Oceania Healthcare Limited (NZE:OCA)
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Earnings Call: H2 2022

May 20, 2022

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Oceania Healthcare FY22 Results Announcement Conference. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brent Pattison, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Welcome everyone to Oceania's results presentation for 31 March 2022. It has been a significantly dynamic and rewarding year for Oceania. I wanted to start by congratulating our team for their outstanding efforts. We have stood shoulder to shoulder through the continued disruptions of COVID, Omicron, and more variants in my high school periodic table to deliver outstanding resident experience and keep each other safe. Thank you, team. There are a bunch of highlights that Kathryn and I will touch on, and these are even more relevant as we reflect on the context of a challenging macroeconomic environment. Turning to slide two. Underlying EBITDA of NZD 76.2 million is 16% up on prior corresponding period as a result of strong sales momentum, high quality new build form, and rewards from our intentional investment in premium revenue.

Our Village segment has delivered strongly with a 30% uptick in deferred management fee income. We've observed average resale margins of 21% and average new development margins of 28%. Importantly, a lot of our success in the 2022 year, circa 64%, has been achieved outside the Auckland region. On average, our prices achieved are up 27% PCP to an average of NZD 637,000. Nearly 60% of our care portfolio consists of premium beds or care suites and delivered us just short of NZD 20 million of premium care revenue at NZD 18.9 million, up 24% on prior corresponding period. Continuing with highlights. Our traditional business development pipeline is very strong with nearly 2,000 units and care suites to deliver over the next 5-6 years. 71% of that pipeline is already consented.

In the 2022 results, we delivered 171 high-quality ILU product across 5 sites, and we look forward to strong sales capture in our 2023 year. Our Gracelands and Stoke Village product was 100% pre-sold. We have a lot of construction underway, with 550 units and Care Suites being built across 6 locations nationwide. I'll talk to the premium M&A and greenfield land acquisition progress in the next couple of slides. We have an eye on sustained growth, and we are pleased to announce our intention to lift our build rate to 300 per annum from here. In order to do that, you need a strong balance sheet. We've been quietly getting on with securing a NZD 500 million five-year facility.

This is an increase of NZD 150 million, and this takes us out to full year 2028. It also provides us with NZD 290 million of headroom following the settlement of our recent premium M&A. We're certainly very pleased to reward shareholders with a NZD 0.023 per share final dividend, bringing total dividends to NZD 0.044 per share. This is a 55% payout ratio, and the DRP will be in operation. Moving to slide four. We have some new faces joining the team. We're certainly very pleased to have secured Andrew Buckingham, who will be known to a lot of you from his extensive and senior leadership roles in the New Zealand and Australasian property scene. Andrew's already reshaped our portfolio, allowing us to lift our build rate and provide maximum optionality going forward.

Andrew has a proven background in curating, developing, and delivering premium built form. We're excited about what Oceania will build in the future. Rob and Peter have both joined as directors of our board and are well-known and highly respected and accomplished executives and directors. Rob is adding his expertise to our audit committee and Peter to our development committee. Pleasingly, in between various lockdowns, Peter and Rob have been able to get out to some of our key development sites, our operating sites, and to meet our fantastic team. Growth and performance. Oceania listed in 2017, with the majority shareholder, Macquarie, selling their final stake in 2020. The business has traditionally been a brownfield developer with disrupted earnings and a focus on care.

Over the last year, we've been actively building out our strategy for the next five years, including engaging with our stakeholders, residents, board, and senior leadership team. Oceania is set up for growth and performance. It has pivoted to some new proof points which are additive to our existing strong organic business and deliver on our commitment to reimagine the aged care and retirement living experience in New Zealand. This starts with a great offer. Alongside our remaining brownfield pipeline, we are curating and designing premium properties on greenfield sites. Examples include Waimarie Street, Franklin, and Bream Bay. We will have a higher weighting towards ILU development in the next couple of years and maintain our presence in key premium locations nationwide. We also have maximum optionality in the portfolio to allow for changes to product typologies and locations to meet consumer patterns and strong demand profiles.

We certainly have a commitment to lift our annual build rate to greater than 300 units per annum. Great resident experience is at the heart of what we do for our more than 4,000 residents. We've continued to innovate and build on our industry-leading clinical model of care, including the introduction of nurse practitioners. We delivered outstanding outcomes for our residents and their loved ones, including their wellbeing during the challenging COVID pandemic. We have a focus on key service moments for our ILU residents and the introduction of a tailored approach enhancing their experience and services. We build critical infrastructure, and we deliver essential services with a warm smile every day. Our team of over 2,900 people are the glue in making this happen. We've lobbied hard on industry matters such as pay parity, immigration settings, workforce development, and funding.

We are building a culture that enables our people to grow their careers, forge great friendships, and make a real difference to the lives of residents. We continue to demonstrate a capability to grow the business through premium living experiences, value-accreted M&A, accelerated pipeline, new resident services, and the pursuit of best practice in ESG and sustainability pursuits. Let's look at our developments. It's been a busy period for building. We have completed 171 high-quality premium ILU units and villas across four growth locations of Auckland, Tauranga, Hawke's Bay, and Hamilton. All villa product delivered was 100% pre-sold, and our stage 2 flagship developments at Bayview and Awatere have been well-regarded by the market. The 113 Care Suites at Lady Allum will now fall into the first half of full year 2023.

A small delay brought about due to the COVID lockdowns in Auckland. What do we have under construction? In addition to the 171 ILUs delivered in FY 2022, Oceania has been developing capability to deliver maximum optionality across 8 sites in 6 locations with 550 units and Care Suites currently under construction. This is an increase of 156. These developments are all fixed-price contracts, with 300 units and Care Suites coming on stream in full year 2023, giving us the confidence around our annual build rate guidance. If we look at a couple of acquisitions and what they've added to the pipeline, the acquisition of Waterford and the premium greenfield land bank at Franklin have delivered strong additional ILUs and Care Suites to our pipeline, as well as attractive future earnings.

In the 12 months since owning Waterford, we have progressed our development plans and increased the yield of consented apartments in the first stage to 50, up from originally 24. Overall, we will deliver 110 units and care suites on a fantastic site. With the additional 1.8 hectares bought at Franklin, we are well advanced on resource consent for 280 units and care suites on what now is a 7.9-hectare site. Recent M&A acquisitions. You would have heard us talk on the ninth of May about our recently acquired premium retirement living apartment building, Remuera Rise. The 8-story 58-apartment and 12-hospital-bed complex is fully occupied. It has strong embedded value of approximately NZD 560,000 per apartment.

Equally importantly, it provides a future feeder for us for our quality care suite offerings at Mount Eden, Meadowbank and St Heliers. On the ninth of May, we acquired Bream Bay Village. This is in Ruakākā, Northland, and has been identified by Oceania as a key strategic growth corridor for Aucklanders and for Whangārei residents. The high-quality existing villa site comes with an option to acquire 6.7 hectares of adjacent land. The plan change is progressing well, and we expect to have an outcome in the coming months. Extensive design and planning works have already been undertaken, and our plans indicate 124 additional villas can be built on the site. While this is not yet in our pipeline numbers, we expect to get underway once the plan change becomes operative.

Finally, for me, before I hand over to Kathryn, our CFO, this time next year, we will open our magnificent property in St Heliers, Auckland. Welcome to The Helier. The artist renders show the intelligent and high-quality design and attention to detail. It is obvious we have had an eye to The Helier blending seamlessly into the surrounding neighborhood. The property boasts 79 of arguably the best apartments in Auckland, with commanding views of Auckland City, Northern Beaches, Rangitoto and the Waitemata Harbor. We will also be offering private paying care services in our 32 premium care suites. We will be delivering superior resident services and experiences such as concierge, EV cars, 24/7 dining, a wellness center, spa, guest services. As well as warm, sophisticated, and beautifully curated spaces, all as part of our commitment to reimagining retirement and aged care living. Thanks, everyone.

I'll now hand over to Kathryn, our CFO.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Thank you, Brent, and thank you everyone for dialing in today. Those of you who have had a chance to sneak a peek at the slides will notice the format of my section has changed a little from prior years. Oceania prides itself on the level and quality of information which are provided in our financial statements and investor documentation. This year, we have continued to provide the detailed information which you are used to, and much of this is included in the appendices to this presentation. The results continue to be extremely important to us, and I will walk through these over the coming slides. Before we do, however, I wanted to update you on what we have been doing in the environmental, social, and governance spaces, and I'll start with slide 13.

ESG is integral to our business model and is a key enabler to our growth moving forward. Our sustainability focus starts with our purpose, grounded by strategy through our four key pillars, which Brent touched on earlier. This year, we've spent a lot of time in the foundational aspects of integrating sustainability into the business and really getting to the heart of what ESG is really about for us, Oceania, as framed through our enablers of people, planet, and prosperity. While we have refreshed our materiality matrix this year, a copy of which can be seen in the annual report, the fundamentals remain the same. We will grow sustainably, focused on reducing our carbon emissions and waste. For example, we are currently building to 6 Homestar principles and have achieved a number of 6 Homestar ratings across the portfolio.

Which brings me to my next slide, detailing some of our ESG highlights from the last financial year. A new role has been created during the year, that of Head of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, to help take our ESG agenda further. We are thrilled to have on board a senior executive in that role focusing on our roadmap. Some of our key milestones achieved in the year are highlighted on slide 14. These include the scoping of the TCFD framework and roadmap, a 2-3-year journey for us which will focus in the immediate months on the appropriate governance aspects. The refresh of the materiality matrix, which we started back in 2020, looking at what matters most to our key stakeholders.

In parallel, we continue to focus on both food and waste diversion and many of our recent trials, such as vermicomposting and energy-efficient methods, will be rolled out over more and more of our sites. It is important to us that we are mindful of ESG impacts and drivers through our growth journey. We will be utilizing our website as the main platform to update you with progress, and we'll update this website over the coming months in order that everyone can keep up to date. We look forward to sharing our steps with you throughout the coming 12 months. Before we move to the results, I wanted to spend a little time to talk about what we have done in the last 12 months in preparing our balance sheets and our capital structure for growth.

It started with a capital raise back at the start of the financial year in March 2021. At that time, we raised NZD 100 million through an oversubscribed placement and share issue. That allowed us to execute on the acquisitions of Waterford and Franklin, which Brent talked about earlier. It also placed us with the lowest gearing in the industry at that point of time and put us in a position where we will be able to fund the latest acquisitions of Remuera Rise and Green Bay fully through debt. Prior to Christmas, we raised NZD 100 million through our second bond at a coupon rate of 3.3%. This bond was again oversubscribed with significant interest, as with our first NZD 125 million bond, which was at a coupon of 2.3%.

Over the last few months, we've been working with our banking syndicate to bring forward our refinance. With uncertain times ahead, it was extremely important to us to secure certainty through our funding and finalizing our work on positioning our balance sheet for growth. We are pleased to say that we have secured excellent facilities with our banking syndicate, and we have confirmed an increase to a commitment of NZD 150 million, bringing our total commitment to NZD 500 million. A five-year tenure to be applied to the entire bank funding and competitive pricing, keeping our margins low for the next five years. In times where interest rates are rising rapidly, we are extremely pleased to have secured these positions early, bringing our total debt facilities, bonds and loans to NZD 725 million.

As at the 31st of March 2022, we have headroom of NZD 354 million, and we are strongly positioned for growth. Moving now to slide 16 in trading highlights. At a high level, we are pleased to have seen further increases to our premium revenue year-on-year, with NZD 52.3 million of premium revenue recognized in the year. Our journey to premiumization of care started earlier and prior to us listing on the NZX. We are now truly starting to see the fruits of our labor coming through in this area, and I will touch on this in more detail later. Despite Auckland in particular having a significant number of weeks spent in lockdown as a result of COVID-19 outbreaks, we've seen strong sales, a level of 450 units and Care Suites over the 12-month period.

This comprised 266 resales and 184 new sales. I will touch on the margins shortly. Underlying EBITDA of NZD 76.2 million is a 16% increase to the prior comparative period, driven largely by the increases in premium revenue, strong sales and resales, and through the accretive acquisition of Waterford, which comprised NZD 3 million of operating revenue in addition to increased capital gains from the site. At our interim results, we highlighted that our developments for FY 2022 were moving to the region. More recently, we have completed developments in Tauranga and Hamilton, adding those to those completed last financial year in Nelson and Christchurch. Specifically, 53% of the new ILU sales were regionally based, and 82% of the new care suite sales were in the region.

With more and more stock coming online across the country, we're seeing our development margins moderate slightly, but pleasingly, we're still seeing strong sales across the board. Slightly less units have come to market in the last 12 months as a result, our volumes have continued to moderate. We experienced 66 Care Suite sales and 118 ILU sales over the last 12-month period. The resulting total development margin was NZD 32.9 million, an average of 28%. Average apartment prices of NZD 982 thousand in the prior comparative period included a number of Auckland apartment sales. We've seen increased apartment sale prices this year, noting that the regional biases reduced the average price to NZD 922 thousand. What we have experienced in the last 12 months is consistent with both our expectation and what we have signaled to the market previously.

With a maturing portfolio where the mix is moving from premium Auckland apartments to a more regionally based portfolio, we are seeing fantastic capture across the region. Finally, on this slide, we have provided additional information with regards to the affordability ratio of our residences. When setting price, we are constantly monitoring and benchmarking the prevailing house prices in the catchment areas of each of our sites. As you will note from the right-hand side of the slide, we have significant headroom with the affordability ratios ranging from 59% for apartments and villas down to 27% in relation to Care Suites. Moving to slide 18. Resale volumes and pricing have been fantastic over the last 12 months.

As with developments, we have seen really pleasing increases both in price and volume across the region, with 58% of the 92 ILU resales and 66% of the 174 Care Suite resales in the region. Margins have softened slightly in respect of the Care Suite resales, with average margins of 15%. ILU resales, on the other hand, have seen increased resale margins of 27%, particularly in respect of apartments as the apartment model has become more and more accepted regionally. Moving to our care segment on slide 19. Appendix 3 has the detail around segment results, and we note EBITDA per bed of over NZD 9,500. This rises to over NZD 16,000 per bed when we include Care Suite resale gains and development margins.

Those of you who will have been following the Oceania journey for a while will be very familiar with our premiumization of care as we transform through brownfield development. The disruption in earnings from this transformational brownfield development is now coming to an end. Where we stand today, we have a total of 9 sites in our portfolio. That's around 27% of our total occupied beds who are achieving EBITDA per bed in excess of NZD 15,000. Importantly, combined, the ramp-up in mature sites represent approximately 78% of our total Care Suites portfolio. Our care EBITDA margins have been suppressed due to the impact of the immense pressure that the aged care industry has been under over the last few years, with nursing shortages, closed borders, tight labor markets, direct costs of COVID, and coupled with inadequate funding.

The current slide provides an insight as to why this is important. As we know, this has been causing direct pressure on margins in our care segment. Back at the time of listing, we were achieving margins of around 21%. At this moment in time and for the last 3 years, these margins have been around 12%. The premiumization of care journey, which we started early, has provided us with the resilience to stabilize the margins. As can be seen from the graph on the left-hand side of the slide, the premium revenues have more than tripled over the 5 years since listing. This growth will continue with increased premium revenue from gains on resales and ongoing deferred management fees, lifting our profit per bed and increasing our margins over time. Moving to slide 20 on embedded value.

Much like the future growth in premium revenue, embedded value provides a sign of what's to come. As acquisitions and developments come online, the embedded value in our portfolio also increases. As at 31 March 2022, our embedded value has increased over 42% since this time last year, with NZD 189 million of accrued deferred management fee cash flows to be realized and a further NZD 178 million of resale gains. I end today with a look at the balance sheet. Slide 21 provides a comparison to 31 March 2021, and also a net adjusted value view. As you will recall from the September interim, the acquisitions of the Waterford and Franklin sites, coupled with positive fair value movements, have allowed us to break through the NZD 2 billion mark.

Focusing on the right-hand side of the slide, the net adjusted value measure is something we provide each reporting period, and the definition is in the pack for you to ponder. Our net asset value per share has increased from NZD 1.28 as at March 2021 to NZD 1.38 as at March 2022. Being a proxy for the valuation of the status quo of our existing portfolio, it excludes the cash flows and earnings from the 550 units which are currently under construction. The nine cents per share or the NZD 66 million, which will be unwound in the future from the blended discount of 26%, which is already included in our CBRE valuation. Taking this discount into consideration brings us to NZD 1.47 per share. Thank you for your time today.

I will now hand back to Brent for closing remarks before we open for question time.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Thanks, everybody. I'll just do a quick recap, and we've got plenty of time for questions. From my perspective and the team's perspective, it's been a dynamic and rewarding year, and we're pleased with the results. The results are good. We're up 16% from last year at NZD 76.2 million, as Kathryn indicated. Our team have done a fantastic job. It's actually been a tough environment over the last couple of years, and our team across the business have risen to the challenge. We've got through COVID well, and we're very pleased about that. We've talked about the strong cash that we have, we've talked about the solid balance sheet that we have, and we're very pleased to have NZD 500 million secured for 5 years.

Where it makes sense, we've been complementing the portfolio with M&A, and we think we've done some highly attractive additions to our portfolio through this. We're confident around our build rate of 300. I guess the only downside from my perspective is it'd be good to see a bit more funding coming into the sector. The sector has done incredibly well, and I'm sure a number of the questions will be focused on our thoughts around funding and the latest budget. I guess also, as Kathryn said at the end, we've pushed through the NZD 2.2 billion mark as it relates to our total assets. Why don't we open the floor to questions. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for question. We will now take our first question from Bianca Fledderus. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

Good afternoon, Kathryn and Brent. First question from me, just around your exposure to care. It looks like with the Remuera Rise and Bream Bay acquisitions that you announced the other day, you are moving away from care to ILU a little bit, which I guess especially with high care cost inflation and nurse shortages at the moment isn't a bad thing. Yeah, just wondering is that the case, and what sort of targets ILU to care mix would you see for the future?

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah, I think that's a great question, Bianca. We are transitioning. We have a really wonderful care business. With the Care Suite product, we have found that has worked incredibly well for the market. We are pivoting towards more ILU. It was very intentional, our acquisition of Remuera Rise and Bream Bay, delivering premium product for new ILU residents. Prior to that, I guess, the Waterford acquisition as well. If we think about what lies ahead, we've actually got a couple of very large care developments at Lady Allum, which is delivering a lot of beds for us and Elmwood. We will have care as part of the portfolio.

If we think about the next couple of years, Bianca, we get to probably 60% ILU and 40% care, if we think about the build form over the next couple of years.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, just following on from that, on your growth. Yeah, obviously good increase to your developments, but you have done a few acquisitions in the past year as well. Yeah, if you think about your growth going forward, will that be mainly focused on greenfields, or would you consider continuing to grow through acquisitions as well?

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

I think acquisitions are additions rather than the main game for us. You know, we have a fantastic pipeline. From our perspective, our growth comes through the business that we actually have and the sites that we actually have. We are absolutely moving to greenfield. Brownfield development is tough. Brownfield development disrupts earnings and makes it hard for the readers of our accounts. We're moving away and getting to the tail end of our brownfield development, choosing to prefer greenfield, and choosing to prefer ILU in this kind of next phase. It's actually very difficult to find M&A activities that match our strategic brief and deliver good, solid returns, and we'll be just getting on with the nearly 2,000 units in Care Suites we have in our pipeline.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

Okay. Thank you. Last question from me, could you like what's the like-for-like unit price inflation split between Care Suites and ILUs? Do you have that number?

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah, Bianca. Hi, it's Kathryn. Yeah, the kind of increase in sales prices we've had is around a 17% average on villas, about a 7% increase on apartments, and about a 1%-2% increase on Care Suites year-on-year.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

1.2% on Care Suites?

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

1%-2%, yes.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

What's the reason that the Care Suites were more or less flat?

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

I think, it's more just the nature of the Care Suites product. I mean, obviously when we were developing Care Suites in the Auckland region, they were commanding, slightly higher prices. As we moved down the country, that sort of, moderates. Our Care Suites product is needs-based versus choice-based. As a consequence of that, we're, just conscious of the services that we're providing, to that incoming resident, where they are in their season of life. You know, obviously the price points are very, very different around the NZD 300,000 mark, you know, versus apartments that are, you know, on average, around the NZD 1 million mark.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

I think as well, Bianca, the tenure comes into it slightly. With our villa stock, residents will have been in there around seven years before we leave. The increase from a starting point is a lot more as well. If you're looking on more of a longer term than a year on year, you'll see bigger jumps between an outgoing resident and an incoming on a villa stock.

Bianca Fledderus
Analyst, UBS Group AG

Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. That's all for me.

Operator

We will now take the next question from Aaron Ibbotson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I've got three questions if I may. The first one is just a brief detail one. I think you called out COVID direct costs of something like NZD 2.5 million for the reported period. I was just wondering how we should think about that into this year or FY 2023. Do you expect it to drop out or stay there, or how should we think around that? I might as well rattle through my three questions. Secondly, just on your Remuera Rise, specifically acquisition. You mentioned obviously earlier on that it's accretive, but I just want to know if you could say something around specifically contribution that you're expecting from resales from that acquisition. It looks like it should be sort of maturing as we speak.

You know, if you could just add a bit of color around, you know, how you arrived to your high single digit accretion from the acquisition. Then, final question, just around CapEx in FY 2023. You know, what are your expectations for CapEx going into FY 2023 and maybe more specifically around, you know, cash flow from operating activities? You know, I noticed that, you know, you had a NZD 50 million shortfall or so this year if we exclude acquisitions. So just curious to know how you see that in the following 12-month period. Thank you.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah. Okay, thanks, Aaron. I might try and tackle the first two because the first one's very easy. Assuming that the country continues to travel as it is in terms of its response to COVID, so we don't see prolonged you know lockdowns in the future. From our perspective, the NZD 2.5 million of direct costs comes out of our accounts going forward. There's obviously a lot of costs that the business has incurred, and we've seen that in the compression of care margins that are not direct costs. I think all things being equal, NZD 2.5 million will be an improvement year-on-year in that particular item.

As it relates to Remuera Rise, part of the attraction for us, Aaron, I guess, was the maturing of the residents that occupy the apartments at Remuera Rise. There's 58 apartments. There are 12 premium hospital rooms. But the average age of the residents in Remuera Rise now is about 83.6. We worked through our valuation exercise and looked at assumed resale patterns of the operator that we bought the site off. Those resale patterns are pretty conservative. We think we may be able to do better than that, but in any event, we've taken a conservative view around how those resales will flow out.

If we think about one of the apartments that has come up since the last couple of days that we've owned the asset, it's got an incoming price of about NZD 1.4 million. The exiting resident was in there at about NZD 900,000. There is significant capital gains or resale gains, more particularly, being accrued from Remuera Rise. It's a combination of factors. It's a fantastic site. It's a very high quality facility. It's got an aged population or a seasoned population. Resales have been pretty conservative because of that aged population, and we expect that they'll be reasonably buoyant from here. I'll just ask Kathryn maybe to answer your third question.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah. Hi, Aaron. I think you started the third question talking about CapEx for 2023. You will have seen we've had quite a step-up in our CapEx costs this year. Usually we sit around the NZD 120 million mark. With the increase in under construction and signal and the increase to 300+ units delivery from next year onwards, the spend this year's been around the NZD 160 million mark. We certainly expect that that's gonna be the new normal, probably increase a little from there as time goes on as well. The second part of your question was around the cash flow and the operating cash flow specifically. Yeah, you're quite right, we're kind of down on operating cash flow from where we were this time last year.

There's a few things that go into that. One of them is buybacks. We talk a lot about the brownfield and how it's coming to an end, but there are a few key sites in Auckland that are requiring buybacks. Our Lady Allum sites and Elmwood sites in particular, we're in the process of buying back so that we can start that future development. There's around NZD 10 million in the number for that. The other thing is unsettled ORAs. You've probably noticed from the back of the accounts, the unsettled debtors has increased by about NZD 15 million this year. It's mainly due to the number that we've had going through. ORA Care Suites in particular, we've sold 174 Care Suites this year versus 124 last year.

With that has come kind of a step up in the receivable at the year-end, and just part of the ordinary business when we have kind of a needs-based product that comes on. I guess all of that, bringing it all together, we're comfortable with how the cash is gonna look going forward. Slide 15 that I touched on earlier kinda talks about capital structure and position, and we note that post kind of actually paying the checks for Remuera Rise and Bream Bay, our gearing should be around the 32% mark. We're very comfortable with that position, and it's something we've kind of signaled to market previously as to expect us to be around that 30%-35% position.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Thanks, Aaron.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

So, uh, we may respond to-

Operator

Once again, please press star one if you'd like to ask a question.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Sorry. We may just pick up some of the questions that we're seeing online. I guess one of the questions that might be on people's minds, and there's a couple of them that have popped up on the auto queue, is just how are we feeling about construction with supply chain disruptions with pricing. We've obviously brought Andrew onto the team. He's gone around every single site. He's had a look at our building profile. He's had a look at our build form. We have gone through and looked at our pipeline over the next 5 and 6 years and just looked at the optionality and kind of build design that we were doing.

We have in place fixed price contracts out to December 2024, and that provides us some hedge, but we know that that's unrealistic for new build going forward. The product that we've secured takes us out to December 2024 on a fixed price basis. We think that the market's gonna reshape away from fixed price contracts, and it's gonna start to evolve, where you have a smaller proportion of fixed price contracts with some bonding, with some escalation, et cetera. What we're finding is that the team of partners that we use for our building supplies are prepared to go to sort of around 75% fixed price contracting. The uncontracted portion, I guess, is really where there's some concern around subtrades.

That's simply a moment in time around subtrades that exist in the market. They could be electricians, for argument's sake, but it can also be, you know, access to product. If anybody knows a good supply of Gib, then let us know, because that's obviously something that's on everybody's mind that impacts kind of the sector. Hopefully that gets solved in the coming months. Our team have done well in securing that sort of supply. In the near term, over the next couple of years, we're feeling very confident around what happens with our build form, where we get to with the cost of construction and also the optionality. As we move to ILU, that gives us some flexibility.

Rather than having to bring an entire building out of the ground or an expensive apartment, we're also accenting the portfolio with some villa product, with some compact townhouse product, to allow that sort of optionality. We've found from what we've done in the past, that a lot of that product is almost on a build-as-you-sell basis. Villas that we've been developing recently have been 100% pre-sold. That's a pretty generic response to a bunch of questions that have come online.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

I might just read out some of the questions that are coming through. I noticed Andrew's still put some questions in there. The first is around what level of care EBITDA we can expect going forward, given. Sorry, Andrew. Just reading out. Given the funding pressures that we've been faced in the industry. I think, Andrew, Brent's probably touched on this a little bit already, on my side where I went through the premium revenue. And even without kind of the government coming to the table and giving us some extra money, as Brent has talked about, we are expecting those care margins to increase over time, given that our premium revenue of the DMF and the PACs on the Care Suites will be increasing exponentially.

As we touched on earlier, because we started that journey early, we're really seeing really strong year-on-year growth in that area. Your other question there is around current projects being fixed price and do we have any contingencies. Yes, absolutely. There's contingencies in there on both sides, both on kind of our main contractor side and also on our side as well. Yeah, we are managing those very tightly. Andrew and the team have built some really good relationships there, and it is something that we are monitoring as we go.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah. I mean, the further observation that I'd make is I think we're all disappointed with the recent budget announcement. I think we talk about aged residential care being a critical infrastructure, and we firmly believe that it is. We're providing essential services. As people are aware, there is a funding gap between our nurse wages in a DHB setting. So on a pay parity basis, we have been absorbing that margin compression. Now, we didn't see anything in the budget which gave us too much confidence that that's gonna be addressed, but that lies ahead for the industry to solve. We have seen more than 500 beds being removed from the market just since January of this year, where the smaller operators are citing financial hardship as a basis of continuing.

We're hoping with borders opening and with a more sympathetic government to the critical infrastructure that we're building, at the very least, we will solve nurse parity. If we think about what that translates to in terms of dollars for the sector, it means that there's about NZD 5-NZD 6 per resident per day that would be funded by the government to solve nurse parity between Oceania and its peers and the DHBs. Now, we've kept our wage rates up. We are attracting clinical talent to our teams. We've put a lot of effort into training and career pathways. It's been pretty hard yards, it's fair to say, where your competition, being the DHB, is paying on average NZD 20,000-NZD 30,000 more per year.

That's an area that we're focused on. It's an area that we're doing active lobbying on, and it's an area that we would like to see some, you know, I guess, consideration from the government.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Just reading some more that are out there. Shane Solly, thank you for your comments on the presentation. You had quite a few comments here. I'll cover a few of them, and then I'll hand to Brent for some of them. Some he may have already covered off. Your first one was around care profitability. I think I've probably covered that answering Andrew's question. Next two to three years, absolutely. We expect strong increases in premium revenue. Brent touched on what an increased funding from the government might result in, which covers your second question. Flexibility in development. We, as we kind of signaled in the presentation and moving to, we've got a lot more sites on the go at any one point of time. We're in all parts of New Zealand.

We're kind of developing all different types of products as well. It gives us a lot of optionality to be able to turn on, turn off, and build what the market needs at a time when the market needs it. You had a question around unsold stock. Slide 18 in my section has details on the unsold stock from a resale perspective. If we add in the unsold stock from development, we're currently sitting on stock of around 450 units in Care Suites at the moment, and we're really happy going into the new financial year with that. It gives us kind of a bed for development and resale gains going forward. Awatere is now online. That's in Hamilton, and the build of that finished right on the year-end.

We didn't see any sales coming through for that site, but we expect to see them coming through in the next couple of months. Then the last question I might hand to Brent was around whether we're expecting any land acquisitions. There's been another question come through as well around whether with the softened market, we see opportunity in land purchases and what kind of land we're looking for. I might ask Brent to answer both of those at the same time.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah. Thanks, Kathryn. It felt like a hospital pass. It wasn't meant to be. I think from a greenfield land acquisition basis, absolutely. I think Oceania is in a situation where it actually builds different products to the other operators. So as a consequence of that, our land size tends to be smaller footprint. We're not interested in large gated communities. We want premium, we want bespoke, and we want our residents to enjoy the lives that they had in the community as well. Still keep those connections are very important for us. You'll see with Franklin, we're at an 8-hectare site. If we contrasted that with Browns Bay, which is fully sold down now, The Sands, as people will know it, that was only a 1-hectare site.

I think somewhere between that sort of smaller footprint, through to the larger footprint is where we see greenfield land acquisitions. There are some key locations, some growth corridors that we are not in, that we want to be in. We're spending a bit of time out on the road looking at that. We've also probably seen a softening in the market. What we were paying for land, you know, maybe six months ago, maybe even twelve months ago, is fundamentally to our favor, I think, in terms of what lies ahead. Residential property developers are finding it harder to get their projects financed with the tightening credit market for the new product supply.

That is bringing some new opportunities, and there has been an enormous amount of M&A in the sector. If you talk to CBRE, they would say that it's been one of the, you know, busiest 12 months that they've had of sort of M&A, and that M&A is greenfield, that M&A is existing operators, et cetera. We think we do have a bit of pricing power. Our prices for our product have kind of lagged the market. You can see that in our results and others in terms of the strong resale margins that we're making. We've got a needs-based product, so that helps.

Even on a choice-based product, we think there's still a little bit more in, you know, in the market to come from a pricing perspective, over this next period. I think we provide significant care services to our residents, and so that's an area that we're watching with some interest, as part of delivering better EBITDA margins in that part of our business.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

I might just pick up as another question comes through from Andrew Steele from Jarden. Could you remind us how much of your debt is fixed and how much hedging is in place? Thanks for the question, Andrew. We have NZD 225 million of bonds at the moment. As I've touched on earlier, we had lovely coupon rates of on those of 2.3% and 3.3%, with those. We do have hedging in place. With the bonds and the hedging, then it brings us to around in excess of 70% fixed debt at the moment. Sorry, just bear with us, callers, while we just scroll through and see that we've covered all of the questions.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah. I think we have. Yeah. I guess, you know, in summary, we're really pleased with the results. It's been a really solid result. The team have done an outstanding job. We're excited about being able to signal to the market that we're confident about the future and our growth and, yeah, we're looking forward to getting on with it, and I'm losing my voice. If there's no further questions, we'll probably wrap up there.

Operator

Pardon the interruption. We do have one dial-in audience queue for questions. Can I open it up?

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Yes, of course.

Operator

We have one follow-up question from Aaron Ibbotson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

Hi there. Apologies to interrupt the closing remarks. Kathryn, I just wanted to clarify your comments that you just had around your closing stock or whatever you call it. Because if I get it right, you've got 117 for resales. You said 400 or 450 or something in total. Did I get that right? That's well, yeah, that sounds way more than I had in my mind.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

It's way more than that.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

You're telling me that

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Yeah.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

You've got 330 new sales in stock?

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

We've still got some from The Bellevue and Green Gables in the care suites stock. As we know with care, because it's a needs-based product, it doesn't necessarily pre-sell, and so we do still have some of that product left to sell. We also have, the Waterford came online just on the thirty-first of March, so we've got all of those apartments. I think it was 63 from memory. I'll probably get that wrong. Bayview and Waterford, I don't know if you'll recall this, but a few years ago when we first built that Care Suites product, what happened was we moved some of the existing residents from the old care site over there. They are residents in those, in some of those units at the moment under a PAC.

We count those in kind of stock that will become available over the next week while as those residents depart, and then it becomes available for a first sale for us.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

If I do, you know, what is available today or was available 31st of March for actual resale or new sale at the closing day or today, you know, not things that you're expecting to complete at some stage? These are all units that are actually completed, but some of them have residents in them that you're waiting to depart to their next residency.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Correct. Yes. Page 18 has your currently available resales. If we include all of our available stock, which we count as unsold, if there's a resident in it with a PAC in it's 450. If we exclude those PAC people, which might be muddying the numbers from your end, it's probably closer to 300.

Aaron Ibbotson
Director and Senior Analyst, Equities, Forsyth Barr

300. You've got 150 people, PAC people then, that you think first sale. Okay. Thank you. Very clear.

Kathryn Waugh
CFO, Oceania Healthcare

Thank you.

Brent Pattison
CEO, Oceania Healthcare

Thank you, Aaron. Thanks a lot, everybody. I've recovered my voice with a bit of water. Yeah, thanks for everybody's participation and we look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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