Hello, good morning, and welcome to the full year 2024 webcast from Metrovacesa. My name is Juan Carlos Calvo. I'm Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, and as usual, we have in the call as well Jorge Pérez de Leza, CEO of Metrovacesa, and Borja Tejada, CFO. We are going to present an overview of our operating activity and the financial results for the full year 2024. The slides of this presentation have been released to the market earlier this morning, and they are available through the CNMV website and in our company website. We have also sent it by email to our usual distribution list for analysts and investors. At the end of this presentation, there will be a question and answer session.
If you wish to ask a question via conference call, you can register by pressing the star five in your telephone keypad at any time, and you can cancel your question by pressing again the star five. If you are participating via webcast, you can type your question directly in the webcast platform, and we will read it out. Now I hand it over to our CEO to start the presentation. Please, Jorge.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 full year results presentation. Let me dive in directly into the highlights page of the presentation number five, and we are experiencing for the last months, and I think in the coming future as well, an undersupplied housing market. We have just witnessed a year in which the supply-demand imbalance persists, and with new housing starts just covering 50% of the new households, and this is without even considering the backlog from the past or the undersupplied demand from the past. This is resulting in a continued pressure on housing prices, and what we have seen is that the trend in the second half of the year with the reduction of the rate, the interest rates in the European market, the transaction numbers are again growing, reaching record high record figures.
Metrovacesa has delivered 2,000 units in the year, which is a target that we aim to achieve later, a few, I would say, in 2025. However, we've been able to achieve that result in 2024 with record revenues of almost EUR 660 million and an EBITDA of EUR 73 million and a return to positive net profit of close to EUR 16 million. We have grown our pre-sales by 12% with a total backlog right now of EUR 1.2 billion as of December 31st. With all of that, we have exceeded our guidance provided at the beginning of the year to have a cash flow, an operating cash flow between EUR 100 million and EUR 125 million, being the result of EUR 146.5 million.
Therefore, being a very good year for Metrovacesa for our operating results, financial results, and as I will point out later in the presentation, also with a positive guidance or a positive view of the years coming forward. Now I hand it over to Juan Carlos just to give us a brief overview of the market in page number eight.
Thank you. Yes, the bottom line about the situation of the Spanish housing market is that the demand fundamentals continue to be very well supported by demographics, growth, and macro growth. And in the second half of the year, it has been accelerated due to the decline in interest rates. And we can see that in the first chart, the evolution, particularly in the last few months in the growth of housing transactions in Spain. And this has translated into pressure on house prices, upward pressure with positive growth. And in the end, the situation of the supply gap continues to exist in the sense that housing starts, even though it has started to increase, it still covers roughly 50% of the projected household formation in Spain. The main bottleneck continues to be the shortage of fully permitted land.
We think that solving this would require more agile transformation procedures, shorter licensing periods, and more public-private collaboration, which is something that is still not being fully addressed. With this back to Jorge.
Thanks, Juan Carlos. So moving on to some operational figures. In terms of residential deliveries, as I mentioned before, we have delivered almost 2,000 units, so beating our expectations from being a little bit above what we delivered in 2023. We've grown in revenues in 17%, with a total revenue from residential deliveries being at almost EUR 590 million, with an average selling price of close to EUR 300,000 per house, and a gross margin which is 22%, 22.1%. Basically, the performance, the strong fourth quarter performance delivering 1,200 units is what has allowed us to reach that figure. As I will mention later on in our guidance, a figure that we hope to consolidate in the coming years. The margins at 22.1% are in line with our guidance on the low 20s. However, we have a more positive outlook in terms of margins for the years coming forward.
Important to highlight the project of Isla Natura, Palmas Altas, as we know it from the past in Seville, that I will talk about in a second, and also the BTR segment in which we delivered two BTR projects both in Seville and Entren úcleos, and with those two projects delivered, we have now delivered all our BTR projects exceeding 1,000 units in total. Isla Natura, as I mentioned, located in Palmas Altas, Seville, is a great example of Metrovacesa's capacity to develop new districts, and it's a capacity that we will also see in coming developments. As you may know, this is a district we've been talking about in the past where we have over 1,800 units in total. More than 1,500 units are already launched, all of them under construction, and about 373 delivered already.
As of the end of 2024, we had delivered 337, but in January, again, we've continued delivering units in these projects. I think it's nice to see the picture of June 2022 in which we were starting the organization and how the development looks like in December of 2022, 2024, sorry, so two years and a bit later where we already have, as I mentioned here, about 18 projects in construction. Basically, we will continue delivering units in this project.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I think it's a proof of Metrovacesa's capacity to contribute to sustainable development of new areas in which urbanization CAPEX are required and in which having a vast or a good percentage of the units allows us also to, let's say, control the way that we want to deliver the units, also optimize margins, and at the end, contribute to the P&L of the company. In terms of moving on to page number 11, in terms of pre-sales, we've grown our pre-sales figure by 12%, totaling 660 million EUR, basically with 500 increase in the number of units and with a higher average selling price, 342,000 EUR per unit, which will give us an idea of what the average selling price will be in the future. This represents 411 units selling the quarter with an average selling price of 363.
Figures that are way above 300. I think it's important to note that in the last quarters, sorry, months, as we mentioned in the last presentation, we've been kind of managing the break, the handbrake in terms of not selling too many units in order to optimize margins in our development. As we will see in the next page, given the coverage that we have in terms of pre-sales for the deliveries of 2025, 2026, or even 2027, I think it's a time now to, rather than to sell more units, to actually sell more margin. Moving on to page number 12, in terms of operational activity, our backlog of units stands at over 3,200 with more than EUR 1.2 billion in future revenues and an average selling price of EUR 355,000.
I think very strong visibility of the years coming forward with 80% coverage of our deliveries in 2025 and 62% of the deliveries of 2026. These are very good pre-sales coverages that, again, will make us focus on maximizing margin rather than maximizing number of units being sold in the coming months, especially for the deliveries of 2025 and 2026. We have over 4,000 units under construction. Basically, this represents an average of 2,000 units per year to be delivered, and in commercialization, we have 5,000, almost 6,000 units, 5,633, that if you divide it by a little bit less than three years of commercialization, again, we have about 2,000 units of on average of deliveries in the coming years.
In terms of land activity, we are active, as you know, in the entire land value chain, which we consider as management, sales, land sales of non-strategic assets, and then also land acquisitions as a top-up to our existing land bank in order to launch around 2,000 or a little bit more than 2,000 units per year. In terms of land management, I think it's important to note that in the next three years, we expect more than 6,000 units of excellent areas to actually become fully permitted. And therefore, a good set of launches will come in projects like Los Cerros, La Papelera in El Prat de Llobregat in Barcelona, also Vinival in Valencia, where we recently had the provisional approval of the PERI, Benimaclet in Valencia, and also Las Térmicas in Barcelona.
So finally, these developments are coming, and we will see a good set of launches in the next three years. In terms of land sales, our total P&L revenues, including residential and commercial, are close to 70 million EUR in the P&L of 2024. And also, we have a backlog of binding contracts of close to 100 million EUR. And these are contracts that will appear in the P&L mostly in 2026 and some in 2027. So basically, sorry, 25 and 26, 25 and 26, correction there. And in total, we have now sold 455 million EUR in revenues in the period of 2018 to 2024. So therefore, consolidating our rotation of non-core residential and commercial assets.
In terms of land acquisitions, we purchased close to 790 units with a total commitment of investment of EUR 62 million and focusing mainly in fully permitted plots of land located in high demand and high margin areas. And of those 787 units, 675 are already launched, and many of them are already under commercialization. Our commercial portfolio, as you know, is a portfolio where we aim to divest the full portfolio in a few years. The activity that we had in 2024 is, on the one hand, that the second JV with Vita, the operator of different residential projects like student housing and also flex and co-living. We signed the second plot for almost 500 residential units in our Oria district or in the old CLESA factory.
We also have EUR 55.7 million of backlog of binding contracts that will flow through P&L as we sign the deed in the next year. Also, important to highlight that we have now in the Puerto de Somport office building where we have the JV with Tishman Speyer with a 75% occupancy and figures growing. In the second half of the year and also in the beginning of the year, we have seen increased interest in the take-up of the space of this building. Finally, talking about our ESG strategy, I would say that an important milestone was executed during the year, which is the approval of our new strategic ESG plan 2025-2027, which aims to consolidate Metrovacesa as a sustainable and responsible developer, actively accompanying the new ESG regulatory framework, incorporating sustainability activities in all our strategic and operational processes.
With this, I now hand it over to Borja to talk about our financial overview.
Thank you, Jorge. And good morning, everyone. Just a quick review of our main figures in our profit and loss account, slide 70. 12% revenue growth year on year with significant increase in development revenues. Good performance in terms of development gross margin up to 22% and practically breakeven in land sales. Almost 75 million EUR EBITDA from development, meaning a recurring earning of 49 million EUR. Finally, we finished with a positive net result of almost 16 million EUR. With reference to our free cash flow in slide 18, 146.5 million EUR of gross operating cash flow, exceeding widely the guidance of 125 million EUR. In terms of now in slide 19, concerning our net debt, as previous quarters, very solid and diversified financial structure with 400 million EUR of gross financial debt and 314 million EUR net, at a very competitive cost.
13.1% loan to value, a comfortable ratio below our reference of 15%-20%. Important mention has the process of refinancing of our corporate loan that we signed in October where the company agreed extension of the maturity until October 2029 versus 2026 previously and increased the limit up to EUR 276 million, meaning more than EUR 65 million versus previous loan. Summarizing, diversified financing mix, good access to varied sources of capital at competitive cost, and no relevant maturities within the next four years. Finally, about our asset appraisals in slide 20, 2.4, almost 2.4 billion euros of GAV, gross asset value, out of which 86% represents our residential portfolio and 14% commercial one. Positive growth in value, almost 5% with an increase of almost 7% in residential and a decline of 4.6% in commercial portfolio.
Finally, in terms of net asset value, EUR 13.25 per share after the distribution of almost EUR 0.70 per share during 2024. Now, I will hand over to Jorge with closing remarks.
Closing the presentation, I would reiterate that we've had a very successful 2024, and we have positive prospects for 2025. We've reached the 2,000 deliveries target earlier than expected and with record revenues and a positive net profit. We will consider a distribution of a dividend in May and will be decided in March as usual with the call of our annual shareholders meeting, and as I mentioned during the presentation, we have a high visibility for 2025 with solid pre-sales coverage ratios and a higher dynamism in the land market. Therefore, our guidance for 2025 is that we will have a cash flow of EUR 150 million or more gross operating cash flow that will come basically from both business lines.
I think growth in housing development revenues, not only as we have seen with the average selling price of our backlog and our recent pre-sales in the last part of 2024, but also in terms of margins. I would say that if we consider a bracket between 20% and 25% gross margin, we have been until now guiding towards low 20s, and I would say now we will be close to the mid-20s, closer to the mid-20s. Also a higher land sales based on the strong backlog of EUR 100 million that we have already signed and also a few other operations that we have in the pipeline.
All of that, we will continue focusing on our core strategic lines, which is the residential development as our key business line with around 2,000 units annually, plus or minus in each of the years coming forward, and all of them fully owned. Also, land management in order to bring those 6,000 plus units in key areas of key developed, key strategic locations to bring them to market as soon as we can, and finally, sales of non-strategic land to optimize our portfolio size and quality, and finally, in our commercial segment, we will continue with our gradual divestment via land sales or project developments, turnkey developments in some cases or JVs in others. With that, I close the presentation and hand it back to Juan Carlos.
Thank you, Jorge. We are now ready to start the question and answer session, starting from our participants in the conference call. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star 5 in your telephone keypad. You can cancel your question by pressing again star 5 for a second time. We will now give you a few seconds so that you can register your questions. Okay, the first question comes from Ignacio Domínguez, analyst from JB Capital Markets. Please, Ignacio.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for the presentation and taking our questions. I just have one. Could you provide us with more visibility on the gross margins for the housing development business in the fourth quarter, excluding the Build to Rent project delivered? Thank you very much.
Yes, I think. Hello, Ignacio, good morning. Going forward, I think first of all to say that we have no BTR developments in the pipeline. So therefore, it means that there will not be lower margins due to that. And therefore, as I mentioned, I think in the bracket between 20%-25%, we will be closer to 25% than to 20%. We're changing our guidance from low 20s% rather to closer to mid-20s%. I think that was the question.
Yes, thank you. I was looking for the gross margin for the housing development business, excluding the build-to-rent project you delivered in the fourth quarter.
Okay, I think, to be honest, I don't have that precise answer if I take the two apart, so it is obviously higher than the 2.1%. I would say n little bit higher than 23%, but we can come back to you with the exact answer later on if we may. But I would say a little bit higher than 23%. And then going forward, as I mentioned, closer to 25%.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay, thank you. We do not have more questions from the conference call. And so far, we have not received questions from the webcast. So if that's the case, we will close the webcast at this point. So in this case, we conclude the company presentation for the full year 2024, Metrovacesa. And as usual, the investor relations team will be available to take any follow-up questions that you may have. We thank you for your participation, and we look forward to meeting you again next time. Thank you.