A Brown Co. Inc. on Thursday said its income for the first semester rose 5 percent to P225.9 million from last year’s P213.6 million on the back of real estate sales and the good performance of its associates.
Consolidated revenues were down almost 12 percent to P289.4 million from P327.7 million last year.
It said the company’s booked real estate sales declined by 11 percent to P259.9 million due to the imposition of stricter community quarantine restrictions which affected permitting activities for the launch of new project phases.
Demand for A Brown’s real estate offerings remain strong as its niche areas of operations Cagayan de Oro, Bukidnon, Butuan and Misamis Oriental posted real estate reservation sales of P669 million for the first half.
“The company maintains its focus on delivering healthy, environment- friendly and low-density community concepts to cater to the middle and premium markets,” it said.
A Brown’s investments in the utilities sector, recorded as equity in net earnings of associates, contributed P167.9 million to the bottom line, a 15-percent increase from P145.4 million last year.
Operating associates Palm Concepcion Power Corp. and Peakpower Energy Inc. also delivered better results for the first half of the year compared to the same period last year, the company said.
Fully-owned subsidiary Vires Energy Corp. secured a notice to proceed in April by the Department of Energy for the proposed Integrated Natural-Gas Fired Power Plant and LNG Storage and Regasification Project in Batangas. A consortium of Seanergy Singapore and London Marine Consultants has started work on the Pre-FEED of the Floating Power Plant component of the Project.
Irradiation Solutions Inc., another wholly-owned subsidiary, is developing the Tanay Commercial Electron Beam Facility. The project is envisioned to be the first Commercial E-Beam Facility to be built in the Philippines.
Permitting and detailed engineering design for the Tanay facility is expected to be completed by December while construction is targeted to commence by 2022 and commercial operations to start by the second half of 2023.
The listed company said in July that it filed its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a shelf registration of 50 million non-voting perpetual preferred shares.
The company said it will initially offer some 15 million in preferred shares at an offer price of P100 apiece, or proceeds of P1.5 billion.
The rest of the preferred shares will be offered within three years.
The company said it aims to use proceeds from the initial offering to fund the development of pipeline real estate projects, land banking initiatives, funding requirements of subsidiary Irradiation Solutions Inc. and other general corporate purposes.