MREIT earnings as of Sept climb 13% to P 2.1B

| PHOTO: Official website of MREIT

MANILA  -Tycoon Andrew Tan’s real estate investment trust company MREIT Inc. expanded distributable earnings by 13 percent to P2.1 billion from January to September after booking significant contributions from the injection of new assets from sponsor, Megaworld Corp.

Total revenues during the first nine months of the year reached P3.1 billion, up 15 percent, a stock exchange filing on Tuesday showed.

MREIT earlier won regulatory approval to acquire four Grade A office towers from Megaworld worth P5.3 billion. Apart from new assets, earnings were bolstered by higher leasing rates from its current tenants while it maintained an average occupancy rate of 95 percent during the period.

“The consistent outperformance of MREIT compared to industry benchmarks while delivering solid results underscore the quality of our assets and their prime locations,” MREIT president and CEO Kevin Tan said in the filing.

“We remain committed on sustaining our earnings growth and distributions by ensuring high occupancy and implementing escalations when possible. We are also actively seeking opportunities for growth through strategic acquisitions, so long as the valuations remain beneficial for our shareholders,” he added.

Under its expansion program, MREIT signed a deal to potentially acquire seven Grade A offices from Megaworld with a total gross leasable area (GLA) of around 150,500 square meters (sq m).

The projects, which include buildings located in Megaworld townships McKinley Hill, McKinley West, Iloilo Business Park, and Davao Park District, will expand the company’s total GLA by 46 percent to 475,000 sq m.

MREIT earlier committed to raise its GLA to 500,000 sq m by end-2024.

“While our recent [memorandum of understanding] with Megaworld is focused on office spaces, we are also keenly observing the impressive growth of Megaworld’s retail assets,” Tan said.