KUALA LUMPUR: Sunway Bhd’s property division is aiming to achieve RM1.7bil in sales this year. The property development division’s joint-managing director Sarena Cheah said the property division’s unbilled property sales of RM2.8bil as of Dec 31 last year, combined with its remaining 3,362 acres of land bank with a gross development value of RM49bil, would keep the division busy for the next 12 years.
“We have about RM2.6bil worth of property investment assets which are currently under construction and expected to be completed within the next two years, these assets range from education and malls to hospital assets, among others”.
This explains the group’s inspiration to build holistic, integrated, and socially and economically vibrant townships that serve the multi-cluster communities,” she told media after launching the Living Sunway, Living Community campaign at Sunway Velocity, the group’s upcoming, self-sustained integrated development project in Cheras here the other day.
Cheah said the group would remain cautiously optimistic this year, amid the softening market conditions. “With challenges, there would be opportunities that we would prefer to focus on, which would be landbanks, our core raw material.
“Our gearing today stands at 0.3 times compared with the year 1997 where it stood at two times and we had to dispose of our assets,” she said, adding that the group’s overall divisions were performing well at present.
Sunway’s property development and investment divisions currently contribute about 70% to group revenue.
Cheah said as it was a good time to look at more landbanks, the group was on a constant lookout for township opportunities where it could create value.
“We will focus on building our investors portfolio, as it is a good pipeline for our real estate investment trust segment. We will be selective of the locations, which should fit the price and economic growth levels.
“As long as consumer sentiment, the gross domestic product and employment rates, and interest rates are good, opportunities will still exist,” she added.
Meanwhile, speaking at Sunway’s five-year information technology (IT) modernisation plan, group chief financial officer Chong Chang Choong said this year, the group would continue to strengthen and harness the synergistic benefits within its diversified portfolio of businesses.
He said the impact of the weakening ringgit on the group would be minimal as long as the fall was gradual and less volatile.
“Some of our business units, especially those in the leisure and hospitality sectors, may benefit from the weaker ringgit, as it would attract more foreign and local tourists,” he said, adding that although the
expenditure in Budget 2015 had been trimmed, the allocation for major infrastructure projects remained intact, which bodes well for the group’s construction arm.
On the goods and services tax, Chong said except for residential properties and healthcare services which were exempt-rated, the rest of its products were standard-rated and he did not expect a major impact on margins.
The group had been positioned accordingly to weather such expectations, he added.
The five-year IT modernisation plan is a partnership between IBM and Hitachi Sunway Information Systems Sdn Bhd to deploy IBM Connections Cloud throughout its divisions to transform its IT and business infrastructure. IBM Connections Cloud services provide easy-to-access integrated email, social business capabilities and third-party applications, all delivered via cloud computing.
The multi-million-ringgit investment will support its 13,000 employees via an ICT business tranformation endeavour.
