Parkson's sale of KL Festival Mall

The sale of KL Festival Mall does seem weird as it is to my understanding that one of strategy of Parkson sealing its future moves of reducing the risk of increasing costs of rental rates is to own those malls directly. However, it seems that its sale of the Mall is like taking the other direction. However, based on the rationale for the sale, it seems that it does make sense.

With a smaller mall, it is probably harder to be part of the town planning. If one look at how Aeon Malaysia does it, they do it very well. Usually, the township planning comes with a medium to larger sized mall and brands like Parkson, Aeon or even Giant or Tesco will provide added value to the township. The KL Festival Mall is on already a matured township and it is harder for Parkson to grow from there. Developers would want to work with shopping mall operators to build the township and I think Parkson's move may still be a step towards the right direction.

In searching for Parkson's strategy moving forward, I have added the article here.