SM to open mall in Tuguegarao on October 12

MANILA, Philippines – SM Prime Holdings Incorporated, the country’s largest mall operator, will open SM Center Tuguegarao Downtown on Thursday, October 12. This will be its 65th mall in the Philippines.

SM Prime told the local bourse on Tuesday, October 10, that its newest mall will provide an additional 37,000 square meters (sqm) in gross floor area (GFA) to its portfolio, bringing its total GFA to 8 million sqm in the Philippines.

SM said its new mall in Tuguegarao is strategically located at the corner of Luna and Mabini streets, which are main thoroughfares in the major urban city in the north. (READ: FAST FACTS: SM Investments Corporation)

SM Center Tuguegarao Downtown is set to open with 90% of its space lease-awarded. Stores include SM Hypermarket, ACE Hardware, Surplus, Watsons, Miniso, Simply Shoes, and BDO Unibank. 

“The opening of SM Center Tuguegarao Downtown will provide SM Prime a sturdier foothold in the northeastern part of the Philippines, along with our other mall in the region, SM City Cauayan in Isabela,” SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said in the disclosure.

“We are very excited [for] how this new mall will give a unique shopping experience to this urbanized city in northern Luzon and how it will contribute further to the development of [Cagayan],” Lim added.

In 2017 alone, SM Prime has launched malls in Puerto Princesa in Palawan, Cagayan de Oro, Pasay City, and Antipolo in Rizal. (READ: Doing business under Duterte? Philippines’ richest family shows how)

Mall operations remained the top contributor to the net income of SM Prime, which increased by 15% to P7.79 billion during the 2nd quarter of the year.

This brought the bottomline of the country’s leading integrated property developer to P14.39 billion in the 1st half of 2017, 14% higher from P12.59 billion in the same period last year.

The SM group aims to have developed 10.96 million sqm of shopping malls; 139,000 residential units; 2,500 leisure homes; 460,000 sqm of leasable space; and 2,187 hotel rooms by 2018. – Rappler.com