Jardine Cycle & Carriage Limited (C07) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Jardine Cycle & Carriage Full Year 2023 Results Presentation. I'm Ben Birks, JC&C's Group Managing Director. And together with me today, we've got Amy Hsu, our Group Finance Director; and Jeffrey Tan, our Group General Counsel and Chief Sustainability Officer. I will now start with the highlights for the year. Firstly, I continue to be encouraged by the team's approach and their hard work which has supported JC&C to post record earnings in 2023. The group posted an underlying profit of USD 1.16 billion, 6% up on prior year. Secondly, our dividend payout continues to grow in line with the increase in profitability. As such, the dividend increases from USD 1.11 to USD 1.18 per share. Thirdly, we made solid progress in strengthening the balance sheet. This was made possible through the enhanced dividends from Astra and the proceeds through the sale and leaseback of the Singapore properties. We closed the year with our holding company debt down to USD 1.25 billion. Astra yesterday announced that it will pay out another round of enhanced dividends this year. We welcome Astra's effort to take a proactive approach towards cash management, and we will take this opportunity to further pay down our holding company debt. Next, working closely with our investee companies, we've been able to deploy capital towards our strategic priorities. At JC&C here, we allocated further capital to support the growth of our future champions, THACO and REE. While at Astra, investments were made to further strengthen Astra's heavy equipment and mining business and also its automotive portfolio. Lastly, we're really pleased that in 2023, we continue to make progress against our communicated ambition to decarbonize the portfolio. We've so far reduced our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 10% from our 2019 baseline, and we're on track to achieve our 2030 goal of reducing emissions by 30%. Now to highlight the strategic developments of the year. In 2023, Astra has taken further steps to strengthen and evolve its core portfolio at United Tractors. And as discussed in previous updates, UT has committed to diversifying its earnings. This includes investment in non-coal minerals as well as renewables. In 2023, UT made significant progress towards this strategic objective. They deployed around USD 1 billion into nickel-related investments. UT also made further progress towards the objective of playing a leading role in Indonesia's energy transition. Further to its previous investments in solar and hydropower, UT is also building its exposure in geothermal. In respect to the automotive division, Astra's market leadership position remains strong with an improved market share in 2023. Astra continues to work closely with its principals to deliver the right product for the Indonesian market. We're encouraged by Astra and Toyota's continued dominance in the fast-growing hybrid segment. In addition, Astra is pursuing a number of initiatives to further leverage its auto ecosystem to support earnings growth going forward. One of these initiatives is Astra's strategic move into the used car sector. During the year, Astra acquired OLX, Indonesia's leading online player in the used car market. The acquisition of OLX serves as a bolt-on digital solution to Astra's existing automotive business. Combining this with -- this business with Astra's existing used car operations has made Astra the #1 used car player in the country, and we're excited by the growth possibilities of this adjacent segment. Moving to THACO. Now to remind ourselves, THACO is one of the largest unlisted business groups in Vietnam. It's also the market leader in auto. It also has a significant exposure to high-growth sectors in the country, such as agriculture, industrial, both targeted for exports as well as real estate and retail. We are positive on the long-term growth and value of THACO. In line with this, we subscribed THACO's USD 350 million convertible bond in 2023. The convertible bond gives JC&C a secured pathway to increase our exposure in this high-growth private company. Also in Vietnam is REE. REE operates in power and utilities, real estate and M&E services. Its largest and fastest-growing business is its renewable energy platform. REE has a total of 780 megawatts equity-adjusted capacity in solar, wind and hydro. We allocated more capital in 2023 to increase our interest in REE in Vietnam. Our equity interest is now 34.9%, and we remain confident in REE's long-term growth potential and are especially excited about its growing renewables business. Our Direct Motor interests continued to deliver a strong performance, growing at 8% year-on-year. In addition, USD 225 million was released from the sale and leaseback of our properties in Singapore, which helped strengthen the balance sheet at the holding company level. So with that, all in all, I feel that in 2023, we've made good progress in creating earnings growth, delivering increased dividends, strengthening our balance sheet, deploying capital for future growth and also embedding sustainability further throughout the portfolio. Now on that note, I'll pass over to Amy who will take you through our 2023 results. Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. I'm pleased to report that we have posted another record result again this year. Our underlying profit in 2023 was $1.16 billion, 6% higher on a year-on-year basis. Astra contributed the largest share of this profit with just over USD 1 billion, and the non-Astra portfolio altogether contributed $187 million. I will take you through the details later in this presentation. The non-trading items in the year mainly comprised an $81 million gain from the sale and leaseback of our Singapore properties, partly offset by unrealized fair value losses of $20 million related to non-current investments. Under corporate costs, we have an FX translation gain of $22 million from JC&C's foreign currency loans, while other corporate costs increased mainly due to higher financing charges. For the full year, the Board has declared a final dividend per share of $0.90. Together with the interim dividend of $0.28 per share, our total dividend for 2023 is $1.18 per share. This is 6% higher than 2022, in line with our underlying profit growth and reflects a payout ratio consistent with our prior years. Turning now to our balance sheet. Our group's financial position remains strong with shareholders' funds standing at $8 billion. Excluding Astra's financial services, consolidated net debt in 2023 was $1.1 billion compared to net cash of $893 million the year before. This is following the deployment of capital in various strategic initiatives, mostly in Astra. Our overall gearing remains very modest at only 6%. On our parent company debt, it has been reduced to $1.25 billion. As Ben mentioned earlier, we will use parts of Astra's latest enhanced dividends to further pay down the parent company debt. Our balance sheet strategy is not to have significant long-term debt at the parent company level, and we believe leverage should be held in operating companies. For the time being, this leverage is comfortable for us, but we will continue to assess and work on further steps to reduce it while also seeking opportunities for capital deployment. Now if we look beyond the 1-year comparison, this chart shows our performance in the last 5 years. In terms of growth, we have achieved a CAGR of around 8% from 2019 to 2023, and our goal is to outperform Southeast Asia's GDP sustainably. We have been and will continue to benchmark ourselves to the region's GDP growth and put in place strategies and allocate capital to achieve this goal consistently. I will now take you through each of our businesses in further detail, starting with Astra, one of the largest business groups in Indonesia. In 2023, Astra contributed 12% more profit to JC&C. It reported net income of $2.2 billion, up 17% year-on-year in rupiah terms. This was driven by good performances from most of its businesses. The largest growth came from automotive, financial services and infrastructure operations. First, on automotive. Net income increased by 18% to $750 million. Indonesia's new car market came in at around 1 million units and Astra sold 561,000 units, increasing its market share from 55% to 56%. As to the motorcycle market, Indonesia recovered from the semiconductor supply issue faced in the previous year. The overall market grew by 19% to 6.2 million units in total, and Astra outperformed the market growth and increased its 2-wheeler sales by 22% to 4.9 million units. Market share increased from 77% to 78%. On financial services, which is predominantly for consumer financing, Astra's net income increased 30% to $516 million. The growth followed largely the trajectory of its new car and motorcycle businesses in addition to increasing penetration in the used car segments. For the heavy equipment, mining, construction and energy segment, the net income was relatively stable at $832 million. Commodity prices have come down during the year, which resulted in lower profits from the coal mining businesses. But it was -- impact was offset by improved earnings from both heavy equipment sales as well as the mining and contracting business. On agri business, the net income was down by 39% due to lower CPO selling prices. Finally, infrastructure and logistics. This is a business that we are positive on. Net income increased by 85% year-on-year to $64 million on the back of higher traffic volumes and toll roads revenue. We are optimistic that with the increased connectivity, there will be further growth opportunities in this segment. Now turning our lens to THACO, one of Vietnam's largest private business groups. THACO contributed $36 million to our JC&C underlying profit. This is 57% lower compared to the year before. This was due to an overall weak economic and consumer sentiment in Vietnam which lead to the automotive market to decline by 23% last year. And in addition to this macro headwind, THACO also faced semiconductor chip supply issue in the first quarter and increased competitive pressures throughout the year. The sharp increase in interest rate last year also had an impact to the overall profitability. That being said, the Vietnam economy and automotive market started to show signs of bottoming towards the last -- end of last year, and it is expected to improve this year as consumer confidence gradually return. We expect this to reflect positively on THACO's automotive business performance going forward. Automotive aside, THACO is actively ramping up several new businesses which are engines for further growth. In particular, agriculture is a business segment that targets the export market. It has been ramping up in the last few years and saw losses narrowing considerably as revenue is ramping up and pre-operation CapEx is reducing. We expect the business to start contributing profit soon. In real estate, given the wider macroeconomic environment, there has been no major development there. The other segment includes investments in industrial manufacturing for exports, retail and logistics. All together, they contributed a 5% increase in profit contribution. Going forward, we believe these businesses will be the profit engine for THACO's work going forward. Turning now to our Direct Motors Interests. Our Direct Motors Interests segment has delivered an excellent result in 2023. It contributes to $68 million to our underlying profit, representing 8% growth year-on-year. In Singapore, Cycle & Carriage contributed a headline profit of $25 million, a 24% decrease versus the year before. The Singapore automotive market was in a tight COE cycle last year. And despite that, Cycle & Carriage, our market share maintained relatively steady at 18%. The after-sale business has also seen good improvement in downstream revenue, profit margins and efficiency. This provides a level of resilience to the cyclical automotive business. Finally, there's also a rental impact from the sale and leaseback of the Singapore properties. If we exclude this, the business would have achieved similar profit level as last year. Looking forward, it is our strategy to continue to strengthen our brand portfolio, particularly on electric vehicles. For example, Cycle & Carriage has introduced the new electric vehicle brand, Ora, into Singapore last year. And later this year, we will be bringing in Smart, another EV brand, into Singapore. And we will continue to evaluate opportunities to bringing new EV brands to offer low-carbon options to the various different segments for our customers in Singapore. In Indonesia, Tunas Ridean contributed $39 million, up 39% from the previous year. Similar to Astra, the higher profit was driven mainly by their leasing and financial services business, along with better overall performance in the motorcycle market in Indonesia. Finally, I'll take you through the performance of our other Southeast Asia investments. REE, Siam City Cement and Vinamilk collectively contributed $84 million to JC&C's underlying profit, 2% lower than the previous year. REE's earnings contribution was slightly lower at $32 million compared to $37 million the year before. The performance was weakened due to less favorable weather conditions, which impacted the performance in the renewable energy business. Nevertheless, we remain excited about this sector. Renewables and utilities continue to make up the largest share of REE's profit. In 2023, they contributed to some 60% of REE's profit for the whole year. On Siam City Cement, our share of the profit was $17 million, up 43%. The higher contribution was mainly due to a lower base in 2022 because of a one-off losses in Sri Lanka. And excluding this one-off effect, Siam City's contribution would have been largely flat. Even though selling prices have improved and energy costs have gradually come down, the volume -- the profit was offset by lower sales volumes. Finally, Vinamilk produced dividend income for $36 million for the group. The slight decline of 3% was due to FX impact. We're pleased with another record year performance. It demonstrates the strength and quality of our portfolio. And looking ahead, we will continue to focus on our core markets, Indonesia and Vietnam, with our businesses to protect and create future earnings growth as well as actively manage our portfolio to deliver sustainable growth in earnings and dividends.

Thank you all very much for your participation in this session. Thank you very much.