Good morning from Prague, here at CTP with an update on the first half of 2025, which has been so far a very good six months. We at CTP say change is opportunity, and we have seen many different changes over the past years, and that has been good for our clients and our business. We see trends of de-globalization to continue, which triggers nearshoring in Europe for Europe, and then in Europe for Europe. It's often Central Europe where companies land. Those are companies from all over the world, but also Asian companies, which is now good for more than 20% of our new business. Most of the new business we continue to do for existing clients, long-term loyal partners who we have built facilities for over the past decades in different countries throughout the CEE, the region of Central Europe, and we continue to do so.
We get still more than 70% of all the business we do from our existing clients. It is very good to have new companies come in as well, many Asian, in particular Chinese companies who have found their ways to Europe in order for them to grow their business and supply their European clients. It has been good in numbers. We've seen one million square meters of new leases, which we've signed the first half this year. One million square meters is 11% more than we did during the first half of 2024, 11% up. We've also been able to sign those leases at higher square meter prices, around 5% more compared to prices of 2024. Looking forward to continuing to see strong leasing activity. It is often the case that we close more deals in the second half of a year. We are positive about the rest of 2025.
Clients are happy, tenants are happy. Retention rates continue to be 85%. Collection rate, that means the money we collect from the tenants, close to 100%. 99.7% of all the rent we charge, we get paid from our tenants. They are very strong, financially healthy companies who grow. CTPark model, so our unique business park concept continues to grow and is very successful. Mostly grow with existing clients and the companies who have been here who continue to grow their business and often, in some cases, started as low-cost manufacturing, turned into a full-scope facility with R&D in-house and logistics facilities. It became real big. We break it down at CTP. We talk about Operator. Operator is our portfolio of income producing. We are at 93% occupancy, similar to what we were before. We've been historically around 95%-93% at 6.2 years of old. That's the current figure.
We have a portfolio now of around 13.5 million sq m. 13.5 million sq m is good for EUR 767 million of rental income per year. That's the 13.5 million sq m portfolio, which we have built mostly. I think 80% of that is constructed by ourselves, and we have also acquired some portfolios here and there as part of an entry strategy in a new market or in order for us to grow our market share, which we continue to do. We have around 1,500 different tenants in all those buildings. That's good. These buildings are well maintained. They're all BREEAM certified, and we look after those properties as if they were ours, which is the case. We continue to invest to make sure that parks and buildings remain in excellent condition.
That means we continue to invest in infrastructure, access to our parks, in green areas, adding amenities and facilities to those parks to make sure that parks remain attractive. Often, I must say, they become more attractive over the years because you're adding more companies and facilities and amenities, and then these parks grow and become a center of activity and business for local communities. Obviously, we team up with schools and other stakeholders, which is good. You provide education as well as workforce to those clients in parks. We add incubators, smaller units, as I think there's more opportunities to build these SBUs, small business units, in different markets, especially in Germany, but also in the Czech Republic and other markets. Often, as a part of a business park, it could also be standalone sites where we develop, I don't know, 30,000 sq m of SBUs in one location.
That's what we're looking into. Maybe that's also the jump to the developer, our second activity. That's the in-house construction company. We build a lot of stuff. We have underway more than 2 million sq m of projects currently. Some of that will be complete this year. So far this year, the first half we've completed and handed over around 224,000 sq m of space to our clients, fully leased. The other properties, most of the 2 million, will be completed during the second half and handed over to the second half of 2025. Some projects will go into 2026. Interesting, I think important to mention is that almost 80% of those projects and developments are within existing business parks. Those are parks which we started, where we bought land, built infrastructure, and we are continuing to add buildings and build buildings in those parks. Why is that so important?
It confirms the success of a park. You already own that land. You have done your infrastructure. It's very nice to continue to add and grow those business parks to become a full-size business park. That's what a park is about. You continue to add companies and different industries to diversify also. When this 2 million is fully let, it will do another EUR 160 million of rental income. We will be around 10% yield on cost as we typically do. The people at the construction teams do value engineering and procurement, of course, but also make sure that we build the right quality for the right price, which then helps us to get to a 10% yield on cost. Upon completion, we think these buildings will be 80%-90% leased. We start and then we continue to build.
Mostly when we start, we have a pre-lease for part of the building or for all of the building. We build a bit of speculative here to also have an opportunity for companies who need something soon. We have something on stock, as we say. Typically we then get to over 90% once buildings are complete. Czech Republic, our home market, and very strong. I must congratulate the team here in Czech Republic. They do a fantastic job. Jakub Koller is at the helm of CTP Czech. He's done a great job. He's been with us for a couple of years now. He started as a leasing guy, and turned into a proper Country Head here. Congratulations to Jakub and his team for the fantastic achievements so far we have seen. In the Czech Republic, multiple parties on the way.
Throughout the Czech Republic, in particular in Brno, CTP's home market, you could say, where also we do things for Hitachi . We're doing some things for Getit, for Honeywell, for other long-term clients. At the CTPark Brno, which is a flagship business park where we also now have more engaged the city, but also the university and the high school, which is good. I think it's next-level business park. It's also a little bit of a kitchen, maybe, Brno, where we develop and invent new property types and new things, which is nice to see that the Czech teams continue to do that. That's good. Poland is good, strong, good demands. Piotr Flugel and his team started obviously much later in Poland compared to Czech. Czech, we've been since ever, since the launch of CTP in 2000.
Poland also only came a couple of years ago with an acquisition of 7R, a friendly local developer, which we knew. We bought most of their land bank with some projects they had on the way. Piotr Flugel and his team turned it into a development machine, and they continue to do one after the other side. They're currently with more than 100 people in Poland, in Warsaw, with offices in Poznań, in Katowice, and in Gdańsk as well. That's good. The Germans are getting there, nice team. I seem to spend a lot of time with them. Two ways or two things we do, two business lines in the Deutsche Industrie, which is the portfolio of properties we bought a couple of years ago, 1.6 million sq m with many, many, many tenants. That is a very different business to our normal new build stuff.
We do both at the moment. We have a couple of sites which are magnificent, are really nice, beautiful opportunities which we've been able to buy because we felt that the market was good to buy in Germany in the past years and that resulted in us buying a site in Mülheim, in Düsseldorf, but also in places like Aachen, Krefeld, et cetera, for our new developments. We have been able to start. We're under construction in multiple sites, more than 20 locations throughout Germany where we actually are either constructing or about to start construction, which is a mix of SBUs, so small units, 1,000 sq m with a loading dock and a door, a showroom, a little bit of a workshop or warehouse in strategic locations, but also custom build and warehouses altogether. We've done some announcements on Mülheim and will continue to do other announcements.
That is also our core business going forward. At the same time, we look after the Deutsche Industrie, which we bought for cheap at that time, but also we need to do refurbishments and the rental growth, which we have been able to do and continue to do. Now also with the new government in place, you see a change going on in Germany and that resulted immediately in more demand for both Deutsche Industries as well as our new developments. Quite positive about Germany. A fantastic group of people based in Wuppertal, most of them, not all of them, more than 100. I continue to go there every second week. We see more opportunity in Germany. Also good to see that some of the tenants we have in Germany are also active in other countries in Central Europe.
There's also a good opportunity to work with them more, to build on those relationships and grow the business together. That's for me so far. Thanks for dialing in and for your attention. I'll hand over to Maarten and of course remain available for any questions you may have later on. Thank you.
Moving on to the financial highlights. The like-for-like rental growth came to 4.9% in H1 2025, driven by indexation and strong rent reversion. Occupancy at the half year remained stable at 93%. Our gross rental income increased by 14.4% year- on- year to EUR 367 million. We continue to reduce our service charge leakage, bringing the NRI to GRI ratio to 98.1%. Annualized rental income increased to EUR 757 million, illustrating the strong cash flow generation of our portfolio. We confirm our target to reach an annualized rental income of EUR 1 billion by 2027.
Company-specific adjusted EPRA earnings increased by 12.2% year- on- year to EUR 199.3 million. CTP's company-specific adjusted EPRA earnings per share amounted to EUR 0.42, an increase of 6.2%. The lower year-on-year increase in the earnings per share is driven by the increased number of shares as a result of the equity raise in H2 2024. Thanks to our backload of deliveries and net development income in the second half of the year, the group is on track to reach its EPS guidance for the year. We expect to return to double-digit EPS growth from 2026 onwards. Now looking at the valuation results. The valuation results in the first half of the year came to EUR 598 million. Of this, EUR 181 million was driven by the construction and leasing progress on our developments, while EUR 374 million came from the revaluation of our standing portfolio and EUR 43 million from our land bank.
Our standing portfolio saw an average 11 bps yield compression, while the EOVs increased by 2.5%. The total gross asset value now stands at EUR 17.1 billion, up 7.2% from full year 2024 and 15.9% year- on- year. CTP's reversionary yields stand at a conservative 7%. We saw yield compression in the first half of the year, but we also expect both further yield compression and positive EOV growth in the CE region in the second half of 2025. In most CE markets, inflation-adjusted real rents remain lower than 15 years ago, illustrating both the affordability of the region for our tenants as well as the midterm rental growth potential. This is also illustrated by the new leases that we signed in H1 2025, where rents were 5% higher than the new leases we signed in H1 2024.
This is also supported by the undersupplied nature of the CE markets, with only half of the industrial and logistics space per capita compared to the U.K. or other Western European markets. We also saw transaction markets reopening across Europe, as there is more clarity around funding costs. Especially on the private equity side, that's funds coming to their maturity, we expect to see more churn. This will further support our valuations, but as well offer opportunities for us. Our EPRA net tangible assets per share increased from EUR 18.08 at year 2024 to EUR 19.36 at the half year, representing an increase of 7.1% since the beginning of the year. Year on year, the increase was 13.5%.
With this NTA growth and our dividend, we delivered a total accounting return for our shareholders of 70% in the last 12 months, highlighting our superior return profile, which is unique for the real estate sector. Now I hand over to Richard.
In the first half of 2025, we secured EUR 1.7 billion of debt to fund our organic growth. We issued EUR 1 billion of bonds directly after our full year 2024 results, seizing the market opportunity of very attractive pricing ahead of the tariff announcements and the subsequent market turmoil. In addition, we closed our inaugural Samurai loan of JPY 30 billion, the equivalent of EUR 185 million. Diversifying the sources of our funding is one of our main priorities. We transformed CTP from a purely Euro senior-secured financing structure in 2020 to a largely unsecured financing structure through bonds, private placements, and unsecured syndicated facilities, consistent with our stable investment grade rating. Adding the Japanese yen market to our funding mix further improves our position, as the Japanese yen market, which is the world's third largest, is competitive at different times than the Euro market.
Finally, we signed a new unsecured facility of EUR 500 million in June, which we drew down in July. We continue to actively manage our funding costs and negotiated margin reductions on EUR 159 million of loans. In total, we have renegotiated or repaid over EUR 1.5 billion of our most expensive bank loans in recent months. This includes the prepayment of the EUR 441 million of expensive unsecured debt in H1 of 2025. The EUR 272 million of bonds which matured in June were repaid from our available cash. Our cash position stands at EUR 800 million. When including our EUR 1.3 billion RCF and the new unsecured loan drawn in July, our pro forma cash position stands at EUR 2.6 billion, more than sufficient to meet our cash needs for the next 12 months. The average maturity of our debt stands at 5.1 years, with only EUR 254 million of debt maturing in 2025.
At the end of the second quarter, our average cost of debt came to 3.2%, slightly up compared to a year in 2024 due to the new funding. Our current marginal cost of funding is close to 3.5% for five-year money. Thanks to our strong cash-generating portfolio, we have a healthy interest coverage ratio of over 2.4 x, while our normalized net debt to EBITDA remains stable at 9.2 x. We expect the ICR to have bottomed out, as we showed during our capital markets day last year, thanks to our market-leading development yield on cost of over 10%. Each euro we invest in our pipeline increases our ICR and decreases our net debt to EBITDA. Our loan-to-value decreased to 44.9% from year end 2024, mainly thanks to the positive revaluation of our standing portfolio. We remain confident in the outlook for CTP. Leasing is strong.
We see nearshoring speeding up in many industries, with production in Europe for Europe continuing to drive demand. Our pipeline is highly profitable, and our growth is tenant-led. Thanks to our industry-leading yield on cost of over 10%, we're able to deliver sustainable and profitable organic growth while maintaining our strong financial position. We confirm our EPS guidance of EUR 0.86 -EUR 0.88 for 2025, representing 8% -1 0% growth compared to 2024. We expect to deliver 1.2 million sq m- 1.7 million sq m of developments this year, in line with our long-term growth targets. Thank you for your attention. We now welcome your questions.
Thank you. We'll now start today's Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question and you've joined the conference call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To remove your question, it's star followed by two. If you've joined us on the webcast, please use the questions box below the video player and type out your question. Our first question today comes from Marios Pastou from Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions and for the presentation. Just two questions from my side. Firstly, on the ERV growth of 2.5%, it feels like it's broadly running in line with last year's levels. Any comment you can make on which markets are driving this performance and whether you think that type of momentum could continue over the second half? Secondly, you now split out the pre-let levels of the 2025 deliveries into both new locations and existing. I'd almost have expected the business to be the other way around with greater levels of pre-letting in the existing locations where you have better visibility. Is this typical of the trends you see? Thank you.
Hi Marios, thanks for your question. Regarding the ERV growth, indeed 2.5% in the first half of the year. We need to see what it will do in the second half of the year. It comes back to the new leases we are signing. We show you also the new leases that we are signing in the presentation, split out by country. If you take into account the market share we have in the Central and Eastern European region, that's quite a good indication of where market rents are going. If you look to the different regions, you see the Czech Republic, and that's no news, sees a bit lower ERV growth or market rental growth because we have been able to increase already a lot in the last years. We have seen some rental growth in the other markets, like Poland.
We see a bit of ERV growth coming too. Same in Romania, actually, for that matter, if you look to the new leases we signed there. There are the different stages that the countries are in in terms of market rental growth. It will always differ a bit year on year, country by country, but on average, and that's also what we set. I think when we gave guidance for this year, we expect to be ERV growth in line with inflation or inflation plus. Inflation in the countries in which we are active is still most countries ranging somewhere between 2% and 3%. That you see reflected in here. We don't see it slow down. Basically, the supply-demand balance remains very healthy. You saw the amount of leases we did, 11% more than we did in H1 of last year.
A good amount of head-of-term signed, which is the forward-leading indicator for the leasing activity we will do in the second half of the year. As long as leasing remains strong, we expect our market rent growth to be in line with inflation or slightly ahead. In terms of the pre-let, and Remon can also comment more on it, it comes back to the risk. Ultimately, if we start a new location, we want to have more security in terms of pre-letting because it's a new location, it's improven. Therefore, we typically require more pre-letting before we start.
If we have an existing location, and that's in line with what Remon has been doing for the last 25 years, we will start building the next building when the park is full, even whether we have a pre-let, yes or no, because we know the location, we know there is demand, we know the tenants. There we are much more comfortable to lease during the construction. That has been our business model all along. You need to see it from a risk perspective. This is actually not different than it was in other years. The pre-let typically on the new locations is higher than it is on the existing locations where we have much more of that comfort, and we'll always start with the next building if the park is full.
Thank you very much for the comment.
Our next question today comes from John Vuong from Kempen. Your line's now open. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you provide a bit more color on the building blocks for the 4.9% like-for-like? Also, looking at your guidance, I suppose it sets 4% for the full year. How would we compare this to the 4.9% as it kind of implies a deceleration in H2?
Yeah, in terms of thanks for the question, John. In terms of the like-for-like composition, it's around 2.5% of indexation. The other 2.4% or 2.5% is from reversionary capture. We have a 14.9% reversionary potential on the portfolio. It's the part of that that we were able to capture in the last six months. We're running ahead of the guidance, and we will do everything that we can to make sure that we stay ahead of the guidance.
That is always, of course, a bit timing. In which half year or in which quarter you capture the reversion. In Q1, as you might remember, the like-for-like was a bit lower. We'll see, like Richard said, of course, we target to be higher, but the 4% was based on what we saw in terms of full-year impact when we gave the guidance at the beginning of this year.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you. Just on your geographical exposure, I think I suppose you cover quite a fair share of the land between the Black Sea and the North Sea. There's also quite some countries in Europe that you're not active in. How do you look at entering new ones and perhaps what are your criteria for entering new ones?
Look, we are in, as you know, John, we are very much focused on our returns. Return requirements are leading. It comes back to the tenants. Do the tenants ask us to be active in certain countries? Because also, if you look historically, that has been one of the main drivers for us to expand into new markets. Tenant-led expansion. Tenants asking us, can you also do something for us in Romania? Or tenants asking us, can you do something for us in Poland? To take the Poland example, we were not active there for a long time, as you know, because we could not make our returns. As soon as we saw the opportunity with the higher interest rate environment where we are in to make those returns, we entered the market. That is also how we look at other European markets.
There are a few large markets in which we are not active in Europe. We are not active in the U.K. We are not active in France. We are not active in Spain, in Italy. Tenant demand and returns, that are the two main indicators. Of course, some markets we would consider expensive, U.K. for that matter. If you look at capital values there, it is not likely we will go there. All those factors are feeding in there. Maybe Remon also wants to comment more on that.
Yeah, sure. I agree with what you said, Maarten. On top of that, you can also only do one thing at a time. With that, I mean we have entered some new markets in line with what we said before the IPO. We said we would do more in Western European markets. We did the acquisition of that portfolio in Germany. Since then, we have been able to buy more land sites. We built a team. Now it's very much a focus on getting permits so that we can actually start to develop on the land we have bought in Germany and also get more rent out of that Deutsche Industrie portfolio. I think that's what you need to do. You need to also give your organization the opportunity to grow and take some time to get up to speed before you take the next step.
I think that's one thing which I would add to what Maarten said. Another thing which I would add is that we are constantly looking at opportunities of where shall we go. Shall we go to a new market, and if so, what for. We constantly do active market research. We are keeping our eyes and ears open to make sure that we don't miss out on any opportunity, in line with what we can do financially, in line with what we can do operationally. Yes, I think, yeah, we will, we don't stop with operating in 10 markets. That's not the plan.
The plan is clearly to continue to develop a strong platform with a very strong business model and a proven concept of full-service business parks with a variety of different property types and a unique system of managing the tenants and the parks as we do with all the amenities, et cetera, et cetera. That model has proven to be very successful. We constantly improve and fine-tune, but it's definitely a product which we think in other countries will also be successful. Ultimately, of course, you will continue to grow and extend footprint in different markets going forward. Definitely. Yeah, that's absolutely the plan.
More later to come.
Okay, that's clear. All right, we'll see. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vivien Maquet from Degroof Petercam. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Two questions on my end. First one is on the deliveries. I think that you deliver with 100% pre-lets. You're very confident about the letting, looking at the head of terms. Finally, I think that you are pre-let above last year's in comparison. Are you confident about delivering, I would say, at or above the upper end of the 80%, 90% pre-let guidance at this stage?
Yeah, thanks for the question. Look, I think we always target to do 80 %- 90%. If we can achieve more, we will always try for that. The first half was exceptional with 100%. Don't expect us to keep that going forward. In terms of the comfort for this year, Maarten mentioned earlier the increasing number of HoTs that we're signing, which is basically when we've reached the commercial agreement with the tenant, but we're moving forward to sign the formal lease document, which normally takes a couple of months. We're seeing those increasing. Yeah, we remain confident in delivering the 1.2 million sq m- 1.7 million sq m. We'll see how that tenant demand continues, but we would expect to be comfortably within that and delivering comfortably within the 80 %- 90% pre-let range.
We're just continuing, as Maarten said earlier, continuing the long-term pattern that we do, build buildings next to the ones that we already have and mostly lease them to our existing tenants. It's a business that can repeat organic and deliver organic growth on a very regular basis.
All right. To that extent, is it an element that will refrain you from narrowing the delivery range? I would assume that you have much more visibility into H2, which could have, I would say, led you to narrow the EUR 1.2 million -EUR 1.7 million, which is still really quite large.
Yeah, look, I mean, I hope you can join us on our capital markets day in Wuppertal and the Ruhrgebiet in late September. I think we'll be looking to narrow the guidance then.
Thanks. One final, more technical question on the current income taxes. If I look at the share that is included in the EPRA earnings, it's way down compared to last year. Could you maybe just give a bit more detail? I could not find it in the full report either.
Yeah, it was driven by some one-offs, which we can recover. Maybe it's better that we take it offline. I can send you some of the details because it's indeed quite technical.
Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Suraj Goyal from Green Street. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning all. Thanks for taking my question. We've been seeing the nearshoring trend for a while now, benefiting from Asian occupiers relocating to Europe to serve Europe. The leasing rate of growth for the Asian occupiers looks to have slowed somewhat in the first half of 2025. Is there perhaps a ceiling that you're approaching? I just want to hear your thoughts on that. If this recent deceleration continues going forward, how would that impact your ERV growth, if at all, as well as the like-for-like guidance?
Yeah, I wouldn't characterize it as a slowdown, particularly. There's always a little bit of volatility around any of the leasing numbers when you deconstruct them into ever smaller component parts. Asian tenants have been running around 20% of our new leasing for the last year and a half. They continue to be that. There will always be a bit of volatility on a quarter-to-quarter basis. We don't see any reduction in demand, particularly from Asian tenants. I'll let Remon talk to his recent visit to Asia on that. I wouldn't particularly overinterpret one quarter or one half into a long-term trend. The long-term trend for nearshoring is going to remain intact. It's very clear now that we are in a world with higher trade barriers, which will mean less global trade, more local production.
Europe represents 25% of the world's GDP, so manufacturers will need to produce their products in Europe to sell competitively in Europe. We would be confident in that trend continuing for quite some time.
Yeah, Richard, I can add to that that we see more demand. Also, as you can see, we've done more deals first half this year compared to last year, 2024, over the same six-month period. With regards to the travel and the context with Asian companies, as you know, we have an Asian team. We have a Chinese team, people who are in Europe as well as in China in order to make sure that we are close to Chinese companies, help them, support them in the decision-making and guide them, make sure that they get the proper support to set up the business in Europe for the European clients. That's happening. There's more to come. We've only seen the beginning. I think it's going to be much bigger. That's what I feel. We have a number of projects under construction, as you know. That also attracts suppliers.
It also works as a kind of confirmation, as a reference. I think there's way more to come. Chinese, but also Taiwanese. We have been working for Taiwanese companies for a long time. Currently, we have under construction multiple projects for Taiwanese semiconductor business related in Germany, in Aachen, in Brno, Czech Republic, where there's the cluster of Taiwanese semiconductor related businesses. There's another cluster in Dresden, Germany, where we have been able to buy two land sites, where we're currently in a zoning and permitting process. On a daily, weekly basis, doing different proposals. I'm meeting on a weekly basis Chinese potential clients. We expect a lot from that. There's different sectors. Maybe we should talk about Asian companies setting up business in Europe. That's definitely happening. There's certain industries. I refer to Germany.
There you see clearly from the defense industry, there's demand from defense industry-related companies who are looking for space. That's clearly happening. Also, energy, also for Germany. The Mülheim project, we announced E.ON as one of the first tenants. We will soon announce another tenant for Mülheim. You could call it an energy park. The second tenant for that project is also related to the energy sector. Energy, defense, semiconductor, and also data center supply, pharmacy is strong. Pet food, we referred to that earlier, is strong. E-commerce is still in Central Europe growing. There's all kinds of different industries, which, yeah, which there is lots of opportunity out there. Not slow down. No, there's not a plan. The plan is to continue growing. That's what we see from the market. Good demand.
Thanks, that was very clear. It's helpful.
Our next question today comes from Frédéric Renard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line's now open. Please proceed.
Hi, good morning. I just wanted to come back on ERV and what you show in the presentation. Can you give us a bit of detail on geography? I mean by that namely Hungary and Poland. I see, for instance, rent in Hungary going down 4% while it is up almost 10% in Poland, where vacancy is actually quite high. I'm quite surprised for Poland. Is it due to different corridors that you have delivered assets, which could explain that increase? Basically, the question is, can you give some comments specifically for Hungary and Poland? The second question would be on subsector. Can you give us a bit of detail on which subsector might be more active going to H2? Last year, if you remember, you had a lot of questions on the autonomous industry.
Can you give a bit more granularity on what happened over the last year on this subsector? Thank you.
Let me start with the ERV, and then I think Remon can continue on the subsectors. If you look to Poland, indeed, we have seen a rental growth coming through. That's because if you look to Poland, yes, vacancy went up a bit in 2024, as there were still a lot of deliveries coming online, which were basically started in the low interest rate environment. You saw vacancy going up in 2024. If you look to the forecasts from the brokers, whether it's CBRE, whether it's JLL, etc., they expect to be back in one, two years at 5%. Why is that? Poland continues to be economically very strong. If you look to the demand, if you look to the net absorption, Poland is a good market, and we do good leasing there. That's also one of the reasons why we have seen the rental growth there.
Of course, there is always a bit, what Richard said earlier, the individual deal you are signing. In general, we are quite constructive on the Polish market, both in terms of rent as well as demand. If you look for Hungary, Hungary is a bit different, especially around Budapest. You see some oversupply driven by a local developer who has been quite active there. Regional Hungary is better, actually. Around Budapest, there is a bit of oversupply. That has put some pressure on the rents there, the new rents that we are signing. Ultimately, if you look to the reversion, there is still reversion embedded in our Hungarian portfolio. That are sometimes the things that happen, and then you adjust your developments. In Hungary, we will do less speculative at the moment. That's always how we have been operating.
There can be local pockets of oversupply in certain cities, certain regions. You slow down your speculative developments there. There is no point in competing head-on-head with one of your competitors who builds a building next door. You need to be realistic in that. We are for sure. That's also why we value our model with the in-house construction team also so much, because we have the flexibility to speed up and to slow down where we want. Overall, for Hungary, as a market, I would expect indeed this year not a lot of rental growth. First, the bit of oversupply needs to be absorbed by the market. It's also, it's not a huge amount, but it's temporary, distorting probably some of the leasing we have done in the first half of the year. I'll let Remon comment on the subsectors.
Okay, thank you, Maarten. Indeed, as you said, the markets like in Hungary or in Budapest, maybe there is a bit of oversupply in it. I mean, long term, there is rental growth, right? Not as much maybe as we've seen over the past years, or not as much as you see in the Czech Republic. If you look long term, if you look, you know, three years, two years, five years, and compared to today, then there is a significant rental growth. I mean, construction costs are not coming down, land costs not, et cetera, et cetera. The trend is that long term, there's rental growth. If you build proper buildings in the right locations, you maintain them well, I think you will, yeah, you will sooner or later see rental growth, a steady rental growth. That's one with regard, yeah. Also, you mentioned Poland.
Poland depends also a bit on the location, of course, because it's a big country, the largest country in Central Europe. Also work closely with or rely on whatever the German economy is. It's still the fourth largest economy in the world. You see signs of recovery. I think, yeah. I'm not sure what exactly submarkets, which, which, what would you like me to refer to, Maarten? What do you want me to?
I think the question was more on the difference between automotive, 3PLs, and manufacturing.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can take the automotive part. If you look, we've been deconstructing the portfolio, and you see that also in the presentation, growth of the leasing in different subsectors versus the overall leasing across the whole portfolio. What you can see is that in the last two years, we did 16% of our new leasing was with automotive versus a whole portfolio of 21%. When we first started showing this, I think three quarters ago, that was 14% for automotive. A slight tick up in the last couple of quarters, as I think, you know, we benefit from Central Europe being the best cost location for manufacturing. I think, as Remon said right at the very start of the video, we see changes in opportunity. The change in the dislocation in the automotive industry is driving more of that towards the lower cost manufacturing locations.
In Europe, that is predominantly Central Europe. Generally, otherwise, we see good solid demand from multiple sectors, whether it's retail, the logistics companies, or manufacturers, either nearshoring from Asia or also tenants maybe moving from higher cost locations in Europe into lower cost locations in Central Europe.
Yeah, true. It's also maybe to add to that, when you talk about automotive, I think that also includes tire, you know, tire warehouses, which is aftermarket. There is still car ownership, they're still growing, obviously. There are still, you need tire warehouses or warehouses where you store tires. That's one. Then we have automotive, which is car parts, you know, also aftermarket for repairs of cars. Plus, what do you have? You have in the Czech Republic, we used to supply, used to be a lot of automotive in Germany, in Bavaria, with Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and so that part of the world. One of our products, I remember, in the Czech Republic, CTPark Bor, was also a good location for those automotive companies to supply the manufacturing of cars in South Germany.
In the meantime, I think that turned a little bit, and Bor is now for different clients, as I refer to pet food. There's huge in terms of pet food. There's online Royal Canin, which is German, I think, part of REWE, or yeah, they do online pet food into Germany out of Bor in the Czech Republic. There is, and maybe automotive moved a little bit to the east to Central and Eastern Europe, obviously. Also you see, and whatnot, Chinese car part producers who supply, yeah, different car makers with car seats, for example. Car seats you need, no matter if it's an electric vehicle or hybrid or traditional vehicle. No, I'm not so concerned about it. I think diversification was always, we were always keen on that.
The other way around, if you look at pharmacy, if you look at, as I mentioned, semiconductor, if you look at those industries, there is, yeah, good opportunities out there in different sectors and industries. Yeah, many possibilities.
Our next question comes from the line of Eleanor Frew from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the presentation. There were rumors earlier in the year that you were intending to acquire a Romanian portfolio. Can you give us any update on that? From your presentation, it looks like there are about 100,000 sq m of standing portfolio acquisitions. Can you give us some more color on those and maybe how you're thinking about acquisitions more generally, given your comments that the market's improving? Thanks.
Yeah, regarding the portfolio in Romania, that comes back to what we also disclosed in the Q1. We are waiting for competition approval. We haven't gotten that. The competition authority goes over their own agenda and their own timeline. We are waiting for that, and we'll update the market when we get it. If you look to the acquisitions we disclosed, it's actually just over 50,000 sq m we bought here in the Czech Republic in Pardubice, which were two buildings where we saw a nice value uplift as we could come in and bring some tenants in there. We saw a nice opportunity there. As you know, in general, if you look to our M&A strategy, we are quite opportunistic there. We don't need M&A to grow because we grow 10% - 15% through our developments. That's our key growth engine.
If there are interesting acquisition opportunities, we always look, see whether they can comply with our return requirements, see what is the strategic benefit. Can we get some land with it? Can we basically strengthen certain tenant relations? Can we strengthen our market position in a certain region? It's always a mix of the financial and the strategic requirements that fit into those considerations. It really depends on the opportunities that are there. If you look historically, the acquisitions in our portfolio are always a bit volatile. The big acquisition was, of course, Deutsche Industrie Ried. Other than that, acquisitions are actually more focused on land. We buy each year a bit more than EUR 200 million of land. Last year, it was even a bit more as we bought a big site in Düsseldorf. Ultimately, that's, of course, where we create most of our value.
Acquisitions from standing buildings are just bolt-ons in certain locations when they make strategic and financial sense.
Okay, thanks very much.
Our next question today comes from Rob Jones from BNP Paribas. Your line's now open. Please proceed.
Great, thank you, team. Remon, I've got one on Germany and then Maarten or Richard, one on development pipeline. Remon, you talked at the start around Germany, so getting there, spending time every couple of weeks there. I appreciate you spending time pretty much all the portfolio every couple of weeks. I also appreciate we'll get obviously more color on Germany at the upcoming CMD. Maybe you could give some comment on, you know, when you are in Germany, are there any specific parts of the German business or its operations that you're focusing your time on specifically when you're there? Maarten or Richard, in terms of the pre-letting of the 25 deliveries, I think you said that was just over 50%. The first part is how does that compare to last year at this stage? The second question is, remind me what that is in terms of square meters.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question, Rob. With regards to Germany, I'd like to explain how that works in order to answer your question. We have two businesses. I start with the, I call it easy part, which is the new development. That's what we always do in any other country. We go out, buy land, and then we do a design and a project, and we go out, get permits, building permits, and then we start to build with a pre-lease or in combination with some speculative development. That activity is now starting. In numbers, that means that I think we can complete around 150,000 sq m next year, 150 of new builds, you know, brand new industrial warehouses, but also some SBUs, some smaller units, often combined. You have a business park like Mülheim. Mülheim is one of the sites we bought from Vallourec. It's close to Düsseldorf.
It's a fantastic location. We needed some time to do the demolition, cleaning up of the site, preparing the site for new development. That is happening while we speak. We think we can start on site in Q1 of next year with construction. Most of that will be complete by the end of next year. That's the site where we have some pre-leases signed. We have announced E.ON. We will soon announce another well-known German company. That's one activity. At the same time, we are building in Jülich, for example, it's close to Aachen. It's a pre-lease for a Taiwanese chip manufacturer. Aachen is close to Eindhoven. It's all part of the semiconductor kind of industry and business and ecosystem. There are multiple sites in Aachen itself. We are doing a project. We are doing something in Krefeld. Those are multiple projects.
That business, I hope, will grow beyond the 150,000 sq m of production, of us building properties, more than 150,000 sq m per year. The target is more towards between 200,000 sq m and 300,000 sq m on a yearly basis. A significant part of that will also be Düsseldorf. That's the other site we bought, which has 800,000 sq m, more than 800,000 sq m land. We think we can do more than 400,000 sq m of lettable area over the coming years. That's our core business, new developments. I spend time with the teams. We have micro teams, as we call them. That means we have a small team in different regions, and those teams are responsible for the entire project.
From the design, permitting, construction management, et cetera, we break it up, let's say, in different regions where we have dedicated teams of people who focus on such a project. We have, out of Wuppertal, a legal team. We have procurement, et cetera, so that we have services to support those micro teams in the various regions of the country of Germany. As I said, Germany is the fourth largest economy in the world. Obviously, certain regions are stronger than other regions. We have a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia, so the Düsseldorf area, Düsseldorf-Cologne, that part of Germany. We also have an office in Stuttgart. We have a site in Frankfurt, which we acquired. We're also active in the north, so Hannover, Bremen, that part, and a bit less in the eastern part of Germany. We do have a team in Berlin as well.
Multiple teams throughout the country cover the country to prepare for new developments. I think we have been able to buy at good prices. I think there was a good time to buy. Maybe now it's changing a little bit. We see more demands, obviously. That's the first business. Second is the portfolio of properties which we have acquired. There's an acquisition of Deutsche Industrie. That's around 100 different buildings throughout Germany. They're older buildings. Some need refurbishment. For some, we are looking for tenants. Others, we do redevelopment, which means demolition and new build. Overall, you could say that when we acquired it, I think the average rent was EUR 3.60 per sq m per month. We have seen rental growth, so we're now close to EUR 5.50, I think, on average. That's also where the valuation came from.
There, that's a dedicated team of people, a different group of people than the group who do the new developments. There are two different businesses. On top, we have our solar business, which is 10 MW by year end. For Germany, we are working on a data center project. We put a team together. It's still relatively new. It's only two years from the start. We're still in a startup phase, shaping the organization, introducing all kinds of IT projects, different processes. I'm involved as an interim Managing Director, if you like. We have a management team of four people. That's my role. It's very similar to what I've done in the Czech Republic or Romania or Poland, where at the start phase, I'm a bit more involved than later on. We at CTP, we have, we call it the Group A and Group B countries.
Group A have their own MD, they're well established. The B groups, the startup, the growth, there initially I'm a bit more involved during the setup, which is, it could be one, two, three years or so, and then a bit more engaged and a bit more involved until we hand over to the local teams once they are more established, I would say, and once the local teams are up to speed. I think this is the way of coming to quick decisions, you know, when it comes to acquisitions of land or doing designs and getting moving forward. Richard already mentioned it. We have invited you guys to come over to our capital markets day, which will happen in Wuppertal. There, we have an opportunity to see the Wuppertal site, which we bought. That is a combination of some existing buildings, which we will keep. They're listed.
They're older industrial properties, which we are currently refurbishing. There's also mostly leased already. We are going to build some new buildings there. It's going to be another business park with a variety of different companies and businesses. Quite interesting, I think. That event will give you the opportunity to see Mülheim, Düsseldorf, so you also get a better feel for the pipeline and at the same time, also for the team. We will also visit some of the Deutsche Industrie properties, so you can actually see how those buildings look like and what we do with those buildings in order to create more income and more value. Very positive about the progress we're making. There's a bit more detail maybe, but that's what I do. Look forward to showing your, yeah, sure, sure. Pleasure.
Rob, to answer your second question, the pre-let ratio last year was 51%.
It's 53% this year. That would give you a range between 650,000 sq m and 900,000 sq m .
Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Nadir Rahman from UBS. Your line's now open. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. My first question is on the delivery pipeline and the guidance for 1.2 million sq m- 1.7 million sq m by year end. If I look at the 2023 and 2024 figures, I think by this stage of the year versus the deliveries you'd completed for the full year in those years, you'd completed around 25% to 35% of your delivery pipeline. This year, I can see that you've completed, if we take the midpoint of your guidance to be 1.45 million sq m, you would have completed 15% or so. I was just wondering what the downside risk is to the guidance that you've given us for the 1.2 million- 1.7 million sq m for year end. That's my first question.
There's no downside risk. Otherwise, we wouldn't have reiterated the guidance, which we just did. Look, we are very comfortable. If you look to the leasing we've done, we have done more leases. Leasing is key. Leasing and construction progress are on track. We are very comfortable that we will get into that range of $1.2 to $1.7 million.
Yep, that's very clear. The second question is a comment just made by Remon on the data centers. Is this a project that's just being looked at in Germany, or do you have any other details at this stage on the timelines for this or what this could imply?
Yeah, we have previously also mentioned that we're looking into data center opportunities. We have some people at CTP who are experienced in this industry, and we have also researched, and we appointed advisors to help us there. With regards to Germany, when buying one of the sites in Germany, it comes with 100 MW of power. We have an opportunity to increase that to maybe 300 MW. That's one of, and experts believe, a suitable site for data center development. Where we stand is that we are currently in a visibility study, I would call it like that. That's one, and there are two other sites with similar characteristics. Also in Germany, where currently, we are, in order for us to understand opportunities better. That's where we are. I would call it a visibility study.
I think we'll probably know a bit more by the Capital Markets Day event in the end of September, or maybe on the next call. It's definitely a sector or industry where we, yeah, come to.
Sure that we understand the opportunity, and if so, going forward, be part of that. In one way or the other, that's all I can say at the moment, I think.
Thank you. Very clear.
Yes.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from [Wim Louie] from KBC Securities. On the leasing demand from Chinese tenants, can you give some color on the industries they are in or are they more subcontractors versus OEM? Do you see a relation to the tariff discussions between U.S. and China that could benefit CEE investments in certain countries?
Yeah, interesting question. It's also the question we ask ourselves. What are the targets? Where should we search? What industries? A conclusion, I think, for the moment is that it's all over the place. That means that all companies, Chinese companies who like to sell in Europe are actually interested in being in Europe because of many reasons. The reasons are, for instance, when we had the COVID pandemic, we could not get goods out of Asia to Europe. That was one. We had geopolitical issues and the Suez Canal was closed and decarbonization. I mean, it's not fashionable to travel with goods all over the world. You'd rather manufacture locally for the markets, for local markets. The tariffs came. There are many, many, many reasons why Asian companies or in this case, Chinese companies come to Europe because they want to sell to European consumers. What industries? All over.
Chinese furniture makers, they do not maybe necessarily manufacture furniture in Europe, but they would ship parts of furniture from Asia, from China to Europe to assemble here in Europe and to sell it in Europe online or in their showrooms or through their distribution channels. That's furniture makers or furniture sellers. Can be any other e-commerce, Chinese e-commerce industry. We are doing a project in Hungary for a Chinese company who are, they manufacture machines, vehicles, I would call for the mining industry, agriculture industry, and construction industry. Construction, think of bootloaders, what do you call it, and lifts for outside facade cleaning or facade mounting, these kinds of things. That's very diverse. We have, obviously, Chinese companies like Lenovo. They manufacture computers, right? In Hungary, by the way, in Budapest, we have done a factory for them and we extended with a distribution center.
Automotive, there are suppliers to BMW and to Volkswagen, for example. BMW, Volkswagen, they require these suppliers to be in Europe, close by their factories. BMW, for instance, they are currently investing EUR 3 billion in a new factory. BMW is building a new factory in Debrecen in East Hungary, along the Romanian border. That attracts also Chinese automotive. We have a Chinese company who supplies Tesla. Tesla has a factory in Berlin. This Chinese company, they work for Tesla in China, but they also work for Tesla here in Europe. They are renting a factory from us in East Slovakia, which we have recently completed. I think there's all kinds of Chinese companies looking for space in Germany, but also in Central Europe for all types of different activities. What we try to do is to catch them through our business team in China or in Europe, different business delegations.
We team up with the different embassies. You have these chambers of commerce. We have different presentations. We do online events for Chinese companies who are interested in learning more about the European markets, about the legislation, about everything, labor, property related, et cetera, et cetera. We do most of the business for existing clients, but if you ask us about where does new business opportunity come from, from different sectors, but also from different parts of the world, and this would be one.
Thank you. With that, we have no further questions in the queue at this time, so I'll hand back over to the management team for some closing remarks.
Yeah, we'd like to thank everyone for their questions. I look forward to seeing lots of you at the Capital Markets Day in September, and wish you all a great day. Thank you.
Thank you all for joining. That does conclude today's call. You may now disconnect your line.