On Sunday, I was out with my family at Northpoint City, and I noticed that the mall was buzzing with excitement like COVID-19 never happened.
Source: Primo
That was when I thought it might be a good time to re-look into the REIT, Frasers Centrepoint Trust (SGX: J69U), which owns Northpoint City (South Wing) and many other suburban retail malls.
Here’s what I found during my latest research.
Gradual Recovery in Retail
Singapore’s retail industry seems to be on the mend.
The retail sales index, which measures the short-term performance of the retail industry based on sales records, decreased by 8.5% year-on-year in July 2020 (the latest available data).
However, this was an improvement from the 27.7% year-on-year plunge seen in June 2020.
On a month-on-month basis, seasonally adjusted retail sales bounced up by 27.4% in July 2020, mainly due to a lower base in June 2020 when most physical stores were shuttered until 18 June.
(Note: The seasonally adjusted figure removes any variation that...