United Development Company Q.P.S.C. (UDCD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the United Development Co. First Quarter '23 Results Call. I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. I'd now like to welcome Roy Thomas from QNB FS to begin the conference.

Thanks, Paul. Hello, everyone. This is Roy Thomas from QNB Financial Services. I want to welcome everyone to United Development Company's first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. On this call from United Development Company we have Maher Omar Naim, the Executive Director of Financial Planning; and Karim Farhat, the Executive Director Finance. We'll conduct this conference call with management first reviewing the company's results followed by Q&A. I will turn the call now over to Maher Naim.

Hello, everyone. I hope you all had good Eid break. Just to start with the financial results of United Development Company for the first quarter of the year 2023. The company has achieved revenue QAR 563 million compared to QAR 386 million with an increase of 46% than prior period and achieved the net profit of QAR 93 million compared to QAR 83 million with an improvement of 12% than prior period. And net profit attributable to the equity shareholders reached to 88% compared -- QAR 88 million compared to QAR 80 million with the 10% increase than prior period. And the earnings per share increased -- reached to QAR 0.025 compared to QAR 0.023. As we have always been addressing and stating, UDC is still working on its development project. And we are continuing the development phase, mainly emphasizing on Gewan Island. We have achieved what we wanted to achieve for the World Cup. And now we are continuing with the rest of the development of projects, which we had parked a bit till we finished the World Cup and things are in progress. There are certain delays on the projects from the contractor point of view, but these are not major and they are very much manageable by UDC and we can overcome these. As you are aware, we are constructing the 5-Star hotel, Corinthia Hotel in Gewan Island as well as we have 15 mixed-use buildings and the retail arcade also being developed and/or built in the Gewan Island. And you have maybe noticed that we have handed over and completed the golf club, which is the first golf club to be in the Gewan Island. And this has been completed prior to year end 2022. So far, we had a good start in the year 2023. And we hope we can continue throughout the year with the challenging market situations that the real estate market is witnessing. But we hope we can continue with good results. And keeping in mind, maybe UDC is making compared to its peer better from a financial performance point of view, taking into account the mix we have, the product we have and The Pearl Island and each market and so forth. So I leave the market -- the floor to you guys, should you have any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And you first question comes from the line of [ Mustafa Amir from Al Rayan Investment ].

Just wanted to understand regarding the Urban Development segment. Obviously, the revenues were up quite handsomely year-on-year, but the net profit was down. Just wanted to know the rationale behind it?

It depends on the type of the product being recognized as revenue. The revenue has increased indeed, yes, but the net profit reduced, not a lot here. I mean, from QAR 125 million to almost QAR 110 million. It depends about what is the type of the product and the associated cost, the direct cost, which caused this small [Technical Difficulty] So it is, as I said, it depends on the product being generated and the associated cost for such product. And the decrease was not significant compared to prior periods.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Roy for closing remarks.

If there are no further questions, we'd like to thank Maher and Karim for the results update and answering queries. And we look forward to speaking to you all for the second quarter results. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Good luck. And yes, we will speak to you during the month of July. Thanks a lot.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.