MREIT to expand portfolio to 1M sqm
MREIT Inc., the real estate investment trust sponsored by Megaworld Corporation, is planning to expand its office asset portfolio to 1 million square meters within the next five to ten years.
In a statement, the firm said it is aiming to be the “country’s fastest growing REIT with the longest expansion pipeline” among the REITs listed at the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Next year, Megaworld is planning to inject an additional 100,000 square meters of prime office assets that will increase MREIT’s portfolio to around 324,000 square meters by end-2022.
“We are committed to reaching half a million square meters by 2024, and are highly confident of our ability to reach 1 million square meters in the near future so that we can be the largest office REIT in Southeast Asia,” said MREIT President and CEO Kevin L. Tan.
He added that, “Our goal is to put the Philippines and MREIT on the global REIT map because of the size and quality of our REIT portfolio and our world-class tenant base.”
Tan noted that, “We believe we can easily achieve this because Megaworld already has 1.2 million square meters of existing office buildings and has a robust pipeline of new office development spread across 26 business parks across the country.”
“We remain bullish about the prospects of the Philippine BPO sector and Megaworld expects to maintain its undisputed leadership position as the Philippine office landlord of choice for the world’s leading IT and BPO companies,” he said.
MREIT’s initial portfolio of approximately 224,431 square meters consists of 10 prime office buildings in three of Megaworld’s most established township locations that are popular among the biggest BPO companies operating in the Philippines.
“Our current portfolio has been carefully curated to include only Grade A PEZA-accredited buildings with mainly BPO and multinational tenants,” said Tan.
He explained that, “MREIT’s strategy is to be very focused on high quality office buildings with high quality tenants that are located inside an already established township.”
“Throughout the years, our integrated live-work-play townships has proven to be successful in attracting better and stickier tenants, which in turn translates to significantly less tenant churn, consistently higher occupancy rates and sustainable escalating rental rates,” said Tan.
MREIT’s initial public offering price was set at ₱16.10 per share, which translates to a projected fiscal year 2022 (ending June 30, 2022) dividend yield of 5.7 percent.
“This IPO was priced at an attractive level to provide IPO investors a compelling entry opportunity to become long term partners in MREIT’s goal of becoming the Philippines’ fastest growing REIT backed by the country’s largest office landlord,” said BDO Eduardo Francisco, President of BDO Capital, one of the joint global coordinators on the IPO.
As a result, he said the institutional book building attracted strong interest from both long only foreign investors as well as domestic institutional investors.
The estimated net IPO proceeds (assuming full exercise of the overallotment option) of ₱14.7 billion together with the expected cash proceeds from the impending asset injection into MREIT will be reinvested by Megaworld into 15 projects over the next 12 months.