Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A Visit to Perennial China Retail Trust’s Assets in Shenyang, China 鹏瑞利中国零售信托

Recapping my June post on Perennial China Retail Trust (PCRT), PCRT was a recent Chinese real estate IPO on the Singapore exchange which advertised itself as the only “pure play on Chinese retail” available to Singaporean investors. It advertised “a total valuation of approximately S$1.1 billion as of December 31, 2010” based on an "independent valuation" of its five principal assets, which are two malls and an office complex situated together in Shenyang and malls in Foshan and Chengdu, but the valuation report was based on the false premise that all five properties had been completed and fully leased, when only one building, the Red Star Macalline Furniture Mall, had been completed and opened, and the malls in Foshan and Chengdu had not only not been started, but the land had not yet been acquired by PCRT at that time. In other words, the Foshan and Chengdu malls did not exist, yet they had been included in the current market valuation of this trust, as published on page 434 of the Prospectus.

In other words, the valuer had not been independent and had instead abetted the misrepresentations of the IPO sponsor. It should also be noted that the CEO/IPO sponsor receives substantial annual compensation (0.38% of appraised value) based on the independent valuation rather than the market capitalization of the outstanding shares, which is now less than half the amount of the "independent valuation" report. This is another built-in conflict of interest within PCRT.

I also questioned why the Singapore Exchange would allow PCRT to represent undeveloped properties as being fully developed and leased in their representations to the public of total asset valuation and why there were no controls on the misbehavior of supposedly “independent valuers” who are in reality the paid advocates of IPO sponsors.

PCRT initially attempted to go public in February by offering approximately 1.1 billion shares at S$1 per share but received an inadequate response. The offering was re-priced at S70 cents per share in June and was fully subscribed at that time. Since then, the market-traded share price has declined to S40 cents per share as of October 5, 2011. With 1,121,695,000 shares outstanding, this represents a loss to investors of more than S$336 million in market capitalization.

The visit to Shenyang

The location of the Shenyang properties is highly visible and accessible via the First Ring Road, and the Longemont Mall also has its own bus depot and subway rail station. This is a first-rate location.

I was disappointed to find the renamed Red Star Macalline Global Home Furniture Life Mall closed for the day at the time of my arrival at 7:15 pm. I naively assumed that it would be open late like most Chinese malls, but its official closing time is 6:30 pm; the error was mine. The closing time is the same at the other Red Star Macalline store in Shenyang.

The Longemont Shopping Mall had its opening on July 1st and is a beautiful sight to behold. The only things lacking are tenants and shoppers and western-style toilets. (Chinese "squat" toilets are simply porcelain holes in the floor. For a purposely western-style mall, this is an incongruity that I just cannot take sitting down.)

Ground floor of mall, 7:15 pm on a Friday evening

First floor of atrium

Third floor

To be fair, basement levels B1 and B2 have a hubbub of activity drawn by a major 20,000 square meter (215,000 square foot) supermarket with linkages to the city’s bus and rapid transit systems. Floors 1 through 7 were a different matter entirely, as seen in the other photos. My visit was timed between 7:15 and 8:30 pm on a Friday evening.
Basement supermarket

Many multi-level Asian malls also have their top floor or floors devoted exclusively to restaurants, and this can be one of the busiest sections of a mall in the evening. Not so here. Longemont’s 7th floor is also devoted to restaurants, plus an ice skating rink, but it appears that only half of the restaurant space has been rented out.
Seventh floor restaurant level

While I was dining on shredded dog meat in chili sauce on the 7th floor, I asked an employee why the Red Star Furniture mall was closed so early, and he was surprised to hear that it was already closed for the day, claiming that it was supposed to be open until 9 pm just like the Longemont Mall. “Not many people go there,” he also said. Nevertheless, the signs at Red Star Mall clearly indicate a 6:30 pm closing time.

Miscount of tenants at Longemont Shopping Mall

Although the PCRT web site advertises Longemont Mall as having 800 tenants, the number of open stores appears to be less than 200.

Is Longemont Shopping Mall "skating on thin ice"?

Two 56-story office towers are still under construction and show progress compared to previous photos from June. Leasing activity is not known yet.


Options on other sites next to future High Speed Chinese Rail Stations are also mentioned in the Prospectus. The July 23rd high speed train crash in Zhejiang that killed 40 and injured almost 200 revealed shoddy standards and official corruption which warranted the the arrest of the former railway minister Liu Zhijun. As a consequence, railway construction is now being delayed, with only one-third of projects still ongoing construction, while many railway construction workers complain about not being paid (more than 2000 alone at the China Railway Engineering Corporation.) What is the consequence for PCRT assets located at future high speed rail locations?

Remember, too, that all 5 properties are situated on ground leases. The Shenyang lease expires in year 2059, while the Foshan and Chengdu leases expire ten years earlier. What will happen then? The Chinese ground lease system only started in 1980, so none have expired yet, and there is no case history to learn from about when valuable malls sit on expiring ground leases.

Investors in PCRT (N9LU on the Singapore exchange) are probably quite disappointed now; those who bought at the offering price of 70 cents have seen a 43% decrease in value since June. $336 million of investor value has been lost since the first day of public trading. For those who relied on the independent valuation report, I don't know what legal recourse they have in Singapore.

One bit of encouraging news is that CEO Pua Seck Guan has finally started buying shares at recent market prices. Why didn't he buy before now?

Disclosures: None. I have no short or long position in this stock.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just shocking the level of stupidity that investors can have. Gosh!

My2cents said...

Thank you Vernon for this article. Do you have any comment of the malls owned by CapitaMalls Asia in China?http://capitamallsasia.com.cn/en/index.php

Vernon Martin, MSRE, CFE said...

My2,

I have no comments on CapitalMalls Asia´s assets in China, as I have not been hired to analyze them.