Q4 2019/Selvaag Bolig ASA Earnings Presentation Translation from The
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12 February 2020/08.30 CET – Q4 2019/Selvaag Bolig ASA earnings presentation Translation from the original Norwegian, which remains the definitive version Corporate partiCipants Rolf Thorsen, CEO, Selvaag Bolig ASA Sverre Molvik, CFO, Selvaag Bolig ASA Presentation RolF Thorsen, CEO, Selvaag Bolig ASA I would like to wish you heartily welcome to the fourth-quarter presentation for Selvaag Bolig. My name is Rolf Thorsen, CEO of Selvaag Bolig. Together with Sverre Molvik, our CFO, I will be presenting the results for the fourth quarter of 2019 and the full year. We’ll cut straight to the chase. There will be a Q&A session at the end, so that it would be good if you try to save up your questions until then. And those who’re following this streamed presentation on the web will also have the opportunity to send in questions, so we’ll try to collect these at the end. I’ll start by saying a few words about the overarching picture and a bit about sales. Sverre will then follow with masses of details about financial aspects and operational data. I will then return and talk a bit about the market and sum up at the end. We have had a very good 2019. We issued a stock exchange announcement this morning with the headline “record result and dividend”, and that’s quite correct, of course. Sverre will come back to the exact figures on this. But it has been a very strong year, based naturally on the fact that we have managed to sell and build a lot. It’s as simple as that. And then we have the fact that 2019 has also been very affected by this Urban Property transaction. That’s demanded a lot from us in the form of work, of course, perhaps particularly in the second half when much attention was devoted to it. And we can undoubtedly say now that this looks absolutely as if it could be a success. It has also allowed us to pay an extraordinary dividend of NOK 22 per share, which appears to have been much appreciated by both shareholders and analysts. And it’s also the case that, based on our results for 2019, the board has proposed that we pay an ordinary dividend of NOK 3.00 per share for the second half of 2019. That’s in addition to the NOK 2.00 which has already been paid. This means that, viewed overall, 2019 was a quite incredibly good year in terms of dividend. But it’s also the case that this Urban Property transaction has been implemented precisely so that we can maintain the dividend strategy and policy which we’ve had. It’s absolutely not our intention to pay out NOK 27.00 per year for the future, but to maintain a good level of dividend in the years to come. So to a few details. I won’t weary you with too many, but nevertheless provide some. Results for the quarter in accordance with the IFRS are a turnover of NOK 1.4 billion and a margin of 28 per cent, and for the full year are a turnover of almost NOK 3.4 billion and a record margin of 28.5 per cent. Sverre will provide more details here, but those of you who’re good at mental arithmetic can amuse themselves by multiplying NOK 3.4 billion with 28.5 per cent and seeing what the result comes to. Results for the quarter in accordance with NGAAP are a turnover just over NOK 1 billion and a margin of almost 22 per cent, and for the full year a turnover of 23.6 per cent and almost NOK 3.3 billion in operating revenue. So the business is doing well, we’re making good money and are actually working at full speed ahead. That’s been driven to a pretty considerable extent by good sales. Looking at the volume, the value of sales we made in the fourth quarter came to NOK 705 million, and the graph of units sold show that they totalled 140 in the fourth quarter and 752 for the full year. These are net figures, so they report only our share of joint ventures. The gross figure is 908 units actually been sold. If you then look at the 12-month rolling figures for the same, I think this is a pretty impressive performance – a rising value even though our sales have been relatively flat over the past couple of years. This means that we must not become obsessed with the number of units alone, to the exclusion of their value. We see that the latter has then risen somewhat – not sharply, but moving steadily up a little. That has something to do both with what we offer and with the general price trend in the market. Viewed overall, therefore, a strong quarter and a strong year. Now Sverre will take us further into the details. Sverre MolviK, CFO, Selvaag Bolig ASA I’ll start by taking a little look at operations. We had almost as many construction starts and completions in the fourth quarter as in 2018 – 248 as against 254. That means our pace was almost identical compared with the previous quarter. A total of 1 504 units were in production, down by six from the third quarter but with a value just over NOK 30 million lower at NOK 7 155 million. So a very good tempo. This is the order backlog, of course, results and turnover which will come down the road. Of this, 70 per cent was sold at 31 December and those of you who have kept abreast of media reports will undoubtedly have seen that the market remains liquid this year, so that we now naturally have a higher sales ratio already. Of this roughly NOK 7.2 billion, 91 per cent is in the Greater Oslo area or the east Norwegian region. So you can see for yourselves that when we get Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim restored to a normal level – and perhaps also Stockholm – this has a very good potential. Looking ahead, our guidance on completions for the present year is the same as in the previous quarter, at 745 units with the bulk in the fourth quarter as is usually the case. Of this, 75 per cent was sold at 31 December and that proportion is now larger. By comparison, our overall sales ratio in the final quarter of 2018 was 66 per cent. So the sales ratio, all other things being equal, was higher during fourth quarter of last year. And the market is actually developing better, as Rolf will return to later. When putting projects on sale, we’re noticing that things have improved this year compared with the same time last year. That’s positive. As we usually say, we’re selling on a straight-line basis between the start to construction and completion. We thereby obtain the market price. Sales should actually be completely linear. In that respect, we’re very well placed with regard to the sales ratio and in line with where we are supposed to be. If we look at the financial results in accordance with the IFRS first, we had fewer deliveries in the fourth quarter than the year before – 214 compared with 421. The value of the units delivered was NOK 1 069 million compared with NOK 1 596. So the value was much lower. But we have had a couple of one-offs. These include the sale of a commercial property at Hamang – the old Statoil building there – because we failed to secure planning permission for the change of use we had envisaged and because there was demand in the rental market there and we have then sold this as a yield property. The transaction has been recognised as turnover because the property was registered as a warehouse when we acquired it and has been sold on with the same designation. It has not been requalified, for those of you who wondered about that. In addition, we have sold an option contract in Asker which we would have developed if we had been able to participate in it. So that’s why we’ve sold – we haven’t got rid of land we could otherwise have used in our core business. We’ve disposed of property and we’ve also achieved a good and sensible margin on these sales, even though it’s not as good as the one we have in the rest of our ordinary operations. Other revenues include normal Pluss service earnings and rental income, totalling NOK 26 million. Overall, therefore, despite fewer deliveries, we ended up with revenues more or less unchanged from the year before. Not that bad, at any rate, at NOK 1 414 million compared with NOK 1 625 million for the record fourth quarter of 2018. Project costs at NOK 937 million were in line with the forecasts for the final result we make when starting sales. As I usually say, we’re very good at managing our projects. When we start sales in a project, the costs we enter in our calculations usually end up lower by the time we complete construction. We also add in a little as a safeguard, unforeseen items and so forth, in these calculations. Project costs included interest expenses of NOK 23 million related to the units delivered. Other expenses came to NOK 92 million and were a good bit higher than the NOK 83 million for the same period of 2018.