Grainger plc ($GRI)

So good morning, everyone, and welcome to Grainger's Half Year Results. In a time of global uncertainty, our business continues to deliver strong results, growth in earnings and an excellent outlook. Now this shouldn't be a surprise. We are in a needs-based real estate sector. We are a resilient business in a structurally supportive sector and we continue to deliver strong growth. The agenda this morning is I will take you through the highlights and Rob will take you through the financial results and then I'll talk about our market and the drivers of growth and we'll have time for Q&A. In the first half, we have delivered a strong performance and we are delivering compounding earnings growth. Our guidance is to deliver GBP 60 million of EPRA earnings this year and that's a 12% uplift on 2025 and GBP 72 million, a 35% increase by full year '29 and that's after rebasing our finance costs. We are on track. This is a resilient business with a high demand for our product, high occupancy and a large and diverse customer base. Our growth is underpinned by wage inflation and our strong customer affordability. Our growth is locked in with a committed pipeline on site and we are leasing into an undersupplied market. This with improved margins. Deleveraging is a priority and will see us reducing net debt targeting a GBP 300 million to GBP 350 million reduction and targeting a net debt to EBITDA of 8x. We have a great track record of asset recycling with disposals in line with valuation and our GBP 850 million of noncore assets support our committed pipeline and our deleveraging. So we delivered another strong financial performance in line with expectations. Our rental income was up 7.8%, our like-for-like was 3.1% and our earnings growth was 4%. We have increased our dividend 3% and our NTA is 290p per share. Now this is slightly lower than full year '25 and it reflects the value of sentiment about the sector rather than concrete deals in our geographies. And as a reminder, our NTA has been resilient as outward yield movement has been substantially mitigated by rental growth. Our operational platform continues to deliver ahead of the market. As a reminder, we underwrite at between 95% and 97% occupancy and we've maintained high occupancy at 96%. We've achieved strong retention at 61%, healthy customer affordability at 27% of our customers' income spent on rent and this is very healthy because on average mid-30s is seen as affordable. We have strong operational efficiency still at 25% even after absorbing higher cost. And as a reminder, our gross to net includes all maintenance and refresh cost. Grainger is a resilient and growing business and here are 5 key reasons. One, we are a needs-based asset class. Everyone needs somewhere to live and there is a shortage of good quality rental homes and this is getting more challenging. We have low obsolescence. We are AI resilient. And indeed, we are more likely to be a beneficiary of AI in our operations because of our data and insights. Two, we deliver inflation-linked growth underpinned by wage inflation and a trend for renting for longer. Three, we have a very diversified customer base and that's diversified in employment, diversified in geography and less than 10% of our customers are students and that's a self-imposed cap. Four, we have limited cost inflation exposure. In our developments, our construction costs are fixed. In our operations, our energy costs are around GBP 2 million per annum. And of course our homes are significantly more energy efficient than the wider market helping our customers in their overall occupation costs. Five, we have embedded margin expansion and earnings growth. Our stable tech-enabled platform is scalable for growth. And as we add more homes through our committed pipeline, this will increase earnings growth and deliver margin expansion. The strong pace of our disposals continues and it is this that is funding our deleveraging and future growth. And as a reminder, we have done over GBP 2 billion of recycling since the start of our strategy and GBP 700 million since 2022. There was a degree of market stagnation in our Q1 and the long-awaited and delayed budget caused many buyers to pause, but we've achieved GBP 82 million of sales completed or exchanged year-to-date. And we are seeing strong demand for our ex-regulated properties and our noncore PRS and we haven't seen any slowdown in momentum in recent weeks. We still have GBP 850 million of noncore disposals to support our strategy. Now we included a similar slide to this a year ago, but it's important to revisit. Our disciplined capital allocation will drive returns. Our current priorities are the completion of our committed pipeline of schemes on site and deleveraging. Our committed pipeline of 775 homes will cost GBP 120 million to complete and it is this that will drive our uplift in earnings. Our second priority will be to reduce our net debt to bring LTV to around 30% and net debt to EBITDA to 8x and this is supported by our noncore disposal program. These first 2 priorities facilitate the growth in our earnings and they optimize our capital structure. We have been clear that following our 2 priorities, we will consider other options to drive future returns for shareholders. And at our current share price, share buybacks are a strong contender for capital allocation following our key priorities of deleveraging and completion of our schemes on site. We will allocate capital into whichever is most accretive to shareholder returns. We are focused on delivering shareholder value in the short, medium and long term. So turning to our portfolio. We have a high quality build-to-rent portfolio of just under GBP 3 billion and a pipeline delivering significant earnings growth. Our regulated tenancies continue to sell well that are now around GBP 530 million and they are a source to fund our future growth. Our onsite committed pipeline seen here shaded in black will deliver 775 homes and GBP 14 million of net rents, which is a key driver of our 35% earnings growth and there's just GBP 120 million to spend remaining. We have over 2,000 homes secured and an outer pipeline of 1,200 homes in planning and legals. We have strong partnerships and optionality for the future. The growth in our portfolio will leverage our central costs and drive our EBITDA margin expansion. At our current share price, share buybacks look more accretive than our secured pipeline. This pipeline though provides a valuable store of future growth. This slide demonstrates the consistent delivery of our business and the vast increase in our income and margin. We have consistently grown our income, our earnings and our margin and our growth is continuing. Our strong growth in our rents, in our EPRA earnings and as we drive operational leverage, we will deliver more EBITDA margin expansion. We have a track record of delivering growth, but there is a lot more to come. And with that, I'll hand over to Rob.

Thank you, Helen, and good morning, everybody. Today, I'm going to run through the financial performance for the half year and outline the strong earnings growth that we have to come. The first half has been another period of strong growth with rents up 8% demonstrating Grainger's resilience and our market-leading position. We have again delivered a strong operational performance with like-for-like rental growth of 3.1% and occupancy at 96%. EPRA earnings grew by 4% and we're on track to deliver our guidance of 12% growth to GBP 60 million for the full year. Our dividend per share increased by 3% and EPRA NTA was down 2.7% to 290p due to valuations and I'll cover this in more detail later. So turning to the income statement in more detail. Our overall like-for-like rental growth was strong at 3.1%, in line with long-term averages. Stabilized gross to net remained at 25% demonstrating our ongoing focus on cost efficiency. Our overheads were flat in the half having implemented a GBP 2 million annualized cost saving in the period and this will keep overheads flat for the next 2 years. Interest costs increased during the half due to one-off costs relating to refinancing our bank debt with the benefits of this to be delivered in the second half and beyond. We continue to see EPRA earnings growth up 4% in the half, in line with our plan to deliver our guidance of GBP 60 million for the full year. As expected, sales profits were lower at GBP 5.2 million in the first half reflecting phasing of regulated sales with a strong pipeline for the second half. Other adjustments include derivative valuation movements and restructuring costs associated with our cost saving initiatives. So looking at the moving parts of the 8% increase in our net rent for the period, Strong occupancy and like-for-like rental growth of 3.1% contributed GBP 1.5 million and this was driven by good rental growth in BTR in line with guidance at 2.9% with new lets delivering 2% and renewal 3.3%. Our regulated portfolio delivered 5.9%. The strong lease-up performance of our recent pipeline deliveries has contributed an additional GBP 5.7 million of net rent and our asset recycling program offset this growth by GBP 2.4 million. Looking forwards, we'd expect full year build-to-rent rental growth to be in line with the long-term average of 3% to 3.5%. This chart shows the key movements in NTA over the period and our NTA was down 8p at 290p per share. Net rents and fees added 9p with overheads and finance costs offsetting this by 5p. Overall, our portfolio valuation for the period was down 1.1% and the PRS portfolio saw 1.4% valuation decline with ERV growth of 1.1% offset by around 25 basis points of outward yield shift reflecting macro sentiment. Valuations on the regs portfolio were up 0.6% demonstrating their resilience and further details of the valuation can be seen in the appendices of this presentation. Now looking at net debt. Net debt increased in the half to GBP 1.5 billion, in line with our plans. Operational cash flows remained strong with GBP 85 million generated with disposals contributing GBP 61 million net of fees. We're targeting GBP 200 million of operational cash flows for the full year. As mentioned at the full year, investments in our build-to-rent portfolio has continued to moderate as we work our way through the committed pipeline. There was GBP 80 million invested during the period with a further GBP 120 million to spend on the pipeline and the majority of this falling into FY '27. As Helen explained, in line with our capital allocation strategy, we'll continue to generate high levels of sales. These proceeds will be used to fund the remaining committed pipeline and also to lower leverage by GBP 300 million to GBP 350 million by FY '29. Going forwards we, therefore, expect net debt to be broadly flat on FY '25 by the FY '26 year-end before starting to delever from FY '27. And our balance sheet remains in good shape. Both net debt at GBP 1.5 billion and LTV at 40.2% were up slightly over the period in line with our plans. We maintained strong liquidity and a robust hedging profile with rates fixed in the mid-3% range. In the half, we successfully extended our GBP 540 million bank facilities to 2033 and reduced margins further derisking our balance sheet and this will give an annualized saving of GBP 1 million. As previously highlighted, we plan to reduce our debt by around GBP 300 million to GBP 350 million by FY '29 as we continue to sell through our lower yielding noncore assets. And this will see our net debt at around GBP 1.1 billion, which will equate to around an 8x net debt to EBITDA and LTV of around 30%, which we see as the right capital structure for the long term. As net debt is brought down, this will help mitigate the impact of rising finance costs as our low rate hedging rolls off ensuring continued strong earnings growth. And we remain confident of delivering our previously communicated guidance. We are on track to deliver our EPRA earnings guidance of GBP 60 million this year and the 35% increase to GBP 72 million by FY '29. And we see this growth as exceptionally strong particularly as it's delivered through a period in which we'll absorb the full rebasing of our interest costs to market levels. We've modeled interest at 5.5%, which a number of people thought was prudent last time, but of course is now looking more realistic. And the bridge on this slide breaks down the key drivers of delivering this, which are unchanged and they include the benefits of like-for-like rental growth assumed at 3% to 3.5%, the yield pickup from recycling out of our lower-yielding rental assets into our build-to-rent portfolio, scale efficiencies with EBITDA margins growing to over 60% and the mitigating impacts of reducing debt on higher interest rates. So to summarize. We've continued to deliver a very strong operational performance with rental income increasing by 8%. We continue to derisk the balance sheet through refinancings. We're focused on deleveraging using disposals to reduce our debt by GBP 300 million to GBP 350 million. We maintain our EPRA earnings guidance of GBP 60 million for the full year and GBP 72 million by FY '29 from the delivery of just our committed pipeline alone whilst also fully absorbing the headwind of higher interest rates. Despite the current macroeconomic uncertainty, our underlying business continues to demonstrate its compelling resilience and compounding growth both now and for the years to come. And with that, I'll now hand you back to Helen.

Thanks, Rob. In this section, I'm going to provide evidence to support why we and many others think build-to-rent is a great real estate sector to be in and why living and build-to-rent screams as one of the most wanted asset classes. Our investment case is that investing in residential provides low risk compounding growth with diversified customers and this provides resilience and growth. The attraction of build-to-rent comes from 2 main features: its positive growth drivers and its low risk nature. So looking at just 4 features of its growth and 4 reasons why the sector is low risk. One, it has real scale and liquidity. There are 5.6 million rental households and build-to-rent is just 2.6%. Two, there are market fundamentals of a needs-based asset class with a structural undersupply and growing demand. Three, it has a compounding effect, 3% plus rental growth over the long term and inflation linking through the cycle. And four, build-to-rent delivers a true net yield. All refresh costs are delivered through the gross to net, no dilapidations and that's in stark contrast to commercial property. And then there are the 4 low risk factors. So linked to that previous point, designs of homes endure. There's no obsolescence as we've seen in other real estate sectors. Two, there is low volatility. Even during COVID, our occupancy was averaging 90% plus. Three, low depreciation. There are no end of lease write-downs. And four, we have a growing low risk diverse customer base with strong affordability and more customers renting for longer. So we are an attractive asset class with growth fundamentals and low risk. So just looking at these supportive attributes. The compounding effect means that private residential rents have significantly outperformed commercial. This growth has been resilient and affordable. It is underpinned by wage growth and that's people's ability to pay and that is providing inflation linkage and growth through the cycle. There's an opportunity to scale. Now Grainger is the largest player, but there are 5.6 million rental homes and only 150,000 purpose-built built-to-rent homes. So there's a long way to go. And Grainger's core customer demographic is 25 to 34 and it does not see the higher levels of unemployment or volatility in employment rates that are experienced by those below 25. So residential's resilient and growing demand base has helped rents to grow year-on-year without pricing corrections seen in the commercial sector and this combined with a net yield that explicitly captures all ongoing maintenance, lettings, voids and refresh cost justifies its lower yield. Sadly, there is a continued reduction in private landlords and buy to let investors. Increasing regulation and fears of it together with increased finance cost has seen a net loss of over 200,000 rental properties from small private landlords between July 2022 and August 2025. So the blue bars here are the inflows and the orange bars are landlords selling and leaving the sector and the black line shows the reducing supply from small landlords. The introduction of the Renters' Rights Act led to a significant acceleration of this. The slide on the right is showing the steady decline of buy to let mortgages amongst individuals. And anecdotally, reports of accelerated sales by landlords reaching 700 homes a day in the run-up to the introduction of the Renters' Rights Act and these will exacerbate these numbers. But as a large investor with the leading operational platform, we deliver efficient management and stronger earnings growth and we can comply much more easily with the new regulations. We have a sector-leading operating platform. This platform is leading to our EBITDA margin expansion, which has grown rapidly and we're on track to deliver 60%. And since the start of our strategy, we have a very disciplined approach to cost control. Our overheads now are broadly the same as they were 10 years ago whilst our net rental income has more than tripled. As Rob mentioned, we've taken a further GBP 2 million out of our cost base and we've done this through our investment in our processes and technology. Our investment in our proprietary technology platform CONNECT and in data and AI to make our operations more efficient and more customer focused. We are leveraging data and AI to attract and retain customers and run our business more efficiently. It is also providing us with customer and asset level insights in real time. So this is a very valuable platform to attract, retain and serve our residents. And our customer base is reflective of the quality and the positioning of our portfolio, modern efficient assets aimed at a diverse mid-market customer. 85% of our residents are over 25 and the majority are in that 25 to 48 range and they have good customer affordability. 27% of their income is spent on rent, which is below the U.K. average. They work in diverse sectors of health care, financial, IT, education and many are key workers. And this together with our diverse geography gives us a great high quality customer and asset base providing resilient and growing income. Our homes are designed to insulate customers from energy cost inflation. Grainger's customers pay for their own energy and Grainger's build-to-rent properties are the most efficient, 99.9% are A to C and over 85% are A or B. And the chart shows the average energy bill for an apartment across EPC A to C and the comparison to the wider rental market. So our customers pay significantly lower energy bills as a result of our energy efficient portfolio and Grainger's direct energy bill is only GBP 2 million per annum. Our strategy is to invest in cities with long-term growth fundamentals and supply and demand fundamentals and it is the result of rigorous research, city champions driving local knowledge and insights. London remains our best city for long-term growth. We have a strong track record of sourcing across the U.K. and the gold stars represent where we have schemes under construction now. So our committed pipeline is in exactly the best places. Three schemes illustrated here are on site. The Merrick in Southall next to the Elizabeth line will be delivered early next year and that's over GBP 9 million in net rental income when stabilized. Alloy Apartments in Guildford, 179 homes, Phase 2 of The Mint; will deliver GBP 3 million of income when stabilized. And our Connected Living London JV with TFL at Chiswick Reach represents a real milestone. It is also our first scheme delivered by a housebuilder and at this scheme, our income of GBP 2 million will be enhanced by fees. Now this month marked a major milestone in England's private rented sector. On the 1st of May, the Renters' Rights Act came into force giving a clear and certain environment to the build-to-rent investor. We have invested in processes, training and technology to prepare our business for the changes. But for small landlords, these may be seen as difficult to manage. But our scale and our technology puts us in a good position to embrace and adopt these changes. Reassuringly, the government chose not to implement rent control or caps when it had the opportunity to do so in this Act. They have repeatedly confirmed it is not their policy and this is not the policy of the main opposition. So we can now move forward with certainty. There is broad support across political parties for build-to-rent and recognition that build-to-rent can help raise standards, professionalize the rental sector and increase housing supply. So we are a business that delivers a high quality income stream with compounded earnings and embedded growth. We are a resilient business and vastly underestimated is the value of our operational platform vertically integrated enabled by a tech-first approach and a sector-leading gross to net efficiency. This is enabling high occupancy and attracting a wide customer base. We have locked in growth from our committed pipeline. Our headline growth is delivered by our committed pipeline, but we have a secured pipeline of great sites, which gives us optionality for the future. We have a track record of delivering on sales even in difficult markets and we will use our GBP 850 million of noncore assets to support one of our key priorities of deleveraging. We will deliver GBP 60 million of earnings this year, a 12% increase and we're on track to deliver GBP 72 million by 2029 after refinancing. So we're a resilient growth business. As the U.K.'s only listed build-to-rent platform, we continue to benefit from a structurally undersupplied rental market and long duration inflation-linked income. So the earnings outlook for Grainger is excellent. Thank you. I'll now invite you to ask questions.

I'm going to be joined by Rob, but we have got senior people in the room that can help with questions. Tom?

It's Tom Musson at Berenberg. Just a question on your long-term leverage targets. Since you announced them, we've obviously seen swap rates increase quite meaningfully. We also had that noise from the government about potential rent freezes, which I know they retracted. But if there is arguably a bit more sort of long-term uncertainty both on future rental growth and also interest costs, then why are those future debt targets the right ones? And could they not in fact be materially lower to help satisfy what seems to be a quite conservatively minded equity investor?

Right. There's quite a lot in there. I'm going to ask Rob to deal with the why is the number the right number. But before we do that, I'll just pick up on why we have had reassurance. And of course we might be going through a leadership change, I haven't looked in the last 10 minutes. But consistently rent caps and rent freezes have been rolled out by this government by the Housing Minister, by Angela Rayner as it happens when she was Housing Minister. So we've had consistent reassurance. And the reason that a lot of people who understand this rent caps and rent freezes up is they know it has the opposite effect, which is it actually drives rents up. And bearing in mind the size of our portfolio and the churn, actually a temporary cap or a temporary freeze would actually lead to a lot more growth. But Rob, why don't you answer the debt question?

Yes, absolutely. Well, fundamentally we see our business as very much a low risk, low volatility earnings stream business and also the resilience in the balance sheet as well. Really our earnings guidance and our leverage guidance has been predicated at that level in which we'll be able to grow our earnings throughout the full rebasing to higher interest rates and you've seen the trajectory that we've got. Now clearly we would maintain some flexibility because the variable in all of this will be where interest rates ultimately settle down to. So if indeed we did end up with an even higher for longer compared to what we've modeled, then we obviously have the flexibility through disposals to lower our leverage beyond that as well. So relating to the GBP 850 million of assets to dispose of, we do have quite ample flexibility.

Okay. And maybe a second one, if I can. Just a question on how you see the trade-off between share buybacks and leverage. If the share price stays around where it is, could we see you allocate any capital to buying back shares alongside deleveraging or is your preference very much to focus on deleveraging first so in effect buybacks might not be considered until after FY '29?

Yes. So I think we were clear in the presentation, we see it as after deleveraging. But Rob, why don't you explain why?

Yes. So actually we're constantly triangulating the different rates and what makes most sense from an accretion point of view for capital allocation. At current rates actually it's most accretive for us to reduce debt. And of course in this environment for the reasons we've just discussed, also reducing our financial risk I think given the volatility in the markets also makes sense. So really that's our primary focus. As we continue to work through our deleveraging, of course we'll keep an eye on all the alternatives of use of capital and maintain some agility as a result of that. But really our focus is on deleveraging for the reasons that we've set out.

Neil Green from JPMorgan. Just 1, please. You talked about the impact of the Renters' Rights Bill on landlords selling out. But just interested, and I appreciate it's only been a few weeks, if you've seen any impact on your portfolio whether it's increased admin or people coming to your assets. Just interested to get any take there, please?

Yes. Neil, it's a really interesting one. I mean it's very, very early days so we've only really had a week and a short week in that of trading, but we did see a spike in inquiries so inbound inquiries to our portfolio and I suspect that was because of the notice period. So a lot of Section 21s were served in the lead up to the Renters' Rights Act. So we have seen an increase. But having said that, it's quite hard for us to unpick that because this time of year is our strongest letting period as we go into the summer. Alastair?

Alastair Stewart at Progressive Equity Research. Just really one broad question on could you provide a bit of color on the development industry dynamics just now for instance build costs, I know who you're looking at, viability challenges, supply chain resilience. And on the flip side, is all of this providing any opportunities in the land market?

Yes. I'm going to ask Mike to come to this. But in the land market, obviously we have got a nice supply of land for the future that we've built up. But Mike, why don't you just talk about the state of the development market?

So as we know, viability for build-to-rent is challenged and that's a combination of obviously the values with construction costs higher and have become higher over the last 3 or 4 years. We have the benefit of a registered provider and a lot of discount market in affordable housing, which we've applied for grant for and have been successful. We've got applications out now. So we would expect with the changes we've made to the schemes to add density allied to dropping the affordable housing small amount plus the grant help will materially improve the viability of those schemes.

And in terms of actual build costs, are they accelerating? And something that was pointed out to me recently is supply chain resilience. What's your position on that?

So with the forward fund schemes, which is the ones on site at the moment, obviously those costs are fixed. They're fixed with the contractor and fixed with our partner with forward funding. And we do a huge amount of due diligence on both our partner and the supply chain that they enter into to make sure that we have resilience and good companies with good balance sheets. We would take exactly the same route with any direct development in the future to make sure that when we're entering into contracts, they're at fixed price and with good counterparties. In terms of the cost inflation, we've seen the cost inflation. I think it went up by 40% I think in 5 years. The cost inflation related to Iran, which is what I think you were probably alluding to, isn't clear yet. Obviously the pressures are there. But as I say, we are sort of hedged away from those because of that forward funding. And we will take a view at the time that we would press the button on those development schemes around making sure that as we look at our capital allocation; they've got to make sense, they've got to be viable and they've got to be low risk.

And I think it's fair to say that there's quite a lot of capacity, Alastair, in the sector at the moment because obviously the housebuilding numbers in the U.K. have more or less fallen off a cliff.

Eleanor Frew at Barclays. You've already hinted at it. But given the rise in financing costs we've seen over the year, there is likely some upside pressure to that 5.5%. So do you see any risk to your FY '21 guidance should rates stabilize at these levels when you come to refinance?

We based our guidance on 5.5%. Clearly current rates are tracking a bit higher than that today. Obviously there's been quite a lot of volatility and who knows over this period where rates ultimately settle down to. But what we have is plenty of flexibility and the agility to adapt and really our best response I think in a higher interest rate environment is to reduce the leverage. And if rates are higher, then we will reduce our leverage by more and it's very accretive to do that given that we're trading out of lower yielding assets. So we've got enough tools in our toolkit to effectively manage and our focus is on hitting our guidance.

Great. Then on like-for-like rental growth, do you expect the differential between new lets and renewals to continue or will they trend towards each other as a consequence of the Renters' Rights Bill?

In terms of the new lets, we normally find they go stronger in the second half in any event. However, I would expect them to go closer together. And of course our new lets are supportive of our renewals because they are evidence for any debate. Chris?

Chris Millington at Deutsche. Can we just explore the point around the true net yield a little bit more and kind of the cost you're taking, which maybe other commercial companies aren't bearing out? I mean can you give us any details to what maintenance, what refurbishment costs are and just perhaps flesh that point out one at a time.

And it's important to say it is also different from other European residential firms as well. So we take all of the costs of refresh, dilapidations, et cetera, through our gross to net. We take our void cost, our leasing cost, everything goes through that 25% number. That's quite different to what happens in commercial where you let a lease for a long period of time and at the end you may have both obsolescence and dilapidations to come to because you're refreshing the whole time. And the reason for that is because that reflects what our customers are doing. So we're leasing year-to-year and everyone must go into one of our apartments feeling that they are the first person to live there and so it's actually kept to a very high standard. And so that's the philosophy behind it. So what you don't get is at the end you don't have an obsolescent building where you have to reset. You're getting that genuine true net yield. And I think sometimes -- I've got some valuers in the room, but sometimes I think that's been missed in the investment market that the minute you let a commercial building, it's actually deteriorating and the minute you let an apartment, we've got the reverse. We've got the rental growth going up on each letting.

I'm not looking for the specifics, but of the 25% gross to net, is that a big chunk the refurbishment?

Yes, the largest thing is repairs and maintenance and refresh is the largest part. Larger obviously because we have very little void as well.

That's helpful. Next one is just on transactional evidence in the market. We're obviously seeing a bit of outward shift everywhere at the moment because of higher bond yields. Just wondering what you're actually seeing in kind of real world examples.

So the first quarter of this year I think was one of the strongest quarters in terms of transactions, but it wasn't actually transactions in our kind of stock. There's a lot in terms of single-family housing. So there hasn't been -- so my reference point was there hasn't been an awful lot of transactions in our geographies to sort of, if you like, to prove it. But there is a lot of appetite to invest in the sector. I think the reality is just people are not trading out of their portfolios. They're holding on to them. If you think of our peer group, there's a lot of long-term investors in that peer group. So they're holding on to them.

And the last one is just about customer behavior more recently. There's obviously been some pretty seismic changes out there. Are you seeing any reticence on the sales side, on the rental side? Is there any cohorts who are maybe doing better or worse? Just a little bit of fleshing out of that side effects?

Well, I think if you recall that our affordability level has actually got more affordable, which is telling that in the age demographic that rent with Grainger. Their incomes are going up and actually the 25- to 34-year-olds often that's the point where their salaries are accelerating. So we're not seeing any attrition from any of those groups at all. And as I mentioned, lot of key workers, lot of people in health care, et cetera. Anecdotally, I know that some of our peers saw a number of notices served after the Renters' Rights Act, the 2-month notices, but they have a high proportion of students and obviously that gives a lot more flexibility to students that they didn't previously have because they rented traditionally September to September. And now they can obviously get just over 2 months' notice and leave. So there has been some behavior, but not in our portfolio because we restrict the number of students in our portfolio.

Just on the sales side, any moderating momentum there maybe?

No. The regulated tenancies, I think there's an interesting dynamic going on at the moment, which is that if anyone knows anyone trying to buy a house, actually it's quite competitive particularly at the entry point where our regulated tenancies are. And so quite often we've got 4 or 5 bidders and we're going to best and final on our ex-regulated properties. I did mention in the presentation we had a slight slowdown just around the time of the budget and that was a sensible thing for people to do because one of the kites that was flown was the potential to reduce or abolish stamp duty. So why wouldn't you wait a couple of weeks or whatever and of course we waited an awful long time for that budget to come through.

We had 3 questions submitted online so I'll take them in order. We had Darren Leung from Resolution Capital in Australia. Given adjusted earnings is no longer provided as a KPI, will the leadership team's KPIs and compensation targets move to EPRA earnings?

Yes. We had a remuneration review that was approved at our AGM in February, which moves us to an EPRA earnings target. So the Board are consistent in aligning both short-term and long-term targets to the focus of the business.

The next question is from a private shareholder, Mitchell, who asks EPRA NTA has moved down to 290p per share despite operational rental growth remaining positive. How should shareholders think about the risk of further NTA erosion from here? Specifically, are current portfolio valuations already reflecting the higher rate environment or should we still expect further outward yield pressure to offset rental growth over the next 12 to 24 months?

Yes. I think we can't get away from the fact that the real estate equity market does have a linkage with the 10-year gilt. I think that that is unjustified in a way in Grainger's case because one of the things that we provide is index linking through our inflation linkage. So actually the comparison should probably be at the index-linked gilt. There we're obviously screaming 300 basis points plus difference between our net yield and an index-linked gilt. So although the reality is, I think we will get caught up in the higher bond market. I think it's probably more people are realizing that we already see 100 basis points outward yield shift on our prime markets, but very little NTA erosion and the reason behind that is because rental growth has supported that. I'm going to try and do something now, which the brokers are going to go mad with me about, which is just to -- I'm sorry for those on the line. But Slide 50 in the deck shows the NTA resilience of Grainger and what that's showing is that rental growth has supported our NTA over this period. So whilst our NTA is down around 2%, you can see that some of the other sectors are materially more damaged because they don't have that inflation-linking capability in longer leases.

The next set of question is from Aakanksha Anand, the real estate analyst at Citi. That's a 2-parter. The first one: given the current uncertainty continues, how does the business underwrite the risk from weakening investment markets and slower rates of disposals? What level of discounts might be acceptable to current book values to continue progressing on the immediate priorities of the committed pipeline and debt reduction?

Okay. So a huge part of our sales are actually the regulated tenancies and they've actually maintained or slightly gone up in value. So we're not having to discount. In fact our sales are actually coming in around there. So we're not having to discount what we see on this.

The other one on ERV. Could you put some color around the drivers for the lower ERV growth at 1.1% for this half compared to 1.9% in the first half last year and 3.2% for the full year in '25? Where can we see this progressing?

I think we've always said that it will be between the 3% to 3.5%. That's the underwrite in our business. So an annualized 3% to 3.5% and that's done on the base of inflation. If we do get a more inflationary environment, of course we could see that number pick up, but 3% to 3.5% is where we see it. And all of the trends that we're seeing at the moment are actually substantiating that. Rob, do you want to add anything to that?

No, I think I mean it is aligned to that growth. Obviously the ERV growth is a 6-month number and we do expect that to pick up as we've said, but we're very much at 2.9% overall like-for-like rental growth. We're very much in line with where we said we'd be and we expect that to tick up into our range of 3% to 3.5% for the full year.

A couple more have just come in. So John Wong, real estate analyst at Kempen. Looking at your priorities for excess capital, starting new projects from the secured pipeline screams to be at the lowest priority. However, looking at the pipeline, the majority of projects are CLL. Are your priorities aligned with those of TfL? And also to what extent is the viability of these projects challenged and recognize that it's challenged?

Okay. So we have started one of our CLL projects and done that so that's on site right now, quite exciting because not a lot is being built in London, but that is. And that was an important strategic start on site for us with CLL. They are aligned with us in the fact that we have got a better planning environment now in London. And actually what has been happening on those sites is we're going for higher density and better schemes on those sites, if you like. So actually they have been aligned with, if you like, a deferral to improve the schemes. And we have a great working relationship with them and we continue to sort of work closely together.

Final question is from Marcus Phayre-Mudge at Columbia Threadneedle. You mentioned that you restrict the number of students. What is the maximum number that you allow? What's the percentage? And do you separately identify and distinguish between undergrads and postgrads?

Yes, we do. Great question. We restrict to 10%. We are below 10% and we restrict to we have mainly postgrads or students that are in a relationship with a working person. And there's a reason behind that, which didn't actually come from the structural situation in students. And the reason behind it is because of the environment we want to create within our buildings, which is that students, if we can remember that far back, can tend to be a bit more noisy and perhaps not as conducive to professionals at the early stages of their career wanting not to be strewing beer and pizzas in the corridor. So yes, that's the reason behind it. But of course we've been sort of a beneficiary of that. And also because we're trying to build stable communities and students do have more churn. Any other questions? No more on the line, Kurt. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for coming this morning.