SHKP Ekes Out 1.7% Profit Increase and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

In today’s roundup of regional news headlines, Hong Kong developer Sun Hung Kai reports a modest profit increase for its fiscal 2020/21, Singapore’s Fragrance Group applies to delist from the SGX after a privatisation offer, and CBRE says data centre investment in Asia Pacific is headed for another record year.

Sun Hung Kai Properties Ekes Out 1.7% Profit Increase

Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s largest developer, reported a 1.7 percent increase in annual profit as it began to recover from the pandemic and political tensions that weighed on business.

Underlying earnings, which exclude property revaluations, rose to HK$29.9 billion ($3.8 billion) in the year ended 30 June, Sun Hung Kai said in a filing Thursday. That compared with the average estimate of HK$30.6 billion from 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Read more>>

Fragrance Applies to Delist From the SGX

Property developer Fragrance Group has applied to delist from the Singapore Exchange, even as Singapore-headquartered TDCX, which provides digital customer experience services, heads for a listing in New York.

Fragrance announced on Wednesday that it has applied to the exchange for a delisting after a privatisation offer. Read more>>

Data Centre Investment in APAC Set for Record Year, Says CBRE

Data centre investment in APAC is set for a record year, with $1.8 billion in direct data centre investments transacted in the first half of 2021, according to the latest research from CBRE.

Mainland China accounted for the highest proportion, with several major deals completed during the first six months. These included the acquisition of a 50 percent stake in Songjiang Internet Data Centre in Shanghai by GLP and GDS’s purchase of a data centre in Beijing from CITIC Group. Read more>>

Walmart Rethinks China Hypermarket Strategy

In the months before the delta variant upended domestic travel in China, Walmart would regularly have employees fly to cities like Shanghai to observe and take photos of what its competitors were up to, according to people familiar with the company’s practices. At times, they got caught and were asked to leave.

While checking out rivals is not uncommon in the industry, the task took on added urgency for the world’s biggest retailer in the past year. A quarter century after it entered China and transformed the way people shop for groceries, Walmart is at a crossroads: it’s fallen from No.2 in 2011 to fourth in China’s hypermarket sector. Read more>>

Singapore Retailers Reconsider Leasing Plans

A big percentage of retailers (46.7 percent) are either reviewing, postponing or dropping plans to seek new physical retail space in Singapore this year after more stringent control measures were enacted by the government in May, according to Knight Frank’s retailers sentiment survey.

But 43.3 percent of retailers remain undeterred about such plans, while the remaining 10 percent did not have such expansion plans to begin with. Read more>>

Hong Kong’s Affinity Puts Burger King Japan, Korea Shops on the Market

Affinity Equity Partners is putting Burger King’s operations in South Korea and Japan up for sale after the US hamburger franchise overtook its bigger rival McDonald’s in Korea by number of outlets for the first time.

The Hong Kong-based private equity firm is now looking for a sale advisor for the franchise’s operations in the two countries, which it had acquired for a combined KRW 220 billion ($190 million) between 2016 and 2017, according to investment banking sources. Read more>>

India’s Supreme Court Freezes Amazon Case for Four Weeks

India’s top court on Thursday ordered authorities to withhold any final decision on Future Group’s sale of $3.4 billion of retail assets for four weeks, prolonging its dispute with Amazon, which has challenged the deal.

Amazon has for months argued that Future violated certain contracts by selling its assets to Reliance Industries, an allegation the Indian retailer denies. The dispute has been taken before courts in India and an arbitrator in Singapore. Read more>>

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