Nexity SA (NXI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to this Nexity conference. We're going to be talking about the business and revenue for the third quarter of 2024, presented by Mr. Jean-Claude Bassien, Deputy Director General; and Pierre-Henry Pouchelon, Secretary General for Finance. FYI, today's conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to give the floor to Mr. Jean-Claude Bassien to start the presentation. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this conference call. At the end of the third quarter for 2024, there are a couple of highlights that we'd like to draw to your attention and a couple of key messages that we'd like to get across. First of all, this is something that should be taken as a very positive note. We're starting finally to see some light at the end of the tunnel for our business sector. Of course, the rate drop off from the European Central Bank, minus 75 basis points since the beginning of the year has helped. We're therefore starting to see bank loan rates drop off as well. And if you look at 10-year French treasury bonds and bank loan rates, you can see that we're already back to plus 7% purchasing power for our clients and maybe even a little bit more than that eventually, we're at between 3% and 3.5% loan rates for them. A second important message, and this will have a very direct impact on us. We are able to confirm the strong dynamic observed in the first half of 2024 with the retail sales that are up and even ramping up in the third quarter and Pierre-Henry will be coming back to that in a few minutes. Another important thing to note, we are moving forward at a fair clip at our transformation plan, implementing the various aspects of that, that I'll be coming back to in a little bit in a moment. We've got redeploying, recalibrating, resizing. We're fully on schedule for that and the consequences of the transformation plan on our financials is starting to be seen and -- well will certainly be seen by the end of 2025. Now supposing that the macroeconomic environment does not change significantly, our outlook is unchanged for the end of this year. There are some positive signs as well, as I mentioned in the introduction now. I already said that the rates are dropping off, and I've said what that means for us. But as a follow-up to that, there's an important thing that I'd like you to note. Construction costs are stabilizing with the BT01 indicator plus 0.7%, which is lower than inflation. That is very good news for us and for our business. From a political perspective, there's also an important thing that I'd like to comment. There's certainly an emerging consensus on how important it will be to move quickly to solve the social housing crisis, which is starting to emerge. Of course, between political speeches and actions, there's still a chasm, but we have noted that some commitments have been made for real estate purchasing power, especially de-zoning the 0% rate loans, which could include individual housing going forward. For taxation of individuals, this is important because this affects the individual investors that are an important client base for us. At the end of the French P&L law seems to be occurring. Nonprofessional furnished loans are no longer excluded, which is very important. And it's maybe important also to remember that when it comes to investment, this is in its very nature, designed to create long-term returns at low tax rates and the tax changes do not look like they will fundamentally upend the investments that we have. I'll be coming back a little bit later to our transformation plan. But before that, I'd like to give the floor to Pierre-Henry who would like to get into the details of business figures for this third quarter.

Thank you very much. On Slide 8, you will be able to see all of the main indicators for our business, and these are things that I'll be coming back to in detail on the coming few slides. On property development, we're seeing a drop of 12% of overall sign-ups. That basically confirms the observed trends in retail, as I remember, minus 20% at the end of June according to AFP. On services office space we have an order book of EUR 55 million. This reflects the lower end of the cycle, but our pipeline is now higher than for the entire year 2023. For office space, mainly, we had a lot of deliveries with more than 170,000 square meters delivered for flagship projects that show our know-how. And on services, we are still drawn by our service provision to buildings. Our backlog is EUR 4.5 billion. This is affected by a drop off in the services backlog because of the low number of new orders and the very selective strategy that we've been applying for residential real estate, and I'll be coming back to that later. This backlog does not include the Carrefour deal for which the first building permits are expected in December with the first bookings that will start to feed into that backlog shortly. As you know, since the beginning of the year, all of our project operations, i.e., the ones for which we have not yet bought the land have been reviewed line by line in our balance sheet on 30th of June. We decided to abandon EUR 50 million worth or so, put into exceptional operational losses with few bookings attached to these in the third quarter. That strategy has continued in line with our plans, and 29 further operations have canceled. These 29 are mainly related to block sales with the reviewed costs, the exit clauses and the inability to renegotiate them mean that we need to abandon them. This means that a significant number of orders from before 2024, even 2023 have been canceled. We've decided to review them to give a clear understanding of our business performance in 2024. These cancellations aren't from our clients initiative, but from us. We have 1,504 reservations, total 195 of which are retail sales. So therefore, a 12% drop-off in bookings with a lot that still must be done in the fourth quarter as is the case many years. Now our retail sales are 4% with a strong ramp-up in the third quarter, plus 11.5%. The strong third quarter performance continuing into October is still being supported by our current commercial campaign, which has led to an increase in traffic on our website and contact for our outlets. It's been one of the best months since the crisis for Nexity. However, our sales numbers are stable, which shows that we seem to have past 2023, which was the low point. We have Paul Lassalle as our new National Director. He has a lot of experience in operating our business after spending many years with property developers, which goes to show our ability to attract new talent. On this slide, we have our client mix, which is still nonrepresentative of the entire year. We're expecting an increased share of retail sales by the end of the year. However, we do see a 4-point increase in first-time buyers that are now 16% of the total that is in line with the bounce back due to our current campaign and current trends. Our commercial plan shows the transformation plan and also the recalibration of our offering. The offering is down 26%. And since the beginning of the year, 12% as of the 30th of June. We don't have any unsold finished homes. And the short-term unsold homes is not significant. As I said, we delivered more than 170,000 square meters on large flagship products this year. If you just look at the third quarter, we have 110,000 square meters -- 95,000 square meters for the Eco Campus in Garenne-Colombes, which is a turnkey delivery for Engie’'s corporate HQ and more than 15,000 square meters for the Carré Invalides project in the 7th Arr Paris, we have shown that we're able to deliver big unique projects on time. On our services business, we're continuing to be driven by operations with high occupation rates, good growth of the overall area operated and also the average basket is Studéa which is going to show the new concept. Sales are bouncing back, thanks to having the right team and working on smaller lots. Finally, our services business is being recentered and does not require any particular comment. Jean-Claude will be going at to those in just a few minutes [Foreign Language] Sales at the end of September stood at EUR 2.6 billion, slightly down by 8% slow and divested activities for both residential and commercial property development activities. This reflects the progress of operations underway. Please note in commercial property, Q3 sales were up by EUR 70 million, reflecting the full delivery of La Garenne-Colombes during the period. Residential property sales also stabilized in Q3, thanks to strong momentum indeed assigned, compared with Q3 last year. In services, service properties are up thanks to the embedded effect of site openings. Distribution, on the other hand, is still impacted by the low level of sales in 2023. To finish the section on business activity [indiscernible] as in every publication from now on, on nonfinancial performance, which is at the heart of our business challenges. As a reminder, we're aiming for a 42% reduction in our carbon footprint by 2030, a little 10% better than the current RE2020 environmental regulations. The group's operations at the building permit stage during the first 9 months of the year outperformed the RE2020 environmental regulations by 30% on average. In concrete terms, we are ahead of the game as our operations anticipate the new RE2020, 2025 threshold. Our commitment to low carbon construction has also been recognized. For the sixth year running Nexity was ranked first in the 4 main categories of the BBCA trophies. Since the BBCA certification was created in 2016, as many as 175 Nexity projects have been awarded the certification, representing a total of almost 1 million square meters. Over to you Jean-Claude for the progress of the transformation plan.

Now regarding the transformation plan, I'd like to remind you that last time we said our transformation plan was built around the 4 orders, refocusing, resizing, recalibration and redeployment. Our road map is clear, and we are making rapid progress on all 4 aspects. I'll get back to each aspect in turn. Let's start with our refocusing efforts. On July 25, we announced that we had entered into exclusive negotiations with Crédit Agricole Immobilier with a view to selling Nexity property management, all conditions precedent have been lifted and completion is expected in the next few days. Nexity has also sold a 50% stake in the real estate advertising platform, Bien’ici, to the [indiscernible] Group for EUR 35 million. So an enterprise value of EUR 70 million. At this stage, as a major player in the profession, Nexity retains a 6% stake in the platform. As a reminder, Nexity finalized the sale of our PM or property management for individuals business on April 2. I'd like to remind you, the enterprise value was EUR 440 million, capital gain, EUR 183 million. Over the quarter, we continue to stand in disciplined management of our balance sheet and cash flow. It should be noted that cash flow was positively impacted by the delivery of large-scale commercial programs such as La Garenne-Colombes and Carré Invalides. As a result, undrawn confirmed credit lines totaled EUR 800 million, and that's the total amount of confirmed lines maturing in 2028 with no limit on their use. The second pillar of our transformation plan is resizing. The group's transformation obviously involves a resizing and reduction plan for operating expenses. We're adjusting to a new real estate environment. We have a plan to reduce operating expenses. We initiated that in last year. And our horizon is 2026. We expect savings by 2026 to amount to EUR 95 million. That's a reduction of at least 16% in our cost base on a full year basis in 2026. EUR 75 million of this plan will be achieved by reducing the payroll. The redundancy was what we initiated in April in the subject of collective agreements and operational implementations that were scheduled for November. So like I said, the redundancy plan, which we started April has been the subject of a collective agreement with unanimous approval. We also have the approval of the labor authority. So implementation will begin at the end of November. As a reminder, we also announced EUR 20 million in savings on overhead. That plan is proceeding a pace region after region. And this also involves the real estate division. Pillar number three, recalibration, Pierre-Henry touched upon that before We talked about it in the commercial activities section. We have continued our efforts to address our commercial offer. For properties currently under construction, we have continued to align launch prices with purchasing power and construction costs. And this pain staking work is carried out on a by-project basis. The development in project phase, we be banded 64 projects over 9 months with a strong impact on booking cancellations in Q3. These cancellations have been restated to correctly reflect the sales momentum over the period. Key takeaways, three aspects. Firstly, the measures are taken since the beginning of the year of bearing fruit and are reflected in our commercial offering. Secondly, all projects put into production over 2024 have been recalibrated to the new market situation. And thirdly, I would say that this work will be reflected in the low point of the cycle in 2024 and will greatly contribute to profitability in as early as 2025. So Pillar #4, redeployment. To provide examples, the -- pertaining to this redeployment effort, we'd like to share with you the -- what we're doing in terms of urban regeneration, which accounts for more than 20% of the projects presented to the commitment committee since the start of the year. We're talking over 17,000 housing units. So excellent momentum here. New Nexity will be operational by the end of the year. Clearly, we seek to accelerate development we can fast track our exit from the crisis. We also seek to optimize performance and increase our agility based on the new needs of our customers at a local divisional level. And also based on their funding capabilities. Let me say a few words about the Carrefour deal. You're probably familiar with the main principles that structured this deal. You can see them on the slide that you can see the major KPIs. As Pierre-Henry said earlier, in December, we should have the first full building permits. They represent 800 housing units and more than 4,200 square meters of commercial space with forecast sales not yet included in the backlog of EUR 120 million. Lastly, let me say a few words on our outlook. On the basis of the momentum for road map execution is subject to the macroeconomic environment, not deteriorating, we are maintaining our outlook unchanged. We still expect a positive operating profit for 2024, marking a financial low point. This level of earnings takes into account capital gains on disposals and the cost of adjusting the offering to the new market environment, as well as the cost of reorganizing the group. We expect net financial debt at the end of 2024 to be significantly lower than at end 2023. We also expect improved profitability as early as 2025 and consequently, further debt reduction with a maximum net debt of EUR 500 million by the end of 2025. Thank you very much for your attention. Pierre-Henry and myself are happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, gentlemen.

[Operator Instructions] No questions so far. Last call to ask questions [Operator Instructions] No questions. Over to you, gentlemen, for the wrap-up.

Well, if there are no questions, that must mean we've been crystal clear. We are taking advantage of the improving market situation as observed in the first half of the year and implementation of our transformation plan will be reflected in our next financial statements. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you for attending today's webcast. You may now hang up. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call]