The real estate investment trust (REIT) offering of Citicore Energy REIT Corporation (CREIT), which will debut this week at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), has been oversubscribed across all tranches, including with the small local investors (LSI), trading participants and institutional investors.

In a statement to the media, CREIT indicated that the interest of LSIs in particular had generated oversubscription topping 124-percent, and that cornered total demand of 270,745,000 shares compared to the original allocation of 218,182,000 shares, as stipulated in the final initial public offering (IPO) plan.

According to Pamela Louise Victoriano, first vice president for corporate finance of Unicapital Inc., “the underwriters 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.”

She qualified though that “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.”

Oliver Tan, president and CEO of CREIT, asserted the firm’s appreciation “to the overwhelming reception of investors,” which he mainly credited to “the extensive market education conducted, which further increased appreciation for REITs as a new asset class.”

For LSIs that were not able to participate in CREIT’s stock offering or if they have just received partial allocations, the company chief executive 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.”

Tan stressed “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.”

Given the voluminous transactions generated due to high demand from investors, the company is batting for a one-day rescheduling of CREIT’s listing at the PSE main board to February 18 from the original February 17 timeline.

Tan expounded the projected dividend yield based on projected 2022 and 2023 earnings of 7.0% and 7.4%, respectively; had been regarded “the highest among the existing REITs.”

Fundamentally, the CREIT chief executive emphasized that their pioneering REIT offering at the local bourse as an infrastructure asset in the green energy space had “energized investors to invest in CREIT, being the first REIT also to be listed in the Year of the Tiger.”

After the stocks listing, the Citicore subsidiary-company stated that it will be carrying out a dividend payout of at least 95-percent of its distributable income for the preceding year – subject to availability of unrestricted retained earnings and in compliance with applicable laws.