DOUBLEDRAGON Properties Corp. on Tuesday said it has started construction for its second industrial leasing hub in Iloilo City.
The listed property developer’s unit, CentralHub Industrial Centers, Inc., broke ground for the 3.9-hectare property in Iloilo on Tuesday. The site will host modern, standardized, multi-use warehouses for commissaries, cold storage, light manufacturing, and logistics distribution centers.
CentralHub Iloilo is located along Iloilo R3 Road, which is three kilometers away from the Iloilo International Airport and 10 kilometers away from Iloilo City Proper. The facility will offer 22,000 square meters (sq.m.) of leasable space once fully developed.
This will be the second CentralHub complex under DoubleDragon’s portfolio.
The first industrial leasing project, CentralHub-Tarlac spanning 32,000 sq.m., is set to be turned over to tenants by July.
“We believe that the industrial leasing segment presents significant growth opportunities for DoubleDragon as the current market supply is very traditional and fragmented and with growth now flowing into second and third-tier cities demand for industrial space has risen considerably,” DoubleDragon Chairman Edgar J. Sia II said in a statement.
DoubleDragon has targeted to have eight CentralHub sites by 2020, with two each in North Luzon, South Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. These will give the company an initial 100,000 sq.m. of leasable space in the next two years.
The company is banking on industrial leasing as one of its four sources of income, with the other three being provincial retail leasing, office leasing, and hospitality. Potential clients for the industrial facilities include e-commerce businesses and tenants of its community malls.
DoubleDragon is currently building 100 CityMalls until 2020, set to cover 700,000 sq.m. of leasable space. For the office segment, the company has DD Meridian Park in Pasay City and Jollibee Tower in Ortigas Center, which together will cover 100,000 sq.m.
“Other than the e-commerce businesses that will soon require facilities such as CentralHub, there are also a lot of synergies within our ecosystem since both our affiliates and the tenants of our CityMalls are the natural users of warehouse facilities as they continue expand their business to capture the growing consumer base of the Philippines,” Mr. Sia said.
Under the hospitality segment, DoubleDragon seeks to have 5,000 hotel rooms under its brands Hotel101 and JinJiang Inn Philippines.
Once these projects are completed, DoubleDragon will have 1.2 million sq.m. of leasable spaces under its portfolio. The company is slated to generate a net income of P5.5 billion by 2020.
DoubleDragon’s net income more than tripled to P744.56 million in the first three months of 2018, following a 182% jump in revenues to P1.83 billion.
Shares in DoubleDragon shed 65 centavos or 2.51% to close at P25.25 each at the stock exchange on Tuesday. — Arra B. Francia