Mapletree Commercial Trust gearing up for $1b IPO?

MAPLETREE Commercial Trust, the owner of properties including VivoCity, hired banks for a $1 billion initial share sale this quarter, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

The trust, a unit of Mapletree Investments Pte, hired CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, Citigroup Inc, DBS Group Holdings Ltd, Deutsche Bank AG, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc as advisers on the sale, the person said, asking not to be identified as details are private.

Mapletree Commercial Trust's listing would follow a similar sale by Mapletree's industrial property unit, Mapletree Industrial Trust Ltd, which raised $938.5 million in October.

Mapletree Industrial units, sold to investors at 93 Singapore cents, closed one cent down at $1.06 yesterday.

The chief financial officer of Mapletree Investments, Wong Mun Hoong, said in October that Mapletree Commercial Trusts' initial public offering (IPO) would be ready by the first half of 2011.

The Wall Street Journal reported the IPO yesterday, citing people it didn't identify.

Mapletree Investments is the real estate unit of investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. — Bloomberg

MCT expected to be ready for listing in early 2011

Trust's portfolio may include VivoCity, HarbourFront, PSA Building

(SINGAPORE) Mapletree Commercial Trust (MCT), which could include VivoCity, is expected to be ready for initial public offering (IPO) early next year.

The trust is expected to raise at least $500 million, Mapletree Investments chief financial officer Wong Mun Hoong said yesterday.

While there is no minimum size that Mapletree is targeting for MCT, it 'will be a sizeable IPO' of a few hundred million dollars to one billion dollars.

MCT can be ready for listing in the first half of 2011, Mr Wong told reporters on the sidelines of a press briefing on Mapletree Industrial Trust's IPO.

The portfolio is expected to include VivoCity as the anchor asset, Merrill Lynch HarbourFront, PSA Building and Mapletree Business City (MBC), an integrated business hub with Grade A specifications located on Alexandra Road.

Mapletree is currently evaluating the assets' readiness.

'VivoCity is a good anchor asset to have,' Mr Wong said, pointing to its rental resilience during the financial crisis. According to him, VivoCity currently has a value of close to $2 billion.

PSA's retail podium is currently undergoing asset enhancement to offer 87,500 square feet of net lettable retail space, which Mr Wong estimated would take 18 months to complete, while MBC is in the process of filling up its 1.78 million sq ft of net leasable space.

'Depending on the readiness, we may or may not include some of these (assets),' Mr Wong said. 'Investors are looking for good-quality investment propositions, so we will look at something that we believe will be attractive.'

He noted that Mapletree was not in a hurry to raise cash through the MCT listing, given its more than $2.5 billion of debt facility and cash available to invest.

Mapletree will consider MCT's IPO size with a view of providing sufficient liquidity and, at the same time, maintaining its strong exposure to MCT's earnings growth.

If it is launched, MCT would be the fourth real estate investment trust (Reit) by Temasek's fully owned Mapletree Investments, which also listed Mapletree Logistics Trust in 2005 and jointly launched Lippo-Mapletree Indonesia Retail Trust with Lippo Group in 2007.

Mapletree yesterday launched the Mapletree Industrial Trust IPO, which is set to raise up to $1.19 billion in gross proceeds assuming full overallotment is exercised. Mr Wong said that Mapletree was also looking at setting up private real estate funds in China and Japan.

There are currently no plans to list the Mapletree India China Fund (MIC Fund) that was set up in 2008. But once the US$1.2 billion fund is fully invested, Mapletree may set up a pure China fund of US$750 million for commercial and residential projects.

Mapletree hopes to raise US$300-US$500 million for the Japan fund to acquire 10 to 15 assets, Mr Wong added. These would be off-CBD office buildings and data centres with long leases and large anchor tenants.