SET-listed developer Ananda Development has cut its transfer and presales targets for 2021 by 37% and 24%, respectively, after the most recent wave of the pandemic hit residential demand and delayed the country's reopening plan.
Sermsak Khwanpuang, the company's chief financial officer, said the new transfer target is 10 billion baht, down from 16 billion set in June. The firm has slashed its presales target from 18 billion baht to 13.75-15.75 billion.
"The recent wave of Covid-19 -- since July -- had a strong impact on demand and the country's reopening plan," he said. "We will keep lowering costs and expenses to match the new targets and offset competitive prices."
The company planned to launch five new projects worth a combined 24.4 billion baht in the fourth quarter which would all be joint ventures with Japanese developer Mitsui Fudosan.
"We are monitoring the market situation and evaluating the timeline to launch the new projects," said Jakrawut Rodsattru, director of investor relations. "We expect 2 billion baht in presales from the new projects."
In the second quarter, Ananda transferred 2.6 billion baht in total, lower than its target of 2.9 billion, but presales hit 3.26 billion baht, 16% higher than the 2.8-billion target.
Total revenue in this period was 1.19 billion baht, up 9% year-on-year, mainly attributed to growing revenue from low-rise projects. Profit from continuing operations dropped 55% to 34.6 million baht.
For the six-month period, it recorded 2.23 billion baht in revenue with profit of 73 million baht from continuing operations, down 15% and 84%, respectively, year-on-year.
As of June 2021, Ananda had a sales backlog of 13 billion baht, of which 1.4 billion baht would be realised in the second half of this year.
"Despite the postponement of the sales of new debentures worth 6 billion baht, our financial liquidity remained sufficient to repay debentures of 4 billion baht as we had 3.55 billion baht in cash as of June 2021," said Mr Sermsak.
He said the Ashton Asoke case last month briefly affected the firm's presales in the first week after the Central Administrative Court ruled to revoke the building permit of the project.
"We, as a petitioner, and government agencies who are defendants in this case filed a petition to the Supreme Administrative Court," he said.
He said the Ashton Asoke case had not yet impacted the firm as it would take a couple of years to settle the case.
In a worst-case scenario, it would affect the project's unsold inventories to the degree of 3% of total units, equivalent to 200 million baht.