Despite prevailing challenges in the real estate industry, SM Prime Holdings Inc. (SM Prime) expects to surpass the record profits it earned last year and is supporting its continued growth in 2026 with a capital expenditure (capex) budget of ₱100 billion.

“For 2026, the estimate is to spend about ₱100 billion, which is the same as last year, although we’re still finalizing the breakdown. But we would want to be more strategic in terms of deploying our capital,” SM Prime President Jeffrey C. Lim told an online media briefing.

“Every peso that we will spend should generate value for our shareholders. We will not cut our spending or delay it to conserve cash, but we will ensure that our spending is efficient and the returns are very clear before we commit to this capital,” he explained.

Lim said SM Prime will also strengthen its customer engagement through better experiences and improved services to sustain its foot traffic and sales.

“We will also focus on the timely completion of our projects, because in the past we had some delays, so that we can turn over the products and units on time to be able to contribute to the revenue that we have projected for 2026,” he added.

For growth drivers this year, SM Prime Chief Finance Officer (CFO) John Nai Peng C. Ong said, “Let’s look at the malls segment, and we see that the retail as well as the service sectors... they continue to be steady drivers of our economy, and that is evident by the foot traffic in the first few weeks of the year 2026, and we have seen also consistent and expected tenant sales reported by our malls.”

“We continue to look at the significant contribution coming from our retail and commercial segments, which means that... we continue to look at revenues coming from malls, offices, hotels, contributing to the top-line revenues,” he added.

SM Prime Senior Vice President at President’s Office Noel Torres said, “Our malls business will continue to drive our portfolio for 2026.”

“And our malls are stronger than ever. High tenant demand, occupancy is almost at an all-time high, and revenue and net profit are also at an all-time high for our malls business.”

For the firm’s residential business, he said SM Prime will focus on completing projects that have already been started in its core segment, with much of the effort directed at bringing these developments to ready-for-occupancy (RFO) status.

“A smaller portion of our portfolio is hotels and convention centers, which we anticipate and we expect strong growth this year, particularly given the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] Summit, which is being held in the Philippines this year. I think our hotels team is expecting a significant uptick in revenue given that ASEAN Summit,” Torres added.