SM Prime net profit rises 8% to P2.36 B in 9 mos

SM Prime Holdings, Inc., the Philippines’ premier and largest shopping mall chain, posted a noteworthy eight percent increase in net income of P2.36 billion in the first nine months ended Sept. 30, 2000, from last year’s P2.18 billion.

Bucking trends, total revenues for the period grew 13 percent to P4.4 billion fro P3.9 billion a year ago. Rental revenues for the period increased by a remarkable 17 percent to P3.46 billion from the previous year’s P2.9 billion.

Income from operations amounting to P2.76 billion for the nine-month period in 2000 increased by 12 percent from last year’s P2.45 billion. Operating expenses increased by 14 percent to P1.64 billion from P1.45 billion, mainly due to the opening of two new malls, SM City-Manila and SM City-Iloilo.

Interest income (net of interest expense mainly for the US dollar loans) and other incomes decreased by 30 percent to P240.5 million from last year’s P346.4 million. The decline is due to the depreciation of the Philippine peso this year.

SM Prime malls, which meet some 75 percent to 80 percent of basic needs and other wants of consumers, maintain their sway on Philippine lifestyle as seen in the malls’ continuingly intense drawing power.

In April this year SM Prime opened the 170,000 sq.m. SM City-Manila, now 95 percent lease-awarded to over 200 tenants. Like SM City-North EDSA, SM Megamall, and SM City-Fairview, SM City-Manila has 12 cinemas. It has become a major destination of shoppers, given its prime location right in the heart of Manila and easy accessibility by the Light Railway Transit and other public vehicles.

On Nov. 11, 2000, the company inaugurated the much-awaited SM City-Pampanga, the 10th SM Prime mall, and welcomed an unprecedented mammoth crowd of residents of Pampanga and the neighboring provinces, such as Bulacan, Tarlac, Bataan, Zambales and Nueva Ecija. SM City-Pampanga was packed and bursting in the seams throughout the mall hours of the weekend, with the 900 parking slots quickly occupied.

The three-level 60,000 square meter destination center, straddling the municipalities of San Fernando and Mexico and strategically located on a 32-hectare property on the Olongapo-Gapan Road, opened at a record-high of 96-percent lease-awarded mall space and 80-percent occupancy rate.

SM Department Store and SM Supermarket, industry leaders, and the other retail anchors, such as SM Appliance Center, Ace Hardware, Health and Beauty, Surplus Shop and Family Drugstore, SM Food Court, and six state-of-the-art SM Cinemas, led in drawing the crowd.

Design International, a foreign-based company, was SM City-Pampanga’s mall design consultant, while Palafox & Associates were the architects, and Monolith Construction and Development Corp., the general contractor; Lynx Industries Contractor, Inc., the electrical contractor, and GHT Service, the construction manager, Atlas Ward Structures Ltd. and Webcor Construction Inc. supplied the prefab materials.

Surging into its expansion program, SM Prime in constructing four more malls – one in Sucat, Parañaque, another in Davao, both of which are scheduled for opening in 2001; another in Bicutan, Parañaque, set for opening in 2002; and the 500,000 sq.m. Mall of Asia, at the reclamation area fronting Manila Bay, scheduled for opening in 2003.