LSL Property Services plc (LSLL.XC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for joining LSL Interim Results Presentation. I'm Adam Castleton, LFL's Group CEO, and I'm here with David Wolffe, Interim Group CFO. I'll first cover highlights, market context and progress we've made in our divisions. David will then take you through a financial review. I'll then talk about outlook and some key takeaways, and we'll take questions at the end. We're recording this event and a replay will be available on the LSL IR website. These are my maiden set of results as Group CEO. I'm really pleased to report the results are in line with expectations, and we continue to make good operational progress. Revenue and profit are up with operating margin maintained at a 15-year high. Return on capital employed of 31% for the last 12 months is much higher than historical levels. These reflect the improvements we've achieved following the transformation of the group in recent years, and this was achieved while continuing to invest for growth. This performance underlines that our capital-light resilient model is delivering consistently while we are reinvesting for the future and the full year outlook remains unchanged. Moving to key financial highlights. Group revenue increased by 5% to GBP 89.7 million, and we maintained our strong market share. Group underlying operating profit was up 3% to GBP 14.8 million, while we continue to invest strategically in our business and absorb the national insurance increase. We are a highly cash-generative business. Our cash conversion for the last 12 months was 95%. This is at the upper end of our target range of 75% to 100%. We performed well in a recovering market. Total mortgage lending in the market increased by 5%, with a very different picture in new lending, which was up 22%, whilst product transfers rebalanced back 10% year-on-year. We gained market share with our new mortgage lending up 23%. U.K. residential sales were up 17% with a pull forward of demand given the stamp duty changes. We maintained our market share of this market. Mortgage approvals increased 10%, with the change in our lender mix slightly reducing our estimated share in surveying and valuations with revenue up 9%. We operate 3 divisions with leading market positions, each benefit from strong long-standing client relationships with scale and strength in their markets as well as expertise and deep domain knowledge. Each delivered operational progress during the period. In Surveying & Valuation, productivity per surveyor increased by 8%. B2C revenue increased by 43%, and we renewed a top 5 lender contract and started working with another new lender. In Financial Services, new mortgage lending was up 23%. Revenue per adviser increased by 8% and the implementation of the new CRM is progressing well. In our Estate Agency Franchising division, we increased the size of our lettings portfolio, making 3 acquisitions during the period with a strong pipeline, and we added 3 new branches to our franchise network. In summary, each division continues to execute well while maintaining discipline on margins and returns. I'll now hand over to David to take you through the financial review in more detail.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning. I'm David Wolffe, Interim CFO at LSL, previously CFO at a number of high-growth, tech-driven and listed businesses. Let's look at the group's financial performance in more detail. In the half year, revenue grew 5% to GBP 89.7 million, driven by 9% growth in our largest division, Surveying & Valuation. Underlying operating profit increased to GBP 14.8 million, up 3% year-on-year, and I'll come back to that increase in just a moment. Operating margin remained strong at 17% at the upper end of our historical range. Cash from operations at GBP 7.4 million reflects shareholder distributions, planned investment and some working capital timing. Again, more on that shortly. Return on capital employed for the last 12 months increased to 31%, very strong compared to historical levels. So the first half has delivered continuing growth while maintaining a high return on capital profile. Coming back to that operating profit increase, there are 2 main points to highlight. First, we have made positive operating performance progress with an underlying increase of GBP 3 million before strategic and investment decisions. This progress is driven by our volume growth across the business, improved pricing and the first positive contribution from the Pivotal joint venture. Second, we made strategic decisions in 2 areas, which reduced profit in the period. We stepped away from some protection-only business as we rebalanced our adviser firms towards mortgage and protection or composite firms, and we made investment across Financial Services and Surveying to drive future growth. So the headline growth of 3% is a combination of that underlying progress and the growth investment. Turning now to cash flow and capital allocation. In the half, we delivered positive operating cash flow of GBP 7.4 million after working capital movements around the 2024 year-end. I'll come back to this in just a moment. We deployed capital in 2 key areas in the period. First, in shareholder returns, we distributed GBP 9 million in dividends and share buybacks. The interim dividend is maintained at 4.0p, and the buyback program continues with GBP 3 million deployed to date. Second, in strategic investment, GBP 3.6 million of cash was spent across CRM development, data and lettings books acquisitions to drive future growth. Our balance sheet remains robust with June cash at GBP 22 million and a GBP 60 million unutilized facility, we have strong liquidity and our capital-light model ensures ongoing flexibility. Looking at the positive operating cash flow and working capital in a bit more detail now. The line at the bottom of this slide shows our adjusted cash from operations performance over the last few half periods. The GBP 7.4 million we reported in H1 presents as a lower number than last year, but we had a timing effect of GBP 4 million excess working capital inflow just before the 2024 year-end that then unwound into an outflow into 2025. You can see this in the lines above. In operating profit, we have stable progression. Depreciation is flat and low, reflecting our capital-light operating model. Cash on lease liabilities continues to moderate after the transformation of the Estate Agency business. But on working capital, H2 2024 inflow of GBP 5.9 million you'll see in the box was an outlier, which illustrates these timing effects around the year-end. The unwind in H1 of 2025 makes our cash conversion look suppressed in the half, even though on a rolling 12 months basis, we made really good progress. We expect that the second half and full year 2025 cash conversion should be normalizing towards our target of 75% to 100%. Taking each division in turn, let's run through the story of the half. In Surveying & Valuation, revenue grew 9% to GBP 53.2 million, within which B2C was up 43%. Underlying operating profit was GBP 11.9 million with margins at 22%. This is down on the elevated levels of H1 last year with Surveyor commissions now normalized, and this effect is in line with what we have flagged before. But in sequential performance compared to the second half of 2024, we have made good margin progress, up 200 basis points. Volumes grew with jobs up 7%. Fee per job was up 2% with better terms and more B2C activity, and we improved Surveyor productivity in jobs per surveyor, which was up 8%. In Financial Services, revenue was flat overall, but this illustrates the combination of mortgage-related revenue up 21% and protection revenue down 12%, following our strategic repositioning away from protection-only brokers. As a result, adviser numbers were down to 2,637, but adviser productivity increased 8% in completions per adviser, and we grew fee per completion by 3%. But overall, at a divisional level, despite the broker repositioning and some P&L investment in CRM, operating profit grew 23% to GBP 4.8 million, with Pivotal making that positive contribution. In Estate Agency franchising, revenue overall grew 1%, but while residential sales revenue was up 24% and lettings revenue up 4%, our land and new homes business was pushed back by a contract change. As a result, underlying operating profit margin remained flat at 24%, but we are expecting improvement in the second half with cost savings feeding through. Branches grew by 1% after 3 more openings in the half, with overall sales income per branch up 22%. The lettings portfolio now stands at over 37,400 properties after 7 lettings books acquisitions since mid-2024, with overall income per property now up 1%. So with progress in each of the divisions, the group delivered on expectations in the first half, whilst at the same time, positioning itself for stronger growth in the second half of the year. And with that, I'll hand you back to Adam to take you through the outlook.

Thank you, David. Expectations for the full year remain unchanged. In the second half, we expect a sequential step-up in profit in each division with an increase in refinancing activity, a strong activity in 2-year and 5-year mortgages in 2020 and 2023 mature in large numbers. We've already seen this in July and August, with July the strongest refinancing month for us this year. We also came into the half with residential sales pipelines increased from this time last year. We will continue to invest in our business in the second half, for example, in lettings books and the FS CRM system. Indeed, in September, we've already completed a further 3 lettings books. When I presented our preliminary results back in April, just before I started out as Group CEO, I set out my early thoughts and priorities. These remain unchanged, and I'm pleased with early progress. Our senior leadership teams are responding well and are raising their sights and ambitions even higher for the future. We continue our investments in technology and data, notably the new CRM in FS and data in Surveying & Valuations, whilst we are also trialing new AI-enabled solutions to improve productivity. I'm already working closely with our divisional business leaders on the opportunity to leverage group strengths, and I'm encouraged by the early signs that I'm seeing. I'm working very hard and even more transparent and clear communication, both internally and to the market. For example, we've just rolled out the first wave of updates to our IR website, adding some fresh new elements to allow greater accessibility and transparency. This is all steady, deliberate progress, and I look forward to sharing news of our ongoing progress. We are a diversified, resilient cash-generative group, strategically positioned for growth. We're delivering, performing in line with expectations, and we're investing carefully while maintaining shareholder distributions. We're building consistently. The LSL of today is stronger and leaner, delivering higher quality earnings. It is early days in my tenure as CEO, and I'm excited about the growth opportunities open to us as a group. With 2025 on track, we're looking ahead with renewed ambition and with confidence about our future. With that, operator, can we please move to Q&A.

This is Phil from Investor Relations. I'm going to be asking the questions to the management team. You've just watched the presentation that was given to the analysts and now we're moving to live Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. I'm going to ask the questions one at a time, and we'll go through as we have time. The first question is around group operating margins. They've been held at 17%, which is considered resilient in a softer housing market. What are some of the specific operational efficiencies or strategic actions that have helped maintain the margin?

Thank you, Phil. Yes, very pleased with the 17% margin following our restructure of the group with the franchising Estate Agency, the sale of noncore assets and the move of some of our broker businesses to our joint venture. We're much more resilient, greater quality of earnings flowing through, that's demonstrated with the margins up at 17%, which we've maintained off the back of our restructured group divisions. And so we expect to do better than 17% when we move on beyond 20%. The most important thing is that the quality of the earnings is much greater.

Thank you, Adam. The next question is around AI. Could you talk about how you're embracing the AI opportunity?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Phil. So we've always embraced technology at LSL going back all through the years, we've embraced it. We've leveraged it all the way back to when we started our surveying business, we call the e.surv. We call the e.surv because we were the first to send the physical reports by e-mail. A number of years later, we're one of the first businesses to actually put the Estate Agency network on one platform. And more recently, within the surveying business, we have 70 machine learning tools. None of those are strictly AI because there's sort of procedures that you put in with written by humans. But in terms of AI, the one use case that we have is the launch of the AVM model, which we've built over the last 15 months. We've had tested with lenders, is working very, very successfully, and that uses patent recognition and machine learning. And there are other AI tools that we're trialing in the business, including distributing across the whole of the business, the corporate version of ChatGPT.

Great. I've got a series of questions around cash and working capital. Again, I'll ask them one at a time. Your net cash position moved from around GBP 32.5 million at year-end to GBP 22 million at half year. How much of this was due to timing effects, for example, dividend acquisition investments? And what is the outlook for the second half of the year...

Thank you. So we highlighted in the presentation that we had significant shareholder distributions in the half across share buyback and dividends. We distributed GBP 9 million, and that indicates a stable continuing dividend policy. We also invested significant cash in developing the business and in CapEx. We highlighted that there were GBP 3.6 million investment across lettings books acquisitions, driving the Estate Agency franchise business and further GBP 2.5 million of CapEx that was driven by investment in the Surveying division, where we have been building automated valuation model capabilities that will drive the next generation of revenues. And within that cash profile in the first half of the year, we also delivered adjusted operating cash from operations of GBP 7.4 million. Now that number, as we talked about, was influenced by working capital flows, and I'll just explain the pointed issue there. In the back end of 2024, we had an unusual inflow of working capital from a number of delayed payments of around GBP 4 million, GBP 4.5 million. That inflow, which was just around timing of payments just before year-end, then resulted in an outflow in early 2025, that depressed our cash flow from operations. And I can illustrate that in the cash conversion numbers across the periods. So we target 75% to 100% of cash conversion. And actually, in the second half of last year, that cash conversion number was 145% influenced by that GBP 4 million of working capital inflow. As a result of that reversal and the unwinding of that in the first half of the year, cash conversion in the first half of this year actually dropped to 50%. And what we signaled is that we're now expecting our cash conversion to return to what we call our target range of 75% to 100%. And that's the expectation when you look at the position by the time we get to the end of the full year.

Thanks, David. There's a question here on a similar topic around liquidity or your cash position. How sensitive is that to lender or client payment term changes?

Yes. So I think we have limited sensitivity to payment terms across the business. And the reason I say that, I think, is there are 3 factors in play. The first is that in 2 of our 3 divisions, we are effectively managing all of the cash flows of the business on -- whether it's a mortgage transaction or a housing transaction, we are managing the cash before it gets remitted out. So we are in control of those flows and insulated from timing effects. The second is that in terms of the payables for the business across the group, our single biggest cost is people and payment terms on staff costs are obviously pretty fixed. And the last point, I think, to highlight is in the one business, which is surveying where we have any meaningful working capital around when our big customers who are the major lenders pay us, they are big institutions with whom we've been trading for many, many years, and those payment terms are very, very stable. So I think overall, we have very limited sensitivity in terms of our liquidity to payment terms.

Great. I've got a broader question here. The question is acknowledging or recognizing that the new LSL is a much lower capital-intensive business, and that raises the question of would you consider taking on some debt onto the balance sheet given you're a lower capital-intensive business?

Thank you. Theoretically, of course, yes, we're less volatile with lower capital employed, in which case, in theory, we have the ability to take on debt with some comfort. At the moment, I think we're a little way away from that. We've got a very strong balance sheet, which we're happy with. It gives us optionality for investments. But if we have opportunities to make investments that take us into debt, we'll be comfortable with that given the fact that, as you say, we've got low capital employed, but also most importantly, we've got a high headroom with our revolving credit facility. And also we have a business which is much less cyclical. But as ever with LSL, we've been over the years, very cautious, very cautious of debt. We'd always be careful in that case.

Great. Thanks, Adam. A question here around how does the business manage cybersecurity and data privacy risks?

We've invested quite heavily in recent years on governance and compliance. As you would expect, in this day and age, it's certainly something that keeps us very focused as there are from time to time some corporate issues. We have got a committee that looks at all cyber. We've got committees through all of the businesses. It's something we keep under review very, very regularly. And we're pleased with the governance that we have, but we're always very, very watchful, certainly not complacent in this day and age.

Great. I'll now turn to a number of divisional questions. The first one is just on the Surveying & Valuation business. The question is how sustainable are the current margins in surveying given last year's figures benefited from the lower incentive payments?

Sure. So yes, we called this out in the presentation, the fact that the margins in the first half of this year at 22% for the division, represent what we see as a normalized level of margin and that the comparative period last year was influenced upwards by a temporary delay in incentives that affected that period. So we would see the half that we've just reported as a normalized level. And our expectations for the full year are at a similar level. And therefore, we are comfortable that that's a good indication of the base that we're working with.

Great. And sticking with Surveying & Valuation for first half of 2025, picking up on what you just said, David, profits fell slightly due to the normalization of incentive payments as well as investment made in your automated valuation model project or initiative. When should investors start to expect these investments to generate decent returns for the business?

Yes. So the AVM space is a place in the market we've not historically been playing at all. So about 15 months ago, we started the project of building an AVM model using a team of data scientists. We've been testing that in recent months with a major lender, and that testing has been very successful. We are in the latter part of conversations with one lender and others who are interested in starting off with an initial contract to deliver AVM services to one lender. So we expect by the end of this year to have the first initial contract, and then we expect to roll that out over the next year or 2 to get to our natural market share of 38%. So it will roll out over time, starting off with the first contract signature that we expect in the latter part of this year.

Great. Thanks, Adam. A couple of questions now on the Estate Agency business. Could you just talk about the pace of branch expansions within the Estate Agency business?

Certainly. Very pleased with the first half performance with 3 new branches opening, 2 of which were cold starts. They weren't opening of branches from existing franchisees, and that demonstrates the strength of the brand, attracting people to us to start up their franchisee business under the Your Move and Reeds Rains brands. We would expect going forward 2 or 3, a small handful every half. That was about the pace that we would like. So steady incremental growth, which demonstrates the opportunity for growth within Estate Agency as we have with the other divisions.

Great. And then just following up within Estate Agency still. You're obviously running 100% franchise business there. How much support -- financial support do you provide to the Estate Agency franchisee?

Thank you for the question. Relatively limited. When we launched the franchising, which is something that I don't think have been done before, and we did it in difficult markets with some new franchisees who never run businesses before, we offered some working capital support, which actually was not taken up too much. There was GBP 2 million or GBP 3 million that was taken in the early days of the franchising. We now have less outstanding, probably about GBP 1 million, GBP 1.5 million, which are general working capital, which are well within our comfort levels. What we find is that the franchisees are very successful and the ones that are new to franchising and new to Estate Agency and owning their own business, very pleased as well. So very limited and modest working capital support even in times of difficult markets.

Thanks, Adam. And just another question here we've got on Estate Agency. This one relates to the investment in the letting books. Could you just clarify for the audience how much financing you're providing to the Estate Agencies and whether or not you own these or the franchisee owns the lettings books?

So we've got a long-running expertise in the identification and acquisition of lettings books. We're particularly particularly active in 2015 and '16, less so more recently. Now they've gone the franchising, we see as an opportunity for growth, assisting the purchase of lettings books for our franchisees. We did about 3 or 4 in the first half, and we think we can carry that cadence going forward. Effectively, we identify the lettings books, 80% of the time. Sometimes the franchisee themselves identify it. We provide the financing for it. The average lettings book may cost about GBP 300,000, GBP 400,000, so we provide the financing for that. They are owned by the franchisee. But in the case that the franchisee moves on and the letting books revert to LSL. Generally speaking, a very, very good use of capital and very high IRR for those projects.

Great. Got a couple of questions now on Pivotal, the joint venture. Again, I'll ask them one at a time. There's a question here about the recent changes of leadership at Pivotal. Does this have any impact or implications for LSL Group?

No, the CEO of Pivotal was previously the founder and CEO and Chairman of LSL, who took on the role of initiating, starting off and building the initial momentum of Pivotal. Now as we move to the next phase, as we've grown towards scale, there's now a change of management as a new CEO has come in, as you've said, and Simon is the Executive Chair. So he's taking a watching brief and helping with all his experience to drive that business onwards. We've seen some really good momentum, and we hope and expect a positive return on capital for our shareholders.

Great. And the second question on the Pivotal joint venture. It's obviously stated policy as a buy and build. How are you continuing to scale the Pivotal joint venture through acquisitions without overpaying for the deals?

Discipline, Phil discipline. The team are very, very disciplined. They have shown no signs -- and we wouldn't allow overpaying. They just basically are disciplined and we've been able to attract brokers to the buy-and-build story, I like to be part of that firm Pivotal and also benefit from some of the synergies that, that group can offer. So really, it's discipline. And across all of LSL, we've always been a disciplined business. Even in the lettings books, we were aware when we were active some years ago and now too, that there are people always in the market that are, should we say, splashing the cash, paying a little bit more than the average, but we've always been disciplined and we won't chase volume for the sake of it. And that was, in reality, some of the slow start with Pivotal was, there were a few deals that came along that we could have paid more. We could have bought to get some momentum, but we chose to pass and we chose to be disciplined with our approach, which we retain.

Great. Well, next question maybe relates to discipline here, Adam. You've got cash on your balance sheet, you're a cash-generative business. You're doing a buyback. Is there any scope to expand or enhance the share buyback program?

Yes. We -- as you say, Phil, we've got a dividend. We're paying -- we've kept that basically flat since -- in absolute terms since COVID, and we've got the share buyback program, which we're regularly dipping into each week. We're comfortable with our cash balances, which gives us flexibility for organic and on a sort of a specific basis, any inorganic opportunities. We're sort of comfortable with the balance at the moment. It's always kept under review, the dividend policy as the share buyback opportunities, we try to keep flexibility in the market. I think we've got the balance about right at the moment.

Great. Well, we've rather quickly run out of time. We've got time for one final question. But before I ask you that, just as a reminder to everybody, if you do have any further questions, if you send through an e-mail to the LSL team, we'll pick those up. And sorry if we weren't able to cover all the questions. But the final question, Adam, why did you reduce exposure to protection-only firms within financial service business? And then does that go to 0? And what is the financial impact of moving away from protection-only firms?

We like to focus our attention and our proposition where we feel that we'll get the best return and where we can add most value to our broker firms. We believe that composite firms with deep relationships with our clients and where we have a deep relationship is where we want to focus our attention and our investments and our CRM system really is focused there for composite firms, protection only, which is they're good businesses generally, but they're less our focus because they're generally a little bit more sales driven and they're not broad in the products that they offer their customers and a little bit less of an advised process. So very focused on our composite firms. Do I think it will go to 0? No. We've reduced a number of the firms. There might be a few more that reduce, but I think we'll always have that balance between mortgage and protection within composite firms and some protection only firms depending on the balance of the business that's being written.

Great. Well, Adam, I'm going to hand back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Listen, thank you for your time. I look forward to meeting any of you out there. It was slightly unnerving to look into a blank screen. So hopefully, if you've got interest in the business, which is really exciting, it'd be great to meet with you and explain a little bit further and in more depth about the opportunities this business offers a really great company that in recent years has transformed, got higher margins, lower capital that we have to spend each year and a higher return on capital employed. So we look forward to meeting as many of you as I can in person in the flesh. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Adam and David, for joining us today. That does conclude the LSL Property Services investor presentation. Please, can you take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage investor. We hope you've enjoyed today's webinar.