Citycon Oyj (CTY1S) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We welcome everybody. Thank you for coming, and we will shortly start to present our results for the 2025. We opened the camera just to show you that we are not an AI management. Hilik is the CFO. My name is Eshel, and I'm the CEO. And from now, we will go to the presentation. Thank you. So we will start with the annual highlights. We can see that the like-for-like NOI grows by 5.4%, which is very good results. The retail economic occupancy is 95.5%. The retail average rent grow by 3.3% per square meter, and we come to EUR 27.7 per square meter. The like-for-like footfall grow by 2%. The sales tenant -- the sales grow by 1.7%, and we add EUR 51.1 million to our fair value. The NOI margin is 93.7%. The quarterly results for quarter 4 is like-for-like growth, 3.8%. The retail economic occupancy is 95.5%, 3.3% retail average rent growth per square meter. And again, we come to the price of EUR 27.7 per square meter. Footfall grow by 1.1%. The like-for-like sales grow by 2.1%. We gained in the fourth quarter, EUR 8.3 million to the fair value and the NRI margin is 92.9%. The key achievement in '25, we actually deal with more than 500, I think, 522 contracts, which reflect 142,000 square meter. We have significantly reduced our operation and administrative costs. During 2025, we add EUR 51 million to our fair value. And we continue to divest non-core assets and we demonstrate the sales of Lippulaiva Residential by the fair value book, EUR 61.5 million. We actually repayment of EUR 830 million during the year, and we reduced our LTV by 240 basis, and we are now in 44.9% LTV. We can see here how the NOI actually grow by the year by each country or what we call business unit. Norway, 3.2%; Sweden, 3.7%; Finland, 7.7% and the average is 5.4%. And on the right bar, you can see how the price per square meter grow during the quarters. And as I mentioned before, we stabilized at EUR 27.7. Here is some examples of marketing. We are acting in marketing very, I would say, aggressive. We actually, I can say, investing by the book almost 5% from our NOI, which is a huge amount of money. We are doing a lot of events to drive footfall to our assets. And we are doing it most of the time, I can say, successfully. A lot of events that drive footfall, and that's what we have to do as a landlord, and we will keep doing that, of course, next year. Our portfolio is very healthy. You can see our top tenant on the left side, which actually 50% of them are grocery or hypermarket. And if you go -- if you look to the right, the highlight is that 83% of our tenants are not fashion, which is the most sensitive, let's say, sector in the -- among the retailers. So this is a very, very healthy portfolio. Capital recycling. In '25, we divested Lippulaiva, as I mentioned before, we sold it in the book value, in the IFRS book value, EUR 61.5 million. And in 2026, we put sales on hold of EUR 510 million, while in the next, let's say, 24 months, we intend or we target to sell between half or between EUR 500 million to EUR 1 billion. From here, I will give the floor to Hilik to run through the financial overview.

Hello, everyone. So I will start with the NRI. NRI has landed at EUR 209.2 million for the year versus EUR 214.7 million. That's minus 3.1%, and this is mainly to the divestments, which we completed in 2024. The EPRA earnings is landed at EUR 79 million. We're going to touch on the next slide, the main drivers for that. We have finished with EUR 0.43 earnings per share, which is in line with our guidance, which was EUR 0.41 to EUR 0.46. And looking at the next slide, you can see the development of the EPRA earnings bridge. We lost NRI from divestments in the year, EUR 18.4 million. But on the other hand, we had a very strong like-for-like growth of EUR 11.8 million. And also, in addition, we had increased costs, financial costs, aggregate of EUR 6.4 million. And then we landed at EUR 79 million for the year. The quarter, we have the same pattern, slightly better bottom line, EUR 19.1 million versus EUR 20.2 million. With respect to the fair value change, we have -- in the last quarter, we gained EUR 8.3 million fair value gain, the whole year, EUR 51.1 million. That's a 1.4% of our whole portfolio, which is something that we are happy with. You can see that the -- we had a cap rate pressure coming from Finland. But on the other hand, we had -- again, this is coming from the solid leasing activity. So the overall impact was positive EUR 51.1 million. As for the debt management, we've been very active in the debt front. We've repaid more than EUR 830 million of debt maturities and doing tendering. And we also issued a 2031 bond, EUR 450 million, extending our duration -- average duration and overall derisking the balance sheet. LTV dropped 2.4%, landing at 44.9%. And we're also post 2025 on January, we have successfully signed EUR 270 million of secured financing with an additional EUR 250 million upsized accordion. And that is a 3-year plus 1 plus 1. And overall, we are very -- have very productive discussions with various lenders, international and local, and we get a lot of interest and attractive term sheets that reflects our quality of assets. The result of all the financing and refinancing that we've done in 2025, you can look at our scheduled debt maturities, and you can see that it's well staggered. We have bond 2026 that is coming due September, EUR 123 million and 2027 bond, EUR 129 million. And we have, of course, monitoring and have adequate liquidity for the year-end. And as mentioned in the financial review in the financing question, we gave -- provided more details around the secured RCF to have full transparency with all the customary terms, including ownership covenant of 60%, which is very standard from this kind of instrument. And I think on the key metrics, 2% down, like as mentioned before, loan-to-value 44.9%, net EBITDA traded lower at multiple 9, very stable ICR and a gradually increased average interest rate, which we will touch later in the Q&A.

From now on, I will highlight a few points that I believe that I have to clarify. So the first issue is the divestment. As I said, in the -- in the next 24 months, we are intend to sell between EUR 500 million to EUR 1 billion non-core assets. And I want to highlight, it's not a call to the creditors. So we don't have to sell our cash, our financial situation is very stable. It's not that I need the money in order to pay my debt or whatever. So we will continue to sell in the book value if there are buyers, they are welcome. If not, we can continue to work as usual. So this is regarding the divestment. The asset value, there are 2 -- actually 2 lines that we are working in order to increase our value. The first one is to reduce our OpEx. We tenders almost all the services that we are getting. And we can see already in '26 that we will reduce our OpEx in some sector even dramatically. And the second leverage is the OCR. Today, the OCR of the company is low compared to the market, and they still have, let's say, 2%, 3% to increase the rent in all around the portfolio. Strengthen the balance sheet through the repayment of existing unsecured debt in compliance with the covenant. Hilik mentioned it. We want to always focus on our balance sheet, and we take care about it, and I feel very comfortable with it. Regarding dividends, we will check case by case. And basically, our intention is when we will have free money and we pay our debt, we will introduce another option of distribute dividend. And last, I want to thank all the Citycon's employees, wherever they are in the Nordic. They worked very hard in 2025 and continue to work hard at the moment. So really thanks for the good results and for the warm welcome that we get when we came here. Thanks again, and now we are open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Neeraj Kumar from Barclays.

A couple of questions on my side. So can you please update us on the status of the EUR 215 million secured financing you're in the process of signing? And also if you could help us with the use of proceeds of the EUR 270 million loan you signed earlier this year?

Well, EUR 270 million, as we announced, is already signed, and we are going to draw the money in the next days. It's very much how to use the funds in a productive manner. And I think as I stated generally, we have a lot -- we're seeing a lot of appetite from the secured market. We have been approached by international and local lenders, and we are introduced to relatively attractive terms. And I think, again, this is echoing the quality of our assets. We can see that this is a good path for us to continue leverage ourselves with a decreased kind of coupon versus the rate environment outside.

Got it. And can you help us understand a bit more about your liquidity profile? I understand that RCF has a change of control clause, so you may not have access to it in the near future. Are there any conditions attached to that EUR 250 million accordion option you have?

Yes. I think I've mentioned it earlier. We have -- for this kind of instrument, usually, we have customary terms and conditions and covenants, including ownership covenant. This is something that we also stated in the financial statements. We have 60% ownership covenant in there. And on the other hand, we have EUR 270 million of secured financing loan with an optionality to have -- to upsize it by EUR 250 million. So I think on the liquidity front, we're -- we have adequate liquidity. And we're, of course, looking forward to do more secured financing in the future.

Got it. And how has been your discussions with S&P on the back of all these things? Because I remember they used to assign -- they currently also assign good recovery on your unsecured bonds because of relatively low secured debt. So do you think the -- that may change in the future?

Yes. I see -- Look, I think S&P, it's more of a methodology. S&P has the methodology. Once GCD crossed 50%, the downgrade has happened just because they're looking at us on a group level. But if you look at the reporting on a stand-alone level, they acknowledge the fact that we are improving. And I think to actual point, we are going to concentrate on generating more income from our current portfolio. So this is what I have -- I can say about the S&P report.

Got it. Last question on my side. Can you help us understand a bit more about the dividend policy? Thanks for providing those thoughts earlier. You mentioned you'll look into it once you kind of repay your debt. How do you see hybrid instruments in light of all those things? Do you see it as a debt? And do you want to address them as well before upstreaming any dividends? Or how do you think about that?

When the hybrid will come, we will consider it. We will do what is the best for the company. And as I said, regarding the dividend, whenever we will have money instead of sitting on our bank account, we will consider distribute dividend.

The next question comes from Othman El Iraki from Fidelity International.

Actually, Neeraj already kind of covered a lot of them. But actually, I have one more on how you look at your capital structure going forward. Do you kind of see yourself as a using secured debt and that's it being a kind of secured borrower? Or do you still see value out there for some kind of unsecured bonds or other instruments, how you look at your funding?

Well, I think, look, we are a new management. We're looking -- we're very pragmatic people. I think right now, the unsecured market is limited to for us -- and I think the secured financing for us is a good way, a good path to experience, lower coupons and a very stable kind of unlocking of liquidity. And I think we have a lot of headroom. So I think this is the path that we're going to take for the time being.

Okay. Okay. And just maybe a follow-up on the RCF. So you're not looking to waive the covenant with your banks. I mean you would be using this...

Yes. First of all, it's not me to waive, right? This is the lenders.

If you can talk to the lenders, we'll be happy.

But second, I think the instrument itself, the kind of instrument is less -- is something that we can consider in the future. But look, we're trying to be very transparent with the terms and condition, and this is what we're trying to say. There's a 60% ownership covenant. GCD right now sits on somewhere around 59.5% before the MTO results. So we're taking the measures to monitor the risk, i.e., entering to secured financing upfront.

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

So thank you very much all of you, and we will see you soon in the first quarter. Well done. Thank you. Bye-bye.