‘Voluminous’ demand prompts CREIT to reschedule market listing launch

MANILA, Philippines—Citicore Energy REIT Corp., the country’s first renewable energy-themed real estate investment trust, moved its stock market listing to early next week amid a “voluminous” market demand, especially among local small investors (LSIs), some of whom will be refunded for excess orders.

CREIT reported that the LSI tranche had generated an oversubscription level of 124.09 percent, receiving a total demand of 270.745 million shares from 218.182 million.

Institutional and trading participant tranches also recorded over subscriptions, CREIT said, without citing the actual numbers.

The voluminous transactions arising from the huge number of retail and individual investors will result in the listing ceremony being moved to early next week, from the initial Feb. 17 schedule, CREIT said in a press statement on Wednesday (Feb. 16).

“We are grateful to the overwhelming reception of investors, owing also to the extensive market education conducted, which further increased appreciation for REITs as a new asset class,” said Oliver Tan, CREIT president and CEO.

“The projected dividend yield based on projected 2022 and 2023 earnings of 7 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively – the highest among the existing REITs – also energized investors to invest in CREIT, being the first REIT also to be listed in the Year of the Tiger,” said Tan.

”In as much as the underwriters wanted to accommodate all interested investors, the strong orders for CREIT’s IPO from local and international institutions and more than 5,000 retail investors simply outnumbered the total shares offered to the public,” said Pamela Louise Victoriano, Unicapital Inc. vice president for corporate finance.

“The underwriters nonetheless exerted efforts to distribute the shares as widely as possible to a broad investor base to hopefully result to better liquidity and more active trading,” Victoriano said.