Industrial and business park investor, Goodman Property Trust, has made a record high full year profit, driven up by strong increases in the value of its $2.3 billion property portfolio.
Sky Tower. Auckland CBD Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The trust's full year net profit is up 30 percent to $233.1 million, in the 12 months ended in March, despite a slight dip in revenue - down 0.4 percent to $166m.
That was more than offset by rising property values, which accounted for more than half of Goodman's underlying profit of $247.9m.
The chief executive of the trust's manager John Dakin said Goodman's strength was underpinned by more than $350m of new development projects over the past three years.
"It's a strategy that is transforming the trust's land holdings into high quality, income producing assets," he said, adding that the projects had been funded through the sale of some $300m of assets over the past three years.
"Following the completion of the current work book the trust's land weighting will reduce to just 8.3 percent of total property assets, while investment in the favoured Auckland Industrial and Business Park sectors will increase to 67.8 percent."
Goodman's operating earnings before tax were 9.41 cents a unit in 2016, and expected to rise to around 9.5 cents a unit in the current year ending in March 2017.
This year's dividend of 6.65 cents per unit was up 3 percent from last year's, but is forecast to remain unchanged in 2017.