The drop comes as a higher unit base from the private placement is announced in February 2024
DIGITAL Core Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) reported a 6.3 per cent fall in distribution per unit (DPU) to US$0.018 for the first half of 2024 from US$0.0192 in H1 2023.
In a bourse filing on Wednesday (Jul 24), the data centre Reit’s manager announced that the Reit’s revenue for the same time period fell 9.6 per cent to US$48.3 million from US$53.4 million the year prior. Net property income (NPI) for H1 2024 fell in tandem to US$30.4 million, down 13.4 per cent from US$35.2 million in H1 2023.
The fall in revenue and NPI was largely driven by the divestment of two properties in Silicon Valley in January 2024.
Distributable income to unitholders rose 5.1 per cent in H1 2024 to US$22.6 million from US$21.5 million in H1 2023. This was driven in part by the increase in share of result of associates due to the higher share of post-acquisition earnings from the increased stakes in the Frankfurt Facility and Digital Osaka 2.
Digital Core Reit raised its stakes in the Frankfurt facility to 49.9 per cent in April from 25 per cent, and Digital Osaka 2 to 20 per cent in March from 10 per cent.
DPU was lower due to the higher unit base from the private placement announced in February 2024, which raised US$120 million at US$0.625 per unit. The DPU comprises an advanced DPU of US$0.0048 which was paid on Apr 4, with the remaining DPU to be paid on Sep 20 for unitholders of record as at Aug 1.
The data centre Reit has US$1.4 billion in assets under management across 10 data centres as of Jun 30. The weight average lease expiry is 2.8 years with a 97 per cent occupancy rate across the portfolio of data centres.
“Long-term digital demand trends are highly supportive of our business, and we are well placed to capitalise on favourable data centre fundamentals as well as our unique opportunity set to continue to create durable value for unitholders,” said John J Steward, chief executive officer of Digital Core Reit Management.
Units of Digital Core Reit closed down 0.8 per cent or US$0.005 to US$0.62 on Wednesday.
