Posted on May
10, 2013 08:12:06 PM [ BusinessWorld Online ]
DEVELOPER
FILINVEST Land, Inc. is looking to boost its residential reservation sales by
up to 20% this year on the back of sales from its flagship mid-rise building
(MRB), while looking to expand leasing portfolio to new sites in southern Luzon
and Cebu in the next three years.
“We normally
target a 15- to 20% increase,” Lourdes Josephine G. Yap, Filinvest Land
president and chief executive officer, said during the firm’s annual
stockholders meeting on Friday at then Mandarin Oriental in Makati City, when
asked how much reservation sales the company was eyeing this year.
In 2012,
Filinvest Land reservation sales rose by 14.91% to P13.1 billion from P11.4
billion in 2011 on the back of nine new projects and 12 phases of existing
projects that were launched last year.
Asked what
will drive the firm’s sales growth this year, Ms. Yap told reporters after the
meeting: “Our strength will still be MRBs. Notably, our products are still very
end-user oriented.”
Filinvest
Land launched its first MRB in Feb. 2008, and has since completed 41 structures
in various MRB projects, with another 11 structures under way.
This year,
the property firm said it will launch six new MRBs worth P11 billion, bringing
its total MRB portfolio to 18 developments and forming part of the company’s
P20-billion projects set for launching this year.
Meanwhile,
Filinvest Land has earmarked around P7 billion to build new malls and
contribute to its earlier goal of more than doubling its leasing portfolio by
2015.
According to
presentation materials provided Friday, Filinvest Land will be spending P2.8
billion for the 2.5-hectare Filinvest Mall Tagaytay, P1 billion for the
2.5-hectare Filinvest Mall Princeton, both of which are in Cavite and targeted
to open in 2015, as well as P3.1 billion for the 7.4-hectare Filinvest
Supermall Cebu, which will open in 2016.
These
projects will add 84,094 square meters of gross leasable area (GLA) to the
company’s current retail portfolio of 135,163 square meters in Festival
Supermall in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.
Filinvest
Land aims to have a GLA of 550,200 square meters by 2015, or more than double
its GLA of 188,700 square meters in 2006.
Filinvest
Land, formerly known as Citation Homes, Inc., was incorporated in 1989 to
engage in real estate development, with business segments divided into real
estate and leasing. It was listed on the stock exchange in 1993.
As of
end-2012, the firm had a 2,251-hectare land bank, which includes 379 hectares
under joint ventures and 29 hectares in six locations in Metro Manila.
This year,
Filinvest Land plans to spend P20 billion for its capital expenditures -- P10
billion for residential projects, P7 billion for office buildings and malls,
and P3 billion for land banking activities.
Part of the
firm’s budget this year will be funded by the second tranche of its seven-year,
P7 billion fixed-rate retail bonds first issued in June last year, Ms. Yap
said.
“Filinvest
Land intends to issue the second tranche amounting to P4 billion bonds in the
second quarter of 2013,” the company said in its 2012 annual report.
In a separate
development, the board of Filinvest Land on Friday approved the distribution of
cash dividends, namely a regular cash dividend of P0.028 per share and a
special cash dividend of P0.020 per share on July 3 to all shareholders on
record as of June 7.
Shares of
Filinvest Land rose by two centavos or 0.99% to P2.04 apiece on Friday from
P2.02 on Thursday. -- Franz Jonathan G. de la Fuente
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