China Evergrande Group's net profit more than tripled in first half

CHINA Evergrande Group, one of the country's largest developers, said today its net profit more than tripled in the first half of this year amid a surge in revenue.

Net profit during the six months through June soared 224.4 percent from the same half last year to 23.13 billion yuan (US$3.47 billion), the Guangzhou-headquartered company said in filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Revenue jumped 114.8 percent year on year to 187.98 billion yuan and profit attributed to shareholders skyrocketed 832.2 percent to 18.83 billion yuan.

Contracted sales during the six-month period surged 72.2 percent from the same period a year earlier to 244.09 billion yuan while the gross floor area jumped 49.1 percent to 24.751 million square meters.

The strong contracted sales were mainly due to the company's large scale operations, huge number of available projects for sale, strong ability to enhance the value-add features of its homes as well as its flexible and practical sales strategy and marketing model, the company said.

The average selling price climbed 15.5 percent from the same period a year earlier to 9,862 yuan per square meter between January and June.

In the first half of this year, Evergrande acquired 152 new pieces of land parcels, evenly distributed among first, second and third-tier cities, with the average price by gross floor area of 2,039 yuan per square meter.

By June 30, Evergrande had 719 projects in 223 cities across China in its development pipeline, with gross floor area totaling 276 million square meters, it said.