Vista Land shares get 'conviction buy' rating

MANILA, Philippines - Shares of publicly listed property developer Vista Land and Lifescapes Inc. have received a “conviction buy” rating from leading international stock brokerage house Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia-Pacific (CLSA).

In a report issued last July 16,” CLSA property sector analyst Leo Venezuela said he expected Vista Land’s share price to rise 64 percent or P3.54 within the next 12 months.

“Vista Land has been on a roll... and we continue to reiterate our buy call on Vista Land and make it one of our conviction buy picks with a potential 64-percent rise to our target price over the next 12 months,” Venezuela stated in the CLSA report which was released to stock market investors.

Venezuela noted: “The disappearance of the political overhang (referring to the recent presidential campaign of Sen. Manny Villar who founded the company) for Vista Land makes (it) more attractive.”

CLSA analyzes various companies and its top picks are included in a “conviction buy” list expressing its confidence in those companies’ fundamentals and future prospects.

Good results in 2009 and an encouraging start to 2010 in terms of sales take-up anchored CLSA’s view of Vista Land ‘s strong fundamentals. The property group had earlier reported that it was targeting a record P20 billion in sales take-up for 2010. Ricardo B. Tan Jr., Vista Land’s senior vice president for finance, said recently that there was a strong likelihood that the company would declare a cash dividend during the second half of the year.

Renewed confidence, rising remittances from overseas Filipinos, low interest rates, and modest property price appreciation are factors that bode well for the property sector in general. Venezuela said Vista Land has recently been outperforming the market, and he attributed this to the market “finally recognizing its inexpensive valuations, robust fundamentals, and disappearance of the political overhang two months ago.”  

Shares of Vista Land have similarly earned “buy” ratings from other analysts in the first semester of 2010.

Vista Land is the holding company of five business units, namely Brittany, CrownAsia, Camella Homes, Camella Communities, and condominium developer Vista Residences. As the country’s leader in homebuilding with the widest geographic presence nationwide among all property developers, the group has generated recognition among buyers for its themed and master-planned communities that offer quality housing across all market segments.

The group recently announced a core net income of P694 million in the first quarter of 2010, a 10 percent increase over the P630 million recorded in the first quarter of 2009. The company had total consolidated assets of P55 billion as of 2009.