Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the SCA Property Group SCP FY 2022 results conference 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 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Anthony Mellowes, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and welcome to our FY 2022 full year results for the SCA Property Group. My name is Anthony Mellowes, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer. Presenting these results with me today is Mark Fleming, our Chief Financial Officer. Our teams have been working extremely hard over these last 12 months, and I'm really pleased with the results that we've been able to achieve, particularly during the last six months, where we have seen a rebound. We have, again, remained true to our core strategy of investing in and managing convenience-based centers, weighted to the non-discretionary retail sector in Australia, with a strong focus on everyday needs, particularly grocery, food, and the medical categories. Firstly, let me take you to slide 4, which sets out our FY 2022 highlights.
Our FFO per unit of AUD 0.174 and our distribution per unit of AUD 0.152 is an increase of 18% and 22.6% respectively on FY 2021. Net profit after tax was AUD 487 million, an increase of over 5% on the same period last year. Our NTA increased to AUD 2.81 per unit, an increase of an 11.5%. Our portfolio occupancy is 98%, and our specialty vacancy is staying steady at 5%. We made AUD 347 million of acquisitions and divested AUD 307 million in assets during the year, and our weighted average cost of debt is 2.5% with a 5.3-year weighted average debt maturity. Moving to slide 5, which sets out some of the key achievements.
With respect to optimizing the core business, our convenience-based centers' performance is strengthening. Our comparable NOI growth was 3.3%, and our tenant sales are now 10% above pre-COVID levels. Our leasing spreads of 2% for the year, which included 3.3% in the second half. Our sustainability strategy is progressing well. All centers now have LED lighting, and our solar panels that we installed in Western Australia were all completed during FY 2022. Our growth opportunities, our funds management. We raised our SURF III in December 2021, achieving an IRR of 11% for all of our unit holders, and we entered into a joint venture with GIC for the SCA Metro Fund, and that was launched in April 2022 with a AUD 284 million seed portfolio.
We acquired seven convenience-based centers for AUD 347 million, and we divested 8 properties for AUD 307 million, including seven to the Metro Fund. On our capital management, our valuation like for like uplift of 354, or 8.9% for FY 2022, and our balance sheet remains in a strong position with gearing at 28%, which is below our targeted range of 30%-40%. 81% of our debt is now fixed or hedged as of August 2022, and our weighted average term to debt maturity is 5.3 years, and our cash and undrawn facilities of AUD 453 million as of June.
Finally, our funds from operations per unit of AUD 0.174 increased by 17.9%, as I said, and the distribution of AUD 0.152 increased by 22.6% over the same period last year. Now I'd like to hand over to Mark to present the financial results. Mark?
Thanks, Anthony, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 7, which shows the sales performance of our tenants and our cash collection rates during the COVID pandemic. On the top right-hand side of this slide, you can see that the sales performance of all categories of tenants has improved in the last two quarters of the financial year, following the end of lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria, which is an encouraging sign as we look forward. Also, we note that total center sales are now 10% above pre-COVID levels, and that's also fairly consistent across all major tenant categories. In terms of cash collection, it's a similar story. You can see that cash collection rates were a bit weaker in the first half of the financial year during the lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria, but again rebounded strongly when lockdowns ended.
We expect these trends to continue in the current half year period. Turning now to slide 8, income statement. Our statutory net profit after tax was AUD 487.1 million, which was up by 5.2% compared to the prior year. The result included a 9.9% increase in net operating income due to acquisitions and comparable NOI growth of 3.3%. Stepping down the P&L, the like-for-like fair value of investment properties increased by AUD 354 million, primarily due to cap rate compression. Unrealized foreign exchange loss was due to a weaker Australian dollar increasing the value of our US dollar debt. Transaction costs were costs associated with setting up our funds management joint venture with GIC. Finally, net interest expense decrease was due to one-off swap breakage costs in the prior financial year.
Moving to slide 9, Funds from Operations. To get to funds from operations or FFO, we reverse out the non-cash and one-off components of our net profit after tax, including fair value adjustments. FFO AUD 192.7 million was up by 21.2% on the prior year, primarily due to acquisitions and comparable NOI growth. AFFO of AUD 169.5 million was up by 24.8% on the prior year, slightly more than FFO because of a decrease in leasing costs and fit-out incentives. AFFO per unit of AUD 0.153 per unit was up by 21.3% on the prior year for the same reasons. Distributions were AUD 0.152 per unit, representing a payout ratio of 99.8% of AFFO.
Turning now to slide 10, which shows our summary balance sheet. The book value of our investment properties has increased to AUD 4.46 billion due to AUD 347.5 million of acquisitions and a AUD 421 million increase in the value of investment properties. The valuation increase is primarily due to cap rates tightening by 47 basis points from 5.9% at June 2021 to 5.43% at June 2022. Net debt has increased due to the acquisitions completed during the period, offset by divestments. Net tangible assets per unit increased to AUD 2.81 per unit due to the investment property fair value increase. Finally, our management expense ratio has reduced to 38 basis points due to the increase in assets under management. Moving to slide 11, which deals with debt and capital management.
As at 30 June, our gearing was 28.3%, 69% of our debt was fixed or hedged, and we had AUD 452 million of cash and undrawn facilities. During the year, we issued AUD 250 million of new eight-year medium-term notes at a fixed rate of 2.45%, and we used the proceeds to cancel an expiring bilateral facility. We now have no debt expiring until June 2024. Post-year end, we acquired five further properties for AUD 180 million. We underwrote our August dividend reinvestment plan to 50%, and we amended an interest rate swap at zero cost. As such, as at August 2022, our gearing has increased to 30.1%, and our fixed or hedged percentage has increased to 81%.
Finally, as you can see, we're well within our banking covenants. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Anthony for the operational performance overview.
Thank you, Mark. Now turning to slide 13. Just a quick overview of our portfolio. As of the third of June, we had 77 neighborhood, 1 freestanding Woolworths and Big W at Katoomba, and 13 convenient subregional assets comprising approximately 770,000 square meters with over 2,000 specialty tenants. Our weighted average cap rate is 5.4%, and as you can see, our geographic diversification is well-balanced across all states and territories in Australia except for the ACT. Forty-seven percent of our gross rent continues to come from our anchor tenants, including Woolworths, Coles, Wesfarmers and Aldi. Of the other 53%, there is a heavy weighting towards our core nondiscretionary categories, being food, retail services, and pharmacy and medical. Slide 14 describes our portfolio occupancy. Specialty vacancy is stable despite continued COVID-19 challenges during the year.
Our occupancy level increased slightly to 98.1%, and our specialty vacancies remains at 5%, which is at the top end of our target range of 3%-5%. Our specialty tenant monthly holdover is 4.3%, up from 3.9% at December 2021. Turning to slide 15. Our sales growth and turnover rent. The turnover rent is increasing due to strong supermarket sales. Our total supermarket MAT growth for FY 2022 compared to FY 2021 was 2.4%, although panic buying from FY 2021 has not been repeated, and there were lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria during the first half. The sales growth has accelerated in the fourth quarter of FY 2022, with 4.5% growth compared to the same quarter in FY 2021.
Compared to pre-COVID, total MAT has increased by in excess of 10%, with all categories recording strong growth, and turnover rent has increased to AUD 5.5 million, with 47 anchor tenants paying turnover rent as at the 30th of June, and 45% of supermarket anchors now pay turnover rent. There is another 14 anchors that are within 10% of their turnover thresholds, and there were 2 anchor tenant turnover rents captured in a base rent review during the year. Our specialty key metrics for our existing centers are outlined on slide 16, and we saw a strong half. The strong second half leasing performance with positive spreads. Our second half of 3.3% versus the first half of basically flat. We've had fairly stable sales growth and reducing occupancy cost positions as well for future rental growth.
Our sales productivity at 9,865 was slightly down from June 2021 of 9,954. Our average rent per sq m remains unchanged at just under AUD 800 a sq m, and our occupancy cost has increased slightly from 8.6% to 8.7%. Our annual fixed rent reviews of 3.9% are applied across 88% of our specialty tenants. Turning to slide 17, this outlines our sustainability strategy. We are targeting 6 key areas where we can have maximum impact. The key highlights for FY 2022 are our energy and carbon. We've spent approximately AUD 18 million on installing solar panels in all of our Western Australian centers, also depleting our 22 gases, and we are now 100% LED across all of our centers.
We've completed a portfolio-wide climate exposure analysis on climate risk. We have maintained our 40-40-20-20 gender balance. Our energy rating, we achieved a six-star NABERS rating for our corporate head office. We also sponsored 128 children through our partnership with The Smith Family. The key focus areas for FY 2023 will again be energy and carbon risk, and also aligning to the principles of the TCFD as that comes in over the next 12-18 months. Mark, would you like to discuss funds management?
Sure. Thanks, Anthony. Now on slide 19. Earlier in the year, we wound up the last of our SURF retail funds. All three of those funds were successfully concluded with internal rates of return in excess of the 10% hurdle. As such, we received performance fees for each of those funds. In April this year, we successfully launched the SCA Metro Fund, which is a joint venture with GIC of Singapore. GIC owns 80% of the fund and SCA owns 20%. SCA is the property manager and the investment manager. The fund was seeded with a portfolio of seven assets from SCA for AUD 284.5 million. In July, the fund acquired a neighborhood center in Beecroft, Sydney for AUD 65 million, bringing the total funds under management to around AUD 350 million.
The initial target fund size is AUD 750 million. This fund will focus on neighborhood centers in metropolitan locations with a particular focus on Sydney and Melbourne. Anthony, back to you.
Thanks, Mark. Again, growth opportunities continue to look at acquisitions, and FY 2022 was, again, an active year for us. We completed seven centers, and we also contracted a further five centers in June. We also have acquired some adjoining land and a childcare center at Marion in Queensland. Again, another busy year for us. Slide 21 just highlights the fragmented ownership in our sector, which provides us with great future acquisition opportunities. We are now the largest owner by number of neighborhood centers, and we'll continue to consolidate by utilizing our funding and management capability to execute on these acquisition opportunities. Since listing nearly 10 years ago, we've now acquired 64 convenience centers for over AUD 2.5 billion in aggregate, and the majority of these acquisitions have continued to be off-market, and we expect this to continue.
We've also divested 42 freestanding and neighborhood centers for over AUD 800 million. There was continued demand from investors for these neighborhood centers during the year, and we will continue to be disciplined with respect to acquisitions. We believe we're well-positioned to take advantage of any change in the market as a result of movement in interest rates. On slide 22, our indicative development pipeline is highlighted out for the next five years, and we've identified and are working on over 30 potential developments with CapEx spend in excess of AUD 300 million. Again, a continued focus on sustainability going forward. We also have in there our Lismore rebuild, which is gonna occur in FY2023, which is mostly covered by insurance. I'd now like to talk about our key priorities and outlook. On slide 24, our core strategy remains unchanged.
We'll continue to seek and deliver defensive, resilient cash flows to support our growing secure distributions. We'll continue to focus on the convenience-based retail centers with strong weighting in the non-discretionary retail segment. Again, we'll be seeking long-term leases to quality anchor tenants such as Woolworths and Wesfarmers, and again, demonstrated by our latest acquisitions. We'll continue to explore both the core business growth opportunities in our development pipeline, acquisition opportunities, and also fund management opportunities. Mark, can you discuss our longer term AFFO growth targets?
Thanks, Anthony. Slide 25 sets out our medium to long-term target, which is to grow AFFO per unit by 2%-4% per annum. This earnings growth will come from a combination of comparable NOI growth supported by supermarket turnover rent and specialty rental increases, developments, acquisitions, and funds management, underpinned by disciplined control of our operating expenses and capital expenditure. In FY 2023, we currently expect that our AFFO per unit growth will be below the bottom end of the target 2%-4% range due to a sharp increase in interest rates. We expect to return to this range once interest rates stabilize. Moving on to slide 26, which explains our FY 2023 AFFO per unit guidance in more detail. As you can see, in FY 2022, we grew net operating income strongly, primarily due to acquisitions and comparable NOI growth of 3.3%.
In FY 23, the divestment of the seven assets to the SCA Metro Fund reduces the net contribution from acquisitions and disposals, and our guidance assumes that we won't complete any further acquisitions, either on balance sheet or in the Metro Fund this financial year. We are, however, expecting strong growth in comparable NOI for two reasons. Firstly, we believe that inflation will increase the turnover rent from our major tenants. Secondly, we believe that we can achieve an uplift in specialty and mini major income from a combination of positive leasing spreads and reduced vacancy as we rebound from COVID. The obvious detractor from our FY 23 earnings growth is interest expense.
We're expecting that our weighted average cost of debt will increase from 2.5% to 3.4%, and this assumes that the weighted average 3-month bank bill swap rate during FY 2023 will be 3% in line with the current market curve. If we excluded the impact of increased interest rates, our FY 2023 guidance would actually have increased by 6% versus FY 2022. Moving to slide 27, which gives a sensitivity for the FY 2023 guidance around different interest rate outcomes. As you can see from the bottom left chart, in FY 2023, every 50 basis points change in the average bank bill swap rate changes AFFO per unit by around AUD 1.7 million or AUD 0.0015 per unit.
I know some investors and analysts will have their own view around interest rates over the next 12 months, and this should assist them in forming their own forecasts. Anthony, back to you for closing comments.
Great. Thanks, Mark. Just finishing on slide 28, our key priorities and outlook. We are looking to generate strong and sustainable comp NOI growth and continue to pursue these growth initiatives in a really disciplined way. With our core business, our focus continues to be to serve our local communities for their everyday needs, partnering with our supermarket anchors to improve their online offer, and actively managing our centers to ensure that we have successful specialty tenants paying appropriate rentals. We'll continue to execute on our sustainability initiatives. With respect to our growth opportunities, we're gonna continue to explore the value and earnings accretive acquisition and divestment opportunities that are consistent with our strategy. We'll progress our identified development opportunities, including our sustainability investments. Finally, we are really looking to continue to grow the SCA Metro Fund.
With respect to capital management, we'll continue to actively manage our balance sheet to maintain diversified funding sources with long weighted average debt expiries and a lower cost of capital consistent with our risk profile. We're gonna actively manage the interest rate risk in the current volatile market. Our gearing will remain below 35% at this point in the cycle, and our FY 2023 FFO guidance is AUD 0.17 per unit, and AFFO is AUD 0.15 per unit. As Mark said, this guidance assumes no further acquisitions, either on balance sheet or in the SCA Metro Fund, and the weighted average 3-month BBSW for FY 2023 will be 3%. In conclusion, I'd like to say that during these volatile times, we'll continue to deliver on our clearly stated strategy and objectives.
We're gonna continue to focus on and optimize our core business with particular focus on rent collection and continued deal flow on renewals and vacancy. We've built solid foundations to enable us to continue to seek out and execute on the growth opportunities that are consistent with our strategy and risk profile. FY 2022 was another challenging year for our team. However, the strong rebound experienced in the second half of FY 2022 reinforces our strategy, and we see no real reason to deviate from it. Now I'd like to invite any 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 two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We request you to limit questions to two per participant. First question comes from Callum Bramah with Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Anthony and Mark. Thanks very much for your time this morning. My first question was just following up on your comments around leasing spreads moving forward. Obviously pretty good outcome over this half at the 3.3%, especially with sales still 10% ahead of pre-COVID levels. How should we be thinking about those leasing spreads going forward? Conscious you've got the 2%-4% range that you sort of target. Are you expecting to continue to, I guess, improve at least in the near term, while sales are so far ahead of pre-COVID levels?
Yeah, thanks, Callum. Mark, I'll have a crack at that. The answer is yes. Second half, 3.3% leasing spreads. In FY 2023, we're expecting at least that number. The main reason for that is that we are coming out of COVID, and as you know, during the COVID period, we weren't able to get the sort of renewal spreads that we had in the past. It's been pretty flat or slightly negative. Now that we're coming out and that the sales momentum of the tenants is very strong, you know, fourth quarter sales growth of 4.4%, for example, we think we can take advantage of the fact that our specialties are, in our view, under-rented.
Our rent per square meter on specialties is only AUD 793 per square meter. That's the lowest in the sector. Our occupancy cost is 8.7%. That's the lowest in the sector. We think that we can continue to get those positive leasing spreads and, you know, bring those rents more up to a market type of level.
Yeah. Just when thinking about those spreads on a, I guess, a medium term view, is there any sort of concerns around potentially a normalization or an unwinding of the shop local trend or, sounds like maybe that hasn't been a real tailwind anyway, and there's not a huge amount of unwind. How should we think about the sort of medium term there?
No, I don't. It's Anthony here. I don't think so. I think the shop local trend is here to stay. I don't know about your office, but our office is basically 3-4 days a week, and I think we're at the upper end of where most offices are. That's for CBD in Sydney. Other areas, it's different. I just think there is a lot more working from home and flexibility that's coming to life generally, and I think that's a permanent change.
Great. Thank you. Just a final one from me. You mentioned very briefly in the presentation, but would you be keen to get a little bit more color just in terms of how you're seeing opportunities for acquisitions, both within, I guess, the mandate of the SCA Metro Funds, and the more sort of core SCP balance sheet type opportunities. Are you seeing more of those given recent interest rate rises?
Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think we're gonna get asked this a lot over the next couple of weeks. Look, leading up to in May, there was a fair bit of activity. There was a bit of product out on the market. A few things closed out. There hasn't been much closed out during sort of June, certainly in July. There is now a lot of stock on the market. There's a number of portfolios on the market. I think there is still a lot of private interest. I think the larger dollar values, which becomes more institutional, people are sort of sitting back and looking and wondering when the volatility of interest rates is going to settle down. We haven't seen in the last six months many transactions actually closed out.
I think there's probably a gap between vendor expectations and purchaser expectations as we sit at the moment, and I think over the next 4-5 months, we'll see how that plays out. I will say that in our sector, pre-GFC, during the GFC, post-GFC, leading up to this, there's always been about 40 transactions per annum, and I think the same will happen this year, although it could be a bit slower in this first half as that gap equalizes. I think there is a gap there between vendors and purchasers at the moment.
Yeah. Caleb, just on the guidance, you know, as I said, we have not included any acquisitions either on balance sheet or in the Metro Fund. Potentially that's conservative, but on the other hand, that's the way we always do our guidance.
Mm.
That's the way we've always done it in the past as well.
There's a lot of product out there. Buying is easy. You can just pay a dollar more than the next person. It's buying.
Yeah. In terms of.
Net asset value is the important thing.
Yeah. In terms of that spread that you're referring to between buyers and sellers, is there sort of a high level rule of thumb that you've seen that spread open up to?
Oh, no, I haven't seen it yet. I know from our perspective, we're probably sitting there thinking there's, you know, 25, 50 basis points difference now than where we were 3, 4 months ago. That's our view, but the market could be different.
Yeah. That's clear. Thanks very much for your time.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Solomon Zhang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, Anthony and Mark. First question from me was on the corporate costs, just on slide eight. The full year impact was AUD 18.7 mil, but the first half was AUD 9.8 mil. It implies that corporate costs have declined about AUD 1 mil half and half. Anything to call out there in terms of seasonal items? Is this sort of a rebasing lower post-COVID? Just noting that corporate costs have been about AUD 10 mil for the past two halves.
Yeah. Look, we do tend to have a little bit of seasonality sometimes between first half, second half. In particular, we pay the bonuses in the first half of the financial year. That's probably the main explanation for that. I wouldn't look half on half. I'd look at the whole, the total year number as the sort of ongoing run rate.
All right. Thanks, Mark. Second question was just around the COVID impact, just from slide seven. It seems the net impact for the full year was just AUD 0.1 million, given the waivers offset by the release in the provision. Just wanna confirm my understanding here. Is that a AUD 2 million positive impact to FFO in the second half then?
Yeah. In the second half, most of that impact was in the first half, as you say. Net for the year, you're right, it's -0.1%. Very limited impact in the second half. I guess with the ECL, the thing behind that is it's not just unwinding a balance sheet provision, it's actually reflective of cash collection rates. Looking forward, we've still got an AUD 8 million ECL provision. If we can continue to collect at 100% or above, then that's what'll help drive that ECL number. You know, we're hoping obviously that in FY 2023, we'll be able to continue with that momentum of cash collection and therefore be able to release more of that provision.
All right. Maybe just to follow up, is there any guidance, any additional ECL provisioning in guidance at the moment, or is that AUD 8 million going to be sufficient in your view?
Look, I think the AUD 8 million is sufficient, but there could be some upside if we can collect more than we expect.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sholto Maconochie with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Yep.
Okay, great. Just a couple on the turnover. If I look at the previous 1H 2022, you had 45 anchors in paying turnover, and now you've got 47, which is 45% of anchors. What was that percentage of supermarkets before in 1H?
Well, we had
Let me go back to it. Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry.
No, no. You go.
Yeah. I actually haven't got the percentage in the previous, but 42 anchors has gone up to 47, so obviously an increase of 5. I'd have to go back and calculate what that percentage is.
Oh, that's all right.
in FY21. Sorry.
'Cause you look at the two anchors were paying turnover rent were captured in base.
Yeah.
It was still 2 at the first half, but there was 16. There was no increase between the first and second half on the anchors that were captured in the base rent.
Also sold some assets that could have been in turnover rent as well.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, we'd have to come back to you on a bit of a rec-
Have to come back to the reconciliation of that.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah. Okay. They probably are not like. Just obviously stick to that thing. What sort of over the next sort of three years, given the high food and supermarket inflation, what do you think that will benefit? 'Cause the turnover has been increasing quite materially over the last few years. Is that should go into base rent, and be a so it should be at the sort of top end of that sort of your guidance sort of bridge where you talk about the like for like that 2%-4% going you know, driving the indicative growth of the 1%-3% comp NOI?
Yeah. The way I think about the anchor turnover end is as follows. Let's assume that. I'm just not saying these are our forecasts, but just for argument's sake, that there's 4% growth in supermarket sales in FY 2023, and that 45% of our supermarkets are paying turnover rent.
Mm-hmm.
That means if the four percent was evenly spread across all supermarkets, that would mean that the anchor tenant line, the anchor rental line, would grow somewhere between 1.5% and 2%, and probably closer to 2%.
Okay.
Given that 45% of our anchors are in turnover rent, our supermarket anchors.
Okay.
When I think about that long-term guidance, I'd say, look, call it, and you know, obviously we're in an inflationary environment now, so we are expecting good, strong supermarket sales. If we can get 2% growth from our anchor rents and we can get, call it, 4% growth from our specialty rents, then we should be able to grow comp NOI at 3% or thereabouts, which is the top end of our target range.
That's really what we're looking for in FY 2023, is to grow at that top or that higher end, the 3% level or better because of that combination of supermarket inflation driving turnover rent and the under-renting of the specialties and the positive spreads we're expecting to get, as I discussed earlier. The other thing with the specialties to recall is that they generally have 4% fixed step-ups in the leases.
Yes.
They grow by 4% for 4 years, and then the spread is obviously on the fifth year.
Yeah. You've only got about three Aldi in the portfolio. They're. From my understanding, they just go up with CPI. Are there plans to just put some more into your centers, given the, you know, this is the market that could be quite advantageous to the portfolio?
Yeah. In our development section, there is a number of sites that we're working and talking to Aldi on to expand. We don't have a lot of opportunities because a lot of Aldi opportunities are coming in replacing discount department stores, which we don't have a lot of. We do have a couple of Aldi opportunities in our where we're doing larger center expansions, such as Greenbank in Queensland, North Orange. There's a couple there that there's a real opportunity for Aldi, but it's not big for us.
Yep. Yeah, that's fine. Then just finally on the acquisitions you've touched on. There's a couple of big ones like Scentre's. That would be probably too big for you or would the fund, the GIC JV look at something that big, like a Scentre's-style asset?
Scentre's, I actually know very well. It's a great center. I think the values that have been put out there by the selling agents indicate that it's a big development site.
Okay.
Not necessarily a core, shopping center site.
Mixed use, yeah, because it's got adjacent land.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's a lot of apartments all around it.
Yeah.
It's a great center.
That's great. Yeah. Thanks very much for your time. That's great. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Marie Connolly with Moelis Australia. Please go ahead.
Morning, Anthony. Morning, Mark. Just noting the comments around the insurance proceeds that were received during the year. Could you just give us a bit of color around the impact that that's covering, please?
That relates to the Lismore flood damage. So far under that claim, we've received AUD 2.2 million, but only AUD 1 million of that related to loss of income because there's a component of the insurance that relates to replacing or fixing.
Loss of income. Yeah.
Fixing the center, and there's a component of the insurance that relates to loss of income. There's a AUD 1 million inclusion in the FFO, if you like, from insurance, but that just compensates for lost income from that center during the second half.
Is that center back to sort of a normal ongoing operation?
That just takes us back to what the center would otherwise have delivered us in terms of NOI. We'll have NOI.
I mean, going forward for FY 23, though, is that center back to normal?
We will have coverage for loss of income during FY 2023 as we rebuild the center or fix the center. Not rebuilding it, but fixing it.
We don't have any income at risk and because that's covered, and we'll have the center up and running before the expiration. I think it's 24 months off the top of my head. We'll have the center up and running before that. Then it's costing probably AUD 15 million-AUD 16 million to rectify on a like-for-like basis, and we'll probably spend a little bit more on that because you've got builders there and everything, and we might spend a little bit more fixing up a couple of things on the center as well. Income's preserved and, yeah, we'll get the majority of what we spend in capital back from the insurance company.
Got it. Thank you. Just on the 4.3% of specialties or of income through specialties that are in holdover, would you expect to be leasing those up sort of on a sort of near-term six-month view? Or is that more of a longer-term chipping away if that's that figure?
Yeah, no. Look, we used to have a very low tenants on holdover, about 1%-1.5%. We made the decision that we would keep them on holdover rather than renew them at lower rents and because we think the market was gonna pick up, and that's what's happened. I think the 4% will stay around. It might come back a little bit because we have tenants renewing all the time, or their renewals come up all the time. It'll stay around that, which is still pretty low compared to the rest of the sector.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Parnas with Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. Just back on the turnover rents, I was interested in whether you had a sense of driving the supermarket turnover, the sort of split between volume growth and the inflation effect, you know, with some fresh food prices going up a fair bit. Secondly, yeah, whether you sort of took a view on that.
Forward if it wasn't a meaningful effect.
Mark, do you wanna have a go? I'll have a go first. Look, you're better off waiting for Woolies and Coles to come out to tell you exactly what their inflation numbers and volumes are, and I think they'll come out over the next week or two, and you'll get the exact number there. They don't provide that level of detail to us. I think the question is a good one about going forward, is there gonna be more inflation or less inflation? I think there is gonna be a bit more inflation, although there has been some products that have been coming back because, you know, they're less flood affected or bushfire affected, so we'll see how that goes.
Look, I personally think there is gonna be a bit of inflation for the next six to 12 months, and that's why our interest rates are going up to contain a bit of that inflation. The inflation number takes into account a lot that's in the basket of supermarket goods. I think that's where most economists are saying things will play out. Mark, do you wanna add anything or not?
No, I think I just generally, a general comment. We actually see inflation as a benefit for our business because we think it'll drive turnover rent. We think it'll further reduce the occupancy cost of our specialties. Yes, there will be a little bit of offset in terms of increased expenses, but net-net, we think inflation is a positive for our business in FY23.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Allison Tiernan with Queensland Investment Corporation. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thank you so much for your time today. I just wanted to ask, just touch on the interest rate swap reset that you did in August. I guess I just wanted to get, you know, what was the thought process behind resetting the swap? Because I guess the initial swap that you did in February was. That was quite a good trade, and you were, you know, fairly in the money on that. What was the, I guess, thought process in shortening the swap? I guess you had sort of locked in ten-year funding at a pretty nice rate. Obviously, the rate on the reset was shorter, but just, if you could just walk through what the thought process was on the trade-offs between the two trades.
Well, I guess the main thing is that we wanna make sure that we continue to deliver you know growing a reasonable level of distributions to unit holders. Obviously the big impact of the rising interest rates is gonna be in FY 2023 and to a lesser extent FY 2024. We really wanted to reduce the volatility of earnings in those two years. We still have two years until that swap now ends for us to think about how we deal with FY 2025 and beyond. There could be a range of options there whether that's more medium-term notes or other fixed rate debt or whether that's another swap that we put on from FY 2025 onwards.
We'll think about that over the next two years, but we were really keen to lock in certainty of earnings over the next two years when there's a lot of volatility.
Okay, that's helpful. Then do you by my math, I'm not a specialist, but there would be about between AUD 1 million and AUD 1.5 million profit in actually doing that trade. Should we see a swap transaction gain in the FY 2023 results?
No, because we did it at zero cost, so there's no gain or loss.
Okay.
on that.
Okay.
And just-
Right. Okay.
To be clear, we didn't pay any capital either, so it was just converting.
Okay.
from one swap to another at zero cost.
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Grant McCasker with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Anthony and Mark. Just a quick one. You mentioned inflation, but can we touch on the cost side of things, how you're managing your electricity costs, hedging? You know, when do you start getting exposure? You know, can you sort of quantify some of the impacts across the portfolio?
Yeah, thanks for that. We're pretty good on electricity. We have three contracts in place that are spread across different states, et cetera. Over the next year, we're not seeing dramatic increases. Electricity, if you remember, went up. It was about two to three years ago, Mark.
Mm-hmm.
Wasn't it? We had a big increase as we entered into these three contracts then. I think we're gonna be pretty well hedged there. Hopefully they'll come back down in three years' time, two to three years' time.
Where is the hedge rate relative to the market today? Is that something we should be thinking about for 2014 or FY 2024?
We'll have to come back to you, but it's not a huge gap because we actually went up a fair bit a couple of years ago. We'll have to come back to you in a bit more detail on that.
The key point is there won't be any electricity cost increases 2023, 2024.
Okay.
We will start to get them in 25 if the electricity prices remain elevated.
Continue to grow.
Continue to grow.
Okay, good. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lauren Berry with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just wanted to ask about the GIC fund, just what your thoughts are around the gearing and the hedging in that fund at the moment. Also, you know, whether there has maybe been, I guess, a pullback on the rollout of that fund given where interest rates have gone. Thanks.
Yeah, the original gearing strategy for that fund was 50%-60%, was kind of the target. We're not doing acquisitions in that fund at the moment, so it's a little bit academic. Obviously we're waiting to see where interest rates settle. If interest rates continue to increase the way they are, then we'll probably be looking to slightly reduce that gearing going forward. Exactly what that number is, we haven't agreed that number yet, but the gearing's more likely to come down a touch if the interest rates continue to increase the way they're expected to. The main reason for that is just to preserve ICR ratios and obviously that involves discussions with banks and all sorts of things.
Not an issue for today, but we might, you know, if we start acquiring in that fund again in the second half, for example, then we'll revisit it at that time.
Okay, thanks.
All right.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Mellowes for closing remarks.
Great. Thanks very much, everyone. I really look forward to the next couple of weeks and, thank you for your time. I know it's a busy day. We won't take you any more of your time. There's quite a few others there, but thanks very much and look forward to seeing you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.