Robinsons Land—the real estate arm of the billionaire Gokongwei family’s JG Summit—plans to inject 25 billion pesos ($442 million) of properties into unit RL Commercial REIT (RCR) as improved contributions from its shopping malls and hotels helped boost the developer’s profits to record levels in 2023.
RL Commercial REIT raised about 8.5 billion pesos from the sale of 1.72 billion shares at 4.92 pesos each to help fund the acquisition of the properties, Robinsons Land said in a statement on Friday.
Under the plan, Robinsons Land said it will transfer office buildings, shopping malls, hotels and warehouses into RL Commercial this year, boosting the REIT’s total gross leasable area by about 60%. RL Commercial’s portfolio consists of 16 prime commercial assets across the Philippines with gross leasable space of 480,000 square meters.
“Being the majority shareholder of RCR, Robinsons Land shall continuously fuel the growth of RCR by infusing yield-accretive and high-quality assets that will complement the predominantly office portfolio of RCR in order to maximize both Robinsons Land and RCR shareholder value,” Lance Gokongwei, chairman, president and CEO of Robinsons Land, said in the statement.
Robinsons Land—one the country’s biggest developers—said last month net profit in 2023 climbed 24% to an all-time high of 12 billion pesos, fueled by the success of uts shopping malls and hotels. The company owns 1.6 million square meters of shopping mall space, 270,000 square meters of offices, 227,000 square meters of logistics facilities and 26 hotels with more than 4,200 rooms.
Its parent 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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