Lumo Kodit Oyj (LUMO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, all, and welcome. This is Kojamo, and this is our Q1 result webcast. I am Niina Saarto from Investor Relations. I have with me here today, Erik Hjelt, our Interim CEO. He will give us a presentation covering the Q1 results, and also an update on the operating environment. Please be active. You can send questions via chat. And those joining over the phone lines can also ask live questions when we have the Q&A after the presentation. Now I think we can give the floor to Erik. Welcome.

Thank you, Niina, and good morning, everybody. So I'm really excited to discuss our latest results. And operationally, we had a very strong quarter. The improvement of our occupancy rate accelerated in the first quarter of this year. So total revenue and net rental income grew in the first quarter of this year. So total revenue growth was 0.9% and net rental income growth was 3.7%. Our FFO decreased because of the effect of increased financial expenses. So net rental income grew EUR 2.2 million but on the FFO side, finance expenses grew EUR 3.6 million. So our occupancy rate has improved since last autumn, and the increase accelerated during the first quarter. And at the end of -- or during the March, actually, the occupancy was already 93.5%. Our balance sheet remains strong and liquidity situation is very good. And following the successful issuance of EUR 500 million in March. So now we can say that already 2026 maturing loans are covered. So geopolitical tension grew significantly in the beginning of this year. And that has, of course, an impact for general environment, economical environment. But since Kojamo is operating only in Finland, and we don't have any export or import, so direct impact of this geopolitical tension is not visible in our operations. So for us, it's more important what is happening in the rental resi market here in Finland. I'll come to that later as well. So operating environment, as said, so global economy is expected to be uncertain. To say the least, Finnish GDP growth is expected to be 1%, quite muted, but anyway growing and inflation muted as well, so a little more than 1%. So giving in that sense, a good background for our operations. So operating environment, if you look first the supply side. So already 3 years in a row, the resi start-ups in Finland has been historically low level, 2023 and 2024 below 20,000 units each year and estimate for this year is around 20,000 as well. For us, more important is nonsubsidized apartments. Resi start-ups in 2023, 2024, each year, it was well below 4,000 and estimates for this year, nonsubsidized apartment start-up is 7,500. That estimate is given by the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industry. If you look at the releases from listed construction companies, so this 7,500 may be quite optimistic figure. Nevertheless, there are estimates that in Finland, we need 35,000 new apartments annually to cover the needs of urbanization. So these start-up figures are way below that requirement. And as we know that it takes roughly 18 months once they start until a project is completed. So it's pretty clear that second half of this year, 2026 and 2027, no major amount of new supply coming into the market. Moving to the next page. So the demand side. So the urbanization is already on the same level as it was before COVID-19. And actually, city of Helsinki, for example, and the population growth there is even stronger than before COVID-19. And at the same time, the immigration according to Finnish standards has been quite strong. Statistics Finland estimate that this year, 45,000 people are moving to Finland, next year, 40,000. And most of these people that are coming to Finland are staying in Helsinki region. So if you combine -- we are not giving any guidance here, but if you combine these 2 figures, so the volume of start-ups, resi start-ups and the population growth in these growth centers, we might be in a balanced situation by the end of this year. And when I say balanced situation, I mean that the available apartments in the public portals on the same level as it was before COVID-19. Moving to Page 9. Total revenue grew EUR 1 million, improving occupancy contributed EUR 0.5 million and then completed apartments, another EUR 0.5 million. Net rental income grew 2.2%. Repairs was EUR 0.2 million lower than in corresponding period and maintenance was EUR 1 million below corresponding period. Heating was EUR 1.4 million, down from corresponding period due to the mild winter here in Finland. And electricity was EUR 0.5 million below last year's figures during the Q1 as well. On the growing side, there was water and cleaning together roughly EUR 1 million up. Moving to Page 10. So profit before taxes, excluding change in values. So net rental income contributed EUR 2.2 million. SG&A expenses, same level as in the corresponding period and finance expenses on the P&L side, up by EUR 4.7 million. On the FFO side, financial expenses up by EUR 3.6 million. Page 11, our occupancy has improved since last autumn. If we compare Q1 occupancy to Q4 last year, so the occupancy rate improved 1.2 percentage points, so quite strong improvement there. And if we take only the occupancy rate for March, it was already 93.5%. And during the April, we have made a good number of new lease agreement as well. And tenant turnover decreased from the last year, so corresponding period, down by 0.6%. And all this happened regardless of the fact that there's still oversupply in the market and there's typical seasonality in the market. So what we've been actually doing. So the renting has been quite strong. There are several reasons behind that positive improvement there. So we are still increasing the rents for existing customers more than 1%, but that's much more moderate level compared to beginning of last year. We are more flexible when it comes to the rents, and we have spent some -- made some additional repairs to support the renting. And we have improved our own operations, and we have developed our sales management and then we have enhanced our online processes. And then we have established a sales support function in our service center. Tenant turnover is coming down as well. So other thing that is contributing for improving occupancy is that we have enhanced our -- been able to enhance our customer satisfaction. So now we have been developing our operations of Lumo Service Center, and we have improved our cooperation with property management partners. And now the situation is that we are offering faster and more effortless service for our customers, and this is already visible in our figures. So Net Promoter Score of 57, so all-time high figure there. Page 12, our like-for-like rental income. It's good to keep in mind that the like-for-like calculation is backward-looking. So it's past 12 months compared to previous 12 months. So if you look at the impact of rents and water charges, as I said, we are still increasing the rents for existing customers contributing 0.8 percentage point for like-for-like calculations. And this lowering rents and incentives we are, in some cases, offering, had a negative impact of 0.4%. But this impact of occupancy rate, the negative 1.7%, I said, this is backward-looking figure, and we are more concentrating to improving our occupancy looking forward. And in this like-for-like calculation, we actually carry on the situation Q2 and Q3 last year, and that has a strong negative impact on this like-for-like calculation as shown in this figure. But if you look how we have been able to improve our occupancy year-to-date and the good amount of new lease agreements in August, that impact, the negative impact is about to change when we look at the future calculations later this year. Page 13. Our investments remained at the low level. So for the time being, we are not making any new investment decisions. We have one ongoing development project, 119 apartments, so-called Sentnerikuja project in Lassila in Helsinki, 119 apartments to be completed during the first quarter 2026. Gross investments during the first quarter this year was quite low figure, EUR 4 million. Modernization investments, EUR 2.9 million and repairs, EUR 5.8 million. We estimate that the repairs for whole year will be broadly in line with the last year's figure. And the modernization investments this year is going to be somewhere around EUR 30 million, given the fact that we have started a couple of bigger modernization investment projects. Fair value investment properties, slightly down, 0.5%. There was a limited amount of transactions in the market, actually, only one small portfolio transactions. And that was broadly in line with the previous transactions. So there is no evidence that yield requirement has moved during the first quarter, and it's clear that the decrease in interest rates reduced the pressure to increase the yield requirements. Because of the limited amount of transactions in the market, we kept our valuation parameters unchanged. In the negative outcome, EUR 37.4 million, there are several items included -- these items, including impact of net rental income and aging of the buildings. Page 15, equity ratio and loan-to-value at a strong level. So we have communicated that our aim is to do some moderate amount of disposals between EUR 100 million and EUR 300 million. And because of the IFRS requirement, we have now booked EUR 280 million worth of assets as held for sale because of the IFRS requirement. So there are several ongoing discussions, but nothing more to say at this point. So if we are able to finalize or not several of these discussions, then of course, we'll release the outcome in due course. So in our loan-to-value, 44% is now including the assets held for sale. So basically no changes there compared to the end of last year. Page 16. So we have been active on the financing side as well. So we issued this EUR 500 million bond in March. And together with that, we made the tender offer for 2026 maturing bond, and we were able to repurchase EUR 165 million worth of those bonds. There are still outstanding EUR 135 million in that 2026 maturing bond. This new one is carrying a coupon of 3.875%. And our net debt went down to EUR 3.470 million. And if you combine all these factors, so it's -- we can now say that 2025 and 2026 maturing loans are covered. At the end of the quarter, we had EUR 317 million cash and financial assets and EUR 375 million unused committed credit lines. They are really unused. Hedging ratio is still quite high, 91%. Average interest rate went up to 3.3%. There were several reasons behind that. One is that the bond issue was very, very successful. But nevertheless, the coupon there is higher compared to what we have on average in our portfolio. During Q1, we paid back the remaining part of 2025 maturing bond, a little more than EUR 400 million. And then the bond, 2026 maturing bond, we made the repurchase that was carrying a lower coupon compared to the new one. So these factors lead to the increase in average interest rates, 3.3%. That's including the cost of derivatives. There has been some discussions regarding the comparability of our figures because it looks that some of our peers are booking part of the repairs and modernization investments on the balance sheet and only part of them are booked in P&L. So now we introduced a new KPI, so coverage ratio, excluding repair expenses to make our figures more comparable. The coverage ratio, excluding -- including repairs is 2.5, and excluding repair expense is 2.7. Page 17, our key figures here, equity per share and EPRA NRV remained pretty much unchanged compared to the ending of last year. So Page 19, our outlook for this year, we kept that unchanged. So we estimate that top line growth is going to be between 1% and 4% and FFO is going to be between EUR 135 million to EUR 145 million. At the midpoint of the top line guidance, we assume that the rent increase is going to be moderate. The improvement on the occupancy is penciled in there as well and the fact that we are flexible, when it comes to the rents. We haven't penciled in any support from the market, improving market in this guidance. And then if you look at the FFO guidance, so the range there reflects the top line growth rate range and then average -- the midpoint of the FFO guidance including the -- assuming average weather remaining part of this year and SG&A expenses and repairs in line what we had in 2024. Strategic targets, a couple of notes there. So FFO against total revenue, it's good to keep in mind that because of the booking requirements, the whole year's property taxes are booked in first quarter, almost EUR 15 million. And then other thing is this Net Promoter Score, very, very strong improvement there in latest year. And as I said, Q1 this year, the all-time high figure there. I'm extremely pleased with that improvement in Net Promoter Score. To summarize our Q1, so total revenue and net rental income increased. FFO decreased due to the increased finance expenses. Our occupancy rate has improved since last autumn and the increase accelerated during the Q1 and fair value investment properties pretty much in the same level as year-end, and our financial situation has remained strong. So now happy to answer any questions you may have.

So do we have any online questions? We can...

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Anssi Raussi from SEB.

I have a few questions, and I go one by one. So first, about your average rent per square meter, which decreased a bit year-over-year. So could you explain a bit what impacted this figure like, do your campaigns impact this number?

Yes. So in some cases, we've been lowering the rents, the asking rent, I mean. And in a situation where the apartment has been vacant very long time, and we know that there's nothing wrong with the product, and we have tried to find a customer there. And we see that around our building, there's -- our competitors have available apartments. They are clearly lower rent, what we have in those cases, we have even lowered the rents and then the impact of these campaigns. So in some cases, we have offered 2, 3 or 4 weeks vacant period in the beginning of the lease period. That has been the case in the market for several years, and they are much stronger incentives available by our competitors. We do that in a small scale. But yes, that has an impact on the average rent as well.

Got it. And then about your booked fair value losses, which were -- I think those were EUR 37 million. So which was the main driver here and maybe linked to these 2,200 apartments, which are now booked as held for sale? Or is it so?

So there are several items including -- and impacting that figure. So the impact of net rental -- change in net rental income, aging of the building, and some other items as well.

Okay. So these apartments held for sale didn't have -- or these were not the main explanation here?

So at this stage, we are not able to comment that because they are, as I said, booked because of the IFRS requirement. If we are able to finalize those discussions, then of course, we are going to dispose the impact of those transactions as well. But it's too early to comment at this stage.

Okay. And maybe one more. Did you mention your buffer in fair values before you would hit the 50% LTV?

So it's EUR 800 million, so around 60 basis points in -- if only yield requirement changes. Of course, now the cash flows are improving. But if you only look at the change in yield requirements, it's around 60 basis points. So quite sizable buffer against that 50% level.

The next question comes from John Vuong from Van Lanschot Kempen.

Just a follow-up on the question before on rents in your market. Are you seeing any change in this lower rents and discounting that your competitors are giving over the past, say, month or 2?

So it looks that the -- lowering the rents is -- it's not there anymore in big scale. So in that sense, we haven't seen in the market changes yet, but our approach is now more moderate when it comes to the lowering the rents.

And would you say that your apartment rents are now at market rents? So everything in your portfolio is at a similar rent to apartments in the neighborhood comparable?

So at the moment, I think we are at the market. Of course, in a big portfolio, there might be 1 or 2 apartments that you need to look what the right rent level is there. And then if we compare our pricing to the general market, so we are still getting premium to what we see in the market. And that we don't want to get rid of that, of course. But in some cases, it has been justified to be more flexible when it comes to the renting. And of course, if you combine what we have done on the rent side and what we have achieved on improving occupancy. So improving occupancy is more than offsetting the impact of, in some cases, lowering the rents.

Okay. Clear. And then just on your comments on the investment market, I think you said it was still a bit slow. You haven't really seen any transactions. At the same time, you booked a couple of assets as held for sale. Does this imply that you're seeing that the market is opening up?

So we have communicated that our aim is to dispose some assets, noncore assets, EUR 100 million to EUR 300 million, and that's still our aim. There's several discussions ongoing. We know that there are especially international investors who are looking at the Finnish property market. But why we booked these assets as held for sale, it's more related to the requirement on IFRS.

The next question comes from Neeraj Kumar from Barclays.

I have a quick question on your Moody's rating. So how comfortable are you in defending the current rating at Moody's? The reason I ask is because Moody's was expecting the EBITDA is here to land at 2.4x as of full year 2024, whereas the number came out at much lower as 2.17x. So just trying to get some thoughts around that.

So when we discuss with the Moody's and actually what they said in the latest report, so they think that the market is improving. They seem to like the company. They really appreciate all these actions taken by the company to support the balance sheet and to remain investment-grade rating. And there are 3 KPIs that they are especially looking. One is loan-to-value. And I said, we have a quite sizable buffer against the 50% level, which seems to be the threshold for Baa2 rating. Other thing is liquidity coverage, and we are ticking that box as well. And now on back of this latest bond issue, our position there is even stronger. They are looking at net debt to EBITDA as well. They haven't set a target there, but they concluded that thanks to all these actions taken by the company, net debt to EBITDA is slightly coming down going forward. And then, of course, we have this fixed charge coverage ratio or ICR, as Moody's calls it, fixed charge coverage ratio. And in their latest report, they say that they -- in our case, they will tolerate 2.5x. And based on their calculations, we might go below that. But thanks to all these actions taken by the company, they expect that to recover and go to the growth path. And the reason why they kept the negative outlook, which has been there quite a long time is that actually they want to give the company time to show that this is really crystallizing. I mean, all these actions. And even if the fixed charge coverage ratio goes below 2.5x, it will turn to the growth path again. And we have set a management meeting with Moody's in August. And nowadays, they take each company once a year in the rating committee. And on back of this meeting that has been set, they, of course, will take us to the committee. And then we hear what the outcome is. But this is the situation regarding the KPIs and how Moody's approaches our figures and situation.

Just a linked question to that. So Moody's is also assuming EUR 140 million assets to be disposed by you this year, which means should we assume you'll be able to sell half of the assets held for sale, which you have classified?

In the report, they say that they penciled in the calculation, EUR 140 million disposals this year.

The next question comes from Anssi Raussi from SEB.

A couple of follow-ups from me, if you may. So I think you mentioned that the rental activity has remained at the solid level or maybe even improved in April. So how should we think about the typical seasonality this year because the market conditions are quite exceptional right now?

Well, the seasonality is still there in the market, and it was actually very, very strong if you look what happened in the market, and we've been able to move into other direction, thanks to all the actions taken by the company. So in our case, the seasonality is not visible in our figures. But yes, you do see the seasonality in the market. And typically, during the summer, the amount of new lease agreements is higher compared to other months, and we don't anticipate any changes there if we look at the market.

Understand. And maybe lastly, just to double check something here. So did you mention that you have increased rents above 1% in your existing agreements?

A little more than 1%, yes.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you. I think we have some questions from the chat, and we already touched the assets held for sale and also the fair value changes and these items, which are included in those calculations. But then a quick question on the transaction market. Do you see any potential motivated or forced sellers, for example, funds?

That used to be the case 6 months ago or so. But now because these funds, most of these, they are open-ended funds but they are more or less closed right now. So they are not paying out for the investors. So that's why we don't anticipate to see any forced sellers or highly motivated sellers regarding that. Other than these open-ended resi funds, there hasn't been any distressed or highly motivated sellers in the market.

Then about this like-for-like growth. You made progress in occupancy improvement, but the like-for-like bridge shows occupancy effect was negative 1.7%. Can you explain the difference because it was thought that it was Q1 '24 versus Q1 '25 and then Q1 '24 occupancy was lower than in Q1 '25?

So in this like-for-like calculation, you compare figures for the past 12 months against the previous 12 months. So it's not quarter-to-quarter. It's a year to a year or 12 months to 12 months. So that's why in these calculations, there are still those figures where you compare Q2 last year against Q2 2023 and same goes with Q3 and Q4 as well. And in those quarters, the like-for-like, what comes to the occupancy was quite strongly negative. So you are right that Q1 against Q1, it is just positive because of these 12 months calculations, you have the burden of these poor quarters in Q4, second and third quarters. And now what comes to the calculations going forward, so in Q2, we are going to enjoy the positive trend in our occupancy. And we will -- in those calculations, we will drop out the pure quarter. I mean, Q2 2024 against Q2 2023. So that's why in like-for-like figures, you still have quite strong negative impact on the occupancy. But in real life, our occupancy has been improving. And that's why I say that this like-for-like calculation is backward-looking, and we are concentrating what's happened in the future and what we have achieved, especially during Q1 this year. So this is a tricky one in this type of situation when things are changing very fast.

Then a question on peer SATO. They have reported increasing rents for Q1 and higher occupancy rate. Is there anything you can comment or explain?

Yes, their occupancy is higher than ours. We are moving in the right direction with accelerated speed. And if you look at SATO's Q1 occupancy and compare it to their Q4 occupancy, it's down by 50 basis points. So in that sense, we are moving in other direction. Yes, the fact is that their occupancy is still higher than ours, but now we are moving in different directions. And I'm extremely pleased of the outcome of what we have achieved when it comes to the improving occupancy in our case.

So how is this improvement in occupancy rate? How is it in line with your FFO guidance?

So the top line guidance, 1% to 4% in the midpoint is the improving or improved occupancy. And that, of course, has an impact for FFO as well. But if you compare the midpoint of the top line growth guidance and the midpoint on FFO, they are in line. So if we are able to improve the occupancy, the aim is, of course, to improve it, then, of course, that is going to have a positive impact, both top line and FFO.

Can you comment where we are standing at the end of the year with regards to the occupancy?

We are not giving guidance regarding our occupancy.

How about the cost of debt? Do you expect it to remain stable?

So the thing is that this year, we don't need to do any additional refinancing because the investments are -- volumes are low. So it's all about refinancing, not taking new money in. And it looks that interest rates came down already. And again, I would say, in last month or so, and the spread has been quite -- slightly wider compared to the time we made our last bond. So there's not that much to be happening during this year, given the fact that we now have taken care of all refinancing needs for this year and 2026 as well.

Okay. And now final question, and it's related to the Lumo website and webstore. Do you show all the available rental apartments there? So is it up to date? And is it possible to calculate the spot occupancy rate from there?

It's an indication, but it's -- you can't really calculate the exact figures because when an apartment becomes vacant, it takes a little time before it's taken in the webstore. And some of our apartments, of course, they are under repairs and they are not available in the portals. So you can't get exact spot figure. But in a ballpark, of course, you can follow what's happening just looking at those figures.

Yes, you can see the trend. Thank you for the questions, and thank you for the very good questions. So next time, we will meet in August, August 21, we will publish then our half year result. So thank you for joining us today. And now I wish you all a very good and warm summer. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you very much.