Charter Hall Retail REIT (CQR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Charter Hall Retail REIT 2025 Half-Year Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Friday, 14th February 2025. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. Ben Ellis, Retail CEO. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Charter Hall Retail REIT's results presentation for the first half of FY '25. My name is Ben Ellis, and I am the Retail CEO for Charter Hall and Executive Director of CQR. Joining me this morning is Joanne Donovan, Head of Retail Finance at Charter Hall. I'd like to commence today's presentation with an acknowledgment of the country. Charter Hall acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work and gather. We pay our respects to elders past and present and recognize their continued care and contribution to the country. Turning now to Slide 4 and our highlights for the half. CQR continues to deliver a resilient and growing income stream for our investors. For the first half of FY '25, operating earnings per security is $0.126. Distributions per security is $0.123, in line with December 2023. Underlying same-property NPI growth was 3%, with shopping center same-property NPI growing by 2.5% and net lease same-property NPI growing by a strong 4.5%. This 4.5% NPI growth from our net lease convenience assets demonstrates the benefit to CQR unitholders of our strategy to diversify our convenience-based portfolio. MAT growth remained strong at 3.4% and occupancy of the shopping center portfolio remains very high at 98.7%. Our leasing activity has again delivered strong results with special leasing spreads of 3.8%, demonstrating the quality of our convenience-based portfolio. During the period, CQR successfully launched the takeover offer of ASX-listed Hotel Property Investments or HPI, in addition to several other transactions, which we'll talk on later in the presentation. Our bid to acquire the HPI portfolio was done in a joint venture with our wholesale investment partner, Host Plus, and we now currently own 85.4% of the units in HPI. This exceptional level of take-up showed the strong investor support for our offer, and we continue to progress in our strategy of moving to the 90% compulsory acquisition level, which will then see HPI delisted as a Charter Hall-managed partnership between CQR and Host Plus. Moving now to Slide 5. We will provide further details on the HPI transaction. On December 20, 2024, the Board of HPI recommended that HPI unit holders accept CQR's takeover offer. Pleasingly, CQR and its wholesale partner, Host Plus, now own 85.4% of the ASX-listed HPI. As discussed during the presentation, we continue to make strong progress in our strategy of moving to the 90% compulsory acquisition level, which will cease HPI delisted and become a Charter Hall-managed partnership between CQR and Host Plus. As reported by HPI, Charter Hall's Group CEO and Managing Director, David Harrison; and Non-Executive Director, Greg Paramore, along with myself, have recently been appointed to HPI's Board of Directors. HPI is a $1.3 billion portfolio of 58 hospitality assets with 100% occupancy, a 9.1-year WALE, and CapEx-efficient double net leases. Importantly, the predominantly CPI-linked rent review structures are forecast to deliver long-term rental growth of 3.6% per annum. This high rental growth, coupled with the CapEx-efficient lease structures is highly attractive to CQR and is in line with our stated strategy of generating the highest income and earnings growth from the convenience retail sector. The ability of the Charter Hall team to identify and execute accretive transactions such as HPI is a clear benefit to CQR. Turning now to Slide 6 and the REIT's strategy. CQR strategy is focused on delivering the highest organic income and earnings growth from the convenience retail property sector. We achieved this by investing in dominant convenience retail property, including convenience-based shopping centers and convenience net lease retail anchored by leading major tenants. Our convenience-based portfolio of shopping centers is focused on non-discretionary goods and services that are resilient throughout the economic cycle, and are dominant in their catchments. Our convenience net lease retail portfolio is also focused on everyday needs, goods and services, and benefits from CapEx-efficient leases, strong tenant covenants, and income security from long leases, coupled with inflation-linked annual rent reviews. As mentioned earlier, the strong 4.5% like-for-like NPI growth generated from our net lease convenience portfolio without the drag of any capital expenditure or leasing incentives exceeds the growth available from all shopping center portfolios and reflects the strength of our convenience retail diversification strategy to maximize earnings growth for CQR unit holders. We will remain focused on enhancing portfolio quality through the curation of assets we own, active asset management to drive strong rental growth, utilization of low site coverage within our shopping center portfolio through expansion opportunities, and prudent capital management. This strategy continues to deliver a high-quality, resilient, and growing property income stream for our investors and demonstrate the value of the Charter Hall retail platform, Australia's largest in-house convenience retail platform. Turning now to Slide 7. This chart and table clearly demonstrate the benefit of the HPI portfolio to CQR given the strong forecast weighted average rent review structure of 3.6% per annum. And as previously noted, this level of organic rental growth is highly accretive to CQR's portfolio. A significant portion of CQR's portfolio is invested in convenience retail shopping centers. Convenience shopping centers generate their rental income through a mix of supermarket anchor tenants and specialty tenants, driven by millions of visits to our center by customers for their daily shopping needs. While CQR continues to generate strong rental growth from our specialty tenants of 4% per annum, given the strong sales productivity and sustainable occupancy costs of our centers, supermarkets in contrast tend to have more moderate rent review structures tied to their sales performance. Pleasingly, however, CQR now has a record high 87% of supermarkets within the portfolio paying percentage rent within 10% of their turnover rent thresholds. I'll touch on this in more detail later today. As a result of our market-leading number of supermarkets paying turnover rental and our more favorable net lease structures, our forecast long-term income growth from the convenience shopping center portfolio is in the range of 2% to 3% per annum before incentives and CapEx, neither of which are applicable to our net lease convenience portfolio that delivers an effective rental structure along with effective rental growth. In contrast, HPI's rental income is forecast to grow at 3.6% per annum with no near-term lease expiries nor any material capital expenditure, which demonstrates the value of HPI to the CQR portfolio. Turning now to Slide 8. In addition to the HPI portfolio, the Charter Hall transaction team in collaboration with Charter Hall's retail team has been active during the half in respect to both acquisitions and divestments as part of our ongoing portfolio curation strategy aimed at delivering stronger longer-term NOI and earnings growth. Lake Macquarie Square has been unconditionally exchanged for sale at a price of $122.5 million, being a 1.2% premium to prior book value and will settle in the second half. A portion of these proceeds were reinvested into the acquisition of Glebe Hill Village and Hobart, alongside one of our wholesale capital partners, TelstraSuper. Glebe Hill was purchased for $50.25 million on a 100% basis, reflecting a yield of 5.9%. This convenience-based shopping center is only 3 years old, and its trading performance is exceptionally strong. CQR also further increased its convenience net lease retail portfolio through the acquisitions of the Cecil Hotel on the Gold Coast leased to Endeavour Drinks, the Harlow Pub in Richmond and inner Melbourne, leased to ABC, and an Ampol lease service station in Marsden Park, Sydney for a combined $44.3 million, reflecting a yield of 6.3%. On the right-hand side of this slide, we draw your attention to our asset enhancement activities on the surplus land holdings of our convenience-based shopping centers. CQR's portfolio is land-rich with significant opportunities throughout the country to grow value and income through new pad site offerings on our shopping center sites. In the past 4 years, we have delivered 9 pad site developments that have achieved a 22% IRR on the capital we invested. We'll continue to focus on further pad site opportunities as this is a highly attractive use of CQR's capital. Turning now to Slide 9. As this chart shows, strong and consistent income growth is the hallmark of the CQR portfolio. Despite capitalization rates being consistent with where they were 4.5 years ago, CQR's portfolio valuation has grown by 18.1%. This is due to the underlying rental growth, a characteristic not available in less mature or lower-quality portfolios, and reflects the benefit of a diversified convenience retail portfolio, including CapEx-efficient net lease properties, delivering strong effective rental growth. We firmly believe valuations have troughed, and with increasing investor demand and interest in the convenience retail sector, we believe further valuation growth is in front of us. I'll now hand over to Joanne to talk through the financial results for the period before moving to the operational performance in more detail.

Thanks, Ben, and good morning. Our operating earnings and distributions can be found on Slide 11. CQR achieved same-property NPI growth of 3%, driven by like-for-like shopping center NPI growth of 2.5% and like-for-like net lease retail growth of 4.5%. This was offset by the impact of divestments in late financial year '24. Finance costs have increased during the period, reflecting CQR's weighted average cost of debt increasing from 4.3% to 5%, as previously disclosed to the market. We delivered operating earnings of $73.1 million, or $0.126 per unit, for the half. The distribution was $0.123 per unit for the period, which is in line with DPU for December '23. Turning now to Slide 12 and the balance sheet. The December '24 balance sheet reflects HPI investment on a look-through basis at CQR's ownership of 28.3%. Investment property has increased over half to $4.5 billion, driven by additional investment in HPI of $290 million, together with the acquisition of 100% owned fuel and pub assets of $44 million. Our tenants continue to be in a positive position to pay their rent, with tenant arrears of less than 0.5% on 31 December 2024. NTA per unit increased by 1.3% to $4.57, driven by favorable valuation uplift. Our key valuation metrics are shown on Slide 13. 99% of the portfolio was externally revalued during the period. Cap rates remained stable for calendar year 2024, with a portfolio cap rate of 5.82% on 31 December 2024. Shopping center valuations increased by GBP 50 million, or 1.7%, driven by strong rental growth and capital investment of GBP 21 million. Net lease retail valuation increased by GBP 35 million, or 2.3%, reflecting CPI-linked rental growth and an uplift in the HPI investment. Given the transaction evidence in the market, with sales occurring at or above book value, we believe CQR's portfolio will continue to benefit from a valuation uplift going forward. Slide 14 highlights our capital management. CQR enjoys diversified funding sources with a weighted average debt maturity of 3 years. During the period, we refinanced GBP 655 million of debt and increased debt facilities by GBP 100 million, achieving additional tenure and margin reductions, demonstrating our bank support for convenience retail. Balance sheet gearing is 31.8%, and look-through gearing is 37.9%, within our 30% to 40% target range. CQR's weighted average cost of debt at December '24 is 5%, which we believe reflects a sustainable cost of debt and positions us for growth going forward. I'll now hand back to Ben to provide an operational update.

Thanks, Joanne. Turning now to Slide 16 and the portfolio summary. Our convenience shopping center occupancy has remained stable at 98.7%. As noted earlier in the presentation, CQR's portfolio MAT growth remained strong at 3.4%. This growth demonstrates the resilience of the non-discretionary nature of the portfolio and the strength of the REIT strategy, including our ongoing commitment to enhancing the portfolio quality through curation of the assets that we own. Portfolio WALE remained stable at 7 years following continued strong leasing renewal activity. Importantly, the CQR portfolio benefits from having 60% of total income growth directly or indirectly linked to inflation, with 27% of income growth linked to CPI and a further 32% of total income growth indirectly linked to inflation through turnover rent mechanisms. Turning now to Slide 17 and our convenience net lease retail portfolio. Our convenience net lease retail assets now represent 35% of CQR's total portfolio by value. These assets are all triple or double net leases, meaning they're free of any material capital expenditure and provide a true AFFO yield for CQR investors. These convenience net lease retail assets continue to complement CQR's existing convenience-based shopping center portfolio and provide valuable diversification benefits, enhanced tenant covenant quality, and security of income. Further, we note that on completion of the takeover of HPI, CQR's convenience net lease portfolio exposure will increase to 39% of the total portfolio. No other REIT in Australia retains this compelling mix of net leased long WALE convenience retail assets alongside high-quality convenience shopping centers. Moving now to Slide 18. CQR's total portfolio income from major tenant customers is now 57%. Our tenant customer list is market-leading in the convenience retail sector. With the major supermarket partners, we remain well-balanced between Coles and Woolworths, and we continue to partner with Aldi. Importantly, when we look at our exposure to any one specialty retailer, it remains limited, with Specsavers, our largest specialty tenant, at just 1% of total portfolio income. Turning now to Slide 19 and discussing our supermarkets in more detail. Strong trading supermarkets remain the foundation of CQR's convenience-based shopping center portfolio. During the period, supermarkets delivered high MAT growth of 3.9%. Supermarkets in turnover within 10% of their turnover rent threshold reached a portfolio record high of 87%. Continuing to grow our supermarkets in turnover will generate greater rent growth for CQR on a long-term basis moving forward and will differentiate CQR from its peers. Turning now to Slide 20 and our specialty tenants. Over the period, our specialty tenant sales productivity reached a portfolio record high of $11,278 per square meter, and our tenant's occupancy costs remained stable at 11.3%, providing room for future rental growth. For the period, we completed 143 leasing transactions made up of 44 new leases and 99 renewals, achieving positive leasing spreads of 3.8%. Once again, another year of positive leasing spreads, demonstrating the attractive and resilient nature of our portfolio. Pleasingly, our retention rate also remains high at 84%. Slide 21 looks at our ESG highlights for the period. CQR continues to deliver on our sustainability commitments and remains on track to achieve net zero carbon emissions in 2025. Our power purchase agreement with ENGIE commenced last year, and we currently have 18 megawatts of solar installed on our rooftops and 9-megawatt hours of installed battery capacity with feasibility studies in progress for an additional 5 sites. CQR and the Charter Hall team recognize the important role our centers play in supporting the communities in which we operate. Annually, we deliver a number of national and local initiatives within our convenience-based shopping centers, and we are deeply committed to our partnerships and responsibility to create shared social value within our communities and across our supply chain. Turning to Slide 23 for outlook and guidance. Firstly, and as per our ASX announcement this morning, we are pleased to welcome Leanne Buck to the Board of CQR as a Non-Executive Director. With over 20 years of experience in Australian and global investment markets, Leanne will be a valuable addition to the CQR Board. Moving to outlook and guidance. Based upon information currently available and barring any unforeseen events, CQR reconfirms FY '25 operating earnings of approximately $0.254 per unit. Distributions per unit are expected to be in line with FY '24's distribution of $0.247 per unit. In closing, I'd like to add the following remarks. In the next 10 years, Australia's population is forecast to grow by 3.5 million to 4 million people. Our portfolio is focused on convenience-based retail assets that dominate their catchments and in locations that will greatly benefit from the strong population growth. With construction costs remaining at elevated levels, many assets are currently valued below their replacement costs, which will restrain the supply of convenience retail space into the future. This will also enhance the performance of the CQR portfolio. Finally, capitalization rates for all convenience retail have now stabilized and signs of cap rate compression are starting to emerge. All this points to the fact that the convenience retail sector is in an excellent position to grow from both an income and capital value perspective. That ends the formal presentation. With that, I now invite questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Cody Shield with UBS.

Just one on the look-through gearing there. It's around 38%. Can I just ask where that's tracking now with your current HPI ownership?

Yes. So the gearing level reflects where we were at 31 December. And as you'll note, Cody, through the presentation, we've noted that we've subsequently entered into a divestment of Lake Macquarie Square, which was settled in the half. So obviously, the timing of the uptake of HPI and the divestment of Lake Macquarie and other activities that take will obviously get our gearing normalized over time.

So you don't think there'll be a need for further divestments over time or you don't have a feel for a quantum that might be needed or profile of assets you'd be looking to divest?

We've been on a long journey of curating assets that don't have the level of rental growth and income growth that we desire to reflect in our Charter Hall portfolio and that has been the thesis we've undertaken for a long time. We also are firmly of the belief that we're in a position that not only have cap rates troughed, but with our strong income growth driving valuation growth as well as the early signs of cap rate compression starting to be evident across the market, gearing is something that's going to be well and truly under control during the course of the next half and onwards.

And I might have missed this, just the leasing spreads, pretty good outcome there. Can you touch on what was driving that strength?

Yes. Look, it's always pretty compositional, Cody. But I think, once again, it's important to note that when you curate your portfolio to better quality assets with better quality sales densities and better quality tenant mixes, you're going to end up with better quality outcomes. And I think that's really important and shouldn't be lost on this, that the quality leasing spreads, the quality of the tenant customers we're generating across our portfolio is because of that ongoing activity, and we expect that to continue.

Our next question comes from the line of Simon Chan with Morgan Stanley.

Ben, I was just hoping you could just give us a bit more color on your remixing strategy because I noticed leasing spreads for new leases were actually very good at almost 6%, whereas renewals are actually lower at 3%, right? Whereas in the last couple of years, the renewal spreads were actually much higher. So clearly, you're doing something right with your remixing in terms of the new people you're bringing to the mall. So can you give us some color as to what you're doing? And is it costing you in the form of incentives, et cetera?

Yes. Look, good questions, and thank you for the compliment, Simon. I think the reality is, it goes back to what I said to Cody, is that the quality of the assets is improving all the time as we curate. Now the leasing spread makeup between renewals and new leases is always going to be very compositional at any point in time. You're talking about 44 transactions for the half for new leases and 99 renewals. I think one of the big drivers that we've been really focusing on for a long period of time is that transition away from anything that's got a discretionary or lower growth nature and transition that to retail services, fresh food, and the like. And I know we'll get questions on Mosaic. I'm headed up now. We have 12 tenancies remaining with Mosaic. Their average rent is less than half of the average rent of the CQR portfolio and we're well advanced on activities to try and get those replaced with better quality nondiscretionary retail tenants. So to answer your question, we have got a better quality portfolio. We've got a very diligent team working on it. And as we transition towards these better quality usages, you're going to see better quality outcomes.

And our incentives still around the 12-month mark for these new tenants?

On average, yes, but I would say that they're probably a bit lower in this half because of some really great leasing outcomes driven by Charter Hall's leading leasing team in the convenience retail sector.

Our next question comes from the line of David Pobucky with Macquarie Group.

Just the first one on the HPI acquisition, if I may. If you can touch on some or all of this, please, just around the strategy kind of synergies, EPS accretion and when would any associated fees are being paid to the manager on the transaction, please?

Yes. Well, I'll start with the first one. I mean the strategy is very much in line with what we stated. And it's very clear that the like-for-like NPI growth of our net lease convenience retail portfolio for the half at 4.5% is superior to the shopping center portfolio and always will be at those sorts of levels. HPI is in addition to that. We are very well versed as a business in Charter Hall in the ownership of these types of assets, having been involved with them since 2014 and we're market-leading and the largest owner of these types of assets in the country. So our familiarity with them, understanding of them, and our existing platform is very beneficial to the CQR's ongoing growth because of that. From an EPS perspective, like as I said, like-for-like income growth generated by these portfolios without the need for any CapEx, without the need for any leasing incentives, long tenor, it's always going to be a better outcome than we were at a prior point in time before, our diversification into net lease convenience retail. In terms of fees, it is always per market standard for Charter Hall and I'll leave it at that, but everything is baked into our numbers.

And just the final one for me. Just if you could talk a bit more broadly about the retail conditions you're seeing, noting like-for-like MAT slowed a bit, but still remained positive and pretty strong at 3.4%.

Yes. So I will. I mean, look, obviously, supermarkets are well-documented. People are well aware of it. I do think that the macro factors influencing convenience retail are going to continue. We are seeing material population growth relative to anywhere in the world. We've got a lack of new supply coming on, which is going to be a tailwind for the sector. And it's really important as a manager and owner of these real estate assets that we are continuing to improve the quality of our mix and tenants to drive long-term outcomes for our investors. If I break it down in terms of that signing of MAT growth, quite simply, if you look at our non-discretionary retail tenants, excluding tobacco, they grew at 4.5%. And then if you look at our discretionary tenants, they reduced by 1.7% during the half, driven predominantly by apparel at minus 4.2% and that obviously includes the Mosaic brand. So our strategy to continue to curate our assets, but also curate our tenancy mix towards non-discretionary is really going to be a favorable tailwind for us and we're really positive about what that means given those macroeconomic factors going forward.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Murray Connellan with Moelis Australia.

Just on the HPI acquisition, I was wondering whether as far as that portfolio is concerned, there's any, I guess, curation that you feel needs to be done there. Do all of those pubs and shops necessarily belong in the CQR portfolio? Or do you think there are a few that might need to get sold over time?

Murray, we'll get our feet on the desk as we move through that transaction and rework through in some detail. It's an incredibly good portfolio. It's something that we're really proud to have as part of the CQR and Hostplus joint venture within the vehicle. And we will work through that on a case-by-case basis. But obviously, our stated strategy of curating our entire portfolio, regardless of what type of asset that is will continue and we'll always look to do that in a manner that drives positive rental outcomes for our investors and drives into our long-term strategy of having the leading organic income and earnings growth through the convenience retail sector.

And then just touching on Mosaic Brands for a second, please. Just wanted to find out how we should be thinking about that space in your portfolio in so far as it impacts earnings in the half and then looking forward. So I guess, how much Mosaic rent would have been in this half? How much would have been missing? How much is baked into guidance for this year? And what does that look like next year?

So a couple of things. One is, we have been well on top of this for a long period of time, and I think I've talked about it ever since I've been in this role. We've been curating our portfolio away from them for a long period of time. We're down at 12 tenancies. We have plans advanced for all of them. From an arrears position, our arrears for the entire CQR portfolio are the lowest they've ever been and that includes any debtors owed by Mosaic brands. So we were well up to date with our rent prior to this process with them through the management of our team and that real active focus on the collection of rental payments, which is as important as any part of property management. Going forward, as I said, at an average rent of less than $600 a square meter and low productivity, I see it as a positive, not a negative. So from an impact perspective, negligible, opportunity perspective, high. So we're looking forward to remixing that and getting on with it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back to Ben for closing remarks.

I just want to thank everyone for joining the call today. We're exceptionally pleased about the addition of Lam Buck to our Board and we're exceptionally pleased with the progress we're making in the curation of our portfolio, including the addition of HPI. We look forward to talking to you all during the course of today. Thank you.