DEMIRE Deutsche Mittelstand Real Estate AG ($DMRE)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the FY 2025 Earnings Call of DEMIRE Deutsche Mittelstand Real Estate AG. I'm Maxi Gutmann from NuWays, and I'll be moderating today's call. We will begin with the management presentation followed by a Q&A session. I will provide instructions for the Q&A once the presentation has concluded. And with that, let's get started. Dirk Ruffel, the floor is yours.

Thank you. So ladies and gentlemen, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the results presentation. On DEMIRE side in the conference room here in London, you have myself, Dirk Ruffel, obviously, who's talking; Tim Bruckner, CFO; Ralf Bongers, CIO; Julius Stinauer, Investor Relations; and I think 5 people of our team being present as well. In terms of structure of the call, I will provide a quick executive summary before handing over to Tim and Ralf to provide more details for '25. And at the end, I will give also a quick outlook on what we are going to expect for '26. So I think first main message is that both our rental income and FFO for '25 are in line with expectations and the provided guidance. Company continued to optimize financial profile through active management of the debt, in particular, we refied or newly raised roughly EUR 77 million in mortgage loans over the year '25. In terms of sales, we sold rough -- we sold about -- I think it was 11 assets with a total GDP of over EUR 64 million. These disposals mainly served to streamline the portfolio and contributed to the deleveraging strategy. We further strengthened our operational capabilities, especially on the asset management side, which is obviously to help driving letting performance. In terms of detail, if you jump to Page 5 of the presentation, which is the executive summary. So maybe some highlights from my side before I hand over to Ralf. The letting performance improved compared to last year, but that was predominantly driven by the conversion of the noise master lease into the individual contracts. EPRA-Vacancy slightly increased due to space reductions of some bigger tenants like telecom, whereas our WALT was bumped up a little bit to now 4.7 years. Transaction side, I mentioned it already, we sold 11 assets, GDP, EUR 64 million, including also some smaller ones like a leasehold sale that will generate cost savings going forward. On the financials, to point out, rental income reached EUR 53.5 million, FFO I at EUR 10.1 million. I mentioned it before, it's in line with the guidance we provided. The net LTV remained stable at 41.8%. And then on the bottom right-hand side, finally, on the processes, we refied EUR 77 million of mortgage loans and have achieved gold awards again for EPRA best practice reporting. And then if we jump to now page, I think it is Page 7 and 8, and then Ralf can provide a bit more detailed specifics on the asset management side and the transaction side of things.

Good morning, everybody. The annualized contractual rent has decreased from EUR 56.4 million down to EUR 51.3 million. This reduction is mainly driven by the disposal of the assets in Freiburg and Hamburg and an increased vacancy of our asset in Bonn. We have seen a strong letting performance. The letting performance increased significantly from 68,000 square meters in 2024 up to 127,000 square meters in 2025. And the largest drivers are here the 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 of course, the converting, as already mentioned by Dirk of the former master lease for our largest asset in Neuss to individual lease contracts. Coming to the occupancy rate, the EPRA-Vacancy has increased from 15.1% up to 16.4%. The increase of vacancy is primarily a consequence of Deutsche Telekom leaving part of their rental space in our asset in Bonn. And of course, letting achievements in our assets in Rostock and Langenfeld have mitigated this effect. The WALT has increased slightly from 4.6 years up to 4.7 years, what we consider to be a good number for our portfolio consisting mainly of office properties. And the WALT improvement reflects a prolongation with Deutsche Telekom in our asset in Bonn and letting achievements in our largest asset in Rostock. Let's talk about now about the financials, and I hand over to my colleague, CFO, Tim Bogner.

Thank you, Ralf. Welcome, everyone. As you have already heard, rental income is down, but I think the good news is that we have stabilized our NOI margin, albeit at a rather low level of 68%. But nevertheless, I guess it was important to stabilize it. What you then see in our P&L that there is a further negative impact from the valuation of our portfolio. I guess that is a bit weaker than we thought about a year ago. But as we already highlighted in November last year, we see a lot of pressure on the transaction market continuing. And so we have nearly the same fair value adjustment for our portfolio. We have slightly lower SG&A, mainly driven by the effects from the bond restructuring a year before, but we are working obviously actively on reducing G&A further. It's not easy in that structure, and it's not easy also if you see inflation pressure on especially consultant work. But I guess we are positive that we are able to reduce the number this year. Going further down to financial income and expenses, you see a big gap to last year, mainly driven by the effect of the bond structure in the year before and the shareholder loan, which then at the end results to the negative earnings figures and also in effect to the lower FFO I, which is still in line with expectations, but considerably lower than the year before. The same effects are basically visible on the next slide, the balance sheet. You see a shrinking balance sheet volume driven by the valuation effect and the disposals that have been mentioned by Dirk and Ralf before. Obviously, because of the negative P&L effect, we also see lower equity and lower equity ratios in our balance sheet. The next slide gives you an idea of the LTV. As Dirk already said, the LTV is about stable. We have sold some properties. We have refinanced some mortgage loans. And we have only one mortgage loan left to refinance in 2026, and that is at a very low double-digit euro amount. So we are pretty confident that we can probably even increase our mortgage volume a bit and benefit from the higher volumes that German mortgage banks seem to lend this year, which will hopefully also decrease pressure on the bond refinancing that comes up next year, but that we will obviously address early at the second half in this year. What we see when we refinance our debt, obviously, we have some old debt in our balance sheet with very low interest rates. When we refinance that, we currently see net cost of leverage of between 3.7% to about 4.5%. And overall, this has increased our average cost of debt from 4.35% to 4.85%. And with that, I hand back to Dirk.

Okay. Yes, in terms of outlook for '26, if you go to Page 13, you see on the right-hand side, we expect lower numbers due to having a reduced portfolio following the planned disposals. The guidance for next year is rental income between EUR 41.5 million to EUR 43.5 million, FFO I in the range of minus EUR 1 million to plus EUR 1 million. The main objectives for '26 are not surprising, reducing costs, have a look at cost efficiency measures and above all, improve rental income, and that's only been done through renewals and new lettings. So this is the main objectives for next year. Obviously, also deleveraging where we can and selling assets where we can, all acknowledging that is at the moment, a very difficult market and certainly, the global incidents happening literally on a semiannual basis don't help, but we obviously do the best we can. So I think that concludes the outlook for '26, and then we jump into the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] then let's proceed with the first question from Philipp Sennewald.

Maybe first one to start with for Tim. You mentioned you only have a small amount to refinance this year. Can you tell me what is the interest on that loan you have to refinance the current interest?

The interest on that loan is currently quite high because it was a restructured financing from a larger asset, and we expect the interest expense to come down or the loan to be fully repaid at, let's say, the third quarter of this year.

Okay. That's -- I mean that's good news to hear. Then I have a couple on the portfolio and on your rent levels. First, the like-for-like rent, the decline, is that purely explained by the increased vacancy? Or did you also like relet at lower face rents? And considering the overall vacancy, do you have a target for this year, which you want to reach?

I think the vacancy is a combination -- I mean maybe to answer the first question, the headline rent has not changed. So there was no decline in headline rents on a square meter basis when you look at the assets. So the decrease in occupancy is literally either selling assets or actually losing tenants, i.e., people not renewing or having a couple of insolvencies. So that's the reason.

Okay. And the vacancy -- I mean, you must have a target for this year, target figure for the vacancy level for the end of the year. Can you elaborate on that?

It depends on the sales very much, right? I mean if the sales go through, then obviously, we have a target. We have annualized lease-up assumptions as well, but it very much depends how we will go through with our asset sales, which is, to be honest with you, hard to predict because at the moment and in the last 2 years, I would say the average transaction time if a transaction goes through is between, what, 8 to 10 months. And you can only be sure once you actually sit in the notary and sign the SPA and get your down payment that the deal is going through. So it very much depends whether the sales are going to happen or not.

Yes, that's fair enough, I think. I would like to continue with one final part of my questions here. I see your contractual rent is at around [ RON 50 million ] at the end of '25. When I do the math, to reach like the midpoint of your top line guidance for 2026 and yes, taking the yield you currently have on your portfolio, you would have to sell assets with north of EUR 100 million, which you were not able to achieve last year. I would be interested in what is your disposal strategy? Is it rather selling like 2, 3 larger assets or rather sell smaller noncore ones? And I mean, you mentioned already, how do you see the market at the moment, especially in the past couple of weeks with the events happening in the Middle East?

Yes. I mean in terms of asset selection, what we are going to sell, I would say it's a mixed bag, right? There are assets where we basically lose money on because you have an empty asset and you have vacancy costs. So there are a couple of these ones we want to get rid of. So nonstrategic. And then obviously, in order to achieve a certain volume, we are going to market some assets which we consider to be liquid in the market. and liquid in the market, meaning they obviously have to have some level of stabilization. In terms of how I see the market in the last couple of weeks, I would say it hasn't gotten worse due to Iran, but it wasn't good to start with. I would have hoped that things will calm down a little bit. And then this happened, it certainly doesn't help. The buyer pool is still very much restricted in terms of smaller assets between EUR 5 million to EUR 20 million in okay locations still work, but the buyer pool is very restricted in terms of it's mostly family offices. There is no institutional money. So obviously, that restricts the buyer pool.

And Philipp, maybe the rental income has certain components. And as you have seen, we have sold 11 assets last year and earlier this year, and that also drives rental income down together with the beforementioned disposals and vacancies. So it's a mixed bag, and you cannot just say how much do you sell this year to reach this year's guidance. It's more the effects from last year that affect this year's numbers.

Okay. I just thought the contractual rent would have included that already, but thanks for the...

The rental income guidance, just to be clear that, that is much driven by what happened in the past.

Yes. Yes, yes, for sure, for sure. Makes perfect sense. Thank you, Tim. Yes, I think -- yes, I can totally agree to what you've said on Iran. We all hope that it goes by soon, affects all of us.

Well, it doesn't seem like there are any more questions. I think, honestly, we can conclude the call for today. Dirk Ruffel, would you like to share any closing remarks?

I mean, look, thanks again for taking the time and joining us and having a look at the documents. If there are any questions coming up afterwards, feel free to get in touch with the team, and we are more than happy to provide answers where we can.