Nordine Hachemi, President and CEO, Kaufman & Broad

Hello.

So 2024 was in line with the outlook we had given at the beginning of the year, that is, revenue growth and profit, well revenue growth in the housing segment because we had a base effect with a project. Exactly. And then profit growth, again on the housing side, because at the time we also had a base effect with the recognition of a large order in 2023, which was the Gare d'Austerlitz project. Absolutely. And for 2025, we are again announcing revenue growth of about 5% and profit that will also improve.

So there are two things. There is a fundamental trend at Kaufman & Broad where since 2018-2019, we have warned about the rise in land prices. So that's a first point. We have... Yes, that was one of your very old concerns. I remember perfectly. We've been saying it for more than 7 years. So it's not by chance. Yes. And then after that, we said that we had to be careful about the rise in selling prices, which was mainly fueled by a drop in interest rates but would not withstand the slightest increase. And when interest rates were... when a young couple borrowed, it was a figure that had struck me, a young couple borrowing over 20 years had an interest rate lower than the interest rate of the US government bond. And if you reason in pure economics, you could tell yourself that the young couple borrowing over 20 years had a bit more chance of defaulting than... even though we had a US dollar-euro exchange risk, everything you can imagine, but nevertheless, we saw that we were falling into a somewhat absurd zone. And so we said be careful, all this is fueling a rise in land prices. We also saw stocks increasing at our competitors, which was not our case because we have always had an obsession with selling very quickly, regardless of market conditions. That is, we sell today in 4 months, what we call our sell-through rate. Yes, the sell-through rate is very fast, I don't have the figures in mind, but in 4 months when the market was 21 months. But what is interesting is not so much that gap, but that when the market was doing well, when the sell-through rate of the market was 9 months, we were already at 4 or 5 months, below. And what is important is to show that in one case, the market follows the ups and downs: rates go up, sales go down, tax policy improves, then rhythms improve. That means the market depends on its environment. We decided that we did not want to depend on our environment, but we wanted to be masters of our destiny.

Prices constantly adapted to market conditions. Which means we sell quickly when the market is not doing well, but we also sell when the market is doing well. And we are actually stable in our sales rhythms because our obsession is to create products, imagine programs that will be adapted to the purchasing power and the tax environment of the moment. And when you sell quickly, you are a bit like a fishmonger who always has fresh products on the market. So your products are always adapted to the new environment. We have no stock to sell. So what we sell today has already integrated the fact that there was no more support scheme for individual investors, and so we continue to sell quickly.