During the quarter the company launched one new condominium project, a new brand and a new sector of the market for the company with the super valueUnio being launched with prices per unit under one million Baht and with a total project value of 2 billion Baht and three housing projects under the new Arden brand. All projects were launched in mid-June and were approximately 25% sold by the end of June.
Including sales from existing projects the company generated total presales for the quarter of 3.115 billion Baht, 53% above guidance for the quarter and presales for the first half totaled 12.3 billion Baht, representing 54% of the company's initial annual presales target of 23 billion Baht, and the company announced an increase in pre-sales target to 26 billion Baht
Commenting on the success of the recent launches, Mr. Ted Thirapatana, Chief Business Development Officer for Ananda, stated, "The launch of Unio was a new model for us. Including building the sales office, the total marketing budget for this project was only 6 million Baht, so sales have come exclusively from word of mouth and local interest. Sales of over 600 million in the first 2 weeks were very gratifying given this absence of marketing and indicate real end user demand. The three Arden housing projects were launched as part of our overall company strategy of keeping housing at around 20% of the company's total portfolio and we needed to restock as our Atoll projects have been selling well."
The company ended the quarter with a backlog of over 34 billion Baht, due to transfer over the next 3 years, with more than 70% of the second half's revenue target already presold and part of the backlog.
2ndquarter revenues from sales of real estatewere 1.198 billion Baht, 8% above guidance,and the company had other income of 343 million Baht mostly in the form of payments from the JVs with Mitsui Fudosan, combining to a total revenue of 1.541 Billion Baht. An increase of 11% from the previous quarter. Net profits were72 million Baht for the quarter. The guidance for the annual revenue for the year remains unchanged from that given earlier in the year at between 10 - 11 billion Baht
Commenting on the results Ms Muntana Au-kitkajorn, Chief Financial Officer for Ananda Development said, "The revenue results were broadly as expected with no new projects completing construction and beginning to transfer in the quarter.The company was very successful in continuing to control costs in the quarter. Our administration costs actually fell by 9% from the same quarter a year ago despite the company's rapid growth.
Mr Chanond Ruangkritya, CEO of Ananda, said, "We are delighted to continue to achieve such strong results in the quarter and in particular that we are maintaining our growth and performance while maintaining a strong discipline on costs and borrowing. Ananda is the market leader in Bangkok mass transit living and through the constant innovations in both building design and every other aspect of real estate development we aim to maintain our leadership in the condominium market. As evidence of this, just this week we became the first Thai real estate company to issue a perpetual security, which will allow us to reduce our risk by reducing our debt to equity without diluting shareholders like an equity issue would."
He continued, "It will reduce our debt to equity ratio and payments can be postponed indefinitely if there is a crisis, so it reduces our risk similar to increasing equity, without the dilution effects on shareholders. The perpetual security will not affect our Earnings per Share although it will reduce Return on Equity during the life of the security, followed by a boost when the security is repaid. This optimization of our balance sheet will allow us to further support our growth and take advantage of investment opportunities in the future."
He added, "The announcement today also of our partnership with Samsung to research and deploy the new technology of Internet of Things SmartHome is further evidence of our commitment to leading innovation and we are very proud that Sumsung chose us as their exclusive partner to bring this technology to Thailand. We believe this is important as for the first time a developer can change the functionality of a unit to best address the occupiers needs rather than simply differentiating on location and design. "
He continued, "The partnership with Samsung is especially gratifying for us as it includes joint research. We share a customer centric view with Samsung. We will be working together to learn more about how technology can be used to improve the lives of all our different types of customers.. "
He concluded, "Through this research collaboration I believe Thailand can be at the forefront of the global development of Internet of Things and SmartHome technologies and to further support this Ananda will be supporting the Thai entrepreneurial community. We will establish a series of X-Prizes to spur and support local innovators to solve problems and issues our research shows our Thai customers are suffering from, and we will also support these entrepreneurs in getting their solutions out to the global platform. This is the DNA of Ananda, to innovate and improve."