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1H 2026 Financial Results Briefing

1H 2026 Financial Results Presentation & Management Briefing · · ~3,412 words

Unofficial machine transcript. Prepared by SMID Research from the issuer's public webcast recording by automated speech recognition, without a full manual check: expect mis-heard names and figures. The text is not divided by speaker; timestamps refer to the recording. Not a company publication. The City Developments Limited investor relations is the authoritative record. Copyright in the briefing rests with City Developments Limited; contact [email protected] for corrections or removal.

CDL audio recording ↗ Markdown (.md) All City Developments Limited briefings

Management

  • Kwek Leng Beng (Executive Chairman)
  • Sherman Kwek (Group Chief Executive Officer)
  • Kwek Eik Sheng (Group Chief Operating Officer)
  • Chia Ngiang Hong (Group General Manager)
  • Yiong Yim Ming (Group Chief Financial Officer)

Transcript

[00:00:01]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media, analysts, bankers, investors, and fellow CDL colleagues. My name is Belinda, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at CDL. On behalf of the CDL management, welcome to CDL's briefing on its unaudited financial results for half year ended 30th June, 2026. Now this is a hybrid briefing format with both in person here at the M Hotel Singapore and those joining us virtually on the live webcast. Thank you for being here. I know it's a very busy financial reporting season and to see so many in this room brings us much joy. So thank you for all for being here. So for today's briefing in line with CDL's commitment to environmental sustainability, we will not be providing printed materials. Instead, please scan the QR code on the screen

[00:01:02]

to download several documents that were uploaded on SGXNet this morning. They include a copy of the detailed financial result statement, a press release summarizing some of the key highlights of a performance, a presentation deck that the management will be using in a very short while. Now for our guests that are joining us virtually, you would similarly be able to download these documents which are available on the CDL website. I would like to introduce you to the CDL management panel. In the centre, we have Mr. Kwak-Ling Bing, our executive chairman, and followed by our ex-school members. On his right, Mr. Sherman Kwak, group CEO. On his left, Mr. Kwak-Ixing, Group Chief Operating Officer, then followed by Mr Chia Nhat Hong, Group General Manager and nearest to me, Ms Yong-Yin Meng, Group Chief Financial Officer.

[00:02:03]

Now the format today, briefing is in two parts. We will kick off with a presentation of some of the key highlights of our performance, followed later by a Q&A session. So without further ado, I would like to invite Mr Sherman Quack, CDL Group CEO, to kick start the presentation. Mr. Craig, please. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Belinda, for the introduction, and thank you for making time to come over. As Belinda has mentioned, I know it's a busy day for all of you, with several earnings announcements coming out today as well. I'm happy to take you through our performance highlights for the first half. Yiming will then take you through financial highlights, the ops review for your perusal, and if If you have any questions, let us know.

[00:03:03]

Performance highlights, really happy to be here to share some strong results for our first half. You will see that our revenue is up slightly over 60% and our padme is up more than three times or 230%. Primarily, this has been driven by our strong Singapore property development segment. So we have several projects that really did well for us and we recognised revenue on a and they were built at a faster pace. So revenue and profit recognition came in faster as well. Obviously one is Lumina Grant, as we've mentioned up there, that's an EC in Bukit Batok, West Avenue 5. So that has been completed and therefore under the prevailing rules we recognised full revenue and profit. Other contributors that were strong were Newport. Newport Residences was launched at the beginning of this year and is now over 80% sold. And because that project, as you know, we delayed the launch, because we were going to

[00:04:07]

launch right as we were going to launch, the 60% ABSD on foreigners was announced, right? So we held back on that. And as a result, the launch was delayed by quite a while. So because of that, the building completion has gone on much faster. Therefore, we are also recognizing good revenue from there. And lastly, many of our other Singapore projects continue to have steady sales, Norwood Grand. We had a bit of a slow start with Union Square Residences, which is quite a pity because it's in such a beautiful mixed use development and in a really great fringe CBD location. glad to see that sales have really started to pick up as well over the last couple of months. And you'll see that across the board, all of our core operating segments have shown strong operating results. As I mentioned earlier, Newport Residences was a great launch for us.

[00:05:09]

And then we've had a very resilient performance with so-called the commercial portfolio comprising office and retail. They're still doing really well and trading above actually the market average and the UK commercial has held steady too. On the residential market in Singapore, I think this year we've continued to see good, stable price growth. So far I think year to date it's about 1.4% according to the URA, Private Residential Price Index. And the volume has been about slightly over 4,000 units, year to date about 4,100. Are we going to hit the 10,000 that the market did last year? May not. I think it's and primarily it's because there's been less launches in the first half this year. So let's see how the back half stacks up. But I think we should get within a range of maybe 8 to 10,000 by the time we end this

[00:06:10]

year. Yeah, so, you know, it's been a really good start for us and actually underpinning our entire first half has been strong Singapore property development, revenue and profit. Noticefully absent from this our capital recycling gains. We have certainly pushed hard for the first half this year, but I think with a lot of different factors such as the Middle East conflict which continues to be quite prolonged and rages on, as well as the fact that we've seen a lot of turbulence here and there. I mean, the UK went through their own political upheaval with the change of government and all that. So I think that has dampened a bit of investor optimism in the first half. But I see that momentum coming back now. So our divestments will probably be more weighted on the second half. I just am not sure whether they will complete in the second half or into next year.

[00:07:13]

But certainly there are several in the pipeline and we hope to be able to share more exciting news on that. But as mentioned, at previous analyst and media briefings, capital recycling is going to be a core part of our DNA and our business as usual in the future. So we really got to get that ramped up and that will really provide a stronger base for our results. Going into the next slide, we have our NAV and shareholder returns. So you can see that predominantly I think NAV and RNAV and RR NAV are pretty stable. This year we declared an interim dividend six cents, which is double what we declared the half year of last year. And obviously, we have made a commitment to the market that we will hit a minimum of 35% dividend payout. So we're leaving it more for the full year. And share price performance, and this

[00:08:16]

was as of year to date, as of 30th June. But obviously, we are all very pleased to see the rally today. Our segment analysis, and if you look at the fair value, I mean our assets have ticked up slightly from 35 to 36 billion. And business segments or the IPDP, there are some changes in terms of geography as well. But predominantly, I think that really fluctuates depending on how much DP we have at any one point in time. You will notice that this year we haven't made any significant investments, neither, as I mentioned earlier, have we made any significant, sorry, we haven't made any significant divestments. And in terms of investments, we have mainly made two, and those are the two GLS sites that we acquired in Singapore. And one is Tanjung Ru Road, and the other is Peck Hay,

[00:09:16]

which is a Scott's Road based off Kane Hill area. So this is a completed project, Lumina Grand at Bukit Batok West Avenue 5, mentioned. Norwood Grant, 92% sold and just TOPed earlier this month, so about two weeks ago. And then our upcoming project completions for the rest of this year, we have Canning Hill Peers, our JB with Kaptaland, as well as the Mist, and both are substantially sold. As mentioned earlier, the only investments we made this year were the two GLS sites in Singapore and add it together with the rest of our land bank. I think we have a healthy launch pipeline of 2,200. We're comfortable with this level and that positions us well going forward. We obviously look forward to unveiling Lucerne Grand. That's in Lakeside Drive out in Jurong West and we'll have magnificent views. I really hope the project will be well received.

[00:10:23]

We're doing just a little bit of marketing here for the project. So you can see it's five towers, 17 stories each, you know, and we think we designed it well and it's directly connected to the Lakeside MRT station, so that's always a very important amenity that buyers look at nowadays. So you know, please spread the word and October when we launch this, hopefully this will garner a strong reception. This just shows you a little bit about our two projects that we are legacy assets that we are redeveloping, which all of you are very familiar with now. One is Newport Plaza, which is the name of the whole development, which was the former Fuji's Rocks Towers. And then the other is Union Square, which is the former Central Mall, Central Square, that whole development there. So it's coming along nicely, both of them. And as I mentioned earlier, Union Square Residences, the sales have also caught up really well.

[00:11:26]

And we're really excited. The office market continues to remain strong. So when these two office assets are ready, so for Newport Tower, it will be in second half of next year. That's the office component of Newport Plaza. There'll be second half of next year. So that will add about 220,000 square feet of NLA to our portfolio. And the union square will be sometime in 2029 and that will be 250,000 square feet. And obviously, pre-leasing efforts are strongly underway and very encouraged so far by the feedback. And our hotel portfolio is also bounced back really well and we've taken the opportunity to continue to revamp some of our assets. So you can see that the Millennium Knight Spirit Hotel, I mean, renovations are underway, King's Hotel as well. And then we continue to build out the M Social Hotel in Sunnyvale that has a targeted completion

[00:12:28]

towards the end of this year. And we've also finished the renovation for this Millennium Premier Hotel and Times Square, which is part of the Broadway hotel, so it's a smaller component of it, a more premier, upscale component of it, so that's just been completed in June. So we're excited to see that, so far some people I know have stayed there already and they're really pleased with it, so great that we're refreshing our portfolio as we move along. Just a bit about our industry and sustainability recognitions. And last slide before I hand over Yiming, obviously the thing on everyone's mind is, when is your strategic review coming out? I know we've taken quite a while on it. We wanted to put the, you know, we wanted to really spend enough time to make sure that we do a thorough review and ensure that we have a proper roadmap how we're gonna implement the whole strategic, the whole refresh strategy and how we're gonna get there.

[00:13:30]

And so, and ensure that every number that we share with you towards the end of September is properly backed up by, you know, how we're gonna get there, what's the asset makeup within it. So very excited to share that with you. It's more or less complete. I mean, the strategic review got approved by final approval by the board yesterday, but we just need to tweak a few more things and of course create some nice pretty infographics to go with it. So we thought we would just give ourselves a little bit more time. But yeah, suffice to say, it's really, we're really excited and eager share this with you at the end of September. So all good to go here. Next up, I'll pass it to Yiming for the financial highlights. Thank you. He's really tall. Thank you, Sherman. Morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'll start off with a segmental analysis. So this revenue

[00:14:35]

growth across all segments increase of 61% in first half of 26. EBITDA stands strong at 694, increase of 25.9 and very pleased to report that PBT and Patme has both roughly tripled, rising to 404 and 302 million respectively. So let us delve a little bit deeper into each metric. For revenue, the group posted revenue of 2.7b for first half of 26 up from 1.7b in first half of 25. So the property development segment remained the largest contributor with revenue searching 167%. So as Sherman has mentioned the various contributors and we all know that revenue from Singapore development projects are recognised based on the percentage of completion method. The strong construction progress across these projects also supported the accelerated recognition of revenue during this period. So kudos to our project team for their excellent execution and for maintaining strong momentum across our projects. For The hotel segment delivered a 6.4% increase in revenue supported by a 4.9% growth in Rev

[00:15:40]

Par. Rev Par growth was recorded across all regions with Singapore up 4%, US up 10% and Australasia up a strong 14%. The strong performance in Australasia was driven by New Zealand hotels which recorded improvements in both occupancy and room rates. This was partially offset by rest of Asia where Rev Par were impacted by softer performance in KL, Jakarta and Manila. Hotel revenue was also boosted by the acquisition of holiday in London, Kensington High Street, which we always call HIK, because the name is Capri Long. So we acquired a hotel in December 2025. Hotel has performed strongly since acquisition, achieving an impressive 96% occupancy and is now the largest contributor in the UK portfolio. So overall for hotel, the segment performance reflect broad-based REFPA growth across our key segments, together with strong contribution from our newly acquired hotel. Moving on to investment properties, they also deliver a 3.2% increase in revenue, notwithstanding

[00:16:41]

divestments of the bespoke hotel Osaka Shin Shabashi and 1250 Lake Sign in Sunnyvale last year. So the growth was driven by higher contributions from our UK commercial properties, Jung Se Long, our mall in Phuket, as well as the living sector in Singapore and the UK. stronger contributions more than offset the revenue from the investor assets, once again demonstrating the resilience and continued growth of our investment portfolio. Now we move on to EBITDA. EBITDA stood at 694 million, a strong growth of 26% year-on-year. So I've mentioned this before, EBITDA is an important measure of the group. We look at it for cash generation capability as well as a key metric that we monitor closely. Our target is always the annual EBITDA of 1B which supports healthy cash generation. So excluding capital recycling gains, all three core segments recorded higher EBITDA. So the strong EBITDA was again underpinned by our property development segment supported by income visibility from

[00:17:45]

our successfully launched projects. You can see property development EBITDA, they doubled year on year. And other than the projects that we mentioned in revenue earlier, JV also contributed to this EBITDA. This included the ORI, Canning Hill Piers and Khasia. For hotel operations, EBITDA increased by a strong 27% year-on-year. They are supported by heavy revenues as well as discipline cost management. GOP margin remained resilient at 30%, broadly in line with first-half of 2025. In key markets of Singapore and London, GOP margins remained particularly strong at 35 and 42 per cent respectively. Mentioned earlier, New Zealand had good revenue improvement and this flowed along to GOP margins. Australasia, GOP margins also expanded from 33 to 35 per cent. So the combination of revenue growth, resilient margins and discipline cost management drove this hotter operations a bit. For IP, which is investment properties, EBITDA was slightly lower in first half 26 due

[00:18:48]

to lower capital recycling gains. Just a refresher, for first half of 26, now we have recycled Keysight Art and several Strata units in Fortune Centre. This service 25, where we have a huge recycling gain of city industrial building. So importantly, excluding capital recycling gains, the EBITDA contribution was still broadly comparable year on year. This once again reflects the underlying performance of our commercial properties as well as our living sector. I move on to PBT. So improve 189%. So one interesting fact point is that property development takes up 57% of revenue but 84% of PBT. So the PBT variations are largely, explanations are largely similar to EBITDA but it's impacted as we know by financing and debris. So net finance costs decrease significantly by 47% to 145 million. supported by an 11% reduction in net interest expense as well as a favorable swing in exchange.

[00:19:50]

The group recorded exchange gain of 38 million in first half of 26 versus the exchange loss of 63 million in first half of 25. I want to highlight that these exchange differences are unrealised translation differences from intercompany loans. They do not represent underlying operating cash flows. For property development, while the segment deliver a stellar performance. I also want to reiterate that the profits from this segment are inherently lumpy. As we all know, it's dependent whether there's key project milestones, whether there's an easy, there's a handover for overseas, as well as the progress of project completions. Hotel operations, the significant turnaround. They reversed from a loss of 84 million in first half of 25 to a profit of 42 million in first half of 26. This improvement was largely driven by two things. One is the newly acquired HIK, and two is a favorable exchange position from exchange loss in 25 to a gain in 26. This largely from intercompany loans. So for investment properties, PBT decrease

[00:20:52]

also due to lower capital recycling gains. I sound like a broken record, but it's worth reiterating the CDL accounts for investment properties at cost. So what you see in this set of financial statements has no fair value gains. Instead, they record a depreciation about 68 million. Just moving on to capital management. So we continue to maintain very strong and robust financial fundamentals with well-balanced debt maturity profile. Gearings stood at 75%. It's an increase of 4% over 31st December 25, largely attributable to the acquisition of the two GRS that we have acquired this year, as well as $144 million of CapEx on our investment properties, largely for Newport and Union Square. So looking ahead, we expect healthy cash flows from four projects that will achieve TOP this year. Lumina Grant achieved TOP in April, Norwood in August, and we're expecting the means as well as Canning HOPs to TOP in 2026. And these project completions will support the cash generations.

[00:21:52]

Liquidity position is continuing to be very strong. 2B of cash, 4.9B of committed and drunk credit facilities. So we have definitely sufficient financial hit room. For all the other metrics, you know, I think interest, average interest has dropped and then it's not at 3.4%. I know one of the favorite question is, you know, where do we see where we end the year at? We have articulated previously, we hope to end the year, you know, no higher than 3.5. So to all the bankers in the room, please help us achieve this objective. So as shown, the last one is just basically on hedging. So we don't do any speculative. So you can see our loans match with the assets that we have and we have an overall natural hedge, about 76% across the key markets. So financial position in a nutshell, we have a strong liquidity position, diversified financing sources, and we definitely exercise prudent financial risk management. So with this, I hand over back to Belinda.

Automated speech recognition of City Developments Limited public webcast recording; not divided by speaker. Prepared 6 September 2026 by SMID Research.

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