Baltic Horizon Fund (NHCBHFFT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. Good afternoon and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Baltic Horizon Fund. As was written also in the NASDAQ invitation, this meeting will be more of an informative meeting as nothing is going to be decided in today's meeting. So the meeting has been organized as a hybrid meeting. Some investors are present, but most investors are viewing the presentation and the meeting over the online channel. So yes, since nothing is to be decided, there is no need to count for a quorum. And the agenda for today's meeting is a regular webinar presentation, a presentation of Baltic Horizon's last year results, but also, more importantly, looking into the Q1 results and into the current situation after the COVID lockdown. So let us begin. I would always like to emphasize and start off with by summarizing what Baltic Horizon is. And we are a dividend-oriented real estate investment funds having invested in Baltic capital cities, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius. About 75% of our assets are in Riga and Vilnius as of today, and our primary goal is to manage our properties with long-term tenants and, from operations, payout quarterly dividends to our investors, which we have also done during the COVID times. In regards to the 2020 year, then, yes, we had certain lockdowns of certain shopping centers, but we were still able to recover almost 84% of the retail rents. It's been a lot of work, a lot of difficult times to support our tenants because many of the tenants -- the business cases are strong, but they've just been forced to close. And online shopping and online sales actually form less than 10% of most of our tenants, so 80%, 90% of the revenues are coming from off-line stores. I will talk about that a bit later, but we've been happy to retain many of our good tenants and who are now open again for business and the recovery can start. A snapshot of 2020 versus 2019, which was a very successful year for Baltic Horizon Fund. And here, you can see just the visualization of the change between 2020 and 2019. 2019 is a lighter blue version. And I'm happy to say that we were able to actually retain quite a high occupancy even in 2020 compared to 2019, which occupancy was more than 98%, but we finished the year 2020 with 94% occupancy. So that's the result of a diversified portfolio. You have several assets in several cities and then in several segments. That helps you go through the difficult times. No crises is alike, and it's very difficult to prepare for any crisis. And this time, we saw a crisis, which is a health crisis, affecting the real estate in several ways. What I'm also very happy about is that the generated net cash flow per 1 unit, and I think this is a very important metric, that in 2019 it was EUR 0.114 per unit, but in 2020, with a lot of work, we were able to have EUR 0.10 per unit, the cash flow generated from operations. So only around 12% below to the record year of 2019. So -- and that 12% is directly related to the lockdowns and the discounts that we had to give during the periods. We can also see that despite that, we did earn EUR 0.10 cash flow per unit from operations. We decided to reduce the dividends, and we paid out about EUR 0.067 throughout the year. The difference we kept into the reserves. So compared to 2019, where the payout ratio was much higher, then the payout ratio in 2020 was slightly lower. But we decided that regardless of the situation, the portfolio is strong, and there's no reason not to pay dividends. So we continued to pay dividends in the reduced fashion, at the same time keeping a higher cash reserve throughout the year. Also on the slide, you can see the impact of the evaluations. Our portfolio-level valuations dropped around 7%, which is understandable and quite in line with the market. Some of the important figures here. And trade receivables is something that we have monitored very closely. And it is one of the ways how to keep track on the tenants, how they're doing, how they're paying the rent. And as you can see in May 2020, the trade receivables, basically the unpaid invoices, doubled in almost 1 month, and that was understandable because of the certain -- the uncertainty in the market, not knowing what is going to be happen. So everybody stopped doing things, including paying invoices. But again, through communication with the tenants and also as time has progressed, we were able to bring it back to the levels or the normal levels, which is around EUR 1.5 million by the third quarter last year. And now also, we can see in the first quarter of this year, the tenants have been more prepared. It's more understandable that lockdowns will be over, and we are able to -- been able to keep quite a regular level of trade receivables in the amount of EUR 2 million on a monthly basis. In the rental income, you can see the impact of the COVID lockdown, and it is true that the first quarter was the -- this year was the longest lockdown. And in Latvia and Lithuania, shopping centers have been closed since November, December and only now in Lithuania in end of April they opened. In Riga, they are now also open. Estonia's lockdown was less severe. But since we have our 2 largest assets in Riga, this had quite a large impact. Compared to Q1 2020 or Q2 2020, the impact was stronger because the lockdowns have been longer. Still, together with the tenants, we've negotiated and we've had them pay still some rent even if they were closed, and -- since they want to keep their premises, they want to start operating again. And also, they've helped us to pay the charged expenses that it takes us to maintain the buildings during the lockdowns. Occupancy is around 94%. So we have lost a few percents, but I think anything above 90% is -- we're quite content with that. It also demonstrates how strong our office segment has been to support the period, the lockdown period. And then looking at the market price of the unit, there was a drop, of course, in Q2 last year, and it's been recovering. And hopefully, it will continue to recover as our shopping centers have been opened and we are able to operate and the tenants are able to again -- visitors have turnover and therefore pay rent. It will take a bit of time, but, as we saw also last year, by September, people are back in shopping centers and it was quite a regular business as usual. Some of the key events for the fund. Standard & Poor's is a rating agency that we have asked to give a rating for Baltic Horizon -- to Baltic Horizon's Fund. And of course, we have monitored the covenants of the bonds. And also, S&P has analyzed and monitored the performance of the fund, what we have been doing to cushion and to manage the lockdown and the results. And they thought that we've done a pretty good job, so we're happy to have them second time confirm the rating at the same level as it was in 2019, so -- which is MM3. And hopefully, we are able to continue with a high occupancy -- higher occupancy in the future and sustain this rating or even improve it, hopefully, some time in the future. What we've done also during the lockdown and the crisis is really reshaped our management. We have accelerated the change of concepts for our shopping centers. We have chosen a new property management and accounting service provider, CBRE International, and it will be our main partner for the next periods, for the next few years. And we hope to even in that sense, even more strengthen the relationship we definitely have with international retail tenants to bring them to the Baltics. And we've already had a few successes, [ Bincol ], which has decided to come to Europa shopping centres to open their first store in the Baltics. And there are several more negotiations ongoing which I'm not able to perhaps reveal today, but it will be revealed in due time in the future. So into the financial results. I think the numbers are quite self-explanatory. The difference of -- if you compare the first quarter to -- of this year to the first quarter of last year, then it was around 24% below when the fund was working in -- pretty much in full speed. We've been able to also manage and reduce the expenses, administrative expenses, to make sure that we find savings in all our places. Also, financial expenses have been very stable as expected, nothing new there. And I think generally, we can be happy or, let's say, satisfied with the Q1 results considering the circumstances. When you compare the year 2020 to 2019 then, actually we did have some rental income growth. But of course, the growth would have been much -- around 12% actually larger where -- because Galerija Centrs was acquired only in midyear 2019. So in that sense, the lockdowns, yes, are also reflected here, and it was, yes, around EUR 2.5 million, EUR 2.6 million that we had to, over the year, write down or give us discounts. Then the balance sheet. So I think overall, the balance sheet is very strong. We have maintained a very good cash buffer and have been looking for new opportunities, which I will also talk a little bit later about. So the cash is ready to be deployed. And when the deals are ready to be announced, we're quite satisfied with the equity ratio, which is the equity level compared to the total capital in the fund that -- remaining at around 40%. Just to remind, in 2019, it was around 42%. So with the help of additional cash, additional support from the investors in the capital raising last year, we've been able to have a strong balance sheet and definitely remain also highly -- strongly positive in the cash flow from operations, as described earlier. Here is another view of the generated net cash flow per quarter. And yes, as you can see as well, in first quarter, due to lockdowns, we only generated around EUR 2 million of net cash flow, which is what we can actually distribute to the investors as dividends. However, we have decided to keep the dividends at a lower level at this point and maintained a EUR 0.011 per unit payout. But even given that, we have reduced it. On a rolling basis, our dividend yield is about 5%. And I think considering the circumstances and alternatives, we're quite satisfied with that. So in terms of -- on distributed dividends, we have about EUR 5 million which we have generated from operations over the past, I would say, year, a bit more, 1.5 years, which we haven't paid out to investors. And of course, I'm sure the question is that when can we pay this out, and I think we haven't decided on the plan yet. But of course, we'd rather look at it on a more conservative basis and distribute the cash to the investors when the uncertainties around the lockdowns and the virus are even less visible. One of the things that we have worked on as well during the lockdown and during the crisis period last year and this year as well, especially now beginning of this year, is refinancing of our portfolio. And this year -- in 2020, we had no loans to be renewed. This year, we have 2 loans, Sky and G4S loan, to be renewed. We have talked with the banks and generally achieved an agreement how to prolong them. It will be formalized, hopefully, now during the summer. But, as you can see as well, the majority of the loans will be refinanced in 2022, 2023 when also the bond term arrives. So we're definitely preparing very actively to refinance the portfolio, meaning signing -- the priorities to sign new leases for the vacancies to prolong the leases and then go back to the financing market. Of course, negotiations with the banks have already started and will continue throughout this year. We have still a few options what to do. One is just to refinance all the properties with the banks. I would say the lending sector and the banking sector is quite healthy right now. Banks are willing to lend. Banks are willing to lend with their long-term partners. Maybe a bit more cautious on the development side, but they are definitely willing to lend, including the retail objects which sometimes people are a bit scared of. So the question is, of course, which objects and -- will have the longest lease agreements. Those will be the most -- best priced in the future. But as I said, the banking market, despite that, it is quite healthy. And Luminor Bank, for example, has been quite visible in the markets and active, gaining market share. We are considering as well potentially a mortgage bond or a combination of bank financing and mortgage bonds. So let's say there are several tools in the toolbox. It will be quite exciting to see what the best solution will be, and this will be something that we'll definitely aim to finalize or understand how to do this by the end of this year. So this is another view of how we have also fixed the interest rates. It's a good question how we will fix interest rates or what sort of hedging we will apply in this next cycle of financing, for example, with refinancing some of the bank loans. We will find the best solution, whether it's a cap of Euribor or whether it's a fixed rate application. But I think currently, despite the inflation of -- let's say, forecasts or threats, there are several reasons why -- an argument why the Euribor should not be increasing that fast. So do we really need to hedge it? And how much -- how costly would that be? That's something that we will also discuss and work on during this year. And I think every quarter, we will learn a bit more on how the economies are coming back from the lockdowns. And it's quite interesting that as of the first quarter this year, retail only makes up 31% of our NOI. And this is, of course, due to the discounts that we had to give to the large shopping center tenants. As I said, office segment has remained strong. And what's also been interesting is -- and quite expected actually, is that our neighborhood supermarkets and shopping centers have remained also quite healthy. And this crisis is, in that sense, has been interesting that the properties in the city centers have suffered more than the properties in the suburbs. And this is, of course, because of the fact that people are being pushed away from their offices to work from home, et cetera. There hasn't been any real changes in the tenant -- major tenant mix, I would say. We've had some prolongations of the agreements. We've had some tenants -- office segment tenants actually take a bit more premises during the crisis. But we've also had one tenant reduce their space. But overall, again, office segment has remained quite more -- or expectedly stable. G4S has actually announced that they will be moving out of the property in about 1.5, 2 years period of time, after approximately 2 years. And yes, it's interesting to follow their journey as they used to be a service company that had become more and more of a technology company and actually sold off many subsidiaries. And so when they'll be moving out, actually half of the property will still remain let. The cash handling department, hopefully, will continue with us, and there is other tenants also in the building. So we'll have to find a solution for approximately 4,000 square meters after 2 years. So maybe that's been the -- one of the largest news. But again, if you look at it from the portfolio perspective, then there have been many prolongations as well. Yes. So in Duetto I, we've had several prolongations. Duetto 2, the occupancy has remained high. The same goes for Domus Pro. And yes, in North Star, there was a slight reduction of 1,000 square meters of the main tenant of space. But then again, in Upmalas, the tenant took an additional 1,000 during the crisis. And in Vainodes, it has remained stable, so has been in LNK. And Sky actually supermarket has been the star performer in our portfolio throughout the lockdown, where the tenants' turnovers have increased by double digits and as well our NOI. So the most impacted has been Galerija Centrs, as I explained, as it's been closed and, as well, Postimaja to some extent. This is a slide that actually summarizes the yields, which are operating yields, quite well. Lockdown property performance, as you can see, Europa shopping centre and Galerija Centrs have been impacted the most. But again, we've had certain rental income still during -- even during the lockdown. And I think it's almost official, but I think it's now confirmed that we will receive around EUR 440,000 of government support for Galerija Centrs. As there was a governmental measure to support shopping center owners, there was onetime remuneration of EUR 15 per square meter. Hope to receive that then during the course of June as some kind of a remedy. Maybe just to highlight in regards to the Europa shopping centre in Vilnius. We have engaged a very successful interior architect, Bolder, from Finland to really refurbish and replan the area of shopping centers. So we hope to complete the turnaround by the end of this year and replanning the ground floor, the access, the food court, so -- to take the shopping center to the next decade, let's say. So very happy about that. The team is working hard. And I'm sure that if you're in Vilnius, then you have noticed something that -- that something is happening. So we'll be ready when the majority of the people will return to the offices in central Vilnius during the course of this year. It's very interesting to note that during the lockdown, Vilnius CBD central area has continued to undergo a lot of development. There's a lot of new offices planned, being built, being completed, also residential plans. So it's a huge building ground still. And so I really hope that soon, we can all visit Vilnius and see the performance of the shopping center. It seems that my network connection is a bit slow, but I will turn off my webcam. Maybe it will go a bit better. So -- and the same plan is actually with Galerija Centrs, the fifth floor. We're planning to retenant it either to be a health care center or maybe even an office. So if we have some news, we will announce that right away. And last but not least, Postimaja Shopping center building permit for the expansion has been received. It's -- the first stage is to build the 2 buildings together. And again, we are finalizing interior architect selection and design and also pursuing now the signing of new lease agreements of new anchor tenants, as well renewal of the cinema lease agreement. And yes, the cinema will be part of the complex. The cinema is open at end of May. There's been a lot of people already visiting the cinema. So cinema's new premises will be slightly less than before. But definitely, they will be integrated into the Postimaja's new concept, which is definitely focusing on experiences, on convenience and on modern sort of product service mix offering. Now just to summarize. The -- to emphasize the strategic priorities of the fund going forward, and I think I've said that also a few times before but just to repeat this, we have fulfilled our retail investment strategy. We have the retail assets in the central Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius that we believe in on a long-term basis. We also believe that the tourists will be back. It will take a little bit of time, but vaccinations is -- in this area and in Europe are going into the right direction. There are already some countries who have achieved 70%-or-higher vaccination, meaning the herd effect. And hopefully -- and I guess there's no other way how to manage the travel industry, and the people have to manage the future traveling. People are eager to travel, and we're very much looking forward to the tourists come back. In regards to office segment, we definitely believe in the office segment as well. What we have heard from our tenants and based on the research that we've done, offices will be needed in the future. But the question is, to what extent and in which locations? So there are arguments for central areas that people that -- this is where you still make business. This is where you want to have the front office, want to welcome clients. That's where you have the sort of the flagships of our -- of the offices. But then again, in neighborhood office buildings, the arguments that if people, especially in larger cities, don't want to commute anymore. They understand that commuting 1 hour or 2 hours to the work and back is just a waste of time. So I do foresee that there is demand -- there is going to be demand for some neighborhood hubs where people get together, rent a sort of conference room, get together, meet, do innovation, team building and then go back homes where more individual work can be done. So there are other companies that can do this differently, and I think companies will be doing this differently. Some will be working more from home, more in flexible mode, but some still are needed to be in the office. So the next -- I would say the growth of the office segment in the Baltics will be slower than previously anticipated. But again, we have 5x less office space than in the Nordics. So I would be more worried about the vacancies in the Nordics rather than the vacancies in the Baltics, where the economies will be transforming themselves continuously from manufacturing-based economies to service-based economies. So there are additional support measures -- or, sorry, additional supportive arguments why the Baltic office segment will be rather growing than reducing its size in the next few years. Of course, the focus is on sustainability, on high quality. We are ourselves going through and have gone through the quality checks or are upgrading our properties where we can, and I will just talk about that a bit later. But what I would like to emphasize here is that part of our strategy will definitely be logistics in the future. So we want to have both sides of the retail. As I mentioned, in the Baltics, before the COVID, online sales made approximately 3% to 9% of total sales of each tenant or each segment. So it's almost nothing. So around more than 90% of the sales have been done in shopping centers. Baltic states, as you know, is relatively small, and the cities are smaller than in the big countries in U.K., in France and U.S. So everything is 15- to 20-minute drive away, and sometimes it's just more convenient to go shopping, so -- in the shopping center. Still, online sales are here to stay, and they are likely -- and this is what I'm hearing from the tenants. That's what they're saying is, is that probably they will make approximately 10% to 15%, maybe 20% of the total sales, but there's a lot of logistical issues that need to be solved before it can go any higher than that. As well, it's quite nonprofitable for the tenants to actually manage the deliveries, the returns. So there's a lot of issues that do hinder the further increase in online shopping, especially in certain segments. But I think electronics and sort of stand-alone goods probably will experience the higher growth, whereas emotional shopping, close, that you want to try on and choose even, et cetera, people want to touch and feel, they want to see which shade of the color it is. It's all about emotion at the end of the day. Plus, in the shopping center, the shopping for the tenants, it's much more profitable and quick. The money is there. It's being paid for right away. And the after service is there as well to maintain the customer relationship. So -- but we want to be on the same -- on both sense. We have the retail centers in place. So now we're building the office -- sorry, the logistics part. But it, again, has to be brand-new offices, so that's why we haven't really made any office investments also in the -- sorry, logistics investments in the past, because we need to see some really strong brand-new developments here before -- and there are some which are already on the market which we're looking at. Last but not least, health care. This is definitely the -- part of the strategy of Baltic Horizon Fund going forward. And this will be the -- part of the other segment, which is around 20%. We want to grow over the next 3 years to EUR 700 million. So logistics and health care segment are to be actually the main reasons for the growth. Northern Horizon Capital, who is the management company of Baltic Horizon, has operated health care funds in the Nordics since already mid-2000s. And we've had several funds. We have close to, I think, EUR 800 million right now of health care homes under management. That's hundreds of health care homes across the countries. And we have just secured another new fund, raised another EUR 100 million for that segment in the Nordics. So there's a lot of know-how that we want to bring also to the Baltics and hopefully even attract some of the operators to come here. So it will be a very exciting journey and something that I think not only us will be focusing on. But the time is right, the demand is there, and we will be focusing on that. So last but not least, some of the ESG goals. We have been keeping busy. And during this year, we aim to have the BREEAM certification for all of our office buildings, have been looking for low-hanging fruits that we can improve not only in the energy efficiency area but also in the governance area, also with the communication with the tenants. So it's a combination. It's environmental, social and governance. It's ESG. So it's quite a wide topic. Of course, electric vehicle stations are to be installed, and we are close to now achieving 100% of all of our leases to have green clauses in them. It's been a lot of work with our property management people. Our asset managers have been explaining why this is necessary, and I'm very happy to say that our tenants are very open to these changes. And at the end of the day, it's for the better of the environment, it's for the better for the building and for the long-term solution for both sides. So I think this concludes my short overview of first quarter. I hope that you have had a chance to read through our quarterly report, which was issued in -- over NASDAQ in May, and there's a lot more detail there. So I'm open for any questions at this point.

There is no questions at this point. The presentation and recording will be available over NASDAQ later on. I think we received one question. Thank you for the question, [ Robert ]. So the question is how are we approaching the organizational change when we are diversifying our investments into other segments. As I explained briefly, we do have the international know-how, how to make long-term investments in health care segment in the Nordics and will definitely be, and have been already, cooperating with them to see what kind of a model can be applied to the Baltics. Who are the operators? That's, I guess, the number one question. Does the operator know what to do? How to do it? What sort of building they need? So we'll definitely be working together to develop this segment as the health care segment. The care home segment really as an investment-grade segment is not yet here in the Baltics. So in regards to logistics, yes, it's a more specific field. And with these investments, we'll definitely analyze more carefully again from the point of view how -- because logistics is all about the tenants. It's -- and not so much about the quality of the property even though that's also important for the location. But it's really about the tenant, how are they connected to the logistics world. So that needs to be definitely scrutinized. And I think also I can safely say that we will be strengthening our investment team also in the coming periods, and news about that will be announced also to the market if that happens. Okay, I don't see any more questions. So we're open to any questions over email or just to reach out if there's anything that you would be interested in hearing more about. And we'll keep you posted through NASDAQ announcements and through our social media channels about the smaller and larger things that are happening around our buildings as well our potential capital raising plans, also plans to make new acquisitions. I think it's safe to say that Baltic Horizon aims to become a large property fund still focusing on -- only on the Baltic states. So there will be growth phase ahead. But we'll definitely focus on our current assets, how to improve them, potentially maybe even selling 1 or 2 of them over the next periods. So bigger times ahead, and lockdowns are hopefully over. We'll have to manage the life. We have to understand the new sustainable ways of doing business and hope to now do that very actively. So let's touch base again then in the early autumn. So thank you very much.