Originally Posted by
Baa_Baa
There's no doubt SUM are a successful company and should continue to be so, and there's also no doubt they know how to back land and build properties, heck they're doing an amazing job with that! I'm glad that you acknowledge albeit obliquely a sale performance issue (by not refuting it) that has been emerging for some years now. It's reported in their FY results way down the bottom in the sales table, but it's just that they don't spell out the % of sales versus units available for sale, which has declined year on year for quite some time.
So their development programme has got well ahead of their ability to sell the properties. I think it's fudging the numbers by reducing development, as it will of course make sales look better as a % of units available for sale. I reckon if I was a Board member I'd be making life difficult by asking what they're doing about selling what they have and why should I have confidence that they can sell what's in the development pipeline, without arresting the developments which are going so well.
Yes, I'd be all over the the sales manager like a rash and asking all sorts of awkward questions. I wouldn't immediately support a non-disclosure of developments (as they said recently "not headlining"), I'd be grinding on their sales strategy and methods and what they're doing about fixing their sales under-performance.
If that's helped by having 'fixed fees for life', then bring it on, it's a sales motivation (at least part of), and that's what we want to see, a coherent plan to fixing sales underperformance, a sustainable pathway to unloading all the properties that are vacated and that they so capably can develop.