Sirius Real Estate Limited (SRE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to today's presentation of Sirius Real Estate's full year results for the period ending March 31, 2025. My name is Andrew Coombs. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Sirius Group. And I'm joined this morning by Chris Bowman, who is the Group Chief Financial Officer. Together, we'll take you through this morning's presentation. And maybe we can start by turning to Page 3. As you all know, we are an on balance sheet, best-in-class owner and operator of mixed-use light industrial business parks on the edge of key towns in Germany and the U.K. Please remember that Sirius operates in both the German and U.K. markets under the brand of Sirius in Germany and BizSpace in the U.K. The group currently operates over EUR 2.6 billion of property, 90% of which is wholly owned by the group. This consists of 152 sites in total, 75 of which are in the U.K. and 70 of which are in Germany. In addition, the company has 7 other sites, which it operates through the joint venture called Titanium. Let's now turn to Page 4 and look at some of the highlights for the period to March 31, 2025. So the Sirius Group is a rigorous, well-run and growing organization. We have proved the resilience and reliability of the business model during COVID, during the gas crisis in Germany and, most recently, through a period of rising interest rates in both Europe and the U.K. In that time, we have continuously grown our revenues. We have continuously increased our dividend payments. And very importantly, we have made sure that the total value of the property we own goes up, not down. In the period March '25, we grew the group like-for-like rent roll by more than 6%. This resulted in a 7% increase in NAV per share and a 12.5% total accounting return. Our profit before tax amounted to just over EUR 200 million, and we improved our FFO from EUR 110 million in the previous year to EUR 123 million in the period we're talking about. And this brings us closer to our current mission to achieve EUR 150 million of FFO. In addition, we managed to find the time to acquire EUR 270 million of new assets. And currently, we have just over EUR 600 million of cash on the balance sheet. So we believe that we have a strong balance sheet with LTV in the low 30s and significant firepower to repeat the performance of EUR 270 million of acquisitions in the coming year. Let's now turn to Page 5, and I think Chris is going to start by taking you through the income statement.

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. Over the next few pages, I'll just take you through some of the highlights of the P&L and the balance sheet. So just starting on Page 5. As Andrew has said, great performance operationally has driven top line rental income by 15.1% to EUR 215.3 million. So that's a combination of the organic growth in that like-for-like rent roll growth of 6.3%, but also reflecting the fact that we are in acquisition mode at the moment. We are highly acquisitive. So you've got the benefit of those two drivers driving the top line growth. That has then fed through to net operating income, NOI growth of 12.4%, up at EUR 189.8 million. Just within the -- in between those two numbers, the key item is the service charge, irrecoverables. So for those of you who will know as well, you'll know that recovering service charge, particularly in Germany, is one of the key strengths of the group. However, this is the first full year that we have not benefited from very beneficial utility hedging contracts that we had during the gas crisis in Germany. So we had a EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million headwind that we've had to digest and have digested in this financial year. Together with the acquisitions that we make, typically, there is a lag in the service charge recovery there because when we're acquiring properties, we're acquiring properties where service charge is not recovered as well as it is under our ownership. So you will see the irrecs or irrecoverables, continue to be a little bit elevated whilst we are acquiring, but that's a growth opportunity going forward as well. Flowing on down EBITDA, up 13%. And then that moves down into FFO up 11.9%, EUR 123.2 million. I'd just point in there, the finance cost, that's a net interest cost of EUR 11.8 million, virtually flat on the prior year. At a gross level, we've had EUR 23.5 million of interest cost, but we benefited from interest income through very effective treasury management through our cash balances. So we are running quite high cash balances at the moment in anticipation of repaying the corporate bond that comes due next year. And going forward, those finance costs will start to tick up. So that is the headwind that we'll face over future years. We're very confident we can continue to outrun those headwinds, as I say, through organic and acquisitive growth. Really, the standout number at the bottom half of the P&L which is not included in FFO is the increase in the valuation that drives our underlying -- our profit before tax up by 75%. So you can see EUR 80.7 million of surplus on valuation. That's after CapEx of just over EUR 50 million. So on a gross level, we've had over EUR 130 million of valuation growth coming through in the year. Just turning on to Page 6, looking at those numbers on a per share basis. So the net operating income of EUR 189.8 million converts into EUR 0.13 of NOI, the platform costs, the overheads at EUR 0.0329. And together with that, interest and tax cost of EUR 18.5 million, which converts into EUR 0.0127. That then gets you to an FFO per share of EUR 0.0844. Our FFO per share is still being held back, and this is really, I think, what I'd describe as the bottom in terms of the dilution from the recent equity raises that we did. So we suffered the dilution in number of shares, but we have not yet fully deployed all of that capital into acquisitions. So from here on, you will start to see the FFO per share really be driven by the organic and the acquisitive growth without any further share issues. So we have headroom in the balance sheet that I'll talk about later to continue really driving that number up. The EUR 0.0844 allows us to then pay out a very healthy growing dividend, EUR 0.0615 in the current year. We are committed to continuing to grow the dividend. So because of the flexibility that we have, and typically we're aiming for 65% payout on dividend, we have actually paid out 72% in this period. So we're able to protect shareholders, insulate shareholders from the effect of that dilution and lag in the -- in putting proceeds to work from the equity raise by flexing our payout ratio to continue to grow the dividend. We are committed to bringing that payout ratio back towards 65% over time whilst continuing to grow the dividend. And the business model allows us to do that. Looking on to Page 7 on the balance sheet. So again, in terms of investment properties, we've seen healthy growth in the underlying portfolio, EUR 278.5 million growth to a EUR 2.46 billion portfolio on balance sheet. That EUR 278 million (sic) [ EUR 278.5 million ] of growth in the portfolio is driven by actual properties that completed in the year of EUR 150 million acquisitions. We have then notarized another EUR 120 million as well. We've disposed off EUR 14 million, typically of small sites in the U.K. We also announced a disposal at the end of last week in Germany of a larger site, we'll talk about later, but that's not within these numbers yet because that was post balance sheet. We had an FX gain of EUR 12 million. And I've already mentioned the growth in the values at a gross level of EUR 133 million. So that's driven that growth in the portfolio to EUR 2.46 billion. And then on the asset level, you'll also see we are running very high cash balances at the moment, EUR 604 million (sic) [ EUR 604.8 million ] of cash, of which just over EUR 30 million is tenant deposits. So net, we have about EUR 570 million at the year-end. We are running those levels of cash because we refinanced our June '26 bond early. So we went out and raised a EUR 350 million bond in June. We had demand for nearly EUR 2 billion from investors for that bond. So that was a very, very successful issue. We were able to place that bond at a 4% interest rate for 7-year duration. So that gives us an extremely strong balance sheet and has derisked entirely the June '26 bond refinancing. So you'll see us continue to run relatively high cash balances right through until this time next year when we repay that bond. And turning to the liability side. The flip side of that bond issue is you'll see that our bank loans has gone from EUR 945 million last year to EUR 1.319 billion. Again, that's the effect of that EUR 350 million bond issue. We also tapped our November '28 bond. We have 3 bonds outstanding. We tapped our November '28 bond for EUR 59.9 million in May last year. And of course, we had the equity raise back in July of net of EUR 175 million after costs. All of that flows through to a very, very healthy NAV performance. We focus on adjusted NAV, EUR 1.1889 that is up 7% in the year. So that 7% growth, as I say, has been driven principally by the increase in value of the portfolio. And that's really -- we are now getting the benefits of our operational performance, the growth in the rent roll being reflected in the values, which reflects the stability of underlying yields now. We are actually now back into growth mode of our values. Page 8. Just on a per share basis, you can see the waterfall taking us from last year's EPRA NTA per share right the way through to this year's EPRA NTA per share. I won't go through every line. But the recurring profit after tax in Germany, the fifth far across, you can see it was EUR 0.0576 per share. That's EUR 87 million of profit after tax we generated in Germany. We also then have EUR 0.0582 per share of valuation gain in Germany. That's EUR 88 million of valuation gain after CapEx. In the U.K., we had EUR 33 million of profit after tax, which generates about EUR 0.0218 uplift in the -- on a per share basis. We suffered -- we are still seeing small valuation decreases in the U.K. after CapEx due to still suffering small yield shift and move-outs in the U.K. We'll talk about that a little bit more further on. But you can see EUR 7 million down in valuation at EUR 0.0045 per share in the U.K., giving you the net gain of GBP 81 million on valuation. We paid out EUR 85 million in dividend during the year because of the way the math works, that has shown us EUR 0.0562. We actually -- and that's really because we issued shares during the year. So the first half dividend was not -- the people who came in for the equity raise did not get the first half dividend. So the actual cash effect of the dividend is lower than the EUR 0.0615 overall. So -- but we have paid out EUR 0.0615 per share in the year, taking you through right through to EPRA NTA, which is also up 7% of EUR 1.1761. I will hand back to Andrew to go through some of the KPIs from Page 9 onwards.

Okay. So just starting with Germany. Now you remember this time last year and 6 months ago, I was banging on about an occupancy-led strategy. What you see on this page is the reason why we were talking about an occupancy-led strategy. If you look at move-outs, move-outs in this period of 180,000 (sic) [ 180,477 ] versus 137,000 (sic) [ 137,992 ] a year before, that's a 31% increase in move-outs. Now why is that? Well, one of the big reasons that, that move-out rate has increased is because we've been in the business of buying sites where we know tenants are either going to leave or we're going to throw them out so that we can invest capital and get better tenants. Dresden is a great example, whereby if we look at Klipphausen, we bought a site knowing that the tenant was going to 100% exit, and they have done that in this period. And what we've done is we have refilled that space. So what you see in terms of the move-ins, some of that is reflected in places like Klipphausen. But these move-outs are not a surprise. They are not driven by the market. This is a deliberate strategy on our part. And we knew a year ago, we were doing this. And the reason that we switched to an occupancy-led strategy because in the wake of that, we needed to prioritize occupancy and we needed to prioritize replacing those tenants rather than holding out for price while the volume of your rent roll reduces because of a lack of occupancy. So look at how we've done it. Firstly, we've had an increase in the underlying rate per square meter from EUR 7.24 to EUR 7.55. We've increased rate by just over 4%. But what we've also done is in terms of the move-in rate, we've reduced it from EUR 8.81 to EUR 8.36. And by reducing that, we've been able to increase the volume of move-ins from 169 (sic) [ 169,176 ] to 206 (sic) [ 206,477 ]. We've increased that by 22%. And so I am not talking about reducing our prices. Our price is still increasing. But I am talking about reducing the price at which we recruit a new customer. Why? Because we've been in the business of recruiting a higher volume of new customers, that's an occupancy-led strategy. And why have we been doing that? Because we've been deliberately buying sites at lower prices because people are willing to sell them at lower prices because they know they've got an occupancy challenge, an occupancy challenge that they feared, one that we were confident with our platform about being able to solve. That is what you see happening here. What you see is that new business pricing is down by 5%. The volume of move-ins is up by 20%. We've maintained our occupancy in spite of a 30% increase in move-outs, and we're still recruiting customers at a 10% higher rate than the underlying rate in the portfolio, which is why price will continue to go up. That is part of our strategy. We are just not driving it as aggressively as we were in the past for the reasons just stated. If we go across to Page 10, you can see how some of this plays out. If you look at the like-for-like move-ins and the like-for-like uplifts, they amount to about EUR 20 million. That more than copes with the EUR 17.3 million of known move-outs. And if you look at the CapEx-assisted move-ins, up EUR 5 million, together with the acquisitions, which we haven't seen the full effect of in this year, you can see that the move forward is very much that EUR 5 million block and the EUR 2.6 million block with a little bit of residual from the uplifts and move-ins. Going across to Page 11, let's see how that shapes out on the valuation. Now look, there's a lot of detail in this. But I think the important thing that I want to get across to you is that whilst there has been some benefit in terms of the stabilization of yields, 85% of the increase in valuation has come from the valuation of additional net operating income. So sure, we've been a beneficiary of stabilizing yields and, sure, yields are heading in the right direction in both markets. But 85% of what we're benefiting from has been line-by-line execution in terms of active management, in terms of investment of capital, in terms of dealing with customers, in terms of the operating platform. We are the masters of our own destiny here. We're not sitting here lazily riding the market. And you can see in the bottom right-hand corner, the capital rate per square meter is at just over EUR 1,000 with a gross yield of 7.4%. So again, the yield isn't compressed to some silly, very risky kind of level. There's a lot of good news on this page, but the key point is we are benefiting largely from our own efforts. If I go across to Page 12. You can see here that the number of inquiries is down. That's down not because the market is down. That's down because we've tuned down our marketing. Why have we tuned down our marketing? To try and control our costs in an environment where we want to work our sales process harder. And we have been working that sales process harder because we've improved our viewings ratio from 63% of the inquiries to 72%. And what that's ultimately enabled us to do is to improve marginally the sales conversion. But of course, we've employed less cost in doing so and we've got more productivity out of our sales force. And in doing so, we have achieved 14% more sales volume, i.e., 188,000 square meters instead of 165,000, 14% more sales volume on lower marketing costs, again, line by line, process platform. We are pleased with that result. It is not an accident that is a deliberate tactic. If we go across to Page 13, perhaps I can hand over to Chris to go through some of the acquisitions.

Yes. Just looking in Germany first on the acquisition side. So if you think about the year, it was a very busy beginning of the year, and it was a very busy end of the year. If we look back when we got back from the summer last year, we then faced a lot of political instability. You had obviously the U.S. election. You then had the German elections in the background. So that really caused us to sort of take a little bit of a pause and a wait-and-see approach on the acquisition side. And really, the activity, therefore, was very much focused at the beginning and now has started to really ramp up. You've obviously seen us in the last week be active, and we will continue to be active. The pipeline looks very strong. But looking at exactly what we notarized or acquired during the year. Göppingen, a site just outside Stuttgart. Very typical Sirius asset and sort of highlight the difference between the gross yield at 8.3% and the net yield of 6.9%. Really, one of the greatest opportunities there is just to close that gap, to put our service charge teams to work, to put the tenants onto a Sirius basis of service charge recovery, close that gap and also then fill the vacancy, get it up from 87% up towards the mid-90s or above. So very straightforward, high-quality asset. We already have other assets in the area and it is going to plan. No service charge. We've already got the largest tenant who wasn't even paying any service charge. We're already on to new terms with that. And Klipphausen, Andrew has just mentioned. This is a site that essentially we acquired from the owner-occupier who was moving out and moving production elsewhere. Fantastic quality asset just outside Dresden. Within that Silicon Saxony, it's an area that's got huge amounts of inward investment in the semiconductor microchip space. We already have very successful site by Dresden Airport. We know the area well. We did a deal with the vendor, whereby they would lease back the space for a minimum of 6 months, it actually took them a little bit longer to near 9 months to get all of their kit out of the space. But we leased it -- they leased it back on very attractive terms. That gave us the time to go out and put together our marketing and re-leasing strategy together. I'm pleased to say that we have virtually filled the entire site already. So -- and the really exciting thing with Klipphausen is not only the quality of the asset and where it is, but the development potential as well. So you can see on that picture, there's actually quite a bit of green space around the edge. That is our space. And there is opportunity to put more production halls, more space into that development space, and we're already starting to work on that. I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second when we get to CapEx. Munich Neuaubing II, not hugely clear on that picture. But if you look in the blue -- the area circled with the blue line, that is our existing Neuaubing site. That's our largest asset valued at about EUR 150 million, key site, just outside Munich. GKN, our largest tenant, is in the large building on the right-hand side. You can see the yellow encircled area is the new space. So this is very much a strategic acquisition that fills in a gap and gives us control of essentially the whole site. Longer term, there is a potential development opportunity here of turning this space into resi. It's an area that is completely encircled by residential, and it would have huge value upside where we have to get to that point. But that's an investment in the future as a great strategic acquisition. Turning over to Page 14. Reinsberg, again, within Silicon Saxony, so just outside Dresden. We completed on this on 1st of April. This is a sale and leaseback again, except the vendor is staying in place. They retained 76% alongside one other tenant. Once we get the remaining space let up, which we've already got inquiries on, then this could easily get to double-digit gross yields. Again, there is the opportunity to bridge that service charge gap. The main tenant has taken a triple net lease, so that service charge leakage should all but disappear once it's filled. So huge upside as well. Monchengladbach to the west of Düsseldorf. Again, key strategic asset, incredibly low capital value. So they should say capital value per square meter, EUR 243 per square meter. Very, very attractive value-driven space, lots of opportunity to fill the vacancy. It's only 2/3 occupied at the moment. And it gives us a blueprint to really work from a fairly attractive blank sheet paper to work from. Lubeck, our most recent acquisition. This is up in the north, just east of Hamburg and near the Baltic Sea. We mentioned in the announcement last week, there's some key infrastructure going into the area and particularly a link -- massive infrastructure project, linking Germany to Denmark. This is really, really high-quality real estate we acquired a very attractive price with some upside as well to fill the space. Moving on to Page 15. I kind of think that Page 15 really is the kind of serious opportunity on a page. This is where the growth opportunity is. So when I break down our portfolio in Germany, that EUR 1.89 billion portfolio, roughly 40% of the portfolio is what we would call mature. That's the bedrock of the portfolio. That's the assets which have been through the Sirius machine, which have been worked on, which are at 94.5% occupancy, which are valued at EUR 1,270 per square meter off a 6.8% gross yield with virtually no leakage down to 6.5% net yield. The growth opportunity in Sirius is to take the other 60%, the EUR 1.17 billion of property, and work it and get it into the mature state. Our value-add portfolio is 81.6% occupied. It's got a capital value of just EUR 900. It's valued at 7.8% gross yield but with 1% leakage. So the opportunity there to continue to work those assets, and then I'll talk about CapEx in a second, but apply careful CapEx, low-risk CapEx into refurbishment of space to then move those assets from value-add, not only do we get the benefit of obviously the rent roll that we generate by increasing the occupancy, but also we then get the double benefit of those assets being valued at a tighter yield as well, just moving them into institutional quality. Page 16. Talking about CapEx, I've had a lot of questions about CapEx over the last 2 years since I've been in place. So I've now tried over the next couple of pages to give more color and more detail on the makeup of the CapEx. It continues to be the case that Germany has the greatest opportunity in terms of putting value-add CapEx to work to drive returns. They are larger assets with more -- simply larger assets with more space that we've acquired as opposed to the U.K. assets that tend to be smaller, obviously smaller with less, for instance, surplus land and less vacancy. At a group level, we have spent EUR 41.7 million of CapEx, excluding CapEx that we've fully recharged. So when you go and look at our accounts, you'll see us -- we've actually at a gross level, spent EUR 51 million. Some of that CapEx has gone into some large projects which are fully reimbursed by tenants. So just focusing on the EUR 41.7 million of our CapEx that essentially comes out of our funds, that splits down EUR 29 million in Germany, EUR 12.7 million in the U.K. Now when we talk about the opportunity of taking assets and value add to mature, that's really the value-add CapEx of EUR 11.5 million, and specifically in Germany, EUR 8.3 million. We are typically generating at least 30%-plus ROI on that spend. And in renewals as well, it's a smaller number, around EUR 1 million a year focused on Germany, where we negotiate with tenants' specific spend to drive specific better lease terms with those tenants. Something I'll come on and talk about a bit more, but newbuilds, we are now actively running a program of looking at opportunities where we have surplus land and opportunity to build new spaces and new production halls, new facilities on our existing surplus land. So that will become something we'll talk about more over coming years. And then finally, works in ESG, EUR 26 million. Of that, EUR 10 million of that is ESG-related, roughly split EUR 5 million and EUR 5 million between Germany and U.K. Of that, in Germany, most of that is PV solar installation. So it has a clear return attached to it, double-digit return attached to it. The remainder in the U.K. has been focused on our EPC program, so getting our buildings up toward to EPCC and plans towards EPCB as well further on. Just delving down on Page 17 into the value-add. When we apply CapEx, it takes time for that CapEx to then flow through and actually lease the space up. So rather than just focus on 1 year, I'm going to look at this over a rolling 3-year period as I come and present each time going forward. So over the last 3 years, we have budgeted to apply value-add CapEx to 253 million -- sorry, 253,000 square meters of space with a budget of under EUR 35 million to drive rent improvement of about EUR 13 million and an ROI of 38%. Now we have done. We have gone out and we have refurbished 253,000 square meter space. We've actually invested EUR 30.7 million. So we are achieving cost control, and we're seeing very much the kind of inflationary environment in cost on CapEx is now very much stabilized. And we are typically spending on average EUR 121 per square meter. So this is not kind of high-risk complicated refurbishment. This is refurbishment. Where it gets most complicated in Germany is around fire safety. But again, we've got lots of experience of dealing with that, and that really comes into play where we're subdividing spaces. We've achieved EUR 10.8 million of rent improvement of occupancy of 69%. Now I flagged that because this is the numbers for 3 years up until March 31, '25. We're still working in that space. So that will end up getting towards 90%. So actually, there is plenty of upside in that, but there is always going to be a lag in terms of value-add CapEx that was put into place in the H2, for instance, of '25. I'm pleased to say we always conservatively budget and we're achieving better rates per square meter than we expected. So this is all about moving assets from that value-add to mature. We have the opportunity to continue doing that, and you should expect to see us do at least 80,000 square meters of value-add CapEx again in the year ahead. And then there's obviously opportunities in the other buckets as well. Renewals, I've touched on. But over the last 3 years, we've done just under EUR 4 million of renewals specific to a lease. Very, very high returning 55% ROIs on that space. Page 18, just looking at new builds. So this is a relatively new area for Sirius. And we have started in Gartenfeld, which is our large site just on the edge of Berlin. You can see there, we have on the left-hand side of the page, we've successfully developed two new production halls at Halls, Halls B and C, invested EUR 5.3 million. We've achieved rates of EUR 13.66, really, really high attractive leasing rates. Now that generates a yield on cost of 9% on a site which is valued below 6% yield. So therefore, you achieve an IRR of 23% on what is actually very low-risk, low-cost development. So this is really attractive for us as an opportunity. The land is in for free. We are doing another hall, Gartenfeld A, which is in progress at the moment, just under EUR 2 million spend there. The IRR is slightly smaller and the rate is slightly smaller only because the hall is smaller, to be honest. There is some benefit of scale. Right down the bottom, what's the opportunity? We see at least EUR 25 million of opportunity of further development in the pipeline in the relatively short term, so in the next 2 to 3 years. And I'll obviously update on that in future presentations. But again, IRR is over 20%. And you'll see us be active with more halls. You'll see us putting more work box type products in there, more garage type products. and you'll see us be active in self-storage as well. I'll hand back to Andrew. Thank you.

Okay. So U.K., and again, an occupancy-led strategy. And look at why. Move-out, 726,000 (sic) [ 726,487 ] versus 586,000 (sic) [ 586,715 ] 24% increase. For those of you who came and visited Gloucester, Vantage Point last year where we held our Investor Day, you would have remembered the space that was rented out to the Range, okay? The range have now gone. They've gone because we don't want them to be there because they don't pay enough rent. What that means is that the move-out rate goes up. That is just one example. But to give you an idea of the impact of that example, that example loses is EUR 2 million of annualized rent. You'll be pleased to know that we've already replaced half of that, EUR 1 million, and we've only used 1/3 of the space to do it. But we are in the business of having acquired more assets in the U.K. for this space than they've done for a very, very long time. And in doing that, we are not looking for dry shiny assets that need no work. We're looking for stuff that we can fundamentally change. And part of the fundamental change involves taking customers who pay very low rates and have no intention of increasing those rates and instead of fighting with them, persuading them to go somewhere else so we can clear the space for investment, recruit new customers, carve the space up into smaller areas and charge more money for doing it. So our move-outs are up by 24%. You can see that we've reduced our new business pricing by 7.4% from GBP 17.40 to GBP 16.11, but that's enabled us to increase the sales volume up to 19%. That leads to a marginal 4.3% pricing uplift. So we are still getting pricing uplift. But essentially, what we've done is loosened price. Remember, in the time that we've owned this business, we have increased price from November '21 to the present day from GBP 10.89 a square foot to GBP 15.63. That's a double-digit price increase year-on-year. 4.3% is less than half of that. It is deliberately less than half of that because we are in an occupancy-led strategy. Our move-outs are up by 23%. That's not a surprise. We planned that. But in terms of our response, we need to rebuild the occupancy with extra sales volume, and we need to rein in price slightly to be able to do that. Having said that, we are still moving customers in at GBP 16.11 per square foot against an underlying rate in the portfolio of GBP 15.63. That's a 48p difference. That's a narrow 3% arbitrage. But we needed to take it there to be able to get the volume to make sure we don't collapse the business as we execute our strategy, which is buying other people's problems that we know how to solve with our platform. If we go across the page to Page 20. What you can see is the like-for-like move-outs are covered by the like-for-like move-ins, and the progress is very much in the like-for-like uplift together with the GBP 11.1 million of acquisitions. Remember, we still haven't seen the full effect of all of those acquisitions in one financial year. So there is still more to come through even if we did nothing from this point. Go across to Page 21. You see a slightly different position in terms of valuation increases. We haven't seen the level of valuation increase that we have in Germany, but we are seeing more stability in the U.K. And what you can see in the bottom right hand, say, more stability, more stability than the previous 2 years in the U.K., not more stability than Germany, more stability than the previous 2 years. If you go down to the bottom right-hand corner, you can see that actually what we've done with the acquisitions is taken the capital rate per square foot from GBP 96 down GBP to 77. And that, in part, illustrates the opportunity that we are presented with and need to work on going forward the opportunity of getting all of the assets, including the acquisitions, up to a capital rate per square meter of something much closer to GBP 100. If we go across to 22 and we look at the sales and marketing performance. We've seen an increase in inquiries in the U.K. We've been successful in developing new inquiry channels in the U.K., which is something that we've been working hard on for the last couple of years. That's resulted in more inquiries. That's resulted in more sales per month based on a slightly better inquiry-to-sales conversion ratio than the 6.8% in the previous year. Suffice it to say, the sales and marketing machine in this space is fundamentally different to the sales and marketing setup that we inherited in '21. It's a really important part of the business. There is no way that we would have been able to go out and buy challenged assets at low prices with the confidence to be able to deal with those problems without what you see here. We have disintermediated in the U.K., not to the same extent as Germany. In Germany, 90% of our leads are disintermediated. But we are now disintermediating more than 50% of our inquiry flow. If you go back to November '21, 85% of all the leads received by BizSpace came through intermediaries. We have much, much better independence, much better disintermediation, and that crucially gives us more control. And that control is essential in terms of our ability to be able to manage the price that we sell at and the way in which we communicate real value to prospective tenants. And what's important about the prospective tenant is not just recruiting them today to fill the space, but making sure they are the kind of tenant that can cope with the sort of uplift that we will demand based on the investment that we make in the property and the value that we add to our customers. Chris, do you want to go through U.K. acquisitions?

Yes. Page 23, acquisitions in the U.K. So GBP 129 million invested in 6 assets during the year. Vantage Point, we've spoken about very widely already. Clearly, a very attractive low capital value per square foot on day 1. And as Andrew said, we're in the process of repositioning that in light of the largest tenant we have moved on and bringing in new higher-paying tenants in their place, which is already well advanced. Banbury, a multi-let site, which we acquired a very attractive net yield -- day 1 net yield from a pension fund. We're already in negotiation with the largest tenant there for a lease regear, which should take it into double-digit yield on cost. So playing out very nicely. Wembley, very attractive. So studio assets up in Wembley, which is an area which you see huge amounts of investment go into that space as an opportunity to push rates quite hard on that space as well given where the occupancy and demand for that product is. over on to Page 24, Carnforth, which we acquired in the middle of the year, up in Lancashire. You can see on the side there, well, we acquired 11.4% net yield. So very, very attractive day 1 net yield, 100% occupied site. There are some underrents within that space. We've already regeared one of the largest tenants at a much higher rate. And you can see that area of land on the left of the picture, that's a development piece of land, which is already consented. So in future periods, you'll see you me start to talk about that as part of the CapEx plan. We've put containers on to that space in the meantime. So we're generating further income as well from the site. And Earl Mill in Oldham, this is literally down the road from an existing site we've got just North Manchester. We're achieving 3x higher rate than is being achieved at this site. This was a private individual owned site. We've acquired at 14.1% net yield, but it's on an underrent. There is an opportunity there as well. The largest tenant there is paying what I describe as peanuts. And so there is an opportunity there for a regear as well in the future. Chalcroft, which is relatively recent. We have exchanged on Chalcroft, not yet completed, still going through some approval processes there. But we acquired an asset on a day 1 net yield of just under 5%. So relatively tight yield on day 1. But the 20% vacancy there is actually fully refurbished space, which the vendor had already put in the CapEx for that. Plus there are two development sites at Chalcroft, one on the main park and one at the entrance to the park. This is a site that's surrounded by one of the largest housing developments in the South of England as well and it's a former defense logistics sites as well. It is really very, very high-quality real estate which, again, there are under rents and development opportunities with. Turning on to Page 25, just putting all of that into kind of the holistic picture of what we've been up to. EUR 270 million of investment in the period, either notarized or completed. As I say, it was a certainly a busier beginning and now very much a busy end to the year, and we're very confident of the pipeline as it stands that it will continue to be a very active period for us on the acquisition front. We've acquired a 9.9% gross yield. We're very, very proud of that. We think there is huge value opportunity within that -- those pool of assets, and that will really drive value going forward for us as a business. On the disposal side, we focus in the U.K. on subscale sites, so smaller sites, which you'll continue to see us just churn out some of the sites, which bluntly no longer fit -- no longer the right fit for us given the platform we now have and the maturity of the business. Most recently, last week, you've seen us sell Pfungstadt, a notarized Pfungstadt in Germany. This is a site where the value opportunity going forward just wasn't there. We -- every single site we have, we business plan on a 3-year rolling basis. This is a site which just simply did not meet our return on capital requirements. So we have sold it to a private individual. That sale will go through in the -- or complete in the final quarter of the current financial year. But we've sold above book value, EUR 30 million. We've proven essentially our values again. On to Page 26. Looking at the group FFO ambition. So 2 years ago, Andrew set out a very, very clear ambition for the group of EUR 150 million FFO. That was when we had achieved 2 years ago EUR 102 million of FFO, which was the previous ambition. So that ambition of EUR 150 million is both an internal and external ambition. That is written in stone internally. All of the teams are fully aware of that, and obviously, we commit to that externally as well. I want to try and give you the color on how we will get there. This is not a profit forecast. This is just giving you some color on the breakdown of how we get from the current year, EUR 123 million achievement up to about EUR 150 million. So -- and this is in aggregate. Now let's assume 3 years as an aggregate period for this to be achieved. So I've talked about CapEx investment. So on the basis of similar value-add CapEx investment of between EUR 8 million and EUR 9 million a year, then I'm assuming that we can generate EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million a year of upside, which will drop straight down to FFO per year, so overall EUR 10 million over a 3-year period. We will continue -- Andrew's talked about the occupancy-led strategy, so we'll continue to drive occupancy, so letting up vacant space in the portfolio. If we can only let up 1% to 1.25% of vacancy in Germany, that will drive over the 3-year period another EUR 6 million of NOI, which drops straight down to the bottom line to FFO. I've assumed 3% uplift per annum in pricing in Germany. That would generate EUR 14 million of additional NOI, drop straight down to FFO. I think that's conservative. And I've assumed 4% uplift per annum in pricing in the U.K. That would generate EUR 10 million in aggregate over 3 years. And we continually are always challenging ourselves to find other sources of revenue. So just another extra EUR 1 million of incremental revenue per year in aggregate, leaving us with an extra EUR 3 million in 3 years' time. I think there's further opportunity in car parking. We continue to be able to drive car parking revenue in Germany, but there is definitely an opportunity to push that further in the U.K. Virtual office has been a really successful product for us. Again, in Germany, there's opportunity to continue to push that. And there is an opportunity as well to push on the PV solar to be driving more income as well from PV. So there's always that drive to generate more and more income from other avenues than the -- alongside the rental income. Acquisitions. If we can put EUR 250 million to work a net yield of 7%, that would generate EUR 18 million of NOI dropping down to bottom line. There will be increased overheads, and I've seen 3% to 4% increase in overheads over the next 3 years. That will generate a headwind of roughly EUR 8 million. We will continue to invest in the platform, but a lot of investment has already taken place, to be quite honest. So the core has already taken place. It's really when we acquire assets, then we have to continue to scale the local on-the-ground teams. The big one, though, is the interest expense. So we will continue to suffer a headwind on interest expense. As you've seen, our net interest expense of about EUR 11 million this year will go towards the high 30s, 3 years out. So on the basis of net debt, after we've cleared the bond repayment this time next year, net debt of around EUR 1 billion, we will end up with an all-in cost market right now of, let's say, 4%. So we do have a headwind there of -- a very significant headwind to get over. But as I say, all of the building blocks to allow us to get over that headwind, still drive FFO growth and still hit our ambition, we believe are achievable. Page 27, just turning to the balance sheet and what's behind that headwind. Look, the funding of the company is actually incredibly straightforward now. We have EUR 1.1 billion of unsecured borrowings. That is three listed bonds. They are investment-grade bonds rated BBB stable. June '26, we have EUR 400 million maturing. November '28, we have EUR 360 million. And in January '32, we have EUR 350 million. Alongside that, we have EUR 235 million of secured lending. The vast majority of that is from BerlinHyp and Deutsche PBB out to 2030. I just flagged that we refinanced our Saarbrücken asset with the local Sparkasse, which is essentially like a savings bank or the equivalent of a building society in the U.K. We refinanced that out at 3.3% interest rate for 5 years just earlier this year. We will continue to seek out opportunities to finance individual assets, particularly on the acquisition side, with local Sparkasse given how attractive that lending is and how straightforward it is. It is very, very straightforward from a covenant perspective and from a paperwork perspective. It's not going to be hundreds of millions of euros, but it will continue to give us an edge on acquisitions. Weighted average interest rate today, 2.6%. As I say, we have to go on the journey to get back up to 4%, which is what I assume is our all-in cost on a normalized basis. Interest cover 6.3x. That's really a testament to the very high-yielding nature and high returning nature of our portfolio. We've got 4.2 years weighted average debt expiry, which I think is very healthy. And net debt-to-EBITDA 5.2x, which again, we are -- we have a very, very strong balance sheet. We are in a very strong position from a balance sheet perspective. LTV, 31.4%. There is headroom in the balance sheet to continue to use the balance sheet to acquire and drive top line growth. We have a commitment to stay below 40% LTV. We will absolutely do that. But certainly, the next 12, 18, 24 months will be about continuing to flex that balance sheet to drive growth, to drive FFO per share to really drive returns to shareholders. And I think the support we saw from the bond issue in January, that EUR 350 million bond issue, obviously, everyone in the room here is looking at us from an equity perspective. It was really pleasing to see how strong the credit community view Sirius as well and to get that support of nearly EUR 2 billion of demand for that bond. I'll hand back to Andrew to wrap up.

Thanks, Chris. So in summary, you can see that FFO continues to grow, and we remain focused on our mission to get to EUR 150 million. You can see that the uplift in valuation have come not only from stable yields but also mostly from the 6.3% annualized increase on like-for-like group rent roll. As Chris explained, we've achieved EUR 270 million of acquisitions, and we have the firepower to go forward and repeat that without issuing any more shares. And we are paying, for the 23rd consecutive time, an increased dividend amounting to EUR 0.0615 for the year as a whole. The balance sheet is strong, as you've just heard, and we are well prepared and have effectively already solved the challenge of the 350 -- sorry, EUR 400 million bond that we face next year. If we go across to the outlook. We are trading, we believe, in line with expectations since the end of the period to the present day. The U.K. portfolio has grown substantially through acquisitions over the last 12 months, more substantially than Germany in comparison to the volume of acquisitions versus the initial value of the portfolio itself. And we are really in a phase now where the U.K. is concerned in terms of driving through those opportunities on the assets that have been purchased over the last 12 to 18 months. In Germany, we are very encouraged by the; German government, Merz's government in the early days, focusing, we think, on very business-friendly strategies. As you know, there is EUR 900 billion of headroom to be invested in infrastructure and also defense in Germany. And we believe that, that will be unavoidable for owners of industrial property in Germany. Where the U.K. is concerned, you've doubtless heard this morning that the government have issued and published the strategic defense review. We believe that there will be a connection between the SDR in the U.K. and what Germany do. For example, the SDR makes very, very clear that the U.K. will be adopting a NATO-first strategy. That means it will cooperate with Germany and it will cooperate with the EUR 900 billion of spend that Germany is able to put into both its defense and its defense infrastructure. What it also means is that some of that money from Germany will not only be spent in Germany with German companies. It will be spent in the U.K. with U.K. companies, U.K. companies like Rolls-Royce, like BAE Systems, like Babcock, some of whom are already our customers. I'm delighted to tell you that we will be making announcement tomorrow around an appointment for Sirius, somebody to advise on strategy into that sector. It is a retired major general who used to run U.K. Defence Logistics and used to represent the U.K. at NATO level. That's a key appointment for us because what it will help us to do is to prepare optionality, optionality so that if that defense spend starts to dominate the areas of industrial property in both U.K. and Germany, we will be equipped with the right experts to be able to access that market and make sure that we can capitalize on that opportunity. And interestingly enough, if you look at the assets in Germany and the U.K., somewhere in the region of about 20% of the assets that we own have had in their past some kind of former defense logistics use. So we believe we are particularly well positioned where that's concerned. We also believe that economic growth in both Germany and U.K. will be fueled by the subject of defense in the future, and we believe that in Germany, that will be almost like a physical stimulus. It remains to be seen how quickly the U.K. go about employing what's been laid out in the SDR that's published today. So the company continues to assess further growth prospects both in Germany and the U.K. in its core markets, in the self-storage market, in terms of the optionality around defense. Our organic growth remains strong, and we think we are well positioned to be able to capitalize on the opportunities in this asset class going forward. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Very happy to answer whatever questions you might have.

Tim Leckie from Panmure Liberum. Just a very, very quick one. It's the only for me. The acquisition guidance and the FFO runway, you mentioned 7% is the assumed yield. Just was that a gross or a net?

I assume it drops straight down to FFO, so a net.

It's James Carswell from Peel Hunt. Just on the newbuild CapEx that Chris mentioned. Do you think some of that will be pre-let when you think about like the EUR 25 million pipeline? Or are you very comfortable given the platform you have, given the fact that these are existing assets that you know those kind of demand?

I think we will only -- I guess we will only go ahead with development CapEx where it's very low risk. So when I think of what's within that EUR 25 million, it's sites that are virtually 100% occupancy already. So for instance, Gartenfeld where I showed you Halls A, B and C, they were not pre-let. But actually, because Gartenfeld is essentially 100% occupied, we are incredibly confident about the demand there. And by having that knowledge and that understanding, we're actually able to generate better rates than we would have potentially accepted had it been a pre-let as well. So there's always a balance there between risk and reward. But I think our development CapEx will continue to be focused on very, very -- what we consider low-risk strategy and low-risk sites. So for instance, Klipphausen might be a site where we would also develop, almost certainly will be. But again, we won't develop anything there until Klipphausen is at least full, which we already have the visibility that it will be. So self-storage is an area where I think you will see us, I guess, take an element of operational risk. But again, we would only build self-storage, and I can think of there is one major self-storage site within that pipeline. The reason that, that is attractive is because we already have self-storage on site. So there's an opportunity to move existing self-storage out of a production hall, which we can then free up and lease out. But also then there is a huge housing development taking place next door to our site, which gives us a huge amount of confidence to be able to put that CapEx to work.

So therefore, in that self-storage example in Berlin, we don't see the risk being in filling the self-storage site for the reasons that Chris has just explained. And if there is any risk, the risk would be that we've never built a self-storage site before. And that's exactly why we recruited Tom Lampard, the former Lok'nStore Director, who has developed a lot of self-storage sites. And why he will be overseeing the build of our first ground-up self-storage site in Berlin over the course of the next 12 months.

You shouldn't expect that development CapEx number to ever become what I consider material to the group. This is giving us another leg of growth, but it's not going to be kind of us suddenly putting huge tens and tens of millions into development CapEx. This will be very much controlled carefully.

Matt Saperia from Peel Hunt. Just following on from James' question about the newbuild. Just to be clear, the -- I think you mentioned the EUR 25 million is 2 to 3 years. So there is a long runway of other sites across the portfolio.

Absolutely. So in Germany, there's 26 of our sites in Germany that have surplus land, lots of other opportunity in there. But as ever, we're not going to try and do everything straight away. We're not going to ramp up the risk profile to achieve what on paper may look like very attractive returns, but in reality it just means that we'll be ramping up the risk profile. So this will be very carefully and sort of progressively approached.

Perfect. And one more, if I may. I think, Andrew, on Slide 12, you talked about reducing the marketing spend in Germany. Just to be clear, is that a temporary reduction? Or is this being more productive using new technologies to actually structurally reduce the cost of generating inquiries?

It's the latter. So what we fear most of all is spoiling ourselves here. We're not interested in how many sales people get. We're interested in how many opportunities that they convert. We're not here to give them too much, let them overtrade and do their job easily. We're here to try and get them to get the most sales out of the smallest number of leads. And that's about the way they conduct the sale, and the inquiries are about how we get the inquiries in the first place and AI comes into that. And also, once we've got those inquiries, particularly the ones that don't convert, how we then work the other sort of 85% of spent inquiries over the next 1, 2, 3, 4 years to use low-touch, less labor-intensive methods to still keep those in contact, in dialogue with us so that when they next have a requirement, we can get them second, third time around.

Sarim Chaudhry from Jefferies. Just a quick one. On the deployment of proceeds into the new acquisitions, I think -- the last equity raise, I think most of those proceeds have been deployed. Is there a view on where the remaining proceeds, will it be primarily in the U.K. or Germany? Or is it just opportunistic on what you see as accretive?

We'll be opportunistic. What we're looking at doing is getting the best return. Now look, we're not saying that based on opportunity, we'd end up with a 50% U.K. business and 50% German business. There is a macro we have in mind. But at the moment, over the course of this tranche of money that we're deploying, it is very much how the opportunities stack against each other.

It's Max Nimmo, Deutsche Numis. Maybe just kind of relating to that point. If the market is starting to turn a bit, you're seeing particularly in Germany where the yields have stabilized coming in, is there a sense that some of the owners might now actually say, well, we're not really willing to sell as much as we were before? Is there a risk to hitting that sort of EUR 270 million of deployment from that angle, do you think?

So there are two separate questions there. The first one, the answer is yes. People are now becoming more optimistic in Germany and saying, actually, why don't I hold on? Why don't I wait until the government has got more traction, ECB about to reduce interest rates more. If I hold my property for a year longer, maybe I can get a better price for it. Definitely, that's happening. And you see some of that in the yield compression that we've talked about in Germany. But I'll remind you of what we do. The power of our platform enables us to look at over 1,000 opportunities a year. Out of those 1,000 opportunities, we buy typically less than 50. What we are looking for is we are looking for somebody else's problem that our platform can solve. So we are looking for the person that, regardless of whether they think their property might be worth more in a year's time, they are very concerned about what they see before them, whether that be a leaving tenant, whether that being someone going out of business, whether that be a local trend that is against them. And not all of those things are things we can solve. But when we find something that a platform with our power and strength can solve, that's one of the things that we buy where we're able to say, we can leverage your problem with our ability to buy, but what we need is we need a lower price. And we are a cash buyer. We don't have to consult banks to purchase. We have a 10-year track record of being able to execute transactions in a very professional and very efficient way. We have an in-house team. If you engage with us, we'll have a team of 7 people on your doorstep within 24 hours. Not many people in Germany work like that. Most of them are 9 to 5, outsourcing everything, taking 2 weeks to make an appointment. That's not how we work. When we bought Vantage Point, that transaction went on all night until 5:00 in the morning. There are not many management teams that wouldn't have basically abandoned it at 6:00 or half past 6 and said, let's come back next week. It's not how we work. That's why we have to look at 1,000 just to buy 50.

Matt Norris from Gravis. Great set of results. Can you just look through the inquiries to viewings to sales? So what we see is in Germany, very high level of inquiries to viewing, 70%. But in the U.K., a much lower number, 22%. So what's the difference? And then if you look at viewings to actual sales, in the U.K. while we get many fewer viewings, the sales conversion is higher sort of 30%. Whereas in Germany, they get lots of viewings, but the conversion to sales is lower, sort of 20%. So what's going on with those numbers, please?

So they're very, very different markets. When I mystery shop, whether I do it myself or whether I get a third party to mystery shop in the U.K., if I make an inquiry now about a warehouse with an office, upstairs somewhere in the South of England, I'm going to get probably somewhere in the region of 30 to 50 different intermediaries and providers. But mostly intermediaries are going to come at me and they're going to keep coming at me for at least a week. If I do the same in Germany, you'd be lucky if you get 10. And 90% of those won't be intermediaries. So what you tend to find is it's much, much easier to get the viewing in Germany. But actually, a lot of people viewing are still browsing rather than actually buying. In the U.K., it's completely different. In the U.K., your name is in a database. You are going to be hounded by lots and lots of different people for much, much longer. Now that's the reality of the two markets that we operate in. It means that overall conversion does prove higher in the U.K. because it's more concentrated and it's more competitive. But it does mean you are trying to get very good at different ends of the sale, which are the ends that make a difference in the U.K. market versus the German market. Does that help?

Yes, very helpful.

Any questions coming in over the Internet portal?

Yes. There's just one that's come through, Andrew, about acquisitions. There's clearly a lot going on in the market. We see Workspace have results and a strategy update on Thursday. Are there any assets in their portfolio that you'd be interested in acquiring in the U.K?

There are. I mean, we already own some of Workspace's assets. In fact, if you turn to Page 28,of the presentation and you look at the illustration in the top left of Islington Studios. That is a formal Workspace asset. Unfortunately, we haven't bought any of those assets from Workspace because whilst attempting to engage in the past, we've never really got a response. More recently, we sort of thought that with a very strong platform, with GBP 600 million on your balance sheet, with the ability to be able to run a debt-free business in the U.K. and borrow money at European rates, we would have been the type of people that can buy those assets for the sort of prices that they might want to sell them at. However, we haven't been successful in being able to engage or get any sort of realistic discussions going. And I'm guessing that, that must be because they've got some announcements coming out this week. They must have another buyer in mind. But yes, we are interested. But we're also interested in dealing with people where we can execute in a straightforward way and actually get a transaction done. So it remains to be seen whether there's any possibility there. But in answer to your question, we already own some of former Workspace assets. And yes, we think they've got a great portfolio. And if there was stuff that they wanted to sell, yes, it's exactly the kind of kit we'd want to buy. And we think we would be very well placed to be able to do that quite quickly.

Thanks. There are no more questions on the webcast.

We're done. Thank you. Thanks very much, indeed.