Embassy Office Parks REIT (EMBASSY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q3 FY '22 Earnings Conference Call of Embassy Office Parks REIT. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek Agarwal, Head of Investor Relations and Communications at Embassy REIT. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to the third quarter FY 2022 Earnings Call for Embassy REIT. Embassy REIT released its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, a short while back. As is our standard practice, we have placed our quarterly financial statements, earnings presentation discussing our performance and a supplemental financial and operating data book in the Investors section of our website at www.embassyofficeparks.com. As always, we would like to inform you that management may make certain comments on this call that one could deem forward-looking statements. Please be advised that the REIT's actual results may differ from these statements. Embassy REIT does not guarantee these statements or results and is not obliged to update them at any time. Specifically, the financial guidance and any pro forma information that we will provide on this call are management estimates based on certain assumptions and have not been subjected to any audit review or examination procedures. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such guidance and information, and there can be no assurance that we will be able to achieve the same. Further, there are significant risks and uncertainties related to the scope, severity and duration of the COVID pandemic and the direct and indirect economic effects of the pandemic and related containment measures on Embassy REIT and on our occupiers. Joining me today are Michael Holland, the CEO; Vikaash Khdloya, the Deputy CEO and COO; and Aravind Maiya, the CFO. Mike will start off with the business and industry overview, followed by Vikaash and Aravind. We will then open the floor to questions. Over to you, Mike.

Thank you, Abhishek. Good evening, and thank you for joining us on the call. We have many encouraging items to communicate today. We will report on multiple new lease deals, in fact, our highest level of new leasing since April 2020, and again, on the delivery of our quarterly distributions, a healthy INR 4,929 million, bringing our total year-to-date unitholder distributions to INR 15,640 million or INR or 16.50 per unit. In addition to our results for the quarter, Aravind will detail an increase in guidance for our NOI and distributions. This increase, in spite of the current Omicron wave, reflects the clear acceleration in leasing activity and our optimism on the growing demand for India office as we move into FY '23. On another positive note, it's 1 year since the ETV acquisition and Vikaash will detail a number of areas of outperformance of that asset in that time. And finally, we have today received a right of first offer, or ROFO information from Embassy Group in relation to Embassy's splendid TechZone, the 26-acre business park in Chennai totaling around 5 million square feet when fully developed, and we will shortly commence our review process on this opportunity. We are excited by the potential to continue to expand our portfolio footprint with large-scale, high-quality opportunities, whether through our sponsor or partner network or external market opportunities. In terms of the external environment, the new Omicron variant emerged in India towards the end of December. In just 1 month, cases in India have multiplied. So as seen in the west, the impact in terms of hospitalization and fatalities is limited. However, there has been a disruption to normal business operations arising from staff absence and post test in quarantine, resulting in a delay in the new year back-to-office plans of many corporates. Active cases in leading western countries have up only 4 to 5 weeks peak. And in many countries, we now see a significant downward trend. If urban India were to follow similar trends in time lines, we would likely see a peak by early to mid-February followed by an active recommencement of back-to-office ramp-up. In Q3, we saw a very encouraging trend of new lease deals with multiple new market entrants committing to premises. The conversion of leasing pipeline into signed deals has been impressive despite delays in some cases due to staff absences, and we are confident that the long-term trend remains intact. Our confidence stems from the consistent feedback from our corporate occupiers as well as the clear macro differentiators for India office, which are increasingly translating into the growing leasing pipeline. First, it is clear that the demand from our customer base continues to grow as the world accelerates its digital transformation journey. Many of our occupiers continue to report record earnings, deal pipelines and accelerated hiring. As these corporates grow and expand their footprint, India continues to be their destination of choice, given the abundance availability of cost-effective and talent. Second, that STEM employee base is a young demographic in the early stages of their careers, who greatly value opportunities for learning networking and innovation in the workplaces of these rapid growth businesses. In addition, Urban India has well-known infrastructure challenges for efficient work from home and global concerns around cybersecurity and data privacy continue to increase. All these factors drive the importance of physical office for the growing workforce in India. While back to office in India has been delayed by the current Omicron wave, the intent from corporate leadership is clear and physical office continues to be at the heart of their businesses. And third, at the property product level, this rapidly growing tech and global captive customer base is seeking higher product standards for their employees. Institutional grade, wellness-oriented and green-rated buildings have been the preferred choice for global occupiers, a trend which will continue, given the ever-increasing focus around attracting and retaining the best talent. At Embassy REIT, we provide an industry-leading portfolio of best-in-class properties, which we continue to enhance through our active asset debt management and ESG initiatives. On ESG, we recently set out our sustainability road map with 19 specific programs, each with a defined baseline and midterm targets. By way of example, we have set out our commitment to increasing our renewable energy share from our 2019 baseline of 35% to 75% by FY 2025. We believe that our ESG initiatives further cement our position as the office provider of choice. As the pandemic recedes, we expect pent-up leasing demand to surge and that, too, in a favorable backdrop of constrained market supply, especially in key micro markets across the country. The fundamentals of the Indian office sector and the strength of our institutional grade properties present in the right locations will continue to drive our leasing momentum and growth trajectory. I will now hand over to Vikaash to present our business and operating highlights of Q3.

Thank you, Mike, and good evening, everybody. We continued our positive trajectory on new leasing and development in Q3. Business and operating highlights for this quarter include leased 428,000 square feet at 24% spreads across 15 deals, including the highest level of new leasing since April 2020, delivered 1.1 million square feet JPMorgan campus within budget and commenced new growth cycle with 1.9 million square feet new office development at Embassy TechVillage, or ETV; launched one of Asia's largest rooftop solar projects to deliver over 20-megawatt scale and over 30% in projected IRR; and successfully integrated the INR 98 billion ETV property within a year of acquisition; delivered better than underwriting on a number of metrics. Let me cover the detailed update on the 3 broad themes: our leasing performance, our organic growth updates and our acquisition initiatives. First, an update on our leasing performance. As of December 2021, our portfolio occupancy stood at 87% on a 33.6 million square feet operating area. During Q3, we witnessed an uptick in our deal activity as we successfully leased 428,000 square feet at 24% spreads across 15 deals. This included 346,000 square feet of new leases signed at 17% re-leasing spreads and 82,000 square feet renewals at 39% renewable spreads. Worthy of particular note is that about 1/3 of our new leases during the quarter were to new occupiers. We added 8 new occupiers, bringing an occupier roaster to over 200 of the world's leading corporates. Deal traction came from anchor sectors, including tech, financial services and banks as well as from high-growth sectors like SaaS, logistics and e-commerce. In another clear indication, multiple occupiers have retracted their previous exit or downsized notices and in few cases where occupier has already exited during the pandemic, they're now looking to re-lease space with us. So far, we have received 8 such requests relating to over 300,000 square feet leases as these occupiers reassess their office needs led by rapid business growth and improved visibility on the future plans. The combination of increasing demand from new as well as existing occupiers underscores our firm belief that in India, the office is here to stay and grow. We remain fully on track with our previous guidance on escalations, expiries and renewals for this financial year. These details are also included in our earnings materials. With regard to our new leasing for FY '22, Aravind had laid a guidance of 400,000 square feet during Q1 earnings call in July last year. Of this, we have already achieved about 700,000 square feet of new leasing year-to-date and factoring our current deal pipeline of about 400,000 square feet, we are raising our guidance and are now targeting to achieve over 1 million square feet new leasing for the full year FY '22, a significant increase compared to our initial guidance. While the recent Omicron wave may result in short-term delays in deal signing, we continue to see an increase in inquiries, inspections and RFPs from occupiers from a range of sectors. The Indian office market is well on its way to a demand rebound with improving business sentiments, increased offshoring and robust hiring, especially in the tech sector. As per independent market research reports, calendar 2021 saw a gross absorption of 38 million square feet with Q4 alone contributing to half of this. With 24 million square feet of RFPs currently active in our 4 markets, we expect a continuation of this recovery trajectory, and Bangalore is expected to be at the forefront of India office demand recovery given its well-established tech and start-up ecosystem. Bangalore contributed to over 1/3 of pan-India office absorption in 2021, and currently accounts for over 60% of pan-India active RFPs. Our 74% concentration to Bangalore market, therefore, continues to be our major strength and a significant differentiator for us. Moving to our organic growth updates. During the quarter, we successfully delivered a state-of-the-art 1.1 million square feet campus to JPMorgan at ETV. This has been possible due to the seamless integration of on-ground teams soon after acquisition last year and the successful execution despite COVID disruptions. Given this excellent result, we have commenced the next phase of growth at ETV with the development of 1.9 million square feet Block 8 office buildings as well as Central Garden, an 8-acre central attraction zone with world-class amenities such as an open amphitheatre, sport zones, FNB and sit-out areas. These initiatives, along with the recently inaugurated pedestrian skywalk are aimed to further enhance ETV's competitive advantage for years to come. Beyond ETV, we also continued with construction at full pace with peak labor strength across our sites for the ongoing 1.6 million square feet on-campus projects. The upcoming buildings at Embassy Manyata and TechZone, totaling 1.9 million square feet, are on track for delivery in 2022. We are also exploring redevelopment of 400,000 square feet across 2 of the earliest blocks at Embassy Manyata, with potential to more than double the current leasable area to 1 million square feet and thereby create long-term value. We are currently evaluating the timing and financial considerations and will keep you posted as we progress. Further, we are on track for a June 2022 launch of our 619 key dual-branded Hilton hotels at Embassy Manyata and handover to Hilton team is currently underway. Both these hotels significantly add to the overall business ecosystem offering of Manyata, our largest property, and increases entry barriers for other competing office properties for many years. Thereby enhancing our office-leasing efforts. The hotel has already finalized long-term contracts with over 50 leading corporates and further discussions are underway. We believe that this launch is well timed as the hospitality sector is witnessing a gradual demand recovery. Worthy of note is that our 2 operational hotels turned EBITDA positive in Q3, driven by an increase in occupancy. And while there may be short-term blips with the new Omicron variant in this quarter, the current -- the underlying trend continues to be positive. Another organic growth initiative that we have undertaken is closely linked to our broader sustainability strategy. We have placed a contract for one of Asia's largest solar rooftop projects with over 20 megawatts in scale and over 30% projected IRR. This project entails installing solar panels across 8 of our properties. We have already secured green financing at sub-6% and are targeting to complete installation by early 2023. Post commissioning, over 40% of the total baseline power consumption of our business parks will be serviced by renewable energy. Finally, an update on our acquisition initiatives. Growth is a key focus area for us. And in addition to the ROFO opportunity, which Mike noted in his earlier remarks, we continue to actively evaluate acquisition opportunities in the market. Our acquisition strategy is based on our previously stated criteria of high-quality, large-scale business parks located in the right micro market of the top 6 Indian cities. Our business scale understanding of the office submarkets, on-ground network and relationships, our strong balance sheet and well-established access to capital market helps us pursue opportunities that are accretive to our unitholders. Given it has been a year since we acquired the 9.2 million square feet marquee ETV property for INR 97.8 billion, let me take you through a 12-month update. Since acquisition in December 2020 and despite the pandemic, the increased occupancy by 120 basis points to 99% have added 4 new growth occupiers and have delivered the 1.1 million square feet JPMorgan campus within budget. We have also kick-started the next growth cycle at ETV with the launch of 1.9 million square feet new office development and our showcase Central Garden infrastructure initiatives. Construction of the 518 key dual-branded Hilton Hotels is planned to commence later this year. We are also exploring additional FAR opportunities, which could further increase leasable area and potentially enhance value. As you can see, we have delivered better than underwriting on a number of metrics. Looking beyond the ETV acquisition, on our December 2019 forward purchase of M3 Block B, totaling 0.6 million square feet at Embassy Manyata, the pandemic and regulatory dependencies have both led to delays in preconstruction approvals. For our October 2020 acquisition of CAM businesses of Embassy Manyata and TechZone properties, we have achieved higher than underwritten EBITDA. Our strategy of owning and controlling the facilities management of our properties is also very beneficial during occupying leasing discussions, especially with the ever-increasing focus on wellness and safety. To conclude, we remain confident of a strong rebound in office market, the best-in-class quality of our portfolio and the opportunity to consolidate market share given supply constraints. New business growth and need for higher-quality offices are the consistent themes during our discussions with occupiers. We remain focused on delivering the next phase of business growth. Over to Aravind now for the financial updates.

Thanks, Vikaash. Good evening, everyone. We continued our resilient financial performance in Q3. Key financial highlights for this quarter include: grew net operating income by 30% year-over-year to INR 6,213 million, with operating margin of 84%; announced distributions of INR 4,929 million or INR 5.2 per unit, with 83% as tax to unitholders; refinanced INR 36.5 billion zero coupon bond at 6.5%; delivered approximately 300 basis points refinancing spread; maintained a strong balance sheet with low leverage of 24% and INR 116 billion debt headroom to finance growth; and enhanced our full year FY '22 guidance for both NOI and distributions, reflecting pickup in new leasing activity. Let me take you through the details. First, an update on our Q3 income performance. Revenue from operations grew by 31% year-over-year to INR 7,409 million, reflecting rent escalations on 1.8 million square feet leases, ramp-up in hotel occupancy and revenue accretion due to Embassy TechVillage and other completed acquisitions in the previous financial year. The impact of these positives was partially offset by a decline in occupancy since the start of the COVID pandemic. Net operating income grew by 30% to INR 6,213 million, in line with the increase in our revenues from operations. Our NOI margins continue to be best in class at an interest of 84%, reflecting both the scale and efficiency of our business as well as a low fee structure. Our EBITDA grew by 26% to INR 6,109 million, in line with the NOI increase. Net distributable cash flow grew by 14% to INR 4,927 million, mainly reflecting the accretion due to Embassy TechVillage and other completed acquisitions in the previous financial year. The impact of these positives was partially offset by the interest payments on our new coupon-bearing bond given our recent SCB refi on 2nd November. Further the Board of Directors have declared a distribution per unit of INR 5.2 for Q3, representing a 100% payout ratio. With this, Embassy REIT has now cumulatively declared YTD distributions of INR 15,640 million or INR 16.5 per unit. Tax-free distributions grew to 83% in Q3, one of the highest in the industry. Further, we remain on track to collapse the legacy 2-tier holding structure of ETV property and expect to receive necessary approvals for June 2022. Post this restructuring, around 85% of our distributions are likely to be tax-free, thereby enhancing the overall post-tax distribution yield for our unitholders. Moving to our balance sheet updates. During the quarter, we raised INR 46 million debt at 6.5% to refinance our in-place zero coupon bond, thereby consolidating our entire REIT debt to coupon-bearing instruments and simplifying the cash flow through for our distribution. This early refinanced through a significantly lower cost debt of 6.5% helps us achieve an impressive approximately 300 basis points or INR 1.3 billion pro forma interest cost savings annually. The INR 46 million debt raise of participation by large domestic mutual funds, insurers, banks and corporates, demonstrating the increasing acceptance of lease in India and further deepening our debt to fund future growth opportunities. In addition to this refi, we also successfully renegotiated INR 21.5 billion of our existing term loans with current lenders to achieve 6.5% interest cost, a positive spread of approximately 60 basis points. With both of the above, our overall debt cost at the REIT level is now down to 6.6%, significantly lower compared to 9.4% debt costs for the initial at debt at IPO. As part of our overall ESG road map and commitments there on, we successfully secured INR 4.9 billion of our debt at ETV as green loan from a leading global bank under the green and sustainability-linked financing program. This is first of our many initiatives to achieve INR 10 million cumulative green and sustainable financing by FY '24. As you can see, our recent debt rates and plans with CB refinancing has further strengthened our balance sheet with low leverage of 24% and staggered our debt maturities with less than 2% of our debt maturing over the next 18 months. We currently have INR 11 billion of liquidity and continue to maintain AAA credit rating as an issuer. Further 63% of our total debt is locked in at fixed interest rates, which will significantly help optimize debt costs, especially in an environment where interest rates are anticipated to rise. Additionally, a pro forma debt headroom of INR 116 million provides us the flexibility to capitalize on growth opportunities as laid out by Vikaash earlier. Lastly, an update on our FY '22 guidance. As you are aware, previously during the Q1 earnings call in July '21, we had provided our full year FY '22 guidance comprising a midpoint NOI of INR 23,700 million, and a midpoint DPU of INR 21.5 per unit, both within the range of plus or minus 3.5%. We have now updated our numbers based on the YTD performance, and I'm happy to share that we are raising our full year NOI and DPU guidance. We now expect a midpoint NOI of INR 24,500 million and a midpoint DPU of INR 21.7 per unit for the full year FY '22, both within a tighter range of plus or minus 1.5%. This translates into a 3% increase compared to our previous NOI guidance. This upward revision in guidance despite the recent Omicron wave mainly reflects the positive uptick in leasing activity we have achieved, apart from the improvement in our other business segments. However, please note that our guidance is subject to the evolving nature of the pandemic. To sum up, we remain in great financial shape and continue to deliver on our NOI and distributions. Further, as mentioned by Vikaash earlier, both our acquisitions in FY '21 have delivered better than our underwriting and have been accretive to both NOI as well as distributions. As we evaluate new growth opportunities, we remain focused on financing these through an optimal mix of equity and debt to ensure that it is accretive to our existing unitholders. Over to Mike for his concluding remarks.

Thank you, Aravind. So another very solid and encouraging quarter, the highest level of new leasing in nearly 2 years, delivery of our NOI and distributions, increased guidance for the full year, delivery of the JPMorgan campus, an industry-leading ESG road map and line of sight to potential acquisitions-led growth from an additional 5 million square foot campus in Chennai. The current Omicron blip has a short-term timing impact on return to office and deal signings by our corporates, but the necessity for quality office spaces has been reinforced by global digitization and technology adoption as reflected in our leasing performance this quarter as well as our strong demand pipeline. We continue to expand our tenant base and solidify our relationships with over 200 existing corporate occupiers. We are on the path to further grow our business by developing and acquiring quality properties and to reinforce our position as the landlord of choice and scale for leading global corporations. With that, let's move to Q&A, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Kunal Tayal from Bank of America.

Sure. Congratulations on a good quarter. Two questions from me. The first one is, as you evaluate the ROFO opportunity, can you remind us what is your playbook for acquisitions look like, both from an operational and financial metric perspective? That's one. And then second, I would appreciate if you can give us some more color around what happens to new leasing decisions because of the Omicron wave? Fair to assume that the pushout would be comparable to return-to-office plans? Or is it just a physical constraint around signing the deals for now?

Thank you, Kunal. Thank you for those questions. Just a small point, a number of us are in different locations, so if you'll just excuse a little gap between any sort of Q&A. I'll take the second question in terms of leasing decision and then I'll ask Vikaash to talk about the ROFO playbook. So Kunal, in terms of leasing decisions, we think that the principle around whether or not corporates are taking extra space, additional growth space, principle is not changing. What is happening in this last 4 weeks is that there's a disruption to the administrative side of getting business done, getting leases executed, getting formal approvals. So we do think there'll be a slight delay in closing some of the deals, and we've already seen that actually just in the last 2 or 3 weeks. But overall, we think that we'll see maybe a 4- to 6-week delay in actually closure on deals. As I say, we do have a strong, fairly advanced pipeline of between 300,000 and 400,000 square feet for this quarter. And we are very encouraged by the quantum of RFPs that are out there in the market as we cash outlined. So we think the decisions aren't changing. The administration perhaps is getting slightly delayed. Vikaash, would you like to comment on the ROFO thought process?

Sure, Mike. Kunal, so in terms of our acquisition strategy, as we previously articulated, we basically look at geographies where our customers want to be. And we're basically focused on the top 6 cities. What we look for is large scale, high-quality or tenanted properties, I believe with a mix of both completed around campus development. I spoke about the ETV doing better than underwriting. And what we are doing today is we are on the lookout for similar large-scale resilient assets, which fit well into our portfolio. Our balance sheet strength, which Aravind spoke about really gives us access to capital and it depends on specific deal of how we structure the optimal mix of debt and equity. In terms of this acquisition, the opportunity that we received, we are aware of the property. We will now start our evaluation, but we are -- this is one of the properties which has great international occupiers, particularly from the banking, automate and services sectors. The key considerations, as you mentioned as well for us remains valuation, structuring the deal and also how we finance it through the optimal mix. So given we have just received the ROFO notice, we will commence assessment, but underlying theme for us is how well does it fit into our portfolio and is it accretive to our unitholders.

Next question is from the line of Puneet from HSBC.

My first question is on Manyata, if you can give more color on how the discussions are progressing for leasing that property on?

And your second question, Puneet?

Second would be on Quadron, so that property has continues to stay at below 50% occupancy levels. Any -- also some color on what other plans for that? And how should we think about it going into the year and the year after? And third, if I may add, if you can give more color on the nature of occupancy in Hilton Hotel. Is it large the business travelers? Or is it occupied more by leisure travelers?

Vikaash, can I ask you to comment on Manyata and Quadron in terms of pipeline and the work that we've done at Quadron?

Sure, Mike. So on -- let me take Quadron first. So Quadron is a business park we own in the West of Pune. We did see an exit and a relocation from a large occupier in early part of last year. What we have done since then is we have, one, undertaken a complete repositioning and upgrade of the assets, so that has come out quite nicely. And you may refer to some of the pictures in the last quarter's deck. The feedback that we have got has been very positive and now we are seeing early traction. So we recently signed with a telecom operator 2 quarters back and now they are likely to grow with us with another 50,000 square feet. We had in the past seen tangible benefits post refurbishment in our other assets like the 247 park in Mumbai, and we are confident that we'll replicate the success here. As we see the deal activity pick up, especially from the technology and the IT services players, we think this park and the West Pune Hinjawadi is really well placed to capture that demand. So we are taking a little more forward-looking view on this, and we think the occupancy will quickly ramp up once we see the services sector players starting to take space in Pune. So that's on Quadron. On Manyata, actually, it's interesting that you bought up that question, so just taking a step back, let me give you a quick start on where we are at Manyata today. Manyata today is about 88% occupied with about 1 million square feet of vacancy. This is factoring even the Q4 -- up to Q4, all the exits that we will have. There are a couple of things we are doing in Manyata, one, obviously, we have leased year-to-date about 225,000 square feet of space, and this has been significantly higher than the market trend of INR 93 assessed by CBRE. We have also renewed about 570,000 square feet year-to-date, with a very impressive renewal spread of 42%. What's happened is we've seen exit by one large legacy occupier in Manyata, where the rents were significantly below market with about 150% to 200% mark-to-market opportunity. We are doing a couple of things. We think the asset is really well placed. We've seen the recent infrastructure initiatives on flyover. We also have the Hilton Hotels, which are opening up, which really, we believe, will help in our leasing initiative, plus we are currently refurbishing some of our vacant buildings so that they are ready as and when the demand does pick up, we are able to lease it out. In addition to that, for some of the older blocks, we mentioned -- I mentioned during my prepared remarks that we have an opportunity to undertake redevelopment. So while we're assessing for 400,000 square feet of the earliest blocks of Manyata right now, we have a couple of other blocks where we have the potential to double the [ FCR ] and the leasable area. So what we're doing as of now is we are seeing how the demand pans out. There's early-stage pipeline that we are in discussions for Manyata, which is about a 1.2 million square feet of pipeline. And this is how this demand and the traction pans out, we will take a call on the timing of redevelopment versus refurbishment. We remain very positive of the way Manyata as a park has shaped up, it's the largest asset in the REIT. And notwithstanding the 2000 FY '23 expiries, and we have about 800,000 of that, if I could refer you to the supplemental data book, we think there's a huge opportunity simply because of the mark-to-market trends that we have both on the existing vacancy as well as any vacancy that may come up from the FY '23 expiries. So as and when demand picks up, and it certainly is, we think Manyata will be a huge beneficiary of that.

On the hotel question, Puneet, the type of mix. So as I think we mentioned, we saw a good encouraging quarter to the end of December, 37% was the blended occupancy there, slightly different profile of occupiers for Hilton and Four Seasons and a slightly higher occupancy at the Hilton of GoldLinks, about a 45% occupancy, and then half of that was corporate, and the balance was mainly sort of staycation-type of occupier. The Four Seasons, on the other hand, was much stronger in the group's and vacation type of space, much more due to those high-end, high-group events. So encouraging in Q3, clearly, we've seen a tail off over the last 3, 4 weeks. But we're confident over the medium term that these numbers will improve.

Great. That's helpful. If I can squeeze in the fourth one, you also talked about a 20-megawatt solar, should we think of it as a business model similar to what you have right now? Or will it be different metrics?

Yes. I think you can think of it, we've identified approximately 30% IRR on that money. It's about INR 98 crores of CapEx, which Aravind mentioned, we've also funded that through a green bond deal. So very appealing. It helps us to increase that renewable energy proportion in the portfolio. It feeds the common parts of the buildings and is in addition to the existing 100-megawatt plant, which has been running since IPO.

Okay. So basically, the capacity would go from 100 to 120, that's how one should think of it?

That's correct. And I think if you look at and compare the proportion of renewable energy that's utilized in Embassy REIT with pretty much any other commercial office portfolio in the country, we really are leading the way as part of our overall ESG effort, submitted just another piece of that jigsaw.

Next question is from the line of Adhidev Chattopadhyay from ICICI Securities.

My question is pertaining to the Hilton Hotel, which is now opening up next year. Given the situation on COVID, so how do you see the initial occupancy ramping up? And any initial losses or anything, how would you want to recoup that? I mean is there any arrangement with the hotel operator, which is there, which you could share? Second question, again, is on the hotel at Embassy TechVillage, obviously, which you will start construction shortly in next year. Could you give us the estimated CapEx per room, if you could share that? I know that you may put that disclosure afterwards, but if you could just give us some sense of the range where the budgeted CapEx would be for that asset?

Okay. Adhidev, if I can just comment from a qualitative perspective, and then I'll ask Aravind, if he can speak on the numbers. I just want to give you 2 examples. In the last 24 hours, we have had 2 corporates, one, very large banking -- U.S. banking, corporate and another a very small domestic type of operator looking at our office premises. And both of them have given really positive feedback about the fact that we're able to offer these conferencing facilities, these hotel facilities as part of our office offering. If you -- and we love you to come down and take a look at the new conferencing facility at Manyata, which will be opened by May. We believe that it's going to really give us a very strong competitive advantage in the office leasing market as well as the fact that there really is nothing in the vicinity to match the size and scale of the conferencing side and also the hotel with its 2 price points. So we think the -- and the same comments would apply to the planned hotel at TechVillage, so clearly, that is probably 3 or so years away. But from a qualitative perspective, we think that this is all part of reinforcing and strengthening the competitive advantage that we have at Manyata. In terms of the quantitative side?

Yes, Adhidev, honestly we are still working out the numbers in terms of the budget. We're in the process of finalizing it. So we will put it out probably next quarter when we launch it. But from a broad perspective, you can look at the cost, what we are incurring in our Manyata project. And of course, the cost would be a little escalated considering it will be a more recent project. So that's a broad guideline I would give. And in terms of just the numbers, while honestly, Adhidev, we will come out with a more formal guidance next quarter in terms of the overall business, which will include what will happen to the overall hospitality. But purely from an economic perspective, Hilton is the operator which is entitled to a percentage of the revenues and NOI and all other economics will belong to us. But as Mike said, we are pretty positive on how this will add value to Manyata Park as well as we believe that the hotel per se on an individual basis should do reasonably well.

If I may add, Aravind, so in general, we've seen for breakeven, we need to achieve somewhere between 35% to 40% for our Hilton EGL. And based on the 50 corporate contracts that we've already signed and some others in the pipeline, that would roughly translate to about 33%, 35%. So really the hope and the target, while we will lay out the formal guidance next quarter would be to break even in the first year itself and ensure that there is no cash loss for the Manyata Hotel.

Okay. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. I could just squeeze in another question. For the new leases, which you are signing, so what would be the rent-free period or when would these commence? And also considering Omicron impact, could you give us a broader sense, what is happening over there?

Sure, Adhidev. So on the new leases, all that we have signed so far as well as on our pipeline, we have not seen any impact on the rent free. Our rent-free range anywhere between 2.5 months for really small quantum of space, let's say, in front office format in Mumbai to about 5 to 6 months for really large 400,000 to 600,000 square feet kind of leases. So we have not seen any change in that. I'm guessing it may get pushed out by, let's say, 15 days additional across but not more than that, simply because both our construction work for our 4.6 million square feet as well as the fit-out work is being permitted despite the lockdown.

Okay. So there is no change on account of Omicron, right? It's just except for the 2 weeks sort of deleverage you mentioned?

Yes. We have not seen any impact in terms of the rent-free period because of this, the occupiers who generally made the decision that they need the space and there are more and more talks on those. They're really looking beyond the short-term blip of Omicron and really looking at how to cater to the people they've already hired over the last 18 months. So I think they are looking at -- they are more urgency than us, including for the large global occupier that we just leased out space, they are well underway on their fit-out work.

Next question is from the line of Amandeep Singh from Ambit Capital.

So firstly, in terms of expiry, we know that a large chunk of Embassy Galaxy is up for expiry in FY '23, where the in-place rentals are also significantly below the market rentals. So any thoughts on early discussion with the tenant with respect to renewal? Similarly, even Quadron has a large chunk for its renewal next year. So any thoughts over here?

Vikaash, do you want to take that?

Sure. Sure. So Amandeep, thanks for that. So why we lay out a formal guidance next quarter on our expiries and the way it's shaping up in terms of renewals and which are the possible exit, I just wanted to make 2 points, Amandeep. One, on a current year exits and expiries, we are absolutely in line and on track with what guidance we read out at the beginning of the year, and they have been no changes to the 1.3 million square feet exit that we had mentioned. So in general, we see that as a very positive trend. Coming to FY '24, if you can -- if I can -- FY '23, sorry, if I can refer you to Slide 28 of the earnings deck, you would see that there are about 2.9 million square feet of expiries in FY '23. In general, while it's a bit early to say, and we are engaging with occupiers, but we are really encouraged by the growth that we have seen in our tenant base. And we certainly expect to see an improvement on our FY '22 exit percentage of the overall expiries, given all the positive trends that we're speaking about. Just quickly coming to your 2 specific assets you mentioned Galaxy and Quadron. While I'll defer any comment until the time we signed binding documents but a large chunk of the leases that we are discussing -- that are coming up for expiring both these parks, all the discussions with occupiers, and we don't expect any -- we expect encouraging outcome out of these. Let me put it that way.

Sure. So this was really helpful. And secondly, sir, this quarter, you saw uptake in occupancy at Embassy One and FIFC, so in that context, can you help us with your thoughts on the RFPs or along with update on other assets like Embassy Oxygen?

Yes. So in general, I would say we have been very pleased to see some leasing kick-start at FIFC, it's a fantastic asset, and we've got a really high-quality occupier, we've disclosed -- we leased out some space to ICICI Securities here. What we are seeing in general -- and similar as a theme with Embassy One, where we've leased out to Hyundai, it would have -- it's one of the important office locations for them. In general, what we're seeing is post-COVID, the demand for high-quality office spaces, even if it's at a premium positioning, really occupier -- certain segment of occupiers are really keen to be in these locations with these assets in both FIFC and Embassy One, our premium products. In terms of pipeline, we have gone a very encouraging pipeline at both of these properties, especially Embassy One, where we have recently seen quite a number of inquiries and there's a significant amount of discussions that are underway. So we'll keep you posted in the next couple of quarters, but we see it as an encouraging trend, especially for Bangalore property.

And a quick comment on Embassy Oxygen, maybe?

Yes. So Embassy Oxygen, I think there's a lot of good initiatives that has been taken by the government in terms of the infrastructure, in terms of the recent announcements. We have really focused on building a world-class Phase II. So the last tower, which is currently under construction, it's coming up. Right now, the traction is yet to build up for the asset. We think it will come in a subsequently after 2 -- 1 or 2 quarters, post we see pickup in other cities like Pune are following Bangalore. So there's nothing which I can say, which is an advanced pipeline right now. But with the last Tower, which is about 700,000 square feet coming up and with the recent announcements and the infrastructure challenges some of the occupiers mentioned in Gurgaon, we think in the medium term, over the next 3 to 4 quarters, we will be really able to secure large global occupiers like we did a Tower 2 in Oxygen last year, but we'll just have to wait for some more time. In the past, during the same YTD, we leased out about 63,000 square feet to a top 10 global health care provider, but we'll have to wait a little bit more before we see further traction here.

Next question is from the line of Vivek Ramakrishnan from DSP Mutual Funds.

I just have one question, which is kind of really mathematical since you've answered all others. The rating cash as Aravind mentioned about the AAA rating, and the rating cash as talk about 85% occupancy level. Do you -- would you be able to give any guidance on the kind of occupancy levels you will maintain over the next quarter or going to next year, given the fact that there are many vacancies and releasing conversations?

Yes, Aravind.

Yes. Sure. So in terms of occupancy, as Vikaash and Mike mentioned, we are as of now at 87%. What's interesting to note is in terms of the FY '22 expiries, a lot of these expiries have already played out and there's very little left in terms of expiries for the fourth quarter coming up. And more importantly, in terms of the leasing pipeline as well, as we have reported, there's around 400,000 square feet of pipeline which is currently under discussion. So all in all, Vivek, as we look forward into the next quarter as we end the year, we believe that the Q3 occupancy of around 87% probably might be the lower end of the occupancy level, and we see these occupancy levels going up from here onwards.

Okay. Excellent. And you had mentioned, Aravind, the importance of the AAA rating. So would you keep the occupancy level percentage -- I mean, of course, everybody talks about a sustained basis, but would you keep that as a back of a mind situation? Of course, you're a REIT so you don't want to be unoccupied, but is that is important -- is it 85% an important number for you?

Yes, absolutely, Vivek. So I think in terms of the rating rationale the 85% from our rating agency, the way they look at the 85% is it should drop below 85% on a sustained basis. They do understand that the current environment is more a temporary phenomenon. But having said that, if the levels drop below 85% on a continuous and sustained basis, that is when they would look at relooking at the AAA rating, which we believe will not arise in the current scheme of things.

And Vivek, just to add to what Aravind said, Vikaash here. The only other point I would like to mention is, of course, AAA rating and optimizing our debt costs are important to us. But from a business perspective, the way we look at deals, pipeline and when we negotiate, we just -- the way we look at it is, okay, is this the right kind of occupier? Will this occupier grow? What is the covenant of the occupier and other rents, does it make sense to transact at these rents? If you've seen the trend over the last 3 years, we have really stayed away from doing desperate deals, and we are pretty happy to wait patiently because we are very confident of the product offering as well as the micro markets we are in. So it's a combination of both, what Aravind mentioned as well as on the business. But end of the day, every new lease has to make business decision. Even for the exits that we have seen, those have been calibrated decisions to ensure that we maintain or achieve the mark-to-market. And if some occupiers are not willing to pay those, we are happy to kind of take a call to churn them and have new age occupiers who can pay for the rent that kind of we command.

Next question is from the line of Chandrasekhar Sridhar from Fidelity International.

I had a few questions. One was just on the vacancy, which has obviously come in Manyata over a period of time. How easy or difficult is this to slice this space up into multiple occupiers or do you need a similar kind of an occupier to the one which left to take up that large amount of space? That's the first question. Second was just on the supply. You're yourself also bringing about 3.5 million square feet of supply in Bangalore between FY '23 to '25, which is about 1.2 million per annum. The average addition, I think, in Bangalore has been about 12%, 13%. Just how much of the supply -- 12 million, 13 million square feet, sorry, how much of the supply do you think you are now on a prospective basis versus value historically? And third one was just NOI increase is not translated into that much of a NDCF increase, is this primarily because of the offset from the interest-bearing debt? And the last question was, if I were to look try to take a longer-term view on when you look at the market trends across your properties over the last couple of years, they pretty much being where there was maybe Manyata moved up a bit, but -- and Hinjawadi come off. Given where we are from a vacancy perspective across most of the markets, is it a fair assumption that market rent, while you still have a mark-to-market, the market rent itself across most properties shouldn't really be heading higher?

So there's quite a lot there, Chandra. So let me just deal with market rents and I'll ask Vikaash to talk about the work that we're doing on Manyata and multiple occupiers. But I think over the last couple of years, what we've all been doing is ensuring that we maintain our rentals, that we've secured those escalations that are there contractually and that we've endeavored to maintain occupancy. And as Aravind mentioned, we think that now we're probably at the net year of the occupancy. Rents have been flat in most locations at a market level. Frankly, there wasn't expectation in many parts of the market that we would see significant rental falls. That's not something that we've seen in most of our portfolio, particularly in Bangalore. The data shows that we've been able to maintain and, in some cases, increase rentals on new deals. I think that we're going to see some opportunities for growth over the next 12 months, given the -- what we expect to be fairly rapid acceleration in the demand side in the early part of the next financial year. So I think rental growth is still going to be there. We've seen some good rental growth at TechVillage on the deals that we've done of late. And we think that, that's just going to get better over the coming months. Vikaash, do you want to talk about the different elements of Manyata and what we're doing to make that appealing to different types of occupiers?

Sure. Hi, Chandra. So just on the Manyata piece, just to kind of sum it up, we currently have about 1 million square feet vacancy. And in the coming year, which is FY '23, we have expiries of about 800,000 square feet, 780,000 square feet. Obviously, there will be a component of renewal as well in these -- and some exits. But just for the discussion sake, we have about 1.5 million square feet on a pro forma basis, vacant to lease in Manyata. We have done a couple of things here during the pandemic over the last 15 to 18 months. One, we have really reevaluated all that we can do on the upcoming as well as existing vacant spaces. And we have a full refurbishment program in place, Chandra, which is already underway to ensure these properties are ready to lease up as and when demand picks up. So all of that is underway. To your question on how specific -- is it modeled to a specific occupiers need or other [ floor plates ] usable by others, I think the good news is that Manyata has a really large clean [ floor plates ], and they can just be pretty much used by any other occupiers as and when they come. So we don't think any retrofit or customization is required or we have to undo any earlier customization. Now interestingly, what we're also doing, Chandra, is across 4 blocks while we mentioned 2 blocks of 400,000 square feet, we have potential to also double our leasable area. Manyata does have unutilized FAR on an overall part basis, especially some of the earlier blocks, which are more like 5 or 6 floors. So we are doing that assessment right now. And I would imagine as we get ready with our platform of our plans and get ready of the 1.5 million square feet on a look-through basis until March '23, we would take up some component of the redevelopment opportunity to kind of create overall value. Given the infrastructure that we've already done, whether it's the flyover, the hotel or even the upcoming retail, which is next to -- next year within Manyata of about 90,000 square feet, we feel pretty good about our discussions. In fact, today, I was speaking to the business head of our one of our largest banking occupiers in Manyata and they are looking to double the headcount and there's an RFP out for a space take up in early 2023. So we feel good. We think all -- the beauty of Manyata is with about its 45 occupiers, a lot of them will grow as -- and as the numbers of ramp-up back-to-office improve, we'll see a lot of them keep taking more space. So we'll see multiple smaller deals of 60,000 to 100,000 square feet in Manyata. And we are targeting that by the end of this year. We really ramped up Manyata's occupancy back to the early 90 that we used to see earlier. So that's a Manyata...

Yes. This space can be sliced up. It can be sliced up if need be. It's not like...

Absolutely, Chandra. And even during the discussions on exit or new leases, we have ensured that this -- we have ensured we don't have partial exits or partially inefficient floors being exited. So we're in good shape there.

Can I just, Vikaash -- just to summarize for Chandra. Chandra, we can offer floor by floor. We can offer stand-alone buildings. We've got co-working space. We've got new build, build-to-suit opportunities, there's land that's available for that. And that really is part of the beauty of the scale of the portfolio that we've got. So we're able to offer a flexible solution to an occupier to bring them in, and then we see them growing with us for the long term. So that applies not just to Manyata, but Manyata is a good example of that. Sorry, Vikaash.

No, Mike, sure. So -- and Chandra, we have an active pipeline in Manyata. Some of it preliminary but about 1 million, 1.2 million square feet. So it depends -- we just need to work through and see how fast we can push through some of these to deals in closure. In terms of supply, in general, I would say, Bangalore has been pretty -- one of the stable markets simply because it's a more mature market. And there's more control supply by the existing developers. What we have seen, Chandra, is whether we take the CBRE forecast or forecast by any other market player, it's roughly estimated that there'll be 12 million square feet supply next year and demand roughly for 2022 is also expected to be 12 million square feet. So what we are looking at doing is to ensure that we bring up our new supply as soon as possible to the market. There are very few of the 12 million -- of the 12 million square feet, Chandra, very few which are quality large-scale campus-style kind of offerings. We have a couple of other players who are doing decent work and good quality spaces. But in micro markets like ETV, there's -- the amount of RFP that's live today versus the vacancy, we feel really good about new supply. And in fact, the challenge is to get it and deliver it as fast as possible. So we're not overly worried. What we have done in our construction program is obviously incorporated some of the wellness and ESG. We have enhanced the requirements that we kind of stipulate for our buildings. And I think as we move forward with large banks and some of the technology companies looking for [indiscernible] as we see currently, we feel good about both our supply vis-a-vis how we stand in the market even in the Bangalore market, given that it's expected that there will be some supply from other developers.

And Chandra, just to answer your question, the NOI, 2 perspectives. One, when we look at the Q3 numbers, yes, it reflects the impact of the coupon-bearing debt into the NDCF. But from a projection point of view, there's a 3% increase in our NOI versus 1% increase in our distribution. That's largely coming because of a lot of these new lease-ups starts generating cash rent from approximately April '22 onwards. So that's the delta, what you see between NOI increase versus DPU increase.

Next question is from the line of Pulkit Patni from Goldman Sachs.

Most of them are answered. Just one additional question. Is there any change in the way we are structuring our lease agreements with new tenants in terms of force majeure, if there's a -- God forbid, a fourth, fifth wave of COVID or escalations being more back-ended as they also test the market and so on and so forth? Or are they pretty much the same the way they used to be pre-COVID?

Yes. Pulkit, thank you. I think the answer is the latter, it's very similar to what we've had before. No in-principle changes to force majeure. What has changed -- and certainly not anything changing on the escalation side of things, what has changed is that we're adding into all of our leases, various clauses that relates to what some people call green leases. So every new lease that we do now includes those provisions. They make provision for the tenants to provide certain data around energy, water and waste usage and vice versa that we share data and information with them, which allows us to build that -- those data points into our overall sustainability planning. But in principle, that would be the only significant change to the general lease structure.

Next question is from the line of Kunal Lakhan from CLSA.

Just a follow-up on the supply question earlier. So if you look at it, like -- just want to understand first, like how is the occupier preference towards, say, newer assets, which are likely to be more efficient versus the existing assets? Do they prefer to be in like new buildings versus the older parks? And secondly, with a fair bit of high supply -- overall supply expected, will the occupancy rate really bottom out in CY '22? And thirdly, see, there's a fair bit of supply, which you yourself highlight is not comparable to REIT, but it's still quite significant at 39 million square feet. So what does this do to the overall vacancy levels and rentals in the micro markets?

I think -- let me take that. I think that one has to put oneself in the shoes of our type of customer, the leasers, our buildings who are largely -- not exclusively, but largely international corporations. And you'll agree that those types of companies are having ever higher and higher standards in numerous areas, help and safety, comfort for their staff, wellness, energy efficiency, the ability to provide amenities for their staff and so on. That's the type of tenants that we're offering our product to. And frankly, they are the types of tenants that are seeking our type of products. Those types of tenants, and we've got over 200 of them, are not going to go to a substandard multi-owner, strata sold inefficient building because the rental is cheaper. So this plays to the theme that we've often spoke about, this concentration of demand into fewer, larger and more institutional asset owners like ourselves. And that's a clear theme, I think, is broadly seen and accepted in the market. New buildings, we think that tenants are looking for more environmentally friendly buildings. They're looking for more energy efficiency. We have a program around that again as part of our ESG program. Much of the capital spend that we've looked at over the next 3 years for that, all those refurbishments which might include chiller replacements to get more efficiency and so on, those are costs that ultimately were able to recover from the tenants. I think we've got a program that's INR 275 crores over the next 3 years, and it's pretty much a wash in terms of cost recovery. So we are investing in keeping our buildings, our products, our overall ecosystem up to the mark and up to date. Example to go back to the hotel or Vikaash talked about the green areas, the TechVillage, the sports zones and so on, that is the way that we believe we're going to maintain our competitive edge and maybe even increase that note. Occupancy, I think we've looked at the numbers. We've done the numbers. Our view at present is that we're at the bottom of that with our current 87%, 88% occupancy. And we're feeling really good about the year to come.

So you're saying that your numbers do factor in the supply, which will come in into the overall system, which should have some impact on the overall rental and occupancy levels, but it's unlikely to impact yours?

Well, I think what we've done and we do every quarter and consistently as we look at what's the comparable supply in our markets and in our submarkets. And we know specifically what are the buildings that we're competing against in any particular market. I think if you look at what's the supply that's coming forward in, say, Bangalore, and look at the typical demand side, it's fairly well balanced. There are some cities across the country that may well have some significant supply/demand mismatch. The most egregious of those, we're not in those cities. So we're comfortable with the overall situation. And yes, we've built that -- the new supplies into our conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was our last question for the day today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mike Holland for closing comments. Over to you, sir.

Thank you sincerely to each one of you for your questions and for your ongoing interest. As you can tell, we're very encouraged about where we're at. And a lot of these data points that we've spoken about are on our website and in the published materials. But I think as you're aware, we -- any one of us who've spoken on the call, Abhishek or Vikaash, we're always available if you've got any further questions. So with that, thank you very much. Good evening, and have a great weekend.

Thank you very much members of management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Embassy Office Parks REIT, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.