Logistea AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to the presentation of Logistea's year-end report for the year of 2024. As usual, myself, Niklas Huckeman, CEO of the company, and Philip Lövgren, CFO of Logistea, presenting. As always, happy to take any questions after the presentation. At year end we have 143 properties at a value of roughly 13.2 billion SEK. Rents per square meter stay low at below 700 SEK and the occupancy still had high at almost 97%. The LTV continues to be below 50% and the NRV per share is today at 15.3 SEK. 2024 has been a very busy year for Logistica and worth highlighting are, of course, the merger with KMC that took place during the summer, which transformed Logistica in many aspects. We have more than doubled the property portfolio. The market cap has increased by 189%. And this is an important factor when it comes to attract more investors and more investor types. NOI in the run rate is 890 million SEK, which is an increase by 168% only in one year. We have increased the income from property management per share by 22% to one krona. Obviously, we've done a lot when it comes to refinancing. And just after the merger in the summer, we have reduced the average interest cost from or to 5% from almost 6%. We have refinanced a secure bond at a margin of 5.15 with an unsecured bond at a margin of 2.75. We have been included in the EPRA index and we have also seen a positive net letting for the full year of 5 million SEK. Six months following the merger, we can see that the rationales behind the merger were true. We reduced the central administration cost per square meter. We're looking to invest in several Nordic countries at the moment. and the deal flow is massive. We have reduced the financing cost of 61 million SEK per annum post the merger. We have more bank contacts, enabling us to grow in several markets at good financing terms. The liquidity in the share has increased by almost seven times if comparing the first half of the year with the second half of the year. We have seen a clear improvement when it comes to interest from both Nordic and international investors into the Logistea shares. And as mentioned, we were included in the APRA index after the summer. We've done two major deals that are worth mentioning. The first one is a Greenfield development signed in Q4. We will develop 31,000 square meters of modern logistics for Intersport, and they've signed a 15-year lease with us at Logistea. The development has started, and we're looking to finalize these projects later on this year. Total investment cost is roughly 200 million SEK, representing a year-long cost of 7.5%. Just a few days ago, we signed a deal where we're buying a fully-let property in Nyköping. The property comprises 45,000 square meters and is fully leased to the municipality of Nyköping on a six-year lease on average. Yield on this investment is in the range of 9.5%. On this slide, we are presenting the current run rate, including the most recent transactions. As you can see, there's been a large increase due to especially lower cost of financing. The income from property management per year and share was 0.97 and one krona per share, if including the next year project that will be completed later this year. The new shopping transaction alone will add 7% on the income from property management per share, giving us a total of one krona seven euro per share. The portfolio composition is similar compared to the last quarter. We still have high yields in all markets and long walls. Occupancy rates standing at roughly 97%. We still have a high portion of triple net contracts at 91%. And as I said, long walls with an average of 9.7 years. We're happy to report positive net lettings in both the last quarter of this year as well as for the full year. As you can see on this slide, Norway stands out when it comes to rental uplift and increased turnover. As for the yields, we foresee these coming down during this year in all of the Nordic markets, and that's following a stronger transaction market and lower interest rates.

Logistia's revenue and net operating income are in line with expectations. We have a 4.5% increase in the like-for-like portfolio looking at the revenue. Apart from that increase, the revenue has been affected by the finalized project in Alingsås, where the new lease with the annual rent of 16 million began in December. The net operating income came out at 216 million SEK, and it's down a percent from last quarter affected by both seasonality, where logistic in some properties are responsible for utility costs, which are higher during the colder months, but also by some rent losses. All in all, the economic occupancy rate declined from 97.4 to 96.9%. The operating margin showing the net operating income in relation to the total income increased to 85.1%. The main reason for the increase is the new property portfolio lease structure after the merger with KMC. If we exclude the rent supplements and compare the rental income with the net operating income, our adjusted operating margin increased to 93.2%. And during the quarter, there's been a lot of activities in the loan portfolio. We bought back the 900 million NOK secure bond, which had had a margin of 500 basis points and replaced it with a 600 million SEIC unsecured bond at a margin of 275 basis points. Together with some bank loans, these activities decreased our interest average interest rate from 5.6 to 5.0% in the quarter. Though these procedures came at a cost of 48 million Swedish, which we in the report has classified as items affecting comparability since it's more of a one time cost. The profit from property management per share for 2024 is more or less the same as 2023. But if we exclude the bond buyer cost, we have increased the profit from property management per share by 18%. Looking at the key financial metrics, we have through the newly issued bond and bond buyback decreased the secured loan to value from 48 to 43.6 percent the interest cover ratio which is calculated on a last 12 months basis increased to 2.1 times and is expected to increase even further with the decreased average interest costs In October, our unsecured bond issued in 2021 matured, which has together with a buyback of the 900 million NOC bond decreased the share of bond loans in the total loan portfolio from 14 to 9%. We are still positive towards the bond market and estimate that we have the opportunity to use the capital market going forward without stretching the loan to value ratio too much. On this page, you can see some of the effects from our financing activities. Bear in mind that we have had an average interest rate of 5.9% post-merger, which has now decreased down to 5.0%. Of the 60 basis points dropped in the quarter, around 40 of them come from lowered margins and the rest from lower EBOS. We are currently working on negotiating lower bank margins even further with existing banks. Also, we are looking into changing banks for loans that came with KMC with a goal to decrease the bank margins even further. Outside of the Nordics, we are considering and discussing local financing setups for our unencumbered assets in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. And the key takeaways are that more decreases of the average interest are to be expected and that we have a good relationship with both existing and new banks, which are eager to lend into our real estate segment. Posing the books of the financial year of 2024, we can look at some of the outcomes for our financial targets and policies and risk limitations. Large headroom for our loan-to-value target coming in at a loan-to-value of 48.1%. Our interest cover ratio is projected to increase going forward. For 2024, the interest cover ratio came out at 2.1% at times. In September, we sharpened and strengthened our financial targets. The net asset value per share increased 15% in 2024, which is in line with our new targets. Also, the profit from property management per share, excluding the one-time effects from the bond buyback, increased by 18%. Finally, the board of directors are proposing to the annual general meeting in May that there will be a dividend of 0.1 kronor per share for the financial year of 2024. The proposed dividend amounts to 47 million and the dividend per share amount to about 9% of the run rates we have to date.

Good. Looking at the future, we see that there are still many good deals to be done in the Nordic markets. We have managed to build a portfolio of almost 14 billion SEK with an increased yield gap over time. The growth going forward will take place with the combination of buying single assets or portfolios. We will continue to do capex investments into our own portfolio. Obviously aiming to do more developments like we've done for NKT and doing for Intersport. And finally, we will continue to spend time on and analyze potential M&A activities. And to summarize, we have presented stable and good results for the full year. The run rate is currently at 1.07 SEC per share, and we're well positioned to continue to grow the business. Thank you.

And with that, we open up for questions.

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The next question comes from Niklas Wetterling from D&B Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I have two questions. Starting off with the Divi, if you can tell us anything more about the decision here to start to distribute capital here to shareholders and not focus on the growth.

Yeah, sure. We have throughout had a policy that we should over time become a company that distributes parts of the profits to the shareholders. The board now decided that this is a good starting point. It's a small dividend. It will not affect the potential or the possibility to continue to grow the company. But it was decided that it's a good starting point and showing that investors into Logistia should expect dividend over time. So a small step, but a sign that we have started to send out dividend to the shareholders basically.

Okay, thanks. And my second question is on the health of the tenants. I noticed you had one default during the quarter. If you look ahead, do you see more risk for defaults in the tenants list or how's the state of the tenants?

In general, one could say that we have had a list of tenants not performing well over the past two and a half years. Most of those tenants are now Call it taken care of. They've either gone bankrupt or they are performing well. So the list of call it bad payers, i.e. paying rent late, etc. That list is much shorter now compared to a year ago. Not meaning that we can promise there will be no more bankruptcies, but from what we can see today, the list is shorter and therefore the risk is slightly lower compared to the previous quarter, we have to say.

Okay, great. Thank you.

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

Good. We just need to check if there are any written questions. And there are a few. How will you fund future acquisitions? Could you consider a capital raise? And the answer on that question is that we have, over the years, been able to in some to some part we pay with own shares in the acquisitions so we're printing shares when buying a property or portfolio that we are continue to investigate if possible we have done a couple of capital race the past two years and it could absolutely be a situation where we find that doable, of course, depending on, you know, how good the pipeline is and how good the transaction are or how much they increase, for instance, NAV per share and the EPS per share. So that could well be for the future that we are looking to do capital raise. Nothing decided, though, I should say.

And then we have a question here. Central administration costs in Q4 is much higher than in the earnings capacity. Why? And is it non-reincurring costs? And we foresee that the central administration cost is coming down. Looking in the current run rate, The central administration cost is based on the budget for 2025. Though in 2024, we had still some costs that we expect to disappear in 2025 or decrease, not disappear, but decrease, for example, admin costs for our Northern European property portfolio. Like for like, rental income growth increased quite a lot in Q4. Why? Yes, we had an increase of 4.5% for the full year and an increase in Q4 as well. I don't see the increase in Q4 being outstanding in any way. It's in line with our expectations. The things that had affected the like for like is, of course, indexations on the leases, but that has been in there since the 1st of January 2024.

On funding, at some point, would you consider a Euro bond issue? Potentially. As you know, we did a non-secured bond recently. At that time, we decided to do it in SEC instead of Euro. But provided that we grow the company, And maybe in combination with more Euro income, it could well be that we consider to look at the Euro bond market in the future. Next one in Swedish, is it more difficult to buy properties when the share price is almost in line with the net asset value? Not necessarily. I would say in maybe half of the transactions, we're paying all cash. In half, we're paying or try to pay with part shares. And as long as we're traded at NAV or above, I think that probably helps the situations. So it's not difficult to find properties as such. We have a very large pipeline in all of the Nordic countries, I would say. We're seeing good deals, and obviously a good example is the Nischöping property. that we just bought at a yield of 9.5%. You know, funding cost in Sweden today is, depending on how long you go, say, call it 4% or slightly above. So it's a massive yield gap. And we're finding similar yield gaps in many of the Nordic countries. So we still believe there are good deals to be done, and therefore, we and you should expect future growth for the company. Next one or one is the vacancy has increased slightly. Is that worrying? Obviously, we never want to see increased vacancies, but we had a fairly large bankruptcy in Q4. A company called DLL went bankrupt. We have managed to sign new leases for parts of that premises, but not all, and that affects the overall vacancies. With that said, we have also signed a new lease with Interspotto of 31,000 square meters. They will start paying rent once we finalize the property later on this year. And we have had a positive net lettings for both the quarter and the full year. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. We're happy with the new leases signed, but obviously we never want to see higher vacancy rates, but we're not, you know, it's not worrying as such. We believe that we're at a stable point and hopefully we can decrease vacancies over time. Another one, can you comment a bit on the run rate in Chinese for Morgan? Of course. So we we have presented first, we presented the as per year end and then we've added the new shopping property and we have also for this quarter added the income from property management per share so you know increasing over time income from property management per share quite a huge increase since the merger to be honest and that's driven by as we said lower financing costs and that we have done a few very good deals and as we said yesterday shopping property that one had seven percent per share which is obviously good What's your view on divesting some of your non-Nordic assets? We are still of the view that the non-Nordic assets will be kept for the reason being high yielding, extremely long leases and the properties are managed outside of of our Norwegian asset management office. So kept for now. Another one on the edits, one on capital raise. Let's see if there's something new. No. We've answered all. Yeah, no, I think we're done. And if anything else pops up after the call, yes, let Filip or myself know and we'll try to answer any outstanding questions. And thanks for your time. Thank you.