Greenspan Mall, Donholm. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard] It is a warm Tuesday morning marked by a quick breakfast as journalists and corporate executives rush from one of the rooms of a top Nairobi hotel to get on with their day.
The first full-year financial results for Kenya’s first and only listed Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) have just been released since its management changed hands.
Before dashing out, Caesar Mwangi, the chief executive ICEA Lion Insurance Holdings , stops at the table where this writer is conducting an interview with one of the firm’s top executives.
“Keep it up…,” he encourages Ruth Okal, the property investment manager at ILAM Fahari I-Reit (a subsidiary of the ICEA Lion Group), adding that some publicity will do good for the Reit.
Distributable earnings to unit holders of the ILAM Fahari I-Reit were announced at 74 cents per unit compared to 80 cents per unit in December 2019. Read More
This is after the listed property fund posted a 16 per cent drop in profit for the year ended December 2020, attributed to revaluation of property on a year hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In May last year, ICEA Lion Asset Management took over the Reit from Stanlib, renaming it ILAM Fahari I-Reit.
The Reit was established in September 2015 and listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange the same year, but has had a poor run in performance over the recent past.
The market has had little appetite for Reits due to low awareness of the product and presence.
Reit managers run properties including shopping malls, office buildings, hotels and apartments.
The aim of the ILAM Fahari I-Reit is to provide unit holders with “stable annual cash distributions from investment in a diversified portfolio of income generating real estate assets.”This year the Reit market expanded a bit when student housing developer Acorn launched a pair of Reits. They are, however, listed in a separate segment of the Nairobi Securities Exchange and are not open to the public.Ms Okal has been with the ILAM Reit for the last six years and is keen to offer the context upon which it was formed and the future outlook. She joined Stanlib in 2013, the year the Reit regulations were published and set it up. Jokingly, she describes herself as the longest “fixed asset” there.“When Stanlib set up the Reit they had very big ideas and that was based on their corporate offerings and muscle,” she says.Stanlib […]
