SM Prime Holdings Inc., the country’s largest property developer, said it will now build residential projects in China, following its recent merger with real estate unit SM Development Corp.

“As a consolidated group, we can now go to China with residential [projects] because before we only have malls. We are coming in now as one company SM Prime,” SM Prime president Hans Sy said in an interview at the sidelines of an awarding ceremony Tuesday night at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel.

Sy said SM Prime would use the same formula in developing and constructing residential and condominium projects in the Philippines.

“It is something similar to the Philippines. I think the formula will work well in China because we are customer-oriented and we do understand the users,” Sy said.

SM Development Corp. in 2010 announced plans to put up residential projects within the malls of SM Prime in China. SM Prime at that time operated only two malls, namely SM Xiamen and SM Jinjiang.

SM Development had planned to put up a residential condominium within an 80,000- square meter lot beside SM Xiamen. However, plans to put up residential projects in China were delayed because of regulatory problems.

SM Prime currently has five malls in the cities of Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu, Suzhou and Chongquing with a total gross floor area of around 800,000 square meters.

SM Prime in 2014 is slated to open SM Zibo, which will provide an additional 154,000 square meters of gross floor area and SM Tianjin, which will have a total of 540,000 square meters.

The Sy family is in the final stages of consolidating all property development assets, including SM Development under SM Prime.

Sy said SM Prime would announce a five-year plan for all subsidiaries, including malls, residential, leisure hotels and lifestyle communities, once the consolidation took effect. 

Sy said he remains robust about China despite concerns about the possible slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

“China’s economy may have slowed down. But their growth is still 7.5 percent. I don’t know if you can call that a slowdown,” Sy said.

SM Prime’s net income in the first three months of 2013 grew 14 percent to P8.43 billion from P7.40 billion year-on-year amid higher rental revenues.

Gross revenues in the first nine months expanded 12 percent to P24.77 billion from P22.10 billion on year.

Rental revenues, which accounted for 85 percent of total income, rose 12 percent to P20.94 billion following the opening of new SM Supermalls in 2012 and 2013, such as SM City Olongapo, SM City Consolacion, SM City San Fernando, SM City General Santos, SM Lanang Premier and SM Aura Premier.