The profit margin of the mall was 94%, considering the turnover only rose by 5% to EUR30.8 million, according to the company’s filing with the Finance Ministry.
More than half of the malls have been booking net losses year by year, because most of them were developed using bank loans, whose repayment eats up most of the rent revenue.
AFI Palace Cotroceni, too, was developed with a EUR234 million loan, but the developers refinanced it via a EUR220 million facility this year, which they got from Erste, Raiffeisen and Deutsche Pfandriefbank.
The profit of this mall is almost three times the profit Baneasa Developments, which operates the retail area of the Baneasa complex in northern Bucharest, posted in 2013, EUR10.3 million. It also puts Cotroceni Park SA among the 50 most profitable businesses in Romania last year, a ranking where OMV Petrom SA (SNP.RO) took the top spot with more than EUR1 billion net income.
Where does all this profit come from? David Hay, chief executive officer of AFI Europe, says the development of the office buildings nearby did not directly influence the turnover of Cotroceni Park, since the AFI Park [office] project is registered to other companies.
With a lettable area of 80,000 square meters, the AFI Palace Cotroceni welcomed 53,000 visitors a day on average last year, an increase of 2%, while tenant sales stood at EUR205 million, up 4.3% on 2012.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)