(Yicai Global) March 26 -- China's Phoenix Tree Holdings expects its first-quarter revenue to fall slightly from the quarter before due to the Covid-19 epidemic after the operator of Danke Apartment platform logged a loss in its first public earnings report.

Revenues for the three months ending this month should stand between CNY1.9 billion and CNY2 billion (up to USD281.4 million), the Beijing-based shared apartment leasing company said in its first earnings report as a listed firm published yesterday. 

But Phoenix Tree has not been sitting idle watching its tenants walk away. The corporation has pared its inventory in the first quarter while reducing operating costs by slowing down renovation work and implementing managers' pay cuts to deal with the occupancy rate drop caused by the outbreak, it added.

Phoenix Tree's shares [NYSE:DNK] closed unchanged at USD7.65 in New York yesterday with a USD1.4 billion market cap after logging a historic low on March 20. In January, the company became the second Chinese firm that counts long-term apartment leasing as its core business to go public in the US. It priced its shares at USD13.50, raising USD130 million. 

The parent nearly tripled its revenue to CNY7.1 billion (USD1 billion) last year from 2018, its report shows. Its loss was at CNY3.4 billion. By the end of the year, the number of apartments it managed climbed by 85 percent to 438,300. 

Phoenix Tree maintained a strong growth momentum last year as the company's further expansion in 13 Chinese cities contributed to a significant revenue increase, Chief Executive Gao Jing wrote in the report.

Founded in 2015, Danke Apartment targets young professionals with shared lodgings in Chinese cities.

Editor: Emmi Laine