Mercialys SA (MERY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Mercialys presentation regarding its 2026 Half Year Results. It will be structured in two parts. First, a presentation by Mercialys management team, represented by Mr. Vincent Ravat, Group CEO. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A session during which you can ask oral questions through your computer or by joining the conference call. I will now hand over to Mr. Vincent Ravat. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm pleased to present our 2026 half year results. We have, across the semester, delivered a very strong performance in an environment that remains volatile. Our performance combines organic growth, financial discipline, balance sheet strength and the acceleration of value creation drivers. Over the next slides, I will show you why we see this momentum as structural for us. This presentation will follow 3 chapters: first, the resilience and growth of the past semester; second, the Shop Park levers that fuel it; and third, how it all converts into financial performance. Let me open the first part of our presentation. We are demonstrating that our growth endures, even as the macroeconomic backdrop stays turbulent. Over time, we have constantly refocused our portfolio on accessible, convenient and value-oriented formats that households tend to turn to. That is what feeds our current footfall and retailer sales growth, our occupancy, and ultimately, our rental income. It all shows in our half year indicators, as shown on Page 4. All our major metrics are moving upwards this semester. Our net organic rent growth is up plus 2.9%. Our total net rental income are up plus 4.5%. Our EBITDA is up plus 4.8%, with an EBITDA margin up 70 basis points at 82.7%. That leads our recurring net income to increase by plus 4.1% or plus 3.9% per share. Meanwhile, our portfolio value is rising plus 4.6% on a like-for-like basis. This contributes to our LTV staying firmly under control at 41.9%, down 10 basis points over a year. All in all, we continue to create value while maintaining a sound balance sheet, and these strong indicators set the tone for the full year perspectives. On Slide 5, our guidance upgrade illustrates the confidence we have for our full year trajectory. We are raising our 2026 target for recurring net income to between EUR 1.3 and EUR 1.32 per share from at least EUR 1.29 that we had set back in February. We are also raising, consequently, our 2026 dividend guidance to at least EUR 1.02 per share. On Page 6, we see the translation of our overall performance for our shareholders. Our total shareholder return reached nearly 15% over the last 6 months. It was supported by the dividend of EUR 1 per share paid fully in May 2026, but also by our positive stock price evolution for the first 6 months of the year. In a sector where the cost of capital remains highly observed, this combination of yield and stock growth should be perceived as a positive marker. We come to Slide 7, which details a key part of our operational performance. The growth in footfall and sales of our retailers confirms the attractiveness of our indoor/outdoor shop park model. Our footfall increased sharply by plus 4.5%, and the momentum continued even stronger at the end of the semester, with a plus 6.5% from 1st of June to the 15th of July. We outperformed largely the national benchmark index, respectively by plus 370 basis points and plus 280 basis points for footfall and retailer sales. The transformations we are carrying out in Brest, Nimes, Aix, Marseille and Niort are contributing positively, and their positive effect should strengthen further while they last. Our assets are not that subject to the current lukewarm consumption market that we see through the lenses of the national benchmark year-to-date that I just described. Our portfolio continues to gain market share, both in terms of traffic and in terms of sales. On Slide 8, I would like to put our performance in the general context of the consumption in France. French consumption remains mildly affected by inflation, but we see 2 strong buffers that are working in favor of a gradual improvement. Firstly, the high level of household savings illustrated on the left of the slide that consumers have started to tap into. And secondly, the substantial level of social transfer illustrated in the bar chart on the right. For Mercialys, both should be additional background supports in the medium term. It should especially be the case for us because our assets meet the current needs of consumers, proximity, accessibility, and above all, price accessibility, as we will see further ahead. Slide 9 highlights our organic growth engine. Our plus 2.9% organic growth in net rents was driven by a very dynamic commercial effort. It was also driven by a gradually improving rental reversion of plus 2.3% captured on our portfolio. Meanwhile, indexation has slowed significantly down to only plus 0.1% over the semester from, you remember, above 2% 6 months ago. An important point to highlight is that even when indexation is less supportive, we keep finding growth via the quality of our leasing team and in the sheer demand for our location, helped by low OCRs. But inflation could be back sooner than anticipated. And as we see on projection on the graph on the right-hand side of the slide, should inflation go up towards 2% from 2027 onwards, as it is projected by Banque de France, indexation would once again become an additional tailwind for organic growth further ahead. Arriving at Slide 10, the plus 24% of relating signs signed in the first half of the year compared to H1 2025 confirm the depth of the demand that I just outlined. Financial vacancy is close to our historically lowest levels, while our occupancy cost ratio remains stable at one of the lowest level among our peers. Besides, not stated here, but worth noting, our collection rate is up 50 basis points at 97.2% year-on-year. In other words, our rental growth is not achieved at the cost of the weakening of our retailers' P&L and solvency. It is based on a sustainable sales rental combination dynamics. Slide 11 details the likely upcoming favorable regulatory tailwind for physical retail that we expect. The European Union and France, in particular, are gradually implementing measures that aim at leveling the playing field for physical retailers. Indeed, a range of duties and processing fees on small parcel shipment from outside the EU have already started to increase the real cost of these models, especially for the ultra-fast fashion e-commerce pure players. For physical retailers, this should work as a structural support aimed at reinstating some of their competitiveness. To conclude this first part, Slide 12 shows that we have a continuous commitment on ESG that can also act as a financial lever. Our decarbonization trajectory, portfolio certification and transparency strengthen our company and portfolio quality and positive image. As a reminder, we have already achieved 57% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions on a trajectory leading us towards carbon neutrality, 95% of our portfolio value is certified BREEAM In-Use and we receive regular recognition in terms of ISR, the latest being an all categories award for our first place among SBF 120 listed companies for the quality and the transparency of our financial and extra financial reporting. We open the second part with Slide 13. Having shown the resilience and growth of the first half, I will now detail the operational levers that fuel this performance. On slide 14, we show our shop park model is proving its commercial efficiency. As you already know, the shop park roadmap is structured around 8 guiding principles detailed on the left. On the right of the slide, we see that with around EUR 1,300 in turnover per square meter generated per million visitors per year, shop park assets outperform the European benchmarks on that metric. This measure of revenue productivity is, according to us, a very interesting and telling indicator. It shows that our model converts traffic into sales at a very high rate, much higher than other asset formats. Reason for that being that footfall and sales to CapEx efficiency has always been central to our approach. Slide 15 links our real estate strategy to current demographic dynamics, as we have explained in previous presentations. We deliberately focused our portfolio in regions that benefit from favorable population trends and higher economic growth, with a bonus boost from senior population spending power. This gives us a genuine competitive advantage being in resilient catchment areas that are typically less volatile and better performing than the country's average. We also capture this way the economic depth of France's regional territories, where competition for prime retail space is far lower than in large international metropolis. In Slide 16, we highlight our belief that seniors are a major under-leveraged growth driver in the retail real estate sector. The over 65s already represent about 22% of the French and European Union population. That is 15 million consumers just in France. They have structurally higher purchasing power than the average consumer. They are more physically store-oriented than the rest of the consumers. We see on the right, 137 store visits a year for the plus 65 against 94 for the 24 to 35 years old with no children. And those consumers are also more loyal and are attached to trusted brands for their spending. It is a profile that is perfectly compatible with our shop park model, proximity, ease of access, choice among well-known top-of-mind brands. We believe this is not a marginal trend. It will be a long-term demographic driver needing to be properly addressed like we are doing. Slide 17 shows how we turn today's consumer environment into an opportunity. We see on the survey results, detailed on the left of the slide, that consumers are comparing more and hunting for the best value for money. There is not one single question in this very recent survey where price does not come on top. At Mercialys, we meet that demand head-on with an everyday low price proposition. More than 75% of our tenants already offer value-oriented ranges all year round, and we are targeting 90% of EDLP, as we call them, brands across our portfolio soon. Slide 18 focuses on how this translates into our leasing. We signed 97 leases in the first half of 2026, with a deliberate effort to tilt our mix towards consumers' preferred names, wider choice and attractive price positioning. We are also gradually approaching our strategic objectives of higher diversification of our commercial risks, being no consumer segment at more than 15% of our rents and no brand at more than 3% of our rental income. This diversification is particularly focused on textile retailers, as everybody has already acknowledged that the personal item segment is a maturing one. It is facing heavy competition from e-commerce, the second-hand market and from network rationalization. This is an evolution that we anticipated rather than one we are enduring, as shown on Slide 19. Indeed, over the last 6 months, 90% of the square meters concerned with textile retailers' failure on our portfolio have already been relet, 20% of them to brands outside the personal items segment. This reletting momentum is the clearest evidence that we can rotate our tenant mix faster than the market natural movement. Transformation on our portfolio is one of the drivers of our growth. Slide 20 sets out our pipeline roadmap. We plan more than EUR 100 million of CapEx over '26, '28, followed by around EUR 200 million over '29, '31. We have a minimum IRR hurdle of 10% for any of our projects. Importantly, we will continue to have a controlled progressive activation of this pipeline within a strict balance sheet discipline. Let's turn to Slide 21 with some illustrations of this pipeline with Marseille and Nimes. In Nimes, our current ongoing transformation is meant to improve the customer journey and differentiates our mix. Primark is yet to open, but our asset management efforts are already visible and generating plus 15% footfall in the first half of 2026 versus 2025 with zero current vacancy on this asset. In Marseille, we are restructuring a large hypermarket space into a more relevant proposition with around 80% already pre-let and a total value creation potential of plus 10%. This includes a new hypermarket operator, which we have signed on terms already and several other units, of which one MSU that was actually signed yesterday. These 2 examples show that we know how to turn existing assets into growth platform. Slide 22 continues with our ongoing projects in Grenoble and Saint-Andre on the Reunion Island. In Grenoble, we are replacing a closed shopping mall with a more efficient indoor/outdoor format. Just like for Marseille, there is a temporary downside on top line until rents of new tenants kick in fully in 2028. We currently have a 90% pre-letting. We expect to generate 20% additional net rents on this asset. In Saint-Andre, we benefit for this retail park development from a dense catchment area with low local competition. Our project is more than 90% pre-let, up 10 points from 6 months ago. We expect a yield above 9%. On Slide 23, we turn to our external growth. It will remain highly selective and disciplined. Our acquisition of the Toulouse retail park in the first half perfectly illustrates our main criteria: prime asset, limited vacancy or potential for occupancy improvement, a mix that can be aligned with our everyday low price positioning and an attractive yield. Looking ahead, we are clear about our investment criteria. Quality takes precedence with headline return and earnings accretion just after in terms of priority. We grow only when it creates value, both financially and operationally. We expect to be net buyer over the coming semester with some asset rotation on the menu as well in order to stay in line with our financial discipline of maintaining our BBB rating. We open the third part with Slide 24. Having covered the operational and strategic levers, let me turn now to their financial translations. Slide 25 shows the momentum around our top line revenues. Invoiced gross rents are up plus 3.8% at EUR 91.9 million and gross rental income reached EUR 92.2 million for the semester, while net rents are up plus 4.5% over the same period. It is driven by an organic growth of plus 2.9% in net rents. You will note that the temporary and favorable effect was linked to the ongoing restructuring of the Brest and Niort site affecting our top line. The full completion and the new rents of which will only take effect in 2027. Additionally, as explained in the pipeline section, we have started restructuring the Marseille Plan de Campagne hypermarket with several effect on gross rents to be underlined. One, the lease breaks with Intermarche, against which we received an indemnity. Two, the associated loss of rent over the period. Three, the reletting of this unit and the progressing, kicking in of positive effects on top line in S2, 2027. Overall, several tailing effects for lasting upward performance with a normalized top line not to be expected before 2028. On Slide 26, artificial intelligence starts to become a measurable lever for us as well. We are moving from roadmap to first concrete gains. We now have 10 automated structural processes with annualized savings equal to around 1% of our G&A, excluding HR costs. AI agents are deployed on rental management and retailer relations. AI allows for 20x faster access to asset and tenant data than before. AI will be a lever for operational efficiency and scalability. We have a medium-term target of 5% of our OpEx in savings. Slide 27 lets you read our operational performance straight through to our account's bottom line. Our EBITDA comes to EUR 76.2 million, up plus 4.8% compared with the first half of 2025. Our EBITDA margin improved by 70 bps to 82.7%, benefiting from the increase in rents and cost discipline. Our cost discipline is also reflected in the improvement of our EPRA cost ratio, down 70 bps over 12 months. Our net recurrent earnings come to EUR 64.1 million, up 4.1% year-over-year. At EUR 69 per share, it translates into a growth of plus 3.9% only per share, related to a temporary increase in the average number of shares due to our liquidity program. You can see that our NRI growth is achieved despite the rise in our financial expenses that are up EUR 4.9 million. They are related to the normalization of the company's average cost of debt. Slide 28 addresses our portfolio value. At the end of June, it comes to EUR 3.06 billion, including transfer taxes. It is up plus 0.7% over 6 months and plus 4.6% over 12 months on a current basis. Over 12 months, this increase combines a rent effect of plus 1.3%, a yield effect of plus 2.5% and a scope effect of plus 0.8%. Over the half year, rental growth at plus 0.5% has a scope effect of plus 0.8%, offset a slight pressure on yields of minus 0.6%. Our average appraisal yield rates comes to 6.63%, virtually stable compared with the end of 2025. Value creation shows through in our EPRA net asset values, as shown on Slide 29. Our EPRA NAV indicators are up over 12 months. EPRA NTA is up plus 3.8%, EPRA NRV up plus 4.3% and EPRA NDV up plus 4.4%. The increase in NTA to EUR 16.23 per share is supported by net recurrent earnings and the revaluation of assets, despite the payment of EUR 1 per share dividend on May 6, which mechanically reduces the 6 months indicators. We are now at Slide 30 to address our financial structure that remains very solid. Our net debt stands at EUR 1.2 billion, with an average cost of bond debt of 3.2% and an average maturity of 3.8 years. No repayments are due before the EUR 150 million bond of November 2027. Our loan-to-value ratio comes to 41.9%, is the ratio including transfer taxes and the financial lease from the Saint-Genis acquisition. It is improving by 10 bps over 12 months, and it is up over the semester because of the full dividend payment in first half, as I just mentioned for the NAV. Our ICR stands at 4.1x and our net debt to EBITDA ratio at 8.5x. These ratios leave a room relative to the covenants, which are of an LTV below 55%, excluding transfer tax and an ICR above 2x. Our Standard & Poor's BBB stable outlook rating was last reaffirmed on October 17 last year. To conclude, Slide 31 brings together the pillars of our sustainable value creation that I just described. We have a refocused portfolio, record occupancy, a reservoir of reversion and retail outperformance. We are closing a very strong first half with enhanced visibility, activated growth levers still ahead of us and an asset-light model that will be reinforced by AI. That is why we are confident in raising our ambitions for the full year. At last, important information before I conclude. As of the 2026 financial year, to facilitate intra-sector benchmarking for our investors and analysts, we now account for our investment properties at fair value instead of amortized cost. You will see how it translates in our first half financial report that was published yesterday. Thank you very much for listening. I'm now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Florent Laroche-Joubert from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.

I would have 3 questions, if I may, and I propose you to ask them one by one. My first question will be maybe to come back to the Slide 25. Would it be possible to have more colors on your organic growth, excluding indexation? Because I think it's quite significant, and it could be good to understand better how you have been able to build that.

Florent, for organic growth, there are quite a few factors that have played actively and positively. The first factor, as mentioned, is that we had important negative impact from liquidations of retailer at the end of last year that we have quickly relet with also some immediate effect from temporary relettings that have weighed positively on that organic growth. We had, as you saw, a very strong second trimester where we had contribution that was very positive from casual leasing operation additional revenues. We also had positive effects on additional rents coming from variable part of the leasing. So if you compare that on long-term basis, and then we've always said that the first quarter, because there are some specific impacts on a quarter that's very tiny in terms of length of time. If you look at long-term trends, I think we were on a trend over 12 months at the end of the first trimester that was above 2%. That has slightly improved, but it's still the long-term trend that we are on at the end of the semester.

Okay. Yes, my second question would be on your projects for acquisition. We understand that you have the ambition to be a net buyer in the coming semester, notably maybe to initiate some acquisition in H2. So would it be possible maybe to have more colors about maybe the type of assets that you are looking for? Maybe the volume of acquisitions that you ambition to do. And in terms of location, is it located only in France or are you looking in some other countries?

We are on the same path we described at the beginning of the year, both in terms of net quantum and in terms of type and quality of assets. The net quantum, we always said, was something around EUR 70 million, of which we have already spent around EUR 20 million. We also have, as I mentioned, potential for disposal that could help us make more acquisition and balance them with some disposals so that we maintain healthy LTV and other debt ratios. We are still focused in France on regions that we described over and over as allowing us or giving us more possibility for growth. So we focus on that regions. We have also started, as I mentioned, in February, to look outside France. But for the moment, there is nothing specific planned.

Okay. And maybe my third question would be on your development pipeline. So you have presented a significant number of projects, but would it be possible maybe to have maybe more colors in terms of CapEx by project, in terms of general cost? I don't know if in your reports there is a table with your development pipeline with all these details.

As mentioned, our development pipeline has a very important quality, is that we are able to activate and stop rather quickly any type of project. For the part that's shown as the 2026 to 2028, around EUR 100 million, this is what we are currently working on, and you can allow and spread that over the three years. So count EUR 30 million for 2026, EUR 30 million for 2027 and EUR 30 million for 2028. If you add that up to the external growth, EUR 70 million plus EUR 30 million, you had about EUR 100 million investment that we had announced back in February. So we are on that path and delivering.

The next question comes from Legrand Benjamin from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just 2 questions from my side. The first one is regarding the footfall, which is increasing quite importantly over H1. I was just wondering if there was anything specific related to that growth, especially that we are in France. If you could give a bit more color regarding this, that would be interesting. And then the second point is regarding the guidance uplift. If I'm reading the numbers, it seems that you've got a few one-offs and notably a reversal of provisions. And I'm just wondering if the guidance uplift is related to those one-offs or if it's really the operational performance that is driving you to upgrade the guidance?

In terms of footfall, I think what's interesting in this first semester is that over the past few years, retail parks have been the craze among investors with something that was not taken into account is the fact that climate changes can affect the way a consumer behaves. And the consumers have realized in the semester trimester, and it shows in the media, we have a lot of requests for interviews about that subject, that the consumers are turning back to formats of shopping centers that are both indoor and outdoor. They don't want outdoor only, it's too hot. They don't want indoor only because sometimes it gets milder. They want something that's in between. And our shop park model is exactly that. A combination of indoor and outdoor format that we have built taking into account potential effect of climate change because we were exposed early to it. As you know, our geographic focus has been a lot in the south part of France, where we have felt those effects before. And so it pays off. Right now what we see is that our shop parks are becoming the new place of the villages, if I can call them so. I think it's France Info, the national radio, that was calling them that way. And we have seen like an increasingly strong activity related to that, that positively translated in our numbers. After -- another positive effect, as I described, as being the transformation work that we carried on some assets with a boost in terms of footfall, I mentioned Aix, I mentioned Nimes, I mentioned La Valentine. All those centers are seeing positive trends, and the wind blows in their back. Those trends will last and they will carry increasing take-up of market share for us locally. So these are the factors that explain those very interesting numbers. In terms of guidance uplift and your comment, we had indeed in the first semester, a positive unwinding of some litigation leading to a provision reversal in the first half. They are in good part related to the progressive extinction of risks and litigation associated with the unwinding of operations related to Groupe Casino that we had provisions. I think you were among the analysts pointing to some time ago the risk associated to Casino. Our team is working and have been working to unwind that risk. Sometimes it leads to litigation. It's unwinding now and it's very positive for the company as it clears the risk ahead. At this stage, we do not expect further significant effect in the second semester. But by nature, we cannot forecast it. We don't know as they are related to litigation. Therefore, to answer your question, in no way are we making any bets on provisions to revise our guidance. We cannot. It could be also a negative provision in the second semester. We have very positive broad-based recurrent indicators that support those revised targets, and that's on those indicators that we have revised the guidance, not on unwinding of litigations.

But just to make sure I fully understand, when you had your guidance in the first place, that was not forecasted either. So the EUR 2 million additional one-off that you now recognized was not in your initial guidance. Just to make sure I understand fully. You did not forecast that.

We didn't know, otherwise there would not be provision. So we had the guidance of at least EUR 1.29. We are revising according to the flow, but they are mostly based on strong indicators. We could have, like we had in other years, negative provisions in the second semester. This is not, like I said, the basis on the guidance revision.

The next question comes from Stephanie Dossmann from Jefferies.