Insider moves: NTUC, Blue Pegasus trim stakes in SPH REIT, MMP Resources respectively
Singapore’s labour movement, the National Trade Union Congress, is no longer a substantial shareholder in SPH REIT.
This followed NTUC’s June 17 sale of 400,000 units for $355,960, or an average of 88.99 cents per unit, in the open market.
With the sale, NTUC now holds a deemed stake of just over 137.9 million shares, which translates to 4.998%, from 5.012% earlier. Under Singapore Exchange rules, NTUC is not obliged to declare further sales of units in SPH REIT as it has dropped below the 5% threshold which defines “substantial shareholders”.
NTUC took a stake in SPH REIT more than a decade ago after it jointly developed Clementi Mall with Singapore Press Holdings
(SPH). The mall, which was opened in 2011, was part of the portfolio of retail malls that formed part SPH REIT ahead of its IPO in 2013.
On May 6, SPH REIT announced it was extending the rental waiver for tenants because of the extension of the “circuit breaker” measures by four weeks. Together with the rental rebates granted in February and March, the total rebates averaged 2.3 months and were fully funded by SPH REIT.
In the 2QFY2020 ended Feb 29, SPH REIT’s net property income rose 23.3% to $ 56.5 million from a year ago. However, given the Covid-19 pandemic, SPH REIT held back DPU so that it could build up its emergency fund. Instead of the 1.41 cents per share declared in 2QFY2019, SPH REIT cut its DPU to just 0.3 cent.
Blue Pegasus Capital, a substantial shareholder of MMP Resources, has been steadily selling shares in the market. The most recent sale was made on June 18 when it sold 35 million shares for $104,673.81, or an average of 0.3 cent per share. With this sale, Blue Pegasus now has nearly 120.9 million shares, or 5.16% of the company, down from 6.65% previously. Earlier, it had sold 11.2 million shares on June 3 for $45,998.40, or an average price of 0.41 cent per share, and 12 million shares on May 12 for $53,000, or 0.44 cent per share.
RTO deal to acquire city developer
Blue Pegasus Capital is reducing its stake in MMP Resources ahead of a $118-million reverse takeover deal of Tokyo-based company called GCM which was announced on April 28. The consideration of the deal is 39.3 billion new MMP Resources shares at 0.3 cent each. The issue of new units will increase MMP Resources’ share base from just over 2.3 billion to nearly 41.7 billion.
According to MMP Resources, GCM, which has been operating since 2005, provides financial and real estate services, and has plans to acquire properties as part of a smart city development in Japan.
For the 1QFY2020 ended March, MMP Resources reported losses widened to $666,000 from $255,000 a year ago. Revenue in the same period came in at just $57,000, down from $467,000.
Before 2015, MMP Resources was known as Sino Construction, until a new group of shareholders and board took over. As Sino Construction, the company was linked to John Soh Chee Wen, who is on trial for allegedly being the mastermind behind the manipulation of three penny stocks back in 2013.