Swire Properties Limited (1972) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the live webcast of the Swire Properties Interim Results Analyst Briefing. Today's session is being hosted by Mr. Guy Bradley, Chief Executive of Swire Properties; and Ms. Fanny Lung, Finance Director of Swire Properties. Guy and Fanny will first take us through a detailed look at our results for the first half of 2021 to be followed by a Q&A session. Analysts are welcome to submit questions in the question box at the bottom-right of the window. Please ask your questions in English and don't post more than 2 questions at a time. Before we begin, we would like to show a video highlighting Swire Properties' key developments and achievements so far in 2021. [Presentation]

May I now invite Guy and Fanny to take us through the presentation?

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Swire Properties' live webcast. I'm very pleased with the solid set of results for the first half, which solid under extremely challenging continued conditions and an environment continued to be affected by the pandemic. In terms of recurring profit, we had a slight increase versus the same period last year. But on the underlying profit line, we're showing a 20% growth largely due to the ongoing sale of Taikoo Shing car parks in Hong Kong. Turning to our biggest business, the Hong Kong office sector, I would describe the performance is very resilient. We're almost full at 98% occupancy in Taikoo Place and Pacific Place, and reversions at Taikoo Place continue to be positive. We even have a large anchor tenant now announced for the newest building to Taikoo Place, which is very good news. In terms of Hong Kong retail, the portfolio gain is almost fully let, and we're seeing a slight rebound in sales. In fact levels of 36% up in Pacific Place. And rental income continues to be stable, which I think is a good situation given the pandemic. Chinese Mainland, on the other hand, has had a very robust performance. We're up 77% in terms of retail sales growth. And the corresponding rental uptick is a double-digit figure of 38%, which we're very pleased about. The highlight of the remainder of the year will be the opening of our sixth investment in the Mainland, and that will be in Shanghai at Taikoo Li Qiantan. So China Mainland retail going very well for us. We continue to do a good job over strategic capital recycling. We've had a good track record over the last 3 years in doing so. And that program continues. In the first half this year we raised $3.2 billion in terms of sales proceeds from the sale of the remaining units at EDEN in Singapore, Reach and Rise in the U.S.A. and the ongoing Taikoo Shing car park disposal that I mentioned earlier. Finally, I'd like to just make a comment about the sustained dividend growth. We're raising our first interim dividend by 3.3%, which I think is a positive sign. In terms of some key developments in the first half, some very encouraging signs on the trading side, as I mentioned, 8 STAR STREET, we launched that earlier this year. We're now about 2/3 sold with 26 units out of the 37 already presold. We entered into investments in Vietnam on the residential side in March. And we completed the sale of EDEN in March as well down in Singapore. And again, I mentioned Reach and Rise in May where we were able to sell almost all the remaining units there. Very exciting on the asset reinforcement side in the Chinese Mainland. We've just announced a cooperation agreement in Sanlitun with the Chaoyang District Government to transform the bus depot just to the north of Taikoo Li Sanlitun, which will become an extension of that project and further continue the upgrading of the Sanlitun business circle. Moving down to Shanghai. We also recently announced a partnership, joint venture agreement with the Jing'an District Government to revitalize the historic Zhangyuan Shikumen Compound, which is adjacent to our existing assets, HKRI Taikoo Hui. So some very exciting events going on pretty much everywhere for the company in the first half of the year. In terms of our growth pipeline, which is very important to us. It's why we're raising all this capital. You can see from this chart that it's a very balanced pipeline, both in terms of timing, geography and sector. What pleases me, I mean it's why we want the strong balance sheet, it's to allow us to do these projects. But you can see that there's a really healthy mix here of trading projects and investment projects, not just in our home base, Hong Kong, but also in the Chinese Mainland, in Miami, where we have a strong local foothold, and increasingly on a smaller scale, but more active scale, down in Southeast Asia. So good looking growth road map, I think. Puts us in great shape for the next 3 or 4 years. With that, I'm going to pass over to Fanny to talk in more detail about the investment portfolio. Thank you.

Thank you, Guy. Thank you very much. My presentation will be divided into 2 parts. First of all, I would like to give you a little bit more color to the operational performance of our portfolio. And then it will follow by the financial performance of the overall group performance then. Hong Kong office. In general, the Hong Kong office market was weak. It was affected by COVID-19, increased vacancies in central and new supply. But there was more leasing activities in our buildings. Our office portfolio was resilient. In particular, I would like to highlight that our triple Grade-A office tower in One Island East and One Taikoo Place did well with 100% occupancy and 10% positive rental reversion. Other Taikoo Place office towers also achieved a small positive reversion of 1%, with a high occupancy rate of 96%. Pacific Place portfolio has a negative rental reversion of 11%, but we managed to increase our occupancy by the end of last year at 95% to 98% at the end of June 2021, which is a very encouraging picture. So on a combined portfolio basis, adding the Taikoo Place and the Pacific Page 2 main parts together, our occupancy rate maintained at high at 98%. And total attributable gross revenue was HKD 3.44 billion, representing 7% drop. If you look at the bar chart on the left, you can see that largely due to the loss of rental contribution because of the fact that we sold Cityplaza One in the second part of 2020. If you exclude the effect of the Cityplaza One, the drop in the attributable gross rental was actually 2%. The attributable valuation of the Hong Kong office portfolio was $171.3 billion, only a 1% drop from the end of 2020. Moving on to the Hong Kong retail portfolio. The Hong Kong retail portfolio was adversely affected by the COVID-19. There was a downward pressure on rents as inbound tourism was absent. Local customer demand started to recover. During the first half of 2021, retail sales increased across all our 3 shopping malls. As you can see from this particular slide, PP Mall increased rental sales by 36% and Cityplaza increased 5%, Citygate 18%. And cash rental concessions was given for specific periods on a case-by-case basis in order to support tenants. But the total number or the amount of cash rental concession reduced considerably. This partnership approach help us to build stronger relationships with retailers and to maintain high occupancy. On an overall basis, we almost achieved a fully let position. And on the attributable gross revenue, excluding that particular rental concession, rental level was pretty much the same as that of the first half of 2020. Total valuation of the Hong Kong retail portfolio was HKD 45.5 billion, dropped by 2% from the year-end position of 2020. Moving on to Chinese Mainland portfolio. We have a very impressive growth story in our Chinese Mainland portfolio. There has been a year-on-year nonstop rental income growth. And the momentum continued in the first half of 2021, as you can see that we achieved a 33% increase over the same period in 2020. This testifies the success of our Taikoo Li and the Taikoo Hui brands in the Chinese Mainland. Percentage contribution of our Chinese Mainland portfolio increased to 36%. And Chinese Mainland retail portfolio is now the second largest rental contributor of our portfolio. The retail portfolio of Chinese Mainland had a very strong rental growth for the first half. And it was largely driven by the robust retail sales, strong local demand and the RMB appreciation. The occupancies were high across all our 5 shopping malls, ranging from 95% to 100%. And significant retail sales growth in all our portfolios were noted. For example, Sino-Ocean Taikoo Li Chengdu achieved 66%; Taikoo Hui, 88%, Sanlitun, 85%; Hong Kong RI Taikoo Hui, 83%; INDIGO, 6%. But it was distorted -- this one was distorted by the performance of the car sales. Total attributable rental -- gross rental was at $2.108 billion. It was a substantial growth of 38% from that of the same period last year. With attributable valuation of this portfolio increased by 5% to HKD 47.6 billion. Talking about the impressive retail growth in Chinese Mainland retail portfolio, we have an overall retail sales growth of [ OMO ] on an aggregate attributable basis, achieving 77% in the first half of 2021. In this slide we put the first half retail sales growth in comparison with the full year retail sales growth in 2020 and 2019 in the chart below. So you can see that the first half retail sales growth actually exceeded the full year growth of 2019, which was the prepandemic situation. We are very pleased with this particular performance, of course. Moving on to the Chinese Mainland office portfolio. The performance was largely steady with improved occupancy. INDIGO Beijing, actually we achieved to improve the occupancy rate from 70% at the end of last year to 88% at the end of June 2021. And also Hong Kong RI Taikoo Hui occupancy also improved from 97% to 99% by the end of June 2021. And the same happened to Taikoo Hui, Guangzhou, that we have a 1% increase in our occupancy in the first half of 2021. So with that, the total attributable gross rental achieved a 11% increase to $431 million, with the total attributable valuation for this portfolio at $14.3 billion, which is pretty much the same as that of the year-end position of last year. So moving on to the new projects. Guy mentioned about we have a few new projects. Perhaps I can give a little bit more color to the new projects that we have. Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai this is the -- our 6th development in the Chinese Mainland portfolio. And this is a joint development with Lujiazui on a 50-50 basis. This development is located in the Qiantan International Business District and also known as the New Bund in Pudong Shanghai. It will have -- it has an aggregate GFA of approximately 1.2 million square feet with 86,000 square feet of central green area at the ground level. And also is connected to a 3-line metro interchange station with the open plan named Taikoo Li Design. It will have over 200 shops. And as of now, we have over 80% of the area be listed. And it will be opened up in September 2021, which is next month. The Taikoo Li Qiantan, our focus for this project is pretty much on wellness and sustainability. You can see from the picture on the left top corner that there is a running track and greenery and leisure spaces on the roof connected to the shops and restaurants. More than 50 luxury brands will be taking space, and more than 12 brands opening their first store in Chinese Mainland. And in the pictures shown in this slide you can see some of the names in this slide. Taikoo Li Sanlitun West, this is an extension to the Taikoo Li Sanlitun, and this is next to the Taikoo Li Sanlitun South, as you can see from the picture here. It has an aggregate GFA of approximately 0.3 million square feet, and the refurbishment is now completed and will be opened up in the second part -- second half of this year. With this, we are adding approximately 20% of our retail area to the existing Taikoo Li Sanlitun, which is part and partial of the overall project. Zhangyuan. In July, we announced the formation of a joint venture management company with Shanghai Jing'an Real Estate Group, where Swire Properties owns 60% interest of this particular joint venture company. And a joint venture company will be responsible for the leasing and the management with the objective to transform the historic century-old Zhangyuan shikumen compound into an international cultural and commercial landmark in Shanghai. We are very excited about this particular project. As you can see from this picture, the area comprises 43 shikumen blocks, around 170 historical buildings of 28 different styles. And this is the largest and best-preserved and the most diverse shikumen compound in Shanghai. And the right-hand side photo also show that, the location. This is located in Nanjing Road West adjacent to the Hong Kong RI Taikoo Hui project that we have. And the above-ground area is approximately 0.6 million square feet. First phase will be ready by July 2022. So we continue to expand our core portfolios, both in Hong Kong and Chinese mainland. And this chart show that in terms of our completed investment property portfolio, in the next 3 years we are going to add in Hong Kong, 16% more GFA for our completed investment portfolio. And also in Chinese Mainland, 18% more GFA in Chinese Mainland portfolio. So we are driving the growth for Hong Kong and also for Chinese Mainland as well. So moving on to trading property portfolio. We have very encouraging progress made for the sale of 8 STAR STREET, 26 units out of the 37 residential units were presold at a average selling price of above $39,000 per square feet. And the expected completion day will be 2022. And we are very pleased with the presale results so far. And we also have continuous residential pipeline, as Guy just mentioned about. We have the Wong Chuk Hang Station Package 4, which we have 25% interest, and it will be expected to compete on -- in 2024. And afterwards, Taiwan and also the King's Road, Pan Hoi Street development will follow where we will have 80% and 50% interest respectively, for these 2 projects. Moving on to overseas. We had a good run on the residential sale in Singapore and U.S.A. All of the 20 units of EDEN were sold out. And we also sold almost all of the remaining units, except 2, for the Reach and Rise development in the U.S.A. And there are also 3 projects undertaken in the Southeast Asia. The first one, which is on the left-hand side of the chart is The River. And this is located in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam Huimin. This is a luxury residential project with 525 units, which we have 20% interest. The expected completion date is 2022. And we already presold more than 90% of the unit. The second one is also in Ho Chi Minh City, called Empire City. This is a residential-led mixed-use development with residential, retail, office, hotel and service apartment components. We got 15.73% minority interest. The completion date will be by phases, starting from 2021, this -- later part of this year all the way to 2026. And for the residential units, more than 45% of the units being presold. And the last one, but quite an important one is also Savyavasa which is our 50% interest investment in South Jakarta, Indonesia with more than 400 residential units. The expected completion date is going to be 2024. So quite a busy pipeline on the residential portfolio for us. Moving on to the hotel portfolio. Trading conditions in Hong Kong remained quite challenging due to the COVID-19 and the associated travel restrictions. But we have good performance in Chinese Mainland and U.S.A. with higher RevPAR and occupancy. This takes us to return to a positive number on the EBITDA level with a small $4 million profit for our managed hotel portfolio for the first half of 2021 compared with an EBITDA loss of $98 million in the first half of 2020. Subject to the COVID-19 conditions, we are going to open up the new hotel, The Silveri Hong Kong MGallery later part of this year. Okay. So I will talk through the financial performance of the -- for the first half as well. On the underlying profit, you can see from this chart that the total underlying profit for the group is HKD 4.530 billion. There was an increase of 20% as compared to the same period last year. The increase was largely driven by the sale of investment property, which was the sale of car parking space at the Taikoo Shing residential development. We offered 946 car parking space for sale and 645 have been sold, of which 389 car parking space were recognized in the first half of 2021. And the remaining 256 sold will be recognized in the second half of this year. So that contributed a large part of the favorable variance to our underlying profit. And on the recurring underlying profit, we recorded a marginal increase of 0.4%, which we factored the higher retail rental income in Chinese Mainland and the reduced losses from hotels, which was largely offset by the lower retail rental income in Hong Kong and the loss of rental income from Cityplaza One, which was disposed in the second half of 2020. On the property trading portfolio, property trading recorded a small loss, reflecting the sale of EDEN in Singapore and of the units in Reach and Rise of Miami, U.S.A and some adjustments to certain provisions. So the chart highlights all the movement for the first half of this year. On rental income, total attributable gross rental income increased by 4% to $7.207 billion. An analysis of the buy asset class was shown here. On the Hong Kong office portfolio we got a drop of 7%. But as I explained that in the operational performance, it was largely due to the loss of rental from the disposal of Cityplaza One. If disregarding the Cityplaza One, the attributable rental income actually decreased by 2% only. There was very good performance from Taikoo Place portfolio with positive rental reversions and firm occupancy rates, which offset the negative rental pressure that we had in Pacific Place portfolio. Hong Kong retail portfolio recorded a 13% drop in the attributable rental level which was largely due to the amortization of rental concession. Disregarding the amortization of rental concession, the rental level was pretty much the same as that of last year. High retail sales rebound to drive higher turnover rent, which was offset by the lower base rent that we have on the portfolio due to the negative rental reversion pressure. In the Chinese Mainland retail portfolio, we reported 38% growth. It was partly due to the renminbi appreciation and partly affected by the amortization of rental concession. Disregarding these 2 factors, rental growth was 23%. It was largely due to the very strong retail sales growth achieved all over across all the 5 shopping malls. Chinese Mainland office portfolio achieved 11% growth as they achieved a very steady performance. On the others category, which largely reflected the retail rental for Brickell City Centre in Miami and also the residential rental for Hong Kong, Chinese Mainland and U.S. This particular part recorded 7% largely due to the strong recovery of the retail sales in Brickell City Centre in Miami. So this is the dividend return, notwithstanding the adverse impact of the COVID-19, we have declared the first interim dividend of $0.31 per share, 3.3% up from the first interim dividend of 2020, reinforcing our commitment to deliver sustainable growth in dividends to shareholder. Our policy continues to be to deliver sustainable growth in dividends to shareholders, which we have been doing, as you can see from this particular chart. And to provide -- and to pay out approximately half of our underlying profit in ordinary dividends over time. On the investment property valuation, the total valuation dropped by, slightly by 0.3%. The major impact to the drop in valuation was the net fair value losses, which was largely due to the fact that there was a decrease in the valuation of investment property in retail and the office investment property portfolio in Hong Kong, partially offset by the increase in the valuation of the investment properties in the Chinese Mainland. In terms of our valuation, there was no change in the capitalization rate. So the net fair value losses was mainly, we factored the fair open market rental level in that. Moving on to our balance sheet. We have a very strong balance sheet despite an increase in net debt from $6.6 billion to $9 billion, around $9 billion at the end of June 2021. Our gearing was -- remained to be very low at 3.1% only. So the key factors driving the increase in the net debt was primarily due to our investment in INDIGO Phase 2 in Beijing and also some capital expenditure properties in Hong Kong investment property which was partially offset by the proceeds of sales of trading properties in U.S.A. and also in Singapore. We have adequate liquidity and healthy maturity profile. As you can see, total cash was very strong at around $16.9 billion, with an undrawn committed facility of $7.6 billion, making the total cash and committed undrawn facility at $24.5 billion, very strong position. And in terms of our maturity profile, it was largely well spread with a relatively higher facilities expiring in 2022, which is not a major concern at all given our current liquidity position. So -- and in terms of our credit rating, we maintained the same credit rating, which is A under Fitch and AA under Moody's. Moving on to our capital commitment. You can see that the total capital commitment at the end of June 2021 was HKD 17.690 billion, largely in Hong Kong and also in Chinese Mainland as well. For the Hong Kong commitment, it mainly represented our 2 Taikoo Place development and the redevelopment of Zung Fu and Wah Ha building as well as the Queensway East development, which is the PP office extension. For the Chinese Mainland capital commitment, this is mainly due to the INDIGO Phase 2 expansion. With that, I pass it back to Guy.

Thank you, Fanny. I'm just going to comment in the next couple of minutes on sustainable development. This section seems to get bigger each time we do this, reflecting the importance with which we take the subject. Firstly, I'm delighted to be able to say that from July 2021 Taikoo Hui, Guangzhou is able to source 100% of its electricity needs from off-site renewable sources. On the back of the news about Chengdu doing the same thing, we now have 2 of our projects in the Chinese Mainland that are 100% sourced from renewable sources. And that's a tremendous achievement. We've just also launched on the back of the first places impact report of Taikoo Place in Hong Kong, our second report featuring Taikoo Li Sanlitun which was produced in conjunction with Tsinghua University. There's a QR code here. I do urge you all to take a good look at the report when you get a chance, but it really does play to the way that we contribute to a vibrant mixed-use community and how we make places. And I think the report will make extremely interesting reading. I mentioned last time that the -- one of the themes in sustainability this year was engaging our tenants. And I'm very pleased to be able to say that we've just launched a green performance pledge and a target for 2025 to have 60% of our new office leases signed up under this pledge, where we're trying to work with our tenants to take action and meet commonly agreed sustainable development goals. That's great news. Lastly, in terms of financing, we already currently are up to 31% of our bond and loan facilities, which come from green financing. And we've now said it's a stretched target for 2025 of achieving half of our facilities sourced from green financing loans and bonds. So we like to stretch ourselves. That's the target. And we're pretty confident we'll be able to get there. So lots of good progress on the sustainability side, which makes us all very proud. In terms of prospects, I just want to cover a couple of topics. One, digitalization. It's very important in a moving world as fast as technology is going, but we keep up with this. So we've got projects going on, on the customer engagement side. We've got projects driving greater efficiency through smarter processes. In fact, an example of that will be the first Hong Kong landlord to offer 5G services in our business hubs in Pacific Place in Taikoo Place. And we're also searching with partners for stronger synergies using digital connections. So quite a lot of focus going into becoming more digitized as we seek to compete going forward. Secondly, in terms of tech and new ventures, we have a USD 50 million corporate venture capital program, which is now nearly 1 year old and is sourcing some really interesting looking deals in conjunction with the tech experimentation fund in which we've looked at over 50 tech trials in the last 3 years. So there's quite a lot of activity going on behind the scenes in terms of prop tech. Lastly for me, as I hand over to Tim Blackburn for the second half, who will be taking over as Chief Executive. I think the business is expected to continue to improve in the second half with Hong Kong office leasing momentum hopefully picking up gradually, retail sentiment in Hong Kong still a bit mixed, but we hope gradual recovery of sales will happen. And we're still very optimistic about the Chinese mainland retail market supported by strong local demand. We mentioned the opening of Taikoo Li Qiantan and the extension in Taikoo Li Sanlitun which will come in the second half. And so we think we're well-positioned for our growth strategy in the core markets with the pipeline that we've got. With that, we'll take questions and answers. Thank you.

Thank you, Guy and Fanny. We will now move to the Q&A session. I will read out the questions we received from analysts through the online platform, and Guy and Fanny will address them accordingly. The first question is from [ Ken ] from Citi. "2 Taikoo Place. Can you share any target preleasing percentage at the completion? And how do you see the rental pressure on your office portfolio in view of more supply in 2022 to 2023?"

Well, it's too early, I think, for us to be able to give you some accurate sharing data on the pre-leasing situation. But you're probably aware that we did secure a large anchor bank, Julius Baer, who are coming down to take 4 floors of 2 Taikoo Place, which is very, very good news, and testament to the ongoing trend of decentralization. So we're delighted about that. There's lots of conversations taking place, lots of continued interest, but nothing more to report in terms of percentage leasing or preleasing. And part 2 is?

The second part of the question is the office rental.

Yes, I think in the next couple of years we do anticipate the Hong Kong office market to continue to be reasonably soft. But as I said in the media briefing, we've got a fairly full-looking occupancy level. And so we look fairly in good shape really to withstand what is going to be a continued soft market. I would say that there is signs of activity picking up a little bit in the last couple of months, driven mostly by the financial sector, and that's encouraging.

Thank you, Guy. In the interest of time, I'm afraid we can only address 2 more questions. So the second last question is actually asked by [ Bob Mark ] from UBS as well as [ Karl ] from Bank of America. "Could you elaborate more on the partnerships with Shanghai Jing'an District Government as well as the Beijing government? And what is the revenue model? And any financial guidance could be provided?"

Well, on the -- in terms of the Shanghai partnership with Jing'an District Government, it's a joint venture. It's an asset-light partnership. We have 60% of the joint venture. And we are going to be responsible for helping with the design and to do the leasing and management. It will complement very nicely the asset that we have next door, HKRI Taikoo Hui. And so we're extremely excited about the way that those 2 assets will sit next to each other and dovetail. In Beijing, of course, we -- it's -- at the moment, it's just a cooperation agreement framework. But I think both of these deals, the important point here is that the district governments with which these projects sit recognize Swire Properties as a partner that they can trust and as a partner that can do really good things. We've done that in Chengdu. We've obviously done it in Sanlitun. And we want to extend that further. So it's a great relationship that we have in these districts. And we're very pleased to be able to help and build those sorts of communities, which is obviously something that we've done very well in Hong Kong.

Thank you, again. Moving to the last question. It's from [ Andy ] from Haitong International. "What is our expansion strategy going forward with our fairly low gearing ratio?"

Fanny, do you want to take the last question?

Okay. I think our expansion strategy, of course, is we have a very strong financial position to help the company to expand. Our goal is, as highlighted in the Chairman's statement, is to focus on the Hong Kong and China. And the 2 main areas that we have in Hong Kong is the Taikoo Place portfolio and also the Pacific Place portfolio, which we have been putting quite a lot of growth pipeline into that, as explained by this particular presentation. We will continue to look for expansion opportunity in Hong Kong. No doubt about that. As there will be demand for, as Guy said, smart office and also high-quality office space in Hong Kong as Hong Kong will still remain to be a very important financial hub within the GBA policy of the overall picture there. In relation to our Chinese Mainland expansion strategy, our focus will be pretty much on the retail-led mixed-use development projects like what we have been doing for the 5 projects that we now -- and now I should say 6 projects that we have in Chinese Mainland for the time being. And our focus is pretty much on the first-tier cities, but of course, some emerging first-tier city that we would like to expand and extend our success of the Taikoo Li and Taikoo Hui brand further into Chinese Mainland. But of course, in our trading property portfolio, we also want to extend our pipeline as we have been doing in Hong Kong and also in overseas. All these kind of expansion that we have been doing will continue. And I'm sure that with the strong financial position that we have, we can do more at the same direction that we are demonstrating.

Thank you very much, Guy and Fanny. And that concludes our analyst briefing. On behalf of Swire Properties, thank you once again for joining us.