European Residential Real Estate Investment Trust (EREUN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the European Residential Real Estate Investment Trust Fourth Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. My name is Marie, and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Nicole Dolan of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that during our conference call this morning, we may include forward-looking statements about expected future events and the financial and operating results of ERES, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. We direct your attention to Slide 2 and our other regulatory filings for important information about these statements. I will now turn the call over to Mark Kenney, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Nicole, and good morning, everyone. Joining me this morning is Jenny Chou, our Chief Financial Officer. I want to get started with Slide 4, which provides some highlights from this past year. In 2024, we completed over EUR 900 million in strategic dispositions that reduced our residential portfolio in the Netherlands to approximately 3,000 suites as of December 31, 2024, down from nearly 7,000 suites at the start of the year. We were able to transact on these sales at pricing at or above previously reported fair values, generating significant capital that we used in part to strengthen our balance sheet. We repaid EUR 544 million in mortgage debt, and we fully paid down the EUR 103 million we had outstanding on our revolving credit facility at the start of the year. The result was a significant reduction in the REIT's ratio of adjusted debt to gross book value from 57.6% as of the previous year to 39.7% as of December 31, 2024. With remaining net cash proceeds, we were pleased to declare a special cash distribution to unitholders of EUR 1 per unit in Class B LP Units, which amounted to EUR 234 million paid out on December 31, 2024. On the whole, this capital allocation achieved our 2 primary objectives: maximize returns for our unitholders and maintain strong financial management. Operationally, on our same property portfolio, average rent was EUR 1,245 per month on December 31, 2024, which represents an increase of 6.8% versus the prior year-end. This reflects the continued strength in the Dutch rental market fundamentals, combined with our ability to proficiently navigate its regulatory regime. We're continuing to execute on our rent growth strategy comprised of uplifts on turnover and indexation. And in 2024, we realized a weighted average uplift of 14.9% on turnover, supplemented by an increase of 5.5% on indexation. This resulted in the strong year-over-year increase in average monthly rent and contributed to our solid same-property NOI margin of 76.6% for the year ended December 31, 2024. Turning to Slide 5. You will see that our occupancy has decreased to 94.6% on the total residential portfolio as of December 31, 2024. This relates to our value maximization strategy and is mainly being driven by our disposition program. To a lesser extent, we are also intentionally keeping certain suites temporarily vacant in order to optimize rent growth in balance with local market conditions. I will now turn the call over to Jenny to provide an update on our financial performance.

Thanks, Mark. Slide 7 summarizes our performance for the fourth quarter. As mentioned, we've strategically taken on vacancy, and we had 94.9% of our same-property residential suites occupied at period end. Although growth in the occupied AMR was strong at 6.8%, it was offset by higher vacancies as well as an increase in operating costs due to elevated repairs and maintenance and insurance expenses. As a result, our same-property NOI was down by 2%, and our margin decreased to 76.2% for the fourth quarter of 2024. Diluted FFO per unit also decreased by 5.3% to $0.0360 for the 3 months ended December 31, 2024, primarily due to dispositions, partly offset by lower interest costs following significant repayments of debt. I'll also briefly walk through our financial performance for the full 12-month period as outlined on Slide 8. Due to dispositions and higher vacancy, partly offset by rent growth, operating revenues were down by 2.8%. On the total portfolio, operating costs as a percentage of revenues were relatively stable, and our NOI margin remained strong at 78.4% for the year ended December 31, 2024. On the same-property portfolio, strong rent growth was offset by elevated vacancies and higher R&M and insurance costs, resulting in the decrease in our margin to 76.6%. Diluted FFO per unit was down 4.3% to EUR 0.154 for the current year. With an increase in nondiscretionary capital expenditure, our diluted AFFO per unit was down by 7.3% to EUR 0.139 and our AFFO payout ratio was 86% for 2024. This reflects a stable monthly distribution of EUR 0.01 per unit, equivalent to EUR 0.12 per unit annualized, which sustained a relatively high distribution yield throughout the year. We've highlighted our financial position and liquidity on Slide 9. As mentioned, we used part of the net proceeds from our strategic dispositions to repay a meaningful amount of outstanding debt in order to strengthen our balance sheet. This lowered our leverage with a conservative ratio of adjusted debt to market value of 40% as of December 31, 2024, down from 58% at prior year-end. We then had available liquidity of EUR 133 million, comprised of cash on hand and the full EUR 125 million in unused capacity on the revolving credit facility as of year-end. We also ensured that all our debt covenants continue to be met. Slide 10 shows our mortgage renewal profile. It continues to carry a low weighted average effective interest rate of 2.3%, which is almost entirely fixed and it has a weighted average term to maturity of 2.5 years as of the current year-end. After paying down mortgage debt associated with disposition, part of the net proceeds were reallocated into prepayment of certain additional mortgages maturing in the near term. As such, going into 2025, we have a total of EUR 34 million in mortgage principal maturing in the year. This is down substantially from the EUR 227 million, which was originally set to mature in 2025. We now have a well-positioned balance sheet to support the REIT's strategic objectives going forward. And on that note, I will turn things back to Mark to wrap up.

Thank you, Jenny. We're very proud of what we were able to accomplish in 2024, especially in the context of an operating environment that continues to face macroeconomic, political and regulatory challenges. We have stated that our mission is the maximization of value for unitholders, and we believe that this past year has shown our true commitment to that objective. We were pleased to have kicked off 2025 with a special unitholder meeting in which a resolution to amend the REIT's Declaration of Trust was passed. This provides the Board with maximum flexibility in assessing and executing on the most attractive opportunities available so that ERES can continue to make significant progress on the execution of its strategy in the year ahead. So far, we are maintaining momentum on that and have already closed on 2 dispositions of an aggregate 279 suites for a combined gross proceeds of EUR 56.2 million. Moving forward, we are going to continue to explore every opportunity to surface value in a responsible, disciplined and timely manner and expect to generate strong returns for all unitholders in 2025. With that, I would like to thank you for your time this morning, and we would now be pleased to take any questions which you may have.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Alexander Leon of Desjardins.

I want to start off with maybe an obvious one, and that would be if you can maybe give us your thoughts on maybe the expected timing on when you expect to be able to sell off the remaining assets and maybe on the ability to achieve your IFRS fair value.

Well, we've not officially broadcast the strategy for the balance of the portfolio, but the unitholder meeting is extremely strong signal of what the Board and management is thinking. I can tell you that we are very confident with the transaction market in the Netherlands. It would appear that strength is growing in the interest of multifamily, especially privatizers. So there is clear signs of trading. There is very high confidence that our IFRS values are realistic. And like I said in the presentation, we will be very disciplined in the review of maximizing value for unitholders. But you can expect sort of clarity from the company on the path forward. But if any -- if last year was any sort of signal, you can expect that we will keep the same commitment to 2025.

Okay. That's great. And you made a comment there about strength of the market. So that hasn't been impacted at all maybe with the recent geopolitical events and maybe some of the volatility that's caused?

No, the Netherlands is facing very similar housing crisis to Canada, some slight nuance differences. But when you look at sort of the direction of regulation, the government clearly is leaning towards homeownership versus rental, it would be how we interpret things. And the housing crisis and the need for housing remains extremely, extremely strong, which makes the market for privatization quite good. So lots of things happening in Europe. Netherlands definitely remains a safe haven where people want to live. So with all the geopolitical issues in Europe, the Netherlands has got its own influx of people and just not enough homes.

Okay. That's great to hear. Maybe last one for me. And that's just -- I mean, continuing on this kind of pattern of questioning, I'm just wondering now that there's a little bit of a higher proportion of regulated suites that are left over, do you think that's going to impact maybe the pace of sales at all?

No, because the -- at the end of the day, people are looking at the privatization value. So the return impacts as a result of regulation are not ideal for the REIT, but the privatization opportunity of the apartments are extremely appealing for those that want to go into the privatization business. So I would just -- this is the beauty of having individual title. Punitive legislation only slows down the production of homes and makes the privatization of each individual unit even higher.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Sairam Srinivas of Cormark Securities.

Congratulations on the disposition so far. I just have one question around the entire plan for the REIT. And maybe, Mark, if you think about '24 versus '25, how would you characterize the transaction market appetite in terms of the kind of buyers you're seeing out there, both in terms of the kind of assets they are acquiring as well as the overall investment appetite?

That's a great question. What we've learned about real estate is that every asset is different. So because ERES has a portfolio that's quite geographically diverse, the appeal is quite diverse in terms of who the buyers are. So I can tell you for what's left, there are a couple of housing associations that would be the most frothy buyers. There are privatizers that are family offices, and there are funds that are seeing the opportunity to privatize in the Netherlands that are gaining steam and raising capital. So the ideal buyer is our job to maximize value on each and every asset, and it's quite diverse. Now the good news is I would characterize that differently than in maybe 2023, even when we go back, where there was just a lot less buyers in the marketplace. There was virtually no trading activity. And what we've seen is just a sort of a continuous gain in momentum on the buy side, but diverse.

That makes sense, Mark. And maybe just kind of doubling down on that one, when you kind of put it in the context of privatizers looking at these assets and the privatization opportunity and then you kind of use the historical trend of all these housing associations primarily kind of trying to acquire more units now to get to the affordable living side, does that impact the valuation of these assets in terms of how they look at it? Or is it just generally privatization is the perspective there?

That's another great question. And you can take comfort in the fact that when we do our valuations, there is a privatization component that's built into those valuations. Now it's not perfect and nor is there any sort of math calculation for valuation. It's a benchmark in the marketplace. But we're able to steer our thinking, knowing that privatization is built into our valuations.

We currently have no further questions, so I will hand back to Mark Kenney for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining us this morning. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact any of us at any time. Thank you again, and have a great day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.