(Source: Business Mirror | May 10, 2018)
Property developer Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc. on Thursday said its net income grew 13 percent during the first three months of the year to P2.61 billion, from P2.31 billion last year, on sustained sales of its core residential business.
Revenues grew 11 percent to P10 billion, from last year’s P9.03 billion, as its leasing business, such as the shopping malls and office buildings, starts to grow its contribution.
Manuel Paolo Villar, the company’s president and CEO, said the company is on track to reach its upgraded target of 1.4 million square meters (sq m) of gross floor area of commercial space by the end of the year, even if the first-quarter area of 1.06 million sq m did not even move compared with the area as of end-December.
“Most of the malls will be completed toward the end of the year. But we are still on target to hit our goal,” Villar said.
Leasing revenue for the quarter increased by 14 percent to P1.6 billion, from P1.4 billion in the prior year period.
Revenues from real estate, meanwhile, still take a huge chunk of its business ending the quarter with P7.8 billion, up by 10 percent from the previous P7.11 billion.
Reservation sales for the quarter grew 12 percent worth about P18 billion or about 9,000 units, Villar said.
Vista Land also launched new projects totaling about P12 billion in the first quarter of 2018.
“We have seen a continued growth in our leasing business as we continue to roll out our expansion programs to achieve our new upgraded target of 1.4 million square meters in gross floor area by the end of this year. As a result, our leasing business now accounts for 28 percent of Ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] and 23 percent of net income, and we expect this to increase toward the end of the year,” Villar said.
“In addition to the expansion of our rental spaces, which provides stability to our existing core and stable end-user housing business, we will continue to launch and open projects in new areas across the Philippines as we get on with our next 100 new cities and municipalities in addition to what we had at the end of 2017,” he said.
Villar said the company may raise P10 billion worth of bonds and bank loans. This will be towards the end of the year or during the third quarter since most of the requirements of its capital expenditures of about P50 billion for the year were already pre-funded last year.
He said, however, the company is still open to tapping the overseas market for its capital raising activity, but these are mainly to redeem some of its expensive debts and replace it with cheaper ones, while the timing will be “opportunistic.”
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