Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd, Q3 and 9M FY 2023 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Arvind Subramanian, MD and CEO from Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Lizan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our quarter three FY 2023 earnings call. I'd like to thank all of you for participating in this conference call. A reminder, once again, that as you know, many of our key operating entities from the residential business, like Mahindra Homes and Mahindra Happinest, as well as from our IC and IC business, like Mahindra World City Developers Ltd, Mahindra World City Jaipur Ltd, and Mahindra Industrial Park Chennai Ltd, are not consolidated on a line-by-line basis. I'd like to take you through some of the highlights for the quarter and the year, and the year so far, the nine months of the year. Let me start with the residential business. We've had a strong quarter with about INR 451 crore of pre-sales, bringing us to INR 1,452 crore for the nine months.
You would remember that the full year FY 2022 was INR 1,028 crore, and the corresponding nine-month period in FY, INR 709 crore. So on a like-to-like basis, it's 100% growth. This has come on the back of four launches. We launched a new project, Mahindra Citadel, in Pimpri, in Pune. This was the land that was acquired in April, and we launched it in November. So within seven months, we've been able to get the designs completed, approvals in place, and been able to launch it to the market. We also launched the second phase of Mahindra Eden in Kanakapura, in Bengaluru. Again, the first phase was launched in Q1 of the financial year. We received an outstanding response, and that encouraged us to bring forward the second phase by almost a year.
It was originally slated to be launched in the next financial year, but given the response to the first phase, we brought it forward. We also increased prices quite significantly, by almost 14%, and even at those higher prices, we've seen an excellent response in Eden, in Mahindra Eden. We did a formal launch of Mahindra Happinest Kalyan 2. This is a project that was pre-launched in February last year. The main launch happened in December, and again, we've seen a good response there. The fourth project that was launched was the second phase of Mahindra Happinest at Mahindra World City, Chennai. Again, a very successful first phase, which was launched a year back, 100% sold at that stage. We brought the second phase in towards the end of Q3.
Once again, took the price up quite significantly, more than a 20% increase in price, and have brought it to market. In the coming quarter, we expect to launch two new projects, new activations, the second phase of Mahindra Nestalgia in Pune, and a plotted development in Mahindra World City, Chennai. A lot of our management time and effort this quarter is going to be on preparing for new launches for the next year, and particularly for the first half of next year. We would like to bring Andheri project to market in the first half of the next financial year. We would also like to do a full-fledged launch of Mahindra Citadel. What we did in Q3 was a pre-launch, but we'll do the main launch in H1 of next financial year.
Within H1 of next financial year, we are also intending to bring our new acquisition on Hosur Road, which we had announced last month, to market. We'll be looking at later in that year, bringing both the Dahisar project as well as the Santacruz redevelopment project that we announced, to market as well. We are looking at a busy FY 2024 from a new launch perspective. Turning my attention to business development for the residential business, as you would have seen, we've announced 2 new transactions in January. One was in Bengaluru off Hosur Road, and the second was a society redevelopment project in Santacruz. Both of these are very attractive new opportunities for us.
Bengaluru is a market that we continue to build a presence in, and society redevelopment, as we had discussed, is an area that we have been keenly pursuing for almost a year. So it's very heartening to see our first breakthrough in the society redevelopment space. We are very excited about the prospects and opportunities in terms of bringing in premium products in fully built-out neighborhoods in the city of Mumbai. Hopefully, with this win under our belt, it should open the doors to many more wins in the quarters to come. Our overall BD pipeline, in the last call, we had talked about pursuing a pipeline at various stages of maturity of about, in aggregating, about INR 5,000 crore of GDV.
Out of that, around INR 1,000 crore has got converted, roughly INR 1,500 crore has either been dropped or we've lost, and we've added back about INR 3,000 crore of new deals in the pipeline. So today, we are working on a pipeline of about INR 5,500 crore. Again, these are in various stages of maturity, and we are hoping that a reasonable proportion of these will get converted in the next two to three quarters. In this last quarter, we've also completed the conveyance of the Kandivali land, which we purchased from M&M, as well as land, 68+ acres of land at Thane off Ghodbunder Road.
As I mentioned, we are working towards bringing Kandivali to market in H1 of the next financial year, and Thane, we continue to be on track to bring it into the market in the early part of FY 2025. Turning our attention to the industrial business. In the quarter, we did INR 69 crores of industrial leasing. It's great to see the pickup in Origins Chennai and Mahindra World City, Chennai. The last several quarters, much of our leasing has happened in Jaipur, but I have been mentioning that we've had a nice pipeline building up in our two Chennai parks as well, and it's good to see some of those deals coming to fruition in the last quarter. We continue to have a very active pipeline, and are looking at, roughly 50 acres of, advanced pipeline to be converted over the next two quarters.
This INR 69 crore of leasing in Q3 takes our year-to-date leasing to INR 255 crore, and this compares to INR 297 crore for the full FY 2022. So again, we are looking at a strong growth momentum in the industrial business as well. Let me turn it over to Vimal to take you through the financial highlights.
Thank you, Arvind, and good morning, everyone. Moving on to financial performance for Q3 FY 2023, here are the key points. The consolidated total income stood at INR 198 crore against INR 74 crore in Q3 FY 2022. The consolidated EBITDA, which includes other income as well as share of profit from JV, stood at a profit of INR 5.5 crore against a profit of INR 20 crore in Q3 FY 2022. The consolidated debt after non-controlling interest stood at INR 33 crore, as against a profit of INR 25 crore in Q3 FY 2022. Your company has debt of INR 280 crore at a consolidated level, while cash in hand and bank balance was about INR 228 crore. The cost of debt is 7.76% on consolidated basis, while the standalone cost was also almost similar at 7.72%.
These are the key highlights on the financial front. I now request if the floor can be open for questions, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone wishing to ask a question, may please press star and one on your touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Parikshit Kandpal from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Arvind. Congratulations on business development and strong pre-sales for the nine months and the third quarter. My first question is on the business development pipeline. Now, I want to understand that typically you said this quarter we have added INR 30 billion of new, INR 30,000 crore of new BD pipeline. So what is the timeline of closure of this 30,000 crore of typically, how much will be the closure timeline, where you will take some decision on this?
So typically, I would say, two quarters is what we would see as the maturity timeline for these, for this pipeline. So between this quarter and next quarter, whatever gets converted, our experience has been, gets converted within two quarters, and if it doesn't get converted in two quarters, it gets dropped.
Now, coming back to the last quarter, we had INR 5,000 crore of BD. You said 1,000 got converted, 15 got dropped, and 2,500 gets carried over to this quarter. So do you expect it to close by whatever decision making happens, will happen by this quarter on the INR 2,500 crore?
Yes. A lot of it should either one way, either get converted or dropped by the end of this quarter.
Okay. So, if you can also give a breakup of the INR 5,500 crore of BD in terms of BDAs, JVs, and redevelopment, and also geography-wise, Pune, MMR, and Bengaluru.
Yeah. So roughly, rough split, about 2,500 in Mumbai, 2,000 in Pune, 1,000 in Bengaluru, and outright is about out of that 5,500, roughly 3,500 is outright. 1,000 is JDA and another 1,000 is between redevelopment and plotted.
Okay. Just one more question on this GD addition over the last two years. So we have added INR 3,800 crore in FY 2022, and now financially today, we have added INR 2,600 crore. So what will be the total value of the land acquisition cost of this entire 3,800 plus 2,600? So if someone can answer that.
The acquisition cost of land for the-
Yeah.
3,800 + 2,600.
Yeah, INR 6,400 crore, which we have added.
One update on that, Parikshit, you may have picked it up in our release yesterday. This year, the Pimpri land that we acquired, we've actually got some enhanced development potential there. So the value, GDV value, has gone up from INR 1,700 crores to INR 2,300 crores.
Oh, wow! So another yes, we add it to this year's number, right? INR 1,700 crore-INR 2,300 crore is roughly about INR 500 crore. So INR 2,600 crore becomes INR 3,100 crore now. So INR 3,100 crore so roughly INR 6,900 crore in the last two years GDV addition.
Yeah.
What will be the land acquisition cost, hard cost, which will be incurred, and how much has been paid till now?
So, overall, Parikshit, the way it will operate, and, if, for example, it has bought a Kandivali land, where the payment is staggered, at an overall level, what you can assume, if it's not a JD or a redevelopment, usually the cost will vary between 15% to about 23-24%, depending on the geography in which you are operating. That's what I will sort of stay with, so for as the searching numbers are concerned, Parikshit.
Okay. So then how much of this will be, like, paid off? What will be the pending cost on this GDV to be, like, incurred from the balance sheet?
We would have incurred almost about INR 400 crore in the last nine months.
What is the pending to be incurred on this?
Almost similar.
Okay. How are you going to fund it, Vimal? I mean, how do you look at funding this?
The two things, so far as operating cash flows are concerned, the company continues to be fairly robust in terms of collections and overall cash flows. We are running ahead of our plans in that sense. That's one. The second important point is that, the balance sheet, as you know, is completely sort of unleveraged, and to that extent, there will be long-term borrowings, et cetera, which you will start seeing.
I see. Last question to Arvind. Arvind, you have this Alibaug plotted launch. So I just wanted to know what's the response there, and now you're planning to be in the Chennai market at the MWC land plotted. So what's your outlook on overall plotted development, as an overall strategy in the GDV? So do you think this can become big in the coming years? Because with Chennai, you have seen a depleting treasury, and besides the industrial, I mean, industrial land plus inventories left, so that is also coming to an end. So how do you see the Chennai market where you started at the start of your business? So how do you see that play out for the residential piece? From the plotted side, if you can start us and help us understand that, how that product uptake, so.
Sure. So, Alibaug and Chennai, very different. While both are plotted, I mean, Alibaug is positioned at premium end of the spectrum, and Chennai will be a mid-market plotting market. I'm quite hopeful that we will see success in plotted development. Many of our peers have made an attractive, successful business in plotting. So, I'm hopeful that we will also see similar traction. The Chennai one that we are launching this quarter will be the first, and hopefully will be followed up by more such launches. We're also looking at new business development in the plotting space, particularly in Bengaluru and Pune.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best. Those are my questions.
Thank you. We move on to the next question. That is on the line of Himanshu Upadhyay from O3 Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Arvind. Congrats on good set of results. Clearly the visibility is now much more clear of business operations improving. I have a question on-
Sorry, Himanshu Upadhyay. Sir, can you use the handset mode while speaking and not the speaker phone? It's causing a lot of disturbance.
I'm on handset only. Is it clear now?
It's a little better. Please proceed.
Yeah, congrats on good set of numbers. Yeah, it becomes much more clearer for the way the company is moving ahead, and visibility is clear. I have a question on this employee remuneration and benefits, okay? If you look at the nine months, okay, and even the quarterly, the employee remuneration and benefits is down around 67%, okay? So has there been some cost rationalization or, there was some one-off event or... Can you just give an idea?
Yeah, so overall, couple of things, Himanshu. One is that as we are expanding the number of projects on which we are doing the construction, we do follow a consistent accounting policy of inventorying that cost, and that is one key aspect. The second one really is that what you are possibly seeing is Ind AS accounted cost. And to that extent, there are costs which are at JV level also, which are getting incurred. At an aggregate level, if you look at consistently, in terms of remuneration increase, you usually see about 10-11% increase year-on-year, on a decent growth trajectory.
Himanshu, we are actually building the organization steadily, because as we are growing the business, we are building capacity as well as capability. So there is no manpower rationalization. If anything, we are, we are investing in talent. We believe that's going to be one of our key advantages.
No, I agree, because, I mean, see, in last year, the revenue in nine months, what we did was INR 253 crore, okay? Including other income, or if I exclude other income, it was INR 231 crore. And, in these nine months, it is INR 351 crore, okay? But the employee remuneration has moved from INR 66 crore to INR 61 crore, okay? So, that was the thing. And, the question was, that even if when my revenue is increasing, my employee remuneration has fallen by 6%-7%, okay.
Yeah. So as I said, two things which are not visible in the numbers which you quoted. One, in the inventorization. For example, Bengaluru is a market, where the project got launched, phase two got opened up, is leading to higher inventarizotion in that particular project. And secondly, the cost allocations, which we do across our projects and across entities, there's a bit of overall, optimizations also we would have done in terms of taxabilities from a structuring point of view. In terms of headcount, if you look at annual report, the count would have gone up, levels would have improved, and the increments, et cetera, would, as I mentioned, have been decent.
Okay. Okay. And, any timelines for Andaman launch, which, what we had? We were looking for a partner for quite some time now. So what is the progress on that Andaman, launch?
Continues to be an area which is work in process. Looking, as we had mentioned in the last couple of calls, for the right anchor to create the location. Still don't have headway on that.
This Murud, Raigad, okay, the 1,291 acres, okay, is it means we were going to develop with something like government project. Was that- is this that land or what is this project? I'm-
So we have 1,300 acres in Murud, and now interestingly, we see two axes of growth there. One is the second home market, which from Alibaug will sequentially expand to Kashid and then to Murud. And the second is this land is also in the hinterland of the Dighi Port, and Dighi Port is getting expanded and a lot of investment is coming into that area from an industrial perspective. So both of these are opportunities that we are evaluating quite closely, and some combination of that is what we will eventually develop Murud for is the hypothesis stage.
Okay. Best of luck. Thanks for the good luck.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Adhidev Chattopadhyay from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. I have couple of questions. First-
Sorry
Okay. Is it better now? Okay, I'll come back into you then. Okay, thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So first question is on, you know, the projects that slipped out. Obviously, you did well in terms of business development and added couple of projects, but, you know, any specific reasons maybe you can highlight on where, you know, did we missed out on those projects? Is it just, you know, competition and the pricing that was offered, or just any comment on that?
Yeah, so, largely competitive dynamics. So look, in any such pipeline, we will have a win-loss ratio. And, you know, we lost one society redevelopment project, we won one, so it was kind of a 50/50 in that space. And, there was one other project as well, which got dropped because of some concerns on the diligence front.
Okay. Okay, got it. And second on this Kalyan 2, which we relaunched, we still see, you know, not much ramp up in terms of sales, but there might be, you know, some bookings that would have slipped over to, you know, Q4. But are you overall now happy with the kind of response that we have got for this project? And also, I think I noticed even you have a higher area available for development in Kalyan 2. So just comments on both.
Yeah. So look, as the CEO of the business, I'm never happy until it is 100% sold out, right?
Mm-hmm.
But that being said, I think there's been good traction in this launch. We are, I must kind of openly state that we are starting to see some constriction of demand in that segment of the market, the sub-INR 40 lakh kind of segment. That being said, we've got a good response to this launch. You will see the numbers coming through in Q4. This was launched in December, so much of the bookings will come through in Q4.
Got it. Got it. In terms of launches, while we have highlighted about the new project launches that can happen in FY 2024, that includes Dahisar, Hosur, and also the redevelopment one. I'm not sure if you also mentioned Kandivali, but apart from that, any phase launches that are planned in FY 2024, maybe early part of second half?
So as I said, Mahindra Citadel, which we launched in November, December, that's the main launch. Well, what we launched in November, December was a pre-launch. And we will have the main launch in Q1 or Q2 of Q1 of next year. Nestalgia, as I mentioned, the second phase is getting launched in this quarter. So again, you'll see some of that getting logged this quarter and some of it next quarter. So those are the new phases. Kandivali, as I mentioned, is certainly on track for H1 of next financial year.
Okay, okay, got it. That's it from my side for now. I'll jump back in queue for a few more questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of VP Rajesh from Banyan Capital Advisors LLP. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations for good set of numbers. My first question was regarding the housing society redevelopment project. So if you can give a little more detail as to you know, why is this business more interesting? Does it have higher IRR, and how long does it take to get all the pre-work done to even start the construction? Just wanted to know a little bit more about this new business that we are taking on.
Yeah, so couple of things on that. One, the, it gives you access to certain markets where otherwise it will be very hard to participate. So, you know, market like the western suburbs in Mumbai are fully built out. There's no vacant land available, so redevelopment is really the only opportunity to create a presence there. These also tend to be higher price segment markets, so therefore, a stronger gross margin on these kinds of projects. In terms of timeline, we are structuring these in a manner where a lot of our costs and investments start coming in only when the site is fully vacated, when all the members have vacated their apartments. So, therefore, the IRRs are also looking healthy. That being said, this is our first redevelopment project.
I'm sure there will be learnings. We are actively looking at the experience that other developers have gone through and learning from those, but we will go through our own learning curve. But I do believe this is an attractive opportunity space, particularly with the Mahindra brand and the kind of trust it adds with members of these societies. We automatically, we've had lots of calls ever since we've announced our intent to be in redevelopment. This is the first thing we've had in a long process, but hopefully then sets the tone for many others.
Right. So are you saying that by the between the announcement that you did, this month for last month project, and the time you start working on the project, you are not really going to put any capital into it, except some, minor, fees, et cetera, that you may have to pay for, getting the, you know, land use change, et cetera? Is that the way to understand it?
Yes. So largely what happens is, at this stage, there will be some diligence costs, legal costs. We will start doing design, because that is important as we get into discussions with the members about their apartment allocations, et cetera. Those are the kinds of costs, so it's much more about service costs rather than any, land or development costs. Those start kicking in only after the site is fully vacated.
Okay, okay. And then just on the balance sheet side, you mentioned that you will start to think about taking long-term debt. So any idea what the size could be? Because obviously your cost of capital is very, very low, and that's a big competitive advantage. So I was just curious, like, how much debt are you planning to put on the balance sheet?
Look, I think we'll hand this over to Vimal, but in general, we will continue to be very prudent about leverage. But Vimal, if you want to share any guidance on what we are looking at.
Conceptually, the same point, as in going by the land pipeline and assuming that you will have say, 15%-22% of land costs, if it's a greenfield acquisition, there'll be upfront cash payout which will be required. Two sources, operating cash flow, upstreaming of cash from internal joint ventures, et cetera. And the third one will be the long-term borrowings. And all three right now are going. All, the first two streams, which is operating as well as upstreaming of cash, are going fairly strong. And the third one will be borrowing. Debt equity right now is extremely low, and therefore, we don't have any challenges in terms of raising it at very competitive rates.
Right. But you don't have any particular figure in mind as yet about what this third one will look like?
So, our going-in position, say, from, especially from finance point of view, is that, that will never be the constraint. So far as we are getting good, land parcels, we'll go ahead and invest.
In addition to what Vimal said about internal cash, you know, cash accruals from a collections perspective as well as upstreaming from the JVs, we also have forward visibility on cash because of the strong pre-sales. So in many of the projects, it's only a matter of time, as long as construction progresses, that the cash will come in. So in that sense, there's a lot more predictability on the next few quarters of cash flow as well.
Right. Right. Okay. And then, talking about your GDV pipeline that we were discussing earlier, so what is typically your win ratio in these types of deals? Not win ratio, but how much, how much of that actually materializes in your experience over the last two, three years?
You know, very hard to say, and it's early days. You know, calculating ratios on a small base is fraught with risk. So I won't venture into talking about win ratios, but as, when I think Parikshit asked this question, typically two quarters is what it takes for these deals to either convert or get dropped.
Right. I was just curious because you have had the experience for the last 2-3 years now, so you would have some sense of, you know, how much are you going to convert into potential pipeline versus them dropping off or whatever the case.
Look, 2 years back, we had said we want to do about INR 2,000 crore of annual GDV addition. We are well above that. We will continue to build on top of that. Anywhere in the INR 3,000-INR 4,000 crore range of annual GDV addition for the next year or 2, I think sets us up very well.
... Okay, great! Wonderful. Thank you. That's all I have, and, all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prem Khurana from Anand Rathi Shares. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on good set of numbers this quarter. Sir, I mean, the idea was to try and understand our business development activity little better or portfolio augmentation side little better. So when I look at the numbers, I mean, essentially over the last 2 years, we've done almost around 8 odd transactions with GDV potential in excess of INR 8,000 crore. But when I look at the co- I mean, split, so there are 2 projects, and in Kandivali and Pimpri, wherein it is in excess of INR 2,000 crore each. So these 2 in itself are almost 60%, if I will include that.
So I mean, the three projects make up almost around 70% of the total potential that you have on books now, or what you've been able to add over the last two years. So the idea was to try and understand how do we think about the sizing of these projects? Because, I mean, Kandivali and Pimpri seems like you want to create value over a longer period of time, and with each phase you would want to raise prices and generate more value for the shareholders. And you have something like Kanakapura, some of these recent additions, wherein it's around INR 400-INR 500 crore quick churn kind of projects.
So do we go with any thought in mind that you want to have this kind of balanced with quick churn and long-term value creation? Or is it as and when, as the opportunity comes, and we evaluate and then we go with the opportunity.
Great question, Prem, and I think we had talked about this, maybe three or four calls, quarters back. Ideally, we would like to be in the, let's say, INR 500 crore-INR 1,000 crore GDV range for each of these projects. And particularly in cities like Bengaluru and Pune, I think that's a nice sweet spot, because it allows you to potentially launch in a single phase or two closely spaced phases, construct quickly and get out. And given our focus on IRR, it's important that the overall project schedule in terms of land acquisition to completion is kept as short as possible, typically within four years, four and a half years is what we target.
That being said, as you rightly pointed out, there are strategic opportunities like Kandivali and, Pimpri, where we've taken, a call to, to flex that upper limit. In the city of Mumbai, we will typically see deals which are north of INR 1,000 crore, just given the price points in the market and the kind of land supply, side dynamics that exist. In Pune, Pimpri was potentially an exception at, two thousand now, or INR 2,400 crore, or INR 2,300 crore GDV. Again, there typically we would do INR 500-700 crore kind of, GDV transactions. But in certain strategic markets, Pimpri, this was, you know, is a market that we have had significant presence in. This is our, fourth or fifth project in Pimpri.
Similarly, we will look at other markets like Kharadi and Hinjawadi, etc., which are very important micro markets in Pune, where if the right opportunity comes across, we are open to looking at larger GDV transactions.
Sure, sure. And on the redevelopment side, because now we have experience dealing with these societies, so how is our experience with them in terms of timelines, let's say, compared to dealing with landowners and individuals? Here, you are requiring to manage expectation of number of people, right? I mean, the society would comprise a number of members, and residents as well. So is it fair to assume that the conversion timelines would be slightly longer for society versus the open plots or the DDAs, that you do?
Significantly longer, not just slightly longer, because, you know, what you're having to deal with is, in a typical land transaction, you deal with one landowner or maybe a family, where there's two or three land- you know, partners or family members who are taking the decision. Here, you often have a 100-plus members taking a joint decision, and it is a highly emotive decision, right? This is their house. They've lived in it for 20, 30 years. Potentially, this is second generation living in the house. So it is, it is not an easy decision to make in terms of, which offer to go forward with, whether to redevelop at all, et cetera. So it tends to be a much more iterative process in the transaction that we...
One, there's been multiple rounds of discussions, multiple general body meetings that the society has gone through, where we presented, and it's the same case in the one that we lost as well. So, there's many reasons when a general body meeting is called for the decision not to be taken, rather than for it to be taken, and one has to be patient and work through that.
Sure. Got it. And just one last bookkeeping question from Vimal. Sir, I, in our, our presentation, on slide number 33, we gave segment performance. And when I look at the residential vertical, our net debt seems to be up around INR 120-odd crore sequentially. But when I try to kind of reconcile this with the kind of collections that we could have in this quarter, and the, the construction spend that was incurred, there was a large gap. So why would we get to have this INR 120-odd crore of sequential jump in our net debt for the residential vertical? Consol is down, I understand, but in the residential vertical, it seems as though it's gone up.
You're seeing net debt has gone up versus last quarter?
Yes, sir. So for the quarter, it's around INR 94 crore, and if you were to refer to your last quarter presentation, it was-
The position you are seeing is 31st December position, right?
... Yeah, thirty-first December versus thirtieth September, sequentially, INR 120 crore of rise.
Yeah, that's right. So it's all for the good, what I would say. There are obviously, as Arvind mentioned, there are pipeline, and therefore there's a funding requirement which should be there.
Okay. But the Kandivali-
Land acquisition.
Okay. But the Kandivali payment is still not done, right? And because it is always reflecting as a part of other financial liability. So which is why I was wondering if it, if it was, if there was any other payments that you would have made during the quarter.
Yeah. So, so two things. One is that what you're seeing on the liability side is not the full, liability, because part of the-
Yeah.
Communication has been paid out.
Mm.
One. Second is, Kandivali land conveyance happened, last quarter.
Oh, okay.
Towards that conveyance, there were payouts which you would have done to state authority, et cetera. So both of those were also the,
Sure. And INR 70 crore would have gone to the partner as well, and the Mahindra Homes, the buyback that they would have done. So that again would have impacted those numbers, right?
Absolutely. Absolutely. As a data point, and this is not specifically your question, but I just do want to share this. In the last nine months, we have shared almost about INR 200 crore with standard stakeholders, including, for example, the IFC World Bank or Actis or other partners which we have. To that extent, it again indicates a robust cash flow, which we are experiencing in the last few quarters.
Sure. Sure. That's great. Thanks. Thanks a lot, and all the very best, for future.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the follow-up, Arvind, again. My question is on, again, on redevelopment. So, you know, while we are seeing not much competition in terms of outright land, but at the same time, redevelopment, you know, does sound a good opportunity even for smaller developers. So what kind of competition we are seeing in redevelopment, especially where we are targeting, you know, those group, or a group society redevelopment rather than just one tower? So any comments on that?
So we see quite a lot of competition in the society redevelopment space as well. There are specialist players there, both very local players in particular neighborhoods who have built a strong reputation, but also players at the city level, who built a portfolio of redevelopment assets. You know, just like us, there are other developers who are dipping their toes and starting to embrace redevelopment, who traditionally not done redevelopment. So we are seeing a full set of competition in redevelopment, which we also see in outright deals. You know, we are not the only ones who are seeing this as an attractive opportunity. Many other leading developers are also pursuing this.
In terms of the project we won in Santacruz, you know, did we offer, you know, a better, you know, growth in terms of area? Or is it the brand which attracted the, you know, the, the tenants to choose us as a redevelopment partner? Because I'm sure there would be, you know, competition for that project as well.
So the way these typically play out, and I'm giving you a very general answer, there's often first a weeding out of developers that the society would like to do the deal with. So there is kind of that technical qualification, if I can call it that, from a traditional procurement perspective. And then among that, there is then a pure commercial discussion that happens. So yes, in this situation, we did offer the best commercial terms, but we were also then in a shortlist which comprised a peer group, which was very credible. So it's, we're not then at that stage competing with, you know, just any other developer.
Sure, got it. Just if you can provide, you know, a split of the pipeline that we have right now, around INR 5,500 crore. Out of that, you know, how much is outright land or, or redevelopment and, and in particular, which cities that they are targeted?
Yeah, I think Parikshit had asked this earlier, so just to reiterate, roughly INR 5,500 crore total, split as INR 2,500 crore in Mumbai, INR 2,000 crore in Pune, INR 1,000 crore in Bengaluru. And then, if I split it by transaction type, roughly INR 3,500 crore of outright, INR 1,000 crore of JDAs, and INR 1,000 crore of redevelopment and plotted.
Sure, got it. And, just lastly, I don't know if I missed it out, but, update on Thane. Is it, you know, still FY 2024 or spilled over to 2025?
We've always said 2025, early part of 2025, so it stays there.
Okay. Okay, got it. Thanks for answering my questions. That's it from my side, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parikshit Kandpal from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow-up. So Arvind, my question is that, last two years, two years back, you've said that INR 2,000 crore of city addition and INR 2,500 crore of fee fees by 25. You've been doing 2x of that, but still I see on the slide, FY 2025, 2,500. So it should ideally have gone up by two times. Any thoughts there?
Yeah, so look, I, as you kept pushing me, and I've stuck with that time, we would certainly like to do better. Let the land visibility build up a bit more, and we can, we can kind of update those milestones. So 2,500 is, as I've always said, it is a step in a journey... if we achieve it, before FY 2025, great! I mean, it just means that, the journey is well on its course. It was never intended to be a destination, so.
The second one is on the spillover. You said, you did touch upon that there was some spillover of sales due on December launches, which will get reflected in Q4. So between all these new launches which you did in this quarter, Pune, Bengaluru and MMR, so how much would be the spillover sales which would have not got recorded under this quarter and maybe will just flip over from December to next quarter?
I think, let's wait for this quarter to close for those numbers to come out. But, yeah, we've got good response to those launches, Citadel as well as Kalyan. I think Eden phase two, most of it has been recognized in the last quarter as spillover from last quarter to this quarter. Those are the two which came in at about December, so there were some booking that happened last quarter and some will happen this quarter.
But in this 4,000-50,000 sales, how much is the new launch contribution?
I don't have that off the top of my mind.
Okay, maybe I'll take it off now.
We can take it off then.
Yeah. And just lastly, on this question on the warehousing, so we had a tie-up with Actis of 100 acres. So when do we start monetizing this land bank in Jaipur? Which year it comes in? And lastly, on that operating cash flow of nine months, so post-construction and other period costs, what would have been the net operating cash flows for the nine months?
Yeah. So the Actis joint venture is building out nicely. We are in a phase where the company has been incorporated, we are building out the management team, and hopefully in the next three months, the key leadership team should be in place. And that's when we will start bringing the land, the seed assets in, as well as look at virgin assets, greenfield assets as well, to build out the business. So over the next year or so, I think that business will start getting built out quite nicely. As you know, we are a minority partner in that, so we'll be largely playing kind of a board and governance role rather than an operating role there, in addition to providing the fee. Vimal, you want to talk about operating cash flows?
Operating cash flows, so overall, for the first nine months, primarily because of very solid action on the collection side, which has been talked about, about INR 254.5 crore. Similarly, on the collections and sales side, we had operating cash flow positive, about INR 450 crore in the first nine months. And majority of this has been deployed either towards acquisition of new land parcels, or buying more development potential in the existing land parcel, or towards payment of our existing stakeholders.
Mm-hmm. So 50 is after construction cost and after period costs, employee costs and corporate overhead. So post that is generated INR 450 crores of cash flow.
It is after every operating cost and including corporate overheads.
Payout of partners. Does it include payout to partners also, which you mentioned about INR 200 extra crore?
Operating numbers, and to that extent, the financing or the investing activity is not included.
Okay. Got it. Okay, understood. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ronald Siyoni from Sharekhan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, sir, and congratulations on good numbers. My first question was, you know, the sales which you have done over the last two years and say, before that, you know, what kind of movement you have seen in terms of the gross margin, operating margin and return on capital employed? You know, sales done before two years and new sales, you know, over trailing two years.
Sir, we are not able to hear you.
Yeah, Ronald, you're not clear at all.
Am I audible now?
Yes, much better.
Yeah. So first question was, you know, the sales booking, which we have done over the trailing two years, and before two years. And, you know, so what kind of, you know, margin trajectory you have seen, say, before two years and last trailing two years in terms of, you know, operating margins and gross margins and return on capital employed? How we have, you know, evolved over the trailing two years, the new launches which we have done?
Yeah. So, you know, couple of points here, and this is more like a summary of what we have been responding to in the last four quarters or so. In general, our sales numbers first, and then we get into the gross margin numbers. We were at about INR 700 crore per year till about FY 2021, and then last year was over INR 1,000 crore, and right now it's closer to INR 1,500 crore as we speak. Now, with every passing quarter, there are two things which we have done.
1 is much stronger control on the cost, and that comes on the with very active interventions we have got on the design side, as well as the costing sides, to get our estimations much more accurate, closer to reality, so that we can ensure the realizations, the net realizations are much superior. And the last 2 launches which we have done, we have usually done better than our guardrails, which, for example, on the profitability side, all costs taken will be closer to about say, 18% or upwards, and this is about 4-5 percentage points better than the old projects which you just talked about.
Yes. So 18% on the operating level, which was better by 4%-5%, you mean to say?
Yeah.
Okay. And second question was, you know, in terms of what we have seen the rise in the interest cost. So, you know, have you kind of seen some slackness or sluggishness in, especially in the affordable housing side or, you know, in terms of footfalls or say, closing of sales by customers? So what kind of interest rate impact have you seen, especially on the affordable projects?
Yeah. So, Ronald, I covered this in my opening comments. We are seeing some constriction in demand on the affordable side, particularly less than INR 40 lakh kind of ticket size. It's a combination of higher mortgage rates and also inflation, which is starting to pinch affordability in that segment. That being said, it is still, you know, a robust market. So, while the overall market might be kind of flat or declining compared to the mid-market, which is growing quite significantly, within that, the stronger players are still seeing good traction.
Okay. And sir, last question would be, you know, setting aside the INR 40 lakh categories, in the upper categories, you know, what kind of percentage on an average, you know, there is a mortgage lending taken by the customer?
Roughly 60%-70% of sales in that segment happens through mortgage.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, sir. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Milan Patel from Edelweiss Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Patel, we are not able to hear you. Sir, your audio is not audible.
Am I clear now?
I think your voice is sounding a little muffled.
Yeah, you can go ahead. We can hear you now.
Sir, the first question is related to IT business. I want to understand, like, last this quarter, we had 8 acres of sales in the SEZ, and we were talking about some policy change. So has that policy change happened, or how do you think about that, SEZ part of the MWC business?
So we're still waiting for clarity on that. So this is the DESH Bill that was announced in the last budget, and the rules were to be formulated around how that will get implemented in the SEZs. Which effectively, the spirit of that is to open up the SEZ for units that also serve the domestic market. The specifics are still awaited, and we're hoping in the next few months, we will have some clarity on that.
Sir, second question is, you mentioned to one of the previous participants that, four to three quarters of, operating cash flows, in the nine months. So I understand it would be lumpy in our business, but for full year basis, in general, should we, assume a north of, INR 600 crore cash flows over the next few years?
No, you know, Arvind articulated it very well, FY 2025 numbers. So to that extent, directionally, the operating cash flow is going to be sort of reflective of the sales trajectory which we are on. Yes.
And sir, last question, even though we have very less land left in MWC, Chennai, but realization came down to some extent. So any particular reason for that?
No. Fundamentally, very limited land parcels, and the location of those land parcels can be inside the World City. There are a few land parcels which are, which are residing outside of the World City premises, in that sense, what we call as outside boundary lands. And every land, land transaction, to that extent, is negotiated, and depending on the location, trajectory, overall area, et cetera, the pricing is fixed.
Yeah, going forward also, you will see us doing some transactions of what we call outside boundary land, which is beyond the boundaries, planned boundaries of the World City. Those are significantly lower priced. There's, fundamentally no infrastructure, nothing, none of the World City infrastructure is extended there. So it's a, it's a different market altogether.
Thank you so much, sir, and wish you all the best.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the last question. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Arvind Subramanian for his closing comments.
Great. Thank you once again, all of you, for participating in the call. As we mentioned, we are on a very steady, and planned growth trajectory. The numbers are essential of that. And all the operating metrics, whether it's residential, pre-sales, industrial, staying cash flow, or land acquisition, these are all trending in the direction that that has been indicated. And with your support and blessings, we hope to continue on that trajectory. We are seeing a strong cycle in the real estate sector, so there's favorable tailwinds as well, which we hope to take advantage of. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd, that concludes this conference call. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.