Sun Hung Kai Properties (0016.HK)

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Hong Kong's Biggest Developer Sees Profit Rise 57% as Sales Soar

Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., Hong Kong’s largest developer by market value, said half-year underlying earnings rose 57 percent, as sales benefited from a surging home market.

Profit excluding property revaluations climbed to HK$14.6 billion ($1.9 billion) in the six months ended Dec. 31, compared with HK$9.3 billion a year earlier, the firm said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday.

Sun Hung Kai’s earnings were buoyed by resurgent demand in Hong Kong’s housing market, where existing home prices this month reached an all-time high and builders bid up prices for land plots, including a record purchase last week. Sun Hung Kai was one of the most aggressive of local major developers in wooing new buyers during a brief correction last year, offering discounts and mortgages valued at more than a home’s value.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...s-increase

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Sun Hung Kai’s former chairman Walter Kwok in stable condition after heart attack

Sandy Li & Jane Zhang
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 28 August, 2018, 10:13am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 28 August, 2018, 5:54pm

Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, the eldest of the Kwok brothers who run the city’s largest property developer, was taken to hospital after a heart attack, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Kwok, 67, was taken from his residence at Deep Water Bay at around 11.30pm last night for admission into the Ruttonjee Hospital’s intensive care unit, the source said.

The former chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties was released from Ruttonjee and is now recovering at the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital, where he is said to be in a stable condition, the source said. His family members were seen visiting him at Ruttonjee, according to the source.

Sun Hung Kai Properties chairman Raymond Kwok Ping-luen was seen leaving the hospital at around 1.40pm after visiting his brother this morning.

Officials at Sun Hung Kai declined to comment on their former chairman’s condition, citing his privacy.

Kwok, along with his younger brothers Thomas and Raymond, inherited control of Sun Hung Kai from their late father Kwok Tak-Seng in 1990. Raymond Kwok remains the chairman and managing director of the company, and the family is the third-richest in Asia, with a combined fortune estimated at US$40 billion, according to Forbes.

“The hospital has arranged quite a number of medical experts to examine and assess the situation of Mr (Walter) Kwok,” said a spokesman from the Kwok’s family trust. But he refused to disclose his heath condition

The family feud among the three Kwok brothers for control of Hong Kong’s largest property developer by market capitalisation was once the centre of controversy in the city.

A flashpoint of the dispute came in October 2010 when his mother, matriarch Kwong Siu-hing, removed her eldest son as a beneficiary of the family trust. Since then, he has fought to regain control of the company and his one-third stake in the family trust that controls the property empire. The company had a market capitalisation of about HK$345.9 billion (US$44.1 billion) as of Tuesday’s close.

More details in https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/...r#comments

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Hong Kong Billionaire Released From Jail and Heads Home for Dim Sum

By Shawna Kwan
March 21, 2019, 10:36 AM GMT+7

What’s the first thing a Hong Kong billionaire does when he’s released from jail? Order dim sum, of course.

“The thing I want to do the most? Go home,” 67-year-old Thomas Kwok said outside Stanley Prison after serving just over three years of his five-year sentence. He was granted an early release for good behavior. “I have already ordered dim sum.”

The former co-chairman of Hong Kong’s largest developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., Kwok was found guilty in 2014 of conspiring to bribe the city’s former No. 2 official Rafael Hui in exchange for favorable treatment for the company.

Kwok has a net worth of $12.4 billion, making him Hong Kong’s fifth-richest person alongside his younger brother Raymond Kwok, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...or-dim-sum

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Sun Hung Kai’s hotel, shopping mall businesses take a drubbing as tourist numbers plunge amid Hong Kong protests
* Hong Kong’s biggest developer has seen occupancy rates of its hotels fall as low as 50 per cent amid social unrest, says chairman Raymond Kwok
* Its shopping centres are also struggling under the weight of a slump in footfall and spending exacerbated by the protests

Lam Ka-sing  
Published: 6:30am, 13 Sep, 2019

Sun Hung Kai Properties, the largest developer by value in the world’s least affordable housing market, said its hotel and shopping centre businesses have been hit hard by the protests that are shaking Hong Kong to its core and deterring visitors.

Occupancy rates at the company’s hotels have plunged on average by 30 to 40 per cent, with some hotels finding themselves just half full, said Raymond Kwok, chairman and managing director of the company.

Fewer customers came when a lot of Western countries issued travel warnings so the hotel industry has been affected quite a lot,” said Kwok.

He was commenting on Thursday evening after revealing that the company’s underlying profit jumped 6.6 per cent to HK$32.39 billion (US$4.14 billion) in the year to June 30. The protests that marked the start of Hong Kong’s unprecedented political crisis started on June 9, so would have had a negligible impact on the figure.

Hong Kong’s tourism industry has suffered its worst downturn in more than a decade, with arrivals plunging almost 40 per cent in August from a year earlier.

Market sentiment has been battered by massive street rallies that are now stretching into their 14th week.

The demonstrations, initially against a now-abandoned extradition bill but now calling for broader democratic reform, have come on top of the protracted US-China trade war which had already drained appetite for property in Hong Kong.

Kwok, whose company is also the largest private shopping-centre owner in Hong Kong, said malls such as New Town Plaza had been affected. Those catering primarily to tourists or mainland visitors have been the hardest hit.

“Now is still late September. I hope tourist [numbers] will recover and they will come more,” said Kwok. “In the first half of the year, sales at the shopping centres increased. Of course, it reduced in July and August.

“For New Town Plaza, it is most important to protect customers and the staff [during the protests]. It has been necessary to spend more on security expenses.

“On certain days, of course, if there are too many people protesting, we have to ask tenants to close to avoid affecting the safety of the tenants’ staff. After it becomes peaceful, we plan to have more promotions.”

The residential market is not faring much better.

The gains in home prices seen in the first half of the year will be erased, said Victor Lui, deputy managing director of Sun Hung Kai Properties, who is responsible for residential sales.

“In the past few months, the housing market has slowed because of the US-China trade war and the social upheaval,” said Lui. “Home prices at year-end will be more or less at the level of the beginning of the year.”

The average price of used homes across Hong Kong fell 0.7 per cent from May to July, according to figures released by the Rating and Valuation Department. The Centa-City Leading Index slid 1.6 per cent from the end of July to September 1.

Kwok said he “worried” about the violence sparked by the political crisis, particularly conflicts between families members and friends as well as between Hongkongers and mainlanders.

More details in https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/...e-drubbing

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Hong Kong’s Kwok family boosts city with HK$9.4 billion cheque for stake in Sun Hung Kai towers atop West Kowloon station
* Kwok family’s investment exhibits family’s belief in Hong Kong’s prospects, Sun Hung Kai Properties says
* The project will include both retail and office space, according to company

Daniel Ren  
Published: 10:51pm, 16 Dec, 2019
Updated: 1:13am, 17 Dec, 2019

Hong Kong’s Kwok family will invest HK$9.4 billion (US$1.2 billion) for a 25 per cent stake in office towers to come up on a plot of land won by Sun Hung Kai Properties last month. The family is the company’s controlling shareholder and its investment is being viewed as a show of confidence in the city’s economy.

Hong Kong’s economy entered a technical recession in the third quarter amid anti-government protests that started in June and have since derailed its tourism, aviation as well as property sectors.

Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s biggest developer by market value, won the plot on Austin Road atop the West Kowloon High Speed Rail Station – the biggest plot ever sold in the city – for a record HK$42.23 billion in November. It said on Monday that the Kwok family’s investment exhibited the family’s belief in Hong Kong’s prospects.

It said it “expects to bring in proper long-term investors to add value to the landmark project by taking advantage of all the resources and strength [available with] the new shareholders,” Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, the company’s chairman, said in a statement.

The project will include both retail and office portions, and SHKP will “form a synergy” with the International Commerce Centre it operates nearby, Kwok said last month after winning the bid.

The plot has an area that equals 47 Olympic size swimming pools. It can be built into 3.17 million sq ft of gross floor area for retail, office and hotel use, which will make it 12 per cent larger than the ICC, Kowloon's tallest skyscraper.

More details in https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/...-stake-sun

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Sun Hung Kai's Adam Kwok calls on HK govt to help struggling hotels
Tue, Dec 17, 2019 - 5:50 AM

.......He said hotel revenue for the company as a group had fallen by as much as 40 per cent in November and December due to the unrest. For the entire second half of 2019, hotel revenue is forecast to be down around 30 per cent.

At US$38 billion, the Kwok family is Hong Kong's wealthiest clan, according to a Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking of Asia's richest families. Their business empire is among the most exposed to anti-government protests that threaten to upend the city's status as a global business hub.......

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real-es...ing-hotels