Good evening,

We’ve got our paws on Virgin Australia’s maiden IPO pitch!

The airline’s big boss Jayne Hrdlicka, flanked by the CFO Race Strauss and chief development officer David Marr, has kicked off a set of investor meetings overseas.

First stop was Singapore, and Street Talk hears the inaugural message included a heavy dose of explaining and only a small serving of Virgin’s financials.

The trio offered up the airline’s EBIT margin of 11 per cent (3 per cent higher than before its administration) and gross debt (down to $1.97 billion) as the only numerical markers.

Instead, there was a lot of exposition on Virgin’s footing in Australia and future goals.

All of that means investors have to wait a little bit longer for detailed numbers, before they can start thinking about how much they’d be willing to pay for Virgin shares relative to Qantas. Those meetings should be some time around May, Street Talk hears.

It will also be interesting to see how Goldman Sachs, UBS and Barrenjoey finetune the pitch for Aussie sensibilities. It had to be explained to the Singaporeans that Australia is a vast continent where sometimes flying is the only mode of transportation available.

Elsewhere, we found George Clinical’s Asian suitor wrestling FIRB, Newcrest’s CFO talking up the business at Credit Suisse’s (final) conference, and Geoff Wilson parking one of his LICs’ $700m-plus raise.

Lastly, National Storage REIT delivered on the much-touted REIT raising play. Its $300 million placement leg was expected to clear near the floor price.

Happy reading,
Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
Street Talk editors