Robinsons Land Corp., the real estate arm of the Gokongwei Group, said Monday it is expanding its leasing business with the opening of six new office towers, four new hotels, and three logistics facilities this year.
RLC said in a presentation during an analysts’ briefing it plans to open six office buildings this year that will boost total office leasable space by 18 percent to 721,000 square meters from 613,000 sq. m. as of end-2020.
The six new office projects are located in Iloilo, Cebu City, Bacolod City, Ortigas Center, and Pasig City.
The group is expanding its office business as the sector remained stable despite the pandemic.
RLC said it would also complete four hotel projects this year that would increase its hotel rooms by 10 percent to 3,493 units from 3,188 as of end-2020.
Two new hotels will be opened in Tuguegarao City and Naga City under the Go Hotel brand, while two hotels will be opened in Naga City and General Santos City under the Summit brand.
The property firm is also looking to open three logistics facilities that will boost its leasing area by 75 percent to 173,000 sq. m. by end of 2021 from only 99,000 sq. m. as of the end 2020.
It said that for 2021, it would open a shopping mall in La Union and expand three existing malls in Tacloban City, Dumaguete City, and Antipolo City.
These projects will boost its mall leasing space by 6 percent to 1.605 million sq. m. from 1.52 million sq. m. as of end-2020.
RLC did not open new malls last year because of the pandemic.
RLC earlier said was looking to inject its mature office assets into a real estate investment trust company that would conduct an initial public offering this year.
RLC is one of the country’s leading office landlords with 25 office buildings offering net leasable area of over 600,000 sq. m.
An REIT is a corporation that primarily invests in income-generating real estate such as office spaces, malls, service apartments, and even hotels, hospitals, warehouses, and the likes.
REITs are required to distribute a minimum 90 percent of its distributable income as dividends annually to avail of certain tax benefits, as dividends distributed operate effectively as a tax-shield for corporate income tax.
RLC reported a net income of P5.26 billion in 2020, down 38.8 percent from P8.6 billion in 2019 as the pandemic affected mall and hotel businesses. Consolidated revenues fell 17 percent last year to P25.4 billion.
The property firm’ development portfolio, which accounted for 49 percent of total revenues, increased by 30 percent to P12.26 billion. This partially negated the decline in the investment portfolio, which ended at P13.15 billion, down 38 percent year-on-year.
The share price of RLC fell 0.55 percent Monday to close at P18.