# Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT — Corporate Connect Webinar Presentation & Q&A

Event: SIAS Corporate Connect Webinar featuring Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT
Date: 4 March 2026
Issuer: Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT (SGX:CMOU)
Provenance: automated speech recognition (asr) of the public webinar recording
Source recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvOS8OBINP8
Official record: https://www.koreusreit.com/en/investor-relations/
Presenters: Mr. David Snyder — Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT Management
Words: ~10,099

Unofficial machine transcript. Prepared by SMID Research from the public Corporate Connect webinar recording by automated speech recognition, without a full manual check: expect mis-heard names and figures. There is no speaker attribution: the source recording carries no diarisation, so cues are shown as timestamp and text only; timestamps refer to the recording. Not a company publication. Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT's own investor relations page (https://www.koreusreit.com/en/investor-relations/) is the authoritative record. Copyright in the briefing rests with Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT / SIAS; contact contact@smidresearch.com for corrections or removal.

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[00:00:01] Okay, good evening everyone. Welcome to today's session corporate connect webinar which is organized by Sias and supported by the SGX group. My name is Siva, I work for Sias and I'm your host for today. Today's session or the main feature will be called USRead, formerly known as Kepel Pacific Oak USRead. Before I carry on, welcome to everyone including our audience from YouTube. Now, Core USRead, formerly known as Kepel Pacific Oak USRead, is a distinctive US focused office read listed on the SGX's main board since 9th of November 2017. Core targets high growth sectors such as technology, advertising, media and information as well as medical and health

[00:01:03] care while investing in quality commercial assets across key growth markets in the United States. Its strategy focuses on vibrant super sunbelt and 18-hour cities that offer strong economic fundamentals and attract with lifestyle appeal. As at 31st December 2025, Core's diversified portfolio comprised 13 freehold office buildings and business campuses across eight key growth markets with a total portfolio value of about 1.3 billion US dollars. Core aims to be the preferred US office SRead for investors seeking sustainable distributions and strong total returns. Now before I call upon the senior management of Core to deliver their corporate presentation, we have here with us Mr. James Ui, Chief Market Strategist for Tiger Brokers

[00:02:03] who will deliver our usual market highlights. After James' presentation, we will then have the Q&A session, sorry the corporate presentation first by Core and then we will have a Q&A session for members of the public to ask whatever questions they might have. So without much further ado, I call upon James to deliver his market highlights. James, over to you. Thank you Siva. Let me share my stack first. Thank you. So I hope that everyone can see this. Hi, good evening everyone. This is James from Tiger Brokers Singapore. So I'll be sharing some insight on the Singapore market. So there are a lot of news last week but mostly other macro news. So some of the important ones that we could see include

[00:02:59] Singapore manufacturing output search by 16.6%, mainly driven by the AI related demand. And we have been seeing a spike in the oil price due to Iran war. If there is continuous spike in the oil prices, then we may see higher inflation and hence delay in the further reserve rate cut as well. But again, higher oil price means higher inflation, but it also means slow down in the global growth. Then we may start seeing a fund outflowing from the emerging market and flow back into the US market and hence pushing up the US dollar. And according to the economists at Morgan Stanley, every $10 increase in the oil prices will hit Asia GDP growth directly by 20 to 30 basis points.

[00:03:56] So please keep a look out in the oil prices as well. We could see the SDI index return about 6% so far this year. Some of the outperformance this year include Yang Zhejiang, UOL, SD engineering. And some of the worst performance include Genting Singapore, SATS, Asanda series. Again, it's a good time to be a Singapore investor. While it feels like a bear market in the US, the sentiment in the Singapore equity market is completely different. The SDI market is one of the top performing stock indices globally so far this year. The year-to-day return this year is roughly about 6%. And the five year annualized return is 15.6%, outperforming Hansings, 1.36%, outperforming S&P 500s, 13.82%.

[00:04:56] The month-to-date return is about negative 1%. But the seasonality suggests to us that much could still be a good month. Over the past 25 years, March generally provides a positive return of 0.85%, whereas April returns 1.86%. So if we were to take a page from history, SDI index could go higher and only suffer meaningful corrections in May.

[00:05:36] I want to talk briefly on the interest rate. The US futures market is now suggesting that we may see two rate cuts in 2026. There would be in the month of July and December FOMC meeting itself. Just bear in mind that John Powell's tenure as the Chair of Federal Reserve will end in May this year. So I guess he may not do anything about the interest rate until he steps down. He just wants to leave the interest rate problem to the next chair. And there could be another rate cut in December 2027, meaning we shall see low interest rates, conducive interest rate environment until end 2027.

[00:06:27] So we just want to keep things simple here. As long as interest rates remain low, there could be constructive for the stock market. Not just REITs, all sectors should benefit, but maybe especially REITs itself. So the million dollar question here is how much lower Singapore's SORA could go. We can see that SORA has come down a lot. The three month composter SORA has fallen from 3% in the beginning of 2025 to about 1.12% at the moment. So it's about 63% drop. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve doesn't really cut so much, but we have a fund run the Federal Reserve rate cut. And here are some of the recent developments in the Singapore market. I want to go through one by one.

[00:07:20] The key thing to look out here is we could see that there is more EQDP injections. The EQDP size has expanded to about 6.5 billion.

[00:07:36] And so far 3.95 billion has been allocated to nine fund managers. So there is another 2.55 billion to be allocated. The next batch of fund managers benefiting from this EQDP are expected to be appointed around mid-2026. But we do not know how much will be allocated in the next round of allocation. And I just want to remind everyone that not all will go into small mid-cap stocks. For example, one of the beneficiaries from this EQDP is Fullerton Singapore Value Up Fund, which it indicated in their mandate that it only targeted to allocate about 30% of the NAB to the small mid-cap Singapore equities,

[00:08:31] meaning the remaining 70% will be invested into large-cap Singapore equities. And here I just want to show you that missing out just a few days in the market could significantly impact your return. For example, the 10-year average yearly return for the STI in-depth is about 5.9%. But if you miss out the best 10 days each year over that period, your average yearly return would be drastically reduced to negative 11%. So this is why I always advocated staying invested in the equity market. Okay, so here I'll show you some of the welcome rewards that we have. So if you want to find out more, please scan the QR code here.

[00:09:26] So that will be the end of my presentations. So over to you, Shiva. Thank you. Thank you so much, James. I hope that the market highlights section was useful for our viewers. Now we move on to the corporate presentation. I'll call upon the senior management from CORE, U.S. REIT, to give us their presentation. Mr. David Snyder, the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of CORE, and Ms. C.I. Lin, Head of Finance from CORE. Over to you, David and I. Lin. Thank you very much, Shiva. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I just want to start by thanking CS for inviting us to be part of this presentation this evening.

[00:10:13] They do a lot of great work with investors, and we're really grateful for the opportunity to be in front of everybody that is here with us this evening. We'll go ahead and start with an overview of the CORE U.S. REIT. We are an office REIT, SREIT here in Singapore, focused on key growth markets that offer robust economic fundamentals and strong lifestyle appeal in the U.S. These markets include things like Super Sun Belt Cities, 18-hour cities, and the like. You can see on the chart in front of you that we've got some symbols there for most of our locations that represent things like that, or supernovas, which are some of the strongest growing and best markets in the U.S., essentially.

[00:10:56] And those continue to attract companies and talent due to lower-income taxes, more affordable cost of living, better employment opportunities, and various other quality of life issues that make these sort of stronger and better markets than, say, gateway cities or others that you may be more familiar with from Singapore. Our portfolio has 13 high-quality freehold office buildings and business campuses within eight different markets in the United States, and we have a total nettable-led area of about 4.8 million square feet. Portfolios anchored by tenants from the TAMI sectors, which is essentially technology advertising, median information, and then also the medical and healthcare sectors, a little bit of which I think you already heard from SEVA, but can't hurt to repeat that as some of you may not be all that familiar with us.

[00:11:47] I want to spend a few minutes explaining the markets we're invested in since they really probably aren't all that familiar to everybody that is joining us here this evening. These 18-hour cities and other lifestyle markets offer vibrant entertainment, outdoor recreation, strong food and beverage options, a great sense of community, lower taxes, as I had already mentioned, and several other benefits. They provide lower living costs, favorable tax environments compared to traditional gateways like LA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, the markets many of you are probably more familiar with in the U.S. They're also supported by strong talent pools thanks to the proximity they have to top universities, which is a hallmark of virtually all of our markets.

[00:12:37] Our footprint with cities like Austin, Nashville, Dallas, Bellevue, and Redmond in Washington, then Houston and Denver, sits squarely on the lifestyle map. These markets combine dynamic economies with cultural vibrancy and live-work-play ecosystems, which tenants increasingly value. Orlando ads' unique draws like Disney World, Universal, Lakes, Beaches, and others that reinforce its appeal. And then we've got Sacramento, which is the state capital of California, which benefits from a strong talent pool, which is attracted to the lower cost of housing as compared to the Bay Area, or near the San Francisco area, along with close proximity to mountains, parks, and a lot of beautiful outdoor spaces. CORE's unique market position has given us a competitive edge.

[00:13:20] These markets benefit from demographic momentum, post-pandemic vibrancy, and perceptions of safety, all driving office demand today. They combine affordability, the strong job growth, quality of life, all critical for companies navigating hybrid work and talent retention. Our key growth markets, combined with our disciplined operations, have enabled us to maintain consistent performance over time, including through the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing structural shifts in the U.S. office sector that we've been seeing. I can see has remained consistently high and continues to outperform both the broader U.S. office market, Key Gateway Cities, as well as our SGX-listed U.S. office peer group. This is underpinned by sustained, robust leasing activity.

[00:14:03] Over the past five years, we've averaged approximately 678,000 square feet of leasing annually, reflecting sustained tenant demand for our well-immanitized properties and the proactive efforts of our leasing and asset management teams. Notably, adjusted NPI today is higher than it was pre-COVID and has remained stable, even as the U.S. office market continues to undergo structural shifts. CORE's consistent performance is also a testament to our focus on developing and maintaining properties that provide the amenities, space, and services the tenants' desire in our markets that continuously outperform the broader U.S. market, our disciplined operations, and prudent financial management, all of which have enabled us to navigate both short-term disruptions and longer-term market shifts.

[00:14:49] We'll now move on to our 2025 performance highlights. On slide 7, we're pleased to update that following our latest refinancing exercise, we have fully addressed all 2025 and 2026 term loan maturities. With these refinancings addressed, the board has recommended a distribution per unit of $0.25 U.S. cents for the second half of 2025. This marks the completion of our recapitalization plan ahead of the initial distribution resumption timeline that we had announced originally, which was first half of 2026. This decision was reached after carefully considering the REIT's cash flow position, capital commitments, and liquidity needs. While modest, this early resumption reflects our confidence in the underlying fundamentals of the portfolio and marks a meaningful step towards rebuilding a long-term distribution stability.

[00:15:42] We've begun with the conservative payout ratio, with the aim of increasing it to a much higher but sustainable level aligned with long-term portfolio performance over time. Our portfolio valuation remains stable at $1.3 billion compared to a year ago, as expected. Turning to leasing, portfolio occupancy stands at 87.2% supported by robust leasing activity with approximately 622,000 square feet of leases signed during the year, meaning 2025, which represents 13% of our net lettable area. Full year rental reversion was a positive 6.8% and I will cover leasing trends and demand drivers we're seeing later in the presentation. In the broader U.S. office market, recovery momentum continues to build, and I'll touch on the market outlook in a subsequent section as well.

[00:16:31] Despite market volatility and ongoing structural changes in the U.S. office sector, core portfolio valuation has remained resilient. While there have been adjustments in cap rates and asset values across the market, our proactive asset management and strong leasing performance have helped mitigate the impact. Assets that generally saw declines in their valuations were Plaza Buildings, Westmore Center, 105 Edgeview, and Maitland Promenade 1 and 2. Of these, all but Maitland were expected based on occupancy. This was offset by the increases from 125, Bel Air Park, and West Tech 360. Overall, portfolio valuation remains stable year on year at U.S. $1.33 billion. With that, I'll hand it over to Ailin to elaborate on core's financial performance and capital management.

[00:17:19] Thanks, Dave. Okay, so slide 10 is a summary of core's financial performance for the second half of 2025 and the full year of 2025. So net property income of $80.7 million for 2025 was higher than 2024 by 3%. However, excluding the non-cash adjustments such as the amortization of straight-line rent, lease incentives, and amortization of leasing commission, which has no impact on income available for distribution, adjusted net property income was 0.3% higher year on year at $83.6 million. This was mainly due to higher other operating income, recurring income, and reduction in property taxes, partially offset by the lower cash rental income from higher free rents due to timing differences in leases completed for the respective periods.

[00:18:09] Finance and other trust expenses of $33 million for 2025 was higher than 2024 by 6%, mainly attributable to the expiration of interest rate swaps in 2025, higher professional fees, and accrued withholding tax resulting from the suspension of distribution, partially offset by the impact of lower floating interest rates during the year. Income available for distribution for 2025 was $43 million. On the back of our successful early refinancing efforts, it manages please to declare distribution of 0.25 cents per unit. Moving on to slide 11, which outlines our debt-related metrics as at 31st December 2025. Aggregate leverage stood at 44.1%, and the all-in average cost of debt was 4.66% per annum, or 4.53% per annum, excluding the amortization of upfront debt financing costs.

[00:19:08] Our interest courage ratio remained healthy at 2.5 times, and both sensitivity scenarios show that ICRs staying above the regulatory requirements of 1.5 times. The weighted average term to maturity of our debt stands at 1.5 years, and 64.4% of our loans were hedged. A 50 bibs increase in SOFR translates to approximately 1.22 million increase in income available for distribution per annum. Slide 12 provides an update on our refinancing efforts. So call addressed all 2025 and 2026 term loan maturities following execution of term loan facilities of $115 million and $37.5 million in December and January respectively. So the chart at the bottom left reflects the updated debt maturity profile post refinancing.

[00:20:03] Assuming that the loan was refinanced as at 31st December 2025, our weighted average term loan to maturity would have been 2.1 years. So we continue to engage with prospective lenders to commence early refinancing of loans maturing in 2027. So with that, I'll pass it back today for a provide an overview of the portfolio's 2025 performance and update of the U.S. Office market outlook. Great. Thanks, Ellen. Moving on to slide 14 in the 4th quarter of 2025, we continue to see healthy leasing momentum across the portfolio. New and expansion leases made up about 59% of the space signed in the 4th quarter. The majority of the demand was largely driven by tenants from both the professional and the medical and healthcare sectors.

[00:20:50] Rennory version for the full year was 6.8% largely driven by a government lease renewal at 125 in Dallas in the 3rd quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, Rennory version for the 4th quarter was negative 0.6%, mainly due to a new lease at the same building, 125, that immediately replaced an expiring tenant without the need for any tenant improvements or free rent, which actually makes it a very good lease from an overall economic perspective. Coors built in average annual rental escalation of 2.6% continues to provide a steady base for organic growth. In 2026, we have 14% of NLA expiring. And of that, the known vacates make up about 4.1% of portfolio NLA with the largest space at 124,000 square feet, or 2.6% of our portfolio NLA coming back from Meta at West Park, actually just this past month.

[00:21:53] We're actively working on backfilling these spaces and investors can continue to take comfort from our historical leasing track record. We remain confident that we will end the year with occupancy in the mid 80s or higher. Leasing momentum and stable performance we've seen in 2025 are supported by our ongoing asset enhancement efforts. These upgrades not only improve tenant experiences, but they also position our assets competitively in markets that continue to evolve. Let me share what we completed in 2025 and the projects currently underway. Completed works for the year included a spec suite floor with shared amenity space at the greenhouse at 10, 900 of the plaza buildings and lobby upgrades at Bel Air Park and Building 5 of Westmore Center.

[00:22:39] Additional amenities introduced were an onsite coffee and pastry bar at a newly constructed tenant lounge in West Park, a pickleball court at the plaza buildings, a new cafe operator at Westmore Center, and an expanded cafe area at Maitland Promenade 1 and 2. In addition, several enhancement projects are underway. The first floor renovation and building of a full floor spec suite at 10, 800 of the plaza buildings. And coincidentally, I'm in Bellevue right now today and just went through our brand new lobby, which looks absolutely amazing and was looking at all the plans for the spec suites that we're getting ready to start work on right now.

[00:23:19] So these things are truly underway and really are sort of transformational, if you will, for buildings. We've got the refresh of outdoor spaces at Great Hills Plaza, West Tech 360 and Iron Point, as well as upgrading of tenant amenity spaces at West Tech 360 and bridge crossing. These initiatives underscore CORE's continued focus on maintaining high quality, well-immunitized assets that attract and retain tenants. A key part of CORE's active leasing strategy is also our spec suites program. These move-in ready spaces give tenants two major benefits, speed and a clear, modern workplace vision. For us, they lease faster, require less free rent, and most importantly, lower long-term capital requirements.

[00:24:06] Most suites are under 7,500 square feet, but can be combined for larger needs. We've already delivered full floor spec suites at Iron Point, 1,800 West Loop, and the 10-900 building at the Plaza buildings. And as I mentioned, we're now currently building out the posts at the 10-800 building at the Plaza buildings. Individual spec suites in appropriate sizes will continue to be planned and built at selected properties where we anticipate demand, ensuring we stay ahead of tenant requirements. On slide 17, we illustrate how our active asset enhancement and spec suite strategy plays out in practice with the case study at 1150 Iron Point. After a long-term tenant vacated in mid-2023, we launched an asset enhancement and spec suite program to reposition the property.

[00:24:52] We identified suites under 3,000 square feet as the optimal size for smaller tenants seeking flexibility in collaborative environments. The project was completed at the end of 2024. As part of the upgrade, we introduced more open spaces and refreshed amenities, including multi-room conference areas, cardio and training studios, and self-service snack and convenience spaces, all designed to support modern workplace needs. To date, we've successfully leased all four of the spec suites built, clear evidence of the strong demand for move-in ready spaces. Occupancy at Iron Point has also increased meaningfully, rising from 68.9% at the end of 2024 and as low as 54.4% in 2025 after another known vacate to today's 80.4% occupancy.

[00:25:38] Core's portfolio remains well-diversified across geographies and industries. A majority of our portfolio by NPI is in growing tech hubs such as Bellevue, Redmond, and Austin, as well as Denver, which is a major beneficiary of the expanding aerospace and advanced technologies ecosystem. We have a well-diversified tenant base across the TAMI as well as the medical and healthcare sectors, which helps to underpin income stability. The table on slide 19 shows our top 10 tenants. With meta vacating its space in first quarter 2026, it is no longer included in the top 10 tenant list. The U.S. Homeland Security has emerged as a new top 10 tenant, following it taking additional space at 125 in Dallas.

[00:26:22] No single tenant accounts for more than 4% of Core's CRI, underscoring our low tenant concentration risk. Collectively, Core's top 10 tenants contribute only approximately 29% of total cash rental income. Slide 21 frames the structural shifts we're seeing in the U.S. office market. These trends are directly influencing where demand is going, and more importantly, they align very well with Core's portfolio positioning. First, office attendance is improving. Employees are coming back more consistently, and companies are becoming far more intentional and firmer about enforcing return to office policies. 97% of Fortune 100 employees are now subject to hybrid or full-time office mandates, averaging around 4 days per week in the office.

[00:27:07] Again, I mentioned I am here in Bellevue right now. Microsoft is based in Redmond, which we also have a building in that location. And we're just discussing today with our leasing team the fact that Microsoft employees were back in the office mandated, back in the office, and were back in the office starting last week. Three days a week, and for some it may be a bit more, and they were back in the office. So that was good to see from that perspective that these things really are working. Amazon isn't alone in using badge swipe data to monitor attendance. Samsung has even created a manager-facing dashboard that shows employees days and times in the building.

[00:27:51] Dell has told hybrid teams that on-site presence will be tracked and may influence performance reviews and even compensation. Financial institutions are taking equally strong steps. Bank of America issued warning notices to staff for noncompliance. J.P. Morgan employees have shared that senior leaders can view an internal dashboard showing the percentage of eligible days that each person actually spends in the office. Second, the flight to quality continues. Companies are prioritizing amenity-rich and well-located buildings that meaningfully improve employee experience, places where teams actually want to show up. This is where leasing activity has been strongest and where core assets already have a competitive advantage. Third, lifestyle markets continue to outperform.

[00:28:36] A recent JLL report highlighted the growing outperformance of office assets in lifestyle markets. These locations continue to benefit from demand for well-located amenity-rich workplaces in more affordable and high-quality of life environments. The very places Core invests. This trend reaffirms Core's early strategic focus on growth markets with vibrant lifestyle appeal. These sub-markets have consistently outperformed the U.S. average in traditional gateway cities, positioning our portfolio for long-term resilience and growth. Building on the flight to quality trend we discussed already, slide 22 shows the resilience of highly-amenitized offices since 2020. By upgrading outdoor spaces, enhancing food and beverage options, creating shared spaces, and adding experiential programming, landlords can tap into growing demand for lifestyle office.

[00:29:26] At Core, we've been ahead of this trend. Our highly-amenitized, well-located assets continue to command premium rents, strong leasing demand, and investor interest. Move-in-ready space is another advantage. Today, 85% of our properties feature tenant lounges, conference rooms, and fitness centers. 77% offer food and beverage options, of which 39% are with full-delir food service and 38% with substantial grab-and-go markets. All of our properties include outdoor spaces that enhance the tenant experience. Just this year, we introduced a new cafe provider in Westmore, and we are redoing food and beverage options as well as building a sports court at Bridge Crossing. At 10800, the plaza buildings is part of the repositioning of the lobby.

[00:30:11] We are introducing a golf simulator, which I got to try out today for the first time that it's been used, and it is a lot of fun. We had a few people give that a test run, and we expect that to be quite popular with tenants. Our amenity-rich assets position us to capture strong demand and sustain strong rents in this evolving market. The past five years have shown that traditional office models and stale CBDs are not working. Today's workforce values experience and outcomes. They want quality, amenities, and vibrant locations. This has fueled the rise of lifestyle office markets, mixed-use regions with moderate density, strong transit, diverse property types, and walkability.

[00:30:55] And when we say strong transit, we mean the U.S. version of strong transit, not Singapore's system, which is maybe a thousand times better than the best in the United States. Slide 23 shows what is driving the trend behind these lifestyle markets. First is demographic momentum. Pandemic-driven migration from CBDs to affordable, high-quality areas created demand. As rates rose, renters flocked to lifestyle markets, and developers followed with multifamily housing, attracting both residents and employers. Second is post-pandemic vibrancy. Attendants rebounded faster in these markets, which offer live-workplay ecosystems. Workplace flexibility also means employees and employers want convenience and amenities which boost leasing performance. Third is crime perception. Pandemic-driven crime spikes and widespread retail closures dent to the safety image of many urban cores.

[00:31:46] Even as crime normalizes, safety concerns linger, pushing demand toward secure, vibrant locations. Slide 24 highlights estimates by JLL of where various markets are in the property clock cycle. Core markets are predominantly in the early stages of the rising phase of the U.S. office market. Denver is the only location of ours that still has some room to fall, but that may not reflect some of the positives in our sub-market in the northwest, which might put it closer to the bottom. Overall, this positioning is good news, as it signals strong future growth opportunities for our portfolio. Our priorities remain unchanged. We continue to focus on portfolio optimization and asset enhancement initiatives to maintain high occupancy and rental rates.

[00:32:30] We'll continue our spec suite conversions and targeted upgrades to enhance leasing appeal and future-proof assets. When opportunities arise in the future, we will redeploy capital from non-core divestments into debt reduction and higher growth assets while pursuing value-accreative investments in markets with strong fundamentals. All these initiatives are supported by prudent capital management, proactive refinancing, balance sheet discipline, and effective hedging to mitigate interest rate volatility. In closing, I would like to reiterate what makes Core stand out against its peers. We're strategically focused on key U.S. growth markets in cities that combine livability, affordability, and access to skilled talent. These are the very markets benefiting from labor migration and corporate relocations, which continue to fuel leasing demand.

[00:33:18] Our portfolio fundamentals remain robust. Occupancy has consistently stayed well above 85% since our IPO listing days, outperforming the national average, gateway cities, and significantly outperforming our competitors. We're anchored by exposure to fast-growing sectors like TAMI and medical and healthcare, which add resilience to our income streams. Operationally, we've maintained discipline. Strategic investments and upgrades in spec suites paired with proactive leasing have maintained healthy cash flows and helped preserve capital values. We're confident that as the U.S. office market gradually recovers, Core is well-positioned to ride the upturn. Our future-ready portfolio is aligned with structural shifts and tenant preferences. We remain committed to delivering sustainable distributions, and the resumption this quarter is a good start.

[00:34:07] And that will wrap up this portion of the presentation. Great. Thank you so much, David and Ailin, for that presentation. We'll now move on to the Q&A session. There are already a bunch of questions in the chat box, sorry, in the Q&A box. I'll probably start with the first one from CH Cheung, who says that your peer prime has resumed dividends, but the market is still heavily discounting it. What are the merits of listing in a market thousands of miles away from the assets? That is an interesting question, and not one that we get very often. So, you know, prime has resumed a substantial portion of their distributions.

[00:34:58] And, you know, one of the nice things for us is we get to sort of watch them do that and see what the benefits are. We've said, as we talked to investors for the last year, or two years, I guess, that we plan to start small and build gradually on the distributions once we resume, which we have now obviously resumed, so that we can grow that over time and take some time for the market to be able to adjust, to see the earnings, to see the distributions, and the stock price adjust that sort of thing. So, you know, we didn't think it was necessarily a very prudent way to go about it by, you know, making a really big jump in distributions where the market might have difficulty absorbing it,

[00:35:39] understanding it, and reacting to it, which I think we've seen happen. So, one of the advantages of what they're asking about in this question, and why would you list in a market that's so far away from home, is we do have the ability to provide some unique tax benefits. And so, typically, if a Singapore investor or any Asian investor wanted to invest in the US REIT, they could buy US REIT stocks directly on the New York Stock Exchange. But they would face a withholding penalty because they'd have about a 30% withholding, and it varies by location because the US has different tax treaties. But, you know, typically, it's a 30% withholding tax that we withheld that they could never get back because they're not US tax filers.

[00:36:26] So, we can eliminate that while still providing the ability to invest in the US. We have hoped and continue to hope that by demonstrating, you know, the strong portfolio that we have, the stable income and the like, that over time we would really be able to help Singapore investors and others in Asia see the benefits of investing in the US that way. Unfortunately, COVID sort of changed things a little bit. We were in a position where we had very strong growth in both, you know, rent, income. We had strong distributions. We had a lot of good things going. And the, I guess, concerns about the US market overall really damaged the ability of not just prime stock, which they mentioned, but ours, to perform as I think it really should.

[00:37:21] Especially if you look at our performance and our current occupancy level still beats the US as a whole. You look at our income levels that are, you know, still at or slightly above pre-COVID sorts of levels, you would expect that our stock price would be performing in correspondence with that and it hasn't. So, we have work to do, you know, as this prime, as we try to help people understand the US market better. But we really do still believe, you know, especially for us, that we do have something unique and valuable to provide. And I guess, you know, the good news for investors today would be, if you look at where the stock price is trading versus NAV, there is an awful lot of room for growth and value creation there.

[00:38:02] Thanks, David. Okay. Darrel Lim has two questions. I think they are a bit interrelated. Can management please share whether you have an ideal or target payout ratio? And the second question was, what is the distributable income per unit currently? Okay. Well, Darrel, thanks for the questions. I'll take the first. I'll let Eilin take the second in just a moment. For a targeted payout ratio, we haven't picked a specific exact percentage at this point. But we do hope over time to get to somewhere, you know, around an 80-ish percent level. I mean, I think we're targeting, you know, say somewhere between, you know, 70 to 80, 85-ish.

[00:38:49] We haven't really given an exact specific because we really want to, you know, maintain some flexibility there. But the goal really is to ensure that we do maintain some capital for the needs of the properties. Because in the U.S., unlike in Singapore, the landlord is responsible for things like building out tenant spaces, which is different in Singapore. The landlord would also be responsible for amenities. But we tend to provide a lot more amenities in the U.S. than I think is typical in an office building in Singapore. We talked about a lot of those amenities that we provide earlier in the presentation. So we want to maintain the ability to fund some of that from income that's coming in within the portfolio.

[00:39:33] You know, so it will be some range around there. The goal is not to get back to 100 percent. We don't believe that's prudent for REITs in general wherever they're located. So, you know, again, it'll be something a little bit smaller than that, as I mentioned. And Eilin, maybe if you want to take the other question about distributions. Yes. So the distribution per unit, if you translate it to the income available for distribution per unit for the full year, it'd be about 4.1 U.S. cents. Okay. Great. Thanks for that. Okay. I'll probably just answer the questions or post the questions in the sequence that they were typed in because otherwise it wouldn't be fair.

[00:40:20] Okay. Feng Cheng-Heng has got this question. Property maintenance and refurbishment costs have been on an uptrend in recent years. Will management discuss their views on cost ability to outpace these increments through rental revisions? And net property income yield is lower than cost of debt. What is management's view on its ability to recycle capital over the next few years and at what discount to NAV? So I think we'll do the same thing. Maybe I'll take the first question and we'll let Eilin take the second question that we've got there. So the first one, when it comes to maintenance and refurbishment costs and that sort of thing, we saw some fairly significant growth during the COVID timeframe.

[00:41:11] We just – the whole world saw a lot of inflation, so we saw some inflation in those sorts of costs as well as just about everything else. Anything that has an employee attached to it or a piece of material saw increases in costs. Rental growth was pretty much flat sort of post-COVID through now. We're starting to see some rent increases happen in some of our markets. The good news is in most of our markets, costs have relatively stabilized, and we're now looking at more of just a typical inflation of the 2 to 3 percent range for most things. It's interesting. I am here, as I mentioned earlier, in Bellevue right now.

[00:41:52] So we're at Bellevue Redmond near Seattle, but in the east side of the market where we have several of our properties. And we were discussing today, unfortunately, in this particular market because of some of the policies of the area, some of those costs do continue to increase, but this is a market where we are seeing rent increases. So the first floor space that we just built out an entire new lobby for one of the two buildings, the Plaza buildings, which looks absolutely amazing, does have a tenant there with rent that is above what we estimated rent would be even as we were building out space.

[00:42:30] And working on the leasing there, we're going to be building out a full floor of spec suites in that same building. And we currently now expect to see rent rates there with – I mean, I don't know how significant it would be, but call it about a $2 rate increase versus – and that's per year, not per month. But a rate increase is about $2 a foot over what we would have previously expected. And we've already got one tenant ready to sign a lease, and we haven't even started building out the space yet. So we are seeing some rent growth there. We're starting to see some of that and a few other places in the portfolio.

[00:43:06] So I think the market trends are now moving back into the right direction. Leasing is picked up across the U.S. I mean, that would be somewhat in our markets as well as in gateways like New York City and San Francisco. Seeing rent increases is actually in San Francisco. We don't invest in the gateway markets. We don't think they're the major drivers of growth. We don't think long-term their potential is nearly as good as the markets we do invest in. However, those are the markets people are familiar with. And if the gateways are doing well, then the rest of the country is probably doing a bit better.

[00:43:40] So we like to see that growth, and we do really think that's going to help on an income growth level. I mean, I do want to warn a little bit for that. That 2026, we did have significant tenants that were known vacates, primarily just the one, which is meta, which we lost in February. So we've got – we will have a bit of a decline in revenue starting the year. We expect to refill either that or other spaces, make that back up over the course of the year and get the trend going in the right direction again. So we may have a short period here because of the loss of meta where income trends a little bit down, but we do expect to see growth as we're moving through the year with the rent rates and refilling of some of that space and some other space within the portfolio.

[00:44:32] With that, I can go ahead and turn it over to Aylin for the second question. Yeah, so on that question, we do not see the MPI EU as a trigger for a near-term asset sale. So our focus currently remains on improving income and occupancy to lift our asset cash flow as well as value over time. So although there has been an increase in the office investment volumes in the US, most sales are of small buildings that do not require financing as the capital markets have not yet to fully recover. So we have considered asset disposal, but we do not expect to divest any properties at this point at a price that would be beneficial to our unit holders.

[00:45:24] Okay, thank you for that, Aylin and David. Next question comes from CH Cheung. What are the signals that call can glean to predict whether a tenant will renew? And what is the current renewal rate? That is an interesting question. I'll start with the second part first, which our renewal rate tends to run somewhere around 50% within the portfolio, whether you measure that by number of tenants or by square footage. We tend to be somewhere around there, and it varies year by year for a number of reasons. One, and that probably sounds a bit low from a Singapore perspective, but for the portfolio that we have, we actually consider that to be a perfectly acceptable, if not a pretty good rate.

[00:46:17] We tend to have a lot of tenants. We have around 400, and I can't remember the number, individual tenants within the portfolio. And a lot of those tend to be pretty small. Our overall top 10 concentration is pretty low at 29%, but we do have a lot of small tenants. And so as some of those grow, they need to move out to other things. Some of them may have other reasons why they move and do various things. But we tend to turn over a lot with that type of tenant, but there tends to be a lot of tenants to replace. So maybe the best example of this is West Park, which is in Redmond, which I'll be out at in the morning.

[00:46:56] And at West Park, we have a lot of tenants in that location. And as we lose, we tend to turn them over relatively quickly. And so we've had rent growth at that property through the pandemic and post-pandemic. It'd be the one place in the portfolio, I can tell you. We have not seen a rent decline, and we have seen increases basically continuously, because those types of tenants need what they need. And we have products that are really specifically useful to smaller tech companies that need both office space as well as development space. So places for us like West Park and then in Denver, where we've got Westmore Center, really provide that.

[00:47:40] They can do R&D on-site fabrication, on-site testing, and also have their office space together. And so we've seen a lot of success with that in the portfolio. In terms of telling what a tenant's going to do, I mean, typically we're monitoring physical occupancy, not just at the building, but at the various tenants. So we usually have a pretty good window into whether tenants are really utilizing their space, and we start to really focus on that as they get closer to renewal times. We've got property managers that are great in all of our locations. One of the things that we do that's a little different than some of our competitors is we assign different property managers to every location.

[00:48:22] So we are agnostic as to firm. We like to have really strong asset management firms in each location. We have tended and continue to grow with one of them over time, but we consider these people the face of our business. They're the people that everyone sees every day when they come into the office. These are the people that are interacting with them on a daily basis. So we've moved those services multiple times since inception of this company to make sure we've got great people doing that. And so those folks generally know to some degree what's going on. We've got great leasing teams that we also move around and make sure we have the best leasing teams in every market.

[00:49:02] And we have even more variety there in terms of service providers across the U.S. And they will be in touch with folks, usually starting about a year in advance for really big tenants. It might be 18 months to 24 months in advance for smaller tenants. It's probably more like 9 months in advance so that we can kind of get their views and start the negotiations, understand what they want. Right now, we're in the process of moving a tenant within Plaza buildings where I'm at because they want to grow and they want to do it maybe even before their lease may be up. So we also are involved with tenants on that side.

[00:49:35] One of the things that I think really stands out is over the last year, year plus. We've seen more expansions in our portfolio than contractions. So while we have lost a number of tenants, we've had a lot of tenants grow with us. And we're able to do that not just at renewal time, but other times as well. And we've had some tenants that have grown two times, maybe even three over the course of the last year, which has been good. So there's a lot of things to monitor. We look at for the larger tenants, we're monitoring sort of their business and how that's going as well.

[00:50:08] And we try to do this based on relationship. When people ask what's the most important thing in real estate, everybody sort of knows the old stand by its location, location, location. And that is absolutely true when you buy a piece of real estate, you better make sure it's in a good location. When it comes to operating real estate, managing a real estate company, whether that be office or residential or something else, it's relationship, relationship, relationship. And that's how we operate our business and how we work with tenants. Great. Thanks, David. Next question from Kongjo Lam. For financial year 2025, capital expenditure 39.5 million, fair value loss 40.5 million.

[00:50:51] KPAX has been huge and fair value loss is just as strong. Net property value growth nil impacting NAV. Okay, please advise the outlook for 2026 and beyond. Yeah, so it's an interesting question. It really, the question may or may not be getting the cart before the horse, if you will, to use one turn of phrase for this. If you were to look at this portfolio and assume we did not make the investments that we made in 2025, the value decline would have been significant, significantly more than it was. Because what our capital expenditures reflect is putting tenants in the building. So there's going to be a lot of TIs and there are tenant improvements where we build out space for tenants.

[00:51:41] There has also been building improvements that we do. We talked earlier in the presentation about a number of the things that we've done over the course of the last year, adding a new tenant lounge with food service at West Park. Redoing lobbies in certain buildings. We're redoing the lobby right now. That, like I mentioned, is absolutely beautiful. It has all kinds of tenant amenities in it, putting in those tenant amenities and those sorts of things, which attract tenants and also help with valuation itself when a valuer can see some of those improvements that are being made. What we saw in the last year was we spent – let's call it roundabout $40 million on the property, and we saw the value stay completely flat.

[00:52:25] Meaning from the perspective of the person asking the question, we got no value for putting in those improvements. We spent $40 million and we got nothing to show for it. What we have to show for it is a building or a bunch of buildings that are in better shape than they were a year ago, in many cases with more tenancy and ready to be leasing. They're in places where, especially where we build spec suites, we will get higher rents from them. Our costs over time go down when we build spec suites, and maybe this is a good time to sort of mention the sort of the theory I briefly mentioned in the presentation.

[00:52:58] So when we build a spec suite, we actually spend more to build that space out than we do when we do a normal TI to put a tenant into a space. So on a five-year lease – and I'm just going to use some round numbers. Please don't consider these as completely indicative, but directionally, this will give you an idea of what we're doing because each of our buildings has different rent levels and TI costs, and they just vary across the country. But it will just take sort of some round numbers. We might spend $100 a foot to build out space for a tenant, and on a five-year lease, if we spend $100 a foot to build that out, let's say we're getting whatever we're going to get in rent, we're going to make that back over time.

[00:53:34] And we'll make a profit, but at the end of that timeframe, we may need to significantly demo space for the next tenant of that space. When we build out spec suites, we build out much smaller spaces. We only do this up to about 7,500 square feet. But for tenants in the 1,000 to 7,500 square foot range that we build spec suites for, we know what they want. So we build these spaces, and we build them once, and we might build, for say, $150 a foot. We will get a rent benefit to that, and we will make back the costs and make profits more quickly. But when we build the space out the next time, typically – and we were just discussing this today as we're getting ready to break ground on this new – the post, which is the spec floor at one of the buildings at Plaza – we want to make sure that our costs later are just going to be typically some carpet and paint, which might run $20 or $30 a foot.

[00:54:29] And so we can continue to put tenants into that space for $20 or $30 a foot for a decade, maybe two, meaning our long-term costs go significantly down because we're spending good money up front to create valuable space. And Plaza Buildings is where we started this program. It is really a poster child. We have a space in Plaza that I'll be looking at tomorrow that has its fifth tenant going into it over many years now. And it was one of the original spec suites, and we continue to only ever have to spend $20 or $30 a foot instead of call it $100 a foot or more to build out space, which is what it would cost us in Bellevue.

[00:55:04] So this is really good spend. Adding amenities is what is making employers look at our spaces and say we really want to be there. When we redo amenities while we're rebuilding spec suites, we start leasing. As I mentioned, we've got our building in Sacramento. We leased all of the spec suites in our new amenity building, and we've done a tremendous amount of leasing at the place. We've done a tremendous amount of leasing at the property itself in large part due to those new amenities that we put in, and it happened very, very quickly. As I mentioned a moment ago at the Post, this new building – the new space at Plaza that we're building out, we already have a tenant that is ready to sign a lease, and we haven't built one square foot of space.

[00:55:43] But they looked at what we built in the other building at Plaza, which was called the greenhouse, which is a full-floor spec suite, and they said we want that, and we'll take it as soon as it can be ready. So the money is being really well spent. We are guarded about where we spend it. We're trying to spend only on the things that make the most sense. So I'd rather spend on spec suites than TI's all day long, but we also need to put larger tenants into larger spaces, which means TI dollars. But when we do that, we try to manage that well, make sure it's value-creative, try to develop plans for the space that we believe at least significant portions of will be reusable.

[00:56:16] So in the future, we can try to keep those TI costs a bit lower than they typically would be as well. So we're trying to manage it well. If we didn't do what we do, we would see significant losses. And if you look at our two competitors in Singapore over the years, and you look at the losses they've had on their portfolios, they dwarf ours, and they're multiples. And I think we've been smart about the markets we invest in. We've been really smart about how and where we spend money. And what you have – what you were not seeing is a decline in the quality of our buildings.

[00:56:48] You were seeing cap and discount rates that were increasing and causing valuations to decline. But we were able to head off most of that by the capital spend that we did. We think that should be kind of the bottom in 2026. We're hoping to recover all of our capital in 26. So far, I've been right in our predictions about what we think valuations will do at the end of a year. I'm not on the spot for this because I don't control interest rates and I don't control sentiment. But last year, we told people we think we're going to be round about break-even valuation. We told people we thought we would hit where the capital that we spent would probably not be recovered.

[00:57:27] This year, I think what I'd like to tell people, and I'll tell people here, is I expect to recover at least much, if not most, if not maybe all of the capital we spend this year, meaning I expect to see a valuation increase in 2026. I think we've hit the peak when it comes to cap and discount rates, barring some crazy unforeseen circumstances. And so I think the rent increases that we expect to see in some places, some of the new leasing that we expect to be doing, and some potential from some actual rate decreases that might finally start impacting cap and discount rates to give us some benefit when we get to the end of 2026.

[00:58:07] Again, that is not a guaranteed prediction. That is how I'm reading the marketplace today, just to be clear. But that's certainly what our hope is going to be for the end of 2026 on valuations. Okay. Thank you so much. We are running short on time. I think I'll just take maybe another two questions or so. Justin We has asked, am I correct to say that the term loan of 37.5 million is two years and 115 million loan is three years? Any reasons for the short periods of these two recent refinancings? And when the loans in year 2027 and 2028 are coming up for renewal, are the refinancing terms also to be of a similar tenure, i.e. two to three years?

[00:58:50] Well, I'm going to start just by thanking Justin for asking a question of I-Lynn. It is, what is it now? 3.59 a.m. in the morning where I am in Seattle as we're doing this. So that one with all the multiple pieces to the question and all that, I'm not even sure I can follow it at this hour. But I-Lynn will and she'll be able to answer it well. So thank you, Justin, for asking her that question. So the answer is yes. It's a three year and a two year loan. So we have chosen like shorter term loans to manage our capital efficiently and maintain the financial flexibility.

[00:59:27] So shorter-tenure facilities offer more competitive pricing and allows us to re-optimise our debt structure as the market condition evolves. So yes, going forward, we will still look at a two, three year loan, although longer term may be possible as well. So it depends on the market situation. Okay. Thanks, I-Lynn. All right. We are actually at eight o'clock now. I'll take one more question from-so that at least as many people as possible had their questions answered. Maybe one from Darrell Lim. What comments does management have about diversifying cost mandate to different sectors? For example, retail properties? It is an interesting question. I will take that by saying we are an office REIT and we, you know, for the foreseeable future intend to remain an office REIT.

[01:00:28] What we would like to do is if we are recycling capital in the future and we have a couple of properties that, you know, when the transaction market is back in the U.S., we would likely sell. You know, as I tell people, our building in Sacramento, while that is the key growth market by all the definitions we had when we first launched the REIT, it's in California. California has gotten worse and worse over the years. Their taxes are, you know, incredibly high. So you can't escape the California negatives by being in one of the better office markets in California. So that building, which is relatively small, would be a targeted one for us.

[01:01:05] We've got a building in Houston, 1800 West Loop, that rent growth hasn't kept up with the inflationary costs to go back to a question we had earlier. And that one would be a likely target. The first one would be too small to reinvest, but the second wouldn't. And when we reinvest, we'd like to be able to reinvest into mixed use. So if we were able to buy office that had, along with it, something, say retail, would be fantastic, as would multifamily. If we could do something that had some multifamily as a mix to it and really get a true experiential place, doing that in just individual locations within our portfolio rather than looking for this truly just the experiential markets that we're in, that would be great.

[01:01:52] For now, you know, we're stay the course and just really looking to improve the properties that we have, the leasing, get those really back up to where they should be as we wait for the U.S. market to – maybe not the whole U.S. market, but the transaction market, as I mentioned, to recover so that we can start to do something like that. But having a bit of diversity is something that we would welcome as we move into the future here. Okay. We've just run slightly over schedule, so I think we'll end here. Apologies to those whose questions were not answered. We'll consolidate all the questions and send them to call.

[01:02:38] I wonder how they would reply. Anyway, never mind. I'll just stand by that for a minute. Hold that thought. Thanks to David and Ailin for the presentation. Thanks to James for his market highlights. And let me just see what else there is on the schedule. Nothing else, sir. Okay. Hold on a second. Okay. I think what we'll do is we will consolidate all the questions that have not been answered and send them to call. And, okay, together with the emails, email addresses, so that should – that'll be taken care of later.

[01:03:35] Okay. In case you've missed any part of today's session, you can rewatch this webinar on Siasah's YouTube channel. Please visit Siasah's Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn, and website to get updates on our upcoming webinar, investor education programs and initiatives. The next Corporate Connect session will be held – will be a special edition held in person on the morning of Saturday, the 14th of March. And it will feature HRNet Group as part of a half-day event. So, keep a lookout on Siasah's website for registration, which will open soon, and we hope to see you there. All that remains is for me to thank everyone for attending this webinar, including James, David, and Ailin for their presentations.

[01:04:31] And thank you, everyone. And I wish you all a good night. Thank you. Thank you so much, Siva and Sias, and thank you, everyone that attended. Thank you. Thank you.