Bonava AB (publ)

STO:BONAV B

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to the presentation of Bonava's Third Quarter 2024. Bonava is a residential developer that has operations throughout Northern Europe with the purpose of creating happy neighborhoods.

My name is Fredrik Hemborg, and I'm Group President Public Affairs and Acting Head of Investor Relations since my dear colleague, Anna Falck Fyhrlund, is on parental leave. With me here around the table at the headquarters in Stockholm this morning, I have Bonava's President and CEO, Peter Wallin; and CFO, Lars Ingman, who will take you through the highlights of the report in just a while.

As always, we will open up the floor for questions at the end of the session. [Operator Instructions] Last but not least, this conference will be recorded and will be uploaded to our corporate website, bonava.com, together with the PowerPoint presentation later today. So let's get started, and I hand over the word to you, Peter.

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Thank you very much, Fredrik. Great presentation. And a very warm welcome to all and everyone from sunny Stockholm. And we are introducing this conference regarding the third quarter with the backdrop of a sunny day in Dusseldorf Paulshöfe.

So if we start to hit the market highlights for the third quarter, we are continuing to see an improvement in the market. And this is something that we have talked about during the year, but more and more clear, we can see the improvement in the market. Especially the consumer part of the market is improving compared to last year, which you can see in both sales and starts. And also the very important market for us, the business-to-business, the investor deals is on the rise as well. So, so far, we have signed 2 investor deals, 1 in Germany and 1 in Finland, which we released yesterday. And we have a pipeline of more deals to come where we have actually notarized deals -- contracts, and we are awaiting building permits.

And then if we look, Bonava, we are reporting our sales figures, which is binding contracts. If we both combine sales and reservations, we have actually seen a strong growth in both here during the year, and they are increasing in total 31% over a comparable period last year. So that's something which will do well for the binding agreements since we will convert the reservations to binding contracts.

If we take a quick look into the third quarter, Lars will talk about them in details. As expected, since we are reporting completed contracts, we were expecting a low volume in third quarter. So we are reporting a net sales of SEK 1.4 billion, which is half of the net sales reported similar period last year. We are seeing an improved gross margin up to 10%. And this is thanks to both the savings that we are implementing, but also a very good job out in the business, making sure that we can serve the margins. The cost reductions then we are very close to the gross savings of SEK 1 billion, which we initiated actually already 2.5 years ago, and then we upped the plan to SEK 1 billion gross back end of last year with the restructuring of the German operations. We are more or less done now. We have a little bit more to go in the fourth quarter, but we are a little bit ahead of the plan.

And this impacts and reduces, as you can see from the numbers, both the S&A, which is reported on a 1 liner in the P&L, but also the indirect cost, which is an integrated part of the gross profit. So that's why we are talking a little bit about underabsorption. Hence, the low volume that we have in the quarter, despite that, we are actually reporting a very small EBIT loss on the operating EBIT. On the rolling 12-month basis, we are increasing the EBIT margin to 4.6%. So albeit not at levels where we should be, we are heading in a better territory now.

Very important for us is, of course, to make sure that we have a very good and lean balance sheet. And we have done quite a bit of job here, as you can see, and we are reporting a strong cash flow also in the third quarter, which takes down the net debt to SEK 3.5 billion. Last year, it was SEK 6.3 billion. And of course, SEK 1 billion of the reduction is thanks to the new issue of shares that was done. But the predominant part is done through the operations.

Then as we do in all third quarters, we have done an evaluation of our building rights portfolio through a DCF or discounted cash flow and that puts a surplus value of our land bank building rights, which is future profits to be reported in Bonava of SEK 4.6 billion. So that's an increase by SEK 900 million compared to last year.

Then talking a little bit about the starts that we see in the third quarter. Paulshöfe in Dusseldorf, very interesting investments, where we are doing a lot of different phases, both for investors and consumers. And this is essentially, just as Fredrik alluded to, is building a new neighborhood in Dusseldorf.

We are also starting a project outside Linköping in Sweden of single-family housing for consumers, which is very, very good in interest areas for us to develop over the coming years. And then we are also starting our first project in Finland for almost 2 years in Tampere. And this took -- is interesting because this is a project which has started where we have developed a lot of other projects over the years. So we know the market very well. It's attracted a huge interest. So we signed up a land lease in the second quarter, and we are starting the projects in the third quarter. So hats off for the Finnish operations.

And I was also -- we are talking about and have been talking about that we will see an increase in production starts during the second half. So we have reported in the third quarter, an increase of starts and so far, during the fourth quarter, we have started a little bit more than 250 projects where we reported an investor project in Turku in Finland. Sorry for my pronounciation. 99 units to an investor, and that's a forward-funded deal. So that will also give us a very good and healthy cash flow.

And then we have also started a consumer project in Riga. We have started a consumer project in Aiandi in Tallinn, an area where we have developed a lot of projects over the years. And then also in Stockholm, we have started the first of many phases of single-family housing for consumers outside Stockholm. So we are taking on the market head-on with profitable and value-adding project starts.

With that, I hand over to you, Lars.

[Lars Ingman, executive]

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I will now try to take you through the Q3 figures. So first, we have the slide through in the number of recognized units in the quarter. During the quarter, we have 192 units were completed and of which 30 units remains unsold at the end of the period. And we also reduced the inventory with 125 units an addition, 33 units were sold, but not recognized at the end of the quarter. So in total, 337 units recognized in the quarter.

So we continue to aim at reducing our inventory of unsold completed units, and we were successful with that also in Q3. The starting balance in the quarter amounted to 442 units and with 192 completed during the quarter or the units -- completed units in the quarter were 93% sold in the same quarter, along with 125 units sold from the inventory. So in total, the inventory decreased by 112 units or 25%. And year-to-date, the inventory value has decreased by approximately SEK 0.5 billion.

Next slide. Based on the 337 units recognized plus the sale of land, we reached net sales of SEK 1.4 billion compared to the last year, SEK 2.8 billion. And the operating gross margin in the quarter increased to 10%. This is mainly driven by strong operating gross profit in two business units, Germany and Baltic.

Selling and admin expenses also continued to be lower versus last year and was down with SEK 13 million in the quarter and down year-to-date with SEK 69 million. This is due to the implementation of ongoing cost reduction program that started last year. The operating EBIT of SEK 19 million versus last year, SEK 30 million, is mainly explained by the lower business volume in the quarter that not -- cannot fully recover the OpEx costs in the quarter. But in general term, the outcome was in line with our forecast for the quarter. All in all, the EBIT outcome also include impairment items of SEK 239 million. So all in all, EBIT minus SEK 258 million for the quarter.

The net financial items decreased with SEK 30 million to SEK 132 million and these financial items also includes interest costs as well as FX items and bank costs and guaranteed fees.

On this slide, here, you can see the summary of the operating profit and the margin for the group per business unit for the quarter and the rolling 12 months. As you can see, the development over the last 12 months has been stable in Germany and Baltics, but are more challenging in Sweden and in Finland. So let's move to the business unit, starting with the biggest one, Germany.

Here, we recognize 153 units to the consumer and the net sales figures decreased in total to SEK 813 million due to the lower number of recognized units, of course. During the quarter, the gross margin increased to 13.6% due to lower indirect costs and higher project margins in the recognized units -- recognized projects. Also here, the selling and admin costs were down to SEK 66 million from SEK 74 million. And this is due to the implemented cost reduction program.

Despite the decrease in the net sales, the operating EBIT margin remained at a stable 5.5%. And in the quarter, we started (317) units, slightly below last year, and the number of sold units remaining close to the last year's figures. During the period, we saw a strong development in both started and sold units to consumers, and they increased about 30% versus last year.

So the next slide. Next is Sweden. Here, the net sales amounted to SEK 413 million and with the sales to consumer totaling SEK 224 million and the sale of land amounted to SEK 186 million. The gross margin was SEK 2.9 million (sic) [2.9%] this is due to the low margin in the recognized units and the land sales. Selling and admin expenses continued to decrease and now at SEK 26 million compared to last year SEK 36 million. So in summary, the operating EBIT was negative at minus SEK 14 million, and the result was not a surprise to us and was in line with our forecast.

During the quarter, we also started 23 units compared to 0 units last year and they increased the number of sold units by 15%. Sweden also experienced a strong demand, selling 30 units from the inventory in the quarter. And year-to-date, the inventory of unsold units is down by 50%.

Moving to Finland. In Finland, the market continues to be very challenging with the net sales being low based on 8 recognized units to consumer and sale to investors, resulting in a net sales of SEK 27 million and the gross margin and the operating margin for the quarter were negative mainly due to the underabsorption of costs caused by the low business volume during the quarter.

Moving to Baltics. The number of recognized units increased to 119 from 80 and the net sales were up, and with the gross margin also increased to 14.9%. And due to the increase in net sales and the strong gross margin, the operating margin also rose to 8.7% and the occupancy rate in the B2M project, continues to increase month by month and is now above 80%.

If you continue to the next slide, this slide -- the graph summarizes the expected completion and the corresponding sales per quarter for the consumer units. The left (one) bars represent a number of units completed during the third quarter, while the other bars indicate expected completion and actual sales status for Q4. Expect -- per Q4, the expected completion is 600 units, and it was, yes -- the next 1, it's the same graph, but have to do with the investors. So this graph summarizes the expected completion for the investor business with 0 completion in Q3. And expected 250 completion during Q4. And currently, investor business is conducted in the business units, Germany and Finland.

Continue to the next slide. This is the updated valuation and the company conducts an annual valuation of the land portfolio in September, and this is based on both external and internal valuation. And the valuation are based on discounted future cash flow from projects yet to be started. The total surplus value over the book value was estimated at SEK 4.6 billion by end of September compared to last year, it was SEK 3.7 billion. So this year's valuation has also resulted in a write-down of in total SEK 143 million from a couple of projects.

So if you look on the graph, on the right side, you can see the development of the surplus value from the reported last year, SEK 1.2 billion and the additional surplus from the internal valuation last year up to the SEK 3.7 billion and this year is up to the SEK 4.6 billion.

Continue to the optimizing the building portfolio. This is a summary of the current number of building rights 27,500, where of 7,200 are off balance. And you can see the distribution between the business units and the potential start per year, plus the total cost distribution of units between B2B projects and B2C projects. And of course, before any project starts, calculation are prepared to ensure that each individual project will be profitable, which then, of course, turn -- which in turn can affect the planned project start date and year.

On this slide, you can see the operating cash flow statement. In summary, we had a positive cash flow from the net investment with SEK 431 million, where land sale and completed unsold unit contributed and combined -- this is combined with a positive change in working capital, mainly driven by increased customer advance compared with last year. In total, the operating cash flow for the quarter amounted to SEK 489 million compared to the SEK 188 million last year.

So let's continue to the next slide and this -- which provides a summary of the reduction of the net debt from SEK 6.3 billion mentioned last year to the current SEK 3.5 billion. And this is close to 50% reduction. And since the start of 2024, the net debt has decreased by SEK 1.5 billion and the decrease is, of course, mainly due to lower bank debt and the reduction in housing and company debt.

And this slide summarizes the external financing facilities as per end of September with a total facility amount of -- sorry, SEK 5.5 billion with SEK 900 million undrawn and around SEK 700 million in cash. So in total, SEK 1.6 billion, SEK 1.7 billion in available liquidity by the end of the quarter.

So in addition to Bonava's financial target regarding operating margin and return on equity, we also, during the year, introduced a new financial framework with 2 key metrics, the net project assets to exceed net debt and the equity to asset ratio to be above 30%. As you can see, both of these metrics were -- both metrics were met at the end of the quarter. So with that said, back to you, Peter.

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Fantastic, Lars. Thank you for a very good presentation. So summarizing this all, we have completed the third quarter, which I think is proving that we are on the right way. And we are, as everybody else, of course, dependent upon a continued improvement of the market. And by -- through the improvement of the market, we will increase sales. And through increased sales, we will be able to start projects, which will benefit the value of Bonava.

We have significantly reduced net debt, and we are continuously working to keep the balance sheet in a good shape. And this will allow us to be flexible when it comes to project starts and also then reduce the financial costs. The OpEx, meaning both indirect costs included in gross profit and selling and admin will gradually be reduced. And this is also, of course, thanks to that we get a full impact of the savings that Lars has talked about. And then also, of course, as we start projects, we will be able to capitalize more of these costs relating to the projects to the projects.

So all in all, we expect sort of a tail off of the underabsorption. It will take some quarters ahead pending that we will continue to start. We have a strong pipeline of starts, both for the fourth quarter, we have talked about 250 started so far and also for the full year 2025. And this is an important part, of course, is in our target of reaching an operating EBIT margin of 10% during 2026, as we have talked about before. We are in the fourth quarter now. And as you all know, historically, we are leaving the low volume quarter of the year going into the most busiest quarter of the year, both in terms of handovers, meaning profit and loss accounting, cash inflow, continuously strengthening our financial position and then, of course, also increasing the starts.

So we are very much looking forward to talk about that in the beginning of February next time, but we will be busy working with this until then. So with that, Fredrik, let's move into the Q&A.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

[Operator Instructions] I would like to start with the question. Peter, anyone who follows the news has probably noticed that there are macroeconomic challenges in Germany. And at the same time, we write in the report that we continue to see positive signs in our German business. Can you explain the situation in Germany at this point?

[Peter Wallin, executive]

I will try to. Germany is described as the sick man of Europe. And that, of course, relates to the challenges in the industrial way it's set up and also the way inflexibility in the labor market. When we look into our business, we see a pent-up demand for housing. And we see a housing market, which have sort of dropped off much more quickly in all other businesses, which means that we are already seeing then that the pent-up demand and the improved disposable income of households is improving the demand for housing. And then also, of course, our regional exposure in terms of having a very high market share in Berlin, which is a very strong market right now, together with Dusseldorf, Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Frankfurt.

So those are really the engines in the German market context right now. So that is something that is benefiting our development of sales and reservations in Germany.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

[Operator Instructions] Lars, at the end of Q3, we had 330 completed unsold units in stock, a significant decrease during the year. Going forward, what would you say is a reasonable, even optimal level when it comes to completed unsold? Is there an ideal figure?

[Lars Ingman, executive]

You can put it like that. I mean you have to work -- first of all, you have to work quite actively with your inventory. That's the most important and if you get down to 0, then you probably have sold out absolutely too cheap. I mean you have not got what you should get out because then you don't get out any margin. So this is a balance, so it will not be 0 but we should work actively to get it down to a very good level, and we are on track for that. I mean going down this year from 505 to 330, and we will work actively to get it down even further, but it will not get to 0 because then it's -- then you have sold it off too cheap, and you want the margin also.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

We have a question here online. It's coming from [indiscernible]. The land sales in Sweden, could you describe those a little bit? Are they below -- are they below or above book value? And maybe also could comment on construction cost development and how they have changed year-to-date?

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Okay. Thanks a lot for the questions. So we have the land value in Sweden. We reported some joint ventures in Sweden in -- during the third quarter. And those have been below the book value, which have made us to do a write-down, which is visible on the impairment line under operating EBIT. And if I should speak a little bit about that deal, we have taken a view that when we started the discussions, the market was much tougher. So you can say that the level indicates that we want to get the project started quicker in a tough market. Whereas market values principally is dictating how you can start and evaluate the project in a free and open market without any sort of pressure of time.

So that means that we have taken a knock down the value. And we have also done some outright land sales also below the book value, which have caused to do some impairments. And I would say that the market has improved also in terms of views of land bank valuations. But the toughest market to get around is non-cash flow generating land deals in a market which have not operating in a normal way. Talking a little bit about construction cost, we can see the input materials have sort of come down in terms of value and cost. We've also seen the costs for hiring contractors has decreased on the back, of course, of the very tough market conditions.

In the opposite direction, of course, comes the inflationary pressure from wage increases, and then also increased cost of transportation. And we all know the situation with the Suez canal and everything that is sort of making challenges when it comes to the supply chain deliveries. So those have sort of acted in the wrong way. On the balance, construction costs have sort of tailed off in terms of increase and actually started to decrease somewhat.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

And we have two questions from Simen Mortensen of DNB. And the first one is, can you give an update on the strategy evaluation for Finland? And the second one is the impairments. Are these based on updated external valuations or internal calculations? Maybe we can start with the Finland question, Peter.

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Okay. And then Lars, you will take the other question, please. Okay, Finland. When it comes to Finland, we are -- the assessment of Finland will be when we are seeing the market is sort of -- right now, the market is very tough to see. And we are getting things started in Finland as we have reported. So we need to go along and continue to see if we can continue to start projects. If we can continue to start projects, we have a very good and well put together operations that can create a lot of value there. So it's early days in the assessment of Finland right now. We are seeing promising signs into the market. But I would say that Finland is trailing the Swedish development by 6 months because of the big imbalances in terms of completed unsold volumes in the Finnish market. We are seeing improvements, but it's still early days. Impairment, Lars.

[Lars Ingman, executive]

Yes, impairment. The question was around 30% as was in the presentation, 30% of the building rights portfolio have been evaluated by external valuator. And the remaining 70% we have internally evaluated, but we have, of course, been talking to or getting sort of -- we talk to external valuators and they also validate our assumption in the method and the metrology we used. And as you can see, we used the WAC weighted interest cost of -- interest cost of 9.2%, which is compared to last year's 12.5%. And that's, of course, have an impact also on the value of the building rights portfolio in the future when you take cash flow and make a net present value of the future cash flow. So that's a major impact on that, of course. So it's made with the same method as last year, but with a small portion of external valuation.

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Specific question also, I think, was relating to the impairment on was that external or internal valuation. And I think as I said, both actually, and if we -- what we also have mentioned, is the fact that in some of these, the predominant part of this relates to deals where we are seeking to divest building rights. So it's a -- you can say it's a very sharp target to release this value and get cash flow instead.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

And we have one more from [indiscernible]. Given the tough market situation, do you see any opportunities to acquire any land bank at distressed valuation or the market is not in such a stage where such opportunities would emerge?

[Peter Wallin, executive]

Very good question. I think that is exactly why we're using and making sure that we keep our balance sheet lean and flexible. Because we do see those kind of opportunities, especially in Germany right now. And in Germany, we have a strong market position in relation to the big increases we can see in business volume there, we will need to replenish the land bank in not too distant future. So yes, we do see that both opportunity and need to do that.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

Do we have any questions from the phone conference? Does not seem so this morning. I have one more question. Peter, starts or production, we always say that it's the engine of our business. And quarter after quarter this year, we report an increasing number of starts. Would you outline your thoughts on production starts going forward? Maybe we can repeat that.

[Peter Wallin, executive]

As we alluded to, we see a strong opportunity to increase starts to a large extent in the fourth quarter. And we have a very strong pipeline in 2025 as well. And when we talk about pipeline, it is about to start projects at the right time and during the right conditions. When we have secured production costs, we have a verified sales situation, and we have the right team in place. So despite all the changes we've done in the operations, some of the changes we've done is to strengthen the line organization out close to the customers and market. And that means that we are prepared to start projects with the right preconditions.

So sales is tremendously important now because we -- starting projects is easy, but starting projects with a good sales situation, that is the key to balancing both risks but also the opportunities.

[Fredrik Hemborg, executive]

No further questions at this point. Let me just update the chat, let's see if we have anything else. No, so we have no further questions at this point, then it's time to wrap up this session. And if you would like to know more about Bonava, our strategy, products or our people, you can always go to our corporate website, bonava.com, feel free to send us an e-mail or you're always welcome to give us a call. Bonava's year-end report will be published the fourth of February 2025. Thank you very much for tuning in this morning. We wish you all a very nice day. Goodbye for now.