Plaza S.A. (MALLPLAZA) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Mallplaza's Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. Today with us are Pablo Pulido, CEO; Derek Tang, CFO; and Rodrigo Sirhan, Finance Manager. This presentation and the 4Q '25 earnings release are available on our Investor Relations website and will also be available for download in the chat. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rodrigo Sirhan. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to Mallplaza's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I am Rodrigo Sirhan, Director of Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me today are Pablo Pulido, our CEO; Derek Tang, our CFO; and the Investor Relations team. This is a special call for us as it marks the first earnings presentation under Pablo's leadership, building upon the extraordinary 35-year legacy of our former CEO, Fernando de Peña. Before we discuss our fourth quarter 2025 results, please note that management may make or refer to forward-looking statements during this presentation relating to our company, its results, operational expenses, strategy, potential restructurings and other similar matters. Such statements are based on assumptions and expectations of future events that are uncertain and contain risks. For further information on this, please refer to the disclaimer displayed on the screen. Today's presentation will follow the following structure. First, we'll review our financial and operational performance during the fourth quarter and the full year 2025. Next, we'll share key strategic milestones and progress on value creation initiatives. And lastly, we will open the floor to Q&A. Mallplaza maintains a consistent track record of strong performance throughout its holdings. During this period, we have kept our expansion base, utilizing our reach and premium urban location to foster closer ties with partners and visitors. Both being more than 2.3 million square meters of total GLA, we stand as the premier retail space manager within the Andean market. We are dedicating to improving our brand appeal across this 100 million inhabitant region, solidifying our status as the main gateway into the region for top-tier retailers and a foundation for enduring progress. With that, I'll now turn it to Derek, who will walk us through the details of the quarterly results.

Thank you, Rodrigo. During the quarter, we achieved broad-based growth across our primary financial metrics, including revenue, EBITDA and FFO. This performance was underpinned by robust operational efficiency and healthy occupancy rates across our portfolio. Ultimately, these results validate the premier quality of our assets and our disciplined approach to strategic execution. Turning to our operational performance in Slide 4. Footfall across our urban centers reached 106.4 million visits, a 16% increase year-over-year. For full year 2025, we welcomed over 385.3 million visitors, up 24%. This growth was primarily driven by the performance of our recently expanded and transformed urban centers and the consolidation of our Peruvian portfolio. As an example, during the quarter, Mallplaza Vespucio saw a 14.4% rise in visits, while Mallplaza Trujillo and Mallplaza Cali grew by 13.5% and 6.2%, respectively. This foot traffic directly translated into strong commercial outcomes. Tenant sales for the quarter grew 16.4% to CLP 1.96 trillion. For the full year, tenant sales reached CLP 6.6 trillion, a 22.9% increase. In terms of organic growth, same-store sales grew by 5.9% in the fourth quarter of '25 and 6.7% for the full year. Meanwhile, our consolidated same-store rents saw an increase of 7.3% during the quarter. This reflects strong organic rental growth across all our markets, reaching 7.3% in Chile, 6.2% in Peru and 9.3% in Colombia. For the full year 2025, consolidated same-store rent grew 6.3%. In terms of performance of key assets, Mallplaza Cali in Colombia grew sales by 15.5% and Mallplaza Trujillo in Peru by 27.4%. This performance was supported by a solid occupancy rate across our core markets with Chile at 96.3%, Peru at 94.6% and Colombia at 97%. Importantly, we achieved this while maintaining healthy margins for our commercial partners, occupancy costs remained at a healthy 8.8%. Moving to our financial performance on Page 5. Net revenue for the fourth quarter totaled CLP 173.7 billion, a 23.6% increase year-over-year. For the full year 2025, our revenues reached CLP 653.9 billion, climbing 32.2% compared to 2024. Our average remaining duration of lease contracts is 6.7 years with 53.3% of those contracts extending beyond 5 years. Furthermore, 93% of our rent is fixed, which provides stability. In the fourth quarter of 2025, cost of sales and SG&A reached CLP 33.7 billion, representing a 2.2% increase compared to the same period in 2024. On a year-over-year basis, combined cost of sales and SG&A increased by 13.1% for the full year 2025. This growth is primarily explained by the consolidation of our Peruvian assets. Our operational efficiency is translating to post-pandemic record profitability. EBITDA for the quarter reached CLP 141 billion, increasing 30.2% year-over-year. For the full year, EBITDA totaled CLP 526.2 billion, up 38.2%. As a result, our quarterly EBITDA margin expanded by 4.1 percentage points, closing the quarter at 81.2%. Switching to net income on Page 6. Profit attributable to controlling interest, excluding fair value for the quarter was CLP 138.4 billion, representing an 86% year-over-year increase, bringing our full year net income to CLP 369.3 billion. Consolidated Plaza FFO reached CLP 110.6 billion for the quarter, a 35.5% increase, yielding an adjusted FFO margin of 63.8%. For the full year, FFO reached CLP 405.3 billion, up 33.7%, while our FFO per share rose 26.2% to CLP 185.1. As detailed on Page 7, we continue to validate our standing in the global capital markets. Since our last capital increase, Mallplaza has recorded a sustained surge in stock liquidity. During the fourth quarter, MSCI and FTSE announced their latest rebalancing, officially incorporating Mallplaza into the MSCI Mid-large Cap Index and the FTSE. This is a major milestone that consolidates our position and significantly raises our profile among international investors. Our average daily trading volume over 180 days increased 130% to $10.4 million. On Page 8, we outlined our solid financial position. We closed the quarter with cash and equivalents of CLP 268.3 billion and a financial debt of CLP 1.58 trillion. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio stands at 2.5x with a loan-to-value ratio of 19%. Our debt maturity profile is deliberately long term. 91% of our maturities exceed 1 year and 20% exceed a term of 10 years or more. Furthermore, most of our debt is fixed rate and highly managed by our cash flows with 82% denominated in UF. This resilience is backed by our investment-grade ratings, Baa2 from Moody's and BBB from Fitch and AA+ locally from Feller Rate and Humphreys. This financial strength supported by our investment-grade ratings provides us with the flexibility to execute our ambitious growth plan. With that, I'll hand it over to Pablo Pulido, who will guide you through our strategic road map.

Thank you, Derek. It is a distinct privilege to address you for the first time at Mallplaza as CEO. Our strong performance this quarter is a direct result of the disciplined execution of our strategy. Moving forward, I want to reaffirm our long-term vision, transforming our square meters into vibrant urban ecosystem that lead the Andean region. Our road map is clear and built upon 3 strategic pillars: maximizing the productivity of our current assets, executing a disciplined GLA expansion and scaling our complementary business. Central to this is our value proposition, which focuses on simplifying and enhancing the lives of our visitors through social connection and constant evolution. By converting spaces into high productivity categories like dining, entertainment and specialty retail, we are creating urban centers that offers multiple reasons to visit, ensuring our assets remain the preferred destination for both customers and leading global brands. Regarding organic growth, I want to emphasize the strategic importance of flagship assets like Mallplaza Vespucio. During this period, we successfully opened 32,800 square meters of GLA across our operations in Chile and Colombia. A major milestone in this growth was the expansion of Mallplaza Vespucio in Chile, which alone contributed 19,600 square meters. These results prove our ability to unlock value and capture high-density demand in major markets, further consolidating our leadership in the region. Looking forward, our focus shifts to a significant pipeline of expansions. While we are executing a robust CLP 600 million brownfield investment pipeline to add new DLA (sic) [ GLA ], we are simultaneously transforming over 800,000 square meters of existing DLA (sic) [ GLA ] across our portfolio to consolidate our assets as dominant urban ecosystem. These new square meters will enhance our offering of food and beverage, entertainment and especially retail, ensuring they drive superior profitability to our assets. We sustained a robust and proactive commercial management, successfully renewing over 850 leases and integrating 519 new stores throughout the year. This added 84,000 square meters of new offering to our regional portfolio. Furthermore, our ability to repurpose multiple spaces has been key to consolidate our value proposition across all 3 countries, strengthening our market position, growth and overall impact. In doing so, we introduced socialization and leisure offering highly valued by our visitors, which serve as key footfall drivers for our urban centers. By providing multiple reasons to visit, we ensure a constant evolution of our value proposition. A standard example of our conversion capability is Mallplaza Premium Outlets Biobío opened in December 2025, a $12 million investment, transformed a major asset into a premium outlet. Following this successful blueprint, we are expanding to Peru with the transformation of Open Plaza Atocongo Lima opened in first half 2026. Through a highly efficient 7.5 million investment, we are shifting this convenience center into a 37,000 square meters small plaza premium outlet. By integrating top-tier global brands in a strategic high demand location, we expect to be positioned to capture Lima's dynamic consumption and maximize our return on invested capital. Our complementary business vertical focus on ancillary revenue streams where our parking business has established itself as a pillar of financial results. We ended 2025 with consolidated parking revenue reaching CLP 67.8 billion, representing 10.4% of our total revenue. This performance is driven by consistent 26% CAGR since 2019. Digital innovation has contributed towards this growth. Our ParkFlou solution now serves over 950,000 monthly visitors, reaching a 29.5% adoption rate in Chile during the fourth quarter. This operational efficiency not only enhances the visitor experience by removing friction, but also directly optimize our margins as we scale our proven technological platform across our network. Finally, our profitability is intrinsically linked to our corporate responsibility. On the environmental front, we are committed to validate our emission reduction targets with the Science Based Targets initiative, ensuring our operational efficiency is also environmentally responsible. From a governance perspective, I am proud to share that Mallplaza's Board was named Board of the Year by the Institute of Directors of Chile. The recognition honors our commitment to corporate governance, transparency, risk management and commitment with sustainability, the great pillars that we have market confidence to execute our growth plans. We closed the year not only with the record financial results, but also as reputational leaders in the retail real estate sector. Mallplaza concludes 2025 in a solid position, having reached a historic EBITDA of $577.5 million and a consolidated EBITDA margin of 80.5% for the year. We have demonstrated our ability to consolidate regional operation, particularly with the successful integration of assets in Peru, innovating our business model such as our Mallplaza Premium Outlets and execute large scale project with financial risk. In 2026, we'll continue to evolve with agility, driving our purpose of creating spaces where people truly enjoy being and connecting and where we will impact the lives of people positively. I am deeply grateful to our teams for their tireless energy and to our investors for your continued trust in our strategic vision. Together, we will keep pushing the boundaries of the future.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Gustavo Fabris with BTG.

I have 2 questions here from my side, right? At first, I wanted to explore a little bit more on your cost structure in Q4, right? I understand you had some recoveries on this front that helped on a gross margin level. So maybe if you could clarify a little bit more on the nature of these recoveries and whether we should expect to see that happening in the coming quarters as well, it would be very helpful. That would be my first question. And the second one, I'd like to get your view maybe on how should the operating metrics in Chile evolve for now on, right? When we look at the data in Q4, rent growth on an organic basis outpaced a little bit the sales growth in Q4. So if you could just, I mean, share your thoughts on the consumer environment in Chile for 2026 and what it should mean for rents as well would be helpful, right? If we could imagine -- continue to see real growth in sales and rent this year as well.

Gustavo, thank you for your questions. Starting off with first on the cost side, and as we've mentioned in previous quarters as well, the company is very much geared and focused towards sustaining a level of EBITDA margin of about 80%. So we've surpassed this metric in the last couple of quarters. And with regards to cost, as you well mentioned, it's mainly due to higher common expense recovery and the netting effect that this generates. So going forward, in terms of margin, our expectation is to continue this track of -- and sustain margins at the levels that we are observing right now. Now with regards to your second question, in terms of the operating metrics in Chile, as you well pointed out, we did observe not only in Chile but in all the 3 markets in which we operate a significant EBITDA growth. So in Chile, we increased EBITDA at 12.9%, in Colombia 18.4% and Peru on a pro forma basis, take into consideration that the acquisition that we made in Peru was in December of 2024, therefore, looking on a pro forma basis, adjusting for that effect, the growth -- the EBITDA growth was 17.8%. Whereby we've been observing significant sales trends also in the markets in which we operate. So if you look, for example, in terms of sales growth for both Peru on a pro forma basis and Colombia, those were double digits, 12.4%, 11.9%. 12.4% in Peru, 11.9% in Colombia with Chile at 6%. And I think what's relevant here looking forward towards the markets in which we operate is our significant pipeline of expansions and transformations of the assets. As we've disclosed in the earnings release, we have a total pipeline of north of $600 million of CapEx, which we believe will enhance the value proposition of our assets and should continue to contribute towards the delivery of higher productivity for these assets as well. When you look in terms of the occupancy cost, which I think is also relevant to mention that in all 3 markets in which we operate, occupancy cost was at single digits. So on a consolidated basis at 8.8%, decreasing 0.1 percentage point compared to the previous year, which we believe also enables us towards capturing this higher productivity.

Our next question comes from Jonathan Koutras with JPMorgan.

Congrats on the quarter. I had also 2 questions on my side. The one still on the common expenses efficiency that Derek just mentioned, could you please remind us on the factors behind the recovery, right? It was quite meaningful in the quarter. And the second question on the parking revenue side has been growing, now reaching over 10% of top line, Chile closer to 12%. So the question is how quickly you think Colombia and Peru can catch up to this level? And is there something specific to geographies that explain this difference? These 2 questions.

Great, Jonathan. Thank you for your questions. And again, I guess, on the cost side, it has a lot to do with the higher content common expense recovery. We're always focused on seeking ways in which we can optimize the common area costs in general. We have a very centralized structure as well with an operations center, which some of you have visited already, which enables us to capture certain efficiencies in terms of how we operate the malls. In addition to that, always seeking into ways in which we can recover these effects in terms of the common expense. And going forward, as mentioned in the previous answer, we expect this to contribute towards maintaining a high level of efficiency at the company. Now on your second question, I think here, it's an important highlight with regards to parking, whereby in 2025, it totaled 10.4% of gross revenues. This is a 26% payer since 2019. And as you well pointed out, when we look between the different countries, I mean, Chile is -- it already accounts for 11.7% of gross revenues. Three years ago, this was at 7%. Colombia at 8.3% compared to about 3% three years ago and Peru at 6%. Now we do believe that the complementary businesses in general, I mean, parking, media, in general, these are revenue lines, which have increased significantly. If you look at for the full year of last year, both of them grew at 40 -- almost 45%. And going forward, we do believe that there is room to continue to revisit the relevance of these complementary businesses in the company so that they become even more relevant. And, I mean, some countries, there are also the opportunity to do some catch-up to the levels that we've been observing in Chile.

Our next question comes from Jorel Guilloty with Goldman Sachs.

Not to belabor the point on the expense recovery surge, I just was trying to better understand what it means. So does it mean essentially that if a tenant pays you CLP 100, let's say, and you're spending less or becoming more efficient on how much you're spending vis-a-vis what you received? So just trying to understand if it's just exactly what's happening here, how you're operationalizing this. And the other question would be, if that means that indeed you're spending less on common area expenses, will we then see that common area expense portion of your occupancy costs eventually go down as you pass through these savings to tenants? That's my question.

Great, Jorel. Thank you for your question. And as to your point, yes. So the way this works is that we -- whichever common costs we're able to recover or charge and pass-through towards the tenants, that's get charged and there's a netting effect, as you're well familiar in other industries, such as Brazil as well. And so -- and to your second point of your question, if there is a decrease in the overall common expenses, yes, that would imply in a reduction in terms of the occupancy cost for the tenants. As an example, in this fourth quarter, if you add up the portion of the occupancy costs, which is related to common expenses and the marketing fund, this dropped by 0.1 percentage point from 2.5% in the fourth quarter of last year to 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Next question comes from Felipe Ballevona with Santander.

Congrats on the good results. I have a question about taxes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like when we exclude the deferred taxes related to the asset revaluation, it seems like you guys have an income tax gain of almost like CLP 20 billion. So if you could give us a little bit of color on that, that would be very helpful. Maybe I'm doing something, maybe I'm looking at something wrong.

Felipe, thank you for your question. So specifically to the deferred taxes, as you well mentioned, there's a portion or a significant portion of it, which is related to the fair value gain that we observed in this quarter. As you well know, whenever we have an asset revaluation and this generates a revaluation gain or loss, this also leads to a deferred tax effect. But in addition to this, and towards your question, there was also a corporate restructuring, which was concluded in the quarter, which led to a lower deferred tax liability compared to the previous quarter, which brought by an effect towards deferred taxes.

Got you. So it's not related to unrecognized tax losses or something like that, it's just restructuring.

That's right.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Jonathan Koutras with JPMorgan.

Just one more since we have spare time. Other players in this sector are raising capital, went to deploy it in greenfields, brownfields and et cetera. So the question is how are you seeing the competitive environment? The company also has a robust pipeline as was just mentioned as well. So how do you see the tenant demand for this additional GLA that the sector should see in the next 5 to 7 years?

Thank you, Jonathan, for your follow-up question. Well, as you've observed on this quarter, Mallplaza currently has a balance sheet, a strong balance sheet with a 2.5x net debt-EBITDA, the leverage, and a Baa2 rating from Moody's and BBB rating from Fitch, which in the end of the day, allows us to access the debt capital markets quite extensively in order to finance any investment needs that the company might have. It is a significant investment plan that we have going forward with the greenfields -- the brownfields and the transformations of assets. As I mentioned earlier, that's going to be north of $600 million for the coming years. However, I mean, with this access to capital and also the EBITDA that the company is able to generate is sufficient to sustain these investment needs going forward. Now also just, I think, highlighting in terms of capital markets as well, I think it's important here to mention that liquidity for the company has increased significantly. As you well know, this has been an effort of the company of being able to increase awareness of the company to shareholders. So our ADTV for the fourth quarter increased 130% to $10.4 million. And just recently, the end of last week, FTSE announced that we were being moved from the mid-cap to large gap, which also should contribute towards this increased awareness or increased liquidity as well.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes the question-and-answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Derek Tang for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thank you all for connecting to this, fourth quarter '25 earnings call for Mallplaza. As always, myself and all the Investor Relations team is available for any follow-up questions that you might have. Thank you.

Thank you. This does conclude today's presentation. You may disconnect now, and have a nice day.