SINGAPORE (Feb 26): Sinarmas Land saw its earnings surge five-fold to $238.2 million for the 4Q ended December, from $46.5 million a year ago.
This bring full-year earnings to $356.0 million for FY17, trebling from earnings of $114.9 million a year ago.
The higher earnings in 4Q17 was largely attributable to sale of land parcels and stronger operating performance from its Indonesia division, further boosted by exceptional gain of $109.4 million from the divestment of Orchard Towers by its International division.
4Q revenue rose 70.8% to $560.4 million, from $328.1 million a year ago.
This was mainly due to higher sales of land parcels to Japanese and Chinese property developers, and higher revenue recognised from handover of apartments in BSD City.
4Q gross profit jumped 90.4% to $387.7 million on the back of higher profit margin deriving from sales of land parcels in Indonesia.
The group’s EBITDA rose 136.0% to $333.4 million in 4Q17, as EBITDA margin clibed 16.5 percentage points to 59.5% during the quarter.
As at end December, cash and cash equivalents stood at $865.6 million.
Sinarmas Land is proposing a special final dividend of 0.7 cents per share for the period. Together with an interim dividend of 0.8 cents per share paid earlier, this bring total dividend for FY17 to 1.5 cents per share.
This is significantly higher than the first and final dividend of 0.19 cents per share paid in FY16.
“The Indonesian economy continue to display resilience amidst global headwinds and geopolitical turbulences with GDP growing 5.07% in 2017, the fastest pace since 2013,” says Margaretha Widjaja, Sinarmas Land’s executive director and vice-chairman of the group’s Indonesia division.
“However, the group remains cautious on the outlook for property sales as domestic consumption may be hampered by June 2018 regional elections and 2019 general elections, where consumers usually adopt a wait-and-see approach,” she adds.
Going forward, Widjaja says Sinarmas Land will continue to adhere to its earnings diversification strategy through the development and acquisition of commercial properties to increase its recurring income base, as well as unlocking values of long-term investment properties to enhance the group’s property investment yields.
Shares of Sinarmas Land closed half a cent higher at 38 cents on Monday.
