Citicore Energy REIT Corp. (CREIT), the country's first renewable energy-themed real estate investment trust (REIT), deferred its stock market listing to Feb. 18 as its underwriters needed an extra day to sort out "voluminous" market demand, especially among local small investors (LSIs), some of whom will be refunded for excess orders.
CREIT reported that the LSI tranche had generated an oversubscription level of 124.09 percent, receiving a total demand of 270.745 million shares from the 218.182 million allotted shares.
Institutional and trading participant tranches also recorded oversubscriptions, CREIT said, without citing the actual numbers.
P6.39-B stock market debut
The "voluminous" transactions arising from the "huge" number of retail and individual investors resulted in the listing ceremony being moved a day later to Feb. 18, CREIT said in a press statement on Wednesday.
LSIs were allowed to apply for as much as P1 million worth of CREIT's offer shares. The company sold shares at P2.55 each, finalizing the size of its stock market debut at P6.39 billion as it also reduced the number of offer shares.
"We are grateful [for] the overwhelming reception [from] investors. [We owe this] to the extensive market education conducted, which further increased appreciation for REITs as a new asset class. The projected dividend yield based on projected 2022 and 2023 earnings of 7 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively—the highest among the existing REITs—also energized investors to invest in CREIT, being the first REIT also to be listed in the Year of the Tiger" said Oliver Tan, president and CEO of CREIT.
Higher dividend payout
Post-initial public offering (IPO), CREIT plans to implement a dividend payout of at least 95 percent of its distributable income for the preceding year, subject to availability of unrestricted retained earnings and compliance with applicable laws. This is higher than the required dividend payout of at least 90 percent.
"In as much as the underwriters wanted to accommodate all interested investors, the strong orders for CREIT's IPO from local and international institutions and more than 5,000 retail investors simply outnumbered the total shares offered to the public. The underwriters nonetheless exerted efforts to distribute the shares as widely as possible to a broad investor base to hopefully result to better liquidity and more active trading," said Pamela Louise Victoriano, Unicapital Inc.'s first vice president for corporate finance.
"For the LSI investors who were not able to participate in the country's first energy REIT or received partial allocations, rest assured that refunds for those who placed and paid for their orders but were not allocated are being promptly processed by the underwriters and the receiving agent. We fervently appeal for your understanding and we hope your interest and support for CREIT's sustainable value proposition will remain strong and continue beyond the IPO listing," Tan added. INQ