Shui On Land Limited (272) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are sorry that there was some technical issue a bit earlier. So we are restarting again. Welcome again to Shui On Land's 2024 Interim Results Analyst Briefing, and thank you very much for having the patience and joining us this evening. We are pleased to have 5 members of the senior management team with us today. Mr. Vincent Lo, our Chairman; Ms. Stephanie Lo, our Vice Chairman; Mr. Douglas Sung, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Shui On Land; Ms. Jessica Wang, Chief Executive Officer of Shui On Land; and Mr. Allan Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Shui On Xintiandi. We will start with a presentation by the management, followed by Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Without further ado, may I please invite Mr. Lo to start with some opening remarks. Mr. Lo, please.

Hello, everybody, again. The first half of this year has been extremely challenging and difficult, as we all know, due to the geopolitical tensions, the regional wars and then economic adjustment and repositioning in a lot of places, Sino-U.S. relations and the Western ally trying to contain China's growth, particularly on the technology front. And then on the Mainland itself, we're seeing low investor confidence and a very slow and difficult growth. The liquidity and debt issue of the developers and then the financial market has been extremely difficult for developers. And with low consumer confidence, it's affecting all the businesses. And despite all these adversities, the company has been able to remain profitable, and I think that is not a bad situation. So let me hand over to my colleagues now to give you more details.

Thank you, Chairman. This is Stephanie. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and thank you for being patient with us. Let me just briefly introduce the highlights of the first half of 2024. As the Chairman mentioned, we have seen continuous challenges in China's economy and property sector for the reasons he listed just now. But nevertheless, the group has recorded a profit of RMB 183 million in the first 6 months of RMB 24 million, with profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 72 million. This reflects a large year-on-year decline in net profit, but primarily due to a lack of new residential property completions, which greatly impacted property sales. From a commercial portfolio point of view, we have seen a very strong resilience from our property portfolio, which yielded an increase of 16% year-on-year in rental income. This was largely supported by successful new openings of Panlong Tiandi and Hong Shou Fang in Shanghai last year. We will continue to take a prudent yet proactive capital management strategy. The group's balance sheet remains stable with a net gearing ratio at 53% as at June 30, 2024, and our cash and bank deposits totaled RMB 10.5 billion. As of 2021, RMB 40.6 billion of offshore debts have been repaid by us, including the recent repayment of the USD 493 million senior notes due on the 24th of August. So from that point of view, we will continue our prudent and proactive capital management strategy, and Douglas will share more later. From -- a very quick 2 points on sustainability, we continue to take a very long-term mindset to build resilience and sustainability overall in the business. This obviously includes tackling climate adaptation, but the overall purpose is to improve our competitive advantage as a developer, a landlord and an employer and reduce our costs over time. So we've introduced 2 new policies on biodiversity and diversity and inclusion in the business to promote environmental and workplace well-being. We're happy to report that as of the 1st of July, Shanghai Tai Ping Qiao, which is where the Greater Xintiandi, Shanghai Xintiandi area has transitioned to 100% renewable electricity, becoming the first commercial complex in Shanghai City core to do so, we believe that this will generate savings over the long term. From the market point of view, just a couple of observations. Despite a lot of easing measures that both central and local governments have pushed out this past year, consumer confidence remains extremely low in the backdrop of slowing economic growth. So what we're seeing is a lot of downgrading in consumption demand. And to top that off, there is a large retail supply and office supply in most major cities that will create more downward pressure in terms of rents. So from that point of view, we continue to be very focused on driving occupancy and stability within our portfolio. But we are seeing some green shoots where in retail, more experience-based retail and services, larger spend on leisure and sports are becoming new runways, and Allan will share more later on how we think about that. But from an overall market outlook perspective, we take a very cautious outlook towards the China real estate market. We believe recovery will be quite slow for a variety of reasons, some of which is because there's a lot of -- still a lot of uncertainty towards the overall economic growth catalysts as well as a lot of issues and challenges that still yet to be worked through within the real estate sector. But from that point of view, we are very focused on Shanghai. Over 70% of our NAV is still based in Shanghai. So we think that with a very resilient luxury residential market in Shanghai, we're well positioned to capture this consumption demand. We have 2 large residential projects that are launching this year, and Jessica will share more on that. As the credit crisis continues, as many of you well know, the offshore lending market remains virtually shut to a lot of China developers. While we are quite cautious on near-term business outlook with tightened liquidity for the property industry is still expected, we will continue to preserve cash as our utmost priority, and we will continue to review and adopt the most appropriate debt management strategies for the sustainability of the business going forward. So with that, I'll hand it over to Douglas.

Thank you, Stephanie. Let me run through the financial side for first half 2024. So on this page, you will see the key financial figures performance for the first half period. So revenue is just over RMB 2 billion. Net profit, RMB 183 million, with which property sales totaled RMB 143 million. So this figure, obviously, is quite low because during the first half, we did not launch -- we did not complete or hand over any new residential projects. So this RMB 143 million in sales are primarily car parks in completed residential projects and some individual shops -- retail shops. So we did not have a lot of new completion handover during the period. Total rental income is about RMB 1.75 billion -- RMB 1.76 billion. This represents 11% year-on-year increase, which is driven by contribution by our new properties, which opened in the last 12 to 18 months, including Panlong Tiandi and Hong Shou Fang. So this added to the overall rental income base. Profit attributable to shareholders is RMB 72 million, as you can see. So on the income statement, I won't run through all the figures, just highlighting a few key ones. So overall revenue is RMB 2.0 billion, as I mentioned, down 68% year-on-year. You can see primarily because of lower property sales during the period. As I mentioned, rental income is up 11% year-on-year. So gross profit is down about 54% year-on-year to RMB 1.35 billion. Gross profit margin is obviously quite high at 65% because the revenue is primarily rental, which always have a much higher margin compared to sales. And then I think the other line items are relatively straightforward. You can see that our finance costs during the first half is basically in line with first half 2023. So that basically is reflective of our overall debt amount hasn't increased much over the last 6 to 12 months. And I'll talk about the fair value change of our IP in a later page. So next page. So profit before tax, RMB 282 million, and then profit attributable to shareholders, as I mentioned, RMB 72 million, down 88% year-on-year. I would also like to add that our Board recommend there is -- [ declared no ] interim dividend for the first half of this year. So the next page. So on the balance sheet side, very quickly, total asset is just over RMB 10 billion. And the total debt is about RMB 33 billion -- sorry, RMB 100 billion and then total debt is RMB 33 billion. So our net debt is about RMB 23 billion as of the first half. Again, it's relatively stable compared to the end of 2023. Net gearing is up slightly to 53% compared to the end of the year. And next page, you will see graphically, total assets have been pretty stable at about RMB 100 billion to RMB 110 billion over the last 5, 6 years, of which about 61% right now is completed investment property. Next page. So the IP portfolio, you can see the overall valuation has been stable during the first half -- the grand total amount, if we exclude JV and it's associate projects, it's about RMB 49.5 billion. Our company share is about RMB 44 billion and then including the JV and associate projects, over RMB 100 billion, and our share is about RMB 62.5 billion. So overall, you can see some ups and downs, but the overall value of the portfolio has been relatively stable. Next page. So again, this graphically show you our net debt and our net gearing position over the last 10 years. You can see that in terms of the debt amount compared to the peak in 2015, 2016, we actually are still well below that level. So we have reduced debt quite substantially over the last 8, 9 years. So our view, the management's view is that the challenges the company is facing right now is not so much over leverage or too much debt. It's primarily because of liquidity and challenge in the financing market that is very, very difficult to get new financing. Next page. Here, you can see the debt maturity over the next few years. And you can see clearly that we expect the maturity wall to peak next year in 2025. So it's approximately RMB 8.5 billion, RMB 8.6 billion of debt maturing, of which we have a U.S. dollar bond of $3.5 billion maturing in March next year. So once we get through 2025, the debt profile will look substantially better going forward. We actually do not have much debt to retire after 2026. So obviously, a lot of work to be done in the next 12 months. But hopefully, once we get past that, it will look much better. So the breakdown on our remaining senior notes, offshore senior notes, we have repaid the USD 493 million as of last week. So we have 2 remaining U.S. dollar bond, [ totaling ] amount is approximately $900 million. Next page. So the -- on the financial side, finance side, a lot of initiatives we have been doing and will continue to do over the next 12, 18 months. Of course, we have, as Stephanie mentioned, ensuring liquidity and cash flow has been our utmost priority in the past couple of years. So we have adopted many, many different strategy to improve our liquidity. We have done more onshore financing, including CMBS. We have disposed assets. We have also repurchased some bonds in the past couple of years. We will continue to use a different approach to enhance and improve our liquidity overall. And as you know, we have been very, very selective in new investments. We really haven't really spent much in new landbank in the past couple of years. We will have a chart on the next page to show you. But overall, we have repaid in excess of RMB 40 billion of offshore debt since 2021 when the Evergrande debt crisis first broke out. So as you can imagine, it's a huge amount and a huge cash drain from the company in the last couple of years. We have also substantially reduced our reliance on offshore financing in the last few years from approximately 80% of our debt is offshore to currently about 47%, but after repaying the August bond, this ratio will be down to roughly about 40%. So we have continued to reduce our risk because of the offshore financing difficulty. Going forward, of course, we will continue to strive to continue to preserve cash, continue to improve our liquidity going forward. We will obviously continue to review different strategies to best manage that maturity profile coming up in the next couple of years. Next page. So I mentioned earlier, we repaid over RMB 40 billion of that, including the August bond we just repaid last week. So you can see that basically, every year since 2021, we have paid off approximately more than RMB 10 billion of debt offshore. As you know very well that the offshore market is still basically shut, so a lot of this repayment really is coming from our internal resources to meet that obligation. Next page. And also, I mentioned that one of the key initiatives is to reduce our offshore financing reliance. So right now, the FX debt ratio is approximately 47% as of the first half. But including the repayment of our August bond, this would be approximately 40%. And we would expect this ratio to drop further towards the end of the year. So probably, we would expect by the end of this year, early next year, approximately 1/3 of our debt will be in FX on RMB, and then the remaining 2/3 will be RMB. And then the one way we have increased onshore financing is, of course, leveraging on our investment property portfolio. So you can see that ratio has gone up from overall 25% to about 36% right now. But this really [ 36% ] is for the overall IP portfolio, of which, obviously, different properties have different LTV. But it also -- the 36% also includes some recently completed properties and some properties which the rental level or rental yield is still relatively low. So it's -- I think it's not feasible or not realistic to expect that we can leverage up every single IP property to 50%, 60% LTV. And we feel that there is a little bit more room for us to increase leverage on our portfolio, but probably not substantially more from the current level. So I will stop here and turn it over to Jessica.

Thanks, Douglas. So let me introduce the property sales and development. So I'd like to begin with an update on our property sales performance first. We did not launch any major new projects in the first half of this year due to the construction schedule. Therefore, the contract sales of the first half was RMB 623 million, and apart from the contract sales, the group also recorded RMB 251 million of subscribed sales, which will be converted to the contract sales in the coming months. In terms of the recognized sales due to a low level of residential completion in the first half, the group's total recognized property sales was RMB 1.69 billion, but this situation will improve in the second half as we target to complete and hand over to the buyers of Wuhan Tiandi Residential B12 in the second half of this year. The group achieved a total locked-in sales of RMB 7.8 billion available for delivery to customers and to be recognized in the second half of 2024 and beyond. Next. Taking into account the market condition and the construction schedule, the group has planned for more launch in the second half, including Riverville and Lakeville Phase 6 in Shanghai. There are approximately 240,000 square meter of residential GFA available for sale and presale in the second half and beyond. This slide summarizes our existing residential development landbank and saleable resources for the future. The total saleable amount is RMB 66.4 billion, with attributable value at RMB 35 billion. RMB 24.1 billion of saleable resources are in Shanghai. And besides the residential development landbank, we also have a considerable commercial development portfolio in Shanghai and other high-growth cities. This slide listed the commercial properties under development and the major pipeline projects for future development. The total GFA of our commercial property portfolio was 2.32 million square meter, of which 60% were for office and 40% for retail. Now let me walk you through our market observation and development strategy. First, looking at market trends, we've seen positive signals from recently policy easing. Our key focus is the promotion of the property sector development towards our new model. China has vowed more opportunities for private enterprises and to boost the business confidence. They've also committed to fostering stable development of the real estate market and a continuing high standard opening up policies. Importantly, municipal governments have been empowered with great authority to ease restriction on housing purchase, tailoring policies to local conditions. These are positive signals from market stabilization and economic growth, though the full effects may take time to materialize. Secondly, the Shanghai residential market has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Relaxation of purchasing restriction combined with unprecedented reduction in mortgage rates and down payment ratios have improved the market segment especially in May and June 2024. Notably, the high-end segment has outperformed with primary sales of housing units above RMB 20 million in Shanghai increased by 57% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, which showed the strong demand in this segment and boosted the market confidence. Given these trends, our strategy focus is threefold. First, leveraging our strength in urban regeneration, we will further explore and capture suitable opportunities in a very selective approach. Secondly, we are implementing a best-in-class product strategy with our strong brands and presence in Shanghai market, we will further reinforce our leadership position in Shanghai. Finally, we are pursuing an Asset-Light Strategy with higher management efficiency, while continuing to expand our partnership network. We believe that this approach positions us to capitalize on the evolving market conditions and maintain our competitive edge. Now I'd like to dive deeper into Shanghai's high-end residential market and our upcoming residential launch. Looking at the chart on the left, we see that a total of 1,549 units priced above RMB 30 million was sold in the first half of this year, setting a record high for the past decade. We observed a similar trend for unit priced above RMB 50 million. This surge in sales can be attributed to 2 factors, a significant increase in supply and a strong demand for superior living environment and quality. The demand comes from a large customer base, both within Shanghai and across China. Recently, relaxation in purchase restrictions have further expanded its customer base. It is important to note that the supply of high-end residential properties in the city core remains limited, especially for high-rise apartments. Given these factors, we remain optimistic about the market segment. We believe that high-quality product will continue to outperform in the market. And as mentioned earlier, the Shanghai property market remains attractive, showing stable demand and resilient performance against the broader market downturn. Our group has been deeply rooted in Shanghai for over 30 years with several high-quality products under development. I'd like to highlight that 2 of our high-end residential projects set to launch in the second half of 2024, Riverville and the Lakeville Phase 6. Riverville is located on the left bank of Huangpu River in the Yangpu Riverside zone. It's a heritage preservation and redevelopment project featuring a high-end, low-density residential community. This project extends our Lakeville brand to a wide market at the first -- as the first of villa product -- the Lakeville brand. It primarily consists of 90 units. The total saleable area is 21,000 square meter in GFA. We expect to complete the construction in Q2 2025 and hand over to our customer in Q3 2025. For the Lakeville Phase 6 is the latest addition to our Lakeville series in the Shanghai Xintiandi community. It will be the tallest residential building in Puxi and will stand out as a landmark. It enjoys not only our best location, but offers rare lake views, further enhancing appeal. The first bench of super high-rise building with GFA of 56,000 square meter will be available for sales in the second half. The project is targeted to be completed in Q4 2026 and handover in Q2 2027. The Lakeville brand has consistently attracted a large base of loyal customers over the years. We anticipate Phase 6 will be one of the city's most sought after projects in the near future. We believe these 2 upcoming residential will drive sales and provide a consistent revenue to the group and will further solidify our leadership position in the luxury property sector. That's all my part for my -- for today, and I hand over to Allan.

Thank you, Jessica. In this section, I will quickly brief the overall performance of the commercial assets management. So in this year, with the new launched project to Panlong Tiandi and the Hong Shou Fang's maturing and its strong performance, and the development project at Tai Ping Qiao, the Xintiandi Commercial Centers approaching the final completion, our total valuation of commercial assets located in the prime location in Shanghai reached RMB 79 billion. And the rental and related income increased by 16% from RMB 1.5 billion to RMB 1.76 billion due to the stable and strong performance of the mature projects plus the strong and successful new commercial projects of Panlong Tiandi and Hong Shou Fang, which contributed the majority of the increase of the rental and related income. Well, the increase of rental also contributed to the innovation and also the proactive leasing strategies. And from the retail side, we observed that the average occupancy rate remains at a very stable rate, which is 93%. And our overall sales in the shopper traffic increased by 11% and 12%, respectively. And also, we initiated many creative marketing events and continuous product innovation, which result in quite strong tenant sales, which grew by 11% in the first half of this year comparing to first half last year, where office market has been really challenging, but we have managed to maintain a very stable office rate for the mature office properties, which is 91%. And the overall occupancy has improved by 7% from December last year to end of first half of this year. And even though the new office are facing immense pressure, we believe that the increase of 7% is quite significant improvement. And I will introduce a bit more about the total signed office areas. And also in first half, we have been strategically focused on the large tenants. So we successfully signed deals with many reputable tenants, including Panasonic, Cisco, Huatai Securities, CBRE, Nespresso and Kimberly-Clark. We believe that the adding of these reputable tenants will help us to maintain the occupancy -- the office portfolio as a very stable performances. Well, the next slide is about our initiative of seizing the opportunity from the market to create new social landmarks, where the first project in the Panlong Tiandi. We positioned this project as the urban retreat destination. According to latest internal questionnaire survey, there are more than 40% of our customers are attracted by this project's distinctive esthetic open spaces and also the water town scenery. And as mentioned in these slides, we have received more than 26 million visitors since the opening, and also the total sales reached RMB 135 million. And the second project is the Hong Shou Fang. In this project, we tried our best to provide an extraordinary experience under the theme of ideal neighborhood with a refined atmosphere. So as you can see, we received more than 7.8 million visits, and the total sales goes all the way up to RMB 204 million. And the average sales per square meter per month reached above 3,000, which is not easy during this market downturn. Well, from the office side, we are trying to shift the competition from the hardware to software. So we tried our best to provide a very sustainable work solution in order to attract reputable tenants. Among all of the initiatives, we launched 4 different interesting services, including the Holistic Work Solution offer and also Hybrid Work Solutions plus we call it a One-Stop Workx Ready Service in order to provide a [indiscernible] office space for our clients. The last one is the Sustainability Work Solution. And so because all of these initiatives, we successfully attracted more than 83% of our office tenants, joined the effort to create sustainable office places. And also because of these innovative solutions and services, we have signed more than 182,000 square meter new office lease in first half of this year, among which around 48% of tenants are from the 3 different type of big companies. Well, other than the maturing project, we also have a quite strong pipeline. So next slide is about the new adding to our commercial portfolio, which is the Xintiandi Commercial Center, CPIC Xintiandi Commercial Center, where this project is a quite a big one. We have more than 193,000 square meter office plus 81,000 square meter retail places. And now we have already handed over the first office tower to the user at the end of last year, and we have signed around the 60% of new lease terms for the second tower. And the tower one and the retail podium will open business next year. So my last slide is about the operational focus in the near term. No need to mention that the demand will remain weak under this lower economy. So we believe that there would be a lot of challenges for both the retail and office. So from the operational side, we will focus on maintaining and improving our occupancy rates as the first priority. From the retail side, we will focus on providing cultural content and also a very innovative and experience-driven products to the customers in order to create all of our community into a social hub for the customers in order to achieve a quite strong stable sales and shopper traffic. For the office side, we will focus on the big and the quality tenant, as mentioned before. And we will keep innovating ourselves in the software and also the service offerings in order to create a sustainable work solution for the premium customers. Well, I'll stop here and hand over to [ Nona ].