Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Kshitij Jain from Godrej Properties. Thank you, and over to you.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Godrej Properties Q4 FY 2024 Results Conference call. We have with us Mr. Pirojsha Godrej, Executive Chairperson, Mr. Gaurav Pandey, Managing Director and CEO, and Mr. Rajendra Khetawat, CFO of the company. Before we begin this call, I would like to point out that some statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature, and a disclaimer to this effect has been included in the results presentation. I would now like to invite Mr. Godrej to make his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Godrej Properties fourth quarter financial year 2024 conference call. I'll begin by discussing the highlights of the quarter, and we then look forward to taking your questions and suggestions. I'm happy to share that GPL has registered its best-ever quarter on most operational parameters in the fourth quarter. In terms of new bookings, Godrej Properties achieved its highest-ever quarterly and annual sales. Booking value for the quarter stood at INR 9,519 crore, up 135% year-on-year over what was, at the time, our best-ever quarter and 66% quarter-on-quarter over what was also our best-ever quarter at the time. This was the third consecutive quarter and fifth time in the last six quarters that GPL has set its highest-ever quarterly sales benchmark.
Booking value for the full year of 2024 stood at INR 22,527 crore, up 84% year-on-year over the previous best-ever year and 61% above the guidance we provided at the start of the year. Both the quarterly and annual sales value were the highest-ever announced by any publicly listed real estate developer in India until date. This sales growth was on the back of both an improving project mix as well as strong volume growth of 31% in financial year 2024. This strong growth can be attributed to an extremely strong customer response to some of our new launches during the quarter. Godrej Zenith in NCR achieved a booking value of INR 3,008 crore, and Godrej Reserve in MMR achieved a booking value of INR 2,693 crore. Both of these projects were the best-ever launches for Godrej Properties in these respective markets.
In financial year 2024, four projects, including Godrej Aristocrat launched in quarter three and Godrej Tropical Isle launched in quarter two, achieved over INR 2,000 crore of booking value, and all four of these projects are owned outright by Godrej Properties. Godrej Properties' bookings in NCR in financial year 2024 grew 180% to just over INR 10,000 crore, and Godrej Properties' bookings in the Mumbai region grew over 114% to INR 6,545 crore. GPL also achieved its highest-ever cash collections and net operating cash flow. Collections were INR 4,693 crore for the fourth quarter and INR 11,436 crore for the financial year, leading to net operating cash flow growth of 16% year-on-year to INR 2,607 crore in the fourth quarter and growth of 23% to INR 4,334 crore for the full year.
This was aided by deliveries of 6 million sq ft across seven cities in the fourth quarter, taking the annual tally of deliveries to 12.5 million sq ft, another record milestone for Godrej Properties. The strong cash collections allowed GPL to reduce net debt by over INR 700 crore in the fourth quarter despite strong business development investments. With a large number of project completions in the last quarter, GPL recorded its highest-ever reported net profit numbers on a quarterly and annual basis. Our total income for the fourth quarter increased by 1% and stood at INR 1,952 crore, our EBITDA increased by 3% to INR 649 crore, and net profit increased by 14% to INR 471 crore over a very strong base quarter. For financial year 2024, our total income increased by 45% to INR 4,362 crore, EBITDA increased by 20% to Rs.
1,197 crore, and net profit increased by 27% to INR 725 crore. From a business development perspective, I'm happy to announce that Godrej Properties entered the Hyderabad market in the fourth quarter with two land deals with an estimated booking value potential of nearly INR 5,000 crore. The Hyderabad market is among the largest and fastest-growing residential real estate markets in the country, and these acquisitions are in line with our strategy of strengthening our portfolio across the key markets in India. In all, we added four group housing projects with an estimated booking value of INR 12,800 crore in the fourth quarter of the financial year and a total of 10 new projects with an estimated booking value of just over INR 21,000 crore in the full financial year.
We believe financial year 2024 has been a transformative year for Godrej Properties with huge growth in bookings and especially in GPL's share of bookings. Our hypothesis of raising capital five years ago, deploying aggressively into business development when market conditions were favorable for investments, and using these new projects to deliver exponential growth in bookings is, we believe, playing out exactly as we had hoped. While reported cash flow and earnings growth have been strong, we believe these parameters will see a sharp upward trajectory in the years ahead because the high bookings combined with GPL's increased economic interest in these projects. The pro forma P&L details, including in our investor presentation, provide a sense of the growth potential in the P&L as the projects launched this year achieve revenue recognition largely in financial year 2027 and financial year 2028.
For financial year 2025, we hope to grow residential bookings by over 20% or over a high base to INR 27,000 crore through the launch of a large number of exciting new projects combined with strong customers' sales. This, combined with continued strong project deliveries, should allow us to build on the momentum generated in financial year 2024 in strong operating cash flow generation. On that note, I conclude my remarks. Thank you for joining us on the call. We would now be happy to discuss any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone 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. We'll take a first question from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies India. Please go ahead.
Pirojsha and team, congratulations on the strong numbers that we have seen. Sir, with the scale that we have achieved on sales now, I mean, what's a medium-term target looks like? I know, I mean, you've given a strong guidance for 2025, but what's the view from a three-year basis now?
Thanks, Abhinav. I think the base that we need is more demanding now than it has been in past years, but I think we'd like to stick with our guidance of 20% growth over the medium term. Of course, it might get calibrated upwards or downwards based on market conditions and how strong business development additions from here are, but over the next few years, I think the 20% number remains the aspiration.
Okay. For FY 2025, if you can help us, I mean, on the guidance, how much can we say volumes versus pricing?
So I think it will depend a little bit on the mix and what approvals, etc., come through. But if you look at it over the last years, Abhinav, I think there's been a fair mix of growth in volumes, which last year were 31%, year before that 40%. And I think pricing is in two parts that's important to remember. One is actual pricing growth for the same project because of market conditions. But I think a lot of GPL growth has come from repositioning the company into a stronger set of locations and the pricing growth that is accompanying that. I'd say you'd really have to break up the booking value growth into three buckets. One is kind of volume growth. The second is this repositioning or kind of improved project portfolio growth. And the last is like-to-like pricing growth.
I think all three will continue to contribute in the year ahead.
Okay. Sir, also, if I may ask a little bit of clarity on the family agreement that just came out yesterday. So a few questions there. Firstly, is it and can you clarify the MOU that we have for the Vikhroli development? It will continue beyond the six-year exclusivity period because I understand there is some sort of apprehension out there.
Thanks, Abhinav. Yes, it's very clear. The DM has already been in place for many years and will continue exactly as is and is applicable for the entire Vikhroli land. There is no time-bound period to which it is applicable. So Godrej Properties will act as the development manager and partner Godrej & Boyce, which is the landowner and developer of the development. So we greatly look forward to playing a role in that project. And we're quite happy that after several years in Q4, we actually had a launch under this development management relationship. We launched a project called Godrej Vistas, which is off to a good beginning. So hope to see a lot more activity in Vikhroli in the years ahead. But just to be very clear, there's certainly no time limit after which the DM doesn't continue.
Great. Sir, just the last question from my side. On the exclusivity part also, so how does the usage of brand name work, say, in the next six years and even beyond that? I mean, how do you see that as such?
So Abhinav, as part of this understanding, for each side's existing categories, there is an agreement that we won't use the brand and won't compete with each other in those cases. For real estate, let me clarify how this works. For the first six years, Godrej & Boyce is not going to do any real estate development outside of lands that it already owns today. So on the lands that it owns today, Vikhroli, of course, being the main one of those, it is free to do development, including using the Godrej brand. But it cannot do any development on new land parcels beyond that. For the six-year period, Godrej & Boyce is free to do development on other lands but cannot use the Godrej brand for those developments. So that is a very important distinction.
I should also point out that Godrej & Boyce has an existing construction business, and that is actually their exclusive business. So while Godrej Properties is free to do construction for its captive purposes of developing its own projects, if we ever wanted to backward integrate, we are free to do so. But we will not be, for six years, able to do third-party construction services for other developers or other companies. And after a six-year period, we can provide such services, but we won't be using the Godrej brand for that. And that is true across all categories that one or the other side has a presence in. So I think there has been a little bit of confusion on this, saying that there can be competing Godrej developers, etc. That is not at all the case.
The development to Godrej & Boyce, from a property development perspective, for the next six years is entirely limited to lands they already own. Of course, the most important of those lands is Vikhroli, which will be developed through the DM. And for six years, while they are absolutely free to set up a real estate development company, it would have to operate without the Godrej brand.
Great. So thanks a lot for these answers. I will join the queue again.
Thanks, Abhinav.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parikshit Kandpal from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Pirojsha. Congratulations on a great year, sir. So just delving a little bit more on the family settlement agreement. So now with this in place, do you think there will be acceleration in launches because we have so much of land in Vikhroli? So now all these issues are ironed out. Do you think we can get at least every year a launch coming in from the Vikhroli land?
No, I think as we indicated in the press release, the timing of launches in Vikhroli will be largely determined by Godrej & Boyce. But certainly, I think this clarity will aid in there being more momentum to this process. And as I said, I'm very happy that we've launched a project under this arrangement after a few years in Q4 and would certainly hope to see many more such projects ahead.
Okay. This 10% DM, so is there any change there or it'll be same for six years?
Absolutely no change to the agreement of any kind. So it's exactly what it was, which is, as you said, 10% of stuff like that.
Okay. And just the last question on the promoters. Now, I mean, we have both the families. So now, will the promoter shareholding get classified into public shareholding, and what's the future? I mean, how will the shareholding change post this?
I should clarify that the family so far has announced its intent and the agreement. It has gotten approved. The immediate next step is to seek regulatory approval, which we will be doing over these next few weeks. Assuming those come through and we are able to close as envisioned, the families will be depromoterized from each other's sides of the group. There will remain some amount of cross-holding between both the groups, and those can continue thereafter.
Okay. And on this, now we are seeing that in Noida, NCR, we have already reached INR 10,000 crore of sales, and in MMR also just crossed INR 6,000 crore. So now, incremental growth, do you think there's still scope for these two markets to offer you incremental growth in FY 2025 given you have already announced that INR 27,000 crore of pre-sales? And with such high market share, do you think there's still scope for you to grow from these two markets?
Yes, certainly. I think we have a lot of scope to grow in these markets. If you look at NCR as an example, I think the market did fantastically well. The team performed fantastically well. So I think Kshitij Jain, our CEO in NCR, and his team because I think the numbers were very strong. But largely, we deliver through the launch of three projects. I think we have the potential this year to launch at least five or six projects. So certainly, we hope with market conditions sustained that we can see strong growth in NCR as well.
In Mumbai, we had a very strong fourth quarter. We have several new large projects that are now in the market where we have additional acres and additional inventory to be launched in the year ahead. We have some exciting new launches planned in places like Worli. Again, see no reason that we shouldn't be able to grow off this base.
Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you, and wish you all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Puneet Gulati from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, and thank you so much for the opportunity. Congrats on great numbers. My first question is, with respect to your INR 27,000 crore guidance, how much of this should we think will come from sustaining spending? How much of it is dependent on new launches?
Thanks for the question. Essentially, whenever we plan a launch calendar for a year, we always see for a series of projects with some buffer. Of course, we have a lot of sustained inventory. We don't really have a clear guidance on the sustained and launch. It frankly changes from quarter to quarter. If you look at the quarter one, two of the last year, it was largely sustained balance with some launches. If you see, let's say, quarter four, it was just the opposite, about 84%, if I'm not wrong, 80%+ was largely on launches. I think quarter to quarter, it would shift. Fair to say, it will be a very launch-heavy year balanced with some amount of sustained. Largely, launches would be the bigger contributor.
Will it be possible to share what is the value of unsold inventory that you have?
Offhand, I won't have a number to share with you. But fair to say, in every geography, we have a huge set of inventory. Rule of thumb is whatever guidance we give you, the available inventory that we have in stock is usually at least 2x available in our mind is when we typically give you a forecast.
So when you said INR 27,000 crore, you're saying INR 54,000 crore worth of inventory?
We will have visibility in our pipeline of about 50. Our total inventory is even significantly higher. But the one I'm talking about is mostly in the pipeline funnel that we get to see. Finally, it's a combination of launches that will hit in the market, but that's how we typically make our estimate.
So if I were to just do some basic math here, so you're talking of INR 30,000 crore of new launches. Does that mean about INR 24,000 crore of inventory is remaining to be sold from the projects already under execution? Is that how one should think about this?
Not really. Project to project, it would differ. I think.
Yeah, but at portfolio level.
The number of unsold stock, I think the question is unsold stock of launch inventory, right?
Yes.
This question is on, so I'll probably get back to you on the unsold stock. But fair to say, if you look at the recent launches, if I give you an example, last year, we did a launch in Tropical Isle, right? This was sold out with 0 inventory available. We did in Aristocrat, largely about 80%+ sold, and again, some amount sold out in Q4, so about maybe 10-odd%. Then we did Reserve. Reserve will have about close to INR 4,000 crore of stock available. So the recent launches, if you see anything which is INR 2,000+ crore, the residual inventory is about 10% with the exception of Godrej's Reserve. But historically, if you see very old projects so far, they were always launched in phases. And typically, in year one, we would sell in launch back then about 70%, and then sustenance would follow.
If you ask me, in this INR 27,000 crore projects which were launched in the H2 of last year in NCR, not much of sustenance available. We practically sold them out. But you'll have a good amount of inventory as new tower launches in Mumbai and other locations.
INR 30,000 crore launch will include that number as well, right?
Yes, yes. INR 27,000 crore is the guidance that we've given. It will include all of that. And launches, as you rightly said, will include the new tower launches as well.
Okay. Just following up on that as well, you've been selling a significant amount of what you launched in the year itself. How are you thinking about cost and pricing? Don't you want to keep some bit of inventory for later dates to realize better prices, or are you thinking that it's best to capitalize on current prices?
So if you ask me from a mitigation strategy and inventory management, I think it's mark-to-market, right? I mean, if we see, for example, North as a market, right, our ability to charge premium to our underwriting is very viable right now. So if I give you some examples, look at the launch of Q3, which was Aristocrat. Between what was our underwriting to the embedded profit that we have shown, it was almost close to 1.82x of our underwriting profit. So if we see that there is an immediate opportunity based on what we've underwritten, we can significantly enhance our profitability. Even the costs will not be as high, then our opportunity to capture the upside immediately.
But likewise, in certain markets, like if you see Bombay, while this has become Mumbai real estate's highest-selling project, and we had the opportunity, of course, to launch more inventory, but we're very conscious of launching inventory in phases because we believe there is far more price upside available. Of course, the launch itself saw much higher underwriting, much higher price performance versus underwriting. But we believe in that particular micro-market where there is hardly any supply, we would be able to command more premium. So finally, it's a call between immediate price upside opportunity available versus long-term costs. Wherever we feel the opportunity is better than it is, we kind of capitalize on it. But yes, there are times we also will do staggered sales.
Okay. That's helpful. Lastly, on the commercial portfolio, if you can guide us as well, what is your share of capital employed, and what is your share of net operating income from the commercial portfolio?
Total rental portfolio opportunity is about INR 1,100 crores. Godrej Properties' share, as a full potential, is about INR 270-odd crores. Of course, as and when we will hit OCs, this will continue to come. There will be some OCs; most of the OCs will hit in this year itself. So we have already got one OC last year, and this year we'll see the OC of all the residual four inventory. Our share of profit is different in different projects in Godrej Two. For an example, it is about 50%. And you would appreciate that we saw massive leasing uptake in Q4, almost close to 98%+ thereabouts. 94% is the current leasing of Godrej Two. In another commercial portfolio, which is the Taj The Trees, which is just recently opened, you would see that there is. This is 100% owned by Godrej Properties.
We've seen some fantastic occupancy, about 67%, a very high amount of EBITDA. This is just the start of the property. In terms of its operation, we hope to see even better returns in the coming years. Yeah, I mean, our commercial portfolio, frankly, is outperforming our own internal estimate because there's a very strong uptake in 2024. I think FY 2025 likely would be even more exciting.
Understood. Are you likely to take more commercial projects?
I mean, we have a partnership with Godrej Fund Management, as you would appreciate. It's very opportunistic to how we see the development. I think currently, we have a good focus on these specific projects. There's nothing immediately in our mind, to be very frank. Currently, with more execution towards ensuring the leasing, everything gets over. But fair to say, if we do see something very exciting coming quarters and all, we'll be, of course, evaluating.
There will be a growth, I think, in these commercial projects, including one this year for sure. But as Gaurav was saying, I think it's correct that the key focus for the year on the commercial side will be to stabilize and start operations for these four or five assets that are completing this year.
Understood. That's very helpful. And lastly, sorry, one more for you, Pirojsha. So the MOU is only applicable for Vikhroli and not for any other land parcels. There was Mohali, Hyderabad earlier. That's no longer effective now.
Correct. It's just for Vikhroli. I think some of that Hyderabad property and all is actually been I don't think in the system anymore. Yes, the MOU is for Vikhroli.
Okay. That's all from my side. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, I would like to remind participants to press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Saurabh Kumar from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations. So I had a few questions. The first is essentially on this economic interest. So we've seen this economic interest go up. Can one expect this to keep going up to, let's say, 90%, 95%, or do you think it's 85-odd% we peak out now?
No, I don't think it will keep going up. It's already at, I think, it was 85%. So it's already at a very high level. So I would not expect it to really go up from here. It might go up a little, down a little year-on-year basis, whether JVs are contributing, etc. But I'd say I would not expect it to start going towards 100 or anything like that. And you would have seen even this year, we did have some joint ventures added.
Yeah. So effectively, the EBIT which you're reporting at about the pro forma EBIT, if we adjust for this stake, then on a normalized project basis, you should have earned close to 30. Because of this, you are basically happy to earn 25%. That's the broad understanding I'm coming with, right?
Yeah. I think, again, it varies a lot on projects and structures beyond just JV and outright. But yes, I think there certainly is room to continue to improve margins given the kind of momentum we're seeing in the market.
So, typically, what we essentially do when we underwrite transactions agnostic to the deal structure are targeted imputed margin metrics are very similar. The only difference is that when you actually hit the market, if it is a 100%-owned project and the market is supporting our ability to significantly take the margin up, is the opportunity available. But whether we are doing any deal today or we'll do in future, whether it's a JV project or an outright, our return expectations are very similar when we underwrite a deal. It's not different for a JV project or outright for that matter.
Yeah. So that's what I was trying to call out. The underwriting margin which you're targeting is about 25% by deals, right?
Yeah, they are.
25 on gross.
Yes. In plotted, of course, it will be much higher. But yeah, ballpark what you're saying is right.
Okay. Got it. And in the underwriting, I'm assuming now you keep construction buffers maybe I mean, if you can quantify the amount of buffer you keep in your underwriting.
Yeah. We do try and keep but to be very frank, that's a risk to the market. In fact, if you see our pro forma, we've intentionally even shown you a scenario with 10% sort of a contingency exactly to help one get a perspective. Eventually, in execution, our ability to manage costs will either improve the returns or could largely reduce it. Fair to say, what we are publishing in terms of the range is what we aspire to hit.
Yeah. So this imputed is after factoring in the contingency or without the contingency on cost?
Yeah. I think there obviously is some contingency figured even in the base thing. Let's say there will be some escalation. That is part of the basic business planning. What we're saying is beyond that, so even the base number that we've provided as actual obviously has some factor of contingency for escalations and other things. We've just wanted to clearly show that this number is not something set in stone, that there is execution risk attached to this. So we've just tried to present a range which shows kind of if for any reason execution sees deterioration in this by, say, up to 10% of projected EBITDA, what the ratios would look like under such a scenario.
Yeah. I understand that. Okay. Got it. Just very quickly, moving on to business development. So you've done INR 20,000 crore this year. Next year is INR 20,000 crore. So I understand you have an order book. But in an environment where, let's say, property prices are going higher than land prices, won't you want to do more BD at this point of the cycle and slow down later, or? I mean, why were you taking such a conservative BD for next year at least?
Yeah. Honestly, I think our BD guidance is probably the one we pay the least attention to, if I'm being totally honest, because BD will really depend on what we are seeing during the year as a specific opportunity. There is not going to be any. If we see great opportunities, the INR 20,000 is not going to form any kind of upper cap, certainly. We've seen in past years, for example, in FY 2023, where I think we guided around INR 15,000 and ended up doing INR 35,000 or so. Certainly, I wouldn't look at this INR 20,000 as an upper cap. And we would hope to, if we see the right opportunities, go well past it. And you're right that I think just intuitively, BD growth should be at least at replacement level. If we see the right opportunities, I don't think we'll stop from taking them.
But at the same time, I think meeting our guidance is important to us. And on business development, we're quite clear that it's not something we do at any cost. So if we feel the opportunities are not correct for whatever reason, we won't be overly aggressive. And we do feel we have a good portfolio for the next couple of years in any case.
Okay. Got it. And on this Bombay, so you obviously scaled up nicely. But I mean, your market share in Bombay, there'll still be maybe you're between, I'm guessing, between number six to number eight. In terms of new project acquisitions also, Bombay doesn't seem to be that big this year at least. So how would you be thinking about this market? You've done very well in Delhi and NCR and some of the other markets. What's your strategy for Bombay, and is there a market share aspiration you have here?
Yeah. Essentially, even the guidance that we've given from a launch point of view, right, it's almost in fact, the highest launch volume that we talk about from a value point of view is in Bombay, which is about INR 9,500 crore. But coming on a bit of forward-looking and how we're looking at Bombay portfolio, if you try and see what is happening in Mumbai for the last few years, you'll try and appreciate the point of inflection. Bombay used to be sort of a dormant business for a couple of years back, about 1,500-1,600 crore. And FY 2023, this became almost double of that. For the first time, we crossed 3,000 kind of crore kind of a number. And what happened last financial year, it crossed 6,000+ number, 5,500 thereabouts.
So essentially, last year, we were trying to see that the acquisitions that we've done in FY 2022 and 2023, how are they going to play out? Because there were some seven high-capital, very important transactions we did, starting from projects like the Mahalakshmi project that we have, the Kandivali project we had, something in Azad Nagar, Thane, and the likes of it. Now, having seen that playing out really well, you would see continued momentum in Bombay. And if I just want to give you some very, very broad-level sort of pipeline indicators that we have, we have something in Carmichael Road. We have something very exciting finally coming up in Worli this year. We've done something in Bhandup as a planning. We have close to INR 4,000+ crore worth of inventory available in Kandivali project. And then there's something coming up also in Navi Mumbai.
So I think we have a very robust pipeline for this year. But I think the determination to do more is going to be a little more stronger from Bombay this year because of the last year's execution strategy kind of playing out well. So I think it's a bit of a thoughtful approach that we will continue every quarter to buy land where we feel we're very confident. Then if it crosses a particular threshold of capital deployment and booking value available in that particular micro -market in geography, we will wait for the launch to happen. And with success, we will, of course, double down and add more. And this has played out very well for us. If you see last year, it was last year was NCR, then it was MMR.
I think you will see a lot of action even in markets like South and Pune this year.
Okay. Got it. Very helpful. Just one last question. So on your residential project, so you have this annexure slide. So effectively, you have to get approximately, from what I can calculate, around INR 64,000 crore or INR 36,000 crore, INR 28,000 crore. Is that cash to collect? Is that number broadly my understanding of?
Yes. Correct. Correct, sir.
Okay. Thanks, Rajendra. And what is the cost to finish against it?
That we have not been giving that guidance. But then you can have a normal percentage applied, whatever is a normal construction. We always give that what is our expected profit. Now, with the pro forma, you can very well do a back calculation.
Yeah. But your land cost should be about 20%-25% of yours, right? I mean, that depends.
Depends. It can range anywhere from 15%-25%. Yeah. Depend on project to project.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. We'll take a next question from the line of Parvez Qazi from Nuvama Group. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for taking my question. Congratulations for a great set of numbers. My questions are related to the cash flows. In line with the sales, we have seen pretty decent improvement in our operating cash flows. I mean, if one looks at a quarterly basis, on an average, our construction and project-related outflows have been somewhere closer to about INR 2,000-odd crores. And therefore, there's a fair bit of volatility in our net operating cash flow depending on the collections. How do we see, on an annual basis, our operating cash flow going ahead? That's the first question. The second, I mean, in terms of our land-related CapEx, we have done roughly about INR 5,500 crores this year. How do we see that going ahead? Consequently, what would be our debt trajectory in future? Thank you.
Thanks, thanks. Let me try and break it up into sort of parts. Essentially, as you rightly said, the operating cash flow is largely coming out of collection growth. If you see our collections, CAGR, it's about 34.7. And what is more noticeable is to see the trend from FY 2022. So from FY 2022, our collections have almost doubled. And again, an interesting data point is to see points of inflection like last year. I mean, let's say last year FY 2023, the quarter four sales were about INR 4,000-odd crore. This year, the quarter four collections is more than that, right? So I think collections is following us sort of a lag of three to five quarters in every project because all our payment plans are construction-linked.
I think the idea is that if we continue to sell well and we ensure that the collections payment plans are very, very front-ended, your collections with a great efficiency will continue with the CAGR that we've already been seeing the last two or three years. In terms of operating cash flow, again, if you see it going at a 50%+ CAGR. Now, that being said, from a future and FY 2025 point of view, if you see this is one year, normally, we are a little more conservative in giving our collections guidance. Last year, we gave a collection guidance about INR 10,000 crore, and we delivered something INR 11,300-INR 11,400 crore. The year before that was a similar we had given a conservative and were able to exceed.
We've understood that the kind of sales we've achieved in FY 2024 is very, very high quality, which has given us the confidence to kind of step out and give a relatively much higher guidance, which is about INR 15,000 crore. And I think fair to say with that kind of guidance, we will see a continued good trajectory of operating cash flow and there beyond. Now, the second bucket, which is mostly on our ability to invest and how we are seeing debt and all, I think we've always maintained in every earnings call that our gearing ratio that we are comfortable is between 0.5-1:1. I think we were 0.72 in 2023. In quarter four, we've become 0.62.
In fact, this is the first quarter in the recent quarters where we have close to INR 700 crore of free cash or something, which previous calls, the questions were being asked. So I think if we continue to be prudent, we calibrate our investment strategy to opportunity, we will maintain 0.5 and 1:1 with a net debt never crossing above INR 10,000 crore. So I think it's purely the growth momentum, strong asset management, very strong quality of sales, and monitoring of that, which is resulting into this opportunity to have a continued trajectory of aggressive growth.
Thanks. All the best, Pirojsha.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phones now. We'll take the next question from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on the great year. First, again, on Vikhroli, so post Godrej Vistas' launch, we can see only one project which is left with Godrej & Boyce. So that's the only project where we have MOU in place right now. And then for the rest of the projects, the MOUs will follow up on a time-to-time basis. Is that understanding right?
No, the MOU is to the whole land. So we have an MOU in place for the whole Vikhroli land that Godrej and Boyce wants to develop individual parts of it. It will be developed through the DM. We have Godrej Vistas currently under development, as you rightly pointed out, as another identified parcel, which is in a planning stage and hopefully will be available to be launched immediately upon Godrej Vistas completing. There is, of course, a lot of other land that's been potentially come up for development. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on that in detail at this stage. As we get more visibility on exact plans from Godrej and Boyce, we'll, of course, share them after the correct time.
Sure. But anything that gets developed in the Vikhroli land would be through us as per the MOU, right?
That's right.
Okay. Perfect. And secondly, on the micro market, so NCR, MMR, we did well. What's your view on Pune and Bangalore? Specifically, FY 2025 does look great for Bangalore in terms of launches, right? So can we assume Pune sustaining the same run rate and Bangalore contributing to material growth next year that we are targeting?
I think you could actually count on both showing strong growth in the year ahead. I think as we look at INR 27,000 crore, we'd look to have another strong year in NCR and Mumbai. Gaurav spoke a little bit about the Mumbai pipeline. I had mentioned in NCR, this INR 10,000 crore number from FY 2024 was largely on the back of three launches. We have the potential for siix in FY 2025. In Bangalore, I think we have a very strong pipeline. Actually, it was a little bit of a timing mess where a big launch in particular slipped out of the year. Oh, we could have had a much better FY 2024 as well. We're quite confident of seeing a big number in Bangalore in FY2025.
Pune also, we have both a few new projects that we're looking forward to bringing to market that are already in the portfolio. And it will be an area of focus from a business development perspective as well. And just to add to that, of course, we also have an entirely new market which contributed nothing in FY24, which is the Hyderabad market. So between all of those, we think there's good visibility of us getting to this INR 27,000 crore number.
Sure. And underlying assumption for FY 2025 would be Mumbai and, I mean, MMR and NCR sustaining the run rate that they had done in FY 2024, or there is a growth incorporated for these two markets as well in those numbers? I mean, just asking from the perspective.
We see growth in these markets as well, certainly.
Just lastly, on the imputed margins, we see 27% kind of EBITDA margins. Was that margin tilted by a large contribution from NCR, either upside or downside? Or how do you expect these margins to this margin trajectory going ahead, considering other markets like Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad start contributing to a little larger extent?
I think it's perhaps a little bit dependent on market conditions. But I think overall, these are kind of margins we're expecting to see. I think 25%-30% is a reasonable expectation, as Gaurav said, project development might be a little bit higher than that. But I don't think the geographic mix will necessarily change things very significantly. It's more the project mix within each city. I think if you have more high-end projects and so forth or more upside-down projects, those can have an impact. But I wouldn't expect that if we do more in Bangalore, for example, this year, that that would have any kind of negative impact on margins.
In fact, just to add on, like I mentioned sometime back, whenever we underwrite transactions or returns, thresholds from underwriting is more or less the same for all markets. Just, of course, with the opportunity, finally, when you hit the market, your ability to take price upside in certain markets creates more acceleration. But I think from a long-term, if you try and see our aspiration and direction from BD is to have geographic-agnostic, similar kind of return profiles.
Yeah. Sure. That's helpful. Those were my questions. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take a next question from the line of Kunal Tayal from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. This is Kunal Tayal. It's great to see the pro forma P&L out there. My first question is, once again, going back to the imputed EBIT margin, just want to broadly understand, is the 27% number that you've registered for FY 2024 broadly synchronized with the kind of opportunities you see out there on an ongoing basis? I'm trying to understand if all the price increase, which has happened in several of the markets over the past 12-18 months, is it already captured in this 27%, or does it start to play out from here?
Yeah. I think this is on actual sales during the year. So the price increases across some of the projects would be captured in this. I think it's important to keep in mind that we have seen a price increase in the sector. But honestly, this is very much exactly what was kind of expected at this stage of the cycle. In fact, if you look at it, I think the price increase or at least the pace of price increase has been much higher in markets like NCR and Bangalore and some of the Maharashtra markets like Mumbai and Pune. We haven't really seen that level of price increase yet. So you might see those markets continue to pick up. So overall, I think this margin, at least in the near term, is sustainable. And with the project portfolio we have, we'd hope to maintain or improve that.
I understand. Okay. And then just again, going back to the geographical mix of bookings, NCR has broken through the ranks and contributing very nicely to the overall mix. Is that something which should continue for the next two to three years as well? I'm sure a few percentage points difference here and there is okay. But overall, are you looking at the skewed tilting in favor of any of the other markets in a big fashion, or this is a fairly representative trend that we've seen in FY2024?
Honestly, my view is this comes down to execution by the individual teams in those markets. There is no real constraint we see from an umbrella perspective to growth in any of them. Market share, even in NCR, would be relatively modest still. So in terms of being able to add to that through new projects, I think the opportunity remains immense. I think Kshitij himself was running the NCR business. The NCR team has been doing very well for many years. But certainly, there's no inherent right they have to 40%+ of GPL business. So they'll have to execute at a very high level. I think Pune teams are fully geared up and fully seen the kind of numbers NCR and Mumbai have had this year and certainly have stoked their competitive juices. So I think all teams have an opportunity. These are all big markets.
We have a relatively modest market share in all of them. We have an appetite for growth, and we think availability of capital to fund growth in all of them. So it will come down to ability to secure the right business development opportunities, ability to consistently execute at scale. I'd say if you're asking me my opinion for this year, I'd say the NCR portfolio remains very strong. And if market conditions there remain as they have been, that probably remains our largest market this year as well. But beyond that, I think it'll depend a lot on business development in NCR, our ability to replenish the portfolio strongly, and of course, how well the scale-up in some of the other areas happens. But overall, I think feeling pretty good about each of the key regions contributing strongly this year.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Lakhan from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. So on the cash flows, right, we've seen spend on the growth this year or other land has been higher than our operating cash flow. And I understand the OCF will go up as the collections rise. But I'm assuming the spend on the land too will increase as you do higher BD for the replenishment. So in terms of funding of this growth, are we confident this will come through the internal approvals, or would you look at raising capital at any point in time, especially equity?
Yeah. I think we have no plans for the moment to raise capital. We would never kind of entirely rule that out. But certainly, we don't have any immediate plans for that. I think Kunal, your point is very valid. But I think it's important to keep in mind that we are doing exactly what we said we'd do, which is we'll raise capital first. We'll then aggressively go out and do business development disproportionate to our then scale. And that will result in an increase in debt. And in fact, even when we were raising the capital, we said we think it would be mismanaging the business to operate at an under-leveraged level of 0.5:1 given the kind of opportunities. So we've done that. As a result, I think we've demonstrated that booking value growth can be very disproportionate through that strategy.
We've had now two years, one year of 55% growth in bookings, one year of 84%. If you look at, as we've shown in the chart, the share of bookings attributable to Godrej Properties, those growth rates increased further. So that is going to require investment. Now, if we slow that down to kind of more 20% kind of growth, the amount of business development you need to do as a proportion of your current size will not be as much as it was three or four years ago. So you will see that ratio improving. We are not, however, very fixated, as we've said multiple times, on very large free cash flow generation at this point. We could have obviously generated much more free cash than we did last year, had we chosen to invest a little less on business development.
We think from a long-term value creation perspective, rapid growth and market share gains is a much stronger lever for us than kind of in-year cash flow generation because I think that scale is giving us huge economies of scale, huge ability to generate cash on a much larger base. Hopefully, a quarter like the one we just had is indicative that when things are firing, you will see free cash even with a lot of business development. That's certainly the goal. We would quite intentionally not say that we will limit our business development to ensuring that it's lower than free cash because we don't see that as a requirement. We think the company has a strategic advantage in its access to capital, including debt at low cost.
That having some debt on the balance sheet is an entirely intelligent part of making the best of the opportunity for growth that's available in the sector. As Gaurav rightly pointed out, you don't want to get carried away with that logic and have a balance sheet that puts the company under any kind of stress, which is why we've indicated this range of 0.5:1 to 1:1. But honestly, if we were seeing free cash flow generation becoming so high that the debt was rapidly coming below 0.5:1, that would be a sign to us to look at increasing investment. But of course, also calibrating and making sure that we're comfortable with the investments. We don't want to just be making investments to make investments.
We have to be confident that we're making the right investment at the right time in the cycle, that we're confident that irrespective of how markets turn, we'll still be able to generate a re turn on those investments. So I think all of those are factors in our mind as we kind of look to calibrate business development versus free cash generation.
Understood. Thanks for that detailed explanation. A quick one on the deal again, the restructuring, rather. So on the non-compete, right, any restrictions for GPL on signing projects in, say, locations in central Mumbai or central suburbs, rather, which are in and around Vikhroli, outside of the land owned by G&B, any restrictions for us?
No. There are absolutely no restrictions on GPL of any kind to do any kind of property development in any part of the country or any part of the world for that matter. I think what some of the media has reported that there could be competition from another Godrej Group real estate company, etc., is also entirely inaccurate. As I've explained, the Godrej & Boyce will do development using the Godrej brand will be limited to lands already owned today, the biggest of which is, of course, Vikhroli, which will be developed through Godrej Properties. And the reciprocal or the business that they have is there for that we cannot enter is construction where we cannot use the Godrej brand even after six years, except, of course, when we're doing our own captive construction, there's no prohibition against that.
Understood. Thanks for clarifying, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohit Gupta from Fullerton. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. Quick, quick.
Hi. Yeah. Sorry. My question was the same as Kunal. You already answered. Thank you. Sorry.
Thanks, Pirojsha.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take that as the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to management for closing comments. Over to you.
I hope we've been able to answer all your questions. If you have any further questions or would like any additional information, we'd be happy to be of assistance. On behalf of the management, I once again thank you for taking the time to join us today.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.