SM Investments net income up by 26% to P10.7B in Q1 2019

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s largest conglomerate SM Investments Corp. grew its first quarter net profit by 26 percent year-on-year to P10.7 billion on higher earnings across its retail, property and banking businesses.

The three-month consolidated revenues of the Sy family-led conglomerate rose by 15 percent year-on-year to P109 billion, SMIC disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

“We continued to deliver double digit growth to both our top and bottom line in the first quarter. Performance was strong across our businesses, particularly for our banks,” SMIC president Frederic DyBuncio said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

For the first quarter, banks accounted for 42 percent of SMIC’s consolidated net income, followed by property at 40 percent and retail at 18 percent.

Retail operations under SM Retail Inc. — consisting of food businesses under SM Markets, WalterMart and Alfamart and non-food under department store The SM Store and other specialty retail units — posted a 5-percent growth in first quarter net profit to P2.7 billion.

Retail revenues in the first three months rose by 13 percent year-on-year to P79 billion. Revenues from the specialty retail stores grew by 13 percent to P19.6 billion for the period.

At end-March, SM Retail had a total of 2,385 stores consisting of 63 department stores, 1,388 specialty retail stores, 57 SM Supermarkets, 53 SM Hypermarkets, 194 Savemore, 52 WalterMart and 578 Alfamart stores.

It was earlier reported that property arm SM Prime Holdings grew first quarter net profit by 16 percent year-on-year to P8.8 billion.

BDO Unibank grew net profit by 66 percent year-on-year to P9.8 billion in the first quarter, achieving about a quarter of its full-year profit goal of P38.5 billion.

China Bank also grew its consolidated net income for the first quarter by 24 percent year-on-year to P1.9 billion on higher interest income, fee-based earnings, treasury gains and sale of idle assets. /kga