Frasers Centrepoint Trust

Morning to everyone. Welcome to Fraser Centrepoint Trust results presentation for the first half financial year 2024, ended 31st of March 2024. We have uploaded the press release, the results deck as well as the financial statements on the SGSnet this morning. And we are happy that you are attending our briefing. And let me invite Richard, the CEO, to give us a run-through of the presentation. Richard, please.

Yeah, hi. Thanks, thanks, Hang Ling, and good morning. to all of you. Thanks for joining us again for this quarter update. I'm going to dive straight into the summary of the result deck and I'm very happy to actually share a set of healthy performance that we have for this quarter. If you look at the financial aspect of it, revenue is at 172 million, MPI 124 million. And later on, when we go into the various slides that shows the charts and so on, you will also see two charts, right? I think we want to distinguish it a little bit because if we were to exclude MPI, CCP, which is Chinese City Point, which was divested at the end of last calendar year, but the first Q for our financial year and also the effect of AIT1. Our gross revenue actually rose 2.9% and MPI actually was higher at 2.1%. DPU, relatively stable at over 6 cents. In terms of capital management, aggregate leverage is currently at about 38.5%, which is pretty healthy. Average borrowing cost, slight improvement from 4.3% in first Q down to 4.2%. ICR over three times, and currently for FY24, all our financing needs has been settled. Coming to the business operation side of things, we have seen a very robust set of numbers. Committed occupancy at close to 100%. Rental reversion at 7.5%. Trouble traffic has gone up 8.1% year-on-year, and tenant sales has continued its trajectory of improvement, and we saw an increase of 4.3% year-on-year. And if you just take a step back, if you compare to pre-COVID same period, we actually grew by over 20%. We also have some updates on AEI, which Pauline will share with you later on, as well as some highlights on our ESG activities for the quarter, which are something we'll share with you. Next slide, please. So just a quick recap of what we have done for this quarter. If you look at We have started off the calendar year, which is our Q2. First off the block, we made an announcement 25th January on the acquisition of the additional 24.5% stake in NEXT. We also launched our equity fundraising, which we did raise $200 million, 2.5 times covered. and also some other notable things that happened during this quarter, including the FCT's inclusion into the Straits Times Index on 18th of March. We did an EGM on 25th of March and also completed our transaction for the 24.5% stake in NEXT on 26th of March. So today, we own 50% stake in NEXT as a whole. Quick update on the market. I'm not going to spend time on the wider macro perspective because you guys know as much as we do. Maybe a little bit on the sales. So if you look at retail sales index, it's a 3% year-on-year growth. If you exclude motor vehicles compared to, you know, ours, it's actually stronger. F&B sales continue to be one of the key driver at 4% year-on-year. From the renter perspective, similar trend. Suburban Mall, you've seen a 2.7% year-on-year growth as compared to ours, about 7.5% growth. But of course, the constituents of their numbers are very different from ours. Updating on the supply side of things, again, we are seeing a pretty muted supply that's coming on stream all the way to 2027. And we have also included some of the projects. This is actually extracted from the research report from CBRE. So some of the names that you could see, some of the smaller malls. In fact, most of them are smaller malls that's going to be completed between now to 2027. So very limited supply, and that underpins the strong demand that we continue to see from retailers, especially to our stronger malls. And this is also the other reason why we are seeing such a robust rental rate version as well. For financial highlights, I'll pass on to Audrey to share about what has happened during the second quarter. Audrey, over to you.

Yeah, thanks Richard. So good morning to everyone. I'll run through the financial highlights for the first half. So first half, we have registered higher gross revenue and also higher MPI if you were to exclude, you know, the Chongqing City Point, which was divested on 31st October. And, you know, if you were to exclude Tampines One, which undergoes asset enhancement work. The gross revenue was up 2.9% due to higher occupancy, staggered rents, and higher passing rents for the portfolio. MPI was also up by 2.1%, with higher gross rent offset by increase in property expenses. We have a good MPI growth of 2.1%. Next slide. So distributions to unique holders is at 104.9 million. This is due to the higher MPI registered by the portfolio and also higher contributions from the investments offset by the higher financing costs. DPU at 6.022 cents for the first half of 2024. So for this slide, I would like to bring attention to the distributions from investments. It has grown 22.8%. This is mainly due to the higher contributions from GRPL, which is the entities that hold NICs. We acquired the 25.5% stake on... on 6th of February last year. And as a result, this year is a full six months contributions from the investments. Secondly, we also increased our stake in SSD switchhole waterway point from 40% to 50% last year on 8th of February. That also contributed to the increase. So however, this is offset by the absence of distributions in hectare, which we have divested in December. Next. The adjusted NEV is stable at 2.25. Next. For the financial metrics, the aggregate leverage actually went up from 37.2% to 38.5% due to the lows that was drawn down in March to finance the acquisitions of 25.5% stick in next and also to fund the asset enhancement work that companies want. ICR at healthy level at 3.26 times. And our cost on debt for this first half is at 4.2%. For the first quarter, it is at 4.3%. And the second quarter is at 4.1%. So you see a dip in terms of the cost of financing. about 68.5% of our debt are actually hedged to fixed-rate interest, increased from the last quarter of 63.4%. So in total, we have undrawn facilities about $587.5 million for the vehicle. Next. So this shows you the debt maturity profile is well spread. There's no refinancing risk in FY2024. So what is due next year in FY2025 is about $320 million. We have already started engaging the banks for the refinancing in next year. So with this, I'll hand over to Pauline. We'll run through the portfolio highlights.