CapitaLand Ltd. (CAPL), Southeast Asia’s biggest developer, said first-quarter net income rose more than three times after it restated last year’s earnings.
Net income increased to S$101.5 million ($82 million) in the three months ended March 31, from the restated S$29.8 million a year earlier, the Singapore-based company said today in a statement to the city-state’s stock exchange. CapitaLand restated last year’s results to comply with an accounting policy that became effective Jan. 1, it said. Last year’s first-quarter net profit, before it was restated, was S$115.4 million.
Revenue climbed 39 percent to S$611.5 million from a year earlier because of higher contributions from residential, commercial and industrial projects in Singapore, China and Australia, the company said. The three markets accounted for 96 percent of the company’s earnings before interest and taxes in the first quarter, CapitaLand said.
“Asia, with its stronger fundamentals, growing domestic demand and rising income levels, continues to present many opportunities for the group to expand its businesses in the core markets,” Richard Hu, chairman of CapitaLand, said in the statement. “Given its strong balance sheet, CapitaLand is actively pursuing further investment opportunities to lay an even firmer foundation for future, sustainable growth.”
Ascott, the company’s serviced residence unit, plans to invest S$1 billion in Asia and Europe this year and is set to achieve 40,000 apartment units globally by 2015, Liew Mun Leong, chief executive officer of CapitaLand, said in the statement.
Housing Pipeline
CapitaLand said it has a 15 percent share of the Singapore private housing market and aims to sell 1,700 apartment units in 2011. The company has a pipeline of 2,700 homes in the city with more than 4 million square feet of space for the next two to three years, it said in a slide presentation.
Singapore’s first-quarter private home prices rose by a revised 2.2 percent from the previous three months, slowing for a sixth quarter, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority yesterday. The government added new measures this year to curb speculation after policies last year failed to prevent home prices from rising to a record.
The developer also aims to double its investments in India to more than S$300 million, according to the slide presentation. CapitaLand has S$28.1 billion of assets, with China having the biggest share at 37 percent, followed by Singapore with 35 percent, it said in the slide presentation.
CapitaLand will continue to develop Vietnam into its “fourth core market over time in a measured and calibrated manner, in line with the macroeconomic situation and market developments there,” Liew said.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has lowered the target for credit growth to less than 20 percent this year from an earlier goal of 23 percent to curb the availability of cash in the system. Consumer prices climbed 17.51 percent from a year earlier, the most since December 2008, after rising 13.89 percent in March, the General Statistics Office said on April 24.