Charter Hall Group

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Charter Hall Group 2026 four-year results briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session, at which time if you wish to queue for a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Friday the 21st, August 2026. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. David Harrison, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer. Thank you. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for attending FY26 Results Call, which our group CFO, Anastasia Clark, will present with myself. Turning to the group's earnings on slide 4, FY26 has seen CHC deliver operating earnings of $488.1 million, translating to $103.2 per security, representing 26.8% growth over FY25. Today, we're also providing FY27 guidance of approximately $114 per security, representing a further 10.5% growth over FY26, which delivers... a three-year growth of 40% over FY24 to FY27, noting that the FY24 result of 81.4 cents was an inflection year, as I have called out several times. The Group's return on contributed equity increased to 26.4% post-tax, reflecting strong earnings growth, equity inflows and disciplined capital deployments. We continue our long-standing track record of distribution growth, increasing DPS by 6% to 50.7 cents per security and guiding for a further 6% growth in FY27. Group FUM increased $10 billion or 12% from $84.3 to $94.3 billion, whilst Property FUM increased nearly 14% from $66.8 to $76 billion. Net acquisitions, developments, and equity flows accelerated during the year as we have continued to curate our existing and new portfolios. Whilst Group Fund grew approximately 12%, operating earnings per security grew almost 27%, demonstrating the strength of our platform and earnings diversification. Our balance sheet remains well positioned with 14% gearing and approximately $1 billion of balance sheet investment capacity. and total group investment capacity of 6.4 billion across the platform. Turning to slide five and our strategic pillars. Our strategy remains unchanged. We continue to access capital from listed institutional and retail investors, deploy capital into attractive investment opportunities, generate day-to-day funds management, asset and property management, expand our development with and our uncommitted pipelines and invest alongside our capital partners. We continue to execute on this strategy of accessing, deploying, managing and investing capital on behalf of our investor customers, as we have for the last 15 years. On this slide, we talk to various milestones achieved over various time periods. Given my 22 years leading CHC, I tend to focus on the longer term. and it is pleasing to see that over the last decade we've closed close to $60 billion in acquisitions, completed $14 billion of developments and existing asset improvements, while securing $37 billion in gross equity inflows into our funds management business. I also note that our balance sheet property investment portfolio, or PI, has tripled in size over the last decade from $1.1 to $3.2 billion. PI forms the property investment segment of CHC and its growth without raising new equity for over 12 years shows the power of our self-funding business model. The PI portfolio's growth not only enhanced our PIE with DAR but it also supports the growth of our property funds management business and enhances our flexibility and optionality in opportunistically taking advantage of specific asset opportunities and dislocation events in markets. As shown in slide 6, we've delivered FY26 operating earnings of 103.2 cents and, as mentioned, provide guidance for 27 operating earnings for OEPS of 114 cents, continuing a long track record of earnings and distribution growth. Over the last decade, operating earnings growth has exceeded 12% per annum. Our FY26 earnings released today in our earnings guidance for FY27 excludes any performance fee revenue. This reflects strongly on the sustainability of growth in our core earnings drivers across both funds management and property investment portfolios. Group fund increased by $10 billion, as I mentioned, to $94.3 as outlined on slide 8. Our platform remains highly diversified by both capital sources and sector. Institutional wholesale investors account for nearly 80% of the group fund and 70% of property fund. We also have another 15% represented by our managed REITs whilst the remainder is in our direct business. FY26 marks the first year Charter Hall has exceeded 90 billion in group fund and we expect continued growth to drive Group Fund beyond $100 billion during FY27. Property Fund increased by 13.8%, as I mentioned, from $66.8 to $76 billion. Growth during the year was driven by $11.9 billion of acquisitions, $2.1 billion of positive valuation movements and $1 billion of net development capex. partially offset by 5.8 billion of divestments as we curate our portfolios continuously. The majority of property fund growth in 26 was acquisition driven and transaction led in addition to the valuation movements mentioned. This outcome reflects the breadth of our capital sources, product development capabilities and transaction origination platform. Divestment activity was elevated this year as we took advantage of market conditions to curate portfolios across all three listed REITs, CQR, CLW and CQE, in addition to actively managing our portfolios across the unlisted funds and partnerships. Turning to slide 10, the platform continues to manage the largest diversified property portfolio in Australia. We own and manage over 12 million square metres of leadable area, diversified across 1,620 individual properties FY26 has seen us grow the rent that we collect across that portfolio to over $4 billion. The institutional wholesale platform contributes 70% of the property platform and we're pleased to see many existing investors lift their allocations to property with us during the year. And also the onboarding of multiple new institutional clients allocating long-term capital within Australia from domestic investors and into Australia from our wide variety of offshore capital partners. Slide 11 and equity flows. We secured a record 6.7 billion of equity inflows during FY26. The breadth of the inflows across multiple institutional clients from many different countries allocating to Australia is particularly encouraging. We also benefited from new Australian mandate wins and increased allocations to existing investments from existing clients and diversification across charitable funds as existing clients broaden their exposure to our multiple funds and partnerships. The majority of inflows originated from institutional wholesale investors reflecting growing conviction in the Australian commercial real estate market from a growing global retirement savings industry. We also saw Charter Hall Direct, our retail and SMSF and advisor investor network grow its platform where we've seen equity flows increase by nearly 60% compared to FY25. Momentum of equity flows is increasing in Direct and the pace at which new product launches are being oversubscribed early is pleasing to see. As outlined in our market update prior to results, We also have secured new partnership capital for the second 50% acquisition of the O'Connell Street precinct, one O'Connell and the surrounding properties. And we have also announced previously the $445 million acquisition of the Sonic Life Science asset on a 20-year triple net lease to a fantastic corporate customer. All of these latter... inflows and acquisitions will be recorded in FY27. Our office platform now manages close to $28 billion in total assets, the largest office portfolio in the country, which spans over 2.3 million square metres. With occupancy of 95%, compared with the national average of 83%, we continue to materially outperform broader market conditions, with notably low vacancies compared to market in all sub-markets, including what will surprise many, a 3.6% vacancy at the Paris end of Melbourne CBD. During the year, we closed on close to 300,000 square metres of leasing deals across 250 individual transactions. The average while of secured new leases on this releasing was 6.8 years. 92% of these leasing transactions involve tenant customers maintaining or expanding their office footprint. We are seeing improved office market fundamentals this year with growth in net effective rents outpacing investor expectations and combined with the ongoing limited supply or new supply due to the high economic cost of building new buildings, we expect to see pressure, upward pressure, on office rents in virtually every sub-market that we are represented. Like-to-like income growth across the entire portfolio, including new leases and existing rent reviews, was strong at 6.97%. I would like to highlight some important points on our office market position. As the largest office owner in Australia, with close to 300,000 square metres of office leasing deals across 250 individual leases, and with the aforementioned 92% of tenants even maintaining or expanding their space, we have high conviction on the positive trajectory of office fundamentals. Slide 13, and industrial logistics. Our INL platform manages close to 25 billion in assets across 6.7 million square metres of the Leadleville area, and about 20 million square metres of land. Our development pipeline is close to 7.1 billion in completion value. The portfolio is 99% occupied with a while of 8.7 years. Over the year, we closed over 600,000 square metres of leasing activity across 70 individual transactions. 90% of our leasing activity was with repeat tenant customers. At lease term expiry, we recorded very high tenant retention with over 90% of tenants renewing their leases with an average market rent review or leasing spread of 19% relative to prior passing rents. The portfolio remains materially under-rented, which is a far win well into the future, supporting future rental growth. While supply is increasing in some markets in specific locations, the sector remains constrained by ongoing planning constraints lack of available land, lack of available power and and encroachment of residential use into both Greenfield and Brownfield logistics regions. The biggest impediment to new supply is the cost of development. And whilst we've seen construction costs stabilise, the economic rent and in fact, the economic value of new developments still well exceeds the average investment value of our existing portfolio. The sector continues to benefit from multiple demand drivers requiring significant construction and new supply, and with the current market constraints to supply many locations, we do forecast attractive rent growth over the medium term. Slide 14, convenience retail. And as I say to Ben Ellis, the new lucky seat. Convenience retail platform now exceeds $18.3 billion in assets. with $6.9 billion invested in convenience shopping centres and $11.4 billion invested in net lease retail. The portfolio overall comprises over 2.5 million square metres of letterable area and in many cases double that in land area. And it is 99% occupied. We closed over 447 lease transactions during the year over a total of 90,000 square metres of letterable area. obviously in the shopping centres given that we've got no vacancy in net lease. Our shopping centres across the nation recorded high tenant retention and a healthy 4.1% average leasing spread with new leases recording leasing spreads of just under 5%. Our net lease retail portfolio is at 100% occupancy with strong exposure to annual rent increases linked to inflation which will further drive rental growth into FY27. with a large proportion of our net lease retail benefiting from a CPI print in September which will drive December quarter rent increases. The launch of the Charter Hall Convenience Retail Fund, or CCRF, represented a significant strategic milestone for the group. CCRF, which was $3.3 billion in size at reporting date, creates a significant opportunity for the group where Charter Hall already has market leadership in both ownership and transaction origination with a further one and a half billion of growth capacity likely to be realised shortly. Two thirds of that is likely to be realised before December. The social infrastructure platform has $4.4 billion in funds under management with close to 100% occupancy and an 11.4 year while. We're pleased to announce the acquisition of the Sonic Brisbane 20-year triple net lease asset with CPI-linked rent reviews during the year and look forward to growing the social infrastructure platform further with selective government lease and high-quality corporate tenant customer covenants underpinning the resilience and security of income generated by these assets. Turning to slide 16, today our platform services more than 5,700 leases across a highly diversified tenant base. Our top 20 tenants account for approximately 52% of platform income providing excellent covenant quality and visibility of earnings. During 26, we transacted with 10 of our top 20 tenant customers demonstrating the depth of relationships across the platform and multiple leasing and acquisition transactions. one of the key differentiators for Charter Hall continues to be the breadth of relationships we maintain with major corporate, government and institutional occupiers. We also commission independent surveys of both tenant and investor customers and many of our fund and headstock chairs directly interview major customers to ensure the group is serving their needs appropriately. These relationships create a recurring pipeline of leasing, acquisition, divestment and sale and leaseback opportunities that are often difficult to access off market. Turning to the transaction slides, 17, which highlights 26, represented a record year for transaction activity, with 17 billion of property transaction activity across the platform, equivalent to approximately 2.8 times FY25 levels. Acquisitions totaled 11.7 billion, divestments 5.4, resulting in net transaction activity of 6.3. Importantly, activity was not concentrated within a single sector. We saw transaction activity elevated across office, industrial, convenience, retail and social infrastructure, reflecting a broad-based investor demand from our investor customers and the market generally. Turning now to our property investment portfolio, the portfolio increased from $2.7 to $3.2 billion during FY26. driven by both valuation increase, retained earnings driven reinvestment into growing the PI portfolio. Occupancy increased to 97.8% across the Hall Group platform while increased for 8.7 years and rent growth metrics remain strong across the portfolio. One of the features of the platform is that it is diversified by geography, tenant and sector whilst maintaining a strong focus on high quality assets and tenant governance. Slide 20 illustrates the diversification of the property investment and earnings segment across all sectors of the platform. No single asset contributes more than 6% of portfolio investments, and approximately 26% of portfolio income is derived from government-related tenants. The key investment theme continues to be income quality. The portfolio benefits from long lease duration, strong government and blue-chip tenant, exposure and built-in rental growth mechanisms. Turning to our development pipeline, the Group's development pipeline increased to approximately $20 billion, making it one of the largest institutional development pipelines in Australia. Development completions totaled approximately $1.4 billion during 26 while maintaining a substantial committed and future project pipeline. The ability to create next-generation institutional investment stock remains one of Charter Hall's competitive advantages. Slide 23 highlights our industrial development pipeline, which is now at $7 billion. It includes approximately 202 hectares of strategic land holdings nationally. We completed approximately $700 million of industrial developments during 26 and currently have $2.5 billion of committed developments underway. The scale of our industrial land vacuum is becoming increasingly valuable as planning constraints and infrastructure have all become more important barriers to entry. We've also recently taken advantage of DC demand by the sale of industrial land at material premiums to cost and book values to data centre buyers, which drives growth for our fund investors in both NTA, IRR and the capacity to recycle cash delivered at premiums to cost into other industrial and logistic developments. and acquisitions. Slide 24 on office development. The office pipeline's total sits at $7.8 million, with Chitley South continuing to be the centrepiece of the platform, which is on track for completion in mid-27. Pre-leasing has reached 70%. Leasing momentum remains encouraging, and we continue to target maximising rents and occupancy as the project nears completion. The successful completion and leasing of The 55,000 metre 360 Queen Street Brisbane project in the core of Brisbane CBD with virtually 95% plus pre-commitments of PC and the 100% 15-year government pre-leased asset for the new headquarters of the ATO in Barton, Canberra demonstrates continued customer demand for premium sustainable office assets. We're steadily working towards the commencement of our next project in Brisbane CBD at 60 Queen Street and the addition of the one O'Connell Street precinct in Sydney has added considerable optionality to our future Sydney core CBD pipeline. Turning to sustainability, 26 was a significant year for Charter Hall's sustainability strategy. Platform achieved net zero scope one and two emissions from 1 July 25 supported through renewable electricity procurement, onsite solar generation and approved offset programs. Installed solar capacity increased to 96 megawatts, while sustainable finance facilities increased 8.2 billion. I'll now hand to Anastasia to run through the financials.

Thank you, David, and good morning to everyone on the call. Starting with the financial results on slide 27. The group delivered another strong result in FY26, with operating earnings post-tax increasing 26.8% to $488.1 million, being 103.2 cents per security. Importantly, all three segments contributed to this growth. Property investment EBITDA increased 17% to $341.6 million. Development investment EBITDA increased to $61.5 million, up $20.9 million on the prior period. and funds management EBITDA increased 8% to $293.1 million. The group reported statutory earnings after tax of $427.9 million, an increase of 30%, while distributions increased 6% to $0.507 per security. Property investment earnings are underpinned by like-for-like income growth of 5.6% on our co-investments in funds. together with a material contribution from the incremental deployment of $450 million throughout FY26, plus the annualised income from the prior year's net equity investment of $196 million. In addition, we have continued to actively curate the portfolio, generating a positive yield spread and earnings accretion through capital allocations. Development investment earnings growth was driven by a 50% increase in development volume, reflecting both project completions and the subsequent realisation of profits from asset sales. I'll return to funds management segment when we move to the next slide. Net finance costs have increased on the balance sheet in line with higher drawn debt and higher undrawn debt capacity, underpinning our increased activity in property investments. Offsetting this is lower look-through interest expense from our co-investments in funds due to downweighting higher geared investments and reinvesting in lower geared investments compared to the prior period. Overall, net interest expense increased modestly by 2.3%. Tax expense is lower by 15% at $81.9 million from capital allocation efficiency implemented across the staple between CHP, the Trust, and CHL the company. Importantly, these benefits are durable and have permanently reduced the group's effective tax rate by approximately 5 percentage points. The group has maintained its long-term distribution growth policy of 6%, providing reliable income growth for security holders while retaining earnings to support future investment in earnings accretive opportunities. Turning to funds management earnings. Funds management base fee revenue grew 8% and transaction and performance fee revenue grew 40.3%, evidencing the typical pattern of strong equity inflows underpinning deployment and transaction fees in this financial result for FY26, ahead of the annualised benefit of base fees in the subsequent FY27 financial year. Property services revenue declined 2.9%, primarily reflecting elevated leasing activity in the prior year. Operating expenses increased by 6%, of which 3.1% is for the one-off FY26 STI outperformance. The remaining 2.9% growth in underlying operating expenses is a result of the annual wage increase and inflation in non-employee costs. Turning to the Charter Hall balance sheet. The PIDI investment portfolio grew to $3.3 billion, up from $2.8 billion over the course of FY26, led by net investment of $450 million into property investments throughout the year. NTA increased to $5.95 per security, led by retained earnings. Headstock investment capacity increased to $1 billion following the addition of new bank facilities and the successful debt capital markets issuance of Australian $250 million medium-term note seven-year bond at the end of the third quarter. Geary increased to 14.2%, reflecting the higher level of capital deployed into property and development investments throughout the year. Return on contributed equity increased to 26.4% post-tax, highlighting the strong returns delivered by the group during the year. Our focus remains on growing return on contributed equity through generating income and capital growth organically for the benefit of security holders. Turning to platform debt. Slide 30. Across the platform, we have continued to proactively source new loans and refinance existing debt to increase financial covenant headroom and lower credit margins for $22.6 billion of total debt facilities of $35.3 billion across 66 portfolios with debt in our funds management platform. These initiatives reduce credit margins on average by 20 basis points, helping offset the higher RBA cash rate and market floating rates, which we expect to moderate lower in calendar 2027. Credit market conditions remain highly supportive. with strong appetites from both domestic and international banks and debt capital market investors. Before handing back to David, in summary, the group delivered a strong earnings result for the year ended 30 June 2026. The combination of elevated equity inflows and investment capacity on the balance sheet and in our funds platform underpins organic fund growth and sustained future earnings growth. With that, I'll hand to David to discuss earnings guidance.

Thank you, Anastasia. Now turning to our FY27 guidance. Based on no material change in market conditions, Charter Hall expects FY27 post-tax operating earnings of approximately 114 cents per security, representing 10.5% growth over FY26, which we note, once again, has no performance fee revenue within that forecast. Distribution guidance is for 53.7 cents. for security representing our 16th consecutive year of 6% DPS growth. We're now happy to take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, please press star 11 on your telephone, then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Simon Chan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Oh, g'day, David. G'day, Anastasia. Hey, David, can you walk us through what was on your mind when you made the comment during your prepared remarks about expecting the drive group from beyond $100 billion in FY27? I'm guessing, you know, yeah, what was it? How do you think you're going to do that? Is it going to be... acquisitions, revals, development. Can you give us some insights there?

Well it's pretty simple. You've been following us for a long time. We've always got dry powder in terms of equity inflows both allotted and committed but yet to be allotted. We have the largest transaction team in the country across all the sectors so we've got quite high conviction around net acquisitions continuing. I think I called out that we've got confidence in valuation growth driven solely by income. And in addition to that, you know, you've got a fairly large committed development pipeline that will continue to grow beyond a billion dollars a year of completion. So it's a pretty simple maths. and that sort of drives the expectation.

Right. Hey, if I want to be a bit critical of your result today, right, I would say that the first half inflows was pretty good, well, very good, and then the second half inflows, you know, in comparison was quite weak. Is that just the nature of the game or do you think because of, you know, what's happening in the world out there that, that we probably should expect a period of slower inflows in FY27?

Well, there's a few comments I'll make about that. First of all, we have committed and not allotted inflows in various funds, and that will get allotted as we grow portfolios. CCRS, a good example, I called out. We've got one and a half billion of dry powder, and that's before new inflows that we're expecting shortly. you know when I think about in the first six weeks of FY27 we've got net inflows well in excess of 600 million already and with the line of sight I've got further inflows coming just in the first half of this year I'm pretty comfortable with last year's run rate occurring part of the reason why it's not healthy for people to be doing quarterly balance sheet updates is that it's never linear. So we might have a quarter where we have materially higher inflows than an average for the year. So all I'd say to you is there's certainly no expectation from our side that inflows are going to slow down. The other thing I'd say is when we use our balance sheet to warehouses, sorry, warehouse investments like the Sonic 20-year triple net lease. We will use our balance sheet and sell that down. So, you know, we put $160 million of net equity into that prior to 30 June and I'll have it all out before the end of September. So when you guys sort of look at 160 out of 500 million in net debt, you can pretty well work out why 14% goes below 10% pretty quickly. So I'm not concerned around the granular analysis of one quarter over another. We'll just stand by our long-term trajectory of growing our net inflows as outlined in the presentation.

Great. I've just got one more. It must sound like a weird question, Anastasia. Hey, what denominator... did you use when you came up with $1.14 per share guidance?

What do you mean by denominator?

Outstanding security.

Just our shares on issues, Simon.

Just $4.73?

Yeah, that's right.

Well, we won't be changing the number of shares on issue, Simon. Thanks, guys. Cheers.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Dodds with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Just thinking about underlying growth in 27, I mean, it was a very active year in 26 despite all the macro challenges, flows and transactional activity both at record levels and you're still calling out plenty of dry powder. I guess if we just think about... if we resume no further deployment or fund formation, just what the sort of annualised benefit from 26 deployment would look like on earnings into next year?

Look, I'll tell you what I've been saying for the last 20 years. We always have a bow wave of annualised revenue impact from strong equity flow years. So you know as you can see from both our half and full year results equity flows come in that then creates net asset growth that doesn't give you an annualized revenue impact until the following year the same thing will happen in 28 over 27 and 29 over 28 so you know when we look at net some growth as I outlined before. There's three or four drivers, there's net acquisitions, there's valuation growth, there's development capex completions and obviously as we continue to drive net inflows that accelerates the growth in the fee or revenue generating assets under management. It's pretty simple.

Okay, and then maybe just on transaction fee revenues, $43.8 million this year. They do feel kind of a bit light on just, again, $0.07 billion of transactional activity. I guess the blended sort of margin is about 26 basis points, so sort of well below that sort of 50 to 100 bits you make on acquisitions and disposals. So what was the kind of key driver in this lower number in 2017?

You've got to look at the net transaction number. So obviously during the year it's well publicised that CQR transferred assets into CCRF and took an equity investment in CCRF, so we're not going to charge fees on those sort of transactions. It's always dangerous just to do what you've just done is look at total transactions and divide them in and try to get up to a basis points. If you sort of look at our results presentations over many years, the actual dollar number of our transaction fees hasn't changed but there will be occasions where we're not going to charge fees on related party transactions so that's simple.

I can add to that. Okay. Obviously we won some pretty key mandates which was fantastic through the year and the mandates you know in winning them you don't actually get a transaction fee they're transferring their assets to us and the balance sheet itself has obviously contributed a lot of growth in property investment income and that's a billion and a half of the transactions that obviously we don't charge ourselves face.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Calvetti with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hi, David and Anastasia. Just one on tax. I mean, that decreased materially. How do we think about that in FY27? I mean, the effective tax rate that was in FY26, is that expected to continue, increase, decrease? Just any colour on that.

Thanks, Adam. Yes, the effective tax rate has reduced. We've been putting in effort for a couple of years now around getting the cash on the trust side and the right capital allocation across the staple that's now complete and so we've now got a locked in net effective tax rate that's about five percentage points below what it used to be before those efficiency drivers so that will continue at that lower effective tax rate ongoing.

Just to be clear the effective tax rate for 26 will remain the same into 27?

We don't give compositional guidance. It is somewhat dependent on how much of the growth in the earnings in 27 is made up of taxable income like your funds management earnings and development profits versus what's in property investment income, you know, non-taxable. But broadly, no reason to say it won't pattern over time similar to what you're seeing.

Okay, great. And on performance fees, you've got five or six funds that are up for assessment this year. Can you just talk to whether those are in the money, maybe embedded performance fees, and how you're thinking about their contribution to FY27?

Look, I'll answer that. Every year we've provided guidance. We don't include... estimates of performance fee revenue unless they're so material in the money I think we've all learnt that volatility in interest rates and therefore cap rates makes it a pretty fickle game trying to do forecasts on valuations at June 30 next year and you know at the end of the day I'm not going to get drawn on whether they're in the money or not. The reality is we've provided guidance that doesn't have any performance fee revenue in it and we'll see how things emerge during the year.

Okay, great. Thanks, sir. One more, if I may. Just on investment, they picked up about half a billion dollars over the year. Can we expect to see Charter Hall contributing a larger portion into new funds going forward? Are they expecting to pick up over 27 as well?

No, I would say our average percentage of equity under management will continue to decline as it has for 20 years. If I look at what we have co-invested in, say, CCRF, our latest commingled fund, we've got $100 million out of $3 billion plus. So as has happened with every other major open-ended fund, fund, we might start at a certain dollar number that is a certain percentage and our percentage gets diluted over time. Our business model is not to try to keep pace with our super funds or pension funds or sovereign wealth funds or insurance companies. We've got much bigger balance sheets than Charter Hall. And I think the scale of our business and our track record of performing for our investors would suggest that we don't need to be co-investing at the sort of percentages that perhaps we did 20 years ago.

But just to be clear, David, that co-investment as a percentage has ticked up, your ownership stake has ticked up over the last five years.

It depends on... That's not actually correct. If you split the... funds by their type, whether it's institutional pooled funds, our percentage stakes have been coming down materially over the last 20 years. I started at 20 or 25% stakes in CPOF and CPF pre-GFC and we're down to very small percentages of them. Some of our partnerships where we might have a 10% stake and and LP has 90%. They do stay at those levels, but across the board, our percentage of equity under management has been trending down for a very long time, and I actually don't see that changing as we get bigger. Okay. Thanks, David.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tom Bedore with Jardin. Your line is open.

Good morning David and Anastasia. I'd just like to ask a question around equity flows. If I look at the difference between the gross and net equity flows from first half into second half, it does appear that the redemptions might have picked up a bit in the second half. Is that the right interpretation? I think sort of from circa $900 million first half to about $1.2 billion second half?

They're not redemptions. So if In the case of CCRF, which we've articulated, if CQR sells assets into CCRF and takes equity, there's an in and an out. If we have equity that is being bought by incoming LPs that buy equity from outgoing LPs, that's an in and an out. I don't think it's right to categorise, you know, that redemptions have lifted. And if I look at the pooled fund history of this business over the last 22 years, we've cleared every redemption queue that emerged at sort of seven-yearly liquidity reviews in funds like CPOP and CPIF within a very short period of time. and then even in the direct business, we've cleared the redemption queues that existed in the two office funds, PFA and DOT. So, you know, once again, it depends on the timing of liquidity events in those various entities or various funds. But it's absolutely not right to say that we have redemption queues. Like right now, we have no redemption queue in any of the direct funds any of the pooled funds so I just want to make it very clear we're not currently you know facing redemption queues yep that's very clear thanks for the cover and then if I look at the gross transactions a bit of a stellar breakout year this year I think you went from 6.1 billion in 25 to 17 billion in 26 so

A massive effort. Just would be interested as we look into 27, what level of transactions are broadly assumed in your guidance?

Well, we're not going to, as Anastasia said, give you sort of compositional indications. What I'll tell you is that we'll be buying a lot more assets than we're selling as a ratio to what you've seen in 26. And that's a function of what I just said. about a lack of redemption queues and a function of what I'd indicated will be a continued strong run rate in net inflows.

Excellent, thanks. And just a final small question on Southern Cross Tower. I think the government has indicated that they may vacate that asset. It's around 77,000 square metres per lease. I know it's not for a while before that lease ends. Just be interested in any comments around leasing that space.

It's not actually accurate. There's two leases in that building and only 20,000 metres was the subject of the lease that expires in FY28 and the government hasn't exercised their option on that tranche. The reality is that the other tranche is into FY29. We have already fielded strong corporate tenant interest for the 20,000 metres we have to lease in FY28 and I'm pretty confident that that's not going to add to what I previously indicated as a very low 3.6 vacancy rate for the Paris end of Melbourne.

Excellent, thanks for that.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Pobucky with Macquarie Group. Your line is open.

Good morning David, Anastasia and team. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up one on Flows. Can you talk to investor demand for unlisted product and how you expect demand from wholesale Insta retail channels to evolve over 27, like for example direct funds. Fund Flows picked up in 26. Are you seeing a broadening number of global Instas allocating to Australian property? Any comments on that please?

Yeah so we've got over 150 institutional LPs across our platform obviously from a total equity under management that's majority domestic but we've got an accelerating volume of new domestic investors and foreign investors I would say we're seeing continued strong demand from offshore capital wanting to invest in Australia, broad-based from Japanese institutional investors, European-based and other LPs around the world. We have obviously announced a couple of mandates with Challenger and Care during the last financial year which are additional domestic inflows and as a general statement I think the PE multiples in international equities at one or two standard deviations over historic norms is giving cause for our domestic and global investors to look more seriously at driving allocations into direct property because of the denominator effect most of our clients are underweight their strategic allocation to property both domestic and offshore combined with a view whether you know the markets got this view or not the vast majority of our clients have a view that we've hit peak rates and therefore the vintage to invest in commercial property at positive gearing. I think the recent federal government changes has turned negative gearing into a dirty word and we're seeing capital wanting to invest in positively geared long-lease commercial assets across retail, industrial, office, social infrastructure from all ends of the spectrum. From mum and dad retail to high net worth to financial advised clients through to the institutional end of our sources and with respect to listed you guys understand that sector better than unlisted the REIT sector is still trading at discounts to NTA and at PE multiples that don't compete with the unlisted equity markets so until that changes I don't see much equity being raised in listed REITs

Thank you. Just my second question on CCRF, please. Convenience Retail, you posted, I think it's a bit over $8 billion of gross transactions in the year. How much further acquisition and aggregation opportunity remains in the space and what's the intent, scale and ownership structure of CCRF, please?

I'll give you a stat. So we're the largest owner of convenience retail in this country at $18 billion. and we're barely 5% of the investable universe when you think about neighbourhood and smaller regional shopping centres, Bunnings, Triple Net Lease, pubs, service stations. So we think the universe of continuing to selectively acquire assets we like, particularly in shopping centres, is very strong. There wouldn't be a week in Charter Hall goes by without us making offers or going to due diligence on further acquisitions right across the platform so yep we're pretty confident of our ability to keep acquiring assets and in that space particularly in the neighborhood and sub-regional space the vast majority of the people we're buying from are closed-end retail syndications that have to sell privates quite often it's a family planning issue quite often it's simply they've got to a point where you know a lot of the privates we're buying off are getting to an age where they don't really want to be actively involved in managing shopping centre assets and virtually in every case our management team under Ben can extract NOI growth from better management of these shopping centres, driving rental growth. So yeah, we see that as a big opportunity. And look, that equally applies in the other sectors that we operate in. So we sort of feel like we've got a relatively modest percentage of the investable universe in all of the sectors we operate in, and therefore the growth capacity for us to acquire and develop decor in those sectors is still quite significant. Thanks, David.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Brayshaw with Bear and Joy. Your line is open.

Good morning. I'd just like to clarify my understanding of the one-time STI expense. Could you talk about how that's been allocated into the funds management business?

Yes. You're talking about the STI expense?

The one-time STI expense.

Well, it's not an STI. Are you talking about the retention rights?

I'm just referring to the 3.1% increase... in operating expenses for the funds management business included in a 6% increase on the PCP.

So Ben, we obviously outperformed in all three segments and each of the outperformance has been proportionately allocated to each of those segments according to their outperformance. and so not all of it is in funds management. Some is in development. Obviously that grew by nearly 50% in earnings and some of it is in PI that also had significant earnings growth.

Are you able to say approximately what the quantum of that is in dollar millions?

In funds management segment it's $9.2 million dollars.

and just like to get your feedback on how you're looking to position the balance sheet in relation to the gearing ratio and just some colour on debt issuance in the second six months for the balance sheet, which seems to have increased the undrawn liquidity and the facility limit.

So, look, Ben, it's really simple for me. We have no qualms about sitting... you know, 10 to 15% balance sheet gearing. If you listened to my remarks earlier, simply selling down our equity that we've warehoused for the Sonic transaction takes us below 10% balance sheet gearing. So, as I'm sure you're aware, we have unsecured debt platform because of the capacity of us to bring down gearing and then reinvest to warehouse further assets for further capital partnering right across the spectrum it's going to ebb and flow there might be one reporting date we're in the mid single digits and then another reporting date like now we're at 14% but it moves around quite a lot because it's a very modest level of drawn net debt for the business and the cash flows we generate. So that's the best answer I can give you. Thanks, David.

In terms of funds, we added bank lines and we issued a medium-term note. So we have taken the outstanding debt drawn with that medium-term note higher in the second half. and the rest of the loans we added, bank loans, are undrawn and they've increased the capacity, just to answer your question.

Thanks.

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Richard Jones with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Oh, thanks. Hey, David, you started last year with original guidance. I think you upgraded it three times. As we start 27, you've obviously got pretty good flow on impacts from your farm growth into largely recurring earnings in the farm's business next year that should be in around where you've guided. I'm just interested to, you know, in your comments, you've kind of pointed to similar equity inflow and a higher level of transaction activity. It doesn't just seem consistent with where earnings are guided. I would have thought, based on your commentary, you'd be expecting a much stronger result than the original guidance you're providing today.

Well, I'll just remind you, Richard, the street, according to consensus, had FY27 estimates for EPS at $0.97. We've just got it at $0.114, which is 18% above where the street was in August last year. I love all the notes on, you know, 1% misses. In reality... we've been providing, as we have for most years, for the last 21 years, a momentum story. I'm never going to come out and predict equity flows and therefore put them into a guidance because I've never missed guidance and I will not go out and provide guidance with any risk of downside. So all I'd say to you is as is the case in every other year. We look at what's in front of us. I don't know what could happen in the world, whether it's geopolitics, bond markets, et cetera. So we'll factor in what we have high conviction on forecasting. And as some of the things I alluded to emerge, including inflows driving growth, will look at our re-forecast during the year. But having just delivered 27% growth and 10.9% guidance growth for this year, I'm not sure anything's changed around the characterisation of this business being able to organically continue to grow and deliver earnings momentum for its shareholders.

Thanks David. Just a second question on data centers. You flagged some transactions through the course of the year. Are you able to provide a bit more detail on that and then also outline whether there's any balance sheet owned land or assets that you're potentially looking at data center exits as well?

So the first answer is we've had a couple of site divestments, not on balance sheet, they're in our large industrial fund CPIH. One I bought for $60 million and sold for $180 million. I was pretty happy with that result. And there's probably others that may also generate premiums to cost and current book values that we realise. I think I've made it pretty clear we're not going to be a built form data centre developer owner. I think there's too many other experts out there that have got a longer track record and greater aspirations to be in that space. And in terms of the balance sheet, no, we don't have any incubated opportunities that would necessarily be just targeting power banks to then on-sell the data centres. I think when we have used our balance sheet to warehouse opportunities that are generally to produce pre-lease product that might be suitable for our core funds in whatever sector, whether it's industrial office, et cetera. So, no, I certainly wouldn't want you to be thinking we've got some big development profit coming on balance sheet from being able to sell at premiums to data centre buyers.

Very clear. Thanks, David.

No problem.

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of James Drewes with CLSA. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hi, David and Sam. One big picture question for you around office demand. You talked about sort of looking long-term and you've obviously seen a few cycles. If you look at the PCA data since 1990 and just look at the absorption numbers for every six months, 24 to 26 is only doing 50,000 each six months. If you go back to 2015 to 2019, that was doing more like 100,000 each six months. If you go back to 2004, 2008, it was almost 200,000, 300,000. square metres of demand each six months for all the CBDs in Australia. So there's been a sort of structural decline over a long period of time and I get that there's work density issues there, I get there's work from home as well but we should have cycled work from home by now I would have thought. I'm just curious as to sort of how you think about demand over the next 10 years.

Fortunately, I started this industry before 1990, so yes, I've been through a few cycles. If you look at, I think you've got to look at office markets in almost three tiers. There's prime, premium, A-grade, there's lower grades, and then there's almost obsolete grades that will have to be and have been over many cycles converted to predominantly residential and hotels. When I think about demand, I look at it in the context of future supply because every cycle I've been through, major tenants, both government and corporate, always want to move out of older buildings into the latest and greatest new complexes. We're seeing it right now. I think both Carmel and I have called out for some time the bifurcation of tenant demand. So when I look at virtually every sub-market we're in and 60 to 70% of the vacancy sits in 30% of the buildings that generally are the sort of buildings that we don't own, you're seeing quite a shift of a structural shift of long-term structural vacancy in older stock and I would argue in suburban markets and an increasing demand for good modern product. We're actually seeing this in industrial as well. The reason why most of us that have got a capability of doing industrial products pre-lease developments is that the demand is moving out of old sheds into the very latest because the amount of automation that warehouse users now want to invest inside their sheds means that the older stock is just not fit for purpose. And the same applies in office. So, you know, if I look at the last 10 office projects we've completed nationally, virtually all of them were either pre-leased 100% prior to completion or somewhere between 90% and 100%. And we've just delivered another one in FY26 in Brisbane called 360 Queen Street. So your stats are right, but you need to look at the categories within each of the sub-markets. So, for example, on Chifley, we're at 70%. pre-commitment on the new Chifley Tower. I am in no hurry when I see double-digit net effective rental growth in the core of Sydney to lease up the rest of the building. And my team get annoyed because every three months I decide, let's put the rents up. And, you know, we've got similar conviction in Brisbane. I think it's a very tight market. And we're also seeing huge tenant demand wanting to move out of virtually 85% of Brisbane's CBD is in 30, 40, 50 year old boiler buildings that are just not going to retain their tenants. So tenant demands shifting to modern buildings. Now modern could be something that's 10, 20 years old or it could be a new building like we've just delivered on 360 Queen and what we will be delivering on our new project up there, 60 Queen. So That's the way I see office markets. Yes, we all know they've had elevated incentives compared to other sectors but incentives are coming down at a rate of knots and net effective rental growth is happening which is obviously good for the NOI line but it's also good for your terminal value estimates that the valuers put on their 10-year DCS because people are looking at putting lower incentives in their terminal values than what are existing incentive levels. So that's why we're sort of high conviction on a segment of the office market that is not represented by PCA figures because PCA figures quite the whole of the supply. And the other thing I'd say is there's a lot of obviously political discussion are now about net migration. People forget net migration and population growth drives a model-applier effect for demand in both industrial, retail and office. Everyone understands retail and industrial and they always sort of forget about office. And to your earlier point, you know, every week you're getting another organisation finally, you know, saying that this whole work from home thing is not working. I think one organisation this week has come out and mandated five days a week. I think we will move, and we're not quite there, but we will continue to move back to pre-pandemic attitudes around a flexible policy for our people. And, you know, I think the other thing that's going to accelerate demand for Office N, in my opinion... an acceleration of people getting back into the office and not working from home is AI could be quite a disruptor for companies who can't get the productivity out of the human workforce they have and they'll go down the path of using robots. I've seen it for 20 years in warehousing where automation has been put into warehouses, and that's, you know, their payback's basically a reduction in labour force costs inside the warehouses. That's the only way you can actually justify the CapEx investment. So, yep, I'm pretty bullish about the right sort of office in the right sub-markets for all those reasons.

All right, that's it. Thank you.

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Sir Raj Nathani with Citi. Your line is open.

Thank you. Thank you. Just a couple of quick questions. Firstly, Anastasia, on that, just clarifying that overhead comment, I'm looking at the employee costs in the Saturday income statement. They've risen by almost $15 million year-on-year from $185 million to $235 million. Can you just talk to that overall number and how much is the SCI, I guess, expense there and what do you expect heading into 2027?

Yeah, so obviously we did have a very, very good year with three earnings upgrade underpinning some size growth of sharing of the outperformance between employees and shareholders. And that's resulted in an extra $30 million of cost in the group for FY26.

Sorry, I also state it's actually in the REM report, so there's 187% average SGI award, which I think is justifiable given we just grew, I think it's 27% over 25.

So think of that 187% as 100% base pool and you will have that expense in... FY27 and the 87% is the outperformance pool that is not at all in the guidance or expected in FY27. Offsetting that though, you do have an annual wage increase and we do have some inflation coming through our non-employee costs and that's also on top of last year's wage increase. So I would expect you will get about a half saving of that STI outperformance in FY27 on FY26. So about a $15 million dollar decrease in FY27.

And that comes through across various lines, right? I think you were saying $9 million in the funds management line and then sort of spreads across the other.

That's right, but that'll all just drop out of the, you know, it'll be in the FY26 prior period, but going forward in FY27, if there's no outperformance, it's just all in FM.

I understood thank you and while we're talking about the REM report I guess just a quick question on I was trying to find with the retention ownership plan there Rob and any I just wanted to clarify firstly what was the final outcome there another five-year plan it's all in the REM report it's an 80% award of the retention plan Thank you David and I guess a lot of focus on performance please understand you know giving guidance I guess people are just trying to assess you know what does the earnings outlook look like there's some strong performance coming through it seems on some of the funds but If I focus on the office side, can you talk to Chifley and when exactly does it complete? And I would have thought there should be decent outperformance there or any expectation, I guess, that you can give on Chifley particularly?

Well, he is going to be a fantastic outperformer. But when I look around the ownership, of Chifley between you know a large LP partner that was the original owner that we bought 50% from and two of our funds it's just one asset in those funds so and look as I said before we when we guide and say the guidance has no performance fee revenue that doesn't mean that there may not be a realisation. But I'm not going to come out and do forecasts. I've seen too many cycles before on whether or not we may or may not generate performance fees. So I think the way you should look at it is that's our guidance without performance fee revenue and if they materialise during the year, well, it's upside.

Final point on, I guess, you mentioned listed pricing at a discount to NTA. Any sort of appetite for M&A activity in the near term?

Well, I've done nine take privates, so I've always got appetite, but I'm not going to talk about it today.

All good, David. Hopefully there's something coming through, but all good. Thank you.

Thank you.

ladies and gentlemen at this time I would like to turn the call back over to David Harrison for closing remarks thanks everyone and I'm sure over the coming days weeks we'll get to meet at the various lunches and one-on-ones and importantly a big shout out to the whole of the Charter Hall family for the contribution over the last 12 months and it's had its challenges but I think the team's performed exceptionally well for our investors and our tenant customers and you know at the end of the day you can't run a business of this scale without it being a big team effort so just wanted to thank our team thank you