They said much would depend on how much provisioning firms make for their property projects, several of which were launched or relaunched at loss-making prices over the past few months.

These include projects by companies such as MCL Land, Orchard Parade Holdings and First Capital Corp (FCC)

"They may report losses because recent projects have been launched at a loss. It would be prudent for them to make the provisions but some may choose to defer it," said property analyst at Vickers Ballas Securities Leong Chi Meng.

Leong, who has forecast a 25 per cent fall in 1998 earnings for the property sector as a whole, said investors were also not paying much attention to earnings these days as they tend to be very divergent depending on how developers treat provisioning.

"Nobody is making too muchfuss about widely differing earnings forecasts these days. Depending on the assumptions you make, you could come up with very different numbers," he said.

He said the most recent case in point was not a property company, but DBS Bank.

Jardine Fleming had forecast Singapore's largest bank might make as little as Singapore $8 million (US$4.6 million) in 1998 in the worst case scenario, depending on the amount of provision loss from its Thai Danu Bank stake. Jardine subsequently revised the full year net profit figure to S$101 million.

DBS has since reported a 50 per cent fall in interim net profit to S$178 million as at end June 1998. Among the larger property companies to report their interim results this week are expected to be DBS Land and Keppel Land.

Analysts polled in Barra's The Estimate Directory had a 1998 consensus net profit forecast of S$218 million for DBS Land and S$80.5 million for KepLand.

Lim Chung Chun, head of research at ING Baring Securities, said his full year forecast for DBSLand was some 53 per cent below consensus at S$102 million.

He expects DBS Land to make S$70 Million in provisions this year though the group should still see good profit from its Aspen Heights project, and operations in Australia and China.

Lim said DBS Land would be one of the better performers in the property sector, which is expected to see earnings dive this year.

City Developments is the other property company which should do relatively well as it has not been aggressive in acquiring land at high prices in the last few years.

"Those who have been buying land in 1996 and 1997 will probably have to make quite sizeable provisions as prices have really come off since," Lim said. This includes Wing Tai Holdings and FCC.

Lim said Wing Tai might have some flexibility as to whether it wants to make the provisions in 1998 or in later years as it has not started development on Draycott and Newton sites acquired at record high prices in the last two years. Lim said he expected FCC to be the only majorfirm to report a full year loss, of S$45 million, for the period ending June 30 1998.