Citycon Oyj

everyone and welcome to Citicon's fourth quarter and full year 24 results audio cast. My name is Anni Torkko and I work as the investor relations manager here at Citicon. Last night we published our full year 2024 financial results and I would like to direct you to the investor relations section of our website where you will find all results materials. Today, together with me in the call, I have our interim CEO, Mr. Scott Ball, and our CFO, Mr. Eero Sihvonen. We will start by Scott going through our business and operational highlights. And after that, Eero will go through our financial results. After the presentation, we will be opening the line for questions from the audience. Please, Scott.

Thanks, Annie. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our full year 2024 financial results call. Citicon enjoyed strong growth in its operational business in 24, posting 184 million euros in direct operating profit. On the back of this strong performance, total direct operating profit grew by 12% for the year, adjusted upper earnings by 12.1%, and total net rental income by 10.3%, all measured with comparable FX compared to the same period, 2023. Excluding divested assets and acquisitions, like-for-like net rental income grew 4.6% compared to the same period in 2023 and comparable FX. These results are within the Q3 guidance with adjusted EPRA EPS slightly higher than guidance. Demand for space in our properties remains strong. The retail occupancy rate increased 20 basis points over the prior quarter to 95.3% and average rents increased 4.6% to 25 euros per square meter. The company signed over 175,000 square meters of leases during 2024, a 33% increase over the 132,000 square meters leased in 2023. New tenant openings included a 7,300-square-meter Prisma Hypermarket in Mirmani, a 3,200-square-meter Selver grocery store in Roka Almari, an 1,800-square-meter fitness gym also at Roka, and the first Nike concept store in Finland at Iso-Omena. In December, CityCon announced that it had signed a lease agreement with Turvistalo for an over 4,000 square meter medical center hospital in Trio. This further reinforces our tenant mix, which is over 20% grocery and 11% municipal services and healthcare. As noted in prior calls, the tenant portfolio is 82% non-fashion oriented. These large new deals further improved the strong credit profile of our tenant base and the quality of our grocery municipal anchored urban hubs and resulted in a rent collection rate of 99%. In 2024, Citicon completed important measures to restructure its operations, reduce expenses, and improve its balance sheet. Actions to reduce costs included the outsourcing of accounting, and decentralization of day-to-day decision-making to the individual countries. This includes all operations as well as our leasing efforts, which will be directed at the country level. There are new managing directors in place to drive the business for their respective countries, and each country also has a separate board of directors made up of CityCon board members and senior management to provide oversight. These actions completed in 2024 provide for a reduction in G&A overhead to approximately 23 million euros for 2025 onwards. Citicon also issued two new bonds during the year without size demand from the market as the bonds were seven and 10 times oversubscribed and further improved the debt maturity profile. The company also made the decision to suspend dividend payments and repay short-term debt to push out the average maturity schedule. In addition, the company significantly reduced capital expenditures for 2024 and planned further reductions in capital expenditures for 2025 amount to approximately 21 million euros. Earlier this month, Citicon continued the process to delever and repaid €150 million of its secured €250 million term loan facility. The expansion in yields impacted the valuation of the portfolio during 2024, which was partially offset by realized rent growth occurring in our assets, resulting in an increase in the market rents used in the valuation models within all of our main markets. For the year, the book value of our assets decreased by 74.6 million euros. As interest rates continue to decline, spreads should tighten, which should positively impact valuations for 2025. Ero will provide more detail in his financial review later on the call. As of January 1, the company had 770 million euros of liquidity. Given this strong liquidity position, we are pacing asset sales in a manner that allows us to effectively deploy the cash generated. For 2024, we had asset disposals of 354 million euros, with proceeds continuing to be used to repay debt. Total divestments as of year-end 2024 reached €475 million since the publication of our divestment target, resulting in a 50% completion of that €950 million target by 2026. We anticipate another €250 million divestments through 2025 and intend to hit our full divestment target in 2026. As we begin 2025, the company's operational results are among some of the best within the peer group. However, there is still room to further accelerate rent growth. The company's occupancy cost ratio is one of the lowest in the industry at 9.4%, and our tenants continue to experience sales growth, which provides Citicon ample headroom for compounding rent growth. In addition, our country team operating model is up and operating with separate board oversight for each country. Taken together, these factors give us confidence that 2025 results will continue to build on the strong performance in 2024 and is reflected in our guidance. As a result, the guidance for 2025 EPRA EPS is in the range of 41 to 53 cents and EPRA EPS excluding hybrid interest is 60 to 72 cents. Lastly, I want to welcome Mr. Oleg Zaslavsky to Citicon as a new CEO starting on the 1st of March. As a professional with 20 years of experience in the real estate sector, I am confident that he will bring fresh eyes and valuable expertise to Citicon and lead the company towards even greater financial and operational results. I, along with the rest of the Board of Directors, will be supporting OLEG during the transition period and moving forward. I want to also extend my thanks to everyone on the CityCon team for their hard work this past year. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Arrow to provide a financial overview.

Thank you, Scott, and it's great to be back and I'm very pleased to be speaking to you again. First of all, there is a snapshot of the financials. I will review the main topics very briefly and then go more in detail in each of those. Citigroup had a strong year operationally. Our net rental income did grow by approximately €20 million, or 9.7%, to €214.7 million. Our EPRA earnings also improved to €113 million, a 3.1% improvement. In per share terms, EPRA EPS, there was a slight reduction due to the increased share count during the year. But also in terms of EPS, solid performance at 62 cents per share. Our EPRA net replacement value, the reduction of that mainly reflects the changes in valuation items, and I will also come back to that in a while. The detailed net rental income bridge, I will mainly concentrate on the bottom part, i.e. the full year picture. And here you can see that the main component of the increased improved net rental income relates to Gista. Early last year, we bought the remaining 50% of Gista in Stockholm, Sweden. And as a result, we fully consolidate the asset. and therefore, just net rental income fully is included. We had a positive like-for-like development, quite significantly, like 6.6 million, as Scott already mentioned, and redevelopments coming on stream impacted by approximately 3 million. And as mentioned, the total net rental income for the year ended up at 214.7. Similar analysis for the EPRA earnings, and as can be seen, net rental income for the full year increased by 20 million, 20.1 million, we had an increase in financial income and expenses, mainly due to two factors. Number one, we also now consolidate the financing costs related to CHISTA, and even more importantly, of course, like everybody knows, interest costs have been increasing, and our average cost of debt is somewhat higher. But nevertheless, the overall performance in terms of EPRA earnings was positive, i.e. we had a growth from 109.6 to 113.8 million euros. Then turning over to valuation, The full-year property valuation loss was 74.6%, i.e. 1.9% of the total value. and we had a negative valuation in last quarter of 158 million, negative, and that had to do mainly with the wider yield requirements, wider so-called cap rates by approximately 20 basis points. And I have noticed already earlier, during earlier years, that when there are yield movements, the Nordic normally comes after UK and Central Europe, so like a stabilization of the yields came to this region a bit later. or is coming a bit later. But anyway, the overall performance, 1.9% reduction, i.e. 75 million, is as mentioned here. Then we have had a lot of attention during 2024 and the beginning of 2025 in balance sheet improvement, and substantial actions have been taken, like Scott already alluded to. We issued a new bond, this 350 million bond, which now matures in 2030. That was issued very successfully in December. And since the end of the year, some actions that can't be seen here yet, because they happened after the closing of the full yearbooks, but we have already repaid 150 million of this 250 million term loan that can be seen under 27. We are also contemplating a bond tender of our nearest term, a bond, 350 million. A bond we are contemplating to buy back or tender 100 million of that bond. And rationale, the reasons behind all of these activities is naturally to to reduce the refinancing concentration that appears between 26 and 27, and to increase and lengthen the weighted average maturity of our debt portfolio. And we have been very successful in doing that so far, and now the weighted average maturity of our debt portfolio at year-end was 3.4 years, and weighted average interest rate also at the end of the year was 3.6%. The key credit metrics can be seen here, loan-to-value in terms of IFRS, the net debt to EBITDA, which can be seen here 9.3 times, interest cover ratio 2.7 times, still ample headroom compared to our covenants and other metrics, but naturally somewhat lower due to the fact that the interest rates have increased just like for every other company. And that concludes my part of the presentation. Back to you, Anni.

So, we will be opening the line for questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Simon Mortensen from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. I have one, basically two, three questions. One is on the leasing activity. On page eight in the report, you're stating the leasing activity with the leases started and ended. As I can look on my figures, it looks that you have 93,000 square meters ended for the year and 50,000 square meters ended in the quarter, representing basically 9.3% and 5.1% of the total gross lettable area, given the size of these terminations or ended leases. Could you please give us a bit of coloring on the leasing activity data here?

I'm sorry, Simon. I'm not sure I followed the question. Could you try that again for me?

The leasing activity on page 8 in your report states that 200,000 square meters in leases started, but number of leases ended is 293,000. A very big gap in the number difference between the started and ended leases compared to the size of the portfolio. Could you please give us a bit of color on that large deviation in what will then be looked at as net leasing activity?

I think it's really a timing issue. We've got, as mentioned, we leased 173,000 square meters of space. Not all of that comes online right away. It happens over a period of months. So I think this is simply an issue of when these leases actually kick in. As you saw, our occupancy actually increased slightly, and... Yes, and they are not necessarily the same spaces, so it can happen that there are the impact of disposals. Exactly. So you've got some centers that are coming in and out of the portfolio at the same time. So there's a lot of moving parts that go into those numbers.

We will review this in detail and we will answer you, but the overall leasing performance was... Okay, thank you.

Also in the upper earnings, just for some one-offs, admin costs and other restructuring costs, it seems, 250 million, just give us a bit of the impact of those, what to expect going forward, what we will see more of this in the course to come, and what accounting line will these cost charges in the P&O?

First of all, I would like to highlight that in 2025, EPRÄ has changed the definitions of EPRÄ earnings. And now the standard, if you like, EPRÄ earnings already is after hybrid interest. So, this will be different. So, EPRA earnings will be including hybrid coupons and costs. But then the real question that you asked was about restructuring. So, of course, the company had quite substantial restructuring during 24, and we don't expect that to continue on the same level in 25.

Yeah, I think, Simon, just to piggyback on that, We dramatically reduced our head count. I think at the end of last year, we had something like 208 employees or slightly higher than that. And we currently have approximately 150 employees, so quite a significant reduction in the size of the workforce here. Obviously, associated with that are severance costs and other factors which cause that expense to be higher in 2024. As mentioned in my comments earlier, we anticipate, now that we've kind of got that behind us, that the run rate for GNA would be something like 23 million for 2025 and moving forward.

know closer to about 10 percent of our uh our nri is is where we're shooting for um hopefully that answered your question yeah he does thank you i've actually done uh last question from my tag at the moment is the divestment target if you can give any indication on which market uh or we are looking to divest the most assets What we have seen is not been that much sold assets in Finland recently. Is that to be expected going forward?

Yeah, I think we're going to continue to do what we've done, which is sell quote-unquote non-core assets. As mentioned, we had a pretty good year. We sold over $350 million in 2024. Those, as you rightfully note, were primarily located in NORWAY AND ALSO WE SOLD A LARGER ASSET IN ESTONIA. WE DO SEE THE MARKETS STARTING TO OPEN UP MORE IN FINLAND AND ANTICIPATE THAT WE WOULD HAVE A NON-CORE ASSET IN FINLAND THAT WE ARE WORKING ON CURRENTLY. And as mentioned, we anticipate, based on our pipeline right now, about $250 million of sales this year. We are still on target to hit the larger number, the $950 million that we outlined previously. But I would point out that we are, because of the strong liquidity position we have currently, We're trying to pace out these sales and be a bit more patient. We still anticipate hitting that in 26, but unlike where we had indicated previously, it would be the beginning of 26. It'll be later in the year in 26. Again, we're trying to just be thoughtful about how much cash we're taking in and making sure we have everything lined up to deploy that cash effectively.

Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions for now.

The next question comes from Othman Eyal Iraki from Fidelity International. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thank you for answering my questions. I have two questions more on the fixing website. Would you consider a new bond this year like you did last year? It's not really on the card. So that's my first question. And my second question is in regards to your S&P ratings. Given the pressure you have on the rating, are you still confident that you will be able to protect the investment-grade rating going forward, especially thinking about the ICR metric going forward? Thank you very much.

Yes, as you have seen or you heard me saying, we have been very active on the refinancing front and we are of course comparing the bond markets to other markets including bank term loans and others. it's likely that we will continue either issuing bonds or raising money via the bank loan markets, but whether we will choose the one or the other is too early to say, but this improvement of balance sheet will continue and the improvement of loan portfolio and extension of loan portfolio will continue, that's for sure. Then about rating, we fulfill most of the S&P metrics for an IG company and we continue the discussions with them. and the discussions so far have been very constructive, but of course there are no guarantees that this will be the case in the future, but investment grade ratings are very important to us and we will continue to defend them, but it's of course their decision, whatever they they will want to do with the rating. But I would like to remind you that the disposals are particularly conducted to improve the rating and improve the balance sheet. We stopped dividend payments for 2025, thereby strengthening the balance sheet. We have extended the weighted average maturity. We fulfill S&P metrics in weighted average maturity. The ICR, we don't have an issue currently with the interest cover ratio. We fulfill very nicely the requirements for an IG rating. So, this is the overall status.

Okay, that's super helpful. Thank you very much.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Robin Ussen from Neuberger Berman. Please go ahead.

I have a couple of questions for you this morning. First one on your asset disposal target of 250 million for this year. I've noticed that your assets head for sale currently have decreased materially to only 81 million euros. And actually, I noticed in particular that the Swedish shopping centers are not head for sale anymore. So can you just maybe explain this? And then my second question relates to valuation. It's been... I think three years in a row that your internal valuation in Q1 and Q3, Q1 to Q3 lead to positive revaluation during the year. And then the one in Q4 that is connected externally lead to a significant negative revaluation. So I'm just curious, what isn't working internally and are you going to try to do something to fix this?

So I will start by which... What do you want to...

I mean, the health for sale.

Yeah, the health for sale, sorry, yes. I nearly forgot the first question because I was so concentrating on the second question. Health for sale reflects now two smaller assets. And the health for sale definition, it's like an accounting definition which you need very strictly to go through with the auditors. and you need to pass certain tests. And of course, from the company's point of view, it's not even very nice to show assets as held for sale, because then it becomes quite public and so on and so forth. But this should not be read as an indication that we are disposing Less, of course, there are sometimes situations when an asset we don't want to continue the negotiations for whatever reasons or right now it looks less likely than it looked at that point of time. But still, and having said that, we have active negotiations and As far as I can see right now, it looks pretty promising that we will be able to sell as it's in accordance with our overall targets.

Yeah, I think I would piggyback on that. That's exactly right. We actually exceeded the target we had set for ourselves in 2024. And given the fact that we see more liquidity in the market and more activity very confident in the 250 million Euro target that we have identified, and that's how we've kind of planned our year internally.

Yes, and then the other question. The property markets or the valuation markets were more negative than we forecasted a year ago, or the development was more negative, particularly the expansion of yields was bigger, like I said, on average 20 basis points. And as you know, we do the quarterly valuations more or less ourselves, but we never touch the yields. And the positive valuation in 2024 reflects the fact that our cash flows improved and our rents increased, so we... In our own valuations, we added those parameters, but the parameters that were updated at the end of the year were the yields. There was some minor adjustment of yields as well, like a widening of yields in Q2, if I remember. But more like a thorough review of the yields happened by the appraisers at year end. So this is what impacted for 24, that there were in between increases and at the end of the year a loss.

Yeah, I think, you know, it just... reflects the fact that our market rents continue to grow, and so each quarter, as Errol mentioned, when we do the internal review, we do not look at yields. We only look at the market rent component, and then the appraisers opine if yields have moved over a certain level. And so we were relying on that from the appraisers for the first three quarters. Q4, the appraisers widened the yields more than we anticipated. However, as Zero mentioned earlier in the call, We seem to be in the Nordics here. We seem to be a bit behind the continent in terms of yield movement. And I suspect that the improvement in yields that you're seeing on the continent should find their way to the Nordics in 2025.

Thank you very much. And if I can just squeeze in that question, maybe you're not guiding for direct operating profit this year? Is there a reason why?

Well, we just think that the earnings or earnings per share is the one overall metric that covers it all, so there is no special wisdom otherwise in that, and we are, of course, going forward also happy to discuss with you operating profit, but we thought that that's like a more all-encompassing metric to guide markets, and we guide the markets both with and without the hybrid costs, because we think that it's fair to show it in two ways.

Are you able to comment orally on the expectation of direct operating profit for 2025?

No, we have not done that, and it's probably too early, but overall, I would say that we are positive on 2025.

Okay, thank you.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

I would just like to thank everybody for your time this morning, and I also want to wish the team at CityCon continued success. I'm very bullish on the direction of the company. And as I look at 25 and how we're guiding, it feels very, very positive. So I'm excited to see what the company does. And thank you all again for your time.