S-REITs recorded 3.9% total return YTD: SGX

Following the SIBOR gain on Monday.

Singapore’s REIT sector has been performing quite similarly to the REITs on NYSE.

The USD/SGD rose on Friday evening following stronger than expected monthly US jobs data. The currency cross rate began this week at 1.3776, which saw the three month Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (Sibor) move up 0.02353 percentage points to 0.8364%.

According to SGX, following the Sibor gain on Monday, Singapore’s 28 Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and six stapled securities averaged a 0.8% decline on Monday. In total yesterday, there were 25 trusts that declined, seven trusts unchanged and two gainers. This brought the average year to date gain for the 34 trusts to 3.9% on a dividend adjusted basis and 16.9% over the past year.

The five best performers in the year thus far are Fortune Real Estate Investment Trust, Mapletree Greater China Commercial Trust, Mapletree Commercial Trust, Frasers Centrepoint Trust, and CapitaRetail China Trust. They have a combined market capitalisation of S$12.0 billion and they maintain an average dividend yield of 5.4%.

SGX adds that the one year return was marginally above the average 15.3% gain for the 191 securities representing the REIT Sector on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) over the past year. The similar performances stretch back further to a period of five years where the Singapore’s REITs averaged a 64.1% dividend adjusted gain compared to the NYSE average of 60.0%.