Merkado Barkada
September 9, 2024 | 8:49am
No, because there’s no quarterly deadline to be missed. According to Article II, Section 7 of the REIT Law, DDMP [DDMPR 1.00 unch; 35% avgVol] is only required to distribute at least 90% of its qualified distributable income by “the last day of the fifth month following the close of the fiscal year of the REIT.” We can confirm DDMPR’s fiscal year ends on December 31st by looking at the “Fiscal Year” section of DDMPR’s Company Information tab on the PSE EDGE server, so in this case the last day of the fifth month following 31 December 2024 is 31 May 2025. That’s the only legal deadline that DDMPR needs to comply with. While DDMPR distributes quarterly dividends, there are no legal deadlines that it needs to follow in terms of when these dividends are declared and paid, other than the one that applies to the entirety of DDMPR’s distributable income at the end of the year.
MB BOTTOM-LINE: This question has been coming up more often because DDMPR is consistently one of the last REITs to declare its quarterly dividend. I know there’s a human impulse to attribute negative connotations to people and companies that do things “last”, but the truth here is that it is not particularly informative to investors that a particular REIT declares first, second, or last. Sure, there’s an argument that it’s better to get the money earlier rather than later. Compared to shareholders of RL Commercial REIT [RCR 5.70 ?0.9%; 177% avgVol] that already received RCR’s Q2 dividend on September 2, shareholders of DDMPR look significantly disadvantaged. But if DDMPR always declares and pays with the same lag, then it’s running the race at the same speed, just shifted by a few months. Last year, DDMPR declared its Q2 dividend on October 2 and paid out on November 29. So long as it does approximately the same this year, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about with this specific issue.
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