Stockland (SGP.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone, to the Stockland Full Year 2023 Results Announcement. There will be a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. You'll be able to ask a question by phone or through the webcast. To ask a question through the webcast, please click on the request to speak button at the bottom of the broadcast window. The meeting broadcast will be replaced with the audio questions interface, click, join queue and allow access to your microphone. If you are dialed in by phone to ask a question, dial start at any time. The operator will take your details before placing you in the queue. I will now pass it over to our first speaker, Mr. Tarun Gupta.

Good morning. My name is Tarun Gupta, CEO and Managing Director. Welcome to Stockland's financial results update for FY '23. Before we begin, I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional learners and custodians of the land on which we meet, the Garigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Joining me today is Alison Harrop, our CFO; Louise Mason, CEO of Commercial Property; and Andrew Whitson, CEO of our Communities business. Our FY '23 result represents a strong financial and operational performance with funds from operations towards the upper end of our guidance range at $0.371 per security on a pre-tax basis. The initial financial benefits of the refreshed strategy that we announced in 2021 are evident, along with our disciplined approach to capital management. The result also reflects the strength of our diversified platform and several years' worth of focused and disciplined efforts by the Stockland team who have created a high-quality, resilient portfolio and development pipeline. In November '21, we shared our refreshed strategy, building on Stockland's strengths to deliver sustainable growth. Over FY '23, we made further progress in executing this strategy. We are dynamically reshaping our portfolio through the targeted divestment of non-core properties and creation of new high-quality Logistics and Land Lease assets that are accretive to both earnings and net tangible assets. We are progressing the delivery of our $40 billion development pipeline, and we are growing our existing capital partnerships while executing on new partnering initiatives. The quality of our Commercial Property portfolio is reflected in the strong operating metrics delivered over the period with comparable NOI growth and leasing spreads accelerating for both our Logistics and Town Centre portfolios. Our MPC business delivered a resilient performance in an environment of rising interest rates and production constraints. We are positioning the business for the recovery phase of the market cycle, while also leveraging the scale and breadth of our land bank to provide more affordable product. We have seen sustained demand for our Land Lease product reflected in continued price growth for new releases. The acquisition of 5 additional Land Lease projects subsequent to balance date will enable us to accelerate the scale-up of our platform and drive material growth in the earnings contributions from this business in future periods. Turning to the FY '23 financial results. On a pre-tax basis, funds from operations of $883 million was up 3.8% relative to FY '22 and up 3.9% on a per security basis to $0.371. Our NTA per security is down marginally by 1.6% to $4.24. The Commercial Property portfolio continues to perform strongly. Comparable FFO growth for the period was up 3.5%, while leasing spreads accelerating to 3.1% for the Town Centre portfolio and up over 21% for our Logistics assets. Our MPC business delivered just over 5,400 settlements in FY '23 despite production constraints and severe wet weather over the first half. Underlying demand for our MPC product is solid, with enquiries running above pre-COVID levels, but conversion rates remain below historical averages. We expect sales rates to improve once the interest rate environment has stabilized. The contribution from our Land Lease business was up strongly for the year, and we have positioned it to be a key growth driver for us in future periods. ESG leadership is at the core of our strategy and is essential to our ability to generate sustainable growth for our investors. Our refreshed ESG strategy is designed to be commercially sustainable, combining our scale and innovation to make meaningful impacts in decarbonizing our footprint, embedding circularity principles across our operations, enhancing the social impact by supporting the continuum of housing and strengthening the climate resilience of our portfolio. We have brought forward our Net Zero target for Scope 1 and 2 by 3 years to 2025 and are working to have our most material Scope 3 emissions by 2030. We will be targeting Net Zero for Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 2050. Importantly, we have identified a clear pathway to achieving our decarbonization goals with a focus on making a measurable difference through the implementation of practical commercially viable initiatives. Our focus on making practical and measurable impact extends to our social impact ambitions. Our goal is to create $1 billion of social value by 2030, targeting areas such as housing, diversity and affordability and First Nations engagement. Our people drive our success. We strive to create an environment with diversity, inclusion and high levels of engagement are natural outcomes. It is pleasing to see our employee engagement remaining consistently high and improving to 88% over the year, well above the Australian national norm. We are committed to creating a team that is as diverse as the communities that we serve. Gender diversity is clearly an important part of that, and we'll continue to meet or exceed gender balance targets for senior management. I'll now hand over to Alison to take us through the financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Tarun, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start with a couple of things that I'm really pleased about. Firstly, our active capital management over the year has put us in a strong position as we end FY '23. And secondly, we have been diligent about managing our costs during the year, whilst allowing investment for our growth areas such as Land Lease Communities. We ended the period with gearing at 21.9%, down from 23.4% at June 2022 and toward the lower end of our 20% to 30% target range and with available liquidity of $1.6 billion. Our weighted average cost of debt for FY '23 was 4.3%, and we expect this to be approximately 5.2% for FY '24. Our fixed hedge ratio over FY '23 on our debt portfolio averaged 62%. And for FY '24, we expect this to average approximately 60%. We continue to actively manage our interest rate exposure. We've also been focused on lengthening our debt maturity. Over the year, we extended it to 5 years on a weighted average basis through a new 7-year medium-term note and 10-year private placement issuance at competitive pricing. Turning to FFO. On a pre-tax basis, FY '23 funds from operations of $883 million was up 3.8% relative to FY '22. FFO per security of $0.371 was up 3.9% and toward the upper end of guidance range of $0.364 to $0.374. The completion of the sale of our Retirement Living business in July 2022 realized a material taxable gain, resulting in Stockland Corporation Limited returning to an income tax paying position during the year. On a post-tax basis, FFO for FY '23 was $847 million or $0.356 per security. The effective tax rate for FY '23 of circa 4% is post the utilization of remaining tax losses and is expected to rise in future periods. Both the Commercial Property and community segments delivered strong earnings growth over FY '23, up 13% and 17%, respectively. Our Commercial Property business generated comparable FFO growth of 3.5%, up from 3.3% in FY '22. This was supplemented by NOI contributions from logistics developments completed over FY '22 and FY '23, the end of COVID-19-related rental abatements and significant increases in the contributions from our development and management income streams. While settlement volumes for our Masterplanned Communities business were down by 9%, this was more than offset by strong MPC price growth and margin expansion over the period. The communities' results also reflect significant growth in the contribution from our land lease development business, which more than tripled relative to FY '22. And the communities' rental and management income lines were also materially stronger. Unallocated corporate overheads grew by 4.5%, just below inflation. Across our whole business, commercial property overheads were essentially flat year-on-year, and communities' overheads were up, reflecting investment in our land lease and Masterplanned Communities platforms, which we are positioning for significant growth. For FY '24, we expect overheads to be broadly flat across the business. Net interest expense was up slightly for the year. This represents the net impact of a circa 90 basis point increase in our weighted average cost of debt for the year, a lower period average debt balance and an increase in the proportion of interest capitalized as we progress MPC and logistics development activity. Now on to cash flows. Operating cash flow before land acquisitions of $981 million was comfortably above both FFO and the distribution for the period. Including land acquisitions, operating cash flow was $332 million for the year. Payments for land tend to be somewhat lumpy. And over time, we expect operating cash flow post land acquisitions to average out broadly in line with FFO given our focus on reporting cash back to earnings. So as you can see, we continued to actively manage our capital position, and we remain disciplined in balancing investment for growth with a sharp focus on costs. Our strong balance sheet simultaneously provides scope for us to deliver on the upside while mitigating downside risk. I'll now hand over to Louise to take us through the Commercial Property result.

Thanks, Alison, and good morning. The strong Commercial Property numbers are the result of the work done over the last few years to remix and reposition the Town Centre portfolio and divest non-core assets, our high-quality, geographically well-placed logistics portfolio, and the associated development pipeline, the planning, delivery, and capital partnering of Workplace projects like M_Park and the deep capabilities of the team to deliver. Our results reflect the execution of our strategy and the impact of several years of effort from the team to build a high-quality portfolio. This puts us in a good position as we move forward through the cycle. Our growing logistics exposure and the performance of our repositioned Town Centre portfolio underpinned our strong result. In logistics, we're delivering on the development pipeline with circa $450 million of developments nearing completion. In Workplace, construction is close to completing on the first 2 buildings in Stage 1 of M_Park and construction has commenced on the final 2 buildings. Our high-quality Town Centre portfolio delivered comparable FFO growth of 4.8% and positive leasing spreads of 3.1%. Our rents are set at sustainable levels with an occupancy cost of 14.8%. Masterplanned across the portfolio highlighted densification to logistics and mixed-use opportunities across town centres and workplace. We're now progressing through the planning process across a number of assets. Future town centres associated with the Communities business are also proceeding through the planning phase. The $10.5 billion Commercial Property portfolio delivered 3.5% positive comparable FFO growth. This was underpinned by the 4.8% comp growth in town centres and 4.6% in logistics, both driven by positive leasing spreads and high occupancy. Rent collection is strong in all sectors at 99.5% and new business lines from development and management incomes are making a meaningful contribution to FFO. Cap rate expansion across the sectors was largely mitigated by strong income growth, which reduced the FY '23 impact to a 2.3% decrease. 97% of assets by value were independently valued over FY '23. Our strong market rent growth in Logistics delivered a $100 million uplift in value despite cap rates expanding by 71 basis points to 4.8%. The majority of the Workplace portfolio is positioned for future developments, and we'll tend to see higher incentives and lower rental growth in the near term as the WALE shortens. This is reflected in the cap rate expansion to 5.85%. The stable assets were less impacted by cap rate decompression. Similar to Logistics, high-quality income growth in our repositioned Town Centre portfolio has, to a large extent, mitigated the impact of cap rate expansion. Our weighted average cap rate now sits at 6.11%. In Logistics, we've delivered comparable FFO growth of 4.6% underpinned by full-year positive leasing spreads above 21%. Occupancy and rent collection remained consistently high at more than 99% and 100%. The portfolio WALE at 3.3 years, allows us to capture further rental growth. The logistics pipeline at circa $450 million per year is delivering high-quality income for the group. As you know, we've been systematically building our $6.4 billion pipeline for some time, and this continues to be rolled out. We're nearing completion on circa $450 million of FY '23 developments and are targeting the same in FY '24. As you can see, we have over $2 billion progressing through planning and over $3 billion in masterplanning. We'll continue to see these opportunities progress over the coming periods. Approximately 62% of the pipeline for FY '24 is pre-leased. We're seeing strong rental numbers and reduced incentives on these developments, and we're delivering circa 6% in relation to yield on costs. These development opportunities in well-located sites underpins the strategic objective of reweighting the portfolio to the logistics sector. We have a low exposure to Workplace and with the majority of that portfolio positioned for future developments. Although comparable FFO was negative 1.9%, we saw some positive operational metrics with re-leasing spreads improving to around 1% and new leases at 4.6%. Occupancy was good at just under 94% and rent collection was above 99%. The WALE of 4.2 years provides flexibility around future development. The development pipeline in Workplace is progressing with the ongoing delivery of Stage 1 at M_Park and the lodgement of mixed-use development proposal for Stage 2. We've launched planning proposals over Trinity in Macquarie Park and 601 Pacific Highway. And Piccadilly continues to be reviewed with an upcycling ESG focus. Our capability in managing detailed approval processes is adding value to these assets, whilst we control timing and commencement based on market conditions. Our diversified model also supports our mixed-use proposals. We're delivering strong performance in our town centres with total comparable sales growth of 14.7% and specialty sales growth of 19.8%. In comparison to pre-COVID, total comp sales growth is 14.4% and specialty is 13.6%. At $10,328 a meter, our specialty sales are more than 17% above the Urbis average. More than 70% of sales is in essentials-based categories with our remixing combined with the disposal of non-core assets, resulting in this strong sales performance. In Town Centres, we delivered comparable FFO growth of 4.8% and positive leasing spreads of 3.1% with more than 6% rent growth on new deals. We've increased tenant retention to 77% and lowered incentives to 9.8 months. Occupancy and rent collection are both above 99%. The specialty occupancy cost is well positioned at 14.8%, giving headroom to absorb any slowdown. The remixing and repositioning of the Town Centre portfolio in recent years has underpinned our performance and it gives us a sustainable position moving forward. Overall, we're very pleased with the performance of the Commercial Property portfolio. The team has been highly effective in the execution of the strategy, and this puts us in a good position. Moving forward, we will continue to execute our logistics development pipeline at circa $450 million per annum, and this will deliver meaningful high-quality income to the group. In FY '24, we anticipate logistics FFO comp growth to be broadly in line with FY '23. We believe the strong underlying fundamentals driving rental growth will continue. In Workplace, we forecast low single-digit FFO comp growth in our portfolio positioned for development. Our essentials-based Town Centres portfolio was resilient in an inflationary environment and also provides future mixed-use opportunities to maximize returns. Whilst we're forecasting good gross rent growth in FY '24, this will be somewhat offset by increases in operating costs, particularly energy and labor costs in cleaning and security. So overall, the Commercial Property portfolio is strategically positioned in FY '24 to capture income growth through the remixed core town centres and the well-located logistics portfolio and development pipeline. And we'll continue to progress mixed-use development opportunities across our Workplace assets to deliver future high-quality income from our diversified sectors. I'll now hand to Andrew.

Thanks, Louise, and good morning, everyone. We're very pleased to be able to deliver 17% FFO growth from the Communities business this year in an environment of rising interest rates and production challenges. This growth has been driven by the consistent execution in each area of our strategy, including extending our leadership position in the sector through increasing activation of our land bank, continuing to scale up our land lease business with a significant ramp-up in development activity and the acquisition of the Living Gems portfolio and broadening our existing capital partnerships through the establishment of the Stockland Communities partnership. The FFO growth that we delivered in the Communities business this year has been generated by all parts of the business. Masterplanned Communities is up year-on-year. We've delivered strong growth in land lease settlements and generated new high-quality rental and management income. Now on to the results for the Masterplanned Communities business. I'm pleased with the total lots settled for the year given the heavily back-ended nature of the settlement profile. The development operating profit margin was strong and benefited from the cost savings on completed projects. We're continuing to see cost escalations moderate with supply chain improvements. This is expected to read through to reduced construction programs over the next 12 months. Our settlement targets for FY '24 is in the range of 5,200 to 5,600 lots with a skew to the second half. And the operating profit margin will be lower than the prior year to a mix shift away from high-margin projects in New South Wales and Queensland. As expected, interest rate increases are impacted by settlements over the past year. While enquiry levels are similar to what we experienced pre-COVID, the conversion rate has been lower than the long-term average. Q4 gross sales were in line with Q3, with Q4 net sales impacted by higher cancellations due to the large volume of settlements that we called during this period. We remain positive on the residential market outlook with the rebound in net overseas migration supporting demand amidst the ongoing constrained land supply and we expect that certainty around interest rate movements will drive an improvement in conversion rates. In the year ahead, we expect the Victorian and New South Wales markets will benefit the most from the rebound in net overseas migration but affordability constraints will limit near-term price growth. And with relative affordability and interstate migration supporting Queensland and Western Australia, we expect these markets to outperform over the next 12 months. Given this market outlook, we've been working to position the business for relative outperformance during the market recovery phase. And this plan has 3 key elements: the first is doubling down on affordability through reducing the average lot size and developing more efficient housing solutions with our major builder partners. The second, accelerating production to reduce the timeframe between sales and settlement. And the third, launching up to 6 new projects in FY '24 to drive land bank activation and continue to explore organic and inorganic growth opportunities. Turning to land lease. Back in November '21, when we established our strategy to become one of the market leaders in the land lease sector, we had a clear investment thesis that was based on 3 propositions. One, the structural demand drivers of the sector; 2, the synergies with our Masterplanned Communities business; and 3, the strength and quality of the development returns and rental income. The strong performance of the business this year has reinforced our conviction in this key strategic move. We've exceeded our settlement guidance despite the supply chain disruption and start FY '24 with around 90% of forecast settlements covered by contracts on hand. We've continued to experience sustained demand for new releases over the past 12 months, with June net sales the highest for the year. This has resulted in double-digit price growth during FY '24. Pleasingly, we've seen the supply chain improve over the past 6 months. This has resulted in a moderation in construction cost escalation in the second half, which was less than 1% in our housing and construction business. The team have continued to progress our development pipeline. And with the acquisition of the Living Gems portfolio, we're on track to launch up to 12 new communities this year, which would take total number of active communities from 5 currently to 17 by the end of FY '24. This will allow us to significantly ramp up settlement volumes over the next 24 months. Our settlement target for FY '24 is 400 to 450 home sites with the development operating profit margin slightly below the through-cycle range due to launch costs associated with the production ramp-up. Established portfolio has grown to above 2,000 home sites, retained 100% occupancy and delivered 6.3% net rental growth in line with inflation. So in summary, we've continued to make significant progress in reshaping the business through the execution of our strategic initiatives. The Masterplanned Communities business is both demonstrating a high level of resilience and demonstrated -- and is positioned for the recovery and the land lease business is further capitalizing on the positive growth momentum that we've established. I'll leave it there and hand back to Tarun.

Thank you, Andrew. So in summary, our FY '23 result reflects the effective execution of our strategy and a focus on driving operational and financial performance while maintaining a strong capital position. Our town centres are benefiting from the high weighting to essentials categories in an environment of high inflation and increasing cost of living pressures and structural drivers are continuing to underpin strong occupier demand for our logistics assets and development projects. Demand has also remained resilient for our land lease product, facilitating further price growth for new releases. The operational land lease portfolio is generating CPI-linked rental growth and high-quality ongoing management income. We continue to increase our portfolio weightings to the logistics and land lease sectors in line with our strategic targets while positioning our Masterplanned Communities business for the recovery phase of the residential cycle and leveraging the scale and breadth of our land bank to provide more affordably priced product for our customers. Finally, our very strong balance sheet position provides us with the capacity to fund our near-term development commitments while also giving us the flexibility to take advantage of opportunities that may emerge. And we continue to engage with a range of capital partners for opportunities across our platform. For FY '24, FFO per security is expected to be in the range of $0.345 to $0.355 per security on a pre-tax basis with tax expense expected to be a high single-digit percentage of pre-tax FFO. And the distribution per security is expected to be within our targeted payout ratio of 75% to 85% of post-tax FFO. We will now open the lines for questions and answers.

Thanks, Tarun. To ask a question through the broadcast, please click on the request to speak button at the bottom of the broadcast window. The meeting broadcast will be replaced with the audio questions interface. Click join queue and allow access to your microphone. If you're dialed in by phone to ask a question dial start at any time. The operator will take your details before placing you in the queue. Our first question today comes from Caleb Wheatley from the Macquarie group. We might move to the next caller. The next call is Lauren Berry from Morgan Stanley.

Just wanted to ask around your lot settlements guidance for FY '24. I'm looking at your contracts on hand, post-July it looks to be about 4,500. You're guiding to 5,200 to 5,600. It's a pretty big step up given the current sales rates. Can you just give us some color on how you're thinking about how you're going to reach that guidance, please?

Yes. Sure, Lauren. Well, of the contracts on hand, we've got 3,800 that are due to settle in FY '24. So if you think about the guidance range, we've got another 1,400 to 1,800 net sales to make to achieve a number within that range. And at the moment, we're seeing around the similar number to the Q4 number playing out for the next couple of quarters. And that would be sufficient to get us within that guidance range. So we're seeing a shortening of production timeframes, which has been a positive, which is going to allow us to sell and settle more lots within the current year.

What is that production timeframe looking at the moment?

Yes. So it got out to beyond 40 weeks, and we're now seeing it come back to around 38 weeks. And that's still allowing for 5 weeks of wet weather, and we've started the year reasonably well. That's been dry out there. So we've got some good momentum in our delivery at this stage. So with that sort of production timeframe, we're basically going to have all stages commenced by the end of September. And there is some variability in that timing by state as well. Victoria being the longest, WA, it's down around 30 weeks.

And Andrew, in your presentation, you did mention that you could be looking at inorganic growth opportunities. Can you just give us a bit of an idea of what the market is looking like at the moment and what -- are there any potential opportunities you might be considering, please?

Yes. Lauren, I'll take that. Yes, I think as you would recall at the half year, we said we've been quiet in terms of acquisitions in our land bank restocking for a couple of years because of the market being too hot. But we are seeing that window opening. We have been active. We've bought some small going concern projects over the last few months. And as we look now into FY '24 with our balance sheet capacity, our capital partner relationships, we are looking to restock both organically and if there's any attractive inorganic acquisition targets, we'd be looking at those.

Is there any update on the partnership with MEA in terms of residential acquisitions?

We're pleased with establishing that as we had flagged at half year. It's -- on 31st July, it was formed. We had put one of our existing assets in Victoria called Lyra as the first seed asset and now we'll be working with MEA on delivering on the objectives which will be acquisitions over the next couple of years. We'll be working with them but we've just formed it over the last few weeks.

Our next question comes from Caleb Wheatley, who we'll try to get back to again. Okay. We will move on to our next caller who is Richard Jones from JPMorgan.

Obviously, the change in mix across your buyer profiles has been quite significant with investors and builders now making up close to 50% of sales. I was just interested, Andrew, in your thoughts on this and is this more a reflection on low first home buyer sales or is it a bit of a trend that's changed, do you think?

Richard, as you pointed out, it's the low first time buyer sales, and that's really been the affordability headwinds. We see that as one of the big opportunities moving forward and it has really been our focus around doubling down on affordability and reducing the package price with smaller lots and more efficient housing solutions. We see a pathway to bring down the average house and land package price between $50,000 and $100,000 to address more of that pent-up demand in the first home buyer market. And when you think about that first time buyer market, we sort of think about it in 2 ways. One, you've got the traditional first home buyer but also it's the new migrants as well. That generally skilled migrants coming to this country with a reasonable amount of equity. So there's opportunity there. And then you've got some of the government initiatives that have recently been announced with shared equity, low deposit schemes that'll come online in FY '24, both of which we think are going to provide some good momentum for that unaddressed demand at the moment.

Can we just delve into how you bring down house and land packages so much, given there is still pressures on the builders is what we understand, and there hasn't been much pullback in the cost of construction. So just interested, obviously, you can reduce the lot size, but I'll note also townhome settlements look relatively low in the period as well. So just maybe you can kind of touch on a few of those things.

Yes, sure. And on the home building side, what we're seeing is we're really establishing some significant closer partnerships with the larger well-capitalized project homebuilders. So working on new product initiatives with a number of those groups to look at more efficient housing solutions. And you're seeing it come through in some of the broader industry numbers as in the number of single-story homes moving forward, the size of the home, the configuration, be it al fresco areas, the internal layouts and there's opportunities to make the housing solutions more efficient but still a very desirable product to get people into home ownership. So we're seeing both a reduction in the overall size of the home and a smaller lot combining to reduce the package price.

And then maybe, Tarun, just a question just on just the trading profits contained in this result. And it looks like the Melbourne Business Park maybe didn't have its full contribution. I haven't verified that but also what the outlook looks to be in terms of land lease sales and any remaining Melbourne Business Park profit to be recognized for FY '24.

I'll take the first part, if you like, Richard. Yes, you're right. Not with Business Park. And I think we highlighted at the half year, it was probably going to roll over into FY '24, and it has just some final settlements there around the $5 million to $10 million mark.

And land lease sales to the JV?

Yes, Richard, we'd previously noted that we had 7 communities that were going to reach the milestones where we would look to transfer them into the partnership through FY '24. We're still on track for that. Most of that will be in the second half. The exact development profit release through that transfer, that depends on both the size of the community, the age and carrying value of the land but also things like debt costs and construction programs. So there's some variability in that number site by site.

Is there a tick-up from last year should it be?

On a -- difficult to give an exact number, but you would expect on a site-by-site basis, you saw those 2 go in for around $10 million per site. It's going to be below that.

We will attempt to go back to Caleb Wheatley now.

My first question, maybe one for Louise, just around the future stages of M_Park and particularly the introduction of some build-to-rent at that development. Can you just provide some rationale in terms of the pivot and any thoughts on future stages as well there?

Yes. Thanks, Caleb. Good to have you on the line. Yes, M_Park, it's -- Macquarie Park is such a great location given the metro, the university, the general demographics, the residential demographics of the area. So when we look at Stage 2, which is a large site, we saw that there was mixed-use potential there. So we have lodged a state significant application for potentially some build to rent, some more data centre, amenity and a small amount of workplace. So it's going to be another sort of 12 months to 24 months until we get sort of full visibility over that and where we get to with the authorities on that. And then post that, depending on market conditions, sort of where we go ahead with the development.

And I guess you flagged a bit of extension to build to rent in the past, noting that you're flagging potentially 2,000 apartments across the resi land bank. Is there any potential crossover on, I guess, build-to-rent aspirations? And I guess that the apartments you see on the residential or the community side of the business or are they mutually exclusive at this point in time?

Caleb, the 2,000 apartments reflects the masterplanning we're doing right across our land bank. A lot of it is in the Commercial Property portfolio. We've mentioned M_Park, projects like Trinity could also have components of that, but also in retail assets, some of them and the communities land bank. We're looking at across the board. And as we start to lodge planning applications, you'll get some more visibility on that. But it is a strong endowment we have within our land bank to pursue build-to-rent at what we believe will be good returns to meet our own objectives and financial targets.

Do you have any high-level thoughts on the sort of returns you'd be expecting out of build-to-rent given, I guess, the land is already in the platform?

It'll depend deal by deal, but I think -- and also we'll be looking to bring in third-party capital, given the capital intensity of build to rent over time. So I think in time, you'll see those returns come through. But together with fees that we would look to generate, it will be -- we'll be targeting to be within the ranges for our development and for our investment ROI targets.

My final question just on logistics portfolio and some press is suggesting that you're out in the market as you're looking for a capital partner on that portion of the portfolio. Just wondering if there's any update on capital interest there and any high-level thoughts around structuring on a potential partnership in Logistics, if there's anything to add there, please?

Yes. Again, one comment on press speculation. I think what we have said consistently is that right across our platform, our strategy is to introduce capital partners on thematics, on sectors, and we have lots of discussions undergoing. Clearly, we've announced another partnership in this result. And over time, you should expect us to do more. Specifically, when and what, you'll just have to wait and see.

Our next question comes from Tom Bodor from UBS.

I was wondering with some of the communities' partnership, if you would consider inorganic opportunities within the partnership or would that just be reserved for organic acquisitions of land?

Again, specifically, it's being set up. Its primary objective is to look at our own portfolio pipelines and the organic opportunities that come. We don't set up these more programmatic deals for inorganic opportunities because they are uncertain. You don't know how big and when they come. So I think the best way to think about it is like SRRP has been, we develop, we acquire land lease and communities’ projects in the normal course of business, and we'll be offering them to Mitsubishi as a capital partner, but in communities, we have other capital partners as well already on Aura, on Katalia, on Mt. Atkinson. So we'll be talking to all our capital partners as we generate the pipeline, which we do a lot of.

And then on the communities’ margin going lower, I think it's quite clearly called out around the mix shift in Western Queensland. But I'd be interested to understand if there's an expectation that there will be a little bit of price being traded off for volume to drive volume and also just if there's any sort of notable incentives or change in incentives in the last 6 months that you're seeing across your portfolio?

Yes, with regards to the margin, I think we've been saying for the last couple of years, we've been trading at or above the top end of the margin range and we expect it to move back within that range over time. So that's what you're seeing as we move through some of these projects that are delivering high margins. So that's sort of the trajectory that we're heading in. With regards to incentives and pricing out there in the marketplace, yes, within our portfolio, we saw most of the rebasing of pricing occurring in the first half of FY '23. And since that time, we saw the pick up in sales and enquiry in Q3, we've really seen the market moving sideways. There's been some -- there's going to be some variability month-on-month, but we're seeing that market moving sideways at the moment. And really the next leg of that recovery we think, is tied to getting -- the customer getting certainty around stabilization of rates. So with regards to incentives out there in the marketplace, we were working with some incentives for customers to ensure settlement in Q4. We spoke about that being around $10,000 a lot. That's sort of where it's set at.

And then just on that point around default rates and cancellations above historical averages. That's for the full year '23. Can you -- and you mentioned that the 4Q is in line with expectations, but maybe just some slightly more specific comments there around the sort of percentage rates you're seeing today would be great.

Yes, sure. The exact period quarter, monthly default rates aren't overly meaningful because we're sort of matching historical contracts with current settlements as the denominator. So yes, the rolling number is what we've always quoted as the more meaningful number. We saw it from a cancellation perspective, it's a couple of percent above that long-term average. But you do have some variability geographically there within Victoria, New South Wales at single digit, and that's reflecting the more binding nature of those contracts WA, Queensland, that's up above 20%, reflecting that those contract structures largely remain conditional until very close to settlement. So the numbers are manageable with the default rate. Once again, it was a couple of percent above that long-term average. But we saw people settling reasonably well in Q4. We had some pushouts into July with a couple of hundred settlements falling in July. So that performed reasonably well. Valuations are holding up reasonably well. So we're still seeing that orderly progression in the marketplace at the moment.

Our next question comes from Suraj Nebhani from Citigroup.

Just a couple of questions on the logistics side, please. I noticed that the base of logistics development, the $450 million seems to be lower than what we've talked about at prior results around $600 million. Just wondering what's driven the change there.

In prior periods, I've talked about over a 2-year period of $1.2 billion pipeline rollout. Roughly, it's the $600 million per annum. There's Kemps Creek in there at about $300 million. That's the outlier that's actually falling into FY '24 and '25 actually. So we're going to do about -- we've got about $450 million in '23, another $450 million in '24, and then in '25, I won't quote the number yet because it's always subject to how long planning approval is taken. As you probably heard from a lot of the market, Kemps Creek is delayed due to various authority delays out there. So that's the difference, the $300 million, and that's falling into FY '25 now.

And maybe just sticking on logistics, Louise. We talked about comp growth being similar to FY '23. It seems like 20% of the rent base is expiring next year. So even if you assume similar spreads.

Yes, that's right. So yes, it's about, that's fine. Yes.

I was just wondering why is the guidance not stronger. You obviously have some fixed rent flows in there as well for the balance of the leases, which are not expiring.

I think it always comes down to where those expirees are occurring. We've got a couple of big expirees in there. We have -- we're in the process of finalizing those negotiations and they're certainly looking positive. But I think at this stage of the year, we feel that with the expirees we have, the development pipeline time frame that we think will be around the same sort of number. Also, the development pipeline, the income often comes on the first quarter after the end of that financial year. So you don't get the full benefit in the actual year. So there's this rolling benefit coming through with the development pipeline.

And maybe just one on the -- maybe just one for Alison on the cost of debt expected in FY '24. I'm not sure if you made a comment earlier that I missed that.

Yes. So we're expecting a weighted average cost of debt to be circa 5.2%. That's based off of an average BBSW of about 4.3% for the year.

And if -- has there been any additional hedging put in place, I guess, since December?

No, not since we did some early -- I think in January, it was when we did some, but we haven't done any since then. Obviously, we're very active. We're looking -- actively looking at the market and waiting for those windows, but we haven't. We did about $600 million, as I recall, earlier in the year. We haven't done any since then.

Our next question comes from Sholto Maconochie from Jefferies.

I just have a couple of follow-ups from what's been asked. On the default rate, what's the long-term average again? Just to clarify, I can't find it.

Yes, around 4% shelter.

Are you running at sort of 6% on a rolling 12-month basis?

Yes.

And then just to look at demand, if you look at the sort of quarter, you had a big pick up in WA in the fourth quarter. But if you look at where the demand is, it seems like Queensland has come off a lot on a sort of -- on a full-year basis. It's been the weakest. What's driving that? Is that releases on net deposits or is it demand? What's been the driver of the softness in the Queensland net deposits?

Yes. And there's a couple of elements up there in shelter. We largely trade out of 3 projects in Queensland now. The volume comes from Aura Providence and Newport. Newport specifically, we go through a preloading period, which means releases can be infrequent. So we're in one of those periods for Newport where we've got less product releases coming to market. Aura demand has been reasonably consistent. It's probably the west of Brisbane, where it's been more variable. Those western corridors was more are price pointed and more first home buyer a lot. And so that's probably where we've seen some variability in sales velocity.

Yes. And then if you look at the total sales, like it seems to have net sales normalized at that $900,000. Is that what you're sort of assuming going forward of that type of a run rate sort of $900,000 net deposits a quarter?

Yes. So the -- if you look at -- there's probably 2 things to talk about, right, Q3 and Q4 gross sales were very similar. We had more cancellations in Q4 on the back of calling for more than 3,000 settlements during that period. So that impacted that net number. But we would see in the next couple of quarters that net sales are going to be around the similar level to Q4, give or take, is how the market is feeling at the moment. Difficult to call the exact timing of the next leg of the recovery.

And then I think the other question is about you talked about the lot size and I think you've got a good slide on it. It's 31 of the result packet, you managed to sort of lower the lot size to help affordability. Does that help you with your market share because you have a smaller lot size to get people into a home? Is that a part of the strategy as well to grow that market share?

Yes, absolutely. We -- the 12-month rolling market share has been up over -- up strongly during this period, which we're really pleased with. And then we're focused on maintaining it through the market improvement phase as well. But yes, that affordability, we think is going to be a key theme of the market moving forward, and that's what's going to unlock that first-time buyer market.

Our next question today comes from James Druce from CLSA.

Just wanted to pick up on Tarun's comments just about stabilizing interest rates being a catalyst for resi and I'm learning that you own the market restocking. How do you expect that to play out in a sort of a longer flatter interest rate environment? Do you still expect house prices to be rising? Is that the house view?

Yes. I think we're more driven by volumes, James than necessarily price rises. Obviously, prices have stabilized and because of lack of supply, they're starting to have a bias to increasing. But the volume outlook is what we're looking at over the medium -- well, not medium term, near- to medium-term because with population growth starting to surge with immigration and supply constraints, not -- it's encouraging to see some talk in the market and governments to release supply, but that takes a long time in our experience. So we think having a zoned land production-ready land, that's affordable, which is where our strategy is. As you can see, Andrew and the team have made quite strong pivots. It will stand us in good state to take advantage of volume increases, which cyclically, we should start to anticipate because we're now in about 18 months into the peak to trough. Usually, in our experience, it lasts about 24 -- 18 months to 24 months. So that's how -- that's what we're looking at. And we are looking to restock in that time period as well because we are, as I mentioned, seeing better buying opportunities than we have seen for the last couple of years.

So you could see house prices disconnect from volumes. Is that a view?

Well, I think if the supply doesn't come online, then prices will have upward pressure because the demand is definitely coming. There's no -- demand is here. Already with -- we've had almost 0.5 million immigrants. And as they get jobs, our experience is within the next couple of years, they'll be buying into our communities because that's what they normally do.

And just on it's a pretty common question, I know, but just what retail sales has been doing in July? Can you just provide some color there, please?

Yes, sure. A real bifurcation, our essentials-based sales continue to be up 5%, 6% whereas the discretionary, the fashion, the jewelry, the homewares are probably down the same amount sort of 5%, 6%. So that's what we're seeing across the portfolio. And we're buoyed by the fact that 70% of our sales come out of those essentials categories. So but certainly one we're keeping an eye on. And I think as I said in my presentation, that 14.8% occupancy cost is a good position to be in. It gives us that buffer should there be any further downturn.

Our next question comes from Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey. Okay. It looks like we don't have Ben. And that is the last question we have time for today. So I'll now hand back to Tarun.

Ben, we'll answer your question this afternoon. So -- but thanks, everyone, for joining in and for your questions. We are looking forward to talking to you all as we commence our roadshow. So thanks again, and we'll see you all shortly.

That concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now log out.