If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome James Kelly, Managing Director, to begin the conference. James, over to you.
Thank you for that, welcome to the call, and thank you for taking the interest to listen in. This year we celebrate 20 years, which is splashed all over our annual report and our presentation deck. Since we started in a coffee shop in Melbourne, all those years ago, to try and reimagine what living could be like for people over 50, we spent so much time researching our customer, the market, what was on offer in Australia and America, then settled on the unique model that defines what we do today. From the get-go, we had a moral, ethical, and social mandate to do the right thing, create a business that was truly for purpose, we've never wavered from that mandate. We've pioneered a model that is management, not development-focused.
There is a laser-like long-term focus on our homeowners to deliver amazing experiences with resultant high level referral rates. We've also maintained a focus on shareholders by recycling capital to drive organic growth and deliver above-index returns. I think one of the most unique things about Lifestyle this time, when I reflect back, is that we're still doing the same thing 20 years later, with the constant focus of evolving the offer in line with our changing customer to always deliver an aspirational product and service offer. When we started in 2003, our target customer were those born in the war generation. 2013, we met the Baby Boomers, who've been winning our sales for the next 10 years. In 2023, we have met the Gen X, who are a slightly different customer again.
I found it just so exciting to see how the team has reimagined our service and product offering to accommodate this new customer, particularly in the seven communities that we launched this year. Beginning to understand this customer, it certainly opens up our addressable market in terms of who we can pitch the lifestyle product to. As long-term managers, we have pioneered the benefit of a DMF in the landlord sector, which gives our homeowners assurance that we have their backs and making sure that our community is looked after and giving them confidence that their home values are supported. We're increasingly seeing a really receptive customer around this proposition, which also just so pleased to see that revenue from communities has doubled over the last five years, which really strengths the benefit of the new income being from our operational business.
I think one of the most exciting things in my time is that we launched amazing Club Lifestyle. It's located on the beach, our new community down of Bellarine Peninsula, at Leopold. Club Lifestyle was the outcome of a strategy to provide added value to all homeowners living in the lifestyle community, to create memorable experiences that will both drive referrals as well as differentiate against competition. The club itself is on the beach. It's absolutely amazing. Consists of 28 bespoke villas, 23 caravan park sites, 2 motor homes, a designer camp kitchen, pitch and putt golf course, a mini zoo, the list just goes on, and on, and on. It's been really good. We last night actually went to a function at one of our new communities at Meridian.
Has opened the clubhouse, and we had about 250 people in the room, and we were launching Club Lifestyle. Gosh, the response from the room was just so extraordinary in terms of, just so appreciating the fact that Lifestyle Communities just continue just to value-add to their lives in so many different ways. It just really strengthened my confidence that this was a really strong differentiator for us moving forward. We also had the opportunity to actually roll this Club Lifestyle type villa product out at Phillip Island, a newly purchased site at Yarrawonga, and also Wagga, which will really open a world of opportunity for our homeowners to live an even bigger life.
We employ an incredibly passionate team. I know that those of you who actually visit our communities, we always hear comments back on how amazing our team are. This team is just incredibly customer and people-centric, and they have celebrated our 20 years of both, by both attaining a WGEA accreditation, as being recognized as a final in the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work. We passionately believe in giving our team an amazing workplace where they are empowered and supported in all they do, enabling them to take whatever steps needed to drive the exceptional customer and home experiences that we're so proud of. I look back over 20 years, I think this has been our greatest achievement and what sets us apart from the rest. I'd now love to pass over to James to talk through some of the financial results.
Thanks, James. I think whilst new home settlement quite rightly gets a lot of focus in our business, the standout for me this year is the operating business, which as you allude to, it's delivered a 50% uplift in earnings since FY21. The compound effect of the increased number of homes under management and the strong price growth in our resales business has really started to come through in terms of earnings and annuity cash flows. With our rents linked to inflation, we're able to maintain our margins this year, and it was also pleasing to see the increases to the pension and Commonwealth Rent Assistance come through, which meant that our rent as a percentage of the pension actually decreased this year.
It's this linkage, coupled with the value that we're able to deliver back to homeowners using our increase in scale with things like the microgrids and Club Lifestyle and consolidated electricity purchasing and other discounts we're able to offer, it's further highlighting the benefits to our homeowners of our model. Not only providing high quality, affordable housing, but also broader benefits to the cost of living to our homeowners, which we're really starting to see some traction with in the current climate. On the new home settlements, as we flagged in June, we're slightly lower this year than our expectations, which was really attributable to customers of two projects just taking a little bit longer to put their homes on the market.
Looking through this, the positive is that the sales of these projects are performing well, and we did not see any material change in cancellation rates. The feedback we've had from many of those customers is they're looking forward to listing their homes in the spring, and getting ready for the seasonal selling season in Melbourne. Just on the balance sheet, with the substantial uplift in development activity, as we've launched seven new projects, we've seen increases in inventory levels as we've commenced works on infrastructure, roads, clubhouses, homes, et cetera. This increased development activity, and the land we've settled on, contracts that were in the pipeline, has been funded out of our existing debt facility and will continue to draw into this facility as we work through that development program.
The increase in development activity obviously coincided with a substantial uplift in interest rates as they went through a period of normalization from their pandemic lows. It's certainly a fast-paced economic environment this year, and we're very active with our response. Regularly reviewing and updating all of our project forecasts and models, keeping on top of things and adjusting sales prices as we go. In addition, we introduced some interest rate hedging into our loan book this year, and that's helped us manage the speed of change in interest rates, giving us time to adjust our sales prices to pass this through to end customers.
We do expect our cost of debt will continue to average up over the next little while as the increases in FY23 annualize through. We've got AUD 100 million of the hedging that rolls off into December 2023. Following this, we'll still have AUD 240 million hedged until December 2026. This will provide some stability and certainty going forward. This changing climate obviously saw some compression in our debt covenants, and you can see those disclosed in the pack. We've still got sufficient headroom in those covenants and sufficient funding in place to develop our to deliver our planned development pipeline. We want to once again thank the banking syndicate, all of whom participated in our upsize in October.
We're very appreciative of their ongoing support. It's great to see them getting behind affordable housing. In the property market, more broadly, despite a fast-moving rate environment and a lot of negativity in the press, the external market in the catchments where we operate, actually performed quite well this year. The confidence in the new home build market remains pretty low with some of the activity that's been going on there. We, we continue to see strong demand for the established homes that our customers are selling. They move into a lifestyle community. This means our customers were still able to achieve a substantial equity free up when selling their family home.
Again, this really helps with the cost of living pressures that are out there at the moment, with many more customers looking to make a change and relieve some of those financial pressures. On our property valuations, cap rates remained steady this year, we did see an increase in our property valuations, which is attributable to the rental growth and also the strong prices in our resales business, which uplifted the DMS valuation. We've also seen in recent months, a number of third-party sale transactions in the land lease market announce, which gives further support to the valuations in the sector and highlights the continuing strong demand for land lease assets. Some cash flow. The statutory operating cash flow was negative this year, which was down to the large step up in the development activity.
We've included some additional detail on the cash flow on page 21 of the investor presentation this year, which helps separate out the development cash flows from the operating business. Under our capital recycling model, the development cash flows will ebb and flow, depending on where we're at in the development cycle for each community. This can really be seen when you look back over the last 3 years with FY21 being negative and FY22 being positive, and then FY23 being negative again, as the development cycle has played through. On this page you can also see the 50% growth in the annuity cash flow since FY21 that I referred to earlier. It's great to see that operating business really starting to generate some increase in scale.
Finally, I just wanted to echo James's comments and give a big shout-out to the entire team. Launching seven new projects in a year whilst maintaining a growing operating business and keeping our very high standards and customer focus, is no mean feat. The increased activity levels touches all areas of the business, and it's really pleasing to see the investments we've made in not only processes and systems, but bringing on new people and training. It's really started to put us in good stead to manage this additional volume and operate at a new cadence for us. It's been brilliant to welcome so many new people to the business to help us bring these new projects to life. From my perspective, the energy in the business is really infectious at the moment, and I'm, I'm really enjoying it.
I'll just close with one final prediction on the outlook, and that is a 3-1 victory to the Matildas tonight.
Hear, hear. Funny. Bring it on. In closing, thanks so much, Darren, and I've got to say, the presentation and the ATM report is just outstanding in my view. It's a real step up, it was sensational. With the slowdown in greenfield sales in terms of just lots of people to buy lots to houses on, we've seen a real slowdown in that market, and that's actually released out some land opportunities, and we've been sort of waiting for this moment to come through, and sure enough, it's here. Where it's been a really, really interesting level of deal flow to buy sites in the areas we'd like to be buying them. Yeah, we're really excited by that, so watch this space. We'll hear more about that at the half.
But, um-
... In the interim, we've bought another crafting site down at Clifton Springs on Bellarine Peninsula, which is a really beautiful site, and also one up on the, out in Yarrawonga, which is a sort of Melburnian sort of Nirvana for retirement on the Murray, and I think that site will do extremely well. It kind of is a, a really interesting model for us to take on with a slightly different product. Yeah, really exciting to see how that rolls out as well. We, we put another forecast out for 1,400 to 1,700 settlements over the next 3 years.
That might be a tad conservative, but we're really just being a little cautious around making sure we get all our projects up and running and firing, and we'll be happy to update the market whenever we see that, that changing. You know, segment we're certainly seeing, as Darren mentioned, a strong property market with consumer confidence staying through, which is all in well for a pretty strong sales half, which is great to see as well. We also, we built a just a record number of homes last year, so, we are starting to see also the construction prices going to plateau and the freeing up of supply of labor. In closing, what a fantastic 20 years it's been, and we are blessed to have the best team, the best board.
We're all 100% aligned to keeping reimagining what Lifestyle has to offer. I'd like to express my deepest appreciation to every individual who has contributed to our organization's wonderful success and growth over this time, and also to the shareholders over this time as well, who backed us right from 2007 when we first listed. It's been a fantastic journey for everyone. As we stand at this juncture, looking ahead to our future, we just simply cannot be more excited about what lies ahead. It's just extraordinary. We'll definitely continue to innovate, transform, and lead the way forward in the industry, and always continue to make meaningful difference to the lives of others. Thank you, and I'd like now to pass it back to Paul just to take on some questions.
Thank you to James and Darren for the presentation. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Lou Pirenc from Jarden. Your line is open.
Yes, thanks, James and Darren. A few questions on the financials, if I may. Maybe start with the, the, the cost base. I mean, clearly strong operating revenue growth, but the margin hasn't really, or if any, if anything, has come down. Should we expect more scale benefits over, over time, or, or are costs pretty variable there?
As a general principle, Louis, we don't really look for margin expansion at operating business because we're very mindful that, you know, we're delivering value back to the homeowners. And we're also mindful of their impact, you know, relative to the pension and commercial rental system, those things. So typically what we aim for is to try and hold those margins steady, and then as we generate the ability to deliver value back, we tend to give it back to the homeowners in the, in hope of really delivering better service and driving referrals. So it's not ultimately a goal to sort of, deliver a margin expansion. It's more about using scale to allow us to do more things, if that makes sense.
Yeah. No, no, thank you. Does the same go for, I guess, project management, sales, marketing, and corporate overheads, which also went up quite significantly in FY23, or are there more scale benefits there?
Yeah. If we just touch on each of those separately, I guess the development margin, it's usually pretty consistent across a project, but it does ebb and flow, reporting period to reporting period, depending on, you know, the mix of homes or the mix of projects. We typically make a slightly lower margin early in a project and then a slightly higher margin at the end as we ratchet prices through the project. That will sort of ebb and flow around, but in the fullness of time, it should be pretty consistent. The marketing costs went up this year purely because we launched so many new projects, and there's a little bit of front-loaded sales and marketing effort when you launch a new project.
Because we had so many launch in the one year, that's what drove that up a bit. Then in the overheads, yeah, look, we are a growth business, and we're always, sort of making sure that we've got the right tools of trade in the back end to support the growth. Ultimately, we would like to see some scale coming into that overhead line over time. We're definitely not a sort of CPI growth business in the overhead line.
Thank you. A final question from me. Can you just remind me how you decide what fair value uplifts for the DMF you kind of book as your operating profit and what you book below? Quite a big difference between 22 and 23, so just so I may understand it.
Yeah. What we do with the DMF is we, we take the value from the most recent independent valuations. That's what we book as the operating profit, and that's essentially what we unlock every time we sell a new home. When we, we move someone in, we create the rental stream as well as the DMF, and we book the fair value uplift for both of those things. Then at the end of each year, we re-undertake the valuation exercise, and any movements in the assumptions in those valuations is what we sort of attribute to the market. If, you know, the, the valuer has a different view on price growth or they change the discount rate or something, that's what we say is the non-operational part.
Great. Thanks, Darren. Thanks, James.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Gawler from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
G'day, James. Hey, Darren, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, good, good to hear you, Chris.
No worries. Just a couple of questions from me, more on the, the demand environment and the settlement outlook. Firstly, James, just noting a comment around the medium-term settlement guidance, potentially having some conservatism in it in terms of getting projects up and running. Interested to get your thoughts around whether that's more supply or demand driven, that conservatism, and, you know, what you sort of need to see to have more confidence to potentially lift that in the future.
Yeah, Chris, it's, it's a little bit more around, you know, we've launched projects and, you know, just making sure that we, you know, there's no supply issues in that or labor issues. It's just really making sure that we hit the timelines we need to hit and deliver them when we need to deliver them. Yeah, it's just our to deliver the conservatisms and to make sure our projects are moving forward as we, you know, go. You know, we've got a bit of a low ground risk with rock and bits and pieces like that. You know, we want to make sure we get that out of the way as well.
We've got one project that we were counting on in the settlement process at Ocean Grove 2, which is got tied up with some external service issues beyond our control. You know, we're just not sure which year that's going to ultimately land in. It's that sort of stuff, Chris, that I guess we are just being a little bit just cautious around, you know, the expectation. I guess if you look at the project list on our release and in our presentation, it looks like we can certainly do more. And that's obviously what we're going to be striving to do, as we always do.
Yeah, I guess also currently the cadence rate of buying 3 sites a year and kind of 3 sites a year generates sort of 1,400-1,700 homes a year kind of thing. That's what means we're averaging. You know, maybe you could also say that, you know, when we step up to 4 sites a year, that will produce another number. I have to say, if you look at the current, you know, pipeline, you'd probably be thinking more is possible, and yeah, we'll be certainly striving towards that.
Yep, sure. Thinking a bit more near term, interested to hear a little bit more about some of the lead indicators that you're thinking for sales, so far, so far in FY 24, you know, inquiry rates and so forth. Just kind of a bit more, color around your comment that you're feeling positive heading into the spring selling season this year.
Yeah, it's been really interesting. It's been really interesting, Chris, because like we've had, you know, down in Melbourne, particularly outer suburbs, you know, having a lot of property on the market, so everything that sells, sells pretty quickly. You know, again, we've got a first-time buyer buying our customers' homes. But we've just seen with, you know, interest rates going up over the last 3 months and, you know, the a little bit of negativity in the press and these sort of things.
We've just, we've just had a sort of slightly sort of choppy waters in getting customers to put their homes on the market and saying, "Is this the right time to get the homes on the market?" We're now starting to see that change in particularly sort of July or August, it's starting to change. But, which is a good thing to see. That's-- we're starting to see, you know, customers now, moving with much more confidence to list their homes and, and sell them and sell with us in Lifestyle Communities. On the sales side, yeah, we are seeing a pick up in consumer confidence around, you know, thinking about downsizing and those sort of things.
We're also, you know, cranking up some different types of marketing ideas, which have been in the, in the sort of pipeline for a while, and they're starting to, to sort of hit home as well. Yeah, there's two good things that are happening around increasing that demand. Fundamentally, I think, you know, we're seeing consumer confidence starting to improve, and that will then lead to a stronger market and mainly encouraging our homeowners our customers to get their homes on the market. They then become homeowners with Lifestyle Communities and build with us.
Yep, that makes sense. Just one more question, just on FY24. I'm interested in getting a little bit more color around the, the skew half on half. I know you comment that, there'll be a bit of a H2 skew, but I also note that you've got around 330 houses at the moment, sold, waiting for settlement. Just interested in your thoughts around the skew this financial year to settlements.
Yeah, it's really around project timing, Chris. Obviously, these new projects that we've launched during this year, we've got to get through a certain level of development before we can move homeowners in. We've got a lot of pre-sales on those projects, but, ultimately, we can't settle them in until the house is built. Phillip Island is a good example of that. You know, we took sort of 50 odd deposits in the first month there, but those homes, you know, they're sort of 12 months away from being what they were at that time. They'll deliver in the sort of, you know, Q4 of FY24. It's really purely around project timing and when those projects will be able to settle homes.
Great. Thanks, guys. That's all from me.
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. I was wondering if you could just talk about the fair value uplift in operating earnings for the H2. Seems like it's a little higher than what would be implied by the settlement skew. Anything change there between the value attributed to homes on completion versus the recurring rental increases?
No major change, Ben. The, the big difference is the rental, you know, the valuation is linked to rental growth, and because we put through a 6.6% rental increase on 1st July, that gets picked up in the vals, and that's what's really been the major driver of the difference there. Otherwise, you know, the other key inputs, cap rate remained pretty steady, but we did also see a little bit of uplift in EMF, which was attributable to price growth. Those are the two sort of main moving parts around the fair value.
Just in the current environment, could you also just comment on average settlement times in terms of when you complete a presale to broadly, when you would expect that, that will settle, notwithstanding your comments that, you know, there's lumpiness in the project profile, but just in terms of your expectations for settlement times at the moment?
Yeah, it's a really good point, and I think you, you kind of gave my answer in your question, but the average is a little bit misleading because we sort of have two main groups. We have the groups like the Phillip Island people that I described before, which will put a deposit down sort of 12, 18 months before their home is ready. Those people, you know, their settlement timeframe is 12, 18 months. Then we'll have people like we're seeing at the Deanside site at the moment where the home's, you know, finished and ready to go for them to move into. They'll put a deposit down today, they straight away put their home on the market, and they move in in three months' time.
The average, you know, might be eight or nine months, but there's very few people that actually sit on the average. It's either you're sort of ready to go and you get into it quick, or you're pre-buying and you're 12, 18 months away.
Terrific, Darren. Just have one follow-up question. Have you published or perhaps could you talk to the averaged hedge rate? You mentioned that a percentage of your debt was fixed. I think it's around 65%, and you had a swap in place that was going to roll off, but you've still got hedging in place until FY26. Could you just talk about the profile there in terms of the average hedge rate, please?
Yeah, we, we didn't actually publish the rate then, just for commercial reasons. You know, we have published the weighted average cost of debt for the last year, and we do expect that's going to average up this year just with, you know, the speed of interest rates that have gone through, the level of unhedged debt that's still out there, and then obviously this hedge rolling off in December, as I mentioned earlier. I mean, ultimately the goal for us with hedging wasn't sort of to... I mean, you always want to minimize the interest cost, but it's more around certainty for us so that we can build it into our pricing models and make sure that we can recover that interest through the sales prices.
The hedge strategy was largely around getting, some, stability into that cost line so that we weren't jumping in the market and changing our sales prices every 5 minutes, those rates were moving so fast. Yeah, that, a long way of saying that we, we kind of expect to move closer to the variable rate over time, but it'll take a little time to get there. Depending on what happens with interest rates in the broader market, who knows after that?
Terrific. Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Tom Bodor from UBS. Your line is open.
Morning, James Kelly and, and Darren Rowland. I was just interested in the comments around likely H2 skew to settlements and just wanted to understand, and also acquisition opportunities presenting in the market. Just wanted to get a feel for how high your gearing might go at the mid-year, and where would you be comfortable or not comfortable in terms of % gearing and debt headroom or undrew debt?
Good day, Tom. It's Darren here. Yeah, it's a good question. I think ultimately where it goes will depend on settlements. You know, it sort of does ebb and flow a little bit. I think, as we saw last year in December, the, you know, the gearing went up a bit, and then in the half, it came down. We had that same profile the year before, we're expecting something a little bit similar this year, to be honest. Hard to say exactly where it's going to go because, you know, we're still working through sales and settlements that can contribute in this H1. Ultimately, we're comfortable with where that sits. It, it will go up and down a little bit, depending on what comes through in the half.
Okay, sure. Would you be, say, comfortable finishing a period with your headroom under AUD 100 million, for example?
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the debt facility that we've got, AUD 525 million, the plan is to draw into that over time anyway, as the business continues to deliver these new projects. If you look back in the history of how we've grown that facility, as we develop more and we finish more assets, we can then borrow a bit more, and that allows us to increase the cadence of development. That model has been the model since sort of 2012, and we've got no plans to change that model.
Okay, that's clear. Then just on your ICR, do you expect that to be higher or lower in FY 2024, given ranges in interest, you know, interest rate moves, but also settlements changing into next year?
I guess the answer is yes, we expect it to be higher or lower. Ultimately same answer, mate. It, it really does depend on where the settlements land. Like, if, if we, you know, get to the... Things go well and we get to the top end of our plans, then, the interest cover will be higher, and if we're slightly behind, it'll be slightly lower. It will ebb and flow a little bit similar to the, the gearing.
Okay, great. Back picking up the comments you made around the ground rents, and, you know, linking to CPI and pension, and it's gone down as a share of, of the pension. Just in absolute dollar terms, it's sort of getting up there in that sort of mid-AUD 200 range for a couple? You know, I appreciate pensions are indexed to CPI, but it feels like everything's inflating pretty high, you know, significantly at the moment. You know, does there become a point where those weekly rental fees are unaffordable for your customers, or you start just pushing back on the sale side?
No, it's just really, it's a relative thing, because at the same time, pensions went up 7.2% over the same period. We've got our, our rents up 6.6%. Yeah, they, they are actually better off again. Yeah, they, they just get the relativity. The other really good news was, the first time in 20 years, Commonwealth Rent Assistance, Commonwealth Rent Assistance went up 15%. Which is, you know, that's a really good Labor government issue in terms of trying to make rentals more affordable. You know, it's kind of all going, you know, quite well for pensions at the moment, you know, for me. Yeah.
Tom, we track our, because this is our sort of, I guess, our main testing point with the homeowners. We know how sensitive they are in the cost of living space, so we do measure this quite closely. You know, where the rent sits today relative to the pension is, is lower than what it was back in 2009. We do track those settings pretty closely.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I was asking more from the context of everything else is a lot higher. It's just an affordability constraint at some point, but, I appreciate that.
That's the benefits of our model, mate, because we're able to shield people from some of those other increases. Our electricity rates haven't increased anywhere near where the broader market has. Then leaning into some of the other features and benefits we offer. You know, people can use our car and save themselves 1 tank of petrol every 2 months, and that really helps with some of those other cost of living challenges.
That's very clear. I mean-
So-
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, Tom, it's interesting, you know, you, you talk to our homeowners and they often say, "God, thank goodness I'm not living in my existing house. I don't know how I'd afford to live." Because, you know, all those ground-based costs and electricity, water, and all the other things they're paying for, gas, in the existing homes, they're not paying. They're shielded from, as Darren said, in the lifestyle community. Yeah, you know, I tend to get more on the positive, as Darren's saying. You know, thank goodness we're here, not out there, type thing.
Yeah, no, it's clear. Speaking of Labor governments and rental affordability, I appreciate the Andrews government might have walked back from the idea of rent caps, is that something you've thought about the risk around that and how it could impact your business?
Yeah, look, it's a hard one. You know, it's, it's, yeah, we, we're always sort of, you know, mindful of it. I mean, it was a pretty sort of, you know, a pretty shoot from the hip type comment from our, our premier, I've got to say. We're, we're in discussions with the treasurer to sort of go, you know, whatever happens, just make sure you exempt our category from this, because we've got 90-year leases with fixed rental increases, which is exactly what Daniel Andrews wanted. We had a really good hearing around that from the, the, the vice treasure. Yeah, it's great.
Yeah, so, yeah, we were certainly on the front foot about it, but, I just don't think, you know, we're, we're, we're delivering exactly what they want, which is controlled rental increases on long-term leases. Yeah, it's Nirvana, so we kind of tick every box for them.
Yeah, okay. It seems like it's fallen back into line anyway, so thanks. Okay.
Your next question comes from the line of Russell Gill from Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, James and Darren. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me. Just interested to hear your comments on the performance of your communities from a settlement perspective. I know during the presentation and during the trading update, you mentioned there are a couple of communities in the northwest of Melbourne that underperformed, you know, were there any other communities that either underperformed or outperformed? I have noted that it looks like your expectations for the Pakenham community, in terms of it reaching normalized settlement rate, is being pushed back by about 6 months. Yeah, we're just able to comment on those couple of things, that would be great.
Yeah, the, the Northwest is still, we're putting a lot of effort into the Northwest and understand our customer and running some very different campaigns to what we've run before, and they're now performing, you know, you know, better than what they were performing 12 months ago. I think the main thing there, too, is that they're, you know, very much, you know, we, we were pretty much delivering what we delivered the previous year, so, we've just also pushed through a little bit there as well. Down the Barwon and in, in the Southeast are doing very well, so, you know, tick, tick, tick.
Pakenham just had a bit of a, a, you know, issue putting out ranges and a delay not, not caused by us, but caused by the land developer who we bought the land from, who, it just had a slight delay in getting services, roads and bits and pieces to us. That's just set us back a little bit. Yeah, it is, it is tricky when you're buying, you know, sites, as part of an englobo site where you're relying on the developer to service the site. It is a little bit out of, out of our control, but, you know, it's just something you have to, to work through. Yeah, it's, it's...
We are sort of seeing a, a stronger August, September, October in our view, as sort of we come out of the sort of melee of what's been going on through winter and also through interest rate rises then. We're sort of sensing, we'll see the market really strengthen over the next couple of months.
Perfect. Thank you very much for that. Just wanted to also ask you about the DMS. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this time around you have disclosed the amount of resales in the period, but not necessarily the amount of resales attracting a DMS. I guess, firstly, are you able to disclose that number? Secondly, are you able to maybe just make a comment. I know in, in the last couple of periods, the amount of resales attracting the DMS, the volume has been a little bit lower, you know, versus expectations, but certainly the average DMS, sorry, the average DMS per resale has grown quite significantly. You know, have those trends also continued?
I'll take this one, Russell. This is the worst question that we get because it's impossible to predict DMS. Ultimately, we are in the hands of our homeowners, many things drive their decisions to either stay or go, including, you know, health or death reasons. Health or death typically is sort of 50% of the resales, and then there's 50% for any other reason, really. It, it sort of gives me nightmares on the forecasting front. We do our best to try and predict where it's going to be, and we've got a few different ways that we try and come at it. Yeah, it's very difficult to predict. Ultimately, it's not something that we really drive.
Like, the way we think about resales is when somebody makes a decision to sell their home, our KPIs are: how quickly can we sell it, and what is the capital growth that we can deliver through that process? That's where we work with our team on the, you know, on the incentive side of things. In terms of the volume, it's just really not something we can control. On the, the non-DMS, we've actually moved away from that sort of Smart Buy Guarantee. That was in there originally because there wasn't a lot of knowledge around the land lease product and, you know, we saw some uncertainty from customers way back in the day.
We're just finding as the model gets more mature and as land lease normalizes, particularly with others coming into the space and this being a genuine asset class that people understand and get now, the need for that's really dropped away. Yeah, we're just sort of no longer offering that.
so basically you'll no longer have some TMFs with. Well, we're just tailing out, but goodbye. In this entry, there'll be no non-DMS sales.
Yeah. No, that's very clear. Thank you very much. I might just try and sneak in two more questions. Just quickly on site rental, in terms of the EBITDA margin, that, that fell about 2%, year-on-year, roughly or thereabouts. Just wondering what your expectations are heading into FY24 and beyond. Do you, do you feel like the FY23 level is a more normalized level and that should carry forward, or how are you viewing that at the moment?
It does move around, around a little bit, mate, just particularly when we have new communities come online. What knocked it around a little bit this year was Meridian. We had a high number of homeowners move in before the clubhouse opened. That means we've got all of the operating costs, but none of the revenue because the rent doesn't start until the facilities open. Really, the, the change in the margin is driven by that. It's not driven by a change in our cost structure or anything like that. It will sort of, you know, move around a little bit. The next year, you know, with so many new communities coming online, we'll have that same issue, but sort of multiplied a little bit.
We might see a little bit of, you know, the margin coming back next year and then picking up again in FY25 as the rents kick in at those communities.
Yep, perfect. That, that makes sense. Thank you. Just one last question. Just regarding the home settlement guidance. The FY 2022-2024 guidance, just taking into account the FY 2022 and 2023 settlements achieved, that leaves still a fair range for FY 2024. Just wondering what your thoughts are regarding what would drive the bottom end and the top end of settlements. Is it, you know, is it a question around the construction supply chain, or is it more regarding demand?
It's definitely not construction. We, we'll have all the products built and ready to go. Really, mate, in these near-term areas, it's ultimately down to homeowner choice. Like, we sell them a home that's available for them, they choose where to move in a bit. A little bit outside of our control in those near-term areas. Yeah, definitely we've worked with the homeowners. What we try and do is create a bit of FOMO about moving in. You know, we create all this excitement about the new life that they're going to have. We get them involved in activities and try and really get them in emotionally invested in the community as early as possible because, you know, they've made the decision to do it, get on with it is the sort of style that we go for.
definitely, all that in front of us in terms of trying to just move through people through that journey as quickly as possible.
We always invite deposit holders to events in the clubhouse, and at this one last night, where we had between 80 people, we had a lot of deposit holders there, and, oh, my gosh, they were just busting a boiler to move in. Yeah, it's that type of FOMO that we can, we're really carrying. We also give them a VIP pass, so this lanyard that they can actually come and use the pool and all the facilities before they moved in. That, that also just increases their familiarity with the facilities. They get to know people, but also it, again, still drives that FOMO. Yeah, there's a lot of other things that we do to sort of try and, you know, ensure that their home's on the market, and it sells pretty quickly.
A lot of it's self, self-driven by the homeowners, which is great.
Fantastic. Thanks a lot for taking my questions.
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Hudson from MST. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. Just a couple of questions. Further to, I guess the previous questions around Pakenham, I've also noticed a slight slippage in settlement expectations for The Shores and Merrifield. Could I just maybe understand, I guess, what's driving those to shift from sort of FY24 into FY25?
Yeah, slightly the same. We're relying on services from others, unfortunately, the service was slightly delayed by having to replace more pallets chimp or, or, what do you call it? Indigenous artifacts. That, that just pushed it out slightly. Then I think the other one was Merrifield. Yeah, that's been a service issue to get access to the site. We're just, we're working through those now, and they're underway. We, we'd like to switch the settlements into FY24, we're certainly working to achieve that. We're just a little bit cautious here to make sure that we don't under rely on them or short them.
Okay, thanks. Dan, your comments around, I guess, gearing maybe rising again slightly towards the end of the H1 of 2024. Is that a development spend impact, or is, do we expect settlements to be down in H1 2024 relative to H2 2023?
Yeah. We are expecting settlements to be slightly lower in the H1 relative to the H2 of 23. Exactly where, I, I don't know, yet, to be honest, we're still working through our process. At the same time, we've also got a very full development program going on at the moment across all these new projects. It's a little bit of both, to be honest. You know, the ebb and flow, I know I've used that phrase a lot today, but it really, you know, can be influenced quite a bit by the number of settlements we get. You know, it might be down a bit, it might be up a bit, but it's definitely not something we're, we're focused on.
We've got the, you know, the plans in place, we've got the funding, we've got the, you know, pre-sales going. We're rolling on. Ultimately in that near term, the result will be what it will be.
Okay. I guess just in terms of clubhouse timings, I guess Woodlea, Bellarine, Riverfield, Phillip Island, could you give us a sense of when those clubhouses are expected to open?
Crikey! Good question, Scott. Trusting you here.
I can do it.
You go.
The Bellarine is open today, and it's beautiful.
Woodlea is sort of February, March.
Yeah.
I always say December, but it's probably more likely February, March for this year. Phillip Island, still probably 12 months or more away, as is every other one that we've launched. The only one really that's going to be completed in FY24 is Woodlea.
Okay, Riverfield and Phillip Island, no rental income until FY25?
Yeah, that's right.
Okay. Lastly, just the new land acquisitions, I guess one up towards the Murray River. You're confident in the demand profile from sort of a more regional landscape?
Bring it on. Okay, Scott. It fits really into Yarrawonga is the bottom line, sort things with the development of Yarrawonga into longer Yarrawonga. We won't be adopting now, I promise you right now, but yeah, it's a really interesting one for us. We're doing a smaller format product there, it's kind of, it's, it's 110 plots or something, it's not big, but it's, it's interesting for us, actually. The demand is there, no problem at all, it just goes by a slightly different product and give it a go, we'll do a sort of smaller clubhouse, probably more for 15. It's in a cracking location with a boat ramp down the end, where one of those couple, couple of lifestyle sites.
Yeah, we really so like it. It's a really, it's you can get, you, you do what you do every day, and then you get, Yarrawonga, everyone gets really excited by it, going, "This is different." Yeah, I just want to buy a helicopter. That's the thing to get up there because it's three hours away. I'm only kidding, but yeah, that. The Murray River for us is actually something we're exploring quite heavily for, for the Melburnians. It's quite aspirational now, as you get back to, to retire in the Murray River. That's what we are longer lens into.
Right. That's all I had. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Suraj Nebhani from Citigroup. Your line is open.
Thank you. Just a quick one on the sales rates. Just looking at this chart on slide 14, it, it seems like some of the recent projects are, you know, sales rates are tracking more in line with the longer-term average versus, let's say, you know, the ones that were launched in 2020 and 2021. Would it be fair to say that the sales rates are slower than I guess, what you may have anticipated?
If you ask James, he'll always say the sales rates are slower than he anticipated. No, like, we've, we've probably got three sort of categories, and I think I've put this on one of the slides that, you know, that we've got sort of new in corridor or growth corridor projects that are performing in line with historical averages, and we're perfectly happy with that. I think, we put the example in the Beaconside relative to some of our other first in catchment projects, and, you know, Deanside is our worst performer at the moment, but it's actually ahead of those two projects. We're both were a great project. Yeah, we're not worried about those ones in line with historical averages.
They're important to deliver into those catchments because they're all big catchments with big populations and will be great corridors for us over the ten-year journey. It's important that we get in there and build the brand and start to build a presence and a referral network. Then over the top, we've got, you know, some star performers down in the Southeast, where we, we were in that catchment early, ten years ago, and you can see the benefits that you get by sort of persisting with some of those corridors. They're always great catchments for us. Then the destinational projects, you know, in particular, Phillip Island and the Bellarine, we had, you know, really strong first months.
You know, 50, 55 sales in the first month of those projects, and then they've kind of adopted a more traditional sales rate from that point on. A lot of, you know, people just bussing to get in there, and then, you know, we've cleaned out the database and reset, and now we're sort of getting back to normal operating. Yeah, I guess, long answer, but every project is kind of slightly different for us and, you know, they've all got their different marketing strategies and plans.
Sure, sure. That makes sense. Maybe just a general question on the demand side. I know James mentioned a bit on, you know, the longer-term forecast being conservative, but just on the path to getting there in FY24, do you anticipate, you know, demand to be, I guess, stronger, over the next 12 months than what it has been over the last 12 months?
Yes, I, I think generally we're, we're forecasting that, but who knows? I mean, you could, you know, could ask for a different time, but the economy could. Generally, we're, we're expecting it to be a little stronger, as we hope, you know, it's sort of consumer confidence element sometimes in certain down. It depends a little too, again, as Darren says, which project in what area as well. You know, the Northwest can get a little bit more spooked more quickly than, say, the Southeast or the Bellarine or others. You know, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's interesting. Overall, yes, we are expecting consumer confidence to increase and, and sales to keep going.
I think the other big driver is, you know, there's so much discussion about this affordable housing crisis and, and, you know, so there's, you know, a number of different factors that sort of can, can lean into what we're doing. You know, you've got government stimulus, which is, you know, we start to talk about recycling of housing and getting, you know, baby boomers out of their homes. You know, also, you know, we've got very attractive product to government, so we actually have our product on the ground. You know, Victoria, there's a lot of discussion about building lots of homes. Well, we are actually building lots of affordable homes. You know, it's a whole journey of, you know, generating interest in that space.
Yeah, it's, yeah, that's another sort of side factor there, which is an interesting one for us. I think, yeah, you know, generally, I think also the other thing is this opening up this addressable market with the Gen X. We've just started to lean into that, with our products and our marketing, everything else. You know, that, that, that I think should also increase, sales as well. Yeah, so, that's my take on it.
Perfect. Thanks. Thanks, James. Appreciate the color. Maybe one for Darren on the hedging side. Is there an expectation that, you know, that the hedging, once it expires, is, is renewed into the next year or, or not really?
It's a good question. When the hedge rolls off, we'll still be sort of 60% hedged on that debt facility. To be honest, mate, we'll probably just have a think about it at the time. You know, things are quite different today than what was happening sort of, you know, back in May last year, where we were getting rates going up every month and more so. Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a wait and see, to be honest.
Okay. The final one is on the pricing of homes. I know, the way you sort of price product, you know, any rise in rates or costs should get captured there. I'm just assuming, like, you know, there may be scope to increase prices further, but just checking, like, you know, what other numbers would you expect, I guess, on the pricing growth side, on new homes near term?
Yeah. We, we do price our homes on a cost recovery basis, and that adjusts based on the input costs. We do use a bit of a pricing strategy to assist with sales as well. You know, a price increase is a great way to sort of find out whether somebody is genuinely interested or not, because if they were going to buy, they would buy before the increase and not after. We do sort of line up our price increases around milestone events like clubhouse opening or play homes and things like that. We also do sort of increases prices through the development as the risk sort of decreases. The best time or the cheapest price in one of our developments is on day one, and the most expensive is on year five.
We've got lots of different techniques around pricing, but ultimately, the overarching strategy on every development is the same, which is just to recover our development costs.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Oliver Stevens from Entrust Wealth. Your line is open.
Oh, hi, gents. Just wondering, in regard to resales, obviously there's a variety of reasons, but historically, what percentage of departures are due to residents sort of not being satisfied or deciding lifestyles, not for them?
Actually, it's a very small percentage. We, we, we really back our sales team to, you know, we say to our sales team. Firstly, you know, we've got a non-commissioned sales team, so, you know, they're not driven to, you know, try and create a, a, a lifestyle for someone where it's not appropriate. That's number one. Number two, yeah, they do a lot of screening in the process to actually try and ensure that the customer is making the right decision. You know, we, we do a lot of engagement with that customer. We invite them into the community. They can sort of walk around, they can meet other homeowners, you know, and get other things to involve them in.
You know, hopefully by the time they actually get to move in, it is 100% the right decision. Yeah, most people who move out early days, I would say, you know, less than 1%. If it is that 1%, then it would be due to health reasons, you know, unexpected health crisis or a change of circumstances...
Yeah.
where their children move to Queensland suddenly and those-
Yeah.
kind of things with buyers. Yeah.
I guess... Yeah, sorry, James, just a related question. I guess you, you sort of understand when people leave, why they are leaving, so you can get onto that early...
Absolutely.
If there is an issue, I guess? Yeah.
Yes, it surveys all the time. Most of them are... You know, I've always said that, you know, with the war gen, you know, they, you know, they were moving in on us for a sort of, you know, a, a death stone in the sense of, you know, they're there to, you know...
Mm-hmm.
to the very end. You tend to find now with the younger baby boomers and, you know, Gen X, it's, it's more a stepping stone. It's not necessarily their last destination, you know. You know, downsize free equity, you know, spend some of that, keep some of that. They'll see the house prices go up, and they might then sell again and do something else. It has changed a lot over 20 years. Now it's much more into, you know, there's definitely health and death. Yeah, health and death are the reason for that, but we're seeing a lot of maybe an increasing number of people just moving on for lifestyle circumstances, going, "Let's do something different.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Bryn Walters, private investor. Your line is open.
Good day, James and Darren. Thanks for taking the call, and thanks to you and the team for producing another pretty nice annual report. Just a couple of bits of feedback, if I could. You mentioned in the report about conducting homeowner surveys.
Yeah.
Are you able to publish the results of those in the forthcoming reports?
Yeah, we don't really publish those. I think the reason why is at the moment we're just trying to ourselves... We've only just started these surveys, so, you know, when we get a really better sense of it, we might be able to do that. I'm not sure what it would necessarily achieve by doing this. Look, put it this way, we did have it in this report, we took it out, we didn't want to have this sort of ongoing barometer of saying, you know, your Net Promoter Score is up here, what's the problem? Or down here, what's the problem, and the other up here.
You know, it was kind of, it was a sort of a more, a, a, a metric that we didn't think was necessarily great value to the conversation, but it's, it's a work in progress for us, where we've been. Yeah, bear with us as we sort of work out what we are going to do with those type of scores going forward.
Okay, thanks for that. I did notice there was employee engagement scores and they would be-
Obviously-
Yeah.
When it's the employee, that's the one, that, that's in there.
Yeah, no, I saw that.
Yeah.
All right. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Bryn.
Also just moving forward, if we could go back to the streaming version of the conference call so that we can have a bit more interaction and maybe write down questions and present them to you that way.
Yeah, interesting.
Anyway, that's just some feedback, and thanks for taking the call. I'll let you on to the next question.
Thanks. Good feedback. Good feedback.
Yeah, next question comes from the line of Warren Jeffries from Canaccord. Your line is open.
Thanks, guys. I won't rehash, but just, just quickly, just, just on the hedging. A $100 million down rolls off by December this year. Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
The 200, I missed it earlier. There's another 200-
26.
December 26. Just when, I mean, you've got, you haven't got anything due for a little while yet, when you might next revisit the total facility, and an uplift to that?
Yeah, look, our facility has rolled and evolved as the business is growing, so the plan is.
Yeah
... sort of continue that journey. Exactly when that happens, Yeah, stand by, we'll, we'll keep you posted. You know, if you look at how it's grown over, certainly over the period of time that I've been here, you know, as we deliver some more assets to the balance sheet, that allows us to then borrow a bit more. That allows us to increase the developments, and, and that's basically how the capital recycling model and the organic growth story works for us. Keeping with that model, yes, you can expect a, a, a roll and uplift at some point.
Good one. Thanks a lot.
Yes.
As a reminder, if you do have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Ravin Kuhadrus, who is a private investor. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Congratulations on 20 years. I just had a-
Thank you.
... question on-
Yeah, I just have questions on your Club Lifestyle initiatives. How do you see the experience, the experiences in that, in your Club Lifestyle evolving over time, and how does it fit with the broader lifestyle offer as you look further down the track?
Yeah, good question. This was a real strategic initiative around just recognizing that, you know, you, you, you move into lifestyle community, you get a lot of the lifestyle there. But in terms of then taking, you know, the total sum of the parts, it became an opportunity to actually provide something on top as well, to add that greater value. I think in a way, it was a way of sort of putting something that differentiated against, say, some of the more property developer type oriented competitors who wouldn't be looking at those type of things.
We just saw it as a way of, you know, not only adding value to helping drive referral into longer term, but also just differentiating our brand against others because it, it just, you know, it just, it sort of really highlighted or shone a light on, you know, why Lifestyle is just so different to other competitors in Australia. You know, I can't imagine anyone else would even contemplate doing what we've done, but, you know, it seems the homeowner feedback has been just extraordinary. They're able to invite a friend down as well, particularly if it's, you know, seeing them invite a friend down, and some of them are two bedrooms.
You know, what a great way of, you know, driving a referral is just sitting there in your own beach house, you know, which is free to use and, or in the motor home, which is free to use, or the, you know, the caravan park is free to use, and you're walking down along the beach and, you know, you've just, you know, passed the sort of, you know, the drinks bar down on the, you know, the, the leisure center down on the beach and, or, or having a drink on the balcony overlooking the unions. You know, it, it's the most extraordinary asset I think we've ever bought. I guess it's a, a real way of being, of just sort of showing what lifestyle is truly about, adding value to homeowners and also helping drive referrals.
We just saw it as a strategic initiative, it, it's just sensational, and we just found a piece of land that just matched it perfectly.
Great. It sounds like, it, it differentiates us from some of the other players and gives our homeowners more value. Is there, is there scope for monetization down the track, or is it more purely an accelerant and a value add? A sort of accelerant and a value add?
Accelerant and value add, correct. Yeah, we wouldn't monetize it. It's, yeah, it's just not something that's. You know, when you say it's free, you get about five people actually faint in the room, like, it's just like, "You're kidding." And we've got a big sticker on all our brochure that says, "My home comes with a free beach house." It's pretty powerful as a marketing message, and we're now, you know, working hard to get that message out to all our homeowner groups and also putting it on the stores, our online communication portal. We've got activations in every community with sort of two deck chairs, a cooler and, you know, a bottle of champagne, two glasses. Yeah, we're really venting to what the opportunity this is.
Yeah, watch this space. I think it's a, it's, it's a unique opportunity to really express the brand and express the value of that brand.
Great. Thanks, everyone.
This brings our Q&A session to a close. I'd like to hand back over to James for closing remarks.
Thank you, Paulie, I really appreciate that. Thanks everyone so much for getting on the call and looking forward to catching up with many of you over the next week. Thanks so much, and go the Matildas.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.