Catena AB (publ)

welcome everyone. Today's presentation we will start off by giving a short summary of Q3 report followed by a short overview of our business. We will then proceed to the business update where we will touch upon our current projects. Sofia and David will then walk through the numbers in the financials and sustainability and we will then open up for the Q&A in the end. Next slide please. So starting off with the summary, we continue to report rental income growth driven by acquisitions, projects, and the stronger like-to-like numbers driven by our CPA-linked contracts. Profits from property management increased by 17% in total, and per share, the increase is 4%. The balance sheet is very solid with an LTV at the comfortable levels. Lastly, we recently announced that the zoning plan for logistic positions has gained legal force. This means that we have the possibility to develop somewhat 240,000 square meters of new GLA. Please proceed to slide six for market update. On a similar theme as we've seen in the whole 2023, we are going through a trying macro environment with decreasing consumer confidence, impacting the minority of the segments. We are seeing continued demand for new development, but it takes longer times to sign contracts. And one can summarize it as a wait and see situation. And for the decision makers, it's easier to wait than to say yes. But with that said, the strong players are also keen to have an optimal long-term logistics setup in order to capture future growth and to end up in a stronger position when the market swings back. Once again, illustrating the importance of having the right type of customer as we do have. As we have said before, we can see that 3PL players have their chances to gain their business when other players want to and have to decrease their investment in logistic systems. Another thing that we have talked about throughout the year is our possibility within the energy area. We can contribute with solar panels on our roofs and potentially with batteries, for example, shape peaking and for short stations for electric trucks in the future. We also see that more and more of our customers are looking into some kind of automation solutions to increase their efficiency in their business. Lastly, we are seeing more logistics space being completed this year and the next year, especially around the Stockholm-Mälardalen region. It will lead to somewhat higher vacancies in the short run, but in the long run, we still see the trend speaks for logistics and a higher demand for more spaces. Next slide, please. During the quarter, we acquire a smaller land lot in Sundsvall and a new building in Gothenburg, which brings the portfolio to a total of 131 properties with a rental value of almost 1.9 billion SEK. Next slide, please. Taking a look into our customer base, it's pretty much the same situation as last quarter's. The ICA acquisition, which took effect in Q1, makes ICA our second biggest customer with regards to the contract value. And furthermore, the top 10 customers stands for 45% of the contract value. And as before, logistic and transport together with food and beverage are the two big segments in our portfolio. Next slide, please. Let's talk a bit about business updates. Next slide, please. We have a very extensive project portfolio and it totals to around 3.7 billion as we speak, where 2.2 billion is remaining investments. When all this is completed, we can add about 315,000 square meters to the portfolio. And the yield on costs is hovering around 6.5 percent and for the new projects we are aiming for around seven percent next slide please in an excellent logistic location at the foot of the southern rich near the e4 and with rapid access to the e6 that they announced the property of vans gunastop we are very pleased that the zoning plan recently gained legal force allowing the development of 565,000 square meters of land. Our ambition is to build sustainable, efficient facilities with an estimated lettable area of 240,000 square meters. The land is located in Pjuvs municipality, close to the border with the Åstops municipality and near Åstops southern industrial area. We have been aware of the potential in the area for a long time. We are now seriously establishing logistic positions as a significant new logistic hub there. You should also bear in mind that this is the only available land in the Helsingborg region at the moment. Next slide, please. Another project that is ongoing and one of our latest projects, it's located in Jönköping. And the new facility will cover an area of approximately 33,000 square meters, part of which will consist of a high base storage of 30 meters in height. Katina has signed a nine-year lease agreement with the third-party logistics company, Norways Logistics, for this facility, with an option to lease the remaining space. In the facility, Norways Logistics will handle flows of goods from Granngården, a leading retail company in gardening and agriculture. Next slide, please. And the last project we will present is in Malmö. It's on Lodgatan, very close to the city of Malmö, where we are building a new facility with a total of almost 19,000 square meters. And we have signed a lease agreement with Lekia, who plans to move into the new premises in January 2024. And the building will be certified by Miljöbyggnad Silver. Next slide, please. For the future development, with regards to the land bank, we have had great success, as I said before, in Södra Rehåsen. We are still waiting for the water judge in Stockholm South, but it's expected to be on its way and we assume that it will be decided in Q4 2023. The land bank speaks in our favor to be capable to deliver many new projects going forward, and the total potential of new GLA is somewhat 1.7 million square meters. Next slide, please. Taking a look at our leasing operations, Our letting ratio continues to be high, standing at 96.4%, reflecting a strong demand for our segment, and our net letting was 17 million SEK in Q3. With that said, I would like to hand over to Sofie for the sustainability and financial update.

Thank you, Jörgen, and good morning, everyone. Going to the next slide. Yes, thank you. Our sustainability work continues. We have now reached 37 percent of our electrical area as environmentally certified. Produced energy from solar cells increased by 7 percent since last Q3 and reached over 6,000 megawatts. And we also achieved EPRAS SBB PR goal for our sustainability reporting. And now for some financial update and going to the next slide and over to the income. Rental income for the period amounted to 1.3 billion, a growth of 17% since Q3 report last year. The increase was driven primarily by indexation, acquisitions, and some projects being finalized. The higher rental income increased our net operating surplus with 19% to 1.1 billion. The higher surplus ratio is explained primarily by us divesting old facilities and replacing them with efficient facilities with lower property costs, either through acquisitions or finalized projects. And profits from property management rose 70% to 849 million. And over to the next slide, please. Rental development. The largest positive impact on our rent is our CPI-linked contracts that came to effect by the start of the year, and they were giving a like-for-like growth of 10.7%. Acquisitions contributed with 68 million SEK, with, for example, two assets in Denmark and two properties that we bought from ICA. Divestments made a negative contribution of 32 million, And within projects, the main contributions were, same as last quarter, the completion of the post-null facility and the no-waste facility, both in Helsingborg. And now over to David for some comments on financing. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Sofie, and good morning to everyone. Our equity ratio of 51% is well above our minimum target of 40%. During the quarter, we have witnessed a short-term, in short term, a dramatic shift in long-dated treasury yields on the back of stickier inflation expectations. And the view that we are heading into a world of government debt funding could potentially exacerbate that trend as well. Central banks seems to have set sail now to wait for the market to respond going forward. If rates stay elevated on or around these levels, Catena can still stand firm. The fundamentals of our strategy is set to absorb even higher rates for longer. We have been working with long-term commitment thinking in all parts of our business, whether it's about customer care, property management, or financial strategy. Currently, we hold through Fitch Ratings, a long-term issue rating of BBB-, with stable outlook, and Nordic credit rating also confirmed earlier this year, triple B minus with a positive outlook. Both of them confirming our strong operations and the flexible financial position. Next slide, please. Our financial KPIs holds up very well, and there is a comfortable safety margin to our financial policy targets and to our existing financial covenants. The current market interest rates through Stybar and Kybar sets our average interest rate on balance day at 3.7 percent. Net debt to EBITDA was reported at 7.5 times, and with an interest coverage ratio of 4.2 times, we believe we have been able to mitigate the interest environment in a good manner so far. Given our strong operations and a loan to value of 36.5%, offers us a valuable situation to take advantage of potential opportunities ahead. Next slide, please. During the quarter, we finalized the borrowing from the Nordic Investment Bank with a 430 million loan with death maturity of eight years. We also have issued commercial papers for 150 million. We have arranged for a satisfying liquid buffer, meaning that we can comfortably cover for 12 months of debt maturities should that be necessary. However, we expect to refinance the upcoming 2.3 billion of debt that matures over the next 12 months, where around 50% is secured bank debt and the other half are secured bonds with typically prime assets as collateral. We have several sources of funding partners to work with, and we feel great comfort in these operations. Credit margins in general are good without any major concessions. Additionally, we have witnessed during the quarter an opening in the bond market for some players, and we specifically have received some attention from investors, which I believe is a valuable signal on our sound business model. Next slide, please. And on the interest sensitivity during the quarter, we timed to acquire an interest rate swap for 500 million with a fixed rate of around 3% with a maturity of eight years. Our consolidated interest maturity structure implies we have currently 65% of total debt hedged with an average term of three years. Our derivatives portfolio and fixed interest loans combined have a mix of maturities up to 10 years from now. The interest sensitivity implies that if short-term market rates would move out another one percentage point momentarily from here, we would still be able to keep interest coverage ratio comfortably well over three times. Thank you, and back to you, Sofie.

Thank you very much, David. And a few words on our capital deployment. During Q3, we acquired the first of two, a property in Kungsbacka south of Gothenburg at a value of 113 million. Total investment in acquisition so far are 1.2 billion. We had one small divestment during Q1 and property in Boreås of 9 million. And our development capex ended at 441 million during the quarter. These investments are mainly related to our large ongoing projects with El Gigante in Jönköping, Menego in Landvetter and with Lekia in Malmö. Total development capex for the year came to 1.4 billion. And next slide, please. With regard to property valuation, we registered write downs of 603 million by the third quarter. The write down was driven by higher yield requirements, which were partially offset by renegotiated leases and some successful projects. The average weighted valuation yield for the portfolio is 5.6% by the end of the period. And so far, 77% of our portfolio has been externally valued. The EFRA net initial yield came to 5.3%. And now, over for some closing remarks from Jørgen. And next slide, please.

Thank you, Suflea and David. Two takeaways from Catena's Q3 can be summed up. The first is that Catena has very strong fundamentals and continue to deliver profitable growth. Second, our extensive pipeline of projects in combination with a very strong balance sheet gives us a lot of possibilities in the coming years. And with that said, we would open up for Q&A.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from John Vong from Kempen. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning team. Thank you for taking my questions. There has been some pressure on your occupancy over the past three quarters. Of course, this comes off a super high level. But how do you see this going forward, also given the small oversupply that you're seeing in some submarkets?

Yeah. Morning, John. Good question. We do see that till next quarter, we are rather positive that we could maybe go up a bit again in the letting ratio, all else equal, what we can see now and what we have on the table, so to speak. What will happen in the coming years? Well, it's very interesting to see, as I mentioned, as you know and all know, that there will be some oversupply in some parts of Sweden, but not all of the parts. We are pretty confident with our situation. We also know that the competitors with vacancies are expecting rather high rent levels. So we are actually competitive in those discussions with our existing customers, existing premises. So I'm not concerned about our letting ratio will be trending down more in the short term or not even in the long term for sure, but one could think that in the short term it should go down a bit more regarding the trend, but I don't think so.

And when you're saying rather high levels for the vacancies, what exactly is the difference compared to your sitting rents and how does it, for example, compare to market rents? Do you still see market rental growth in those sub markets?

I mean, there is a huge player, Panattoni, everyone knows them. They acquired land on the peak, the price peak. They also kicked off a lot of projects during the peak of construction costs. With that said, they need to have high rents to do a profitable project. And we do not have the same same requirements in our projects or in our existing premises. So with that said, I don't think that our customers will move out to move into something cheaper. If you follow me.

Yeah, that's clear. And that basically also implies that it doesn't necessarily impact your decisions on your own land bank, given that you have quite a large land bank in the south of Stockholm, of course. And you previously mentioned that the oversupplies in the Mälardalen region.

Yeah, it's more specific in Enköping, Eskilstuna, Rosåsberg. We do see that Stockholm South will be a very interesting area once the water judge is in place. But we also, as you know, we do not kick off any aggressive speculative projects right now we we have the network with the customers and With that said I'm not concerned that we could not present new projects in Stockholm South going forward I'm very very hopeful that we can have something in there sooner or later Okay, that's very clear many thanks that's it for my side I

The next question comes from Marcus Henriksen from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Maybe this has already been discussed, but the question on the ICA property in Gothenburg where they decided to leave their premises. I just want to check, do you get any any one-time break-up fee? I see that there is seven-year leases. Do you know when IKA is moving out of the premise? Thank you.

Good morning, Marcus. Good question. I think I have received quite many calls from journalists and people who are concerned about the lease agreement. And as you said, it's seven years remaining. We have had as many phone calls from players who want to be a new tenant in that building. So I'm rather confident that we will have a fantastic solution sooner or later with ICA, Catena and a third party. In the region of Gothenburg, there are no chill areas to pick up for any players. But we have no details. We haven't discussed details with ICA yet. That will be a later question.

All right. Thank you for that. Then I think John had some questions there on the oversupply in the market. I just want to follow up a bit on the yield on cost. You highlighted that you're currently at 6.5% and expect that to increase to 7%. You also highlighted that maybe the Bokasjö acquisition since they have another way of doing projects that we could actually come slightly above seven. Shouldn't high competition lead to lower project margins? Could you elaborate a bit on that?

Yeah, good question. Like I tried to say before, that it's depending on where you are, which region. I mean, I couldn't say... that we are aiming for above 7% kicking off a new project in Enköping where there are many square meters vacant at the moment. But to achieve 7% or more on Stockholm South, I feel perfectly fine with. So that's totally depending on where you are and what the supply is at the moment.

Thank you. Then a bit on which type of tenants that are more prone to continue to invest in new capacity in the current uncertain market. You have, for example, no waste, but could you be a bit more elaborate on different sectors or different type of segments where you continue to see potential investment?

I would say that if you look into our customer portfolio and take the top 10 customers, And then you add on some new customers, rather strong players. I would say that's fair to assume that those players are looking into more capacity going forward.

All right thank you and then you highlighted that you potentially see an uptick in occupancy next quarter but do you see any do you see fewer rental requests from tenants in the market or is it stable or what type of signals do you hear from potential tenants?

Well, there are questions. They're pretty much on the same level, but also, as I said before, it takes longer time. It's a bit more of wait and see. But in the vacancies we have, it's also, we are talking about not that many square meters, and sometimes a tenant move out. another one movie and it's a part of the daily business and it's how can I say it it's not a dead market it's a pretty much normal about this daily rental activity all right thank you for that those were my questions have a nice weekend pick as a reminder if you wish to ask a question please dial star 5 on your telephone keypad

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

Well, thank you very much for your listening to this financial call and we from Catena wish you all a very good weekend. Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you, goodbye.