Stockland released their annual report today. On the conference...

Stockland released their annual report today. On the conference call John Schroder, Commercial Property CEO, said that Australia is NOT oversupplied with retail property assets and with population growth will require additional assets from hereon. He also said that they have strong occupancy levels and there are opportunities to selectively increase rents for existing tenants.

Hopefully these comments and the good result from Stockland will bode well for the LPT sector in the coming weeks and may provide some early indications on what we might expect from the Centro Australian portfolio.

Additionally on the wires is:

0018 GMT [Dow Jones] Stockland (SGP.AU) up 3.4% at A$5.16 after posting 10% growth in operating profit to A$674.0 million, in line with average estimate of A$673.5 million from Thomson Reuters. After 5% increase in EPS, CEO Matthew Quinn says Stockland expects a "nominal increase" in EPS in FY09, "assuming that market conditions do not deteriorate further," before higher EPS growth expected from FY10 onwards. After 45% decline since December, analysts looking for at least flat EPS outlook for FY09, so result and outlook comments should be welcome relief. (WEL)