EPIC Suisse AG (EPIC.SW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the EPIC Suisse AG 2025 Half Year Results Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Roni Greenbaum, Chairman. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our EPIC Suisse conference call on behalf of -- on the half year results 2025. My name is Roni Greenbaum, and I'm the Chairman of the Board of Director of EPIC Suisse. Joining me on the call this morning are our CEO, Erick Parizer; our CFO, Valérie Scholtes; and our Portfolio Director, Philipp Küchler. You should have received our press release this morning, and you can find on our website epic.ch in the English section of the Media and Investor, our half year report 2025 as well as the presentation to our call. We are very pleased to report once again robust results for the half year period, and we're also proud of many other achievements, especially the completion of our two development projects, PULSE and Campus Leman Building C towards the end of H1 2025. For the next 30 minutes or so, Erick and Valérie will take you through the slides in the presentation, after which all the 4 of us will be available for a Q&A. Erick, over to you.

Thank you, Roni, and good morning, everyone. I would like to join Roni's comments and to also welcome you all to EPIC Suisse H1 2025 Results Conference Call. This period marks the 3 years anniversary of EPIC Suisse being a public company, and we are proud of what we've achieved in terms of top line growth, in terms of our cost discipline and the progress of our development projects. We also held our first Capital Markets Day in June 2025, where we had the opportunity to present our vision to the investment community and those who participated could visit some of our buildings first site, firsthand. We highly value the interaction with our investors and partners, and we would like to thank all those who have participated. Now to the numbers and achievements during the first half of the year. It is a great pleasure for me to share with you all today once again our record results and to update you on our ongoing operations and development. Let me start with a quick overview of the economy. As you can see on Slide #3 of the presentation, inflation in Switzerland has cooled off from its peak in December 2022 at 2.8% to 1.1% in December 2024, and according to the Swiss National Bank is expected to continue to go down to 0.2% in 2025 and 0.5% in 2026. GDP growth has come down since December 2021 at 5.1% to 1.2% in December 2023 and 1% in December 2024. Expectations are that GDP will increase again during 2025 and 2026 to a modest growth of 1.3% and 1.2%. Consumer sentiment remains negative and stands at around minus 33, indicating continued uncertainty from the consumer side. Please note that the numbers that I just commented on and on this slide were all published prior to the recent U.S. tariff announcements, which may lead to revisions of these estimates over the next few months. In this economically and politically challenging environment, our company continued to grow and the market value of our real estate portfolio grew to circa CHF 1.7 billion, as you can see on Slide #5. The real estate portfolio as at 30th of June 2025 was split according to market values as follows: 54% in the Lake Geneva region, 34% in the Zurich Economic Area and 12% in other locations, notably in canton St. Gallen, Bern and Glarus. The change compared to last year of about 2 percentage point increase in the Lake Geneva region was mainly due to our recently completed development projects in this part of Switzerland. I will refer to PULSE and Campus Leman Building C projects later throughout the presentation. The portfolio remained also well diversified by sectors with market values per sectors as follows: 42% offices, 35% retail, 13% logistics and light industrial, 10% developments having increased from 9% in December 2024, reflecting the progress that we've made in our development properties. We have 25 properties with almost 325,000 square meters of lettable area. The net rental income yield of properties in operation was 4.5%, and the portfolio continues to benefit from a long WAULT of 8.1 years. On Slide #7, you can see the main highlights of our H1 2025 business period. We continue to grow our rental income to CHF 33.4 million compared to CHF 32.6 million in H1 2024. Reported vacancy continued to come down and was 3.8% during the period. For a reminder, this reduction trend has been going on for a few years now. During 2024, the reported vacancy was 4.2%; during 2023, it was 4.6%; and during 2022, the year when we became a public company, it was 5.8%. Our WAULT remained long and stood at 8.1 years at 30th of June 2025 compared to 8.2 years as at 31 December 2024, despite the fact that 6 months have passed by. Also, EBITDA, excluding revaluation of properties, increased during H1 2025 to CHF 26.8 million compared to CHF 26.1 million during H1 2024. We continue to have a solid equity ratio of 48.4% as at 30th of June 2025. And finally, and we will discuss it in more detail later in the presentation, during the period, we have successfully completed both PULSE and Campus Leman Building C. Slide 9 summarizes our portfolio key figures. We have 25 properties in operations and 3 properties under development, Nexus Brunnpark in Roggwil; Campus Leman Buildings C and D in Morges and PULSE in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne. Our portfolio value increased to CHF 1.66 billion, out of which CHF 1.48 billion are properties in operations and CHF 174 million are properties under development. Like I mentioned, the reported vacancy was reduced to 3.8% in H1 2025 compared to 4.8% in H1 2024, 5.8% in financial year 2022 or 7.6% in financial year 2021. I already commented on the WAULT, which we consider 8.1 years to be very attractive. As usual, we do not report individual market value per property. But on Slide #10, you can see the portion of the top 10 properties in operations out of the total market value of the portfolio as well as the respective uses. As you can see, the top 10 properties in operations represent 60% of our total portfolio value. We have 2 properties in operations with a value in excess of CHF 100 million. The average property value amounted to approximately CHF 59 million, while the smallest property we have in operation carried a value of about CHF 6 million. So overall, we consider our portfolio well balanced also from a risk perspective. Slide 11 reflects the change in market value of our portfolio with an increase in value of 2.6% during the period. The increase was mainly driven from CapEx of CHF 28.2 million in total, which was split as follows: CHF 22.1 million investments in our development pipeline, mainly PULSE with CHF 17.4 million and Campus Leman Building C with CHF 4.7 million as well as CHF 6.1 million investment in our properties and operations. This increase was further amplified by the revaluation gain of CHF 13.8 million, which we have had during the 6 months to June 2025. On Slide #12, you can see in blue the breakdown of the revaluation per sector as at 30th of June 2025 and the comparable numbers for last year's corresponding period. As in previous years, all our properties were valued by the independent valuer, Wüest Partner, who revalues our properties every 6 months. Overall, the revaluation resulted in a net unrealized revaluation gain of CHF 13.8 million. This split was as follows: a gain of CHF 6.4 million in the office sector; a gain of CHF 4.5 million in the retail sector; a small loss of CHF 0.6 million in the logistics sector; and finally, a gain of CHF 3.5 million in properties under development, reflecting the continuous development stage of our projects. The average nominal discount rate for 30th of June 2025 was 4.39% compared to 4.67% on 31 December 2024. The average real discount rate remained almost unchanged at 3.35% in June 2025 compared to 3.38% in December 2024. On Slide #13, you can see that in the top table, the evolution per sector of our vacancy rates during the period compared to the corresponding period. In the bottom table, you can also see the like-for-like growth for those for the 2 periods. You can see in the top table that the vacancy per sector was as follows: Offices, vacancy rate was reduced quite substantially from 7.7% in H1 2024 to 5% in H1 2025; Retail, the vacancy remained more or less unchanged at 3.4% in H1 2025 compared to 3.2% in H1 2024; Logistics and light industrial slightly increased, but still remained very low at 1.2%. As you can see, the overall vacancy has been reduced from 4.8% in H1 2024 to as low as 3.8% in H1 2025. In the bottom table, you can see the like-for-like growth of H1 2025 compared to the corresponding period. Office sector growth of 3.5% in H1 2025 compared to minus 3% in H1 2024. Retail and logistics sectors remain more or less constant on a like-for-like basis with a slight immaterial pullback of 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively. Overall, like-for-like growth was 1.4%, as mentioned earlier in the presentation. As just presented, the main driver of this growth was from the office sector, where we had new tenants moving in, in Biopôle Serine, com.West and Lake Geneva Center A. On Slide #14, you can see the list of our top 6 tenants. The top 6 group of tenants are all very solid tenants and represented 52% of our H1 2025 net rental income. The contracts with those 6 tenants have a WAULT of 10.2 years and the total net rental income in H1 2025 amounted to CHF 17.4 million from these 6 tenants alone. The other CHF 60 million of net rental income are well spread over more than 160 tenants. As mentioned earlier, the WAULT of our entire portfolio is 8.1 years. And it is important to note that as much as 89% of our rental income on a weighted average basis is linked to the Swiss CPI index. On Slide #15, you can see the expiry profile of our leases. As you will notice, more than 60% of our leases will expire post December 2030. Out of the 2.2% expiring in 2025, 83% relates to contracts with either no fixed maturity or already renewed or relet or currently under negotiations, while 17% of the 2.2% expiring in 2025 relates to services that are on the market. Out of the 6.1% of expiry in 2026, 46% relates to leases where negotiations are ongoing, 39% to services, which are on the market and 13% awaiting confirmation of the renewal in due time and in accordance with the lease agreements. I would like now to pass the word to Valérie, who will go through the financial numbers in more detail.

Thank you, Erick, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to report on another solid set of financial results. Although very modest as the tenants just moved in, this half year report includes for the first time, rental income from our recently completed developments PULSE and Campus Leman Building C. The combined annual target rent of both properties amounts to CHF 8.7 million, which we expect to achieve as we will gradually rent out those properties. And as usual, I will focus on 3 areas: first, the equity and liability side of our balance sheet; second, the performance of our portfolio; and then thirdly, how this performance translates into earnings per share for our shareholders. And for each of the key figures tables, I will highlight the main points, and then I will dive into those on the following slides. Starting with Slide 16 and our balance sheet. So despite the dividend distribution of CHF 32.5 million in April 2025, our equity remained at similar levels compared to December 2024, namely at CHF 817 million in June 2025 compared to CHF 820 million by the end of December 2024, corresponding to equity ratios of 48.4% and 49.9%, respectively. And as we kept investing in our portfolio and especially in our development of PULSE and Campus Leman Building C, our mortgage-secured bank loans increased to CHF 682 million by the end of June 2025 compared to CHF 662 million by the end of last year, nonetheless showing a stable net loan-to-value ratio of 40.5% compared to 40.6%, respectively, still well below our medium target net-to-value ratio of about 45%. Now the annualized return on equity for the first half of 2025, when we exclude the regulation effects stayed also constant and unchanged at 5% compared to the full financial year 2024. As illustrated by Slide 17, our robust first half 2025 results of CHF 30 million allowed our equity to remain at comparable levels compared to December 2024, considering the dividend distribution of CHF 32.5 million, which I already mentioned earlier on. And all investors could benefit from an increased dividend per share of CHF 3.15 this year compared to CHF 3.10 last year, corresponding to an attractive dividend yield of 3.9% based on the year-end closing 2024 share price of CHF 81. The IFRS NAV per share equaled CHF 79.12 by the end of June 2025 and even reaches CHF 90.97 when we disregard the net deferred tax element. So let's move now to the liability side of our balance sheet on Slide 18. As at 30th of June 2025, 63% of our mortgage-secured bank loans were hedged by using either fixed interest rates or interest rate swaps. The Swiss reference interest rates basis for SARON progressively decreased from 1.75% as at 1st of January 2024 to 0% as at June 2025 largely explaining the decrease in bank financing cost of CHF 4.2 million from CHF 4.2 million for the first half of 2024 to CHF 4 million for the first half of 2025. The weighted average cost of debt as at 30th of June 2025 stood at 1.1% and the weighted average residual maturity at 3.5 years, and this compared to 1.3% and 3.7 years for 30th of December 2024. Now when we look at the debt maturity profile at the bottom of the slide, there is one loan coming to maturity in 2025 in an amount of CHF 55.7 million, which entirely relates to Project PULSE. And this loan is actually currently in the process of being extended by 1 year in order to allow more time for the consolidation of the construction loan into a standard loan. Now moving to the performance of our portfolio for the first half of 2025 on Slide 19, the 7 blue arrows pointing upwards says it all. For each of the profit and loss key figures, the performance of this first half year 2025 surpassed the one of H1 2024. And most of the growth of the top line in the amount of CHF 0.8 million could actually flow to the profit, excluding revaluation effects, thanks to the stable operating and bank financing costs in aggregate. So as already explained by Erick, the rental income from our real estate properties grew by 2.3% between the 2 reported periods or by 1.4% on a like-for-like basis, keeping the net income yield for our properties in operation competitive and unchanged at 4.5%. The NOI amounted to CHF 30.6 million in H1 2025 compared to CHF 30.3 million in H1 2024, showing a slower progression at 1.2% as the direct expenses related to the properties actually increased largely due to project PULSE, which is still in its marketing and letting phase. Erick also already commented on our net unrealized revaluation gain for our properties of CHF 13.8 million for the first half of 2025. EBITDA, excluding revaluation of properties reached CHF 26.8 million in the first half of this year versus CHF 26.1 million in the first half of 2024, and this is thanks to the reduction in other operating expenses, which actually compensated for the increase in direct expenses related to properties, which I just mentioned before. The financial result came to a net expense of CHF 5.2 million in H1 2025 in comparison with CHF 8.1 million in H1 2024. And when we exclude the unrealized revaluation effects of the derivatives and of the related underlying U.S. dollar loans, the adjusted financial result shows a minor decrease of CHF 0.1 million between the 2 reporting periods, driven by the lower bank financing costs. And all of this translates into a profit, excluding revaluation -- sorry, revaluation effects of CHF 20.5 million in this first half year versus CHF 19.1 million in the prior comparable period, and this resulted in an additional profit of CHF 0.6 million or an uplift of 2.8%. And as usual, the next 2 slides summarize visually what I've just said about our H1 2025 performance. Slide 20 shows the main P&L component divided from rental income to EBITDA before revaluation of properties, while Slide 21 compares graphically the first 6 months portfolio performance, excluding the revaluation and the KPIs between 2024 and 2025. So the presented NOI and EBITDA margins actually relate to the entire portfolio, including the development and show consistency with NOI margins at around 90% and EBITDA margins at around 78%. And when we consider only the properties in operations, then the NOI margins actually improved from 90.6% -- sorry, 90.8% in the first half of 2024 to 90.2% in the first half of 2025 -- 91.2% in the first half of 2025. And now this leads me to the final slide of my presentation, Slide 22 and how this performance translates into earnings per share for our investors. And here, the 2.8% increase in earnings per share, excluding revaluation effects or CHF 1.98 is actually the reflection of the solid performance of our business, which I've just described to you a few minutes ago. So in conclusion, our business performance shows consistency and steady progression. And the next meaningful increase in rental income will materialize with the gradual lettings of our recently completed development projects, especially in PULSE because Campus Leman Building C is already let at 85%. And without any further delays, Erick will now provide you with an update on the developments.

Thank you, Valérie. So on the following few slides, I would like to share some information with you on our development projects, starting with Campus Leman Building C on Slide 24. We are pleased to report that Campus Leman Building C was completed during H1 2025 as planned and is already mostly occupied by 2 tenants. As expected, the construction cost of the building were around CHF 15 million as budgeted. We have invested a further CHF 1.7 million in tenant fit-out, which is fully amortized during the terms of the lease of one of those tenants. We were at 85% occupancy as of 30th of June 2025 with only the top floor, that is floor 5, not yet leased. The target rent for Building C amounts to CHF 1.2 million once the building will be fully let. Today, we have rental income signed for around CHF 1 million with the 2 tenants. The provisional P-certificate has been received, and we are waiting for the final certificate to be issued. Moving on to PULSE on Slide #25. This building was also completed on time and on budget. PULSE is located in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, is a cutting-edge property designed for life science and high-tech companies and has a lot of very positive features on sustainability. The building offers a gross area of 43,000 square meters of fully modular space with contemporary architecture, high-tech facilities and customized layouts. Located in the heart of the Swiss Valley, it provides easy access to tenant transport links, including an 11-minute connection to Renens train station. The property will obtain environmental certifications, Minergie and BREEAM, and the project cost amount to a total of about CHF 130 million. The target annual rental income communicated previously is CHF 7.5 million, which corresponds to a yield of circa 6%. So far, 21% of the target rent is already secured with the following tenants: Thermo Fisher, which is part of the U.S.-based Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company listed on New York Stock Exchange; Kidelis, a subsidiary of Eldora, a restaurant chains serving in excess of 30,000 meals per day across Switzerland, and UC Romandie operating fresh facility under the brand Bubbles, mainly for children in the PULSE tenants employees. The relation with these 3 tenants are for 10 years, excluding any early breaks, providing us with a stable cash flow. I would like to point out that we are having at the moment positive discussions with several interested parties, which reinforces even further our belief that PULSE is well designed and that it is a high quality and a very attractive building. We are confident that further leases will be signed in the second half of 2025, which would meaningfully increase the occupancy rate beyond 21% already signed. On Slide #26, you can see our ongoing development of Nexus Brunnpark in Roggwil, Canton Bern. As most of you know, we've received the preliminary general building permit for the extension project on Nexus Brunnpark. The permit gives the official feedback from the authorities on items such as, for example, size and volume of the building, planned redirection of the river running through the site, access road, traffic, et cetera. This preliminary building permit was for a building of a gross area of 30,000 square meters with a gross volume of 425 cubic meters. Currently, we are in early discussions with our existing tenant and potential other tenants to define the next steps of the development process. We feel that such a larger logistics plots of land in such an attractive location in the golden triangle between Bern, Basel and Zurich are very rare, and we are confident of the potential of this development. At the moment, it is still early to define a precise budget as it depends on many factors such as the use of the future tenants. But from initial analysis, we estimate the cost to be somewhere between CHF 70 million and CHF 90 million. In any case, we will aim for at least 6% return on our costs. On Slide #27, you can see our development in Tolochenaz. As a reminder, Tolochenaz is currently included in our properties in operation as it is fully let and generates rental income. The reason that we also included the property in this section of the presentation is that we expect the property to be redeveloped. Once this takes place, the property will be moved to development segment, most probably in phases, as the future development will also most probably be in phases. We will inform the municipality of the strong wish to complete the master plan in the next 12 to 18 months. The new master plan is expected to improve the flexibility of the building rights. However, and this is important to note, substantial building rights are already in place, allowing future development to take place regardless of the outcome of this new master plan. Finally, as you already know, the site is classified as a strategic development site by canton Vaud. Let me take you to our outlook on Slide #29. Assuming no materially adverse impact on our operations going forward, we reaffirm our rental income growth guidelines of 2% to 3% for the full year 2025. The next sizable uplift in rental income will materialize with the further lettings of PULSE and Campus Leman Building C over the next few months. And with this, we end the presentation part of the call, and I would like to now open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We have the question from Philippe Züger from Zürcher Kantonalbank.

Philippe Züger speaking from Zürcher KB. Actually, I do have two questions. First is regarding the market for tenants in...

Excuse me, this is the operator. Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Greenbaum, can you hear us? Okay. Please hold the line. I will try to reestablish the connection with the speakers. The speaker line is now connected. Mr. Züger, could you kindly repeat your question?

I'd like to know how do you see the market for logistics in the Lake Geneva area in general? And then second question goes to the property PULSE. May you share us your ambition for the vacancy at the end of '25 and maybe also next year 2026?

Sure. Maybe I'll take the first part of the question, and Ron, you can comment on the second part of the question -- the second question. Regarding logistics, we see the market so far strong. I mean also you can see that from the low vacancy percent -- vacancy rate that we have in logistics overall in the market, 1.2%. And we don't see any significant differences between location. Generally, we see the logistics market is performing well. And regarding PULSE, I'll let Ron answer.

We have a very healthy ongoing negotiation. As Erick mentioned, we are optimistic about important signing still in Q4 this year. So obviously, during -- we said on our Analyst Day, in the same day, that we anticipated to get the majority of the letting within 18 months.