In a statement, the research house reported it had undertaken a review of the open-ended unlisted property trust and decided to keep the rating at the previous year’s level.
The company said it had a “strong level of conviction” in the abilities of the fund’s management team.
“Since taking over the fund in 2010, management have been dedicated to reworking and rationalising the fund portfolio, focusing on recycling capital and rebalancing the assets to a mix deemed more appropriate by the manager to their long-term strategy,” it said.
“Following the disposal of several assets, the strategy now turns to recycling capital with management intending to undertake new acquisitions in the near future.”
Zenith said the new team was responsible for improving income yields after a period of “disappointing” returns.
“Since the change in management to Australian Unity, Zenith has always considered the potential in the fund to be viewed as longer term and not focused on short-term performance,” it said.
“Zenith sees the turnaround strategy as now complete and the fund has returned to acquisition mode.”
Overall, Zenith had a positive outlook for global property markets generally and the DPF in particular.
“As stated in our previous reviews, property markets are generally stabilising and notwithstanding some short-term global economic uncertainties we see a positive outlook for quality assets under strong managers,” it said.
“We are of the opinion that going forward the fund should be more than capable of providing superior risk adjusted returns to investors and continue to hold our high opinion of the investment managers’ capabilities in this space.”
