TWO of the country’s most profitable listed companies, Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) and SM Prime Holdings (SMPH), expect to end the year on a positive note despite the prevailing global financial crunch. Next year, however, could present a different story.

In an interview over the weekend, ALI president Jaime Ayala said the company is still seeing good growth this year as shown by strong sales of residential products, particularly the affordable to middle-income segments.

“The trend is still quite strong overall, especially in our Alveo and Avida projects. Sales of the Ayala Land Premiere, on the other hand, have dropped partially because of the OFW sales in the US, which is down significantly, and the fact that we don’t have much inventory available anymore,” he said.

Before the global financial debacle, sales to the US account for close to 50 percent of ALI’s total foreign sales. Now, this number has been reduced to 25 percent.

“Fortunately, our sales in the Middle East are going very strong and is up 70 percent in the first nine months. And a lot of that went to the Avida products,” he said.

While he admits that 2009 would be a challenging year, he said ALI would definitely finish on schedule its existing projects.

“As for the new projects, we will have to see how the global situation plays out. It is hard to tell where 2009 will be headed. A lot of it depends on confidence. Right now, people are a bit rattled despite the fact that many of the underlying drivers in the Philippines remain to be pretty good,” Ayala said.

For his part, SMPH executive vice president and chief finance officer Jeffrey Lim said the performance of the group’s retail and shopping mall businesses is expected to continue to be upbeat this year.

“We would still be okay, especially this fourth quarter, with the onset of the holiday season. But 2009 could be challenging. However, we would still continue to expand and build more shopping malls,” he said.

It cannot be denied that the country’s property sector is being sustained by the reliable foreign-exchange remittances of overseas Filipino workers who buy residential properties, as well as bullish prospects of the office sector, largely dictated by demands from business-process outsourcing companies and the retail sector.

The Philippines has also one of the lowest mortgages to Gross Domestic Product ratios in the world at 2 percent.