Enduring the Financial Impacts of COVID-19: Property Developers in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the early financial implication of COVID-19 towards property development firms in Malaysia as well as discuss the actions taken and their effectiveness to ensure business continuity and to minimize the impact to the financials. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design was implemented in this study. Content analysis was adopted to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data of the quarterly and annual financial reports for thirty (30) public-listed property developers in Malaysia. Subsequently, an interview with a market research expert was conducted via Skype to provide possible explanation on the key findings from the financial reports. The Movement Control Order ("MCO") imposed by the Malaysia Government had cause several operational difficulties for the property developers. These negative impacts of COVID-19 were reflected in the declining financial performance of the property developers in year the 2 nd quarter of 2020. However, upon the actions taken by the management as well as the loosening of the MCO over time, developers' performance appeared to be improving as they were allowed to operate their business with certain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to adhere. The actions taken were appeared to be effective in responding to the impacts of COVID-19. The findings of this study might not represent the actual financial impact of COVID-19 on the property developers because the smaller property developers in Malaysia were not included in this study. Furthermore, since the study was only focused for the year 2020, the full impact of COVID-19 to property development was not able to be assessed. It is proposed that the study may be reconducted to gauge on the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the inclusion of the smaller property developers in Malaysia. Despite its limitation, this study provides input that relates to the impact of COVID-19 in this specific industry in Malaysia. This study recommends actions to be taken by management to ensure business continuity and minimize the impact of pandemic to the firms' financial performance, should similar pandemic arise again in the future.