Embassy Office Parks REIT on Thursday posted a 23% increase in net operating income year-on-year to Rs 2,491 crore, while its operating margin came in at 84% for the quarter ended March 31.
Its board declared a distribution of Rs 499 crore or Rs 5.26 per unit for Q4 FY22. With this, the cumulative distribution for FY22 reached Rs 2,063 crore or Rs 21.76 per unit — 1% higher than the initial guidance — of which 82% is tax-free for unitholders.
The REIT leased 2.2 million sq ft at 18% spreads across 47 deals, and achieved 14% rent escalations on 7.7 million sq ft across 89 deals. It added 18 high growth occupiers, and increased customer base to over 200 marquee occupiers.
Chief executive officer Michael Holland said, “The office leasing momentum continues to grow, backed by very encouraging return-to-workplace trajectory, coupled with robust hiring by technology and global captive players and record tech investments. We remain focused on delivering growth to our unitholders and scaling up our industry-leading portfolio.”
The REIT raised Rs 4,600 crore at 6.5% to refinance legacy zero-coupon bond, with 300 basis points or Rs 130 crore of pro forma annual savings. The company locked in two-thirds of debt at fixed interest rates and secured Rs 2,170 crore in green loans. It has an over Rs 12,000-crore debt headroom to finance growth, it said in a statement.
The REIT delivered the 1.1 million-sq-ft JP Morgan campus and ramped up its new growth cycle with 4.6 million sq ft of office development. It also launched one of India’s largest mixed-use hotel complexes, with 619 dual-branded Hilton hotels, and a 60,000-sq-ft convention centre at Embassy Manyata, and has already signed 110 corporate contracts.
During the quarter, Embassy completed add-on acquisition of Rs 932 crore at Embassy GolfLinks through the REIT’s 50%-owned investment entity, comprising additional 0.4 million sq ft and the property management business of the EGL campus.