HONG KONG: Top Chinese property developer by sales Country Garden said on Tuesday it was prepared to slow down work on new projects to boost safety, as its core profit in the first six months jumped 80 percent thanks to higher revenue and margins.
The homebuilder said in a statement its core profit, which excludes revaluation gains and non-recurring items, rose to 13 billion yuan ($1.9 billion). Net profit rose 72.5 percent to 12.9 billion yuan, while revenue was up 70 percent at 131.9 billion yuan.
Responding to safety concerns after a series of incidents at its sites, Country Garden said it would "overhaul" its management systems, boost supervision and training and increase use of technology to cut down on manual labour.
"For the sustainability of our business, we would rather downshift into a lower gear and raise the standards of our business management," President Mo Bin said in a statement.
Following the accidents, the developer halted all projects in China for a few days for security inspections last month. The halt would not impact its full-year new-start and completion targets for its projects, it said.
The stock extended gains to 9 percent after the results, outperforming many of its peers.
After expanding aggressively in small cities in the past couple years, Country Garden has said it would be more selective in choosing cities going forward, and would only expand in small cities where there was enough demand. - Reuters