CTF Services Limited (659) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining NWS Holdings Financial Year 2021 Final Results and its Presentation. First of all, let me introduce our panel members: Mr. Gilbert Ho, Executive Director; Mr. Jim Lam, our Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Ben Wong, General Manager of Corporate Development and Investment; and Catherine, today's MC. For today's agenda, Gilbert will first walk you through the key highlights of our company's results and strategy. After this, Jim will present to you the financial highlights, and then Ben will cover the performance of individual business segment and then followed by the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Without further ado, let me pass the mic to Gilbert. Gilbert, please?

Thank you, Catherine. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to NWS Annual Results Analyst Presentation 2021. Let me first give you a very brief review of our business portfolio. As all of you probably have followed us for a few years already, we have embarked on a journey of simplifying our business portfolio. And for this year, we have viewed some results, and I would like to present to you a very simplified business portfolio that we have now. As you can see from the pictures now, within our core business, we have our roads, our aviations, constructions and insurance. And within our strategic portfolio, we have logistics and facility management. This compared to a few years ago, is a lot more simplified and with very clear business visions. As I just mentioned, since 2018, we have embarked on a journey of transformation. We have acquired FTLife, 3 expressways in Central regions and as well as a number of different businesses at a total consideration of over $28 billion. At the same time, we have disposed a number of noncore assets, mainly in ports, transport and environment with a total consideration of $20 billion. This significant progress we have achieved have maintained our gearing ratios at 25% with a simplified business portfolio and actually support our sustainable and progressive dividend policies. In doing our acquisitions and disposals, we have actually maintained a very healthy transactions valuations. If you look at the left-hand side of the screen, our major acquisitions, including FTLife and Roads. For FTLife, as you can see, our P/B, when we acquired was 1.5x. That compares to the peer average of 3.5x. And in 2021 financial year, it contributes already 19% of our AOP. And compared to the first half of 2020, the embedded value increased 26% already. For the 3 Roads we acquired, it already contributed over 10% of our AOP in our Roads segment. On the right-hand side of the screen, you can look at the major disposals. In fact, all of the disposals has achieved a premium valuations over our peers. Just take a few examples in our bus disposals, the peers average was 25.8x whereas our P/E when we disposed was 360x. And the most recent disposal, which is Xiamen Port, we disposed at the P/E ratios of 17x whereas the peer average is around 7x. Our business strategy is actually to achieve sustainable long-term growth. So how we do it is by growing our core businesses. So you can see at this moment, the core business contributed around 81% of our total AOP. And this AOP grow 34% year-on-year compared to 2020. In our Roads segments, the rapid economic growth in China and the car ownership growth actually boost our Roads segments AOP. This also will enable us to do expansions via continuous M&A. While business traveling are still on hold for most of the international travelers, we still maintain a long-term growth on the business and leisure travel demand. And we remain very optimistic about opening up of the borders. And you can -- and we can actually see that the number of new airlines already opened up during this season. So we have very strong confidence on the long-term growth of this aviation segments. In constructions, more projects is coming from the Hong Kong government and the private sectors. And recent sizable land auctions in Central and Causeway Bay is a sign of pickup in confidence. And in insurance, improved branding and attractive product actually gained tractions of FTLife. Our business actually have been outperformed the industry average since acquisitions. So in terms of future capital deployment, we will focus on our partnership with SOE and major Mainland investors in our Roads segments in continuous M&A. We will also look for acquisitions in the logistics sector in warehouse, cold chain, technology & integrated service provider in the Mainland and also in the Southeast Asia. And needless to say, we'll continue to deploy capital in insurance to expand in mainland with GBA focus. Same as last few years, our key investment selection criteria is to have strong growth prospects and attractive risk-adjusted returns. Solid recurring cash flow is our major focus as well. We will target at least single high digit return on our capital deployed. Meanwhile, you can see our business has still have potential to maintain the [ strong rebound ] after COVID is gone. Just name a few, in insurance, in the first half of '21, our overall APE in Hong Kong business grew 27% and 49% already. And this has yet to include the Mainland visitors. Uptrend in interest rate will also benefit our insurance company. At the very moment, our Hong Kong Convention Center as well as our Free Duty business is still affected by COVID and closing of the borders. So this will definitely be well positioned to catch the rebound after the border reopened. For our Gleneagles hospitals, even during COVID time, we have achieved our EBITDA breakeven since May which is well ahead of our budget. This proved the improved brand recognition to attract Mainland visitors after the border reopened. These slides, you can actually see our dividend history. Since 2019, we have changed our dividend policy to a sustainable and progressive dividend policy, on absolute DPS. This year is the first sign of delivering progressive dividend even in the midst of COVID. Our dividend of HKD 0.30 represents around 3.4% increase versus 2020. So all of the above can give us the conclusion that we will maintain and enhance earning qualities and DPS growth. I'll pass on to Jim to give you some financial highlights of our this year's performance.

Thank you, Gilbert. We are pleased to announce that in fiscal year 2021, the group recorded a 25% increase in revenue to $28.2 billion with a 49% increase in AOP to $5.2 billion. We'll go through the segment performance in the next slide. During the year, the group recorded nonoperating losses totaling HKD 2.6 billion, which included firstly $1.37 billion remeasurement loss on our Wai Kee shareholding, which have already been included in our interim sales this year. Second, $553 million asset impairment cost and expected credit loss provision from Goshawk. Note that there was very strong sequential improvement if you compare the second half provision with the first half. During the second half of fiscal year 2021, we only made additional provision of about $137 million as compared with $460 million in the first half. The remaining balance of the nonoperating losses represent mainly our remeasurement loss or provisioned on our other investments such as Derun Environment, which was disposed of in May this year. Finance cost was down 34% year-on-year to $483 million. That's mainly due to the significant drop in HIBOR as well as the lower Hong Kong dollar loan balance. Expenses was down 11% to $436 million, driven mainly by our group's very stringent cost control measures. Overall, we recorded a 3.5x increase in profit attributable to shareholders of HKD 1.1 billion. Basic earnings per share was HKD 0.29. The Board approved 3% increase in final dividend per share amounting to $0.30, which brings our full year DPS to $0.59, which based on the closing price today of $7.21, this impressed a dividend yield of about 8%. Adjusted EBITDA, which is a proxy of the group's operating cash flow of this year, increased 19% year-on-year to HKD 5.6 billion. Moving on to the performance by segment on Page 11. In terms of the core business, the AOP increased by 34% year-on-year to $4.2 billion, and the strategic portfolio's AOP increased by 1.7x to $1 billion. Within the core business -- within the core businesses, gross AOP increased the most by about 99% year-on-year to HKD 1.8 billion, which was driven mainly by the rapid traffic recovery after the resumption of the toll fee collection policy in May 2020. The insurance business increased by -- sorry, the AOP of the insurance business increased by about 29% year-on-year to $972 million, driven mainly by the full year contribution from FTLife after the completion of the acquisition of FTLife in November 2019. Aviation's AOP increased by 18% year-on-year to $496 million, which was driven mainly by the mark-to-market gain on the interest rate swap of about $51 million versus a loss in [indiscernible]. So if you strip out the impact of the mark-to-market gain on losses, the underlying aircraft leasing business AOP was down about 22% year-on-year in this year because of the airline restructuring. Construction business was down 11%, mainly due to the fact that we have ceased to -- equity account for the profit of our Wai Kee shareholding since December 2020. With regards to the strategic portfolio of businesses, the strategic investments, AOP increased the most by about 2x year-on-year to HKD 739 million, which was driven mainly by the increased contribution from our JV and associated company investment as well as the increase in fair value of our various investment because of the buoyant market conditions. AOP from the facility management -- sorry, AO loss from the facility management narrowed by 16% to $649 million. Within that, both Free Duty as well as Gleneagles Hospital saw a layering of AOL, where the AOL of Hong Kong CEC increased because of the COVID-19. I will pass on to Ben to talk about our business performance in more details.

Thank you, Jim. I will take this opportunity to walk you through some of our core businesses as well as our strategic portfolio. For our Roads portfolio, we have seen swift recovery. If you look in the table in the middle, compared to 2020 and also FY 2019, we have significant increase in volume and also in terms of traffic. And if you look into the 3 expressways that we acquired over the past few years in the Central region, we have seen pickup in contribution on the roads AOP, which contributes over 10%. We are also in discussion with governments on the compensation measures for the toll fee exemption that took place last year. And for the outlook, if you look on the right-hand side, those are the rendering of the premium service area that we have developed, which is planning to be launched in the next couple of months at Hangzhou Ring Road, which is the -- one of our premium roads and also our crown jewel within the Roads portfolio. And this also gives us a platform to potentially launch premium service centers in other toll roads that we operate and also potentially to link up with other toll road operators to expand and increase our source of income. Moving on to Aviation. We have seen our lessees are benefiting from the global rollout of vaccination, gradual resumption of domestic and also regional flights, formation of travel bubble programs as well as relaxation of travel restrictions in between different countries. And if you look at -- in terms of the rental deferrals that the requests that we have seen have gradually decreased as well as the deferral on the rental payment continued to be repaid. And if you look at our collection rate, we stand at 92% in the second quarter of 2021 relative to fourth quarter of 2020 at 82% and a significant improvement from the worst 2020 2nd quarter at 68%. And we have also seen strong financial footing, having a record high cash and undrawn liquidity at the grassroot level to support our financials. And we are also expanding our asset management service to potentially expand our source of income. In terms of construction, this year, our AOP has dropped 11%, but that is mainly due to the 6 months pickup from Wai Kee rather than 12 months in the last fiscal year. Excluding Wai Kee, Hip Hing Group's AOP is up 6%. And if you look at the new contracts awarded, we have $7 billion. And in terms of our contract on hand, we're at $49 billion and with a $28 billion backlog. In terms of the usage of technology, we have efficient -- we have now used the modular construction for a number of our projects. And if you look to the right-hand side, the Innocell project and also the quarantine facility at Penny Bay are exemplary -- very good examples of how we used it to minimize waste reduction, to be more efficient in terms of the building and also shortening the time that's required. In terms of the type of projects, we currently sit at 70% private, 30% government and institution and all of these are external works that we have done for government institutions as well as private companies and corporates. We're still very much optimistic about the long-term outlook of construction picking up, and we have seen pickup in demand from the government and also the private sector. And we are also adopting new technologies to improve efficiency as well as to mitigate some of our cost pressure. Moving on to insurance. The AOP for the segment is up 29%. This year, we have launched a new brand strategy, Think Beyond Insurance. And if you look at our performance in the Hong Kong domestic business, it's up 49%. So all in all, if you look into the APE overall, we have consistently outperformed the market average. And from the market standpoint -- a market ranking standpoint, we are up 12th from last year's 13th. And I think one thing to note is the embedded value since our completion of the acquisition of FTLife, it has been up 26% and year-over-year we're up 21%. So that has also demonstrated our flexible business strategy and also adjusting to unexpected events such as COVID and border closure. I'll now move on to the strategic portfolio. For logistics, we have seen ATL Logistics Centers to continue to perform very well. Occupancy at 99.7% with an average rent up 1%. And in terms of CUIRC, our AOP is up 63% year-over-year, benefiting from further development of rail intermodal transportation, international block train. And for Xiamen Container Terminal, one thing to note is we have signed the SPA as disclosed in August 2021 for the proposed disposal of the 20% of our stake for RMB 1.5 billion. Outlook for the logistics, we will continue to deploy more capital in terms of modern logistics. As well as if you look at the positioning of ATL, it's still continue to command a very strong positioning in high-quality large-scale warehouse in Hong Kong and definitely has benefit from the solid demand for our service. Moving on to Facility Management. The AOP for the segment is up 16%. And I think we have seen the AOP -- AOL narrowing and also bottoming out in terms of the individual businesses for the Gleneagles Hong Kong Hospital. AOL further narrowed and EBITDA break even since May. And also for the Central clinic, we have seen the breakeven since July. And if -- In terms of the utilized beds, we're up to 210 regularly utilized beds. For HKCEC, we have seen some improvements in the second half of 2021, although it has been very much affected by COVID for the first half, particularly with the restrictions for COVID. So we look forward to the next few months as the restrictions on travel relaxes. And for free duty, the 3 outlets remain closed, and we have new business initiatives such as pop-up stores at DPark, at FOREST, and also our new e-commerce website, FD Mall. And in conclusion for the strategic portfolio, we have disposed our environment business and we have completed the disposal of Derun Environment in May, and we expect the disposal of SUEZ NWS to be completed in 2022. And we have commanded a attractive evaluation at our -- for the disposal of both businesses. I'll take a few minutes also to walk you through some of the ESG initiatives that we have carried out this year. Again, going back to our ESG initiatives. We target wellness, caring, green and smart. And you have seen a wide range of recognitions from various professional parties such as ICPA giving us a Corporate Governance award. We have achieved overall rating AA+ with the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index. And we have seen improvements by various rating agents such as MSCI, FTSE. And this really has sums up in terms of the ESG performance and also the initiatives, we are not only looking at very narrow areas, but implementing across a wide coverage in terms of governance, in terms of environment as well as taking care of our stakeholders. This year, we have also signed on sustainability-linked financing with a total of $3.8 billion as of June 31 -- June 30, 2021. In terms of our environmental targets, we continue to push on a few key targets, such as carbon intensity, energy intensity, water intensity and as well as social targets that looks into wellness and also caring, and all of those metrics are on track. To highlight the few -- the very key initiatives in place, we have completed our first climate-related transition risk assessment towards low carbon economy in 2021, sustainability-linked loans, which will continue to give us extra financial incentives to upkeep and also push our limits on the ESG side. And we are also implementing various ESG consideration and measures as an investors, phasing out investments relating to coal fired power and also adopting ESG considerations for our future investments. And the newly launched -- to be launched service center is also a very good example of how we combine business and also ESG. We have used a lot of technologies to take care of our customers. We have unmanned convenience stores. We have various environment-related measures to upkeep our ESG side of things. And if you look into Hip Hing, we also have implemented a few things such as the building information management system and also the MiC, which has been widely received by various professional parties and have received multiple rewards and recognition from industry-wide associations. And last but not least, FTLife Insurance, we have received various awards from different parties essentially recognizing and validating our view and also how we are taking care and also extending grace periods for some of our products and also providing wellness protection during COVID. And I think this is a quick wrap-up on our presentation. Thank you.