Property developer SM Prime Holdings Inc. said Monday net income climbed 80 percent in the first quarter to P6.5 billion from P3.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020.
SM Prime said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the first-quarter consolidated revenues amounted to P20.8 billion, or almost the same from the previous quarter.
The company said the reopening of many businesses and increased mobility of people amid the localized community quarantine measures contributed to the slight recovery in the company’s financial performance in the first three months of the year.
“We welcomed 2021 with high hopes as most areas in the Philippines, including Metro Manila, were placed under GCQ [general community quarantine] in the first quarter of 2021. Along with the sustained growth of our residential business, our mall affiliates together with many of our SME-partners were able to reopen their shops, allowing our mall business segment to perform better,” SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said.
The group’s mall sales, which accounted for 28 percent of the consolidated revenues, reached P5.9 billion in the first three months, or 10 percent higher than the previous quarter’s P5.3 billion.
The growth was due to the increase of operating mall tenants, which drove mall rental income up by 14 percent to P5.6 billion in the first quarter from P4.9 billion in the last quarter of 2020.
Meanwhile, SM Prime’s China malls registered a 53-percent growth in revenues to RMB199 million in the first quarter of 2021 from RMB130 million in the same period last year.
The positive growth of the company’s international malls signals return to normal operations after the government-imposed lockdown last January 2020, it said.
Residential business under SM Development Corp. reported a 5-percent increase in sales to P11.9 billion from P11.4 billion in the same period last year. This accounted for 57 percent of the company’s consolidated revenues.
The group’s operating income also improved by 9 percent to P5.1 billion in the first quarter of 2021 from P4.6 billion of the same period under review.
SMDC’s reservation sales climbed 31 percent in the first quarter to P32.4 billion from P24.8 billion in first quarter of 2020. The newly launched residential projects in Metro Manila accounted for nearly 70 percent of the reported reservation sales.
SMDC plans to launch 15,000 to 20,000 residential units this year.
SM Prime’s other business segments, which include offices and hotels and convention centers, contributed P1.6 billion to the company’s consolidated revenues.
The Commercial Properties Group which manages the company’s office business continued to operate at optimal level, while the company’s hotels and convention centers’ operations followed the guidelines set by the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force.