Chinese developer profit soars as housing market warms

The China Merchants Property Development Co., Ltd (CMPD), a leading property developer in China, reported a surge in its third-quarter net profits on Wednesday as the country's real estate market perked up. The company saw net profits soar 94.5 percent year on year to 1.2 billion yuan (190.5 million U.S. dollars) in the third quarter of 2012, according to a statement it filed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Business revenues jumped 38.5 percent from the same period of last year to 6.1 billion yuan, said the statement. The results improved markedly from those in the first half of the year, when the CMPD posted a year-on-year decline of 16 percent in net profits. China's housing market has been cooling since the government tightened its grip on the sector in 2010 through the imposition of purchase restrictions, higher down payments and property taxes. However, recent government policies to bolster a slowing economy, including interest rate cuts in June and July, helped boost demand for housing and fueled expectations of price rises. Compared with July, fewer cities saw month-on-month rises in home prices in August, but more reported higher prices than a year earlier, according to latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics. In the first three quarters of the year, the CMPD generated 16.1 billion yuan of business revenues and 2.4 billion yuan of net profits, up 29.5 percent and 16 percent year on year, respectively.