About

Ascendas Hospitality Trust

Ascendas Hospitality Trust (“AHT”) is an SGX-listed REIT with a S$1.8billion portfolio consisting of 14 hotel properties with over 4,700 rooms in 7 cities across Asia Pacific. More than 80% of AHT’s assets are centrally located freehold hotels in the CBDs of global gateway cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul. DPU has grown consistently at a CAGR of ~5% from 2015 to 2019 attributed to organic growth in RevPAR as well as contributions from new hotel acquisitions in Seoul and Osaka. Despite the attractive growth profile, AHT continues to trade at a 15% discount to NAV in part due to its smaller size and less trade liquidity. 

Capitaland and Ascendas announced their intentions to merge in early 2019. Due to Capitaland also owning the manager of Ascott Residence Trust which invests in hotels and service residences mainly in Asia, the merger creates an overlap of investment mandate between AHT and Ascott Residence Trust. This can potentially result in conflicts of interest in acquisitions and divestments of properties which can potentially damage investors’ confidence and interest.   

Engagement topics: 

  • Proposed that AHT and Ascott should merge to resolve the overlapping investment mandate between the 2 trusts 
  • A takeover price at a premium of 5% above AHT’s book value can be a win-win proposal – it provides an attractive merger premium for AHT’s unitholders and will also be an accretive transaction for Ascott Residence Trust’s unitholders 

Outcome: 

  • Ascott Residence Trust and AHT announced a merger to form the largest hospitality trust in Asia Pacific with S$ 7.6billion of assets at a premium of 7% to AHT’s NAV 
  • Quarz exited the position with a return on investment of 30% 
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