Filinvest City, where 16 of 17 buildings in FILRT’s portfolio are located, is the country’s first central business district to receive LEED v4 gold certification for Neighborhood Development Plan.
The Fiscal Incentives Review Board recently announced that they expect the information technology-business process management sector to fully-transition to on-site office operations after March 31, 2022 in line with Resolution 19-21.
The move is expected to boost the real estate leasing industry, particularly the Office segment, as BPOs rebuild their on-site footprint. Filinvest REIT Corp., whose portfolio has one of the largest percentages of BPO tenants among Philippine REITs at 90.8 percent, is positioned to benefit significantly from this transition.
FIRB’s announcement came as majority of the country was placed under a more relaxed Alert Level 1 with new COVID cases hitting below a thousand starting March. FILRT president and chief executive Maricel Brion Lirio lauded FIRB, citing that the return to on-site office operations is testament to the national government’s commitment to rebuild the economy.
“FIRB’s resolution, in tandem with the country’s relentless push for vaccination, is critical to the IT-BPM sector’s continued recovery. Bringing operations back to highly equipped sustainable workspaces will not only increase productivity and provide stable connectivity but will also assist workers to deal with WFH social challenges. We expect that this shift will boost our economy with a push towards job creation, consumer spending, and business growth,” said Brion-Lirio.
The P26.7-billion IT-BPM industry has been resilient throughout the pandemic, posting growth of 1.8% in 2020, and created a ripple effect to FILRT. Following FILRT’s successful IPO in August last year, it has since declared three quarterly dividends of P0.112 per share each, equivalent to an annualized dividend yield of 6.4 percent. FILRT also joined the widely followed MSCI Philippines Small Cap Index in November.
“We also attribute FILRT’s success to our portfolio of Grade A-rated buildings, stable occupancy rates, a line-up of blue chip global BPO tenants that includes the likes of giants Majorel and SLK Global, as well as the sustainability features of our developments. All these position us for steady growth. We believe that leveraging this synergy allows us to create value for all our tenants, stock investors, and other stakeholders,” said Brion-Lirio.