The Egyptian Stock Exchange's (EGX) listing committee has approved real estate company Palm Hills Development's (PHD) request to increase its capital from EGP 2.69bn to EGP 4.3bn, an EGP 1.64bn increase. Around 824m shares will be offered, with each share at EGP 2. The shares will be available within the EGX's database starting 27 July. The company first announced its intention to increase its capital in January. The revenues of Palm hills surged by 74.2% in 2014 with it registering EGP 2.1bn, compared to the EGP 1.2bn recorded the previous year. Net profit during FY 2014 jumped by 47.9% compared to the previous year, recording EGP 353.3bn, which was lower than Palm Hills' expectations of EGP 388m. The notable improvement in revenues was attributed the increase of land sales. Gross sales in 2014 increased by 166% compared to 2013, registering EGP 3.94bn while the net sales recorded EGP 3.57bn, the real estate company noted. Palm Hills Middle East for Real Estate Investments, a company of which PHD owns 99.9% of, signed an EGP 750m medium term loan with Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, and Arab African International Bank. "The loan will be partially directed towards refinancing an existing revolving credit facility previously granted by Banque Misr to the Subsidiary by a maximum of EGP 330m," PHD said. "The balance will be utilised in accelerating the pace of development in Hacienda Bay [one of the company's projects in the north coast), and reducing the project's completion timeline by approximately two years, to be the fourth quarter of 2017 instead of 2019," the real estate company added.
