August 24, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — AREIT Inc., the listed real estate investment trust of the Ayala Group, is ramping up its asset diversification to accelerate growth in the coming years.
“For this coming year, 2025, we are looking at furthering out our diversification strategy,” AREIT president and CEO Jose Eduardo Quimpo II said.
Quimpo said AREIT would diversify its asset mix with a portfolio of offices, malls, hotels and industrial assets to improve returns and reduce sector risks across various economic cycles.
“We are looking at retail assets that we will be infusing alongside hotel and some offices,” Quimpo said.
“I think in the near term, in the next few years, we will be growing our retail and our hotel assets at a faster pace than our office,” he said.
According to Quimpo, offices currently account for about two-thirds of AREIT’s portfolio.
“As we continue to grow that, we need to grow the other aspects of our portfolio at a faster pace so that each of these particular legs gets to double-digit in the very near future. I think in the immediate years, it will be to get all of these asset classes into the double-digit range,” he said.
Quimpo said industrial assets are also part of the asset class, which AREIT will continue to look at should there be opportunities.
“But I think in the near term, we’re really excited on the warehousing assets. We think that warehousing provides a further balance to our portfolio. We are looking at those particular assets, both from our sponsor as well as third parties in terms of adding them into and how it plays in the overall portfolio of AREIT,” Quimpo said.
“We are open to opportunities. Our goals of diversification, total shareholder returns are items that we continuously balance. So if there are good opportunities out there, we are open to evaluate those,” he said.
With the recent appointment of Quimpo as AREIT’s new president and CEO, the company is gearing up for its next chapter of growth.
AREIT is set to close the year with $2 billion in assets under management.
“We are poised to hit our $3-billion target within the next three years,” Quimpo said.
AREIT recorded a net income of P2.9 billion in the first half, up by 44 percent year-on-year, on the back of a 43-percent surge in revenues to P4.2 billion.
Its overall occupancy during the period remained high at 96 percent, better than the industry average.
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