UAE Sorouh’s CEO positive despite surprise Q4 net loss

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TOUGH TIMES: Sorouh Real Estate's full-year profit rose to 1.784bn dirhams. (Getty Images)

Sorouh Real Estate posted a 29 million dirham ($7.90 million) surprise loss in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, due to rising finance costs, missing analysts' forecasts.

The company said it posted an "unrealised loss" on financial assets of 35 million dirhams ($9.53 million) for the year and that it had 117 million dirhams ($31.87 million) in exposure to equities through hedge funds.

The company's full-year profit rose to 1.784 billion dirhams, compared with 1.257 billion dirhams in 2007, Sorouh Real Estate said in a statement, without giving quarterly data, which Reuters calculated from previous financial statements.

Analysts forecast of the company's fourth quarter profit ranged from 376.08 million dirhams ($102.45 million) to 400 million dirhams ($108.97 million), according to a Reuters survey last month.

Sorouh Real Estate earned 1.81 billion dirhams in the first nine months of 2008 and 483.91 million dirhams in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The company said 2009 would be slower than 2008 but that it was confident of long-term prospects after the group posted a surprise loss for the last quarter of 2008.

"We accept that 2009 will be slower than 2008, given the global financial situation, but we remain confident of the long-term outlook for Abu Dhabi and for Sorouh," said Mounir Haidar, Sorouh's Chief Executive Officer, in a statement.

Abubaker Seddiq al-Khouri, managing director, said: "We remain confident that we are positioned as positively as we can be for 2009. Sorouh strengthened its cash position in 2008 to ensure we have the necessary liquidity in place for the coming year and beyond." (Reuters)

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READERS' COMMENTS

Long-Term
Posted by DG, Dubai, UAE on Thursday 29 January 2009 at 16:49 UAE time


So what does this add up to ? Which CEO has ever said that the long term outloook on their company is bleak or unknown ? They always say it is rosy - and there are few to remember these lines in the 'long term'. In the long term we are all expired !

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