The manager of Ascott Residence Trust’s (ART) announced Monday that the resolution pursuant to the proposed combination of ART and Ascendas Hospitality Trust (AHT) has been approved. The support was overwhelming with strong approval of over 99% of votes at ART and AHT’s respective EGMs.

Under a trust scheme of arrangement, ART will acquire all the AHT units for S$0.0543 in cash and 0.7942 ART stapled units, per AHT unit. AHT stapled securities’ last day of trading is expected to be on 16 December 2019 while the delisting of AHT is expected to be on 3 January 2020.

Subject to the relevant approvals, the new ART stapled units under the combined entity are expected to begin trading on 2 January 2020. For now, we maintain HOLD on ART, with an unchanged fair value estimate of S$1.31.

Source: OCBC Research - 22 Oct 2019