CTP N.V. (CTPNV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. And well, I'm talking about the 24 results here from a sunny Prague here in Czech Republic at CTP's headquarter. Good year, '24 a record year when it comes to profit, more than EUR 1 billion of money we made last year. But also, a record in terms of new deliveries and leasing. So we have built a lot of properties. We completed a lot of buildings, and we have done -- signed many leases. And that is thanks to our clients, the unique model of the way we work, the park model, building full-service business parks throughout the region. That pays off. A model which we have developed over the past decades and continuously improve to make sure that we have the right amount of amenities and services on site to support our clients in doing their business. So the client focus on core business, and we provide the property as well as all amenity services. It includes all of the energy, but also things like health care, [ product ] transportation, which we offer to our tenants in those parks. And the tenants, again, they work with their suppliers and create ecosystems whereby we help to support when it comes to education and other programs, including affordable housing for some business parks. So we focus and we support our clients in their core business. Has been good, and there's always local CTP teams on site to look after those clients and buildings, make sure buildings are in an excellent condition at all times. Happy tenants. That's what it is about, and that's why we've done more than 2/3 of all new business with existing clients, long-term loyal partners who we have been working with all those years. They're good for 2/3 of our business. Continued retention rate of around 90%, signed 2.1 million square meter of leases last year, which is 7% up compared to 23%. Especially the last quarter, we pushed it a little, we've done 14% more than we did in the Q4 of 2023. And there's more to come for 2025. The leases we are signing are higher than before. So we continue to see rental growth. We get more per square meter from a building than we collected for that same square meter the year before. So we continue to see rental growth, which is good. '25, more requirements going into '25. Markets are changing, which is good, changed opportunity. Nearshoring continues, definitely in Europe, for Europe. Even more with our friend Trump getting into power, and it's in Europe for Europe, definitely, which has an impact on property demands as well as on infrastructure and energy. Maybe a wakeup call, and there is a lot of work to be done, but there's definitely opportunities for those in business here in Europe. Especially the part where we are active in the Central European part, CEE, with most of Denmark is, where we operate, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary, where we are market leaders and continue to gain market share as the business-smart location has been and is now very important. We have affordable labor and infrastructure newly developed and a lot of support from local governments here in this part of the world, which is positive for our clients and helps them to grow their business. Also, we have been able to welcome new tenants. 20% of our lease in '24 were signed with Asian clients; companies from Asia who come to Europe to set up shop for their European business. So that continues. We see more demand coming. And we have extended our Asian team with both people on the ground in Asia, in China in particular, but also in Central Europe where we have, for example, here in the Prague office, some new Chinese colleagues to make sure that we can support Chinese companies very much with the search for a location and help them set up their business, which includes the property but much more than that. And we are here to support and make sure that these companies can get feet on the ground here in Europe and can be part of the industry and help build Europe. Obviously, geopolitical situation has certain impacts on the region as well. EU, similar to the U.S., is protecting their own market with regulations and import tariffs. There is continued strong demand from 3PLs and the retailers. Fastest-growing region in Europe is the Central European region. We've done multiple projects recently, including completion of the Tesco project, of course, last year in '24 in Budapest, Hungary, but also fulfillment centers for fashion retailers and others. So consumer goods, most of our parks are located close to larger cities, and of course, they benefit from consumer spending, which continues to grow because we see GDP growth in Central Europe double of what it is in average in Europe. So there is consumer spending and, therefore, any warehouse, especially if there are no warehouses around, which as we concluded, there remains an undersupply of A-class warehouse space in the region of Central Europe, especially when it comes to the setup as we do with the full-service business park, as I explained. GLA per capita in Central Europe remains low compared to Western Europe. And that means the square meters of warehouse space per capita, which is still a bit behind. Germany, I see and I feel we get a lot of support from German governments. And the last year, we bought a fantastic site in Düsseldorf at the airport. We would not have done that without the pleasant talks and negotiations with the city of Düsseldorf, so the mayor, the city council, very supportive and interested in the project which we plan to do. We have acquired it. We have a team of people, around 100 people in Germany at the moment. We're currently working on zoning and design and permitting. So we hope that we can start the project soon. In the meantime, we see that we get some income from the existing buildings, which we bought, but that is going to be a unique, fantastic project. I'm very excited about being part of that project in Düsseldorf to build a CTP-style full-service business park in Düsseldorf to offer a next-level property for different companies, whether logistics, R&D or light manufacturing. We want to make sure that we have something to offer for all. And that the park comes with all amenities and services you can imagine. So that's going to be a flagship project in Germany. And in the meantime, we do a project in Mülheim. We bought that site also last year, as you may remember. It's 36 hectare. We're making fantastic progress on permitting. And I think that we can start to build next year in 2026. We're also talking to some tenants already, and we are in the middle of doing the demolition. So getting the site ready for construction. And there is much more going on in Germany. I think this year is going to be 250,000 square meter new builds and maybe next year even more. The situation where Germany is at the moment gives opportunity to buy at attractive prices. So I think this momentum is advantageous for us at this moment as we are new to the market. Quick update on our businesses. Operator, the team of people who look after the income-producing part of the business. Talking about people, we are 900 people in the meantime. Operator is good. Standing income-producing portfolio, we were at around 93% end of last year. We've been able to grow the portfolio to 13.3 million square meter now and that is good for EUR 743 million of rental income per year. Rent comes from different companies. It's widely diversified, international, local, lots of different companies who pay on time and continue to grow. So there's more than 1,500 different blue chip tenants in broad range of industries. That's for the operator. Move to developer. Developer is the construction company. All the boys and girls who are busy building properties, which starts with doing the designs, the different feasibility studies, the yield and cost calculations, the financial engineering, but also the value engineering, data and that, they other work closely with the people from the leasing team. That's the secret of the success, I think, is we work in micro teams, so not like 900 people sit in some office tower. No, no, no. We have them all around the different, let's say, 10 countries. But in those 10 countries, still, they are sitting in different projects to be very close to where the business is and where the clients are. So together, they prepare these projects for construction. And then they start to build those with a tenant or on a speculative basis or when they talk to tenants. And anyway, developer. Industry, leading yield on cost, very profitable business. Have done it for 25 years. We grow 10%, 15% per year. Have a lot of in-house activities, including design centers and, as explained before, keep an eye on long-term quality and sustainability; make sure that we build and continue to build very functional, above all functional real estate but obviously, in a good way so that we create quality and secure long-term income from those buildings, which are generic designed. So they aren't built for a certain purpose. They can be built for a variety of different activities for our clients going forward. That is, in short, 1.3 million square meters of completed properties last year at 10.1% yield on cost. Some of the highlights. Raben is one of our long-term, very valuable partners, logistics service provider, 3PL, but also we work with a lot of pleasure for DHL and DSV and Kuehne+Nagel, et cetera, but also fashion retailers, LPP, H&M and other consumer goods business, like, for example, DOUGLAS because, I mean, everybody wants to smell nice, and it's great that DOUGLAS continued to expand their presence in the region, that also here in Central Europe, we can smell nicely. And Tesco, also, of course, as I mentioned earlier, a fantastic project for them in Budapest, which we did. This year seems to be -- looks to be larger with 1.8 million square meter of new buildings under construction. 80%, 8-0, of all of those new buildings are under construction in existing business parks. When fully let, all of the space, we will add another EUR 142 million of rental income, on our way to hit EUR 1 billion of rental income per year. And with yield on cost, we keep as a good tradition at around 10%, maybe a bit higher. And we expect to be leased at 80%, maybe 90% upon completion of those projects. So far, maybe a short note on energy. Energy is going well. It's our third business line, if you like. It's very small compared to the other 2, operator and developer, but energy is important to us, of course, to make sure we have the right amount of energy on-site in our business parks. Energy is also about us continuing to install rooftop solar plants which we are at 130 megawatts end of last year and is also appreciated by the tenants, of course, that have access to renewable energy right from the roof to the shop floor. Also, what we do, we do in a project now to store energy, we will first see a pilot project going live in '25 and there's plans for doing more of those. It's very much a result of the ongoing talks and negotiations with our tenants to see how we can best support them when it comes to energy and a source of energy. And smart metering, for example, is another project, which we continue to roll out that gives us a much better overview of what energy is being consumed where. And that, first of all, you can improve the amount of consumption. And with that alone, you can save a lot of energy and also cost and so on. So -- and for the rest, yes, I enjoy very much. I see many projects on a weekly basis. It's very exciting out there with all of these changes going on. And we want to make sure that we're going to be part of all of this change, changed opportunity. And yes, it's -- the year started very nicely, and we look forward to 2025 to become a very interesting year for all of us here at CTP and our shareholders. Thanks for joining. I'll hand over to Maarten, and I'm available later for any of your questions. Thank you so much.

Moving on to the financial highlights. The like-for-like rental growth came to 4% in '24, driven by indexation and stronger reversion. Occupancy at year-end remained stable, 93%. And the reversionary potential stands at 14.5%. And we have been proven to successful in capturing this potential for the leases that came up for expiry. Our gross rental income increased by 16% year-on-year to EUR 644.1 million (sic) [ EUR 664.1 million ]. Net rental income went up by 19% year-on-year as we reduced the surcharge leakage. Consequently, NRI to GRI ratio came to 97.4%. The annualized rental income increased to EUR 743 million, illustrating the strong cash flow generation of our portfolio. And we confirm our target to reach an annualized rental income of EUR 1 billion by '27. The company-specific adjusted EPRA earnings per share increased by 9.9% year-on-year to EUR 0.80, in line with our guidance. Now moving on to the valuations. CTP's strategy is built upon long-term client relations with around 2/3 of our developments taking place in existing business parks for existing clients. This derisks our business model as these are proven locations with existing demand. And it treats us well into the valuations and the huge opportunity we have with our 26.4 million square meter land bank. Assuming a 50% built-up ratio, we can build over 13 million square meter of GLA on our land bank. And with a development profit of around EUR 400 per square meter, this land bank will enable us to continue to generate organic double-digit NTA growth also in the years to come. Looking at the valuation results. In '24, the revaluation amounts to EUR 941.5 million. Standing assets, revaluation gain amounted to EUR 499.9 million, mainly driven by the positive rental growth and slight yield compression in the second half of the year. Revaluation on our developments amounted to EUR 380.4 million, driven by the leasing and construction progress on our pipeline. Our total gross asset value now stands at EUR 16 billion, up 17.2% in '24. CTP's reversionary yield stands at a conservative 7.1%. And in the second half of the year, we saw 8 basis points yield compression after the 80 basis points increase we saw in '22 and '23. We expect both further yield compression in '25 as well as positive EV growth in the CEE region. In most CEE markets, inflation-adjusted real rents remained lower than 15 years ago, illustrating the affordability of the region for our tenants as well as the midterm rental growth potential for us. We also saw transaction markets reopening here. There's more clarity around the funding cost. And especially with, on the private equity side, funds coming to their maturity, we expect to see churn. We see this supporting our valuations, but as well offering opportunities for us. Our EPRA net tangible assets per share increased from EUR 15.92 at year-end '23 to EUR 18.08 at year-end '24, representing an increase of 13.6%. With this NTA growth and our dividend, we delivered a total accounting return of 70% to our shareholders in '24. And now I hand over to Richard.

We have a robust balance sheet and strong access to multiple pools of capital. In 2024, we raised EUR 2.4 billion of debt and EUR 300 million of equity. We also repaid EUR 950 million of short-dated bonds, extending our debt maturity and allowing us to book a capital gain of EUR 37.1 million. Our cash position stands at EUR 855 million. When including our RCF, our liquidity position amounts to EUR 2.2 billion, more than sufficient to meet our cash needs for the next 12 months. The average maturity of our debt stands at 5 years, with only EUR 560 million of debt maturities this year. At the end of the year, CTP's average cost of debt came to 3.1%. This will continue to tick up going forward as we bring on new funding at today's higher interest rates to finance our development-led growth. However, we've seen our marginal cost of financing come down during 2024. And depending on the maturity, this is now between 3.5% and 4%. Thanks to our strong cash-generating portfolio, we have a healthy interest coverage ratio of 2.6x, while our normalized net debt-to-EBITDA reduced further to 9.1x. As shown during our Capital Markets Day last year, thanks to our market-leading development yield on cost of over 10%, each portfolio we invest in our pipeline increases our ICR and decreases our net debt-to-EBITDA. Our loan-to-value stands at 45.3% despite the large land bank acquisition we did industrial Düsseldorf in Q4 of last year. And it's down from 46% at the year-end of 2023. Our loan-to-value will decrease further as we complete our development pipeline and the revaluation gains become fully booked. We are confident in the outlook for CTP. Our leasing remains strong as shown during the year. And in addition to what we've already pre-let in our development pipeline, we also have 80,000 square meters pre-let for future projects where we didn't start construction yet. We see nearshoring speeding up in many industries, continuing to drive tenant demand. Our pipeline is highly profitable and tenant-led. And thanks to our industry-leading yield on cost of over 10%, we are able to deliver sustainable and profitable organic growth while maintaining our strong financial position. We expect to deliver 1.2 million to 1.7 million square meters of developments this year, in line with our long-term growth forecast. We expect an EPS of EUR 0.86 to EUR 0.88 in 2025, representing 8% to 10% growth compared to 2024. This increase is driven by our strong underlying growth, partly offset by higher interest expense as we repaid nearly EUR 1 billion of lower coupon bonds ahead of their maturity in 2024. Thank you for your attention. We now welcome your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Marios Pastou from Bernstein.

Great. Just two from my side. Maybe firstly, on the Q4 leasing volumes, which, obviously, jumped across the portfolio, you mentioned that you pushed these. And I wonder if you could comment on how this has trended so far into 2025 and what we should expect for maybe the first half of this year? And then secondly, on Romania. Are you seeing any impact from the current political environment, both the decisions made across your existing tenant base, but also when you're undergoing leasing discussions of your developments?

Marios, thank you for your questions. This is Remon speaking. With regards to the leasing last year, end of last year, I think overall, it has been good and strong, but maybe there was more confidence at the end of last year somehow, I don't know, going into '25, but we have been able to sign leases as well at the end of last year, which may be the negotiations started a bit earlier, where maybe our clients were looking at different scenarios and ultimately decided to go ahead with their Central European option, I mean, the option of CTP. Yes, that could be, in some cases, maybe one of the reasons. I mentioned DOUGLAS is a [ buff formulary ] business, very active in the region and we signed with them in Poland in a site which we have south of Warsaw. I think that negotiation also started in the summer of last year and it took a bit of time to get things closed. Also, I think if you look at our track record that Q4 typically is a bit higher in terms of closing than other quarters may be. So it's not something I think to get too excited about it. I think it's part of what it normally is, a bit higher. And yes, I'm happy and it's good to see that companies continue to make decisions and decide to stay and grow the business in Central Europe because it's mostly Central Europe, as you know, our business, but also, we have leased up our project in Bremen in the north of Germany end of last year as well. And yes, I mentioned DOUGLAS there. Obviously, many other fashion retailer. I mentioned for Bucharest, which we signed with, maybe that also leads into your next question, what about Romania. What we have seen over the past years, Romania are turning into a -- yes, you could call it, logistics hotspot maybe, but for sure, a very strategic location. And then I -- mostly, Bucharest because Bucharest initially was maybe seen as the end of the region and not so strategic maybe on one hand. But that has proven to be very strategic. Bucharest itself is like 2 million, 3 million people. If you look at Bucharest and the catchment area, point one, so there are a lot of consumers. We've seen higher consumer spending and GDP growth, of course, especially in Bucharest. So that's point one, is for Bucharest. But also for the region for Romania, for Bulgaria and a larger region. So if I speak to Pepco or Kuehne+Nagel, DSV, IKEA, fashion retailers like LPP, then it's not -- their facility in Bucharest is not just for Bucharest or for Romania for Romania and Bulgaria. It's often a larger region and even goes into Turkey in some cases, whereby Turkey, Istanbul is only 430 kilometers away from Bucharest and most of that road network has now been developed so that helps the location, of course. And then suddenly, Bucharest is a very interesting location to cover the entire region at the rent prices of between EUR 4 and EUR 5 compared to Istanbul is probably 1/2 of what you would have to pay in Istanbul. So overall, very positive about Bucharest as a location and that also -- because of that, we have been able to build a park and multiple parks in and around Bucharest. One Bucharest West is almost 1 million square meter by year-end of lettable area, which we have developed over the past years. But also going forward, I think Bucharest, Romania has also certain potential also when you look at the region of -- yes, for the East, close to maybe north of Romania to Ukraine. So there's also opportunities yes, to grow that further. There is infrastructure being built at high speed now, so that I refer to motorway roads, ring roads around Bucharest, but also other motorways, which are being built and therefore, Romania becomes even better connected to the region. So overall, quite positive. And yes, we have a team of 100 people on the ground in Romania at different locations. So we believe that also, with the changes going on, Romania could well benefit from this going forward. I hope that answers your question.

We now have a question from Vanessa Guy from JPMorgan.

From my side, I have two questions. The first one, it's more related to how you're seeing occupier demand and how it's evolving, especially towards the end of the fourth quarter and how you've seen it at the beginning of this year. And then the second question is more on the guidance that you're giving on delivery, between 1.2 million and 1.7 million. So to reach that 1.7 million square meters in delivery, what would you have to see happening? Like what conditions would need to be met?

Vanessa, Maarten here. I'll maybe start with the second question, and then Remon can comment further on the occupier demand. So if we look to the guidance indeed for '25, between 1.2 million and 1.7 million. To get near the 1.7 million, one, we would -- of course, 2 things are important. One is the tenant demand, and that comes a bit back to your earlier question and the amount of leasing that we are doing. '24 was a good year with 7% more leases than '23. So that helps us, of course, also into '25. But tenant demand is one of the factors. And the second part is, of course, the construction. Sometimes you have a delay in construction. Of course, we can often -- with our in-house teams and our capability skill set, we are doing it in a pretty optimized way. But also, we have sometimes delays in construction. That will happen. So that are the 2 factors driving in to the guidance range. And as you remember, at the beginning of last year, we also gave a guidance range of 1 million to 1.5 million, and we ended up at 1.3 million. So we typically give a bit broader range in the beginning of the year and then narrow as the year is progressing, and we see basically the leasing progress and the construction progress happening. And then that's ultimately depending on where we end in that range, but the leasing gives us quite a bit of confidence into '25.

Yes, with regards to -- just to add to what Maarten just said about the last year and the pickup or the take-up we see, as you know, our business model, we do most of the business with existing clients, so companies we've been working with for many years. They give us more business because they grow their business either because they continue to nearshore, they bring business from other parts of the world to Europe, to be in Europe for the European clients, or because they just grow their business. And there's 1/3 our new commerce companies we have not been able to work with, and it's the first time we do projects for those. But to explain a bit where the demand comes from, it's all different kind of sectors. I did talk about fashion retailers, but I didn't talk about pet food. So we have multiple projects for pet food-related businesses, whether this is pet food distribution for certain regions from Prague out of the Czech Republic to the German market, or whether this is something in Katowice, which we are doing in Poland. So it's a variety, all kind of different businesses because they haven't been here yet. They haven't been in Europe, but it's part of Central Europe or because they continue to grow. And then with regards to growth, our business model, as you know, is we have these business parks where we have land available for growth and land is often already prepared, infrastructure and permits and we have an ongoing communication with our tenants about their needs, and we try to very much work with them and understand their needs going forward. And if they think of adding some of their production or distribution or extending their region or whatever it may be, then we are the first one to be able to build property. So I think that the way of working very close to your client, having land available is the ultimate way of providing property to your tenants.

We now have a question from [ John Ivwan ] from [ Camp M ].

Just following up on the nearshoring question. I think you mentioned that tenants in the end went with the CEE option. I'm just curious to understand what other option were they considering and what has ultimately driven them to choose the CEE over the other regions?

Well, you have companies that this is not a new thing. I mean over the past 30 years, that's the whole idea of setting up CTP. We set up business in Central Europe because labor is cheaper, because of different support from government, et cetera. So you still have companies who continue to have certain activities in expensive countries. It can be that they still have had activities in Western European countries, which can easily -- it could have maybe moved or should have been moved sooner or earlier to other places. And that's what you see. So you see, for example, carmakers, like they have recently in Germany, where they had to shut down or reduce the amount of people, which they employed, which is, I think, very obvious and it's a trend which we have seen over the past decades and you cannot keep up an operation in a country which is just too expensive or whereby the productivity, et cetera, et cetera, is just not at a level where it needs to be. And if markets become a bit more competitive and if you need to be serious about your costs more, then that triggers certain decisions. And we have seen that also during the financial crisis, for example, many years ago, 2008, '09, '10, where we were able to continue to grow our business. And that was also because companies had to rightsize or companies had to adjust to the new market circumstances. And that's, I think, yes, one of the reasons why they have been and they could have stayed in a certain country, but they then decided to move to a new facility or to bring more business to their Central European facility. This can be one reason. The other one is we have been working -- we are working with Taiwanese companies, as you know, very after related to the semiconductor business. IA is a big thing. The data center industry is a big thing. You could, of course, decide to keep the supplies out of Taiwan or out of Asia. But that has proven to be risky. Risky sometimes because during COVID, there was no supplies coming out of Asia or very little. And then you have geopolitical issues, whereby it was also difficult to get supplies when the Suez Canal was closed and import tariffs and so on and so on and so on. So this is all the trend of nearshoring, that companies realize that also from a carbon footprint perspective, if you want to decarbonize, you want to travel less with your products, you want to manufacture locally for European market and that is a trend. And that doesn't mean that all of these companies make a decision and go ahead immediately as a process. It takes time for them to decide, ultimately, do they go, where they go and with whom do they go. And I think our job as CTP is to make sure that we talk to these companies who are in the decision-making process, bringing more business to Central Europe, and we are here to make sure that we accommodate them, to make sure that we have property for them to either grow their operations or set up business in Europe for Europe. And also going forward, that, I think, is the trend. And yes, with CTP well established with foot on the ground -- feet on the ground, sorry, and with projects in the region of Central Europe, I think we're well positioned to catch more of those. But yes, it's a process and it can take time for companies to move ultimately. I think there is one of the things maybe. I hope that answered your question.

Yes. That's very helpful. And just one more on the income from development activities. There's EUR 26 billion in your P&L. Could you provide a bit more color on why this is much higher than last year ? I appreciate it's a bit more lump than rental income. And yes, just how should we think about this in terms of a normalized run rate?

Yes. John, it's Richard. Happy to answer that question. Yes, last year, as you know, it also a little bit follows on from the nearshoring point as we see that ticking up. The more manufacturers you have in your pipeline, the more fit-out they need. So for example, last year, one of the big fit-outs that we did was for one at a time when these chip manufacturers, where everyone was talking about where we did 6 clean air production lines. So we built the clean air facility for them and they paid for it. And we are able to make a nice margin on that. So as we see the nearshoring going forward, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to repeat '24 every year. But if you look, that number has been slowly ticking up over the last number of years, also reflecting the increased deliveries and the continued share of manufacturers in our [indiscernible] base.

We now have a question from Steven Boumans from ABM ODDO.

One quick follow-up on the previous question. What is the expected run rate for the income on the development activities in that? Then I have two others.

Steven, it's a bit hard to forecast as these are all items which are short on invoice. And so this is not, per se, recurring. So these are extras that we do and deliver to the tenant on handover on invoice. I think if you look to the average over the last years, I would assume, it would be a bit above that. But whether we can hit as well the EUR 25 million in '25, I'm not sure. But we should be -- and it comes back to what Richard said, as the amount of manufacturer is increasing, it will tick up. If you look over a longer period of time, whether we are able to match '24, we'll see. We'll do our best, but yet to be seen.

Okay, clear. And another question. Please comment on the drivers of the decrease in projects under development versus last year. So for example, what is the typical time for development for your pipeline, '23 versus today? And how you anticipate the pipeline to evolve in the coming quarters?

Yes. That's a bit driven by timing. So we have, at the moment, 1.8 million square meters under construction, which indeed is slightly lower than the full year of '23 when we had 2 million. And the reason for that was that we started especially in 2022 and '23 some bigger projects, which were then delivered in '24. A big one was, for example, the Tesco facility in Hungary. It took us a bit longer to build. So it was for a bit longer in our pipeline. And therefore, if you look to the amount of under construction, it was always a bit higher compared to the deliveries we were guiding for. That's one. Two, we delivered quite a large number of projects in the fourth quarter of 700,000 square meter. So it's also a bit of timing. And many of new projects we have starting in Q1 of '25. So ultimately, yes, when you look to the new start in a specific year, it can depend on those factors. If you have a simple logistics building, we can, a bit depending on the country, deliver in 9 to 12 months. And that with 1.8 million square meter under construction with some new starts in Q1, we can easily hit the guidance we have given for '25 in terms of development completions.

Okay. Clear. And last one for me. Could you comment on the amount of euros of acquisitions where you have exclusivity in today?

You might refer to certain market rumors. We don't comment on market rumors in principle. We see -- and what I also said, of course, in the introduction, we see with a transaction market becoming more active again. We see some opportunities for us and we hope to close on those in '25. That's also why we did the capital raise, of course, last year in September. As you might remember, we told you at that time that we wanted to have the firepower to act upon acquisitions of both land bank as well as standing assets. We bought, of course, the big land plot in Düsseldorf Remon was referring to. But we are also looking at standing assets and how we can bolster our portfolio in certain markets. So we are always looking at opportunity there. And when there is something to announce, we will announce.

We now have a question from Frederic Renard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Maybe just one question, which is also a bit of a reflection. We see the implicit EPS growth a bit decelerating, which is normal as you get larger and larger. Yet your growth is a bit underestimated based on what your peers are reporting. If I look at your balance sheet, I think you have around EUR 1.1 billion of property under development. And I'm wondering what is the quantum of the debt that is mobilized to fund the pipeline. And I guess you see where I'm coming. It's linked to the capitalized interest by how much your earnings would be up making capitalized interest into account.

Yes, Frederic, indeed, if you look to basically non-income producing assets because that's where your question is coming from, we have indeed EUR 1.1 billion of investment properties under development. And then we have on top EUR 1.3 billion in terms of land bank. So in total, EUR 2.4 billion. So if you would capitalize your interest cost, it depends a bit on at what rate you would capitalize because you see peers capitalizing at average interest cost. Others do it at the marginal interest cost. So if you have -- if you do -- would take EUR 2.4 billion and you say you would capitalize at the marginal interest cost, which is currently around 3.5% to 4%, that gets you to a very substantial amount for us because if we do EUR 2.4 billion, a multiple by 4%. We have never capitalized interest costs because we'd like to keep our P&L clean. So if you look to our EPRA earnings, it's very close to the cash -- operating cash flow basically we are generating. And indeed, if you look to '25, you see the EPS growth being slightly lower with 8% to 10%. It's indeed partly driven by the fact that we don't capitalize interest cost. Also, we pulled forward some of the refinancings. In '24, we bought back EUR 950 million of bonds maturing in '25 and '26, which are all low-coupon bonds. So it's a bit of a lowering the EPS, but we bought them back below the nominal value, so we are also able to book a capital gain. So it's neutral for our equity, and it's improving our credit profile. And basically, it allows us to grow faster going forward. Because if you look to us and compare us to our peers, we have already taken most of the refinancing hit because we believe that in the current environment, with inflation around 2%, that cost of funding will not materially come down. And as cost of funding not will come down materially, we are okay to refinance in current environment and to take that hit because we can grow our top line much faster. Because if you look to the amount of deliveries we are doing, if you are investing at 10-plus yield on cost and borrowing at 4%, we should do as much as possible because every euro we invest is basically improving our metrics, both for the equity shareholders, but as well for the credit holders. So yes, we could capitalize interest, coming back to your original question, and therefore, increase basically optically, the earnings per share short term, but we are here for the long term. And yes, that means that the EPS growth for '25, it may be slightly lower. But going forward, we will be able to grow faster.

Yes. And Frederic, one of the things where you see the growth in the top line, the 16% growth in rental income and also the material cost in the annualized 12-month rental income, that feeds into the growth in the NPA. And finally, what you see is that we are also able -- as we were more -- I want to call it financially agile, but we were more active in terms of the development market, we're also able to gain market share. So our market share across our core markets increased again to 28.8%. So we were 23.5% when we listed less than 4 years ago. So we've been able to materially increase the market share in our core market, and that's building on the Parkmaker model that Remon's been talking about. So growing with your tenants, meeting the tenant demand. Going forward, we said we continue to see tenant demand over the last 2, 3 years. We do today still. And therefore, we continue to borrow money when others were maybe saying, we don't know, we want to stop. And that's allowed us to grow faster and now be in a better position to grow again from here.

That's clear. And maybe a second one, just quickly to rebound what you said on your cost of funding. I think you guided at the same deal, a low 3%, which is basically what you are today. But the spread again have gone quite a lot down in the unsecured market. I guess going forward, do you plan to only solicit [ bundes bearers ]? Or do you also think about bank facilities as you have done in '24 and '23?

So we'll always try and take the lowest marginal cost of debt, whichever market is offering that. And that's our responsibility to the shareholders to try and deliver the lowest possible cost of funding on a continuous basis. So in addition to the bonds that we bought back last year, we also repaid a number of bank loans in the last -- Q4 of last year, we also repriced a number of bank loans. So we'll always look to take the most attractive funding options.

We now have a question from Lee (sic) [ Wim ] Lewi from KBC Securities.

It's Wim Lewi from KBC Securities. I've got two questions. One is on the pre-let level. Whether you can give some color on where, let's say, which regions you have to do a bit more leasing activity? And also whether that will be like last year? You had a very strong fourth quarter, whether that will be more times towards the end of the year? And then a second follow-up question is on the Düsseldorf and also the other Vallourec brownfields you did. Is that something that you see continuing, rather investing in brownfields than greenfields in Germany? Yes, those are the two.

Wim, I will take the first question, and then Remon can comment on Düsseldorf and Mülheim. So if you look to our deliveries and leasing, yes, they are always a bit skewed to the fourth quarter. That will be the same in '25, that seasonality. So in terms of the deliveries, typically around 1/2 is in the fourth quarter and also leasing, like Remon referred to earlier, they're also a bit stronger fourth quarter. So that will persist. So as usual, we start typically the year with the pre-let between 30% and 40%. We currently are at 35%. And that ticks then up as the year progresses to the share at 72% -- of 80% to 90% pre-let at delivery. And we show also in the presentation that we have been consistently able to hit that 80% to 90% pre-let at completion. Last year actually was slightly higher with 92%. So that's the usual progression during the year. If you look to the different countries, of course, we need to do leasing in all the countries. And the pre-let is not, to be honest, specific to 1 country. We have in all countries pre-let ratios of around 30% to 40%. They're all in kind of similar ranges. And it comes back to the leasing that we are doing because also, if you look to the leasing stats and that also we show in the presentation where we show the amount of leasing we do per country, that's, of course, a large number, and we are a large part of the market in most of the countries with our market share in Central and Eastern Europe of around 30%. But that's the continued leasing we are doing. And as Remon and Richard were referring earlier, a lot with our existing clients expanding. And that also, of course, gives us the confidence that we will also this year hit the 80% to 90%. And we saw strong leasing in -- across the countries. Actually in 2024, Romania was quite strong, and Remon already referred to a few deals. Poland was quite good in terms of leasing, over 300,000 square meters. So we are also really getting up to speed over there. We started with doing more leases in Germany, with the deliveries coming online. Czech was a bit lower in '24, but -- and it was mostly in the first half of the year, it ticked a bit up in the second half of the year. So there are always those differences country by country, quarter-by-quarter. But overall, we are confident in the progress of our leasing activities to hit the 80% to 90% across our pipeline.

Yes. With regards to Düsseldorf -- or before I go to Düsseldorf, maybe just a couple of things to add to what Maarten just said. Indeed, we continue to grow market share in those 4 countries, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. That means we do more business than our competition does. That's a given. And with regards to the other markets where we entered, so for example, Poland, there, the entry strategy, as you may remember, was that we started to develop on a speculative basis more to get feet on the ground in Poland, and that has paid off because last year, we have been able to do some good take-up. And also this year, we will continue to focus on Poland because, obviously, the largest country in the region has a fantastic potential looking at also, for example, defense industry, but looking at how markets are changing. Yes, Poland has a lot of potential. And that's why also there we have almost 100 people on the ground with multiple projects going forward. So that's definitely some country region where we expect a lot from. And so that focus is also on leasing up the space which we started to develop. Also quite unique for Poland is the concept of doing it in a park setup in the concept of building full-service business parks. And yes, that's good. So with regards to Düsseldorf and other sites in Germany, I'm not sure for how long, but definitely, there was a window or is a window to buy in Germany at very attractive prices. You remember, we looked at how to enter the German market. And back in 2022, I think it was we decided to buy -- build the Deutsche industry there. Was it there? And that was a portfolio of 100 properties throughout Germany. At that time, they were doing around EUR 30 per square meter per year, I think. So we have been able to see rental growth. We have been able to work with those tenants and do extensions and built on land which came with that acquisition, the Deutsche industry. But there was also a start of CTP in Germany in the meantime. We have offices in Berlin, in Wuppertal and in Stuttgart. And yes, the market was open for us to buy, I think, some very nice land sites. Brownfields indeed, yes. Vallourec, they closed a project in Mülheim, which we bought then, around -- it was around EUR 110 per square meter, I think. So I think a very good price for a site, which is really strategically located. We had a careful look at the [ Piloshi ], had a careful look at the cost for demolition, but that was okay. We had full support from the city of Mülheim. In the meantime, we started to demolish and I hope that we will start construction in 2026. So that is a plan for beginning of next year, and we're already in advance talks with potential tenants for that project, which is 150,000 square meter lettable area, I think a bit more than that, but see how it will end up. So that's one. And then with the connection to Vallourec, we had the opportunity to also buy Düsseldorf site. You can imagine many people looked at Düsseldorf at the site. I think we had the advantage of the experience with Vallourec in Mülheim. We have very pleasant negotiations with Düsseldorf. Right now, it was a good time for the city of Düsseldorf also to support this very much. So yes, I think a quite unique opportunity to buy such sites, which is -- also there, the city of Düsseldorf do not wish to have just logistics. So they like -- they're looking for a mixed use. Mixed use means light manufacturing, but also some logistics. It means R&D. The site in Düsseldorf has lots of opportunities. We would like to do smaller units, like then think of units for SMEs. So those are units of 1,500 square meter, maybe a bit more, maybe 2,000, maybe 1,000. And those are also projects which we plan to develop in other places like we have currently under construction in Krefeld. We have bought a beautiful site in Aachen. We have a site in Rustatt and those sites are typically very suitable for SMEs for doing these units of around the 1,000 square meter. But it can well be that in the same product, you also do something larger or you add some logistics to it and so on and so on. So I think a super opportunity to do full-scale CT park business park. And yes, with brownfield, there is a lot of pluses, I think. Locations are normally very, very nice, but you also need to be careful when it comes to pollution and cost of demolition. But they also come with a lot of electricity. So we haven't done data centers, but we look into it. We are looking into doing a partnership with somebody to help us at least understand that business and then we can decide whether to do it ourselves or whether to do it in a partnership or whether to maybe sell part of the land to somebody who can do data centers [ as well ]. We don't know yet. We're open to any of those things. But that's also one of the benefits of those sites, which they normally come with a lot of utilities and infrastructure already. Plus, you don't have to start in a greenfield, where it is from a carbon footprint perspective also much better in line with our ambition. And yes, so quite good and there may be more, but it's not open forever, I think, the window, but for the moment, we're definitely looking into opportunities to extend our presence in Germany.

Great. Is the Capital Markets Day still planned in Düsseldorf or around that area?

Yes, absolutely. We are looking forward very much to showing you around because also the Wuppertal site is where we are building. I didn't mention that, but you know that we are under construction with multiple units there as well. At the same time, we do some refurbishment of the existing properties, which are heritage-listed industrial property, very beautiful I think. So we don't do it for the money only, right? We do it to create nice projects, and I really hope to see you there in September. So the tour is indeed Wuppertal, Mülheim, maybe Aachen. In Aachen, we're also doing a facility for Taiwanese Quanta, chip manufacturing related. It's also close to Eindhoven, of course. That is also definitely an industry ecosystem we are part of, but I think we stay on the German side of the border. It's a bit easier, from my experience, than trying to do it in the Netherlands which is in -- I won't say too much about that. But yes, we are looking forward to having you there in September, and there is going to be a 2-day tour of different properties and meetings with some of the German colleagues as well as some clients and other people. So we try to make a very interesting program for you guys to give you full insight of what we do.

We now have a question from Rob Jones from BNP Paribas.

So I've got three or four in total. Maarten, I think in the prerecorded bit, you highlighted there have been 8 bps of yield compression H2 '24. Did I hear you say that you expected further yield compression in '25? And if yes, why? Richard, for my model, where do you see weighted average cost of debt at the end of '25? Is 3.2%, 3.3% sensible? And then Remon, you've obviously demonstrated considerable nearshoring leasing success last year. I think it's a notable differentiator compared to a lot of your competition. Can this, as a potential, just the portfolio leasing activity, ramp up from the kind of low to mid-20s that we saw last year in terms of percentage terms? And then the final one on a slightly more challenging from -- or slightly more kind of concern from some of the investors we speak to. Obviously, tenant retention ticked down a bit. Yes, it's still higher, but it's gone from 90% to 87%. Why was this the case? If it falls further, should we see it as a negative?

To answer your first question, 8 basis points indeed in the second half of '24. And if we look to '25, yes, we expect to see further yield compression driven by the -- you see the transaction markets recovering. You saw the December, you saw Blackstone entering Czech Slovakia. This was basically their first entry in the market. You see more players entering the market, which ultimately also is good because that drives liquidity premiums down. Liquidity premium is an important part of the yields in the Central and Eastern European markets because if you look, there's still a relatively wide spread between yields and CE and in other markets. So as more players are acting in the market, we expect that to compress, but also driven by, of course, the lower cost of debt and lower interest rates. So both factors will basically support, in our view, evaluations and result in some further yield compression over '25.

Yes. And then on the cost of debt, yes, that's a realistic ballpark, Rob. No, we took the bulk of the increase over the last couple of years. So that will slowly tick up, but the bulk of that is behind us. May be different to do a lot of players in the industry. So I wouldn't expect it to go up very quickly, assuming that the marginal cost of funding stays roughly where we are today, which I think feels reasonable.

Thank you, Rob. Spot on. Yes, definitely, you can do much more. If you ask me, you're only at the beginning with CTP. We are -- yes, there is way more potential, obviously, for us to do business and projects. I think so far, what we've been able and trying to do is to build more -- yes, to build a backbone. That's why the IPO, as you know, we want to have access to the capital markets. We have many people, very good people, talented people who joined the organization. We are now looking into how can we further digitalize our company. And there is progress to be made. We are in process of hiring more people to support that. And when you have a stronger, I think, backbone, then you can even continue, grow the company further. And yes, in the region of Central Europe, yes, mostly, I think, with existing clients, but there is so much opportunity and potential for other companies to come to the region. And we didn't talk about defense industry, which we think is going to be big, and we want to be part of that together with our long-term tenants. We didn't talk about IA -- AI, sorry, enough because we also think there's opportunities. There are a lot of opportunities in -- yes, for us, I think with our tenants, to develop different type of properties, larger business parks, but also to look into doing small units, as I explained, we do now in Germany. We don't do that in other countries yet because I think they're too busy with doing the big box and the larger facilities. But we could, of course. In any city with 100,000 people, you could build a beautiful CT zone, as we call it, not a CT Park, maybe a bit small, urban business park type of things which we're doing. But now with affordable housing, with other things, with education, with campus, with -- and so on and on. So I think there's a lot of opportunity to still do with the existing clients, but also to try and get more new companies to work with CTP because it's nice that you do 2/3 of your business with existing clients, but it also means that maybe you do not do enough to get new clients. Yes. And then we could also now with Germany, we look into Western Europe. There are obviously also other locations where we could go to. And in terms of expansion, we're currently around 10 markets, but we could continue to grow that more. So yes, I think there's a good opportunity with our business model to continue growth and continue to build on a strong backbone to support countries. And I can -- I think if you can run a portfolio of 20 million, you can also run a portfolio of 30 million square meter. And yes, so that is looking forward. We just started.

Rob, on the tenant retention, I wouldn't read too much into the numbers on any one quarter. Around 90%, we're very happy. I think we have a tenant retention rate that most people would love to have. There's nothing specific to read into that. There's no trend. So we're very relaxed just to be around the 90% level.

It also fits in, of course, to the occupancy then. That's our main target. And sometimes, especially also if we look to Germany, the former DIR portfolio. We are okay if tenants move out. It gives us the opportunity to capture the reversion potential to the refurbishments if needed. So it's also for us. What we are focused on is our growth with existing clients and the occupancy, and tenant retention will vary a bit over the years like usual.

We now have a question from Raj Goyal from Green Street.

Just a couple from me. The first one is quite a broad one. So just what kind of impact from potential tariffs are you seeing or conversations you're having with current tenants in real time, if any? And then the second one is more around the like-for-like NRI print. So the full year '24 print came in at around 4%, a bit lower than the high 4% to 5% range that was trending over the year. Why is that the case?

I will start with the NRI and then Remon can comment on tariffs. If you look to the like-for-like NRI, yes, it trended down a bit over the years -- over the year, driven by especially where can you capture reversion. We already did quite some renegotiations in the first half of the year, quite a bit of the leasing in the second half as related to new leases for new developments, et cetera. There, you cannot capture reversion upon. So that has some impact. It's more a factor of where can you capture reversion because the indexation is done on the 1st of January. And for '25, we expect a similar like-for-like actually, around 4%.

Yes, with regard to import tariffs or if we -- and in what way are we talking to tenants, maybe, well, obviously, if there is Asian business, companies like to be located in Europe to also avoid that they would be exposed to import tariffs, if they manufacture locally for European markets. Yes, I think that's good. I think that's in line with what we talked about. It's in Europe for Europe, means that you get more activity in Europe for European markets instead of previously what we've seen in globalization; that things are being produced in a country where it's cheap and then shipped to all over the world. I think that's not the case anymore. It's changed completely. So the footprint, the global footprint of our clients is they're working on adjusting that to the current circumstances. And I think that will not change back so quick. If you have this kind of leadership in place with then can make so much impact on businesses, I think the companies will adjust their policies and strategies and to be a bit more solid, which is good. So for us, at least, I think there's benefit.

Yes. And Raj, just to follow up on what Remon was saying, the increase in tariffs or the increase in friction in global trade is not new. That's been ticking up over the last decade from Trump 1.0. So it's not that it's new news for companies. And I think you saw last year that even ahead of the U.S. elections, Asian companies were accelerating their nearshoring activities, which is what we kind of showed you in the statistics around our leasing last year. So independent of whoever won the election last year, tariffs were going to go up. Trade friction was going to go up. And for the companies who are manufacturing, they're making decisions on a 10-, 15-, 20-year horizon. So for them, it's clear that that's the trend of -- the main trend. At the moment, that's the direction that everyone is going in. So they then adjust their plans and they start implementing on them. And they're going to look through a quarter or 2 quarters of GDP growth or interest rates because they're investing for a 10-, 15-, 20-year perspective. So we do expect that trend to continue as the deglobalization trend drives nearshoring. So as Remon said, Europe, in Europe for Europe.

[Operator Instructions] We now have a question from Neeraj Kumar from Barclays.

I have a couple of questions around your ratings. So first, I see that you have received a new rating from Japanese rating agency. Can you please explain the rationality behind it? And do you plan to issue debt in that market?

Sure. Happy to. Yes, as part of our funding strategy is always to continue to create access to new diverse pools of capital. And as the Japanese yen is one of the 3 largest investable basis in the world, yes, we do plan to access the Japanese yen market, we'll swap everything back into euros.

Got it. Secondly, how are your conversations ongoing with S&P and Moody's? Do you see a potential for rating upgrade there? Or you think the decrease in ICR can be a limiting factor?

Look, we have our next discussions with the rating agencies over the next weeks following the publication of our numbers. Today, we're in regular debate with them. I think in terms of ICR, we're probably towards the bottom of where we're going to go. So assuming maintenance of marginal cost of funding around 4%, then all of our developments materially improve our interest coverage ratio and materially improve our net debt to EBITDA, also decrease our loan-to-value as you bring developments online. And that probably makes us very unusual in the real estate sector that we're able to not only grow the business, which makes it more stable, but also grow it and improve credit metrics. So we would expect that at some stage to be reflected by the rating agencies going forward.

As it is already, of course, partly reflected by the bull market. If you look to our curve, letting is straight in line with BBB flat names.

We now move on to questions from the webcast. Question from Anne Caris from Pictet. Can you please give us an idea of your funding plans for 2025?

Yes, sure. If we look to '25, we will probably have funding needs of around EUR 2 billion, similar to last year, split between CapEx and refinancing. We don't have too many expiries this year, just over EUR 500 million, but we're always actively managing our maturity profile and trying to extend our average debt maturity, as ultimately, as a real estate company, we hold long-term assets. So a bit over EUR 500 million in terms of maturities for '25. And then the usual CapEx, both, of course, development CapEx as well as CapEx to -- for acquisitions, whether extending or whether it's land bank. So '24, we did gross EUR 2.4 billion; net, a bit over EUR 1 billion with taking in account the refinancings. So for '25, we expect relatively similar, a bit lower on the gross, like I said, more around EUR 2 billion, maybe slightly below EUR 2 billion and then net, a bit above EUR 1 billion of refinancings this year.

Next question is from [ Peter Shutte ] from IEX. Can you give a guidance for the interest percentage average you expect to pay this year? Earlier, you say more than 3%, but that border you passed already in 2024?

Yes. I think Richard already commented on that. Our average cost of debt is now just above 3%. We expect it to still slightly tick up over the course of '25. But as we already have taken most of the refinancings and we are very proactive in '24, that tick-up will be much slower during '25. So by the end of '25, we expect to be somewhere low, low 3%.

And then a second question from Peter. EUR 0.80 EPRA EPS is at the bottom of the guidance. Was Q4 not so good as you expected?

No, that's more driven by the equity raise we did in September. So we issued new shares for EUR 300 million. And we only start to allocate that towards the end of '24 and '25. So if you have more shares outstanding, of course, it has a slightly dilutive impact on the short term before you start allocating it. And that's also what we already indicated at the Q3 of last year, that we expected to be on the lower end of the guidance range. So basically, the EUR 0.80 is in line with what we indicated already since Q3 of '24 and when we did the equity raise.

Yes. And if you look at the core business in Q4, we had an excellent leasing performance. We also delivered 700,000 square meters of developments at 10% plus yield on cost. So the business in Q4 was not disappointing at all. But as Maarten said, because we did the capital raise, we already said with the Q3 numbers that we would be at the lower end of the guidance for last year.

We now have a question from [ Dominic Bokonaki ]. How do you think the YOC will change in the next 2 years?

We are committed to keep our yield on cost above 10%. We have done so over the last decades. And even with moving more in towards Western European markets, with Germany ramping up in terms of development, we expect to keep on group level, the yield on cost above 10%.

And what markets have the biggest potential to improve it further?

We will always try to improve our yield on cost in each and every market. And then that's where our teams are continuously working upon. That's also, of course, hand in hand with in-house, the development expertise that we're having, in-house procurement teams, in-house design teams both focused on optimizing our returns. So we'll try to get a higher yield on cost for each and every project and for each and every country. And that's what we manage on group level. Like I said, there, we want to keep it above 10%.

Yes. But even if we are in Germany and we're developing at 9%, we're revaluing around 5%, we're making a fantastic development profit there. That indeed would be a little bit higher then even if we were developing at 12% in Serbia and revaluing at 8%. So it's not just the yield on cost target, but also the gap between the yield on cost that we're able to achieve and the revaluation yield for the asset on its completion.

We now have a question from George Nikolaou from Blackfinch Asset Management. Would you be looking at moving some of your development pipeline from traditional logistics to data center deliveries, similar to Robosys, Goodman, Sergo (sic) [ SEGRO ], et cetera?

Yes. I think the big thing Remon touched on, on that a little bit earlier, so we have been acquiring some land plots particularly in Western Europe with interesting access to utilities, and we continue to investigate the opportunities there.

We now have a question from [ Jital Jamanli ], Deutsche Bank. The rent growth on new leases signed in '24 remained more muted compared to 2023. Can you provide more color on that? And where do you see the ERV growth going ahead?

Yes. I think that really depends market to market, and maybe Remon wants to comment on that a little bit after that. So if you look at the rental growth adjusted for the country mix, we were 3% up in '24 over 2023, something that we're happy with. We do expect ERVs to continue to tick up, but that's somewhere around the 2% to 3% level across the portfolio, but it also really depends on the individual markets what you are able to achieve. A market like the Czech Republic, where you had an explosion in rents over the last 2 or 3 years, that's not going to continue at the same pace for the next year or 2. But then there will be markets where we have material pockets of demand where ERVs can tick up materially. One of the markets where we would expect over time to capture quite a lot of reversion in our portfolio is also Germany. I think Remon mentioned earlier, the extremely low level of rents that we had in the Deutsche Industrie portfolio when we acquired it, but we do see a material opportunity to increase those going forward.

We currently have no further questions. So I'll hand back to the management team for closing remarks.

Yes, we'd like to thank everyone very much for their questions and their attention, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue going forward. Thanks very much, everyone. Have a good day.