Lisbon's Real Estate Market Hasn't Peaked Yet, Amorim Says
Lisbon's Real Estate Market Hasn't Peaked Yet, Amorim Says
(Bloomberg) -- Paula Amorim, the Portuguese investor who’s chairman of oil producer Galp Energia SGPS SA, doesn’t think Lisbon’s booming real estate market has peaked yet as she plans to invest in offering new luxury services.
“I don’t think the market has reached a peak,” Amorim, 47, said in an interview at the Conde Nast International Luxury Conference in Lisbon. “We’ll still have maybe two more years ahead for real estate prices to stabilize at a high. There’s lots of foreigners also looking at Portugal.”
Investment in retail real estate in Portugal may more than double in 2018 from the 740 million euros ($916 million) recorded in 2017, according to Marta Costa, an analyst at Cushman & Wakefield Inc. in Lisbon. Home prices in Lisbon’s historic center increased 67 percent from 2008 to 2017, according to data compiled by Confidencial Imobiliario.
Amorim is betting on developing new projects combining food and fashion, as well as hotels, to attract customers and take on what she sees as the “enormous challenge” presented by online retail. Her Amorim Luxury SGPS SA company owns the Fashion Clinic multibrand stores in Lisbon and Oporto, which sell clothes, shoes and accessories.
“You can’t feel flavors online, you can’t sense smells,” Amorim said. Online retail “is an enormous challenge, which can even become a threat if nothing is done.”
At the start of next year, Amorim plans to open a new area combining retail, a restaurant and a private club. Investment will be about 6 million euros, not including a planned hotel. With the new project, Amorim Luxury’s revenue will be about 46 million euros in 2019, the investor said.
Stock Offering
Amorim said that in her Lisbon stores, the “most significant” clients are Brazilians, French, Chinese and Angolans.
Besides being founder and chairman of Amorim Luxury, Paula Amorim is also chairman of the Americo Amorim Group holding company, which was founded by her father and owns 10 percent of Tom Ford International.
“I’d like to see that brand grow, and one day be able to have an initial public offering,” Amorim said about Tom Ford.
The Americo Amorim Group controls cork processing company Corticeira Amorim SGPS SA and 33 percent of Galp, as well as real estate businesses. Americo Amorim, who died in 2017, was a Portuguese billionaire who became one of his country’s richest men as he turned his family’s company into the world’s biggest producer of wine corks.
--With assistance from Henrique Almeida
To contact the reporter on this story: Joao Lima in Lisbon at jlima1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net, Anabela Reis, Jerrold Colten
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.