SM Prime Holdings Inc. is looking at spending P100 million to beef up its electronic commerce platform.
Speaking at the company’s shareholders meeting Monday, SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said the company will initially focus on “click and collection” to enable tenants and customers to meet virtually in the platform.
“Moving forward we see e-commerce as a strategy to complement our mall business and connect our retail tenant to our customers,” he said.
Henry Sy Jr., SM Prime chairman, said the company is well- positioned to benefit from the exit of the economy from the ill effects of the new coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
Sy said the company kept its P80-billion capital expenditures for the year given the company’s long history of resilience starting in the 1980s, with the assassination of Benigno Aquino, the Asian financial crisis in the1990s and the US subprime crisis in the 2000s when “people continued to patronize SM products.”
SM Prime posted a profit of P8.3 billion in the first quarter, down 5 percent from P8.8 billion last year. Revenues reached P25.8 billion, down 3 percent from P26.5 billion.
“The company’s first-quarter results reflect the business disruption impact of the quarantine measures implemented last March 16 which affected primarily our leasing businesses,” said Lim.
During the lockdown, SM Prime closed all shopping malls, except for stores that offer essential products and services, resulting to a 16 percent decline in revenues in the first quarter to P11.3 billion and waived P8.8 billion in mall rent in the duration of the lockdown.
Lim said SM Prime has opened all of its 74 malls since May 15.