China Vanke net profit down 16.5% in Q1

SHENZHEN — China Vanke, the country's leading property developer, said Thursday night that its net profit for the first quarter of 2017 slumped 16.5 percent year on year to 695 million yuan ($100.8 million).

In its quarterly report, Vanke said the revenue in the three months rose 27.2 percent to 18.6 billion yuan.

During the quarter, its sales soared 99.7 percent year-on-year to 150.3 billion yuan.

Zhu Xu, secretary of the Vanke board, said the profit decline was mainly due to a seasonal factor and the profit for the whole of 2017 is still expected to grow.

Yan Yuejin, an analyst with E-house Real Estate Research Institute, said Vanke had projects across the country and some are in the smaller cities without housing cooling measures, thus giving more boost to its sales in the future.