Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Arena REIT half-year 2025 results call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Rob de Vos, Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to Arena REIT's first half financial year 2025 results presentation. I'm Rob de Vos, Managing Director of Arena. Joining me today are Gareth Winter, Chief Financial Officer, and Justin Bailey, Arena's Chief Investment Officer. The presentation, which will shortly commence, has been launched for the ASX this morning and is also available on Arena's website for those that want to follow. First half 2025 has been another positive period for Arena. Over the last six months, the business has accelerated investment activity as the trajectory for market interest rate costs became clearer and new opportunities emerged where our competitive cost of capital and deal-sourcing expertise could be used. With an experienced and expanded management team and a balance sheet with substantial capacity, we are well-positioned to capitalize on further growth opportunities that are consistent with our strategy and investment objective.
The growing needs of Australian communities continue to support the social infrastructure property sector, population growth, government indebtedness, and a higher expectation from communities for improved quality and availability of the essential services that Arena REIT provides the business with strong long-term macroeconomic tailwinds. In this context, Arena REIT's portfolio, operations, and outlook are in a strong position. Highlights of the outcomes and achievements for the first half of financial year 2025 include a statutory profit of AUD 36 million and an underlying cash-based net operating profit also of AUD 36 million, which is 16% on half-year 2024. Our earnings per security increased to AUD 0.092, up 5.5%, a result of strong net property income growth of 13%, being partially offset by higher interest costs and additional securities on issue. Like-for-like average rent increases were 3.2%.
Our net asset value per security was stable as an increase in portfolio capitalization in our healthcare portfolio was offset by increases in passing and market rents in our early learning portfolio, and perhaps most pleasing, we've increased our capacity for new investment at a time when new opportunities are emerging and have taken advantage of that environment with 11 operating properties acquired, six early learning center developments completed, and replenished our development pipeline to now include 19 projects. Arena's performance and positive outlook remains underpinned by the growing community demand for the essential services that our tenant partners provide, and we continue to see that increase in demand with strong underlying operator occupancy across Arena's early learning and specialist disability accommodation portfolios.
Partnering and understanding the needs of our tenant partners and the growing community demand for their services has allowed us to achieve efficient long-term earnings growth, and we're pleased today to reaffirm distribution guidance for financial year 2025 of AUD 0.1825 per security, reflecting an increase of 4.9% on financial year 2024. Moving on to the next slide. In an environment where we are seeing short, medium, and long-term growth opportunities emerge, we remain committed to our strategic discipline and with a clear focus on the needs of our stakeholders. Understanding and addressing those needs underpins the long-term success of Arena. It helps shape our strategy and informs our decision-making and ultimately best positions the business to create value on a long-term and predictable basis. Highlights and outcomes over first half 2025 across key management focus areas include an increase in development acquisition activity.
We've seen the portfolio increase to 289 properties, providing essential services to Australian communities. We have maintained our sector-leading weighted average lease expiry for the portfolio of 18 years through lease renewals and the completion of WALE-accretive acquisition and development projects. We've seen a small expansion in yields of about three basis points across the portfolio for the period, which has been mitigated by passing and market rent growth, again, particularly across the early learning portfolio, providing for an overall immaterial uplift in portfolio value. The passing yield for the portfolio is now 5.4%. We've divested one asset in the period in inner metropolitan Melbourne at its prevailing book value as part of a transaction that we arranged an early surrender of two early learning center leases that had underperformed in terms of business occupancy post-COVID. That transaction has allowed us to unlock value for alternate uses.
The portfolio continues to have high occupancy at over 99%. We have 18 market rent reviews that are currently in negotiation, and we anticipate completing all of those in the second half. We've made further progress on our renewable energy projects with 93% of the portfolio now being powered by solar energy. These initiatives are not only reducing the energy intensity of our portfolio, but they are lowering the utility costs for our tenant partners and are favored by our tenants' customers, the families and communities that use our properties daily. Pleasingly, we achieved all of our sustainability-linked loan targets, which entitles the business to a small discount of interest payable under our syndicated loan facility. We've acquired 11 operating properties in the period, including the six that were announced as part of the July equity raise, and have completed six early learning center developments.
We've also expanded our development pipeline, which now has 19 projects at various stages of completion, all of which we anticipate completing over the next 18 months with a forecast total cost of AUD 131 million and AUD 93 million of expenditure forecast to complete as at the end of December. The anticipated net initial yield on all costs for these projects is 6.1%. Moving on to an update on our sustainability programs on slide five, and we believe that Arena's focus on sustainability across everything we do best positions the business and our stakeholders to achieve positive long-term commercial and community outcomes. We have a disciplined investment process, and being an internalized manager with strong governance protocols means that we're aligned with our investors, which facilitates sustainable growth and long-term quality in our financial metrics. Arena's portfolio facilitates access to essential community services that provide a positive social impact.
And we work with our tenant partners to invest the capital necessary to provide efficient, flexible, and well-located accommodation at sustainable rents, allowing our tenant partners to focus on their core purpose and for us collectively to deliver better communities together. Some of the key sustainability outcomes that we've delivered over the last six months include achieving zero organizational Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We've adopted and are progressing with an emissions reduction plan that targets Net Zero financed emissions by 2050 with an interim 2030 target of a 60%-70% reduction in emission intensity. And as mentioned on the prior slide, we remain focused on increasing the use of renewable energy, with 93% of Arena's portfolio now powered by solar energy. Further detail in relation to our sustainability activities and future goals are available in our 2024 sustainability report.
I'll now pass the call over to Gareth to provide detail on our financial results.
Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Just turning to Page 7 of the presentation, you will find a summary of Arena's operating income statement for the first half of FY 2025, which shows a 16% increase in net operating profit to AUD 35.8 million and a statutory profit of AUD 36.3 million. There is a reconciliation of net operating profit to statutory profit included in the appendix to the presentation, with the most substantial reconciling item has been the periodic re-evaluation of investment property and derivatives. Operating EPS of AUD 0.092 is 6% higher than the first half of FY 2024, with the key driver of the increase in operating profit being the relative 13% increase in property income.
The increase in property income is from a combination of rent reviews and our capital deployment, and likewise, rent reviews averaged 3.2% of the period, noting that 95% of rent reviews in FY 2025 have a minimum review at CPI or a market-based review. As the inflation rate has declined over recent quarters, we are moving towards the minimum standard annual rent review increase, which averages close to 3% per annum. Also contributing to the increase in income was the acquisition of 11 ELCs, including six announced in early FY 2025 in conjunction with institutional placement and income from Arena's ongoing program of investment in ELC developments, with rent from a further six developments commencing during the period.
Just looking at some other line items, other income is interest income and is simply higher because some of the proceeds from the July capital raise were held in cash pending our near-term property settlement. Property expenses, minor change in property expenses. Ultimately, the property expenses are linked to the size of the portfolio and dependent on the number of property inspections and independent valuations performed during a particular period. For context, the cost across the portfolio averaged a little over AUD 1,000 per property. Operating expenses, there's been an AUD 500,000 increase in cash-based operating expenses compared to the first half of FY 2024. This increase was expected, and we flagged this at the FY 2024 results, with the increase being primarily from our investment and new staff resources, including a new Chief Investment Officer and an analyst role within the property team, which both commenced in the second half of FY 2024.
Our expectation is for this investment in our team to continue to drive new growth opportunities, and I note that the operating costs for the first half of FY 2025 are in line with costs for the second half of FY 2024. As a point of comparison and illustrating the operating leverage of the business, when compared to the prior period, revenues increased by over AUD 5 million compared to the AUD 0.5 million increase in OpEx, and our cash-based MER remains in the low 30 basis points. There's been a slight reduction in finance costs in the first half of FY 2025, primarily due to a portion of the proceeds from institutional placement in July and the SPP in August being used to reduce debt pending the use of those funds on our development pipeline. This resulted in the average monthly debt balance across the first half of FY 2025 being lower than the comparative period.
Average rates were relatively stable across both periods. Capitalized interest on the development book for the first half was AUD 1.6 million, which was slightly higher than the comparative period by AUD 100,000, as there was more relative value in the project pipeline. The higher statutory profit of AUD 36 million in the first half is primarily due to higher asset revaluations of AUD 7 million compared to negative AUD 4 million in the comparative period. We have paid distributions of AUD 0.09125 per security to date for FY 2025, which is in line with our FY 2025 guidance of AUD 0.1825, which represents growth of 4.9% on FY 2024.
In terms of considering the status of some of our core assumptions for our FY 2025 guidance, we applied the BBSY forward curve at the time of giving guidance with an average floating rate of 4.3% across FY 2025 and an average CPI assumption of 3.25% each quarter and a payout ratio reasonably consistent with prior recent years. Our view is that these assumptions remain reasonable across the course of FY 2025. Just turning to page eight, there's a waterfall chart of EPS change for the period. The chart starts to just demonstrate the relativity of the individual items supporting EPS growth, noting the key drivers of growth remain the periodic rent reviews and the deployment of capital into acquisitions and developments, with the main offset being funding mix from the capital raise prior to those funds being deployed into new investment.
The relativity of each component and mix is returning to a more normal profile with the declining inflation rate. Turning to page nine, the slide presents a summary of Arena's balance sheet. The full balance sheet is in the appendix to the presentation. Key points to note here are the 10% growth in investment property being primarily due to AUD 154 million invested in acquisitions and development CapEx during the period and positive asset revaluations of AUD 7 million offset by an asset sale of AUD 6 million. New investment deployment in FY 2025 to date was well above recent periods of more opportunities that have become available in the market. Gearing of 20.8% represents a 1.8% reduction on June, given the net effect of the capital raising in July and subsequent investment of proceeds.
Turning to page 10 and the capital management summary, the approach to capital management remains directly linked to our investment objective of predictability of distributions with scope for growth over the medium term. Accordingly, we have maintained relatively low gearing, consistent levels of hedge cover within our expected ongoing range, and maintained liquidity in excess of our development commitments. To support new investment, we completed an institutional placement of AUD 120 million in July and an SPP, which raised AUD 24 million in August. All charges at our debt facility were extended in May 2024, with a weighted average term remaining of 3.6 years and now expiring before 31 May 2027. We have immediately available liquidity of AUD 118 million in our debt facility to cover our development commitments of AUD 93 million, and this liquidity, in combination with our relatively modest gearing, is also allowing us to actively consider new investment opportunities.
In FY 2023, we introduced a sustainability overlay on our debt facility with a range of targets across our solar program, emissions reductions, and modern slavery, with a modest pricing adjustment in relation to those targets. These targets were fully achieved in respect of FY 2024. Our all-in weighted average cost of debt has increased slightly to 4.25%, which was expected and primarily due to a natural change in the swap book as expiring swaps rolled off and new swaps commenced in the half. The weighted average cost of debt quoted is all-in and includes the cost of undrawn facilities.
The primary objective of our hedging program is smoothing the rates through the cycle, and with a substantial and sustained increase in floating rates since FY 2023, mitigated by our practice of holding consistently high levels of hedge cover with a staggered expiry profile across the curve, which is evident in the average swap rate over time. At December, we had hedge cover of 79% on active swaps with a weighted average term of 2.8 years remaining and a current weighted average rate of 2.45%. The average hedge rate, including forward start swaps, doesn't go above 3% until FY 2028 and remains below prevailing market rates through FY 2029, with the scope to participate in any interest rate reductions in our future hedging program as the development pipeline is funded. Finally, it is important to note that Arena continues to operate with substantial headroom in our banking covenants.
I will now pass to Justin Bailey to give an update on Arena's property portfolio.
Thanks, Gareth, and good morning, everyone. I'm Justin Bailey, Arena's Chief Investment Officer. I'll provide an update on Arena's portfolio and our operating environment. Starting on page 12 of the presentation, at 31 December 2024, Arena owned 289 early learning and healthcare properties with a portfolio value of AUD 1.73 billion. The underlying community demand for the essential services we accommodate continues to support the position of Arena's portfolio. We have the longest contracted rent profile in the listed rent sector at 18 years. We've maintained our exceptionally strong occupancy record at over 99%. The portfolio is diversified both in terms of geographies, with the portfolio well balanced across major population centres, particularly the East Coast, and in terms of tenants. We currently have 35 tenant partners across the portfolio, with no individual tenant accounting for more than 21% of our income.
The portfolio provides very low single asset concentration, with the largest single asset accounting for 2% of the value of the portfolio. The passing yield on the portfolio is 5.42%, representing a very mild expansion in yields in the period of three basis points, with our ELC yields stable and yields on our healthcare assets expanding 32 basis points to December. The value of the portfolio overall remains stable over the period, with a small net increase of AUD 7 million, or 0.4%, resulting from rent increases. Moving on to the lease expiry profile on Page 13, we have no lease expiries due in FY 2025 or 2026, 2027, or 2028. We have less than 2% of the portfolio's income expiring prior to 2033 and over 55% of the portfolio lease income expires after 2040.
We continue to focus on the portfolio while undertaking acquisitions of operational properties with long-term leases in place and where possible, putting new leases in place and adding new properties through our development program, all with our 20-year standard form lease. This disciplined focus on lease term helps maintain that market-leading WALE. Moving on to rent reviews on page 14, like-for-like rent increased by 3.2% in half-year 2025. The majority of the portfolio's income is structured as an annual escalation that is the higher of CPI or an agreed fixed amount, providing an opportunity for rent growth through the cycle. As shown on this slide, 95% of financial years 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2028 have annual rent reviews that are contracted either CPI or the higher of CPI or a fixed amount, typically 3%, or a market review.
This provides continued income growth linked to CPI in periods of high inflation, but also provides a floor on rent growth as inflation abates. In terms of market reviews, we have 18 HY25 market reviews in negotiation and anticipate all to be resolved in the second half. For those reviews to be completed, 17 are subject to a 7.5% cap and one is uncapped. All have the benefit of a 0% collar. We are anticipating continued rent growth, market rent growth, rather, as a result of strong demand for early childhood education and care services, which is evidenced by high occupancy and increases in daily fees in the sector. Moving now to page 15, we completed six early learning center developments in the first half, which were located in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, all with existing tenant partners.
During the period, we settled on five new developments that will complement the portfolio and deliver future earnings growth. In addition, we conditionally contracted a further eight developments prior to 31 December. Including these eight developments, our pipeline has 19 developments in total with a forecast cost of AUD 131 million, of which we have capital expenditure outstanding of AUD 93 million. The forecast weighted average initial yield on all costs for these developments is 6.1%, and each of them has the benefit of our standard form triple net lease. Consistent with our strategy, each of our development projects is being undertaken on a fund-through basis, which provides contractual protections for time and cost overruns. In the last 10 years, Arena has delivered 83 ELC developments for 14 tenant partners, which has been undertaken in all states and territories except the ACT.
It continues to demonstrate the capability of the Arena team to source and deliver new purpose-built properties for our tenant partners around the country. As we reported in our FY 2024 results, we settled on the acquisition of a portfolio of six operating centers in New South Wales in early FY 2025, all tenanted by an existing tenant partner. We acquired a further two ELC properties on a sale and leaseback basis in December, which will also provide an immediate contribution to our portfolio yield. We have a further two operating acquisitions that are conditionally contracted at 31 December and are expected to complete in the second half of FY 2025. Together, those 11 acquisitions we reported for the period have a weighted average lease expiry of 16 years.
Moving on to slide 16, in line with the developed countries around the world, demand for early learning services continued to increase as a result of changing community expectations, population growth, and an increase in female workforce participation. That rising female workforce participation, in particular, continues to drive demand for early childhood education and care in Australia. The most recent data from the ABS reports female workforce participation at 77%, the highest level observed in the data series. Federal government investment into creating affordable childcare for working families has consistently demonstrated bipartisan support. The then federal coalition government introduced the CCS in July 2018, followed by an increase in CCS funding in July 2022.
Additional funding to the sector was introduced by the Australian Federal Labor Government in 2023, which was designed to increase the use of child care and, in doing so, provide significant economic and social return to Australia, including increased workforce participation, better economic security, particularly for women, and improving the lifelong learning prospects of children. It's apparent in our tenant partners' occupancy data that this investment has had the desired effect of increasing child care participation. It is our expectation that demand for services will continue to increase in the short and medium term. The shortage of appropriately qualified and experienced educators has been a well-documented challenge for the sector, particularly in terms of expanding capacity. During 2024, the federal government announced additional funding to support a 15% wage increase for early childhood education and care workers in services that agreed to limit daily fee increase to 4.4% over a 12-month period.
Increased wages funding is expected to result in improved staff availability and better outcomes for families, and pleasingly, feedback from our tenant partners is that labor supply constraints have eased, which has improved tenant profitability and supports further expansion in the sector. Net new ELC supply for the 12 months to 31 December 2024 was 3.7%, highlighting the confidence for operators in expanding their networks in the context of ongoing government support. Moving on to the next slide on our ELC portfolio, Arena's early learning portfolio remains in a strong position. Our ELC occupancy is at 99.2%, slightly down on FY 2024. Our tenant partners' average underlying business occupancy remains robust, the equal highest occupancy on record. Average daily fees have increased to AUD 150 a day at September 2024, up 7% over the 12 months. This average daily fee remains below the government's benchmark fee of AUD 157 a day.
As you can see on the graph at the bottom of the page, the government funding package continues to suit our portfolio, which is typically geared towards middle-income families. Our average rent across the portfolio has increased to AUD 3,150 per place. While rents have increased, on average, the affordability of rent for our tenant partners has improved, with a rent-to-revenue ratio of 10% improving from 10.3% over the half-year. Moving on to the next slide on the healthcare sector, our existing portfolio of community-based healthcare and specialist disability accommodation properties continues to perform in line with expectation. We are closely tracking the healthcare sector and selectively reviewing opportunities in subsectors that are integral to the delivery of healthcare services and that are aligned with Arena's purpose and investment objective. The long-term fundamentals of the sector remain attractive.
Community demand for healthcare services will continue to increase as a result of Australia's growing and aging population. Consistent with our strategy, we acquired a key health worker accommodation property in Bendigo, Victoria. The property is fully leased to Bendigo Health, the Victorian government's provider of healthcare services to the Bendigo region. The property was purpose-built in 2014 under a 30-year triple net lease arrangement and comprises a 120-apartment residential village on a site, which is located approximately 500 meters from the main Bendigo hospital site. The lease has 19 years remaining, providing a long-term income security from the investment. This investment provides an example of how we are very selectively looking for opportunities to deploy capital in the healthcare sector and other social infrastructure sectors that support our purpose and our investment objective. I'll now hand back to Rob.
Thanks, Justin. Excuse me. I'm now on the final slide. Today, we are reaffirming full-year distribution guidance for financial year 25 of AUD 0.1825 per security and an increase of 4.9% on financial year 24. As you've heard, the portfolio is in a strong position. Our healthcare and childcare investments are performing well, and underlying occupancy for our childcare tenant partners is at the equal highest position on record. We have solid rental growth across the portfolio with long leases that have embedded income growth and inflation protection. Future income growth will be underpinned by those contracted annual rent increases, including outstanding and future market rent reviews and the impact of our financial year 24 and 25 acquisition and development completions. Looking forward, Arena's outlook remains positive. Early learning and healthcare services are integral to economic stability and improving community outcomes.
Those themes underpin Arena's portfolio value and investment objective of providing long-term predictable distributions to our security holders with prospects for growth. We have substantial balance sheet capacity with gearing under 21%, which positions us well to explore and execute on new growth opportunities. And our expanded and experienced management team has strong industry relationships and expertise that will assist us in sourcing those new opportunities in our usual disciplined manner. That concludes today's presentation, so I'll now pass the call back to the operator to open up for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. And if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Cody Shield from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Rob and team. Just a question on CapEx to start. So you had the high CapEx there in first half 2025, committed CapEx in the second half. Your balance sheet's obviously in a good position, but just looking at that undrawn debt capacity, how should we be thinking about both the run rate and funding of additional CapEx over the next 12 to 18 months? Yes, Cody, Gareth, as you pointed out, we have adequate liquidity to cover the existing development pipeline to the extent that we have further growth opportunities that we'll consider capital requirements at that time. Obviously, the low gearing that we've got gives us the opportunity to both consider debt or equity at that time, and we'll make a decision of what's best.
Yeah. I think I'll add to that, Cody. We're definitely seeing some more opportunities emerge in the marketplace. It's a slow shift in cycles opening up opportunities for us.
Okay, sure. I think I recall when you guys raised that you mentioned there were some larger ELC acquisition opportunities emerging just in terms of portfolio size. Is that still something that you're looking at, or is it the kind of development that's going to be the focus from an ELC perspective?
Yeah. We certainly will. I mean, we get paid to look at everything, Cody, so we're looking at everything in the market. It'd be fair to say there's still some exuberance in the early learning pricing in our view. So vendors are somewhat anchored in sort of pricing that we think that should be pushing out a little bit further. But look, there's opportunities that are out in the marketplace.
We'll be prosecuting those as best we can, but as always, in our usual disciplined manner.
Okay, great. And just the last one. Sorry, I might have missed the market rent reviews to be completed. Where were you expecting these to land?
So the majority of those are sort of capped at 7.5%. So historically, we've been sort of at 6%-7%. So I'm careful to sort of forecast forward on these, but it would be fair to say that market rent growth, and you can see it in the rent-to-revenue ratios, market rent growth given replacement cost changes and tenants performing pretty well, there's a bit of market rent growth that's available to us in those.
Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lou Pirenc from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, Rob and team. Quick question on the acquisitions as well. On your slides, AUD 15 million-127 million, does that include the Bendigo acquisition, or is that a separate kind of CapEx number?
It's caught in that number, so the 127 includes Bendigo.
Great, great. And then how unique is an opportunity like that? Are there many of those around the country? Is it a bit of a one-off, or? Look, I think they're quite excited about the opportunity there.
Yeah. Look, we think it's a good model. There's clearly a need for key worker accommodation, particularly in those more regional, larger health precincts.
Fair to say government has been trying to address that through direct funding to date, so there aren't a huge number of these leasehold-type structures, but we're quite interested in seeing how that market evolves and are still looking for opportunities in that space that meet that kind of long-term triple net structure that we're looking for.
Great. And then finally for me, on the supply side in healthcare, kind of how is that tracking at the moment? It's hard to get reliable statistics. So are you seeing pockets of oversupply, or do you feel that developers are quite disciplined right now?
Lou, was that question in regards to healthcare or early learning?
Early learning, sorry, childcare.
Yeah. So it's moderated. I guess the best way to look at that is just what's happening with the sort of 9,000 services around the country.
It's fair to say that occupancy is up, stimulated by demand and consumer wants. So sort of supply demand is in check. The added, I guess what's moderating that, it's an obvious point, is just the higher cost of construction. And we're not seeing that abate. We're seeing that plateau but not abate. So I think it's likely to sort of moderate supply for the medium term.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Lou.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Chan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Rob, in your prepared remarks, I think at the start of it, you mentioned about early surrender of two ELC leases. Can you elaborate on that? What happened there?
We can, Simon. So we took the opportunity in sort of an improving market to negotiate a surrender of two leases, both in metropolitan Melbourne. It would be fair to say that Metropolitan Melbourne, from an early learning perspective, hasn't recovered well out of COVID, so we took the opportunity to surrender those leases. We got a substantial surrender payment and elected to sell one of those properties and the bioprofile developer, so we've sort of unlocked a position to sort of get out of something that ultimately we thought might have higher terminal risks in time.
What happened to the other one, the one you didn't sell? Are you just going to release it to another ELC operator, or?
Options available to us. The two options there are to sell it or to release it. Look, as we stand right now, we haven't made that call entirely, but you can see that just as that small blip up in occupancy or occupancy coming down a tiny bit from a prior period, that's where that sits on the charts. But that's available for releasing or for sale at the moment.
Great. And was the surrender payment form part of the property income for the half? Only the rental income for the first half. Any idea of the quantum, Gareth?
That was AUD 800,000.
Okay. Cool. Hey, my next question just relates to Slide 10, bottom right-hand corner, the hedge maturity profile chart there. If I think about FY 2027, FY 2028, the hedged amount seems to be a fair bit smaller than the hedged amount you last disclosed back in August. Look what happened there. Back in August, your FY 2028 hedge position was AUD 276 million. It's now AUD 210 million.
So for FY 2027, it was like 315, and it's now 256. Yeah. What's happened?
Probably with the forward start. So a forward start hedge is still hedging, and that was included in the volume. But we've tried to simplify the presentation of that disclosure so that it's only got active swaps at a point in time, but including forward swaps, if that makes sense. It was just a bit of confusion that was coming out of that.
Okay, then. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Gareth. Thanks, Rob.
Thanks, Justin.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adam Calvetti from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, Rob. Hi, Gareth. I've got some results. My first question is, how many tenants are participating in the child worker retention payment scheme?
Yeah. I think we'll see almost 100%, Adam.
There's a little bit, as the rules become a little bit clearer, I think we've seen the majority of our tenants take that up. There are a couple that are contemplating splitting up, so not doing it across their whole network, but the majority will be taking it up. Certainly, our biggest tenants, that's the ones on the big wagon wheel that we show there, are all taking the advantage of that wage subsidy.
Yeah. Okay. So we can expect the ELC to plateau at that 4% or maybe slightly above over the next 12 months?
Yeah. Well, I think 4.4% is exactly where the market will go.
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay. And your development yield on cost has been continually trending up to 6.1%. Is that expected to plateau, or are you seeing potentially that continue to trend upwards?
Yeah. Good question. Certainly, we'd like to see it trend up. We'd love to see a little bit more margin in there for the development pipeline. Land costs continue to be really stubborn. So I think we've absorbed as an industry the economic cost of the additional construction. A lot of that going to rent, but land costs continue to be quite stubborn. We're working at the moment sort of putting new deals, if you like, is probably a good way to answer that, sort of with a six in front of them. And we'll continue to try and push that, but we are very conscious not to push through too much of that onto rents, as you would have heard from us previously. The sustainability of rents on these specialized assets is important to us.
We have seen strong market rent growth, but we just want to be careful that we're not putting economic rents where we need to be careful they are actually market rents. Happy to let deals go if the economic rents are too high or feasibility economic rents are too high on these.
Yeah. Just noted on that. Your net rent to revenue ratio is the lowest that I have on record in my data series. Could you push that further?
Yeah. There's definitely room for that. That's a gross number. It's the lowest on our record series as well, which is very, very long. It's fair to say that the net is looking pretty healthy as well. Yes, there is room for that. I think what we've seen is higher occupancy, higher daily fees. The acute issues on labor have been mitigated somewhat.
So we're seeing better labor conditions. So cost on labor has been reduced. And as a result of that, there's high profitability, which some of which should ultimately come to real estate.
Yeah. David, maybe one more if I may. I mean, you've now got an analyst and a CIO, and I think we've touched on the acquisition run rate going forward. But how do we think about that just long-term, AUD 120 million-AUD 130 million worth of acquisitions? Is that expected to continue?
We certainly got the capacity on the balance sheet and the human resources available for us to do it. So bandwidth is absolutely there, but we've never aspired to have the biggest balance sheet. What we want to do is get the best financial metrics. And I think we're in a really interesting position. The business is well positioned to explore and execute those.
It will all be on existing strategy, and we've got a very clear idea of what that investment objective is too, Adam, so look, there are opportunities that are opening up.
Yeah. Great. Okay. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Gareth. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Morning, Rob. I was wondering if you could just discuss the federal government's commitment to build new early learning centers in outer suburbs or in regional locations. What, if any, impact do you think that might have on the broader market and the relevance for your portfolio?
Yeah. It's a good question, Ben. So yeah, federal government, there's obviously a lot of election campaigning going on at the moment, but ALP, that's the Federal Incumbent Labor Government, have proposed AUD 1 billion that may be put towards, subject to them getting into next term, into regional areas, what has previously been called childcare deserts. There's not a lot of detail around that. It'd be fair to say that we've got differing views in regards to what has been publicly released in regards to childcare deserts. Frankly, some of the childcare deserts are literally deserts, but there is a need in some areas that, frankly, real estate doesn't work. Is it going to be an issue for us? No. Directionally, is it interesting? Absolutely. I think government support for the sector continues to push pretty hard. I think you've heard universal care being on the long-term agenda for the Labor government.
Whether it gets there or not, who knows. But at the moment, AUD 1 billion, as big as it sounds, is not. It's in areas that probably wouldn't suit us. There may be opportunities for the private market, including businesses like ours, to assist government in deploying some of that or saving some of that, frankly. So look, there is a watching brief, but not a concern in regards to what that might do to supply or certainly the opportunity set for this business.
Thanks for your time, Rob.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Murray Conallin from Morgans Financial Limited, Australia. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Just a quick one for Gareth, please. I just wanted to find out whether there is much of a difference in the base rate on the hedges half and half across FY25.
Can you obviously report what the full year base rate is, but just wondering sequentially what that's going to look like.
Not a great deal of difference. It'll go up a little bit. There's some forward starts that will come in, but so a minor increase. Got it. Thanks very much. The chart on slide 10 is the one to kind of look at in terms of what happens to rate over time.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Callum Brammer from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just a couple of follow-ups. Most of them might have been covered, but just thinking about that under-renting position, and I suppose you guide it where you talked about six to seven historic, but potential upside.
Is it fair to sort of assume that going out into 2026, 2027, or is there something more nuanced in the portfolio that we need to be aware of?
I think I'm always careful about giving forwards in this column, but historically, we've been six to seven. Yes, if you looked at the ingredients, I guess, to rent reviews, we have got perhaps a little bit more powder available to us. We are capped, though, for the majority of those. So the majority of our leases, market rent reviews are capped at 7.5%. So we may not access full market rents for some time.
Then just how do you think about the yield on cost for development versus acquisition?
Yeah. A good question. At the moment, we would love to see a little bit more return in our developments. We have very much de-risked those, but they are still developments that have higher risks than acquisitions. We are seeing similar yields come out of the market for those. What pleases us, we are getting a build-to-own strategy, getting real estate where we work with a preferred tenant partner on our lease. That's not always the case with acquisitions, but yeah, take your point. Strangely, the market's not showing a differential in some of the development risks that are taking on versus acquisitions at the moment.
That's great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Cal.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. de Vos for closing remarks.
Great. Thanks very much. Thanks for your engagement on the call today. We look forward to talking to many of you over the coming days and weeks. Thanks very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.