Robinsons Land charts three-year expansion plan
GOKONGWEI-LED Robinsons Land Corp. (RLC) said it will build three new malls for its fiscal year ending September this year, and another four for each of the succeeding two years through 2017.
RLC opened a total of six new malls in its 2014 fiscal year ending September last year.
“Moving forward, for this year we intend to open three new malls and expand one existing mall,” Frederick D. Go, RLC president and chief operating officer, said during the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting late on Wednesday.
Robinsons Place Las Piñas was the first mall the company opened for its 2015 fiscal year. RLC will later open this year its first mall in San Jose, Antique as well as its flagship mall in Cebu.
It will also expand its mall in Novaliches City.
“All these four projects will increase our GLA ( gross leasable area) by 10% in 2015,” Mr. Go said.
RLC ended fiscal year 2014 with a GLA of 1.056 million square meters (sq.m.).
“For fiscal year 2016, we intend to open four new malls and [undertake] one to two mall expansions, thereby increasing our GLA by 11%,” Mr. Go said.
In 2017, RLC plans to open four new malls that will lead to an 8% increase in its GLA.
“We continue to aggressively scout for properties nationwide to replenish land for future malls,” Mr. Go said, adding that the company also continues to be bullish on its office segment.
MORE OFFICE SPACE
For its office leasing business, RLC grew its net leasable area (NLA) by 42% to 275,000 sq.m. in the last fiscal year following the completion of Cyberscape Alpha and Cyberscape Beta.
“We’re currently in the middle of completing the Tera Tower — our first office building in our upcoming mixed-use development, which we are calling Bridgetowne in Quezon City,” Mr. Go said.
The Tera Tower will increase RLC’s total office portfolio by 13% to 310,000 sq.m. when it opens in 2016.
For fiscal year 2017, Mr. Go said RLC will complete a 60,000sq.m. leasable area office building called Bonifacio Summit Center in Bonifacio Global City.
“This property was secured by RLC through a long-term lease arrangement with BCDA (Bases Conversion and Development Authority) last August 2014,” Mr. Go said.
The fresh supply of office space would boost RLC’s NLA by 19% for that fiscal year, and by 22% to 450,000 sq.m. in the succeeding year.
“Given that our ten office buildings are already 99% leased out, we are currently about to start both Cyberscape Gamma here in the Ortigas Business Dis- trict as well as the Giga Tower in Bridgetowne,” Mr. Go said.
HOTELS
RLC opened Go Hotels Butuan last December and Summit Hotel Magnolia last January.
“Both of the two new hotels will increase our hotel portfolio by 15% this year,” Mr. Go said.
“We will grow our hotel room portfolio by about 19% next year and this will be done through the rollout of more Go Hotels and Summit Hotels,” he added.
The company official also said that RLC’s most important hotel project — Westin Hotel Sonata Place — will soon be developed.
“We recently signed an agreement with Starwood (Asia Pacific Hotels and Resorts Pte. Ltd.) to build a five-star, 300-room hotel property in the heart of Ortigas Center,” Mr. Go said.
Budget for all those projects have yet to be finalized but for this fiscal year alone, RLC had earmarked P17 billion to grow its property portfolio.
As of the first quarter of its 2015 fiscal year, Mr. Go said the company already spent around P2.5 billion of that budget.
“As of December, our total land bank is 563 hectares,” Mr. Go said.
“We believe the current level of our land bank is good for about four to five years of project development across our various business segments,” he added.