Care Property Invest S.A.

Good morning. My name is Patrick Koutenier. I'm the CEO of Care Property Invest and I'm together with Philip van Zeebrug, the CFO of Care Property. We welcome you all to the earnings call on the occasion of the first half results of 2025. To start, I show you the agenda of the earnings call. We will try to be efficient and try to wrap it up in 30 minutes, leaving room for questions if you might have them at the end of the presentation. Let's say that we want to start with the confirmation and the continuation of our story and strategy by reminding the key takeaways of our investment proposition. We still are a pure play healthcare Belgian REIT. And this will remain the case at least for the next period. We still are focused on the four core countries where we are active in. We will enter into details in the presentation later on. We still think it's very important to build an energy efficient portfolio along the way. We believe in the sustainability value of our portfolio and continue to put focus on that aspect. We are convinced that there is very nice growth potential in all of our core markets and that we can benefit from these in the future. We are committed as a management team, we have aligned interests with our investors and we are convinced that our profitability is in line with the risk profile of the company going forward. As you know, we have stable cash flows, we have long-term contracts in the legacy portfolio as well as in our investment portfolio. And we stick to financial discipline in terms of balance sheet structure and cost control. This is nothing new. This is a confirmation and a continuation of our story, strategy, and belief. I'll now hand over the word to Philip, who will dive into the financials more in detail.

Good morning everyone, also from my side. I will indeed present you our half-year figures. We can present you a decent set of results and we have a rent collection rate of 98%. An average indexation and which was so all our contracts were indexed in full at 3.08%. And then, of course, occupancy rate of 100%. Our LTV came in at 47%. And we were able to increase our guidance. our EPS guidance to 1 euro and 11 euro cents and keeping, of course, our DPS guidance stable, which gives you a payout ratio of 90%. If we go into further detail, so with the P&L statement, you can see that we have 36.5 million euros of rental income and the guidance being at 73%. Our general expenses are under control and we're at 15.5%. Of course, there is this one-off effect, but aside from that or on top of that, we do have our costs under control. If we look at taxes, we can see the increase due to the abolishment of the Dutch FBI regime, which has an estimated cost of 800,000 euros. So with 61 euro cents EPS, of course, we are well on track to meet our increased guidance, which is to be considered as a minimum of 1 euro and 11 cents. So here you can see the like-for-like change per country. If you look at the balance sheet, nothing changed of course. We have a stable valuation of our investment properties. Year-to-date, 0.1% plus. You can see the evolution per quarter. Overall valuation yield is at 5.66%. And here you can see the split by country. So this is the debt ratio which has risen due to the seasonal effect of the dividend payout. So if all things remain equal, this will decrease towards the end of the year. We're at a level where we are comfortable with the 47%. So this slide gives you the overview of the headroom. And of course, we have very limited cash out and very limited commitments of only 0.5 million euro due to the completion of Elche, which we expect in the fourth quarter of this year. If we look at the maturity wall, the first refinancing will take place at the very end of 2026. And so we're comfortable there. If we look at the weighted average interest rate, we could take advantage of the decrease in Euribo rates in the first half of the year. So we're currently at a level of slightly above 3%. Here you can see the evolution of our hedge ratio. We added the 2028 bar to this graph where we've worked upon in the first half of this year. So we're now at 82% in 2028 and also in this period we have our hedge ratio in place. Our ICR has risen to 3.7 times and so well above the covenant level of 2 times and our net debt to EBITDA stands at 9.2. And as I mentioned, we increased our guidance, of course, on the back of this one-off effect, and especially the decreased interest expenses to 1.11 as an EPS guidance, the DPS guidance remaining at 1 euro. And then we discuss our portfolio, and I hand over to Patrick.

Thank you, Philipp. Well, first a word on our legacy portfolio of financial leases and the balance sheet. where traditionally there are some questions or some focus on. Actually, we are still the owners of a financial lease portfolio of contracts with the Belgian municipalities, of which the total book value as of 30th of June is 163 million euros, and the fair value is 212 million euros. Actually, these are very stable income contracts, very profitable contracts. You see that 17% of the portfolio consists of these legacy contracts, whereas 23% of our income is also depending on this portfolio. So there's very low to no credit risk on this portfolio. we are quite convinced that the fair value is actually very conservative. And so this still is a solid element in our balance sheet. This is also the reason why we are comfortable with a slightly higher debt ratio than our competitors. As you know, this portfolio is running down over the next 17 years. Then you have the schedule of the build down of the building rights fee. And as you know, we are in discussions with municipalities to see if we can renew these contracts. These are taking quite some time and municipalities take time to make up their minds on the future of the service offered to the citizens. I think we've always told by the end of the year, we will have somewhat a clearer view on the potential renewal. But we see that a lot of municipalities are really thinking whether they should still offer that service or not in any case. If contracts cannot be renewed, we will actually recycle the building rights fees and reinvest in other project activities in the core business. the the other investments we have on our balance sheet are actually spread over the four markets you have an overview of the the value per country of this portfolio of course belgium is still the dominant region where we have assets as well as the netherlands and to a lesser extent spain and ireland if you look at the demographics of the of the four countries there is still a huge need and potential for new buildings in our core business. So we are convinced that in the coming years, there's a huge need for new buildings, making us conclude that the potential for growth for care property is intact in these countries. We also strive for operator diversification and spread of political risk, And actually, every market has its own merits and key strengths. There are some detailed slides on these markets further on. But actually, we stick to these four countries because we are convinced that with the structure we have today, we can benefit from the growth potential of these markets in the future. Maybe, Philip, you can give somewhat more insight on the distribution of our business over the operators and maybe give some flavor on how we see the market for the operators.

Yes. So if we look at the rental income and the distribution based on this rental income, and we still see that this historical portfolio or legacy portfolio has a percentage of 23%. So this gives us this risk-averse profile in terms of collection risk. Our rent collection rate stands at 98%, so a very high level. I will further on discuss the occupancy rates per country, but they are all at a healthy stable level and they're slightly increased in all countries except for the Netherlands. So they are above breakeven level. And so we of course have parties with a proven track record. And so with this healthy occupancy rates at pre-COVID levels, we expect them to manage their operations in a professional way and to be able to do that. If we look at the countries and so Belgium slightly increase 93.6% and the other data on the slides are the same as our annual results earnings call. We see a decrease in the Dutch healthcare market. As you know, we have smaller assets there, so frictional vacancy can have a larger impact. And so it's at 84, but still at a level above the breakeven level. And also in Spain and Ireland, we can see that the levels increased compared to the full year occupancy rates. And so these are all data on June the 30th of 2025.

Well, maybe concluding as there is, let's say, little to tell in terms of new projects for the time being. Excuse me. We really want to stress again the strategic focus of care property. The focus on the four markets, we have stressed that. We also... um want to give the financial discipline in terms of profitability in terms of risk balance sheet risk and in terms of cost efficiency this is really something that is very important for us we also want to have a very sound hedging policy i think we did quite well since since late 24 in terms of hedging our interest rate risk We try to diversify our borrower base as much as possible. On the other hand, we look very much at the quality of the operator, the solid business plans and the effort rates in the business plans of the new potential deals that might come on our table. Sustainability is very important and not only the sustainability of the buildings. We try to strive for long-term relationships with stakeholders, operators, investors, banks, personnel, and also government by managing our company quite well and also having a culture of ethical behavior and good governance, which is very important for a company. And we also will provide dividend stability for the shareholders. That's a key element in our strategy. Let's say we also manage our portfolio dynamically, which means that we perform energy audits on our buildings where there is most need to improve the energy efficiency. We are looking into ways how we can optimize the value of our building portfolio through these investments. and also are in discussions with operators to maybe share benefits of these investments. This is a process that is ongoing, but that is a key of our strategy. In terms of the legacy portfolio, we are still keen to continue our exposure on the public sector. We offer multiple solutions to the municipalities to renew contracts or to to find other ways of operations with them. It's still early days. We will come back on that later. But in the case, there is no renewal. We recycle the capital. It's actually our asset rotation program, if you want. So nothing really new. And I would like to maybe conclude with some final comments. Actually, what... What you have with care property is what I would say, what you see is what you get. We consistent execute our focus strategy in current rather uncertain economic circumstances. You will all agree that macroeconomically, geopolitically, the world is It's not a real stable safe haven, but meanwhile, we continue our strategy, our geographic strategy, our financial strategy, our sustainability strategy, and also our governance. We have quite positive new board dynamics with the new composition of our board, and we are very thankful with the new people joining our board. We focus on cost-efficient operations. We stick to the one team, single country team in Belgium. As long as the market circumstances and the geopolitical environment do not cater for structural changes to that model. We need profitable structural acceleration of growth in order to increase our, let's say, structure, our cost structure, if there is no clear... view that it structurally is going to change. We will stick to cost efficiency and the single team, single country team. Maybe some information. We are also looking at improving our procedures and processes as we are in the phase of implementing an ERP system. where we will also try to implement elements of artificial intelligence to increase efficiency in our administration and operations. Still early days, but we kicked off the program recently and we plan to finalize this towards Medio 2027. Everybody is very committed to make this a success internally. We are also strongly committed to cyber risk management and secure ICT environments. As we are aware that reputation risk for a listed company is very important. It's also a point of attention for our company and our management. We are consistently and opportunistically looking at investments that can bring value to the portfolio, company and the shareholders. But the metrics have to work. We look at the further build-out of the company with a long-term view on the value creation for the shareholders and for the company, which means that the future-proof character of the buildings we would add to the portfolio is quite important. Either the buildings already are future proof, either we can improve through reasonable capex investments that bring value in the long term to the company. We also continue to improve the energy efficiency of the existing portfolio as we already meet criteria that other players in the market have as a target within five or more years. We look very much at the solid business plans of the operators, as it is very important that not only we can survive as a landlord, but also our customers, the operators can make a good business over the long term. So effort rates, quality of operations is very important. We are very much aware that the value of our buildings is also very much dependent on the value of the operator running their business in our buildings. We will recycle capital if no renewal can be made with the municipalities. We've commented on that. And actually, we are ready to accelerate growth, and we can do it fast, if financial and operational metrics work and buildings will add value to the portfolio. this is in a nutshell the core of our strategy the core of our operations the focus i think there's not very much more to say today the only thing is that i only want to invite you again to our party of 30 years care property we have a celebration of the 30-year history of the company we have a party on the 24th of September in the Antwerp region. I'm sure you all have been invited. We would love to meet you there. It would be nice to talk in an informal way rather than the more formal earnings call discussions we have. And I propose to end the formal session here. Thank you for your attention and hope to see you soon on the next occasion.