How profitable are these malls for their owners?
Retail data linked to owners’ financial disclosures (FY2023/24), from SGX-listed REIT annual reports / acquisition circulars. NPI = net property income (the property- level profit after running costs). Developers (CDL, UOL, Far East, OUE) and LVS don’t disclose per-mall figures, so their malls are absent below.
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⚠️ Important — please read before interpreting any figure on this page
- Many figures here are estimates, derived from publicly-disclosed REIT/aggregate segment data and our own shop counts. The
npi_srcandrev_srccolumns indata/mall_financials.csvflag each value as Disclosed by the owner vs Estimated by us.- Estimation methodology is documented in the caveats paragraph below; reasonable people will get different numbers using different assumptions.
- Nothing on this page is financial advice, investment guidance, a valuation, or an audit. It is a descriptive view of public disclosures, processed for comparability. Do not make investment or business decisions on this alone.
- Owners are welcome to flag corrections — if a disclosed figure has been mis-extracted, an estimate is materially off, or a more recent FY filing supersedes ours, please get in touch. We will update with citation.
Caveats: CICT NPI is margin-estimated (~69% portfolio proxy applied to
disclosed gross revenue); MPACT/LREIT/Suntec/Paragon figures are derived from
disclosed segment-contribution ratios; some assets are integrated office+retail
(Raffles City, Funan, Jem). npi_src/rev_src columns in data/mall_financials.csv
flag disclosed (D) vs estimated (E).
Shops × NPI — bubble plot
Each bubble is a mall; size = NPI yield, colour = owner. The cluster up-right (Raffles City, VivoCity, Paragon) earns the most absolute profit; the suburban heartland sits middle-left at high yields.
Property-level economics — sortable
Click any column to sort. NPI margin is in %; valuation and NPI are in S$m.
What it says about owner profitability
- Retail is a high-margin, defensive cash machine. NPI margins run 69–79% — owners keep ~70–80¢ of every rental dollar after property costs — at 98–100% occupancy almost everywhere (only CQ@Clarke Quay lower, mid-AEI). Master-leased Orchard assets (Wisma/Ngee Ann via Toshin) post the highest margins (~79%) because the master tenant bears opex.
- The Orchard-vs-heartland yield paradox. Prime Orchard malls earn lower NPI yields — Paragon 4.3%, 313@somerset 4.1%, Plaza Singapura 4.5% — because prestige/scarcity bids their valuations up, compressing yield. Suburban heartland malls earn higher yields — Causeway 5.2%, Bugis Junction 5.1%, Tampines 4.9%, Jurong Point 4.7% — valued on resilient cash flow, not prestige. For the owner, heartland = higher cash return; Orchard = capital value + tourist upside.
- Rent extracted per tenant tracks positioning, not size. Luxury/prime malls squeeze far more rent per shop — Paragon ~S$855k/shop/yr, Tampines Mall ~S$555k, Wisma ~S$535k — vs value malls full of small standard chains (Bedok ~S$299k, Plaza Singapura ~S$319k, Westgate ~S$309k). This is the financial mirror of the cookie-cutter finding: heartland = many standardised chains paying moderate rent; distinctive prime = fewer, higher-paying tenants.
- Per-sqft, small prime floorplates win; mega-malls win on absolute profit. Wisma Atria earns ~S$423/sqft/yr (densest), vs big-box Suntec ~S$126 and VivoCity ~S$218 — yet VivoCity’s sheer size still makes it a ~S$170m NPI giant. Biggest profit pools: VivoCity, Raffles City, Paragon, Jurong Point, Jem.
- Profits are still growing. Rental reversions are strongly positive — VivoCity +14–17%, Suntec +23%, Causeway +8.8%, FCT portfolio +7.7% — so owners are re-pricing leases upward; tenants compete for the space.