2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

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Centuria Capital Limited Sydney, 29 November 2013 2013 Annual General Meeting Chairman & CEO Address

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2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

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Page 1: 2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

Centuria Capital Limited Sydney, 29 November 2013

2013 AnnualGeneral MeetingChairman & CEO Address

Page 2: 2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

Centuria Capital Limited 2013 Annual General MeetingChairman’s Address

The 2013 financial year was a good year for the Centuria Group. Our financial results were solid and significantly better than in 2012. However, the most pleasing thing from the Board’s perspective is that we have made some good progress in implementing our strategy for achieving the fairly challenging growth targets we had set for our property funds management business and for diversifying that part of our business. John McBain will say more about that shortly.

One of the true highlights of the year has been Nick Collishaw joining the Centuria Group. Nick heads up our listed property division and will also play a key role in our wholesale property funds management strategy. We are extremely fortunate to have Nick on our Board. For those of you who do not know Nick’s background, prior to joining Centuria, he was the Chief Executive Officer of the Mirvac Property Group and oversaw massive growth in Mirvac during his time as its head. Nick’s experience and the high regard with which he is held by institutions and others in the property funds management business will greatly help Centuria achieve its goals.

One of the resolutions for the upcoming Annual General Meeting will be to confirm Nick’s appointment as a director of Centuria Capital Limited. I could not endorse that more strongly.

Centuria is not just a property funds management business and the other areas of our business, primarily the Friendly Society business, the reverse mortgage business and our insurance business, all performed well and made significant contributions to our profit. In a similar vein, our focus for growth is not confined to the property funds management part of our business. We believe there are good growth prospects in particular in our Friendly Society business, and you will start to see that this year with growth in funds under management.

The Board is looking forward to what Centuria can achieve over the next couple of years and we feel that the Group is very well positioned for continued growth in our profit.

While I do not propose to make any forecasts about results for the current financial year, I can say that we have budgeted for continued growth in underlying profit and at present we are tracking to deliver that. That said, there continues to be some volatility in market conditions, hence our reluctance to make any forecast at this stage.

On the topic of dividends, the Board is committed to restoring dividend payments as soon as possible and if we continue to track to plan this financial year, we would expect that to occur in the first half of 2014.

Roger Dobson29 November 2013

Centuria Capital Limited 2013 Annual General Meeting Sydney, 29 November 2013

Roger Dobson

Chairman LLB (Hons) LL.M

Page 3: 2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

Centuria Capital Limited 2013 Annual General MeetingChief Executive’s Address

Welcome to the inaugural Sydney Annual General Meeting of Centuria Capital.

From a financial perspective, at the conclusion of the 2013 financial period, we are pleased to report an underlying net profit after tax of $5.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 9.8% and an increase in underlying earnings per share of 12%. From a balance sheet perspective, the group has now disposed of its last on-balance sheet legacy assets, being the investment properties at Moonah Links, Fingal and Pepper Sands Resort, Torquay with no adverse impact on the group’s earnings or capital.

Centuria has travelled through the challenging financial markets we have all experienced and is now well positioned with a strong growth setting. We have well performing core property and financial services divisions, a clear strategy to grow these divisions and the level of talent within our team necessary to bring our growth strategy to fruition.

In the 2013 financial period, the unlisted property funds division under its CEO, Jason Huljich acquired and settled new property funds totalling $171 million, almost double the $58 million of acquisitions in the 2012 period.

This division has assets under management exceeding $1 billion and is an important profit driver for the group. Importantly the acquisitions were larger Sydney CBD assets (175 Castlereagh Street at $56 million and 10 Spring Street at $91 million). It is pleasing to see the profile of the division rising with these larger scale acquisitions and these property funds provide a strong annuity stream underpinning profit.

Our intention remains to continue to develop three distinct property funds management businesses;

• our existing unlisted property funds management • wholesale property funds management• listed property funds management

Last year we set up an office in Singapore to secure mandates from Asian, European or North American institutions seeking to invest in Australian commercial property. This division packages our Australian property investments for offshore institutions to invest in and we have now secured our second major offshore investment for our current fund. The office is managed by Woon Pin Chong, who is with us today.

The establishment of a listed real estate investment trust (REIT) is the third component of our property growth strategy. In May we established our listed property division, which is led by Nicholas Collishaw as CEO - Listed Property funds. The addition of Nicholas to our property team and to our main board is a welcome appointment from the perspective of our staff and directors. He is well known to us over many years, has deep property and listed funds management

John McBain Executive Director and Group CEO

Centuria Capital Limited 2013 Annual General Meeting Sydney, 29 November 2013

Page 4: 2013 annual general meeting chairman & ceo address

2013 Annual General Meeting Chief Executive’s Address

experience and is highly motivated to ensure Centuria achieves its three-level strategy as set out above.

The financial services division contributed strongly to the 2013 result and during the 2013 year we witnessed a stabilisation of total investment bonds under administration at $708 million (FY12 $712 million)

Anne Hamieh, one of our senior financial services executives, is finalising negotiations with a major distribution channel in respect of a new Centuria tax effective investment vehicle which highlights the attraction of our investment bonds as an alternative or supplement to traditional superannuation offerings. Total bond-holders grew slightly to over 82,000 investors.

In the Residential Reverse Mortgage business, the embedded equity for the Centuria shareholders continues to grow strongly and has increased 20% over the previous year. This division contributed strongly to statutory earnings with earnings before interest and tax totalling $3.3 million, up over 20% from the 2012 year.

In 2012 the Company bought back and cancelled 4.2 million shares reducing the shares on issue by 5.2% and concentrating earnings per share. At year end the buy-back resulted in a reduction of shareholder numbers of approximately 6,800 to a final number of 8,300 shareholders.

The Company announced at reporting date that it would not pay a final dividend for the 2013 financial year as a result of expenses incurred in relation to the new Listed Property and Asian divisions. These were substantial however the Company sees these initiatives as critical to the growth setting we have.

It is regrettable that the dividend stream was interrupted due to these factors however, the establishment of these new divisions primes Centuria for further expansion and we would like to think that the security price increases over the year compensate shareholders to some degree.

Finally in terms of outlook;We are witnessing the early stages of a measurable increase in investor confidence as our domestic political situation settles down and global markets fluctuate less wildly. Never the less we still believe credit markets will remain tight however we predict the continuing availability of mispriced assets to fuel our property divisions. Our traditional unlisted property division is expected to perform strongly and since balance date our Asian office has secured its first major mandate.

Since balance date, we have reported that our first listed trust offering was withdrawn. I can, however, confirm we will be re-entering this space. Capital raising for the new $99 million direct property fund which is acquiring a 50% stake in the channel Seven headquarters in Sydney is proceeding well and we anticipate this will be fully subscribed after what has been extremely strong investor interest.

Overall, the outlook for the financial service and insurance business units are excellent and they continue to enjoy predictable earnings. I look forward to updating you on our progress during the year and my thanks to our board, and in particular our non-executive directors for their support during the year, our staff for their diligent efforts and to our shareholders for attendance today.

John McBainGroup CEO29 November 2013

Centuria Capital Limited 2013 Annual General Meeting Sydney, 29 November 2013