LJ Hooker boss quashes IPO rumours

“We have never actually made a statement to the market that we will list,” Mr Harrod said.

“What we have said to the market is that we have a number of growth ambitions that would see the company undertake some form of capital management initiative at a point in time that we saw fit,” he told Mortgage Business' sister publication Real Estate Business.

“But we never actually disclosed that that may include doing an IPO or listing on the ASX.”

Mr Harrod’s comments come after media reports this week said LJ Hooker was looking to raise capital after shelving plans to do so earlier this year.

Mr Harrod said he believed the latest round of listing speculation originated from various areas.

“One is that we have been pretty active in the market chatting to different organisations around acquisitions [for] some of our growth plans,” he said.

“We have also been talking to some of the investment banks around capital management options available to us to help drive the growth ambitions.”

Mr Harrod also said LJ Hooker was caught up in the McGrath float last year.

“Because it was in the same time we had gone to the market to do a convertible vote which was just preceding the leveraged buyout of our current shareholders.”

Mr Harrod said the group “certainly [has] no plans” to list in the foreseeable future.

“Interestingly, LJ Hooker was listed for 40 years and that period of time had some of the biggest growth performances in the company’s history. So to suggest that we would never head back down that path probably is not something we can make at the moment.”

[Related: John McGrath slams state governments over property taxes]