Recurring gains fall for hotelier Shangri-La
Luxury hotelier Shangri-La Asia yesterday reported an 83 per cent rise in first-half net profit after property revaluation gains to US$198.4 million.
Without the revaluation gains, recurring net profit fell 15.29 per cent to US$72.6 million, because of start-up losses of US$5.2 million from newly opened hotels and no currency translation gains. It had US$17.9 million in currency gains in the first half last year.
Corporate finance costs rose US$11.2 million to US$17.3 million, because of the issue of convertible bonds in May last year and fixed-rate bonds in April.
Total sales revenues were up 9 per cent to US$973.5 million and directors declared an interim dividend of 10 HK cents.
Shangri-La said its hotels in Tokyo and Paris had improved significantly. It booked an after-tax loss of US$8.1 million on its hotel operations in Japan, but that was better than the US$11.4 million in after-tax losses in the first half of last year. In France, after-tax losses were US$8.9 million, against after-tax losses of US$18.9 million a year earlier. But these cuts in losses were offset by lower profits from mainland China.
Chief financial officer Madhu Rao attributed the lower mainland profit to start-up losses of hotels that opened in 2010 and last year.
After-tax gains from the mainland hotels dropped to US$15.1 million, against US$31.6 million in the first half of last year. Earnings before net finance costs, tax, depreciation, amortisation and non-operating items amounted to US$281.7 million, marginally lower than the US$282.4 million for the same time last year.
Shangri-La is part of the Kerry Group, the controlling shareholder of SCMP Group, publisher of the .
