Australian property group to focus on retail
One of Australia's most diversified property group, Stockland, is choosing to concentrate on developing retail projects and slow down investments in office projects.
Based on the company's earnings report this year, it found that shopping malls in the country are its strongest assets and yielded better returns than office investments. "Over time, we will be looking to scale down our office and industrial exposure and will replace that rent with better-quality retail rent...," Managing Director Matthew Quinn said in a statement.
Stockland cited that in the last two decades total returns for retail assets came in 10.9 percent compared with 5.8 percent for offices and 9.5 percent for industrial assets.
The company reported that it will see seven percent earnings-per-share growth for this year until next year adding that it would stick to its strategy of increasing investment in residential, retail and retirement projects.
Currently, the company has invested in US$2.5 billion worth of retail and redevelopment projects in the country. These projects will pave the way for growing Stockland's retail assets by as much as 70 percent in the coming years. Moreover, its roster of residential assets were also showing positive growth despite the recent Reserve Bank and bank interest hikes. On retirement projects, Stockland's confirmed that its hold on retirement village operator Aevum would not affect forecasted earnings per share in the year.