Sonae Sierra sees losses narrow to EUR 160 mln in 2009

Portuguese developer Sonae Sierra booked a net consolidated loss of EUR 159.9 mln in 2009 compared with a negative consolidated result of EUR 185.5 mln a year ago. The company attributed the losses to further writedowns of its assets. However, it added that the pace of devaluation started to slow in the last months of 2009 and that it saw operational improvements in the Portuguese and German portfolio. However, these were insufficient to offset the negative yield effect, the company said in a press statement.

Sonae Sierra saw direct net profit rise 20% in 2009 to EUR 76.8 mln. The company attributed the improvement to three factors: an increase in the portfolio; cost-cutting efforts and lower interest rates. Direct income rose 4% to EUR 311.2 mln while net operating result grew 6% to EUR 180.3 mln in the same period. Income was boosted by the openings in 2008 of a number of new shopping centres around Europe and the opening in 2009 of Manauara in Brazil, and Loop5 in Germany. At end-2009, net asset value totalled EUR 1.23 bn, corresponding to a NAV per share of EUR 37.78.

Occupancy levels of the portfolio stood at 94.5% at year-end while the value of the assets under management totalled EUR 6.34 bn. At end-2009, the company had a portfolio of 51 shopping centres in operation, spread throughout seven countries, with a total gross lettable area (GLA) of about 2 million m².