PLife – Phillip

Inflation linked revenue model provides resiliency. Over 80% of revenue is derived from hospitals in Singapore while the rest are from nursing homes and healthcare facilities in Japan. Plife REIT collects rental from its tenants based on an inflation linked formula. In August 2008, rental for the Singapore hospital was revised up 6.25% (average CPI over the 12 preceding months plus 1%). Although we have seen CPI reading sliding off from 6.7% in Sep 08 to register a negative reading of – 0.3% in May 09, unless CPI continuously register a monthly reading of –9.5% for the next four months to offset the positive readings in the prior nine months, the CPI +1% formula ensures that rental revenue grows at the minimal rate of 1%. In our forecast, we have assumed a 2% growth and maintain our projections at the moment, though we think surprise may be on the upside.

Credit rating downgrade a non-issue. Fitch Ratings downgraded Plife REIT longterm issuer default rating from BBB+ to BBB with a stable outlook. We view the rating cut as a non-issue as fundamentals remain sound. Gearing is currently 23% and Plife REIT has total debt of $247.5 million with interest cover of 6.7. $34 million of loan is due in the 2nd half of 2010 while the rest are due in 2011.

We maintained our forecast numbers and reassert our optimism in Plife REIT. Plife REIT is not subjected to the cyclicity of the economic cycle unlike other REITs. We raised our fair value estimate to $1.18 due to lower risk premium input in our DCF model.

Risk factors. Risk includes a prolong deflation scenario, which will cause our revenue estimates to be excessive. However the variance is not significant as changes to our forecasted DPU is less than 1%. We think the main risk would be a further credit downgrade as the maturity of the loans draw near and Plife REIT has not announced its refinancing plans.