Thanks very much, and welcome to our FY 2024 financial results. My name is Anthony Mellowes, I'm the CEO. I'm presenting these results. With me today is Evan Walsh, our CFO, and also in the room with me is Erica Rees, our Chief Legal and Investment Officer. Firstly, let me take you to slide 4, which sets out our FY 2024 highlights. Our funds from operations, or FFO per security, was AUD 0.154 per security. Our adjusted funds from operation, or AFFO, was AUD 0.136 per security. The distribution per security was AUD 0.137 per security, and our statutory net profit after tax was AUD 17 million. Our operational metrics remained strong. Our portfolio occupancy of 98%, our average specialty leasing spreads were 4%, and our comparable non-discretionary MAT growth remained resilient at 4%.
With respect to capital management, we divested AUD 177 million worth of properties as part of our AUD 200 million capital recycling program. We have AUD 262 million of cash and undrawn debt capacity. Our pro forma gearing at 32.3% is at the lower end of our range, and our weighted average cost of debt rose to 4.3%, with 94% of that debt hedged. Moving to slide 5, our resilient portfolio metrics, supported by a healthy balance sheet, positions us well for future investments. We did complete a record number of leasing deals of 552 at 4% spreads, with our vacancy improving to 4.7%. Our supermarkets growth returned to 3%, with 4% growth in non-discretionary specialty sales.
Our occupancy cost remains low at 8.8%, with lower arrears. Our balance sheet is positioned for growth. Our cap rates showed the sector have stabilized, our gearing is at the lower end of the range, and we have that AUD 260 million of liquidity. Our capital and management initiatives have mitigated our downside risk, with no debt expiries until FY 2027, high hedging for FY 2025 and FY 2026, together with our successful issue of a AUD 300 million 7-year MTN that we did in February 2024. Based on the above, this allows us to continue to execute on value creation and growth opportunities, such as our acquisition of Cooleman Court, the establishment of our second fund with our JV partner for Metro Fund 2, and our continued reinvestment into our existing portfolio. Slide 6 remains unchanged.
Our strategy is to provide defensive, resilient cash flows to support those secure and growing long-term distributions to security holders. Moving to our operational performance, which starts on slide 8. 88% of our gross rent is generated from non-discretionary tenants, with 47% of that gross rent attributable to our anchor tenants. The 53% of our gross rent is to the specialties and mini majors, with a heavy focus on food, liquor, retail services, and pharmacy and healthcare. We have 92 centers which are geographically diversified across Australia. Slide 9 shows our leasing activity that has driven higher occupancy and also higher annual fixed rent reviews. We said we've got 98% portfolio occupancy, 83% of expiring tenants were retained. We reduced holdovers to 2.2% from 3.7% as at 30th of June 2023.
Our portfolio WALE is 5.1 years, and that WALE decreased by 0.4 of a year, with increased leasing activity mitigating the natural expiry of leases, particularly the anchor leases. 4.1% of average annual rent reviews were applied across 90% of our specialty tenants, and our average specialty gross rent has increased from AUD 818 to AUD 880 per square meter. Moving to slide 10. We continue to capital partner with our anchor tenants to drive sales turnover, with over 46% of our supermarkets generating turnover rent. We have 127 anchors, contributing 47% of our gross rent. We have 60 Woolworths and 31 Coles stores, and we are the largest and second largest supermarket landlord, respectively, for those two organizations.
We now have 78 Direct to Boot and e-commerce facilities, 3% supermarket comparable MAT growth, which is in line with the 3.2% long average since 2019, and we had AUD 5.6 million of turnover rent generated from 50 anchor tenants, with a further 24 within 10% of those thresholds. Moving to slide 11. We continue to have consistent and resilient sales growth across our non-discretionary tenants. Our 2.5% comparable MAT growth is driven by the supermarkets at 3%, our discount department stores at 1.1%, our mini majors at nearly 3%, our non-discretionary specialties at over 4%, and our discretionary tenants at -4%. On slide 12, our leasing capability has driven a record number of leasing deals with also growing leasing spreads.
As I mentioned before, we have completed 552 deals, being 303 renewals at an average leasing spread of 5.2% and 149 new specialty leases at 1.6% spread, with an average incentive of 10 months for a 5-year lease. On all of these deals, we achieved an average annual 4.1% fixed rent review. Slide 13, we have refreshed our sustainability strategy, and we're introducing an increased focus on governance, particularly procurement and transparency and accountability. Slide 14 shows we are expected to reach our interim Net Zero target for Scope 1 and 2 by FY 2030, and this target is to be achieved through operational decarbonization, with no carbon credits purchased to date.
Slide 15 highlights some of our other sustainability achievements, with excellent results in social and governance, and we're well underway on our ASRS alignment, and we expect to be fully aligned by FY 2027. But this is at a set-up cost of nearly AUD 2 million, and we expect that these ongoing reporting costs will be at least AUD 1 million per annum. For additional information on all of the sustainability, please refer to our sustainability report, which was also released today. Now, I'd like to hand over to Evan to talk through our financial performance. Over to you, Evan.
Thanks, Anthony, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 17, where we highlight the key drivers of the movement in our FFO from 2023 to 2024. Our FY 2024 FFO is AUD 0.154 per security, which has reduced by around 9% compared to FY 2023. Our 3% comparable NOI growth has been outweighed by the impact from a 0.9% increase in the weighted average cost of debt. Excluding the effect of this, our underlying FFO has remained relatively stable, with an increase of AUD 0.001 per security to AUD 0.17. Moving to slide 18, where we provide our financial results for the year. Our statutory profit for the year is AUD 17.3 million.
This compares to AUD 124 million dollar loss in the prior year, with the impact of fair value movements in our property valuations stabilizing in the second half. As mentioned, our FFO was AUD 0.154 per security. Our adjusted funds from operations came in at AUD 0.136, which is roughly in line with our distribution of AUD 0.137 per security. The previously flagged net negative impact from the increasing cost of debt, saw interest expense increase by 29%. The record volume of leasing deals saw our leasing incentive costs increase by close to AUD 2 million. Incentive rates remain in line with long-run averages. On to slide 19. Our balance sheet is conservative, with gearing of 32.9%. This provides us with flexibility to act quickly on investment opportunities.
As at 30 June, our total assets under management was AUD 4.8 billion. This includes the assets held for sale at 30 June, but does not include the Metro Fund 2 properties. Post this, our assets under management would increase to above AUD 5 billion. Pleasingly, our tenants continue to be in a position to pay their rent, with the net rental amounts that are outstanding reducing to just AUD 4.7 million, which is around 1% of billings. This compares to AUD 6.8 million a year ago. On slide 20, this shows some further information around the change in the valuation of our portfolio. During the second half of the year, our like-for-like valuations increased by around AUD 14 million. Cap rates stabilized during the half, with a 3 basis point increase, with market rental movements now driving the valuations going forward.
For the full year, our like-for-like valuations reduced by approximately AUD 74 million. On to slide 21, we talk to the work we have been doing around mitigating our exposure to interest rates. In March 2024, we issued a 7-year, AUD 300 million medium-term note to replace AUD 225 million of notes that expired in June. We saw significant interest from both offshore and Australian debt investors, with the final order book being 4.6 times oversubscribed. This allowed us to issue at a fixed coupon rate of 5.55%. That included a competitively priced margin of 1.45%. During the first half, we also undertook a no-cost restructure of our hedging, where we were able to crystallize value in our debt book relating to the period post FY 2028.
This allowed us to enter into favorable new swaps to reduce the cost of debt in FY 2025 and FY 2026. This also significantly de-risked our interest rate exposure, with hedging levels increasing to 96% in FY 2025 and to 82% in FY 2026. Moving to slide 22, which highlights some of our key debt metrics. We have total debt facilities of AUD 1.7 billion, with around AUD 260 million of funding capacity available for us to draw on, with none of this debt expiring until FY 2027. Debt remains readily available, evidenced through us entering into a new AUD 100 million five-year debt facility with a big four Australian bank, with whom we didn't have an existing debt facility.
We have also had offers for further debt facilities from our existing and new lenders, as well as having unsolicited inquiries from debt capital market investors. I will now hand back to Anthony to talk through our value creation opportunities.
... Thanks very much, Evan. Moving to slide 24. As previously mentioned, our resilient portfolio and healthy balance sheet allows us to invest in growth opportunities. This is demonstrated by our disciplined acquisition of Cooleman Court, but also our disposal program, which is largely complete. We have divested 8 low-yielding, non-core assets for AUD 177 million since May 2023. Slides 25 and 26 show how we continue to increase the scale of our funds management platform. We acquired the management rights of an existing AUD 394 million portfolio for zero consideration. With Metro One and Two, we now have nearly AUD 700 million of funds under management across 13 convenience-based centers. They are held in two separate trusts, with similar capital structures being 80% held by our global institutional partner and 20% held by Region.
Our 20% co-investment, equity investment for Metro Fund 2 is for AUD 39.4 million. This is at a cap rate of just under 6%. The assets of Metro Fund 2 are Cameron Park in Newcastle, in New South Wales. Melbourne Square in Southbank, Melbourne. Byford Village, an outer suburb of Perth in Western Australia. West Village in the West End of the Brisbane CBD in Queensland, and Omnia at Potts Point in Sydney, and also Spring Farm, which is in the growth corridor of Southwest Sydney. Evan, do you want to talk about recycling capital?
Yes. So slide 27 shows that we have progressed well on our capital recycling program, where we have divested AUD 177 million of lower-yielding, non-core properties at an average passing yield of 5.3%. We have redeployed this capital into accretive opportunities through the acquisition of Cooleman Court at a 6.7% initial yield, and allocating AUD 34 million of capital expenditure for the construction of stage 2 at Delacombe Town Centre and on existing center projects. We had also paid down AUD 69 million of debt, where the marginal cost of debt is higher than the passing yield for the assets that we had sold. This has helped us with providing available debt capacity to fund our FY 2025 capital program, which is detailed on slide 28. This slide highlights the indicative spend on our capital deployment program.
In FY 2025, we are planning to spend around AUD 75 million, with a targeted... We are targeting a completion yield of between 6% and 10% and a 10-year IRR that is greater than our weighted average cost of capital. Although this spend is predicted to enhance our future returns, we expect that there will be a short-term impact to earnings. Anthony will now talk further to these initiatives.
Thanks a lot, Evan. Slide 29 summarizes our solar investment. We have invested AUD 35 million to date, and we now have 16 MW completed by June 2024. We are targeting 25 MW to be completed by the end of FY 2027 to FY 2028. Our center repositioning on slide 30 shows the AUD 35 million investments in our ReGen and Revive center repositioning projects. We have three projects currently underway, which are focusing on remixing tenants and improving the customer experience to drive some greater asset value. Slide 31 is really our investments with our anchor tenants and some incremental developments. It demonstrates our continued investments with these anchor tenants and also those incremental developments, which are pad sites, et cetera. We continue to focus on our Direct-to-boot and e-commerce offering, while also completing the development of stage 2, Delacombe Town Centre in Ballarat.
Moving to slide 33, the outlook for convenience-based centers. This is new, but I think it's a pretty important slide, showing how the scarcity of new retail space, coupled with the continued strong population growth, will benefit existing center productivity. We believe that our portfolio is well-positioned to take advantage of these market conditions. As well, our planned reinvestment in the portfolio, plus our lower occupancy costs, provide greater upside for us to increase our specialty rents per square meter.
To sustainably drive our medium to long-term earnings growth, we are focused on generating comparable and a wide growth of at least 3%. Through our value creation initiatives, we aim to add another 1% to our growth rate. Our work to increase our hedging levels, having mitigated some of the short to medium term's early volatility generated from interest rates, with the longer term impact dependent on market movements. Based on all of this, we are targeting medium to long, longer term growth in our FFO and AFFO of at least 3%-4% per annum. Anthony will now conclude with our key priorities and outlook.
Thanks, Evan. So slide 35 just provides that waterfall of FY 2024 to our FY 2025 FFO guidance. Slide 36, we really believe our non-discretionary retail will continue to be resilient, and Region will generate comp NOI growth, despite some elevated expense growth that we're experiencing at the moment. We have limited interest rate headwinds, with relatively high hedging in place for FY 2025 and 2026. Our balance sheet is supported with stabilized valuations and gearing at the lower end of our range, which provides us with the opportunity to invest in our centers, be disciplined with acquisitions, and explore future funds management growth. Assuming no significant changes in market conditions, our FY 2025 guidance is for FFO of AUD 0.155 per security and our AFFO of AUD 0.137 per security. There we go. I've finished that.
Would now like to open it up to any questions. Thanks very much.
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're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Lou Pirenc from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Two questions for me, if I may. Firstly, just on FY 2024, you missed on your guidance from, from February. So can you just talk through what caused that? Kind of where were the surprise?
Look, it's not too far off where we were. And the key movements there is some of the interest cost was in line with what we expected. Some of the property expenses, there was timing on that. And some of the leasing deals were done a little bit later than we expected, so... But we're seeing that flow on effect to FY 25.
Thank you. Then second question, just to do with that fund. It looks like you've picked up a mandate from another manager, which is always good. Can you maybe just talk about opportunities out there to maybe do more of that or to grow, you know, the first fund, you know, more organically by buying assets in there?
Yeah, thanks, Lou. Yeah, look, we have a very good relationship with our joint venture partner, and, yeah, we, we did pick up that mandate from, from another partner, which was very pleasing. So there is still more opportunities in this space, whether it's with this partner or other partners, we'll wait and see, but we've got our main focus is to bed this Metro Two fund down, and we will obviously be looking at all other opportunities, but certainly we're very pleased that we're able to get this, this portfolio across. But there is a fair bit of work to bed it down and, and put it into a, a shape that is reflective for our, the returns for our partner.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Cody Shield from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Anthony and Evan. Just a question on 25 guidance, there. If I look at that MER in line with the long-run average, should this not be trending lower, with some of the asset management initiatives you guys been undertaking?
Look, FY 2024 was not lower than normal. So we're about roughly about AUD 2 million lower than normal, and there was a couple of things relating to that, and one is rent, and there was also some management cost that was a bit lower. But essentially, we're expecting that to be back in line with normal, with normal dollars.
Right. Okay. So, as far as the ID goes from here, what are you expecting for that from 25 or the impact of that?
A lot of those savings will be built into the property level, not at the corporate level.
Okay, and maybe just on the center repositioning, you know, that's... It's kind of been called out for a while, but it, you know, wasn't flagged as a headline in 2024 guidance. Can you guys just detail, you know, the impact you're expecting in 2025 on that front?
Yes. So look, in the 2024 guidance there, we sort of had we're sort of setting up for that, rather than spending a lot of AUD within 2024. In 2025, the impact really is, as we started to do work around those areas, is we've got obviously lost rent from those areas, and additional costs, which aren't related to centers. So that's the main impact there. And look, and we expect-
Can you tell what the lost rent will be for 2025?
Just apologies. What's it... What was that?
Sorry, the lost rent for 25.
What is the lost rent for 25?
Look, I think if you take the, in the guidance, there was AUD 0.002. That's, that's including all, all of those above.
Okay, sure. Just on the property expense piece, if I may. You know, that property expense inflation is an ongoing theme, but something like the, you know, the spending on security, to what extent is that going to be, you know, recurring and ongoing?
Yeah, I'll talk to that. Look, security is being hit by two areas. One is just wages increase, but the other is more hours. You would have... You'd read in the press there's a lot more knife crime, there's a lot more issues, youth crime all around Australia, and we are not immune from that. So security, I think, will continue to increase. It's a big issue for all of our retailers, it's a big issue for us as shopping center owners, and I think we've built in where we think it's going to be this year, and that's more than just a straight wages. We're also increasing additional hours there as well.
... Well, I, I suppose, is that going to change, you know, where you'd look to buy assets and pick up some of those security concerns?
Oh, look, on a case-by-case basis, that's definitely one of the areas that we look at whenever we look at an asset: how much security they have, what is the type of area that it's in. So that's certainly a consideration that we look at for all acquisitions.
Okay, perfect. That's all from me. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Caleb Wheatley, from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Anthony and Evan. Thank you for your time. Just to follow up on the property expense line. In the past, you've spoken to some strategies, particularly around restructuring leases to increase the recoverability and therefore reduce that headwind going forward. Can you provide an update on that restructuring?
Yeah, look, it's on the edge, any of that restructuring that we do. Where we've bought assets and there's specialty tenants and they're on gross leases, we've been converting them to net leases, but they're over. That takes a lot of time. There's a lot of tenants, and there's over 5-year leases, so that's where we do it. With the majors, we don't recover that from the majors, and you can't just go and change a major's deal, at least because it's 20+... Well, in some cases, 20 years old, others there's 10 years to go, 5 years. But, yeah, the market for the majors is pretty well that they don't pay their contribution to expenses, except for increases in rates and taxes and insurance, all those sort of statutory costs.
It's on the edge with the specialties, where we've bought an existing center that a previous owner may have had a gross rent, and we try and convert that to a net lease.
Thank you. Just following up on the center repositioning of the flag, that headwind into 2025, should we think about this as sort of more of a one-off, or as we go through more and more of these repositioning projects, is it more a, I guess, a permanent shift down as things go in and out of that sort of repositioning bucket, so to speak?
Look, the negative reduction to earnings is a one-off, so we should be expecting that the spend we're doing this year, we'll see that revenue starting to flow through in the next year.
But as we do other projects-
Yes
... there will be obviously those impacts-
Yes
going forward. So it'll be a negative offset by the positive.
A positive.
Yep, no, makes sense. And so final one from me. Obviously done a bit of capital recycling. You've gone out and bought an asset as well off the back of that, flagging that development spend and also the new fund coming in. Just keen to think about how you think about those opportunities if you continue to recycle capital in terms of deployment between those several levers that you've flagged there.
Yeah, I mean, we set a target last year of around AUD 200 million that we wanted to dispose of. We've done AUD 177 million. We've still got a couple of what we call non-core assets that we will be disciplined and opportunistic in selling. And that's what we'll be focused on. So that will raise another, you know, AUD 20-30 million. And yeah, we want to reinvest back into our centers. We're also looking at getting good deals that are out there because there are some good deals for acquisitions, but you've got to remain disciplined. We're not buying for the sake of buying. We're buying because they're accretive.
And then obviously, that reinvestment back into our centers, because we think there is a really good opportunity to spend money in our centers to get some better returns there as well. Because the overall outlook is, we're feeling pretty positive about the overall outlook for our sector. As we said, there's not a lot of, or there's actually no new supply coming on, yet there is more and more population coming into Australia, and, I don't think that is going to come off. It may come off a little bit, but it's still going to be very, very positive. So that's what we're going to continue to do. Our cap rates have stabilized, so I don't think we need to blow...
We don't believe that cap rates are going to blow out, so therefore, our gearing, we're very comfortable with where our gearing is at the moment, and, that's why we're, we're really positive on what we can do moving forward. There is good income growth from our centers, so I think the center values will continue to grow, which is a real positive for us. So we're in, we're feeling in quite a good, good position.
Previously spoken to the level of comfortability being at the bottom end of the target range. It seems like that commentary's come out as part of this presentation. Is the implication that you're then looking to maybe move to the middle end, rather than the bottom end, if there's opportunity?
No, we've been... I'm, I'd have to check how many times we did say at the bottom end of our range. Maybe we didn't say it as many times as we have previously, but we're very comfortable with being... Look, we've had a range of 30%-40%. In our 12-year history, we've been above 35 once, and we've been below 30% twice. We're sitting at 32-ish, I think, at the moment... that's where we like to be. We think there is gonna be growth in valuations going forward, so that's why we're comfortable with where that gearing is, at that lower end of the range.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Chan, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, when, when you first set up Metro Fund 1, if I recall correctly, that the target there was to buy Sydney, Melbourne, et cetera, you know, the capital cities. Now that you've got Metro Fund 2 set up, can I assume that, you know, you can add more assets? Which... 'cause, you know, Metro Fund 1, since you've established it, you haven't really been doing too much, right? If I remember correctly, the last, the last deal was actually a divestment. You know, Fund 2, you've got stuff ranging from Brisbane to Newcastle. Can I assume you can buy stuff quicker and grow that one a lot quicker than Metro Fund 1?
Simon, I couldn't hear you exactly, but I think what you're saying is, Metro Fund One was originally set up and to get growth, which is right. It was originally set up with a target fund size of AUD 750 million, and since interest rates have increased, our joint venture partner's hurdle rates also changed, and it was hard to meet those hurdle rates on that original fund, and we got it up to AUD 350, nearly AUD 400. I think we sold an asset there as well in Metro Fund One. But yeah, it was delivering on the incomes that we had forecast for them, and our partner was – he's very happy with that portfolio. They had another portfolio at the time, and they have moved that over for us to manage, and that's what we're doing.
We are not gonna grow Metro Fund 2. We are going to continue to look to grow Metro Fund 1. As long as it meets the investment hurdles of our joint venture partner, we will do that, and they will also, they're happy to invest when it meets those hurdles. At the rates that it is there at the moment, it is probably. It's harder, but not impossible. There are some deals out there that we look at. I'll repeat what Metro Fund is, that is to grow in Sydney and Melbourne for our joint venture partner. Anything outside of Sydney and Melbourne, it is obviously up to us as the owner or the manager, to decide whether we want to put it into Metro Fund or put it on the balance sheet.
You've been super clear with that answer. Hey, supermarket's trading, I know it is what it is, but seems a bit of gyration there if I'm looking at the MAT number. You know, you ended FY 2023 with MAT of +3.5, and then at a half year, it was +4, and it's now down to +3 only. Like, are there any planning there, or is it just it is what it is?
No, it pretty well is what it is. I think you should follow the commentary, I think, and have a look. There's been a lot of discounting going on at the supermarkets, a lot of promotional activity. They have been... There was a lot of criticism by the government. There's ACCC inquiries, there's been Senate-led inquiries into supermarket pricing. You'll-- we'll get a lot more commentary from both Woolworths and Coles as they do their next set of results on that. But I think you'll see its prices of goods have come down, whether that be through the supply chain or their decision to cut some prices or promotional activity is probably where that's come from, or it's a bit of both, is where it's probably come from.
We'll get more color on that when they release their results in the next two weeks. It is at pretty well long-term averages, is 3% for supermarkets. Normally, one of them is trading, being Woolworths or Coles, one of them trades better at a point in time. The combined growth is 3% pretty well.
Yep.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Howard Penny from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just a question on the capital recycling. You can see a good yield spread on the acquisitions of 6.73% and even the value add at 6%-10% versus the disposals at 5.3%. But just thinking about the growth of those relative assets, is it safe to say they both have similar growth outlooks, or you know, is there any difference in that?
Yeah, look, our... What we've described as our non-core assets that we've been selling have traditionally been, I know it sounds strange, lower yielding, but also lower growth. The reason you can have lower yielding or tighter yielding and lower growth is the price point of around, yeah, normally most of them around that AUD 20 million or sub AUD 20 million, in which there's a lot more demand for those assets, particularly from high-net-worth individuals that don't necessarily have need for debt financing. So, and they like owning a shopping center, so they have traditionally been lower yielding, lower growth. We would obviously like to buy higher yielding, higher growth-...
But normally, you, I think what we're looking for is really good, solid shopping centers around that 6%, that also have sort of that 3% growth, which puts us up around that 9%, is really where we're heading.
Great. That's, that's great. And just thinking about the, you mentioned that these sort of high-net-worth individuals looking at assets and the deals, is it just more that they're specifically looking in a certain region or area for those acquisitions, and hence you're able to get that attractive spread, or are there other factors at all?
No, it's... They don't—they're all across Australia. There's lots of different people in different markets that look at different assets. So, but they're more the locals in those areas. So it's not... Yeah, they often buy the center, and they have a job for their children there sometimes. I've seen that. So, but it's more local investors purchasing those local in their local catchments, à la Southeast Queensland, Northern Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, sort of North Coast, Sydney, South Coast. That's—they're the sort of regions, but it's more geographic than local.
Thank you very much. Just on the solar project, just the way that for your growth leases, but also for perhaps the net leases, how are you charging for that electricity?
Sorry, can you just repeat that? Did you say the solar?
Yeah, yeah, just on the solar, how the economics work on that?
Right
... are you able to pass through a sort of economic cost of energy to the tenant?
Yes. So there's two parts to our solar installation. We basically, the first part is our energy consumption, so our car park lighting, our air conditioning in the malls, whatever the case, where we use common area electricity usage, we obviously don't have to buy as much because we're using solar, which is a real benefit. So that's straight on our cost side, operating cost. The second part is, we also are able to then put in what's called embedded networks, where all the tenants basically are able to buy that solar off us, that solar electricity off us, at a rate that is cheaper than what they could get elsewhere in the market. And so that's where we get an income there as well, which is where we can get some better returns.
So we do okay on the reduction of expenses, but you make more returns on the embedded networks, and it depends how many tenants are in there and that type of thing. But generally speaking, the largest tenants, being Coles and Woolworths, don't generally participate in that embedded network. They have their own purchase agreements from much larger companies than just the landlord.
Thank you very much. That makes sense.
Thanks, Howard.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Murray Connellan from Moelis Australia. Please go ahead.
Morning, Anthony and Evan. Just a quick one on the specialty leasing spreads. It looks like there was a bit of a recovery on those metrics in the second half of the year. It looks like in the last six months you were doing average specialty spreads of about 6% on the renewals and closer to 2% on the newer leases, which is quite a bit better than what was reported in the first half. Just wondering whether there's anything to call out there in terms of one source what drove that, and then I guess what you would see the outlook being there?
Yeah, no, nothing in particular. We had a higher skew of new leases in the sort of first half than the second half. And both our new leases and renewals were slightly better in the second half, so. But it wasn't materially different, and our leasing incentives stayed roughly the same. So there's no, I wouldn't call out that there's anything materially that's changed with. I think it was just the mix that we did. The guys probably focused on the harder lease deals in the first half, is where it happened.
Right. And then just a few quick queries on the guidance, please. Could you give a bit more color on what your assumptions are for the base interest rate for 2025?
We've assumed current BBSW interest. We haven't... I think that's we're not in the game of forecasting out market rates. However, though, we're pretty much fully hedged for the rest of the year, so there's not much impact of changing interest rates on us.
Then, just the timing on settlement of Metro 2, please.
In September. We've got a couple of conditions precedent to do, which are very minor, and then we're into just a straight procedural transaction to finalize, but it is changing trusts and everything like that does become difficult. But it's September, hopefully the earlier, not later, part.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Richard Jones from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Anthony. In relation to specialty sales growth, obviously showed quite a moderation in period-on-period. Just wondering, was that negative in the second half? And, and can you maybe call out what the discretionary sales growth was in the second half as well?
I think it's been pretty consistent. It's been—Look, our discretionary is apparel, predominantly, also jewelry, but it's—we're not talking high-end for us. It's, it's really... I'm just turning the page here. So apparel's been down. In that other section there, that's jewelry, et cetera. The gifts and florists are down a little bit, and leisure's down a little bit there. So, but it's predominantly in that apparel area. I don't think it would—We'll have to come back to you on the exact numbers of first half or second half, 'cause we don't look at it, in a six-monthly rolling basis, but it hasn't changed dramatically. It may have improved slightly the second half, but yeah. It's a small part for us. It's 10% of our gross rent, so...
Yeah. I was also after the overall spec sales second half, but maybe come back to that. And just your thoughts on the tax cuts that have come through effective first of July, what impact do you see that having on sales growth in your portfolio?
Well, we get our results, the sales figures for July, over the next couple of weeks, so we haven't got them yet. So, and the first tax cuts came in, in the month of July, so we just don't know that yet. I expect that there will be a slight benefit because people are getting sort of AUD 8,000, which is roughly AUD 700 a month. Each sort of individual that pays tax, so that should start to sort of flow through. We are probably skewed a bit more to the lower demographics than higher demographics with our portfolio. So, but look, I think it's a bit early to say, but I think there is gonna be a benefit. Whether it's gonna be a material benefit, I don't know.
In the past, when there have been straight cash handouts, you can see it straight away, but whether that happens straight away here, I'm unsure.
To find, what's the gearing in Metro Fund 2?
I can't say that, but it's if you do the numbers on 394 at 20%, and we sort of put our equity amount there, you can work it out pretty loosely.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Sholto Maconochie from MLP. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Anthony and the team. Just a quick one on the guidance. If you unpack it, it looks like the Metros accreted by around 2% on a nine-month impact. And another thing, it seems like that's offset a lot of dilution. And just trying to understand why it's so weak, given you've got the Metro part, which wasn't in consensus, and you've also got the impact, it looks about 1.3% impact on the repositioning. So just to unpack why the guidance took those costs to 25?
Look, Sholto, there's three areas I think I'll point to. One is, we mentioned that our corporate costs were going back in line with what our long-run average is. That's about 0.3-- about 3. Our weighted average cost of debt is still another one. And you've got 0.2 from your repositioning of your centers. So you add all those three together, that's what's pulling our guidance back down versus what the growth rate you're probably expecting.
It looks like everything on a comp basis looks pretty good.
Mm-hmm.
It's just, just the one-off that is impacting it. And then just finally on the specialty design, you questioned it. Look, do you think there'll be pressure on spreads given that negative sales deteriorated in the second half from the first half?
We haven't seen that happening. I think... Look, I think there is still, rent isn't the biggest issue for retailers at present. It's obviously a big issue. It always is a big issue, but I think wages is their biggest issue at the moment. There is still inflation. The sales aren't too bad. It is coming back a little bit, but it is coming back off very large highs, off the back of COVID recovery, et cetera, and we are getting back to a bit more normalized areas.
Obviously, the harder piece for us is our discretionary, which is negative, but it is only sort of 10% of our, our income, whereas, you know, our pharmacy and healthcare is very good, medical's great, so, and food and liquor, which is a big, big part of us, is, is sort of at that 1.5%-2%. So I, I think they're a pretty good set of numbers. They're pretty solid. We get pretty excited when we move from sort of 4, 3 to 4, or we get a bit disappointed when we go down to 2% from 3 on our non-discretionary.
I think the discretionary will be bouncing back, cycling off some bigger numbers, and I think you're gonna see them, you know, start to normalize out a bit and hopefully get some growth as some of those tax cuts, et cetera, do come through.
Just finally, on the positioning CapEx, does that AUD 10 million on e-commerce get a, like a rent, rentalized? Do you get a return on that, or is it more just bringing people to the center?
On the e-commerce facilities, yes, we do rentalize that. Usually roughly in line with cap rates, but we don't get that obviously until we've spent that money.
All right. Thanks so much, you guys.
Mm-hmm. Thanks, Sholto.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Mellowes for closing remarks.
Great. Well, thank you all very much. I hope you have a good rest of results season, and look forward to speaking to all of you over the next couple of weeks. Thanks very much, and have a great day.