MANILA, Philippines - SM Prime Holdings Inc., the integrated property development arm of the SM Group, is investing at least P9 billion to build three more office buildings in its masterplanned Mall of Asia complex in Pasay City.
SM Prime senior vice president for commercial properties Dave Rafael said the company would put up more office buildings within and outside the MOA complex in the coming years as it seeks to double its office portfolio to one million square meters of gross floor area (GFA) by 2020 from its present size of about 500,000 sqm.
Within the MOA complex, Rafael said SM Prime would build three more E-com buildings at a cost of between P3 billion to P4 billion each.
Three E-com Center, which broke ground last year, is slated for completion by 2017, while Four E-com and Six E-com Centers are targeted to break ground late this year and late 2016, respectively.
“Each of these buildings is about 100,000 sqm of GFA so these will be big buildings,” Rafael said.
One E-com Center and Two E-com Center were completed in 2008 and 2012, respectively, while Five E-com Center was launched yesterday.
Rafael said Five E-com Center is already 95 percent occupied, with a high-profile tenant list that includes Telstra, Teletech, Vestas and Tupperware.
Outside the MOA complex, Rafael said new SM office buildings would also soon rise in Cebu and in Northern Luzon.
“We want to continue growing at an average of about 20 percent a year. For the past two to three years, we’ve actually been growing more. We’ve been growing at a rate of 30 percent for the Commercial Properties Group because of the new buildings so we want to sustain that growth rate. We’re looking at 100,000 sqm (GFA) of new office space a year,” he said.
SM Prime attributes its bullish stance in expanding its office portfolio to the rising demand for office spaces in the country from the information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry.
“BPO is the biggest driver of demand for office space here, not only for us but in the entire country. But if you look at the tenant mix in our buildings, they comprise about 70 to 75 percent of our tenants, while the rest or the 25 percent are taken up by a lot of this shipping and logistics companies. This is because they still want to be near the port area but they want to be in nicer office facilities,” Rafael said.