Far East Consortium International Limited (35) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Far East Consortium International Limited 2021 and 2022 Interim Results presentation. Before we begin, let me introduce the management representatives attending today. They are, Mr. Chris Hoong, Executive Director and Managing Director; Mr. Alexis Adamczyk, Head of Corporate Development and M&A. Now may I invite Mr. Hoong to start the presentation. Mr. Hoong, please.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Chris Hoong. I hope you all have received a copy of our PowerPoint presentation of our results. If you have not, please refer to our website, there is a copy of the results presentation on it. If I may begin by just giving you some key themes of our first half results. As you can read from the announcement, our results demonstrated very strong recovery in our core businesses. If I may run through quickly each of them to give you some highlight. So far as our property development business is concerned, we recorded a presales and unbooked contracted sales of HKD 14.1 billion. And this is after some healthy settlements in the first half. So far as hotel is concerned, our adjusted business model, which is to focus on quarantines stay has resulted in very strong revenue growth of 81% in the first half compared to the same period last year. So far as car park is concerned, the revenue bounced back by 43% compared to the first half of last year. Gaming, there was still some lockdown during the period, but we've seen very strong recovery since the reopening, and we were able to record a growth of 8% in revenue in the first half of 2021. One of the major initiatives in our first half exercise was to actively recycle our assets. You can see that we have completed a number of asset disposals, including Dorsett City in London as well as 21 Anderson Road in Singapore, both crystalizing very strong gains. We have also completed some smaller-scale car parks and retail units in Elizabeth Quay, which allowed us to cash in about AUD 13.8 million. In addition, we have sold -- signed agreement to sell some affordable housing units in Victoria Riverside, in Manchester as well as Consort Place in London. Moving on to our residential presales, we were able to record good growth in development pipeline, and I will run through what we did, and locked in good presales number, which provide good visibility of short to medium-term outlook. There are going to be 2 expected launches in the second half, namely Mount Arcadia and Tower 5 of Queen's Wharf, Brisbane. We are also actively looking at build-to-rent model in Australia and the United Kingdom. And I will talk a bit more about that later on. So far as increase in land bank is concerned, we have acquired a piece of land in Tuen Mun in Hong Kong in June as well as entered in a joint venture in Sai Kung for a development. More recently, we have announced the acquisition of a piece of land in Kai Tak in Hong Kong. And that is through a joint venture we entered into with the New World Group. I will talk more about that transaction later on. So far as U.K. is concerned, we have also locked in some land in Manchester, which is a neighboring land to Victoria, Riverside, and that transaction is expected to be completed in December '21. So far as BC Invest is concerned, we started expanding the operations into U.K. in early 2021, which demonstrated very good response so far. We also completed the acquisition of Mortgageport, which is a domestic mortgage provider in Australia, demonstrating very strong synergies with our BC business. And we are able to attract very strong capital for our business as the business becoming more mature. We are also currently looking to make a small Hong Kong acquisition to expand our product pipeline in the mortgage business. So far as capital structure management is concerned, we refinanced some short-term debt via bank borrowings as well as tapping the bond market. We issued an additional $150 million of our 2024 note, and we fully redeemed our 2021 notes. We will continue to adopt a conservative approach in our balance sheet management. On Page 6, is a summary of our monetization activity. I mentioned this earlier, so I won't go through that. What I would say is that we will continue to look at active monetization of some noncore assets in the coming 6 months, that would be extended to, I think, 24 months or so. There are a big portfolio of assets in our balance sheet. Some are core, some are non core. Some are important for the long-term strategic development, some are less so. So we are actually reviewing that, and we are going to be doing more of that monetization in the coming months. On Page 7, is a summary of some of the initiatives that we've taken to add to our land bank. We announced in the -- a few months ago, a strategic exclusive agreement with Capital & Regional in London. We are exploring opportunity to co-develop their sites in London. One of the advantage to us is that we don't have to come up with substantial upfront capital for development, and we like to adopt that sort of model, like the one we did with Star Entertainment Group, where they will put their land into the joint venture, and we will take the initiative to develop [ out ]. And the same model can be applied to Capital & Regional as well. That the other sites that we have acquired, which I mentioned to start a more residential focus, those -- these are all built-to-sell. I will talk a bit about the Kai Tak residential development later on, because it's quite a big acquisition. To summarize the results, if you turn to Page 8, our revenue for the first half was HKD 3.1 billion, which is about the same as the same period last year. The net profit attributable to shareholders for the first half was HKD 1.1 billion, which is a 206% jump compared to the first -- same period last year. One of the main reasons for this growth is because of the significant growth in our recurring cash flow business. But also, I think, through the disposal of -- through the monetization of some of our assets like Dorsett City as well as Anderson, we were able to lock in some good gain. If you look at our cash profit attributable to shareholders, you'll see that the number jumped up 186% to HKD 836 million in the first half. The Board declared a dividend of HKD 0.04 in the first half, which is the same as last year. We typically will review our full year dividend towards the end of the financial year. The cumulative attributable presales was HKD 14.1 billion, and that includes the Anderson transaction, which is about HKD 1.2 billion, which was completed in November, so this post year -- post period end closing. The net asset attributable to shareholders was maintained at about the same as the last reported period. That's the combination of the dividend that we pay out and also the profit that we make during the year, adjusting for some foreign currency movement, which go through the comprehensive income statement. If you look at the margins of our business, high level, we maintained a margin of about 38%. You will see that if you focus on the gross profit before depreciation column, you will see that the margin for all the recurring cash flow businesses have increased substantially because it's the nature of the business. Particularly, if you look at the hotel operation, we managed to record a margin of 56.2%. The margin for property development business was at 31.4%, which is lower than last year, and that's primarily due to the composition of the sale of property that we recognized during the period, U.K., Manchester, in particular, having a lower margin compared to, say, our China project, which was a bigger contributor last year. Turning to Page 10, you'll see that our long-term objective of maintaining NAV growth remain intact. There will be slight up and down during the year, but one of the core skillsets that we have is to create value through development. And it's important to understand that one of our business model is we build hotels for our own operations, and -- as and when we complete the hotel development, we create value for that hotel property, but it's not necessarily reflected in the P&L, but there's a lot of value that we create out of the hotel development. And that's one of the reasons, in addition to the retained profit that we generate on our business is to create value through development for -- of hotels. And if you look at the dividend history of our group, again, I must say that despite a very tough 2 years of COVID, we did maintain a good dividend payout. And as the business recover, I'm confident that the dividend could be back on the growth trend as well. Turning to Page 11, to give you some analysis of our liquidity position, as of the 31st -- sorry, as of the 30th of September, our net gearing ratio as reported, this is net assets to total adjusted equity was 56.1%. Our net average leverage ratio, net debt to total adjusted assets was about 28%. Because the Anderson transaction and the Kai Tak transaction took place post the financial end period, we have demonstrated on Page 11, the pro forma gearing figure, adjusting for the disposal of 21 Anderson Road as well as the acquisition of Kai Tak with our cash outlay, and you'll see that actually the net gearing level remains largely unchanged because the money that we received from Anderson, we simply deployed that for the Kai Tak acquisition. And if you look on Page 12 of our presentation, not only do we have HKD 14.1 billion of presales, this represents actually a lot of cash that could be coming back on to our balance sheet as we complete the project. We have about HKD 9.9 billion in liquidity position on our balance sheet and about HKD 3.6 billion of undrawn bank facility for corporate use and HKD 5.7 billion of undrawn bank facility for construction development. So in total, there's a liquidity position of about HKD 19.5 billion, which is substantially larger compared to the planned CapEx as well as the Kai Tak acquisition, which totals about HKD 2.6 billion. In addition, we have a number of unencumbered hotel assets on our balance sheet and also unsold residential inventory, which are unpledged, that totals about HKD 6.8 billion in total. If I may move on to a review of operations, if you turn to Page 14, just to highlight a few of our big projects. First of all, West Side Place Tower 1 and 2, this project is near completion now. The -- so far as the residential is concerned, we have handed over in total about HKD 3.1 billion. There is still a significant amount of presales, which haven't been recognized. Their -- the settlement process has been affected during the 6 months by the border closure in Australia. But having said that, we have seen a pickup in settlement activities, and we are confident that this project being one of the more remarkable project in Australia will be sold through as and when the whole project is completed. Turning on to Page 15, this is our first residential project in Manchester called MeadowSide. It's now entering the harvesting phase now. We have -- the project has a total GDV of about HKD 1.4 billion, and we have recognized so far about HKD 363 million, and this project is earmarked to complete in the -- in this financial year. The upcoming projects in Hong Kong, this one is completed now. We are going to be -- we have actually [ done ] some soft marketing, but haven't officially launched it yet. It will have a total GDP of about HKD 1.8 billion. So if we are able to sell everything, there will be quite substantial cash flow coming back from this residential development as well. Queen's Wharf Residence, Tower 5 is one of the big project that we'll be launching in this financial year, with total GDV of about HKD 2.2 billion. As you know, the Queen's Wharf project is one of the highest-profile project in Australia, with a big integrated resort, with a casino, 4 hotels, big retail component. I think last time I mentioned that we have signed a very good deal with DFS, which is part of the LVMH group. They are taking the entire retail of Queen's Wharf. The residential for -- our first tower has sold very well. So we are now planning to launch our -- the next block of the residential there. So this is going to be with a GDV of about HKD 2.2 billion attributable to FEC. This is a joint venture that we have 50-50 with Chow Tai Fook in Hong Kong. Now I think a number of you have asked me about the Kai Tak residential project. We came out with this announcement a few days ago. So this is fresh off the press. We formed a 50-50 joint venture with New World Group. We signed the agreement a few days ago on the 24th of November to acquire this site from Kaisa. The cost of -- the EV, the enterprise value for the development was HKD 7.95 billion. We are going to be assuming the junior debt facility as well as the senior debt facility. We managed to negotiate a much better term on the junior facility. And we are looking at potentially refinancing the senior to reduce the overall cost of financing. So the upfront cost to the JV, with the deduction of the debt that we'll be assuming is about HKD 1.9 billion. The FEC upfront cost for our 50% share is about HKD 948 million. You can see from the photo on the right that it's actually not a piece of land. It's actually a lot of construction work done on the land already. Substantial construction cost has been incurred in digging the basement and it's a full sea view development site, very big in terms of site area, with a GFA of about 580,000 square feet. And we estimate that the sellable floor area will be in the region of 0.5 million square feet. So if you apply the market selling price, the estimated GDV for the development is about HKD 14 billion. So our share is about HKD 7 billion in terms of the GDV. We expect that this will be a pure residential development with car parks underneath. And Kai Tak, as you know, is one of the big regeneration area in Hong Kong. There are a lot of infrastructure that is going into the area, including 2 subway stations, as also a big sports park that is going to be completed in the next few years. Moving on to the hotel operations. I think I talked about how we took prompt actions when COVID hit us to reduce costs, to adjust our business model, and that is yielding good results now. I'm very happy to see that the team has done extremely well in adapting to a new environment and operating in this environment has not been easy. But as you can see from the results on Page 21, we are able to -- on the revenue per average room, RevPAR in Hong Kong, record a 100% growth compared to the same period last year. And if you look at the Dorsett Group, as a whole, the RevPAR has increased 95% compared to the same period last year. And this is across region, including China, Singapore, U.K., Australia as well as Hong Kong. So very, very strong sets of results. I'm continuing to see strong momentum. So touch wood, I know that people are focused on the new variant. But honestly, it's kind of -- to me, I kind of expect that this is similar to flu. You have a new variant every year anyway. And we just have to learn how to cope with the virus. And I think the results does demonstrate that we are able to actually operate in a very profitable manner in this market condition. And when I compare our results versus the hotel group, I'm very pleased to say that I think we have done significantly better compared to other hotel groups. A number of hotels that we are earmarking to open in the next few months. This includes the Dao by Dorsett in London. This construction is done now. I think the operating team is taking over. We expect that this hotel will be operational by early next year. This is going to be the first serviced apartment brand that we'll be launching is called Dao, Dao by Dorsett. So this will be the first one. The other hotel -- and this actually will be launched quicker than Dao, this is the one in Gold Coast. If you go online, you will see that -- you'll now be able to book to go on Dorsett Gold Coast. This is located right on top of the Star Casino in Gold Coast. There is really 2 components to this development. There is a residential block, which will be completed, I think, around March or April next year. The hotel will be soft opened very soon, and then we'll start taking guests for the Christmas. Ritz-Carlton Melbourne, this one will likely to be open, I think, in June next year, June to September next year. We haven't decided when the opening dates are yet, but this is likely -- I mean, it's part of the West Side Place development, will be one of the highest-profile hotel in Australia, it's the tallest hotel in Australia. The Kai Tak development. This is the site that we bought a few years ago. It comprises an office block as well as a Dorsett hotel, so there are really 2 components of it, and there's some retail underneath as well. The total GFA is about 344,000 square feet. The opening of the hotel will coincide with the opening of the Sports Park. We are currently reviewing the office tower, and we'll be making, hopefully an announcement when things are a bit more mature there. The car park operations, if you turn to Page 25, you'll see that despite COVID, we managed to increase the total number of bays under management. We sold some smaller car parks during the period, and we continue to actually review what can be sold. To be frank, we have seen that a number of our larger car parks that we own has increased in value substantially. On our book, it's still at the very low cost, and we have not mark-to-market at all. These car park assets are estimated, there is quite a healthy gain that we will be able to recognize if we do this sell off of these car parks, but we are not going to do that. We're going to sell off selected number. So as we do that, we will be recognizing some disposal gain there as well. If I may just quickly move on to the gaming operations. We've seen a strong recovery in all 3 casinos since the casinos are reopened on the 30th of May. We've seen in Europe, intermittent -- temporary closures, reopening, close, reopen. But one thing which is comforting to me is that when we reopen, when the casinos are reopened, the business is actually quite strong. It does demonstrate the underlying quality of the business. And when it's open, in fact, we are seeing actually the number being higher than the same period before. So what the strategy there is that to keep the cost base as low as possible. And hopefully, the government will be taking a more liberal approach in allowing operations. And we bought this portfolio at a very low cost, and it's generating actually a very strong cash flow. So I'm very happy with this acquisition. Queen's Wharf development, the construction -- I think this picture is very old. If you go on the website or LinkedIn, you'll see new pictures of the construction progress is progressing very well. We are earmarking the casino to be open in early part of 2023. So the construction is ongoing. The residential tower is almost sold. So that's why we are moving on to the next phase of the sales now. So the harvesting phase, the harvesting period for this investment is coming. The equity investment that the shareholders is supposed to put in has already gone in. So there's not much more equity contribution required from us. At the moment, we're just going to be using construction facility. The -- on Page 30 is just some strategic alliance with Star. I know there's been some news about Star Group recently on TV, on the media. I think, let's see how the review is, but I'm very confident that -- of the gaming operators that I've seen, right, they have -- the team has the highest integrity and professionalism. So of all the operators out there, I think they will come out being the strongest. The BC operation, if I may, just turn to Page 32, you see the track record of the loan growth of BC Group. We started in 2018, AUD 68 million of loan. And now we are at AUD 1.6 billion. The growth has been very, very strong. And this AUD 1.6 billion exclude the Mortgageport acquisition. So with that acquisition, this will go up even more. And the origination capability has been substantially enhanced with Mortgageport. Mortgageport is a domestic mortgage platform. Historically, they've been acting like an agent, but they also have their own book as well. So with us becoming the controlling shareholder, we'll be able to make good use of [ economies ] of scale to channel in cheaper funding source and therefore, have a good NIM. I think for this operation, we will be really seeing the reward in a few years' time. We're projecting that as we build this up, the recurring cash flow from this business will increase substantially. And the real reward will come when the business is big enough to be [ IPO-ed ] and so, we should all see how this will go, but so far, the way I'm seeing the momentum has been very strong. We've secured a number of new warehouse financing to allow for the loan growth to be -- to accelerate. We are seeing that there's strong market for securitization. We completed AUD 0.5 billion RMBS offering in June, and there will be more that we are earmarking in the coming months. So to summarize, I think we are cautiously optimistic despite operating in a challenging COVID environment. We do see that short to medium term, there'll be a good harvesting period coming. This includes the completion of a number of our big projects in residential, HKD 14 billion being locked in. The hotel operations is recovering. We've seen the performance just now and with increased vaccination rate, we think that Hong Kong and China border will be reopened soon and that hopefully will bring more customers from China. We're adding hotels, which hopefully will increase our cash flow stream from the business. The car park operations is gradually returning to normality. We will be selling off some of the smaller car parks, so crystallizing some gains there. Gaming operations, I think when Queen's Wharf, Brisbane open, that is the harvest, right? So we have also filed an application for a Malta online gaming license in November. So that will allow us to provide more gaming product offerings to our customers, in particular, Europe. And the BC Invest business is doing well. It's expanding. And we will continue to look out for expansion opportunity through acquisitions as well as organic growth. Now we are near the end of the presentation, but I think there's one important initiative that I'd like to talk about, which is our ESG initiative. We have recently announced our ESG framework for -- which was published. We have got S&P rating that confirm that we are in compliance with the guideline. There are really four important pillars of our framework. One is managing the environmental footprint, and this is true, especially on the hotel side, right? How do we reduce waste, how do we reduce energy consumption. So there's been a lot of work done on that. So we will continue to monitor that. The other important pillar is, of course, we want to be the employer of choice. We are going to be also issuing internally a code of conduct that sets the standard for all our employees as we grow, right? We have more and more employees around the world. So we want to standardize that. So we also want to make sure that employees have the opportunity to progress through our organization. The next one is cultivating community. This is an important pillar. More recently, we decided to actually work with the housing association provider in the U.K. in providing affordable housing. We've done 2 deals so far. That's something which we are keen to continue to pursue. Placemaking, this is to ensure our customers who either buy apartments can enjoy the environment that we create for them, but also our guests, right, when they come in, they feel secure, they feel safe. This is an important pillar of our ESG framework. So in summary, we are taking very active action in addressing ESG, and we hope that even on the construction side, right, we are going to be turning increasingly to only green buildings. So we will only build buildings which adhere to a certain standard of environmental friendliness. So that's an important part of the initiative. Last but not least, I'm very proud with the IR team and we have achieved a lot of -- what I think we pride ourself as one of the companies in Hong Kong that offers a great deal of transparency with our operations. We have consistently won awards in investor relationships, in corporate transparencies, in corporate governance and also our website, our annual report. So thank you all for your support. I really appreciate that. And with that, I would like to conclude my presentation, and happy to take any questions. Thank you.

We will now come to the Q&A section. Should you have any questions, please type in, in Q&A box, we'll read it out one by one.

This is Alexis Adamczyk from FEC. We have our first question. Chris, first question, how will the management address the disconnect between the strong earnings recovery and the distressed valuation of 80% discount to NAV near pandemic lows?

Very good question. And in fact, it's something which personally is very -- the issue is very dear to me. I think what the market does not appreciate is that there's a lot of value that are being trapped in the balance sheet. So what we are doing, and you can see we've started actually pushing it real hard is to start, become more active in monetizing some of these assets where there's substantial profit that we have accumulated over the years, right? Hotel alone, we're talking about HKD 16 billion, HKD 17 billion of revaluation surplus. We did have in mind before about spinning off the hotel as a REIT, the environment is not favorable. One of the issues is, I think, facing us is that the market does not appreciate a conglomerate structure. We are going to be thinking how do we actually streamline the operation to make it easier for investors to understand and to appreciate the value, it's not going to be a 1-day exercise. I think as when we grow our business, when each of the component of the business becomes bigger, there will be opportunity to actually spin it off. And when we do that, investors will then understand and say, wow, this component of the business is worth this much, and we can do it with a mortgage finance business, we can do it with the hotel business. We can do it with the car park business, the gaming business. But each component at the moment, in my view, is still not big enough yet. What we need to do is be a bit patient to grow them. And when the time is right, we can hive it off, we can dividend off the underlying equity to the FEC shareholders. I think as when we execute that strategy, market will then understand and be able to enjoy the upside from the deep value that is currently in our balance sheet. So I agree completely with you. I don't think the market understand and are willing to spend enough time to analyze our business. And when I look at, for example, some hotel companies that -- which are listed in Hong Kong, and when I compare it to, some even have a higher market cap compared to us. And yet, so far as the quality of earnings, so far as the growth potential, so far as the underlying asset back is significantly worse compared to FEC group. So you're absolutely right. We need to address it. But my solution is through gradual unlocking of this value through growing the individual component and then hopefully hiving it off, and then people will start to realize the value.

We welcome the second question. If you have any questions, please feel free to type in, in the Q&A boxes. Management is open to answer any questions.

Okay. I think we will have follow-up group one-on-one meetings as well after this session. So feel free to contact us if you have not already lined up any meetings. I think, I know, the audience is maybe a little shy, but happy to answer any questions directly on a one-on-one session. With that, thank you very much for attending the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you. Thank you, Alexis. This comes to the end of our investor presentation today. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you.