Corporate Connect Webinar Presentation & Q&A

Hey, very good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us for today's Corporate Connect webinar. This webinar is organized by CS and supported by SGX Group. And my name is Sunny, I'm from CS and I'll be your host for today. Today, we welcome a very sort of a promising read that's listed in Singapore, which I last checked is up more than 20% year to date with a stable dividends of around 8% dividend yield. And that is the Elite UK Read. We welcome them this evening, as well as our audience from our YouTube channel, as well as our partner broker, Kiger Brokers Live Platform. So Elite UK Read is a UK focused real estate investment trust

listed on the Singapore Exchange and they are managed by Elite UK Read Management Private Limited. They are based in Singapore and they're really sponsored by Elite Partners Holding Private Limited, the parent company of Elite Partner Group and Holy Group Private Limited, a leading real estate and construction group. So Elite Read portfolio consists mainly of freehold properties located in town centers, near key amenities and transportly across the UK. It is also one of the largest provider of essential social infrastructure for the UK government, including the Department for Work and Pension. As of 30th June this year, the portfolio is valued at about £421 million. So we will kick off today's webinar

with a market highlights segment by my good friend, Mr James Oi from Kiger Brokers, followed by the corporate presentation by Elite Read. Thereafter, we will dive into the Q&A segment to answer all your questions about Elite UK Read. So before we dive deeper into the company, let me invite James to come on to share with us the market highlights that he has prepared for us. Over to you James. Thank you, Sany. Let me show my slides first. Sure. One second. Okay, I hope that everyone can see this well. Yes. Just one second. Okay. Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm James, market strategist at Tiger Brokers Singapore.

So tonight, as usual, I'll be sharing some insight on the Singapore market. Okay, just let me go through the disclaimer first. This presentation is provided to you for education and sharing purpose only, and does not constitute to anyone. I advise past performance is not indicated or future performance. So some market insights. So here are some of the Singapore equity market highlights for the past one week. The most important news is MTI upgrades GDP growth forecast for 2025 to be around 4% from one to 3% previously. Bear in mind that Singapore GDP grew by 4.4% in 2024. So around 4% GDP growth this year is quite impressive.

And this table show you the top performance and worst performance in terms of week to date, month to date and year to date returns. Basically, the winners and losers are quite random. I don't really see a pattern here for the past one week. And again, STI remains one of the top performing stops indices globally so far this year. The yield daily return is about 25%. And again, we are seeing a broad base rally across all sectors this year. After 24% return in the STI index this year, the financial sectors contributed 10 percentage points while real estate including REITs contributed to about 3.9%, sorry, 3.3 percentage points itself.

So this also show you the average return over the past 25 years for STI index. So generally December is a good month. The average return for December is 1.6%. And so if you are expecting to see some pullback, a seasonality does not really suggest that. So this is one of the most important stocks to me. So recently we have been seeing some pickup in the small mid cap stock prices, but overall they are still far below the 2007 high itself.

So as market breadth continues to widen across all sectors, small mid cap stocks and including REITs as well should benefit. So here are some of the latest developments to support growth in the Singapore market. Again, I will not go through one by one. Some of the important ones include firstly SGS and NASDAQ will collaborate to establish a dual listing bridge for both exchanges. Secondly, in terms of EQDP program, SOFAN 3.95 billion has been allocated. The remaining 1 billion will be allocated in second quarter next year. Okay, here are some of the older news I will not go through as well. So the most important one definitely will be

the $5 billion EQDP program. So far the first tranche of 1.1 billion was awarded to three fund managers, including Fullerton, Avanta and JP Morgan. So they promise to launch funds to target small mid cap stocks. MAS also recently allocated 2.85 billion to the second batch of the asset managers, including Blackrock, Amoeba,

Langover, AR Capitan, Manual Life, E-Spring Investment. So let's talk about interest rates. So again, a lot of Singapore stocks, especially risk-free are paying dividends. So it's quite important to understand the movement of interest rates. To put it simply, as long as interest rates are coming down, dividend-paying companies will remain attractive as long as they can maintain the same dividend yield because investors are basically getting a relatively higher dividend yield compared to a risk-free asset such as government bond or fixed deficit itself. Basically, interest rates in Singapore are quite correlated to the Fed Fund rates. So if the Federal Reserve cut rates, Singapore interest rates should also come down.

Basically, the bearish curve suggests that if US vacancy continues to fall, the unemployment rate in US will also increase significantly. So to avoid that, the Federal Reserve may want to continue cutting rates. So the future markets is now suggesting that we will see one rate cut in December this year and another three rate cuts in 2026. And basically, traders are also expecting one rate cut in July 2027. This actually suggested to you that investors will be in a low interest rate conducive environment until around mid-2027. So again, we want to keep things simple here.

As long as interest rates remain low, that should be constructed for the stock market and constructed for Singapore REITs as well. So let's talk about REITs. Basically, lower interest rates are constructed for REITs. So this is a chart that I constructed last year. Basically, it just means that whenever the spread between the 10-year bond yield and the REIT dividend yield is wide enough, the REIT prices or the REIT's total return should outperform. So the logic here is that if the 10-year bond yield only gives investor low yield, then investor might. As well, just invest in REITs to earn a better dividend yield. So personally, I reckon maybe the magic number is 3%.

Whenever the spread is about 3%, REITs may start to provide higher return to investor. So the spread is now 3.56%. So even though REITs have gone up quite a lot in 2025, the spread still suggests to us that REITs remain quite attractive. And let's look at PV ratio. The REITs PV ratio is now trading at about 0.99 times, which is slightly below the 15-year average of 1.01 time. So if you have been investing in REITs since the beginning of the year, you will, and maybe you will enjoy some of the good REITs return. Basically in the beginning of the year,

the REITs are basically trading at two standard deviation below the 15-year mean, 15-year average, and they have basically completed the mean reversions when they touch the one time PV ratio. So right now, you investor are really betting that whether all of the REITs investor here will turn more optimistic and push the valuation to maybe one standard deviation or two standard deviations above the 15-year average. Which I think is still quite possible because overall the market sentiment is quite constructive at the moment. Okay, so here is just to show you, if you miss just a few days in the market can significantly impact your return.

So for example, the 10-year average yearly return for SDR index is 5.9%, but if you miss the 10 best days each year over the past 10 years, your average yearly return will be drastically reduced to negative 11%. So this is why I always advocate staying invested in the market. Okay, here are some of the tiger brokers. Welcome to the world. If you want to find out more, please scan the QR code here and that's all for me. Thank you. Over to you, Sunny. Hi, thank you James for the insightful sharing on what the market is doing as well as giving us a backdrop on how the interplay between the interest rates

and REIT's performance is likely going to be like, okay, going into the end of the year and next year as well. So now we will move over to the corporate presentation segment. So do allow me to invite the management team from Elite UK REIT, which is the CEO, Mr. Joshua Liao, and then we have the CIO, Mr. Jonathan Edmonds, and of course the CFO, Mr. Michael Tong. Okay, so I'd like to invite the management to present to us the corporate presentation for this evening. Thanks Sunny, happy to take the guy from here. Hi everyone, thanks for the evening for darling. Thank you for darling and sharing your evening with us.

We're very happy here to share with you who Elite UK REIT and, in some of the business updates they will have for most recent third quarter to 25. Now I think before we start, if you would flip open your title ROKUS app and you see the statistics on Elite UK REIT, you see that as Sunny has pointed out, this year we have actually increased our share price by about 22% year to date and currently we are at 36% but also our dividend yield is roughly at about 8.6%. So that's some of the headlines that you see with Elite UK REIT. Now we're here to share with you why that is so

and how we can continue to grow into 2026. So who is Elite UK REIT and what are our SOAR assets do we have? We're fairly unique for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we are a REIT entirely comprised of UK assets but we're listed on the SJEX in Singapore. The portfolio that we have is so counter-cyclical because these assets that leads to the UK government primarily used as job centers. I'll explain what the job centers is in a little bit of time but the leases that we have are signed with the UK government. This is at the sovereign level and these represent about 99% of our income, greater income.

Leases that were signed are also triple net in nature meaning that the 10 year is for gardening, utilities, you know, operation expenditure of the assets. We also have a portfolio of 100% freehold, virtual freehold and long leasehold assets. Together we have 100% affiliate assets that's gathered all around Britain from Scotland to England to Wales. So what are these assets useful? If I could talk a little bit about them. These majority of them are leased to the Department of Work and Pensions. That's one of the largest government companies in the UK. So what are job centers? So job centers, I think in simple context, they will resemble a community census

but the functions that they serve here are not like the community centers in Singapore. They are really here to help people look for jobs but also as a form of social welfare conduit. If someone has lost their job, they actually come up to a job center and get some financial assistance to help them before they look for their next job. I think it's a screen, okay. Can somebody comment that I'm not in a soft screen. Yeah. One second, thanks. Thanks for letting us know that the screen is not showing the presentation mode. We will do the sort of the screen to the presentation mode for the audience.

Okay, so we need to go to presentation mode.

Is it in presentation mode now? No, we ask. Okay, from here you need to go to the display setting to soft screen, correct? Yep. Correct? Yes, perfect, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, so sorry for that. I was explaining what the job center is. So it is one really used to administer the social welfare program in the UK. So in the UK, if somebody typically serving

the group call the workers, if they have lost a job, they can go to a job center, look for some help and not miss the peering their next job. Also in sort of getting some sort of financial assistance to type them along the way until they look for their new role. Now, the reason why they sort of really scattered around the UK is because these job centers actually need to be close to population centers. And the government actually has a policy that the job centers needs to be within 30 minutes of travel from bus or the bus or train for basically anyone that's living in the UK.

And I think that's a fairly unique asset that we have. We also do have other assets as these other government tenants and even if you but they didn't face the largest tenant as well. So we're on to our strategy. Around the middle of last year, we saw a great market to say that, we would like to expand our strategy to include not just the current job centers and government workspaces that we have, but also potentially into student accommodation and build to real residential. Currently we don't have any in that space, but we do have a pipeline and we will be talking a bit more, John will be talking a bit more about the stages

of some of these assets in the pipeline. But why does government and the living make sense? Well, firstly, I think we took a step back. Many of investors that have invested in EAP and IPO, they really sort of like the cash flow that's secured by the UK government visas. It is dependable, it is sovereign in nature and very importantly, it's a conesicrical and also non discretionary. What it means is that, you know, whether there's pandemic, whether it's good time or recessions, these assets will continue to be spent on and to be used. And then I think the other bit to think about is also the living sector is actually very well supported

and has quite a standard of tier way, strong demand by the mentors and structural under supply. Now, if you can be location of assets, whether you're in student accommodation or build to real residential, you want to be in the city center, you want to be close to transportation house. And that's exactly what our current portfolio of job centers and government workspaces look like in terms of your location. So, you know, any other day, whether we can reposition existing asset into a student accommodation or build to real residential, we'll need to meet certain filters. Firstly, it needs to be viable. We wouldn't be building a student accommodation

in a town without a university, for example. That's quite fundamental. Our first strategy needs to be right. So our strategy is living and government. Someone comes along and say, would you do a logistics example and that's a bit left field for us. So it needs to align with our strategy. Still, opportunities are also very important. We wouldn't want to do a small deal. It should be of a sufficient size, both in terms of operational economics that works better. And also, last one of these risk returns, it needs to make sense of financial aid for us and for our Indian purpose. And I mentioned that, you know,

so I think maybe the next section, I can let Michael or CFO take us through some of the, you know, high points on our most recent financial performance. Yep, thank you, Josh. Hi, everyone. For everyone, have a good evening. Let me bring you through the financial performance of the read year on year. So from a revenue perspective, it's rather stable. We didn't change clearly. This is also on the back of the acquisition that we have done back in June, where we acquired three assets. And then moving on, distributable income and the adjusted DPU increased by 6% year on year on average. This is on the back of the interest savings

that we have accumulated, as well as the tax benefits that arise from our sustainability key packs that we have incurred on our property. So moving along to capital management, I think this is where, you know, you want to showcase the loan tender of portfolio. So our loan portfolio makes up two loans. One, these two loan charges are due in 30.7, with a two year substantial option to go with the DPU. This means that, you know, from now all the way to essentially 27.39, we do not have any risk of this loan getting matured and need to be paid. I think the other thing that, you know,

investors try to sell or take note of is the net agrarian ratio. So net agrarian ratio has just never been the least of the first December is flat at 42 and a half. But this didn't tell the whole story. So the story here is that September and March, typically is our distribution of orders and careers. So normally we have an undrawn revolving credit facility. What we do is we collect our rental treatments in advance from our tenant, and then we use this cash to pay down our RCA for revolving credit facility. Then come our distribution orders, we'll drop it up and distribute. So this allow us to no further enhance

and no safe borrowing costs during the loan period. And the different December is allowed. The dearest December is where we distributed. So I think one can see what's the trending like no reaching to the first December 25th. For our loans in GDP, our units are in GDP, our revenues are in GDP. So it's all naturally hedged, no effects are concerned here. And then I think last but not least, just want to point out that our loans are sustainable, and that means whenever we see certain hurdles, there's a little bit of cost savings that comes back to the REIT as well as through to the unit holder like yourself.

Moving on to the next slide is how does the REIT know the initial interest rate risk. So I think this is something that definitely retail investors like yourself will take a closer eye on cost interest rate basically is the cost that the REIT has paid. So last year on the back of the refinancing of our loan, we also undertaken to put in place our interest rates swap. So if you look at the chart on the right hand side, the rectangle toolbar indicates the time period where we actually put in place the interest rates swap. So that's where there's a little bit of a good, a good tailwind in the hedges that we put in place.

So we capitalized on that and she go into the interest rate swaps that allow us to enjoy a variable rate of 3.8%. So our average borrowing cost is 4.8% from the highs. Last year the Sonia was about 5.25, now it's about 4. Then 85% of these rates are being hedged. So any fluctuation in the interest rate, we have a buffer against those fluctuations. And last but not least our interest rate, our coverage ratio is about 2.7 times. It's rather healthy for the meeting. So I think that's pretty much a good sum and I'll pass that back to Josh. Yeah, so before I hand it over to Jonathan

to talk about a student accommodation assets, maybe talk a bit broadly about how we think about better creation within our existing portfolio. So our portfolio, you know, we positioning with our student combination assets is really kind of the same story. When we right now we're going through a lease period with the DWP and that's progressing quite well. We do estimate that we'll complete this exercise for a substantial tranche this year, sorry, incoming first quarter 3D6. And that is the number one, you know, strategy that we need to pursue. Now some assets will then from this lease period come out to us as vacant and then we can actually add how we can,

you know, employ some of these strategies to convert it into alternative uses. Most likely student accommodation, but also give to the grand rest, make sure. And then there's some assets, some very special ones where there are other sort of other users that although they are not within strategy is still very well worth doing because I think it increases evaluation for the assets. And then, you know, we could spend this bit of money to convert them within our means. And once they're ready, we could actually monetize them. And that would, the monetized profits could be used to come back into the entire capital structure. So for example, you know,

I'm talking here about this pure part. Pure part is one of our assets in Blackpool, in the northwest of UK. About a third of it is occupied by the Department of Water and Pensions, our largest tenant. The other two thirds of it is actually overflow car parking plus grassland. So we're renting the authorities to try to convert them due to that's underutilized to be converted into a data center. And this is why I'll produce it because over there they have abundance of power. And also there is a new data cable that has landed in Blackpool. Very recently, you know, I think in the last few months

we've gotten a altogether 180 NDA of power. So that has, you know, that has helped us to get this journey. And we're currently awaiting the planners approval to take it into the data center space. Once we get planning, we already have power. The next step is to try to monetize this asset. And then I think a few months ago, we announced that we have the planning on Lindsay House. And that is, you know, an asset awaiting towards conversion and development. But also in this quarter, we have added one more asset to the portfolio and that's Cambria House in Cardiff. This location is really good next to the university.

And we have very simply obtained a positive pre-planning outcome with the city council of Cardiff. Joining, I'll let you talk about the two assets in the markets. Yeah, thanks a lot, Josh. So just flicking through to the next slide, Josh has provided some explanation about why it's the case that, you know, when government leave an office building they will look to find out if there is a reasonable route to securing a value accretion outcome based on the specifics of each individual asset. So to date, we've added our portfolio of 150 or so properties that we have owned. This is the first property which we have selected

for a development. And you can see quite clearly from this map that the fundamentals of this property are ideally suited to a development for student housing. So Dundee is a city on the east coast of Scotland, very close to St Andrews. St Andrews is the best, voted the best university in the UK. But Dundee has a strong academic,

a number of strong academic institutions, including Dundee University and University of Albertay. So with these two universities, there's 16,000 students in Dundee. I'm just going to flip back to the previous page, actually, just to talk about the fundamentals of the property, which are almost always based in real estate terms on location. So the building is situated directly in between those two major universities and also extremely close to the city centre, to the retail amenity in Dundee itself. It's walking distance to the train station. So students who would stay at this facility

would have immediate access to both universities as well as to the retail amenity. So what we're dealing with here is an office building which we've received a planning zoning consent to convert into provide 168 students studio beds, bedrooms, and that the construction will be completed to allow operations to commence in 2027. So this is a good start for the REIT because this is a conversion. We're not dealing with any ground development. The building is well configured to be converted into a student housing facility with actually minimal, if no structural work required

to change the building whatsoever. So it's a relatively low risk, or it's a lower risk development, and therefore probably appropriate for the REIT to start off with as a development project. On the next slide, there are some market stats about the Dundee market, which I think go to explain how careful we are when we assess every opportunity in terms of its potential to be redeveloped into an alternative use. And so we're looking closely at the market dynamics. I've spoken about the number of students that go to these two universities in Dundee 16,000. Dundee itself only provides, or has today, less than 5,000 PBSA beds across 17 schemes.

And the majority of those schemes are more than 10 years, if not 20 years old. So there's a very limited supply of good quality student housing in Dundee. Dundee is, you know, the two universities popular, both with domestic and international students. And a 3.5 times student to bed ratio represents a very significant level of under supply. And this has led to existing facilities in Dundee consistently reporting more than 95% occupancy. So overall, this presents a really good opportunity to deliver a high quality PBSA facility

with a moderate risk profile. And with the potential to generate a yield on cost, which is significantly ahead of where yields are for income producing PBSA in Dundee. As we know here, yields can be between 5% and 7% for income producing stock. And we would expect the development project to yield a better outcome than that. Therefore generating a value accretion for the REIT. So that's the first project, which is under construction. The strip out is going on as we speak. The next project, Josh has mentioned slightly, which is Cambria House in Cardiff. Again, we're seeing the importance of location.

And you need to be as close as possible to the universities, as close as possible to the retail amenity. That's really what's gonna make the core derived demand from the core student population, which is made up of not only domestic students, particularly domestic students in their first year of university, but also international students. Cardiff University is a Russell Group University, which means it's in the top rank of UK universities. We're looking at securing a planning consent for a development of 348 student beds. Cardiff is the capital city of Wales. It also has several academic institutions. And as we can see on this slide,

there are more than 45,000 students that are attending major universities in Cardiff at present. This gives it an enormous student housing to bed ratio of 6.5 times. That's for the premium segment of the market. Cardiff, a bit like Dundee has some existing PBSA stock, but a lot of that stock is first-generation, so more than 10 years old. So there is a very significant demand for good quality student housing in Cardiff, with the market reporting occupancy levels upwards of 95%. And also, compound average growth rates of more than 1% every year over the past 10 years,

so consistently growing student population. There are a few more stats on the following page, which just talk to the situation, the proximity to the universities, proximity to public transportation, and the number of students, the level of supply constraint. So this is a rigorous analysis that we're going through with every single one of our properties, but we're also very much focused on risk management. So only going to be taking forward a development which is suitable for the REITs strategy, which is to diversify away from being a pure commercial REIT into the living sector. So yeah, that's it on the two PBSA opportunities we're most focused on at present.

Thanks Jonathan. I think if I could quickly summarize on the key priorities of the REITs for the rest of 2026, and then we can move on to Q&A. So number one, I think our very front and center on our minds and something that Jonathan and ourselves have been very busy with is the lease video. So we want to complete a partial part of our lease video early. This is our leases that actually mature at maybe 88. We want to do this by the first quarter, 2026. But evidently, we feel rather confident on timeline to be putting this date on paper and telling our unit holders

that we expect this to be done very soon. And then I think the other bit is also, you know, we're quite focused for next year to continue to grow. And how we do that is to divest assets sometimes and to reinvest them into the creative opportunities. Repositioning asset next week ongoing, Lindsay House, Cambria House, Pure Park, and perhaps more as well as we go through the lease video, we then know which of assets we can then take that into development. And then because we would have done part, substantial part of the lease video for next year, it also builds up momentum for us to try to lower

our cost of debt and also broaden our sources of debt through potentially working with other lenders or other debt sources of next year. So we want to optimize our capital structure and continue to build that. Last but not least, this year was quite important year where we have almost double our training liquidity against you do better. Currently, we have seven analysts covering us all with a by call. And we hope to take that up to more analyst coverage next year as well. Then because the liquidity has improved, we are right now track to be included in some of the indices for three, three, six as well.

Moving back to you, Sunny for Q&A. All right, thank you Joshua, Jonathan and Michael for your very detailed and informative sharing earlier. Do stay with us on the line. We will now move on to the Q&A segment. So for our audience here, please submit your question in the Q&A chat. And if you are on YouTube, you can join us via the Zoom link so that you can post your question as well. And for audience on our Kiger platform, you can post your question there. And I try to answer as many or I try to post as many of the questions to our senior management here today.

So we endeavor to answer as many questions as possible. Let's proceed to the Q&A session now. Maybe let me start with the three pre-submitted question. The first question coming in pre-submitted once was asking, will Elite UK Read be thinking of diversifying the read in terms of going into other segments like retail, commercial, or even data centers, or even other countries, other geographical region? So let me answer that. Other countries know we are focused on the UK. And that's not a bad idea as well because I think we need to have this strategic focus in one market. It also gets us the natural hedge that we have in our capital structure.

But also, I think the UK itself is a very, very deep and significant real estate market. So just looking at real estate and the UK, I think there is really a lot of things to do. Then in terms of sector-wise, currently we're focused on government assets. And whilst we're the only one that's listed on SGX, there are actually peers that are listed on LSE. Many of them are actually holding assets that also derive the cash flows from the UK government. For example, there are leads that hold assets that are hospitals that lease to the UK National Health Care Scheme. And also officers lease to the tax department,

officers lease to the Ministry of Defense and so on. So that is a very thriving and deep sector as well. It's not a niche sector, also the UK. So I think that's really some of it. I think there is quite a lot of things to do, just focus on the sectors that we're focused on, focus on the geography that we focus on. Thanks, Mr. Josha, for that clarification. So we are still focusing on UK as of now. The next question coming in pre-submitted is asking about what could be possible, a pipeline that could be coming from a sponsor that would add diversity to the current portfolio

of government and student housing. So student housing, nothing. And the reason why it's nothing as well, even if there is a portfolio, is because it's not gonna be you or creative. Currently, I think PBSA internet market will yield between five to 7%. Our current cost of equity, and that's a dividend you that are receiving, that's about 8.5, 8.6%. If we blend that with debt, it would not make it you created at first. So the best way for us to develop PBSA product into this portfolio is really to develop that within our existing portfolio. But the sponsors do have a sort of a private fund that holds other government assets,

and that's quite interesting. But I think without talking too much about these assets, maybe if I could focus on what we think would be assets that we want to buy, be it sponsors or external. Firstly, as I mentioned, it needs to be you or creative. Secondly, it needs to be within our strategy. So either student or government, but student, we're gonna cross it out for a time being. And of course, these assets can be long-willed as well. Last but not least, it needs to be from a risk adjusted basis, it needs to make sense. Because frankly, suddenly there are assets in the UK where it can do a you at 30% as well.

But these are the dangerous assets. If it's too good, we true that's usually reasonable. I understand that. So I think a lot of our units holders are also very appreciative of the stable yield that you guys are paying out. So that's why we need to look at the assets carefully before thinking about any acquisitions going forward. Okay, let me move to the last pre-submitted question before I move on to the Q&A, which I see the questions are coming in very fast. So the last pre-submitted question is asking, just now you talked about improving trading liquidity. So are there other initiatives that you guys will be doing and will investor show or something like that

to ensure that there is sufficient liquidity to improve trading going forward? Yeah, absolutely. I just came back from Dubai this morning. I've missed that for hours. So these are tricks and these engagements that are very valuable for us. And that's why we're staying up to have this lot of engagements. When we took over as CEO about three years ago, we had at one point only three brokers covering us today, we're at seven. And there is no such thing as having too much coverage. We want to have more voices. So investors can understand this. And we do have that direct contact with unit orders, both on LinkedIn as well.

As if you went to a website, you could just sign up for email alerts, like email directly coming from myself or investor relations. So we do want to improve the awareness and the equity coverage. Then I think we also do work with some liquidity provider to provide access to the liquidity to help. But ultimately, we do need to have new school. We need to have the right projects to catalyze the asset. And I think this year has been quite a year for that. Okay, thanks for that answer. I think we do look forward to you getting on this show as and when you have new business update

that you can share with the unit holders as well. Okay, let's now move to the live Q&A section. I can see the first question coming in from Mr. Leong. He's saying that he assumed elite UK rate is boring in the GPP, the pound. Is there any case to borrow in Swiss franc that can help to lower the interest rates for elite UK rate? Yeah, I would take that. Truth to be told, I have not explored boring in Swiss franc. I think I give out a slice that earlier shared we are naturally hedged all our expenditures, our income, our loan, our units, our distribution, our GPP.

I would take it at point consideration of a little bit of homework on the pros and cons of boring in Swiss franc, but as far as I'm concerned, we are trying to keep it all naturally hedged as much as possible. Okay, but if I say we were to borrow in Swiss franc that would introduce certain effect management that we need to take care of as well, right? Yes, definitely. Okay, so I hope that will answer Mr. Leong's question. Next question that we have is about this new regulation called a mentioned tax by the UK government. So does elite UK review this regulatory risks? And what are the mitigation or hedging strategies

that you guys will be adopting to protect the unit order dividends as well as capital returns? Yeah, so I mean, I think it all together. I think I saw some of the questions on the, you know, the UK budget. It was really fresh off the press, you know, hot off the press this time yesterday. And that's one reason why I haven't said much because I think we have been very quickly trying to update our board, trying to update our business and how that could affect those awards implications. So it was a very, very long answer. And this morning as well, we sent out the email updates.

So, you know, again, go to our website for email alerts. So you can be informed on such sort of things as well. So I think the, you know, coming we've been watching this often budget very closely. Some initial market reactions is that the guilds actually ease 14 basis points to 4.42%. The FTSE 100 and 250 was also roughly up about 1%. And other meets in the UK was a trade-off of 2%. And that really outperforms the FTSE 100 and 250. So basically, you know, these moves, although they are quite modest, there is no market meltdown and the market has really absorbed some of this budget

without consensus. They weren't very excited, but they weren't overly disappointed as well. Now there was a lot of things announced in the budget yesterday, but in fact, we refiltered like three or four things that really are most relevant to EuQe. Number one is that I think you can tell that the government is leading some structural tax measures, they are freezing tax income thresholds. They're doing like higher taxes on investment income and property related well, which is the mentioned tax, but all of these actually doesn't affect us. In fact, we do have a EuQe regime. So this actually what it means is that we qualify as a tax entity in the UK

where our tax is no worse than a LSE listed means. So what it means is that our distributions will remain competitive and unaffected even with this budget. So the rate that we pay as a landlord in the UK will be far lower than other commercial landlords. There are other needs, for example, in Singapore as well, that their own assets in the UK, they will pay at far higher level of tax. Then I think the other things also you see at the fiscal posture with this budget, especially with the buffer, that the much larger buffer will support a more stable environment. And that's really helpful for evaluations

and capital management as well. Last but not least on the asset perspective, with a focus on welfare, universal credit, youth employment outcomes, this is all in line with the labor parties, manifestos, and of course, the job centers are the key delivery sort of conduit for some of these policies. May I pause a little bit to see John, if you want to jump in to talk about some of what you think from the round? No, I was just gonna quickly answer on the mansion tax point, which is not, which is only on housing for high value kind of residential properties where people are paying individual council tax.

So it's not gonna be a situation that affects the majority of our portfolio, or even the PBSA assets, because these are held for rents and not considered as a single property in that sense. The housing, the mansion tax is not gonna be affecting the rate. I mean, I think just from the ground, the overall assessment is that the UK fiscal position is actually a lot better than many people had thought it was going to be, and a lot better than the impression that the government had given about what it was going to be like. So I think there had been a reasonable amount of concern

about how much taxes and the way government would try and raise the amount of tax that they said that they were gonna need to, and it appears from the budget, although they've raised taxes, they haven't had to perhaps raise them by as much as everybody feared. But the key point I think Josh has already mentioned, which is actually quite a stable outlook following this budget, which is the first time for a while that a chancellor has given a budget in the UK, which has generated some stability. So I think we're supportive of that, even if not paying more tax personally, which is something that people in the UK

are gonna have to deal with. I think if I control some possible implications for this with cuts or interest rate as well, if I can take that a bit further, I think even before this budget was announced yesterday, the markets was pricing in a 87% probability of a rate cut in December, and two more rate cuts in next year. Now with this budget being announced, there's almost a 100% certainty that December rate cut will come down. And next year, I think most people are pointing to a 3.25% or 3.5% bank rate. So all quite positive. Now, what does that mean? A couple of things. One, the base rate will actually open the door

for Michael to do refinancing potentially. And that's also one of the things, one of the key sort of initiatives we have between 2006. Of course, we really love our calls of EPO work. The other, it's also, we are now in the deviation season for most rates with the 31st December year end. And this lower-gill environment will actually support a cap rate stability, and that will also help with our upcoming valuations in year end. Last but not least, I think, usually rates are priced as a premium over the gills. Now if the gills are coming down, the risk rate is coming down, then what you see is that currently right now,

they're actually very attractive, 400 basis points over the 10-year risk-free rates in the UK. So I think that's some of the key points from our perspective. Well, thanks for that latest update on this latest development on UK side of things. I think our audience will be very appreciative that you are sharing this perspective with us despite the news just coming out yesterday. So you heard it first here on this just a public connect webinar as well as the Tiger Broker platform. So we do have a few more minutes left. Let us go to the last few questions. The next question is, are there any steps that the business,

the REIT is taking to ensure that there's a sustainability initiative that can help to protect long-term profits and support the individuals going forward? One more here, John. Oh, I think it's us. Sorry, say that again. Was that one for me? Hello? Yes, I think John, if you have, you can add in a few words first. We are having some connection issues with the Singapore side. All right, okay, sorry. Could you just quickly remind me of the question which we were gonna answer here? Yeah, let me just repeat the questions. Are there any sustainability efforts that can help protect the long-term profits and support the dividends going forward

for elite UK REITs? Yeah, I mean, one of the things which we did a couple of years ago is when we were doing a regearing exercise for the leases with DWP, we took out about 92% of lease breaks across the portfolio. And in return, we provided the DWP with some capital which needed to be spent on improving the energy performance of the assets. So essentially capital investment in the properties geared to improving the sustainability of the assets. It was quite an innovative approach to dealing with a tenant and providing them with a capital sum which needed to be spent actually on the buildings. So that was about a 15 million pound investment

that the REIT made. That was then added to by DWP. DWP themselves spent about 45 million pounds on top of the 15 million pounds which the REIT provided. So there was a very significant sum that was spent on our portfolio funded by Landlord, Elite and Tenant DWP focused on improving the sustainability credentials of the properties. Ultimately, any improvement of property by a tenant is an indicator that they have an intention to remain in that property over a long term. And so, you know, and by long term, we mean to sign new leases. If the tenant's signing new leases, then the income profile for the REIT is protected.

That's how we've gone about achieving that. And we hope to carry on having that kind of relationship with our tenant where we see them investing in our properties and they're happy to sign new longer term leases. Thank you, John, for the answers for this question. Anything else to add on the Singapore site management team? No, I think John is as a lay lay out. All right, no. Yes, the time is 8 p.m. Thanks for staying back with us. We'll do the quick fire questions for the last two questions I think. Any plans to raise funds from existing shareholders to REIT's issuance? So I think with any fundraising that the REITs

pre-raise, the REITs meet up for the REITs. And the way we do it, John has been so far since I've been here either placement or a professional offering, which is a form of right issue, except that usually for a professional offering, your discount is limited at maximum of 10%. That's regulatory cap nature. So I think when we did the fundraising back in Starlet 2024, we did a fine prep for a short offering. The fundraising we did in June this year, small one, it's a placement. So I think both Starlet or fundraising can achieve different objectives. So I think we will be open to both. But I think more importantly,

beyond the Starlet fundraising is why I'm doing fundraising. So it needs to be for a creative acquisition, for example, to buy the right things. And I think where we are, I think right now, Okeering, for example, is a very comfortable position as well. Okay, and I think we have the next questions on the payout ratio. Is EUKA planning to adjust its payout ratio in response to current market uncertainty due to interest rates? Or is the management committed to keeping the payout at historical levels? Yeah, so actually we're quite comfortable with where we are right now. I think some of you need to know this. You might remember in the early part of 2023,

I believe we had then taken down our payout ratio from 100% which was IPO to 90% which was a bit more in anticipation of some uncertainty in the market. For example, at the point in time, we have these breaks that were not sort of resolved at the point in time. We had a valuation coming down and we also have a loan refinancing that needs to be done. So long way we check them off systematically, valuation has stabilized. Loan has been refinanced. We have no refinancing till 2027. And as I've shared, we plan to try to early refinancing next year for some of the loans if we can.

And also, I think some of the hit rates with capital structure gearing that as also can't wait as result some of these things will die. So I think we're quite in a comfortable position. But I think the war seems to be a bit more volatile. So I think we probably stay where we are. Probably won't step up to 100%. But I think when we start that from 90% to 95% last year, we took that decision and we really, really have that introspect because taking it back downwards of 95, back to 90% is not gonna be great news and it's not something that we want to live through again.

So I think we took a lot of thought and making that decision. We're comfortable with that. All right, I think that gives investors or unit holders a lot of assurance that the management is committed to keeping the payout at this current level. And I'd like to thank Elite UK management team for staying back with us despite our APM at 8.05 now. I believe this is all the time that we have. I'd like to thank Joshua, I'd like to thank Jonathan and I thank Michael again for coming to this show today. We have come to the end of our This Week Corporate Connect session and we hope that all our viewers

enjoyed this session. In case you missed any part of today's session, you can actually rewatch this webinar on the CS YouTube channel. So do visit us on our website to get the latest updates on the latest investor education program as well as initiative. And our next Corporate Connect session will be on next Tuesday. So in the meantime, I hope everyone will treat safe and stay safe and have a very good evening ahead. Thank you everyone and have a good evening, goodbye. Thanks everyone. Thank you everyone too much. Goodbye. Thanks everyone. Thank you.