Which Singapore REIT had the Most Frequent Equity Fundraising?

Equity fundraising is a common practice for a REIT to raise funds mainly for property acquisition or strengthen its balance sheets. Equity fundraising (EFR) refers to the process of raising capital through the issuance of new shares. There are 5 types of equity fundraising that employed by Singapore REITs throughout the years:

- Offer to institutional or selected investors.

- Non-renounceable offer to the retail investor, the entitlement is not tradeable nor transferable.

- Renouceable offer to the retail investor, the entitlement is tradeable during the rights trading period. investors can sell the entitlement (nil-paid rights) if they are not intended to take up the offer.

- Issuance of new units to the vendor for acquisition payment.

- Offer new units to the public, similar to IPO, this is not common nowadays.

EFR History
There are 6 REITs which never had EFR since listing:
1) ARA US Hospitality Trust, listed in May 2019
2) BHG Retail REIT, listed in Dec 2015
3) EC World REIT, listed in Jul 2016
4) Lendlease Global Commercial REIT, listed in Oct 2019
5) Parkway Life REIT, listed in Aug 2007
6) Sasseur REIT, listed in Mar 2018

As for the rest, below is the record of individual EFR:

* Pre-consolidation prices

Out of 202 EFR exercises, 27 were preferential offerings and 35 were rights issues, in which both provided opportunities for unitholders (who held until ex-date) to subscribe for new units. Well, sometimes, existing unitholders are kind of forced to subscribe, or else their absolute distribution would get diluted. As for non-existing unitholders, preferential offering and rights issues provide an opportunity to buy the shares at a discounted price. However, there are quite some occurrences that the share prices drop below the preferential offering price in short term. The same applies to the rights issue, albeit may take a longer time due to the higher discount rate.

EFR Frequency
Sometimes, REIT exercises multiple types of EFR at the same time, e.g. Frasers Centrepoint Trust exercised both private placement and preferential offering in Sep/Oct 2020 for the acquisition of the remaining 63.11% stake in AsiaRetail Fund. Regardless, I would consider each as an individual event for frequency computation below:

Out of the 34 counters, 12 counters have an increasing EFR frequency trend while 10 counters have a decreasing EFR frequency trend. Below is the list:

Next, let's find out which REIT has the most frequent EFR throughout different periods:

* Multiple REITs are having the same average frequency for 2nd and 3rd places in the past 10 years, 5 years and 3 years.

For all-time and the past 10 years, Ascendas REIT is the champion. While for the past 5 years and the past 3 years, Mapletree Logistics Trust and Mapletree Industrial Trust get the crown respectively.

Preferential Offering & Rights Issue Frequency
Next, how about we filter out those cash call events only. Below are the 25 REITs that exercised preferential offering or rights issue:

Below is the summary:

1) For all-time, the top 3 REITs with the most frequent cash calls are Manulife US REIT, IREIT Global and Ascendas REIT.

2) For the past 10 years, 5 REITs had 3 cash calls: Ascendas REIT, CapitaLand China Trust, ESR-REIT, IREIT Global and Manulife US REIT.

3) For the past 5 years, 2 REITs had 3 cash calls: ESR-REIT and Manulife US REIT.