CapitaLand, one of South-East Asia’s largest property developers, said on Wednesday (Feb 17) its profit for the fourth quarter fell nearly 40 per cent from a year ago, hurt in part by the absence of gains recorded last year from the sale of an office tower.
The group’s profit after tax and minority interests for the quarter fell 39.5 per cent to S$247.7 million from S$409.4 million. Operating profit was down 12.1 per cent, hitting S$249.2 million compared to S$283.6 million from a year ago.
However, group revenue rose to S$1.74 billion for the quarter, a 14.6 per cent rise over the S$1.52 billion from the same period in 2014.
FULL-YEAR PROFIT DOWN 8.2 PER CENT
The group’s full-year earnings fell to S$1.07 billion in 2015, an 8.2 per cent drop from 2014’s S$1.16 billion, which was boosted by a one-off gain of S$123.5 million from the sale of Westgate Tower.
Operating profit in 2015 was 16.8 per cent higher than 2014, rising to S$823.6 million from S$705.3 million. This was primarily due to higher recurring income from the shopping mall and serviced residence businesses as well as gains on the change in use of development properties for sale to investment properties, said CapitaLand.
For 2015, revenue rose 21.3 per cent to S$4.76 billion from S$3.92 billion. This was mainly driven by development projects in China as well as higher rental revenue from the serviced residence business, said CapitaLand.
CapitaLand’s President and Group CEO Lim Ming Yan said: “CapitaLand remains focused on growth in our core markets of Singapore and China. For longer term diversification and balance, we will continue to expand in growth markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia. In China, we achieved our highest residential sales value of RMB15.4 billion in 2015, and we expect residential sales in the market to continue to perform steadily this year.
“Our new Raffles City developments are also on-track for completion over the next few years and we expect strong demand for these projects,” added Mr Lim.
Source : Channel NewsAsia – 17 Feb 2016