Cedar Woods Properties Limited (CWP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. And I thank you for joining us at Cedar Woods' 2023 Annual General Meeting. My name is William Hames. I'm the Chairman of Cedar Woods. And now it is after 10:00, or right on 10:00. And as a quorum is present, I formally declare the meeting open. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the meeting is being held on the traditional lands of the Noongar people in the Whadjuk nation. I'd also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. I also welcome you, all of our shareholders, who are joining us in person today. And I also welcome a bundle of people that also service us and look after us. Thank you very much for coming. And I welcome those that are joining us on the web platform. Turning to our agenda. I will recap on our strategy, discuss our financial performance for '23 and comment also on the share price. We will then hear from our Managing Director, Nathan Blackburne, who will provide a business update, showcase some of our projects, comment on the market conditions and finally on our outlook for the coming year. Then I will return to the formal proceedings as set out in the Notice of Meeting. Voting on resolutions will be conducted by way of a poll. Shareholders will be able to submit their questions in writing on the Open Briefing platform at any time during the meeting. If you have any questions, I encourage you to submit them early as possible because we have a moderator in place who will receive the questions and provide them to me. We have a long agenda, limited time and we may not be able to answer every question. If you have a question, it will help us if you can note the resolution to which it relates, unless it is a general question. The session is being recorded, and webcast of today's presentation will be available via the ASX and also Cedar Woods' website after the meeting. The notice convening the meeting and related documents have been made available to all shareholders on our website, and I propose that the notice be taken as read. The minutes of the previous general meeting of members have been signed by myself as Chair and placed on the shareholders' minute book. I would like also to welcome my fellow nonexecutive directors and members of our executive team who are with us today. Nathan Blackburne -- I'll go across the table: Nathan Blackburne, Robert Brown, Valerie Davies, Jane Muirsmith and Paul Say. Paul is based in Sydney, and he is joining this meeting by telephone. Our strategy. Our strategy is to grow and develop a national project portfolio, importantly, diversified by geography, product type and price point so that it continues to hold a broad customer appeal and performs throughout a range of market conditions. The strategy has been one of the key differentiators of our business for a long time. We are not bound by one single market or one specific product type. And given the nature of the last year, it served us really well. We have a variety of projects and products that attract different buyer profiles at different times. While our overall strategy has not changed, we are reshaping our portfolio in the way, in fact, we grow our land bank. While we continue to deliver our development pipeline, we remain disciplined on the level of risk we take and the hurdle rates of return that we expect. With capital being precious and the cost of debt being elevated from where it was just a couple of years ago, we have been pursuing agreements and joint ventures. That allows us access to third-party-owned land or capital, and it reduces our capital outlay and preserves our balance sheet. Nathan will highlight 2 of the new partnerships later in his presentation. Let's briefly review our final (sic) [ financial ] highlights for 2023. In '23, we delivered a net profit of $31.6 million and a revenue of $391 million from 919 settlements. This resulted in a return on equity of around 7.3% and earnings per share of $0.385. Our revenue was up 17% on the prior year, but our profit was lower as a result of the softening in the gross margin. And that's due to construction costs and also some sales costs -- or sales prices, and that has affected the whole industry. We expect our margin to improve over time, both by moderation in cost growth and an improvement in revenues. Although in the short term, we expect a similar margin for '24. The Board declared a final dividend of $0.07, fully franked, taking full year dividends to $0.20. This reflects a payout ratio of approximately 53% of net profit after tax. We are mindful of the importance of the dividend to our shareholders, and we have balanced this with our need for future capital to ensure that our balance sheet remains well funded and also supports the growth opportunities across the business. Over the year, we have contracted 694 lots, homes and offices. And as at the 30th of June, we hold -- or held presale contracts to the value of $448 million. This represents a strong outcome, especially when considered in the context of the total revenue for the year. And in fact, as at the end of September, that has risen to $500 million, and that was announced in our first quarter update. We expect the majority of these presales will deliver revenue in FY '24 and the balance in '25. Overall, '23 was a challenging but satisfactory year given the market conditions. Later on, Nathan will talk to you about our expectations for this year. On our share price, let's look over the last 3 years. History shows that there is a negative correlation between interest rate movements and the price of property stocks. In a rising interest environment, the ASX-listed property companies generally experienced a downturn stock price pressure as of last year. The S&P ASX 200 REITs index declined by more than 15% in the previous year, FY '22, and residential developers like Cedar Woods were generally harder hit, noting the impacts that increased borrowing costs have on new housing sales. This also, of course, coincided with the material increases and the general living cost increases. Our sector fundamentals, I have to say, have strengthened over last year. And there is a deepening -- at the present point in time, there's a housing shortage, strong unemployment and a high rate of inbound migration. So there is demand emerging. While interest rates are starting to stabilize, the sector tailwinds are strengthening backed by government policy towards housing construction. And as the graph shows, sentiment is starting to return in favor of listed property companies like Cedar Woods. We are working to take advantage of the next phase of the property cycle. On behalf of the Board, I would also like to thank Cedar Woods' management team and all employees for their endeavors in what has been generally a challenging 2023. The Board acknowledges their hard work and thanks them for their efforts. Looking forward, the outlook for the industry looks brighter. There are challenges, but I feel we have the right strategy, the right team and a project pipeline and partners to deliver strong returns for our valued shareholders. I would personally like to thank my Board colleagues for their continued engagement and enthusiasm over the past year. Finally, I want to thank you, our shareholders, for your ongoing and loyal support. I will now hand over to Nathan.

So thank you, William. And good morning, everyone, and good afternoon to those in the East online. I'm going to provide an overview of the year's activities, challenges and achievements; review some of our projects; and provide some commentary on the outlook for our business. I also wanted to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands from which we are presenting today, the Noongar people from the Whadjuk region. So the operating environment for property development during 2023, as Bill alluded, has been relatively challenging, but the company is adjusting to take full advantage as the market conditions improve. And I'll talk through that in more detail shortly. The rapid rise in interest rates has impacted buyer sentiment. And certainly, that was evident in the first 3 quarters of FY '23. However, sales rebounded strongly in the final quarter, leaping 58% on the prior quarter, which will help support earnings for future financial years. One reason for the lower sales during -- for most of FY '23 was the longer construction time frames, which did deter buyers of particularly house and land packages and single residential dwellings. And this also caused corresponding delays to settlements for our business with some settlements spilling over into the next financial year. This and the sustained increase in development costs across the industry resulted in net profit that we've reported of $31.6 million. The construction industry is still experiencing some challenges with costs elevated and builder availability still limited, but we are seeing this progressively improve each day across the country. The competitive environment for talent continues. Having a strong workplace culture and a compelling value proposition really have helped us delivering strong culture outcomes, which is evident in our staff surveys, which are producing very strong staff satisfaction results. We continued our investment in systems and in tech, but particularly cybersecurity where we have worked to further minimize the risk of an incident for our business. And on the sales and marketing side, we've invested further as well, providing for both better data capture as well as a better customer experience. So we have a portfolio of 35 projects and a pipeline of approximately 10,000 lots, dwellings and units, which, with limited national supply and the surging migration, will support future earnings for our business. As Bill briefly mentioned, we are supplementing our portfolio with projects that are undertaken in partnership. During FY '23, we established partnerships with the Queensland Investment Corporation and Tokyo Gas, presenting exciting opportunities for Cedar Woods to participate in projects of scale without committing to the entire capital commitments of each respective development. These partnerships allow us to leverage off our existing skill base, generate recurring fee income, broaden our portfolio and in the case of QIC, access well-located sites in major town centers across the Eastern seaboard. And importantly, these QIC opportunities are generally for townhouses and apartments, and those 2 product types are where there are the most chronic supply shortages around the country. QIC and Tokyo Gas are both substantial and experienced partners. QIC is the owner of a large portfolio of shopping centers particularly, and our first joint venture with them will be at a major shopping center, town center development and site that they've got in Robina in South East Queensland. Tokyo Gas will initially partner with us in developing apartments at our Glenside project, and we've announced 2 developments that we're doing in partnership with them: our Bloom retirement product that we innovated and a standard apartment building. And the intention with both of these partnerships is that we expand upon those relationships with additional projects. So this year, we continued to deliver the ESG strategy with significant investment in climate change initiatives and environmental enhancement across the communities across the country, and it was pleasing to see recognition of our progress in the maintenance of our A rating with MSCI. We've been working to further reduce the environmental impact of our projects through the development of minimum sustainability standards as well as knowledge sharing of environmental initiatives and ideas across our business, across our projects. A major initiative was the launch of the Community Energy Sharing Network, or micro grid, which we did at the -- which we are doing at the Eglinton estate. And it's expected to result in a 50% to 65% of total energy demand being supplied from renewables or more specifically, through rooftop solar and battery storage. And that's just one example of the many initiatives that we've got across the business in this regard. Our flagship community grants program is another initiative we are proud of that we innovated many years ago and which sees a proportion -- or a portion of profits from each project given back to grassroots community organizations in the regions that we operate. It was also pleasing to see the strong safety record maintained across our business. Comprehensive reporting of our ESG progress is contained in our ESG report and our climate change report, both of which are available on the company's website. I now wanted to touch on market conditions that the company is experiencing and talk about our sales. This graph shows our sales by quarter, gross sales, going back to FY '20. The first quarter of FY '24, on the right-hand side, shows that the first quarter sales results have remained consistently strong and generally in line with that strong last quarter we had of FY '23. Sales are being driven by investors, downsizers and upgraders. But importantly, the first-home buyer cohort remains quite subdued across the industry and across our projects where our product appeals to first-home buyers. Sales prices have been increased across many projects, almost unilaterally within the business. And that was over September and October, but especially so in WA. The construction sector does continue to experience challenges with high work volumes and labor shortages, though improvements of these conditions and challenges we're seeing evident and in conversations with our builders each day. Overall, we do expect sales to continue to be impacted somewhat given the potential for interest rates to rise further over FY '24. There are significant housing shortfalls in new dwelling supply across jurisdictions and across dwelling typologies. These charts show the number of apartments that were launched each year going back to 2010. You can see across these 4 states that we operate in, the low level of new supply that is coming online, and generally speaking, it's multiyear. So for multiple years, very low volumes of apartments, and townhouses for that matter, have been launched and delivered. Due to the construction sector headwinds, many projects that do have approvals are not proceeding, and it's the costs being a bit high and the builder availability being somewhat limited. So Cedar Woods has a broad portfolio of shovel-ready projects, and I'll soon outline some of those new ones that are coming on stream. This shortfall in supply has started to create upward pressure on prices and enabled quite widespread price increases across our portfolio. And my expectation is that our capacity to increase prices will only get better from here, particularly in WA. Further, on the supply side challenges, dwelling commencements are at their lowest levels in over a decade. And these charts show how the low levels of new supply for both houses and units stands currently. Importantly, it will take some time for the market to mobilize and meet the supply, getting through planning approvals, getting through construction and completing dwellings. Governments around the country, it's fair to say, are anxious about this and are implementing initiatives to address supply shortfalls. This includes releasing government-owned land, infrastructure contributions and the fast-tracking of planning approvals. And all of these things will help us, and the industry more broadly, get projects off the ground quicker. You might have seen our recent announcement regarding an arrangement we have with government on surplus land surrounding the Swanbourne train station in Western Australia. So this has the potential to be a significant project. Cedar Woods has been granted what's called a first mover advantage in a market process, and we're deep into that process now preparing our own bid and look forward to putting forward a strong bid to develop that land. Demand for new housing is significantly influenced by population growth, needless to say. The current migration surge will provide a tailwind for new housing, and it has been occurring at record levels. Net overseas migration was around 240,000 persons per annum pre-COVID but was well over 300,000 last year. And we expect migration levels to continue to be elevated, particularly in response to the labor shortages that we have nationwide. In the year to March '23, WA grew by 11,000 people due to interstate population movements, and we expect this trend to continue driven by relative affordability and the relatively stronger wages that WA offers. Population growth is partly also being driven by students, and the students are returning to our capital cities in record numbers. In our portfolio, we have a number of new projects that will start to deliver first earnings over the short and medium term, with 7 contributing for the first time in FY '24. This is as a result of the successful acquisition activity that we've had over the last few years in which we've added to the depth and breadth of our portfolio. There's a great mix of apartments, townhouses and land estates, and the new projects are spread geographically. So now on to the next slide, which is a projects showcase. So I've got 3 projects here that I wanted to briefly talk you through. So well designed and sustainable projects are key to our approach, and the 3 I've selected here provide a bit of a cross section for you. So Glenside is a major multiyear infill project for the company. That is in Adelaide, and it's contributing strongly to earnings. In fact, it's the largest residential development project in South Australia. It has 1,000 townhouses and apartments. It's on a 17-hectare site, and it's only 3 kilometers from the Adelaide CBD. Several apartment and townhouse stages are currently in train with several new stages planned and being launched at the moment. The Bloom apartments project is a new concept that Cedar Woods has developed, and it's an over 55s apartment building but with a traditional strata-titled ownership model. And we intend to roll this Bloom concept out around the country as we come across suitable sites. And importantly, Glenside recently took out the 2023 UDIA award for excellence for a medium density project in South Australia, and we're really proud of that. So Eglinton is an 86-hectare site in Perth's [ northwestern ] growth corridor, and we acquired that just in FY '22. So this new community is conveniently located just 500 meters from the new Eglinton train station that is expected to open later this year. The estate will have 1,200 lots over several neighborhoods and is expected to contribute to earnings over a lengthy 11-year period but starting this financial year. It will include a primary school, a commercial hub as well as a neighborhood shopping center. Presales have been really strong at this project. And for several months now, it has been the top-performing project sales-wise across our whole portfolio of 35 projects, which is really pleasing given it's a new acquisition for us. And also, we have increased prices 3x at this development just in the last 6 weeks, indicating what is happening on the ground here in WA. So Mason Quarter is a good example of one of the company's residential estates as well. It comprises 800 dwellings, 2 schools, community facilities and open space and is 26 kilometers north of the Melbourne CBD. The estate is located close to the future Wollert town center and train station and has been positioned as a premium estate, attracting first-home buyers but as well a portion of second-home buyers. A number of stages are currently under construction with some settlements having already occurred in FY '23 and further stages due for completion in FY '24. So this estate was only recently purchased and already has got very strong margins. And the margins for our larger projects tend to build over time, but it's great that they're healthy from [ bounce down ]. So rising interest rates, broad-based inflation are other things that are currently impacting buyer's sentiment and demand. However, there are sound underlying fundamentals of low unemployment, record immigration and significant shortfalls in supply but also strong government support to fix that. And Cedar Woods is well placed to roll out shovel-ready projects and stages to capitalize on this expected boost in demand. We've got significant presence in the more affordable markets where the impact of rising interest rates is less pronounced. And we ended the first quarter with over $500 million in presales, which we announced yesterday, and that partially derisks our future earnings. So we propose to provide earnings guidance but only when there's clarity on further sales -- on the sales volumes, on our delivery program as well as the sale of the -- the proposed sale of the Williams Landing Shopping Centre. So the catalysts for a sustained improvement in sales volumes are expected to be a combination of the peaking of interest rates as well as an improvement in builder capacity, particularly for sales on the urban fringe of our capital cities. Both of these things will help to restore buyer confidence. And finally, our portfolio of over 10,000 dwellings in quality locations supports our medium-term earnings outlook. So thank you for that, and I will now hand back to our Chairman.

Thank you, Nathan. Now returning to our agenda. I'll now move to the formal business of today's meeting as contained in the Notice of the Meeting. And afterwards, we will take questions regarding the company -- general questions regarding the company. The formal business. Proxies. I have made rulings on the appointment of proxies as follows. I'll report that 210 valid proxy instructions were received by the company by 10:00 on the 30th of October 2023. The minutes of this meeting will record in respect of each resolution voted upon the total number of proxy votes exercisable by all proxy appointments, the directions in the proxy forms and the total votes for, against and those abstaining. Proxy votes received will be shown as we address each resolution. I will move each of the resolutions and then take all questions afterwards. If you have an online question and have not submitted it already, please submit it now. On the ordinary business and the consideration of reports, the first item of notified business is to receive and consider the financial report for the year ended 30th of June 2023 and the accompanying directors' report, directors' declaration and auditor's report. I now table these documents and invite questions from shareholders that relate to the financial report. Questions on conduct of the audit or the auditor's report may be directed to Mr. Ian Campbell, a partner from our auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, who is in attendance today. Ian, put your hand up so we can identify you, so we can target those questions. All right. Please note that we will take general questions from shareholders later in the meeting. And accordingly, I ask that any questions now be limited to those relating to the financial report. If asking a question, please raise your shareholder card, state your name, who you represent and then ask your question. In this room, there is a roving microphone available for questions. Please speak into the microphone if you have a question. I will first ask for some questions from the floor, and then I will go to the online platform. All right. Are there any questions in regard to the financial report from the floor? None? Thank you. Are there any questions from the online platform? None? Thank you. If there are no questions, I will now proceed to the next item of business. I will move directly to a poll on the remaining items. If there is anyone here in person who believes they are entitled to vote but they have not registered, please raise your hand and ask for some assistance. The persons entitled to vote are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders and proxyholders who hold a green admission card like the one on the screen. At the back of the admission card is your voting card and instructions. Proxyholders have a summary of proxy votes attached to their admission card, which can -- which details the voting instructions for the items of business. In respect to any open votes, you need to mark the box beside each motion to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. Shareholders also need to mark a box beside each motion on how you intend to or how you wish to cast your votes. Please ensure you print your name where indicated and sign the voting card. At the end of the formal business, please lodge your completed voting card in a ballot box to ensure that your votes are counted. Ordinary resolutions 1 and 2 relate to the reelection of directors. Ordinary resolution 1 relates to the reelection of Mrs. Jane Muirsmith. Having retired in accordance with the company's constitution and being eligible, offers herself for reelection to be reelected as a director of this company. The explanatory memorandum sets out Jane's credentials. The Notice of Meeting states that the other directors unanimously support the resolution. The proxy votes for this resolution are shown on the slide. Are there any questions from shareholders in regard to this resolution on the floor? Anything from -- none. Okay. Thank you. I will now put the motion. Please enter your vote in the voting paper for resolution 1, and we will then move to the next item. Hold on to your paper for now. Thank you for that. Ordinary resolution 2 relates to the reelection of Mrs. Valerie Davies, who, having retired and being eligible, offers herself for reelection to be reelected as a director of this company. The explanatory memorandum sets out Valerie's credentials. The Notice of Meeting also states that the other directors unanimously support this resolution. The proxy votes for this resolution are shown on the slide. Are there any questions from shareholders on this resolution? Are there any from the online platform? Okay. Thank you. I will now put the motion. As I said, please enter your vote on the voting paper for resolution 2, and we will then move on to the next item of business. Thank you. Ordinary resolution #3 relates to the company's remuneration report. The report is set out in the directors' report on Pages 40 to 58 on the annual report of '23. Further information on the remuneration report is contained in the explanatory memorandum, which is attached to the Notice of Meeting. Following ongoing improvements made to the remuneration framework, we received positive feedback from investors and proxy advisers. And hence, at last year's AGM, less than 3% of the shareholders voted against the remuneration report. A summary of the significant matters dealt with during the year are set out on Page 40 of that report. The proxy votes received for this resolution are shown on the slide. Please note that directors, key management personnel and persons associated with them are not eligible to vote for this -- in favor of this resolution, and this is reflected in the proxy votes, as shown. I now table the remuneration report and invite any questions from the shareholders that are related to it. If asking a question, please state your name, who you represent and then ask your question. Are there any questions from the floor? None. Are there any questions on the online platform? I now put the resolution to the meeting that the remuneration report that forms part of the directors' report for the financial year 30th of June 2023 be adopted. Shareholders are advised that the vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors of the company. Please enter your vote on the voting paper for resolution 3, and we will then move on to the next item of business. Ordinary resolution 4 requests the shareholder approval for the issue of 31,765 zero-price options to the Managing Director or his nominee under the deferred STI plan for the 2023 financial year. Full details of the deferred STI plan are set out in the explanatory memorandum. The directors, other than Mr. Blackburne, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of resolution 4. Mr. Blackburne makes no recommendation in respect to resolution 4 due to his personal interest in the outcome. Proxy votes received for this resolution are shown on the slide. Are there any questions from the floor on this item? Are there any questions from the online platform? None? Thank you. I will now put the motion. Again, please enter your vote on the voting paper for resolution 4. Resolution #5 requests shareholder approval for the issue of 147,984 performance rights to the Managing Director or his nominee under the LTI plan for the 2024 financial year. Full details of the LTI plan are set out in the explanatory memorandum. The directors, other than Mr. Blackburne, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of resolution 5. Mr. Blackburne makes no recommendation in respect to resolution 5 due to his personal interest in the outcome. Proxy votes received for this resolution are shown on the slide. Again, I ask for any questions from the floor. Are there any questions from the online platform? Thank you. I will now put the motion. Please enter your vote on the voting paper for resolution 5. If -- there is one more resolution, so we're nearly home. Ordinary resolution 6 requests that shareholders approve an increase in the nonexecutive directors' remuneration pool. Proxy votes received for this resolution are shown on the slide. Note that directors are excluded from voting on this item. Are there any questions from shareholders on this item from the floor? From the online platform? None. Thank you. I will now put the motion. Please enter your vote on the voting paper for resolution 6. Please sign your form at the bottom. And when completing your voting, please hand your cards in for collection. Computershare personnel will come around and collect them. All right. Last item on the agenda, questions. I will now consider questions from shareholders regarding the performance and management of the company that they may like to ask the Board and management. Firstly, I will deal with questions from the floor, and then I'll consider the online questions that come before or during the meeting. Any questions from the floor? All behaving today. Any questions from the online, company secretary? Paul?

No questions.

No questions? None? I don't believe it. There are no questions. Yes, please.

[ I'm talking ] from Revis Australia Pty Ltd. I heard you mentioned that you had done a bit of extra work on your cybersecurity plan. Could you give us a bit more detail about what you're doing in respect to that and how you're keeping the company information secure under that new plan?

Yes. Thanks for that question. So yes, much work has been done in deploying initiatives to improve our posture in this regard. So the first thing we did, and it's old news, but 2-factor authentication is required across the business when logging into devices. Secondly, a regular and comprehensive training program has been rolled out by the business in -- for all staff and directors, and that's ongoing. And thirdly, penetration testing and simulation testing of attacks are undertaken across the business and to identify gaps. And if there are gaps identified, we seek to rectify those. We also do supply chain reviews. So we look at our key suppliers as well as our smaller and perhaps more vulnerable suppliers to understand if our customer data or our operations are at risk in any way as a result of our interactions with them. So all of those things considered, I'm pretty confident that we have a good posture. It's not a risk-free game, but I'm very confident that we've worked as hard as we can to minimize the risks. And if you're interested in an even more technical answer than that layman's response, then our CIO is here. Would you like some more detail on that?

Okay. Any more questions? None? Okay. As there are no more questions, right, I advise that the results of the poll will be published to the ASX and our website after this meeting. I thank you for your attendance today. I now declare Cedar Woods' 2023 AGM closed. Now you can ask all the questions you want over [indiscernible].