M&C full-year profit up 54% on S'pore condo sales

HOTEL chain operator Millennium & Copthorne's full-year pretax profit jumped 54 per cent due to accrued one-time revenue from condominium sales by its Singapore subsidiary.

The hotel chain operator, which recently acquired Novotel New York and the Chelsea Hotel in London, said that pretax profit rose to £263.6 million (S$500.3 million) in the year ended Dec 31 from £171.3 million a year earlier.

Revenue rose 35 per cent to £1.04 billion.

The company had said in December that the sale of 147 condominiums by its subsidiary Glyndebourne Development in Singapore brought in revenue of £274 million, and it expected pretax profit to rise by £130-140 million.

The sale contributed £139.3 million to pretax profit, the company said yesterday.

Millennium & Copthorne - which operates over 110 hotels under brands such as Millennium, Grand Millennium, Copthorne and Kingsgate - said that revenue per available room (RevPAR) rose 3.4 per cent to £69.58 due to overall improvement in room rates in the US.

M&C, whose three main gateway cities are Singapore, London and New York, said that group RevPAR increased 5.3 per cent in the first six weeks of 2014 on a reported currency basis, with RevPAR up 5.8 per cent in New York.

The company also proposed a final dividend of 11.51 pence per share and a special dividend of 9.15 pence.

Shares in the company, majority-owned by Kwek Leng Beng's Singapore-based property company City Developments Ltd, closed at 571.5 pence on Thursday. Reuters