Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the GDI half yearly results teleconference. 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. Steven Gillard, Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Welcome, welcome everyone to our half yearly results. I'm also with David Williams, our CFO. Well, it's nice to sort of have some good news and a bit of a, you know, nice turnaround for us this half. I'll talk about the WS2 project, which has been a little bit delayed because of finding staff, inclement weather. However, the practical completion is due around about first quarter of this year. We've already signed two heads of agreement for five floors, and we have significant interest in the remaining. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The building is being. Look, you know, six months ago there wasn't too much about sort of carbon neutrality. In the last few months, tenants are really wanting an environmentally friendly building.
Both of the tenants we've signed are gonna sign up for green power. It looks like we could even have the building at 100% carbon neutral without sort of planting trees in Rwanda, by buying things in Australia and doing it properly. The building is probably up there with the most efficient, environmentally friendly building in Australia, and it's becoming very popular.
Can I add to Steve. We are buying base green power for the building, and we are putting it into leases that the tenants will buy green power. As you said, that's the over 70% of the mission. The balance of it, we are looking at carbon offsets, and the tenants are very willing and wanting to do that we have in place at the moment.
Yeah. The building will have, very low, well below market outgoings, and we'll be able to achieve that, you know, quite nicely. It's also got solar panels on the roof as well. We had a great six months. The, you know, I'd say after COVID, there was lots of inquiry, but it didn't translate into leasing transactions. However, since June 30, we've signed leases and heads of agreement for over 20,000 square meters of our portfolio. Over 10,000 square meters of that was done from mid-December. You know, examples of that five Mill Street floors that were vacant for a couple of years, we had three and four tenants vying for those properties. You know, we, you know certainly the inquiry rate is, it was a little bit slower in sort of mid-January.
I was over there for 10 days and got back on Friday, and that inquiry rate is picking up quite nicely now as well. I'll talk about our co-living joint venture. We're very excited with this. We've intend to do a joint venture with the Tulla Group or the Maloney family. They were previously involved in listed The MAC Services Group, which started off small, and they got taken over for around about $750 million. We've got two seed assets. It's mining accommodation. The first asset is South Hedland Motel, which is smack in the middle of South Hedland, opposite the Charter Hall Shopping Center. We've bought it at around about $9.5 million of net income, and we believe we can substantially increase that by over 25%.
There's significant demand in that Hedland region and with iron ore and various things happening and growth to mines, and these mines are long-term mines. We're specifically targeting areas for this mining accommodation where there's long-term longevity in workforce. You know, if you go to somewhere like Karratha, where they build the LNG trains, once they build them, they all move out of there because they only need a few people to operate. Places like Newman. We're also buying the Norseman asset, which we're very excited to buy, which is a, you know, with the Pantoro big raising, and there's significantly longevity in that mine. It also has a number of other tricks up its sleeve, other resources there as well. You know, we're gonna create diversity in this portfolio.
GDI are only committing AUD 35 million into it, we'd be looking to out those properties into trusts for our investors and the group, the joint venture group would take long-term leases over those properties. We're certainly looking for more acquisitions, and we believe we'll be able to certainly grow our funds management business on that. The whole thing is a 50/50 joint venture, a 50% joint venture in the funds management, and a 50% joint venture in the operating company. We believe it will add significantly to our cash flow. By having us as a partner, the Tulla Group we can see strong growth in acquisitions of these type of properties. I'll hand you over to Dave for the financial snapshot.
There's detailed P&L and balance sheet in the appendix. I'm happy to take some questions on any of that if anyone has. I suppose the snapshot is an NTA of AUD 1.25. It's a slight decrease from AUD 1.27 at June. Everything that we wholly own got revalued. Steve will talk through the outcome of those valuations. Importantly, though, there's absolutely no valuation upside for WS2. As Steve said, it's basically comp-complete.
If that were complete today and was in the valuation according to the valuer's draft numbers on that, it would add between AUD 0.04 and AUD 0.05 to our NTA. Our FFO was AUD 0.0264 per security, obviously at our AGM in November, we reduced our distribution down to AUD 0.025 for the half, which was less than our FFO. Our balance sheet is still rock solid at 27% gearing. Like the NTA, there's not that upside in WS2 in that gearing number. Our principal facility is currently drawn to AUD 260.3 million, leaving about AUD 53 million of undrawn facilities to complete the minor. There's hardly anything left on WS2.
Obviously just capacity to do things like buybacks, CapEx as needed, fit outs, and obviously incentives. In the six months, and we mentioned this in the June when we were talking in August, we had some in-the-money interest rate swaps, which we terminated and bought caps instead. We've got interest rate protection to 3% of BBSY on AUD 150 million to the end of this calendar year, and then another AUD 50 million to the end of next calendar year. The BBSY has obviously pushed through that 3% number now. We bought back AUD 3.3 million more securities during the period. That's about AUD 13.2 million or just under half of the program that we started when COVID first hit in 2020.
There is an intent to extend the program for another 12 months. We originally did it in mid-March, so we'll look to extend it in mid-March. That is the debt and interest rate positions.
We talk about the Perth office market. Good solid net absorption again this quarter. If you look at the pages on page eight, economy projected to grow 25%, huge population growth, AUD 186 billion of infrastructure spending over the next four years. We see significant population growth and immigration into Perth, which... A number of these projects have sort of been delayed and held off. The first quarter of this year, we're seeing a lot of those getting off the ground, which will mean more white-collar workers for the CBD. If you look at the vacancy rates, the premium rate went up a little bit, and that was just, you know, there was actually that was already leased that space.
We could see that premium rate going down and the A-grade rate certainly falling quite sharply. However, there's a fair bit of vacancy in C and D-grade properties, which we believe with the 0.5% vacancy in residential, they'll be snapped up by residential developers in time. Which will again be significant withdrawals. If we look at the Westralia, the portfolio, we've basically just about to sign a lease for a further two floors in that property, which will mean that we'll only have level 16 and 19 and a small part of level 18 available. We have strong interest in level 16 as well. We've got a couple of parties looking at that. That building's going quite along quite nicely.
Hopefully, in the short term, we'll only have the top floor available in that building, which the views are sensational, and we believe that will lease fairly quickly. The valuation increased to AUD 382 million. However, as David said, there's no valuation in there for WS2, and be ready for occupation in the next couple of weeks. Once we get a full sign-off and that's finished, that will add to our NTA as well. We're, you know, there's strong demand from tenants and quality tenants as well in that Westralia building. David?
I'll just add on that valuation number. The previous value that was done in December 2021 included about AUD 9.25 million of land value of WS2. That is not in this valuation. Essentially, you've gone from a val of AUD 262 million - AUD 382 million. There's been no change in cap rates. I've chatted to the valuer, and he possibly might have tightened it if we had of done it in June. It was 6% in December. It might have been 5.75%, and he's left it at 6% in December, 12 months later. The valuation increases is largely around the growth in market rents and higher occupancy and less for spend.
Exactly. At 197, look, we got caught with a bit of vacancy there with AMIC and Jacobs moving out. However, we've signed heads of agreement and done leasing for about 7,000 square meters. There is a bit of vacancy in that building, however, the space left is beautifully fitted out, and it's a perfect. We're getting a lot of inquiry and demand for that due to its prime location and, you know, and the quality of fit outs there. That's a lot of those. That's a nice demand for those tenants, sort of from 200 m to 800 m, who are growing on the back of all these AUD 180 billion of infrastructure projects happening. 5 M ill Street, strong demand there.
The vacancy has gone up now to 92%. We've got interest in the rest of that building. That's.
Hot off the press, late last week, another, one of those three suites is now under heads.
Yeah.
200 square meters.
Yeah. You know, I think there's a conservative capitalization rate on that. You know, we haven't. You look at our, all of our, cap rates for various things are all fairly conservative. 1 Mill Street, we had to change around, as we spoke last time. We've changed around the development from a concrete structure now to the steel and timber structure, the environmentally friendly structure. That DA has been approved, and we'll be going out marketing, looking for pre-commitments on that property. There's a number of tenants who would fit the bill for that building. Obviously, we won't do anything until we get a pre-commitment on that property. The good thing is that the timber and steel structure building on top of the building, it saves significant costs and time as well.
Anyone building in Perth at the moment who's doing excavation and that, building costs are up around about 32%. We can keep it around the same levels that we had previously. The two car parks were increased value by 5.75. They're both prime CBD car parks. In fact, they're performing out, you know, outstandingly. We have, however, submitted a DA for the Wellington Street car park, which would be, it forms part of the Perth Hospital. There are two big government inquiries coming out in the next few weeks. We believe this building would be ideal for that. One is, you have two, health and mining and energy.
Also, we're converting the car park into 51 apartments or student accommodation or short-term stay, which will be, you know. The hospital is certainly looking for that type of space there. 180 Hay Street. Look, we didn't have that much inquiry on that for a while. Now we've got an owner-occupier and two strong tenant inquiries on that property, and we're hoping to lease it up very shortly. The valuation went up from AUD 18.4 million - AUD 20.5 million. The car yards are performing very strong. With the benefit now that you're able to import cars from Japan, they found it very hard to get stock. Certainly, they're performing very well in prime locations.
Hot off the press in Stanley Street, Townsville, we've signed a heads of agreement with a major government department for 3,021 square meters, leaving around about 1,000 square meters of vacancy, and we've got inquiry on that. Once we get all that put together, we'll pop that property on the market this year. Dave, want to go on?
Talk on the funds. The funding.
I'll just talk a couple of the funds assets, and then I'll leave it to Dave to talk about. We talked about Townsville. If we go through GDI Number 36, 108 Lake Terrace. You know, we thought that property would be leased. We had some very strong inquiry for two floors. That has just been taking so long. We've got another inquiry for another floor, we hope to lease that shortly and put that on the market as soon as possible. The GDI 38 is, we're with all the government. They're rezoning all of that land to residential. We're hoping to get a rezoning for about 1,100 units on that land and significant upside for investors there. We've talked about Townsville. IKEA.
IKEA have exercised their option, and they've actually spent a lot of money on the building themselves, and it's one of their most profitable stores in the world. Then we've talked about the car yards there. I'll hand you over to Dave Williams to talk a bit about the financials.
Why don't we actually Sorry to jump around a bit, but if we turn to page 20, we'll just talk about the makeup of the contribution of FFO. Obviously, Westralia Square's contribution goes up as occupancy goes up. That's going to continue to accelerate. Full contribution from Westralia Square One is sort of in the AUD 26 million, AUD 27 million marks for the full year. There's a lot of upside there. As Steve said, there's interest in 16, and I believe it's basically only level 19 left. The Mill Green's contribution was obviously it got hit around a bit as the vacancy's come up. As that refills, that jumps back up, and that's all around 197.
The AUD 5 million with it, Mill now basically full, it'll be contributing a bit more. Some of the other, the leaks that look like we might be able to turn them right around are things like 180 Hay, which is costing us AUD 200,000 every six months to hold it empty. Obviously, the rent contribution is quite a lot more, quite a lot of a big swing factor. We are feeling really good about what the next 18 months looks like on from an FFO point of view. On net interest expense, we are essentially unhedged, except we've got that 3% cap. It has gone up a lot in the last six months.
We are currently capitalizing the interest expense on WS2. That will start being expensed through the P&L once we get practical completion. Our corporate and admin expenses have barely changed in the last four or five years. What does that mean for guidance? Look, we've, you know, we had the very difficult situation where we had been maintaining our FFO at AUD 0.0775 for the year. Given the vacancy that we had and the rising interest rates, we took a very conservative approach to it and said we're only gonna pay two and a half for the six months.
That's obviously been confirmed, and we're now saying no more than, not less than, I should say, AUD 0.05, for FY 2023
Yeah.
That's me done.
Yeah. Obviously all these leases we've signed, there's significant cash flow in FY 2024 coming through. I think we might just ask for questions now. If anyone has any questions, we'd be delighted to answer them.
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 need to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question comes from Edward Day with MA Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Steve and Dave. Just wondering if you can give some color to the rent levels you're getting in, WS 2.
The two heads of agreements are averaging probably, over about $750 a meter net. One was done at the lower floors at about $725, $735. Levels five and six are done at $800 a meter.
Thank you. Just on the balance sheet, Dave, I know you've got a bit over AUD 50 odd mil in undrawn capacity. How are you thinking about a balance sheet given the AUD 35 odd mil commitment as part of the JV?
We're in discussions about getting that separately funded by our existing financier. An increase and a slight extension.
Yeah.
Thank you.
We will be looking at some asset sales as well.
As you know, we are...
Okay, thank you.
All right.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll just pause momentarily for any more questions to enter the queue. The next question comes from [Andrew Hechtle], a private investor. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Just thought I'd see follow on from the last question with regards to incentives on WS 2. Where are you currently at around incentives, please?
The range, for, sort of B, C, D grade buildings somewhere around that 45%-50%. For premium they're around about from 35%-40% odd, 45%.
Thanks, Steve.
That's on net, not on gross.
Yep.
Obviously, you know, the larger the tenant, the more power they have, the smaller the tenant, they're really shrinking quite quickly.
Good.
There are no further questions at this time. I now hand back for closing remarks.
Well, thank you all for your support. We're very excited about the future. We've had a great six months, and we thank you all for your support. We'll close this off now. Thank you.