With the support from rental reliefs and government incentives, the average occupancy rate of Singapore's Reit sector (excluding hospitality Reits) dipped marginally from approximately 96 per cent as at March 31, 2020 to 95 per cent as at March 31, 2021.

Pandemic-hit segments such as retail and office S-Reits saw the largest dip in occupancy rates of 2.1 and 1.9 percentages points (ppt) respectively over the year.

On the other hand, acceleration of structural trends such as work-from-home (WFH) and e-commerce provided tailwinds for the industrial and data centre segments. These two sub-sectors attained year-on-year growth in average occupancy rates of 1.4 and 3.1 ppt respectively.

In addition, 12 of the 15 acquisition announcements made during the first five months of 2021 involved industrial, logistics or data centre assets.

Among the nine industrial and data centre Reits listed on the SGX, the three that saw the most improvements in occupancy rates, are AIMS Apac Reit (+6.0 ppt), Keppel DC Reit (+3.1 ppt), Mapletree Industrial Trust (+2.2 ppt).

AIMS Apac Reit (AAReit), with a portfolio occupancy rate of 95.4 per cent as of March 31, 2021, holds a variety of assets including logistics & warehouse, business park, hi tech space, light and general industrial properties.

The Reit noted that its logistics and warehouse segment (comprising more than half of portfolio gross rental income) is largely driven by stockpiling and inventory requirements due to Covid-19, which translated to robust demand for industrial space.

Since the start of 2020, AAReit completed the acquisition of a fully occupied logistics facility at 7 Bulim Street and proposed the acquisition of 315 Alexandra Road, a light industrial building with 98.3 per cent occupancy and a long weighted average lease expiry of 10 years by anchor tenant.

Keppel DC Reit, Singapore's first and only pure play data centre Reit to be listed, has an occupancy rate of 97.8 per cent as at March 31, 2021.

In its most recent business update, the Reit noted that the development of its Intellicentre 3 East Data Centre (IC3 East DC) is progressing as planned and a new 20-year triple net master lease with Macquarie Data Centres for Intellicentre 2 Data Centre and IC3 East DC will commence upon completion of the development.

The Reit believes that it is well-positioned for growth as global co-location market and enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure continue to expand.

As of March 31, 2021, Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT) owns 115 properties across six property segments of which data centres comprise 41.2 per cent of its S$6.8 billion asset under management (AUM), up from 31.6 per cent a year ago.

MIT has a portfolio occupancy rate of 93.7 per cent, while the occupancy rate of its data centre segment stands at 98.2 per cent.

In the past 12 months, the Reit completed the acquisition of 60 per cent interest in 14 data centres in the US, a data centre at 8011 Villa Park Drive in Richmond, Virginia, and proposed the acquisition of an additional 29 data centres in the US.

This will bring MIT's AUM from S$6.8 billion to S$8.6 billion post-acquisition. The proportion of data centre assets in its portfolio will also increase from the current 41.2 per cent to 53.6 per cent. 

REIT Watch is a weekly column on The Business Times, read the original version.