Posted on August 25, 2013 09:04:02 PM [ BusinessWorld Online ]
By Cliff Harvey C. Venzon, Reporter
SY-LED SM Prime Holdings, Inc. plans to open four new malls and expand
two existing ones next year as part of its continuing expansion, a senior
official of the country’s biggest shopping center developer and operator said
late last week.
BESIDES opening new malls next year, SM Prime Holdings, Inc. is
expanding SM City Bacolod and SM City Lipa.
Jeffrey C. Lim, the company’s
executive vice-president and chief financial officer, said SM Prime will open
new malls in San Mateo and Angono in the province of Rizal, South Road
Properties in Cebu City, and Zibo in Shandong, China, besides expanding SM City
Bacolod and Lipa City.
“Including land banking, it (cost) should be about P20 billion for the
malls,” Mr. Lim said in an interview in Pasay City on Thursday last week.
Details on the size of the malls and leasable areas were not
immediately available.
The company is set to end the year with 48 malls in the Philippines. It
opened SM Aura Premier in Taguig City last May, and is scheduled to open SM BF
in Parañaque City and finish expansion of SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City next
quarter.
In China, SM Prime already has malls in Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu,
Suzhou, and Chongqing.
SM malls in the Philippines and in China will have an estimated
combined gross floor area of 6.9 million square meters by the end of this year,
the company had said in a statement last month.
The firm has programmed P88 billion in capital expenditures from
2013-2015, to be used primarily for expansion.
SM Prime is also the vehicle for the SM Group’s consolidation of real
estate assets.
The company has a pending application with the Securities and Exchange
Commission to merge with privately held SM Land, Inc., which took over listed
condominium builder SM Development Corp. and listed leisure resorts operator
Highlands Prime, Inc. early this month.
Once completed, SM Prime’s market capitalization will balloon to $14
billion -- or around P560 billion -- from P338 billion currently, the company
had said in May when the consolidation was announced.
SM Prime’s total assets will also increase to P284.1 billion from
P148.1 billion, revenues will rise to P57.4 billion from P30.7 billion, annual
net income will grow to P17.0 billion from P10.9 billion once consolidation is
completed.
SM Prime’s net income stood at P5.84 billion in the first semester,
14.06% more than the P5.12 billion recorded in the same period last year.
In the same comparative six-month periods, revenues went up by 13.59%
to P16.55 billion from P14.57 billion, while cost and expenses grew by 13.55%
to P7.71 billion from P6.79 billion.
Shares of SM Prime added 20 centavos or 1.25% to close at P16.20 apiece
on Friday last week from P16.00 each on Thursday.
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