Frasers Centrepoint Trust

Morning everyone, on behalf of the manager of Asers Centrepoint Trust, thank you for joining us for this morning's analyst briefing for FCT's first half 25 financial results, which was uploaded on SGXnet this morning. So we have with us today, Mr Richard Ng, CEO of the manager, Ms Annie Koong, Chief Financial Officer, and Ms Pauline Lin, Head Investment and Asset Management. So please be reminded that we will be recording the analyst briefing and also uploading an audio recording of the briefing on FCT's website later today. I would now like to invite Richard to discuss the results and go through the presentation. Over to you, Richard.

Hi, thanks so much Yijing and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. It looks like it's going to be a very eventful week this week. First and foremost, I would like to share that we are very happy again to share a set of very strong results, especially from the operating performance and that translates into the financial performance as well. So perhaps you could go straight up to the first slide, please. Yes, so here again, we have put it in a way where it's easy for you to go through the different numbers. First and foremost, in terms of retail occupancy, again, remaining very stable, steady at over 99% occupancy rate. we continue to see improvements in terms of our shopper traffic marginal 1% up sales for this first half itself came in about 3.3% so again pretty strong sales growth for our portfolio rental reversion you can see that last year this time we actually achieved about 7.5% and for this year we were able to do 9% From the debt side of things, Deering remained at about 38, 39%. Thereabout, the other thing to note is also our cost of debt for this quarter. Second quarter, 25 came down to 3.8%. So with this backdrop, we were able to deliver at the same time, a set of strong financial performance as well. So next slide, please. From gross revenue perspective, it grew by over 7% to $184.4 million, and that translates to a NPI of about $133.7 million, which is also about 7% higher than the same period last year. Next slide. On DPU perspective, our distribution to unit holders grew by close to 5% to $110.1 million and our DPU grew by about 0.5% to $6.054 for this first half of 2025. Next slide. Another important highlight, we just want to have this as a recap, what we did sometime in March, the proposed acquisition of 100% of North Point City South Wing, and we also went out to do a EFR of private placement and also prep offering. The private placement was about four times covered. and a prep offering was about 1.2 times covered. In total, we raised over $420 million. I'm not going to go through the details because we have gone through this before, but we can certainly take questions if you do have on this acquisition. So we are scheduled to have our EGM sometime at the end of May. The date once finalised will of course be announced as well. Next slide, please. So a little bit about macroeconomics. I think most of us are pretty familiar with this information that you have before you. In terms of GDP, of course, we still see pretty strong performance from our Singapore market as a whole. But with all the uncertainties, I think MTI has kind of taken a little bit more conservative stance and reduced or downgraded the GDP forecast to between 0% to 2%. and by the same time it's also important to know that the CPI continues to ease and that's an important element for us to look at and an important number for us to continue to monitor. Retail sales for January, February, that is usually the case. We look at the two months because it differs from year to year when our CNY falls. So for this particular year, for the RSI sales as a whole, came in at marginal drop of 0.5% year on year. However, if you look at some bright sparks within the sector as well, in particular the F&B sales continue to do pretty well with a growth of over 2% year-on-year. Overall rental rents, this is looking at just prime space. Suburban prime material rents continue to grow at about 1.6% year on year. This is slightly different from our set of numbers because ours is on the overall portfolio reversion perspective. Okay, next slide please. Again, if you look at supply, the numbers are still pretty much the same that we have shared before, pretty muted. If you look at the next three years, so on the average, it's about coming in less than 0.3 million square feet per annum in total. But if you look at just strictly on suburban space that's coming up, it is looking at probably around slightly over 200,000. for the whole three years in total. So again, supply is pretty muted. Demand continues to be very strong, in particular, if you look at our occupancy rate. That's one of the reasons why it also contributed to the strong reversion that you have seen just now at the start of my presentation. Next slide, please. Okay, for financial highlights, I'd like to ask Annie to help to go through the section, please. Annie?

Thank you, Richard. Good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the financial highlights for the first half of this financial year. We are pleased to share the improved performance in 1.525. For the first half, gross revenue is 7.1% higher as compared to the same period last year. This was mainly due to the completion of AEI at Tampines One, partially offset by the divestment of Changi City Point on 31st October 2023. If you exclude the effect of the Chinese City Point and T1, gross revenue is 2.4% higher mainly due to the higher occupancy and higher rent across most malls. Property expenses for the 6 months period is 6.5% higher compared to the same period last year. Excluding the effect of the Chinese City Point and T1, property expenses is 4.7% higher mainly due to the higher marketing, maintenance and utilities expenses. These translate to 7.3% higher compared to last year. If we exclude the effect of Chinese City Point 81, the NPI is about 1.6% higher than the same year last year. Distribution from investment relates to the distribution from the JV, which holds the Waterway Point index. It is 83.2% higher due to the six-woman contribution from the acquisition of the additional $24.5 and of course, the better performance in Waterway Point and next. DPU is 6.054 cents for this 0.5. Next slide, please. There's no material variance in balance sheet. The net asset value remains stable at 2.28 cents as of 31 March 2025. Next slide, please. We are pleased to report the healthy financial position with the improved average cost of debt. As of 31st March, the aggregate leverage is at 38.6%, which is 0.7 percentage points lower than last quarter. The interest coverage ratio is healthy at 3.28 times, and the average cost of debt is 3.9% for the first half. It has dropped 20 basis points to 3.8% on quarter basis. Average debt to maturity stood at 2.95 years. And during the quarter, we took the opportunity to increase the percentage of the debt, bringing it to 75.8%. Total unknown facilities is at 596 million and credit ratings remain unchanged. Next slide please. We have a well spread debt maturity with no refinancing risk for this financial year. and in March 2025 this year we also took the opportunity to issue a seven-year 80 million green bond at 3.3% to diversify our sources of funding. Next slide please. Yeah, DPU for the first half is at 6.05 cents which will be paid on 30th May.