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00:00I want to get a sense as we reopen well down on the numbers as we reopen. Are you seeing pent up demand as we saw in London as we saw in the U.K. in a number of other markets. Is there a sense that pent up demand is now coming to greet you as we go towards the end of the year . Good morning and good to be back hope everyone as well. We definitely saw pent up demand and a number of a number of areas . I think when the malls came out of lockdown there was a big rush towards the malls with everyone catching up with things that they needed to get at home. We saw a shift in consumer behavior when it came to our residential portfolio with people now spending more time at home. They wanted larger apartments units with balconies. Many people have upgraded from apartments to two villas. Recently the hospitality segment has been more skewed towards staycation. So a lot of the beach properties are doing well. So there's definitely pent up demand. I mean without any launches we still managed to clear quite a bit of inventory. But the consumer is more sophisticated. He's looking for a specific product in a specific destination with the right attributes whether it's price or payment plan. And if you hit that sweet spot you can really start to push some sales . Allow your asset management business. I mean that dropped 21 percent a year on a year in terms of the net operating income . You look through the second half of the year and you were describing some of the shifts you're seeing among consumers. I wonder whether you're already preparing perhaps for a scenario where there is a second wave and potentially another wider lockdown not just to the region but around the world. Are you making any plans for that. And would you say that that you're prepared . So everything is everything is possible. Yes. But I think I want to start by commending I mean the way the UAE has handled the situation both from a health perspective and from an economic perspective all the fiscal measures the government and the amount of testing that we've done. That's the highest per capita has been. You know I think at the forefront of many other countries the 21 percent reduction in asset management was primarily due to the closure. We had our malls and our hotels shut. You know due to the restrictions we use our hotels for quarantine purposes. So that's the primary driver of the drop in the asset management portfolio. And we've started to see a sort of a steady increase over summer which has typically been our are slower period. So we are cautiously optimistic of the second half and what that may bring for us. We're going to continue to work hard trying to find new opportunities to create value. We are seeing opportunities. We are funded as a business to handle that. If you lockdowns or restrictions God forbid need to happen again we are better planned with our with our continuity plans to be able to handle that weather from our schools or our malls and to be able to adapt according to the great workforce that we have . Till you put aside a hundred and nineteen hundred and ninety million to help support tenants homebuyers et cetera are you going to extend that. Are you going to provide more relief to tenants to homebuyers. Can we expect another boost. Definitely I mean look we can't. We constantly assess and every sector is different. We came out before having the full assessment but we were of the opinion that we needed to be there for our customers . We are a sustainable business and really trying to push the bar when it comes to gays. And it's very easy to have those you know press releases out there. But then when you know when when the time's come. Businesses such as us as market leaders have to be out there and really do the right thing when it comes to the community . When it comes to our customers we were there for them very early on. We're continuing to support them. The bank facilities the payment plans the rebates that we're offering them. Yeah they do take a little bit out of our profit margin. But as you've seen you get closer to your customer. You understand them . That's your ability to then further drive profits even in a very difficult challenging macro environment. That's the. The ability of the business. But the diversification allows us to jump from one side to the other. And this quarter has really been about our development business where we saw the growth not only from our backlog of six and a half thousand units that are 84 percent sold but also a lot of the work that we were doing that we announced in the past . For for our government bailout in terms of if I can just flesh out a key points here on what is driving interest in some of your products pre Kolbert the Chinese investor base played a very important role. Now with it what do you see in terms of shifts. Who might be now more important a client that wasn't as important perhaps before the coronavirus crisis. I mean historically we haven't seen a massive influx of international buyers trouble. It's been predominantly the domestic market driven by the commodities who are you know very strong investor base of customers with an ability to really go out there not only in terms of ready made properties but we've also recently started to see demand when it comes to land either in land to build villas or commercial land where we're starting to see third party developers and we're selling land across our various destinations for third party developers. So we've seen a shift in those institutional investors possibly move away from maybe the equities and other markets back into real estate because even in these markets the yields that you can kind of get from from there I mean our overall portfolio is still 88 percent leased across raising commercial and retail. So that gives the institutional investor also an opportunity to come out there and really look for different opportunities . When we caught up with you before we talked about opportunities outside outside the UAE you'd mentioned Saudi Arabia and other markets. Look you've got to manage the business for growth . You're at 88 percent occupancy here. And in terms of that portfolio. The Saudis still hold a beacon of hope. As you look towards 2021 where are we going to see you increase the footprint . So for us growth and sustainable growth is a key part of our our strategy. And obviously with Cove the right thing to do is to re validate all of your plans. We remain very interested in what's happening over there. We remain extremely interested in what's happening in Egypt from the real estate market perspective. Those are key areas of growth. We're looking for the right opportunity and the right structure. We don't want to venture out into you know five or seven countries all at once . We think with these businesses very important to go and understand the market understand the fundamentals understand the customer and deliver the right product. So the strength of our balance sheet how well-funded we are the strength of our brand is giving us the opportunity to make the right decision. So we're hoping in 2021 to venture out into those areas. There's also some sectors that were underrepresented in warehouse problem that we're also very keen to invest in .

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Aldar CEO Sees Pent-Up Demand for Abu Dhabi Properties

Talal Al Dhiyebi, chief executive officer at Aldar Properties PJSC, discusses the demand he’s seeing heading into the end of the year, the impact of coronavirus on his business and where he’s seeing growth. He speaks exclusively on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Middle East.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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