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

Good morning. And the summary of Results Conference for First Half of 2023 of Atal Group. Today's conference is carried out in Polish and in English. You can select your language on the interpretation button. In today's conference -- today's conference will be participated by CEO, Zbigniew Juroszek; and myself, Andrzej Biedronka-Tetla, member of the Management Board for Finance. I know that probably all of you who participated in the conference every quarter, you are aware of the agenda of today's conference. But for new participants, let me just say that we will first present the results of the Atal Group for the first half of 2023. Then we will ask you to ask questions in the Q&A box. And then after a minute's break, we will answer your questions. And in the meantime, the CEO, Mr. Juroszek, will comment on the current situation on the market. Let's go to the summary of results for H1 2023. And as usually, we'll start with operating activities. Let me present to you the investments that are in progress and in the pipeline in the Atal Group at the end of June 2023. Atal Group carried out 31 investments or 7,340 flat. In those cities, as you can see in the slide, we marked the number of projects carried out in each city and the number of flat. The biggest number is in the Silesian Agglomeration, but also in [ region ] Poznan, in Wroclaw and in the Tri-City. We are planning on introducing new development projects on land that we already have own or we have the perpetual user [indiscernible] to them. The number of those investments is 50, and it covers 13,620 flats. And you can also see where we are planning. So Krakow, 9 investments, more than 2,500 flat. Silesian Agglomeration, Poznan, Tri-City. Let us move on to current data. There sales of flat and contract in particular quarters in the first half of 2023. We signed development and preliminary contracts for the construction of 1,143 flat. So there's a drop as compared to the analogous period in 2022, as you can see. But the first quarter and the previous quarters were characterized by lower sales increase in the purchase of flat, which you can see in the top part of the diagram. In Q2, we signed 740 contracts. It's the biggest result for a few -- for the last few quarters, similar to Q1 2020. As for sales of flat, as compared to the competition, 1,142 flats. It gives us the fourth position among domestic development companies. Flat in our offer, this blue line shows you the data for the first half of 2022, 2023. At the end H1 2023, we had 4,249 flats in offer. It's less, it's fewer flats than in this analogous period in the previous year, but this first quarter of the previous year, it was the time when the amendment of the construction development law was launched. And therefore, there were many new investments. So this level of 4,249 flats is just an average level that we try to maintain. You can see it before the blue bar for the previous year. Handover in H1 2023, which allowed us to report the revenues that we're going to discuss in a moment. So in the first half of the year, we handed over 959 flats. Most of them in Wroclaw, 317. And in Warsaw and Tri-City, quite a significant number, and Silesia. They had the biggest number of handovers. And these handovers will translate to the reported results for H1 2023. As for the level of handed over flat in particular years. Again, the blue line shows the results of H1 2022 to 2023. There's a drop, as you can see, revenues are also lower than in the analogous period of the previous year, but then you will see, in further slide, that the drop of number of flats by 46%, did not translate into an equivalent drop in revenue, and the value of -- that's due to the fact that flats are simply more expensive. This drop results from the arrangement of our production, construction and the finalization of particular construction works. We cannot distribute finalizations of contracts evenly. And this here, specificity is that the majority of flats from the projects that we finished will be handed over in the second half of 2023. So handed over flats will be mainly generating the results for the second half of the year. And handed over flat in square meters. We handed over 53,000 square meters, as compared to the analogous period of the previous year, it was 106,000 square meters. So it's half the number. New land. We acquired -- in H1 2023, we acquired land for PLN 68 million, which will allow us to build about 44,000 flats usable area. The average price of purchase of usable area was PLN 1,547 per square meter. It's mainly in Warsaw, Gdansk and Kraków. That's where we acquired the land. We're not finishing the process. So we will purchase more land in consecutive months, but I think our President will speak a little bit more about that. At the end of June, this bank of land allows us to build 754,000 square meters of flat. Dividend. In the first half of this year, Atal made a -- adopted a resolution on dividend payment, PLN 193 million, which was 54% of net result for Atal 2022. The dividend rate was 10.9%, as of the dividend date, the dividend was paid out at the beginning of July 2023 for the period since our IPO at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the company has already paid our PLN 950 million in dividend. The dividend policy is unchanged. We share our profit with the shareholders. And the only exception was the dividend for 2019, which was the pandemic year when we made the decision on not paying out the dividend, it was the only exception. But the potential of handovers in 2023. These are the projects that we are planning on finalizing in 2023. In total, there will be 2,756 flats, and the contracting is 85% because 2,330 have been already sold. Those that are finalized are in darker gray color, and those lighter gray color, these are finalized -- the finalized projects that will be commissioned in Q3. We're planning on building 2,756 flats this year, but we're planning on handing over some more flats because we have some flats from previous projects that were not handed over at the end of June 2023. So the number of flats will be closer to 3,000. Potential of handovers in 2024, we're planning on building almost 2,200 flats. 790 flats were sold at the end of H1. So the contracting was at the level of 36%. The total potential of handovers of land projects for 2025, we're talking only about investment on the land that we own. Here, we're planning 60 development projects, for almost 950,000 square meters and almost 17,000 flats. Now the second part of our presentation, consolidated financial results. Handed over flat that I showed in the previous part of the presentation, allowed us to get the revenue at the level of PLN 537 million, which is 39% less than in the analogous period of the previous year. As you remember, the drop in handovers was almost 50%. And in revenues, it's in 39%. Gross result on sales is PLN 190 million, just 16% less. And net result PLN 144 million. And please note that our gross margin on sale in H1 2023 was 35%, which compares to the previous year analogous period, it's a decrease by 10 percentage points. Net margin, at the level of almost 27%. And just to summarize what has been said. Gross margin on sales has increased by about 10 percentage points. Net result is 22% less in nominal terms. But in terms of margin, it's 5.7 percentage points more. And now let me just summarize the gross margin by quarter. Second quarter generated margin -- gross margin at the level of 33.3%, which is a little bit lower than in the previous quarters. But as you know, it's due to the finalized projects. We have various projects in various cities and various locations at various prices, so it differs, it varies. But please note that we have this satisfactory satisfying margin, much higher than in 2022, and before that. The same situation goes for net margin, which was 26% at the end of Q2 2023. And balance sheet, our financial standing, this is quite stable. The only thing we could say is that, liabilities -- there's an increase in liabilities, but it's mainly due to financial obligations due to the dividend that was paid out in July. As for our equity. In nominal terms, there's a slight nominal drop related to the dividend payment that was carried out in -- performed in July this year. The key items in the financial statements. Inventory increased to PLN 2,773,000. Equity, on the right-hand side, like I said, a slight drop as a result of dividend payment. Liabilities increased by the amount of the dividend. It was paid out in July. And like I said, and cash, maybe I should have discussed it earlier, there's a drop due to the dividend payment. And let's have a look at inventory. An increase PLN 2,773,000. Also there's increase in ongoing production. So these are ongoing construction work in progress, that has not been handed over to the customers yet. And finished products, these are flat that are -- have not been sold or are sold but are not -- have not been handed over because they don't have the permit for use. And that's PLN 391 million. This is something we would like to decrease. We would like to speed up the handover of those flats and the sale of flats that have not been sold yet. And the structure of debt maturity as of the end of June this year, a lot of things have happened. In 2023, we have bonds to redeem, PLN 120 million, they will be redeemed to end year. We're considering another issue for a similar amount. And in consecutive years, corporate bonds, PLN 70 million to be redeemed in 2024, and PLN 80 million to be redeemed in 2025. These are issues -- the 2 series of bonds that Atal carried out in H1 2023 for the amount of PLN 150 million. At the end of -- as for loans granted by the shareholder, it was PLN 169 million, but these loans were repaid after 30th of June. And two more loans were granted from the shareholder for PLN 100 million. And there's a loan up to the outgoing limit of 200 million to be used by Atal as needed. And last but one slide, business financing sources. Well, Atal group, mainly equity. At the end of June, it was PLN 1,253 billion, but also prepayments from customers PLN 709 million, corporate bonds, loans granted by the shareholders -- the shareholder and bonds acquired by the shareholder. These are the main sources of financing for Atal Group. And to summarize, let me just say that in the first half of the year, in April and June, we redeemed some bonds, and we were considering issuance of -- in July 2023 we issued series F bonds, PLN 252 million. So this is what will increase the equity of Atal [indiscernible]. And this issue was performed under market conditions and the price of per share was PLN 56, with a nominal value of PLN 5. These are the main assumptions. And this is the main information on our operation in the first half of 2023. And now according to our agenda, feel invited to ask questions. We will give you a minute to write them down in the Q&A box. We will try and read them and answer them. And obviously, our CEO is going to comment on the current situation as well. So please write down your questions in the chat in the Q&A box.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, we've got some questions already today. The presentation has been given in a very professional way by Andrzej. But as always, I would like to comment on the current situation as compared to the previous quarter. There's a lot going on as usual. We increased the equity in the meantime since the last quarter. So the situation creates new objectives that we have ahead of us. And we're using the good market situation. It's much better than it was in the previous quarters. Sales are growing, and we're assuming that in the second half of this year, the sales will be even higher. And now referring to some questions that have been asked, we assumed about 2,000 flats to be sold. But last time, already during our conference, we said there would be probably more. Now, we can say that we are certain that it's going to be more and it's not going to be less than 2,500 to 3,000. I'm very conservative when giving our objectives and expectations. So almost always the result is better than what we share. So we're shifting the threshold towards 3,000. But we're not excluding a situation where it's even more. Obviously, it's affected by the situation with the new government scheme subsidies to the 2% loan. But actually, it does not do a lot in our statistics because these applications are still being processed. We keep hearing information from the press and all the applications that have been submitted in banks, about 50% of them have been processed. This pace is like faster and faster. But we always give you just hard data, concluded contracts, not reservations or bookings. We don't share any intergroup transactions or potential transactions with some funds. We only share information on hard sales data that translates into final results. That have been very good in the last years. If we remove those reservations, information on that, I think we will reach the number of 3,000, and we're quite safe on this. Increasing the equity. This creates new goals, which is to increase the scale of the business. We don't want to say that in 2023, it's going to be this and that, in 2024, it's going to be that. We have some projections of projects, and you can make your own estimations and your own analysis, and you can see it already. But our general goal is to simply increase our share in the market. What do we mean by increasing the share in the market? Well, we have very precise statistics from European countries. You see the share of bigger and medium size and smaller developer companies in the market. And compared to the Polish market, we can say that it's still very dispersed because if we take into account the 5 biggest developing companies, their share on the market in main agglomerations is 18%. If it were 20%, it's still a small number. Usually, it's like 3, 4 main developers in Vienna, in Amsterdam, in London. They have like 45% of the market. Obviously, it's a healthy situation when the remaining 50-odd percent is dispersed among other players. But here, our situation is, like, hugely dispersed. We've got large companies, smaller, medium-sized, yet smaller companies. So we see a broad horizon, and we see a chance for us to increase the scale of our business. We want to take a huge part of this cake. That should be increased to 25%, 30%, and we want to take the biggest share possible of it. We are in a good situation. We're prepared in terms of equity, we have a whole range of projects that are being introduced in the offer, and we may keep asking new land -- buying new land. Obviously, this year, we purchased less land than in the previous year. PLN 400 million were spent in 2022. And now -- for now, we have just spent PLN 68 million in 2023. But during -- there are a few ongoing purchase transactions, and we are planning on some more. So the amount will also increase. And we've got our own inventory of land that we bought at lower prices when the market assumes that we should not be buying land. We did buy land then. So we are really well prepared for the next 3 years. But to take a look even further in the future, we're buying more and preparing more investment. As for sales, I've already said that. There are questions related to changes as compared to the previous quarter. They are rather stable, and those increases, they are in place. There are no further increase in prices of materials. The situation, though, is very dynamic. And obviously, if the Polish Zloty is devaluated, then it will translate into the transport cost of certain raw materials. So there might still be some increase in prices in the future. But we're going into domestic and global economy. By making these assumptions, I don't want to share my point of view because every day brings something new. If we take the situation as it is today, and the balance today, the cost is under control for now. We're not envisaging any major drops of profitability in Q3, Q4. Probably 2024, '25, this profitability might be a little bit lower. But it's not certain because the -- well, the price of land is higher. We won't have that much land bought at a lower price, but we will see. Prices can go up, which will compensate it. So well, so much for this introduction to the Q&A session. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. Let me -- you've answered many of our questions here. But let me just read those that has been -- not been -- right. How many flats do you want to introduce in your offer in H2 2023? It's 2,500 yet to be introduced in the offer. So they will be introducing the offer in the coming weeks. What was the tendency in the cost of construction? Yes, we've said that. We've discussed that. When looking at your very good situation in terms of sales, can it turn out that sales in 2024, in volume, will be lower than 2023? Sales, well, I don't think so because in the whole balance of sales for 2023, the burden is by the first quarter, right? It was low for the whole market, right? So Q1 was quite poor. And then Q2, it was better. And Q3, Q4 should be good, but we're not assuming that in 2024, sales will be lower. They probably will be higher. We're assuming higher sales rather than lower sales. Was the volume of sales in Q2 '23 referred to the 2% loan? Not high. Our product is very diversified, geographically diversified. And therefore, these government schemes that are being introduced, they are not that significant for us. This -- well, there's a lot of interest in this scheme, but these applications are still being processed. And actually, in our sales, we don't see a significant percentage of that because they are still being signed. And it's a slow process. It's much slower than we expected. How many flats would the company like to introduce in -- yes, it was answered. And how many in 2024? About 4,000, even more than 4,000 flats to be introduced in the offer, and this is quite realistic. What were the sales of flats in July and August? And can the number of flats sold in Q3 '23 could be higher than Q2 '23? We're almost at the end of Q3, so we can assume that in sales, it's going to be bigger than in Q2, because there's not much that can change this data. And what are the risk results that you think are the biggest risk for Atal in Horizon 12, 24 months? As for finance, you saw everything in detail. We've got financing for all the projects in the secured for by equity, by bonds, by our family holding. So if finance is not a problem, construction is not a problem because apart -- well, in Poland, we only carry out construction of residential housing, road infrastructure and logistics centers. They are being built to some extent. But from the whole construction landscape, it's just a part of it. Therefore, we have no problem with subcontractors, so we don't see any spreads here. So threats are everything that is outside our controls. So global crisis, for instance, but there is potential risk, obviously. But it's not only a risk for Atal, but for the whole economy. And we're part of the entire economy, right? So there are no specific risks for the company. These are external risks, not internal to the company. We hear about them from analysts, but they're not related to our company specifically. This is the last question. If there are no questions -- no further questions. Thank you very much for participating in our conference. Contact us directly via the Investor Relations department, and let's see each other in the next quarter. Thank you very much. Goodbye. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]