ASCENDAS Real Estate Investment Trust (A-Reit) plans to issue 185 million new units to raise funds for property development and further acquisition.
The private placement of new units will be priced at between $1.63 and $1.70 per unit and is expected to raise net proceeds of at least $296 million.
Of that amount, A-Reit intends to use about $175 million to develop its high-tech SingTel industrial facility.
About $121 million will be used to fund further acquisition and potential development of properties. Some debt will also be repaid, it said.
‘The private placement is a chance to strengthen A-Reit’s balance sheet to take advantage of potential investment opportunities,’ said Mr Tan Ser Ping, chief executive officer of Ascendas Funds Management, the manager of A-Reit.
Such investment opportunities have already been marked out, and ’some of these may gradually materialise as the economic condition stabilises’, Mr Tan added.
A-Reit is Singapore’s first listed industrial real estate investment trust.
The industrial landlord owns 89 properties in Singapore with total assets worth about $4.6 billion. These range from business and industrial properties to logistics centres.
Its major tenants include SingTel, Osim International, Siemens and Johnson & Johnson.
It posted a net property income of $80.7 million for its first-quarter results last month, up 15.8 per cent from the previous year.
Its distributable income for the first quarter was up 17.9 per cent to $61 million, due mainly to a bigger portfolio. Its distributable income per unit was 3.62 cents.
A-Reit’s units closed four cents lower last Friday at $1.76. Its units were the subject of a trading halt yesterday.
Source : Straits Times – 12 Aug 2009
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