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UOBKH reiterates buys for KORE and Prime following return to office mandate

By The Edge Singapore

/ EdgeProp Singapore |

January 21, 2025 2:55 PM SGT

Manhattan skyline (Photo Credit The Edge Singapore)

Following a Reuters report that Donald Trump has signed an executive order requiring all federal workers to return to the office five days a week, UOB-KayHian reiterated its buy ratings for Keppel Pacific Oak US REIT (KORE) and Prime US REIT (Prime).

According to news reports, all heads of departments and agencies are to "take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis”. The House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee will soon conduct its first hearing in 2025 focusing on federal work-from-home policies. According to Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from the state of Iowa, a third of all federal employees are working from home full-time.

UOB-Kay Hian says the federal government sets the moral high ground. "The federal government has taken the lead to return to a five-day workweek, providing the impetus for the private sector to do likewise. Successful implementation of the work-from-office model by large corporations, such as Amazon, JPMorgan and AT&T, paves the way for other companies to likewise switch to the same model. Some companies have downsized prematurely and would need additional office space to accommodate more employees returning to the office. The work-from-office momentum would lead to higher physical occupancy and underpin the recovery in demand for office space," UOB-Kay Hian says.

Reuters says: "Some of Trump's allies have said the return-to-work mandate is intended to help gut the civil service, making it easier for Trump to replace long-serving government workers with loyalists. The return-to-office order is being paired with a hiring freeze and the creation of an advisory body - dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - which is meant to help Trump take huge chunks out of the federal government and eliminate some agencies wholesale."

Investors in KORE and Prime may want to take note of the large cuts in federal employment that could materialise before they pile into these two REITs.

Tags:

keppel pacific oak US reit Donald Trump

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