Mall Occupancy at 98%: Two Ways to Count the Same Portfolio

An occupancy rate of 98% across a mall portfolio is a statement about square metres, not about malls. Majid Al Futtaim reported that level for 2025 in both its annual results release and its March 2026 investor presentation, and the same presentation prints an occupancy figure for each asset it lists. Averaging those printed figures by floor area reproduces the headline almost exactly. Averaging the same figures by asset does not. The distance between the two results is 2.08 percentage points, and it separates a statement about a rent roll from a statement about a collection of buildings.

Both regimes are set out below using only numbers the group has published about itself, with both averages computed from the same asset list and neither adopted as the correct one. None of this is a market measurement. A landlord’s own disclosure is primary evidence for that landlord and for nothing else, which is why no rent per square metre, no vacancy expressed in metres and no comparison with another operator appears anywhere in this material.

What the group published for 2025

Majid Al Futtaim’s results release of 16 March 2026 reports group revenue of AED 35.9 billion for the twelve months to 31 December 2025, up 6% year on year, with EBITDA up 10% to AED 5.1 billion and net profit up 41% to AED 3.6 billion, or AED 2.3 billion excluding valuation gains. Total assets stand at AED 71.0 billion and net borrowings at AED 11.9 billion.

The retail property line arrives in one sentence. The release states that the shopping malls and hotels business saw net revenue increase 6% to AED 4.8 billion, led by the strength of its leasing portfolio and a mall occupancy rate surpassing 98%, with footfall up 6%. The investor presentation restates the same year in dollars at a rate of 3.6725: Asset Management revenue of USD 1,265 million against USD 1,181 million in 2024, EBITDA of USD 943 million against USD 883 million, and four operational lines — malls average occupancy 98%, footfall up 6%, rent to sales of 10.8%, hotels average occupancy 76%. The segment supplies 13% of group revenue and 69% of group EBITDA.

Two regimes for averaging one asset list

The presentation lists 24 malls with a year of opening, a gross leasable area and an occupancy rate for each. That list is enough to compute the portfolio average twice, and the two computations are different measurements rather than different estimates of one measurement. The table below sets the regimes against each other on the criteria that separate them.

Neither column is a correction of the other. The area-weighted figure is the one a bondholder needs, because rent accrues to metres and the two largest assets on the list carry more leasable space between them than the eleven smallest combined. The asset-weighted figure is the one that shows whether the estate performs uniformly, and it is the only one of the two that registers a small mall in difficulty.

What the list produces when averaged both ways

The 24 malls listed asset by asset for 2025 hold 1,749,000 m² of gross leasable area between them, in the square metres the group itself publishes, and their occupancy rates run from 73% to 100%. Weighting each rate by that asset’s GLA gives 98.50%, which is what the published headline reports. Weighting each rate equally gives 96.42%. The slices below show where the 2.08-point gap comes from.

The four assets below 95% are the neighbourhood-format unit at Nasseriya, 73% on 5,000 m², the one at Masdar, 85% on 18,000 m², City Centre Qurum at 88% on 26,000 m² and City Centre Al Shindagha at 92% on 22,000 m². Together they hold 71,000 m², which is 4.1% of the listed area. Under area weighting they move the portfolio average by a fraction of a point; under asset weighting they are a sixth of the estate. The largest single asset, Mall of the Emirates at 245,000 m² and 100% occupancy, carries more weight in the published figure than all four of them multiplied by three.

Three counts of one portfolio

The same presentation states the size of the estate three times, and the three statements do not resolve into one number. Each appears on a different page of the March 2026 document, each counts something the text does not define against the others, and no page carries a footnote reconciling them.

• 29 shopping malls successfully operating in five countries, on the Properties overview page.
• 24 malls listed asset by asset with opening year, GLA and occupancy, on the two pages that follow it.
• 23 fully owned shopping malls, in the sustainability section, all of them certified as green assets.

Gross leasable area is stated the same way. The overview page reports over 1.8 million m²; the listed assets sum to 1,749,000 m², which is 51,000 m² short of that threshold. A plausible reconciliation exists — malls operated under management rather than owned would appear in an operating count and not in an ownership count, and the group’s shopping malls page names five portfolio brands including Matajer, which the asset list does not mention once. That is a plausible reading and not a published one. The document does not explain the difference, no correction has been issued, and none of the three counts is declared correct here. What follows from it is narrower and firm: an occupancy average computed from the list describes the 24 assets on the list, and the phrase “the portfolio” carries at least three meanings in one document.

The hotel line in the same sentence

The second merge sits in the segment label itself. The results release reports the shopping malls and hotels business as one revenue line of AED 4.8 billion, and the presentation reports two occupancy rates under that heading for 2025: malls at 98% and hotels at 76%, the latter across seven hotels, five in the United Arab Emirates and two in Bahrain.

The group disposed of its detached hotel portfolio in the Emirates during the first half of 2024, which the presentation records in a footnote to its hotel count. The 22-point gap between the two occupancy figures is not a performance gap, because the two are not the same measurement. Mall occupancy counts leasable area committed under tenancy agreements that run for years, so it moves slowly and by whole units. Hotel occupancy counts room-nights sold against room-nights available, resets every night and is fully re-earned each period. Placing them under one segment heading is a reporting choice the group is entitled to make, and reading across from one to the other is not. Because the segment revenue is published as one figure, no share of the AED 4.8 billion can be attributed to malls, and none is attributed here.

Which mall occupancy number answers which question

The choice between the two regimes follows from what the reader is exposed to. Anyone whose claim sits against the rent roll — a lender, a bondholder, a valuer working from net operating income — needs the area-weighted figure, because rent is collected per square metre and the eight largest assets on the 2025 asset list carry 71.1% of the listed area between them.

Anyone assessing operating performance across an estate needs the asset-weighted figure and the range behind it. A 96.42% average with a floor of 73% describes a portfolio in which most buildings are effectively full and a small number are not, and that is an operational fact the published headline is not built to show. The practical rule is that a single occupancy percentage should never travel without its base, and that any comparison between two landlords’ occupancy rates is unsafe until both bases are known — which, for the figures examined here, they are not, since neither the release nor the presentation states how the headline average is weighted.

Conclusions

Majid Al Futtaim reported mall occupancy surpassing 98% for 2025 alongside group revenue of AED 35.9 billion, EBITDA of AED 5.1 billion and a shopping malls and hotels segment at AED 4.8 billion that supplies 13% of revenue and 69% of EBITDA. Computing the average from the group’s own asset list gives 98.50% weighted by floor area and 96.42% weighted by asset, a gap of 2.08 percentage points that arises because 1,749,000 m² of listed space is concentrated in eight malls holding 71.1% of it, while the seven smallest, at 92.00% between them, hold 5.3%. The published figure is the area-weighted one, and neither document states that it is; the occupancy range across the list, from 73% at the 5,000 m² neighbourhood unit at Nasseriya to 100% at Mall of the Emirates, is visible only asset by asset. The same document counts the estate as 29 operating malls, 24 listed assets and 23 fully owned ones, and states over 1.8 million m² of GLA against a listed sum of 1,749,000 m², without reconciling either pair. Hotels sit inside the same segment at 76% occupancy, measured in room-nights rather than in leased metres and therefore not comparable with the mall figure at all. For a reader, the operative discipline is to carry the base with the number, to treat a portfolio occupancy rate as a weighted statement about space until told otherwise, and to accept that where a landlord publishes no rent per metre and no vacancy in metres, the honest analysis ends at what the asset list will support.

This material is informational in nature and does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice.