Eastern Star maps out aggressive development

Eastern Star Real Estate has laid down an aggressive plan to launch two or three residential projects worth Bt4 billion to Bt5 billion in the second quarter of next year to boost presales by at least 10 per cent for the year.

Chief executive officer Ratanachai Phatinavin said yesterday that the company already had land close to the extended routes of the Skytrain and MRT.

This year Eastern Star embarked on only one project, Nara 9, on Sathorn-Narathiwat Road worth Bt2.4 billion.

"Our board has a conservative policy in developing residential projects because when we expand our investment we have to use our own cash rather than borrow from the bank. Our business policy is to maintain our debt-to-equity ratio below 1 time," he said.

Currently, its D/E ratio is 0.12.

With its ambitious investment next year, the company targets presales of nearly Bt3 billion, up 20 per cent from its presale target of Bt2.35 billion this year. Presales will be booked as part of revenue of Bt2.8 billion targeted for next year.

The company now shows presales of nearly Bt2 billion in the first 10 months of this year, with nearly Bt1 billion of that from Nara 9. That project succeeded in selling 150 units of the total of 361 after its grand opening on Wednesday.

The offering price was Bt125,000 per square metre but the company has already raised that by 1.2 per cent to Bt126,500 per square metre since the opening.

The company also is negotiating to sell 602 rai (96.3 hectares) of land in Rayong for an industrial estate.