Commercial Land Resource Data Provider Raises $10M

LandGate, a marketplace for land-related resources, recently closed a $10 million Series-B round, bringing total funding in debt and equity of $19 million, according to the company. Startup data site Crunchbase pegs the equity portion at a total of $12.5 million.

Leading the latest round was NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Nextra Energy, a major electric utility that brands itself as a clean energy company, although according to a 2020 SEC filing, 73% of its net power generation was from natural gas and 2% from coal. Private equity firm Kimmeridge also participated in the round.

LandGate plans to use the money to “to enhance its product suite, with a particular focus on solutions catering to financial institutions” and “expand its marketing and sales efforts to increase market penetration across the country.”

The company’s focus is on the indirect resources land can bring, including “solar, wind, minerals, water, and carbon offsets.” Clean energy is one category, but so are extractive industries and potential sources of carbon credits. LandGate says that it has “facilitated over $300 million of land resource deals nationwide across transactions for the development of solar, wind, carbon, minerals, mining, electric vehicle (EV) charging and water resources” as of the first quarter of 2021.

Most commercial real estate sectors have multiple data providers offering such information as previous sales prices, comparables, rent roles, estimated values, and more. LandGate claims that the same can’t be said for environmental and resource uses. 

“Participants in the US’ $4-trillion per year energy and environmental land resources market are plagued by a lack of accurate data solutions and market intelligence for land, which prevents stakeholders across the market from making informed decisions about land transactions,” the company writes. “With LandGate, customers ranging from global financial firms looking to optimize their clean energy holdings to landowners across the US have the ability to determine comparative values of the full spectrum of resources and potential royalties for every parcel of land in the United States.”

LandGate says that it has created a new clean energy dashboard for capital market users. “The interface will generate metrics for investors who are assessing the projected performance of large energy and resource asset portfolios and present them with projected production, cash flow, and company net asset valuations (NAVs) updated live with new farm activity or electricity pricing data,” it says. “Traders and insurers can compare the future quarterly cash flows of renewable energy operators and risk them to weather catastrophes.”

Ready availability of information could also become a tool more broadly used in CRE to consider alternative or supplemental values of land.