DEMIRE Deutsche Mittelstand Real Estate AG (DMRE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DEMIRE's Q3 Earnings Call. My name is Maxi Goodman, and I'll be your moderator today. We'll begin with the management presentation and then move into the Q&A. I'll provide more details on the process once the presentation concludes. And with that, let's get started. Mr. Nickel, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, from DEMIRE's side, and welcome to our 9 months 2025 results presentation. Thanks for joining us today. With me here is DEMIRE's CFO, Tim Bruckner; CIO, Ralf Bongers; and Julius Stinauer, our Head of Investor Relations. I'm sure many of you have already reviewed our results, which I would describe as robust, particularly in light of our smaller portfolio size compared to 2024. In a still challenging environment and weak real estate markets, we successfully completed several property disposals to streamline our portfolio and strengthen our balance sheet. These sales have already generated around EUR 43 million this year. Given current market prices, we have decided to hold back some further disposals and will, therefore, not redeem the EUR 50 million of our bonds early as originally planned. We believe retaining these assets for now positions us for stronger value appreciation and gives us more financial flexibility in the future. This year, we secured new bank loans totaling around EUR 75 million for 5 properties, and we were able to partially revalue these loans. Since summer, we've already seen encouraging signs of recovery in the financing market and for real estate companies. Despite a weak economic backdrop, DEMIRE delivered solid operational performance, achieving nearly the same letting volume as last year while maintaining stable and in some areas, higher rent levels. This positive trend reflects our excellent work of our asset management team and our close tenant relationships. On top of that, we expect added momentum from the new IMOTEX center manager starting in early 2026. Now that we've covered some of the highlights, let's move to the next slide. We'll briefly walk you through the developments of our key metrics in the first 9 months of this year. Let us make a more detailed look at our 4 strategic pillars. Among the key highlights, there are continued robust letting performance, the successful financing and the progress we've made on our asset disposals. Our asset management activities generated an annualized contractual rent of EUR 53.9 million, slightly lower than at the end of '24 due to property disposals. Letting performance remained almost stable, a solid achievement given the challenging economic environment in Germany. We are also adding momentum at our largest asset, IMOTEX in Neuss with a new center manager starting early 2026. From that point on, leases will be concluded directly with DEMIRE, further enhancing our earnings potential. The EPRA vacancy rate rose to 17.4%, mainly due to Deutsche Telekom partially vacating space in Bonn as already announced before, offset by successful new lettings in Rostock and Langenfeld. Encouragingly, these lettings also improved our WALT to 4.7 years. Let's look at our transactions. This year, we completed several disposals with expected proceeds of around EUR 40 million, though some are still closing and not fully reflected in the Q3 figures. The sale of a leasehold property will bring meaningful cost savings going forward. We are continuing to focus our disposals on smaller, nonstrategic and mature assets. Overall, these steps strengthen our flexibility and position us well for the future. Turning to the financials. Rental income came in at EUR 41.4 million, down 18% compared to the previous period, mainly due to the removal of LogPark” and Leipzig and the LIMES asset from our portfolio. FFO I stood at EUR 8.3 million, reflecting the smaller portfolio and the lower rental income. Our net LTV was 43%, only slightly higher than year-end 2024 at 40.9%, showing that our balance sheet remains solid. Regarding our processes, all our mortgage loans maturing in 2025 have been successfully extended by at least 3 years. In addition, we once again achieved Gold Awards for both our EPRA section of our annual report and our EPRA sustainability report, reflecting the high quality and the transparency of our reporting. Looking at our earnings so far this year and what we expect for the rest of 2025, we are sticking to our guidance. For the full year, we anticipate rental income of around EUR 52 million to EUR 54 million and FFO I of EUR 5 million to EUR 7 million. Ralf I would now ask you to continue with some more portfolio highlights.

Good morning, everybody. And as already mentioned by Frank, the annualized contractual rent has decreased slightly from EUR 56.4 million down to EUR 53.9 million. This reduction is mainly driven by the disposals of 3 smaller assets and then an increased vacancy in one of our larger assets. Nevertheless, as already mentioned by Frank also, we had a strong letting performance and close to matching last year's strong performance with 56,000 square meters. Largest drivers here are prolongations of 9,400 square meters with Deutsche Telekom in our asset in Kempten and approximately 10,000 square meters with the DIY market. And Frank already elaborated a bit on our asset in Neuss and in addition to this strong letting performance, we have appointed a new center manager for our largest asset in Neuss with 56,000 square meters. And this new management will come into effect in Jan 2026. And from then on, leases will be handled directly by DEMIRE and this will give us better control over the property and help us to unlock more of its earning potential. The EPRA vacancy has increased from 15.1% up to 17.4%. The increase of vacancy is primarily a consequence of Deutsche Telekom leaving parts of their rental space in the asset in Bonn and our letting achievements, especially in the asset in Rostock and Langenfeld helped us to mitigate this effect. The WALT has increased slightly from 4.6 years up to 4.7 years and the WALT improvement reflects prolongation with Deutsche Telekom in Bonn and further letting achievements, for example, in our asset in Rostock. And we see this 4.7 years still at a solid level for our portfolio with an office overweight. Yes, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Tim, who will explain the financial highlights. Tim, please take over.

Hello, everybody. Our [indiscernible] as said before, lower mainly driven by the previously disposal of LogPark and the deconsolidation of the LIMES portfolio [indiscernible] or less stable operating margin in the high 60s in line loss from the rental of real estate. I think for the first time, this is a stabilization of our margins, and we are looking forward obviously to reduce vacancy and increase margins again 60%. When you further go down, we see that there were some [indiscernible] again, profit from fair value adjustments in properties. Those were connected to the disposal prices we can achieve in the current market conditions. And as you have all read our release from last week, it has also an effect on our disposal strategy going forward. The impairment of financial and other receivables mainly consists of the remaining LIMES connected shareholder loans into the structure given the assumed disposal prices of that portfolio. We have now completely written off all proceeds that we expected previously from the LIMES portfolio. We -- given the difficult economic situation, obviously also try hard to push down G&A. I think there is some success in our complex structure. It's not that easy, but we have reduced the number quite a bit from EUR 9.1 million to EUR 7.8 million for the first 9 months of this year. As you all know, interest expense is up mainly driven because of the amended terms of the bond and also the shareholder loan. As you know, shareholder loan interest is not payable, but it is shown in our current financial statements. So we show a significant rise from EUR 12 million to EUR 41 million. This all sums up into FFO after taxes before minorities and shareholder loan interest of EUR 8.3 million for the first 3 quarters of this year. As you know, our guidance is slightly above our guidance for the first 9 months, but we expect some factors in the last 3 months that will hinder us from increasing the guidance at least at this point. On our balance sheet, you see the effect, obviously, of a shift from investment properties to assets held for sale and also the negative results of the period that at the end of the day, shortened our balance sheet and led to some slightly weaker ratios than in the previous reporting period. At the same time, the net LTV is increasing slightly from 40.9% to [ 43% ] excluding the shareholder loan, obviously, we expect that to go down for year-end driven by some closing of the disposals that have been mentioned by Ralf and Frank before. The average cost of debt is more or less stable against the end of the previous year. As said before, we have refinanced quite a number of mortgage loans. You can imagine that those refinancings came in at a higher cost than the original loan. So we see a bit or we will see a slightly further increase in the nominal cost of debt going forward. Back to you, Frank.

Thanks, Tim. All in all, we delivered robust results for the first 9 months of 2025 and feel well prepared for the developments ahead of the remainder of the year. Looking at our performance in the first 9 months and the outlook for the rest of the year, we are keeping our full year 2025 guidance, as Tim just mentioned. FFO is currently at EUR 8.3 million, above guidance, though we do expect some additional maintenance costs in the last quarter. Hence, we are confident to achieve the rental income guidance of EUR 52 million to EUR 54 million and to generate an FFO I of EUR 5 million to EUR 7 million. Before we move into the Q&A session, I'd like to reiterate our key priorities going forward. We are staying firmly closed and focused on strengthening our financial position with debt reduction and financial optimization as key priorities. At the same time, we'll continue selling assets where it makes sense, while putting a strong focus on operational excellence to unlock the full value of our portfolio. Thanks for listening, and we are now happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Hopefully, that's clear. Then let's proceed with the first question.

I hope you can hear me well. Tim, I want to get back to the extra effects you mentioned in the fourth quarter affecting FFO. Can you elaborate a bit further? I mean you consistently improved FFO over the first quarters sequentially, and now you expect at least EUR 1.5 million negative or EUR 1.3 million negative to be precise in Q4. Yes, I want to know maybe a bit more detail on that.

I think Frank helped me with that by saying that we expect to spend more maintenance than in the previous quarters. So if those maintenance effects really materialize, we think that this should have a negative FFO impact.

Maintenance piles up at the end of the year, Philipp. So we have to be -- and this is why we think that going down with the FFO I prognosis makes a lot of sense to us.

All right. Understood. That helps. And then also regarding the news you put out last week, you also mentioned in the end. I want to know, I mean, you have to pay the penalty fee now as you do not pay back the EUR 50 million. First of all, when is this cash relevant? Is this cash relevant this year? Or is it stretched over the course of the -- until the bond is due? And second one, what makes you so confident that you can compensate by higher selling prices for this penalty payment? And does this imply that you see easing pricing pressure?

Well, let me answer the first part of the question. It's payable at maturity.

And on the second part of the question, Philipp, we always said that we are opportunistic in our sales. So we plan to sell the assets that we want to sell and that at a fair price. And we haven't seen that for the last month. So the decision was to go on with the assets that are usually our best assets because otherwise, you can't sell anything these days anyhow and keep them to keep us flexible for the future.

Okay. That makes sense. And I mean, in the case of, yes, easing pricing pressure next year, should that happen? Would you also be willing to sell like, let's say, a portfolio of assets once the market improves?

If it makes sense, of course, Philipp. But I think the glass bowl is not big enough to give you a real answer on that.

Yes. And so far, we don't see any significant portfolio deals in the market.

All right. Then thank you very much. Since it seems there are no additional questions at this time, we can wrap things up here. Mr. Nickel, would you like to share any closing remarks?

Yes. Thanks again, everybody, for dialing in. We'll be back at our full year results presentation on March 19, 2026. And we are looking forward to speaking with you then again.