LEG Immobilien SE (LEG) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everyone, from Dusseldorf. Welcome to our call for our H1 results 2025, and thank you for your participation. As our COO, Volker Wiegel, is today in his well-deserved summer holidays, you have today in the call our CEO, Lars von Lackum; as well as our CFO, Kathrin Kohling, who will guide you through the presentation. You'll find the presentation document as well as the quarterly report and documents within the IR section of our homepage. Please note that there is also a disclaimer, which you'll find on Page 3 of our presentation. And without further ado, I hand it over to you, Lars.

Thank you, Frank. A very good morning to all of you. Let's start, as always, with our summary slide on Page 6. It is again all about delivering strong financial IFRS and EPRA results. Our H1 numbers provide clear evidence of that. AFFO is up by more than 15%, FFO I by almost 11% and EBITDA margin sits at a solid 78.6%. Consequently, we are narrowing our AFFO guidance towards the upper half of the original range. We expect AFFO now between EUR 215 million and EUR 225 million. This translates into an again strong growth of 10% for the AFFO in 2025. We are also on track to achieve our operational targets with like-for-like rental growth gaining further momentum at 3.2%. Therefore, we are confident to achieve our target range of 3.4% to 3.6% this year. Both occupancy and valuations have increased with valuations rising by 1.2%, slightly ahead of our original guidance. Profitability has increased, as shown by a stronger EBITDA margin. We integrated BCP faster than expected and realized some opportunities within our value-add business, leading us to raise our EBITDA margin by 100 basis points to 77%. For the first time since autumn 2022, we are providing an indication for FFO I. We expect FFO I to increase to between EUR 470 million and EUR 490 million. This translates into a solid growth of 5%, taking the midpoint of that range into account. Please note that this is an indication only. AFFO remains our core steering KPI for 2025. However, after having passed the valuation turning point and seeing stabilization of values, we follow the demand from many investors and analysts to provide more transparency regarding the development of the FFO I. We consider our LTV of 47.6% still to be work in progress. Rest assured that we will strive strongly to get it down to 45%. The combination of disposals and valuation gains will get us there. As of today, it might be reasonable to assume to get there in 2026. And with this, let me come to Slide 7. You find a graph showing the impact on our financial KPIs, AFFO and FFO I from our cycle management actions over the last years. FFO I because it was the key steering KPI until end of 2022 and AFFO, as it is the key KPI of LEG since 2023. We report both KPIs since our IPO in 2013, and we will do so in the future. Please note that both KPIs are shown on a per share basis and after minorities. We want to be completely transparent regarding the dilutive effect stemming from equity measures. For 2023 and 2024, the sole effect for our company comes from scrip dividends. To steer the company based on AFFO over the last 2.5 years to cope with the biggest value decline of German residential properties after World War II has proven to be right. We expect AFFO per share to reach a new record level in 2025 and FFO I per share to climb to the pre-crisis record level of 2022. The cash-focused KPI forced us to stick to simple and uncomplex measures to preserve the earnings base. We exclusively sold and sell down weak assets and new developed projects, the latter as we consequently stopped the cash demanding project development business back in 2022. Disposal proceeds, the hard to take and certainly unpopular suspension of our 2022 dividend as well as the scrip dividends for 2023 and 2022 provided us with around EUR 1 billion of cash. Still, all measures taken have neither jeopardized our earnings nor our cash flow base. We even took the brave decision to make use of the disposal proceeds in 2024, reinvesting it into growth. We bought the remaining 63% in BCP, a portfolio of not less than 9,000 units and added growth to our platform. At the same time, we successfully kept the cash interest costs low. To do so, we stick to an opportunistic refinancing strategy. Therefore, the average yield still sits at an attractive 1.54%. We are perfectly aware that further refinancings will increase cash interest costs going forward. However, based on today's interest rate curve, top line will outgrow this effect due to increases in rents and growth of the value-add business. Let me now give you some insights on the BCP effects on Slide 8. Despite the complexity of the corporate structure, in Israelian listing and complex financing instruments, we were able to integrate BCP much quicker than originally expected. Growth of the portfolio by more than 25% since 2019 helped to build an outstanding expertise to integrate even complex portfolios. The swiftness of the integration enables the realization of financial and operational synergies. Therefore, the BCP portfolio already contributes to the strong development of EBITDA, FFO I as well as AFFO on a group level in 2025. While originally expecting BCP to have no relevant effect on the AFFO metric, we now project a more significant earnings impact. EBITDA margin of the BCP portfolio should make it to the overall group level already in 2025. Higher investments will have an impact on FFO I and AFFO. Still, we expect AFFO from BCP to contribute more than EUR 5 million in 2025 compared to our initial plan. The successful integration of BCP is, therefore, one of the key reasons for our improved guidance for 2025. Going forward, we will no longer provide you with specific information on BCP as the acquired assets make up for just 5% of our portfolio and are now fully integrated into our platform. There is one exception. We will continue to report on our disposal efforts for the eastern part of the portfolio. To maximize price, we have decided to market regional sub-portfolios instead of continuing to offer the full portfolio. That will take a bit more time, but will bring better prices for our shareholders. Let me dive a bit deeper into the current state of disposals on Slide 10. With transfer of ownership for around 1,500 residential units in Q1, we had a strong start into 2025. However, second quarter sales were strongly impacted by negative macro and geopolitical volatility and ended up somewhat muted. So transfer was limited to 300 apartments. Overall, we transferred 1,800 units with gross proceeds of EUR 143 million and net proceeds of EUR 74 million in H1. Additionally, we notarized the sale of another 300 units for around EUR 37 million. Those units are expected to be transferred by the end of the year and increase the total disposal volume to EUR 180 million, a good result in a still demanding market. We currently market around 5,000 apartments, including BCP's Eastern German portfolio of around 1,350 units. Taking into consideration the progress of different portfolios in our sales funnel, we remain optimistic to achieve further disposals in Q3 and Q4. In all transactions, we continue to be rigorous on the price to maximize shareholder value. We will not transact if our price expectation is not being met. Exactly this is the reason for splitting BCP's Eastern German portfolio. The first round of nonbinding offers for the complete Eastern Germany portfolio showed that the market is currently not open for portfolios of that size. The marketing of smaller portfolios will take more time, but will bring more liquidity and better prices. You might have noticed on Slide 30 in the appendix, an addition of 175 units in Q2 to our portfolio. These units are mainly completed new builds. We have slightly more than 200 units still under construction with completion in the year. And with this, I hand it over to Kathrin for more details on the operations as well as the financials.

Thank you, Lars, and good morning to everyone also from my side. On Slide 11, you find more details on the rent growth per square meter realized in the first 6 months of the year. Like-for-like rent growth increased to 3.2%. And with that, it was 20 bps higher than in Q1. Therefore, we are still very confident to reach our target of 3.4% to 3.6%. This will translate into a like-for-like rent increase for the fleet finance part of more than 4% and underpinning the underlying market dynamics. Rent table increases contributed 1.8%, while modernization and reletting contributed 1.4% to rent growth, bringing current in-place rent for the portfolio to EUR 6.93 at the end of the quarter. Like-for-like rent growth was solely driven by the free financed units with an increase of 3.7%. Rent growth in the first 6 months of the year was the highest in our stable markets, followed by the high-growth markets and the higher-yielding markets. There will be no adjustments of the cost rent for the subsidized units in 2025. The next adjustment will take place at the beginning of 2026. As a reminder, in 2028, roughly half of all our rent-restricted units will come off restriction and will provide us with a meaningful rent increase potential. Current difference between in-place and market rent for the units to come off restriction amounts to 55%. More details on that topic can be found on Page 35 of the presentation. On Page 12, we provide the usual details on our investments. In the first half of the business year, the adjusted investment per square meter increased by 7.1% to EUR 16.51. EUR 16.51 corresponds to roughly 45% of our full year guidance of at least EUR 35 per square meter. So we are on the right track to reach our investment target as investments will further accelerate over H2. The total adjusted investments increased by roughly 11% to EUR 184.4 million. The growth rate is higher than the per square meter growth rate as our portfolio is slightly bigger than in the first 6 months of 2024, mainly driven by the BCP acquisition. Let me briefly provide you with an update on our value-add business on Slide 13. In the first 6 months, these services contributed EUR 26 million to our overall FFO I versus EUR 19 million in the first 6 months of 2024. The growth is driven mainly by our subsidiary, ESP, i.e., the subsidiary which provides energy and related services. The results of ESP benefit from a more stable underlying energy price, but also from a higher volume where we provide heat and energy contracting towards our tenants. Our green ventures will only be reflected once per year, i.e., at the end of the year via the annual accounts given that these are all accounted for at equity. Given the start-up character of those ventures, we do not expect a meaningful contribution on an FFO I basis for 2025 yet. Until 2028, we target a contribution of an accumulated basis of around EUR 20 million. And with this, I come to some financial highlights on Slide 15. Net cold rent grew by 7% or EUR 29.9 million to EUR 457.8 million. The acquired BCP units contributed EUR 24.7 million, whereas EUR 13.9 million were due to the organic growth. Disposals had an opposite effect of EUR 8.7 million. Recurring net operating income grew even stronger than net cold rent. A positive driver was the contribution from the value-add services, as I said. The recurring NOI increased by 9.6%, reaching EUR 383.8 million. This improved the NOI margin, which rose by 200 bps to 83.8% -- the adjusted EBITDA of EUR 360 million translates into a margin of 78.6%, up 290 bps on the previous year and a solid base to increase our 2025 guidance for this key metric. FFO I increased by 10.7% to EUR 241.2 million. Please turn to the next slide, where we will have a closer look at the AFFO. In the first half of the financial year, the AFFO increased by 15.4% to EUR 126.6 million. The strong impact on rent growth was only slightly offset by a moderate increase in net cash interest of EUR 6 million. I will give more insight into our financing profile in a few minutes. The column others with a positive amount of EUR 5.5 million mainly includes our biomass heating plant. On the investments, the rise in spending is in line with our guidance. We are gradually catching up with investments into the BCP portfolio after a short ramp-up phase following its integration and as usual, expect slightly higher investments towards the end of the year. In terms of subsidies, we expect for the full year a total amount on the lower end of our original guidance of EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million. All in all, we feel very comfortable in narrowing our AFFO guidance to the range of EUR 215 million to EUR 225 million for the 2025 financial year. Let us now look at Slide #17 and the outcome of our most recent portfolio revaluation. By now, we feel very confident that the devaluation cycle has come to an end. Following the slight uplift at year-end 2024, we saw a valuation result of plus 1.2% as of June, which was slightly above our initial expectations. In the stable and high-growth markets coming from higher devaluations, the recovery was even slightly stronger with 1.3%. All in all, we expect this trend to continue with a trend line that is likely to rise in a U-shaped way and not in a sharp way. The gross yield of our residential portfolio still stands at 4.9% and is still offering a decent spread to bond yields. The net initial yield based on the EPRA definition is 3.8% -- the average gross asset value per square meter for our residential properties stands at EUR 1,656, ranging from an average EUR 2,261 per square meter in high-growth markets to EUR 1,144 in higher-yielding markets. Finally, coming to Slide 18 and LEG's current financial profile. All our remaining 2025 maturities have already been addressed for quite some time. The remaining debt mainly relates to our EUR 400 million convertible due on September 1, which we intend to repay and where we can rely on our very strong liquidity position. At the end of June, we had EUR 764 million of cash and cash equivalents, including short-term deposits. Furthermore, there are the undrawn revolving credit facilities adding up to EUR 750 million plus an unused commercial paper program of EUR 600 million. We are now focusing particularly on refinancing the 2026 maturities, continuing our opportunistic approach. Technically, 60% of the 2026 maturities are already covered by liquidity or and signed loans. Our average interest rate stands at 1.54% at the end of June and is therefore, below the previous year's figure of 1.66% -- the corresponding average maturity is 5.5 years. The LTV stands at 47.6% at the reporting date, minus 30 bps compared to year-end 2024 and minus 80 bps compared to Q1 2025. As the payment of the cash dividend took place on July 3, it will be included in the LTV in Q3. Investors representing 38% of the share capital chose to opt for the scrip dividend. Due to this high acceptance rate, we could keep EUR 76.4 million in the company to strengthen our cash profile. We also continue to stand by our midterm LTV target of 45% and our ongoing disposal program will support this. As usual, we provide important financing KPIs and bond covenants in the appendix on Slide 41. Let me emphasize that our ICR still stands at a very solid 4.4% and that all the other bond covenants are also with ample headroom. And with this, I hand over to Lars for the guidance.

Thank you, Kathrin. The excellent operational results, the seamless integration of BCP and the attractive financing structure of our group contributed to the presented strong set of financials. Therefore, we were able to adjust some elements of our guidance. Firstly, we expect the EBITDA margin to improve by 100 basis points to around 77% Secondly, we narrowed the original AFFO guidance range towards the upper half in absolute terms to EUR 215 million to EUR 225 million. This translates into an increase of our core KPI, AFFO for 2025 by around 10%. As we have clearly passed the turning point for valuations and see a further stabilization of values, we provide an indication of the FFO I for the full year. We expect the FFO I to be in the range of EUR 470 million to EUR 490 million. This translates into a 5% improvement over last year and will shift earnings capacity towards pre-crisis record levels. I can also confirm that all other guidance items stay unchanged. Kathrin and I are now happy to take your questions, and I hand it back over to Frank.

Thanks, Lars. And with this, we begin the Q&A session, and I hand it over to you, Meruna.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question from the phone comes from Veronique Meertens in Van Lanschot Kempen.

Maybe first on the value-add business. So you mentioned also for the guidance, it probably helped in moving it upwards. Do you see a further opportunity to accelerate this further besides the green thing that you mentioned? And does it also imply an additional investments, which brings me to my second question is you mentioned specifically that FFO I is not a steering KPI in 2025. Can we expect a change in that for 2026?

Thanks for your question. So first, with regard to the value-add business, which was certainly, and I think Kathrin mentioned that, driven by a better-than-expected result from the energy T service company, which we are running and it's called ESP. So the volume which we were able to transact at with regards to contracting has developed stronger than initially expected. And due to our focus of investments into heating systems, we expect that this certainly will be a driver going forward. So next to the Green Ventures, where we are summarizing the earnings impact, and we will show that at the end of the year due to the equity accounting, Decarbo, Renowate and Termios, we also expect that the additional value-add services will grow. And you might have seen that on the split out on the slide with regards to the FFO I contribution from those value-add businesses and services we are operating that has developed in H1 better than expected. And we also expect to end up of those value-added businesses for the full year stronger than last year. With regards to your second question, the FFO I, yes, you are right. So as of today, we stick to AFFO as our steering KPI for 2025. However, and that was, I think, the strong demand from U.S. analysts, but also by many investors to give you as soon as we have reached the turning point in the market for the valuations also more transparency with regards to the development of the FFO I. This is exactly what we have started as of today. We are now providing not a guidance, but an indication for the development of the FFO I, which we expect to end up for the full year between EUR 470 million to EUR 490 million. However, that is not a decision to get back to FFO I for 2026 already because we just want to see how values are developing. If we are going to see a further stabilization of values, yes, that might be something which we are considering. But as of today, we have not yet taken a decision to return to FFO I as our core steering KPI.

That's very clear. And one question on disposal. You've also obviously discussed the Eastern portfolio. How about the rest of the disposals? Are there any ongoing discussions there, especially for North Rhine-Westphalia?

Yes. So the interest is strong. But what we once again learned from the market, Veronique, is that bigger transactions still are not the ones bringing the best liquidity. What we definitely are not willing to do is to give in on price. So therefore, in many markets, we were better advised to split bigger portfolios apart, which sometimes is even bringing us down to selling single multifamily houses. So therefore, we've been a bit slower than initially expected with regards to disposals. However, looking into today's pipeline, it looks good. We have sales in different stages of negotiations. So we are quite confident to see a pickup of sales in Q3, Q4 this year.

The next question from the phone comes from Paul May with Barclays.

Just one question, probably a follow-up afterwards. You mentioned, I think, a number of times that the transaction market weakened due to uncertainty in Q2, yet surely German resi should be sort of an increased attraction during uncertain times. I think that's the sort of safe haven status of the asset class. Is it not more the case that the 50 bps and 30 bps increase in the German 30-year and 10-year bond have had more of an impact and actually have deterred buyers in the market. We're seeing transaction volumes down quite materially quarter-on-quarter, down relatively materially year-on-year, 40-odd percent down on the year-to-date, the H1 transaction volumes versus the last, I think it's about 8 or 9 years, just quickly looking back. So at what point does the weak transaction market and the higher German Bund, which should act as a sort of valuation proxy to some extent. At what point does that actually start to affect the valuations? I know your cap rates actually compressed, I think, in the valuation process, which sort of is out of kilter with what's happening in the sort of alternative market. So I just wonder your thoughts on that. You seem very confident that values are going up, everything is fine, but actually, the data would probably suggest the opposite. So I just wondered your thoughts there.

Thanks for your question. So let me start with the disposal part of your question, and Katerin will then follow up with regards to the impact on valuation. So with regards to disposals, I think it's always difficult to say that there is a one-to-one correlation between the demand for German residential or changes in geopolitical volatility and then just saying, okay, that is a one-to-one correlation that's impacting buyer's decision. Certainly, and I think that is for sure that if you are seeing a change in the underlying interest rates that this has an impact on buyers'interest into German residential. So therefore, I think that definitely will be one of the decisions. Is it the only reason that we have seen a transaction market, which has been lower than initially expected? I doubt it because it was really not the case that we heard from potential investors that they are not willing to dedicate resources towards due diligences. But unfortunately, the willingness to buy bigger tickets has decreased due to the uncertainty. This is what we can share as of today. So for our disposal pipeline, we are quite confident that we are going to see smaller deals happening over Q3, Q4. Will that size up again remains to be seen, heavily dependent on how the volatility, geopolitical as well as macro effects will develop over the coming months.

And with regards to the valuation question, as of today, we still feel very confident that we are on this U-shaped trajectory that we have already talked about quite often now in the last calls also from everything that we see in the market, given the high supply-demand imbalance in the German market. And given the still very nice step-up between our gross yield of 4.9% and the Bund yield of currently around 2.6% to 2.7%. We do still feel very confident that this is a growth trajectory, not a very strong and fast one, but a slow and steady one, as we've always said. And this also is being supported by what we see in the market like from the German lending banks, for example, they saw a 1.2% increase just for Q1. And I mean, here, we are talking H1.

Just sort of following up, I mean, I appreciate it's nice to say we have a U-shaped recovery. But as I say, that was when I suspect booms were moving in the right direction, not the wrong direction. I mean, how do investors think about the free cash flow? Because I think on a free cash flow basis, all for well and good saying your gross yield is higher than the 10-year, but the 10-year requires no cost. I appreciate there's no growth there. But the sort of net yield is, I suspect, probably negative spread to the German 10-year now once you account for all the costs. And we can see that in your accounts. So I just wondered why still this confidence when you say everything you see supports the valuation increase, but booms are higher. I mean the 30-year is almost at record highs, at least in the last 20-odd years, probably not 20 in the last 15 years. and the transaction volumes have reduced. So actually, what you're seeing is the opposite, surely, it's not supportive of that valuation increase. I'm just trying to understand and reconcile the confidence in that valuation improvement. I mean, is it simply you value your assets and therefore, they're going to go up? Or is there actual hard evidence that is supporting a valuation increase over the first half?

So first of all, if even the yield has such a -- takes such a high place in the valuation, as you suggest, the Bund yield has been quite flat over the last half of the year. We started off the year with 2.8%, 2.9% of the Bund yield. In May, we were at 2.6%. Currently, we are also at 2.6%, maybe 2.64% or whatever it is today, right at this moment. So that is not actually indicating a going up yield.

Sorry, I think the German Bund at the beginning of the year was 2.4. We're now at 2.6 at the beginning of the year. 2.367 according to Bloomberg.

In March?

2.63 now.

In March?

In March, we're going on the sort of year-to-date, I mean values have increased. The only valuation you've done is over the first half, you didn't do a Q1 valuation.