Macrotech Developers Ltd

NSE:LODHA

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Macrotech Developers Q4 FY '24 Results Earnings Conference Call hosted by Antique Stockbroking. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Biplab Debbarma from Antique Stockbroking Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Biplab Debbarma, analyst]

Thank you, Riya. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 FY '24 Earnings Call of Macrotech Developers Limited, hosted by Antique Stockbroking. Today, we have with us the management of the company, represented by Mr. Abhishek Lodha; Managing Director and CEO; Mr. Sushil Kumar, CFO; Mr. Tikam Jain, Chief Executive Officer, Pune; and Mr. Anand Kumar, Head, IR. And without further ado, let me hand over back to Mr. Lodha. Over to you, sir.

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Good afternoon, everybody. A warm welcome to the call. I hope all of you are doing well. As we end fiscal '24 and enter fiscal '25, this is now the fourth year of the sustained upcycle in Indian housing. As we have said several times, we think that India is in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime of the country's transition from low income to mid income, which is aided by housing demand and in turn significantly enhances housing demand also. We believe that with steady wage growth, ongoing increase in economic activity as well as the availability, in particular availability of mortgages, combined with India's demographics and urbanization trends, the demand for housing will only continue to scale up in the years to come.

Before I get into details about the company's performance, a little bit of overview about the industry. Starting with the macro situation, the Indian economy continued to perform strongly. As per various experts, wage growth for this year is likely to be between 9% to 10%. We are seeing an acceleration in private investment, which is starting to happen on account of the various policies of the government, including the PLI scheme as well as the continued attractiveness of India for the -- what are known as GCCs or global capability centers.

While India continues to remain a beacon of strength, economic strength in the world, obviously, the global situation has been full of various challenges, including geopolitical tensions. This is a risk which is pervasive and in front of our eyes. And from time to time, it is definitely likely to have impact on the overall sentiment as well as the direction of several macroeconomic indicators.

However, in spite of these global risks and challenges, global growth has continued to surprise on the upside. The U.S. continues to grow from strength to strength. And that means that overall sentiment in the globe continues to remain positive, and we are seeing the U.S. and India emerging as the 2 strong drivers of global growth.

Now diving a little bit further into our company's performance for fiscal '24 and our outlook for fiscal '25. Fiscal '24, we -- our focus, as always remained on our core 4 KPIs: our presales, the embedded margins of those presales, our new business added and our brand and ESG scores.

We achieved our best ever quarterly and annual presales performance with Q4 sales growing impressively to -- by 40% to about INR 4,200 plus crores. And we closed the year with presales of INR 14,500 crores, which is about 20% growth from last year.

In terms of pricing, in line with our guidance, we had an overall average price growth of approximately 5.5% for fiscal '24. This, we believe, is strongly supportive of affordability because wage growth definitely has been closer to 9%, 10% mark and in turn will mean that more and more Indians can continue to buy a high-quality home from top developers like LODHA.

The embedded EBITDA margin for our business was at about 31%. And this 31% has been achieved this year in spite of the fact that we had a higher contribution of sales with almost -- over 1/3 of our sales coming from JDA projects, which tend to be lower in terms of EBITDA margin.

We are now close to the steady-state mix that we expect in terms of JDA contribution. And with this, since our margin has come in at about 31%, it shows that the underlying margin has actually grown, and we expect that even with the moderate price growth, due to our operational efficiency and scale up, we will keep seeing a steady growth, a modest but steady growth in margins.

Based on the embedded EBITDA of approximately 30% for the full year and 31% for the last quarter, the implied underlying PAT for our business is at about INR 2,500 crores, about 18% of the presales done during the year, and that puts us in a good position to achieve our ROE objectives of about 20%.

In terms of our business development, we delivered about -- we added about INR 20,000 crores of GDVs through new projects, which was higher than our guidance of INR 17,500 crores. Both on JDAs as well as outright, we continue to see a steady and strong pipeline of new projects coming in.

As you are aware, we have raised a meaningful amount of capital towards the end of the last fiscal in March, and that capital will become growth fuel for us, both for improvement of the bottom line as well as for strengthening our growth prospects as we invest that capital over the next 6 to 12 months.

On the back, as you are aware, our net debt now stands at about INR 3,000 crores, taking into account the impact of this QIP, which is at less than 0.2x of equity. If we were to exclude the impact of the QIP, our net debt would be at about which would also be about INR 6,000 crores, which would also be about 0.4 or less than 0.4x of equity, once again well within our limit of 0.5x that we have set for ourselves.

The strong management of the balance sheet and the strong performance of the business have enabled us to get a further rating upgrade. We are now rated as AA Minus Stable by ICRA. This is the sixth rating upgrade that we've had in the last 3 years, probably a record for a corporate of our size.

In terms of our average cost of funds, we are now at about 9.4%, which down about 10 basis points for the quarter. And this was prior to the impact of the QIP and the rating upgrade and therefore, we expect to further work with our lending partners to further improve our cost of funds.

In terms of our progress on the ESG side, we, by March '24, achieved our net zero goal on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, which we are very proud of because we believe that for our business to sustain in the long term, we have to be a wholesome and responsible participant of the entire ecosystem, and the environment as well as society are 2 very, very important factors that we take into account in terms of how we measure our progress and our achievement.

During this quarter, we also entered into an MOU with IIT Delhi for piloting the use of greener LC3 concrete and another MOU with Third Derivative, a start-up incubation arm of the world's leading global think tank for sustainable urbanization, RMI. And the partnership will look to foster innovation in the built environment.

These partnership exemplify our commitment to innovation and sustainability.

We also announced this quarter the women in construction network under our flagship women's empowerment initiative, Unnati, this platform is to give greater opportunity for women in the real estate industry, which we believe, as we said earlier, is going to be a driver of India's economic growth. And if we can enable more women to participate in it, it will be good both for women empowerment as well as for the industry.

In terms of certain highlights during the quarter, we did our second successful launching in Bengaluru. Both in terms of volume as well as in terms of pricing, the launches were far ahead of our underwriting. And we have now sold about INR 1,200 crores in just 2 quarters from 2 operating projects. This showcases the strength of brand LODHA and how well the brand is received and valued even in a market like Bangalore, where historically, we have had a very little presence.

In terms of where we now stand for fiscal '25. We are guiding to additional presale growth of a little over 20% with INR 17,500 crores of -- as a presales period for fiscal '25. Within this, we expect pricing to contribute 5% to 6%, volume growth in our existing locations to contribute 4% to 5% and the balance 10-odd percent coming from new locations.

During the year, we have planned launches from sites that we've already identified and have control over of about INR 12,000 crores. And we, of course, expect this number to grow in the course of the year, just like it did last year. As you may recollect, last year, at the same time, we had guided to new launches of INR 13,000 crores, but actually, we ended up achieving INR 18,000 crores, which showcases that in the course of the year, the launch pipeline typically tends to grow in a robust manner.

With Bengaluru, now we have moved into advanced stages of our pilot phase. We've had 2 successful launches. Over the next few months, we will further assess and ensure that we have all the strengths in place to scale up our business. And we believe that, that is likely to be the case. And therefore, we will start scaling up our presence in a planned conservative manner in Bangalore beyond these 2 projects.

I am happy to again highlight the point that our price growth for the last year was at about 5.5% because I think it is very, very important to note that this price growth has delivered the sales of INR 14,500 crores and the underlying EBITDA margin of 31%. It's very important to note that there is no speculative behavior amongst the buyers in the key markets that we are operating because the price growth has remained modest.

Equally, land prices have not done anything or on account of excessive price growth because once again, the modest price growth also ensures that the growth in land prices remains modest. This, we believe, are all hallmarks of a long-term cycle, and by maintaining this discipline by us and our fellow developers, we will maximize the sales over the medium term and also equity value over the medium term.

We are often asked questions around whether the level of competition is picking up now that you are into year 4 of a long-term cycle? Yes, Certainly, there are new players who have entered the Mumbai market, and we welcome their presence.

Our market share in Mumbai is at around 10%, and the market share of the top 5 developers in Mumbai is still in the mid-20s. So there is a long, long way of consolidation to go as more high-quality players come in, they will certainly benefit the market by taking over some of the lag or slack from the Tier 3 and Tier 2 developers.

However, as I strongly believe that the brand Lodha, the quality of our locations, the product that we build, the services that we provide, provide a very, very significant attraction for consumers. And therefore, we believe that our journey of growing our market share in our core market will continue to be aided by the consolidation in the market and the market having good quality players serving a majority of the supply. So we very much welcome the presence of better quality players in the marketplace.

In terms construction and construction spend, we delivered just under 9,000 units last year. This year, for fiscal '25, we are targeting a 5-digit number of 10,000 or more units. Our construction spend last year at just under -- just about INR 3,700 crores was lower than what we had planned for. And therefore, we are in a meaningful manner, ramping up the construction spend that we are doing this year and going above INR 5,000 crores.

As we speak, we have 20,000 or more workforce working across our different sites. And with the variety of the different interventions, we are seeing that we are able to keep pace with the growing scale of our sales and ensure that we are continuing to focus on delivering our products on or before time.

I would also like to highlight the fact that our growth is very granular, now we have almost 40 different projects contributing to our sales, which gives us a lot of predictability and also does not make us dependable or dependent on any one particular location for our sales or our growth.

As we further deepen the supermarket strategy of being present every 2 to 4 kilometers in the main city -- in the cities that we are present in, we continue to gain sales in markets where we have historically not had presence.

For example, Pune now has grown to sales of about INR 1,800 plus crores compared to INR 1,100 crores in fiscal '23, and just INR 400 crores at the end of fiscal '22. Similarly, for in the Eastern suburbs of Mumbai, we had sales of about INR 2,000 crores in fiscal '24 compared to INR 1,200 crores at the end of -- in fiscal '23 and virtually 0 in fiscal '22.

The 1 large location or very prominent in our long-term plans are Palava and Upper Thane are 2 very large land holdings located in the Mumbai Metropolitan region. Palava is located right at the doorstep of Navi Mumbai and similarly, Upper Thane is located right adjacent to Thane.

With a raft of significant infrastructure activities which have been in the works over the last few years, we are now starting to see that these 2 locations are transitioning from being affordable housings and mid-income housing locations to also now having a traction for a variety of different asset classes, including premium housing, retail, MSME offices and so on. One reflection of this is the land pricing at which land is now transacting for industrial purpose.

When we did our IPO 3 years ago, it was at about INR 2.5 crores an acre. And now we did a transaction in 20 -- in last fiscal at over INR 6 crores an acre. And at this stage, we're in advanced stages of a transaction, which will be likely to be at over INR 10 crores an acre. So that has been the trajectory of land, just line pricing and that too for industrial use.

As these infrastructure complete, you will start seeing that Palava will be just 20 minutes' drive from Airoli, which is the IT hub of the country -- of the Mumbai region and -- rather from 45 minutes today. And similarly, Upper Thane will become just 10 minutes from the Dombivli West Railway Station and a 15-minute drive into the heart of Thane Viviana Mall.

Over the next few years, we'll see further infrastructure upgrades, including the opening of the Navi Mumbai Airport, which will be only 35 to 40 minutes from Palava. And eventually, in the later part of this decade, the start-up of the bullet train project, which will make a meaningful difference because after BKC, the first half will be at Palava, getting people door-to-door from Palava to BKC in 15 to 20 minutes, which would be just fantastic.

And if you look at the pricing at locations which are so much better connected to the 2 core job hubs, IT in Airoli and financial services in BKC, you can see how Palava is going to transition from being a location for mid-income housing to being a location for premium as well as mid-income housing as well as other ancillary asset classes, such as office, retail and so on.

I'm sure that some of you are aware that Jupiter Hospital, the listed hospital company, is building its largest hospital facility in the country at Palava on land which we have given or sold to them.

So this is showing the transition that is happening in Palava, and I expect over the next 5 years that the caterpillar will turn into a beautiful butterfly, and we expect significant ramp-up in sales in Palava and Upper Thane, moving from about INR 2,200 crores for the year ending fiscal -- for the year ending March '24 to going all the way up to about INR 8,000 crores per annum for the year ending March 31. And as a cumulative consequence of this continued trajectory, we expect that cumulative sales in Palava and Upper Thane over the next 3 decades could -- would be in the range of about USD 175 billion and our EBITDA margins will also grow as the mix changes towards having a good presence of premium housing.

All in all, we believe that as a company, our focus on consistent, which is predictable and profitable growth is a strategy which is going to deliver long-term results. We are lucky to have very long-term visibility through our land bank in various parts, but particularly in Palava and Upper Thane, which makes us the company with a largest -- the real estate company with the largest and most productive land bank in the country.

In addition to that, our ability to generate significant operating cash flow, we generated INR 57 billion of operating cash for fiscal '24 and are guiding to about INR 65 billion for fiscal '25, gives us the ability -- this operating cash flow, combined with our low leverage gives us the ability to scale up whenever the opportunities present themselves. And at the same time, our development platform allows us to scale up in a profitable manner because we have the brand and the execution capability to take advantage of the market demand and get both the pricing and volume benefit.

All of this is being done by taking highest cognizance of maintaining very low leverage. We have learned our lessons from the past, and we will continue to make sure that our leverage remains well below the ceiling of 0.5x of equity, net debt-to-equity that we have set for ourselves.

With this, I will now pause and request Mr. Tikam Jain, our CEO for the Pune business, who has admirably grown the Pune business over the last few years to come in and give an overview of that part of our business. Thank you.

[Tikam Jain, executive]

Thank you, Abhishek ji, and good afternoon to all. Let me give you some overview about the Pune development. So Pune is a very resilient and vibrant residential market which has seen significant growth on back of IT and manufacturing sectors, generating a lot of employment. It is also an education hub with presence of high-quality talent, making it an attractive location for corporate to set up or expand their enterprises in the city.

All these factors have led to become it [ INR 15,000 ] to INR 50,000 crores of residential real estate market, which is further expected to grow at a bare minimum 10% to 12% annually.

Historically, it has been deeply fragmented market with hundreds of small players by locality. It is only last few years that branded players have started emerging, and their shares are still small, but [indiscernible] growing.

Lodha achieved presales of nearly INR 1,800 crores in this financial year of '24 in Pune. We enter any new city in 2 phases: first phase being the seed phase, in which we do fewer number of projects and focus on building our local team, understand the local market, approval processes and want to build our brand.

Once the brand and team are set, we expand rapidly. We have successfully implemented this strategy in Pune. We entered the city in the middle of last decade, with our first project, Lodha Belmondo the outskirt of the city. The project has received very well. It helped us in establishing our brand in Pune and help Pune residents to understand what Lodha stands for.

Subsequently, post COVID we hit the expansion stage and from INR 200 crores sales in financial year '21 from 1 project, today we have achieved around INR 1,800 crores from our 7 projects.

We have not only indicated the record of significant scale up in the city in a short period of time but also established ourselves as a more premium brand in the city by selling the most expensive apartment in the city. This is really the true reflection of the strength of our brand. Customers are attracted to Lodha in Pune due to the brand and what we have delivered in Pune and Mumbai. The lifestyle upgrade that our homes provides in addition to reliable delivery promise and other regions customers have trusted us. We hope to continue to deliver on the trust.

Currently, we have projects in east, west, south and central Pune, where we are developing around 90 lakh square feet, including the planned launches, we are looking to add more projects in other parts of the city and has discussions in various stages.

We are already in top 5 in the city from the presales point of view, and it clearly shows that part to us becoming the #1 developer in Pune in next 4 to 5 years.

We aim to double our presales in about 2 to 3 years and eventually have 12% to 15% market share by end of the decade.

Our growth strategy is driven by going deep in the market that is present across the city. Just like MMR, in order to grow on a sustainable basis, we have audited our micro market-based supermarket strategy, as Abhishek ji has spoken recently, just like supermarket in order to get the demand of location, we need to be present in the location or catchment area. Thus, in each micro market of Pune, we will open our supermarket store equivalent, that is our project in a noncompeting manner and get our deserved market share in the city.

Pune organization has grown in size and capability over the past few years. Our Pune team has grown from 80 to just 450 people in the few years. We have built a local capability across all the positions, including customer care, business development, design, construction, et cetera.

At one point in time, we were adding 1 new person a day to team. We have been able to hire, train and retain top talent across the board and have emerged as a go-to organization to work for Pune as well.

With this, I will stop here and hand it over to Abhishek ji and Sushil. Thank you.

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Thank you, Tikam ji, for your detailed comments. I would only like to add and complement the Lodha team in Pune on the fact that for the year ending March '24, we have achieved market share in Pune of about 5%, which is a major milestone in our journey to getting to about 15% market share by the end of the decade. And that shows that, as Mr. Jain mentioned, that our scale up is now at a rapid mode, and we will expect to significantly grow in Pune in the years to come. Thank you.

[Operator]

Should we begin a question-and-answer session?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Yes, please.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Kunal Lakhan from CLSA.

[Kunal Lakhan, analyst]

My first question is on your Slide 6, which is the guidance for FY '25. Now when we look at the FY '25 guidance of 0.5x debt-to-equity cap, I'm just trying to understand the spend that we are targeting for next year considering our current liquidity of about INR 3,000 crores odd from the fundraise and OCF generation expectation of about INR 6,500 crores for the next year. So where do we see -- firstly, 2 parts to my question. So where do you see the debt levels in absolute terms by March '25? And secondly, how much do we plan to spend on business development in FY '25?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

The question that you've raised, obviously, as you know, we have articulated debt ceiling of 0.5x equity. And that is what we've stated as our guidance that we will consistently remain below that. It doesn't mean that we will get up to that. It's a ceiling. It is not a target.

In terms of where we expect debt to be at the end of the fiscal? Obviously, it will be dependent on growth opportunities, but given the cash on hand that we have plus the operating cash flow of the business, we suspect it will be close to INR 5,000 crores of net debt at the end of the fiscal. And we expect to invest in the range of about INR 4,000-odd crores for new business development plus continue to support the existing project in terms of business development spend also.

[Kunal Lakhan, analyst]

Okay. So INR 4,000 crores will include both new as well as supporting the existing...

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

No, the INR 3,500 crores to INR 4,000 crores will probably be purely new. The balance there incrementally, it will be existing because if you look at the free cash -- the operating cash flow of about INR 65 billion, after interest and taxes, that number will be close to INR 50 billion. So that INR 50 billion plus the increase in debt of, let's say, INR 20 billion, is INR 70 billion. So we are looking at spending about half of that in new projects and the balance to be available for other uses including supporting existing projects.

[Kunal Lakhan, analyst]

So close to INR 20 billion will be the total spend on new business developments?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

New business development, about INR 35 billion to INR 40 billion.

[Kunal Lakhan, analyst]

Okay. Understood. And secondly, you said in your comments that the peak mix of JDAs in the presales is now there, almost 1/3 of sales that's the peak levels. So would it be safe to assume that going ahead, the business acquisition, the new acquisitions that you'll be doing would be more skewed towards own land versus JDAs?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

I think, Kunal, your question probably has the answer also. As we've said, our target mix is 60% from own land and 40% from JDAs. You know that we own a very large amount of own land. Therefore, for to maintain this 60-40 mix, it's likely that the incremental GDV addition will be perhaps 50% from JDAs and 50% from own land.

[Kunal Lakhan, analyst]

Understood. And the last one on the guidance for FY '25 for presales of INR 175 billion, how much would you expect from Pune? And since we don't have any Bangalore project, how should we look at Bangalore in FY '25?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So between Bangalore and Pune, we would conservatively be aiming to do about INR 40 billion, and we'll see if we can further exceed that.

[Operator]

Next question is from the line of Praveen Choudhary from Morgan Stanley.

[Praveen Choudhary, analyst]

I have 1 or 2 questions. The first one is about margin. Would you be able to share the margin in Bangalore from the presales of INR 12 billion? And the reason I'm asking this question is to understand in the early stage, maybe the margin is lower than the overall company level. So just to understand how much business development cost went in and when would we get back to similar margin as we have like 30%, 31%?

The second question I had was you mentioned that there's no speculative activity in most of the markets. So Mumbai and Pune sounds about right. But some of the data that we saw suggested that Bangalore property prices have gone up by a meaningful number. That definitely not 5.5%, again, based on some data that I saw. So I would love to get your sense of 5.5% versus maybe 15% that we are seeing in Bangalore and how are you seeing that affordability in Bangalore? And then I have one last question.

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Thank you for those questions. In terms of the margin in Bangalore, we were at about 28% for the sales that we've done so far. So slightly lower than our overall blend at 30%, 31%, but not significantly lower. And we expect -- we do our underwriting in order to work from -- towards that blend of margin that we target. And therefore, obviously, while early stages, sometimes you will have gaps, especially in the early stages of any project because the pricing at the early stage is lower and the margin goes up as the project progresses. But generally, we try not to have too much significant deviation from the overall blend. Obviously, own land and JDA projects have different margin profiles, but we try to maintain consistency across different cities, 200 basis points here or there, but broadly, we try to maintain consistency.

In terms of the price growth number of 5.5%, the way we measure price growth is for light projects. So the project ought to have existed in the last year as well as in this year for us to be able to do a price comparison on what the price growth has been. For any project which is launched in this year, that becomes the starting point of the data from a measurement of price growth perspective.

So in terms of your point that whether price growth in Bangalore has been stronger than 5.5%, I'm sure it is or has been. However, I do believe that Bangalore in general has good supply. Demand has been very solid. And at least in the sales that we've done in the first 2 projects, we've seen that most of the sales have happened to end users, people are buying for themselves. They are not buying -- nobody is buying bulk units to trade later. So that's really our sense of what happened in the Bangalore market. But obviously, we have only 2 projects in Bangalore, so our understanding of the Bangalore market is definitely not as robust as some other people.

[Praveen Choudhary, analyst]

Very, very clear. So one last question I had, if I may. Look, Palava land is clearly very valuable, as time progresses and you have spent some time in explaining that. I just wanted to ask [indiscernible]. I understand the big picture long-term potential. But in the near term, if I were to think about how much land you're planning to sell every year, or even contract sales from Palava, let's say, FY '25, FY '26, would you have some guidance for us?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

In terms of land sales, we are targeting about $50 million, about INR 400 crores to INR 500 crores a year of money from land sales. Some years will be stronger and some years will be weaker. But that kind of sort of the level at which we are sort of transacting land. And therefore, as land values go up, the quantum of land that we will transact or sell will sort of probably become lesser.

In terms of our sales expectations from Palava as well as Upper Thane, the 2 large landholdings that we have and we measure that data together, we did about INR 2,200 crores of presales for fiscal '24. We definitely expect that to grow much faster than the rest of the company because the infrastructure-related upgrades are now largely in place, so we would be looking for at least a 30% growth, if not more. In this fiscal, I don't have an outlook for fiscal '26, but I would not be surprised if the growth in fiscal '26 would also around that kind of a level.

[Praveen Choudhary, analyst]

I must congratulate you for a very good result. And most importantly, I find that your presentation in terms of growth, which is stable and sustainable rather than very high and then coming down along with the ROE target is very interesting and sounds very good to compounding companies, so to say. So, thank you very much.

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Thank you. Thank you for your feedback.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Motilal Oswal.

[Pritesh Sheth, analyst]

First question is on the capital raise that you have done and the deployment of it and that leading to additional growth to the company. So you've guided for 20%, a little over 20% kind of presales growth. When do you think that this capital raise can transpire into 20%-plus kind of growth? I mean, not marginally, but a bigger delta in terms of growth. And do you see any upside risk in this guidance that you have given because of the new project additions that you will do throughout the year, and that can lead to additional [indiscernible]?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Thank you for your question. You have been following our company for a few years, and I'm sure you know that we tend to be modest or conservative in how we look at the outlook because things can often go in various directions which are unplanned or unknown, and we much rather focus on, like we said earlier, predictable growth rather than lumpy or choppy growth.

In terms of the deployment of the capital, ultimately, the most important thing for us is to make sure that the capital generates ROE and therefore, this capital raise is not ROE dilutive. We expect that the capital will get fully deployed in the course of this current fiscal year and definitely, the ROE -- and we expect the ROE levels to be back to our target levels of close to 20% by fiscal '26. There will be some dilution impact in fiscal '25 because obviously, the capital takes some time to get diluted and start contributing to earnings. But by fiscal '26, we expect the ROE levels to be back to -- close to 20% mark.

I think in the early part of the capital deployment cycle, which has started now, you will start seeing a benefit to profitability. So we have guided to 31% embedded EBITDA margin for fiscal '25 compared to 30% for fiscal '24, which itself is partly coming from the fact that we are able to use this capital to improve our profitability at the EBITDA level and then further improve our profitability by the reduction in finance costs, overall, meaning -- having a good impact on profitability.

As the new projects get acquired, it will take about 9 to 12 months after acquisition for those projects to start getting to the launch phase. And therefore, the impact on growth, you will see more likely in fiscal '26, not in fiscal '25. But as I mentioned earlier, the way we think about it is to put this product -- this capital to productive use, which is making sure that our ROE has come back to where we want them to be, close to 20%. And at the same time, it is within our paradigm of predictable and profitable growth.

[Pritesh Sheth, analyst]

Sure. Sure. That's very helpful. And in terms of the kind of deals that we are getting to evaluate, has the characteristics change with deals largely coming from outright land rather than in JDAs or our strategy with this kind of capital that we have will tilt more towards outright because that obviously helps us generate better margins and eventually better ROE? So what would be our focus that?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So as I had mentioned in response to an earlier point, we expect going forward, our new GDV additions to be about 50% from JDAs and about equivalent amount from outright lands. So that our overall mix of 60% of sales coming from outright and 40% from JDAs can be achieved.

I do want to point out that the JDAs tend to have lower absolute profitability, but quite high ROE and the outright tend to have higher absolute profitability but lower ROE. So I just wanted to let you sort of highlight the fact that there is that inherent trade-off in the 2 models.

[Pritesh Sheth, analyst]

Sure. And the kind of deals that we are getting are mix of both JDAs as well as outright?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Yes, yes, which is the reason why I'm saying it's likely to be close to that half-and-half mark.

I think one has to appreciate the fact that JDAs and outright are both models which exist in the marketplace and have existed for a long period of time. It's not only a function of some particular post-COVID or post-IL&FS phenomena. JDAs will exist. They continue to exist because ultimately, landowners have different financial profiles. And also, given the fact that most developers would like to be prudent in their balance sheet and maintain moderate levels of debt. The larger land pieces often are better monetized through JDA. So JDA opportunities will continue to remain available in our view.

[Pritesh Sheth, analyst]

Sure. And lastly, on Palava do you see FY '25 as an inflection point with the kind of growth you are expecting in the residential point, residential segment there? Or there is more growth which can be captured once everything in terms of infrastructure that we are talking about gets developed? Or this 25%, 30% kind of growth is the number that we are anyway is eyeing for?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So Pritesh, as you mentioned, we are looking at least and I used the word at least 30% growth this fiscal, we hope that we can in fiscal '26 also maintain that level.

I think the next 5 years are all going to be additive in terms of the growth, I would say, enablers or drivers. And I think you really see Palava in full bloom, as I mentioned earlier, moving from a caterpillar to a butterfly over the next 5-year period. And the Airoli tunnel, the airport, the bullet train, the Metro 12 line, the Virar-Alibaug multimodal corridor, all of this over the next 5 years is going to be very, very real. So I think it's a -- 30% growth is probably just the start of this process, not the peak of this process.

[Operator]

Next question is from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies India.

[Abhinav Sinha, analyst]

Start with Palava itself. So you started your comments by hinting at some premium products or at least on the housing side. So when can we expect this launch? And what are the price points we're looking at?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So we started doing premium product in Palava. It's about 8%, 10% of the sales mix in Palava and Upper Thane currently, where we are doing stand-alone bungalows, and they are totally -- bungalows are total value, including land and construction costs between INR 4 crores to INR 10 crores per unit already, and they have done very, very well, exceedingly well.

The first multistoried or apartment building, obviously, of the premium category is getting launched this quarter. The price points are likely to be close to INR 10,000 a square feet. As you know, the average price point in Palava right now for the current product mix is more in the INR 6,500 handle, so it's almost a 50% premium to that level. It will be between INR 9,000 to INR 10,000 a square foot to start up and then go up, so it will average about INR 10,000 a square foot of saleable area. And that launch we expect this quarter.

[Abhinav Sinha, analyst]

Okay. Sir, secondly, on Slide 15, where you put out a pipeline for FY '25, just wanted to check if South Central also has the Alibaug project this year or it's a FY '26 project?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Yes, we expect South Central to have the Alibaug project for this fiscal.

[Abhinav Sinha, analyst]

Okay. And that will be like a weekend destination sort of a project that you're creating?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

I think it is a very, very unique parcel of land. The scale of that parcel of land and the Alibaug as seen as the Hamptons or the new equivalent of Hamptons for the Mumbai region, is at a very, very high level of demand, and it's never really had the quality of development that we intend to do over there.

So yes, Alibaug connectivity is very decent right now. You can get there in about 20, 30 minutes from South Mumbai from a combination of taking the speedboat and then taking 5, 10 minutes to get to the site. It takes about 5, 10 minutes by car from the Alibaug jetty to our site. So it is very, very accessible. You have a new bridge which is getting completed maybe in 2 or 3 years' time, which will also make the road connectivity, not through South Mumbai, but through other parts of Mumbai, very strong.

So while it is clearly predominantly a second home or weekend destination, I know a lot of Mumbaikars who are now starting to think about living in Alibaug for not just 2 nights a week, but more like 4, 5 nights a week, and it really is dependent on whether the rest of the infrastructure is in place, health care and so on. And we expect that this development of ours will fill in several of those infra gaps. So we don't only see it as a second-home destination.

[Operator]

Next question is from the line of Siddharth Bhattacharya from Authum Investment and Infrastructure Limited.

[Siddharth Bhattacharya, analyst]

Just 1 question from me. So for the last few quarters, 6 or 7 quarters, we have seen that the value share of ultra-luxury units and luxury units have gone up significantly in the overall mix or let's say the top 7 cities. How do we see that as a trend and how does it affect us, if you could give some perspective?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Yes. I think you're correct in saying that luxury sales have been quite strong over the last few quarters. I would also add to that, that affordable housing has been hit by the increase in interest rates. And we hope that the government's announcement in the budget to bring in a scheme to help first-time homebuyers will come in after the election and will help the first-time homebuyers and affordable homebuyers to get on to the housing ladder.

Having said that, I think luxury housing is really a reflection of India's aspiration and India's wealth creation. And therefore, as long as India's job cycle and investment cycle continues to scale up, luxury housing will also do well.

Luxury is something that people use very loosely, but the real luxury, which is doing well is truly, truly absolute grade A Plus location, grade A Plus product and grade A Plus developers, bringing in a complete grade A lifestyle. I think one has to be careful while reading into what people call luxury because everybody likes to call a lot of things luxury.

[Siddharth Bhattacharya, analyst]

Got that. Got that. Secondly, with the new airport sort of coming up, do you think that the development in the Konkan side will be much faster compared to other areas of the suburbs?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

See, the Konkan area is not a suburb of Mumbai. It's a very, very large and significant sort of part of the state of Maharashtra and has many strengths. It also needs a lot of investment and a lot of infrastructure. I don't see that the airport or for that matter, the MTHL immediately changes much because it takes a lot to make a place attractive to live in. You need connectivity, which is starting to come in. You need airports, which is, again, it will be operational soon. You need social infrastructure, high-quality education, high-quality health care, good retail. In a place like Palava, it's taken a decade to put all of that together. So we do expect that, yes, there will be development in the area, but it is not going to, I would say, fundamentally change the dynamics of how the Mumbai region or the larger Mumbai region is operating.

[Operator]

Next question is from the line of Mohit Agrawal from IIFL.

[Mohit Agrawal, analyst]

So my first question is, how are you looking at deployment of capital towards annuity assets, specifically commercial office space. And within that, how are you seeing office demand shaping up at Palava now that you have a large residential base there?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So we, as a business, are not focused on office development. Our focus is largely around housing. We do some strata office development. And our annuity strategy revolves around 3 facts: one is our facilities management business along with this digital layer. Second is our warehousing and industrial parks business. And the third is selective, very selective office. Specifically, we will do it in some places which have other strategic reasons like Palava and our retail portfolio, which is 1 mall and several other high-speed retail locations.

So Palava, we expect office demand to remain -- to pick up. We now have HDFC Bank's training center completing soon. We have a pharma company, MQ setting up its own R&D center. We have 1 office building, which we are setting, which is now going to be ready this year, and we are going to start leasing it out. We already have presence from the back offices from various banks, including Axis and HDFC Bank. So yes, we have a variety of different mixes on the commercial office side, and we do expect that over the next, say, 2, 3 years, especially when you take into account the -- as the bullet train connectivity to BKC becomes more real, this could become a preferred location for financial services back office in addition to any other classes, which are more driven by the existing talent or the fact that this is a great location for people to live and work close to each other.

[Mohit Agrawal, analyst]

Okay. Understood. And secondly, how has been the progress on the green digital infra JV with Ivanhoe and Bain? Any news in terms of acquiring land parcels there?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

So the progress on the warehousing industrial platform with Bain and Ivanhoe Cambridge, we have 2 assets which are under development currently. One of those assets is actually about to become operational. Construction is almost complete. We are still in the process of acquiring land. The ramp-up has been slower than what we would have liked it to be. We expect some land parcels to close this quarter, and then we'll take it from there. But right now, we're only at 2 locations in that platform. We, of course, have a Morgan Stanley park, which is a separate one.

[Mohit Agrawal, analyst]

Two locations would be -- one would be Palava and the other would be?

[Abhishek Mangal Lodha, executive]

Second is in Kurla.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for the day. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Anand Kumar, Head, Investor Relations of Macrotech Developers, for closing comments. Over to you, sir.

[Anand Kumar, executive]

Thank you, everyone for joining the call. Please feel free to connect in case you have any additional queries. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. On behalf of Antique Stockbroking, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.