Public health crisis slashes FLI income by 41% in 2020
Filinvest land inc. (Fli), the property development arm of the Gotianun group, said its attributable net income for the entire 2020 fell 41 percent to P3.73 billion, from the previous year’s P6.28 billion, due to the effects of the pandemic on most of its operations.
Revenues, meanwhile, fell 27 percent to P17.49 billion from the previous year’s P24.02 billion, with residential revenues declining by 42 percent to P9.84 billion.
“Filinvest is no stranger to crises as we have weathered several economic and political upheavals in the past. I believe that our company’s recovery was a result not only of pandemic-reactive measures, but to a greater extent, of solid decisions made many years ago—lessons learned from previous crises,” Lourdes Josephine Gotianun-yap, the company’s president and CEO, said.
“With the light of vaccinated hope, we remain optimistic that the recovery trend we’ve seen in the last quarter of 2020 will be sustained well in 2021 as we maintain our priority in serving the needs of our stakeholders while keeping our employees safe and healthy.”
The company said its office leasing revenues grew by 8 percent in 2020 to P5.56 billion, from P5.17 billion in 2019. FLI has 31 operational office buildings and 11 buildings under construction that will be completed in the next two years, with a total gross leasable area of over 750,000 square meters in Metro Manila, Clark and Cebu.
Mall rental revenues registered a 55-percent drop in 2020 to P828 million due to the community quarantine restrictions. FLI said it intends to continue supporting its retail tenants by granting rental concessions to help them sustain their businesses.
Overall, proceeds from office leasing cushioned FLI’S recurring income from both retail and office leasing business from the impact of the pandemic, ending the year with a slight 9-percent drop in aggregate rental revenues to hit P6.39 billion in 2020.
The company said it had a 50-percent increase in residential revenues at P3.17 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, coming from P2.12 billion in the third quarter.
A strong recovery was seen in mall revenues in the fourth quarter as it rose by 66 percent compared to the third quarter as Metro Manila and other cities moved to the less restrictive quarantine measures. Mall foot traffic also doubled in the fourth quarter compared to third quarter of 2020.
The growth in demand for the affordable and the middle-income housing segment, transition of key areas to general community quarantine and modified GCQ in the second half of the year, resumption of construction and normalized buyer amortizations were major growth drivers for the period. The company likewise saw a healthy rebound in residential reservation sale.
“We recognize the need for agility amid unprecedented times. This was seen in our swift and deliberate efforts to implement health and safety protocols across all our developments which granted our stakeholders’ peace of mind,” said Yap.
“Furthermore, our company’s digital transformation played a critical role in ensuring continued sales support, customer service communications and financial operations. We believe that our contact-less transactions and customer service channels as well as our aggressive digital marketing strategy buoyed our recovery.”
For the year, the company said it will focus on the completion of its key office building projects, including the development of first phase of the Filinvest Innovation Park in New Clark City in Tarlac, and the continued rollout of its lower density Aspire and Futura urban mid-rise buildings and housing residential developments across the country.