SET-listed Singha Estate is ready to spend 73 billion baht for a five-year plan in residential development, hotels, commercial properties and renewable energy, aiming for 30 billion baht in revenue by 2024.
Chief executive Naris Cheyklin said the company is studying the renewable energy business and plans to set up a joint venture with a strategic partner this year to cash in on the rising segment.
"Renewable energy is the ultimate solution for the global energy shortage," he said. "We are interested in investing in this business because society can use these sources and we can support our existing business."
Singha Estate has set a five-year investment budget of 5-6 billion baht for the renewable energy business. Revenue from this segment in 2024 will account for 10% of the total, or around 3 billion baht.
Mr Naris said the bulk of the five-year investment, 37.5 billion baht, will go into 30 new residential projects being developed by Singha Estate and SET-listed subsidiary Nirvana Daii.
"We are bullish on business investment despite the economic slowdown," he said. "There are two risks: the coronavirus, which will likely end soon, and domestic political risk, which is stalling economic stimulus and delaying the fiscal budget."
Mr Naris estimates that the coronavirus will not have much impact on the company's hotel business, since most of Singha Estate's hotels are in destinations where Chinese clientele are not the target: Britain, Fiji, Mauritius, the Maldives and Thailand.
S Hotels & Resorts, one of the company's subsidiaries in the hospitality business, will spend a total of 22 billion baht for acquisition and development, aiming to have 80 hotels with 8,000 rooms in 2024, up from the current 39 hotels with 4,647 rooms.
Singha Estate will also spend 8.5 billion baht to buy and develop office towers and expects to increase the total net lettable area of office space to 300,000 square metres from the 140,000 sq m existing in the three towers.
With four pillars of investment for the five-year period, the company aims to match revenue from recurring income with revenue from residential development by 2024.
The recurring income will be brought up by offices, hotels and renewable energy.