MREIT declares stable Q4 dividend

MREIT [MREIT 13.36, down 1.3%] [link] declared a Q4/23 dividend of P0.246/share, payable on April 26 to shareholders of record as of March 18. The dividend maintains MREIT’s annualized yield of 7.37%. The total amount of the dividend is P688 million, which is 97% of the P709 million in distributable income that MREIT reported for the quarter. Relative to MREIT's IPO price, the dividend increased MREIT's total stock and dividend return to -1.84%, up from its pre-dividend total return of -3.37%.

MB bottom-line: MREIT’s dividends through the second half of 2023 were marginally lower than its record-high dividends in the first half, but those declarations largely tracked the REIT’s distributable income attributable to each period to maintain a full-year payout ratio of 97%. That’s significantly more than the 90% of distributable income that MREIT is legally required to provide shareholders through dividends. For sake of comparison, AREIT [AREIT 34.90, up 0.6%] distributed 90.3% of its FY23 distributable income, RL Commercial REIT [RCR 5.42, up 2.1%] distributed 96.4%, and Filinvest REIT [FILRT 3.20, up 3.2%] distributed 130.1%. MREIT’s payout ratio is most similar to RCR’s, but MREIT’s underlying income and subsequent distributions were more stable throughout the year: RCR started the year distributing at a 91% pace but saw its quarterly payout ratio climb to over 100% in the final two quarters as the underlying distributable income dipped almost 9%.   

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