Lendlease Global Commercial REIT remains DBS's top pick among REITs in Orchard Road

Lendlease Global Commercial REIT (LREIT) remains the top pick of DBS Group Research analysts Geraldine Wong and Derek Tan, as they mull the future of domestic consumer trends and how they’ll affect the malls along the Orchard Road belt.

Dubbed as a shopping paradise for domestic and foreign shoppers alike, malls along Orchard Road were one of the first few to be negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The impact was keenly felt when Singapore closed its borders, causing tourist footfall to trickle to a halt.

“Shopper footfall plunged to a low of 20% of normalised levels during the circuit breaker period [from April to June 2020]. Almost one year in, the aftermath of a Covid fever still reverberates with the Orchard malls, albeit to a lesser extent, in terms of shopper traffic and tenant sales that are currently still hovering below pre-Covid levels,” note the analysts in a Feb 18 report.