Atal S.A. (1AT.WA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are here to present the results of Atal Group in 2021. Today's conference is being transmitted in Polish and in English. You can switch on the English version by using the interpretation button at the bottom of the screen. Today, we are here with the CEO of Atal, Mr. Zbigniew Juroszek and my name is [ Andrei Biedronkada ]. I'm the Financial Director. In the first part of the conference, we're going to give you an overview of our 2021 results in the form of a presentation, and then we'll ask you to ask questions concerning the presentation. Summary of results for 2021, we have already presented our financial statement on Thursday. We'll start from operating activities and our map of locations. Again it's, like always, 7 locations in a broad sense, 7 cities that we operate in. We have 37 ongoing investment for over 7,000 flats, 7,326. We're preparing land for 30 new investments for 9,210 (sic) [ 9,069 ] flats. Something we would like to specifically boast about is the contract for flat sales for 2021. It was for 4,258 flats, which is an increase by 47% as compared to the previous year. It's the highest achieved result to date. The sales were quite even in the second, third and fourth quarter, as you can see in the first diagram, and it was also record sales for -- in group's history. The sales of 4,258 flats, so we're very happy to have achieved this result. I would like to ask CEO, Zbigniew Juroszek to give a comment on sales for 2022. Obviously, we're very proud about the results achieved in 2021, which is the result of more than 4,000 flat. It's fantastic. But as you know, it's quite, as a rule, it's quite difficult to project sales. And even in the current circumstances, it has become even more difficult. But we have all those ongoing investments. None of them have stopped. So we need to make some assumptions, and we assume that at least 75%, 80% of the result from the previous year. So we're thinking about 3,500 flats. It's quite realistic. Quite conservative, actually. And these are the assumptions we have for this year. The first 2, 3 months have already confirmed our assumptions. Now the piece of information relates to the sales of flats. As compared to the competition, as you can see, we have sales at the level 4,258 flats. So we're in the second position in the ranking. We're higher than our competition from the last year that sold over 4,000 flats. Our offer at the end of 2021, in our offer, that is flats that were booked or that were for sale, it was 3,104 flats. It's lower than in the previous years. It fluctuated throughout the whole year of 2021, which was very much related to high level of contracting in the previous year. Handovers in 2021, this is something that is of particular importance to all of us, because as we all know, handovered flats are translated into revenues from sales directly. So in the 3,700 flats, which is absolute record in Atal's history, we handed over the biggest number of them in Warszawa, in upper Silesia and in Krakow because that -- it was almost 800 flats in Krakow alone. In Q4 2021, we handed over 1,300 flats. And even though, throughout the whole year, this number was quite evenly spread throughout all the quarters, this Q4 it was the time when we really handed over and commissioned the biggest number of flats. Again, in Krakow and in Silesian metropolitan area. Handovers in 2021, it was a record number, 3,700 flats. It's our historical record for the group, it's 23% more than in the previous year. If you take a look at the number of total salable area is 213,000 square meters, so it's even a bigger increase than the increase in the number of flats alone. New land. Like we said, we spent about PLN 200 million, which is PLN 194,000 (sic) [ 194 million ]. We purchased a lot of land in Poznan, Katowice, Krakow, in Warszawa and Piotrkow Trybunalski. The average price was in 2021 was PLN 851 per square meter. And what's important about from this price, which is invariably at a low level, the important thing is that Atal's land bank from 2021 allows us to implement projects for almost 500,000 square meters. Dividend. We have so far paid out almost PLN 0.5 billion of dividend in 2021. It was EUR 117 million of dividend for 2020. After the COVID period when it was stopped for a year, we returned to paying out dividend. Our dividend payment policy speaks about paying out 70% to 100% of consolidated net results. And please comment from the CEO.

Yes, as the director said, our policy has not changed with regards to dividend, it's 70% to 100%. We have had 1 incident of not having paid out dividend, which was 2020, which was the beginning of the pandemic, and we explained it a number of times. And even despite the unfavorable external conditions, well, the situation of the company, within the company and on the market, we don't see any premises to treat this year in a particularly negative way. And therefore, we're within the 70% to 100% dividend payment policy. And we're going to present our suggestions by the end of April to the general assembly. There are no new negative circumstances, and we are observing the dividend policy. Now handovers in 2021. These are the completed projects with use permit. To those of you who analyze the projects in particular years, here, we -- in the table, we have projects that were to be completed in 2020, but they got the permit at the end of 2020. So we present the amounts completed with the permit for use. But some of the projects were not completed in 2020, and they were delayed for 2021, and they are included here. We have 93% of contracts covering the investments that we completed in 2021. And the total number was 3,338 of flats and the finalized projects that are not covered by contracts are 766, which is the potential for the next year. Handovers in 2022 is 3,202 flats, including the investments that you can see now. And about 77% of them are covered by contracts already. And some of them that are here with the number 0 in sales, they are -- have been already booked reserves. So this number of contracts should increase quite quickly. And what has been said, we need to take into account that the number of flats from 2021 will be added to this year's handovers probably. And the potential for 2023, because we work in 2-year cycles, is -- so the number of flats is 3,078 that can be potentially handed over in 2023. And the other flats that remain unsold from the previous year. And the contracts for 2023, we can say that we still have some time to sign contracts for them, which is 36% of the flats. Total handovers of planned projects after 2024, these are the projects that have started in 2022. It's more than 10,000 flats, more than 560,000 total sellable area square meters, and this number of projects is 34. They will be handed over after 2024. Now consolidated financial results. Something you probably are aware of is increase of sales, which is historically high, more than PLN 1.6 billion. It's an increase by 44% as compared to the previous year. Gross result from sales is PLN 453 million. So it's twice the result of the previous year. And net result, PLN 331 million, which is double the number of the previous year. And gross margin on sales increased to 27% in 2021 from 20% in 2020. So you can see a huge development and growth in gross margin, and something that we said and announced before was 25% of margin. This has been achieved. Net margin, almost at the level of 20%, an increase from 14% in the previous year. And here, some more detailed information related to consolidated financial results. This increase of results -- revenues from sales, you can see in the bar graph, 44%. Gross margin on sales, 7 -- 6.7 percentage point higher. Net result, an increased 98%. And net margin, an increase by 5.4 percentage points. This increase of margin, 27% as compared to the previous years, this is the same as 2016, 2017. So we are back to the higher margin on sales and quarterly margin on sales. Pay attention to what happened in 2021. We were talking about margin 25%, but we started from less than 23%. That was gross margin on sales in the first quarter. In Q2, it was more than 25%. And we -- in the fourth quarter, we had the gross margin on sales by 29.6%. So almost 30%. And net margin in the first quarter, 17%. And in the fourth quarter of 2021, it was almost 22%. As for consolidated financial results in the balance sheet. This is quite boring, I must say, because these levels of the balance sheet items are similar to the previous year. The only thing we'd like to attract your attention to is that we have an increase in assets by 12% in current assets, and 12% of increase -- sorry, 22% of increase in equity in liabilities. And long-term liabilities, 29%. But these were advance payments from the clients, that has to be mentioned. And increase in indebtedness. Some key items from the financial results. We have inventory at almost the same level despite the huge number of handover flats, and despite the fact we still have some flats that have to be handed over, it's almost at the same level as in the previous year. Equity on the right-hand side, it's an increase to PLN 1,166,000,000. And on the left-hand side, cash, an increase from PLN 242 million to almost PLN 500 million in 2021. So it's doubled. The group has doubled its cash. And liability, an increase to PLN 1,950,000,000, which is a result of -- an increase of advance payments from the customers. And now we'll briefly go through inventories, which is, like I said, quite boring because it's quite constant. Almost no change to the previous year despite an increase of value of carried out investments, of implemented investments. And the structure of debt maturity. At the end of the year, we only had bonds that are being -- that are to be redeemed in autumn this year was PLN 200 million and PLN 240 million in 2023, and PLN 133 million, these are bonds acquired by the shareholder and related entities. Bank loans, PLN 83 million at the end of the year. These were signed contracts, but not all of them were actually used. And I would like to point out that most of those bank loans have been finalized and the company reduced external indebtedness to the minimum, and we're limiting new loans. And for now, we're mainly using bonds. We don't want to give up bonds, we would like to continue our cooperation on the capital market with regards to bond issue. And loans are quite an expensive instrument, so we're not using them so extensively. We're trying to reduce it to the minimum. Sources of financing in Atal Group. What I said, it's mainly equity, PLN 1,166,000,000, but also prepayments from our customers, PLN 785 million; and corporate bonds, PLN 440 million; bonds purchased by the -- acquired by the shareholder, PLN 133 million; and bank loans, PLN 45 million, most of them are being paid out this year. And to summarize, we started 17 projects in 2021 for 3,743 flats. We've launched sales for 18 investments for 3,300 (sic) [ 3,304 ] flats. And we've finalized 20 investments for more than 3,000 flats. So we started more -- we finalized more investments than we started despite the fact that we handed over so many flats. Now I would like to ask you to use the Q&A button to ask questions. We're going to leave you for a minute to ask the questions, and then we will come back to try and answer all your questions. So please feel free to ask questions now.

Now we're back after the break to answer your questions. We'll start from the first question. What's the current situation on building sites for us regards availability of labor force?

As for availability of workers, that should be understood as there are Polish subcontracting groups. There are no major changes here. We have also subcontractors that have resources from Poland and from Ukraine among the workers. There are certain movements here, where individual people are to go or have gone to Ukraine, but they're replaced by Polish workers. And there's a third group, [ a part ] from a larger supervision, we have a bigger number of Ukrainian workers, and here the reduction of potential of our labor force is 10%, 15%. But it's being supplemented by other people also from Ukraine, but also with people from Poland, actually majority of them are in the reduced group. They try to fulfill their tasks. So as for the Polish market, the situation is good. All very good due to the fact that some infrastructural projects are halted, specifically those carried out by local authorities. So the potential is there on the market among the development companies and road construction companies. So it's a very good situation here. As for workers from Ukraine, the situation is quite difficult. But we still have some such workers like that. It's not like a decrease by 50%, which would be a huge problem, but for now, we don't see any such major change. As for the German project, too, we also see a reduction in drop of sales in Q1. Well, let me comment on that. It's not sold in a Polish model. We're going to sign a contract with a German fund. We have not sold individual flats. On Wednesday, we're closing the whole transaction. So actually, it's not translatable to Polish [ realty ].

What's the potential of new introductions, implementations for 2022?

Well, we have 25 projects planned. Obviously, not all of them are always introduced or launched for sales, and the stages differ, but this is what we have planned for now.

Another question: how do you estimate the dynamics of the price of square meter in 2022 and '23?

Well, this is a more complicated issue, because as for the projects that are to be finished in 2022, usually, the level of expenses for such investments is 70% to 90%. We're talking about incurred costs. So this effect of higher prices or lack of or some gaps on the market, it's not high. So for 2022, it should not be radically different as compared to 2021. Obviously, we are assuming slightly more, I don't know, profitability may be returned to 25% of the average level perhaps, maybe slightly reduced number of handovers, but this 2022 should not be significantly different as compared to 2021. However, those investments that are being started in 2022 in a perspective of handovers in 2024 -- to 2024, the level of expenses is, incurred expenses is for now, low. It's the purchase of land, we have historical purchase of land historically low. But then we have the cost of the project, of the design and of the investment. These are -- they are most vulnerable to the increase of prices that we observe now. So it's very difficult to estimate the result of -- the level of cost. We are the general contractor for ourselves mainly, but we also use subcontractors from the market. And the prices of the subcontractors adds to the final price. Obviously, we are estimating it's going to be higher but -- we're assuming the prices are going to be higher in 2024. If today we are handing over flats that were built according to the previous year's cost, we can estimate to the level of prices we have now. But the prices are going to be handed over in 2024 will probably have to be a little bit expensive. We're verifying it and analyzing it on a current basis, but it's very difficult to answer these questions. As you can see, our assumptions and projections, we've been always famous for having them quite accurate or a little bit underestimated, so I would not like to be very precise in answering it because there's a huge potential of not guessing correctly. But we assume the prices are going to be higher in 2024.

Now what's the situation in sales after Ukrainian -- the war in Ukraine, like, for instance, in March?

There's no significant difference between January, February and March. We see those -- consumer behavior is a little bit slower than it was. Like we said before, we are assuming sales about -- at the level of about 3/4 of what it was in the previous year. So the 1/4 is slower decision-making and slower behavior of consumers, and there are some people who have problems with getting a loan. But on the market, we have those magic cures like PRS, which allegedly says that people are not going to buy flats on mortgage loan because it's not going to be profitable, it's not going to be cost-effective, and PRS is going to do it all. I think Poles are quite intelligent and they can verify the situation. If the interest rates are much higher throughout the year and there are certain other factors that raise doubts, then we take loans for 30 years. So even if we assume that the repayment of a mortgage loan throughout the year is going to be higher by PLN 500, PLN 700, this Polish consumer for this -- throughout this year, is going to pay PLN 7,000, PLN 8,000 more. But in the next 28 years, the levels of loan are going -- cost of loan are going to return to some more reasonable level. I don't believe that due to the fact that the interest rates are higher and there are external factors, specific factors, that this will make people give up mortgage loans and give up buying flats. I don't think it's going to change the situation. As for PRS, I've already stated my opinion. It's a great marketing product, in my opinion. But in reality, we should look at it as a supplemental product on the Polish market that can grow somewhere on the market. But it's a small scale, less than 1% for now. And I think it's going to be another 25 years to reach 10%. So we need to focus on behavior of Poles, on what we can afford, on what we can do to get higher salaries, to have this capacity to take a loan at a higher level. I hope that this model will survive.

And a question related to the mortgage loans regarding the new recommendation from the Polish Financial (sic) [ Supervision ] Authority. Is it going to increase -- affect sales in April or after April?

We obviously cannot estimate this impact of that recommendation. But the clients that have been buying flats so far, these were clients who were at the level specified for -- by the Polish Financial Authority. But we think that the situation we have now can somehow mitigate the outcome of the recommendation.

Now is the policy of the company changing with regards to land purchase, due to the situation that we have now?

We've always had the same policy. We've -- or bigger number -- bigger areas of land for future designs and implementation so that we could get better prices. Last year, there was an increase in prices in all the areas where we work. So we tried to avoid this spiral of prices. But before that, we actually had really good prices. So after this -- these increased prices, the average is still quite good. Now we have a different situation in the last 2, 3 weeks where we can see more land on the market. There's an increased price for them, specifically that from 2021 with a new tendency to a willingness to negotiate. We need to see if it translates into a decrease of -- too elevated, in my opinion -- prices. There are more offers for now, so we take a selective approach to them.

What are the costs of construction? Are they still increasing? Can the general contractor inside the group still secure the supply of raw materials, of steel?

Yes, the prices of steel and concrete, they added -- contributed to an increase in costs. But I don't see any force majeure here. It's a regular market situation. So for now, this increase of prices has to be caught up by savings in other elements. But we've already explained that in 2022, we have higher costs of construction that we're going to compensate in 2023, 2024 by slightly higher prices of flats.

And now in the case of implementation of new project stages, should we expect a decrease in scale of investments?

Where we have our pace of 25 plans, as you can see in our diagrams with the numbers, we follow the assumption. Obviously, it may happen that some investment may be postponed, might be slowed down. There are some investments that have started on the market. Now I'm referring to the previous question. There are -- there's land on the market from lower -- smaller players, but they paid a lot of money for that land, and their projects are not well-prepared and sometimes we cannot even buy that land, even despite the fact that the location is good and attractive to us. But due to the fact that it was too expensive at the very beginning, we cannot repurchase it. But what we prepare, we want to deliver. There's no policy of accelerating or decreasing the pace.

What's your assessment, what's your opinion on the level of interest rates and its impact on demand? And how do you see the revision of assumed volumes for consecutive years?

Well, we are not thinking about any decrease in the number of customers due to higher costs incurred by borrowers. Obviously, it's something that we feel that the customer feels. But Polish customers have higher level of education with this regard. And I think that the situation with loans is quite professionally done. And this information is presented in a professional way. And the loans, mortgage loans, are taken not for 2, 3 years, but for a longer period, and it's being very well explained to the customers.

Now what are expected change of prices in 2022 for flats?

Well, now we're after an increase in years 2020, 2021 and 2022. 2021, we actually reached a similar level to 2022. So we're assuming this year is going to be quite similar in terms of prices, unless we have some contracts that refer to handovers in the future like 2023, 2024. Where now the expenses on investments are small, but they're going to be higher in the future. So then we'll try and offer bigger prices, specifically for handovers in 2024.

What level it's going to be?

Well, it's hard to say, but we're talking about 10%, 15% of difference.

Thank you very much. This was the last question. Thank you very much for all your questions, for your participation. Feel free to contact our Investor Relations department should you have any more questions. Thank you for being here with us, and we'll see each other in the next quarter. Thank you. Goodbye. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]