PETALING JAYA: Sunway Malls had seen better traffic and sales recovery since the easing of restrictions in Phase 4 of the National Recovery Plan as traffic and sales recovered 100% in Q4’21, benchmarking its performance against its historically high traffic pre-pandemic in Q4’19.
According to the company’s statement, the 100% normality recovery in Q4’21 came in higher against the 70% normality recovery in Q4’20.
“Pent-up demand, festive seasons, high vaccination rate, and reduction of Covid-19 cases were among the key drivers in aiding the recovery. Cyclically, Q1 and Q4 are the malls and retail industries peak quarters due to festivities,“ it noted.
The group stated that 92% of its retailers reported sales recovery. A total of 32% of jewellery, health and personal care, digital lifestyle and other retailers had seen a recovery in sales exceeding 100%.
Fashion and beauty retailers recovered between 80-85%, F&B recovered between 85% to 90%. On an aggregated basis, F&B recovery is slightly above non-F&B between 5% to 10%.
Sunway Malls & Theme Parks CEO HC Chan (pix) said the consumer electronics category had outperformed other retail categories as consumers seek digital connectivity.
“Leisure and entertainment segment is still hampered by capacity limitation. But on a collective aggregate basis, they worked out to be 100% normality,“ he said.
Another key factor affecting the differentiated recovery rate was the different reopening timelines for various retail sub-sectors.
“In 2021, there were 150 days of lockdown before all retail sub-sectors were permitted to operate compared to only 50 days in 2020. The threefold-longer duration equivalent to five months of not fully operational period meant there was a lot of catching up to do for the mall and retail businesses,“ he said.
The January 2022’s figure indicated that the momentum is still sustaining well with traffic on Jan 1 being the best traffic count for the past 22 months. The group expects a strong January performance.
Sunway Malls’ H1’22 forecasts consumer confidence is likely to remain robust driven by gradual pick-up in economic activities and ongoing booster shot rate. The interest rate is expected to be accommodative for the first half of the year with no rate hike until H2’22 when a potential 25 basis point upward revision is expected.