Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on Yuzhou Properties (01628) with an "overweight" rating and target price of HK$4.61 for its quality landbank, steady growth, and high profitability.
The research house said Yuzhou has become a national developer with around 130 projects in 30 cities. The company ranked 56th in terms of 2018 contract sales and targets sales of Rmb67bn in 2019 and Rmb100bn in 2020. It also aims to crack the top 20 in terms of core profit within 3-5 years and will focus more on profitability once sales surpass Rmb100bn.
Morgan estimated Yuzhou has gross saleable resources of Rmb230bn (81% in tier 1 & 2 cities), supporting roughly 3.4 years of sales. Yuzhou has timed its land acquisitions well; it was relatively aggressive in 2016 ahead of the massive land price rally and turned conservative in 2017-18 as the market overheated.