Vonovia Se Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Renovio SE Interim Results Six Month 2023 Analyst and Investor Call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants are in a listener-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session, and if you'd like to ask the question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Please press star followed by zero if you need operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to René. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Emma, and welcome everybody to our earnings call for the first half of 2023. Your hosts today are once again CEO Rolf Buch and CFO Philipp Grosse. I assume you've all had a chance to download today's presentation. In case you have not, you'll find it, as always, on our website under Latest Publications. Rolf and Philipp will now present the results and also give a general business update, and we're looking forward to your questions afterwards. With that, let me hand over to Roy.

Thank you, René, and welcome to all of you. I start, as always, with the highlights, this time on page four. First, cash flow, financing, and disposal, which is probably, in the moment, the most important. Our 23 financial maturities are fully covered, and we only have 100 million less to be covered for 24. And this will be relevant only in December 24, and then 870 million bonds matures, so almost a year and a half to go. We will continue to generate liquidity through disposals, not just for the end of 24, but also start turning out our intention to the 25 financial maturities. On financing, Philip and the team has been making good progress with the seamless rollover of all bank debts at this point, plus 1.4 billion of new secured and unsecured loans. So you can see that bank loans are available to us and we make use of them to manage our upcoming maturities. Speaking of liability management, our attempt to buy back bonds was successful as we bought back 1 billion nominal value for less than 900 million cash. What was remarkable to us was how low the offered volume was. Only 11% of the outstanding bond volume was offered to us. And it is probably fair to argue that our bondholders are generally happy with the bonds they own. In terms of disposal, the Apollo transaction has closed as expected, and we now also have determined a value for the call option. which was 359 million as of Q2. Because we feel that this was a great transaction to do, we are looking to repeat something similar and have now identified a portfolio in Northern Germany that is very comparable in size to the Südüvo portfolio. We will continue our sales support at full speed to generate free cash as disposals remain our top priority. Second, which was probably in the past the most important, operating and financial performance. Our largest segment by far, rental, continues to perform really well. We delivered a rental EBITDA growth of 7.8% year on year, which is not surprising if you look at the key metrics. Rents are accelerating, vacancy rates are ultra low, and people are paying their rent in full. Our other segments are more impacted by the overall market environment with higher cost of capital and little transaction volume. Q2 was not much easier than Q1, so for the first six months, we are still down compared to 22, and all of this translated into an adjusted EBITDA total decline of 4.8 percent, and group FFO was 9.5 below the prior year. Third highlight, portfolio valuation. We did a full valuation of our residential portfolio as of the end of Q2, and it resulted in a value decline of 2.7 billion for the second quarter. Combined with the 3.4 billion in the first quarter, we have seen a value loss of 6.1 billion, or 6.6% on a like-for-like basis. While it is too early to make a call on the second half, we are seeing some encouraging first signs in part of the market that could bring some stabilization in the second half of the year. And fourth, update on investigation. When we mandated Hengler, Mueller, and Deloitte as a comprehensive investigation, we promised to you that we would update the market as we go along. Most of the forensic analysis is now completed, and millions of emails have been scanned. And while there are more emails to be reviewed and interviews to be made, the assessment so far confirms three important points. The financial impact seems to be immaterial. There is no indication so far that other parts of the business are impacted. And probably the most important, there is no finding so far about the negative consequence. But again, this is not the final outcome. but this is an intermediate information for you. And this is a handover to Philipp.