Adler Group S.A. ($ADJ)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Adler Group Q1 2026 Results Call. Speakers today, as usual, are our CEO, Dr. Karl Reinitzhuber; and our CFO, Thorsten Arsan. Both will lead through today's presentation and then answer your questions. Also, please note that this call is being recorded and will be made available on our website, where you can also find today's presentation. And with that, I'll hand it over to Karl.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Sven. Before we start with the Q1 numbers, let me give you an overview of our recent asset disposals on Page 4. As already communicated in our full year figures, we closed Quartier Kaiserlei in January '26 as well as Benrather Garten and Holsten Quartier in March '26. Let me remind you that we have received 80% of the Holsten purchase price. The remaining proceeds will be received in the coming months. The proceeds from these 3 transactions were used to further reduce the first lien new money facility in March and April of '26. Let me also shortly comment on our forward sale projects. Quartier Hoym in Dresden was successfully handed over to the buyer Aberdeen in March with very little residual work to be done. Ostforum in Leipzig is also close to completion outside of the lettable area, and we are now progressing the interior fit-out for our office anchor, Deloitte, to be handed over by year-end. Another current focus is the letting of the remaining floor areas following the successful signing of lease contracts with Deloitte and Aldi. We also made progress in the disposal of our nonstrategic yielding assets in Berlin. Earlier in May, we closed Hansastrasse, Kornversuchsspeicher and Hedemannstrasse closed at the end of March and the beginning of April, and the proceeds were also used to reduce the first lien new money facility. Furthermore, we signed 21 condominium units in Berlin for a total sales price of EUR 7 million. All of these disposals have enabled us to repay debt of EUR 197 million since the beginning of the year. Let me elaborate my take on the market environment for residential development and new building in Germany from Q1. My perception is that after a stabilization until February, the backdrop for residential developers has clouded over in the recent months with the increased interest rates driven by the Iran war. It seems that German developers and their equity partners are more cautious and delay their investment decisions. We are currently running a number of development sales processes in advanced stages where we had liked to inform you about successful signings of the purchase agreements, but where the track to finalization is longer than projected. We hope to come up with some good news in due course. With EUR 245 million, our disposal holdback basket remains almost fully filled, unchanged versus 3 months ago. Moving on to Page 6. On the financials, our net rental income came in at EUR 31 million for the first 3 months. Compared to the prior year period, net rental income decreased as a result of the disposals of the North Rhine-Westphalia portfolio. The decrease was partly compensated by rent increases realized on the remaining assets. We are on track to reach our '26 net rental income guidance in the range of EUR 124 million to EUR 129 million. The adjusted EBITDA from rental activities amounted to EUR 21 million with a margin clearly improved compared to last year. The adjusted EBITDA total amounted to EUR 14 million, also reflecting increasing efficiency. As more and more development projects are being sold and the organization is becoming smaller, the negative financial impact from the development business will continue to become smaller. Our group's equity position stands at EUR 0.8 billion. The LTV increased slightly to 77.1%, in line with our expectations. Our cash position amounts to EUR 301 million. Please note that the increase in cash is attributable to inflows from Holsten and Kornversuchsspeicher at the end of March, while the respective repayments under the first lien new money facility were done in April. Thorsten will provide more color on financials later in the presentation. Overall, our Berlin-anchored yielding portfolio continued its strong operational performance, fully in line with what we have seen throughout last year. We achieved 3.6% like-for-like rental growth on a year-on-year basis. This was supported by increases of current rental contracts and ongoing reletting activities. We'll have a closer look at all KPIs on the following slides. Let's proceed to portfolio and operational performance on Page 8. At the end of March '26, we had 17,483 rental units. It is a marginal decrease of 21 units compared to December, driven by the condo sales in Q1, which I mentioned before. As a reminder, our portfolio is fully Berlin anchored with more than 99% Berlin assets. Only 49 units are located outside of Berlin, and we expect to sell these units within the coming quarters. In the terms of value, the GAV of our yielding portfolio remained stable at EUR 3.5 billion. This reflects virtually no change from the prior period as there were no revaluation and only limited disposals during the first quarter. The GAV per square meter decreased slightly to EUR 2,870, down from EUR 2,875 in December. Let's now move on to Page 9 to further discuss our operational KPIs. We achieved 3.6% like-for-like rental growth year-on-year. This is the same figure we reported for the last quarter, Q4 '25. As expected, we continue to achieve like-for-like rental growth well in our target zone of above 3% per year. Over the last 12 months, we have increased the rents of close to 50% of our residential units. Thereof half CPI indexed and half Mietspiegel-based leases. The rental growth of 3.6% is a healthy and sustainable level that reflects increases on current rental contracts as well as ongoing reletting activities. We are confident to report a rental growth number north of 3% at year-end '26. The new biannual Mietspiegel '26 for Berlin is expected to be published today. We can expect an appreciation in line with inflation over the last 24 months, which will support our upcoming rent increases. Our average rent increased from EUR 8.31 per square meter per month reported a year ago to EUR 8.64 in March '26. Turning to vacancy. Our operational vacancy rate remains at a very low level of 1.4%, slightly down from 1.5% a year earlier. This confirms the continuous demand for rental apartments in Berlin, driven by continued population growth and the very limited new housing supply. Now I would like to hand it over to Thorsten, who will walk you through the financials, starting on Page 11.

Thank you, Karl, and also a warm welcome from my side. At the end of March 2026, our yielding portfolio was valued at EUR 3.5 billion and our development portfolio at around EUR 400 million based on externally appraised values. This brings our total GAV to EUR 3.9 billion, slightly down from EUR 4 billion at the end of December 2025. This change was primarily driven by the handover of Quartier Hoym, which was transferred to the buyer during Q1, as stated earlier. In yielding assets, there was a slight decrease in value resulting from disposals of 21 condominium units in Berlin. These disposals reduced the GAV only marginally. Let's now move on to the financing section on Page 12. Let me briefly walk you through the debt repayment update. We made further partial redemptions of the first lien new money facility in Q1 2026, amounting to EUR 51 million in total. This included EUR 11 million repaid on the 2nd January 2026 following the closing of UpperNord Tower, EUR 17 million repaid on 15th January 2026 from the closings of the Offenbach development project and Parkhaus and EUR 23 million repaid on 20th March 2026 after the closing of Benrather Garten. In the course of Q2, we have returned another EUR 131 million to the creditors, of which EUR 116 million are redemptions of the first lien new money facility. The proceeds came from the closings of Holsten, Kornversuchsspeicher, Hedemannstrasse, Hansastrasse and from condo sales. Turning to the 2026 maturities. The remaining EUR 50 million Adler Real Estate bond falling due in April 2026 has been repaid from additional disposal proceeds in March, in line with the new money facility. During the second quarter, we also successfully completed the prolongation of a EUR 6 million secured bank loan, extending the maturity from 2026 to Q4 2028. This is another good example of constructive discussions with our lending banks, especially where assets in Berlin provide strong collateral. The remaining EUR 12 million of 2026 bank maturities, discussions are ongoing. These are standard bilateral talks with the respective lenders. And based on the tone so far, we expect to reach prolongation agreements well ahead of maturity. Overall, the picture remains unchanged with the continuous inflow of disposal proceeds and the supportive dialogue with banks, the 2026 maturity profile is largely addressed, and we remain focused on reducing the first lien facility with further disposal proceeds. Let's now move on to Page 13 and take a look of our current debt KPIs. Following the further partial redemptions of the first lien new money facility in Q1, our total nominal interest-bearing debt decreased to EUR 3.6 billion, down from EUR 3.7 billion in December. As already outlined by Karl, when commenting on our increased cash position, our debt decreased further following the repayments under the first lien new money facility in early April. Our LTV increased slightly to 77.1% as we had expected. The weighted average cost of debt is at 7.1% at the end of March, and our average debt maturity is around 3.2 years with the vast majority of financing maturing only in 2028 or later. All our ratings, including the issuer rating of B- with a stable outlook remain unchanged. Let's turn to the debt maturity schedule on Page 14. The debt maturity picture looks largely unchanged compared to 3 months ago, only reflecting the repayments of the first lien new money facility in Q1 and the repayment of the Adler Real Estate bond in March. All other changes, which mainly are the repayments linked to Holsten Quartier, Kornversuchsspeicher and Hedemannstrasse will only be incorporated in our Q2 reporting. Looking ahead, our next significant maturity is in 2027, where we have a total of EUR 89 million secured loans due. As you can see on this slide, 97% of our financial debt matures only in 2028 or beyond. Let's turn to LTV on the next page, Page 15. The LTV increased this quarter by 80 basis points, mainly due to the usual impact from interest expenses, both paid and accrued. The increase has been partially offset by disposals. As always, a reminder, kindly notice that our bond LTV covenant with a threshold of 90% is calculated differently, leading to a lower figure than stated here. Let's continue with cash on the next page, Page 16. At the end of the first quarter, our cash position stood at EUR 301 million, in line with our expectations. As you might know, we invest our cash holdings usually in money market funds and call money in order to generate interest income. As you see, the development of the cash position is the usual format on this slide. On the cash inflow side, we realized proceeds from various disposals as discussed earlier. Yielding asset disposals include proceeds from condominium sales and Kornversuchsspeicher. Development asset disposals include proceeds from the completed sales of Offenbach, Benrather Garten and Holsten development projects. These proceeds were largely returned to the investors of the first lien notes. The net increase in our cash position is mainly driven by the fact that we have received disposal proceeds by the end of March, but only made the corresponding repayments in April. And with that, back to you, Karl.

Thank you, Thorsten. Let me now conclude this presentation with some final remarks. We confirm our guidance of a net rental income between EUR 124 million to EUR 129 million for the full year '26. We are able to capture rental growth with our strong 3.6% like-for-like increase in line with our expectations, and we confirm our net rental income guidance for 2026. The direction of the German residential real estate market remains uncertain at this point in time. The private buyers for residential units remain the current backbone of the new build market. Institutional investors for both new and standing assets are restrained and hold back until there will be more visibility in the market. A supporting element is the ongoing solid rental growth in all segments. When it comes to the disposal of our development projects, we are making good progress as a credible and trustable partner, for example, with our successful disposals in Hamburg, Frankfurt Offenbach and Dusseldorf. We are pursuing a number of sales processes in advanced stages and expect more signings in the time to come. The recent disposals have translated into debt repayments of EUR 197 million since the beginning of the year. We continue and progress the evaluation of options for our Berlin residential portfolio and the related financing structures together with our adviser, Evercore. We are closely monitoring the debate about expropriation of private housing in Berlin. In the last few days, the topic has reached the level of federal politics, namely with Bavarian Premier Soder putting forward the idea of a federal council initiative, a Bundesrat initiative, to prohibit expropriation on the level of single states like Berlin. It would be helpful for Germany as a leading European business hub in banking, finance and real estate if the expropriation debate came to an end rather sooner than later. We do not face any maturities of capital market indebtedness before the end of '28. Just as Thorsten said, 97% of our financial debt matures only in '28 or beyond. It goes without saying that we remain focused on our comprehensive cost-cutting programs and budget discipline to ultimately preserve our liquidity position. And with that, I would like to thank you for dialing in. We are now looking forward to your questions. Sven, back to you for the Q&A.

Thank you, Karl and Thorsten. And I hand it to our operator, Matilda, to open up the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from the line of Othman El Iraki from Fidelity International.

Just 2 questions for me. The first one is, given, as you said, increased interest rates, can you maybe just give some color on the kind of investment market for standing assets rather than development? That would be good to understand the impact of rates on the market? And then my second question is if there's any update on your strategic options with Evercore. That would be helpful.

Yes. Many thanks for the questions. Now question one, let's say, our view on the investment market for standing assets and residential portfolios. Well, I think what we can say is that we have seen a very limited number of transactions in Germany and in Berlin over the last few months and the fact that the interest rates increased with the Iran war, I think hasn't helped really the market. So the institutional investors are still holding back. And we are not, as I pointed out, seeing many transactions. So I would say the market is rather flat at this point in time. Now with regard to our work on our options with Evercore, let's say, there is not much really I can report in detail. We continue to work. And as I pointed out also previously, when we come to conclusions and steps to be taken, we will share that with you, but this is not the case at this point in time.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dr. Karl Reinitzhuber for any closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for joining today. We will publish our Q2 '26 figures on August 27, and the respective results presentation will take place on the same day. Thorsten and I look forward to speaking to you then. All the best for everyone. We close the call.