MREIT declares slightly larger Q4 div

MREIT [MREIT 13.68 ?0.4%] [link] declared a Q4/24 dividend of P0.2505, payable on April 4 to shareholders of record as of March 21. The dividend has an annualized yield of 7.32% based on the previous closing price, which is marginally higher than MREIT’s pre-dividend annualized yield of 7.28%. The total amount of the dividend is P932 million, which is 96% of the P969 million in distributable income that MREIT reported for the quarter. Relative to MREIT's IPO price, the dividend increased MREIT's total stock and dividend return to 6.32%, up from its pre-dividend total return of 4.76%. Cumulatively, MREIT will distribute 95.2% of its P3.18 billion in distributable income for FY24. 

  MB BOTTOM-LINE:  This is the first dividend to include income from the properties that MREIT acquired as part of the ?13 billion property-for-share swap that it completed in October, near the start of Q4. Prior to the swap, MREIT delivered a Q3 dividend of P0.2489/share on P724 million in distributable income. After the swap, MREIT delivered a Q4 dividend of P0.2505/share on P969 million of distributable income. The distributable income is up around 34%, but because of the shares that MREIT gave to Megaworld [MEG 1.75 ?4.4%] to pay for the assets, that higher level of income is spread out across a much greater number of shares, leading to only an 0.64% increase in the per-share dividend. What’s interesting is that MREIT even put its finger on the scale a little bit, too, by increasing the proportion of the dividend relative to the available distributable income for the period. In Q3, MREIT distributed 96.1% of its DI for the quarter, whereas in Q4, it increased this slightly to 96.2%. That’s not a big increase, but it accounts for 19% of the dividend increase for the quarter. Growth is good, and this injection was dividend accretive, but if I were an MREIT shareholder I’d be a little wary of taking on this many office towers and getting so little in return.

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