Cibus Nordic Real Estate AB (publ)

Christian Fredriksson here, CEO of SEBUS. We're speaking to you from a sunny but wintry Stockholm today.

I'm joined here by... ...Elena Olofsson, CFO.

So good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this conference call to present the Q4 2024 year end report. So diving into the presentation. This, as some of you know, is my favorite slide because it says exactly what we do with our slogan. I think it really hits the nail on the head with what CBUS does, converting food into yield. So that's exactly what we do and we aim to do and do every day. So we are a real estate company focused purely on daily goods properties. We aim to create stable cash flows and that's why we've selected the grocery and daily goods business as the underlying business that we buy real estate assets in. We've been listed since March 2018. Our market cap is approximately 1.1 billion euros as of yesterday. We're the only listed pure daily goods real estate vehicle in the Nordics. And as you are aware of our announcement from the 18th of December last year and going forward, we have now started to create a pan-European pure grocery player with a pan-European foothold. So we've updated the map as you can see here on the right to include parts of Northern Europe as well through our acquisitions of the portfolio and company Forum Estates in the Benelux, which was closed earlier this year in 2025. We pay a monthly dividend to our shareholders. so um what do we mean when we say these stable cash flows just briefly reminding everyone and ourselves about this we focus pure and daily goods properties stable underlying business stable tenants with the large multicultural multi um national organizations um and then the non-cyclical daily goods business underlying people buy food whatever the weather What you'll see throughout the presentation is the words performer. And that's because we carried out a large number of transactions at the end of the year, which some of them closed earlier this year. So when we use the words performer throughout the presentation, we mean the Q4 2024 reported figures. and then added on the acquisitions we've closed so far in 2025. Those acquisitions being the Forum Estate Benelux acquisition, part two of the Danish portfolio we bought also announced on the 18th of December and the Norwegian acquisition of a single asset outside of Stavanger. So that's what we say when we mean pro forma throughout the presentation. So looking at some pro forma figures already here, 81% of our rental income is from daily goods tenants, and 94% of our 642 properties are anchored by daily goods tenants. And then 99% of our rents are linked to CPI development. A steady world and a steady store location stability through the stickiness of the underlying business. What we have done with the acquisitions is that we have continued to diversify our business. We now have assets in seven countries. We have more than 640 assets, the largest one still being below. This used to be 1.7%. This is now 1.3%. This is still one asset in Finland, a KESCO hypermarket. And we have now also diversified among our tenants. We now have more than 15 of the major European grocery chains as our tenants, as we'll show you a bit later on. Still, over 90% of our leases are net or triple net sheltering us from property costs. And then we still have and will continue to have a high share of our debt hedged, 96% interest rate hedged. So looking back on 2024, it was an exciting and fruitful year for CBUS. We started off the year this time last year by refinancing the whole bond portfolio. In some cases, we halved the bond spreads from 700 basis points down to 350 in the beginning of the year. And we also pushed out the maturity of the first bond to mature to February 2027. That made us come back in acquisition mode. We acquired a portfolio in Sweden and then backed by a feeling of strong support from our investors, we started to strengthen again our cash earnings per share accretive acquisition pipeline in both the Nordics and also in mainland Europe. When the pipeline was strong and solid, we raised a 82 million euro capital raise in a directed share issue, which allowed us to carry out those larger transactions which we had identified. And within three months, we deployed that raised capital by doing acquisitions in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. And of course, all of these transactions are according to our strategy, cash earnings per share accretive. And then a larger and transformative transaction was carried out and announced on the 18th of December, which was the acquisition of Forum Estates in Benelux. It's not only a fantastic portfolio, which matches our portfolio very, very well. They also convert food into yield as their strategy, but it's also a great platform for further growth in the area. And this has also elevated us to a pan-European platform, which already now is giving us some interesting new dialogues on a kind of pan-European basis. So very happy about that. So summarizing 2024, we carried out 11 acquisitions, total value of about 680 million euros that increased our property value portfolio pro forma by about 35%. All of the transactions, cash earning per share, accretive as they were, they increased our earnings capacity per share by 9% per former. And NOI measured as earnings capacity by 37%. And then looking at our expansion pipeline or timeline, sorry, then as you saw, we had steady growth between 2018 and then 2022. We had a period of plateauing between 2022 and then to 2024 when we've now taken off and we're firmly back on the cash earnings per share accretive growth track. Looking more at the quarter itself, so transformative acquisitions announced, seven acquisitions in seven countries in Q4, 185 properties acquired for, as mentioned, Euro 650 million, moving the property performer value up 35%, and as mentioned, NOI increased by 37% year on year, measured as earnings capacity. then earnings capacity per share in the quarter itself without the transactions which weren't closed at the end of the quarter we increased our earnings capacity by four percent year on year that was the sixth consecutive quarter where we increased our earnings capacity and then pro forma the earnings capacity per share will increase to 1.04 performer nine percent year on year We also, during the period, carried out refinancing of our bank loans. We refinanced about 40% of our bank loans. That was at lower margins than bank loans were before and about the same levels as the CBUS average bank margins as reported. We've also raised about 57 million of acquisition financing for the transactions we've carried out and those have been at margins below the average margin within CBUS. I'm also happy that we've continued to have a high share of hedging and we carried out some, in hindsight, great hedging in Q4 2024 at what now look like very attractive levels at 1.90 and 2.06 were the different levels for the hedging we did. So compared to the yield curve or the interest rate curve right now, very, very happy the team carried out those transactions. In the quarter, we also prepaid the last bond, which matured in 2025. That's what we did one year ago when we raised the new bonds to be able to repay the bonds maturing in 2024, 2025. We did that and repaid that on the 2nd of December. And then At the end of the period or in this year, what we did, we have raised a new four-year Euro bond at a 2.5% spread, which is, of course, 1.5 percentage points lower than one year ago, the four-year Euro bond we did in March. So that's an impressive move. I'm happy to see that as well. Regarding dividends, during the quarter, we paid out monthly 0.22 euros per share. And as you've read in today's press release, the board has proposed an unchanged dividend of 0.9 euros per share to the AGM in April. So that's a stable dividend level, but it also gives the company an enhanced opportunity for internal deployment of capital in accretive investments. And then moving to the next slide. This is what our property portfolio looked like at the end of Q4. This is a bit of old news, of course, when Forum Estates and the second part of Danish portfolio and the Norwegian acquisition are coming in. So let's move directly to the pro forma figures instead. So this is our property portfolio performer today. 642 assets, 2.4 billion euros of property value, almost 176 million euros of NOI earnings capacity, a 1.3 million square meters of lettable area. And when looking on the tenant's share of NOI, I think it's interesting to see how the diversification and the tenant's mix has changed. adding a number of European players, as seen, both on the picture on this slide, but also see the names you see there, Cafour, Jumbo, Colreit, et cetera, and Ahol Deleuze, which is Albert Heijn in the Benelux. That's one of their brands. But interesting to see that, for example, our two previous largest tenants are still largest, Kesco and Tokmani. in Finland, they used to account for over 50% of our NOI. And now that's dropped to just above one third. So very many household names of our tenants in the seven countries. So happy to see that as well. And then a bit more on Cebus Proforma, what we look like. As you see, the map has been extended. The red dots are assets which have been closed upon during 2025. The blue dots are closed in Q4 2024. And then looking at the pie chart, how the portfolio has transformed, one can see starting to the top left, the properties per country. You can see that it's a good and well-divided device for property portfolio going forward as well. There will be probably more diversification to come. When we look at the property value by country, it's the same thing there. Denmark and Belgium are fighting for second spot as our largest countries by property value. And then when it comes to NOI income, then you can see that Belgium and Denmark both are about 15%. Looking at our tenants and how the tenant structure is built up, there are two ways of looking at it. One is the pie down to the left, which is called rental income by tenants. So that's line by line showing that 81% of our rental income is from daily goods tenants. And then the pie chart to the right is then by anchor tenant, i.e. which is the anchor tenant in each property. So that's 94% of our properties shown that they're anchored by daily goods tenants. And what's also interesting is comparing these two, you can see that the division is pretty much the same, which means that every single asset is more or less anchored by the same tenant. There's only one tenant, really. in most of our assets. That's what the comparison of these charts show when putting them side by side. And then just moving on briefly to talk about the acquisitions announced in Q4. Won't dive too much into the former state's deal and the transaction, because if you want to read more about that, then there was an extensive presentation on that delivered on the 18th of December last year. So there's a presentation and webcast on that on our website for those of you who want to dive more into that. But an update on the situation is that the transaction closed at the end of January 2025. It's a great converting food into yield portfolio, as mentioned, much like ours, great strategic fit. 149 assets, just over 500 million of asset value, a local team in place, which we are working now integrating and getting to know our colleagues better. So you're having great fun with them. It's a cash earning per share creative transaction from day one, and it's helping us in creating a leading pan-European daily goods real estate platform. In the end, almost 88% of the shareholders or the subordinated loan holders of foreign states offered to convert their loans into CBUS shares. And that meant we issued 13.3 million new shares. We'd taken room to make issues of 14.2 million new shares, as if we did not know if 100% would convert. But we're very happy with the 88% that shareholders converted and happy to welcome these about 200 shareholders and subordinate loan shareholders as new shareholders in Cebus. So the integration process is ongoing. The first time the Forum of States figures will be in our results is of course in our Q1 2025 figures where part of that quarter will include the Forum of States figures as they closed at the end of January. So together, we're looking for more cash earnings per share growth opportunities in the benefit. And then moving on to talk a bit more about the Danish acquisition we announced on the 18th of December. It's a great portfolio. In my view, it got lost a bit in the attention of the Forum of States transaction, which came out the same day. But this is a great supermarket portfolio, which we managed to acquire in Denmark. It was bought from ATP, which is a Danish pension fund who put this portfolio together over a number of years. So very happy to get our hands on this. So 31 properties. It's a modern portfolio. It's 99% daily goods tenants. So it's individual supermarkets spread over Denmark. The acquisition price for the underlying property value was €118 million, which is about €3,260 per square metre. Lease length, almost seven years. The tenants and the brands are Rema 1000, the Netto Group, Netto Stores, and Coop Denmark. Modern assets, EPC ranking 100% are A or B ranked, and it's taxonomy aligned. And then 65% of the assets were built after 2014, and only 5% were built before 2010. So it's a real modern portfolio. The first part was closed in December last year, and then the second part was closed in February this year. Moving on then to the transactions in Sweden and Norway in Q4, then there were three single asset acquisitions, which I think is great that we can show that we're active in all of our markets and we can do very nice cash earnings per share accretive deals also in all of our markets. In Norway, we bought the asset which is on the picture on the right, which is a newly built Bunpris asset. So it's just the bottom floor there in a residential building. We bought that for about 2,400 euros per square meter. In Sweden, we bought two assets, one ICA and one VILIS at a low square meter price of 1,105 euros per square meter. And then during the quarter, we also sold one asset in Engelholm. And this is a smaller asset, of course, it's an ex-KUK store, used to be Netto store, then it was a KUK store. And now we've sold it to a local investor who is planning to have his own business in the store, not grocery, but still paid a good price for the asset. So 2,200 euros per square meter. As one investor put it to me who read the press release said, so you managed to sell an empty grocery asset for double the price of fully left grocery assets in the rest of Sweden. And the answer is yes. So happy to do that. And it kind of also shows how we trim our portfolio and work with assets which are no longer grocery. Our most important metric that we follow is the earnings capacity per share. And as mentioned, for the sixth consecutive quarter, we have now managed to grow our earnings capacity per share. So 4% year on year, just looking at the Q4 figures, and then the performer figures, we have managed to raise it 9% year on year to 1.04 euros per share. So happy to see this continued growth. And now handing over to Pia-Lena for the financial overview. I'd just like to remind everyone that the acquisitions which we've now announced in December have only partly or not at all affected the results that Pia-Lena will be showing, of course, for the fourth quarter and only partly affected the balance sheet at year end. So please keep that in mind when we've carried out so many transactions.