K-REIT : DBS

The future growth will come

Leverage on rental growth in secondary locations. We continue to see bullish rental growth with tight vacancy and bullish rentals in the CBD spilling over to secondary locations. We have noted from property brokers that current asking rents for Keppel Towers is now at S$7.80, up by about 40% from S$5.50 within half a year.

1Q07 DPU below expectations,however, evident of lagged recovery. K-REIT delivered 1Q07 DPU of 1.77 cents, with modest growth of 0.6% sequentially compared to 4Q06. This translates into annualised DPU of 7.18 cents and yield of 2.24%, below our expectations. However, with 72% of NLA expected to be renewed from 2007 to 2010 (11% already renewed in 1Q07), we maintain the view that positive rent reversions from Keppel Towers and the remaining portfolio should flow through to distribution income eventually.

Billion dollar deal reflects rents lagging behind capital values. We highlight the recent landmark deal for office transaction with Capitaland unlocking value through the sale of Temasek Tower for S$1.039bn, or S$1,550 psf to Macquarie Global Property Advisors illustrating lagged effect of rental reversions. We understand from market sources that the yield based on the transaction is only about 2%, which implies unit capital values are pricing in strong growth in later years by market players. We find great disparity between our range of RNAV estimate for K-Reit based on i) Income method (FY08 NPI yield, 4.5% cap rate) which derives RNAV of S$2.04 per unit; ii) market comparison methodology (S$2,172 psf for Prudential Tower; S$1,550 psf for KT/GE and Bugis Junction) accordingly derives S$4.57 per unit which is
consistent with this view.

Upgrade to Buy, raising DCF assumptions. With raised rental assumptions for Keppel Towers (44% NPI contribution) and terminal discount proxied by cap rate of 4.5%, we raise our DCF based target price to S$3.70 on the premise that K-REIT’s assets would continue to flush out under-rented space moving forward and rental growth to be reflected by flow through to
distribution income. Upgrade to Buy.