Platzer Fastigheter Holding AB (publ) (PLAZB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Johanna, and together with my CFO, Jakob, we will be presenting the Q2 results.

Good morning.

The title of our presentation today is continued high business activity and strong positive net letting. As I've said before, I have a clear ambition to maintain a high pace of business activity, and I'm proud that this quarter demonstrates tangible results from our efforts to meet our customer needs while also maintaining a strong transaction pace. Net letting for the quarter amounted to SEK 34 million, primarily driven by our office segment, which is representing historically high level. We improved our occupancy rate to 91.3%, achieved strong rental growth of 8% in our lease renegotiations, and we also maintained a high customer retention rate. This shows that we have the ability to meet our customer needs. I also see greater activity in the leasing market compared to last year. Companies are making decisions more rapidly than they were a year ago despite continued geopolitical uncertainty, and we are successfully able to close deals. So I'm really proud on how our organization converts local market expertise and solid customer relationships into tangible business results. And as I've been clear about earlier, we intend to continue expanding within our Industrial and Logistics segment. Last quarter, we signed a combined asset swap with Port of Gothenburg, as you remember. And more recently, we acquired another newly developed logistic property from our joint venture, Sörred Logistikpark. And as the next step in our growth journey continues, we have also launched Arendal 5.0, our next major growth initiatives, which we will come back to a bit later. The quarter was characterized by significant volatility in the interest rate market. We continue to experience strong support from our banks and have not seen any material changes in the lending margins, either upward or downwards. In the bond market, credit spreads have continued to tighten. Overall, we see our core business delivering strong results with high business activity, strong net letting transactions and successful project execution and reinforce one another and driving continued our growth. Looking at the numbers for the quarter. Overall, we delivered a growth in both rental income and operating surplus, resulting in a 6% income from property management per share. The improvement in rental income and net operating income was driven by indexation, lower rental discounts and contributions from our recent acquisitions, [indiscernible] and Mimo. We also continue to improve our net financial items despite a somewhat higher debt level. At the same time, we maintained or strengthened our key financial metrics while completing investments, executing share buybacks and recognizing unrealized negative property value changes due to revised CPI assumptions. All of this was achieved while maintaining a strong and stable financial situation. Net letting amounted to SEK 34 million, as I mentioned, and that is the positive trend that we've had for 3 quarters -- consecutive quarters. And this is actually the highest level of net letting in our existing management portfolio since our IPO in 2013. Our occupancy rate continues to improve with 0.6 percentage from last quarter, it's now 91.3%. And the majority of the new leases that were signed in our existing office portfolio. Tenant notifications of lease termination remained low this quarter as well, and that demonstrates our ability to successfully renew leases and meet our customer needs. In those lease renewals, as I mentioned before, we have a strong rental growth of 8%. And the largest single letting was actually done in the office segment of 8,000 square meters in Tennet. That's most likely one of the largest lease agreements signed in the Gothenburg market during Q2. is Tennet the same property that Nordea will vacate in March '27. And we are, of course, very pleased that our ongoing repositioning of the city block, including new restaurant concepts, conference and gym facilities is already showing results in our letting. And that is also well ahead of Nordea's vacancy. Here are some of the data around that office lease with AFRY. For AFRY the decisive factors for their future office location was the close proximity to the central station, of course, as well as our strong focus on the re-use and circular material choices through our carefully developed sustainable concept. And this is tangible example on how our long-term sustainability strategy creates real business value. We have acquired a modern logistics property, as I mentioned, from the joint venture Sörred Logistikpark. Speed is the tenant and is fully let, and we took position 1st of July. The underlying property value is SEK 570 million and this is the last unit that is developed in our joint venture with Catena [ Bocar ]. Here is a brief overview of some of the other lease agreements, grand openings or lease renewals that we have been entrusted with from our tenants. I also want to touch a little bit on the Gothenburg market. If we start with the office market, the leasing activity is higher than it was a year ago, as I mentioned. The rental levels remain stable, although the competition is still quite intense and the vacancy rate is high, it's around 15%. Prime yield stands on about 4.55% while prime office rentals are flat. And with top tenants of -- top rents reaching above SEK 5,000, SEK 6,000, but the -- [Foreign Language]. Okay. So I would like to touch upon the economic tendency indicator and also the office and industrial and logistics markets. The leasing activity, as I mentioned in the office market has been higher than it was a year ago. Rental levels remained stable, there is a quite tough competition. That's quite intense, and the vacancy rate is around 15% on the market due to office construction -- new office construction that was added '21, '22. Stable prime yields and yes, quite a good demand in the central location of the city. The industrial and logistics market, the demand remained strong in both the leasing and investment markets with prime yields that are slightly going down to 4.8% and rentals are slightly up, and we see continued growth in e-commerce, which is, of course, supporting the market. If we then look at the economic outlook of Gothenburg region, we are in normal economic environment with domestic demand serving as the main growth engine supported by household consumption, retail and a strong hospitality sector. The export weighted GDP growth for the region is forecasted at 1.7% in 2026. It's slightly lower than previously due to the recent geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Employment remains resilient with a positive job growth for 10 consecutive months, while many companies remain cautious of employing. There are also some signs of expansion. For example, Volvo Trucks that recently announced plans to recruit 300 employees. The manufacturing sector is still experiencing relatively weak conditions. However, Sweden's Purchasing Manager Index has improved for the third consecutive month. And the new incoming orders are also increasing. Looking further ahead, the region's growth and employment prospects continue to be underpinned by strong long-term structural fundamentals and one such fundament is the Port of Gothenburg. The port continues to strengthen its position and is the largest port in the Nordics and it's actually the main artery of Swedish Trade and Industry. More than half of Swedish container traffic passes through the port, while also a new liquefied biogas facilities being developed to support the transition of shipping and heavy transport in the industry from a sustainable point of view. Containing imports continue to increase. We are at the balance between export and import of 50-50 split right now. And the vehicle handling has increased by 15% during the last quarter. Energy volumes over [ KAI ] rose to 19% driven of a strong demand for redefined products over the regions refineries. These are some of the areas that underlies the importance of Port of Gothenburg. It's not only important for the region, but actually from Sweden as a whole. And that's also why Arendal is one of the country's most strategic locations for future industrial and logistic growth. And that also sets the stage of our next phase of growth. Since we entered the Industrial and Logistics segment in 2016, we have built a dedicated organization and expertise and grown our portfolio and is now valued to about SEK 7 billion. And over the same period, we have developed and acquired more than 425,000 square meters of lettable area. We call the next chapter of our Arendal expansion. Arendal Generation 5.0. And that's our long-term vision for industrial and logistics hub that continues to evolve in line with the need of the industrial industry. What we are adding here is approximately 200,000 square meters of new industrial and logistics space is representing around SEK 2 billion in project investments. Part of this development, we will also demolish approximately 25,000 square meters of old buildings that have reached their end of the technical life span. So over the span of 7 years, within the existing zoning plan, we will develop what we call Arendal Generation 5.0. And with that outlook on the future, I will hand over to you, Jakob.

Thank you, Johanna. So let's go in and have a look at the financial performance for the quarter. We delivered growth both in rental income, operating surplus and income from property management. Rental income and operating surplus both increased by 2%. And Property costs were essentially unchanged compared with the same quarter last year, and the growth was mainly driven by our like-for-like portfolio. With continued improvement in net financial items, income from property management increased by 4% or 6% on a per share basis. So overall, a solid quarter, both operationally and financially. Turning to the property portfolio. The value remains just above SEK 30 billion. During the quarter, we recognized an unrealized value change of minus SEK 125 million. This was driven by a revised inflation assumption where the indexation assumption for 2027 was low from 2% to 1%. The yield in the valuation remains unchanged at 5.1%. The investments for the quarter amounted to SEK 76 million, somewhat higher than last quarter, but still at a relatively modest level. Our loan-to-value was unchanged, 47% of total assets. And 49% on the property LTV, and these are levels that we are comfortable with. After the quarter closed on July 1, as Johanna mentioned, we completed the acquisition of the [indiscernible] logistic property from the joint venture with Catena. And the value is SEK 570 million. At the same time, we received a dividend from the joint venture of SEK 108 million. So that will come into the -- from start in the Q3 figures. In Q1, we announced the transaction with the Port of Gothenburg and the expected timing for the close is still around year-end. And in that transaction, we are a net seller with approximately SEK 684 million. If we go in the bottom, you see that our net financial items improved by SEK 6 million or 5% to SEK 130 million despite the slightly higher debt volume. The improvement was driven by lower Stibor as well as lower lending margins in our portfolio. The stronger operating earnings and improved financing costs increased our interest cover ratio to 2.6 while net debt compared to EBITDA was 10.8. Overall, we continue to maintain a strong and stable financial position. To summarize, we delivered good operational growth, improved net financial items. And together with the share buybacks completed during the period, a 6% increase in income from property management per share. If we have a closer look at the drivers behind the quarter's earnings and start with the rental income on the top growth in the like-for-like portfolio was mainly driven by indexation and lower rent discounts. And the decline in project development that reflects by the Mölnlycke Healthcare that vacated it premises last summer. We have leased out part of that space now with occupying new tenants in the end of this year. The positive contribution in transactions in rental income mainly comes from the acquisition of the industrial property in Tuve, while the office property Mimo in Mölndal also contributed. Altogether, rental income increased by 2% or SEK 7 million. Property costs, as mentioned, was pretty stable, only increased by SEK 1 million, so essentially flat. And as a result, the net operating income or net operating surplus increased by SEK 6 million to -- or 2% with a like-for-like portfolio also delivering a 2% growth. Our surplus ratio was 81%, which is a level we are very pleased with. So overall, we continue to grow income while keeping costs under control. Leasing remains one of our highest priorities, and we are pleased to deliver positive net leasing again this quarter, as Johanna mentioned. And we are now beginning to see that positive net leasings that we have had in the last quarters to translate into earnings through completed move-ins and also, of course, improving our occupancy rate. Turning to financing. We continue to maintain a very strong financial position. Market conditions remain favorable throughout the quarter. Credit margins continued to tighten. While interest rates remained volatile. Despite the short-term movements, the underlying trend during the quarter was downward on interest rates. The bond market remains strong, and we estimate that our credit spread now is close to all-time low for us. During the quarter, we issued SEK 400 million of bonds and extended interest rate swaps totaling to SEK 550 million. Overall, debt increased slightly during the first half of the year. Our average closing interest rate, including commitments, was 3.43%, 3 basis points lower than the end of the previous quarter. and that was mainly reflected by lower Stibor. One year ago, the corresponding figure was SEK 356 million. If we look ahead for this year, we believe that our average funding cost is now at a sustainable level, all else being equal. Our share of sustainable financing increased from 75% to 81%. And I will come back to that in a moment. We remained active in the fixed income markets during the quarter, extending SEK 550 million of swaps. As a result, our average interest rate duration increased to 2.9 years. As you can see in the chart, we have a well-balanced maturity profile over the coming 5 years. while we continue to build duration beyond 6 years. Our average credit maturity remained stable at 2.8 years. And as I said before, the objective is to have a well-diversified maturity profile across the coming years. If we look at the first year, around SEK 1.5 billion of debt maturing related to commercial papers. Our sustainability transition continues and is fully integrated in both our business and our financing. The share of sustainable financing increased to 81% during the quarter, up 6 percentage points. Together with Swedbank, we introduced an updated sustainability-linked financing framework during the quarter. In addition to energy efficiency and reducing carbon footprint of new developments, the framework now also includes KPIs for circularity and resource efficiency in tenant improvements. By linking both time and capital, not only square meters to climate impact, we create stronger incentives for resource efficient project execution. Significant share of our carbon footprint comes from tenant improvements and refurbishments. It's therefore, encouraging that in our largest leasing transaction this quarter, both we and the customer place strong emphasis on reuse and circular material choices. And as mentioned before, our concept obvious interior choices, helps both us and our customers make climate smart decisions in a simple and practical way. The share, on April 17, the Board approved a new share buyback program of SEK 200 million. And during the quarter, we have repurchased shares of SEK 97 million. Combined with the previous program, we have now total buybacks now amounting to 2.3% of outstanding shares. Share buybacks remain important tool for us for creating long-term shareholder value. To conclude the delivery in the quarter, we report 2% growth in operating surplus, 6% growth in income from property management per share and 2% growth in NRV per share. We also delivered strong net letting of SEK 34 million, providing good support for future earnings. Combined with the LTV of 47% and the net debt to EBITDA of 10.8%, we remain in a strong financial position. That gives us the flexibility to continue allocating capital actively and investing in future value creation. With today's stable cash flow, we have investment capacity of more than SEK 1 billion per year, while maintaining our current LTV ratio.

We are creating growth through active asset management, and we also create extra leverage through project development and transactions. And some highlights that I want to mention so far that we have concluded during this year is then the acquisition of Sörred, Sörred Logistikpark. We have also done an asset swap with the Port of Gothenburg, where we acquired these modern logistics property, and we also divested 9 office buildings together with [ KAI and Water ] area. As Jakob mentioned, the completion is expected for Q4. And the process of approval by the City Council is proceeding according to plan. We also have projects that are running. The Assa project of 10,000 square meters is one of those. We also have signed a letter of intent with the City of Gothenburg earlier this year, where we gear up for a future of its development rights of about 60,000 square meter in absolute prime location adjacent to the Central Station. And now lately, the launch of Arendal Generation 5.0. The SEK 2 billion investment development that we just spoke about. In addition to that, we have, of course, our share buybacks program that continues to provide additional leverage to the shareholder value. And our conclusion is that the strong delivery, a high level of business activity and capital allocation gives us a path to increase further shareholder value in the future. So looking ahead, our focus is on 2 priorities. Firstly, we will continue to maintain a high pace of business activity here and now. reducing vacancies, strengthening cash flow and remaining a fast commercial and flexible in every customer dialogue. Secondly, we will continue to build on our next phase of growth. We will do this through portfolio rotation, project development and by continuing to expand our industrial and logistics portfolio. Arendal Generation 5.0 is a clear example of this. demonstrating how we leverage our unique position in the Gothenburg region and how we create new business opportunity and deliver long-term shareholder value. So a strong financial position and our profound local market expertise. Our organization that works closely with the customers, we are well positioned to continue to create this value. even if the environment in the surrounding world remains uncertain. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are now happy to take your questions.