Kaufman & Broad SA

Kaufman & Broad SA

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Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptOctober 1, 2026

Emmeline Cacitti

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the financial results of Kaufman & Broad for the first nine months of 2026. Before we start, I'd like to let you know that regarding the Q&A session, we'll first answer the questions asked on the phone, and then we'll answer the written questions.

You can use the Q&A tab on the webcast. I will hand over the floor to Mr.

Nordine Hachemi, Chairman and CEO of Kaufman & Broad, Mr. David Laurent, Deputy CEO, and Mr.

Bruno Coche, CFO. They are going to comment on the business results and also the outlook.

You have the floor.

Nordine Hachemi

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us this morning.

We're going to present the results for the first nine months of 2026. I'd like to remind you that our financial year starts on the 1st of December and ends on the 30th of November.

The current fiscal year, the numbers that we present are at the end of August 2026. If you compare with statistics from the market or government statistics, you have to bear this in mind, and sometimes we are able to truly compare the numbers, sometimes a bit more difficult.

Let's begin with the first slide. You have the key indicators, key operating indicators.

First the housing land portfolio, a number of units that is rather stable. As we said last time, this is going to be what we are going to do during the upcoming 24 months, to work and make sure that this portfolio grows because there's going to be an economic recovery in some time, and we'll get back to this.

Now the housing orders in volumes and in numbers, this is rather stable compared with last year. That's for the numbers.

In value, there's a slight decrease, and this is due to the product mix that we have been marketing: smaller flats with unit values that are lower, but nothing that is really significant when it comes to the mid-term business. Now take-up period.

Our take-up period shows that our offer is highly dynamic. We have a good control over our sales and the momentum.

The take-up period is 4.6 months. I'd like to remind you that the take-up period is the time we would need to sell all of our commercial offer if we were to stop marketing new products.

It'd only take 4.6 months to sell everything that we have as of today. It's important because this means that when the macroeconomic parameters, tax rules, and legislation changes, we are able to react very swiftly and to adapt our products to these new parameters.

Our backlog is at approximately €2 billion, rather stable also for housing, and €248 million for our commercial property business, logistics, etc. Now let's say a few words about the market before I hand over the floor to David, who's going to talk about our activity during that period of time.

As you can see on the slide number 4, you have the numbers over time for building permits and also housing starts. We are quite stable when it comes to the time it takes between the housing starts and the issuance of the building permits.

In any case, the levels are very low. They are at a historical low point.

When it comes to Kaufman & Broad, people are interested in our programs because we are good at selling our products, but people really have a wait-and-see approach because of the current environment. At the last presidential elections, we didn't really see any impact of the elections because it wasn't necessarily a topic of discussions or it was a bit negative when we talked about housing, and because we had Mr.

Pisani-Ferry, and I think everyone will remember him because he explained everyone 10 years ago that housing was a non-productive investment. Now I'd like him to explain this further because now we face with the housing shortage, and I would like him to talk about all this productivity impact.

Within the current campaign, people are realizing, all actors, all politicians, all candidates are realizing that this is an issue. They're making all sorts of promises, and officials are not making any decision right now.

Buyers also waiting to see what's going to happen. Obviously the promises are quite positive, or perceived as such by the buyers, but also by the local government when they are going to issue a building permit.

Now regarding the mortgages, well volumes are down. That's not because banks don't want to lend money, it's because there are fewer applications.

You have the evolution of the interest rates. They are going up, but this is nothing to be concerned about because if we have enough building permits and if landowners become more reasonable, which is currently happening, we are able to market products that are in line with the buyers' purchasing power in view of the interest rates.

This is a slide that Bruno will comment in a few moments. In the UK, we saw a good recovery of the housing sector, and the market reacted very swiftly.

Hopefully, we will see something similar here in a few months. This is something like to tell my friend, Mr.

Pisani-Ferry. What is a non-productive investment when it comes to housing?

Housing is jobs created, tax revenues, all sorts of economic benefits. It's good to remind people of this, even though people had forgotten about all this for some time.

Slide number 9, before I hand over the floor to David, and we'll be able to discuss this when we review the annual results. This is what we are envisaging regarding the future scenarios in the years to come.

Right now people are having this wait-and-see attitude, and this impacts the number of building permits. Customers also are waiting to see what kind of schemes will be implemented to help them make those acquisitions.

Things will then be rather stable till 2028, and as of 2028-2029, there should be a gradual increase in the number of building permits, increase in commercial offer also, and then construction starts will go up starting in 2029-2030. Obviously, as we all know, and we will discuss it throughout the presentation, our positioning at Kaufman & Broad despite the dire environment is quite interesting if we think about a future recovery scenario, even though this recovery will take a bit longer than we had anticipated in the past.

David is going to talk about our business during that period of time.

David Laurent

Good morning, everyone. Nordine talked about our key indicators, and I will now provide you with some additional information to help you assess our performance compared with the market situation.

This is now slide number 11. Our housing orders are stable during the 6 and 9 first months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, also.

This is especially true if you compare this with the market as a whole. We would have on on the market, the market will be down for 2026 -18.3%.

If this number were to be confirmed, this would truly show that we are really resilient. This is a relative performance, relative good performance, that can be explained by the an average take-up period that is extremely low, as Nordine said, compared with that on the market that is still at extremely high level, 23.9 months, which is a historical high.

This short take-up period allows us to be extremely reactive and to adapt to the market. It also proves that we have a true know-how, that our teams are able to anticipate on the future situations and the borrowing capacity of our buyers.

Our brand is a strong brand, and we are amongst the only developers that have internal salespeople, and they are good at selling our commercial offer extremely rapidly. Then you have our customer breakdown on this slide.

As Nordine said in the introduction, our product mix has evolved, and block sales have increased between the nine first months of 2025 and the first nine months of 2026. Now we've moved up to 69%, and this explains also the decrease in housing reservation numbers because sales prices are lower than when you do individual sales.

During the first nine months of 2026, we had there's service residences that were sold in blocks, but the units are smaller and the prices per unit are also lower. You have our housing orders for the first nine months of 2026.

The number is comparable to the numbers that we had or the figure that we had in 2023 and 2024, this would be the €749.8 million. Now you have the housing land portfolio, it's quite stable, approximately 32,000 units, almost six years of business.

What's interesting here is that despite this increased activity, we've been able to keep it at a stable level. As Nordine said, we want to move beyond those 32,000 units, and we'll get back to this in a few moments.

Our housing backlog is also quite stable, approximately €2 billion for housing units, more than two years of business. We've been able to keep it at this level despite a more competitive environment or more complicated environment.

Our commercial offer is down, well, slightly down at end of August 2026 compared with end of August 2025. This is due to the elections, upcoming elections.

Some starts or some commercialization have been postponed, and we have also launched quite a few projects since the beginning of the year. We intend to launch an additional 30 new projects during the last quarter, and at the end of 2026, we should have similar numbers to those that we had at the end of 2025.

One last indicator, that's the physical inventory, the number of housing units that are up for sale. Since 2021, we implemented a formal process to identify the projects for which we still have a large number of units up for sale between 9 and 12 months of the delivery of those projects in order to speed up the sales, and this has been fruitful.

At the end of 2026, we see that the number is lower than in 2021, whereas the market, generally speaking, has seen its number of units go up sharply, and other developers have a large number of units that are ready that haven't been sold yet. We have approximately six years of business in store.

Our teams are able to renew this land portfolio despite stricter criteria. We're also able to design units that housing units that are in line with the needs and the demands of our prospects, also good at selling those fast.

Obviously, we expect a greater number of building permits, and as soon as this number goes up starting in 2028 hopefully, as a presidential candidates are realizing that this is a real issue, then we will be ready to react promptly as soon as those permits are being issued. When we presented the first-half results, we announced that we had been awarded two prizes.

We were able to to give you more details about those two activity. We were awarded two projects.

The first one was a highly selective project in Bagneux, we now have a final building permit, more than 28,000 square meters of surface area. We're going to apply for a new building permit with a few modifications, and we should start building soon.

This is the redevelopment of a former commercial wastelands. Then the second project in Cergy-Pontoise, this was also a restricted project, and the aim is to turn a 20,000-square-meter office space into housing units.

This is going to be totally redeveloped, and going to have a sales before completion approach. We were awarded this project.

There will be 14,000 square meters of office units and 90 housing units. This isn' t in our commercial backlog yet because we don't have the final signature yet.

Slides 20 and 21. Slide 20, this is the anticipated recognition of revenue for the Austerlitz project, no changes here, same numbers as that during the last quarter.

Slide 21, this is the Marseille project, 32,000 square meters sales before completion project, that's for EDF Group, and this was launched at the end of 2025. I will now hand over the floor to Bruno, who is going to present the financial performance.

Bruno Coche

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, David.

You were given the main financial aggregates this morning. Let's have a look at the revenue.

It stands at €730.8 million, comparable to that of the nine first months 2025, a 2% decrease only. That's the first thing.

Now regarding housing, it's €550.2 million, down 8%, 75% collective housing units. This decrease was also seen during the first-half results, and it's due to the fact that some activities were postponed, some projects were postponed because we hadn't got the building permits yet for some of them, which meant postponed commercial operations.

This, fortunately, is what we saw during the first half, and this is an issue that we're still faced with right now. Now regarding commercial property, and this is mainly the Austerlitz project and the EDF project in Marseille, €167.9 million, a sharp increase compared with last year, and it's essentially due to the Marseille EDF project that we didn't have last year.

If we have a look at our gross margin, you will see that it's at €151.8 million, up 1.8% over 12 months, absolute value €2.6 million, revenue down, gross margin up. Here again, this shows that we have a good control over our sales prices.

We're able to sell our products fast, our new offers fast, and also when there is some inventory that is a bit more mature, we don't hesitate to speed up the sales in order to avoid any price decrease. Now regarding the costs, direct costs with building costs and the cost of land, we also have a good control over those parameters.

This is proven by the numbers. Nordine said that when it comes to land, people are now making more conscious decisions, and we had always decided to really focus on our margin and our revenues.

Current operating margin, €58.2 million, therefore up 2.5% in absolute value, €1.4 million versus '25. Here again, this is a reflection of the gross margin, but also the fact that we have good control over the operating expenses at €93.6 million, that is 12.8%.

Then if we look at current operating margin, 8%, in line with our guidance. Then if we look at the previous years, we are within the average, and that really shows great stability in terms of operating income.

Then we'll go down again. Cost of financial debt, €5 million, down from last year's.

Net attributable income, €33.6 million, almost flat compared with '25, very stable over a year. The share of the income from the associates is down, but that reflects the drop that we have in the housing business.

Then if we look at the balance sheet and WCR, WCR is still negative at negative €163 million. However, the WCR is shrinking, as you could see.

This is due to Austerlitz, and as the project is nearing completion as planned, the contribution is smaller to the negative WCR. In terms of housing, WCR is within the usual bracket between 10% and 15%.

This again shows that we have good control over these parameters as well. Then we'll continue with the balance sheet.

If we look at equity, €224 million, up from last year's. That really shows again that we have a good control over our financial structure, and we paid a bit more than €40 million worth of dividends last May.

Net cash, €261.9 million, excluding IFRS 16, and therefore smaller, but slightly positive. That's due to the change in WCR over the period.

Then financial capacity, we have an RCF undrawn line, €200 million so far as we speak. That's a reminder.

Another reminder is that if we look at cash, that's €261.9 million, there's €200 million that be used for the Austerlitz project to pay for the land, and that will happen by mid-'27. Then the gross financial debt is all zero.

It's been the case for a while. Active cash and cash equivalents, we've talked about this.

If to this you add the RCF, we have total financial capacity nearing €466.4 million. Therefore, that means we have enough money for the coming quarters.

Here's another reminder. Fitch has confirmed our investment grade rating.

That was done in summer, and it's been the case since 2022. We've had the same rating from Fitch.

It really shows that we're able to adapt to the markets and we have a good financial structure. To conclude for these nine months, what can we say?

We can consider that our performance is okay. If we look at land portfolio, we have the equivalent of six months of business.

The housing backlog represents almost two years of business, nearing €2 billion. Financial structure is solid.

As David was saying earlier on, the brand is appealing. We are known as a good developer that designs good projects and sells them quickly.

These are factors that people remember, that is by people I mean the landowners, but also the local governments. Finally, the outlook and the guidance.

We'll stick to the outlook, that is revenue that'll be at a level that'll be comparable to 2025, the current operating margin would be close to 8%, and net cash and cash equivalent will remain positive. There we are.

I'm done. Now the floor is yours.

Right.

Emmeline Cacitti

The time has come for the Q&A. We'll start with questions online.

You can ask your questions now. For this, you'll have to dial *1 on your telephones.

The first question from Ebrahim Homani?] from CIC, the floor is yours.

Ebrahim Homani

Thank you, gents, for this presentation. I have three questions to ask.

First, your market shares. Have you seen any market share gains mechanically because your performance is better than the other players' performance?

Second question, your margins for 2027, they've been really good over the past nine months, but what about the cost of entrance? Is that a risk for 2027?

Third question for 2027, could you give us more color about the booked revenue for residential, non-resi, but also student residences? Thank you.

Nordine Hachemi

Hello, thank you for these three questions. As far as the market shares are concerned, we usually said that we don't have any objectives in terms of market share.

Mechanically, by the end of the year, as you said, we'll see if the market share is up or down. The worst thing to do in our business is, and by the way, well, it's been years that we've been saying this, but unfortunately, I must say, we're always right.

That is, if you have a market share objective, it doesn't mean much, very easy to do, but that's done to the detriment of the margins: buy the land at any cost, sell your units at a very low price, and then you get a big market share. We're not looking for volume race, nor are we looking for a market share race.

We don't communicate, we don't say anything about market share. By the way, we're not very much interested in our market share, are we?

Because it doesn't mean much. We're not selling printers with a loyalty program to sell cartridges and then more maintenance.

Once the flats are sold, the only certainty we have from the statistical point of view is that we will not see these customers again before, say, seven years. It's more than a presidential term.

You've asked other questions. Sorry for my answers, but you've asked questions about 2027.

That's questions two and three. We're not saying anything about 2027 yet.

We'll do this when the time comes, that is in January, at the end of January. Rest assured, we'll always keep an eye on preserving our margins.

This is the principal objective that we have.

Ebrahim Homani

What about the increase in the price of entrance? Do you think that the price of entrance is going up or not?

Nordine Hachemi

Answer, you mean construction costs going up?

Ebrahim Homani

Yes, that's what I meant.

Nordine Hachemi

My answer is, well, maybe David can answer this. David, go for it.

David Laurent

Now, well, if you look at the current bids that we're working on, as usually we have contracts with the companies in all types of trades, all the trades in our business. We've not seen any price increases.

We know that some suppliers are trying to negotiate some increases with the companies we're working with, but for the time being, we've not seen any impact of this on our prices within the framework of our bidding processes. Thank you.

Emmeline Cacitti

Next question from Emmanuel Parot, and that's Invest Securities. The floor is yours.

Emmanuel Parot

Hello. Can you hear me?

Okay. I have two questions connected to the sharp increase in long-term rates.

First, I have a question about your commercial offer. What about the credit rates before the end of the year?

Do you know what the trend's going to look like? Because it's connected to the solvency of some of your clients.

I know it's going to be difficult to answer. The second question has to do with block sales.

We've seen resilient volumes during Q3, my question is to know if demand is still going to be sustained in social housing given the political backdrop and the savings plans that people have in France, the rates of which could go up. Thank you.

Nordine Hachemi

As far as rates in general, loan rates are concerned, well, this has been factored in. We did that when the year started.

We said the rates are most likely to go up again. Not that we really thought about the imported inflation, but France's deficit will not go down.

You don't need to be that bright to understand that. The projects that we're currently selling today, and that's what it means, these projects have factored in the fact that our clients have less purchasing power compared to the clients we had the year before.

As you can see, we have sustained selling rates. We have good contact points with our clients, but the clients sometimes are in a wait-and-see position because they're waiting for a go-ahead from investors or schemes, and this might happen during the present presidential election.

Some people who intend to buy think they might buy after the French elections, that's right, and they can perhaps postpone their buy. Then the French savings plans and the rates going up possibly, well, the social housing landlords have decreased the volumes that they buy.

As when it's a new project, they finance this with their own money, their own equity, a lot of debt, subsidized debt, because they have another source of income when they buy social housing. They can take up these debts.

Today, they've used lots of their money for the insulation, thermal insulation of these units, and therefore, they can't increase their rents. There's no new source of income from them from that for them in terms of energy savings, as because it's good for the tenants, not for them.

They do not really very much react to the rates going up because they didn't borrow that much. They usually used their money for thermal insulation of the flats.

Next year, what about next year? It all depends on who's going to win the elections.

Of course, it's always a support given to the first buyers, everybody agrees. Then it all depends on the political parties.

Some parties will say, "We want to support those who will buy social units." Others want to put an end to the French SRU law, which is about a minimum percentage of social housing units.

We don't know what's going to happen in '27. In any case, we'll adapt for the reasons I mentioned before.

That is, we can sell very quickly, as I said before. We're a nimble company, and that's what's good and strong about our model.

We can sell very quickly. What we have next year will adapt to the market conditions.

Emmanuel Parot

Final question, perhaps about your land business. It's going down because the rates are going up.

Is that something you've seen on the ground?

Bruno Coche

Oh, yes, clearly, clearly. Mainly the landowners, those who own quite big chunks of the land.

David, for instance, has worked on very comprehensive projects. We were not the best bidders in terms of price, but these landowners that have quite a lot of land, they know that if the price is too high and if the project never comes to fruition, they don't want that.

They want a more reasonable price that comes from a company such as ours, and that's why they choose us. They'd rather have a reasonable price, but you're certain that the project will grow rather than some type of miracle that will vanish up in the air, which was the case in the recent years.

We are a solid group, which is good for us. As we have not dropped many projects on the way.

This is what we've seen, and that's true for the very large project. We have very attractive conditions.

Emmanuel Parot

The decrease in price of land, do you have any numbers in mind?

Bruno Coche

We will succeed in doing this, but we don't necessarily want to communicate on this and give any figures.

Emmanuel Parot

Thank you.

Bruno Coche

As far as you're concerned, we provide the operating margin.

Nordine Hachemi

When we say that we keep our guidance despite increased interest rates, this is probably due to the fact that we're able to decrease our costs.

Emmanuel Parot

This will rather be in 2027. You have increased interest rates, building costs don't necessarily go down, the only thing that you can change is the price of land.

I simply wanted to make sure that this is something that you were implementing or doing right now and that will translate in the P&L in 2027-2028.

Bruno Coche

People do not impose any projects upon us. We do not try to achieve specific market shares or volumes.

We only launch projects that are in line or that match our profitability criteria. If we have to decrease our selling prices because buyers have a decreased purchasing power, if we have to increase building costs because the direct costs go up, then land, the cost of land will go down because otherwise we won't launch the project.

This is what I'm saying. We provide our profitability objectives and then we decide accordingly.

We're not going to simply do things that are imposed on us.

Emmanuel Parot

Thank you.

Emmeline Cacitti

Next question, Jean-Luc Romain from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Jon Pérez

Good morning. Thank you for this presentation.

I have a question regarding the P&L during Q3. I see that development and program expenses, from 4.4 to 7.6, what falls into that category and what would explain this change?

Bruno Coche

I'm going to answer this question. Let's be precise.

We're talking about a increase from 24 22.4 to 23.2. This includes all small provisions, development, etc.

It's not significant for the nine-month period and it could vary for a similar period of time. Nothing specific to say to this.

Jon Pérez

Still, I was referring to Q3 because there is a greater change during Q3.

Bruno Coche

Here again, there's no specific conclusion to draw from this. We review our projects on a regular basis, and we could decide to affect provisions to one and another, but you can't really make decisions on a quarterly basis.

Jon Pérez

Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions on the phone, I'm giving the floor back.

Emmeline Cacitti

Thank you. Now let's move on to the written questions.

Jean-Pierre Leveille has two questions. Question number one: Mr.

Laurent indicated that Kaufman & Broad is the only developer that had internal salespeople. Does this mean that you never sell anything via CGPs or third parties?

Second question: Artemis participation keeps selling shares in order to finance the exit of previous Kaufman & Broad people. When are you going to have a policy that associates managers and employees to the equity or capital of the company?

Nordine Hachemi

I'll answer the first question. Regarding our shareholdership, or employees, this is quite stable, even though there would be a few changes regarding Artemis, which is a very specific vehicle that has lots of constraints.

As the person asking the question is noting, this is mainly due to the fact some people are retiring or simply leaving the company. This is being offset by a employee shareholdership policy that is quite dynamic, and we've remained very stable for some time, and the Artemis exits are being offset by other entries and via other means, be it employee share plans or group savings plans.

We also launch a capital increase operation every two or three years, and this is only for our employees. Now regarding our salespeople, we are amongst the early ones to do this, but not the only ones, no.

It's extremely important for us because it allows us to have a very good understanding of the needs of our clients in real time. Obviously, we also work with a community of prescribers and CGPs, and this allows us to have a complete commercial system in place.

Emmeline Cacitti

Thank you. There are no further questions and we've reached the end of this presentation.

Nordine Hachemi

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

We will meet again for the presentation of the annual financial results end of January, it's on the 2nd of February. Thank you.

Have a good day, everyone.