Pruksa Real Estate Plc (PS), the country's largest residential developer, will focus only on India for overseas investment because of strong demand.
Chief executive Thongma Vijitpongpun said the company will launch a condo project worth more than 2 billion baht in Bangalore after the success of two projects for single houses and townhouses worth a combined 1.7 billion baht.
"We have experienced India's housing market for five years," he said yesterday. "India has the most potential for continuing investment."
Projects in the Maldives were completed and Pruksa has no plans to continue investing there.
"In Vietnam, we waited a long time for land expropriation and it seemed there was no end to this issue, so we decided to withdraw our investment," said Mr Thongma.
A plan to invest in Indonesia's Jakarta was also frozen after a study found many risks.
Sales and revenue from overseas investment have accounted for 2-5% of the company's sales and revenue each year. In the first half, overseas sales dropped to 1% or 93 million baht, while revenue fell to 1.9% or 225 million baht.
Pruksa has no plans to seek a new managing director for international business to replace Mayta Chanchamcharat, who will leave on Oct 1 after joining the company in 2009.
"We will give more weight to the domestic market," Mr Thongma said.
Pruksa will issue bonds of about 7 billion baht in the third quarter to reduce its debt-to-equity ratio of 1.3.
The developer reported 17.93 billion baht in presales in the first six months, a drop of 20.9% from the same period last year, which was in line with the industry's housing sales.
Pruksa has maintained its presales target of 43 billion baht for this year and 42 billion baht in revenue due to improving market sentiment since late May.
It reported a net profit of 2.93 billion baht in the first half on revenue of 18.81 billion baht, up 34.5% and 22.7% respectively from the same period last year.
PS shares closed yesterday on the SET at 35.50 baht, up one baht, in trade worth 324 million baht.