Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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CAIRO (Zawya Dow Jones)--Egypt's real estate giant Talaat Moustafa Group Holding said Wednesday its total sales reached 5.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($1 billion) from January to date.
"We have achieved this year EGP5.5 billion in sales until now," Hisham Talaat Moustafa, chairman of the group, told reporters at a press conference.
The company sees total sales at EGP12.5 billion at the end of 2008 compared with EGP10.3 billion recorded in 2007.
The group's second-quarter earnings are expected to stand at similar levels to first quarter earnings of EGP425 million, Talaat Moustafa said.
Talaat Moustafa also estimated that 40% of the company's turnover will be generated from projects in Saudi Arabia in around four years.
"We will start marketing for our projects there on Aug. 15 and in three to four years 40% of our work will be from Saudi Arabia," Talaat Moustafa said.
The company recently entered the Saudi Arabian market when it purchased two pieces of land in a deal worth 12 billion Saudi Riyals ($3.2 billion) in Jeddah and Riyadh, and is looking to purchase more land.
"We financed the land purchase through liquidity that was available to our company. We are on the look out for other land as we want to increase our landbank in Saudi," Talaat Moustafa said.
The real estate group is also actively studying opportunities in Eastern Europe.
"We have hired companies that are studying possibilities in Montenegro and in Kiev in the Ukraine," Talaat Moustafa said.
The company announced earlier in May that it formed a joint venture with U.S.-based Hill International to manage some of its projects.
"Hill International will be our arm for developments on the international market," Talaat Moustafa said.
Talaat Moustafa said his company is interested in Montenegro and Ukraine as they are politically stable with high rates of growth and are attracting a large number of tourists.
"These are the main criteria we look at when entering a market," he said.
The group said Tuesday its major shareholder TMG Investment raised its stake to almost 50% of total shares through an EGP1.3 billion transaction with the National Bank of Egypt.
TMG Investment bought 133,604,071 Talaat Moustafa Group Holding shares held directly and indirectly by the National Bank of Egypt.
-By Maha El Dahan, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires, +20122267850, mahaeldahan@yahoo.com
Copyright (c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
28-05-08 1110GMT
