CRCT – BT

CRCT placement snapped up

Institutional investors take up 136m new units in CapitaRetail China Trust in 30 mins

A PRIVATE placement by CapitaRetail China Trust (CRCT) was snapped up by institutional investors within half-an-hour after its launch yesterday.

Approximately 136 million new units in CRCT were fully subscribed by investors under the private placement at an issue price of $1.36 per unit, the trust’s manager, CapitaRetail China Trust Management Ltd (CRCTML) said.

The total gross proceeds from the private placement amount to $185 million. The issue price was set at a discount of approximately 10 per cent to CRCT’s volume-weighted average price of existing units on the Singapore Exchange on Thursday.

CapitaLand Retail Ltd, on behalf of CapitaLand Ltd and its subsidiaries, and CapitaMall Trust subscribed for approximately $74 million worth of new units so as to maintain their proportionate unit- holdings in CRCT at their pre-placement levels. The joint lead managers, bookrunners and underwriters for the private placement were Citigroup Global Markets Singapore, DBS Bank and JPMorgan.

Lim Beng Chee, CEO of CRCTML, said: ‘Despite the soft and volatile market conditions, CRCT was able to raise capital and garner strong participation from investors, who had quickly subscribed for the new units within 30 minutes after the launch of the private placement. This demonstrates the resilient qualities of CRCT and the highly accretive benefits of this quality acquisition.

‘We remain positive in achieving our target asset size of $3 billion by the end of 2009.’

Following the equity fund-raising for the acquisition of Xizhimen Mall and the issue price of $1.36 per new unit, unitholders can expect a distribution per unit (DPU) of 6.67 cents for FY2008, the trust manager said. This is an accretion of 4.1 per cent to the forecast DPU of 6.41 cents for CRCT’s existing portfolio.

CRCT is also making a public ATM offering, in which approximately 2.2 million new units will be made available through the ATMs of DBS (including POSB) on a first-come, first-served basis at the issue price of $1.36 per new unit. The maximum number of new units per application under the ATM offering is 250,000.

The ATM offering will open at 10.30am today and close two hours later, subject to early closure if all the units under the ATM offering are fully taken up before that.

The expected date of listing of the new units is Feb 5.