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IRSA Inversiones y Representaciones Sociedad Anónima (IRS)

Q2 2022 Earnings Call· Mon, Feb 14, 2022

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Transcript

Santiago Donato

Management

Good morning, everyone. I’m Santiago Donato, Investor Relations Officer of IRSA, and I welcome you to the Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2022 Results Conference Call. First of all, I would like to remind you that both audio and a slide show may be accessed through company’s Investor Relations website at www.irsa.com.ar by clicking on the banner webcast link. The following presentation and the earnings release are also available for download on the company website. After management remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for analysts and investors. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded and that information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company’s financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detailed note in the company’s earnings release regarding forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Eduardo Elsztain, CEO.

Eduardo Elsztain

Management

Welcome to the Second Quarter of the Financial Results of Year 2022 Results Conference Call. I am very glad to be hosting this webcast and sharing with you all our investors and the analysts, the main highlights of IRSA for the period. A new IRSA merged with IRCP and consolidated in only one real estate that brings me closer to the operation again, and with the satisfaction of having the approval of Costa Urbana project. This combination, it’s incredible. The company consolidation, the 2 of them into will save a lot of cost, will save a lot of operational cost, tax cost. We think it’s an incredible achievement and the fact that we got after 20-year, the approval of a project that came to the legislation more than 5 times. It’s an incredible achievement of the group that shows resilience, patience, and persistence to go in the project. I also believe that this year is going to be a very special year, even though it’s not all common share by all the investors in Argentina, I see that this cycle of liquidity in the world go into commodity will really affect our market in a very good way. I want to pass this now to Matías, our CFO, who will get with you on to the details. And thank you very much again for joining us today to the webcast of IRSA. Matías Gaivironsky: Thank you, Eduardo. Good morning, everybody. So we start the presentation in Page 3 with our merger process. The merge, as you know, was approved in December with our shareholders meeting with the approval of 99.88% in IRSA and 94.57% in IRCP. The process is ongoing. We are surprised with the speed of the process so far. In January, we presented the Definitive Merger Agreement and…

A - Santiago Donato

Operator

Now it’s time for the Q&A session. First question comes from . Hello, thanks for the call. Can you provide a breakdown in dollars of last 12 months EBITDA, this $83.5 million between shopping malls, offices, hotels and sales? Matías Gaivironsky: Yes. Thank you, Huan. The breakdown is we generated around $54.7 million in malls, $18.4 million in offices, $2.5 million in hotels, and $11.6 million in sales and development.

Santiago Donato

Management

Yeah. As a follow-up, could you provide more color on the tax impact of the revaluation of Costa Urbana, it creates a deferred tax, but not an immediate cash, tax impact? Matías Gaivironsky: No. Not at all. All the effects of the revaluation of properties and all the fair value of our investment properties are not generating a tax impact or cash impact is only accounting rules that we have to recognize the deferred tax in the case that we sell, but also we have rollover know if we sell, we can reinvest that money in a new project. So we defer the tax payments. So it’s more tax impact and real cash impact.

Santiago Donato

Management

Next question is from Gordon Lee from BTG Pactual.

Gordon Lee

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me? Matías Gaivironsky: Yes.

Eduardo Elsztain

Management

Yes. Perfect, Gordon.

Gordon Lee

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you very much for the call. Just a question on Costa Urbana, and I know it might be a little bit early to ask this question. But do you have a sense of when we might begin to see capital being deployed towards the development of that project? Do you have a master plan that at some point you will share? Have you selected your partners? How will you finance it? I know its early days yet. But I was wondering if you could at least maybe provide us a sense of timing of one some of these things may happen. Thank you. Matías Gaivironsky: Thank you, Gordon. As you can imagine, we have been working in this approval for 20 years. So all the focus of our team was put in getting the approval, and since we don’t have any certainty that we will reach it, there is some work that we have to do going forward now. So the final way that we will develop this project we are working on that is a huge project. So there is no absorption for the project like this in 1 or 2 years. So we need to work and do it in stages. If we analyze, how we develop in the last years at IRSA level, basically, we did many swaps agreement where we put the land someone else develop and pay us with square meters. But here, maybe some of the – or the first plots, we will have to develop, because it’s an empty land and we need to attract people to the project. So we are defining the way, I don’t expect to see a major CapEx over the next 2 years. For this year, we have to pay to the city around $3 million that will take place in the next month probably. And then, we need to develop part of the infrastructure and part of the parks that $40 million that we committed to the city or the official exchange rate is something that probably could take place in the next I don’t know 2 to 5 years. We don’t have to do altogether, so we can do it in stages. So we will see and probably, when we define how we will develop these, we will announce or we will be informing the news about this project going forward. But the team was really focused on getting the approval that that they took place finally in December. So now we are working in how to develop going forward.

Gordon Lee

Analyst

Perfect. That’s great. And congratulations, by the way, that’s phenomenal news on that approval. Thank you. Matías Gaivironsky: Thanks.

Santiago Donato

Management

Thanks, Gordon. Well, here, Alberto also from BTG is asking, can you give us more color on what exactly drove the revaluation at Costa Urbana to $695 million, it was $300 million increase at official rate, but I think you mentioned? Matías Gaivironsky: Well, basically, Alberto, I like to see these more are the blue chip instead of the official. The land used to – was valued in our books are $210 million and now at $360 million. Basically, the change is the approval, before there was no clarity about what we can do in the land. Now, we have construction capacity of almost 900,000 square meters. So in the revaluation we are giving the impact on that construction capacity, and using an average cost of land of incidence of the land in that construction capacity. So typically, when you have land, here in – or in all parts of the world, but here what we do is typically you have a price per square meters of the finished unit. So let’s assume that the finished unit could worth $3,000. And then you’ll give it – you have the incidence of the land of 2030 depends on the location of the land. So that is basically the price of the land. And here how we reach this valuation, we are using comparable numbers, probably conservative numbers in terms of price per square meter of land is around $400 per square meter of land. That is, I believe, is conservative comparing price of the land in the City of Buenos Aires.

Santiago Donato

Management

The next question I will take to hear a follow-up one from and Matías Castagnino as well from BCP. Follow-up on the performance of shopping malls and office buildings, have you seen any significant change in sales traffic occupancy in January and February compared to 2021? The Omicron variant has any significant impact in results in January, February? Matías Gaivironsky: Well, we see a big increasing sale in December, December was an incredible month, when we compare with January and February is the vacation period and the holiday season here in Argentina and also with the Omicron and an increase in in-cases maybe have some impact in sales. So we will see that when we disclose in March numbers. But, yes, has some impact the combination of the 2 factors, the holiday season, maybe the Omicron variant that in Argentina the cases jump significantly in January.

Santiago Donato

Management

Did you hear one from couch , did you see the proceeds from the – did you use the proceeds from Condor liquidation to cancel debt using the blue chip swap rate? Matías Gaivironsky: Not yet. The numbers that you see in December are not including that effect. So we still have in cash the Condor proceeds.

Santiago Donato

Management

There is a question on a potentially which price would you sell Suipacha building, but those type of transactions we do not dissipate any price, we will release it if we finally concrete a transaction. So it will move to the next one. Regarding office segments, what do you expect after COVID-19 pandemic? At the Zetta Building, the occupancy increased by 8.7 points. Can you give me some color on how do you see rental activity? Matías Gaivironsky: We hope to see probably the office segment was affected by some turnaround on some decisions of companies to decrease the size of the operation or the size of the offices, and maybe we will start to see new activity going forward, I think all those changes already happened. So we hope to see better occupancy going forward, prices of premium buildings remain okay at levels of $25 to $30 per square meter. So that is – are not affected by this situation. It’s more affected by the BBB or B Buildings that since the occupancy review significantly the price per square meter decrease also a lot. And maybe that affect some decisions of the companies to move from AAA to B Buildings, much cheaper levels. But, we – in the premium buildings, we see, no major concerns going forward.

Santiago Donato

Management

I have one last question from also from BTG Pactual. If you can please comment, expectations to see further sales of floor offices in the coming quarters. Matías Gaivironsky: Well, Mariana, typically we don’t give guidance on these kinds of transactions. We just announced when we do it. But I can tell you that the strategy continues. We believe that if we can sell at good prices per square meters, we will keep selling. There is a good opportunity to do new buildings at a replacement cost cheaper than what we are selling. So for us make sense if we have good demand for the offices to keep selling. So it’s something that we will continue going forward.

Santiago Donato

Management

Is there any additional questions? If there are no more questions, we conclude the Q&A session. I will now turn back to Matías Gaivironsky, CFO, for his closing remarks. Matías Gaivironsky: Well, thank you, Santiago. This was very exciting quarter with 2 major developments, Santa Maria, Costa Urbana and the merge. We are happy now. It’s much simpler, the structure is much clear. So we believe this will increase the liquidity of our shares and also generate synergies, operational and untaxed synergies. So we are happy with that. Costa Urbana is an amazing news for the company that will drive the company’s growth for the next 10 to 20 years. So we are very happy regarding the pandemic. We believe that we are surpassing the effects of the pandemic and now with a normal operation we will see good levels of cash again in the malls. The hotels are recovering. So we are very optimistic about the future of IRSA. So thank you very much to all of you to participate in this call, and we hope to see in the next quarter in May. Thank you very much.