Saturday, January 23, 2010

Ascendas India Trust’s Q3 distributable income falls 8%

ASCENDAS India Trust has recorded distributable income of $14.1 million for its third financial quarter ended Dec 31, 2009, down 8 per cent from a year ago.

Distribution per unit (DPU) for Q3 was 1.85 cents, also lower by 8 per cent.

Total property income for the quarter was $29.9 million, which was 4 per cent higher than the corresponding quarter last year. Net property income was $19.3 million, up 13 per cent.

The trust’s portfolio of 4.8 million sq ft of completed space is fairly evenly distributed among Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. The properties house 248 tenants operating in various IT sub-sectors such as software development, business process offshoring, research and development, and data centres.

Portfolio occupancy remained high at 97 per cent as at Dec 31, 2009, while tenant retention rate over the last nine months was 79 per cent, the trust said.

Jonathan Yap, chief executive officer of Ascendas Property Fund Trustee Pte Ltd, the trustee-manager, said: ‘We are pleased to report another strong portfolio performance in the third quarter. Indicators are suggesting that an economic recovery is well underway.’ The Indian economy grew 7.9 per cent year-on-year in the quarter ended September 2009.

‘We will focus on positioning the trust to benefit from further improvements in the general operating environment,’ he said.

The trust will continue to focus on growing the operating earnings of its assets by actively managing the portfolio, optimising its capital structure, and further growing the portfolio through developing the land it owns and pursuing yield accretive acquisitions.

Source: Business Times, 23 Jan 2010

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