Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the earnings conference call of Godrej Properties Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. I'm sorry. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and anyone who wishes to ask a question may enter star and one on their touchtone phone. To remove yourself from the queue, please enter star and two. Should you need assistance to join 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. Kshitij Jain of Godrej Properties. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Jain.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Godrej Properties Q2 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, 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' second quarter financial year 2024 conference call. I'll begin by discussing the highlights of the quarter, and then we look forward to taking your questions and suggestions. Our reported earnings for the second quarter showed healthy growth, with total income increasing by 75% to INR 571 crore, EBITDA increasing by 76% to INR 167 crore, and net profit increasing by 22% to INR 67 crore. For the first half, total income increased by 169% to INR 1,886 crore, EBITDA increased by 88% to INR 396 crore, and net profit increased by 91% to INR 192 crore. The demand for homes in India has continued to gain momentum during the quarter.
Favorable macroeconomic indicators, including India's GDP growth being the highest in the world, and the likelihood that interest rates are at or near their peak, are expected to continue to drive positive momentum over the next few quarters. The positive consumer sentiment driven by need for modern homes with better amenities as well as consumers' preference towards Tier 1 developers, also provide a strong opportunity. The second quarter was GPL's most successful quarter in terms of new bookings, with year-on-year growth of 109% to INR 5,034 crore achieved during the quarter. This was 24% higher than our previous best ever quarter, and interestingly, this quarter's booking figure is also nearly equal to our annual booking level three or four years ago.
This strong growth was due in no small measure to the extremely strong response to some of our new launches during the quarter. Godrej's Tropical Isle in Noida was GPL's most successful ever launch, achieving a booking value of over INR 2,000 crore from 1.5 million sq ft of area sold. Godrej's Parkland Estate in Kurukshetra was GPL's most successful plotted launch, achieving a booking value of INR 628 crore from 1.39 million sq ft of area sold. As a result, we have achieved 52% of our annual booking value guidance. With a robust launch pipeline for the second half of the financial year and resilient demand, we are confident of exceeding our annual booking guidance of INR 14,000 crore.
Cash collections have also grown by 23% year-on-year to INR 2,378 crore for the quarter, leading to net operating cash flow of INR 811 crore. For the first half of the financial year, we recorded cash collections of INR 4,332 crore and net operating cash flow of INR 929 crore, representing a growth of 24% and 25% respectively. We remain on track to achieve our guidance of 10,000 crore of cash collections during the financial year. From a business development perspective, it was a relatively muted quarter.
We added 1 new plotted development project in Nagpur with an estimated booking value of INR 725 crore, taking our year-to-date total to 5 projects with an estimated booking value of INR 7,175 crore, which is broadly in line with our full year guidance of INR 15,000 crore of estimated booking value addition. As highlighted in our call last quarter, with the business development we have already done over the past few years, we now have our strongest-ever project pipeline that can deliver our growth aspirations for the next few years. The most important objective going forward will be to get all of our recently added projects launched in the upcoming quarter. We believe this will dramatically accelerate our bookings and earnings growth trajectory in the years ahead.
We will, of course, continue to do targeted business development to plug holes in our current portfolio and ensure continued growth beyond the next three years. While GPL's primary focus will be to continue strengthening our market share and margins in the residential business, we have also made good progress in strengthening the non-residential component of our business. Our first hospitality development, Taj The Trees in Vikhroli, with 151 keys, opened in October. Our commercial projects in partnership with Godrej Fund Management are at an advanced stage of development, and we expect four of these projects across Bangalore, NCR, and Pune, with a total area of 4.3 million sq ft and a total steady-state annual rental income potential of INR 740 crore to receive their occupation certificate and start generating rental income in the upcoming financial year. On that note, I conclude my remarks.
Thank you all for joining us on the call. We'd now be happy to discuss any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touchtone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We'll take the first question from the line of Puneet from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on great results. My first question is: you know, you also talked about the ownership of projects like Taj and you still have the Godrej Two on your books. Is there a change in strategy, how you want to think about asset ownership, or is there a plan to ultimately sell these off?
Puneet, to be perfectly honest, there's not a you know 100% decision in either direction. I think we are interested in building up a steady income portfolio. But I think at the same time, if the right opportunities are available, we're not closed off to the idea of monetizing them and kind of redeploying for more rapid growth on the residential side. So there's no final decision here. I think we're though increasingly leaning towards retaining these assets, as we think you know both the hotel and the office assets that are under development, we think are Grade A projects that will continue to appreciate. So I think the likelihood is that we retain them, but that's not a certainty.
And should one think that you'll do more of these projects as well to build a portfolio around it?
Yes. I think we've, you know, on the commercial side, we've already got about 5, 6 projects under construction, and funds that Godrej Fund Management has raised towards these are fully deployed. We do expect that there will be additional funds. But the strategy on the commercial side is a little bit different for us than on the residential. I think on the residential side, we've been focused both on very rapidly gaining market share, on focusing across various price points in the market, and on outright ownership or high economic interest in projects. On the commercial, we have a more boutique strategy. I think we'd like to do only very high-end office developments. We're not focused on, you know, IT parks type of developments.
We're doing, you know, front office, headquarter type of positioning for these developments. We're happy to do them in a more moderate scale. So, you know, do one or two in a city at a time, get those leased and then start the next one. And we're quite clear that we would like to do those in partnership with other equity partners. You know, Godrej Fund Management has partnered with a couple of the largest commercial asset owners in the world, because we do think these take up a lot of capital if done entirely from our own balance sheet, and we wouldn't like to do that.
So I think this, this broad strategy of focusing on very high quality assets where Godrej Properties takes is in the range of sort of 20%, and growing, growing the portfolio in that manner is something that we, we see that, that would make sense.
Understood. That's very clear. Secondly, on your business development plans, is there a deliberate move to slow down business development, given that, you know, you have a huge pipeline already and focus more on project delivery, or, is this waiting for the right opportunity?
I think a little bit of both, I would say. You know, there's no question that if you have, say, the relative priority for us between business development and execution, has certainly shifted over the last two years. Where I think two years ago, it was fair to say, by far our number one priority was business development, because we didn't think the kind of growth that we wanted to deliver, we had the portfolio, at the time to do. We now feel clearly for the next two, three years, the kind of growth we want to do can happen entirely from projects already in our portfolio. Therefore, the most important objective and priority is launching those projects and executing them efficiently. That said, that's not to say that we don't want to do business development.
There clearly still we feel visible gaps in the portfolio that need strengthening, such as, you know, the number of projects in Bangalore or Noida, as a couple of examples. Those are areas that we will be continuing to target from a business development perspective. We'd also like to enter the Hyderabad market at some stage. But in most, in many markets, we feel we do have a strong portfolio, and it'll be a little bit more about controlling replacement level kind of business development rather than the, you know, very disproportionate business development we did, where, for example, last year, our business development future sale lock-in was about 3x of our India sales. We think this year we'd be comfortable with it being closer to 1-to-1.
Understood. Will it be right to assume that you're focusing now on expanding the market? You talked about Hyderabad. We've also seen you enter Nagpur in a big way again and Kurukshetra, rather than... You talked about replacing the existing projects. So should one think about expanding the market rather than, you know, gaining more share in the same city?
...No, not really. We have clearly distinct strategies for group housing and for plotted development. I think for group housing, we entirely want to focus on the top five, six markets, which are Mumbai, NCR, Bangalore, Pune, which we're already in, Ahmedabad and Calcutta, where we're in at a smaller scale, and possibly add Hyderabad to that. I don't think we are thinking of group housing beyond these for the moment. Whereas for plotted developments, I think given the greater challenge in finding the required sized land parcels and the quicker turnaround nature of these developments, we're open to a broader set of markets.
Understood. That's clear. Thank you so much. Lastly, if you can provide an update on the Gurugram issue, which you highlighted last year? Any progress there?
Yes, I think there's been, I assume you mean Godrej Summit. There's been good progress there. We've, we have been working with IIT Delhi and some expert consultants on identifying the solutions. The repair work is ongoing there. We've, we think, established a good rapport with the customers there, who now understand the situation. For any customer who wanted to leave, we've provided buybacks to them. That number is at about 60 total apartments out of the 1,100 or so apartments at the end of last quarter. We think that number may end up by the end of the financial year, being somewhere between 100 and 200, would be our best estimate. So of course, it's open again to everyone.
But I think good progress there, both on the operations side as well as on the customer management. We feel reasonably confident that the estimates we provided from a financial perspective will be accurate. We hope to get some of that back from contractors at some stage, but I think overall satisfied with the progress on that matter in this quarter.
Out of the INR 155 crore which you provided, how much has been spent so far?
We have spent around INR 10 crore-INR 15 crore as of yet.
So including purchase of 60 apartments?
No, no. This is on account of all the... You asked me about all of whatever we have provided, so we have provided for INR 155 crore. Of that, we have spent around INR 10 crore-INR 15 crore.
To purchase 60 apartments?
To purchase 60 apartments, we have spent around INR 50 crore. So no, it's more of a cash outflow, it is not a expense, so it will be a balance sheet item.
Okay. Just, just INR 50 crore? Okay. Great. That's all from my side. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Saurabh Kumar from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, sir. Please proceed.
Yeah, again, congrats on the very good quarter. I just have one clarification on the cash flows. You seem to have INR 40 billion of cash on the balance sheet. So just wanted to ask, how much of this is tied up in RERA as per account of all the projects?
Under RERA it is around INR 1,200 crore-INR 1,400 crore is under RERA. Rest, I know we have raised certain entities, non-bankable entities, for our future BD developments. The cash is on account of that.
Okay, understood. And one more thing, for all the BD that we have achieved so far, how much is yet to be paid?
Around INR 2,000-INR 2,500 crore.
Okay, got it. Thank you. That's all my... That answers my question. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies India. Please go ahead.
Hey, hi. So congratulations on the strong sales this quarter. I wanted to check on the launch pipeline that we have for the subsequent months, and you know, which are the large projects that we should be watching out for in the second half of the year?
Thanks, Abhinav. Essentially, we have a very robust pipeline emanating from the business development done till now. Some of the big ones that we are looking forward to are, the first one is the Forty-Nine, Gurgaon. This is in the process of advanced stage of approval, and idea internally is to try and do a sort of a Q3 launch. Then we have Godrej RKS that we had done in Chembur. That would be another upcoming launch. Then Mahalunge, we have the last cluster left, which is a sort of a premium parcel within the entire township. That is also under planning for launch. Then we have one phase of Ananda in Bangalore, in the Bangalore location. That's part of the pipeline. Then we have another plotted development in Mumbai.
These are like, you know, I would say, some of the launches that are more front-ended. And of course, you know, in our investor presentation, we mentioned a series of launches that are anywhere in the process, but these are ones that I would say looks to be more front-ended within that.
Right. Gaurav, also on pricing, so we have seen good progress clearly on NCR and... But, you know, what are your thought process here? Do you sort of envisage to take the pricing much higher from the current levels, or do you see this impacting demand at some point in time, so, you know, you will pause right now?
Thanks, Abhinav. Abhinav, you see, largely what we are seeing currently in NCR market, whatever price uptakes we have taken and what our peers have been doing, the market is not only absorbing it, you know, kind of, delivering all-time best ever sales for us. At least for the near term, it seems that there is some opportunity to continue with some amount of price expansion. But I think we'll have to take it more like a quarter on quarter kind of a view, you know, because it seems very much plausible that we will do continued highs, but difficult to predict what will be the long-term direction right now.
Right, and so one last question on the business development side. So, you know, I think last time we were hopeful of concluding couple of platform deals and shifting more to the JV side. So is it, is that still there or you think, I mean, the target is unlikely to be met for those platform deals this year?
So Abhinav, we are in discussions with some of those transactions, and, you know, you would appreciate at any point of time, what we are doing right now, we have a sort of a defined set of markets we want to invest. So we run parallel transactions, do term sheet closure, and finally, whichever happens to get concluded first, basis the title diligence, the overall diligence and the, valuations being intact, is the one that gets concluded. So fair to say that we do have a series of opportunities, but it'll all play out, basis the diligence that's going on right now, and, our ability to conclude whichever transaction happens first in that particular geography.
But to, to just add to that, Abhinav, I think to one of the ones you're referring to that we were at an advanced stage of last financial year, that did not meet diligence standards, so we were dropped at least one out of those, those two. But there are, of course, a large series of other deals that have arisen as opportunities since then.
Okay, sir. Thanks.
We'll take the next question from the line of Neel Mehta from Investec Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, sir, thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a great set of bookings this quarter. My first question was on plotted development. So I just wanted to understand, what is the margin profile typically like, for these products?
The margin profile, you know, depending on, you know, you know, your, you know, your margins can be, between 30% to even 50%. But it totally depends upon which city you enter and how much, you know, pricing you're able to command during the launch. But yeah, fair to say between 30%-50% is your margin, typically.
Got it. So, this, the Godrej Parkland Estate, project that we had in Kurukshetra, what, what would the margins be like for that one?
Something similar. I don't have the number offhand, but it will be within the range.
Got it. Right. And so my second question was on increasing our economic interest in some projects. So, you know, every quarter, we sort of indicate in which projects we have increased our profit share or taken our economic interest up. I just wanted to understand, what exactly are the considerations that we have when we sort of take these decisions, and what compels us to increase our profit share and take up more share from our JV and JDA partners in these projects?
It, frankly, it depends upon, you know, what is the current, you know, valuation to buy out we are seeing, as in, our entry price. If it seems very attractive, the risk seems, relatively lower than what you would see in a greenfield project, then the opportunity becomes very exciting. Because in a way, you have a more certain margin profile from a project. You're essentially increasing the economic interest in the project to secure more predictable, you know, profit margins going ahead. So that's the construct that which we approach. And, you know, it's been a very opportunistic. There's not really, frankly, a strategy as such. As and when we see these opportunities, we tend to take a bet.
Sometimes, you know, these projects have reached a target or the fund life or the project life has come to an end, so obviously there is a natural process to give an exit and close, to close the JV or a SPV. That exit also happened during that period. But as Gaurav said, these are more opportunities. If the value is good, and if we are able to give an exit and make a better value for Godrej Properties, those exits are evaluated at a regular interval.
Got it, sir. That, that makes perfect sense. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Ankush Mahajan from Axis Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks.
Yeah.
Sir, thanks for the opportunity. My question is related to last year we have a business development of INR 32,000 crore, and the first half is already INR 7,000-INR 8,000 crore. So I just try to understand, for this year, what kind of land payments that's outflow is there for the cash flow? And, what kind of land repayment we can expect in next two, three years? Basically, I want to try to understand the cash flow will become positive.
From these set of projects, you mean from the ones that we acquired now?
Yeah, overall-
I answered, I answered what is the balance land payment for the BD which we have already done. Now, to your second part, obviously, you know, what would be the balance land payment, we said that we have always given a guiding range, that we would want to be in 0.5:1 to 1:1 debt equity. And obviously as we go launch after and our operating cash flows also will keep improving, but it is very difficult to predict what would be my future BD outflow on the new business development opportunity.
Agreed, sir. So considering this quarter's pre-sales, are we increasing our guidance for the full year for pre-sales?
Not really. We've kept it intact. We had a relatively slower start in Q1, and now we are very confident on delivering on the guidance that we've given.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Parvez Qazi from Nuvama Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats for the great set of numbers. So two questions from my side. First for Gaurav, when you mentioned a couple of projects and which you said were front-ended, by being front-ended, you mean you are reasonably confident they'll get launched in Q3, whereas the other projects might get shifted to Q4? And the second is, would be great if you could update about the status of some of our major projects, like Ashok Vihar, Carmichael Road, Kandivali, et cetera, and Worli also. When do we—I mean, where are things with regards to their launch currently? Thank you.
Thanks, thank you for the question. See, the launches that I talked about are some of the ones that we're targeting, within Q3 or early Q4. I mean, at any point of time, you know, some of these are dependent upon last stage of approvals, and we tend to keep, you know, parallel set of backups, you know, so that in case one approval falls off, we at least have something. Sometimes you get unlucky, like in Q1, when, you know, some of our approvals didn't come, but usually we run many approvals on time. So most of them should happen in Q3, and some others are also being tracked for Q3 or Q4.
Coming to your second part of the question, you know, you know, within the year, if you ask me, it seems we, we will be very confident on the Carmichael, because, you know, we have moving very fast track on that. We are moderately confident also on the Ashok Vihar. It's been some good progress on some of the crucial approvals. On the Worli, I think it is a little premature for me to really comment. What I would say is that between the last 6-9 months, we've been able to see a very steady and robust progress in terms of the internal thresholds of timelines that we had targeted for ourselves.
I would like to put a timeline, whether it's a Q4 launch or not at the moment, but fair to say that, you know, it's progressing very consistently towards the speed and direction that we had estimated earlier.
Sure. Thanks and all the best for future.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Mohit Agrawal from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Gaurav, on the, My first question is just, you know, connected to the last question on Ashok Vihar. Could you elaborate a bit as to what is the key issue, you know, because of which, you know, things are getting slightly delayed? Is it the approval issue or, you know, anything else you could enlighten us on that?
It's basically, you know, approval issues only, and, you know, to just summarize in a articulate way, I'll say that in Delhi, unlike any other state, you have overlapping jurisdictions between departments, state, center. And, you know, there are a series of approvals that you take from one particular body, which becomes sort of a condition precedent for the other department to consider as fulfilled. And sometimes when you get, but you, for efficient run approvals, you run all approvals parallely. You know, say MCD approval runs parallely, tree cutting approval runs parallely, or EC approval runs parallely. So sometimes if you get stuck up in one approval, even if your other approval is more or less seems on track, you know, it's like circular reference, you go back to the first page, unfortunately. That's how the system currently works.
But the encouraging things I would like to point out is that there was, you know, there are like three or four critical path activity approvals that you need to make the launch ready. One of which was very kind of consistently stuck for us, you know, from one of the departments. That approval we've fortunately secured. But again, you know, there are other set of approvals that we have to achieve to make the project a realization. It's going on the right trajectory. Sometimes it's likely very frustrating because you do every part of the work and suddenly get stuck up in one approval, restart the same process, but I think that's the nature of the nature of the approval process that we are currently seeing.
Yeah, understand that. So, fair to say it is still on track for fourth quarter, Q4 launch?
Yeah, it seems, it seems there is a reasonable shot at it. You know, that's why I said, you know, I'm moderately confident. The only thing is, you know, you know, we just have taught me one thing on lighter note is to, not get overly aggressive and optimistic. So when we are running approvals as a sort of a, sort of a critical path activity. But yeah, reasonably confident that if we continue on what we've set for ourselves, we have a shot at it.
Okay, thanks. My next question is, for Pirojsha. You know, there were some news reports, you know, in the early October, saying that, you know, the promoter family is, you know, heading for a settlement. Is it possible to share some light on, you know, what kind of impact it can have on the existing DM arrangement in Vikhroli? And how do we see, you know, the launches in Vikhroli going forward? Anything that you can share on that?
No, I think there's nothing to be shared at this stage. You know, I think we have said many quarters ago that there are discussions with the promoter levels about the structuring of the group. Certainly, I think, you know, all I can say is that we are sure that, you know, in no way would any of this, if anything happens, affect the rights of GPL through the development management agreement for the development of Vikhroli, where we continue to look forward to that development. In fact, we're quite optimistic that in Q3 or Q4 we'll have, after some time, a new launch under the DM structure. So we're looking forward to that, but certainly no anticipated change.
Okay. That's all from my side. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A reminder to all the participants that you may enter star and one to ask questions. We will take the next question from the line of Manish Gandhi from Solidarity Investment Managers . Please go ahead.
... Yeah. Hi, Pirojsha, congratulations to you and the whole team from almost INR 1,000 crore a year, 10 years back, to now INR 5,000 crore in this quarter. So my question is, last 10 years, not taking away the great achievement of GPL, but last 10 years we rode the ride, mostly because of delayed projects. Not mostly, but we, we, we got help from that, delayed projects and many defaults. What do you see one or two things we are doing differently to stay at the top and delight our customer for the next 10 years?
Thanks, Manish. You know, I think it's a great question because, you know, we're very clear, and thank you for the kind words about the last decade journey, but we're very clear that, you know, what got us here over the last decade isn't going to get us where we want to and need to go over this next decade. So a lot of the focus has been around really looking very deeply at the kind of quality of projects. And, you know, I think it's fair to say that we feel in some areas this isn't where we want it to be. I think we've been focusing for a long time on the customer service aspect of project delivery.
Again, this, when we, when I say isn't where we want it to be, I'm not using it as, you know, our competition as benchmark. In many cases, we feel our quality and all of this is already above much of the competition. But I think the goal is to really become a world-class company from a quality of product perspective, both design and actual execution. I think that will be the biggest differentiator for us to ensure that we're actually able to take the company where we want to go. I think, you know, Gaurav and his team have been doing some fantastic work on ensuring improvements, and deeper thinking around how we can design the company and its processes and operating structure to be at scale, able to deliver this consistently.
So I'd say that's the number one focus. You know, from a financial return perspective, I think some of the things we've tried to do, as you know, are ensure that the projects we're developing as a group are in better locations, offering us the ability to have a little bit more pricing power. We've taken up our economic interest in the projects have also been some of the other focus areas that will also help us deliver this superior quality product that we aspire to do. But I think that will be the key area that we need to be able to at scale deliver consistently to kind of where we want to over this next decade.
Yeah. That's wonderful to hear, Pirojsha. And, of course, the second question is, I just want to know how the Godrej Living is shaping up. And, I think next- last two years, we might have handover projects through Godrej Living and might be maintaining few of the projects. So what customer data you have, is it, their liking is better than the outer agencies or how your internal metrics are working in that?
Yes, I think the initial signs are, I would try to call them only initial signs for now, but are very encouraging. We've seen very positive feedback from our customers when Godrej Living has taken over sites. We even had, you know, in, in relatively challenging conditions, like Godrej Summit, you know, where, where some of these issues were discovered. Godrej Living has since taken over the facility management there, and I think has played a critical part in helping, you know, ensure our customers are comfortable and confident. So we, we certainly feel that strategically this is the right move to ensure... Again, and, and the whole reason to have Godrej Living, you know, is twofold. One, we, one, we see it as an interesting commercial opportunity in its own right.
But clearly, I think the bigger area of attraction to us was that to do what we just talked about in terms of delivering a superior quality product and a superior service experience to our customers. We think this is a very critical part of the value chain, obviously, that you know that we can impact the actual use of the product post-delivery. So I think Godrej Living is intended to ensure that. For any of you not familiar with it, it's our new facility management 100% subsidiary, which we formed to ensure high-quality living experience to all our residents. And I think its early signs are very encouraging, but early going, of course.
Yeah. Okay, Pirojsha, thank you so much, and keep going. Yeah.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Lakhan from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good evening. I am just going back to the question on Godrej Summit. So just wanted to understand what are the, you know, the nature of construction amendment that we have undertaken? I mean, we had highlighted that there was a corrosion of steel issue over there, and I mean, it seems like a structural issue in RCC itself. So, you know, just I wanted to understand what kind of amendments, amendments can we possibly make to resolve this issue? And a related question is like, maybe we did spend about INR 50 crore on for those 50 units. Do you see a situation where we may have to return money to all these 1,100 apartments?
... So, but you know, I think that the technical subject of how the repairs will be done is beyond the scope of this call, if we have to take you through it. But essentially, there are ways to insert materials into the structure that prevents the steel from deteriorating and allow the building to perform at its expected design life. This is not the first project, you know, certainly not globally or in India, that has faced this issue. There have been other projects by major developers in India where this issue has been faced and actually successfully brought under control. So the technical experts who are advising us are very confident that that can be done, and we're in the process of following their advice on this.
We don't anticipate, Kunal, that all customers will ask for this buyback, as you know, it is, I should clarify again, open to all of them. So, we are of course open to that possibility, but the likelihood of that does not seem very high at the moment. Currently we stand at about 60 actual buybacks done, as I mentioned earlier. I think the end number we expect is, as a best guess estimate, would be between 100-200. This is also not, in our view, going to be a totally open-ended question. I think we're still finalizing the, you know, exact methodology, exact timelines for completion of the repair work, exact, you know, details that the customers would like to have before making a final decision in some cases.
But our sense is that within about six to nine months, we should be at a stage where we can start saying that, "Okay, you know, if you want the buyback, it, please take it now. Otherwise, you know, that offer is closed." And our sense is that, that stage, our best guess is that we would end up with between 100 to 200 buybacks. It is, of course, possible that it is more than that. It could be less than that, but that's, that's what we anticipate right now. As Rajendra mentioned earlier on the call, you know, we feel that we've done it post the repair work and post giving everyone strong confidence that the structure is fully safe, and it will perform to its intended design life.
We anticipate being able to recover the full expenditure of these buybacks.
Sure. Sure. Fair enough. My second question is on the Mamurdi project. We increased the stake to 93%. Just want to understand how much consideration was paid for this?
Consideration is, Kunal, it's a book value, whatever was due to them, because it was a JV, profit sharing JV. So, it was, you know, they have invested in the form of equity, so equity and debentures. So debentures was repaid, equity was at the book value, a nominal amount, not a very great amount.
Then why, why not 100? Why, why the-
That is, there is some bit of a tax planning which we have done, and technically it is 100%, but there is a bit of tax planning because of which we have to keep that 7%.
Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you.
Bye.
Participants, to ask questions you may please enter star and one now. We'll take the next question from the line of Harsh Pathak from B&K Securities . Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Hi, good evening, and congratulations on the strong bookings for the quarter. So my question is on this buyback of the apartments that you are doing. So, are we doing at the same rate as the, which the apartments are sold, or at, are they at the prevailing rates?
We are paying on offer basis at the time of announcement, the last average price of the apartments sold in Godrej Summit or the purchase price for the owners, is whichever was higher out of those two. The average price works out to about INR 6,000 per sq ft of the buyback done so far.
Sure, sure. That, that is clear. And, regarding this launch, you know, Ashok, we had, you know, like, a few questions, like it was highlighted, that there might be some slip or, you know, some here and there. So if it slips beyond FY 2024, are we still confident of achieving our INR 14,000 crore of bookings guidance?
Yes. I think we, as Saurabh mentioned, you know, I think our typical experience, not just, you know, this year, but any year in our industry, you look at our initial start of year guidance for launches, you will typically have some new projects getting added, but once anticipated at the start of the year, you certainly have some that slip out because of regulatory approvals not coming through. So I think that's been a consistent trend. I think the guidance is obviously made keeping that in mind and understanding that we have to have backups in place and that this guidance is a form of commitment to the market and something that we must achieve as we create. So we are confident of delivering the INR 14,000 crore number, irrespective of what happens with any individual project.
But certainly I think we're all, you know, please be assured, extremely focused on making sure Ashok Vihar does not slip out. I think it forms, that we're eagerly looking forward to getting to market. You know, I think the delay so far is very frustrating, but actually, as soon as we're able to launch the project, you know, there might, in hindsight, be an upper worth being given how much the market has strengthened over the last couple of years. But we, we're fully cognizant that now is the right time, to hit the market with a project like this, and we'll do anything and everything we can to make sure it happens this year.
All right. That is encouraging. And you know, regarding your opening comments, and you know, like you you know just mentioned that you know, the demand remains very strong. We have a very strong launch pipeline as well. So how do we see the you know, next two, three years of growth? Can we maintain the same rate of growth rate, same growth rate, or maybe this can you know, get enhanced further? How should we look at it?
... Well, no, I don't think, you know, last year we grew at just 50%, so I think if we have a very good year this year, we could again grow very fast. But obviously I don't think we can sustain those kinds of growth rates. I think long term, what we think is certainly achievable is a 20% kind of growth rate. It might be a little bit more than that last year. You know, I think if things go well this year, it's possible that we- it could be better than last year. But I think 20% is a, is a kind of growth rate we'd like to deliver over the long term, so maybe a decade or more.
Because, you know, I think there are big opportunities in the sector, both from the sector itself continuing to grow, and of course, incredibly strong market share gain opportunities for the larger players who have significant advantages within the sector, but have typically single digit kind of market share. So, there's big opportunities for continued growth, but I think the kind of explosive growth we saw last year and you know, hopefully it continue this year, may not obviously sustain at the same rate.
Sure, Pirojsha, that is clear. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies India. Please go ahead.
Hi, so thanks for taking the follow-up. On the cash flows and balance sheet side, so, you know, couple of things. A, Op CF has improved this quarter, but, do you see this sustaining or, you know, maybe pick up from here?
I think it'll pick up from here considerably, Abhinav. If you look at something like, I think we've demonstrated now we're able to construct these group housing projects in two to three years consistently. A project like this will be quite high margin if you look at our land cost to, you know, selling price, I think it's all quite attractive. We certainly, if you look at the launch guidance, we have projects like Ashoka, several more projects in Gurgaon. We have some large projects we hope to launch in Mumbai, several projects in Bangalore and Pune. So there's no question in our minds, we'll be gearing up for a much, much stronger operating cash flow generation performance next year, and looking forward to making that a reality.
Right. In that context, I mean, where do you see the gearing level settling? So, you know, we are at... I think your broader guidance is 0.5-1, but I mean, next six months, where are we headed as such?
I, I would broadly expect, given, you know, as I mentioned, this INR 2,000 crore of land outflow, we, we think it will continue to inch upwards, probably for the rest of this financial year. And next financial year, when we think, you know, operating cash flow should be higher than business development initiatives, again, besides ramp of business development very strongly.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manoj from Geometric. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations for doing the tremendous BD in last three years, and seeing the trending prices in land, it seems like Godrej has done a exceptional and brilliant job, and I think this will lead to great pre-sales and desired ROI. I visited the Summit site, and even though people were facing little bit inconvenience because of the issue, but they are very appreciative of the fact that the builder has come forward to solve the problem. My question is, like you have anticipated around 100-200 buybacks in this project, have you anticipated how much money you will have to spend to correct this correction of the problem?
That is at INR 10-15 crore have you spent, how much do you think it will turn out to be?
I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, the line for the management has been disconnected. Kindly stay connected while we try to reconnect. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for patiently holding. The line for the management has been connected. Mr. Manoj, may we request you to kindly repeat the question, please?
Okay. I said congratulate Pirojsha for the last three-year BD. I think that has been done with great pricing and great volume. I think this will help in pre-sale and achieving our desired ROI because of buying at very great prices. When I visited the Summit site, the investors and the people who are living there were very appreciative of the fact that the developer has come forward to correct the problem. My question is, like you are anticipating 100-200 buybacks, can you anticipate how much money we would be spending to correct the problems which are in the project? Like you said, INR 10-15 crore has been spent already. How much do you think we will end up in total?
I did last quarter for INR 155 crore for this expenditure, of which, as Rajendra said, about INR 10-15 crore has already been incurred. Separately from that, we anticipate INR 100-200 crore will be required for the buyback, but both we think we will be able to fully recover the money spent on, because we think we can sell the apartments once the repairs are complete at the same price.
... Okay, you have provided INR 150 crore. Do you have any idea how much we will actually, now seeing the situation, how much work has been done on INR 10 crore-INR 15 crore? How much money it would be actually to spend any,
The estimated expenditures are still INR 155 crore, which is what we provided. So no change in estimate over there.
Okay. My second question is, if you see your con calls in the last five, seven years, you have given passing reference to China real estate and how we are trying to emulate the success, the way the number of volumes have been done in the developers by China real estate player. So where we are in that journey, as an Indian real estate, also as well as Godrej Properties, and what can help and affect this journey? Thank you. That's my last question.
Thank you. Well, first, I should certainly clarify that, you know, there are both positive and negative lessons to take away from the China real estate story. So I think hopefully we can take away the positive ones without, you know, learning any of the excess debt and overbuilding issues. But I think our whole, whole idea of kind of studying the China market was saying that, look, as we look to, you know, take the company the next 10x from its current scale, that hasn't been done probably by a real estate developer anywhere in the world other than in China. And the big developers there, at their peak, were selling 500-600 million sq ft a year and being able to deliver consistently those projects at, you know, within a couple of years at scale.
So I think the, the lessons were more around that. I think a lot of the focus, you know, a lot of the time of the management goes in ensuring, again, what we were talking about as part of the earlier question, around this, this journey of scale-up we want to do, how do we first make sure that, you know, the quality expectations that we have from the Godrej brand, the customers have from the Godrej brand, the kind of design and execution that we want to do, how do we make sure we do it on a consistent basis at this scale? And I think a lot of energy is going into that. There are several steps we've taken as an outcome of lessons we've learned from, you know, studying the Chinese companies, including how we've structured the organization.
We have fairly independently managed teams in each of the geographies we operate in. Even our project-level teams have you know some amount of control over overall PNL of their projects. So I think the structure that we've used to set up the organization we think is built for scale. And you know we obviously have to keep learning and keep tweaking it, but we do think fundamentally this is the best structure to facilitate large-scale growth that we anticipate. We're also putting in a lot of effort to make sure we have the right processes in place, the right capabilities in key areas to ensure this delivery, again, at the level of quality we want and at significantly higher scale.
Okay. Thank you, and best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Zaveri from Dhruv Gems . Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I just wanted to know the status of Riviera Kalyan. From what I see, the sales have been quite slow. Generally, all the other projects are doing exceptionally well. So just an update on that one.
Thanks. Yeah, basically, this is a sustained project. We are looking forward to doing the sustenance activation quite soon, and once that activation kicks in, when you will see the booking value grow. The good problem for us right now in Mumbai is we've seen a series of approvals coming, some of the projects on the South Mumbai side. We just happen to be in the launch calendar little front-ended, but once we do a sort of an activation in Kalyan, you'll see these numbers also changing.
The second question is on the Kandivali launch. So I just want to know, what is the planning for that project, which that is also quite a large project, and if you must be knowing, the Oberoi guys which rule the Goregaon, the Kandivali area, they have made exceptionally good quality projects and they are selling at premium prices. So are we on the same lines or what is the planning for that Kandivali project?
Yeah, I mean, we have a very interesting design that we've worked out, and very, very confident that projects will really strengthen the Mumbai portfolio for us in terms of a point of inflection. Our product strategy is quite unique. We have a very fantastic USP. Now we're working on the approvals, and fair to say when this will come into the market, will be one of the most prominent and promising launches from our side.
So that, that is, in our Q4, or should go into the next year?
It's a Q4 launch.
Q4. Okay, my last question is that after adding so many projects, where do we see the company in 4-5 years down the road? Can we expect around INR 30,000 crore of top line and this kind of ROE, ROC in the next 4-5 years?
Yeah, fair to say, the market is presenting us the opportunity. And if you see the way we've been growing the last couple of quarters, it's fair to say that is the direction we should hopefully reach. And the good thing is that entire portfolio that we had, especially acquired in the last eighteen odd months, thereabout, is all hitting launches and with a very good price expansion. So our entire focus towards profit expansion and long-term return on equity is getting strengthened by the execution that we're able to deliver in all these launches.
My last question is that if I wanted to ask you, in the last real estate cycle, the developers raised a lot of prices and then it affected the sales eventually. So this time, I think we would have to balance it out both, so that, you know, we don't raise the price a lot, and it doesn't affect our sales, and it continues the growth of the company.
... Yeah, I mean, you know, you're right, that it has to be sort of an adequate and logical price jump. And if you see, most markets in India are not in the kind of very, very massive price growth like we are seeing in NCR. But the interesting thing is, unlike the previous cycle, all of this demand, especially in our project, we are seeing from end users. We are not seeing speculative demand at all. We don't, in fact, hardly do any marginal, maybe INR 20-INR 30 crores we might have done as a sort of a payment plan with some flexibility, but everything is very, very tightly controlled construction-linked payment plan. It only attracts, you know, end users. Our timelines for construction have reduced significantly from the earlier days.
So, you know, the product proposition and the prices that we are seeing with the kind of payment plan, it makes it a non-starter, especially the kind of lock-in period we build in our BDs. It becomes a non-starter for an investor to participate. So till the time you have end user and you are calibrating your price and you're testing the market very regularly, you will see continued demand. But yes, anything is done, you know, erratic and, you know, and assuming, I'm gonna assume that it continue for perpetuity and eternity, that doesn't hold. So yeah, we will of course take cognizance of market realities and calibrate before every launch. But currently, if you ask me opportunistically, we're seeing good, good ways to increase both price and volume growth, which we are trying to focus upon and even deliver upon.
Okay. Any update on Bandra and the Panvel project? If I see, now it's a huge project, around 8 million sq ft, I think. So are we delaying it purposely for the maybe the airport opening, all that, so that we have more traction, or what is the idea behind that one?
So not really airport per se, but as you would know, that you know, the new Trans Harbour Link is about to get opened, and we believe it will create a very good upside from a pricing point of view. And you know, Panvel will almost get repositioned because the travel time that you take from Panvel to any SBD, CBD location will drastically reduce. So we want to enjoy that upside, and our launch plans are getting ready and on track for that. On Bandra, I think it's still work in progress. You know, we've not put up in an aggressive launch calendar yet, so I won't say that it is anything from a launch point of view within the year. But yeah, there is a continuous focus to you know, take that project also to its logical trajectory.
Okay. Thank you, and congratulations for a good set of numbers.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
I hope we've been able to answer all your questions. If you have any further questions, do let us know and we'd be happy to be of assistance. On behalf of the management, thanks again, and Happy Diwali to all of you. And for any of you cricket fans out there, thank you for taking the time to join us despite the India match. All the best.
Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.