Lend Lease up 15%

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 41

Lend Lease up 15%

NZPA-AAP Sydney Lend Lease Corp has announced a 15 per cent increase in net profit for the 1988-89 financial year to sAustl3s.6 million ($NZ174.36M), in line with its target for annual growth. Lend Lease chairman, Mr Stuart Hornery, told a news conference the property and financial services company was budgeting for “another modest increase” in profit next year. “We’re basically in good shape. It sounds a

bit boring, but there’s no doubt that when times are tough, there’s a flight to quality,” Mr Hornery said. He said the property arm had a confirmed forward workload of $1.2 billion worth of projects, a company record. Mr Hornery said a modest 14.8 per cent lift in revenue from the property group to $1.4 billion partly reflected that Lend Lease was big-project-oriented and profits were only taken at the end of the project. The development pro-

gramme for the 1990 s tfas essentially only three projects, the Darling Harbour project in Sydney, the second stage of Riverside in Brisbrane and Grand Central in Melbourne. During the period the company reduced gearing to 19 per cent or 10.3 per cent of assets and its available cash of $243M exceeded total borrowings by SSIM. Managing director, Mr John Morschel, said since balance date gearing has been further reduced to 17 per cent.