SM Prime nets P38.1B

SM Prime prexy Jeffrey Lim and chair Henry Sy Jr.

Property giant SM Prime Holdings grew its net profit last year by 18 percent to P38.1 billion, mostly driven by higher earnings from residential property, shopping mall and other commercial property leasing businesses.

Consolidated revenues increased by 14 percent to P118.3 billion.

“SM Prime’s continuous growth was brought about by our strategic expansion in the country’s developing cities. We look forward to 2020 as we strengthen our presence in more key areas in the Philippines through sustainable integrated property developments that have great potential to further contribute to the growth of the overall economy,” SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Monday.

The mall business grew revenues by 8 percent to P57.8 billion last year. This was mainly driven by the 7 percent same-mall-sales growth across all mature malls.

SM Prime has 74 malls in the Philippines offering 8.5 million square meters (sqm.) of gross floor area (GFA) and seven malls in China with 1.3 million sqm. of GFA as of end-2019. The company is set to open three to five new malls in key provincial cities in 2020.

The residential group under SM Development Corp. grew revenues by 24 percent to P45.2 billion.

As an indicator of future growth, SMDC’s reservation sales grew by 24 percent to P90 billion in 2019. In terms of unit sales, it increased by 11 percent to 23,424.

Other business segments registered a combined revenue growth of 14 percent to P9.6 billion. Combined operating income increased by 23 percent to P4.9 billion. Growth in the commercial Ppoperties and the hotel and convention centers business segments was attributed to the full-year revenue contribution of ThreeE-Com Center, the opening of NU Mall of Asia, as well as the opening of Park Inn by Radisson hotels in Iloilo and North EDSA, Quezon City.

SM Prime has a total of 12 office buildings with a combined GFA of 695,000 sqm., eight hotels with over 1,900 rooms, four convention centers and three trade halls as of year-end 2019.