This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 16, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Real estate investment holding firm Pelaburan Hartanah Bhd (PHB) is confident it will continue to do well amid headwinds in the current challenging property market.

“Real estate is a solid investment. Our portfolio of investments covers all sectors of the property market. We have invested in offices, retail, specialist hospitals, logistic warehouses and so on. This is because we want to diversify our risk mitigation. Our assets are prime commercial properties, in strategic locations,” PHB group managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Kamalul Arifin Othman told reporters yesterday at the launch of the “Save, Invest and Win” prize draw for its Amanah Hartanah Bumiputera (AHB) scheme in collaboration with Maybank Asset Management Sdn Bhd (MAM).

PHB currently holds 19 properties under its portfolio. “If you look at our tenants portfolio, they are solid players such as MNCs (multinational corporations) and GLCs (government-linked companies). As such, we have been able to sustain our occupancy rate and tenancy portfolio and moving forward, we are very confident that we will be able to sustain the challenges in the property market and continue sustaining the income distribution,” Kamalul said.

He added that the company is currently evaluating several property proposals. “As far as property acquisitions are concerned, [one of] our criteria is the property must be strategically located, around the Klang Valley or in big cities in other states.”

The company currently has four ongoing property development projects — two office towers in Jalan Conlay and Jalan Bangsar respectively, a KPJ specialist hospital in Damansara and a mall in Terengganu, with a combined gross development value of around RM1.5 billion. The projects are expected to be completed within the next few years. “These properties will be injected into the AHB portfolio within two or three years,” said Kamalul.

Launched in 2010, AHB is the first syariah-compliant real estate-backed fund in Malaysia. To date, the fund’s size stands at four billion units with a return of around 6% per year.

AHB unitholders with a minimum balance of 1,000 units in the account maintained for six months beginning Oct 1, 2018 until March 31, 2019 will be automatically enrolled to participate for a random draw to be administered by Dynamic Search Sdn Bhd, the draw manager appointed by PHB and MAM for this initiative.

Unitholders are entitled to an entry for every 1,000 units maintained throughout the period. All entries will be calculated based on the average minimum monthly balance for six months. New unitholders also qualify for the draw provided their accounts are opened before Oct 1.