US Prime REIT

Kyith at investmentmoats has already covered this IPO's buildings and basic metrics.  No need to repeat it here.  They seem decent, except for the leverage.

But he thought they may need to raise money for expansion after listing.  I want to look further at their growth potential.

Growth Potential

Their leverage upon listing will be 37%, limiting their ability to borrow more money.

Is there scope to grow by increasing occupancy?  Not much.  In their 2020 projections that the 7.4% yield (@ 100% payout) are based on, they already assume a high occupancy rate:

Is there scope for rent increases?  Summarising the Property Market Report (Section F) of the prospectus:

Not much here either.  Note that this 3% increase is in gross rent, the percent increase in Net Property Income may be different.  In absolute terms, either all of most of the gross rent increase will be passed through to NPI.  In percentage terms, NPI may increase by more or less than 3%.

Are their buildings' markets expected to improve long term?  From the Property Market Report, we can derive an estimate for how vacancy rates will change in each building's submarket.  We only have the projected change for all of A/B/C class buildings, they did not give the projected change for A-class alone.

Some submarkets are projected to have higher vacancies (bad - red), some lower (good - blue).  The two largest buildings (by value) are red.  It's a little disappointing that the building with the longest lease is in the bluest market. On average, there is a slight increase in vacancy, more so if you weight by the buildings' values.  So generally OK, with a slight negative bias.

My take on these 5 year projections is that future supply is well known, but future demand is pure guesswork.

Conclusion

Its decent, but I can't see much scope for Prime REIT to grow beyond its average 2.1% rental escalations.

I'd like to compare it with Manulife US REIT next.