The Merricks Capital Agriculture Credit Fund returned 0.9% in April and 9.7% on an annualised basis since inception.

Underlying loan performance for the month was lifted with the Fund increasing its investment allocation to one existing loan during the month, deploying $8.0m of capital. The fund is fully allocated with cash at 1%.

During the month, Rabobank released its Australian Agricultural Land Price Outlook forecasting agricultural land price growth in Australia to be low double digits in 2023. This comes off the +20% growth experienced in 2021 and 2022. We do not revalue our loans in line with the asset growth providing further risk management on our portfolio. This significant two-year growth in asset value and our portfolio risk management of lowering the weighted average LVR on our agricultural credit loans from 60% to 56% over the past 18 months has positioned the fund for growth as loans are repaid and capital redeployed.

We are in final due diligence of two acquisition lending opportunities, totalling $40m, one to fund a horticultural project in QLD and the other, a grazing property in the New England region of NSW. We are assessing a pipeline of $250m opportunities across horticulture, cropping and meat & livestock.