By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's biggest industrial property company Goodman Group bumped up its profit forecast on Tuesday, citing supply chain blockages and a scarcity of warehouse space around the world, driving its shares to a record.
The upgrade shows a company benefitting from a squeeze in shipping capacity that has pushed up costs for manufacturers and retailers globally, as well as prompting them to hold on to supplies, enlarging storage requirements.
Goodman, which is building a mega-warehouse for Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) in Sydney's outskirts, said it now expects to grow operating earnings per share 15% in the 2022 financial year, up from a forecast of 10% growth it gave in August.
"No one's giving up warehouse space," CEO Greg Goodman said in an interview.
"If you can get stock, you're sitting on it and filling your warehouses out, whatever product lines you're in," added Goodman, who holds 2% of Australia's 15th-largest company by market value.
Goodman shares rose 7% in afternoon trading, their biggest one-day gain since initial pandemic lockdowns in early 2020 drove analysts to upgrade their forecasts, touching their highest intraday level of A$23.95 before closing at A$23.49, up 5.6%. The broader market was down 0.3%.
"Increased demand, intensification, scale and duration of developments provide strong medium to long term earnings visibility and (assets under management) growth," said Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) analysts in a client note, which called Goodman's update "ahead of our expectations".
The company, which has 153 properties in Australia and a presence in 14 countries, expects total assets under management to grow to A$70 billion ($52.65 billion) by June 2022, from A$62 billion in September with around A$12.7 billion of development projects in progress.
CEO Goodman said he expected the benefit from supply chain stoppages to last after the stoppages were resolved since customers wanted to adapt to long-term changes like population growth in cities, demand for shorter freight journeys to cut carbon emissions, and takeup of electric delivery vehicles.
"It was happening pre-COVID; all COVID did was put a bit of an accelerator under it, and customers that were thinking about it longer term are now going, 'I've got to think about it a bit shorter term'," he said.
($1 = 1.3296 Australian dollars)