RL Commercial REIT Inc. (RCR), the real estate investment trust of Gokongwei-led Robinsons Land Corporation, is aiming to triple its market capitalization to ₱300 billion from the current ₱100 billion in three years through infusions of RLC’s offices and malls.

In a media briefing after the firm’s annual stockholders’ meeting, RCR Chief Financial Officer Kerwin Max S. Tan said “RL Fund Management Inc. has a three-year target to basically make RCR as big as possible.”

“When you look at the sponsor’s (RLC’s) assets, the current assets that are in RCR right now is just one-third of the sponsor’s assets. So, potentially, RCR can grow two-thirds more of the assets from the sponsor. So, it’s basically three times more from the currently size, potentially,” he explained.

Tan added that, while the target is three years, the pace of asset infusions from RLC to RCR will still depend on market conditions.

He noted that, RCR’s growth driver will be the expansion of its earning assets and RLC can potentially infuse about ₱32 billion worth of assets soon based on its recent sale of RCR shares to raise a total of ₱8 billion, noting that asset infusion size is usually four times that of the amount raised from the sale of shares.

Since the REIT law requires a public ownership of 33.33 percent and RLC’s stake in RCR is at the maximum of 66.67 percent, it has to regularly sell portions of its interest in RCR to create more room for the acquisition of new RCR shares through a property swap.

“We are very interested in obtaining shopping malls assets (from RLC). As you know, the malls have enjoyed tremendous growth in the last two years. So, we would want purchase mall assets from the sponsor,” said RCR President and CEO Jericho P. Go.

He noted that, “There are still 1.4 million square meters of assets that have not been injected and a good amount of space is on the mall side that can be infused.”

“But it is also important to note that RLC, the sponsor, is not just sitting idly by. It has made a commitment to grow malls by 50 percent and offices by another 50 percent...that’s another 1.2 million square meters until 2030,” Go added.

However, he said it will take a while before RCR acquires the hotel assets of RLC because they still need to grow the occupany rates of the hotels before the infusion to ensure that these will be prime earning assets.