Singapore named 10th biggest

economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, DBS Group Research pointed out that it may not actually be the case. It says the supply of retail properties is projected to drastically drop from 2020, which will balance out falling demand.

Retail property supply could crash to an average of 43,000 sqm per year from 2020 to 2023, from a peak of 250,000 sqm in 2019.

“Despite the robust net supply of retail spaces in the market in 2019, net absorption was relatively healthy with good take-up within the newly completed projects. Funan Mall, Jewel and PLQ, which represented three-quarters of retail supply in 2019, are currently at occupancy levels of 98.7%, 100% and 90% respectively,” Tan said in a separate analyst report.

He also noted that a ‘landlordfavourable’ market would persist, whilst occupancy rates are likely to stabilise at 93% by end-year.

The impact of the dip in tenant sales on distribution per unit (DPU) could also be marginal in the range of 0.2% to 1.2%, with less than 5% of retail landlord’s rents tied directly to gross turnover.

On the leasing side, an average lockin period of 2.6 years is not expected

Growth projections for the S-REITs

Source: DBS Group Research

to see an immediate impact for Retail REITs. Those with a higher exposure to suburban retail malls, which remain grounded by necessity spending, will stand to benefit in place of prime retail malls that are more dependent on tourist spending.

“The yield disparity between CapitaLand Mall Trust (CMT) and Frasers Centrepoint Trust (FCT) drifted wider due to the COVID-19 outbreak, as suburban retail malls stand as the main beneficiaries given their proximity to residential catchment areas and primary focus on necessity spending, as opposed to prime retail malls which partly rely on tourist spending,” Tan stated.

It is expected that hospitality tenants will suffer the most impact of the pandemic, with Tan noting that the F&B index dropped by close to 40% YoY in April, 2003, in the midst of the SARS outbreak. F&B tenants normally make up a big percentage of retail malls’ contribution by gross rental income, in the range of 40%, and an extended period of non-operations may hurt tenants and landlords alike.

Singapore named 10th biggest cyberattack source in 2019 worldwide

Singapore remained amongst the hotspots for originating cyberattacks in 2019, ranking 10th worldwide, according to data from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN). It fell by two places compared to the 2018 rankings.

The number of attacks also skyrocketed 150% from the 2018 figures, with 11 million attacks caused by servers hosted in the republic last year. Around 4.66 million web threats in Singapore were also detected, putting the city-state at 157th globally in building up cyber-resilience amongst individuals and businesses, a regression of only one position from last year.

“The wave of cybersecurity breaches – the leakage of personal data pertaining to 2,400 Ministry of Defence personnel, the Sephora hack, and the exposure of over 800,000 blood donors’ personal details from the Health Sciences Authority database – are indicative that regardless of the statistics we have here, the Republic continues to be a key target for cybercriminals,” said Kaspersky Southeast Asia general manager, Yeo Siang Tiong.

Kaspersky detected 7.24 million local incidents in 2019 for Singapore, as compared to 6.75 million in the previous year. These included attacks caused by malware spread via removable USB drives, CDs, and DVDs, and other ‘offline’ methods.

In Southeast Asia, the top four attack vectors of web threats were: unintentional downloads of certain programmes or files from the Internet; the download of malicious attachments from online email services; browser extensions activity; and the download of malicious components or communications with command and control, run by other malware.

Kaspersky noted that there was a growth in the number of online skimmers in the region, using TrojanPSW (password stealing ware) to steal information like passwords from infected companies.

Meanwhile, web-mining activity fell in the beginning of 2020 due to declining interest in cryptocurrencies.