Mapletree Industrial Trust today announced the acquisition of a Bank of America-anchored data center in Richmond, Virginia for $207.8m, equivalent to a net property income (NPI) yield of 6.0%. With this transaction, Mapletree Industrial Trust is increasing its exposure to the data center asset class, from 38% to 41% of book value. Mapletree is buying the facility from real estate investor Longships Capital, which bought the property for $38m in January 2017. Finally, Mapletree expects to fund the acquisition with 100% debt.
The property, located at 8011 Villa Park Drive in Richmond, Virginia, has a net lettable area of 700k sqft and is fully-leased, on a triple net basis, to Bank of America. The initial term of the lease agreement expires in June 2022, with Bank of America having three 5-year renewal options. Importantly for Mapletree, Bank of America has already renewed the lease agreement for the first of the three additional terms of five years, under the ownership of Longships.
Mapletree Industrial Trust – Overview
Mapletree Industrial Trust is a Singapore-based multi-asset industrial REIT with ~$5.0bn of assets under management (AUM). The company owns 111 properties, including 84 assets in Singapore and 27 data centers in North America. Overall, Mapletree’s property portfolio includes data centers, business parks, flatted factories, stack-up/ramp-up buildings, and light industrial buildings.
Mapletree Industrial Trust – Data Centers in North America
Prior to including the Bank of America data center in Richmond, Virginia, Mapletree’s data center portfolio had the following characteristics:
- Net Lettable Area: 4.3 million sqft at 97.6% occupancy
- WALE (weighted average lease expiry) by Gross Rental Income: 6.3 years
To clarify, 13 of these 27 data centers are part of the Mapletree Rosewood Data Centre Trust (MRODCT) portfolio. This is a 50%/50% joint venture with Mapletree Investments. Specifically, these facilities include three fully-fitted hyperscale data centers and 10 powered shell data centers in the U.S. and Canada. Indeed, these data centers were purchased from Digital Realty in September 2019 for $1.4bn.
