EQUITATIVA LOOKING AT DEPLOYING OVER 200 MILLION AED IN REAL ESTATE ACQUISITIONS FOR EMIRATES REIT

Equitativa (Dubai) Limited (“Equitativa”), the largest REIT manager in the GCC and manager of Emirates REIT (CEIC) PLC (“Emirates REIT” or the “REIT”), today said that it is looking at investing up to AED 200 million in new real estate acquisitions in several sectors for Emirates REIT by early next year.

The announcement comes at a time when the company announced its H1 2019 Financials, which revealed that Emirates REIT witnessed an increase of 9.1% in its Net Property Income for the first half of this year, compared to the same period last year, and an increase of 13.5% in EBITDA for the same period, despite challenging market conditions. Emirates REIT is the world’s largest Shari'a compliant Real Estate Investment Trust and is listed on Nasdaq Dubai.

Emirates REIT also recorded a profit of over AED 4 million for the period, despite market revaluation of real assets, breaking the trend in the sector. 

The first half of this year saw an overall improvement in the portfolio efficiency of Emirates REIT, including a decrease of 5% in fund expenses, improvement in receivables, and a stable occupancy rate of 75%. This positive performance comes at a time when a research by Knight Frank, titled “UAE Market Review and Forecast 2019”, expected that in the short and medium terms “market conditions in the UAE’s office sector will remain challenging with rental rates continuing to fall.”    

Sylvain Vieujot, CEO of Equitativa Dubai, commented: “Our portfolio enjoys a stable occupancy due to our active management and the quality of the assets. We are now in an active acquisition mode and are considering a number of transactions that will boost Funds from Operations (FFO), which remained stable for the period. We believe that this is an opportune time for acquisition of quality assets. Emirates REIT fund is well positioned to benefit from the attractive pricing of Grade A assets.”