The 75%-completed Tekka Mall in Singapore,DRB-HICOM Bhd's first venture into the international property market.
KUALA LUMPUR: DRB-Hicom Bhd
has denied it is selling its Singapore property, The Verge, to Columba Holdings Pte Ltd at 40% below the price of an earlier aborted deal, saying that the indicative price of the cancelled transaction had not been adjusted to factor in an outstanding loan facility.
In a statement on Monday, the conglomerate said the indicative price of S$317mil (RM961.7mil) under the aborted sale to Evolutyon Real Estate Investment Holding Pte Ltd was prior to the “agreed adjustments” which substantially comprised the redemption of Corwin Holding Pte Ltd’s outstanding loan facility totalling S$85.52mil (RM259.5mil).
However, under the current transaction announced on Sept 22, the said loan facility would remain in Corwin, which is the owner of the 6-storey shopping mall with an adjacent 8-storey commercial building collectively known as The Verge.
“In this regard, the appropriate comparison should be drawn from net sale proceeds (which appear in Section 8: utilisation of proceeds from proposed disposal in our respective Bursa announcements dated Dec 21, 2015 and Sept 22, 2016), which is S$210.08mil (RM637.3mil) against S$189.75mil (RM575.3mil), a lower difference of 9.67%,” said DRB-Hicom group managing director Datuk Seri Syed Faisal Albar.
“Hence, we wish to deny the statement that the current transaction is lower than the aborted sale by 40% as quoted by the media,” he said.
DRB-Hicom also clarified that the market value for The Verge of S$150mil (RM455mil) by an independent valuer, Knight Frank Pte Ltd, was based on the existing use and existing tenancies without taking into account any potential redevelopment value whereas S$273mil (RM828.2mil) was the agreed negotiated value between both parties.
It said the consideration of S$189.75mil (RM575.33mil) was equivalent to Corwin’s adjusted net tangible assets (NTA) as at June 30. The NTA was calculated after incorporating the revaluation surplus of The Verge of S$133mil (RM403.5mil), the difference between the agreed negotiated value and net book value of the said property as at June 30 of S$140mil (RM424.8mil).
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