Good morning, and welcome to Lifestyle Communities Investor Analyst Conference Call. My name is Anita Addorisio, company secretary of the company and moderator for this call. This webinar will be recorded for the benefit of those who are unable to attend today, and the webcast will be available upon request. Please be advised, our conference call will strictly be limited to one hour, and due to the number of attendees, we will endeavor to address as many questions as possible during this time. We encourage you to contact the company via the Investor Centre available on the company's website, should you have any queries following today's update. Our presenters today are Managing Director, James Kelly, and Chief Financial Officer, Darren Rowland, who will provide an update on the equity raise and FY 2024 half-year results as released to the market earlier this morning.
This will be followed by a Q&A session, for which I now outline the procedure as presented on your screen. Prior to asking questions, we invite you to introduce yourself and advise the organization that you are representing. If you wish to ask any written questions, please do so via the Q&A function. To ask a verbal question, please select the Raise Hand icon to be placed on queue. You will be invited to speak at the appropriate time. Please note that questions received via the Q&A function, which are of a similar nature, will be grouped and answered at the appropriate time. I now invite our Managing Director, James Kelly, for his presentation.
Thanks, Anita, and look, welcome everyone, to the investor call, and thanks for your attendance at, at this sort of historic moment where we actually have announced that we're actually going to do a raise. I know for a long time I've been saying that, you know, we will, we're capital recyclers, we'll not do a raise, but sometimes these moments come along where the opportunity is just so good that, you have to rethink your settings, and that this is one of those moments. So let me just unpack that in terms of why we're raising the AUD 275 million. Firstly, the last raise we did was in 2012. We raised AUD 30 million. We were oversubscribed, and we got to AUD 36 million, and, we've been recycling that capital ever since.
The industry since then was a cottage industry. No one knew what land lease was, and now obviously it's an incredibly well-recognized asset class, and it's really been supported by the likes of Stockland, Mirvac, and Ingenia, and others in the space. It's, I think, set for sort of its next huge level of growth moving forward. The big tailwinds for this sector, the macro elements are really the aging population, which everyone knows about. That more recently has been bolstered by the Gen X, which is a really exciting new cohort that's entered our addressable market. You know, basically, we've got a sort of less than 2% penetration rate into the addressable market.
So the opportunity is significant, and then the opportunity to capitalize on that is also significant as well. The next big thing that's happened, particularly over the last sort of 12 months and 3-year hangover from COVID, is we've started to see the whole housing industry sort of discombobulate. What's happened really, is that from the sort of hangover of supply chain issues and pricing, we're now starting to see home builders, more so in Victoria, actually, than other states, start to see some insolvencies. That did impact, for sure, our first half results, and I'll get Darren to touch on that shortly.
But what it has opened up is significant land buying opportunities for us as second and third tier developers have been unable to sell land, and therefore, are more prepared to sell in englobo parcels. The third opportunity for us is that we've got the organizational capability now of sort of five years of investment, and that you've seen that flowing through our sort of corporate overheads of being able to deliver more. And it's a bit like sort of having all that potential, but with this capital constraint and I know my team is sort of chomping at the bit to sort of get into a much bigger opportunity moving forward. So we're sort of recognizing that we also have that organizational capacity to deliver. Let me track back to then why.
So, yeah, we, we bought four sites this year, and we started to walk past site opportunities more frequently. We missed out on a big one down the Bellarine, and our Head of Acquisitions, Chris, sort of said to me, "You know, there's this massive opportunity of sites coming," and Darren, you know, really saying, "We just haven't got the capacity. Definitely got the capacity on our balance sheet to keep doing what we're doing through a year and, and delivering what we've got, but we just have not got the capacity to pick up five additional sites." Since that discussion, Chris has sort of accumulated five additional sites that are really high quality.
Yeah, it was a moment of probably my reflection to say, "You know, we've got to set the business up for this next stage of growth." This is a step change for Lifestyle. It heralds a new stage of growth, and with the organizational capacity to deliver it, a market that is stronger than it's ever been, the land lease industry sort of itself set for a takeoff in terms of consumer understanding around what that sector is. It, it's just too good an opportunity to miss. So, the AUD 275 million we're raising is for five sites and also the funds to develop those sites. It is that step change opportunity for Lifestyle. We always had a carve-out that we'd not raise capital unless an extraordinary opportunity came along.
We thought it would come in one line from one player, but here it's come in multiple lines from multiple players. So yeah, that opportunity we want to seize on. I'll pass to Darren now, just to take us through the last half results.
... Thanks, James. Morning, everyone. Welcome to this exciting day for us. It's a big announcement, and we're very excited about the opportunity in front of us. I think, this slide, first half of 2024 highlights, really sums up exactly what James was talking about. We've sort of got quite a unique situation. We've got the underlying business performing really well. So we saw strong revenue growth, margins held up well, cash flow increasing, supported by, that inflation-linked rental increases, increased homes under management, and our resale prices continuing to see really good capital growth. So underneath all that, the operating business performing really well. In the developing business, definitely some challenging conditions. I think, you know, we've called it out here.
Obviously, the interest rate environment, everyone would be well aware of, persistent high inflation, particularly in the construction sector, and certainly an outsized number of insolvencies in the home builder market really knocked around consumer sentiment, for our customers, and that's had a flow on immediate impact on our timing of our settlements. Just to unpack that a little further, a sort of a normal scenario for us would be if a homeowner is. If our home that we're building for them is gonna be delivered in June, we would be contacting that customer in sort of March and saying, "Okay, it's time to put your family home on the market. You'll market that for 30 days.
You'll then have a 60-day settlement window, so by the time the cash is in the bank for you, our home will be ready, and you can move in the next day. And that's sort of our traditional preferred state. What we're seeing at the moment is, with all the builders sort of having some challenges, customers are saying to us, "Look, that's all well and good, but, we're a bit worried about the building industry, so you show me the finished home first, and then I'll put my home on the market after that." So that's having the effect of sort of pushing a lot of our settlements out to the right. We did see that a little bit in June. We had obviously hoped that that would correct itself and the market would normalize. That hasn't happened yet.
In the long term, we think that it will, it's just we're not exactly sure what that timing is. So yes, the first half results are slightly softer in the new settlements world, but definitely nothing that's giving us concern, or pause. The flip side, though, is this opportunity that's been created, and as James sort of called out, we've, we've kind of done everything in our power to capitalize on the opportunity, without turning our minds to the equity raise. So we've, we've sort of signed four new contracts already this year. We've got pretty creative with settlement terms on some of those.
We've obviously raised additional debt in December, but it did get to the point where there's a limit to what we could put into the pipeline based on the settings we had, and that's really what's led us to the situation today. With the equity raising, we're very much looking forward to capitalizing on these opportunities, which will deliver longer-term growth for us, into the FY 2027, 2028, 2029 timeframes. So if we just jump to the P&L for the half quickly. Sorry, I'm just gonna wait for the slides to catch up. You can see, on the P&L, obviously 124 settlements. So you can see revenue continuing to grow from the site rental, DMF flat for the year.
The challenge we're having with the DMF is we're obviously beholden to homeowners making decisions to move out, and that's not something we can control. But the KPIs that we are seeing in terms of time on market for those homes and capital growth still really strong. So as soon as we're getting homes available, we're selling them, and we think that leans into a little bit of the consumer sentiment piece as well. Obviously, in our established business, there's no construction risk, and that's really sort of underpinning demand there. Margins holding up in that space really well. First half, second half, we always see a little bit of movement based on our refurbishment program. So you will see some movements half on half, but overall, no material change to margins. Similar thing on the development margin.
When we have settlements at different projects, at different stages, that mix of project and the mix of homes does move that margin around a little bit, but overall, the pricing models are still the same. We haven't changed our settings, and that will all sort of correct itself in the fullness of time as projects move forward. We will just call out the increase in project management, sales, and marketing costs. Obviously, we've got a lot of projects in development at the moment that are pre-revenue, homeowners haven't started moving in. We're marketing those pretty heavily. We've got our construction teams in full swing and our sales teams out there sort of working the database.
So on a per project basis, that number's pretty consistent, but obviously a lot more projects underway, so that number's quite high this period, but the settlements will start to come through in 2025 and 2026 off the back of that. Otherwise, we've had good success in passing on the inflation and cost increases in the construction side of the world. So you'll see the average revenue per settlement is keeping up with those cost increases. If we just jump to the balance sheet, as I called out before, we're sort of pushing the balance sheet to fund the development and deliver these increases in settlements into 2025 and 2026, and that underpins this three-year guidance, which we're still confident about delivering.
The challenge obviously was funding these extra sites that are coming through the door, so great news in getting the capital raising away. What will happen with those additional sites is no change to our sort of typical buying cycle, which is usually putting a deposit down on a block of land when we buy the site, going through a sort of 12-18-month settlement window. During that time, we get all of our planning in place, permits, design, et cetera. So there will be a lag between when the money is raised and when it gets deployed. That money will be used to pay down debt in the short term, and then we'll draw back into it as the planning permits are issued and as construction ramps up. Just jumping to the cash flow quickly.
As I said, good performance in the operating side of the business. We're seeing good increases in the underlying cash flow that will continue to increase as homes under management increase. And you can see there the heavy development spend for those seven projects that we launched in FY 2023, really starting to see those costs come through as those developments ramp up. And then they'll progressively start turning into capital recovery mode as the settlements come through. And then final comment from me is just a big shout-out to our banking partners. We did a big debt raise in December, was very well supported by our existing partners, and we're also very pleased to bring in new banks, Westpac and ANZ, into the syndicate.
Obviously, it's great to get their support in the delivery of affordable housing, and it was a great competitive process to really modernize our debt facility and set us up for the next five years. So on that note, I'll hand back to James for the look forward.
Thanks, Darren. Thank you, thank you. In terms of outlook, I just want to sort of go back a little bit to go forward. We put in, in 2012, our sort of strategy of being a capital recycler, of running a business that was incredibly customer and homeowner-centric, which drove our referral rates. And we keep leaning into that and leaning into that, as we move forward. Finally, you know, we're, we're focused on greenfield sites, not brownfield roll-ups, and that, that will always remain our fundamental tenet. Over those 12 years, that's delivered EPS growth of 25% and annuity growth of 25%. So we know those settings are right and have put us in good stead and been the main driver of our growth over the last 12 years. Post this capital raising, those settings remain.
We will still be a capital recycler. We're still focusing on greenfield development, and we are still incredibly focused on our fantastic homeowners and our wonderful customers. None of that changes. What this does herald, obviously, is a sort of step change in what we can now deliver and with the organizational capacity to do that. I think it's an incredibly exciting time. For me, it's a bit of a watershed in terms of just can't be more excited about this opportunity, I've got to say, 'cause these sites that we're looking at are very, very good and does create that opportunity to really take Lifestyling to the next era. So I'm very proud of what the team have delivered and a huge shout-out to Citi as well for sort of bringing this to fruition.
In terms of our outlook, again, no change to our three-year guidance. Expect 1,400-1,700 settlements between FY 2024 and FY 2026. We've mentioned homeowners are taking longer to list their homes because of the uncertainty around, whether their builder will, our builder will complete their homes. They want to see the homes built before they list their home. We've launched a number of different strategies around that, and they're starting to, take effect, so I, I'm confident that will start to turn around, obviously in FY 2025 and onwards. We will definitely see an uplift in settlements, as Riverfield and Phillip Island start to ramp up as well, in the second half.
The continued construction activity and spend across the projects, which we have in active development, plus some early works at Yarrawonga and Ocean Grove too, and it's really exciting to see those projects now come to fruition. Particularly the small lot product we're doing at Yarrawonga, which also heralds a sort of new interesting product range. We've tested some of that product at some of our other developments, and it's going extremely well. And obviously, the mainstay of our business, we're not property developers, we are long-term annuity income managers and managers of homeowners. And it's great to see our community operations increase in terms of its profitability, and that really is the long-term growth for the business as well as growth of ongoing dividend. So with that, Anita, I'm really happy to pass to questions.
Thank you, James. We now welcome your questions, and we'll commence by addressing verbal questions before taking written questions. So we currently have Tom from UBS on the line. Tom, please proceed with your question.
Good, good morning, James and Darren. Thanks for your time. Given the risk, there's no change to the medium-term settlement guidance, you know, I acknowledge that the acquisitions today are probably more likely for 27-29 type settlements. Just be interested to understand, you know, could you characterize this as, as BAU-type acquisitions, or out of the ordinary?
Sorry, you mean...
Definitely out of the ordinary, Tom. I mean, obviously, we're buying sites all day, every day, but we're limited with the amount that we can fund by the capital recycling model. So out of the ordinary in the sense that we've had a lot come to us all at once, in addition to the sites that we've already bought under our BAU model. So BAU will definitely continue in the background.
So where can we expect to see gearing fall in the medium term? Will it be back up to 40, or do you sort of see it running lower, you know, in 2-3 years' time?
Yeah, I mean, we definitely don't publish gearing targets, but, we don't expect it to stay at the current levels, for very long. We're obviously gonna get into these sites and start developing as fast as we can, and we've got the existing projects still in the mix as well. So, we will see gearing creep back up over time, but, also subject to where those settlements fall in the medium term.
Okay, thanks. And then can you just confirm where your cancellations and defaults are sitting for the half versus your long-term level?
Very, very low, Tom. You know, we have very, very low cancellation rates, so typically at a AUD 500 fully refundable stage, you know, we're less than 20%, and if they put down a AUD 5,000 deposit, it's less than 1%, and that's usually only through death or ill health that occurs. So, it's the usual very low rates, Tom.
Has it changed in the last six months?
Not at all.
Okay, thanks. And then just one last, if I may, I'll be very brief here, but just wanted to understand, you know, where the old LVR metric, which I know it's dropped out of the presentation, would've sat at the half, and where your ICR is on a six-month basis looking back?
Sorry, Tom. We tweaked the language on the LVR just to be a bit more reflective of what it's actually capturing. But we don't measure ICR on a six-month basis, so I can't answer that for you, unfortunately. But yeah, obviously the gearing metrics and all that, you can calculate off the balance sheet. But no, sorry, we don't measure ICR on a six-month basis.
Okay, thanks.
Well, next we have Rushil from Ord Minnett.
Thank you.
Rushil, please proceed.
Morning, James and Darren and the team. Can you hear me?
Hey, Rushil. Absolutely.
Hi. Great, perfect. Thanks for taking my questions. Just, wanted to start off with guidance. I noted that the FY 2023-2025 guidance and the DMF, resale volume guidance has been dropped. So I'm just wondering, firstly, can you comment on whether the FY 2023-2025 settlement guidance still stands? And then moving on to the DMF guidance, if you can provide any color there as to what your expectations are, both in the short and medium term?
Thanks, Rushil. No, it hasn't been dropped, mate. We just roll it forward each year as we move the projects in. So the current guidance that we have out there is 1400 to 1700 between 2024 and 2026, and we've reiterated that today. Same with the resale guidance. What we published in June is still the current guidance, so no change there.
Okay, fantastic. Thank you for confirming that. Just in regards to the settlement profile for some of your communities, we noted that Pakenham, for example, looks like the point at which it reaches a normalized settlement rate's been pushed back a little bit. Just wanted to see if you had any comments regarding any particular communities that were either outperforming or underperforming in terms of your, I guess, your expected settlement rate?
Yeah, Pakenham's just pushed out slightly 'cause we're waiting on the developer to actually give us road access and access to services as well, so that's pushed us out a couple of months on that one. Our civil works are proceeding at full flight. It's just a delay in getting homeowners actually moving in there, which is just a little unfortunate. We always... We're quite unique in the sense that often we're moving onto land, and Chris is negotiating, you know, license rights to get on there before we even own it, which is fantastic for the IRR, I've got to say. But, so, yeah, Pakenham's like that. Ocean Grove too will be like that. So yeah, it's not an uncommon thing for us to get on there before roads and services are complete.
It's just the risk of getting the developer to supply that as per the agreed timing. We don't sell those sites until we actually have road and service access. In terms of just, you know, how the communities generally are performing, you know, it really strongly, Rushil, across all of them, you know, the Northwest still just runs at our historical averages, and I think you can see from the worm chart that's in the pack, you know, how they're all going. Really excited, Bellarine's been sort of tracking along, which is great, and that's sort of coming to an end. And, you know, Club Lifestyle has also been a big driver of enquiry and referral as well. So that's, Club Lifestyle is really living up to what the original ambition was for that offer.
It's a great differentiating one as well, and it's a really good brand differentiator. So, yeah, that's a really exciting part of, of what we're doing as well. So yeah, it, you know, Southeast really strong, Bellarine strong, Northwest, yeah, a little bit, much more towards our historical averages.
Perfect. Thank you. Maybe just one last question, maybe for you, James. I know you mentioned, apologies if I misinterpreted this, but I think you mentioned during a presentation that some strategies have been put in place to alleviate concerns around construction and incoming residents wanting to see a completed home. Are you able just expand on that in terms of what those strategies are? Are they sort of in the form of incentives, or sort of any color on that?
No, it's actually because we've used one builder, you know, almost from the get-go, Todd Devine Homes, we claim cost plus. So basically, you can't go broke, 'cause it's cost plus. So 99.5% of our homes delivered absolutely on program. In fact, I think it's almost 100% now. So we just produced what we call the Smart Move In Guarantee, SMIG, where we're saying to homeowners, "If by any chance your home is not ready by the agreed date, not only will we store your stuff, but we'll give you a free holiday, obviously down at beautiful Club Lifestyle, and that's our guarantee." It's been really well-received by those that are yet to put their home on the market that we've currently got.
So yeah, the other strategy we've been putting, Rushil, is it's been a big FOMO campaign, which our marketing team are just so amazing at. So it's all around, you know, all it's missing is you. So, one of the big thing we see with homeowners, you know, they wanna, they wanna move in, they don't wanna miss out. So we've been leaning in hard to that to say, you know, "Don't- life is short, don't waste your time. You know, get connected, become part of the community, and live a bigger life." So yeah, we're doing a lot of activity around that and helping drive, you know, that sort of FOMO element to say, "Oh, I'm sure the home's gonna be complete. Let's get listed. We wanna move in.
Let's get going." So, and I could list off another 10 behind that actually, Rushil, 'cause, we're doing a lot with that cohort to try and turn this uncertainty around into certainty.
Okay, that's great. Thanks again for taking my questions.
Next, we have Ben from Barrenjoey. Please proceed, Ben.
Hey, Ben.
We might just move on to the next question and come back to Ben, if that works. We have Lou on the call from Jarden. Lou, please proceed.
Can you hear me? Sorry.
Yes.
Hey, Lou. How's it going?
Yeah, yeah. Good. Struggling with the technology. Just quickly, on the run rate of your projects, should we expect that to keep going up, or are these land acquisitions just to keep, you know, your 10-12 projects a year on the go at any one time, fairly stable? And then I guess the great reason I ask is, you know, whether we should expect that AUD 22 million annualized project management cost to keep going up, or should we see that as fairly stable now?
So really what I think about, Rushil, is that, you know, we've obviously got to digest the next 5. No, sorry, Lou. Sorry, Lou. Lou, how we see it is we see, you know, absorbing the next 5, and then that increases our run rate. So we might be going from 3 a year to 4 or 5 a year or whatever. So it's obviously that up step in our capital recycling that the term AUD 75 million provides, that means that we can do more projects each year. On the project management expense, Darren?
Yeah, that cost line item is directly linked to the number of projects in progress, Lou. So absolutely, if the number of projects goes up, that line item will go up with it.
Yeah, and you do expect the number of projects to go up?
Yeah, I think the other way to think about it is, you know, pre-today, we were doing three sites per year. Each site takes, you know, circa four-five years go to whoa. So as you're adding three and then three each year, and they're taking four-five to close out, that volume does increase, and it's, exactly what's happened with the growth of the business over time. You know, we were doing one per year, and then one became 1.5, two, two became three. So that's the way the sort of capital recycling velocity works.
Great. Then final question from me. I know you don't like giving guidance, but given that you're raising, you know, AUD 275 million, do you expect your underlying EPS or earnings per share to still go up year-on-year or in FY 2024?
Yeah, I mean, we've put some color around the settlement numbers for this year, Lou. Obviously, that will give you a steer of where we think the settlements are gonna land. You can see what the operating business is doing from the results today. Obviously, in the short term, the share count's gonna go up a bit, and there'll be a bit of a lag until the earnings come through from these additional projects. So yeah, without doing the specific math, we've hopefully given you enough that we can sort of tease this out for you.
Thank you.
Ben, you've raised your hand again. We'll just see if you're available now from Barrenjoey.
I am. Thanks. Can you hear me clearly?
Yes, thank you.
Hey, Ben.
Great. Oh, hi, James, Darren. Just in terms of the AUD 120 million increase in the net debt, could you call out what the main drivers are for the period? Second, just in relation to peak net debt, do you think you're at that point now insofar as FY 2024 is concerned?
Hi, Ben. So the main drivers are land settlements for these projects that we've got under construction at the moment, as well as the pre-revenue development cost. So if I'll give you a sort of a rough example, if we buy a block of land for AUD 25 million, these days we're spending circa AUD 45 million-AUD 50 million in development costs on top of that, before the settlements start to kick in. And at any point in time, we've got different projects in different stages of that cycle. But in this particular year, we've got quite a lot of projects that are in that early cash draw mode, where we've got land settlement, early construction phase, and no revenue.
There's a slide in the deck that shows exactly which project is at which phase, and you can see that over the next sort of 6-12 months, we'll have a number of projects that are moving from that cash draw phase into the cash recovery phase. So, yeah, the debt might draw up a little bit. We've had some more land settlements post 31 December, so it might go up a little bit more before it starts to, I guess, hit that capital recovery mode for those volume of projects. And then obviously subject to the timing of when we can get these new ones into the mix, that'll change the profile again.
Yeah, fantastic. In relation to the pricing on the underlying, site acquisitions, James, could you just comment as to how you see that relative to peak of the market?
You tend to find, Ben, that pricing doesn't necessarily come off dramatically at times like this. What you get is access, and what you also get is ability to have a discussion on terms. So typically in a hot market, Chris will be faced with, you know, the price is this, and we want the money in six months, and, you know, not negotiable. Now you're saying, "Yeah, the price is the same, but we can give you 12 or 18 months terms," and it's interesting. Interest—you know, in the old days, you'd always be pricing interest in terms.
You know, you'd be saying, "Well, if you want two-year terms, you know, you've got to pay me an extra AUD 2 million, because interest on that, well, the money I'm not receiving if it was 12 months terms, is XYZ." Chris is not getting pushback on terms, which is good. So, effectively, you're getting your discount through longer terms that are to our benefit.
Thanks, James. Thanks, Darren.
Thank you. I will now hand to Scott from MST. Scott, please proceed.
Yeah, hi, can you hear me okay?
Hey, Scott. How's it going?
Yeah, morning, gentlemen. A couple of quick questions. I guess, just looking at your, I guess, sales numbers, looks like they've, I guess, slowed a little bit through calendar year 2023 relative to calendar year 2022, despite, I guess, a number of project launches through the period. Can you maybe just talk around sort of how you're viewing demand, or is that just being impacted by negative sentiment across the broader market?
So there's a few call-outs there. Like, we're not seeing on a, I guess, on an overarching basis, sales rates move around too much. We had a bit of a unique situation in 2022 with obviously that run out of COVID was pretty hot. And then we launched two projects at the back of 2022 in December, which was the Bellarine and Phillip Island, both of which had, you know, record-breaking first months. So I think the Bellarine went first and got low 50s in one month, and then Phillip Island came second and got high 50s. So that sort of skewed the numbers in the calendar year period-on-period. But ultimately, both of those projects, after we worked through that initial database that we'd built up and that sort of hot demand, reverted to a more normal sales cadence.
That's the main difference between those two years.
Okay. And then I guess in terms of the cost of carrying those homes for sort of 90 days longer than historically, are you, are you recovering that cost through the sale, through the sale price?
Not really, no. So we give our customers up to six months to settle once the home's complete. It's something we've always done to sort of de-stress the purchaser through the process. But typically by generating FOMO, you know, we tend to find until more recently that, you know, they will be pushing to get into their home. This is sort of a phenomenon we haven't seen, certainly in my 20 years at Lifestyle, where we've got people so uncertain about whether to build or complete a home. But, you know, for a lot of them, their kids have... They might have had a home with Porter Davis or some of the other builds who've gone through and, you know, they've been pushed out 12 months, so nowhere to live and all the rest of it.
So, you know, if, if they haven't got the kids, they've heard the stories. So it's pretty widespread through Melbourne at the moment, this whole nervousness about construction. So it is quite a unique situation, but then again, it's created our opportunity to go and get five additional sites, so it's sort of a double-edged sword.
Maybe asking slightly different way. Darren, are you still expecting, given the, I guess, the extra carry on, on inventory, are you still expecting for development projects to be sort of zero cash outcome at the end?
Oh, yes, Scott, we haven't changed our sort of process. So, you know, we're always running forecasts to complete, which have assumptions around future costs and things like that, and then each quarter we do a review of each project and adjust forward estimates, and then that results in a flow-on to sales prices. The risk that we face is where these things happen late in a project. So obviously when you're early in a project, you can adjust, you've got lots of homes left to sell, you can tweak your sales prices, and everything rolls on. Where you're in the back end of a project and you've got not many homes left to sell, those late surprises can be challenging to increase, you know, sales prices in the market to recover.
What we always try and do is run, I guess, a delicate contingency in there to make sure that we don't get caught short, and then you're sort of measuring each quarter relative to that to make sure you don't leave any money behind.
And then just lastly, on the, I guess, development expenses, those... You incur those costs prior to settlement, is that correct? Or that ramp up in those project costs prior to settlement?
Yeah, it's a little bit of a quirk in the accounting. So for the infrastructure and the housing costs, whenever we incur those, they go to the balance sheet, and they get released to the P&L at the exact same time as the settlement revenue comes through, so you're always matching those two together. Unfortunately, for the sales and marketing and project management costs, they've all got to be expensed as incurred. So when we're in ramp-up mode on a project and we're pre-settlements kicking in if we're marketing hard, and if we've got the sales team in place, those costs go straight to the P&L and don't wait for revenue. The big difference this time around relative to normal is we've just got so many more projects in that pre-revenue cycle than we otherwise have had before.
Okay, so then maybe just one last one. Can you maybe just give me a sense of timing on when, I guess, that next bucket of projects will start? So Yarrawonga, Ocean Grove two, Werribee two, Clifton Springs, et cetera.
Yeah. So, Yarrawonga and Ocean Grove two are sort of middle of the year. We've... we're in full swing on those now, gearing up. The other ones are likely to be into calendar 2025, and staggered through that way.
All right. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We now have Warren from Canaccord, and I may just ask that you limit your questions to two. I'm just conscious of time, to give everyone an opportunity. Warren, please proceed.
Sorry, can you hear me?
Hey, Warren. How's it going?
Good, James. Just a couple have been asked, but just a couple of small ones. You gave an update at the AGM. I think it was 420 homes sold.
Oh, Warren, we got you?
As a-
Hey, Warren.
Yeah.
Hey, Warren. How's it going?
Thank you.
The AGM we had 420 homes sold, is that what... That's where you cut off?
Yep, and contracts on hand were 278. So is that, so that's still right, that it's relatively static now, still 420 and about 287 of contracts on hand?
Yeah, that's right, Warren. It's sort of as settlements come in and new sales come in, since the AGM, they've sort of netted each other off, so one in, one out-
Right
... if that makes sense.
Yep, and just a small thing, just on the resales, what percentage of the 75 incurred a DMF? Because it looks like you're including all resales now, not just those that get a DMF.
We've actually removed the Smart Move In Guarantee, Warren, probably over 12 months ago now.
Right.
The logic there was we brought the Smart Move In Guarantee in way back in the day when nobody really knew what land lease was, and it was one of those, I guess, consumer confidence pieces that said, you know, "Move in, and if something happens or if there's a change of circumstances, you know, there's no fees if you wanna move out.
Right.
What we're finding now is, as the business has got bigger, customers can go and look at any of our existing communities. They can get that confidence in other ways, and so we don't need to offer that, that anymore. So most of the sales these days are picking up DMF.
Right, so they're, they're all capturing. So they look a bit restated for the last few years, I think I touched on this before, and restated up, but it's probably just capturing the gross number, is it?
That's right, and it's indicative of, I guess, the volumes that we're expecting.
Right
... going forward.
Yeah. Well, all right, guys, thank you.
Thanks, Warren.
Thank you. We'll allow one more verbal question before going to written questions, so I will now hand over to Peter Davidson from the Pendal Group. Peter, please proceed.
Hi. Just a question about the settlements in the half. From what you were saying, James, you, we had a situation where people weren't actually moving to sell their properties, and they were delaying because they were concerned about you completing. But you'd also mentioned that Todd Devine always completes for you 99.9%. So your, your homes were ready, but they didn't settle because they just decided not to settle. Was that what happened or-
Well, well, what they were doing-
Can you talk me through that?
Yeah, Pete, what they were doing is that they were basically, you know, waiting for their homes to be substantially out of the ground, roof on, and looking complete before they'd even consider then approaching a real estate agent, getting their home ready to go on the market, running a campaign, and then, you know, selling their home at whatever terms they could get, you know, 60 days, 90 days.
Mm.
And by then, we'd already completed the home, and we're now sitting on it, waiting for that money to come through. So that could cause anything from a sort of 60-90 day delay in what we would normally see go through as, you know, we complete the home, the tenants move in, and, you know, that we can almost settle contemporaneously. But, yeah, so it's just been a shift that we—I think we were talking about at June, and now we're still seeing it come through, pushing settlements into sort of the second half and into FY 2025.
So to paraphrase what you're saying, it's sort of customer reluctance, rather than any production issue on your part?
100%, no, we're building. Yeah, we've got no issues on supply chain, no issues on. But prices are already firming up, which is great, so we have no price rise in September. We're not in for a price rise in March either, so in terms of our construction costs. So that's actually going really well, Peter. But, no, it's just purely reluctance. That's a good word.
Okay.
And, you know, we, we've now published the 99.5%. You know, one thing we're now doing, meet-the-builder sessions in each community with our deposit holders. And that can sort of reassure them verbally about the contract they're under and the fact that they're always building 99.5%. Yeah, so, yeah, there's a lot to... We've sort of re-leant into this story over the last few months to just give reassurance.
Okay. Thank you.
I will now hand the webinar to Darren to address written questions received. Over to you, Darren.
... Thanks, Anita. So there's a few questions in the written questions. The first from Chris at Goldman Sachs. There's two parts question. So the first part is asking about the gross development margin, which I think I did answer before, but really that's just a mix issue on the project. So we do expect that to bounce around half on half, but no major change going forward. The second question is around the lead indicators of enquiry and sales rates, and does that give us confidence into FY 2025 ramp up?
Yeah, totally. So, yeah, we've done really, really high appointments for January, and we're about to hit really high appointments again for February. So yeah, I think, you know, there's some really, really good green shoots coming through. I think the Reserve Bank has done a great job of creating, you know, storm clouds ahead in terms of what's happening in the world, and now customers sort of seeing through that. You know, obviously for our customers, you know, the only certainty they've got is taxes and not being here forever. So, you know, for them, time is now. So, you know, we- our marketing leans into that as well. So yeah, no, we're, we're very comfortable with where enquiry is also.
One other aspect of that is, we've now got our Salesforce system fully up to speed, and that's doing some fantastic work in terms of fielding prospects, putting on nurture journeys and putting through a lead process. And so that's also really helping to drive our appointments. Our referrals still also stay really strong, so that part of the business is going also extremely well.
The next question we've got is from Michael, just asking about the average cost of debt. We don't typically publish the cost of debt at the half year, but we haven't had a material movement since what was published in June other than what's been triggered by the RBA. The other thing I'll just add on the cost of debt, Michael, is most of our interest costs are capitalized into the projects and recovered through sales prices on the new homes. I think that's all of the written questions we've got. We might pass back to you, Anita.
Thank you, Darren. I do still just see questions. I'll just confirm. Ben, did you have some additional questions you'd like to ask? Please proceed.
I didn't actually. No, I've addressed those. Thanks for following up.
Brilliant. Thank you, Ben. And just confirming, Peter Davidson, did you have another question you'd like to ask? Please proceed, Peter, should you have a question? Peter Davidson, that is. Peter's already had the opportunity, so that's all good. I think we're good on the verbal questions. Darren, did you have any more at your end?
There's just one coming from Rushil that says: Are you able to comment on your expectations for the site rental margin in FY 2024? Did you incur additional refurbishment-type costs? So, thanks, Rushil. No change to margin expectations in that part of the business. It's a pretty steady part of our world. The thing that does move it around half on half is just the timing of those refurbishments that you quite rightly point out. So we did have some come into the first half that won't repeat in the second half, so the full year margin should sort of normalize itself over time. So no change in settings there. And we've had... Sorry, one more question come out from Preston that says, "Please spell out the debt headroom/capacity post-raise." So our current debt facility is AUD 700 million.
So post-raise, we'll use those funds to pay down debt in the short term. That debt headroom will remain, so no change to the headroom as a result of this, other than the timing of funds, obviously. Sorry, Preston. I think that's all the questions we've got, so we might hand back to you, Anita. Thank you.
Thank you, Darren. Ladies and gents, we've reached the end of this Q&A session, which brings us to the conclusion of this conference call. We do thank you for your attendance today and invite you to contact the company by the Investor Centre available on the company's website, should you have any questions not been addressed here today. I will now close the webinar. Thank you.