Megaworld income hit P17.9B in 2019

Andrew Tan-led property deve­loper Megaworld Corp. posted P17.9 billion worth of attribu­table net income in 2019, up by 18 percent from the previous year, driven by higher earnings from its residential development and leasable property portfolios.

Excluding nonrecurring gains of P691 million, comprehensive net income for the year grew by 18 percent to a new record high P18.6 billion.

Consolidated revenues went up by 17 percent year-on-year to P67.3 billion, bulk of which came from the sale of condominium units and residential lots, which comprised 63.29 percent of total revenues.

Megaworld’s real estate sales revenues grew by 12 percent to P42.6 billion last year.

As an indicator of future revenue growth, Megaworld posted a record sales reservation amounting to P149 billion in 2019. It launched around P85 billion worth of new projects, mostly residential properties and two new office projects for sale: the One Corporate Place in Maple Grove, Cavite; and the International Corporate Plaza in Iloilo Business Park, Iloilo City.

The rental business also posted a banner year, growing revenues by 18 percent to P16.8 billion. Office leasing arm Megaworld Premier Offices primarily contributed to the record growth in rental fees, growing its business by 20.5 percent to P10.5 billion for the year.

The company was able to complete around 192,300 square meters of new leasable office space in 2019, bringing Mega­world’s inventory of leasable office space to 1.3 million sqm.

“Undoubtedly, our strongest rental business still comes from our leases of prime office spaces across the Philippines. This excludes the office spaces that we have already sold and are currently selling. The good news is that we still continue to see growth in the business process outsour­cing (BPO) and information technology sectors, which comprise majority of our office rentals to date,” said Kevin Tan, chief strategy officer at Megaworld.

He also noted a growth in demand for office spaces outside the capital.

Megaworld is building more office towers to cater to the gro­wing BPO sector in Iloilo, Bacolod, Davao, Cebu, Cavite, Laguna and Pampanga. In Metro Manila, the company is also building additional office developments in its various townships, such as McKinley West and Uptown Bonifacio in Taguig and Arcovia City in Pasig City. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA INQ