China Real Estate Opportunities sees more growth

By Malcolm Locke

LONDON, Aug 29 Reuters - China Real Estate Opportunities (CREO.L), the London AIM market-listed property developer, believes the recent Olympic Games in Beijing will help drive its growth ambitions in the region and help to underpin foreign investment in the country over the coming years.

The group, which has a number of projects underway in Beijing and at Tangdao Bay, close to where the Olympic sailing events were held, said it believes the success of the Games will be "a lasting legacy" for the country.

"While there has been some talk of growth and investment slowing post the Olympics we've not seen any evidence of this," said Richard David, managing director of Treasury Holdings China, the group's investment and development adviser in the region.

"There is a huge amount of interest in the Chinese real estate market at present," he told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.

"As some of the big urbanisation and infrastructure projects surrounding the Games have been completed there is now an increasing focus on the commercial property market. This is where I believe the group will have a real advantage over new entrants into this market. The group has strong institutional backing and we are exploring a number of options to underpin the short- to medium-term growth of our portfolio," he added.

The group has a number of large projects underway including the construction of the Beijing Logistics Park, which is expected to get underway in the next six weeks. The development at Tangdao Bay is also at an advanced stage and has been expanded to 430,000 square metres of mixed-use facilities.

The revaluation of the group's property portfolio, which included the recent acquisition of two additional sites at Tangdao Bay, saw diluted net assets per share increase by 16.8 percent to 9.74 pounds over the six months to end-June. The value of the group's property portfolio increased by 18 percent to 712 million pounds, helped in part by the strength of the Chinese currency in the period.

Pre-tax profit for the period amounted to 15 million pounds, compared with a loss of 3.1 million for the period from December 5, 2006 to end-June 2007.