Net income of condominium and office builder Megaworld Corp. declined 45 percent in 2020 to P10.6 billion as the pandemic hurt its residential, retail, and hotel businesses.
Megaworld said in a disclosure to the stock exchange Wednesday 2020 consolidated revenues also fell 35 percent to P43.5 billion.
Rental income dropped 23 percent in 2020 to P12.9 billion last year compared to the previous year, while real estate sales declined 42 percent to P24.9 billion year-on-year.
The company launched P7.8 billion worth of residential projects in 2020 while its hotel group still managed to book P1.5 billion in revenues.
Demand for office space remained stable amid the pandemic. Megaworld said it leased out 135,000 square meters (sqm) of fresh office space inventory within its townships in Iloilo, Quezon City and Fort Bonifacio.
Around 78 percent of the new leases were part of the expansion programs of office partners while the rest were taken by new client companies.
“These are mostly companies operating BPOs, e-commerce, logistics, and finance. And we are very happy to see the strong interest in our office developments in Iloilo Business Park. Approximately 20 percent of new leases have been booked there and we even cemented our dominance in terms of market share in the Iloilo office market,” said Megaworld chief strategy officer Kevin Tan
Aside from new leases, the company also bagged lease renewals of around 145,000 square meters of office spaces from various company tenants last year.
As a result, office leasing revenues in 2020 stood at P10.4 billion in 2020, which is just around the same level in the previous year.
The company completed the construction of around 87,000 sqm. of fresh office spaces last year, bringing the total leasable office inventory to 1.4-million sqm.
“At this point, we can say that our office business is the most stable income generator in our company’s revenue stream with or without this health crisis, and we continue to focus on the expansion of this business in the years to come and further strengthen our leadership in the country’s office property sector,” said Tan.