Westfield owner the Scentre Group has beat earnings guidance for 2022 and pointed towards a rosy start to 2023.
Not surprisingly, the 42 Westfield malls enjoyed an uptick of 67 million extra shoppers compared to 2021, with 480 million customer visits for the year.
For the first six weeks of 2023, over 70 million customers have visited malls, up by more than 10 million on the start of 2022.
Scentre generated funds from operators of $1.04 billion, a 20.6 per cent jump on the prior year and well above previous estimates.
Scentre CEO Elliott Rusanow is bullish about the year ahead.
“We are confident that the strength of our business and platform, the quality of our team and our customer focused strategy will continue to generate long-term growth for our securityholders,” Rusanow said.
It expects a further FFO jump of between 3.4 and 5.9 per cent for 2023 – also ahead of guidance.
“Our focus on driving more customer visits was fundamental to our business partners achieving sales of $26.7 billionn, a 21 per cent lift compared to 2021, which represents a record level of sales across our Westfield portfolio,” Rusanow said.
Occupancy rates sit at 98.9 per cent, with Scentre striking 3,409 lease deals in the year — 2,232 renewals and 1,177 new merchants — an increase of 912 on 2021.
Westfield has also added over a million people to its membership program, which now boasts 3.2 million members.
