MTR profit drops, property development plunges

Railway operator MTR Corporation Ltd. saw its profit slip 21 per cent year-on-year in 2016 as the group underwent an 89 per cent drop in its property development business, according to a company filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The group’s total profit for the year hit HK$10.25 billion (US$1.3 billion) during last year, as opposed to HK$12.99 billion in 2015, while its property development business plunged to HK$311 million in profit from HK$2.89 billion the previous year.
Despite the company being granted a two-year contract for the provision of management and technical assistance services on the MSAR’s light rail transit (LRT) system worth MOP474.3 million, the company makes no mention of the project, or Macau, in the filing, while reporting on projects in the UK, Sweden, Australia and China.
Overall revenue for the period increased by 8.4 per cent to HK$45.19 billion, with the group recording growth ‘in all business segments,’ according to the filing.
“In Hong Kong many of our businesses have a degree of resilience against an economic slowdown,” notes group CEO Lincoln Leong Kwok-kuen, pointing out that “profits from Hong Kong property development were muted in 2016 and will remain so in 2017 as we will have no new developments scheduled for completion in the year.”