Emirates REIT (CEIC) PLC (REIT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to the Emirates REIT Full Year 2023 Results Presentation. I hope you had a very enjoyable Eid vacation. Let me first share with you some of the key highlights. All indicators basically show very positive growth. Our net asset value has increased by 34%. But what is even more impressive is a 36.8% increase in our operating profit. $74.4 million in simply the highest property income ever achieved since the inception of Emirates REIT, and the average occupancy rate grew to 86.2%. And I will now give you a short market overview. Overall, the UAE GDP shows some robust resilience. Of course, the GDP came down to 3%, partly as a result of the increased interest rates. And yet, most industries continue to perform strongly in 2023. In the non-oil sectors, tourism, construction and real estate industries led the growth. And the latest GDP projection for 2024 shows an increase to 4.7%. Now let's talk a little bit about the office market. The Dubai office market finally reached a single-digit vacancy rate around 7.5%. And as a rule of thumb, single-digit vacancy equals rental growth. This rule is valid anywhere in the world. And yes, in Dubai, we have seen rents going up very quickly, especially in highly demanded areas such as DIFC and TECOM where Emirates REIT has a good number of its assets. Average rental rates for Grade A space reached AED 250 per square foot. And at Index Tower, we've leased shell & core space for AED 320 per square foot. And we do not see this trend changing anytime soon as the pipeline of new office developments is very limited. Now to the retail market. Supply of new retail space has been kept under control in order to absorb the large oversupply of space built during the last 4 years. And demand has been very solid as we have seen the market entry of many new international brands. Rents have grown on average by 17.6% as spendings, especially in well-established malls have continued to increase. Now to the school market. Finding a school for new families arriving in Dubai is a real challenge these days. There are 365,000 students for 220 schools across 17 different curricular. With the existing and planned population growth, we expect this trend to stay the same. Dubai should see several new school developments coming up in '24 and beyond. Now I will ask my colleague, Ross to share with you some of the operational highlights.

Thank you, Thierry, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now be taking you through the operational highlights. The Emirates REIT portfolio demonstrated sustained positive operational performance in 2023 as active asset management supported growth in the context of strong economic and real estate market fundamentals. At the portfolio level, occupancy continues to grow with portfolio occupancy reaching 86.2%. And passing rental rates across the office and retail portfolio recorded a healthy increase of 9.8% year-on-year. And the total number of tenants in the portfolio increased by 8% to 402, with retention of tenants at 79%, reflecting both strong demand for the portfolio assets and the success of asset management initiatives. Looking at property level performance, we have experienced robust performance with our largest asset by value, Index Tower. Index Tower benefited from strong occupier demand in DIFC, coupled with limited supply of available stock. Occupancy of offices at Index Tower increased by 1.4 percentage points to reach 87.8%. The micro and premium offices are now fully leased, with the remaining available stock being limited to some sharing cost space only. On the back of strong leasing and lease renewals, passing rental rates grew by a rate of 10.6% year-on-year. Now looking at the Media City portfolio and starting with Office Park. Leasing activity remained healthy with 10 new leases and 22 lease renewals. There was, however, a decrease in occupancy, which fell by 10 percentage points due to a larger tenant relocating as a result of their company merger. The ongoing implementation of asset improvements, including the sub division of space has supported high levels of inquiries in Q4. In addition, passing rental rates increased 9.8% year-on-year through effective management of new leases and lease renewals. At the Lofts, strong demand from SMEs, media and creative industry companies was reflected in 18 new leases being transacted in 2023. Occupancy at Lofts 1 and 2 increased by 10.9 percentage points to reach 79.7%, whilst passing rental rates increased by a healthy 13.7%. Lofts 3 remains vacant and refurbish options are currently being assessed by Emirates REIT. At Building 24, whilst e passing rental rates increased by 2.7% year-on-year, occupancy did decrease slightly by 1.7 percentage points to reach 51.6%. Whilst the property is well located and there is positive sentiment and demand in the stock market, occupancy remains impacted by new build stock and refurbished properties within the free zone. Refurbishment of the property's common areas commenced in Q4. On completion, the asset will have a modern design and specification to support leasing. In addition, the fit-out of the Anchor F&B unit is progressing well with operations expected to start in Q1 2024. Moving on to European Business Center, which was a standout performer in the portfolio. European Business Center benefits from being a well-located premium office offering in Dubai Investment Park. This was reflected in both occupancy and rental rate performance. Occupancy increased by 14.9 percentage points to reach 83.9%, while rental rates increased by a robust 26.6% year-on-year, a very strong performance. A number of asset improvements were carried out in 2023 to modernize external and internal components of the property, enabling growth. Further renovations are planned. The final office asset to mention is Indigo 7 located on Sheikh Zayed Road, which remains 100% leased with stable performance. Looking now at the portfolio of retail assets. Performance at Index Mall, the retail component of index tower was positive. Occupancy increased by 10.2 percentage points to reach 58.7%, passing rental rates increased by 3.1% year-on-year. Operational highlights include the opening of beauty and healthy dining concepts, while a lease was signed with a Nursery school, all are intended to add significant community and value the Index Tower community. Trident Grand Mall located on JBR also performed strongly in 2023, benefiting from robust demand for well-located real estate assets in developed communities. Trident Grand Mall recorded an increase in occupancy of 7.3 percentage points to reach 83.1% occupancy at an asset level. Of significance our retail units and the 100% leased, with the vacancy reflecting tariffs and storage space only. In addition, passing rental rates increased 4.7% year-on-year. So a very positive story for Trident Grand Mall. Moving to the school portfolio. As Thierry discussed earlier, the fundamentals of the education sector are robust. Private education market in Dubai continues to grow with both the number of schools and students increasing year-on-year. Dubai private schools witnessed a 12% increase in enrollment growth for the 2023, '24 academic year with over 39,000 more student compared to the previous year. The Portfolio schools are operating well and reporting positive growth in enrollment figures. One significant event in 2023 was the completion of Phase 3 at Lycée Français Jean Mermoz with the addition of the schools sports facilities. So overall, 2023 has been a positive year for the operations of the Emirates REIT portfolio, culminating in higher operating profits. With that, I will conclude our operational highlights and hand you over to Moeen, who will take us through the financial highlights.

Thank you, Ross. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to present for you the financial highlights for Emirates REIT for the year ended 31st December 2023, which is indeed a year of record performance. This year with this growth, both in portfolio occupancy as well as improvement in rental rates on an overall basis. As a result of this, the total property income recorded a double-digit growth of 10.5% and it closed at $74.4 million. Disregarding the effect of divestment of Jebel Ali School, which was sold last year, this growth in total property income comes to over 13%. Driven by this growth, net property operating expenses also recorded a rise. However, this was contained to just 2.5% as a result of continued measures taken on cost saving and improving operating efficiency. Consequently, the net property income registered a year-on-year rise of 12.2% and amounted to $62.1 million, which is an all-time record high for Emirates REIT. Impacted by lower fund expenses that were mainly a result of booking certain one-off school refinancing costs last year, the operating profit for Emirates REIT registered a strong growth of 36.8% and amounted to $44 million in 2023. The effect of this impressive operating performance was muted by higher financing costs that the REIT had to bear in 2023. This was on account of high school coupon and the effect of rising benchmark rates on REIT's bilateral financing facilities. As a result of this, the fund from operations or the FFO for the year 2023 came under pressure and amounted to negative $5.7 million. Reflective of the overall positive real estate market, along with performance of REIT's investment portfolio, the unrealized gain on revaluation of investment properties for the year recorded a solid growth of over 68.5% and amounted to USD 132.9 million. Consequently, the profit for the full year amounted to a record $127.2 million, up 55% from $82 million that was posted last year. Moving on to the next slide, we would see that driven by revaluation gains, the fair value of investment properties have recorded an annual growth of 17.7%, pushing the total assets of the REIT to over $1 billion mark. Islamic financing on the contrary reduced by $21.8 million or 4.7% and amounted to $441.1 million, which was mainly due to partial redemption of Sukuk made during the year. The combined effect of revaluation gains and lower financing facilities positively impacted the FTV ratio, which closed at 42.5% as at December 31, 2023, improving 7.3 percentage points from 49.8% reported last year. Combined with the above and overall improved operating performance, the net asset value continued to rise this year and amounted to $499.7 million as of December 31, 2023, up from $372.6 million reported last year, which is an impressive 34.1% increase. The next slide shows the growth trend of quarterly net property income during the last 8 quarters, which reflects continued improvement in operating performance of the REIT. Going forward, the REIT plans to continue focusing on enhancing the portfolio occupancy and the rental rates aiming towards ensuring a sustainable revenue stream and at the same time, optimizing the financing structure to reduce the financing cost impact on the REIT's profitability. With this, I would like to thank you all and request Thierry to please conclude the presentation.

Yes. Thank you all for this presentation. We have a few logistic issues today because, as you know, the roads are blocked in Dubai and therefore, we are all in our different homes. So Thierry is trying to answer your questions now. Bear with us for a few seconds, please. Yes, sorry, Thierry is trying to speak, but we have a few technical issues. So I will answer the questions on his behalf. This is Sylvain Vieujot.

So if I look at the first question, there were more about the financing cost and why the financing cost is so high? This is due mostly to the 2 things, increase in benchmark rates, but also the fact that the Sukuk was refinanced in 2022, at the end of 2022 on fairly -- at the very difficult time on very high rates, and we are in the process of looking at refinancing it through 2 ways. One is deleveraging and -- so by selling some assets. And the other one is looking at other financial options. We cannot elaborate too much about this until this is done, but this is one of the key focus of the company. So one of the question is how we plan to deliver in high interest rate environment? Well, as we said in 2 things, the valuations are quite high, and the revenue has increased quite significantly, as you have seen during the year. If you look at the fact sheet, you will see that also, at the end of the year, the revenue trend was continuing to increase quite significantly. And this is also due to the fact that many of the current trends were signed during COVID and 2023 was just the first year after COVID and now we are starting to get the benefit of renewing those rents because they will sign at COVID time rent levels. And now our rental rates have increased quite significantly. So we expect this to continue and to participate to our ability to deleverage and to return to paying a good dividend. I think we hear you Thierry.

You can hear me now?

Yes, we do. I will let you continue.

Okay. So I just wanted to share the strategy that we've put in place last year. The strategy contained 3 pillars and had a final goal, which is shareholder value and go back into a position where we pay cash dividends. That's the ultimate goal for the asset manager. The first pillar is asset performance optimization, and that's 2023 and onwards, and we've been working extremely hard last year. We believe that we beat the market and we really managed to squeeze additional performance from each asset. And the second and the third pillar are more 2024 objective, the second one being disposition of assets. So yes, we are in the process of looking at potential disposition of assets to be continued, but it's on the process right now. And the third one is landing a proper refinancing because our FFO is negative just because of the financing cost. So this is really what we need to resolve right now. And I can assure you that the team is 100% focused on achieving that. I wanted to also add to this that we are on a journey after COVID. We've signed during COVID a lot of leases at low values that are coming to maturity right now. So it gives opportunity to renegotiate at the current terms of the market. So that means that there is additional potential rental growth in 2024 and onwards. So we should see additional property income growth coming up in the future. I'm looking if I can see additional questions. So where -- there's a question saying, where do you see property prices going in the next 12 to 24 months? I would say that the office market is probably the strongest asset class because there's no supply coming. There's very little supply coming in the future. So there's really a big pressure on the vacancy. And as long as vacancy is below 10%, we will continue to see rental growth. We are lucky from that perspective to have a lot of office assets in our portfolio. So I don't see much pressure on the rents coming in the future at least on the office market -- in the office market. The last question is, is there any office supply coming up in DIFC? We all know that there's a DIFC 2, which is planned, but it seems that they are facing some delays. I do not have any delivery date, but it's certainly not in the near future. There's a last question. If we experiencing any impact from the DFSA action? I think that the market recognizes Emirates REIT as a very resilient business that went through many different situations, including the COVID crisis and the interest rate crisis, if I can call it like that and we're still on a journey of growth. So the answer to that question is no. I'm sorry, I'm trying to see if there is any more questions that are relevant. No, I think we addressed -- just give me a second, please. Okay. There's a question, and I think it's going to be the last question regarding the FFO. And I think we've already answered that question. If you look at the valuations, the valuations have increased by $133 million, and it's coming mainly from positive [ growth ], not from yield compression but positive cash flows. And therefore, those positive cash flows will act as a snowball and we'll have additional positive impact on the bottom line in the future. So this, together with a refinancing option with -- that will actually decrease the cost will put us back in a positive FFO territory. The only reason why it's negative this year is the financing cost. Everything else in the P&L is extremely positive from a revenue perspective. So I will conclude by saying that I'm personally delighted of where we are in the journey with the team. We are obviously benefiting from a strong market, but we've worked extremely hard, and we'll continue to work hard towards shareholder value and with the existing market and the strategy that we have in place. We are quite very optimistic about the future. Thank you very much for taking the time to be here today, and that will conclude the call. Thank you very much.