Aroundtown SA (AT1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. And thank you for joining us for Aroundtown's first half year 2023 Results Call. You should have received our press release before, and you can access the presentation on the Aroundtown website either on the main page or in the Financial Report section of the Investor Relations page. My name is Katrin Petersen, and I'm the Group Head of Communications at Aroundtown. With me today are CEO, Barak Bar-Hen; our CFO, Eyal Ben David; our Chief Capital Markets Officer, Oschrie Massatschi; our Executive Director, Frank Roseen; and from Investor Relations, Timothy Wright, as well as representatives from Grand City Properties. [Operator Instructions] Now I'd like to hand you over to Oschrie, who will guide you through our results presentation.

Thank you, Katrin. Good morning also from my side, and welcome to Aroundtown's First Half 2023 Earnings Call Presentation. Before we dive into the results, a brief comment on some market trends we have been facing this year so far that have an impact on our performance and the strategic direction we follow to deal with this situation. With many European economies recovering only slowly in the face of high core inflation, further delevering the company remains a high priority for us. We have been successful this year concerning our liability management approach. Several bond tenders and ongoing debt repayments in the markets allowed us to maintain a long debt maturity and delever the company by buying back debt at 20% discount on average. The diversification of our portfolio across top cities and asset classes offers a significant level of protection during these prevailing volatile markets. We continue to identify conversion potentials between asset classes and dispose assets to further delever the company. The resilience of our operational performance, reducing CO2 emissions and increasing our share of green certifications increases in importance on which we will give you an update shortly. With that, let me move on to our presentation. We start with our financial highlights achieved in the first six months this year on Slide 4. On the operational side, the net rental income for H1 decreased by 3% year-over-year to EUR 596 million, which was due to the ongoing sale of assets offset by a solid like-for-like rental growth of 3.4%. FFO I came in at EUR 175 million or EUR 0.16 per share for the period, impacted by higher interest expenses and perpetual note coupons. We update our full year guidance with a slight increase in both for FFO I and on a per share level due to our operational results. The EPRA NTA per share decreased by 10% to EUR 8.4. Our capital structure remains robust, and we continue to prioritize a high level of cash and liquid assets that provide the necessary flexibility between our operational activities and conservative financial discipline. We managed to hold our ample liquidity position, which stood at EUR 2.5 billion at the end of June and reflects 18% of our debt levels. Note, this amount does not include any expected proceeds from signed but not yet disclosed disposals or vendor loans. The interest cover ratio amounted to 4.5x, and our LTV only marginally increased to 41% despite further portfolio devaluation on a like-for-like basis, therefore, ensuring significant headroom to all our bond covenants. We will discuss each KPI in more detail throughout this presentation. On Slide 5, we reiterate our focus to strengthen our balance sheet and present our tools that have served us well maintaining our financial strength during the recent uncertain economic environment. We continue to focus on several key strategic measures to successfully navigate the current volatile market and meet our upcoming debt maturities over the next few years even when access to capital markets may remain unattractive in the near term. These include the continuation of our disposal activity, which strengthens our liquidity and allowed to further delever the company by buying back our own debt at discounts and extend the overall debt maturity. It also includes raising additional funds through secured bank financing at attractive terms as opposed to more expensive new bond issuances. Therefore, we see this a relevant source of liquidity in the next period and utilize our good relationships to many different banks. As we highlighted often in the past, our perpetual notes unfold their specific equity characteristics in the current volatile market environment as our option not to care perpetuals in times of unfavorable alternatives is a testament to its equity characteristics. And of course, maintaining high headroom to all bond covenants remains a priority for which perpetuals are supportive as they are 100% equity for the bond covenants. The strength of our operations remains an integral part in navigating the current environment, and despite macro headwinds, we continue to execute our strategy and drive operational growth. On the next slide, we will look in more detail into these points. As we all know, the transaction market remains subdued as many buyers await the full extent of the impact from increasing interest rates. Despite this challenging environment, on Slide 6, we highlight the achievements from our disposal activities, which amount to EUR 545 million of signed deals year-to-date. These disposals were on average signed slightly below book values. Of the total EUR 90 million of disposals were signed after the reporting period during the ongoing quarter. We closed EUR 720 million of disposals in H1 '23, including disposals signed but not closed during '22, at an average rent multiple of 19x, and the total profit over costs came in at EUR 28 million. These results once again stress the quality of our assets and our competitive advantage to dispose properties also in a challenging market environment with low transaction volumes overall. We continue to see disposals as a good way to strengthen our balance sheet by enhancing the liquidity that can be utilized to delever the company. On the left-hand side of this slide, you can see the disposal breakdown, which is across all our asset classes in several geographies. Noncore assets make up 35%. The value creation from development rights and invest segment remains an important part as we continue to find buyers for these rights. 15% of all disposals closed in the first half can be traced back to these assets. As usual, you will find examples of our [indiscernible] development-rights in the appendix of this presentation. On the next slide, we turn to another key strategic measure highlighted earlier: It's bank debt and the relationships we established over many years with banks that you see on the right side of the slide. Year-to-date, we raised EUR 790 million of secured and unsecured bank debt from some of the many different local and international banks, we work with at an average maturity of 7 years and a margin of 1.4% plus Euribor. Of this amount, EUR 430 million was drawn in the first half of this year. Our remaining EUR 20 billion of unencumbered assets continue to put us in a strong position that allows us to access further bank financing. Turning our focus on measures with the deleveraging effect. Slide 8 summarizes the positive impulses from our active liability management. As we continue to see our bonds trading at high discounts for most of this year so far, we chose to repay part of our debt at attractive discounts to delever the company, which is the main purpose of our cash preservation strategy. On the liability management activities combined this year so far, we bought back EUR 1.3 billion nominal amount of bonds at an average discount to par of 20%. This alone enabled us to reduce the net leverage by more than EUR 200 million. We plan to continue repurchasing further debt as long as we see the need for delevering the company and our bonds continue trading at significant discounts. On Slide 9, we want to provide you the considerations of our decisions on perpetual notes and our rationale forward. Prior to each individual perpetual call date, we assess our options in the market. In general, we want to replace perpetuals with the new perpetual issuance as we have done until last year, and as these are not meant to be repaid with debt. We see perpetuals as a preferred equity instrument as they do not have any covenants and no default drives same as common equity, neither is there any repayment obligation. Whilst these are equity characteristics, we see it important to communicate openly to stakeholders the options available to issuers of such notes. Perpetual notes, such as the ones from January and July of this year continue to be considered as 100% equity for IFRS and bond covenants, even if not called. Therefore, they provide a security cushion in volatile times. For any perpetual note, we decided not to call so far, we retained the option but no obligation to call them every year on the coupon payment date. On an annual basis, we paid EUR 52 million higher coupon combined for all noncore perpetual so far. Barak, please continue with the portfolio overview.

On Slide 11, we turn our focus on the portfolio and operations of the group. As of June, our balanced portfolio value split was 41% offices, 32% residential, 20% hotels, together making 93% of the portfolio value. The remaining 7% are logistics and retail. As you can see on the right-hand side, with 91% in value, our investment locations continue to be centered in key European markets with a strong focus on top-tier cities in Germany, the Netherlands and London. Berlin, London, Frankfurt and Munich continue to represent some of our single most important investment market where we will still see significant upside potential in the mid- to long term. For each asset class, we provide more detailed information in the appendix. On the next slide, we zoom into the rental health of each of our 3 main asset categories. Stable rental growth is a vital factor in our view, to offset the ongoing operational cost inflation and further increase in interest expenses. The rental contracts for our commercial properties mostly include rent indexation or step-ups, which resulted in a positive like-for-like rental growth of 3.8% in June. This rental growth is also supported by our ESG improvement efforts to reduce the CO2 intensity and obtain more green certificates for our assets. The residential rental segment hold through our investment in Grand City continues to benefit from growing supply demand gap in German metropolitan areas which is under more pressure due to the inflow of refugees and the drop in new supply. As a result, regular rent increases feasible under the rent regulation is ensuring further steady and stable rental growth or lift the pressure on the vacancy level intensifies, which is reflected in the 3.9% record low vacancy level, a 30 bps drop in Q2 alone. London representing 18% of the residential portfolio has more frequent rent adjustment due to its less regulated nature and higher tenant fluctuation, which allows for faster catch-up to the market rent levels. As expected, our hotel portfolio is on track to recover, and we continue to improve our collection rate. Also, the leases with the hotel operators are linked to inflation or have rent step-ups, which will be recognized once we reach a full recovery. Our well-distributed commercial lease expiry profile has no significant maturities in any single year, which is the result of letting efforts and ongoing negotiation with existing and new tenants. Yet, we do see it takes longer to find new tenants in the current market conditions. As we noted the negative impact on our tenants from the slowing economy as well as the impact from working from home. However, rent expiries can also serve as a value creation opportunity as in most cases, we can still relet above in-place rent levels due to repositioning cycle, our value-add investment on the go. Moreover, our residential tenants in Germany have an average lease term of around 10 years, and we expect this to increase as the fluctuation decreases further due to the lower new development volumes and increased market rents. Our CapEx investment will continue on a selective basis. We want to ensure that in this inflationary environment, we employ smart CapEx investment where it's most needed and where it has the greatest impact on the quality of the asset, whether it may be to reduce carbon emissions or to improve the overall quality of the assets for our tenants. On Slide 13, we break down our diversified portfolio and stable tenant structure. Our group portfolio at the end of H1 amounted to EUR 26.3 billion, with an annualized EUR 1.16 billion recurring net rental income and rental yield of 4.8%, up from 4.5%, resulting from rent increases and negative value like-for-like. The long WALT remained stable at 7.3 years for the group and the EPRA vacancy rate came in flat at 7.7% quarter-over-quarter. The stable development is attributed to the well-diversified asset mix, which provide us downside protection during current uncertain economic periods. Additionally, 75% of our office tenants are in the public sector or large blue chip companies. Our 10 largest tenants continue to account for less than 20% of the group's rental income, ensuring that there is only limited exposure to any single tenant in case of financial distress or inability to pay rents. Oschrie, please continue.

On the following slides, we take a look at the German market performance for each of our 3 main asset classes, starting on Slide 14 with the office market. You can see the development of the rental index were this take-up in the top 7 German cities over the last few years. Since the last quarter of '22, we see a turning point in the take-up, which has continuously decrease since then. This trend is expected to continue more moderate until the end of this year at least. Simultaneously, prime rents increased year-over-year, lifted by inflation-driven rent increases that led to a historical peak in office rents, which has not seen the end yet. As economic headwinds and high costs remain on an elevated level in Germany, we expect that office vacancy levels will moderately increase further. However, prime rents continue to reach ever new highs as they benefit from ongoing high inflation levels. We assume this trend to continue for most of next year. Next up is the German residential market performance. The dominating trend in this asset class is a growing supply-demand gap, which is fueled by a further drop in new development, significantly below the government's target and increasing rents due to the inflation and unaffordable purchase prices for the average first homeowner. Tenants understand they are facing very few alternatives at affordable rent levels should they move out of their homes. Hence, despite the need for required maintenance and carbon emission reduction investments, the fluctuation decreases further, whilst the public pressure against the government growth to act against the historic low vacancy level of 2.9% in Germany. These factors have also supported Grand City in achieving its lowest vacancy level ever with 3.9% whilst achieving its highest average rent level per square meter of EUR 8.4 and growing. As you can see on Slide 16, we highlight the hotel sector recovery path of some comparable Western European hotel markets, focusing on the occupancy rate ratio of space by international tourists and the RevPAR. In some European countries, recovery is faster than in our main locations, but reports from our hotel operators as well as independent statistics like the one you see on the slide, show a steady improvement in all KPIs, and this gives us confidence that a full recovery will be achieved next year. Leisure hotels have been frontrunners in the rebound and we saw full recovery in the booking and collection levels already during the summer despite the increase in travel and accommodation expenses. Due to the tenacious cost inflation and shortage of qualified staff the RevPAR need to be around 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels to achieve the same profitability. Hence, we expect average room rates to remain on an elevated level. The following slide summarizes some ongoing trends in '23 that will shape the rebound in the hotel business this and next year. Demand for corporate travel, business conferences or long-haul flights particularly from Asia and the U.S. markets are still not fully back to pre-pandemic levels and are impacting the speed of the hotel recovery. As you can see on the right side of this slide, we can confirm to be on track to a full recovery with 85% to 90% collection rate for this year and back to pre-pandemic levels next year, which will have positive effects on the FFO. More information about each market segment can be found in the appendix. I'll pass you on to Frank to update us on the ESG efforts of the group.

Thank you, Oschrie. Throughout the year, we continue building on our ESG successes that we have achieved over the last year as highlighted on Slide 18. An important step in our pathway to reduce CO2 emissions has been to obtain green certifications for our properties, a project that we started in the Netherlands two to three years ago. Since then, our office portfolio has reached a level of 22% green certified assets, up from only 2% three years ago. The group has continued to internally share and transfer knowledge from the pilot project in the Netherlands to the operational teams across Germany with an increasing number of German offices receiving certifications during this year. The Dutch portfolio is on track to reach 100% certification level with the remaining properties that have not been certified yet currently in the process to be certified. Progress in Germany has been slower due to the larger scale of the German portfolio and the fact that the certification authorities in Germany takes more time than in the Netherlands. In 2023 and beyond, the group is in the process of analyzing certification options for each hotel segment and at the same time, we'll continue to gradually increase certification levels for German offices. On Slide 19, we summarize our program for installation of renewable energy technologies primarily in rooftop solar plants, electric vehicle charging stations and cogeneration plants using combined heat and power systems. To date, 120 buildings have been fitted with solar PVs with a maximum generation capacity of 4,400-kilowatt peak, which can generate up to 4 million to 4.5 million kilowatt hours per year depending on the weather and other conditions. We have also installed combined heat and power units that have a total capacity of 420-kilowatt electric, which is equivalent to 2.1 million kilowatt hours per year. Furthermore, 400 EV charging stations have been installed across the portfolio. Overall, these measures reduced the CO2 intensity of our group portfolio through avoiding 1,500 to 2,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year based on maximum capacity. At the bottom of this slide, we highlight the energy efficiency improvements through our regular maintenance and CapEx activities, involving a range of technologies such as installing lead lighting, installation of roofs, facades replacements as well as windows replacements among several other options. Roof refurbishment or lighting replacements can save up to 60% and 95%, respectively, of the energy loss from those current specific and efficient units, while bringing benefits to both landlords and tenants through reduction of energy consumption and CO2 tax obligations. These measures also improve asset energy consumption categories, which can in turn increase tenant demand and asset value. Further measures include the ongoing rollout of smart meters to enable real-time and accurate data collection for improved resource management a lot with installation of innovative systems to improve water and waste management. These investments are part of our regular ongoing CapEx measures. For larger CapEx projects, we are very selective with the implemented measures for each asset, depending on their CO2 reduction potential and economic visibility. For more details on our ESG strategy, please refer to the additional information on individual ESG elements provided in our appendix for a high-level view on our strategy on the nonfinancial report's sustainability insights and our EPRA sBPR reports for the year 2022 that are available for both Aroundtown and our Grand City Properties on the company website. I will now hand you over to Eyal to present our financial results.

Thank you, Frank. We begin on Slide 21 with a profit and loss results for the first half of the year. Our recurring net rental income resulted in EUR 589 million for the period. This 2% decline year-over-year is mainly the result of disposals and channeled mostly into our liability management activities. Our group like-for-like net rental income amounted to 3.4% in June, of which offices recorded a 4.2% like-for-like growth and a residential 2.4%. We externally evaluated the entire portfolio in Q2, and as a result, property revaluations and capital gains were minus EUR 1.75 billion. This is mainly the result from a yield adjustment due to higher interest rates as rents have materially increased during the same period. The hotel rent collection improved in the first six months of the year and the extraordinary provisions we put in place is well on track to phase out by year-end. Deferred taxes were added back with EUR 247 million, predominantly relating to revaluation decline. As a result, the loss for the reported period amounted to EUR 1.3 billion, generating a negative EUR 0.95 loss per share, down from EUR 0.25 per share profit in the comparable period. On the next slide, we present the valuation breakdown in our portfolio by asset class. Due to the yield expansion as a result of the increase in interest rate, which was only partially offset by rent indexation, the like-for-like valuation decline in the first half of the year amounted to 6% or 5.4% after adding back the CapEx invested in the period. Office value like-for-like decreased by 6.6%, residential by 5.3% and hotels by 3.7%. Moreover, you can see on the right-hand side that our average portfolio valuations remain conservative with EUR 2,500 per square meter, showing a gap of nearly EUR 1,500 per square meter or 60% to the current replacement cost, excluding land cost, and providing significant value upside potential in the mid- to long term. On Slide 23, we break down the adjusted EBITDA calculation. The H1 adjusted EBITDA decreased year-over-year by 3% to EUR 498 million. The decrease is mainly the result of disposals, which were partially offset by the like-for-like rental growth. The adjusted EBITDA is after excluding EUR 5.4 million EBITDA contribution of asset sales for sale and therefore referring only to the recurring long-term portfolio. Positive contributions continue to derive from our proportional holdings Globalworth and other JV investments, which contributed EUR 29 million in total. Before JV contributions, the adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 468 million, reflecting a decrease of 4% year-over-year. On Slide 24, we highlight our funds from operations achieved during the first six months of this year. The FFO I came in at EUR 175 million or EUR 0.16 per share. This reflects a 6% decrease year-over-year on an absolute and on a per share level. H1 continues to be ahead of our full year guidance, but we anticipate in the second half of this year, higher finance expenses as we continue to secure relatively attractive bank debt and increase our liquidity, but this in return will increase our overall interest expenses. Additionally, there is the impact of the perpetual coupon reset as elaborated earlier in the presentation, which will have a partial impact on our 2023 financing expenses. The total profit over cost from disposals during the period amounted to EUR 28 million as a result from the successfully completed disposals of EUR 720 million. The disposals were executed around book values and generated 4% margin over total cost, including CapEx. Year-over-year, the FFO II decreased to EUR 203 million from EUR 360 million. Our EPRA NTA NAV KPIs are illustrated on Slide 25. The total EPRA NTA decreased in tune to EUR 9.15 billion, EUR 1 billion decrease from the end of last year. On a per share basis, this resulted in EUR 8.4 per share compared to EUR 9.3 per share 6 months earlier. The decrease is driven by the negative revaluation impact. The EPRA NAV decreased to EUR 10.2 per share in the first half of the year, representing a decrease of EUR 1 during the same period. Next, on Slide 26. We provide a view of our strong liquidity position, which is largely the result of the EUR 2.5 billion in cash and liquid assets at the end of June. Moreover, you see our expected proceeds from already signed but not yet closed disposals and vendor loan repayments. We continue to be disciplined with our cash allocation and maintain a high balance of cash and liquid assets in order to remain flexible during these uncertain economic times. Our liquidity positions amount to over EUR 3.5 billion and cover our debt maturities until May 2026. The three years long headroom ensures sufficient time to refinance or dispose more assets in order to stretch out the average debt maturity and cross the current times of challenging economy influenced on the real estate industry. On the following slide, we want to keep you updated about our headroom concerning the key debt covenants considering the prevailing challenging capital market environment. As a reminder, contractual loans attributed as 100% equity according to IFRS for all covenant calculations also when not being called. Our total debt to total net assets stood at 35% in June, which is well below the 60% covenant threshold set by the EMTN program. In a stress case scenario, our June total asset value need to grow by a further 38%, which implies over EUR 13 billion decrease in value before this covenant will be triggered, all else being equal. The adjusted EBITDA to net cash interest is 4.8x compared to 1.8x the required covenant limit. And our net unencumbered assets to net unsecured debt is more than double what is needed. Therefore, in combination with our high cash balance, we could replace our total unsecured debt with secured debt and not risk bridging this covenant. Oschrie, please continue to conclude the final part of the presentation.

Thank you, Eyal. In line with our high-covenant headroom, we want to give you an updated view of our conservative capital structure on Slide 28. Despite the prevailing challenging economy of enduring geopolitical tension and negative macroeconomic sentiment during the first half of this year, our LTV level increased only slightly by 1 percentage point to 41%. The EPRA LTV, assuming perpetual notes as debt is 57%. The net debt-to-EBITDA continues to improve and reached 11.4x in June on an annualized level, down from 12.3x year-over-year as a combined result of operational growth on the one hand and the reduction in net debt on the other. The average debt maturity remained stable at 4.8 years with an increased average cost of debt at 2% as an interest cover ratio of 4.5x. The cost of debt increased due to a combination of several factors, higher interest rates for new financing, increasing of the rates under the hedging caps and in the variable portion of the existing debt as well as from repayments of low cost but near-term debt and maturity of interest rate hedges. Our hedge ratio is 85%, and we expect a further decrease to 83% at the end of this year due to the expiration of some hedging instruments unless they will be rehedged before. For next year, there are no further material hedge expiries. Going forward, we continue to see secured bank financing more attractive than unsecured corporate debt in the short term. With 79% or EUR 20 billion, our share of unencumbered assets provide sufficient options for secured financing at rates lower than current bond yields. On the final slide of our main earnings presentation, we slightly increased our '23 guidance figures. For the full year, we now guide our FFO I to be in the range of EUR 310 million to EUR 340 million, EUR 10 million more than before and FFO I per share to be in the range of EUR 0.28 to EUR 0.31, EUR 0.01 more than previously guided. This guidance is taken into consideration positive drivers, such as further rent increases from indexations, strong results in the residential portfolio, improvements in the hotel collection rate but also negative drivers, such as an increase in the cost of debt and higher coupon payments for our perpetuals as well as further disposals, which will support to delever, but also reduce our income base. This concludes the main part of our presentation.

Thank you, Oschrie. So before we open up for your phone inquiries, we wish to address the questions we have received by e-mail before or during this call. For the sake of clarity, we've group-related questions together to ensure we cover as many topics as possible. Let me now proceed to present these questions to you. So the first question, could you provide an update on the office market? Do you see significant changes? How is your office portfolio and your letting process impacted? What are your expectations for the coming periods, to Oschrie?

The office market continues to be influenced by the macroeconomic uncertainties that we have seen in recent periods. As a result of these uncertainties, tenants explore options to managing costs rather than expanding space which is further impacted from rent increases due to the CPI index or step-up leases. Due to the economic situation, new letting occurs in lower volumes and slower paces but more important is that we continue to see demand for space. When it comes to supply trends, these continue to be in line with previous periods. New supply is drying up as strong increases in cost of construction combined with high capital cost and uncertainty of future demand has led developers to cancel projects and refrain from starting new projects, thereby impacting the creation of new supply. We continue to expect negative demand pressure to partially outweigh in the short term, while we expect the supply situation to provide a tailwind in the longer term. We note our long average lease term of 4.2 years with well-distributed lease maturities over the coming years. This gives us some time to work on reletting and to adjust to the changing environment as we expect to be able to deal with the short-term market dynamics. The inflation, while having a negative impact on demand is driving up rents through indexation, which is currently offsetting the negative demand impact. Although vacancy slightly increased to 11.9%, rent increased mainly from CPI index and step-up leases more than offset this effect. Our office portfolio recorded a like-for-like rent growth of 4.2%. In the first half of this year, we were able to let 150,000 square meter, of which 50,000 were to new tenants at a WALT of 7.5 years. 100,000 square meter were prolonged at a WALT of 5 years. The new lettings and prolongations were at 7% higher rent than the former leases. We continue to see the portfolio well positioned. Our tenant mix remains very strong with 75% of tenants comprising governments, multinationals and large domestic corporations with no dependency on a particular industry which provides some protection against negative macro impacts. That being said, a recession will likely have a negative impact also on our portfolio, especially if the recession is more severe. However, we are cautiously optimistic about avoiding a harsh recession resulting in a significant and rapid drop in demand.

Can you provide an update on the residential market, please, Barak?

The residential portfolio continued to presenting solid operational results with increasing rents and declining vacancies across the portfolio, both in Germany and in London. GCP's vacancy reached another historically low at 3.9% and with an increased trend like-for-like of 2.7%. The good performance come from both increased demand across all main cities in Germany as well as in London, while supply is remaining low. We expect to see the demand for letting remaining strong, while the new supply pipeline is very low, a reflection of the increased cost of construction and increased capital and debt costs. Yield expansion also impacted the residential portfolio, and GCP reported a like-for-like devaluation of 5.4% in the first half of 2023. However, the negative impact was partially offset by increasing rents, increasing replacement costs and the high supply-demand gap.

Next question to Frank. How is the hotel market recovery progressing so far this summer?

The recovery is progressing well with the summer months as usual, benefiting from an increased demand from leisure travel. We achieved in Q2 a collection rate of close to 90%, and we are currently exceeding this rate with July at 90%. We rerate our expectation to achieve 85% to 90% this year and get back to pre-COVID collection rates in 2024. Hotels remain to be an attractive asset class due to sustainable long-term demand drivers from traveling for leisure business and for business meetings and conferences. The pandemic has changed some of the dynamics, especially in the business travel, but we believe the long-term trends are positive, and we see a continuous trend in all demand drivers and lines and reports, reports very strong bookings this summer. So despite inflation decreasing the cost of living and travel expenses, demand continues to be good. And please note that despite the well-progressing recovery and strong demand during the summer period, the hospitality industry is impaired by the lack of staff and the cost of inflation which are not fully passed through to the customers so far. And these impairments are the main hurdles to overcome to full recovery. Our hotel portfolio will further benefit from hotel openings after close periods from major refurbishments in Rome, Paris and Brussels.

Please give us more details on the valuation. Where have you seen most of the devaluation? What do you expect going forward?

We had a full portfolio evaluated in H1 2023 and brought the portfolio to the most updated value which is reflecting in the current market environment. The valuation were carried out externally and by independent valuators as for our usual practice. We recorded a negative valuation result of EUR 1.7 billion, reflecting a 6% decline in valuation between December 22 and June 23, including the CapEx invested, the value declined by 5.4%. Conservatively, excluding the CapEx invested and on like-to-like basis, the office portfolio declined by 6.6% and the residential by 5.3%. The hotel portfolio declined by 3.7%, a more moderate level as the moderate level as the hotel seen valuation declines during the pandemic, and in the recent periods have seen good operational recovery. The valuation declines as the result of the increased interest rates resulting in a 0.3% yield expansion. The yield expansion was offset by higher rent levels, driven mostly by indexation and the positive impact of inflation. Moreover, the replacement cost increased further in the last periods, reducing new supplies coming into the market. We have seen broadly similar devaluation trends across our major portfolio locations as they're mostly macro driven from the larger market forces with some slight local variations as a result of local market structures. For example, with slightly lower devaluation in the Netherlands and London, where yields were already higher compared to Germany. From June 22, our portfolio value had declined by close to 9%, which is the result of the market dynamics we have seen in the last years. Our LTV has remained relatively stable, increasing to only 41% in June 23 from 40% in June 22 due to our deleveraging strategy. Our balance sheet absorbed well the valuation declines and we still have a very high headroom under our financial covenants, which can absorb an additional 38% decline in total asset value. The valuation trend is negative, but it's too early for us to estimate levels, especially after we just updated portfolio values. Interest rates remain high and as long as the rates will continue to be relatively volatile, we can expect to see more negative headwinds, partially offset by increasing rents. However, we believe that once rates will pick and the rate volatility will change, we will see stability return and large transactions come to the market with higher buyer confidence.

Can you please provide a breakdown of your rent like-for-like? What was the contribution from your main asset classes?

We saw a like-for-like rent increase of 3.4%, which came from 3.9% in-place rental growth, slightly offset by 0.5% decrease in occupancy. The office portfolio was the main driver with 4.2% like-for-like rental growth, driven by strong in-place rental growth of 6.6%, which was the result of inflation-linked indexation and step-up rents as well as capture of some of the market and reversion through letting. As previously mentioned, we continue to see positive rent growth driven by inflation, which we expect will be partially offset by a negative pressure on occupancy as the letting process is taking more time. We see our long WALT and staggered lease maturities as supportive until demand picks up again. The next contributor was our residential portfolio, seeing like-for-like growth of 2.4% and benefiting from the robust demand fundamentals in Germany and London. The hotel portfolio's like-for-like was slightly positive and amounted to 1.6% coming mainly from rent increase of leisure hotels. Going forward, we are cautiously more optimistic on the operational performance and guide for around 3% like-for-like rental growth for the full portfolio updated from 1.5% to 2.5% previously guided supported by rent indexation and solid performance of the residential portfolio.

How do you expect to reduce your leverage going forward? What are your tools to continue and remain below the 45% Board of Directors LTV limit?

We aim to continue and keep our leverage low and our main tools are to increase liquidity, buying back debt at a discount and careful cash outflows. We increased our liquidity through disposals, collecting vendor loans and from loan so on. We will continue our debt buybacks if they continue to trade at high discounts, buying back a discount contributes significantly to deleveraging and to strengthening the balance sheet. On the outflow stream, we stopped 22 dividends we held back from calling perpetual notes, and we continue to be selective on CapEx spending and carry out projects, which are either yielding high returns or capture high value creation.

You have enough cash to cover your debt maturities until mid of 2026. What is your plan to maintain your FFO, assuming interest rates remain high and perpetual note coupons continue to increase?

Due to the strong actions we are taking, time is an oversight for now as we have this 3 years cash coverage until mid-'26. This time provides us the flexibility to explore options, how to further extend the time to refinance. Our team is relentlessly utilizing the deal-sourcing network to continue with our disposal activity which will increase our cash flow there. At the same time, we are utilizing our high cash balance to buy back our debt discount, thus further extending our time when we need to refinance and reduce our leverage. In addition, we are obtaining funds for mortgage banks. And although this do not decrease our finance expenses, it increases the time to refinance more expensive capital market debt further into the future. When we expect interest rates will have stabilized or potentially even have decreased to some extent. Regarding the perpetual coupon, we do expect them to increase on each reset date. However, please note that the reset rates of the coming perpetual notes are not much higher than the rates of current new bank financing. Due to the nature of the notes as an equity instrument with no repayment date, no covenants and no default triggers, they provide a very strong protection in the current environment and remain relatedly attractive in our capital structure. The higher interest rates will have an impact on the FFO of the entire real estate industry, including us, due to the nature of the business.

How is the progress on your disposal activity, which asset types are you targeting to sell? And would you comprise more on the price to sell higher amounts?

Year-to-date, we signed approximately EUR 550 million, which is less than last year due to the muted transaction markets, but still a sizable amount which supports well our deleveraging efforts. As our team is working relentlessly and is fully utilizing our deal-sourcing network, we continue to sell properties in these difficult times. There are fewer active players in the market, and it has become more difficult to find the correct match of interested buyer and assets. Our diversification in asset types and location, again, is supportive and we feel the demand for asset types shifting between periods. Thus, we do not target any specific asset type to sell. Transactions take generally longer than usual to execute as many as prospective buyers are not able to source financing in time as banks need longer execution time. Therefore, providing a vendor loan is highly supportive of closing the deal in a shorter time and securing the price now. Our advantage is that most of our properties are not pledged, and we have liquidity to our short-term maturities so we can grant the vendor loan to buyers who seek financing. Thus, we managed to close the deal faster and not subject to financing, we received the equity part of the deal now, which is on average about 50% secured by first pledges on the property and interest on the loan. As our current cash and liquidity covers debt maturities until mid of '26, we continue to have time to progress on our disposal activities. Combined with accessing bank funds in the meantime, we do not see an urgency to sell at higher discounts to our book values. We closed in H1 an amount of EUR 720 million at a slight discount to December book values. Of this amount, EUR 530 million was signed last year as it is standard for real estate transactions to take few months between signing and closing. We sold across several asset types, residential, retail, office and developments. The assets were mainly located in noncore location as well as in London, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and Leipzig. We currently hold asset held for sale in amount of over EUR 600 million, of which approximately 60% has already been signed as of today. The rest we intend to sell within the next 12 months. In addition, the group is working on a lot of deals in parallel, and we will continue to dispose properties when we get good offers and can utilize the cash proceeds for further deleveraging.

You maintained your dividend payout in your financial policy. Are you expecting to pay dividend for 2023? Does this not contradict your deleveraging efforts? Question for Eyal.

We continue to maintain our dividend payout policy of 75% of FFO I per share. However, current market dynamics remain highly uncertain, and it is difficult to predict the situation we will be in the next year, as we are not a REIT, there is no obligation to pay the dividend, which is a safer option in a difficult market and allows us to retain cash to strengthen the balance sheet. We will review the market environment and the company position closer to the AGM invitation date and announced our decision based on the then prevailing circumstances.

You continued raising additional secured financing. Could you provide some more details on the current terms? What is your pipeline? What is the limit of how much secured debt you can raise?

In '23 year-to-date, we raised around EUR 790 million of secured debt, of which EUR 430 million in H1. Terms have not changed materially in recent months, and we continue to see margins of around 1% to 2% for 5 to 10 years, varying between asset types and locations. And this reflects around 5% only in interest based on current mid-swap rates remaining below our capital market yields. We note that many of the loans are capped and the costs will decrease in the base rate decrease. As we have mentioned in the past, the underwriting process is currently taking longer as compared to past years, but we do see continued appetite from our banking partners as reflected in the large numbers and volume of secured loans signed in recent months. We continue to maintain discussion with a wide range of banks across all asset classes and generate additional pipeline deals, which we currently see as key in order to secure potential future liquidity ahead of refinancing needs. We maintain a very large pool of unencumbered assets amounting to EUR 20 billion as we still have the low balance of secured debt, a high ratio of unencumbered assets, we could potentially replace all unsecured that we secured it. However, we note again that this is not our expectation as we believe unsecured debt will remain a key pillar of our financing sources also in the future.

Your first half year annualized FFO remains ahead of your updated guidance. What are the assumptions included in the 2023 guidance? And what can we expect?

We've likely updated the guidance to FFO of EUR 310 million to EUR 340 million or EUR 0.28 to EUR 0.31 per share for '23. We had a good first half in '23, which was slightly better than we expected. However, H1 '23 shouldn't be annualized as an expectation for the full year. While operational results remain robust with a good like-for-like performance, we expect a higher interest rate and perpetual expenses in the second half of 2023 and in the following years.

Your writing outlook was revised negative by S&P in June. How high do you see [ a probability of rating ] downgrade? Would you consider an equity increase to protect your writing?

As always, we maintained an open dialogue with S&P regarding our positions and our plans. Following our decision not to use our voluntary option to call our July perpetual notes, and their own updated prospects for real estate valuation for the sector, S&P published an update in which they revised the outlook to negative. S&P mentions that they see AT1 in three probability of rating downgrades. The revision of the outlook to negative is mainly driven by the classification of the non-called perpetual notes to 100% debt which negatively impacts the S&P financial ratios. S&P does note that our decision not to call the notes, demonstrate the qualitative benefit and S&P factors this into their overall credit worthiness assessment. Furthermore, S&P sees pressure from decreased evaluation across the real estate sector, which is also expected to impact our KPI headroom and has a negative impact on the rating outlook. We have taken several measures in order to offset the negative impacts of our KPI such as disposals, debt repayments at discount, a suspension of the dividend while further improving our liquidity and access to capital by signing new bank debt at longer maturities. Regarding equity increase or rights issue, we know that this is a part of our toolbox. We believe that maintaining an investment-grade rating is important and will enable us to issue an attractive pricing once the markets will be less volatile.

Did you change your approach towards calling your perpetual note?

Our approach didn't change. Perpetual notes are part of our capital structure, which are intended to be refinanced with new perpetual notes or other equity instruments. And in the current volatile times, this is not a reasonable option. Further in current times in our view, it is more important to preserve liquidity for upcoming debt maturities. And here, the equity characteristics of the perpetual loans become apparent as the notes provide cash caution as the call option is voluntary option. We as well as GCP does decided not to call the recent perpetual loans, which had call date so far this year in January and July. We want to emphasize again, as we still see misunderstanding in the market, our perpetual loans have no impact on bond covenants as they remain 100% equity for the bond covenants. These instruments have no covenants, no default rights, no payback obligations and are subordinated to that.

What is your strategy with your development project? Will you execute those in these times?

Our strategy is to identify unused land or conversion potential in existing properties, afterwards, we draw up the plans and handing the application to obtain the development rights. This is a strong value driver and also positive cash drivers as we mainly sell these rights. We will continue to pursue this value creation avenue, also in current times as it is lengthy process and development trials are valid for several years. So even if this would be more difficult to sell at the moment, the long-term demand remains intact due to the scarcity of the land. Furthermore, in order to obtain development rights. You need very specific expertise, which is also the main driver for added value for obtaining the rights. Please also note that the majority of our assets, which classifies development rights and invest our standing assets. Regarding executing projects instead of selling, we have become more selectively than in previous periods and does expect a lower amount of expansion CapEx spending going forward. We continue with the running projects such as hotels, which are in the last mile of the conversion. We finalized the refurbishment of the hotel in Tuscany and started two small projects this year, one roof extension in Berlin, KuDamm and logistics new build in Kassel, which is fully pre-let. More details, as usual, you can find in the appendix of our presentation.

Thank you. So those were the questions that we have received prior or during to this call, and we can now start to open the floor for your questions. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

And we have the first question from Ellis Acklin with First Berlin.

Just one for you this morning. Now that you've revalued the entire portfolio, is there a scenario where you might selectively do a second valuation on some of the assets later on this year? Or do you think you've captured all of the market developments at this point?

Ellis, thanks for the questions. We do believe that the valuations will be updated by year-end as well.

The next question is from the line of Manuel Martin with ODDO BHF.

Two questions from my side, please. The first question is on the disposals year-to-date, which have been signed year-to-date. Could you tell us by how much these signed disposals are backed by vendor loans? This would be the first question. Second question also related to the disposals, could you give us an idea or an indication when these signed disposals might be closed?

Thanks for the questions. And from EUR 720 million closed disposals in H1, we provide about EUR 170 million vendor loans, which comprise less than 25%. Referring to signed but not closed disposals, this is a process that takes normally a few months. And we do believe that most of them will be closed prior to year-end.

The next question is from the [ Neeraj Kumar ] with Barclays.

I have a couple of questions on bond buybacks and one on hybrid. So regarding your bond buybacks, can you please help us understand the taxability of those profits? And if those can be offset with valuation declines. Also, is there any restriction on your ability to buy back bonds, i.e., are the regulations and buyback burns more lenient than the buying back of shares. In terms of your hybrids, are you looking for solutions whereby you can retain the equity content from S&P without actually calling the hybrids?

Thanks for the questions. Referring to the profitability, as we noted several times, so from the overall EUR 1.3 billion of year-to-date bond buybacks, we bought them at a discount of about 20%. And referring to the ability to buyback bonds, there are no restrictions, so it's not similar to share buyback. Referring to the hybrid and solution, we constantly work on several options and try to find the right, let's say, way to refinance also with S&P, but also with our hybrid holders.

The next question is from the line of [indiscernible] with Bank of America.

I just have one. Can you please update us on the disposal of Central Parcs portfolio, please?

There are still discussions about the Center Parcs portfolio. This is -- I just want to emphasize, the Center Parcs portfolio is just one portfolio out of many that we are trying to dispose are under discussions. The specific Center Parcs portfolio, it's a big portfolio that doesn't fit to many investors, and we are currently under discussions. We didn't yet find the right price and process with the potential buyers. So this is still ongoing.

The next question is from the line of Kai Klose with Berenberg.

Two questions from my side: The first one, what was the rent collection rate in the hotel segment in H1? And the second question, what is the annual amortization rate that you have to accept for signing up new bank loans?

Kai, in H1, we collected 84% in the hotels, 88% in Q2 actually. About amortization, it's about 1% amortization rates on bank loans.

The next question is from the line of Orlando Gemes with Fairwater Capital.

I have three questions. From Page 5, could you discuss the further liquidity options at the bottom of the page and how you prioritize each of them? Could you please outline your major development projects -- and in terms of your office portfolio, what actions are you taking to manage your highest vacancy assets?

Thanks for the questions. Your line was not so good, but I think I catched the questions. From our perspective, the two main liquidity sources as we see today is further financing -- by raised financing by secured bond -- secured banks, and the second one is further disposal. Clearly, we have our operational FFO that supported the liquidity, but except of that, these are the two mains. Referring to the office vacancies, so we see them increasing slightly. So we see that due to the, let's say, longer void period until you managed to relet due to the certain uncertainty times, it takes us a bit longer, but we don't see a big drop, so like 20 basis points, 20, 30 basis points a quarter. We think that this, let's say, development will continue also by year-end. Thank you very much for your questions.

With that, I'd like to thank all of you that participated in this call and the questions you raised before and during the call. All the best and goodbye.