Filinvest Land, Inc. (FLI) of the Gotianun group reported a 24 percent drop in attributable net income to P2.42 billion in the first half of 2020 from P3.04 billion in the same period last year due to the disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the firm said gross revenues declined 30 percent to P8.81 billion in the first six months of 2020 from P12.62 billion in the same period last year.

“The results reflect the full impact of the Community Quarantines from mid- March to June which hampered operations and delayed construction activities,” FLI said.

Rental revenues slightly increased by 1 percent to P3.42 billion in the first half of 2020, with the growth in office leasing offsetting the decline in retail mall revenues.

FLI’s office buildings continued to enjoy high occupancy rates and remained operational during the ECQ period. However, most parts of FLI’s malls were closed for the duration of the ECQ, with the exception of essential services such as supermarkets, drugstores and banks.

Following government’s mandate and as support to its tenants, FLI waived rent for establishments which were not operational during the ECQ period.

“The second quarter was a most difficult time for the company with ECQ limiting the operations of our malls and construction restrictions affecting residential revenue recognition,” said FLI President and CEO Josephine Gotianun-Yap.

She added that, “Despite the challenges, we prioritized easing the burden of our customers by providing payment grace periods or rental relief. Our past efforts in process improvement and digitalization allowed us to operate efficiently and effectively during this period as we continued to serve our customers.”

As Metro Manila and other cities transitioned to General Community Quarantine (GCQ) from June to August 3, FLI malls were 60 percent operational with more establishments allowed to open.

Real estate sales revenues went down by 46 percent to P4.56 billion because of lower sales take-up coupled with revenue recognition delay brought about by the construction restrictions during the quarantine period.

FLI also granted a grace period in homebuyers’ payments as support to its customers while under ECQ which affected real estate sales recognition.

There were no residential projects launched in the second quarter, but the company plans to launch P11.3 billion worth of residential projects later this year. “We saw a very healthy rebound of sales during the GCQ period. We look forward to a gradual recovery as we expect buyer amortization payments to normalize and construction capacities to increase which will improve our residential revenue recognition in the next quarters,” said Yap.