Even as global investors queue eagerly to get their hands on Australian real estate, one astute investor, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd, has been quietly taking profits and selling down its Australian holdings.
GIC has sold its five-star hotels, an industrial portfolio, an office building and a key stake in GPT Group, one of Australia’s largest listed trusts.
A quick tally of GIC transactions since 2013 shows these sales have yielded proceeds totalling about $4 billion.
The market wonders why GIC is selling out of Australia. Does it perceive Australia’s fortunes to be on the wane?
Sources familiar with the modus operandi of GIC point out that to date GIC has been offloading non-core and secondary assets.
“The issue is timing and a reweighting of its real estate portfolio,” a source told Business Spectator. “GIC is a very experienced investor compared with other global institutions of its ilk, and it has usually has its finger on the pulse of the market.”
The source points to the sale of the industrial portfolio, consisting of 26 properties, mostly on Australia’s eastern seaboard, as an example of its market acuity.
“Demand for industrial assets is hot, and not just in Australia but elsewhere. GIC is merely taking advantage of strong demand for this type of asset,” says a source.
Singapore-listed Ascendas, a regional manager of industrial assets, paid a premium to clinch GIC’s portfolio. Ascendas outbid the likes of the US private equity behemoth Blackstone in a tensely competitive bidding process involving almost a dozen bidders, mostly from offshore.
Ascendas, which has been looking for a sizeable portfolio for entry to Australia, was prepared to pay a “very tight yield of around 6 per cent” for the assets. “Industrial properties are sold at higher yields,” commented a market observer.
GIC is reinvesting its capital into markets it perceives to be offering the best opportunities in the current global environment, notably the US (one of the few growing economies in the world), India, China and south-east Asia.
Almost 30 per cent of GIC’s assets are currently located in the US. In December, GIC teamed with the Singapore-listed Global Logistics Properties to buy an industrial portfolio in the US from Blackstone for $US8.1bn.
It has also stepped up investment in emerging markets in Asia. Last week, GIC inked a $US300m deal with the Indian real estate developer DLF to build two projects in New Delhi.
GIC’s sense of timing in Australian disposals is exquisite.
It has cashed in on the popularity of Australia as an investment destination, which has pushed up prices to new levels, while also accurately identifying demand for particular types of assets, such as older office buildings for conversion into residential apartments and logistics/warehouse property.
For some time now, some GIC executives have privately said it has a disproportionately big weighting to Australia, given its relative size in the global property market.
But there is a sense of familiarity with Australia, which is the reason for GIC’s enduring relationship here.
Some would even say that GIC cut its teeth in global real estate investment partly in Australia, where it started to amass a portfolio from 1996 with its very first direct office investment.
The building at 175 Liverpool Street Sydney, bought for $125m, was sold last November for $395m to a Chinese developer that plans to convert it into an upmarket apartment block.
As one of the most significant offshore investors to come to Australia, GIC is held in special regard by Australia’s property fraternity.
Before global investors swamped Australia, there was a time when the very sighting of a GIC executive looking at a blue-chip office tower in Sydney or Melbourne would spark off excitement about an impending deal.
And depending on who was reading them, the subsequent headlines in Australian newspapers would cause considerable mirth or consternation in GIC’s head office in Singapore’s bustling Shenton Way.
GIC’s every move was watched and dissected by the Australian commercial property market.
It is a market leader that has cut a swathe through the global real estate market. Today, it is regarded as one of the handful of first tier global investors.
GIC owns 350 real estate investments, in more than 40 countries, including some of the best addresses in major gateway cities. While it does not disclose the value its real estate holdings, real estate represented 7 per cent of its assets in its investment mix (about $33 billion) at March 31, 2015, according to the GIC Report.
Its success has been noticed, for instance, by Beijing. Apparently, the Chinese took a leaf from GIC’s book when setting up its own sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), in 2006, according to sources close to GIC.
CIC is said to be modelled on GIC, now one of the largest sovereign funds globally. It is the custodian of $US344m ($490m), according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, of Singapore’s foreign reserves. GIC was created in 1981, making it one of the oldest and most experienced SWFs.
In the 2014-15 GIC Report, it says its annual average real rate of return over a 20-year span is 4.9 per cent.
Over the past two decades, GIC has gotten to know many of Australia’s listed property groups intimately, partnering with the likes of Westfield Corporation and investing with listed REITs in their wholesale funds.
Its single largest REIT investment was with GPT and it held a board seat until three years ago. (After a three-year absence, its former key executive Lim Swe Guan was reappointed a non-executive director this March in his own capacity.)
It was at times described as GPT’s white knight when in the depths of the market in 2009, GIC bought 300 million GPT securities, in addition to a $250m placement in October 2008. That placement, in the form of exchangeable notes, has earned GIC some $100m in interest over the past five years.
Now it has exited the bulk of GPT securities, leaving a residual but insignificant stake in the venerable Australian-listed trust. GIC has realised almost $880m from the disposal of an 8 per cent stake in GPT and redemption of exchangeable notes.
GIC’s Australian portfolio peaked at more than $4bn. It still holds some of Australia’s best-known buildings, including the premium office Chifley Tower, the iconic Queen Victoria Building and the historic Strand Arcade in the heart of Sydney.
Lately, it has followed its instinct into emerging alternative asset classes, such as student housing. GIC has teamed with Macquarie Group to invest $150m in Iglu, a developer of student accommodation, and media reports suggest that it is looking at portfolio investment in mobile home parks on the east coast.
A source comments: “GIC has always been an early adopter of new ideas. Look no further than its investment history in Australia.”