Unemployment rate rises to 4.8% in Jan AREIT, ALI set swap deal for P22.479B worth of assets

The Philippine Real Estate Investment Trust (AREIT) and Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) will have a third property-for-share swap involving PHP22.479 billion worth of flagship offices and malls in vis-à-vis 607,559,380 AREIT primary common shares.

In a disclosure in the local bourse on Wednesday, AREIT, Inc. said the swap deal with its sponsor will cover assets located in the Manila central business district such as the latest one, which is the One Ayala Avenue East and West BPO Towers at the corner of Ayala Avenue and Edsa.

Other properties include the Glorietta 1 and 2 mall wing, the business process outsourcing (BPO) buildings at Ayala Center, and the MarQuee mall in Angeles City, Pampanga province.

The company said these assets have a combined gross leasable area (GLA) of 190,000 square meters (sqm), an overall occupancy rate of 99 percent, and a weighted average lease expiry (WALE) of 14.5 years.”

“ALI and AREIT are targeting to complete the transaction within the year,” it said, citing that AREIT’s Board of Directors approved it on March 7, 2023 although it is subject to the approval of shareholders during their annual meeting on April 26, 2023.

The company has surpassed its growth plans since its initial public offering (IPO) in July 2020 and has registered a 52 percent total shareholder return.

To date, the company has 673,000 sqm. assets under management (AUM), equivalent to PHP64 billion, up from the 153,000 sqm, equivalent to PHP30 billion, in 2020.

The company said “this new infusion in 2023 will almost triple the Company’s AUM to PHP87 billion and boost its GLA more than five-fold to 863 thousand sqm from the IPO, making AREIT one of the largest and the most diversified commercial REIT in the Philippines.”

ThePhilippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday

reported the unemployment rate in January 2023 rose to 4.8 percent from 4.3 percent the previous month.

In a press conference, PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said there were 2.37 million Filipinos aged 15 years old and above who did not have jobs during the month.

PSA data showed there is an increase of 150,000 in the number of unemployed Filipinos between December 2022 and January 2023. Unemployment number in December last year stood at 2.22 million.

Mapa said the higher unemployment rate at the start of the year is expected due to the increase of holiday-related jobs during the fourth quarter of the year.

He cited sectors that had the largest job shedding in between December 2022 and January 2023. These include agriculture and forestry, down by 1.11 mil- lion; wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, down by 375,000; construction, down by 288,000; other service activities, down by 255,000; and administrative and support activities, down by 215,000.

Mapa said wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles and other service activities are related to holiday jobs.

Labor force participation rate in January this year stood at 64.5 percent. This means 49.72 million Filipinos are in the labor force. Of