CPI Property Group (O5G) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to CPI Property Group's webcast covering our financial results for 2023. This is David Greenbaum, CEO of CPI Property Group. As usual, several colleagues are joining me today. Let me introduce Pavel Mechura, Group Finance Director; Martin Matula, General Counsel; Mindee Lee, Director of Corporate Strategy; Petra Hajna, Group Sustainability Officer; Petr Mizera, Head of External Reporting; and Moritz Mayer, Manager of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. As usual, we are conducting today's call as a webcast. You should see a tool in the webcast for asking questions. We promise to stay until all of the questions have been answered. The presentation material for today's webcast is CPIPG's 2023 Management Report, which is available on our website under Investor Relations. The management report is being displayed on the webcast, but we know that some of you are using a dial-in. If you're having any technical issues, please send Moritz an e-mail, and we will try to resolve your problem. Many of you know that I was appointed CEO only in late November. So this is my first earnings webcast in the new role. Look, I'm truly grateful to our shareholders, our Board of Directors and my colleagues for believing that I'm the right person for the job. I also really appreciate the positive support from bankers and bondholders. It means a lot to me. I hope I will live up to your expectations because it's not an easy job and there is no question that CPIPG has some very important hills to climb in the coming years. Fortunately, there's a great team around me, and we are all pulling in the same direction. I remember, one of our largest bondholders once told me a few years ago that we don't need to be perfect but we need to show progress and evolution. That is what we are trying to do. We want to take the company forward in a positive way for all stakeholders. We must be open and honest about the areas where we need to improve, and we must tackle any problems head-on. The first message I want to give you today is, I still see huge potential in our real estate portfolio. Fundamentally, real estate is about quality and location, location, location. Central and Eastern Europe is different from Western Europe, the U.S.A. and much of Asia because the region has not experienced huge speculation and overbuilding of real estate. Part of that is historical with some of the economies in our region only developing from the 1990s. Part is lessons learned from seeing problems in other real estate markets and a desire to protect historical buildings. So the fundamentals are in our favor. And on top of that, CPIPG continues to invest CapEx in our portfolio to enhance quality and efficiency. Our results show the quality of our assets. We have a portfolio of EUR 20 billion, of which EUR 17 billion is income generating with about EUR 1 billion of rent for an effective yield of more than 5%. Occupancy is 92%, and while office occupancy may be down slightly, retail is rock solid. We have signed EUR 2 billion of disposals in the last 20 months at book value on average and raised more than EUR 2 billion of financing when many companies have struggled. All these good things were possible because of the quality of the real estate CPIPG owns, the location and our asset management teams with their local presence. The second message I want to give today is there are 4 areas where we need to improve. We feel great about the real estate but there are definitely areas of improvement. We are working on them and we are aware of them. The first area of improvement is credit metrics. Our LTV was just below 50% pro forma for the disposals we have signed. It's simply too high and we will continue to address the LTV by making further disposals. We have committed to another EUR 2 billion disposal pipeline now that the old one is complete. On the positive side, net debt to EBITDA at 13x was at the low end of our target range. Interest coverage is also below where it should be. The agencies -- rating agencies are very focused on this, but we believe that by repaying expensive debt, such as our bridge which we expect to repay now within months, the situation will improve quite a bit. The second area of improvement is liquidity. CPIPG had EUR 1.4 billion of liquidity at year-end and the same amount at the end of Q1. Debt maturities in 2024 and 2025 are quite manageable, but we have our eye on 2026. There are many ways to enhance liquidity. Disposals are the clearest and easiest answer. We have also made big progress on sales of stakes in portfolios. You might have seen the news around Berlin, but along with Poland and Italy, the total is closer to EUR 800 million that we can raise from these type of transactions. These aren't early-stage processes. These are late-stage processes where the large amounts of work has been done by us and our investors. On the other hand, these deals are expensive and the rating agencies don't appear to love them very much. We have seen signs that the bond markets are coming back. In fact, we even received some reverse inquiry in our name, which is a great sign. We would love to issue again and address future liquidity well in advance. In any case, we've done the work to create a number of options for ourselves and we'll decide and execute on our chosen path in the very short term. You should expect to see substantial progress here too. The third area of improvement is governance. All of you know that CPIPG was attacked by a short seller last year, early this year, and frankly, just a few minutes ago. While it was an unpleasant experience and the allegations were ridiculous and easy to prove wrong, it also created an opportunity for self-examination and it kicked off a review by White & Case for the allegations raised by the short seller and our governance practices. White & Case was in close contact with our auditor, EY, leading up to the filing of our 2023 results. I am pleased that the investigation by White & Case which is nearly complete has not raised any red flags, but we are also waiting for a final report and recommendations from White & Case before we finalize any changes to the group's governance. The final report from White & Case is expected at the end of June, and our goal is to make some kind of executive summary available. However, let me tell you now which areas the Board is focused on and where we want to make progress: shareholder distributions, shareholder loans and related party transactions. We recognize that these are sensitive issues, and we intend to articulate clear new guidance, limits and policies soon. We are aiming for progress, if not perfection. The fourth area of improvement is complexity. Because of the acquisition CPIPG has undertaken, really beginning with Globalworth in 2020 and culminating with IMMOFINANZ and S IMMO in 2021 and 2022, these acquisitions have made the company more complex. Plus because the unsecured bond markets have been closed, we have been relying on more secured financing, which also introduces complexity. A key objective for us is to reduce complexity, streamlining operations, ideally reducing the level of secured debt and returning to a more normalized level of unencumbered assets. We recently hired a new senior team member who will be focusing on this topic of complexity, and you'll hear more about that from us on Wednesday. So to wrap up my very long introduction, we are happy with the portfolio, the performance, and we are confident in our ability to continue with disposals, access fresh capital and continue running the business well. We see areas of improvement related to credit metrics, liquidity, governance and complexity. You will hear all of these themes again as we go through the results in detail and the Q&A, but I wanted to get these statements out of the way early, considering that some of our investors might have a short attention span in the busy market environment. So let's move on now and go through the presentation. Beginning on Page 5, our financial highlights. It's worth mentioning that 2023 for the first time includes the full year contributions of our acquisitions of IMMOFINANZ and S IMMO. CPIPG's consolidated total assets were EUR 21.9 billion with a property portfolio of EUR 19.5 billion. Overall, the size of our property portfolio declined by about EUR 1.3 billion as the group completed disposals of over EUR 900 million and recorded a valuation loss of EUR 1.1 billion. The decline in the portfolio was partially offset by CapEx investments of EUR 376 million. We also completed a small number of acquisitions, mostly consisting of residential assets. The portfolio generates a large amount of income with EBITDA of EUR 778 million and FFO of EUR 390 million. Contracted rent at year-end stood at EUR 929 million, an increase of EUR 20 million from last year despite all of the disposals that we executed during 2023. The driver was really high like-for-like rental growth of 7.9%, high occupancy of 92.1% and contributions from small-scale developments that were completed in 2022 and 2023. As I mentioned earlier, LTV and ICR are 2 ratios which require continued attention. Our net LTV was 52.3% at year-end, above our target. The good news is many of the disposals that we signed in Q3 and Q4 were not included in our year-end results. Most of these disposals are expected to close within Q2 2024, and on a pro forma basis, our LTV would be 49.8%, including the disposal, so a little bit better than year-end. Remember, our LTV target is 40%. So we still have significant wood to chop. ICR at 2.5x was also outside our target range, but ICR was also heavily impacted by extensive floating rate bridge financing for the acquisitions of IMMOFINANZ and S IMMO. Excluding the effect of the bridge, which is EUR 1.6 billion at the start of '23 and was paid down to EUR 530 million today, excluding the bridge for our ICR for 2023, would have been 3.3x, which is within our target range. Around half of CPIPG's assets are unencumbered, although the ratio declined by 7% from 2022 due to all the secured bank financing that we signed throughout the year. Moving on to Page 8. Despite the disposals, the portfolio mix has not changed significantly. About 45% of our portfolio is offices with a focus on CEE capital cities of Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. Retail is about 25% of the portfolio. We are the retail leader in the CEE region with a portfolio that is oriented towards the daily needs of consumers in a region where retail is not overbuilt. Between retail and office, that's 70% of the portfolio. The remaining 30% is hotels, residential and complementary assets, including land. It's fair to expect the share of hotels and residential to decline further as we continue selling German residential assets. We also sold our hotels in Croatia, sold half of our hotels in the Czech Republic through a joint venture and are looking to sell additional CEE hotels over the course of this year. We love the hotel business, but investor demand is very strong and we are focused on the disposal pipeline. In terms of the geography, this is also very consistent with Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria, representing 2/3 of our portfolio, with the rest being Hungary, Romania, other CEE regions and some assets across Western Europe. On Page 9, the bottom chart shows how rental income has developed. Gross rental income increased by 25% and net rental income by 26%. The increases were driven by the full year contributions of IMMOFINANZ and S IMMO, like-for-like rental growth and positive market trends. Across our region, rents are either stable or rising. On Page 10, occupancy remains high at 92%, which is great considering that we have seen such strong like-for-like growth in rents. Overall, occupancy is down 0.7% from 2022, which mostly relates to office, where a weaker economy, particularly in Germany, and some effect of working from home have contributed to a slight drop. Our retail portfolio was near full occupancy at 97.5% and we continue to see high demand from tenants. In retail, really any vacant space is due to tenant rotation. Residential assets, including our core portfolio in the Czech Republic, saw a slight decline in occupancy as we continue to refurbish units to enhance quality and capture higher rents. As I mentioned earlier, the supply/demand balance across our region remains healthy, and I think you see that reflected in any number of ways. Moving on to Page 12, let's touch on disposals. I'm proud of what our teams have achieved. How many real estate companies have signed EUR 2 billion of disposals in the last 20 months in the middle of the toughest commercial real estate market in decades? Well, CPIPG did. We achieved our EUR 2 billion disposal target ahead of time with selling prices at book value on average across various sectors and geographies. Considering the group's need to further reduce leverage, we have now committed to a fresh disposal target of EUR 2 billion over the next 12 to 24 months. Disposals are never easy, but we're making disposals for cash, without any structured stuff we are getting the job done, and with time, we will hit our targets. When it comes to disposals, the diversification and granularity of our portfolio matters a lot. Over half of CPIPG's disposals have come from Germany and Austria and 2/3 of our disposals have been low-yielding residential and office assets. Croatia was also a healthy share of the disposals given the sale of our hotel portfolio in Hvar and office assets in Zagreb. Investors ask this a lot, who are the buyers? Well, it's important to remember that good properties in our region aren't that easy to find. Local investors drive the market, bank markets remain open, and this has allowed us to continue selling without relying on international investors and big funds. Now moving on to the important topic of valuations on Page 13. Not surprisingly, CPIPG's valuations declined in 2023 by about EUR 1.1 billion or about 5%. I say not surprisingly because in our regular investor meetings, we always said there would probably be a modest decline. As a reminder, CPIPG's portfolio evaluations are conducted by leading independent appraisers and are also carefully reviewed by our auditor, EY. This year, as an additional step, we asked another Big 4 accounting firm to review many of our valuations. However, I still think the best verification of the accuracy of our valuations is the fact that we signed EUR 2 billion of disposals at book value on average and raised more than EUR 2 billion of bank financing. Remember, every time we pursue a secured bank loan, the bank runs their own valuation. Plus, we've had many smarter investors in London reviewing our valuations in conjunction with possible asset sales of minority stakes in Germany, Poland and Italy. We've been under a microscope with regards to valuation, and we are okay with that. So back to the valuation results. Our portfolio is high yielding, with an EPRA topped-up net initial yield of 5.4%, which represents an increase of 70 basis points year-over-year. Diversification also helps a lot. Offices were most impacted from a valuation perspective, particularly lower-yielding portfolio in Berlin and Vienna. While the rental growth potential in CPIPG's Berlin portfolio is unchanged, in general, lower yields made these assets more sensitive to the increase in discount rates. Retail and residential were stable with values dropping by less than 1%. Hotel valuations increased due to strong performance and the sale of our Hvar portfolio at a large premium to book value. The value of our land bank declined slightly, mostly due to higher development cost assumptions. On Page 15, we have some more charts covering leverage, coverage and liquidity. Because the situation is so fluid, our year-end figures don't capture all of the progress we have made and the work we are doing. As I mentioned earlier, CPIPG's net LTV is below 50% once you include disposals signed in 2023, which have either already closed in '24 or expected to close soon. Our bridge financing heavily impacted our ICR. CPIPG began the year with a bridge balance of over EUR 1.6 billion. We repaid about EUR 1 billion during the year, and now the bridge stands at EUR 530 million. We continue to expect that the bridge should be fully repaid around the end of H1 2024 despite, by the way, having maturity in Q4 2026. But repaying the bridge will have a great effect on our ICR. Plus our EBITDA is growing and interest rates appear to have stabilized. On liquidity, we would expect further support from disposals and other potential liquidity measures, as I mentioned earlier. Now let me focus more on operations. On Page 19, we provide a high-level summary of our tenants. There are a few things to highlight. First, the granularity of our tenants. No tenant represents more than 1% of rental income. If you look at the top 10, you will see that most are retail tenants with multiple leases across assets and geographies. Second, our weighted average lease maturity to the first break, not to maturity, remained stable at 3.5 years. This has been consistent for several years. We think this gives us the right balance of length and the ability to actively manage the portfolio, which is what CPIPG does best. CPIPG is not a long-distance property owner. We are a local property owner, and we manage multi-tenant properties with a hands-on approach. This allows us to handle a slightly shorter lease term than you might see in other situations. Diving into the office segment on Page 20. CPIPG is the leading office landlord in Central and Eastern Europe with a focus on central locations in capital cities. Our portfolio delivered solid rental growth with like-for-like rents up by 5.5%. Occupancy declined slightly as discussed earlier, but we're not seeing any big problems in our office markets because the fundamentals are favorable. On Page 21, there are more details on office occupancy. In Prague and Warsaw, occupancy declined as part of normal tenant churn with some spaces undergoing refurbishment before re-letting. The good news is that overall market trends are positive with vacancy rates in both Prague and Warsaw declining year-over-year and supply remains limited. In Berlin, leasing activity was lower than past years because of the weaker economy. However, our portfolio in Berlin, GSG, has strong fundamentals. For instance, rents on newly signed leases increased by 32% on average. Also, occupancy would be higher by about 2% at 91% instead of 89% if we didn't strategically vacate spaces for refurbishment to support higher rents in the future. In Budapest, the results were more mixed with occupancy declining as competition on the market increased from several new projects that were delivered. At the same time, we secured several key leases and increased our WAULT by 0.8 years to 3.5 years. Finally, in Bucharest and Dusseldorf, we saw positive trends. For example, occupancy in Bucharest increased by 5% to 89.2%. We have repeated this many times, but office trends in Central and Eastern Europe are different than many other markets. Prague is not Canary Wharf and Berlin is not San Francisco. People are back in the office in our region with limited hybrid work arrangements. The office remains a key element for employers to attract talent, foster collaboration and social interaction with colleagues and allow teams to effectively work together and be inspired by leaders and colleagues. Prague and Berlin have the best public transportation in Europe, by the way, which makes it easy for people to commute. No one is whining in 1.5 hours traffic ham to get into the work in Berlin and Prague. Continuing on Page 22. GSG Berlin is a high-performing platform with 41 assets delivering rental growth across all clusters with a total like-for-like rental growth of 4.5%. Moving to Page 25. The growth story in Berlin is intact. We continue to increase average rents, which are currently around EUR 11 per square meter, well below the EUR 15.2 per square meter that was estimated by Savills for our assets. The average market rent in Berlin is EUR 28.6 per square meter. So you can see that our rents are also more affordable than the market. Moving on to Warsaw on Page 27. CPIPG is the leading office landlord with centrally located assets. Leasing activity was good and saw a return of more sizable leases above 1,000 square meters. Our properties are attractively priced and we see favorable market dynamics as supply has significantly declined over the last few years and is expected to remain muted. On Page 30, Prague is a very stable market for landlords with limited supply due to restrictions on new construction. Demand is steady, and coupled with low new supply, resulted in lower market vacancy this year. Switching gears to retail on Page 36. CPIPG's retail performance has been excellent in recent years because our portfolio is focused on people's daily needs. Nearly half of our portfolios are resilient, cost-efficient retail parks. In America, they call them strip malls, which are very popular with both tenants and consumers. The other big retail segment, 38%, consists of shopping centers predominantly in the regional cities of the Czech Republic. Overall performance has been great with 8.9% rental growth and nearly full occupancy at 97.5%, which is basically unchanged from last year. On Page 38, you can see that in the Czech Republic, our shopping centers performed well with footfall increasing 6.2% and sales increasing 5.7%. Occupancy also increased slightly to 97.3%. Retail in the Czech Republic continues to benefit from limited supply. Consumer finances are healthy, with unemployment rates declining further from already low levels. At the same time, we've continued to invest in our shopping centers, such as refurbishment of food courts. While input costs have significantly increased over the last 24 months due to higher inflation, our shopping centers have a record low affordability ratio. As a reminder, affordability ratio means rent, service and marketing charges divided by turnover, and it was below 10% relative to 12% just a few years ago. So even as we've increased rents, the space has become more affordable for tenants. This has been a win-win for both CPIPG and our tenants, and we see no reason why this will change anytime soon. Skipping forward to Page 41, you can see an overview of CPIPG's retail park network. Our retail parks are focused on secondary and tertiary cities with catchment areas of 30,000 to 150,000 residents, providing consumers with a wide variety of everyday products. With occupancy of 98.8%, our 157 retail parks are basically full. We are the leading retail park landlord in the region, which is helpful when negotiating with international and nationwide retailers. We are also selectively expanding the network, opening new locations in Croatia as an example, under our STOP SHOP brand. Moving on to residential on Page 44. Residential assets are 7% of our portfolio. The largest portion is CPI BYTY, which is the second largest residential landlord in the Czech Republic focused primarily on regional cities with some exposure to Prague. The Czech residential market, like many other European markets, is characterized by a lack of affordable housing. So demand is solid and occupancy remains high even as we hold back vacant spaces for refurbishment. We are investing. We are focused on improving environmental performance before reletting typically at higher rents. The rest of our residential assets are either opportunistic like you see in the U.K. and other Western European locations like France or noncore like Germany, where we have made and will continue making significant disposals. Well, I have been talking for a long time now. And so let me take a minute and allow some of my colleagues to join in. Mindee, would you like to take over?

Sure. Thank you, David. Page 48 summarizes our hospitality portfolio. CPIPG owns and operates most of our hotels, which were valued at EUR 1.1 billion at year-end. The group primarily owns convention and congress hotels, mostly located in Prague and the regional cities of the Czech Republic, along with mostly residential hotels, city hotels and some boutique hotels. 2023 was a great year for the hospitality sector with travels around Europe recording a strong comeback despite rising costs. Consumers continue to spend on the leisure travel and corporate and events business are remaining strong. CPIPG's hotel and resorts segment reported total revenues of EUR 248 million and net income of EUR 76 million. Compared to 2022, where the first half was still affected by COVID, the sector recovered completely in 2023, which explains our growth. Also, we benefited from the contribution of several hotel assets that were acquired with S IMMO. On Page 50, you can see data on the average daily rate, or ADR, and occupancy. Occupancy improved to 60%, up from 52% in 2022 but still slightly below the levels of 2019. Nonetheless, we managed to increase ADR to EUR 79, which is 16.6% higher than pre-COVID in 2019. This just shows you how strong the demand has been from leisure, conventions and business travel. The outlook for the hotel sector is positive and expected to be supported by further growth in long haul tourists, particularly the increasing returns of Asia travelers. As we have witnessed, the investment market for hospitality assets is also expected to stay buoyant as investors see high yields and the expectations that operating performance will keep this positive momentum. In fact, strong investment momentum allows us to dispose of our hotels in Hvar, Croatia and our mountain resort in Crans-Montana in Switzerland at prices well above book value. CPIPG also announced the joint venture involving the sale of half of our Czech hotel portfolio to Best Hotel Properties, a Slovak investor, and we expect to selectively sell hotels over the course of 2024 and beyond. We love the hotel business, but investment demand also makes hotels an excellent disposal candidate. On Page 52, you can see our complementary assets, which are mainly well located landbanks in the Czech Republic, Italy and other part of Europe. As a closely held company, we take a long-term view on land because due to its finite character, it tends to appreciate all the time. As we make progress on tenancy, we either sell or develop the land. While development is a small share of the group's business, we do see good opportunities to develop retail parts and residential, particularly in Prague. Okay. Well, David now back to you.

Okay. Thank you, Mindee. Picking up again on Page 61, we touch on capital structure and financial policy. As I mentioned earlier, CPIPG's credit metrics are outside our target. Addressing this issue remains a top priority for our entire team in 2024. How will we solve of the problem? Well, disposals are a big part of the solution. As a reminder, in August 2022, we announced a target of EUR 2 billion to be completed in 12 to 24 months. We're on track with that objective, and now we've topped up the pipeline by another EUR 2 billion. We will also need to retain more cash and limit distribution as much as possible. CPIPG is also looking at other ways to reduce leverage, including the sale of minority stakes in portfolios in Berlin, Poland and Italy, as I mentioned earlier. We have quite a lot of liquidity lined up there, but we are also considering what to do and how to balance rating agency calculations, basic corporate finance and the needs of our investors. Speaking of ratings, Moritz, would you like to give an update on our rating agency discussions and other capital structure matters?

Sure. Thank you, David. S&P affirmed our rating in December 2023 with a negative outlook and Moody's affirmed our rating in July 2023 with a negative outlook. Typically, rating outlooks are for 12 to 24 months. The rating agencies will, of course, analyze our full year 2023 results and we're in regular contact. If the rating agencies give us time, we're confident we can bring all key ratios back into line. And moving on to Page 63. We have limited debt maturities in 2024 and 2025, mostly bad debt which is typically rolled over. So far, we have not faced any major issues with bank finance to refinance our prolonged secured debt. Some bonds matured in February 2024 and were repaid with cash and consideration. Considering the disposal proceeds we expect to receive in the near term, we expect to proactively address debt majorities in the coming months. First, we will repay the bridge, then any remaining balances under our revolving credit facility, and then we hope to address bonds and hybrids. Finally, over the last 24 months, the average cost debt increased from 1.73% to currently 3.12%. This was heavily influenced by our bridge loan but also by rising interest rates as we have signed many new bond agreements. Fortunately, rates seem to have stabilized. 86% of our debt is fixed. And once we repay the bridge loan, the proportion of fixed rate debt will increase to above 90%. With that, I will hand over to Martin and Petra to discuss ESG.

Thank you, Moritz. I will begin with a quick comment on governance, just to emphasize that CPIPG already has a robust governance structure with active independent Board members, active participation from Apollo's representative on the Board and clear policies and procedures that have been reviewed several times by third parties. On the other hand, we are ready to implement changes once we have defined White & Case report, so we will be in touch about that. Related party transactions, distributions, these are important areas where we will focus in the coming months. There might be more for me to say in the Q&A, but Petra, would you like to take over?

Thank you, Martin. CPIPG strives for continuous improvement in our ESG reporting. 2023 was the first year when we reported according to the corporate sustainability reporting directive and the European Sustainability Reporting Standard, which will become mandatory from 2024 onwards. CPIPG understands the importance of a solid environmental, social and governance strategy and are carrying work to align the entire organization and stakeholders towards our ESG goal. As you can see on Page 77, in 2023, we announced the ESG group strategy with 15 clear goals. The environmental part is focused mainly on greenhouse gas intensity reduction as well as energy intensity reduction and increase waste recycling rates. The social part focus on increasing the share of certified buildings, green lease agreement being offered for all new commercial leases and renewables and achieving a minimum 33% share of female senior managers. The governance part in addition to what Martin just mentioned also encompasses a group-wide code of conduct for suppliers, which is mandatory for all new suppliers and renewals, along with mandatory annual employee training of at least 8 hours per year. As you can see on Page 81, CPIPG's third-party ESG ratings continue to improve. In 2023, it further improved Sustainalytics' ESG ratings to 11.6 which places CPIPG among the top 4% of issuers globally. Our MSCI rating also improved to BBB. Our CDP score for 2023 remains at B and is classified as Management level, which means that the group is taking coordinated action on climate issues. During the year, we also joined the UN Global Compact on the consolidated level. We are active in many industry bodies around ESG. For instance, I was reelected on the Board of Czech Green Building Council last year. My colleague, Michal Litewnicki sits on the Board of Polish Green Building Council, and we are an active member of the Hungarian and Serbian Green Building Council. Moving on to Page 82. In 2023, the group outperformed our greenhouse gases emissions intensity reduction target by 20%. The share of purchased electricity from renewable sources increased to almost 53%. In 2023, 37.4% of our portfolio in terms of GLA and 40.6% in terms of revenue were certified green. More than 90% of CPIPG's green buildings are BREEAM very good and above and LEED gold and above, as you can see on Page 81. Overall, I'm quite pleased to report solid progress against our environmental objectives as follows. Like-for-like energy incentive decreased by almost 9%. Like-for-like greenhouse gas emissions intensity decreased by 21% and electricity from renewable sources increased by 31%. CPIPG's environmental reporting was verified by CI2, a regional partner for CDP reporting as complying with ISO 14064 from year 2018 and the GHG Protocol. CPIPG was awarded the CI2 conformity certificate, which is available on our website. Our reporting was also prepared in cooperation with the University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of the Czech Technical University in Prague. CPIPG has cooperated with this organization since 2018. As you can see on Page 90 and 91, EU taxonomy disclosure is an integral part of our 2023 management report. Eligible and aligned activities in terms of group turnover CapEx and OpEx were reported. In total, full year 2023, the group has identified 77 buildings that currently needed criteria for economic activity 7.7, which is acquisition and ownership of buildings. In total, 12.3% of turnover, 9.9% of CapEx and 15.3% of OpEx was EU taxonomy aligned in 2023. Continuing to social part of sustainability. As you can see on Page 92, the social part was amended and prepared in alignment with the European Sustainability Reporting Standard. As of the end of 2023, the group had 4,023 employees, 48% male and 52% female. Top management was 10.5% of the total workforce with women holding almost 38% of the top management position. This figure exceeds the goal to fill at least 33% of senior management position with women. As of the end of 2023, the group employs 1.4% of employees with disabilities, showing a significant increase from the previous year. On Page 93, the group disclosed our gender pay gap which for 2023 was 13.5%, still unacceptable but an improvement over the previous year, when it was 15%. In 2023, we also established a goal of ensuring that all employees participate in a minimum of 8 hours of training annually. In 2023, employees completed 10.2 hours of training and education on average. The group also focused on various social initiatives that are important for us, such as support for immigrants, community involvement or wellbeing for our employees. Now I hope that covers the ESG section. Let me turn the floor back to David. David?

Petra, thank you very much. Well, we now have plenty of time for Q&A, and I see we have a lot of questions. So let's jump right in.

First, I will start with the questions that were asked by our short seller just a couple of hours ago and to try and answer them. We had a couple of hours to look at them. The first question that was asked by our beloved short seller related to shareholder loans and the contribution of residential assets in Dubai and the logic behind that. Let me answer this in the following way. First, as I mentioned earlier, we intend to stop as soon as possible this practice of shareholder loans and asset contributions. On the other hand, this has been part of CPIPG's operations for many years. We disclose it, we talk about it. We have a procedure on the Board. However, we see that the practice is no longer appropriate for a company of our size and scale anymore. We need to change it. Our shareholder began investing in Dubai residential a few years ago. When it became clear that our shareholders should do everything possible to support the company and reduce shareholder loans to the lowest amount possible, our shareholder agreed to contribute the assets in Dubai. We had the assets valued by Cavendish Maxwell and then reviewed by PwC and then again by CBRE. We acquired the assets at a discount, which we believe was fair. What we love about the Dubai assets is the quality and the strength of the market. The apartments we own are the hottest segment of the market and should sell quickly at prices above the book value. We have already been approached by banks in the Middle East to finance CPIPG and these assets in Islamic and conventional form. So new doors are opening. On the sales, you should expect news from us soon. Things are a bit slow during Ramadan, but activity is expected to pick up after Eid. And I can say there is a possibility that our shareholder might contribute one final portfolio of assets in Italy once again at a discount and then we intend to shut the doors on such transactions. We dislike the noise this brings and we intend to change it. Finally, these nasty comments around our highly -- our history of highly questionable valuations are just not fair. Everything we do has just been reviewed 10,000 ways by many third parties. Our audit this year with EY was a much more intense process than we had seen in the past and everything was reviewed and double-checked and triple-checked. So I would just really take issue with that comment. But just summarizing a few other things I mentioned, interest on our shareholder loans is not picked, all interest payments were just made in January. There's just a timing mismatch on the cash payment of interest which occurs within 3 months after the balance sheet date. So hopefully, that explains the questions around Dubai. The second and third questions from the short seller relate to the acquisition of Chuchle Arena in Prague. Well, our short seller is not an expert on Prague or I think they would understand the business opportunity here. Chuchle is a large property in Prague with an arena, hotel and event spaces. Here, we see a big business opportunity via synergies with our hotels plus the potential to develop the site to expand the capacity for exhibitions and events. Remember, we have congress and convention hotels. Guess what, some of our biggest events of the year are in Prague in terms of hotel occupancy. The Czech Derby is one of them held every year in Chuchle. We see this as part of our unique offering and presence in Prague. CPIPG has been a sponsor of equestrian events for years. Some companies sponsor football or rugby, we sponsored equestrian amount. For instance, we previously sponsored the Czech Olympic team and held many Olympic-related events at Chuchle. On the other hand, this was an acquisition that was in the works for a long time. We were discussing the potential associated with Chuchle since late 2022. The ball started rolling back in '22, and we simply completed the deal in '23. The acquisition structure and price was reviewed by Mazars and all of this was reviewed and discussed with EY as part of our audit for 2023. Let me just say the following. This is not the type of deal you should expect to see from us going forward. Are our shareholders' daughters champion show jumpers, and does CPIPG sponsor them? The answer is yes. They reflect well on us and we are proud of them and we are proud of that. There is, by the way, no gambling involved in Chuchle, and we have not acquired any gambling business and we don't hold a gambling license. There is a third-party company taking bets for certain events, but this has nothing to do with us. Our goal is to provide events and hospitality and synergies of our hotels, which sounds like a solid business rationale to me. The last question from our short seller was about the net equity of GSG Berlin. Look, nothing has changed with regard to GSG Berlin, apart from the valuation, which we have been totally clear about in today's presentation. The value of Berlin is properly disclosed in our consolidated financial statements at various points, including the segment breakdown. The value of our properties in Berlin declined from EUR 3 billion to EUR 2.5 billion. What our short seller used today was a stand-alone financial statement of CPIPG SA, not the consolidated one we published. And what they found, I'm embarrassed to say, is a disclosure error. Net equity of EUR 311 for 2023 is simply incorrect. This error only affects that stand-alone statement. It has no bearing on the consolidated financial picture. We're not perfect. We make mistakes, and we will always focus on improving. Okay. So now we can go to the questions from real investors. Moritz, would you like to start with the first one?

Sure, David. And the first question, could you elaborate more about the quite large revaluation loss in the German portfolio? Could you share your view regarding the revaluation results in full year 2024?

Would you like to answer this one yourself?

Sure. So as David just stated, the valuation went down in Berlin. It's pretty much due to the lower yielding type of assets we have in Berlin. They're more sensitive to changes in the discount rate. And again, as we also elaborated on the call, the rental growth perspective are still in place, intact for the portfolio. And the second question, how is the process of the potential equity investment by funds advised by Apollo?

So here, I think we really can't comment beyond what the disclosures were that was already made. On the other hand, I think we've been pretty transparent that we have lined up a very significant amount of liquidity in the form of the minority stake sales. But we now need to balance those liquidity options versus other liquidity options and figure out what the right thing is. But I think the good news is there's been an enormous amount of support from investors to investing in our portfolio and a ton of review of our operations due diligence on us, KYC, things have been -- we've really been under a microscope in connection with all of these deals. So I can't give you much more of an update other than to say we're working on all of these things very, very seriously.

Thank you, David. The next question, how was the outstanding of the bridge loan as of now? And do we still expect paydown outstanding in H1?

I think we covered this in the presentation, that the bridge is now EUR 529 million. And yes, we still expect to repay the remaining bridge around the end of H1 from disposals, new bank financing and other potential sources.

And why our unused credit facility is down a lot? Is this due to the repayment of bridge loan? So I think the question is basically on the revolving credit facility. And yes, we used part of -- as you saw, we signed quite a significant amount of disposals. At the same time, the closing was -- is and will be following the full year 2023 results. So there was a timing mismatch and we used part of the RCF despite the timing mismatch with the disposals. And next question. For the EUR 700 million assets for sale stated in the balance sheet, how much money we can fetch?

Pavel?

Yes, more than happy to answer. So generally, asset held for sale, these assets are generally valued based on the expected selling price. So this is quite simple math. So you can see on our balance sheet for '23 in that the amount of asset held for sale exceed EUR 700 million. And you can see on the liability side, you can see liabilities linked to asset held for sale, these liabilities are around EUR 100 million. So it means that roughly, we might expect around EUR 600 million of net proceeds coming in.

Thank you, Pavel. And the next question, according to the most recent annual report, selected U.K. assets are now undertaken by an internal department, not Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman & Wakefield valued the U.K. assets in 2022. Why has this changed?

Pavel, once again.

Okay. I would say that changing our valuer, this is nothing unusual. This is our standard procedure that we have been following for many, many years. So we have been changing well reputable names and sometimes the change is or can be and unfortunately for our internal valuation department. Basically, it happened in '23. So for some U.K. assets, mainly resi and development asset, we decided to use our internal capacities for '23 since we have already been using the external parties in the U.K. And maybe one additional comment, the valuation result generated by our internal department wasn't adopted. So basically, we disclosed a loss of this type of valuation operation.

The next question, can current credit rating be maintained if/when the bridge is fully refinanced? And so basically, and as we elaborated on, the rating agencies put our ratings on a negative outlook last year. If they would have thought we are not able to protect our investment-grade rating, they wouldn't have put a negative outlook. So the outlook is a 1 in 3 probability that we may fail. But as we have already elaborated, we expect ICR to stabilize and improve as we repay most of the bridge and target to repay the remainder of the bridge. And the next question. For those not reflected in the year-end results, what is the cash consideration we will receive after paydown pledged loan?

I'm not sure I understand that question.

I think it was partially answered before and in terms of what are the proceeds from disposals. So I hope we covered it with that. The next question is also on the net proceeds. So I would skip that as well. And for the debt maturities in 2024 and 2025, EUR 1.1 billion, how much do we expect that can be rolled over?

Okay. Well, can I just say, the majority of the debt that is maturing is bank loans. So we have EUR 190 million of bank loans maturing in 2024 and EUR 350 million in 2025. It's only about EUR 540 million that needs to be rolled over. And so far, we've really had no issues rolling over bank debt. The rest is, I would say, some bonds that will be fully repaid and then some other short-term obligations. But frankly, we have no concern about our ability to handle these level of maturities considering all of the disposals, all of the bank financing that we talked about. What I will say candidly is that we're much more focused on 2026. '24 and '25, we feel very comfortable with. 2026, clearly, that's why we're exploring all of these liquidity initiatives and doing everything that we can to support the capital structure and ratings.

Thank you, David. And the next question. To whom did you sell Metrogate House in London?

It was sold to a local investor. Mindee, do, you want to answer?

Yes, basically it was sold to a local investor flagging the local value. And unfortunately, we're not able to disclose more pertinent information. And of course, we have the NDA which was filed.

And the next question. Is CPI Holdco looking to use its liquidity to increase stakes in IMMOFINANZ and S IMMO to simplify the structure? Or could we be seeing new equity to help this financing?

So I would say to the investor that asked this, we get this question a lot, and you can imagine why this is a difficult question for us to answer given all of the regulatory issues. I would just say that we are focused on reducing complexity, we are focused on finding liquidity sources and dealing liquidity sources which are equity that would allow us to have more options on reducing complexities. As I laid it out at the beginning, that's 1 of our 4 key objectives for this year, and we are exploring every options, and that is the goal, to streamline and reduce complexity.

The next question, please add color on occupancy decrease regarding offices in Berlin, Prague and Budapest. So I think in Berlin, it's basically -- it's a reflection partially of the economic environment. The leasing activity was just lower than in the previous year. And then we have ongoing developments. So we disclosed also in our report basically 2% of our current vacancies due to strategically vacated spaces for refurbishment. So otherwise, the occupancy would have been 91%. In Prague, I think it's more or less the normal tenant churn. We also have properties where a larger tenant moved out and the spaces are simply refurbished before being re-let again. In general, also, the Prague, office market vacancy is continuing to decline. So we don't see the issues in the market. And then in Budapest, we managed to secure a lot of -- or prolonged, a lot of leases with key tenants, and it's also a reflection in our WAULT. So it increased them by 2 to 3.5 years again. That said, Budapest also saw some higher supply from new buildings finished. And so we're just like the market vacancy and our vacancy rate increased. And the next question is, give of the call for prefs one of your choice since the earliest one call for a reset coupon early next year? When will you have a rough plan for it?

And maybe you can combine it with the next question.

Okay. And the next question, where the decision on whether we call the prefs or not affect our rating according to the communication with rating agencies?

So I would just say when it comes to the prefs, we've always said we'll make a decision closer to calling. We've also always said that we prefer to deal with the hybrid in a way which is bondholder-friendly, which preserves a good reputation and preserves our ability to hopefully issue hybrids again in the future. I've said many times to all of you that as a closely held company with illiquid common stock, hybrids were really important in contributing to our growth at the company. We want to see those investors be happy. I've been really encouraged by some of the liability management transactions that our peers have done. I consider those to be pretty constructive, and we would like to be constructive as well. But honestly, we have not made any decisions yet about what we're going to do. We have a lot of other priorities to focus on in the coming months but I expect we'll start to really think seriously about what to do with the hybrid in kind of Q4 of this year.

Thank you, David. I will probably skip the next 2, 3 questions because they're regarding the equity transaction and the pro forma liquidity from disposals. I think all of that was already answered. And the next question, can you provide more detail on the Dubai assets that were contributed to the group? Where the Dubai assets contributed with debt already attached to them? Mindee, do you want to...

Sure. The Dubai assets were contributed with no debt attached to them. Some of the assets are in various stages of development, where progress payments would be required in the next couple of months.

In general, these are luxury residential properties in Dubai. And I think if you read any article covering Dubai real estate, you would see this is the hottest segment of the market. We've already had a lot of good traction on selling the assets. And as I said earlier, our goal is to sell these properties as soon as possible and move on from it.

Thank you. And the next question, the level of secured debt appears to be at circa 50% LTV on the book value of developed property. Is there an appetite from banking partners to go beyond this level?

So the question, are we really seeing offers at higher than 50%?

I think so, yes.

I mean, I'd say in some cases, yes. I would say we're still seeing appetite for more aggressive types of financing like development financing. There isn't a hugely -- I would say 50% seems to be limit from most of lenders these days, but we've been approached by countless smart types around London and Frankfurt and other places, offering mid-life solutions that allow us to increase the leverage on these assets. It's not our favorite solution at the moment. So yes, I would say 50% seems to be the general hope.

And you now have quite a lot of liquidity. And once the bridge is repaid at fairly orderly maturity profile until 2026, included with 2027 bonds being 7 months later, what is your plan to use that liquidity?

I would characterize -- again, the liquidity that we have planned, the liquidity that we are -- are on the table, that we haven't grabbed yet but we already take sales or reverse liquidities on our bond, any liquidity that comes in, we apply effectively in all, repay bridge, reduce RCF to 0. And then the next thing we'll do is start buying back bonds and maybe hybrids. That's kind of how I'd look at it, that's consistent with what I've always said. We've always addressed our debt maturities in advance and we plan to do that again. So I do expect the liquidity to come, and I do expect us to be active on underpaying debt as well as in advance.

And the next question. Where do you see your Moody's fixed charge coverage ratio? And are you saying you expect Moody's to maintain your BAA3 rating post these numbers? And I will answer the question as well. And so basically, Moody's changed the outlook. I think there is always some risk. But on the other hand, as we presented in our management report, the bridge is a key factor waiting on it. A rating is based on forward-looking ratio. So even though our full year 2023 ratios are out of guidance or the expectations, I think we clearly have a plan and how to improve the ratios again and get back to the target. And ultimately, Moody's needs to decide how much time they want to give us for executing. I think as we've proven, we're able to dispose, we're able to reduce leverage, we're able to repay the bridge and our top line and operating performance remains quite solid. So we expect to see our earnings to continue to improve. And then it's ultimately at the rating agency's position, how they want to handle it. And the next question, can you provide an update on the Cyprus litigation, Martin?

Yes, I can take it over, even though there is not much to update since we published our update in the management report. CPIPG filed its opposition statement and the hearing on the interim injunction took place on the 1st of February. The sides put forward their arguments orally and also submitted their written submissions with the court. Having heard all the side, the court reserves its judgment on the interim injunction, which is expected in the coming months. And we will, of course, update you accordingly if there is any change.

Okay. The next question. Was the sale of Metrogate House in London used to delever the loan facility secured against these assets and other London assets last year?

I can answer that. The sale of Metrogate, the proceeds were used to repay a portion of the loan that were secured against this asset.

Thank you, Mindee. And the next question, you previously mentioned that you were considering legal action against Muddy Waters. Is this still the case?

To be precise, we mentioned last time that we will consider it after our financial results are -- after we have time more to look into it. And quite unfortunately, this was the only thing that was picked up by our Muddy Waters call as a headline. So we are in the process of considering it but no firm decision has been made. We'll see.

We've got plenty of other important things to do and plenty of other important priorities rather than chasing them around.

Exactly.

So as of the latest list that I can see, I think that is all of the questions. I think we have answered all of them. If there are questions I haven't answered or we haven't answered, you know how to find us, you know how to reach us. We will speak to you, we will meet with you, and we'll answer anything that you would like to talk about. So I would just say, in general, thank you all for listening. Thank you for your continued support of CPI Property Group, and look forward to keeping in touch very soon. So thank you.