Poly Real Estate:Lower GM despite strong sales growth;financial business small despite faster expansion
We estimate 2016 sales at Rmb178bn, up 15.5% YoY.
Poly's new starts were 17.72/14.03m sqm in 2014/15 and its 2016 planned new startswere 17.5m sqm. We estimate saleable gross floor area (GFA) will increase 16.95m sqmin 2016, translating into a saleable value of Rmb237.3bn, based on our ASPassumption of cRmb14,000/sqm. We foresee 2016 sales rising 15.5% YoY toRmb178bn on a sell-through rate of 75%.
We project 2016-18 GM to fall to 30%.
The company's land acquisitions have focused on tier 1/2 cities. The floor price wasRmb3,566/4,985/6,110 per sqm in 2014/2015/6M16, up 22%/40%/64% YoY, whileASP grew only 9%/-1%/4% YoY in the same period. We expect gross margin (GM),hurt by a faster increase in land costs than in home prices, to fall to 30% in the nextthree years.
We forecast financial business to contribute 5%+ of net profit before end-2018.
As of end-2015, the company's Xinbao Fund managed Rmb41.3bn. The companyinvested and created equity investment-focused Poly Capital together with others atend-2015 and announced plans to invest Rmb350m to establish Guangdong-HongKong Securities together with others in May 2016. With the company improving itspresence in finance, we forecast its net investment income will reach Rmb390/790/1,340m in 2016-18 and after-tax net investment income will contribute 1.8%/3.2%/5.2% of net profit attributable to the parent.
Valuation: Downgrading to Neutral; cutting PT to Rmb9.80.
Given EPS dilution from the 24 June issuance of 1.099bn shares raising Rmb8.9bn,along with our lower GM assumption, we are cutting our 2016-18E EPS 13%/18%/18% to Rmb1.43/1.56/1.61. The stock is trading at 6.3x 2016E PE. We derive our newPT of Rmb9.8 based on 2016E EPS of Rmb1.43 and 6.9x 2016E PE (recent five-yearaverage). Our prior PT was based on 10.6x 2016E PE (recent five-year average + 1 SD).
We are downgrading our rating to Neutral because an overly-rapid increase in landprices expected to hurt GM and the contribution of the financial business is small.