Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HomeCo Daily Needs REIT FY23 full year results briefing. 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 Sid Sharma, HDN CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thank you all for joining us today. On the call today with me is HMC Capital CFO, Will McMicking, and HDN Fund Manager, Paul Doherty. Before we commence today's presentation, we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We celebrate the diverse culture and connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. We'll turn to slide four and commence the presentation. FY23 has been a solid year for HDN, with strong operational performance underpinned by a strengthened balance sheet. We have dealt with a unique macro landscape by focusing on top-line revenue and prudent expense management. We have delivered on our earnings guidance for FY23 and have a solid platform to sustained earnings through FY24.
The structural mega trend, which sees our assets increasingly become essential last mile retail logistics hubs, is what underpins our performance and growth. Our assets are in the best growth suburbs of Australia. These assets remain in high demand from tenants and investors. Through the period, we recycled AUD 285 million of assets at a 3% premium to our previously stated book values. The convenience retail asset class is very unique, and so is our portfolio. It is on that basis that HDN successfully delivered on FY23 FFO per unit guidance of AUD 0.086 and distribution of AUD 0.083. This was made possible by a very strong set of operational results, underpinned by 99% occupancy, 99% cash collection, 3.8% comp NOI growth, 6% sector-leading re-leasing spreads.
NTA per unit of AUD 1.48 represents only a minor decrease from the half year, with strong NOI growth, partially offsetting cap rate softening recorded across the portfolio. We are currently targeting to commence over AUD 120 million of development projects in FY24, aiming to deliver 7% ungeared cash-on-cash returns. Through the period, we undertook a number of strategic and proactive capital site recycling initiatives. We announced approximately AUD 143 million of accretive acquisitions, including the purchase of Southlands Boulevarde and investment in the Last Mile Retail Logistics Fund, both of which we have fully funded through capital recycling initiatives. Pleasingly, the AUD 285 million of assets we disposed of were sold at a combined 3% premium to their prevailing book values, highlighting the quality of our portfolio and our valuations.
The balance sheet remains in a strong position, with gearing of 32.8% at the lower end of HDN's target range. Interest rate risk has been mitigated, with approximately 92% of drawn debt hedged until FY25. On slide five, we summarize HDN's investment strategy, which remains unchanged. We continue to target a model portfolio of 50% neighbourhood, 30% large format retail, and 20% health and services tenants across our network. This mix balances the best characteristics of defensive, reliable income streams with sustainable growth. HDN's strong investment fundamentals are underpinned by low rents set at the bottom end of the landlord cost curve, sector-leading re-leasing spreads, and high exposure to national retailers. This is translating into 99% cash collections and 6% leasing spreads for the period.
HDN owns over 2.5 million square meters of high quality and strategically located property, with just 37% site coverage. This gives us substantial opportunity to leverage the rapidly emerging and essential last mile infrastructure trends to unlock additional embedded value. Our portfolio is differentiated. 83% of our assets are in metropolitan locations, with a high skew to the large growth centers of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane to the Gold Coast. We serve over 13 million Australians who live within a 10-kilometer radius and have over 83 million visitations through our assets per annum. As a result, our assets increasingly serve as a critical role in our tenants' omni-channel retailing strategies. I will now hand over to Paul Doherty for the portfolio update.
Thanks, Sid. Turning to slide seven. HDN owns AUD 4.7 billion of high-quality real estate, occupied by more than 1,200 tenants. 71% of the income has a weighted average fixed rent review of 3.6%, and 21% of our income has annual increases linked to CPI. HDN's sustainable rents of just AUD 357 per square meter, and customer convenience provide a reliable platform for growth for our tenants and for investors. Moving now to slide eight. HDN's high occupancy of above 99%, and cash collections that continued to exceed 99% each month throughout FY23, underscores the portfolio's weighting to high-quality assets and robust tenant profiles. We have continued to proactively remix the tenant base to increase exposure to more defensive, daily needs-focused retailers, and maintaining high exposure to national operators.
In FY23, we recycled approximately 3% of tenants into non-discretionary and stronger covenant retailers. In addition, we have already leased approximately 50% of FY24 expiring income. This has resulted in only 6% of total income expiring over the remainder of FY24. We achieved this improvement and continued to grow HDN's property income with 174 leasing deals completed in the year, delivering positive spreads of 6% and maintaining low incentives of just 5.3%. Footfall remains elevated post-COVID, and customers are increasingly living, working, shopping, and dining closer to home in the fastest-growing suburbs of Australia. Visitation across our real estate is running at an annualized 83 million customers per annum, representing comparable growth of more than 20% against FY20.
As a result, HDN's retailers continued to perform strongly, with total moving annual turnover growth of 4.9% for the year. On Slide nine, we provide further detail about our top tenants and portfolio weightings. Currently, which, as I said, we are rebalancing to be in line with the target portfolio weightings over time. Sid will now take you through our FY23 sustainability achievements.
Thank you, Paul. On Slide 10, I'm pleased to report on the progress of our sustainability objectives across HDN. As many of you know, to meet our 2028 net zero target, we have a 3-stage program on energy reduction. The program remains on track, and we're really proud of our energy systems rollout. That is well progressed. Many of you know, our energy management system upgrade to convert our buildings to smart buildings is well progressed, and I'm pleased to report we now have 27 sites, with this installation now complete. This is generating a 23% like-for-like reduction in energy consumption reported to date. In addition, 10 sites across the HomeCo Daily Needs REIT now have solar installations, with another five sites currently being installed today.
The next phase will see the rollout across the balance of our network. These stages are both very critical for us to achieve our net zero target within our asset base. Moving to Slide 13, the growth opportunities for HDN. On Slide 13, we summarize the significant value we have created through developments since IPO. In just over two years, HDN has completed over 16 developments and committed over AUD 160 million of development projects, which have delivered to date a 9% cash-on-cash return. Our track record further builds on this team's team's capability in successfully repositioning over 500,000 square meters of GLA since acquiring the Masters portfolio in 2017. Looking forward, our landbank, spanning 2.5 million square meters, provides compelling long-term upside via relatively low-risk tenant demand-led projects.
Slide 14 highlights our development pipeline, which we upscaled earlier this year. It underscores in more detail the substantial embedded growth opportunity in the portfolio, which we believe is a key differentiator for HDN to its peers. Not only does the development pipeline remain a key pillar for the group, it continues to offer compelling risk-adjusted returns, is accelerating HDN's tenant remixing towards defensive daily needs tenants, and most importantly, it is tenant demand led. As highlighted by our FY23 commencements, which were all 100% pre-committed projects. Turning to Slide 15, HDN commenced over AUD 80 million of accretive development projects in FY23, which we expect to deliver a cash-on-cash return of over 7%. South Nowra completed in the second half of FY23. We expect the two larger projects at Glenmore Park and Mackay to complete in the second half of FY24.
Pleasingly, all of these projects are 100% pre-committed. Slides 16 and 17 provide further detail on our progress, and all projects, as you will see, have an excellent mix of high-quality national tenants and household brands. All projects remain on track for timing and on budget for cost. On slide 18, we have highlighted some of our FY24 development opportunities. To help and support unlock the development pipeline, we're aiming to commence over AUD 120 million of development projects throughout the year. We continue to target over a 7% cash-on-cash return. We have multiple development opportunities at various stages of planning that will fall into the AUD 120 million of commencement, subject, of course, to achieving the appropriate level of returns. I will now hand over to Will to provide some commentary around the financial results.
Thanks, Sid. Turning now to slide 20 to go through the earnings summary. Property NOI grew to AUD 261 million in FY23, which was driven by the full year impact of the Aventus merger, which completed in March 2022. Pleasingly, underlying property revenue growth in FY23 offset higher property and interest expenses. Overall, HDN recorded FY23 FFO of AUD 177 million, or AUD 0.086 per unit, with the latter representing 12% compound annual growth since inception. Turning now to the balance sheet on slide 21. HDN has a robust balance sheet at June 2023, with net assets of AUD 3.1 billion and gearing at 33.8%.
June 2023 NTA was AUD 1.48 per unit, recording a modest 3% reduction versus June 2022, which was driven by an increase in the portfolio cap rate from 5.3% to 5.5%. The resilience of the property portfolio has enabled active asset recycling, with the divestment of non-core properties, Sunshine in FY23 at a premium to book value, and the acquisition of Southlands and HDN's investment into the Last Mile Logistics Fund. HDN will continue to leverage its balance sheet to undertake asset recycling and fund organic growth into FY24, is recently evidenced by the contracted sale of the Midland LFR Centre. Moving to slide 22 to talk to capital management.
June 23 gearing of 33.8% is at the lower end of the target range, and adjusted for the recently contracted sale of Midland, reduces by 1% to 32.8%. Hedge debt increased to 92% at June, following a non-cash restructure in the fourth quarter of FY23, which provides strong interest rate protection into FY24 and FY25. Combined with liquidity of AUD 270 million post the Midland sale and low gearing, puts HDN in a strong position for FY24. I will now hand back to Sid.
Thanks, Will. Turning to our outlook and guidance, we're pleased today to provide FY24 FFO guidance of AUD 0.086 per unit, and distribution per unit guidance of AUD 0.083. Our relatively positive outlook is underpinned by the following: firstly, our strong operating metrics reflect our high weighting to non-discretionary retail and the best metropolitan locations where tenant demand remains robust. This is resulting in underlying NOI growth, which is offsetting the impact from higher interest rates and property costs. Secondly, we continue to successfully execute on our AUD 600 million development pipeline, which remains a key growth pillar. Finally, we are well capitalized to fund our development pipeline. Our management and board remain disciplined and focused as we have always done. We are committed to funding growth out of the existing capital base and maintain conservative gearing in our target range.
Thank you, and I will now open the line up for questions.
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, then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Sholto Maconochie from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, everyone. Just a couple of questions. I, I couldn't quite see them, maybe change your methodology, but the sales figure, the MAT growth, you, you used to report, supermarket and other excluding supermarkets. So for example, it was 2.7% supermarkets at the half and 9.6 ex supermarkets. Now, you've just got a total of 4.9. What, what do you have to see between supermarkets and ex supermarkets?
Yeah, sure, Sholto. We thought it's more prudent, given the portfolio evolution, to report a combined number moving forward. Since last half, supermarket performance has grown by about 2% and the non-supermarket performance has come down. The blended number is about 4.9%.
What was supermarket growing, sorry?
Supermarket has grown by almost 2% above the last reported number, so in the 4th.
... last report. What was the, what's the other one got, Rona?
It's come down, it's come down by about 2%.
Other down. Okay. Then what's trading been like ex-supermarkets post in July?
Pretty good. Pretty good. June was an outstanding trading period, for most retailers. But some of that trajectory has continued into July.
Okay. You don't disclose occupancy cost and productivity because I don't do you for your tenants?
I think we've almost said Sholto. The metrics we like to focus on is the cash collections, which are 99%. They were 99% all year last year. They're 99% for July. We focus on leasing spreads, which are at 6%. We have that data set, and we'll talk to you about it, but it's a pretty small data set for the whole portfolio, so it's not a meaningful number that we put out.
Okay. Then you talked about on the call, you want to get to 50% reweighting neighborhood. You're only at 36%, done 3% reweighting in FY 2023. What, what are you targeting at reweighting in 2024 as a percentage of income?
It'll always be around that. It'll always be around that. Organically, 1%-2% through remixing, 1%-2% through development, and opportunistically through asset recycling. I said last half that I was really comfortable with having a slightly higher proportion at this point in the cycle to large format retail, and I think you can see from the organic growth we generated in FY23 and the way the business absorbs property expense inflation, that was, that's proven to be the right call.
Okay. Then just on the final question on asset recycling, you, you, you sold Midland LFR and then in the period in post-balance date. Are there any plans to do any more? Is it more in the LFR space, or what sort of assets would you look to sell, if any, in this financial year?
I, I think we've proven over the last 12 months, you know, we've recycled AUD 285 million of assets, all at a premium combined to book. I think that's better than what all of our peers have done, proving that our book values are really robust and our assets remain in really high demand. We'll be opportunistic, and it'll only be, if we get a compelling offer on a property and we see a compelling opportunity elsewhere, whether that be in developments or, or acquisitions, but, nothing more to say than that.
Then just on, on that, would you put more capital in, if there was something opportunistic in the Last Mile Fund , would that be the best use of capital with, coupled with the developments? Is that or case by case?
Nothing under consideration for further investment in LML at all yet. We're really pleased with that investment. We made a equity investment of about AUD 42 million, and we're sitting on a 20% gain on the seed asset. Yeah, really pleased with that asset, which has been revalued based on income upside that the fund has generated. We're pleased with what, what our position is today.
Thanks very much for your time. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from David Pobucky from Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Sid, Will, and Paul. Congrats on the results, and thanks for the questions. Correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like the completion of Glenmore Park is delayed by about six months. Is that right? If that's the case, what drove it, please?
No, Glenmore Park was always a two-stage completion. Stage one is on track for completion in the first half, and Stage two is on track for completion in the second half.
Thanks for the color. Appreciate that. Just generally in terms of the environment for developments, at the moment, what are you seeing in terms of cost inflation, labor, and from a planning perspective as well, please?
Sure. I think we discussed last half that material cost inflation was actually pulling back, and we've seen some deflation in materials and products. However, wage inflation remained elevated last half. We're seeing green shoots now that some of that wage inflation pressure is coming off. It's probably still too early to call that construction pricing will be moving down, but we're seeing some really green shoots out there in our conversations with our builders and their subcontractors.
Thank you. Just one last one from me, please. Looking at a few of the other results, some of the other groups that have mentioned, NPI margins have been impacted by increasing energy and land tax costs. Have you seen that yourselves? What's been the impact of increasing costs on your NPI margins, please?
That cost increase was largely born in FY22, FY23, and we addressed it in FY23. The FY23 to FY24 bridge is showing a like-for-like expense increase of about 3%. We proactively managed the controllable expense to offset any statutory increases. Our cost line increase is far more moderate than our peers because we went and addressed the problem last year.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. The next question comes from Adam West, from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Will and Sid. I just have a quick question here, just with relation to the foot traffic data. Do you see any softening in the June quarter, and have you got any commentary around July?
Still showing pretty strong numbers at 30 June, as you can see. From pre-COVID to post-COVID, we're 20% up, and year on year, we're north of 9% up. The story there is our assets are in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, and the work from home trend has not dissipated, right? It's elevated, and I think it'll be here to stay for a while yet. Our assets being close to where people live in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, mean that we've got elevated foot traffic levels. You, you might have seen one or two months up or down, but generally, that trend has held now for the better part of two years. July is no different.
Yep, yep. No, it's all good. Just, just on your voice, I'm just wondering, given you've sort of achieved 9% of the portfolio and you're forecasting 7%, is that just a product of inflated construction costs, or do you sort of see that staying at the 7% mark moving forward?
Yes, we, we revised to 7% probably a year and a half ago, when those construction cost inflation pressures were coming in, and we've held at that 7% number now consistently for a year and a half. We'll always aim to do better than that, but we're comfortable with that target.
Yes. Perfect. Then just on the Mackay and Gregory Hills, do you see anything that could hold up the timing, that would push it out past FY24, or that's all just pretty on track?
Sorry, Adam, I just didn't hear that question.
So for Mackay and Gregory Hills, your developments there, I was just wondering if you see anything that could hold up the timing and push it out-
No.
by 20, FY24?
No, no, it'll be delivered.
Perfect. Perfect. Just last one from me, but the remixing of the portfolio away from the large format retail has been a focus of the group. Could you just discuss the rental spreads you've typically been able to achieve through this remixing, and if there's been any uplift from the shift away from large format?
Across the group in FY23, we reported 6% blended leasing spreads. On new leases, which is when we recycle into a new tenant from another tenant, the spreads were actually higher. They were double digits.
Yeah, perfect. That, that's, that's all from me. Thanks, thanks for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you once again. To ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The next question comes from Edward Day, from Moelis Australia. Please go ahead.
Hey, Sid. Just one from me. Just on your debt, well, just wondering if you can talk through the elements of that, the restructuring your hedges?
Yeah, sure. I mean, we were in a position to do that off the back of, you know, quite material hedging that we undertook in the first half of the calendar year. I mean, it's sort of been called out as it is. I mean, it's a non-cash restructure. We've basically taken value from 26, 27, and, you know, basically been able to really put a line under interest for the next two years. You know, it's obviously some time that we have until 25, and we'll continue to pick our windows.
Yeah, have you seen any change in your margin as a result of this?
No. I mean, we, we actually refinanced some of the term debt, in, in the second half and got a 10 basis points reduction in our margin, so no.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Ed.
Thank you. The next question comes from Alexander Prineas from Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and thanks for the presentation. You've highlighted population growth or the higher population growth in the catchments that you're, you're in. Just wondering, you know, with national population growth having been very rapid since the end of lockdowns, if that sort of normalized or even went, you know, back maybe below pre-COVID levels for a period of time, can you just comment on how that would affect your, your, the assets and particularly your thoughts around how that would affect the feasibility of developments? Is there much beta there between the sort of near-term population growth and the ability to bring developments to market?
It's a great catalyst for our development pipeline. Our assets are located, as I said, in the, in the best suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. As population increases happen, where do people live? They live in and around our assets, and they settle, and they establish their lives in and around our assets. That's the catalyst that gives us tenant population growth. It's not like some regional centers which had a spike through COVID that have come back. Our assets are in the suburbs of the best metropolitan cities in Australia, and that's what underpins our development pipeline growth. We're really excited about it.
So if the population growth did slow, that would, that would translate to, you know, sort of return metrics that you'd, you'd be estimating. Is that, that fair to say?
No, I, I think what we can see in the next 35 years is enough population growth for us to unlock our development pipeline and put embedded earnings growth for a medium and long term through these assets. We're very comfortable with where we're at.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.