Blue-chip industrial REIT in Mapletree Industrial Trust (SGX:ME8U), with its property portfolio comprising of data centres in Singapore and in the United States, along with hi-tech buildings, business park buildings, flatted factories, stack-up/ramp-up buildings, and light industrial buildings all located in Singapore, released its business update for the first quarter of the financial year 2021/22 ended 30 June 2021.
The REIT is one that, despite not being mandated to report its profit and loss statements on a quarterly basis, still continues to do so. I have studied through all the documents the REIT has posted and in today’s post, I’ll be sharing with you some of the key pointers you need to take note of regarding its latest quarterly financial results, its portfolio occupancy and debt profile, along with its distribution payout to unitholders (yes, the REIT is one of the few that has continued to declare a distribution payout to its unitholders on a quarterly basis) to find out whether it has strengthened or weakened. You’ll also read about my personal thoughts about the REIT’s latest set of results, as well as my outlook for the remaining 3 quarters of the financial year 2021/22 ahead.
Let’s begin…
Financial Performance (Q1 FY2020/21 vs. Q1 FY2021/22)
In this section, I will be comparing the industrial REIT’s results for the current quarter under review against that recorded in the same time period last year (i.e. Q1 FY2020/21 ended 30 June 2020), and you can find the numbers in the table below:
| Q1 FY2020/21 | Q1 FY2021/22 | % Variance | |
| Gross Revenue (S$’mil) | $99.1m | $128.1m | +29.2% |
| Property Operating Expenses (S$’mil) | $20.5m | $23.3m | +14.1% |
| Net Property Income (S$’mil) | $78.7m | $104.7m | +33.1% |
| Distributable Income to Unitholders (S$’mil) | $70.6m | $82.7m | +17.2% |
As a unitholder, its always encouraging to see such results (where it has strengthened compared to the same time period a year ago, and the REIT’s ability to continuously report an improving set of results is one of the reasons why I’ve made the investment decision in the first place.)
Particularly, improvements in its gross revenue as well as in its net property income can be attributed to the consolidation of revenue from the 14 data centres in the United States of America previously held under MRDCT and from the data centre at 8011 Villa Park Drive in Richmond, Virginia (also in the United States of America) acquired in March 2021.
Property operating expenses in the same time period have gone up by 14.1% as a result of the additional operating expenses incurred from the consolidation of data centres previously held under MRDCT, along with the newly acquired data centre in March.
Finally, the 17.2% year-on-year (y-o-y) increase in its distributable income to unitholders was mainly due to higher net property income, partially offset by higher borrowing costs, manager’s management fees, along with lower distribution declared by joint ventures.
Portfolio Occupancy Profile (Q4 FY2020/21 vs. Q1 FY2021/22)
Moving on, let us now take a look at Mapletree Industrial Trust’s portfolio occupancy profile, where I will be looking at the statistics for the current quarter under review (i.e. Q1 FY2021/22 ended 30 June 2021), and compare them against the statistics recorded in the previous quarter 3 months ago (i.e. Q4 FY2020/21 ended 31 March 2021):
| Q4 FY2020/21 | Q1 FY2021/22 | |
| Portfolio Occupancy (%) | 93.7% | 94.3% |
| Portfolio WALE (by GRI – in Years) | 4.0 years | 3.7 years |
My Observations: The industrial REIT’s portfolio occupancy profile, compared to the previous quarter, was a little of a mixed bag with its portfolio occupancy inching up by 0.6 percentage points (pp) to 94.3%, while its portfolio weighted average lease expiry (by gross rental income) edged down slightly.
The improvements in its portfolio occupancy can be attributed to slight improvements in occupancy rate in its data centres (up by 0.1pp to 98.3% vs. 98.2% in Q4 FY2020/21), hi-tech buildings (up by 0.5pp to 99.0% vs. 98.5% in Q4 FY2020/21), flatted factories (up by 1.1pp to 91.0% vs. 89.9% in Q4 FY2020/21), and also in its stack-up/ramp-up buildings (up by 0.2pp to 96.9% vs. 96.7% in Q4 FY2020/21).
In terms of its lease expiry, I felt that its very well spread out, with just 10.6% of its leases will be expiring in the remaining quarters of the financial year (19.4% of its leases expiring in FY2022/23, 25.7% of its leases expiring in FY2023/24, and the remaining 44.3% of its leases expiring in FY2024/25 or later.)
On the whole, as a unitholder, I felt that the REIT’s latest portfolio occupancy profile continues to remain resilient.
Debt Profile (Q4 FY2020/21 vs. Q1 FY2021/22)
The REIT’s financial performances, as well as its portfolio occupancy profile for the current quarter under review both met my expectations. How about its debt profile?
Let us check out in the table below where I will be comparing the statistics recorded for the current quarter under review against the previous quarter 3 months ago (just like how I studied its portfolio occupancy profile in the previous section):
| Q4 FY2020/21 | Q1 FY2021/22 | |
| Aggregate Leverage (%) | 40.3% | 31.0% |
| Interest Coverage Ratio (times) | 6.0x | 6.8x |
| Average Term to Debt Maturity (years) | 3.6 years | 2.8 years |
| Average Cost of Debt (%) | 2.8% | 2.7% |
My Observations: I am happy to note that the REIT’s debt portfolio have further strengthened compared to the previous quarter. Particularly, I am very happy to find that its aggregate leverage have come down pretty significantly (by 9.3pp) to 31.0% – at this ratio, there remains plenty of debt headroom for the REIT to make further yield accretive acquisitions before it reaches the regulatory limit of 50.0%.
In the remaining 3 quarters of the financial year 2021/22 ahead, 20.4% (or S$364.7m, all of which are bank loans) of the REIT’s debts will mature.
Distribution Per Unit (Q1 FY2020/21 vs. Q1 FY2021/22)
The following table is the industrial REIT’s distribution per unit for the current quarter under review, compared to the same quarter last year:
| Q1 FY2020/21 | Q1 FY2021/22 | % Variance | |
| Distribution Per Unit (S$’cents/unit) | 2.87 cents | 3.35 cents | +16.7% |
Do take note that the distribution payout for the current quarter under review consists of an advanced distribution of 2.21 cents/unit announced on May 2021 (declared for the period between 01 April to 31 May 2021) prior to the issuance of new units pursuant to the private placement and preferential offering, which was already paid out on 28 June 2021.
For the period between 01 June and 30 June 2021, a distribution of 1.14 cents/unit was declared, and unitholders should take note of the following dates regarding the payout of distribution:
Ex-Dividend: 03 August 2021
Record Date: 04 August 2021
Payout Date: 03 September 2021
Closing Thoughts
As a unitholder of the blue-chip industrial REIT, there’s nothing not to like about its latest first quarter results, where it recorded improvements in its financial performance, as well as a very resilient portfolio occupancy as well as debt profile.
Look ahead, I’m optimistic of the REIT being able to continue to record further growth in the upcoming quarter and years ahead.
With that, I have come to the end of my review of Mapletree Industrial Trust’s latest business updates. In case you’re interested (and have missed out) my summary on the business updates of the other 3 Mapletree REITs, you can find them via the respective links below:
As usual, I do hope you’ve found the contents useful, and that the above does not represent any buy or sell recommendations for the REIT’s units. You should always do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions.
Related Documents
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, I am a unitholder of Mapletree Industrial Trust.
Are You Worried about Not Having Enough Money for Retirement?
You're not alone. According to the OCBC Financial Wellness Index, only 62% of people in their 20s and 56% of people in their 30s are confident that they will have enough money to retire.
But there is still time to take action. One way to ensure that you have a comfortable retirement is to invest in real estate investment trusts (REITs).
In 'Building Your REIT-irement Portfolio' which I've authored, you will learn everything you need to know to build a successful REIT investment portfolio, including a list of 9 things to look at to determine whether a REIT is worthy of your investment, 1 simple method to help you maximise your returns from your REIT investment, 4 signs of 'red flags' to look out for and what you can do as a shareholder, and more!
You can find out more about the book, and grab your copy (ebook or physical book) here...
Comments (0)