centro properties sales growth quickens to 7pc

Source: www.bloomberg.com

Centro Properties Sales Growth Quickens to 7% (Update1)
By Garfield Reynolds

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Centro Properties Group, the Australian-based mall owner that won a A$6.6 billion ($6.3 billion) debt extension this month, said sales growth quickened in the third quarter compared with the previous period.

Sales increased 7 percent in the three months ended March 31, after rising 6 percent in the December quarter and 4.8 percent a year earlier, Melbourne-based Centro said today in a statement to the Australian stock exchange. Retailers at the company's Australasian malls had A$10.5 billion in sales over the 12 months to March 31, up 7.1 percent, the company said.

Annual Australasian mall sales rose 3.9 percent to A$9.7 billion in the quarter ended March 31, 2007, Centro reported last year.

Centro, which has 129 shopping centers in Australia and New Zealand and 672 in the U.S., this month won its fourth debt reprieve since December, when the seizure in global debt markets shut funding avenues for the company, leading to a A$4 billion plunge in its market value. Centro is trying to sell stakes in its funds and persuade lenders to let the company retain a collection of malls stretching from Perth, Western Australia, to Yonkers, New York.

Centro Properties advanced 1.4 percent to 37 Australian cents at 3:41 p.m. in Sydney on the Australian stock exchange.

The company posted a record loss in the six months to Dec. 31 as Centro wrote down the value of its U.S. shopping malls. The net loss totaled A$1.1 billion, compared with net income of A$157.3 million a year earlier, and the company wrote down A$578 million on U.S.-based New Plan Excel Realty Trust, purchased last May for $5.2 billion.


Ends.

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