Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Sunteck Realty's earnings conference call for Q1 FY 2024. We have with us today Mr. Kamal Khetan, the Chairman and Managing Director of the company, Mr. Prashant Chaubey, the Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Abhishek Shukla, the Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations. The initial call will be for 30 minutes, and for the duration of the conference call, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. This conference is recorded and the transcripts for the same will be put up on the website of the company. After the management's discussion, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. There is a Q&A session and we request to restrict questions to participants. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone telephone.
Before I hand the conference over to the management, I would like to remind you that certain statements made during the course of this call may not be based on historical information or facts and may be forward-looking statements, including those related to business statements, plans and strategy of the company, its future financial position and growth prospects. These forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and projections and may involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results, opportunities, and growth potential to differ materially from those suggested by such statements. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Khetan, the Chairman and Managing Director of the company. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Very good afternoon to everyone for joining us today, and thank you for taking the time to participate in our company's earnings conference call for the first quarter of the financial year 2024. We have marched into financial year 2024 with strong footing. Our pre-sales grew by 16% year-on-year to INR 327 crore, and collections too remained strong at INR 288 crore. This gives us confidence that we will achieve 20%-30% growth in annual pre-sale, considering the new launches planned for the second half of the financial year 2024.
Our operating cash flow continue to remain strong as we cross the INR 1,000 crore mark over the last three years, which reaffirms our faith in the robust business model built by us, which has yielded operating cash flow surplus being up 22% on the net, network for the last financial year. I'm happy to report that due to the strong cash flow, our net debt today stands at less than one quarter of the collection at INR 264 crore. Our net debt to equity ratio is among the best now at 0.09x. After our last launch of Sunteck Sky Park, Mira Road, we have now five large projects as growth engines, which will continue to deliver strong cash flows and profit margins. In fact, our Mira Road project has achieved fastest monetization from acquisition to launch in just six months.
Going forward, we are planning to launch two more large projects as growth engine, one at Kalyan, with a total potential GDV value of INR 9,000 crore, and second at Nepean Sea Road with a total potential GDV value of INR 1,500 crore. These all these seven projects will then have a total gross development value for the company at INR 30,300 crore, which will provide strong visibility of cash flow and profit margin in the coming seven to eight years. We are creating annuity income also and expanding our rental portfolio with two projects at BKC, BKC Junction. One, which is Sunteck BKC 51, is already pre-leased, and we have already got our occupation certificate for the same. Our average annual rental from this project shall be INR 36 crore during the tenure of the lease.
The second commercial project, which is Sunteck Icon, another, at the junction of BKC, is near completion, and we are expecting this also to be pre-leased at the same and a similar rentals. On the business development front, our goal is to have an optimum balance of growth and profitability. Within this framework, we have a strong pipeline of deals under consideration, and we intend to conclude few deals in coming quarters. Execution in all our ongoing projects is in full swing. Our ability to execute continues, continues to be rooted in our exceptional people and the unique in-house construction model, which allow us to control on quality and cost. We believe all of this is making Sunteck business model generate asymmetric risk reward.
In conclusion, now, Sunteck Realty today stands at a much stronger footing than ever before, with increasing number of large projects as growth engines to give the company sustainable growth over the next few years. As you know, the company follows the Project Completion Method of accounting. Going forward, we will see incrementally projects getting completed year-on-year, and we will start recognizing the revenue from this year onwards, and the same will be reflected in the financial statements. It is important to understand that due to the Project Completion Method, it is better to evaluate the P&L numbers on annual basis rather than quarterly basis. We remain excited about the future opportunities, and we remain committed to capitalizing on this opportunity in value, creative and disciplined manner. I will now hand over the call to Prashant Chaubey, our CFO, for more information on the earnings performance in Q1 FY 2024.
Over to Prashant.
Thank you, sir, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the earnings call for the first quarter of FY 2024. The financial and operational numbers have already been published on the stock exchanges. I believe all of you must have gone through the same. Let me give you some of the brief highlights of the financial performance. Our pre-sales stood at INR 387 crore in Q1 of FY 2024, compared to INR 333 crore in Q1 of FY 2023, a growth of 16% on a year-on-year basis. We achieved strong collection of INR 288 crore in Q1, compared to INR 285 crore in Q1 of FY 2023. Additionally to this, I'm happy to share our pre-sales collection taker since FY 2021 has increased in tandem to 25% and 27% respectively.
We have also generated an operating cash flow surplus of INR 76 crore in Q1 of FY 2024. On the P&L front, the company follows Project Completion Method of accounting and has reported a revenue of INR 71 crore, with a core EBITDA margin of 43%. With this, we can now open the forum for questions from the participants. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may enter star and one on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may enter star and two. Participants are requested to use hands-free when asking a question. Participants are also requested to limit their questions to two during the initial round. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have the first question from Adhidev Chattopadhyay from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. First question is on our Kalyan launch and whatever Nepean Sea Road next year. Could you let us know what is the status of the approvals here, and how confident are we of the timelines which we have given in the presentation? That is the first question.
Adhidev, we are very confident on Kalyan launch. The approvals at what stage we are, we are expecting that we should be easily launching in next three to four months.
Okay. Somewhere post Diwali, you are saying, right? It's right on the floor.
I would say on the outer limit, it should be close to three to four months. We can fix safely either in Q2 or Q3.
Okay. Okay. On Nepean Sea Road, if you help us understand, what is the status there on the approvals?
Nepean Sea Road, obviously, we are going very aggressive now.
Mm-hmm.
We are-
Okay.
If we talk about that project, we should consider minimum nine to 12 months timeline.
Okay, nine to 12 months. Okay, fine. Second question is on the accounting. Now, we have seen clears shifting to a mix of project completion and percentage completion for the new projects. Is there any thought in our minds or in talks with our auditors and all that, something similar could be done so that financials reflect the performance more accurately of the company?
Adhidev, in fact, we were on Percentage of Completion Method before Grant Thornton came on as the auditor on the board. We debated that with them. They, they insisted us, obviously, this is for them, as per the new norms, they insisted. In fact, we shifted to Project Completion Method. As of now, I don't think we have anything in mind that we should be shifting back Percentage of Completion Method for in near future or anything, unless and until auditor ask us to change it. We are pretty confident and comfortable with this method, and they, they in fact want us to be in this method.
Okay. Okay. No, that question mainly because a lot of our projects are, is not reflecting right now in the P&L. So yeah. Yeah, yeah.
That's the reason the last two years, I think, might not show any good P&L numbers. That's what now going forward incrementally, most of the projects will get completed, and that's why we said that year-on-year, you will definitely see now good numbers, financial numbers in P&L, and it will be incrementally seen in the, it will be reflected in the P&L numbers.
Okay. Sure, sir. Sure, sir, that's very helpful. Yeah.
It starts from this year onwards, we expect the way the projects are on the final stage of completion, how we are seeing that.
Yes. Okay, sir. Thanks for. Thank you. I'm not in the queue. Okay, yeah. Yeah.
We have the next question from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
ing my question. First, is on, yes, slide 15. You've mentioned certain opportunities that you haven't considered in your growth engine calculation. Obviously, West is one where obviously, you know, we have communicated to the market. Kalyan and Jaipur, you know, I mean, what are these projects? Are these projects that are under consideration, under discussion, or and when, when are you going to execute those?
The idea is we have not taken anything into consideration, which there, there we are not seeing a visibility in next 12 months of the launch. These are all projects which are old projects. We are just saying that these projects are there, obviously, with Sunteck, which is in the public domain. You know about it. Everybody knows about it. We are not taking them into any value, intrinsic value approach. That's what, that's all it is. We are not saying that it will immediately. We are trying our best to launch as early as possible, even those projects, but we don't see that anything can be launched in near future, that's why we are not taking into. The visibility is not there. That's the reason we are not taking into it.
I'm not particularly aware about.
Sorry?
Okay. I'm, I, I was just asking, I'm not particularly aware about, you know, Kalyan and specifically Jaipur project. If you can just share some details.
You can, you can, I think you can discuss with Prashant.
Okay.
Prashant can share with you.
Okay.
Yes, we can, we can discuss these projects which are there with us offline.
Sure. Sure, sure. No worry. In terms of, you know, the rentals that you have lined up from upGrad, when do we expect them to start generating rents for us? Whether the INR 36 crore also includes, you know, the CAM income or that would be over and above that? Some details on that.
Occupation, as I mentioned, that occupation certificate has already come. We have given them a possession. We should expect the rentals to start obviously from next month onwards. This does not include the CAM. This is net, net income. This does not include CAM.
Okay. They're done with their fit-out and all, and we should start.
We already gave them a soft possession earlier with for doing the fit-outs and all, and they've almost completed all the fit-outs. In fact, since the occupation certificate has come, I think they will be operational, fully fledged operational in next couple of days or couple of weeks as well.
Got it. Got it. Okay. That's the thing, make it all the best.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Vasudev from Nuvama . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. My first question is on pricing front. How is the pricing scenario looking like, and are we seeing any price hike in Q1?
Hi, Vasudev, Prashant this time. So, you know, FY 2023 was a good year where you saw some amount of price inflation in the projects. In the 1st quarter, we have not taken any price hike per se. Whatever price inflation had happened, it happened in the last financial year.
Okay. For the new launches, you know, what kind of pricing are you looking at?
New launches. This is Kamal Khetan , Vasudev. New launches, obviously, the prices will be as per the market, whatever. What do you mean by new launches? The new launches like Kalyan or the existing projects where the new launches will happen?
Yeah. In Kalyan, as in, you know, if we've been charging the market rate since-
Wherever we have launched, we have-
What kind of price hikes have we seen there?
Your question is not clear. Price, price hiking. It is, we wherever we have launched, you have seen we command a premium as a brand. There also when we launch, whatever the market is there, obviously we will have a premium, Sunteck premium, when we launch there. We will take that premium when we launch project in South Kalyan.
Okay, the second question is, you know, how much is the current unsold inventory in the ODC in Naigaon and Vasai project?
Vasudev, hi, this is Prashant this side. In terms of, in terms of ODC from the already launched project, I'm just talking about. From the already launched projects, we have close to around INR 450 crore-INR 500 crore of unsold inventory in ODC. In Naigaon, in Naigaon, I'll just give you the number. In Naigaon, the unsold inventory that we have from the already launched projects is close to around INR 300 crore. From Vasai- From the already launched projects, we have a unsold inventory of close to around INR 400 crore. This is only what we have launched. Over and above, we have the GDV.
Okay, got it. Sir, also can you give the end of the Mira Road project?
Sorry?
If you can give the same numbers from Mira Road as well. Now, what is still remaining to be sold from the launch number?
In Mira Road also, as of date, we have close to around INR 400 crore, unsold inventory from the already launched phase.
Okay. Thank you, doctor, one more.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Murtuza Arsiwalla from Kotak. Please go ahead.
I, I have just a quick question. You know, you put out that GDV of about INR 35,000 crore from projects to be launched. What would be the cost around this, number one? You know, you talked about launched projects in the previous question, you talked about the unsold inventory. Can you also give us the amount of receivables from launched projects sold and costs to be spent to complete those projects? Both for the future launches, what is the cost? For projects launched, what is the recoverable from sales already made, as well as the cost to be incurred to complete these projects?
Hi, Murtuza, this is Prashant this side. I'll answer your question in three parts. First thing that you asked is, what is the receivables that we have from our already on on the launched projects.
Yes.
The receivables that we have from our already launched project is close to around INR 2,100 crore. That is the number. Okay? Apart from that, for this launched projects and ongoing projects, the estimated cost, which is yet to be in, which I have to spend, is close to around INR 1,100 crore. That is the amount that I have to spend against this receivables that I am getting.
Yep.
Over and above this, I have the inventory, unsold inventory that we spoke about in the last.
Correct.
-question.
Correct.
That is the number. For the upcoming projects, we are talking about the INR 30,300 crore of GDV. For that, the amount that I have to spend on construction, per se, is close to around INR 5,500 crore.
Well, it seems very little, INR 5,500. Let me write this down. Yeah.
No, sorry, sorry, sorry, Murtuza, sorry. 5,500 plus 5,500 so, Murtuza, INR 8,500 crore-INR 9,000 crore. My, my bad. I'm extremely sorry, Murtuza.
No, no, no. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Sarang Gupta from Briarwood Chase Management. Please go ahead.
You know, you mentioned on the, you know, opening remarks that you plan on, you know, doing business development to kind of grow the business and, you know, have a huge growth in progression. I'd love to hear a little bit more about, you know, just the medium-term outlook of business development in the next, you know, two, three years, as well as, you know, how, you know, you are thinking about things that you from the last one, two years when, you know, you were not that active. you know, what's changed in the market to be more, you know, sort of active today over the past?
Hi, Sarang. Yeah. Sarang, we have, obviously we are in the pipeline, so it will be difficult for me to name the project which we are negotiating and are in pipeline. I can say aggressively, as I said in my opening remarks, that we are negotiating at least four to five deals, which we are confident of closing at least three out of 10. Whatever we are looking now are on all large projects. We are, mostly we are looking only large and mid-sized projects. That's what is our strategy going forward for the company is. That's what I can talk about for going forward projects. Regarding annuity income, we have already started building up, that we have, we have leased out one commercial asset at the junction of BKC.
I can confidently say the second, BKC asset at the junction is at the advanced stage of negotiations for pre-leasing. The best advantage I think we have to say the, vacancy level or the vacancy level of the offices in BKC is almost negligible, I would say. There is no big large spaces which are available. We will take full advantage of that by leasing, and that's why we are signing up the lease for like 10 years, 15 years or more than that. In fact, the first lease what we signed was, in BKC 51 is 29 years, and that's how we want to take it forward. Obviously we are looking to monetize.
Again, looking at the good market, we will also looking to start very soon, the commercial development at ODC, also Gurgaon West, and there also we intend to take up the annuity income from there as well.
Got it. Very helpful. Just one last follow-up question on the, you know, pipeline of new projects you have. Are you looking at only GPs or are you also looking at outright land acquisition, you know, maybe four to five deals that you are a bit focused on?
The, the, out of the five that you can, I can say that three are the JDA model. Two what we are negotiating are the buyouts, I can say whatever we are buying, like how we built up on Nepean Sea Road. On a similar model where we are seeing a good value can be created out of it and good IRR can be, can maintain. That's where we are looking to buy out, only, only those projects.
Well, look, congratulations on the strong quarter and good project, whether it's the CD. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Sarang. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, if you have a question, you may enter star 1. We have the next question from the line of Prem Khurana from Anand Rathi Share . Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question, sir. Just to kind of continue on this rental transaction that we've done. If you could help us understand your thought process of this business now. The idea would be to retain these assets, so the idea would be, I mean, once we- we have a, a, a tenant in place, and then you can start monetizing these assets. ODC, you said this large land around 24 million sq m area on commercial side, avenue 5 and 6. Would you want to continue with the same process? You're going to have 2.6 million sq ft of combination commercial or retail, or that the area has changed over the years now, and it has been brought down and the residential component has gone, gone up.
What we are looking to develop with Fifth Avenue as definitely combination of commercial and residential, because what we see the value. Residential is selling at today, INR 30,000 a sq ft plus, plus. It gives a more value to the company immediately, and it gives a immediate cash flow, which gives a better return and better ROI for the company. Nevertheless, but to monetize as quick as possible, we also want to start simultaneously the commercial assets also, which is close to another FSI of 2 million sq ft, area where we can construct in Fifth Avenue more and above 1 million sq ft of residential. That probably we would like to start simultaneously. When you ask the question whether we want to...
What kind of returns? I can just give you example from what we have leased out recently, the Sunteck BKC 51. Prashant, would you like to share the number?
I mean, hi, Prem, this is Prashant this side. Our invested capital in Sunteck BKC 51 was close to around INR 125 crore. Against that INR 125 crore, we are making an average rental of close to around INR 36 crore. That gives us a return on invested capital of 30%. This is what we are, you know, targeting in our commercial projects. We want to do commercial projects with this kind of return metrics.
The idea will be going to retain because, see, I understand Fifth Avenue, it's a large investment in everything, your portfolio kind of, continue to see rental escalation, let the rentals grow and create more value. When I look at BKC or let's say Sunteck, I think, these are smaller assets. Not sure, I mean, if you want to have these assets continue with you or, or you could also look at, monetizing once these are leased out. The maximum value that you are supposed to create, right? I mean, in terms of INR 125 crore you have invested, that is already multiplied. Now on it will be mostly, adjusting to the rental escalations that you, get to have.
So are you going to unlock this capital and look for more growth or possibly just let the asset appreciate over the years?
Yes, first of all, when we have tied up the ODC asset also, the escalation is there year-on-year. The rentals will be increasing year-on-year. It's in the agreement that every year the escalation is close to 5%. That is there in the agreement, and that will give us the escalation. When you say monetization, definitely we will see. Today, it is not that we can monetize, because of that, if you monetize, the growth will be faster or slower. I don't think Sunteck has a very strong balance sheet. We are always disciplined in our balance sheet when we sell. It's not that we are holding any acquisition because the Sunteck balance sheet is weak or not strong or something like that.
Nevertheless, if we feel that we should monetize and create more value, and when we see that value creation will be more when the interest rate cycle reverses, and only then, obviously, we would like to see to monetize, not at this stage where interest rates are high. We are seeing, looking at the current economic situation and the interest rates, how it is behaving, I think we are only heading after few quarters, maybe we will start seeing interest rates coming down. When the interest rates start coming down, only that is the time we should give a thought that whether we should monetize or we should retain the assets. That's what it is.
Sure, that's the answer. Thank you, and all the very best. Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Pradyumna Choudhary from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, my first question is regarding the pre-sale growth. Basically, both pre-sales and collection on a YOY-
Can you start? We could not hear you properly. Can you start once again?
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, yeah. It's more better.
Both pre-sales and collection in this quarter on a YoY basis was slightly slow, on the slower side. Any particular reason for that? On the same part, are we confident of achieving INR 2,000 crore of pre-sale in FY 2024? What could be, could you check maybe some sort of project where this INR 2,000 crore would come from?
Hi, Pradyumna, Prashant this side. The tracking that you are talking about in terms of growth in pre-sales and collection, that is basically if you look at the last three, four years of Sunteck, our first quarter is generally the weakest quarter. That is seasonal in nature as well in Mumbai. Going forward, as the second quarter, third quarter, as the festive season comes into play, you start seeing robust sales and collections and construction activity also initiates at that point in time. That is the reason why you are seeing. It's nothing, it's nothing to do with anything else. It's just that. New launches are also going to come going forward.
The second question that you asked about INR 2,000 crore of pre-sales, I would just like to tell you that if you look at our growth rate from FY 2021 till FY 2023, we have grown at 25% figure. We are targeting 20%-30% growth in our pre-sales year-on-year. That is what our target is, and we will try to deliver on those targets that we have set for ourselves.
no, like my question was, this INR 2,000 crore of pre-sales, some got split off, what the debt can contribute, to the?
Kamal Khetan here, Pradyumna. Obviously now, if you launch Kalyan, we will have six growth engines, what we call six projects. Of that INR 2,000 crore will easily come from all the six projects. These are six large projects. I can't give you what will come exactly from where, but you can take an average of INR 300 crore-INR 400 crore from each project.
Understood. The second, last question?
Achievable. Just to give you an idea, it is like less than INR 100 crore, INR 75 crore per quarter from each project.
Understood. Second question, like there was a slide mentioning the GDV, the value, INR 50,300 crore of gross development. Realistically, how much do you think is achievable over the next, say, four years, four or five years? How much of the gross development value can we look at achieving on a realistic basis?
Pradyumna, this is not. First of all, I would like to correct. It's not INR 50,000 crore, it is INR 30,000 crore. We said this is the GDV value. These are all large projects. I said in my opening remark that INR 30,000 crore for this GDV value, which will be achieved over a period of seven to eight years across all the seven projects.
Okay, understood. All the best.
Okay. Thank you, Pradyumna.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Nikhil Chandra from JM Family Office. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks. I just had one question. So in the slide, I see Signature Signia Project at BKC for GDV of INR 1,500 crore. What I understand is that this project is long completed, and I'm just curious, you know, with, if it is ready inventory, why are we not aggressively trying to monetize this and sell this off, given that the market is buoyant right now? Why hold up this inventory for such a long period of time?
Yes, Nikhil. Kamal Khetan here. I think, we are, we want to sell it obviously, as soon as ASAP, as early as possible. We are, we are trying our best to exhaust this inventory. We all know that, we have been, last number of quarters, we have not been able to sell. I can assure you, so Q1, there is a lot of, deals, in negotiation at a very advanced stage. You will see a pleasant surprises in Q2 and Q3.
Okay, perfect. Perfect. I, you know, this is like ready inventory, so it's just, just the, the, the timing just makes it so much better if you get the cash inflow right now, from an, you know, overall company perspective. That is the logic which I, I'm asking for.
I appreciate, Nikhil. Definitely we are on top of it, and we are confident we try to monetize more earlier than what we were anticipating, as we are not receiving.
Okay. Also, which is there at BKC? On the residential floor, in the-
No. currently not, there's nothing, new residential, nothing is there in BKC.
Okay. Okay. You know, my second question was on the overall capital structure. I understand the gearing is, the, the leverage is very low and, which is, you know, very good. I'm just thinking, if you were to get more aggressive in, you know, new project acquisition or, or, you know, contract, would you look to change this something on the, on the debt structure, or would you still prefer to keep it like at a, at a low level at what it is right now? Should you increase the borrowing to kind of get more aggressive on new project acquisition to, you know, have a longer growth trajectory?
I've said that we will get. We will be very aggressive. We didn't say that we will, as I said, we will not be. At the same time, be disciplined with our cash flows. We will always acquire, looking at our strong cash flows. Between today, what is our current cash flow, we are almost like usable debt. Without building the debt, we will continue to be aggressive and more aggressive. If you see during the COVID period, when we in fact, we started doing acquisitions, we did some crazy acquisitions, profile big acquisitions, and in spite of that, we brought down the debt. That will be our philosophy, not that, always we'll be able to bring down the debt, because debt is already very, very low.
We'll like to deploy the cash flows, which are coming strong cash flow, which are coming, to acquire aggressively more new projects.
Perfect. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Sri Karthik Velamakanni from Investec. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. You've launched the luxury project at Nepean Sea Road, which should have a pricing close to INR 1 lakh or more than INR 1 lakh per sq ft. In addition, you also carry inventory in BKC. What would be our go-to-market strategy, some of reinvigorating the sales channels, given that I will not be able to do any pre-sales in the BKC?
Sri Karthik, so we have not launched, just to correct the question. We have not launched Nepean Sea Road. We are looking to launch over in next nine to 12 months. We have to understand the micro markets are different. Both the micro markets are totally different. One is at BKC, and that is at Nepean Sea Road. The inventory, when we talk about BKC, it is a three towers. Each tower is like 500,000 sq ft. When three towers work like it was more than 1.5 million sq ft. Which is a large inventory in BKC. When we are talking about the Nepean Sea Road, it is just close to 200,000 sq ft. That is totally different, totally a different micro market and different sizes.
Just to tell you, the BKC, we have already sold more than 80% of the inventory. It is this last 10%-15% of the inventory which is there with us. That inventory, you have to understand and appreciate that when we started BKC, we, we started at INR 15,000 a sq ft was the micro market price. In fact, Sunteck created the value in BKC for residential, only after the Sunteck project came into that micro market. Otherwise, Bandra East was always considered for low-income group or middle-income group. In fact, Sunteck could change the perception of the low-income group location to a high-income group. Today, every developer or every builder, everybody would aspire to create a luxury project and, in, in and around BKC.
In fact, there is nothing which is available in BKC today, it's in and around BKC. There the inventory was very large and here the inventory is much lower. In that micro market, how much is the absorption? It's much more in Nepean Sea Road. That micro market has a higher absorption of luxury than the micro market of BKC. That's how it is.
Thank you. I have a question, Prashant, on the total margin calculation. If you could explain what is the direct attributable cost that you are assuming in arriving at a percentage of the margin? In this context, when you are selecting your EPC contractor, I know some of the construction you do, most of the construction you do on your balance sheet. In case you are selecting a contractor, what would be the margin at which you are signing those contracts?
Hi, hi, Sri. Prashant this side. Basically the intention was, Sri, the time is that to differentiate between attributable costs and non-attributable costs. What we mean by that is that the projects which were getting recognized as revenue in the P&L, against those projects, only how much cost was getting attributed. That direct cost included both cost of construction, it included employee benefit expense, and it included other overheads as well. These were directly attributable to the projects which were getting recognized in the P&L. This gives us a better understanding of the margin being made by that project which has been completed. This is what we wanted to show this time in our, in our presentation, because we follow Project Completion Method of accounting.
As per accounting standards, the other indirect costs, which is like advertising, brokerage, these were earlier getting before they were treated as before revenue expenditure. Now they have to get amortized in the quarter in which you are spending, irrespective of whether you are recognizing the revenue from that project in the P&L or not. That is the reason why we wanted to, you know, show this bifurcation and help people like you understand that the projects which are getting recognized, those amounts is small, but the kind of profits that we are making on that is huge. We wanted to show that. The objective was to show the margin.
This would also include your head office, cost, which was attributed to the specific project, right?
Absolutely. Absolutely, Sri.
Lastly, let's say in this quarter there's a INR 40 crore direct cost from what I understand. All of this pertains to potentially the sales and advertisements and stuff that's going on outside the projects where you recognize revenue. Is that, is that right? Or is there anything else that is part of the direct costs?
No, absolutely, Sri, you are absolutely right on that understanding.
Understood. The second question on potential margins, which you are basically coming contract to any of these EPC contracts.
Kamal Khetan here, Sri. We don't give any third party. We are, the construction is in-house, Sri Karthik. There is nothing which we are. There will be small, small maybe contracts, but those like obviously any contractors margin would be like 10%-15% or highest in any specific small contracts or something, it will be 15%, 20% max, max. Okay. That is the advantage that most of all the construction contracts are in-house, so we can maintain a better quality and better margins.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Sri Karthik.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please sign from Sri. That was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference back to the Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Khetan, for closing comments.
Thank you all for taking out the time for Sunteck earnings call. In case if any of your queries have been left unanswered, you can get in touch with me or my team. We look forward to your continuous support. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Sunteck Realty, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to connect you along. Thank you.