Sy family-led leisure estate and gaming firm Belle Corp. grew net profit last year by 74 percent to P3.1 billion mostly on higher windfall from City of Dreams Manila.
Excluding extraordinary items, principally a capital gain of P352 million on the sale of 26 million shares of SM Prime Holdings Inc. in July 2016, Belle’s recurring net income of P2.1 billion last year was higher by 55 percent over recurring net income in the previous year.
Due to Belle’s strong profitability, it declared a regular cash dividend of P0.095 per share to its common shareholders on Feb. 28, 2017. This equates to a total dividend payment of around P1 billion payable on March 30 to shareholders of record as of March 14 this year.
The company’s growth in 2016 was attributed to higher revenues from City of Dreams Manila. Its share in this integrated resort – through its 78.7 percent -owned subsidiary, Premium Leisure Corp.(PLC) – more than doubled to P1.6 billion last year from P756 million in 2015. This was attributed to the ramp-up in gaming operations at City of Dreams Manila, which held its grand opening in February 2015.
PLC owns half of the gaming operations of City of Dreams Manila.
Belle also realized higher revenues from its real estate businesses. Total real estate-related revenues increased by 3 percent to P2.78 billion. Of this amount, P2.19 billion was derived from its lease of the land and buildings comprising City of Dreams Manila to Melco Crown, with the balance of P586 million coming from sales of real estate products and property management activities at its Tagaytay Highlands and Midlands residential and leisure complexes south of Metro Manila.