Yit Oyj Unsp/Adr

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to YIT's first quarter 2024 results webcast. My name is Essi Nikitin, and I'm heading the investor relations at YIT. Together with me here are our CEO, Heikki Vuoremaa, and CFO, Tuomas Mäkipesko. At this point, I hand over to Heikki. Please go ahead, Heikki.

Thank you, Essi, and welcome, everyone, to our first quarter webcast. The year started as expected, with significant improvements in our cash flow and financial position. However, the Finnish housing market and rising yields impacted our profitability for the first quarter. Despite this, our underlying operating performance was solid and project execution proceeded well across all segments. Our housing sales improved nearly 60% on a year-on-year basis, with the Baltics and CEE seeing the fifth consecutive quarter of improvement. Our company's cash flow improved by over 200 million, resulting in a positive first quarter cash flow. Additionally, we secured proceeds from a financial arrangement, leaving us with more than 250 million euros cash at the end of the quarter. So, overall, it was a solid start for the year. Let's take a closer look at the group finances. During the first quarter, the revenue declined by 9%, driven by low residential sales in Finland and a low number of completions in the Baltics and CEE countries. Our adjusted operating profit for the group was negative 40 million euros, impacted by a decrease in the fair values. In total, the impact of yields and fair values on group profits during the first quarter was 13 million, of which 12 attributed to the mall of Tripla. Excluding these changes, our operational result was on a similar level to the first quarter of last year, even with the lower completions in the Baltics and CEE operations. On following pages, we break down these numbers and see how we performed in different business areas. We have recently increased the granularity of our investor communication to provide more insights into our operating engine, which consists of four cylinders. When we look at the group numbers, we can see that three out of four cylinders are performing well. However, the housing segment in Finland continues to face headwinds, impacting both the net sales and profitability. Well, in contrast, sales in the Baltics and CEE remained strong, despite lower completions compared to previous year. The infrastructure segment saw a decline in net sales due to the closure of operations in Sweden, but profitability remained stable year on year basis. The business premises segment, on the other hand, experienced an increase in net sales and positive profitability prior to changes in fair values. Let's delve deeper into the housing Finland. The capital employed is currently at 700 million, an increase of approximately 50 million from last year. However, the inventory of unsold finished goods has almost doubled during that period of time. Despite the increase in the stock of finished apartments, the team has been able to release capital from the other parts of the business operations to control the balance sheet. As the market recovers, all the apartments will gradually be sold, leading to a decline in the capital employed in the Finnish housing. The order book has declined substantially due to the low number of startups, both in the consumer and investor segments. This is due to the prevailing market conditions. But our market share actually has increased over the past 12 months. The adjusted operating profit was negative at 7 million euro, which is on the same level as last year during the quarter. Margins are under pressure due to the low production volumes, but we expect to recover the margins above the outlined target level as the market recovery starts in Finland. So how have we actually then activated the market and increased our market share? Well, Wayanti has launched several campaigns to activate the market. And one of these is the interest rate gap campaign, which allows customers to gap their interest rate at 2% for five years. This campaign has been really successful and we have decided to continue it until the end of the August. YIT is the first company in the Finnish market to offer such a deal, thanks to its strong partnerships with banks. Another campaign launched by YIT is Rent to Buy campaign, which has received a high attention and has already resulted in signed deals. This campaign focuses on addressing the problem of home buyers, especially those who are in between the apartments. So we continue to listen to consumers to solve the problems, innovate solutions and activate the market. Let's continue our discussion on the overall Finnish housing market. As we have mentioned earlier on these investors' calls, the completions to market will be exceptionally low. This year, the completions of consumer apartments are low from historical levels. However, if you take a look on the next year, completions are reaching almost all-time low level. This will for sure have an impact to supply of apartments and also to the whole industry as such. We continue to observe the right timing to start new projects and to maintain a balance between demand and supply. At the end of the quarter, operations in Finland had a total of 1,000 unsold apartments, which are now an asset for the following quarters as completions of consumer units are at the historically low level for the next 16 months. The portfolio continues to be well balanced and locates in attractive areas in major growth cities in Finland. With the population growth continuing in all the major cities this year, the lack of supply will eventually turn the market situation to be balanced. If the sales continues at the pace we've seen in the past two months, the stock of these 1,000 apartments will last somewhere between 12 to 16 months. This presents a promising outlook for us. Moving on to the housing market in the Baltics and CEE. Well, we can see that the market is active, and it also has had a positive impact on our capital employed. Over the past 12 months, we have released over 50 million in capital, despite starting multiple new projects. Our order book has remained strong with the growth on both a quarterly and yearly basis. Our adjusted operating profit for the rolling 12 months is at 13%, which is above our target level. Of the units completed by the YIT housing segment, 70% come from the politics and CEE, and we continue to carefully allocate more capital to this area. Let's take a closer look at the housing segment supply chain in details. During that quarter, our startups doubled to almost 500 units, all of which were initiated outside of Finland. The number of startups is well balanced with monthly sales to maintain a healthy balance between the demand and supply. We will continue to initiate the projects in market with healthier demand. And as I said, we are carefully observing the right timing to launch more new projects in Finland as well. Next, let's take a look on our production. Our production is going well. There are no supply chain shortages or challenges. Raw material prices are on a decline, and it gives us competitive advantages in tendering projects as well. We have recently announced new partnerships to further improve our design capabilities, material cost base, and time to market. Those partnerships will support our competitiveness going forward. At the end of the quarter, we had approximately 3,000 units under construction with a sales rate of 49%. To balance the decline in production, we have used temporary layoffs and other measures in Finland, but we are also focusing on training our employees to maintain the capability to ramp up the production as needed. Next, we move on to completions. During the quarter, we completed a total of 391 units, mostly in Finland. All departments started prior to the market downturn in Finland are now completed, and the supply to the market will be significantly lower in the coming quarters. This will eventually lead to a balance between supply and demand, and we will see a decline in our inventory units moving forward in Finland as well. In the following quarters, completions will take place in the Baltics and sea, as mentioned. The total number is approximately 1,200 units during this year. As I mentioned in the beginning, our apartment sales have increased significantly, 59% year on year and 9% from the previous quarter. Our sales improvement in Finland has been slow, yet steady, despite the overall market remaining weak. Our operations in Poland, Czech and Latvia has been the main drivers for the increase in sales in the Baltics and CEE. Since the lowest point in apartment sales, which was the first quarter last year, we have seen growth in each subsequent quarter. Our sales teams are working hard to maintain this trend in the coming quarters. On the following page, we will cover another element of our operations, which is production under associated companies and joint ventures. As announced April 29th, we are deepening our partnership with investment partners to construct certain parts of our housing portfolio together with them. This operating model provides us flexibility, scale and improved capital efficiency. During the quarter, we sold 110 YIT apartments to consumer from our associated companies and joint ventures. This year, we'll complete 500 units through these special purpose vehicles, and as we announced, continue to expand our partnership in certain markets going forward. It is important to note that the number of apartment sales as well as the completions are not included in the previous part of the presentation. This now concludes the housing segment walkthrough, and we will now move on to the other area for businesses, starting with the business premises. In the business premises segment, we saw an improvement in underlying performance, resulting in positive results. Our revenue improved, supported by a strong order book in the segment. This improvement is due to the lower material costs and improved overall project management. During the quarter, the yield of Tripla Mall increased, evaluated by a third party, and that is weakening our results by 12 million euros during the first quarter of 2024. The mall of Tripla itself continues to perform extremely well, with the growth in visitors and revenue almost 2x compared to Piers, and has a high occupancy rate as well. The segment's capital employed includes two self-developed office premises, one in Finland, another one in Lithuania. The Tripla Mall, Plotsch, and one brownfield development site here in Finland. The plan for the segment is rather straightforward. Release the capital employed from the investments and some plots, secure healthy order book and improve operating profit. Now let's move on to the infra segment. The infra team had a solid quarter with a decrease in capital employed due to the successful divestments of the equipment business and the release of capital from the operations in Sweden. The order book declined from the previous quarter, but the segment still has a healthy order book of approximately 24 months. Several new contracts such as more than 100 million on road maintenance have been announced, but not yet included to the order book. Operating profit was at the same level as last year during the quarter, and the rolling 12 months is starting to reach the 4% level, which should be the minimum threshold for the infra business. With ongoing efficiency measure, there is a potential to exceed this level going forward. But now it starts to be the time to leave the segment results and conclude the market environment where we are today. We expect the housing market in Finland to continue similar during the second and third quarter of 2024. Consumer confidence and the apartment buying intentions are not indicating any speedy market recovery. There is still unmet demand, yet consumers are cautious in their investment decisions. And that is also postponing decisions to acquire new homes, Additionally, there are certain unique characteristics of the Finnish housing market, such as fluctuating mortgage rates, increasing unemployment, and VAT increases that have been recently announced. They might have a further impact on the recovery. In the Baltics and the Latvian-Lithuanian markets are already recovering, while Estonia continues to be muted. The market situation in Central Eastern European countries are normal for us. Both the Finnish infra market and the real estate market, there is a lot to tend for. And the market remains normal, maybe even a bit positive in our view. But now it starts to be the time to hand over our CFO, Tuomas Mäkipeska. Tuomas. Thank you, Heikki.

From financial perspective, we had a positive start for the year and continued on the right track to improve our financial position. Overall, the underlying profitability of the group was stable and clearly increased in business premises. However, in business premises, profitability was impacted by yield increase of 25 basis points in Tripla Mall. The Mall of Tripla is operationally performing very well, and the change was purely related to the yield increase. The housing market in Finland continued to challenge us and burdened our revenues and profits in the housing segment. And in the infrastructure segment, profitability was stable. The highlight of the quarter was the significantly improved cash flow, which was one million positive. We made progress especially in releasing capital and generating cash flow from our operations. Consequently, we decreased the net debt by some 70 million euros from the comparison period. Let's have a closer look at the financials. Focusing first on capital employed development. On group level, we have released 90 million euros of capital during the last two quarters. In Housing Finland, despite the increase in completed apartments inventory, we were able to keep capital employed development relatively stable during the last quarters due to the measures taken in the operations. Sale of the apartments from inventory will release capital and low construction volumes will slow down the amount of additional capital tied to production in upcoming quarters. In housing Baltics and CEE, we reached fourth consecutive quarter in decreasing capital employed. We have released capital altogether some 50 million euros during the time period by conducting more capital efficient ways of doing business. We have, for example, deepened collaboration with RSJ Investments and formed three joint ventures in Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia to develop large area projects together with the partner. We have sold plots or projects under construction to the joint ventures and continue to develop them together, allowing us to reach higher volumes profitably and tying less capital. In infrastructure, we have altogether clearly less capital employed, but also there we are on a very positive track. In total, 50 million euros of capital have been released after Q1 23. Majority of the impact is attributable to the sale of equipment business and is supported by other capital efficiency measures related to the networking capital management. Finally, in business premises, we are on a similar positive trend, and some 60 million euros of capital has been released during the last 12 months. Main contributor to the result was the sale of Maistratin Portti office premises in Pasila, and the largest single item remaining in the balance sheet is obviously the Mall of Tripla in Pasila as well. The determined work continues to further release capital from the operations and to improve the return on capital employed of YIT. In big picture, we see that running our business profitably requires clearly less capital than before. Let's move on to the highlight of the quarter, cash flow. The cash flow improved significantly and we were able to reach positive result in Q1, even though seasonally the first quarter cash flow has been lower than the other quarters. Obviously, we are pleased to have reached such a strong cash flow, especially compared to the last year's Q1. Sale of the equipment business supported the Q1 24 outcome by some 30 million euros. On top of that, measures to improve networking capital efficiency yielded results. We launched the transformation program roughly a year ago, and since then we have taken several cash flow improvement and capital release actions to strengthen our financial position. The 12 months rolling operative cash flow was 80 million positive at the end of the first quarter. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period amounted to 270 million euros, and this was also supported by the successful financing arrangement in the first quarter. If we then have a look at how this is reflected on the balance sheet, our underlying asset base continues to be very strong. Key assets totaled to 1.8 billion euros. We have a land bank of over 800 million euros to serve as a platform for future operations and profits. Of the plot portfolio, worth of some 650 million euros are our own plots and least plots are worth of some 160 million euros. Inventory assets under production decreased to under 320 million euros from over 400 million in Q4, reflecting the declining number of apartments under construction. Completed apartments and real estate in our inventory increased to 435 million euros due to the low number of sold apartments in Finland. and the investments were worth of 280 million euros, declining slightly from the Q4. The net interest-bearing debt decreased by some 30 million euros due to the strong cash flow in Q1. Approximately 510 million euros of our gross debt is related to IFRS 16 lease liabilities, including lease plots and long maturing housing company loans that are transferred to buyer when the apartments are sold. So the adjusted net debt was consequently only 260 million euros. So our asset base continues to be strong and the net debt remains balanced. Going forward, we see that optimal situation for YIT is to operate with clearly less debt and utilize mainly project-based loans. Then a couple of words about our investment and purchase commitments, since we have often received questions related to the content of these items. Investment commitments are mainly related to equity commitments to joint ventures and associated companies, and these are reported to a full amount as long as contractual obligation exists without considering probability for a capital call. So in total, we have such commitments worth of 89 million euros spread over a long time horizon. And according to our estimation, capital calls of only 6 million euros are expected to realize in the following 12 months. Purchase commitments are mainly pre-contracts for plots in Finland that enable the long-term development of residential construction. We rather consider it as a pipeline and potential that we can tap into when the market picks up in Finland. Currently, we have total purchase commitments worth of 307 million euros, also spread over long time horizon. And the amount is based on the estimated total acquisition value of the plot, despite conditionalities or possible termination clauses. So please note that the minimum commitment for a plot is typically less than 10% of the purchase commitment and pre-contracts are typically completed in five to 10 years. So minimum commitment typically less than only 10% of the total amount. So to summarize the balance sheet, equity ratio of the company has remained stable at 33%. Gearing decreased clearly to 89% due to the strong cash flow and decrease in net debt. Overall, YIT's target is to deleverage balance sheet in short term and to return to clearly below 50% gearing level in the long term. Regarding the interest bearing debt, we are on downward trend and on 100 million lower level compared to the last year's Q2 and Q3. We negotiated the substantial financing arrangement in Q1 and consequently improved the maturity structure of the debt portfolio. The 100 million senior bond has been redeemed in April and postponing of the amortizations within year 2024 has supported our short-term liquidity position. Altogether, having most of the financing maturing as late as in 2026 provides us stability and possibility to focus on improving the profitability of the company. Then a short recap on the transformation program going on in the company. The program was launched in February, 2023, and it has progressed faster than originally expected. We have launched all the planned measures to achieve the inflation-adjusted run rate cost savings of 40 million euros by the end of 2024. And with the actions taken by the end of March 2024, we will gain annualized run rate cost savings of 30 million euros, which will be fully realized by the end of 2024. Already now in Q1, we reached 15% lower fixed costs than in the comparison period. In addition to the cost savings, we are expecting to achieve a significant amount of project-related and capital efficiency gains. Competitiveness is improved by increasing efficiency in procurement and project management and improving productivity. we already see tangible results related to the direct cost savings from the procurement and lower project margin deviations driven by improved project management. As part of the program, we are executing capital release measures. The latest action in the first quarter was the successful sale of the equipment business to Renta. The net cash inflow from transaction was 30 million euros. We will continue to evaluate alternatives for releasing capital and the actions to improve networking capital will proceed according to plan. Moving on to the guidance and outlook. Our guidance remains intact, so we expect group adjusted operating profit for continuing operations to be between 20 and 60 million euros in 2024. The operating cash flow after investments is expected to be positive. However, we have made an elaboration in the outlook regarding the housing market in Finland. the housing market is expected to continue to be weak in the second and third quarter of the year. Otherwise, the outlook is unchanged. So, to summarize the finance section. Our financial position is stable thanks to the negotiated financing arrangement. Our operating cash flow and net debt improved clearly, and we continue to execute the transformation program to improve overall performance of the company. Thank you, and now over to you, Heikki.