Highlands Rewilding May Update

A Message From The Board

We recently completed our fifth year on the frontier of the nature recovery market. It has proved to be a rockier frontier than we anticipated at the outset, for us and others seeking to make this vital market work. But we are holding the fort, and continue to have high hopes both that a thriving nature-recovery market will emerge in Scotland, and that Highlands Rewilding will be able to help lead it towards the exponential growth that will be needed if we are to hit necessarily ambitious government targets on biodiversity and carbon.

We are pleased to tell you that we have now sold, or are in the process of closing (i.e. in the hands of solicitors), enough assets to repay substantially the risky loans we took out to build our position on the frontier by the end of June, and sale of the remaining properties being marketed should achieve full repayment by the end of September.

We have sold, or are closing, some 30 buildings, of which 17 are liveable homes. All these homes have been bought either by local community members, or returners, or tenants buying their homes, or by rewilding supporters. In a nation with a rural housing emergency, and a biodiversity collapse emergency, we can be proud of this. The joy of young couples finding permanant homes in a place where nothing but holiday homes sell is wonderful to behold. Beyond this we are bringing in skills for local joint ventures between company and community and contributing to keeping a school open. This is a very important social benefit of the Highlands Rewilding model.

The main environmental and economic benefits, of course, will lie in our generation of ethical profits for nature recovery and community prosperity in the years to come. And here too we are pleased to bring you encouraging news. As the diagram below shows, we have sold or are in the process of closing on nearly 2,000 hectares of land. Crucially, once the sales are completed we will have land management partnerships in place on 1,784 hectares.

You will recall that we call these Operating System Partnerships for Rewilding (OSPREYs). They entail us managing the land, just as we would had we owned it, and sharing the natural-capital monetisation proceeds (net profits) with our partners on a win-win basis. Our OSPREY partnerships will span 82.7% of the land we have sold.

We project net profits to Highlands Rewilding of £72.8 million over the next 15 years from our 1,784 hectares under management. That is the basis for an exciting business plan. We also have a promising potential pipeline of further OSPREYs. And we are confident our projections are based on conservative assumptions. The prices we assume for carbon and biodiversity in Scotland are lower than prices already achieved by our sister company Nattergal in England.

The next task is to raise the working capital to take our business to breakeven (the point where we can live on our own cash generation). We project that we will need £6 million to cover our costs in getting there. So between now and end December we will be approaching the categories of investor who gave us our start: people and organisations lucky enough to have sufficient disposable cash to invest in projects like ours. In investor parlance that means high net-worth individuals, family offices and organisations like progressive companies and foundations. We raised £9.84 million in this way in our start phase, and we have made a solid start this time round. Our minimum requirement is £1 million for working capital in the year ahead and we are a quarter of the way there from early returns. We begin outreach in earnest in mid June.

We also raised £1.2 million from crowdfunding in our start phase, and many of our shareholders have told us that they would like to see us do a second crowdfunding campaign. We would love to, but won’t be able to do it in 2025, simply because of the time pressures on our team.

So June will be a huge month for us. If all sales close on schedule, we will end the month with less than £1 million of debt and falling. We will have until the end of September to repay the residual sum, and will be aiming to do so well before then. We will also have a clear indication of how our equity raise is going by end June, including feedback from three days of investor meetings in Climate Week, 24th-26th June. We have every reason for confidence. When we started we had dreams only, and no track record. Now we have a very investable business plan, and a wonderful team in place that wins plaudits on the basis of its growing experience.

Of course, we live in Trumpworld now, so we should count no chickens. And sales in the process of closing can still fall off rails. So please continue to keep fingers and toes crossed for our project.

With thanks as ever for your interest in us.

The Highlands Rewilding Board