LondonMetric Property Plc

Right, morning ladies and gentlemen. I see so many of you here. Actually, there's one, two spare seats. That's pretty impressive. I don't need a bigger room next year. I said as long as it's free. So, welcome to London Metrics full year results for the period ending 31st of March 2024. As usual, I'll start with a couple of slides, highlights over the period. I'll pass over to Martin and give you a run through the financial review, going into numbers that I haven't covered in more detail. I'll then come back and talk about the portfolio, its evolution, opportunities, and also then talk about the outlook of how we see the period ahead, both from a market perspective and also from a company perspective. I thought I'd start actually by, I read something last night that obviously caught my attention, which I thought summed up my thoughts about the last 12 months. And actually it was a quote from the Real Madrid manager, following Saturday's win in the Champions League. We suffered a bit in the first half, but in the second we were better. And overall, we ended up as the winners and we are happy. Some of it applies to us, but it grabbed my attention. So, overview of what's happened for us over the last 12 months. It's been a transformational year following our various M&A transactions with both LXI and CTPT deals. And that has helped us create what we think we have today is a wonderful company with a portfolio of, as you can see there, of around about £6 billion. And so whilst the company has got bigger, I should just mention that we still think that our approach will remain the same, and that is to pivot the portfolio to the strongest thematics, and that will be something we'll touch on regularly throughout this presentation. Our focus is on triple net and growing our income stream, both contractually and organically, on the basis that we believe that income and income growth is the bedrock of all successful investments. Therefore, we are pleased to announce this morning that over the period, our light flag income growth at 5.5% would be at the upper end of what our expectations would have been for the period. And I'll come on to talk about how that was made up through the various sectors' exposures, but also through rent reviews and leasing activity. Also pleased to see our ERV again growing 5.7% over the period. And that has helped offset a 26 basis point outward yield expansion that the portfolio experienced over the year. Valuations were largely flat and therefore total property return of 4.7%, which is a 570 basis point outperformance against the MSCI or property indexed. And again, in line with our thematics, the portfolio enjoys an embedded reversion where we will see around about £23 million worth of further rental growth being captured over the next two years through a combination of rent reviews, asset management and leasing activity. Our ownership culture ensures a disciplined and rational approach to capital allocation. So on top of the M&A activity, we've also made further disposals in the year and a further 75 million that's been sold post-period end. We announced some sales last week and again a few more this morning. And that will be a theme over the coming weeks as we look to prune the portfolio. This business and this portfolio is never run simply about growing assets under management. So a quick view of the financial highlights before Martin dives into these in greater detail. EPRA earnings are up 20%, £121.6 million. That's helped drive our EPRA earnings per share up to 10.9 pence, an increase of 5.4% on this time last year. And we announced this morning a Q4 dividend of 3 pence a share to give a final dividend for the year of 10.2 pence. That is up 7.4% on a year ago and is our ninth year of dividend progression. We also announced this morning our intention to pay a Q125 dividend of 2.85 pence and that is an increase of 18.8% on where we were a year ago with a targeted full year dividend for FY25 of 12 pence a share. Turning down to the balance sheet. portfolio valuation I've already touched on at 6 billion, relatively flat, 0.3% drop in values, and I'll come on to talk about that. Again, outward yield shift offset by ERV growth. Our EPR NTA at 191.7 pence per share is down 3.6%, but as we announced this morning, that's largely due to the costs incurred in the various M&A activity over the period. An awful lot of investment, banking fees, I'm afraid to say. And so, to move to a lot of people in this room. So on that note, if I just pass it over to Martin and he can take you through some of those numbers in a little bit more detail. Thanks.

Morning. So when Andrew was worrying about football last night, I was doing a note to myself saying, do not do a merger that doubles your size three weeks before the end of the financial year. Well, that was probably a note from my team, actually, who've just put in a phenomenal effort to get us here today. So as Andrew said... We've delivered significant earnings growth and dividend progression, helped by the transformational merger with LXI. I'm pleased to report that our net rental income is £177.1 million, an increase of 20.6% over last year, and is again supported by extraordinarily strong rent collection statistics in the year. We've collected 99.9% of rents during the year. That's up from last year, where it was only 99.8%. Our gross net income leakage has fallen again this year to only 1%. Our administrative overhead for the year has increased to £19.7 million, but our EPRA cost ratio has reduced in the year to 11.6%, which is one of the leading performances in the sector. We expect that EPRA cost ratio to fall significantly next year to around 8%, driven by the cost synergies that will arise out of the LXI and CTPT mergers. Our net finance costs are £36.8 million this year, an increase of £6.9 million over last year. We've held higher average debt balances in the year, and there was a small average interest rate increase, but also the proceeds of asset disposals have reduced our drawn debt balances, therefore our commitment fees have increased, and we've capitalised less interest into our development of forward funding programmes. Despite these increases in financing costs, our focus on cost control on top of our rental income growth has driven our EPRA profit to 121.6 million or 10.9 pence per share. This supports the increase to our dividend for the year to 10.2 pence, providing very strong 107% dividend cover. Dividend cover would have been higher but for mismatch in accounting. We account for a full fourth quarter of dividend to the LXI shareholders but it's only matched by having three weeks worth of earnings from LXI being the date of the merger to the year end. So there's a slight mismatch. The trading performance has been strong and the portfolio valuations have fallen by only £11.1 million in the year allowing us to report IFRS profits of £118.7 million compared with an IFRS loss of £506.3 million last year. Turning to the balance sheet, the net value of the portfolio has increased significantly in the year with the addition of £285 million of assets from the CTPT acquisition and £2.9 billion of assets from the merger with LXI. The valuation is now £6 billion. Gross debt is £2.09 billion, incorporating £90 million of CTPT debt but £1.1 billion of LXI debt. The net liability position at the year-end is £121.2 million. Rents paid in advance account for £72.5 million of that amount. In summary, therefore, our EPRA net tangible assets for the year at the year end were £3.91 billion, or £191.7 pence per share. The fall in EPRA NTA is driven by the reduction in the value of the property portfolio, but more materially by merger transaction costs of £30 million and the costs of the buyout of the LXI management contract of £27 million. In the light of the continued volatility in financial markets during the year where elevated interest rates and higher borrowing costs have persisted for longer than expected, we have sought to ensure that our debt provides long-term certainty with flexibility and that our exposure to elevated interest rates is mitigated. Our gross debt balance is £2.09 billion, up from £1 billion last year, and this year has been one of intense activity in our debt arrangements. The LXI merger added £1.1 billion of debt to our balance sheet. This additional debt was shorter dated and more expensive than the existing LNP debt, but more significantly, the debt stack was wholly secured. As a result, immediately post-acquisition, we cancelled £625 million of LXI's secured debt and replaced it with £700 million of new unsecured arrangements. which were both cheaper and longer than the debt being replaced. We are very pleased that the refinance introduced a new Tier 1 lender to our banking group. We have ensured through the merger that the enlarged group, as was previously the case for LNP, is not subject to any material refinancing ahead of FY26. It's also important to recognise that debt maturity will not necessarily be met through refinancing but may be dealt with through a mixture of available headroom of almost £800 million, further non-course sales or even new equity. Also, we lengthen the maturity by one year on £675 million of our debt facilities. We further mitigated our exposure to interest rate movements during the year by retaining all of LXI's hedging and fixed rate arrangements. We continued our non-core asset disposal programme in the year. £185 million of disposals helped to reduce our LTV and to eliminate our exposure to floating rate debt. In total, all of our drawn debt at the year end was hedged. Our debt maturity now stands at 5.4 years down from six years impacted by the passing of one year but shorter date debt acquired through our corporate acquisitions in the year. Our LTV is broadly the same this year at 33.2% compared to 32.8% last year. Our current cost of debt is 3.9% compared to 3.4% last year LXI's cost of debt was 5.3%, but the £700 million refinancing at lower rates than the £625 million that it replaced helped. Looking forward, we will continue to manage our debt arrangements to ensure that refinancing risk is mitigated and that we are able to take advantage of our increased scale to diversify our funding sources. We will consider whether a strong investment-grade credit rating will enhance our ability to access well-priced debt. Our contracted rent roll is now £340 million following the merger with LXI, which added £194 million of rent to the contracted rent roll. Alongside the CTPT acquisition, which added £17.7 million of rent to the rent roll, we have also added £11.4 million through a combination of new lettings and rent reviews and re-gears, which Andrew will talk about later. Outside of our corporate acquisitions, we have been a net seller, with a loss of income on disposals being largely offset by asset management upside. The travel lodge sale completed immediately prior to the merger eliminated £16.5 million of rent from the rent roll. Looking forward, there is an embedded reversion within the portfolio of £22.5 million. a combination of open market and contractual rent reviews, which will increase the rent roll over the period to March 2026. By this time, the rent roll will have increased, taking the forecast position to over £360 million. This will generate significant earnings growth, and that supports our confidence that we will continue to be able to grow our dividend, which has increased by 7.4% this year, and we expect to increase to 12 pence this a 17.6% increase in the financial year 2025. And finally, a brief look back, which puts the increase in rent roll into context and clearly demonstrates that in the year since our merger in 2013, we have been able to increase our earnings per share by 2.5 times, and we are in the ninth year of dividend progression. Our total property return and our total shareholder return driven by both by share price appreciation but significantly by dividends, equates to a compound annual growth rate in excess of 10%. And on that note, I'll hand back to Andrew.

That's good, Mark. Well done. Excuse me. So a quick look at the investment activity over the period. I mean, some of these points we've already touched on already. It's obviously been dominated by the M&A activity, which has added £3 billion of net assets post the disposals there of £185 million. As well as the M&A, we've also acquired organically £31 million worth of assets in our chosen sectors, and I'll come on to talk about that in a minute, with £51 million post-period end. And in turn... We think that our activity over the period has helped us create the UK's leading triple net REIT with the right structure. We are internally managed. We have strong shareholder alignment. And this new scale gives us opportunities to, both in terms of running the enlarged portfolio harder, but also access to bigger opportunities, a bigger pool of opportunities that otherwise might have been outside of our reach. And actually, that's part of the excitement of this project. transformation the fact of the matter is you know we are seeing opportunities coming through and again you know into the market as a result of whether or not it's fund wind-ups whether or not it's debt refinancing redemptions sale and lease backs and obviously it wouldn't be right if i didn't talk about whether or not we about some the possibility obviously further m&a activity if those opportunities arise so looking at the portfolio um so this has obviously changed dramatically from um when I stood up here even six months ago. It continues to be dominated by our investments in logistics, and for good reason. Now accounts, as of today... just over 43.5% of the overall portfolio, and our target would be to exceed 50% over the coming 12 months. We've obviously added new sectorial exposures. These will undoubtedly change over time. There will be some pruning in some of those areas, but we feel very comfortable with our investments in healthcare, entertainment, convenience in particular, and again, I'll come on to talk about those in more detail. The strength of the portfolio metrics on the right-hand side here, you know, we have very, very long leases. That's great. But full occupancy, which, you know, for a triple net read is absolutely paramount. We have very efficient gross to net income ratio. As Martin says, you know, we've only got leakage of 1%. And importantly, we have the certainty of growth. We have 79% with contractual uplifts. But the open market reviews are also in sectors that are growing. And again, I'll come on to talk about our activity in the rent review and re-gearing later on in the presentation. introduced into the portfolio a much larger exposure to annual rent reviews. Whilst we capture uplifts on a five-yearly basis, the great thing about the annual review is it gives us more control over the timing of asset recycling. We don't have to wait maybe three, four or five years till the next review. It allows us just much tighter pricing tension. And there's a pie chart there that shows how arguably... virtually equally our exposures to open market, fixed uplifts, CPIs and RPIs across the portfolio. So the investment strategy, you know, we want to own key operating assets in the winning sectors that are important to our customers. And they're important because they're mission critical or they're incredibly profitable. That is the aim. If you have a happy tenant, they want to stay longer, they invest more money in your building, and over time you have more chance of extracting higher rents from them. It's relatively basic. So our strategy will focus on the triple net thematics in the structurally supported sectors and robust assets with high occupier contentment. That is what will deliver us not only security of income, but income growth. As I've already said, and Martin's mentioned it already as well, logistics remains our leading sector and our strongest conviction core where we enjoy the highest exposure to organic rental growth. Entertainment and leisure is supported by consumer preferences for experience with mission critical assets offering guaranteed income growth. The convenience sector, we've been invested in this for a number of years now. And we believe that convenience, essentials and value will continue to win out over discretion and experience. And our health care investments are delivering fit for purpose, modern real estate with annual rental growth. And whilst we undoubtedly will trim some of this exposure, portfolio exposure, we don't believe it requires any major surgery. So a bit further breakdown into those four key areas. Logistics, 168 assets delivering £126 million worth of rent per annum. Average rent of £7.60 a foot, but with an ERV 25% higher at £9.50. We'll talk about the rent reviews in a minute, but as you can see there, ERV growth of 6%, which has helped absorb the 20 or so basis points of yield expansion. It is very much the sector that keeps on giving. Our entertainment and leisure, 130 assets, £83 million worth of rent, and let on incredibly long leases. I mean, an average lease length of 36 years. I mean, you can't find that anywhere else in the real estate sector in the United Kingdom. It enjoys a An attractive net initial yield of over 6%, which has helped generate a total property return of 7.75% in the period. In convenience, we remain highly attracted to this sector. As I said, UK consumers continue their pivoting on spending on essentials. But it is a sector that we actively manage. And there will be sales from this set of sales and there will be reinvestments over the course of the 12 months. And indeed, we expect to announce some activity in that space shortly. ERV growth of 5%, again, absorbed the 20 basis points of yield expansion. And finally, the healthcare, this is a new exposure for us. But these are very well-lit, as I said, mission-critical assets with annual rental growth. And they sit incredibly well within our triple net compounding model. Asset management activity was added across nearly 100 rent reviews, nearly £5 million of the bank income. And it's interesting there, the spread between the contractual uplifts, which give you the certainty, the sleep at night, and the open market reviews. So 17% average uplift across contractual reviews, which works out at just over 3% per annum. Open market reviews are doing double that, at 6% per annum. And obviously, the standout performer has been the open market reviews across our urban logistics assets, which delivered average uplifts of 40% over the five-year period. Mark and his team successfully re-let and re-geared 53 assets, delivering an additional £2.7 million worth of income. Our re-gears on urban logistics, you see, saw average rental growth then again rise by nearly 40%. And we expect, as I touched on in my first slide, we expect further rental growth over the coming few years with a minimum of £23 million to be captured through a combination of asset management, contractual rent reviews and open markets. There's a breakdown there on that slide on the bottom right corner. Asset management. remains very much part of our DNA. And so we're always continually looking to improve the quality and efficiency of our buildings to ensure that they remain fit for purpose. So in the year, we've added four megawatts of power through PV installations with a further three megawatts in the pipeline. We've also improved amenities on some of our locations, added 25 ultra-rapid EV charging stations facilities in partnership with both MFG and Instavolt. We've added new catering and F&B amenities in Birmingham, Bedford and Ipswich. And again, that's all part of keeping our customers longer in our locations. The longer the customer spends in some of your buildings, the more money they will get rid of. We've continued to improve our EPC ratings, as you can see there. Obviously, the LNP A to C at 91%, compared to where we were last year at 90%, but we've also absorbed the LXI, and we'll make some further progress on that in the coming periods. And we've seen our Grisby rating improve again to a company high of 76. So before I open up the lines and the room to Q&A, just a couple of slides on the outlook. We believe that the challenging macro investment environment is settling, but debt costs are still too high, and certainly for sectors and assets without organic rental growth. The UK consumer remains incredibly resilient with full employment, albeit there are some signs that discretionary spending is beginning to weak a little. The good news is inflation rates are falling, and that is hopefully creating an inflection point for interest rates. But the property market will require swap rates to fall much closer to 300 basis points than the 420 that they are today for full liquidity to come back into the investment market. But this market uncertainty creates opportunities. As I said, I touched on the four key areas for us, whether or not it's fund wind-up, whether or not it's debt refinancing, whether or not it's selling leasebacks, or whether or not it's redemptions. And that is a key focus for us. And those are not just areas I picked out. We have real-life examples in each of those. I would say debt refinancing would be the skinniest, simply because there's just not a lot of debt issue problems in the structural winning sectors. Obviously, if we wanted to buy some... offices and debt refinance opportunities are plentiful. And our triple net approach will only focus on the sectors with these strong fundamentals. Consumer behaviour will define real estate winners and losers. Income, income growth continue to deliver the attractive compounding returns, which is the bedrock of successful investing. And as Martin's already touched on, our balance sheet will give us not only strength but future optionality for the bigger deals that we previously had to shy away from. And our dividend is on track for a 10th year of progression. We hope we will be standing here in 12 months' time claiming the title of dividend achiever. Looking forward, the work in hand is to reshape and simplify the portfolio. The pruning is already underway. we will always pivot towards the strongest thematics with operationally strong assets in the very best geographies. We will continually prioritise income and income growth to drive the earnings and collect that embedded reversion of £23 million that we think is there over the next couple of years. And our triple net focus will allow us to deliver income-led returns with a progressive and covered dividend. And our confidence in that is obviously underpinned by our intention to announce a Q1 dividend for the FY25 up nearly 19% at 2.85 pence a share. My former chairman will be delighted with that. I know that for a fact. As I suspect, we want to buy new non-executive directors. So on that note, thank you very much for your time this morning. We can open up the room. to some Q&A, and then anybody who might be on the phone. Vanessa.

Hi. Morning. Vanessa Guy from JP Morgan. You touched upon debt reduction by disposals and equity raisings, I guess, an equity raise. Could you give a bit more color on that and what the target is for the year on disposals and where you want to reach your LTV?

You want me to start? I'm sure you're finished. I think the point we're trying to get across is don't assume because we've got refinancings coming at us that that will be met by another refinancing. Fine if it's the right thing to do and rates are in the right place, but if it's not, we have other levers to pull. We have significant headroom. We would raise more equity. I think in terms of having a target of sales... That's above my pay grade, I think.

My view of it is we are always pregnant with sales. It's part of our DNA again. So therefore, when we come up for refinancing, if we don't like the terms, if we think that the banks are being too greedy, where is Steve? Or the swap rates. Or the swish, Davey. and he's hiding, or the swap rates are too high, then we will look at other things. But because we're always looking at recycling assets, we can sometimes reallocate some of those receipts into the debt refi rather than into reinvestment into assets. If debt's costing you 6.5%, you know what? Not all deals are going to get through me.

We're doing this, yeah. We've got a private placement tranche that matures at the end of September for 40 million. We'll just use Headroom and non-core sales proceeds to deal with that.

We will always be in lawyers with somewhere between 50 and 100 million disposals. It's just the way we are. Andrew... Oh, sorry, Miranda, that came up late. Yeah.

Thank you. Andrew Saunders from Shaw Capital. I've got two questions. First one's on asset allocation. Obviously, you've got some new exposure to new sectors, which is obviously not a new thing given the backstory with London, Stanford, and metric, obviously. But I wonder if there's any... asset categories there where you've been surprised on the upside and you might look to increase exposure. And the second question would be on development. Obviously, construction costs stabilizing and rents are accelerating, so some of your peers are stepping up development. You've got the balance sheet to do it. What's your standpoint on that?

Right, I'll take the first one. I mean, I think of some of the new sectors that we've got exposure to, entertainment, theme parks, I feel very comfortable with it. I mean, it's difficult not to be when you think about consumer behaviour, but you also think about credit, you think about replacement costs, you think about... 30-odd years of lease expiry and annual kickers. I mean, it's just a wonderful asset that you want to own for a long time. Trying to extend that is more difficult. I mean, there's not a huge amount of these opportunities that come around, so that would be tricky. I mean, retail parks, it's an area that we have deep experience in. Mark and I spend a lot of time in that space in our careers. We're seeing the occupational picture improve dramatically. Still, it's easier to do a letting in retail parks than a rent review. to be frank. The new tenants who want representation will pay up. The existing tenants want to fight like cats and dogs to avoid giving you an extra penny. But that'll come. So that's a market we're wide-eyed on. So that would fall into our convenience category. The hospital piece, we don't know enough about it, to be honest with you, at the moment, Andrew. I mean, we like it. We like the fact that, you know... People are more health-conscious these days. Obviously, we have an NHS that struggles a little. But we will be conscious about credit exposures. We have a credit exposure. Our largest tenant will be Ramsey, and we'll think about that. You know, it wasn't that long ago that people were questioning our 12% exposure to Primark. Primark today is probably 2.5% or something, so probably lower than that, actually. So, look, we're wide-eyed about this. You know, I don't think anybody could accuse us of being afraid to pivot into sectors where the opportunity might have been missed by others. We're certainly not anchored to legacy sectors. The second development... I mean, development is, I mean, it's, you know, construction costs are moderating, but they're not falling. You know, people have got this thing about, you know, inflation's down. That doesn't mean prices fall. They just don't rise as fast. And we have got some situations whereby the only way we will build this is if you pay us 20% more rent. And we have a real, I mean, we're doing a live example of one. You know, the ERV might be £9, but it didn't make sense to build it. We found somebody who said they'll pay £11. We'll build it. I mean, 11 will be 20% higher than the record ever done in that particular locality. Stills, have you got anything to add?

Yeah, listen, we've never been huge fans of speculative development. And to be frank, you need a proper arbitrage between the opportunity to buy an interesting investment asset and buying a piece of land which either doesn't have planning or doesn't have a pre-let. Land is still relatively expensive. But I think, you know, picking up on one of Andrew's points, I mean, I think our relationship with a lot of key occupiers remains. And we're working with a couple of key occupiers where they will take a substantial pre-let. And then we just sort of make sure that the development works because the land is at the right price. And I think land is still resetting.

All rates have to go up. And I do think in logistics they're going to have to go up. In small and mid boxes they're going to have to go up. Otherwise nothing gets built.

And also the other area of development that we're active in and always have been is funding developers. So that's a quick in and out. You fund a developer on a pre-let and you get a coupon on it as well, which is great for our income. Tying our money up in land isn't exactly a creature to paying a dividend without a pre-let and without a developer and a coupon on it.

But you're going to see rental growth in some of these sectors. I think you're going to see it in small and mid-box logistics. In other words, nothing will get built. Sorry, Miranda.

A couple of questions for Martin. Firstly, just cash EPS. Can you give us that? And going forward, will you provide both cash and EPRA? Because obviously there's going to be a greater difference between the two going forward. And then the second question is just a brief one. Just on page 10, your contracted income progression, does that and will that include that income strip that you've got? I think it's 10 million or whatever the number is. Is that in that?

So first question first. We will absolutely include new cash earnings going forward. We didn't particularly include it this year. It wasn't particularly relevant. We have roughly the same cash cover that we've always had. We're a little below 100%, but not by very much. I think if we project forward to next year, it depends on the sales programme. And if we've got a dividend at 12 and we continue to sell material amounts, that will be a strain. But we'll be transparent about what our EPRA earnings are and what our cash earnings are. On the income strip, we... We include the gross in our rent and then we take off through the finance cost the pay away. And we do exactly the same in the portfolio. So six billion is net of the income strip. With the income strip it would be nearer 6.3%.

I think over time, as we increase the amount of organic exposure to organic reviews, the gap between your EPRA and your cash will be such. I mean, I can't think of many other companies that are reporting both those numbers, are there?

Alan?

Eleanor Free from Barclays. Thanks for the presentation. So we've heard some comments from some of your peers about the position that we're in in the property cycle. So just wondering what your thoughts are on this. What do you expect from the year ahead? Will you expect to see more competition, perhaps?

Look, I think that I think I was quoted recently, you know, we're past the point of maximum pessimism. And that must be right. Swap rates in January, February were around about 350. Today they're over four, which is disappointing in some ways. I could argue it creates more opportunities. But I think that debt costs still for certain sectors look expensive, particularly if you're in a sector where you're not sure about rental growth or you have to invest for rental growth. You have to upgrade the quality of your building in order to secure higher rents. I think that is tough for them. So I think... We are seeing opportunities coming out of those four key areas that I talked about. I would certainly expect to see swap rates lower by the end of the year. And I think we could start to see on growth assets some yields coming in a little bit. So we're feeling pretty good. I think some of the successes that the investment team have been able to deliver over the year in a market that's been pretty tight is terrific. It's not easy out there. It really isn't. We're getting hit all the time. It's taking longer to get a deal over the line. But we've done some really good sales. We've got some really good prices. I think we've been helped by that our average lot size is quite small. Relative to some of our larger peers, our average lot size is about £12 million. So there's more liquidity at the smaller end. But the range of people that we're talking to, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's truly unbelievable. I mean, the vast majority we've never heard of. Owner-occupiers.

The interest in our offices in Glasgow and Dundee, which we've just sold, well, we sold to a French institution, but you're talking about Kuwaitis, people from Dubai, private family offices. You know, it's just names you wouldn't have heard of. In fact, I hadn't heard of Remake until they came out, but they're very popular in the UK now.

So liquidity is still tough, and I think until you start to see that swap rate back down, but closer to 300, it's going to remain so. Was there another part of the question? I can't remember. Is that all right?

Good morning. This is Eduardo Gigli from Green Street. My question is around the pruning of the portfolio. How do you think about prioritizing it? Is it underlying fundamentals in different sectors? Is it the type of reviews or the periodicity of the reviews or sort of tenant concentration? How do you think about prioritizing these factors?

Yeah, by the way, that's a great question. I mean, in a market where we are today, some of it is reactive. So, for example, we've done more transactions in the last 12 months with owner-occupiers than I can remember in my career. So, therefore, you react and kind of have an easy negotiation with the occupier if they want to buy your building. So, therefore, that will take priority. I mean, after that, there's a number of factors that come into it. It's the sector. I mean, my thoughts on offices are relatively well known. And my thoughts on certain geographies are well known. The great thing about even the assets we're looking to prune is they're all well let for long periods of time with guaranteed growth. You know, there are no melting ice cubes here. All right. And so therefore, really, then it is a competition for where you are on the yield stack and then where you are on the, you know, there are differences. For example, some of our, you know, one of the offices we sold today had a fixed rent review at 1.5%. it's more attractive maybe to sell that than one that might be linked to an RPI or something that's capped out at 4%. So it's a combination of things. It's the sector, it's the lease structure, and it could be the geography too. So we think that your thematic needs to have three dimensions rather than one. So it's not, you know, setting out a long lease strategy just on long leases, you get tripped up.

Hi, yeah, Max. Maybe just kind of following up a little bit on that question and then thinking about the long income parts of the portfolio and how you think about asset management opportunities in some of that. I know you said, you know, it's great income. You can sleep well at night. But you also said, well, you know, we know inflation is coming down a bit. The discretionary spend may come off a little bit, which obviously you're hedged a little bit on your convenience side. But Just how you think about adding value, as it were, in some of those long-income pieces.

Yeah, I mean, look, the investment market... is their idea of long income and my idea of long income might be two different things. And in certain sectors, it has different values too. I mean, a lot of people think that 15 years is a long income. I'm not sure it is, if I'm being honest with you. I think it's a difficult period. I mean, you know, and if you look at our convenience portfolio, it's got a... an average lease length, 14 years, if we took that out to 20, we would get probably 50 basis points. Okay? Maybe 50 basis points on that. Or certainly somewhere between 25 and 50 anyway. And, you know, one of the other things for us, Max, is in retail, if the rents are over-rented or the rent is too high, we will trade rent for term because what we might lose on the income will pick up on the cap rate and therefore we look to sell it. At the moment, I would say the biggest opportunity for asset management, if you look at, for example, we've got the healthcare and education, there'll be some opportunities within that portfolio for at least three years. And also in our travel lodge hotel portfolio, there's an opportunity there to take third-party income out of, for example, if you look at a roadside opportunity, it might have drive-throughs at the front. At the moment, that's not part of our income. So look, there's some stones that need to be unturned. The great thing about actually having the exposure that we've got is that, like I said, we're not in a sector that we really, or we're holding assets in a sector that we really need to get out of quickly. Sometimes we just have to be a bit more patient.

Thank you.

one of the advantages of being a much bigger company is your access to potentially bigger deals i think you've talked about it at some of the previous meetings um i think you touched on some of the places where they might arise from in terms of some of the stress but i mean in terms of the timing you starting to see any of those opportunities coming across your desk in terms of big portfolios and do you expect there to be much competition for those kind of deals i mean is there much other kind of capital out there chasing those kind of deals

I mean, I'll start and Valentine can finish. Look, there was a 700 million pound portfolio that came to the market a few weeks ago. Private Irish family wanted to sell out of their holdings in Leicestershire. You know, we had a look at it. We signed the NDA, we had a good look at it. We decided it wasn't for us. I mean, it will be interesting to see who buys it. I think that there is more money chasing specific thematics than blended portfolios. and then it's all about the aspirations and the pressures that the vendor might be under as to whether or not they want to do a wholesale deal or whether or not they're happy to chop it up. I think there's more competition in single thematics than there is in balanced.

V? Yeah, no, I'd agree with that. I mean, the deals so far this year tended to be the smaller ones. Actually, 65% of the deals in logistics in Q1 this year were under £50 million. We are looking at some portfolios. They are beginning to come, but so far they've been pretty rare. Yeah, I'd say even in the last week or so we've looked at two portfolios. They're just beginning to come. And there will be competition out there. I mean, the USP is still there, and they can bid keener yields than perhaps we can because they can take a bigger view on vacancy, etc., and competition in the smaller deals tend to come from sort of local authority pension fund managed vehicles, DTZIM, KFIM, CBREGI. But volumes have been down so far this year, definitely.

If you look at the five areas that we think the opportunities come out of, so saying leasebacks, yep, we're doing that. You look at redemptions, yep, we took a next warehouse in Doncaster at Christmas. The vendor needed money relatively quickly, so we were there for that. Fund wind-ups, you know, we're looking at a portfolio at the moment coming out of one of the occupational pension funds, you know, one of the UK's largest retailers looking to come out of direct real estate, and they've decided to split it up, so we're looking at that. Refis, not so much at the moment in our sector for reasons I said, and then the fifth reason is obviously M&A, and, you know, we've been pretty active in that. We thought that to the market we think the market needs some consolidation there are far too many small caps out there and and that's what you know we started that back in well probably this time last year wasn't it April April last year with CT um and there's been quite a lot of activity and I think that will continue I still think that there are a number of names out there um it would help if some of the managers thought that that was a good idea too a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas

Hi, Sam Knott from Coalytics. Thanks for the presentation. Just on the cost ratio of 8% that you've guided to, is that sort of a long-term target or do you think you could improve that from there? And then obviously that's being driven by the benefits of scale. would you be looking at further merge? I mean, you've just said you think there can be some consolidation. I'll be more polite than you.

I think if we get to 8%, we'll be pretty happy at 8%. I think that's quite low. I think we'll get there because of the cost synergies that will come out of the CTPT and LXI acquisitions and mergers. I think they're We took out 4 million of CTPT costs straight away. No one came over. There was no cost coming over. On LXI, it's slightly different. We've taken out the manager cost, and that gets replaced by the salaries of the people who've come over. And it'll take a little bit of time to work some of the costs out of the system. So I think the savings there would be an annualized saving. But 8% is a target for FY25.

I mean, it would help if the rest of the people in the sector were as focused on this as we are.

I was going to say, it is a big improvement, obviously, from the merger. When you're looking at further mergers, is there a sort of target size that you would aim for in terms of doing further mergers and consolidation, or is it just opportunistic?

I think the biggest barrier to more M&A tends to be the incumbent, either the board or the manager, I'm afraid. At the end of the day, I think cost savings is just one of the metrics we'll look at. I mean, ultimately, we start with the assets. Do we like enough of their assets to want to do this? And then it helps when there's a board that's focused on what's right for shareholders as opposed to other considerations.

Thank you.

If there are no further questions in the room, we will now go to conference call questions. Over to you, Saskia.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I see there are no questions coming through. I would like to hand it back to Andrew Jones for webcast questions. Over to you.

Okay, great. Thank you. I have got some that have come through on this iPad. Quite smart. So I'll just read out a few of these quickly. From Tony at Beckett Asset Management, LTV has increased slightly from the previous year to 33%. What is the maximum limit you're prepared to tolerate?

I'm going to start.

We have different views. Look, it depends on the opportunity. You know, we're not looking to... I mean, I think 33 is a good number. I think 31 is a good number too. But if there was an opportunity out there, you know, to James' questions about then, you know, and it took it up to 35 or 36, that wouldn't bother me either because it's moving all the time. You know, if we'd had these results this time last week, it would have been a higher LTV because Valentine wouldn't have done his sales. So we're in the sweet spot. I think for us it's important, though, not just to look at the number, but to triangulate it in terms of what's it secured against. Is it the right assets? What's happening to those values? How well is the lease length? What's happening to your income? What about your hedging? So 33 feels like a good number. Some pre-annotations. Aurora, following the two mergers, how much reshaping, repositioning is there to be done? What are the characteristics of the assets that you may look to dispose? Look, they're all very long assets. I don't get emotionally attached, by the way, to any asset we own. Every single one of them has a number. It could be a big box, it could be a small box, anything has a number. We're coin-operated. So the fact of the matter is we don't have a target, but there are sectors that we feel more comfortable operating in where we have expertise, where we have critical mass, where we have an edge over some of our competitors. And there are some sectors that we're involved in where we are subscale and we're unlikely to be the price setter that we might be in other areas. So that's what we will look to deal with. I think we've already answered this about the opportunity, the size of the opportunity in future M&A. Would you deal with smaller M&A? Is it worth the effort sort of thing? Again, we'll just react to the opportunities that are out there. Like I said, it's not always that simple. And then there's a bit about rationalising the combined portfolios with the sale of smaller assets. The great thing about triple net is actually there's no operational involvement for us. I'd actually say today that our average lot size at 12 helps Will and Valentine. It's harder to sell a £100 million asset today than it is to sell £10 million assets. without a doubt, because the suite of buyers that we can appeal to is so much wider. And I would say, guys, with the deals that we've done, I can't remember the last deal where we've sold an asset that required debt.

Even if they are potentially debt buyers, they'll buy with equity with a view to gearing up further down the line when interest rates hopefully have come down a little.

I think we saw the high street shock to a South African investor who might have got some debt. But that's about it. So that's the attraction of having some small assets. It gives you that liquidity when the market's tight. Right, we've taken enough of your morning up. So thank you, obviously, those on the phone as well for the last hour or so of your time. And obviously, we'll hang around if there's any further questions that you were too embarrassed to ask in front of everyone else. So thank you.