Frasers Centrepoint Trust

Good morning and welcome to Fraser Centrepoint Trust third quarter financial year 2023 business update briefing. The business update presentation was uploaded on the SGXNet last evening and it is also available on our website. So let me introduce the management team today. We have Richard Ng, the CEO, Audrey Tan, the CFO, and Pauline Lin, the Head of Investment and Asset Management. And my name is Fang Lin, I'm the Head of Investor Relations. Let me hand this over to Richard to kick off the presentation.

Richard, please. Thanks, Fang Ling. And good morning to all of you. Nice to have all of you joining us again this morning. As Fang Ling has mentioned, this is our business. This quarter is our business update. So a lot more focus will then be looking at the various operating metrics. So let me just kick off this morning's presentation. And again, you know, happy to share the result from our third quarter. In terms of occupancy, we are 1.6%. up year on year at 98.7%. So if you look at this set of numbers together with the next set of numbers in terms of shopper traffic, 16% up year on year. Tenant sales, 5% up year on year. And if you look at year to date comparison with pre-COVID, we are about 16% higher. So the trend continues. We had questions during the first quarter, whether are we going to see this trend continue? And even at the second quarter, we also had the same question. So this is again a testament to the strength of the portfolio that we have. Occupancy continued to remain very high. Our shopper traffic is recovering so we are probably 10% there about compared to pre-COVID and it continues to strengthen. Sales definitely is a key highlight. The concern we had previously from various quarters were whether the increase in sales is going to continue. And as you can see, I mean, again, these numbers are there for all to see, continue to increase year on year. And also, you know, especially if you compare to pre-COVID at a double digit of 16%, that is a very strong growth number. financing slightly higher borrowing cost of 3.7. I think it's no surprise as we continue to see volatility in the interest rate market. What's good is also we are able now to extend our debt maturity to more than 2.5 years compared to about 1.9 years previously. On our ESG front, I think this is where we strive to continue to make progress and we recently announced our first collaboration with OCBC on the green loan offering and probably Audrey will be able to share a bit more later on. This is actually one area in which we continue to strive. ESG front looking at the various initiatives, including increasing our green loan proportion as well. On the next slide, you can see again, these are the market environment. Again, if you look at suburban retail more especially, continues to be is seeing very strong numbers coming up from the market as a whole. Suburban prime rents, we are looking at 3.1% year-on-year growth. This, of course, is looking at the broader market where it came off from some of those that were not doing as well too. Even the Orchard Road prime area is also seeing a pickup in terms of rental reversion. and this is on the back of the fact that we have shared this in our various quarter results as well that the supply continues to remain very limited and this is a positive information for the landlord and market. With this, I'm going to pass on to Audrey for the next section. Audrey, please.

Thanks Richard. On the capital management front, I'm pleased to share that the refinancing for FY2023 is completed. And with this, we have extended our average debt maturity to 2.5 years. Our green loans now accounts to close to 50% of our total borrowings. In terms of the matrices, aggregate, the leverage is up from 39.6% to 40.2%, but it's mainly due to the loan that was drawn down during the period for working capital purposes. Our ICR is at 3.89 times. This is slightly lower compared to last quarter due to the higher interest expense. Average cost of debt is about 3.7% and 63% of our loan are hedged to fixed rate. So we have facilities about $557 million that is available and we are rated credit BBB stable by S&P and BA2 stable by Moody's. So for the refinancing that is due in FY2024, we have recently announced in terms of collaborations with OCBC to secure funding to refinance the 353.5 million loans and the loan documentation is currently in progress and we already had funding in place for the 34 million loans. So, we have really plans in place for FY2024. Next slide for me. So, we're also pleased to share that FCT is first in Singapore to collaborate with OCBC on this green loan to offering carbon credits. So, this solution actually helps companies want to accelerate towards carbon neutral as part of its plans to decarbonise. So this is in line with our target to be net zero carbon by year 2050 across our scopes 1, 2 and 3. With this, I'll hand over to Pauline for portfolio updates.