MREIT Inc., the real estate investment trust arm of billionaire Andrew Tan's Megaworld Corp., is pledging long-term value appreciation to investors as it expands its property portfolio.

The company also announced the first tranche of cash dividends on Monday of P0.243 a share, payable on May 31 to stockholders of record as of May 10 this year.

MREIT CEO Kevin Tan said they planned to distribute quarterly dividends for a cumulative 2022 payout of P1 per share. Tan said this was equivalent to a 6.2-percent return based on its initial public offering price and 5.7 percent based on its current share price.

Tan pledged returns even beyond the dividend payout.

"We firmly believe that the benefit to MREIT investors goes beyond the dividend that they will get as we target to deliver a total return of at least 10 percent per annum over the next three years," Tan said in a statement on Monday.

"Our current acquisition plan is key to our achieving, if not outperforming this target," he added.

MREIT previously disclosed a P20 billion "expanded acquisition plan" for 2022.

This included the P5.27 billion acquisition of four office buildings within Megaworld's township projects in Iloilo City and Taguig City in Metro Manila.

The projects were the Festive Walk 1B and Two Global Center in Iloilo Business Park and One West Campus and Five West Campus in McKinley West, Taguig City.

MREIT said the offices would boost its total leasable space by 16 percent to 325,000 square meters.

MREIT aims to grow the portfolio to 18 office properties in four Megaworld townships. INQ