British Land Company PLC

results you will have noticed quite a few changes on the campus over the last year since we were last here and if you do get a little bit of time after the presentation do check out the retail underneath one broad gate it launched last week and it's already 90 percent Latin under offer which is a pretty good place to be So in terms of today's agenda, I'll start with an overview. David will take you through the first half performance and also our earnings levers. And then Kelly will look at our strong leasing and accretive asset management over the period. But before I hand over to David, I'd like to take a step back and look at what's driving the future performance of the business. At the heart of this is the decision we took nearly five years ago to build a market-leading position in campuses and retail parks. Together, these now represent 90% of our business. These are sectors with strong occupational fundamentals. Demand's healthy, supply is constrained, and rents are very affordable. The investment market is waking up to this. Investors are increasing their allocations to both retail and offices. and we're very well placed to capitalise on this. That's down to the quality of the assets, the experience of our team, and our value-add mindset. The result? A very attractive total return profile, underpinned by sustainable earnings growth. So let's unpack this, starting with prime London offices, where a classic supply crunch is driving strong rental growth. The return to the office has exceeded expectations, Midweek utilisation across our campuses is now above pre-pandemic levels. Businesses are short on space. Last year they expanded by 3.3 million square feet, the highest since 2019. And active demand is now 50% above the long-term average. But supply remains tight. Initial concerns about working from home have been compounded by rising construction costs and higher interest rates. You can see on this slide, vacancy for new and refurbished space in the city is predicted to fall below 2% and stay there for the next four years. Historically, when this has happened, it has driven double digit rental growth. We've positioned our portfolio to benefit from this supply squeeze. Office occupiers are focused on four key areas, quality, location, amenity and flexibility. our campuses tick all the boxes. We currently account for seven out of the top 20 leasing deals that are under offer in London. So we're capturing a disproportionate share of a very strong market. That's down to high quality sustainable buildings, prime locations near transport hubs, excellent amenities and public realm and flexible offerings ranging from storey to fully fitted work ready space to headquarter space. This flexibility is key for customers in the innovation sectors. This is a fast growing market, especially in the knowledge quarter. The number of innovation customers in our portfolio has more than doubled since 2022. There's been strong growth from a new generation of AI and tech businesses with high levels of venture capital investment. This is a key source of new demand. We're tracking one and a half million square feet of new requirements. Kelly will explain in a moment how we're benefiting from this at Regent's Place. Our on-site developments are achieving records rents, which is driving development yields above 7% and mid-teens IRRs. These record rents also provide valuable evidence for upcoming reviews across our campuses. We're de-risking our schemes with prelets and fixed price contracts and increasingly bringing in partners such as Modem to reduce capital outlay, accelerate delivery and earn valuable fees. Let's move on now to retail parks. These continue to be the preferred format for retailers. They're efficient and adaptable. offer easy access, free parking and they're ideal for a range of retailers including value, grocery and multi-channel. Retailers like M&S, Lidl, Aldi and Home Bargains are expanding into this format. Yet there's been virtually no new supply in the past decade and we don't see this situation changing. Development economics are unattractive and planning is restrictive. As you know, we're the largest owner and operator of multi-let retail parks in the UK, with a portfolio stretching from the Isle of Wight to Inverness. Half the UK population lives within a 30-minute drive of one of our assets, and we have deep reach with the retailers, given our scale, the experience of our team, and our in-house property management. Of course, we use demographic and competition data but nothing beats picking up the phone to a retailer to understand trading. Our focus on strong trading locations is reflected in our footfall. This has grown 13.5% above the UK retail benchmark over the last five years. Despite a more competitive investment market, we're still acquiring assets that yields above 7%. And we're comfortable taking occupational risk due to the market strength, are asset management expertise and those retailer relationships. In real estate, affordability is just as important as supply and demand. For prime offices and retail parks, the picture is very positive. London office rents, relative to wages, are lower than at the turn of the century. And retail occupancy cost ratios are very healthy. This leaves plenty of room for rental growth. That's why we're guiding to 3% to 5% growth in both sectors. Investors are taking note of the occupational strength I've just described, and they're increasing their allocation to both offices and retail. This, together with strong credit markets, means we expect investment volumes to grow. London office transactions have been subdued in recent years, as we know, but they've really picked up this year. with over 6 billion year to date and 3 billion under offer. So far, the number of deals over 100 million this year is already double the whole of last year. Strong occupational fundamentals, improving investment markets and our high quality platform provide for an attractive total return profile. The essential building blocks are set out here. Their earnings yield, valuation uplift and development upside. Earnings yield is currently 5% and growing. Assuming stable property yields, valuations will primarily be driven by ERV growth, where we're guiding to 3% to 5%. You need to adjust for a bit of depreciation, the impact of leverage, and the fact that ERV growth doesn't feed through one-to-one. But you can see how these first two building blocks get you to around 8 to 9%. Developments add further upside with mid-teens returns forecast on the committed schemes and the pipeline. So we're confident in delivering total accounting returns of 8 to 10% through the cycle. The total return outlook is underpinned by attractive earnings growth. We're expecting at least 6% next year, and we have the levers to deliver 3% to 6% over the medium term. This is an ideal point to hand over to David, who will take you through these levers as well as our numbers. David, over to you.

Thanks, Simon. Good morning, everybody. Three things from me today. First, I'll cover our financial performance for the half year. Second, the balance sheet and our approach to capital allocation. And finally, I'll provide an update, as Simon said, on the five levers of earnings growth I outlined in May and then how we see them translating into medium-term growth of 3% to 6%, including our guidance for FY26 and then into FY27. As you know, we released many of the key metrics in October. That's something you should expect from us going forward. One benefit we see is that it allows us to spend more time today on strategy and outlook. But starting with the numbers. Underlying profit was up 8% to £155 million. And underlying EPS was 15.4 pence, 1% ahead of last year. meaning the dividend is also up 1%, in line with our policy of paying out 80% of underlying EPS. Looking at the EPS bridge, you can clearly see the benefit of our progress against the earnings levers. In particular, driving like for like, which was 4% and contributed £6 million or 0.6p, with a positive performance across both offices and retail. Higher rents from developments from completed schemes like One Broadgate and The Optic, partially offset by void costs. And lowering admin costs. This has been a key focus for me since I became CFO this time last year. I spoke in May about the savings we'd already identified, and I'm pleased to see the benefit come through in H1, with admin costs down £5 million, or 12% versus last year, adding 0.5 pence to EPS. One-off items had only a limited impact on earnings year-on-year, as the positive effect of surrender premium offset bad debt provision releases last year, Taken together then, these positives more than offset the £13 million increase in finance costs, which reduced EPS by 1.3p. This is in line with expectations, mainly reflecting the fact that we're no longer capitalising interest on completed developments, and a 10 basis point increase in our weighted average interest rate to 3.7%. Here's the summary P&L account. I've covered most things here already, but just to touch on two further metrics. First, our NRI margin. This was lowered due to the increase in PropEx, mainly because of the movement in provisions I just touched on, which slightly flattered the margin last year, and void costs as we lease up developments. Once this is done, I expect our margin to stabilise at around 90%. The other thing to draw out here is the EPRA cost ratio, which was 17.4% at September, as this higher PropEx more than offset the reduction in admin costs. Though I do expect the ratio to come down to the mid-teens in future years, as we lease up developments and further leverage the operating platform we have in place, adding income while controlling costs. Now turning to the balance sheet, NTA has again increased since March, reflecting a 1.2% rise in property values, which added 10 pence, and underlying profit, which added a further 15 pence, although this was partially offset by the dividend paid in July and other movements, resulting in NTA per share of 579 pence, up 2%. This, combined with the dividend paid, equated to a total accounting return of 4% for the half, meaning we're on track to deliver our full-year target of 8% to 10%. Credit markets remain very strong, and we've capitalised through a broad range of activity, focused on maintaining our overall maturity and enhancing diversity in our sources of finance. We raised a £450 million green loan secured against one broad gate, extended £930 million of RCFs, and renewed £500 million of term loans at improved pricing. Looking ahead, we have just over £300 million of debt maturities at British Land over the next 12 months. So we remain well financed with flexibility on when and how we raise new debt. And with good access to the bank debt and capital markets, we expect to remain active in a strong market. I was pleased to have our Fitch rating reaffirmed in July at A with a stable outlook, reflecting the fact that our balance sheet remains strong. We ended September with £1.7 billion of undrawn facilities in cash. Net debt was £3.8 billion. Our LTV was 39.1%, with net debt to EBITDA on a group basis at 7.2 times. This balance sheet stability underpins all of our capital allocation decisions. We focus on recycling capital from mature, lower returning assets into higher returning opportunities. Currently, that means investing further into retail parks where, as Simon has described, the investment case remains compelling and we continue to see opportunities to buy at attractive pricing. Alongside that, we progress best-in-class office developments at our campuses on a de-risked, capital-light basis, securing pre-lets, certainty over build costs and bringing in partners to accelerate returns and reduce risk, just as we did over at 2 Finsbury Avenue. Our London Urban Logistics portfolio has embedded development optionality and we remain positive about the long-term supply-demand dynamics here so we can progress those schemes when the time is right. But the sector is weaker today, so we prioritise better uses of capital in retail parks and campus development. It's important to note that we always make capital allocation decisions in the context of shareholder distributions, including the relative returns and VPS accretion available from share buybacks, for example, when we have the proceeds to invest following significant disposals. And as ever, all of our capital allocation decisions are based on our assessment of relative returns at any point in time. In May, I set out the five levers we focus on to drive consistent cash-generative earnings growth. So six months on, let's update against each. First, like-for-like rental growth. We've made a strong start to the year. Portfolio like-for-like growth was 4%, bang in the middle of our guidance of 3% to 5%. Campuses were up 7% as we drove occupancy and secured rental uplifts on space which had been surrendered. Our retail business also continued to grow, albeit at a lower rate, reflecting the fact that we're at near full occupancy. Going forward, though, ERV growth should more directly translate into like-for-like growth, as we're largely rack-rented now on our parks. And overall, for the full year, I expect 5% like-for-like growth across the portfolio. Kelly will give you more detail on our portfolio performance in a minute. Fee income is our second earnings growth lever. We continue to work with a broad range of JV partners, generating fee income for both assets and development management. Although fee income was flat in the first half at £13 million, we do expect to achieve 10% growth for the full year as we continue to earn fees on development mandates and we're actively pursuing opportunities to leverage our platform in order to drive incremental fees from new and existing partners. Third, cost control. I'm pleased with the progress we've made over the last 12 months, but this remains a focus. And so for the full year, I expect admin costs to be 75 to 76 million pounds ahead of the guidance I gave in May and versus 82 million pounds for last year. Development leasing is our fourth earnings lever. As I mentioned earlier, we're now benefiting from schemes such as One Broadgate and the Optic, while leasing on previously delivered schemes at Norton Follgate and Aldgate Place is well on track. One Triton Square launched in October and we're delighted to have our first deals under offer there. Finally, capital recycling. The fuel in this machine is our ability to dispose of lower returning assets, freeing up capital to rapidly redeploy into higher returning opportunities. As Simon laid out, the office investment market has been quieter than in previous years, but we are seeing signs of improvement. And against that backdrop, we've remained active, executing deals where it makes sense, disposing of retail parks where pricing has moved in, or development sites in London which were not income producing, then rapidly redeploying the proceeds. Given the improving investment market, we do, however, expect activity to increase over the next 12 to 18 months. Bringing this together, we expect to deliver sustainable EPS growth of between 3% and 6% over the medium term. This slide shows how each of these earnings levers contribute to that. Now, this is purposefully illustrative, and of course, it will not be linear in any particular year. But to me, this is the best way to think about the earnings growth potential of our business. So let's go through each of them. In terms of like for like, we're confident we can consistently deliver 3% to 5% on our standing portfolio, given the strong occupational fundamentals of our core sectors. At the midpoint, this top line of 4% growth drops through to 5% annual EPS growth. 10% fee income growth adds another 1% per year. And on costs, I do expect further reductions over the next 12 to 18 months, which will, of course, continue to benefit earnings. Although over the medium term, there is likely to be continued inflationary pressures. So modelling broadly flat costs is not unreasonable over, say, five years. Likewise, our weighted average interest rate will gradually increase over time, reflecting prevailing market rates. Based on today's rates, we anticipate a 10 to 20 basis point increase per year, which would reduce EPS by around 2% per annum. So overall, we see a clear route to core EPS growth of 4% per year, and that's before further capital activity, which really is the kicker on top of this core growth. There are two components to consider, development completions and asset recycling. And while the timing and phasing of capital activity is of course hard to predict, and it's by its nature lumpy, I've assumed around £500 million per year, with £200 million for developments and £300 million for asset recycling. Then, to model the earnings impact, for developments we assume a spread of around 200 basis points between the yield on costs and our funding costs, and for asset recycling, 100 basis points between what we buy versus what we sell. Taken together then, this capital activity would contribute a further 2% to EPS growth per year, increasing the annual growth rate to 6%, the top end of the range I described in May. So bringing this back to immediate outlook, Moving into the second half, we expect to deliver at least 28.5p of EPS for FY26, and from there, at least 6% EPS growth for FY27, as we benefit from the continued lease-up of our developments, capitalise on the compelling fundamentals of our core business, and so move forward with confidence in delivering against our five earnings growth levers. With that, over to Kelly.

Good morning, everyone. You've heard from Simon on the strength of our markets, so I'll now take you through how that's translated into performance and outline how we're adding value across the portfolio. I'll start with valuations, which have increased by 1.2%. This is the third period I've been able to report positive valuation growth, and it's a good sign that the inflection point is behind us. Valuations have been driven by strong rental growth of 2.4%. On an annualised basis, this is again at the top end of our guided range of 3% to 5%, and we're confident this rental growth will continue. Turning to the operational performance, starting with campuses, we've leased 486,000 square feet at 3% ahead of AVI, And at the end of the period, we were under offer on 629,000 square feet, 6% ahead of the others. And we've been particularly busy since 30 September, with a further 308,000 square feet put under offer. And that's a very busy six weeks. It's worth pointing out we're seeing particularly strong momentum in leasing up vacancy. Since March, we've let or put under offer 751,000 square feet on vacant or newly delivered space. Our IPRA occupancy now stands at 88%, up 5% this half, up 10% for the year. As we said in the trading update, Broadgate is practically full. There's just one completed floor to lease across the entire campus, and it's an exceptional floor, the top floor of our newest scheme at One Broadgate. We're in negotiations on that floor, and we'll set record new rents for the campus. This is good news for our onsite developments, which will deliver into a market with very limited supply. Broadgate Tower is the first to be delivered late next year. This is a 390,000 square foot building with 240 square foot development floors. Since 30 September, we've gone under offer on 59,000 square feet across five deals, taking the building to 49% let. This is a very strong position to be in at this stage. The next to deliver is to Finsbury Avenue in 2027, where Citadel are taking up to 50% of the space. Here we are in negotiations with a number of larger occupiers, two years ahead of delivery. And this is a fantastic tower building, delivering in a year with very little competition. We've also been proactively identifying where we can take back space and re-let it at higher rents to drive value when there's such little supply. For example, at Exchange House, we proactively took back some floors. We're reinvesting the surrender receipt into much-needed on-floor upgrades after 35 years of occupation, and have already re-let to MSCI, driving rents on by £35 per square foot. This added 10 million to the valuation of the building, and sets strong rental evidence for the wider campus. This is accretive asset management, and we will look to do more of this. Norton Soulgate is a slightly different proposition for us at British Land, as the product is smaller floor plates, often fitted, and therefore more suited to let post PC. We've made good progress and are now 89% let under offer or in negotiations. And we're on track to be fully let by the end of the financial year. Simon covered the growing demand coming from innovation occupiers, which is driving momentum across the portfolio. To capitalise on that, we launched One Triton Square last month. This is an incredible building. It's a campus within a campus and offers real flexibility to tenants. It includes a floor of story space, a floor of fitted labs, three lab enabled floors which look like a traditional office floor that can easily be converted to lab use as demand evolves, and three traditional office floors. You may have picked this up in David's piece, but I'm pleased to confirm that just six weeks after PCing, we have put 56,000 square feet under offer to two globally recognized science and tech occupiers due to complete later this month. And we have another 211,000 square feet in negotiations. We are very excited about this and look forward to continuing to update you on our progress. Turning to retail parks, you'll know it's a very competitive occupational landscape and retailers are keen to secure space. Leasing volumes remain strong at 681,000 square feet, 6% ahead of ERVs, and under-offers are 554,000 square feet, also 6% ahead of ERVs. Deals this half have been in line with previous passing rents. And thanks to recent strong rental growth, our portfolio is now largely rec-rented. And as a reminder, it was over 20% over-rented just two and a half years ago. So we're in a great position to generate strong, like-for-like rental growth from the portfolio. Retail parts provide strong cash yield and good opportunities to increase value through asset management. I'll cover just a few of the many examples of asset management on our acquisitions where we've looked to improve the tenant mix and drive footfall, sales, and ultimately rents. I'll start with the first one we bought when we took the contrarian call to start buying retail parks. When we bought Biggleswade Retail Park in 2021, it had six high-risk retailers. These are the ones in red. We've re-let all of these to strong category leaders, which has helped drive a 12% IRR since acquisition. Rolling forward to one of last year's buys, Queens Drive Retail Park. When we purchased it, there were two vacant units. Both are now let, including to an M&S anchor, which is a major win for the park. The park is full and leasing well ahead of ERV and has delivered a 14% IRR since acquisition. And our most recent buy is Turbury Retail Park in Bournemouth, which we purchased earlier this month for a prospective double-digit IRR and a day one yield of 7.4%, which with asset management we've already increased to 7.7%. and we have a strong pipeline of similar deals. As Simon covered, we're unlikely to see many new retail parks built, but we're actively looking for opportunities across the portfolio where we can add space efficiently. Projects like these ones at Glasgow and Rugby are smaller in scale, shorter in duration, and lower risk than traditional developments, but they generate meaningful returns with a yield on cost of at least 8%, often double digits. And on top of that, they provide strong wash over to the rest of the park by improving lineup and rental tone. So I'll leave you with three things Values continue to rise, driven by strong ERV growth at the top end of our guidance. Our standing campus assets are virtually full, following a strong six months of listings, and we've made good progress on our newly delivered space. And finally, as the market leader in retail parks, our active asset management is pushing on rents and values, and we'll look to buy more in the space as we continue to recycle capital. Now over to Simon to wrap up.