The developer is a subsidiary of Indonesia’s largest property player, Sinarmas Land, and trades under the ticker code BSDE on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

In a shareholders meeting on Tuesday, BSD said it owned more than 500 hectares of land near the site of the new capital city, split into 270 ha in Balikpapan and 245 ha in provincial capital Samarinda. It planned to develop most of the land into residential areas, with the rest to be developed according to the government’s needs for the new capital.

“We are currently preparing the [development] plan as well. Maybe in one to two years, we can start launching the projects,” BSD president director Franciscus Xaverius Ridwan Darmali said during a live public expose held by the IDX on Tuesday.

The new capital city is expected to accommodate 1.5 million residents, mostly state officials, on a sprawling 256,000 ha site that spans the East Kalimantan regencies of North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara.

Developing the new capital city is to cost an estimated Rp 466 trillion (US$32.7 billion), 19 percent to be drawn from the state budget and the rest to come from private investments.

President Joko Widodo announced in August plans to resume developing the new capital city despite the challenges of the pandemic, hoping to relocate the country’s administrative hub from Jakarta to East Kalimantan before his second term ends in 2024.

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BSD director Hermawan Wijaya said the housing project in Balikpapan, dubbed “Grand City Township”, would be just 30 kilometers from the new capital. The project marked the company's third project in the city after Balikpapan Permai and Balikpapan Baru.

Meanwhile, the project in Samarinda is the first project in the region for the company, which is looking to establish a joint venture with a local real estate company to develop the project. 

Hermawan added that new infrastructure in the region, including the 115 km Balikpapan-Samarinda toll road that connects the two cities and the new capital, was expected to facilitate development and demand for the projects.

“We have anticipated development around the new capital city area,” he told the same public expose.

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2021 targets

BSD spokesperson Christy Grassela said at the same event that the company would aim for “single-digit” revenue and profit growth this year, the same as last year.

“We need to [give] a disclaimer that [these] may or may not be achieved because of the pandemic,” Christy said.

The company would focus on its housing business in the meantime, she said, as public appetite for landed houses remained strong, especially among residents of Greater Jakarta.

BSD also set a Rp 7 trillion marketing sales target for 2021, up 12 percent from last year, driven mainly by sales of landed houses.

The company booked more than Rp 680 billion in net profit in the first half of the year to reverse the Rp 192.68 billion in net losses it booked in the first half of 2020. 

Meanwhile, its revenue stood at more than Rp 3.25 trillion, up 39.2 percent year-on-year. Development income, primarily from new houses, outperformed expectations in contrast to recurring income, primarily from existing shopping malls and offices, which underperformed.

BSD also slashed its operating expenses to Rp 1.06 trillion in the first half, down 4.5 percent from the same period last year.