China Evergrande Group Statement for SGX Market

According to the South China Morning Post, home buying was notably subdued in China’s top-tier cities during the eight-day “Golden Week” public holiday, which is a traditionally popular season for home sales.

 

 

Data from real estate brokers 5I5J Group and Centaline Property Agency indicate that new home sales fell as much as 78% and 64% in Shanghai and Beijing, respectively, during the holidays compared with a year ago.

 

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Given the 19th Communist Party Congress starting October 18, it is highly likely that potential buyers are adopting a wait-andsee approach. Further, the slew of cooling measures introduced by the local authorities, ranging from heightened mortgage down payments to resale restrictions, appears to be taking effect.

While Evergrande’s latest operating statistics for Sep’17 indicate that contracted sales remains healthy till date, a prolonged period of market softness will be a cause for concern.

SPH REIT Share Investment update

1. 4QFY17 DPU +0.7% YoY
2. FY17 portfolio rental reversion of 1.2%
3. Full committed occupancy

4QFY17 Results Within Expectations

SPH REIT reported an in-line set of 4QFY17 results, with gross revenue and NPI growing by 1.3% and 3.9% YoY to S$52.9m and S$41.8m, respectively. This was driven by higher rental income from both Paragon and The Clementi Mall (TCM), coupled with higher NPI margins (+2 ppt YoY to 79.0%) due to proactive management of utility contracts, lower property tax and maintenance expenses.

DPU for the quarter came in at 1.42 S cents, representing YoY growth of 0.7% as management released S$4.5m of taxable income available for distribution retained in 9MFY17, versus S$1.6m released in 4QFY16.

For its full-year performance, SPH REIT reported a 1.5% increase in gross revenue to S$212.8m and a 4.5% jump in NPI to S$168.1m. The latter formed 101.5% of our FY17 forecast. DPU of 5.53 S cents translated into growth of 0.5% and constituted 99.0% of our FY17 projection.

Negative Rental Reversion for Paragon a Surprise

Both Paragon and TCM maintained their 100% committed occupancy, as at end-FY17. However, a downside surprise came from Paragon’s negative rental reversion figure of 0.8% for expiries in FY17. As rental reversions for the mall were positive in 9MFY17 at 3.6%, this implies a weak 4QFY17 showing.

The softness came largely from the retail space, as reversions for the office/medical leases were flat. TCM fared better, with positive rental uplifts of 3.7% for the full-year, thus resulting in an overall portfolio rental reversion of 1.2% in FY17. Shopper traffic for both malls was stable.

While Paragon achieved higher tenant sales of 2.1% in FY17, TCM saw a 5.8% decline. Nevertheless, the occupancy cost for Paragon (19.6%; unchanged) and TCM (15.8%; +0.8 ppt) remains healthy, in our view.

There were also positives from SPH REIT’s portfolio valuation, underpinned by a compression in cap rates adopted by the valuers, as rental assumptions held steady. Paragon’s valuation rose 1.5% to S$2,695m, while that of TCM inched up 1.6% to S$583m.

Maintain BUY

Taking into account this full-set of results, we trim our FY18 and FY19 DPU forecasts by 1.1% and 1.8%, respectively. But as we also roll forward our valuations, our DDM-derived fair value estimate remains unchanged at S$1.08. Maintain BUY.

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