Entra Asa

Good morning all and welcome to Entra's third quarter presentation. Moving on directly to the highlights. 770 million of rental income in the quarter. That is 63 million below same quarter last year affected by divestments in the past year. Our rental income growth currently then at 4.4% when adjusted for divestments and one offs. Net income from property management of 318 million in the quarter and net value changes was minus 164 in the quarter due to negative value changes on financial instruments. We were pleased to see that the property valuations came out positive in the quarter. leaving us then with a profit before tax of 156 million this quarter. We have seen that our net asset value has increased in the quarter for the first time now since Q1 2022, currently at 160 per share. And we have continued to see improvements in our debt metrics in the quarter. Effective leverage is now below 50% and ICR in the quarter above 2.0. We have had a negative net letting of 76 million in the quarter. And we have also finalized one project according to plan in Malmö Skriveveien 16 in Sandvika. Our board has decided not to use their authorization to pay out dividend for the first half, considering that their key focus is to strengthen the company's balance sheet. The company's dividend policy, however, remains unchanged. So moving on to operations and starting with a few words on letting. As I commented on last quarter, we have had relatively high letting activity in the first two quarters this year, as you also can see from the bottom right graph. Following the first half, we see that our current leads pipeline is less progressed than we would like to see. At the same time, we have also experienced that the activity in the letting market seems to have slowed slightly down in the third quarter. This is also confirmed when we dive into Areal Statistics database from the third quarter, where you can see that the total volume signed in the Oslo market as a whole were lower than what's normal for a third quarter. At the same time, so signings in the quarter came out with 28 million of rental value or 13,000 square meters. At the same time, we have had some large terminations in the quarter. In total, terminated contracts of 86 million of rental income or 27,000 square meters. Out of this, 64 million is related to three larger contracts, leaving us then with a negative net letting of 76 million. With limited new signing volumes in the quarter, this means that our occupancy also is down currently at 94.4%. This is still a high level, however, below our own targets. The higher vacancy compared to historic level is also a consequence of us having rather high renegotiation volumes to work on. And the fact that we are seeing after the pandemic that a higher amount of our tenants are rethinking their workplace solutions and thereby also more open to look into alternatives, which means that we are in a more competitive environment when we work with renegotiations. The vacancy in our portfolio clearly also represents an upside potential for us. 75% of our vacancy is attractive space, and we are very comfortable that we should be able to let this space going forward. However, we do expect also that it may take some time. When we look into the vacancy situation in the Oslo market, we can see from our consensus report that the consensus is that vacancies is slightly up in the quarter, but still only around 6.6% for the Oslo market as a whole. However, there are some unbalances between where we see demand and available space. So on one side, you can see that the large, in the segment for large contracts, there are a scarcity of opportunities or alternatives. This is of course good news for Entra, seeing that this is where we have the majority of our income and is our core segments. On the other hand, when you look at the smaller segment of leases, there is an abundancy of alternatives in the market, meaning that the competition is much stronger in that segment. This is also where we've seen the increase in vacancies, also because of this being the segment where subleases also typically come in. Entra's vacancy is predominantly 80% of our vacancy is in the small segment. So when we work on solving our vacancy, it is in a more competitive market environment. Having said that, we are in a market with positive outlooks and we're confident that we should be able to let our vacant space but were also realistic that it takes some time to solve it and before we see that feeding into increasing occupancies in our numbers The project we finalized in the quarter is in Sandvika, Malmskiveveien 16. It's a building which we have put on top of an existing parking space. It's been rented out for 25 years to a Norwegian high school. And we were very pleased to see that this project was completed on time and at the cost 11 million below our initial project cost. Leaving us then also with a yield on cost of 5.6% compared to the 5% we started reporting on. Take a look on our ongoing list of projects. We have brought down the project intensity as part of our disciplined approach to strengthen the balance sheets. We currently have four ongoing projects. Let me start by saying that they are all progressing according to plan on time and at cost. The remaining capex in this list of projects is currently 1 billion and 80 million. And we have also forward sold the top project, the new one, new build project in Trondheim. Meaning that, and now we've also signed an agreement that we will receive the proceeds from the forward sale upon completion in the fourth quarter of 2025. So that should then feed into our liquidity from then. No changes in the reporting on these projects in the quarter. ESG is a fundamental part of our business model and we work systematically with roadmap towards becoming a net zero carbon company. And we are currently also in the process of aligning our roadmap with the science based target initiative. and we have started reporting on the EU taxonomy and we are also working to prepare to report in accordance with the CSRD framework. For several years we have had third-party evaluations of our ESG qualities thereby also enabling us to capitalize on our ESG qualities in both debt and equity markets. And we were pleased to see that we once again achieved the highest ranking in the GRESP score with five stars, and also got the EPRA gold level for our sustainability reporting. If we move on to the market, first of all, the Norwegian economy is expected to pick up as a solid real wage growth and also lower interest rates are expected to feed into private consumption combined with increased public spending. We have seen moderate employment growth, and also this is expected to pick up as economic activity increases going forward. CPI was slightly up in September and came in at 3.0%. This was in line or slightly below the central bank's expectations. And the key policy rate has now been held stable at 4.5% since December 2023. And the most recent projections from the central bank is that we can expect to see the first rate cuts in the first quarter next year. If we move on to the property markets, as I already mentioned, we have had high activity in the letting market in the first half, however, slightly slower than in the third quarter. And if you take a look at the top right graph, you can see that the vacancies are tied up currently around 6.6% in the Oslo market as a whole, of course, with some variations between the different areas. And the expectations from our consensus report is that it will remain at these levels going forward. As you can see also from the top right graph, the market specialists in our consensus reports expect to see that we will have a positive market rental growth also going forward in the interval between 3.4 and 4%. This is actually higher than what we saw in the last consensus report last quarter. This is supported by the fact that we firstly have seen limited effects from the working from home trend in the Norwegian market. that we are seeing expectations of employment growth also going forward and the fact that we have low market vacancies and that there is a limited new build supply coming into the market and also the fact that the current break-even rents for starting new projects remain above market rents. So it seems likely that we will see limited new build projects starting in the new future. Just a comment on the high new build volumes coming into the market in 2025. This is explained by two large projects. The first part of the new government offices, which are being completed in the next year, and also Construction City, which has been closed to fully let. So the buildings, they will be vacating, will also need some time for refurbishment before they feed back into the market. So the combination of limited new build supply and expectations of also limited new build starts going forward provides favorable environments for renegotiations also going forward. If you take a look at the transaction market, let me start by saying that it clearly seems that interest rates now have topped out and inflation is on a downward trend. Property values are believed to have bottomed out, as also confirmed by our Q3 valuations. And we can see from the top right graph here that the consensus report expects to see that prime yields now should start declining from the next year onwards. And yields are now expected to decline more than what we could see from the previous consensus report last quarter. If you take a few words on the debt capital markets, they are open and available and we are seeing that credit margins already have tightened and continue to tighten. This is of course positive for the transaction market where we also are seeing increasing activity. And when we look into the most recent investor sentiment surveys, we see that there's increasing buy interest and also that office is sticking out now as the favorite segment or asset class. And this is, of course, this is also confirmed on the incoming interests we are experiencing from a more wide universe of buyers. So with that, I would like to leave the floor to my new colleague and our CFO, Ole Anton Gulsvik. I'm very pleased to have him on board as part of our team. The floor is yours, Ole. Vær så god.

Thank you, Sanja. Starting with the financial highlights. As you're all aware, in Q2 we divested our Trondheim portfolio. As such, Q3 comparison to historical numbers has to be adjusted for this transaction and all other transactions in the period. Rental income came in at 770 million. This is 7 million below what we highlighted in our rental bridge in the Q2 presentation. And I will come back with more details on the rental bridge later on in the presentation. Compared to Q3 2023, our rental income is down 63 million. Divestment reduced our rental income with 99 million, and we also had a negative net letting in the period of minus 13 million. This was partly offset by a positive CPI contribution of 32 million, as well as a net positive contribution from our project portfolio of 18 million. Adjusting for the divestment and one-offs, the underlying growth in the quarter was 4.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Moving to the net income from property management. As you can see, this came in at 318 million, which is flat compared to the same quarter last year, but down 8% compared to the second quarter this year. The 30 million reduction from the second quarter is due to less or lower rental income as we divested both the Trondheim portfolio and the Hotel Savoy in the second quarter. And this was partly offset by lower interest costs of 58 million as we used the proceeds in this transaction to repay debt. On the right hand side, you can see that the profit before tax came in at 156 million. However, this also includes negative or was negatively impacted by value changes in our hedge instruments of minus 201 million. And the reason for this is that the forward Nyborg curve came down in the period. Moving to the per share data. As you can see, the cash earnings has been now unchanged at 7.0 kroners per share the last three quarters. The annual growth rate since the IPO is 5%. On the right hand side, you can see how NRV actually came up in the quarter from 158 kroners to 160 kroners per share. And this gives an annual growth rate since the IPO of 7%. However, adding the dividends we paid out in the period, the total return has annually been 9%. Moving then to the P&L. I've already given quite a lot of details on the rental income, but I will give you some flavors on the other line items. Our OPEX came in at 64 million. This is 8.3% of our rental income. Historically, this is in line with the same level, maybe a tad on the lower side. Administrative costs came in at 49 million. And we now expect the administrative costs for the full year to be around 200 or slightly below. Net financials was 61 million lower this quarter than it was in the same quarter last year. As mentioned earlier, we used the proceeds from several transactions to reduce our debt level, but we also have a lower interest rate this quarter compared to where we were one year ago. Changes in investment portfolio. I will come back to this. This is positive. And also I mentioned earlier the changes in the financial instruments is negative 200 million because of the forward Nyberg curve coming down. As a sum, we came in with a pre-tax profit of 156 million as mentioned earlier. Moving then to our rental bridge. As mentioned earlier, our rental income came in 7 million below what we highlighted in our rental bridge in the second quarter presentation. We had a couple of contrasts with a negative outcome, which combined gave us a negative net letting in the quarter of minus 6 million. Looking forward, in Q4, we expect more or less flat rental income compared to the Q3 numbers. In 2025, we have done some adjustments to this bridge. We are taking down the CPI from 3.5% to 3%. And also the impact from net letting in Q3 as well as some negative net letting in Q4 rolls into the 2025 numbers. At the end, you can also see now we added the first quarter of 2026, where we included a CPI of 3.25%. However, there is a couple of larger contracts coming to an end at the end of 2025, which impacts the 2026 numbers. As such, the growth from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 is not as much as the CPI. There has been a lot of questions related to this bridge. I will use a few minutes to just explain how we built it up. First and foremost, this bridge is not a guidance. It just highlights the rental income trend going forward based on the current portfolio, as well as all reported events. On contracts that expires in the period, we assume this will be renegotiated at current terms. And on top of that, we add the CPI as nearly 100% of our contracts are index adjusted. The upside potential in this bridge is that we are capable or able to rent out existing vacant space or that we are able to renegotiate contract expires at higher terms than we have today. And the downside risk here is that contract that expires in the period are terminated or we renegotiate that at the lower terms than it is today. So this is a mechanical model based on the reported events as well as some simple assumptions which is transparent. And it's not include any targets for net letting going forward. Moving then to our property portfolio, we had a positive value change in the quarter of 37 million. And although small, it's the first increase in value since the first quarter of 2022. A notable factor here is that one appraiser actually reduced the yield on certain assets also in central Oslo. CapEx in the period was 330 million, which is mostly related to the four ongoing projects we have. And this gave a total value in our portfolio of 62.2 billion, which is up 300 million from the second quarter this year. Portfolio net yield is 4.97% and 5.71% if you have fully let at market rent. This is more or less and changed from where we were in Q2. We also want to just highlight the significant value reduction we had since the peak levels. On a like for like basis, the values has been written down 19% since the first quarter 2022. And the average property yield has expanded with 110 bps in the same period. And adjusted for higher than expected CPI, the increase is actually 136 bps. Moving then to our depth metrics, which has improved across the line. Our effective leverage has come down below 50% and reduced 0.5 percentage points to 49.9%. As you can see in the graph to the left, also the EPRA LTV came down in the quarter and slided to 53.7%. The ICR isolated in Q3 increased above 2 at 2.01, up from 1.91 in the second quarter. On the right-hand side, we added a new graph, net interest bearing debt to EBITDA, and this has also come down from peak levels after we acquired the Oslo Aal in first quarter 2022. And the net interest bearing debt to EBITDA came in at 11.8 in the third quarter. We expect to continue the positive trajectory on our credit metrics over time, and this is supported by value increases and lower interest rates. Then moving off to the cost of debt. The fixed line here represent the historical cost of debt as well as our estimates going forward. While the dotted line is the NIBOR forward curve. The difference between the yellow line and the green one is that the green is what we estimate today, while the yellow one is a comparison to what we had in our presentation in Q2. As you can see, the cost of debt came in at 4.0%, which is more or less unchanged from the second quarter this year. And for 2025, you can see in this graph that we expect cost of debt to come down compared to 2024. and this is supported by a lower Narber curve as you can see in the dotted line. Another positive note here is that we are slightly more optimistic about the cost of debt in 2025 now than we were in Q2. Moving then to our debt situation. Our net interest bearing debt is unchanged at 31.9 billion. We did issue two commercial papers in the third quarter at attractive terms with a total value of 800 million. In the graph to the right, you can see that we have ample supply of liquidity, and this increased significantly after the Trondheim divestment in Q2. Our maturity profile is well staggered and we have postponed issuing new bonds as we have a significant liquidity buffer as well as somewhat less attractive credit spreads historically. The credit spreads has tightened over the last periods and we are preparing to test the market going forward. So we will be more active in the next six months than we have been in the last periods. Extending bank maturities is also part of our normal business. When you look at this liquidity buffer, we assume this to come down going forward as it's not really required, and we also want to reduce our commitment fees. And with that, I hand it over to you, Sonja, for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Ole. Okay, a few closing remarks. First of all, positive outlooks for the Norwegian economy. We are expecting to see that both the GDP and the employment growth will pick up going forward. Interest rates are believed to have topped out, and the first policy cut is now expected to come in the first quarter sometime. We continue to see favorable property market fundamentals with increasing market rents and also low vacancies and supported by the fact that we have limited effects from working at home in the Norwegian market and also low new build volumes coming into the market and breakeven rents also limiting new project starts going forward. Our property values are believed to have bottomed out. The debt markets are open and available, and credit margins are tightening, as Ole mentioned. Increased activity in the transaction market is expected going forward, and consensus is that we should see prime yields starting to decline slightly from 2025 onwards. Entra has a solid balance sheet with continued improvements of our depth metrics also going forward. We have an effective leverage currently below 50% and ICR above the 2.0 in the quarter. And we see future prospects of rental income growth driven by CPI, our projects, and the rent uplift potential in our vacancy also and in the reversion potential in the management portfolio. So that concludes our presentation for now and we can check if we have some questions and maybe Ole you will join me here if there are questions for Ole also.

We have a couple of questions. The first one being could you provide some more color on the net lettings and the three terminated leases?

Yes. Well, in respect of net letting, as I tried to mention in my presentation, first of all, we have seen that we have less progressed leads pipeline after signing a lot of contracts in the first half. This means that we are of course working hard to activate leads and increase the activity in the letting. But we are also then a bit surprised that we saw in the third quarter that activity in the market also slowed down slightly. It's a bit early to understand whether this is just a breather. We expect that it is a breather, seeing that also that the fundamentals with employment growth also support that there should be good demand going forward. Now, regarding the terminated contracts, the three terminations, a few words on that. They're quite different cases. The smallest of the three is in Oslo, a good attractive location, but it's a downsizing company which has reduced their size. So this is a vacant space, which is very attractive in the market. but we will need some time to solve it. On the second one, it's a case in Bergen where the tenant has actually grown out of their space. This is a tenant which we have tried to find other solutions for within our portfolio. Our letting team has worked very intensely in active processes in different buildings in our portfolio. unfortunately they concluded to move out of our portfolio this quarter and the final one is a public tenant the largest one which is which we had already let out their space so they had to find an alternative because the current space they were occupying was too expensive for them so we have been working intensively to find alternatives within our portfolio having two alternatives on the table and again they chose unfortunately to go to another landlord offering a lower price product than what we had on the table So very different incidents, but a bit unfortunate that they all came at the same point in time. But I think that's also a part of what I tried to explain during my presentation that we are experiencing that tenants are to a greater extent rethinking how to use the office and how to track tenants meaning that they're also more open to alternatives and we are in real competitions and sometimes you lose some that's just part of the business this time we lost three in the same quarter which which is brutal but that's just the way it is we continue to work we have a good portfolio good products But I think also we have to be realistic that the time from you start dialogue till you sign a contract, it takes some time and it takes more time when the customers are rethinking how to sit. So in the good old days, we could roll them on and that was of course very nice, but now we have to work harder to get signing on each contract. That's part of our business and that's what we're good at. but right now we had a few losses.

Is there a timing effect in the net letting where you expect to see more leases signed in Q4?

uh well i i would say that we uh on the general note uh q4 uh is uh an active quarter but as i said the timing effect is based on the activity and how progressed our current leads and letting processes are i do not expect to see a big hike in the q4 q4 we are of course pushing to just to to come to closure but we have to just be realistic that it takes time for the processes to conclude so no big ketchup effect expected in the q4 but we are working with a lot of leads thank you that concludes the q a session for today Okay, thank you all for joining us today. We are of course available for any questions after the presentation and have a great day everybody.