YANGON—First Myanmar Investment Public Company Limited (FMI) posted revenues of 297.7 billion kyats (US$196.3 million) for fiscal year 2019, a 36-percent increase over last year, the company’s chief operating officer announced at a press conference over the weekend.
FMI—a part of the Yoma Group of companies—attributed the growth to strong performances from its Yoma Bank and Pun Hlaing Siloam Hospitals holdings. FMI Chief Operating Officer U Tun Tun said gross profit more than doubled from the previous year, reaching 110.7 billion kyats.
Net profit, however, fell 41.7 percent, to 14.4 billion kyats, because of a 49.7 percent increase in expenses—104.7 billion kyats this past year—on “initiatives to facilitate the modernization and long-term expansion” of the company and its various subsidiaries, according to a press release from the investment company.
In prepared remarks released before the press conference Saturday, U Tun Tun said the company had “realigned and refined” itself, “disposing of non-core and underperforming assets which provided us with the capital and capacity to strengthen our core businesses.”
According to FMI, spending included, among other things, an increase in employee pay and marketing and promotional expenses.
Yoma Bank saw a revenue increase of 36.5 percent over last year, taking in 254.5 billion kyats—primarily in interest income from a growing loan book, including agricultural loans. U Tun Tun said that the company’s goals looking forward are focused on small loans to small and medium-sized enterprises and banking digitization.
Ninety-one percent of FMI’s revenue came from the financial services sector for fiscal year 2019.
Pun Hlaing Siloam Hospitals saw revenues of 24.9 billion kyats, a 32.6-percent increase over last year. The company attributed the hospital’s growth to an increase in patients and a strong performance in ancillary services.
Healthcare accounted for 8.9 percent of the company’s revenue for the fiscal year. FMI acquired a 70 percent stake in SEIN Hospital, a 100-bed capacity hospital in Taunggyi, this year.
The company’s core businesses include financial services, real estate, healthcare and tourism.
In real estate, U Tun Tun expressed optimism about the company’s City Loft project, a residential development targeting Yangon’s under-served middle-income market. The City Loft strategy is to combine competitive pricing with long-term mortgages to offer units to those traditionally priced out of the property market.
It may take some time, he said, for first-time homebuyers to get comfortable with taking a long-term mortgage.
“In Myanmar there are usually two ways people buy a house. Either your parents buy it for you, or you get rich and buy one,” he said, but he remained confident that this will change, and that City Loft mortgages will help more people to start building wealth.
FMI, a subsidiary of Surge Pun & Associates, is one of Myanmar’s first publicly traded companies, founded in 1992. For the past two years running, the company has placed in the number one and number two positions at the top of the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business’s Pwin Thit Sa report on corporate governance and transparency.
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