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DLF Ltd, the country’s largest real estate player, has not yet seen an impact of rising home loan rates on demand.
According to Vivek Anand, Group Chief Financial Officer, DLF Ltd, while mortgage rates are “close to 9 per cent” or upwards in some cases, sales numbers over the last two quarters indicate continuance of strong footfalls.
Driven by good demand, the real estate major booked its second-highest quarterly pre-sales of ₹2,500 crore (up 24 per cent year-on-year).
New products contributed 89 per cent to the total pre-sales with the luxury project ‘The Grove’ (in Gurugram) clocking ₹1,570 crore of sales booking, while the second phase of ‘The Valley Gardens’ in Panchkula clocked pre-sales of ₹540 crore.
Also read:DLF plans to launch ₹7,500 crore worth premium housing project in Gurugram
DLF has already clocked nine months of sales bookings in FY23 worth ₹6,600 crore. And has another 3.1 million square feet of launches in Q4 FY23.
“So at this point in time, if you really look at our sales numbers, I think the kind of response we’ve got in the last quarter, especially with the two launches we had, we are not seeing any significant impact of that (increase in mortgage rates) as of now,” he said during an analyst call.
According to a report by ICICI Securities, the real estate major is expected to “comfortably exceed” its FY23 sales booking guidance (of ₹8,000 crore) and clock bookings of ₹8,810 crore, versus ₹7,300 crore achieved in FY22.
Also read:Realtors go flat out for pan-India footprint
Reduced debt
Operating cash flow for DLF in Q3FY23 stood at ₹633 crore.
With the Hyderabad SEZ project pushed back on account of delay in DESH bill, the real estate major fully repaid ₹582 crore capex advance to DCCDL (DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd), the rental arm of DLF.
This resulted in net debt reducing marginally to ₹2,091 crore (vs ₹2,140 crore in Q2FY23).
Also read:DLF Q3 net up 58% on better demand, lower expenses
“We have repaid the outstanding capex advance out of the surplus cash flows during the quarter. The transaction was largely cash neutral at the group level,” Anand said.
Within the DCCDL office portfolio, occupancy was flat at 89 per cent. In the retail portfolio, footfalls are still lower than the pre-Covid level; however, spend per head has seen a growth.
Rentals for the DCCDL portfolio grew to ₹1,003 crore (up 15 per cent year-on-year).
“The office portfolio continued it gradual part to recovery. Strong momentum across retail business continues,” he said.
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