Mid-sized developers gallop ahead with property development

SINGAPORE (Nov 1): Deft risk-taking by a handful of midsized developers over the three years to 2015 made them the best performers in terms of the financial metrics by which the Billion Dollar Club companies are measured.

Notably, Oxley Holdings had the highest weighted return on equity, stock return and pretax profit growth over the three years to 2015. All in, it garnered the highest score in the sector. The developers with the next highest overall scores were Ho Bee Land and GuocoLand. Both delivered relatively high stock returns, but Ho Bee did significantly better on ROE while GuocoLand did better on pre-tax profit growth.

These developers have similar stories. They took concentrated bets on certain segments of the market several years ago, and parlayed their gains into other promising sectors. For instance, Oxley started out developing shoebox apartments, which were affordable to homebuyers even after land prices in Singapore had soared. It listed in 2010, and soon moved into developing strata-titled offices and industrial properties, which also sold well.

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