The business units will take care of town-house, detached-house and condominium development as well as administration. The clearer and more effective administrative lines will cost Bt60 million mainly for information technology and training, CEO Thongma Vijitpongpun said yesterday.

The property developer has witnessed robust expansion in the past few years despite the economic slowdown.

The company has operated 34 property projects, and the number will increase to 58 after 24 projects worth Bt10.49 billion are launched this year. The expansion makes it harder for a single unit to take care of after-sales services plus monitoring construction quality and delivery time.

"Our new units will support the company's expansion through next year. The new structure will help us to drive sales growth to achieve our goal," Thongma said.

Preuksa inked an agreement with IBM last year to study its business restructuring programme.

Meanwhile, the company is also expanding its property projects from outside the central business district (CBD) to inside, planning to launch 14 of its 24 new projects in CBD locations.

Thongma said that the CBD locations included Sukhumvit, Pracha Uthid at Onnuj, and Rama II. The company is introducing its first condominium project on Sukhumvit Road, generating an expected Bt200 million in sales this year.

"We have to expand our business to the condominium market because demand for condos has shown strong growth since last year. This follows a home-buyer lifestyle change in which people need to stay close to their office. Thus there is a demand for condominiums located near mass-transit systems like the Skytrain and subway," he said.

Preuksa has maintained its business concept by offer housing prices lower than its competitors by an average of 10 to 20 per cent.

"We plan to develop our construction process to reduce the construction period from 60 days per unit to 45 days this year. Thus we'll reduce our costs and speed up our sales," Thongma said.

The company expects sales to reach Bt10 billion this year, up 21.8 per cent from last year's total.

Yesterday, Prueksa announced sales of Bt8.2 billion and net profit of Bt1.3 billion for last year, up 7.45 per cent and 2.44 per cent, respectively. Sixty per cent of sales came from town-house projects and the remainder from detached houses.

The company had a market share of 8.2 per cent last year, lower than 9 per cent in 2005.

"Our share last year was lower than 2005 because demand for condominiums has grown strongly, but we don't yet have part of that market. However, we believe that this year our share will be increase when our condominium projects are launched," Thongma said.

Somluck Srimalee

The Nation