This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
SCENTRE Group has reported higher sales growth in the latest quarter as consumers continue to flock to Westfield shopping centres.
In the last 9 months, sales growth is up $3.5 billion in comparison to September 2021, while it is up $1.1 billion on September 2019 growth before a drop in 2020.
CEO Elliott Rusanow is pleased with the results of the third quarter.
“The group’s operating performance is strong with customers continuing to return to our destinations and our business partners’ sales growing at an increasing rate,” he said.
“Our team is focused on our strategy of creating the places more people choose to come, more often, for longer.
“So far this year, we have welcomed 391 million customer visits, up 16.7% on the same period last year, and we expect to achieve approximately 500 million visits this year.”
“Our business partners achieved $6.4 billion of sales in the 3rd quarter, up $2.7 billion compared to 2021. Since the start of this year our business partners have achieved over $18.4 billion of sales, an increase of $3.5 billion or 23.6% more than the same period last year.
Scentre Group’s $355 million development project Westfield Knox is also moving along well. Commencement of the project occurred in the opening quarter of the year, with the first stage set to be complete in December. The full project is set to be delivered at some point in 2023.
The shopping centre company has seen an increase of $285 million in rent collected (total of $1.92 billion) comparatively to September 2021.
Leisure and sports maintains the highest record of the year for Scentre Group in terms of business partner sales, ahead of retail services, fashion and jewellery. Rusanow states how the sales Scentre’s business partners have had healthy quarters.
“On a comparable basis, our business partners have achieved 14.8% more sales in the 3rd quarter compared to the same period in 2019, and for the 9-month period they have achieved 11.9% more than in 2019.
“Our business partners have seen their sales growth accelerate in the 3rd quarter compared to the first 6 months of this year.”
Demand from businesses is strong with portfolio occupancy at 98.8%, up 30bps from a year ago.
“We are confident in our customer-focused strategy and growth ambition to become essential to people, their communities and the businesses that interact with them,” Rusanow said.
Good progress continues to be made on the Group’s strategic customer initiatives including our membership program which now exceeds 2.9 million members, an increase of 200,000 during the quarter.
