Lifestyle Communities Limited (LIC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Lifestyle Communities Investor Analyst Conference Call. My name is Anita Addorisio, Company Secretary of Lifestyle and moderator for this call. The webinar will be recorded for the benefit of those who are unable to attend today, and the webcast will be available upon request. Please be advised our conference call will strictly be limited to 1 hour. Due to the number of attendees, we will endeavor to address as many questions as possible during this time. We encourage you to contact the company via the Investor Center available on the company's website should you have any questions following today's update. Our presenters today are our Executive Chair, David Blight; and Chief Financial Officer, Darren Rowland, who will provide an update on the FY '25 half year results as released to the market yesterday evening. This will be followed by a Q&A session for which I will now outline the procedure as presented on your screen. [Operator Instructions] I now invite our Executive Chair, David Blight, for his presentation. Over to you, David.

Thanks, Anita, and thank you to all of you for joining us this morning for the half year results presentation for the period ending 31 December 2024. While it's been a difficult time for the business through the second half of 2024, we have been heartened by the gentle pickup in demand in 2025 and the way the team has responded to the call. The team is performing extremely well. The team culture is strong, having navigated James' retirement as at 31 December. And we're excited to announce the appointment of a new leader for the business, Mr. Henry Ruiz, who commences on March 5, but more on Henry a bit later. So turning to the results; we felt this was a reasonable result in a tough operating environment, and it was marginally above the range we stated at the AGM last November. The settlements were higher than the prior corresponding period, but the sales were materially lower, as you can see. And given the lag between sales and settlements, we expect this to result in a subdued settlement number in FY '26. So to counter this, we've taken several proactive steps to provide more balance sheet headroom and to help us navigate the impact. First, we've refinanced and restructured the debt in the business, including a reduction in the ICR covenant for the next 2 years to provide additional headroom and allow time for the sales rate to recover. Secondly, we've undertaken a strategic review of our landholdings, and we plan to exit up to 3 sites. And this is expected to realize between $80 million and $100 million, which will go to reducing debt over time. And finally, we've paused the dividend and we will preserve capital in the business until we have more visibility and confidence in the sales rate going forward. We presented this data at the AGM in November, and we've now updated the slide with trading performance through to the 23rd of February. As you can see, performance of all lead indicators continued to decline into Christmas, but we are seeing some encouraging signs in January and February. Face-to-face appointments is the best near-term indicator of future sales. And pleasingly, the conversion rate from face-to-face appointment to a sale is consistent with our performance prior to the adverse media coverage in July last year, which suggests that when customers do take the time to visit us, they spend the time with our team and they inspect the product, they tend to transact at the same rate as earlier last year. So the challenge for the team in the short term is to continue to focus on increasing the number of face-to-face appointments. In essence, we found ourselves in what we call the perfect storm. You can see in the boxes at the bottom of the graph that we plan to launch 7 new projects during the boom market post COVID and noting there is obviously a lag between launching new projects and when they come to market. As we know, economic conditions changed quickly in 2023, particularly here in Victoria. And as a result, the sales rates started to slow. We've pulled a number of levers to adjust as new information came to hand, including adjusting the build rates as the sales slowed. We paused the Merrifield project at completion of the civil program, which is a natural pause point. And we then took stronger measures post July, including pausing 2 further projects and rightsizing our operating structure and our cost base. And we will continue to take these measures as necessary based on the most up-to-date sales and appointments information that we have to hand. On resales, as you would expect, the resale volumes have also been impacted by market conditions. This has led to lower resale settlements during the period and a 25-odd percent reduction in the DMF compared with the second half of FY '24. As time on market has increased, the number of homes on the market has increased, but the levels are not high by traditional standards. As I mentioned earlier, we've had a perfect storm with several external factors contributing to the slowing sales rate shortly after we commenced construction at several new projects. The impact of this is that we now have 2 key challenges. First, our inventory levels remain too high. And secondly, we have an outsized land bank. We have a number of initiatives underway to address these, and we'll explore these in more detail in the following slides. Before I hand to Darren, I wanted to just quickly touch on the DMF. As a firm, we remain committed to the DMF model and in particular, the way it enables an enhanced equity free up when homeowners first commit to the downsizing process. We also remain committed to improving customer choice, particularly through the introduction of an upfront payment option for those customers whose circumstances allow them to pay slightly more upfront. We have decided to take a measured approach to this and wait until the outcome of both the VCAT case and the Victorian government's ongoing review of the Residential Tenancies Act until we make any firm changes to the DMF structure. So with that, I will hand to Darren to take you through the following slides.

Thanks, David. I would obviously like to start by echoing your comments to the team. I think it's been a very challenging period, and it's been great to see the team really galvanizing behind the challenge in front of us. So if I touch on the capital management initiatives as David mentioned, due to the material change in sales rates over the last 6 months, in particular, we've decided to undertake a number of proactive capital management initiatives. This includes refinancing our debt facility to provide some additional covenant headroom as well as some extended tenor, the pause in the dividend, as David mentioned, we've reduced the planned development spend for FY '25 by $100 million, and we've undertaken a number of other cost-saving initiatives. All these actions are focused on balance sheet strength and will provide the necessary time for market conditions to improve and the sales rate to recover. And we'd like to thank our banking syndicate for their support through this challenging period. We closed the deal last night, and it was great to work with the banks through this period to give ourselves a bit of breathing space. If we move to inventory; we've called out on this slide the optimal levels of inventories that we have at a typical project, and we've included this because obviously, we've had a buildup of inventory of completed homes as the sales rate has dropped. And whilst we acted quickly when the sales rate dropped to slow the build rate, this does take 6 to 9 months to flow through once decisions are made. And as such, inventory continues to increase as those homes in progress get completed. As you can see on the right-hand side, we don't ever try and run the projects at a zero inventory level, and that's because of the way that the build sequencing works. And also, we do have customer demand for completed products. So we do like to carry some inventory levels. But we will be focusing on selling through the excess inventory over the next 12 months, and we anticipate releasing approximately $65 million to $75 million of committed capital through this strategy. As we get to the land, Lifestyle Communities has always operated a just-in-time development model. We typically purchase land on long-dated settlement terms with the aim of completing planning and having it ready to commence development as prior projects close out. Obviously, due to the change in sales rate, the closeout dates for the existing projects is expected to take longer. And therefore, we'll end up with a land bank, which is much larger than we would typically like to carry. As such, our plan is to reduce this land bank over the next 12 months by exiting up to 3 sites. The Warragul site has a contractual right to terminate, which we intend to exercise. And then we plan to run a targeted campaign to sell another 2 sites. The outcome of this strategy will be to reduce our future development pipeline by circa 600 homes and release between $80 million and $100 million in committed capital. Again, this will be used to reduce the debt levels. As we jump to the results, as we said earlier, it was a reasonable half year result in a tough operating environment. I won't go through everything on this slide, but a couple of quick callouts. As David mentioned, DMF revenue is down a little bit due to volumes, but we do have a lot of stock to sell, and we are still selling through that stock pretty well. So we expect that to resolve itself in future periods. The home settlement margin is lower due to the mix of projects settling and some targeted price reductions. We do expect this will persist for a period of time until the inventory is cleared. In the project management, sales and marketing cost line, this is where you can see the significant reduction in costs compared to prior period, and this is where the majority of our cost saving efforts have been achieved. And just finally, at the bottom, you can see that we've not had any changes in valuation assumptions in this period, and therefore, the operating and statutory profit are the same. As we jump to the balance sheet, you can see here the inventory levels have increased as the homes in progress have been completed. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a plan in place to reduce this completed home inventory over the next 12 months. You can also see at the bottom left of this page, the land settlements, which are due to be completed in the second half. Now all of these are from contracts which were executed some time ago in a very different trading environment. And this will increase the drawn debt as we settle these projects over time. As noted earlier, it is not our model to carry a large land bank. And as such, we have a plan to rightsize the land bank based on current market conditions and the capital release will be used to reduce the debt levels, but we'll also retain a sufficient land bank to support future projects as the existing projects close out. We've touched on inventory already, so I won't spend too long on this slide, but I did want to highlight that inventory consists of both houses as well as civil works and capitalized interest, which gets released over the life of each project. The other thing I wanted to highlight on this slide is the project status. So you can see that we have 6 of our existing projects in inventory release mode, which means they're past their peak construction phase and will reduce inventory balances as new home settlements come through. We've also got Phillip Island, which is currently in the accumulate phase, will very soon transition to inventory release phase now that the clubhouse is completed and open. And just on the cash flow, you can see our rental annuity continues to grow, but the community cash flows has been impacted by that slightly lower DMF volumes in this period. But this growing annuity continues to underpin the operating business. Development cash flows, as you can see, have been reduced considerably since their peak in the first half of FY '24, which was when those 7 projects really ramped up construction. And development spend will continue to be calibrated with settlement revenue over future periods. We have no plans to ramp up development spend again until market conditions improve and the sales rate stabilizes. I'll now pass back to David to take us through the outlook.

Thanks, Darren. So our lead indicators are showing early signs of improvement. But as we've outlined, there do remain some certain challenges that we will rise to. Our immediate focus, as you've heard, is on executing the land bank reduction and reducing the inventory. In relation to the DMF future, as we've talked about, we've got the VCAT hearing scheduled for early May, and we're hoping for clarity in the months after this, but we remain confident in our position. In terms of the status of the pipeline, some up-to-date numbers as of 23 Feb show that we've completed 168 new home settlements year-to-date. There are an additional 44 customers that have unconditional contracts on their homes, on their existing home and a planned settlement date on their new Lifestyle Communities home before 30 June 2025. And we have a further 71 customers that are marketing their existing homes currently for sale, having placed a deposit with us in a new home. So over the course of the next 2 to 3 months, we will have a better feel for how many of these 71 customers their settlements fall into FY '25. So look, in summary, having had a tough 6 to 12 months, we are well advanced on pulling on all the levers within the business to navigate these challenges, and we're cautiously optimistic about the start we've had in January and February. So before we open it up for questions, I'd like to take the opportunity to announce the appointment of Mr. Henry Ruiz as Chief Executive Officer of Lifestyle Communities effective from March 5. We are thrilled to have secured the services of Henry after a deep and intensive search process. Henry has got over 25 years' experience in the property, digital media and technology sectors. And for the last 15 years, he's been in senior management positions with REA in Australia and Asia. We were drawn to Henry for his maturity, his experience, his track record and most importantly, strong cultural fit with the team, plus his track record of commercial and operational discipline, together with strong strategic acumen, which gives us a high degree of confidence that he's the right person for the next chapter of Lifestyle. And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the strength and capabilities of the Lifestyle team. And over the last few months, as I've been on the floor, I've seen firsthand the commitment, the drive and energy that pervades this business and the strong sense of purpose from within the team. As a firm, we're committed to continue to preserve and strengthen the culture, which has served us so well over the journey. So Anita, I'll now hand back to you to open it up for Q&A.

Thank you, David. We now welcome your questions, and we'll commence by addressing verbal questions before taking written questions. We do have Murray on the line from Moelis Australia. Just bear with me, Murray, I'll let you know when you're good to go.

Just wanted to find out the inventory reduction strategy seems to suggest that you've probably got about twice as many homes as what you need, which obviously implies quite a bit of a reduction in that balance and I guess, release of the balance sheet. I'm just keen to hear how you expect this to play out over time? Do you just stop developing in these communities until that ideal balance is reached or is that oversimplifying things? Is there still some build-out that needs to take place whilst that balance reduces?

Murray, thanks for that. No, we don't completely stop building just because there are still homes in the pipeline, but also we don't want to create the impression on site that everything has ground to a halt. But what you do, do is slow it right down. So there's still construction activity happening, but you definitely slow the build rate well below the sales rate. So that will continue to play out over the couple of months. And it really is sort of site-by-site, and we can calibrate it based on the performance of that particular site.

Got it. And then just also wanted to ask about the cost-cutting initiatives that have been done in the last 6 months, please. If we look at the various corporate cost lines in the income statement, would you be able to quantify how much of that is effectively a restructuring cost and probably not repeatable going into FY '26?

The restructuring costs, it's hard to see on the presentation, but you can find them in the interim report that's been released at the same time. They sort of sit below the line. So we've called them out there so you can identify how much that was and the non-repeat, and that's really just redundancy payments. Most of the cost cutting happened at the sort of development side of the business and front end. So that's sort of sales, marketing, project management roles as well as reductions in discretionary marketing spend, etcetera. So it's not really prevalent in the corporate overhead line. It's more in the operating part of the business.

We now have from Lou from Jarden.

Two questions, if I may. Can you quantify the discounting that you're currently doing compared to prices of 12 months ago in order to get that inventory off your hands?

Yes, it's a little bit project specific again, Lou, but it's not severe. We're definitely not going out with fire sale prices or anything like that. Largely, what we've done is rolled back price rises that were put through so that we're sort of mirroring similar homes in those projects that were sold before. And then we are sort of monitoring relative to the median house price in each catchment. We've got some catchments where the median house price has held up really well and others where it has moved a little bit more. So it really is kind of house-by-house. But as you can see in the gross margin that's come through, it's kind of reduced by sort of 5 basis points in this period. So that might give you a steer of where it's coming out at.

Yes. And then is that sales improvement in January and February is that because of the discounting you've started doing or is there something else?

It's difficult to attribute it exactly, but we think a lot of things that we're doing are starting to work. We have put some targeted prices out there, absolutely. So that has worked. We've also been doing a lot of work on the brand rebuild. We've also had open days with new club houses being completed and opened at Riverfield and Phillip Island. So that's brought a lot of new people to site. So it really is, I guess, the sum of the parts where we're just starting to see the business come to life again. And we're also mindful with the property market in general. We tend to see some activity levels pick up once talks of interest rate cuts hit mainstream media. So it doesn't necessarily need to be the cut itself. But once people start to form the view that they're coming and the property market heats up, we do see a bit of increased activity there. So all of those things, I guess, what we're calling the encouraging signs. We're definitely not trying to move to an optimistic lens yet, but we're definitely seeing things head in the right direction.

Great. And then finally, just following up on Murray's questions. What is your production rate? I think you mentioned 90 currently homes under construction. Is that kind of a good annual production rate to assume until you see an improvement in sales momentum?

Yes, it's a good question. I think we typically would calibrate this on a project-by-project basis. So I guess a normal operating rhythm might be 4 to 6 homes per month typically. But what we have done as things have slowed down just so that we're not turning construction completely off is intermittent ordering. So you might order 2 homes this month, then have a gap and then order another 2 the next month. So it really is sort of project-by-project, but that's the way we're sort of managing it so we can keep activity levels moving on site.

But if you add up all the projects, what are you getting in terms of what is currently under construction?

I don't have that number on the top of my head, mate. I'll have to come back to you separately on that, sorry.

We now have Suraj from Citi.

Yes. Perfect. Just maybe, I guess, questions on similar lines. And firstly, on the VCAT issue, you called out, I guess, a hearing date 1st of May. What's your understanding of the process of events there? And when could we expect some sort of resolution?

Yes, it's a difficult one to answer, Suraj, because we're ultimately in the hands of VCAT, and it will be down to the VCAT member to determine whether we get a result on the day, which we suspect is probably unlikely or whether he reserves his judgment and delivers it at a later date, which is probably more likely. And if that happens, we don't know at this stage how long that will take. So it's a little bit -- I know it's a bit vague, but unfortunately, that's all the information we have at this point.

Is it fair to say that like what sort of -- I don't know if there's a typical time line or at least what you're expecting, if you can give us some clarity on that.

It really is hard to say, and we desperately don't want to put words in the VCAT Chair's mouth. But ideally, we'd be hoping we get a result within the sort of 3- to 6-month window post the hearing date.

Okay. All right. The second thing is on the, I guess, the overhead reduction. Is it possible to get some numbers around it and where you're looking to cut -- I don't know if you can say which parts of the business are you looking to cut down on?

A lot of the cost changes have been done. So we don't have any sort of further major changes to be done. But most of those changes happen at the sort of front end of the business. Our overhead base is pretty lean to start with, but also largely fixed. So we don't have a lot of cost to cut out of the overhead line, unfortunately. But as you can see in the sales and marketing projects line as well as some of the money going through the balance sheet, that's where the majority of the cost savings have been made.

I understand. And just one final one. As you're standing currently, you talked about reducing DEVEX by $100 million. I'm just trying to get a sense of what's the base of which the $100 million is coming off. Should we take FY '24 as a base and maybe?

Yes, good question. We published a range in May last year at the -- it was a presentation that we did at the Macquarie Conference that had a planned development spend range for FY '25 in it. So the $100 million has come off that range.

Got it. That makes sense. And the land -- and finally, just one last question on the land settlements that you identified near-term. Is there any, I guess, flexibility around it or are you assuming that all of those go ahead as planned?

Yes. So we do have the ability to exit one contract without any penalties, etcetera. So we will do that. That's the Warragul contract. But all of those other contracts are unconditional. So we will proceed with settlement of those and then any process to sell land will happen separately.

We will now move to Tom from UBS.

Can you hear me? Just be interested in picking up your comment on Slide 4 around sitting at 90% of the median house price in the market in most markets and how you prefer to be at the 80% mark to allow for equity release. I'd just be interested in that comment in the context of your margin at, call it, 15%. And do you have scope to really get pricing right to be able to see sales pick up meaningfully or is it too hard to reduce your prices by 10% given your operating margin and also the impact on existing homeowners who have paid a high price?

Yes, that's right, Tom. We do need to be careful in how we push that through. And it's not saying that we're just going to apply 10% discounts across the board. And equally, the 80%, it's not a hard and fast rule, like we know that we can continue to sell and we're priced above that rate. Your market just does get a little bit narrower and sometimes your sales rate slows down a little bit. So it's a bit of a balance between the speed at which we can sell and the severity of the discounts that we might need to put through. So we don't plan, as I said, to sort of just across the board, apply discounts to get back to 80%. It's more as we think about projects going forward, that is absolutely the level that we would like to be at, and we're doing a little bit of work on the future projects to sort of reengineer so that we can continue to target that 80% of the median as our selling price.

So that has to be smaller stock and changes to design and despecking clubhouses. Is that the kind of approach then?

Yes, it could be. I mean we don't want to sort of put the cart before the horse, but I don't think we're ever going to sort of dramatically reduce the spec. We don't want to create sort of a backwards look, but a simplification maybe of some of the designs. Obviously, we're in a different climate now in terms of construction costs. So when we design future club houses, it will be mindful of the cost environment that we're in.

Okay. And then just on your sales of land and sites, I mean, you bought these at a different time. You said that yourself. And do you think you can sell them for what you paid? And equally, for the ones that you are going to develop is there margin in those projects given that you bought them at a different time in the market?

Yes, good question. I think just touching on the land first. We're obviously pretty in touch with the land market. And our view is that prices are holding up pretty well. So whether we recover 100% of those land prices, we're not sure, but we certainly don't think there'll be major discounting that needs to go on there. There are a lot of buyers for land still out there at the moment, particularly good quality sites with permits attached to them, which most of these sites will have. So we're pretty confident we'll be able to get those away as and when we need to. In terms of the future sites, again, it's a little bit too early to say because we don't plan to bring any new sites to market in the near-term. So we'll need to see sort of what the external market is doing when we bring those sites to market. We'll do some work on the designs. We'll be mindful of property market impact of the interest rate cycle, etcetera. So yes, definitely targeting to bring those sites to market around about the 80% of the median price, though. So yes, certainly, there will be some margin in that if we can achieve it.

Okay. Just a very quick final one for me. The slowdown in volumes has had a pretty marked impact on your business. How is Todd Devine coping with lower volumes? Is there a flow and impact to him? Is there some risk there that this is an issue for him because you've slowed down quite dramatically? And from memory, you are a large part of his business.

Yes, that's right. It's a good question. I think the slowdown in Victoria has impacted us and others definitely. I think you can see others out in the market with various campaigns at the moment. We're seeing $40,000 rebates from some operators. We're also seeing -- there's one operator in particular that has a 2-year rent-free period post settlement. So there's definitely industry-wide impacts being felt. In terms of Todd, obviously, he's still got or he's still getting paid for all of the inventory that is working its way through the system, and we are still building. So he has definitely had to adjust his business a little bit, but that is how Todd is structured anyway. So he has a lot of subbies that he can sort of turn on and off as required. Todd's also done a bit of work in recent times sort of diversifying his business. So he's got various other business streams. So we're not concerned about that. And Todd, like many of our suppliers, has been extremely supportive as we've worked our way through this process. So we're very grateful for the relationship with Todd. And certainly, he'll be there for us when we're ready to ramp up again.

Next, we have Scott from MST.

I hope you can hear me. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, rental growth seems to be relatively muted in the half. Did you sort of -- could you give a sense of what any rental increases you put through, through the first half of '25?

It was the standard rental increase, Scott, that went through on the 1st of July. So I think that was 3.6%. What could be sort of impacting that a little bit is because we've got Phillip Island and Riverfield that both had their club houses only opened. Riverfield was in December and Phillip Island was early January. So the rent of those projects doesn't kick in until after those club houses are open.

That's helpful. You may have answered this before. Just I guess the pricing strategy with regards to clearing some of that inventory. I mean, how far are you willing to go to sort of clear that inventory? And I guess, is the priority to keep the development margin or to, I guess, repair the capital position?

It's a bit of a balancing act, to be honest. Like we're very mindful. We don't want to be running a fire sale. We definitely don't want to be causing flow on impacts to existing homeowners or the resales side of the business. But we are mindful that we do want to realize some capital as well. So it's a bit of a balancing act. And that's why we're undertaking a number of other capital management initiatives in parallel. So it's kind of the sum of the parts that will help us navigate this little period rather than any one thing being the silver bullet.

And I guess in light of the land settlements that will take place through the second half and cognizant of your targeted land sales, can you give us a sense of where you think net debt sort of heads over the next 3 to 6 months?

Yes, good question. I think -- I mean there's no doubt the net debt is going to increase as those land settlements come through. So we should see sort of development spend and settlement revenue balancing each other off a little bit and then the net debt will grow initially by the land settlements. And then ultimately, as these capital management strategies start to play through, it will then come back down again from there.

Okay. And then I guess, given the -- assuming you don't really get any acceleration in sales rates sort of through the remainder of FY '25, is there -- I mean it looks to me like growing settlements in '26 relative to FY '25 looks pretty hard. Is that a correct assumption?

It's honestly difficult to say, and that's been part of the challenge that we've got at the moment is our sales forecast ability, if you like, is difficult in this market. Like we are seeing encouraging signs and the lead indicators always front run the sales themselves, but we just don't know enough yet. So it's a hard one to answer to be honest.

Yes. And Scott, it goes to the question of guidance and reinstating that guidance. And until we have real clear line of sight on the data points and what the sales and therefore, the settlement profile looks like, it's hard to be definitive at this point. So at this point, we think '26 will be subdued, but we don't know to what extent.

And just lastly, is the -- sorry, the demand for existing homes, is that or completed homes, is that any different to sort of demand for homes in construction? I guess how -- is the customer happy to buy a completed home out of inventory or are they sort of more interested in adding a little more personalization to their purchasing?

Yes, it's a good question. We don't typically see a lot of customizations these days. And the ones that we do have, they're pretty standard anyway. So it's not like customers can sort of completely pull apart the spec or the floor plan and go too crazy with variations. And a lot of the inventory homes that we've built, we've built selecting the most popular customizations that people make anyway because we obviously want to make those homes as salable as possible. A lot of this started post COVID, if you remember when the supply chain was going a bit haywire, customers at that point didn't want to customize and they didn't want to take build risk. They wanted finished product to reduce that risk. So a lot of the inventory that's sort of built up has come from that period where we were sort of putting homes on the ground deliberately. Yes. And then the flow-through, I guess, to the resale side of the business, I mean, they are definitely location-driven typically. So people will buy where they want to live. And we are seeing some still quite good demand for resales product. Often, it is at a cheaper price point than some of our newer developments anyway. So in -- I guess, in the cost-of-living challenges that we've got, there is still really strong demand at that lower price point.

Next, we have Andy from Bell Potter.

Just some color, you called out the back just in terms of the snapshot for homes sold and awaiting settlement of 276. Can you just give a little bit more color on the timing of those? So what's expected in FY '25 and then what's into FY '26?

Yes. So if you jump to the outlook slide, Andy, that's probably the best place to give you some color. So there's -- I'm just waiting for David to shuffle through the papers here, but there's 174 of those homes will be built and available for settlement before the end of June this year. So there's quite a lot there that we can work our way through. And then the balance will be available in FY '26 and beyond. So it is a bit of a -- I guess, once you get past June, it's a bit of a sort of more gentle delivery from there of the future stock homes, and that's as a result of us slowing down the build engine.

Yes, understood. And just in terms of the specific projects, so further back in the pack, just wondering where the contributions are coming from more at a project level.

I see. Sorry mate, I don't have those numbers to hand, but can definitely.

That's okay. We can take it offline. That's all good. Just one follow-up just in terms of the land commitments you've called out what's in second half -- is there anything else ongoing then thereafter in FY '26 or onwards?

No. But I think we will always sort of continue to keep our eyes on the land market. I mean, ultimately, as I said earlier, we are a just-in-time development model. So we hadn't intended to build up the land bank when we signed those contracts back in sort of 2022, 2023, we were expecting a sales rate, which would have enabled us to get started on those builds pretty soon. But once we make the changes and we rightsize the portfolio and ideally, we get some more certainty back in the sales rate, we will reenter the market at that point in time, and we'll continue to grow the business. We do remain very high conviction in the demand for this product long run and particularly as we get through these little choppy waters and the difficult market, our long-term view still remains positive. And so we absolutely want to get ourselves in a position where we can get back to growing the business and delivering affordable housing into what is still a very sort of mismatch market in terms of supply and demand.

Next on the line, we have Ben from Barrenjoey.

Just had a question on the 106 homes scheduled to settle beyond FY '25. What type of cancellation rate would you be expecting you could see on potentially the conversion of those contracts to settlement at this stage?

Ben, it's Darren. Another good question. Difficult one to answer because -- I guess, our typical data is not all that helpful at the moment given the sort of cycle that we're in. What we can say is we typically run at the, say, the 281 contracts that are on hand. There's roughly 85% of those that are at the $5,000 deposit stage, and there's probably 15% that are at the $500 deposit stage. And we definitely do see higher rate of cancellation at the $500 stage when that's really more of an expression of interest deposit. It's fully refundable. People can walk away. By the time you get to $5,000, it is a nonrefundable deposit. So our cancellation rates typically are much lower on those. Albeit we have seen an increase in that cancellation rate over the last 6 months just with everything that's gone on with the media, etcetera. So definitely difficult to put a number on the 106, but hopefully, that gives you a bit of color.

Yes, it does. And just on the sale of the surplus sites, how will they be accounted for? Will you be looking to, I guess, reflect any gains or losses on those in the operating earnings or do they go below the line as part of noncore inventory?

No. I think once we go commence the campaign, typically, what we need to do is mark them to market based on feedback that we get either from the agents or from participants in the market. So that -- so those properties would be moved to assets held for sale on the balance sheet and any revaluation as a result of the mark-to-market would go through the fair value line in -- likely in June, I'd say. So it really does depend on where the valuation comes out as to how big that impact is, but it will go through that fair value line when it does.

Terrific. And just on the corporate overheads and the project management sales and marketing cost reductions that have come through this half. Is there still more corporate costs cost out that will flow through for the rest of this year or are those cost line items being stabilized? There will definitely be a flow-through effect just because of the changes that we've made. So the changes that we made were made progressively throughout the period as new information came to light and new activity levels were understood. So even, I guess, the last round of changes were sort of made in early December. So we would expect those changes to flow through into the second half. We don't have any, I guess, confirmed plans or any firm plans to make further changes at this time other than just the usual controlling of discretionary spend, etcetera. But we'll assess that as we go based on the sales rate.

And then Andy, just confirming if you did have another subsequent question, I'll allow you to speak from Bell Potter. Fine, so we do have a question, a verbal question from [ Todd Voigt].

Darren, just a quick question on the, I guess, extension of the tenor of the debt to -- I guess, 2 more years out. It wasn't disclosed if there was any change in interest rate for that extension.

Todd, thanks for your question. No, there's no major change in the interest rate. We are seeing, I guess, the benchmark rate move around a bit, obviously, with the cut. And we do have the hedge still in place. So there's been no change to the existing hedging arrangements that were there. So it really just was increasing the headroom in the covenant and extending the tenor.

Got it. And second question is about -- just about the new CEO. Just a question on his employment agreement. I guess 2 questions. The first is, if you can disclose how long is the term in terms of his employment contract? And secondarily, what are the terms or what happens if there's a change of control or M&A or anything like that? What -- can you disclose to us what the terms of his employment agreement suggest would happen in that sort of scenario?

Yes. Todd, David here. So the term is ongoing. So it's open ended. And the second part of your question in relation to what happens with M&A. So it's fairly prescribed here in Australia, as you may be aware. But there is a clause that we did disclose in relation to reduction in his role, and there would be compensation payable to him in the event that his role materially changed without his agreement. But that's the extent of it.

And can you disclose or is it disclosed to the market what that compensation is? Is it a year or 2 years?

I think it's capped at one year.

One year. And also is he getting any sort of equity or incentive compensation?

Not upfront. But certainly, he's going to participate in the STI on a pro rata basis from his start date through to 30 June 2025. And he will participate in the LTI for the following 3 years. So outside of that, so which is kind of normal practice here for the senior leadership team. And that was all disclosed in the announcement but there's no upfront payments at all.

And is there any requirement in terms of minimum ownership in Lifestyle that he must own as CEO?

No, there's not. Nothing formally. But remember, the bulk of our incentive program is equity. So as time goes on, all the management team build up equity over the journey, which is what works here and what James put in place many years ago, which has worked beautifully.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. That's come to the end of our verbal questions. And apologies, we've actually run out of time for this webinar. We do note that there is a number of written questions on the forum, and we will address those with you individually offline. So that now we have reached the end of this webinar and conference call we would like to thank you for your attendance and invite you to contact the company via the Investor Center available on the company's website should you have any questions not addressed today. I will now close the webinar, and thanks again for your attendance.