Catena AB (publ) ($CATE)

Welcome to the conference call. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Please go ahead.

Hi, and very welcome to Catena's presentation for the Q1 Report 2026. My name is Jörgen Eriksson, CEO of the company. And here is the agenda for today: a summary, a business overview and an update followed by sustainability, finance and a short takeaway before ending up with Q&A. So starting with the summary of Q1. We report a 9% increase in rental income ended up at SEK 701 million driven mostly by acquisitions, but also by our CPI-linked contracts. Profit from property management increased by 7% in total, and per share it was down 1%. The temporary decrease in income from property management per share relates to the equity raise we did in January to be prepared for the closing of the Nordic portfolio at the 1st of April. We expect to report an increase in this measure from Q2 and forward wise. Our NRV came in to SEK 454 and the balance sheet is very solid with the LTV at 33.6%. The occupancy rate has dropped to 95.1%, which is due to 2 factors. We have taken over the project Køge in Denmark. This new construction project located in a prime location was acquired vacant, and we are currently working on leasing it out and are hopeful that we will be able to secure a lease agreement there in due course. The second reason is 1 of the buildings in the Ramlösa project, which was completed in Q1 and where Nowaste is currently leasing only half of the space. As I mentioned earlier, in Q1, we have positioned ourselves for the continued growth, backed by a very stable balance sheet and with the new acquisition now in place as we speak, our cash flow will be stronger than ever. And next slide, please. And going to the business overview. We have seen in the market quite high activity in the transaction market in the beginning of Q1. But what we see as we speak is a bit more caution due to the Iran crisis and so forth. Some planned divestments from various players have been on pause and that is what we have heard from the brokers. But we are all the time looking for new opportunities, and they -- we are convinced that they will arise sooner or later. Regarding some e-commerce statistics, more suites shopped online in January and e-commerce got off to a cautious but promising start to the year. In January, sales rose by 1% compared with last year, while a record number of consumers choose to shop online. Regarding new projects, we are involved in dialogues with customers regarding new projects as we speak, but it takes time. And I think it's the same story and the same conservative view as we had in last quarter, and we don't think that's strange regarding the uncertainty in the market right now. It's easier for customers to put projects on hold or take big decisions. Next slide. Regarding our customer portfolio, there has not been any major changes since last quarter, and it's the same with the segment table on the right-hand side. But in the next quarter, we expect that the DSV percentage to decrease as we add on the new Nordic portfolio. Next slide. The total value of the portfolio is nearly SEK 45.2 billion, and it's worth noting now that since some quarters, we report as we do in the presentation here, we break down the values, not only by region, but also by investment properties, projects, building rights and land values. And the average lettable square meter has now a value of SEK 12,931. Earlier this week, we announced the divestment of 10 properties to [indiscernible] of around SEK 600 million, and the value was about 8% above our book value. We saw this as a good opportunity to recycle a bit of the Swedish portfolio. And at the same time, we look into more deals in Finland. Since we entered the Finnish market, there has already shown up some interesting cases. Next slide, a business update. During this quarter, we completed an expansion for Boozt and they now leased a total of 88,000 square meters from us. Their facilities located along the E-6 highway between Helsingborg and Ängelholm and serves all of the Boozt e-commerce customers throughout the Nordic region, and the lease agreement runs until 2037. In this table here, we show the earnings capacity as we do in the report as well. Worth mentioning now is that the Nordic property portfolio that was completed at the 1st of April is included in this earnings capacity as well as the divestment of the 10 properties to [indiscernible] and that deal will be affected on the 1st of July. Next slide. Current development. Now we have only 1 project left. So of course, we are keen to find new ones. We are struggling. But as I said before, we are conservative in the coming 6 months. But the total portfolio value of ongoing projects, SEK 675 million, where SEK 250 million is remaining investments. When it's all completed, we will add another 35,000 square meters to the portfolio. Next slide, please. Regarding future development and regarding our land bank and our zoning plan processes, there is no major updates since last quarter, still waiting for a decision from the Land & Environment Court regarding the plan outside Ängelholm and as neighbor land to Boozt facilities. We expect to have some decisions during the summer, hopefully. In Örebro, the municipality is about to decide on the zoning plan during Q2, '26. Next slide, please. Looking at our leasing operations, our net leasing in terms of moving in and moving out during the quarter is plus SEK 1 million. Our WALE is at 6.3 years and the letting ratio is at 95.1%. As I mentioned before, the lower letting ratio is fully explained by Denmark and Ramlösa. Next slide, please. Some sustainability. The environmentally certified area is that the Q1, end of Q1 is 78%. Scope 3 is continuing to decrease on a 12-month rolling basis, of course, due to less projects. We continue to maintain a high level of EU taxonomy alignment. For example, our turnover came in at 77%. Total installed solar panels output on our roofs are now above 76 megawatts. And now over to Magnus for some financial update on next slide.

Thank you, Jörgen. And next slide, please. This slide highlights the strength in our underlying earnings with solid year-on-year growth across all key metrics. Rental income is up 9%, mainly driven by acquisitions. Net operating surplus increased by 6% and profit from property management rose by 7%. As Jörgen mentioned, profit from property management per share is down 1%, a temporary decrease derives from the equity raise we did in January, and we expect to report an increase in this measure from Q2 and onwards. And also, as we've shown before, our earnings capacity implies profit from property management per share at SEK 28.45 on a full year basis, 20% above the level a year ago. The Catena model continues to deliver predictable, resilient earnings with operational leverage. Let's move to the next slide. This slide highlights the composition of our rental income growth in Q1 2026. As just mentioned, total rental income increased by 9% year-over-year. The largest contributor was acquisition, accounting for 4.4 percentage points of the growth. Our completed development projects added 2.7 percentage points consisting mainly of new facilities in Ramlösa, Helsingborg, Malmö, and Gothenburg, all leased to strong and well-known tenants. Like-for-like rental income rose by 2.4 percentage points built up by CPI-linked indexation, renegotiated rental agreements as well as increased property tax assessments and media costs which are reinvoiced to our tenants. All-in-all, this underlines our ability to grow through multiple channels, strategic acquisitions, value-adding development and strong day-to-day operations. Next slide, please. Let's turn to our capital structure. The first quarter of 2026 started off with a pickup in real estate transactions and increased activity in the credit markets, a momentum that slowed down during March due to the uncertainty caused by the outbreak of the war in Iran. Global long-term structural uncertainties still remain and is at an elevated level and it is important that we keep being prepared in case of increased volatility. At the end of Q1 2026, our equity ratio stood at 55%, temporarily increased by the equity raise we did in January, a balance level that supports strategic flexibility. EPRA NAV per share increased to SEK 454 including -- excluding dividends, an increase of 5.8% compared to a year ago. This shows our ability to create shareholder value over time even as shareholder returns are being realized. And next slide, please. Let's have a look at our financial position. We continue to demonstrate strong financial control with all key metrics within policy levels. Following the announcement of the acquisition in February, Fitch Ratings reaffirmed the BBB rating with the stable outlook for Catena. Net debt-to-EBITDA came in at 7.1x, interest coverage at 4.1x, and loan-to-value at 33.6%, temporarily positively affected by the equity raise in January. These figures reflect both a solid capital structure and strong underlying cash flows that contribute to giving us headroom to our financial covenants as well as ensuring continued access to capital on competitive terms if needed when opportunities arise. Next slide, please. Let's have a look at our debt and liquidity management. We remain focused on maintaining and securing funding on competitive terms. During Q1, we issued a SEK 400 million secured bond with 3-year maturity and pricing at STIBOR 3 months plus 74 basis points. As mentioned in the Q4 presentation, in connection with the acquisition, we signed a 12 plus 6 months term loan bridge facility that in combination with the proceeds from the directed equity raise was utilized on April 1 for the short-term funding of the acquisition. Our average debt maturity remains solid at 4.3 years. Liquidity is strong with SEK 5.3 billion in available liquidity and the liquidity ratio above 1. Passing on to next slide. Looking at our interest rate management. The war in Iran has led to rising energy prices and disturbances in the energy distribution systems. This has had an effect on the concerns for increased inflation and has put pressures on both short-term and long-term interest rates. Swap rates increased dramatically during March, but have come down somewhat since the high point end of March. We closely monitor the rate volatility and continue to navigate in line with the framework set out in our finance policy. As of the balance date, 60% of the outstanding debt carries fixed interest and our current average interest cost at 3.3% reflects a stable level with some minor room for improvement. Next slide, and back to you, Jörgen.

Thank you, Magnus. Our capital deployment is for the period divided into acquisitions, SEK 159 million and development of SEK 435 million and no divestments during this quarter. And next slide, please. Property value stayed stable and ended up the period with a positive value change of SEK 72 million, which correlates to 0.2% of the total portfolio before adjustments. The average weighted valuation yield, so-called exit yield for the portfolio is at 5.8% by the end of the period. And the EPRA net initial yield came in to 5.6%. Next slide, please. Now we have the takeaways from today. First, Catena closes Q1 2026 once again, with very solid numbers. And second, and the most important, Catena will continue to grow and increase the earnings during 2026 due to the major acquisition that took effect at the 1st of April. And now we will open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Keivan Shirvanpour from SEB.

I have just a couple of questions. The first, could you maybe quantify the net letting number for the quarter?

Yes, the net letting was plus SEK 1 million.

Okay. And then, my second...

And -- but just to be clear, the net letting, that's what's moving in and out for us during the quarter.

Yes. And then my second question is you mentioned that you see some opportunities in Finland. Would you say that you're looking at portfolios or properties or is it individual properties? And maybe if you can say anything about yield levels?

Yes, good question. We have -- we look into portfolios, but we also look into some cases where it's single assets, and you can generally say that it's somewhat higher yields there for same, same. If you compare an apple in Sweden with an apple in Finland, the yields are somewhat higher but not as high as the old saying of perhaps 100 bps, I would say, perhaps 50 bps to 75 bps.

Okay. And then just a final question, and that's related to the divestment that you made. How much would you say in your portfolio that maybe could be categorized as non-core assets that you would be able to divest if you would find a buyer?

Well, we haven't disclosed any specific number, but perhaps somewhat the size we did this portfolio the other week or somewhat higher, we'll see. It depends on if there are some buyers with very strong appetite. But I mean, it's not that many percentage of the total value.

The next question comes from Emil Ekholm from Pareto Securities.

Hope you can hear me well. A few questions from me. The market for starting new projects have been quite sluggish now for some time, as you also mentioned, and the tenants have been passing investment decisions. For how long do you think the market can be in this sort of standstill without an investment decisions being taken?

Yes, I think we will, hopefully, sooner than later, come to an end. But I mean, it's also a combination, the dynamics in foremost Sweden were quite -- we have quite high vacancies in the total market. So in some regions, there is no need for new projects either. And if you have a weak demand and quite high supplies, it can last for a while, actually. But as we mentioned, we have dialogues. So I mean, sooner or later, we will have some success. That's what we believe in, but we cannot guide in terms of next months or years.

Would you say that the high market vacancy like most of that is tied to some specific regions, but would you say that, that also affects markets with lower vacancies as tenants become more cautious?

Yes, I think so. And in some cases, perhaps players, tenants look into if it -- is it possible to move to some other regions. We have not seen that yet happening. But I could imagine that they are considering it at least. So I think this high vacancy numbers is actually a wet blanket for the whole industry at the moment.

Okay. That's interesting. Do you think it's also like a price question, let's say, hypothetically, if you were to lower your yield on cost targets, do you think that you can start anything?

Perhaps. And, as we have said before, we have told that, yes, of course, in an idle world, we expect 7% yield on cost on our projects. But I cannot say that we will refuse to start if we can gain 6.5% or whatever. That's from case to case. The important thing is to have a pre-let before we start. And -- and so we are looking into a lot of angles to see where we can meet the market, so to say.

That's clear. And as the investments in your own portfolio now reduces as you only have 1 ongoing project, I assume that we can expect further focus on acquisitions. But how would you say that competition is in the market for your types of objects currently?

It's always a tough competition. There are many players with deep pockets. We have shown the market many times that we can be successful, and we have done a lot of acquisitions the last 3 years. And as I said earlier in this call, now we are looking into some more opportunities in Finland. So it's fair to assume that some more acquisitions will take place in that region going forward.

That's very clear. And you also had now during Q1, more than 100 leases under renegotiations. Can you say anything about tenant behavior in these negotiations given like what we see in the current macro environment? Are they pushing for shorter lease terms? Do they request any CapEx? And to what extent are you able to raise your rent levels?

I will say it's the tenants market right now. So trying to increase the rents are perhaps in just some few cases possible. In the others, it's a fight to keep them and to prolong the leases. So far, we have been quite successfully, but we are very humble for the situation.

Okay. But we see that a lot in the office space right now, like tenants pushing for shorter lease terms. Would you say that it's the same within your type of assets? Or do they still prefer to have longer leases?

It really depends on what kind of situation it is. Is it a tenant that has automation installed, they are quite keen to keep a long lease. As we mentioned, Boozt before that lease last to 2037, and they will align their depreciations with the automation with the lease agreement. Other 3PL players that just use pallet racks, they can wish for shorter leases. Absolutely.

Okay. And then lastly from me. When do you think we can expect the tenant in Idunsvej property?

Yes, that's the same question I asked the regional manager in Denmark. But we have also at that location, interesting discussion. So I mean, that's the best, best location logistic wise in Denmark. So we are not that concerned about that temporary vacancy.

Something this year, I assume then.

Hopefully. And now it's worth to mention also you can sell on paper, but that's the potential customers also want to see the product, and now it's completed. So we have had some showings for the customer already. So that's promising.

The next question comes from Niklas Wetterling from SB1 Markets.

I have 3 questions. And the first 1 is just on the vacancy rate. And do I understand it correctly, like the like-for-like vacancy rate is flat in the quarter?

Correct, Niklas. It's perfect. It's flat.

Great. And then my second 1 is on investment capacity. I believe you mentioned you had SEK 2 million or SEK 2 billion or SEK 3 billion in investment capacity following the equity raise and now you've divested portfolio instead. Is it fair to assume that you have SEK 3 billion in investment capacity? And when do you expect to deploy that?

Yes. I mean the math you're doing is correct, but we have no clear answer when we have deployed those billions. As I said before, we are looking into cases in Finland. We'll see if we will be successful, but we are hopeful at least whether it takes this year and part of next year for those billions. We have to wait and see.

Okay. And my last question is regarding the hedging ratio, which is 60% right now and what will happen with that figure following the completion of the Urban Partner portfolio?

As we've said, we have a bridge financing in place. And when we do the takeout to long-term financing, we will -- in connection with that also make sure to align with our finance policy and hedge in according -- in accordance with that.

Okay. But currently, it's floating.

Currently, it's floating, yes.

And now there are no further questions.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

So thank you all for listening to this investor call for Catena's Q1 2026. Wish you all a wonderful weekend when it comes. Thank you, and goodbye.