Tag: hand over

Bain Appoints Juan María Nin as New President of Habitat

26 June 2018 – Eje Prime

Habitat is continuing to compose its governing body. The real estate company, which has been owned by Bain Capital since last year, has hired Juan María Nin (pictured below) as the new President of the company. The director is already a member of the Boards of Directors of Azora, Société Générale and Azvi.

Nin is joining the Catalan property developer at a time when the management team is being rebuilt by the US fund, which recently hired José Carlos Saz, formerly of Neinor Homes, as its new CEO.

The executive, who holds a degree in Law and Economics from the University of Deusto and a Masters in Law and Political Science from the London School of Economics, has enjoyed an outstanding career in the Spanish business world. Nin has held positions of responsibility at several banks including Santander, Sabadell and CaixaBank (…).

Habitat, which was acquired by Bain in December last year for €220 million, currently has a portfolio of projects underway in Spain, with more than 1,000 new homes being marketed in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Sevilla, Córdoba, Valencia and Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. Of those, the real estate company has 700 homes under construction and expects to hand over more than 550 homes in the next twelve months.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Neinor Homes Buys “Non-Finalist” Land for €194M

9 May 2018 – Expansión 

Despite recording losses of €8 million during the first quarter of the year, the property developer is maintaining its objective of closing the year in profit.

Neinor Homes closed the first quarter of the year flat in financial terms, with sales of €19 million and net losses of €7.9 million, but it is preparing to crank up the pace with the handover of 1,000 homes during the course of the year, primarily during the last six months, which will allow it to close the year in the black.

Moreover, in order to maintain the pace of deliveries from 2022 onwards, the firm has closed agreements to purchase “non-finalist land” (plots without building permits) for €194 million, on which it will be able to build 1,400 homes. “This land has very advanced planning in place and is without risk. The payment will only be made for these plots if all of the licences are granted within the planned timeframe”, explained Neinor.

These purchase agreements follow the €7.5 million invested in three finalist plots acquired during the first quarter of the year for another 120 homes. With these plots, the firm now owns a portfolio of land with capacity for 14,000 homes. In terms of Capex, Neinor is planning to spend €430 million on its construction projects, which implies 1% less than budgeted.

The property developer’s CEO, Juan Velayos (pictured above), says that this year is going to be “significant” in terms of revenues and he adds that, of the 1,000 home handovers scheduled for 2018, 90% have already been pre-sold. “The rest, which are the best units, will be sold once they have been handed over”, he said.

Pre-sales

Following the punishment from analysts in February, when Neinor announced a reduction in its delivery targets to 1,000 units in 2018 compared with 1,374 planned initially and to 2,000 in 2019 from 3,000 planned originally, the property developer now wants to reassure the market. It confirmed that the 31 developments that are going to be handed over in 2019 are already underway and have received their licences. “We have very high visibility over our revenues”, added the director. Specifically, Neinor’s order book includes almost 2,500 pre-sold homes, which corresponds to sales of around €828 million.

Velayos said that, with the projects underway, the company is going to reverse the weight of the different businesses and revenues will now be generated by the delivery of homes.

Neinor’s shares (…) ended trading yesterday down by 2.31% to €16 per share.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

La Llave de Oro Buys Land in Ibiza to Build 65 Homes

8 May 2018 – Eje Prime

La Llave de Oro is on a roll in the office and residential sectors in Spain. After purchasing a plot of land on which to build offices in the 22@ district of Barcelona from Metrovacesa last June for around €20 million, the group is continuing to explore new destinations into which to expand its business. The latest has been the purchase of a plot of land in Santa Eulària des Riu, in Ibiza, on which it will build 65 homes, according to Ferrán Marsá, CEO of the group, speaking to Eje Prime.

According to Marsá, the project in Ibiza is currently being reviewed, although the plans are for the building work to begin imminently. In addition to homes, common areas, car parks and swimming pools will also be built on the plot.

Moreover, this is not the group’s only project on the Balearic Islands. In Palma de Mallorca, the company is immersed in the construction and subsequent sale of a development comprising 16 homes and parking spaces at number 16 Calle Alber, in the Es Rafal Vell area. La Llave de Oro also has a sales office in Palma de Mallorca.

Nevertheless, the group’s main business is focused in Cataluña. La Llave de Oro is currently building fifteen homes at number 286 Calle Pallars, in Barcelona, as well as another 30 homes (plus two commercial premises and a car park) in Nou Rubí, in Rubí.

La Llave de Oro is also working on a 95-home development in Plaça Europa, in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. There, the company is also going to build a commercial premise, two social rooms and 106 parking spaces. It will be one of the developments that incorporates the greatest number of new features in terms of customisation and energy ratings.

To reach the 450 homes that La Llave de Oro plans to hand over in the coming years, the company has also started work on the construction of almost 60 homes at number 179  Passeig Taulat, in Barcelona, as well as on 90 homes in Sant Cugat del Vallés, which correspond to the second phase of the Volpellers development.

Diversification strategy 

Although La Llave de Oro is going to continue to focus on the development and construction of primary residence homes in Barcelona and the first metropolitan ring, the company is also going to keep looking for opportunities to diversify its revenues. One of the businesses that the group is firmly backing is the hotel sector, as well as the office segment.

The company opened a hotel on Avenida Drassanes in the Catalan capital in 2012, the Andante Hotel, with 134 rooms and which it manages directly. This model involving the development and subsequent management of a hotel, whose results have proved very satisfactory, is what the firm wants to replicate in at least two or three more establishments.

In terms of the office sector, La Llave de Oro used to own a portfolio of almost twenty rental properties, prior to the crisis, which it sold to Goldman Sachs two years ago to raise funds for its property development and construction business, in a deal worth €90 million.

Now, La Llave de Oro is expressing interest in returning to that business segment through the construction and rental of several office buildings in Barcelona. Its purchase last year of a 3,300 m2 plot in the 22@ district of the Catalan capital for €22 million forms part of that strategy. The group plans to build 17,400 m2 of office space on that plot, which used to be owned by Metrovacesa (…).

La Llave de Oro group recorded turnover of €125 million in 2017, compared with €140 million in the previous year. Its workforce comprises 200 professionals (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Neinor Starts Buying “Non-Finalist” Land

23 February 2018 – Expansión

With its first birthday as a listed company just around the corner, Neinor is making a strategic shift. It is negotiating the acquisition of “non-finalist” land (plots that require urban planning management to become developable) to maintain its pace of development once it has reached its cruising speed in 2020. Specifically, the property developer, which has plots of land on its radar worth €500 million, is holding negotiations with banks, private investors and institutional funds regarding the possible completion of three land purchase operations involving “non-finalist” plots for around €200 million. They will allow for the construction of around 1,000 homes spread over various cities, including Madrid and Barcelona.

Under the framework of the negotiations, Neinor plans to make an initial payment of almost 10% of the total price to take control of the “non-finalist” land and to pay the remaining balance once the plots have been granted their corresponding urban planning permits, within a period of between three and five years. “My concern now focuses on acquiring a land bank to put into production from 2022 onwards”, explains the CEO of the company, Juan Velayos (pictured above).

The real estate firm, which announced results yesterday, closed last year with losses of €4.6 million but expects to become profitable in 2018. If we take into account the incentive plan for directors amounting to €19 million – of which €10.6 million corresponded to the CEO – paid in its entirety by the fund Lone Star, and the costs associated with the stock market debut,  then the property developer lost €25.9 million last year.

In 2017, Neinor generated revenues of €225 million, of which €77 million proceeded from its property developer business. It also recorded cumulative pre-sales of €746 million. The company, which delivered 313 homes in 2017, expects to hand over 1,000 units in 2018. It then plans to double that figure in 2019, to 2,000 units; and reach its cruising speed from 2020 onwards with 4,000 units. That would represent the high end of the range announced initially, although it will do so with an evolution in “more conservative phases to protect margins, improve the quality of revenues and deliveries”, he said.

Neinor owns 1.5 million m2 of developable land with capacity for the construction of 12,500 homes and a gross asset value (GAV) of €1.7 billion. The company, which invested €286 million in land in 2017 for the development of 3,100 units, plans to disburse another €200 million on purchases this year. Neinor’s share price closed trading down by 4% yesterday at €16.66.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Top 4 Property Developers Will Hand Over Just 680 Homes This Year

24 November 2017 – Cinco Días

The four large property developers that aspire to lead the residential market in Spain are going to hand over only 680 homes in 2017. The group comprises, on the one hand, two companies that are already listed, namely, Neinor and Aedas, and on the other hand, two that are likely to make their stock market debuts in 2018, namely, Metrovacesa and Vía Célere.

The real estate sector already regards these four companies as the largest in the sector; and on the stock market, they will have access to resources that many others will not. But all of them are at the beginning of the development of their businesses, in a joint bid to reactivate the residential market in Spain.

That reactivation can be clearly shown in the forecast of home deliveries to clients, which will rise from 680 in 2017 to more than 2,000 next year, according to data provided by the companies themselves. Normally, the process to sell homes off-plan and build them takes more than 24 months. And so these companies, which started to back the property development sector within the last two years, are likely to hand over the greatest number of homes from 2019 onwards.

In parallel, the sales business of the new companies is also growing. The four companies expect to sell almost 10,000 homes in total in 2018.

Moreover, for the last few months, Neinor, Aedas, Vía Célere and Metrovacesa have been creating their own land banks, making investments amounting to hundreds of millions of euros to acquire plots of land in Madrid, Barcelona and other capitals. The four companies own land sufficient to build 76,400 homes (…).

This year, work has started on the construction of 73,000 homes (versus 92,000 last year) in Spain, according to the construction permit figures compiled by the Ministry of Development. They are very modest volumes, which are still much closer to the minimum recorded in 2013 (58,740 homes) than the maximum recorded in 2006 (865,560 units).

The leaders of these four companies, which aspire to lead the sector on the stock market, have indicated on several occasions that the rate of house sales by its companies will reach 4,000 units once they are at cruising speed. That means that each one of them will have a market share of no more than 4% or 5% of a market that will exceed 100,000 new homes per year. Even the companies themselves consider those figures to be conservative and sustainable over the long term.

Neinor Homes is the most advanced in its business plan. It was the first to debut on the stock market in this new bullish cycle, in March, and now has a market capitalisation of almost €1,450 million (…). The company led by Juan Velayos plans to hand over the keys to 300 homes this year. It owns land with capacity to build up to 12,000 units, although the company is continuing to buy up plots of land. The four largest real estate companies will build around 38,000 homes over the next three years.

The next firm to debut on the stock market was Aedas Homes, which did so last month. It also has an international fund as its backer, in its case, the US firm Castlelake, which sold more than 45% of the capital in the IPO. (…). The company does not plan to hand over any homes this year, but will complete 230 in 2018. It also forecasts sales of 2,050 homes next year.

The company that is likely to be the next to make its stock market debut is the historical firm Metrovacesa (…). It is currently controlled by Santander (60% stake), BBVA (30%) and Popular (10%) (…). This year, it will hand over 160 homes and next year another 620 units, when it will also sell another 3,500 properties. It is expected to be the largest firm on the stock market and in the sector, given that it owns plots on which to build 40,000 homes.

Finally, the fund Värde Partners is working on bringing Vía Célere to the stock market (…). That company has not provided information about its forecasts, but in its annual accounts for 2016, it forecast the hand over of 223 homes this year and 201 next year (…).

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Velayos: Neinor Homes Will Generate Sales Of c. €1,000M In 2019

9 October 2017 – El Periódico

Neinor Homes, the real estate company born out of Kutxabank and in which the fund Lone Star holds a stake, has now reached a production rate of 5,000 homes in Spain, according to the firm’s CEO Juan Velayos. In fact, the company has 72 developments under construction and now owns land on which to build 12,000 homes.

“We have 35 developments in the launch phase – around 3,000 homes – , we have already handed over five developments and we have three more approaching completion”, explained Velayo at a press conference prior to the celebration of Barcelona Meeting Point, which will take place in the Fira de Barcelona from 18th until 22nd October.

Velayos explained that the property developer expects to record turnover of almost €1,000 million in 2019. “We will come in just below that figure in 2019 and then we will exceed it in 2020”, he said. Specifically, the company expects to complete this year with revenues of around €300 million and to record sales and EBITDA (gross profit) of €400 million and €100 million, respectively, in 2018.

Neinor Homes currently has 64 developments underway; in 2018, it expects to have 92; in 2019, more than 100; and in 2020, 120 in total, which translates into the forecast completion and handover of between 3,500 and 4,000 homes per year from 2020 onwards. “That is the pace that we want to maintain over the long-term”, said Velayos.

The property developer, which operates in Madrid, Catalunya, País Vasco, the Balearic Islands and Andalucía, is also looking at opportunities in Galicia and Portugal. At the moment, 50% of its output is divided between Madrid and Barcelona, and the other 50% is spread across the rest of Spain. Of the two large markets, Catalunya accounts for 20% of the total. “We are not planning to increase the weight of that autonomous region in our portfolio, for the time being at least”, he said.

Original story: El Periódico (by Max Jiménez Botías)

Translation: Carmel Drake