SM Prime Holdings Inc. will start constructing this year its newest mall in China in Yangzhou province.
SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said in an interview following the annual stockholders’ meeting the mall in Yangzhou would have about 100,000 square meters of gross floor area and be completed over the next two years.
SM Prime is also expanding SM Xiamen, which currently has a GFA of 126,000 sq. m.
SM Prime has not opened a new mall in China in the past two years. The last mall it opened in China was SM Tianjin, which has a GFA 565,000 sq. m.
Lim said the company had not been aggressively expanding its malls in China because of strong opportunities in the Philippines.
“We have been quite a bit quiet in China for the last two years now because we focused our efforts in the Philippines given the opportunities here,” Lim said.
SM Prime has seven malls in China with a combined GFA of 1.3 million sq. m.
SM Prime in the Philippines is set to open four malls this year that will add 200,000 sq. m. of GFA.
Meanwhile, SM Prime is expanding its residential development by launching launch 19,000 to 25,000 units in Metro Manila and the provinces.
The units will be composed of mixed high-rise and mid-rise buildings, as well as single-detached house and lot projects to address the growing demand among local and foreign buyers.
Lim expects the house and lot developments to start contributing significantly to the group’s revenues.
Among its other businesses, SM Prime is also scheduled to launch this year the NU Tower, its first university-office building in the Mall of Asia Complex, and two new hotels in Iloilo and Quezon City—Park Inn by Radisson Iloilo and Park Inn by Radisson North Edsa.
SM Prime is set to introduce new large-scale integrated property developments in the Philippines that will carry the success of the company’s first lifestyle city, the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City.