SM Prime Holdings Inc. said Wednesday it will open its biggest mall in China on Dec. 17.
SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said in an interview at the sidelines of a corporate governance forum that SM Tianjin, which offers more 540,000 square meters of gross leasable area, would have a soft opening next month.
Lim said he expected SM Tianjin to be 60-percent leased out to various tenants by December.
“We will soft open on Dec. 17. We will not open entire the entire mall yet, only the first two buildings,” Lim said.
SM Tianjin will be the seventh mall to be opened by the Sy family in China.
The six existing malls are located in Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu, Suzhou, Chongqing and Zibo.
SM Prime earlier said it was open to acquiring existing malls in Fujian province to help accelerate its expansion in the world’s second largest economy.
SM Prime chairman of the executive committee Hans Sy said the company was considering mall acquisitions as land values in China became expensive because of its strong growth over the past several years.
SM Prime’s China mall revenues rose 5 percent to P3.1 billion in the first nine months from P2.9 billion recorded in the same period last year.
Operating income from China malls also grew 6 percent to P1.5 billion from P1.4 billion, maintaining the previous year’s operating income margin of 49 percent.