Co-living is the new marriage, from some Gen-Z or millennial (but I am a millennial).

The Assembly Place is listing in the Singaporean market and is creating some hype. Investors will be glad to know that the company is hitting all the right tones with the current investing climate.

The Assembly Place (TAP) rents out rooms and accommodations to working people with employment passes, students, healthcare professionals, and tourists in Singapore.

Generally, the company serves about five markets - foreign healthcare accommodation, residential co-living, hotels & serviced apartments, students accommodation, and inter-generational living (senior living).

Currently, the company has 3,422 keys (or rooms) across 100 property assets in Singapore.

Foreign healthcare accommodation makes up the highest keys at 1,308, followed by residential co-living (1,080), and student accommodation (453).

We will cover these industries’ outlook later. But what catches my eye is the business model of TAP - it is asset-light.

What TAP does is negotiate leases with property owners (not buy them), refurbish and renovate the properties, market them, and rent out the rooms to prospective clientele.

It does not bear the risks of owning the properties. Instead, it puts up the initial renovation costs. I believe this is the reason it expanded rapidly in the past 4 years.

In just 4 years, TAP’s keys grew by 10 times from 311 in 2021 to 3,422 currently.

It’s more accurate to think of TAP as an operator that leases out rooms, but with specific branding and offerings…

TAP will list at a price of $0.23 per share, and is seeking to raise about $18.3 million. This will give TAP an indicative market valuation of $88 million, putting it in the small-cap space.

TAP will be utilising $12.7 million from the proceeds to

Ultimately, TAP’s gameplan is to expand its keys to 10,000 by 2030. That is growing three times from its current position in 4 years, and is an ambitious target to achieve.

However, I do think this is quite achievable for two reasons.

Firstly, TAP does not incur much renovation or refurbishment costs when they enter into an agreement with the asset owners. I teased this out from its prospectus from the following passage.

“Apart from these renovations, our Group did not undertake any significant renovation or refurbishment of our property assets during the Relevant Period. Any significant renovation or refurbishment, if necessary, are typically carried out by the property asset owners.”

Secondly, TAP has quite a wide network of asset owners that it can … tap into. The network comes from both Eric Low and Eugene Lim as they both have extensive experience in the Singapore real estate industry.

From the trend on its number of keys/rooms, it’s fair to say that TAP’s financial performance has been very strong since its inception in 2021.

Revenue in particular, grew with an average CAGR of 66% since 2022 to 2024, and is now on pace to deliver a 23% growth in revenue for 2025 (1H 2025: $11.6 million).

Much of this growth was driven by its demand for community-driven stays, as it has delivered consistently high occupancy rates in its assets (>90%).

If you take into consideration that its number of keys have grew by 10x, it’s not hard to see why it is delivering the kind of growth that you are seeing.

Meanwhile, profits are a bit more volatile. It generated a positive profit of $0.4 million in 2022 but plunged to a loss of $0.9 million in 2023.

It then, recovered to a big profit of $6.2 million in 2024. It’s difficult to get a good view on this as the company’s valuation of its leases changes every year, and sometimes results in big losses on valuations.

So, I decided to take a look at its operating cash flow instead. Cash is king, the picture becomes clearer.

Operating cash flow doubled from $4.8 million in 2022 to $9.0 million in 2023. It then grew to $12.7 million in 2024, and is on pace to deliver about $14 million in 2025 (1H 2025: $6.9 million).

Not only is TAP’s revenue is growing at a strong rate, its operating cash flows are also showing the same trend.

I think the best way to think about TAP’s operations is through its revenue per key metrics (they did not compute this).

It is basically revenue divided by number of keys/rooms, and it tells us about whether its room rates are increasing or decreasing.

Revenue per key is on an increase, from $779 per key in 2022 to $899 per key in 2024. I view this as positive as it indicates that TAP has some pricing power and is able to increase prices by offering higher value to its tenants (and also asset owners).

Its operational cash margins (operational cash flow / revenue) remains high at about 60% to 70%, but has been declining. For some unfamiliar with this metrics, you can think of its like gross profit margin.

Is this concerning? It depends on how you see it. I myself think that this is fine because having a 60% margin is already quite high.

Ultimately, I am interested in how this compare to other competitors in the market, which is the subject of the next point.

I think one of the main selling points of TAP is that it is currently the market leader in the industry it is in - at least according to the data from its prospectus.

It holds about one-third of the market in Singapore according to the number of keys/rooms. Its closest competitor is Coliwoo, which also listed last year in November 2025.

As Coliwoo is probably the only comparable competitor that has listed, I will be doing my comparisons against Coliwoo only (Lyf is owned by Ascott, Habyt is not listed).

Here is the comparison for Operational Cash Flow margin. TAP does have significantly higher margins compared to Coliwoo.

TAP’s outlook is inevitably tied to the market for foreign workers with employment passes, education and tourism. On these fronts, these markets are projected to grow steadily.

These factors bode well for TAP’s outlook moving forward, and its total addressable market projections reflect this.

Finally, let’s get to an interesting thing I noticed.

Most of its growth in the past was driven by its high networks from Eric Low and Eugene Lim that provided the base of asset owners to lease their properties.

I am of the opinion that while this is great, it also presents a dangerous risk.

Currently, both players hold significant shareholding in the company, and I think they view this IPO as a way of cashing out some of its gains in TAP.

I do not know yet what their personal long-term plans are for the company.

But should one (or both) player exit from TAP, I could see it having a big impact on its portfolio of assets and future network of asset owners.

While TAP has touted that it operates a light asset model (only 42 staff), I am a bit worried about its capability to expand beyond these two key managements’ networks.

That said, I think this is a problem that many small-cap companies face in the market, and is not unique to TAP alone.

I am attracted to the fact that TAP is a market leader in the co-living industry, which gives me assurance that it has significant pricing power. And I have seen this in its revenue per room metrics also.

Financial growth has been strong and it’s making the right moves to triple its keys/rooms to 10,000 by 2030.

However, I do see some risks in the company’s ability to operate without its key managements’ asset owner networks.