Buyer's Guide to Ayala Land

Q3 2016 Ayala Land Inc Analyst Briefing

Makati Nov 18, 2016 (Thomson StreetEvents) — Edited Transcript of Ayala Land Inc earnings conference call or presentation Monday, November 7, 2016 at 6:00:00am GMT

TEXT version of Transcript

================================================================================

Corporate Participants

================================================================================

* Jaime Ysmael

Ayala Land, Inc. – CFO, Compliance Officer & Group Head, Finance

================================================================================

Presentation

——————————————————————————–

Operator [1]

——————————————————————————–

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to Ayala Land’s briefing and its results for the nine months of 2016. Joining us on the line are four callers and we’d like to remind everyone that our materials are available for download at IR.AyalaLand.com.ph.

And, of course, allow me to recognize our panel led by our President and CEO Mr. Bobby Dy. and our Chief Financial Officer Mr. Jaime Ysmael. Allow me as well to recognize the presence of Mr. Julie Jalandoni, our head of our Leasing Group.

And to start off the presentation let me turn over the mic to Mr. Ysmael.

——————————————————————————–

Jaime Ysmael, Ayala Land, Inc. – CFO, Compliance Officer & Group Head, Finance [2]

——————————————————————————–

Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our third-quarter analyst briefing. Allow me to discuss the results, starting off with the financial statements and then followed by margin, CapEx and some operating statistics.

Key messages are as follows. Ayala Land continues to deliver a strong bottom-line with a net income of PHP15.1 billion, up 17% your driven by higher revenues and consistent margin improvement initiatives. Number two, our revenues grew 14% to PHP85.5 billion driven by the sustained growth of residential and office for sale segments, complemented by new commercial lot sales and the strong performance of shopping centers. Third, total CapEx spent registered at PHP63.9 billion, on track with the completion of development and leasing projects. And, lastly, we launched a total of PHP72.6 billion worth of projects during the period.

Starting off with the income statement, again, net income was registered at PHP15.06 billion or PHP2.2 billion or 17% higher than the year-ago level on the back of revenues which grew 14%, up PHP85.5 billion, PHP84.1 billion of which was contributed by real estate operations which grew 14%, as well. I will talk about the details of real estate later on as we talk about the breakdown, but basically all business segments registered growth for the period ended September 30.

On interest and other income, equity in net earnings grew by almost 4 times, so from a negative PHP145 million to PHP345 million this year as of September, primarily as a result of the contribution from, I guess, the equitized affiliates, foremost of which is MCT Bhd in Malaysia which contributed something like PHP300 million in equity earnings and, of course, our investment in Ortigas another PHP127 million. Interest and investment income, on the other hand, declined by 25% to PHP686 million primarily as a result of low interest earnings on lower investable funds. Other income declined to PHP366 million or 43% from PHP643 million last year as a result of primarily of lower management fees as a lot of our projects in consolidated subsidiaries, which we were under JV agreements, have been completed. Real estate expenses also increased by 14%, similar to the growth rate in real estate revenues, hence margins were practically sustained relative to the previous year.

Now general and administrative expenses actually only grew 5% to PHP4.9 billion, slower than the growth in revenues of 14% as a result of which GAE to revenue ratio improved further to 5.7% from 6.2% a year ago. Interest expense, financing and other charges increased by 18% to almost PHP6 billion as a result of the higher average loan balance which mitigated the lower blended cost of interest. So because of the higher borrowings it went up by 18%.

Now provision for income taxes in line pretty much. Non-controlling interest is basically flat, hence we ended the year with PHP15 billion net income or an EBIT margin of about 34% compared to 33% a year ago.

On the breakdown of revenues, out of the PHP85 billion revenues gross PHP56.2 billion were contributed by the property development business which grew 12%, coming primarily from the residential development business which registered at PHP47.1 billion or 9% higher than the year-ago level as a result of new bookings and project completion on existing projects. Office for sale increased to PHP4.6 billion, about 6% higher than last year as a result of the contribution primarily of ALVEO Park Triangle South Tower in BGC.

Commercial and industrial lots also expanded by 58% to PHP4.5 billion as a result of new lot sales in Arca South, Alviera and Altaraza. Commercial leasing grew by 12% to PHP19.2 billion. The bulk came from the shopping centers which contributed PHP10.6 billion in revenues or 15% higher than a year-ago level as a result of improved performance of stable and new malls.

Office revenues, leasing revenues also grew by 10% to PHP4 billion as a result of the contribution of newly opened offices. Hotels and resorts grew to PHP4.6 billion or 6% higher as a result of the higher revenue per available room of both hotels and resorts businesses. Services registered a total gross revenue of PHP48.7 billion or 59% higher, coming primarily from our subsidiary Makati Development Corporation in terms of gross construction revenues which registered at PHP47.7 billion, 61% higher, and property management at PHP1 billion or 15% higher, both of which were as a result of the higher levels of activity, especially MDC as it continues to construct the ALI projects within, well, all of the group projects within Ayala Land.

Now so total gross revenues were actually, it was actually up PHP124 billion, 27% higher than PHP98 billion inclusive of gross construction revenues. If you were to eliminate net of eliminations of intercompany, I guess, transactions of about PHP40 billion coming primarily from the construction side of things our real estate revenues actually were registered at PHP84.1 billion or 14% higher. Very similar to the 14% growth in total revenues.

Margins across the various product lines pretty much remained the same plus or minus. Residential business, horizontal and vertical projects actually declined a little bit in terms of margins by 1 percentage point from 43% to 42% in the case of horizontal, from 35% to 34% in the case of vertical, saw a lot of lower margin on newly launched projects due to higher land and development costs. Office for sale was steady at 38% as we were able to sustain margins of newly launched projects.

Commercial industrial lots margins declined a little bit to 40% from 49% as a result of the higher contribution from lower margin lot sales. On the commercial leasing side EBITDA margins slightly declined for shopping centers to 68% from 69% because of the newly opened malls. But for office it’s the other way around, we further improved margins to 90% from 89% as a result of the continued impact of cost containment initiatives as well as the improved performance of stable offices.

On hotels and resorts, slight decline from 28% to 27% because of the lower occupancy of resorts. On services EBITDA construction and property management combined margins declined from 13% to 8%, consistent with what we have seen in the first half because the bulk of the accomplishments are from lower margin contract packages.

We continue to diversify into new growth centers. 40% of our net income were contributed by new business centers beyond the traditional Makati, Nuvali, BGC and Alabang markets, higher than the 36% contribution from all of these areas for the full-year 2015. We also continued to increase the contribution of the leasing portfolio to total net income with 38% of the earnings coming from the recurring income side compared to 34% full-year 2015, pretty much on track towards our desire or objective of achieving a 50/50 balance between recurring and development by 2020.

We ended the period with a solid balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents registered at PHP23.7 billion, higher than the December 2015 level. Borrowings were also higher at PHP159 billion, about PHP28 billion higher as a result of continued spending, which we funded primarily through debt with respect to the shortfall. But because of the prudent cash management efforts that we have done and also I guess our continued thrust towards reducing our spend and doing it wisely, we were able to actually cap the net debt-to-equity ratio at 0.82 to 1, higher than the 0.74 to 1 as of December 2015 but lower than the 0.85 to 1 that was registered in the first half of the year.

Our debt profile continues to improve. The blended cost of debt remained at 4.5% for the year. This should go down further as we effectively book the latest fundraisings that we did where we issued the PHP7 billion, seven-year worth of bonds at 3.89% and our homestarter bond of PHP3 billion which was also issued at the lower rate than 4.5%, so this should further improve.

Now in terms of short-term to long-term debt ratio it is 80/20 in favor of long-term, which, again, will improve further as we effectively book the new loans which were only obtained subsequent to September in October. Even the floating to fixed rate ratio from 74/26 in favor of fixed as of the nine months ended September 30 we will still — we still expect this to increase in favor of fixed rates, enabling us to actually stabilize the balance sheet.

The maturity profile remained quite good from a liquidity standpoint, about PHP15 billion, PHP16 billion maturity maximum at any given point in time for the next couple of years and with average maturities still at around tenor at around six years. So it’s still quite good from a debt management point of view.

CapEx registered at almost PHP64 billion for the period. Residential spend amounted to about PHP26 billion. And I guess small offices and hotels combined registered at around PHP17 billion.

So those were the bulk of the spending followed by land acquisition. Compared to a budget of about PHP84 billion we expect probably to end the year with a lower CapEx spend compared to PHP84 billion as we continue to tighten spending.

On the residential business we continue to grow the business. Take-up for reservation sales continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace of 2% compared to about 4% in the first half. Sales take-up aggregating at PHP84.3 billion or averaging PHP9.4 billion every month.

Overseas Filipino sales are registered at about PHP19.6 billion, still quite strong representing 23% of total sales. Booked sales, on the other hand, is catching up quickly, grew 12% to PHP57.9 billion with the third quarter registering at PHP24.6 billion. And I guess the take-up continues to grow PHP84.3 billion. We only launched PHP49 billion worth of projects consistent with our posture to focus ourselves effort on available inventories so that we can also keep our inventory levels within acceptable limits as planned.

We continue to build up our unbooked revenue line at PHP137 billion as of the nine months ended September from PHP129 billion as of the end of 2015. So they were up 6% versus the end of the year level.

In terms of key launches for Ayala Land Premier we launched Riomonte Tranche 5 in July, consisting of 134 units in Nuvali. To date we have achieved 40% cumulative take-up or PHP1.4 billion worth of sales.

For Alviera some projects, Callisto Tower 1 in Circuit, Makati. We only launched it towards the end of September, 413 units, PHP3.5 billion worth. There is a 13% cumulative take-up so far.

The Veranda North Tower also launched towards the end of September. This is in Arca South, Taguig. 16% cumulative take-up since we launched.

Avida Atria Tower 2 in Iloilo. Since launched in August 13% tape-up. So that’s the residential business line.

So for the malls we registered a total gross leasable area of 1.57 million square meters as of September 30. We added in the third quarter to that portfolio 56,000 square meters of GLA from the Tutuban mall when we practically booked our interest in prime Orion properties and Riverside Iloilo Mall 1,000 square meter GLA stripmall. This 1.57 million and excludes the gross leasable area of Ortigas mall, so at the 137,000 square meters.

Now the average occupancy registered at 93%. Mall lease rate was about the same as the first half, PHP1,154 per square meter per month. Same mall rental growth registered at 5%, still very healthy from a mall point of view.

In terms of projects in the pipeline, we have close to about 1 million square meters of leasable space under construction, well, 57,000 of which will happen, will commence this year. The bulk will actually be delivered in the next three years, especially 2019 when we expect to open 420,000 square meters of leasable space, primarily coming from two major malls in the Bay Area and Gatewalk Central in Cebu.

For offices we have a total of 753,000 square meters to date. There is an office space that will open in the fourth quarter of 2016 and it is the Ayala Center BPO with 28,000 square meters. The 753,000, again, exclude 66,000 square meters of GLA from Ortigas offices.

Average occupancy registered at 90% primarily because there is still quite a bit of tenants that are still being fitted out. But lease-out rate is already at 96%. Office space lease rate was at PHP734 per square meter. In terms of completions or planned openings, a total of almost 800,000 is in the pipeline, the bulk of which will actually open starting 2017, 2018 and also 2020.

For hotels and resorts, a total of close to 2,000 rooms. Hotels registered a 1% increase in RevPAR as a result of higher average room rate, which expanded by 1% and average occupancy which went up by 2%. Resorts RevPAR was up 5% as a result of higher average room rate, which increased by 6% to 13,500 which mitigated the impact of slightly lower occupancy at 58%, down 1 percentage point.

Now we are opening 42 rooms in El Nido B&B by the end of the year. And then the bulk of the new hotels will actually open slightly next year and onwards.

So that’s basically it by way of I guess presentation. Again, to summarize, PHP15.1 billion in net income up 17% with revenues at 14% at PHP85.5 billion as a result of the continued growth in the various business lines. CapEx at PHP64 billion, and I guess we launched PHP73 billion worth of projects year to date.

So with that I would like to open the floor to questions. Thank you.