Record 7.5b yuan profit for Country Garden
HONG KONG: Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd, China’s top property developer by sales, reported a record high six-month net profit as business in smaller cities continued to boom.
Government curbs to rein in property prices in China have weighed on larger cities, with last month showing the slowest growth in house prices since August last year, although business in smaller centres have remained robust.
Country Garden, which focuses on smaller cities, said its net profit rose 39.2 per cent from a year ago to 7.5 billion yuan (RM4.82 billion) over the six months to June, its highest ever half-yearly earnings.
The company also saw it core profit, which excludes revaluation gains, jump 35 per cent to 7.2 billion yuan.
Revenue for the period rose 35.5 per cent to 77.7 billion yuan and it said it expected further growth in the future, given a number of pre-sold but unrecognised projects.
Country Garden, which has an internal target to double sales this year to 600 billion yuan, posted 288.9 billion yuan sales for the first six months, more than double year-ago levels. This helped the company climb two notches to the top developer spot.
It did not give details on how much sales came from its US$100 billion (RM428 billion) mega development in Malaysia’s Forest City, but said “the project has been well received by overseas enterprises and investors”.
The company has largely halted promoting the project to mainland buyers since earlier this year in response to Beijing’s moves to stop capital flight into offshore investments. Reuters