SINGAPORE (Oct 21): To date, real estate investment trusts are likely to have raised more than $4.3 billion in “follow-ons” such as placements and preferential equity offerings, and excluding IPOs.
On Oct 17, Mapletree Commercial Trust announced that its private placement of 200.9 million units at $2.28 per unit was seven times covered. MCT has also announced a preferential equity offering of 205.6 million units at $2.24 to its unitholders. In total, MCT has stated that it plans to raise “not less” than $902 million to part-fund its acquisition of Mapletree Business City Phase 2 (MBCII), which it is buying for $1.55 billion, or $1.57 billion including expenses and fees.
Since MCT’s private placement units and preferential equity fundraising (EFR) units are being issued at premiums of 31% and 34% respectively to its net asset value (NAV) of $1.70 (as at Sept 30), the acquisition of MBCII is some 4.5% accretive to MCT’s distributions per unit. DPU as at March 31 was 9.14 cents, and annualised DPU based on DPU for the three months to Sept 30 was 9.28 cents. MBCII would add 0.41 cent to its DPU.
