Philippine billionaire Lance Gokongwei is hiving off about 30.7 billion pesos ($536 million) worth of shopping malls into his family’s RL Commercial REIT that will help the group’s diversified property arm Robinsons Land Corp. raise funds to bankroll its expansion plans.
Robinsons Land—a developer of offices, residences and hotels controlled by the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit—will sell nine shopping malls to RL Commercial in exchange for 3.85 billion shares, priced at 8 pesos each, according to a Philippine Stock Exchange filing.
The latest infusion of 324,108 square meters (sqm) of mall space to RL Commercial will boost the REIT’s portfolio by 39.2% to about 1.2 million sqm of shopping malls and office buildings. The deal comes a year after Robinsons Land sold 34 billion pesos of properties into the REIT.
The transaction provides Robinsons Land, the second-largest developer of shopping malls in the country, with RL Commercial shares it can sell to help fund a five-year expansion plan that will entail investments of as much as 125 billion pesos ($2.2 billion). Robinsons Land and rivals Ayala Land and SM Prime are stepping up expansion plans amid a consumption boom in the country.
Spearheaded by Robinsons Land CEO Mybelle Aragon GoBio, the first non-family to take the helm at the 45-year old developer, the company will boost its mall and office space by 50%, increase hotel room keys by 25% and double its logistics capacity.
Robinsons Land aims to have 69 malls with 2.45 million sqm of gross leasable area by 2030, up from the existing 55 malls with a combined GLA of 1.7 million sqm. Its leasable office space will increase to 1.2 million sqm from 793,000 sqm in the same period.
JG Summit also has interests in airlines, food and beverage, banking, petrochemicals and utilities. The business was founded by the late billionaire John Gokongwei in 1954 as a corn starch factory. After Gokongwei passed away in 2019, his six children—Lance, Robina, Lisa, Faith, Hope and Marcia—inherited his fortune. The siblings had a combined net worth of $3 billion, placing them at No. 7 on the list of the Philippines’ 50 Richest when it was last published in August last year.
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