Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome to IGD's Conference Call presenting Q3 2024 results. Let me remind you that all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, a Q&A will be held. If you wish to be assisted by an operator during the conference call, press star and zero on your phone keypad. I'm now turning the conference over to Mr. Roberto Zoia, CEO and General Manager of IGD. You go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon to all of you. We have just finished the board meeting which approved the quarterly results as at the end of September, and therefore we somehow will follow the presentation that was put on the website together with the press release. And then, of course, there will be room for questions as well. Let me start from page three of the presentation.
We see that net rental income declined slightly, but basically it's a decline stemming from the fact that three months and 23 days are missing from the portfolio that was disposed of on April the 23rd. It was a huge fund. And if we look at the results on a like-for-like basis without considering the disposed portfolio, we see an increase of 3.7% and a growth of net rental income on a like-for-like basis, which would be 4.4%. It simplifies through the Core Business EBITDA, which is the consequence of lower income due to the disposal that were made in April. In that case, too, a restated EBITDA had been up 3.9%. FFO we reconfirm our growing trend on a like-for-like basis without having the impact of the disposal factor there.
Our priority, as you well know, is to improve and maximize our financial position growing in the last nine months up to 7.8%, landing EUR 51.4 million at FFO, which again is an impact of a higher net financial position, lands at EUR 26.3 million. The group net result is down EUR 32 million, -EUR 32 million, definitely improving versus the minus EUR 39 million for the first nine months of 2023, considering that there are about an extra EUR 20 million of net financial position to be factored in. Let me tell you that these -EUR 32 million of the group net result are basically driven by the EUR 29.1 million of the impairment on the Food transaction. We've extensively talked about the Food transaction when we first presented our Q1 results.
It's a write-down, it's a one-off impairment, or write-down if you wish, to adjust this stake because there are different rights. There are different rights, voting rights between the rights of the shares we own and the other two investors own. So that was a one-off transaction that in the future may lead to a possible write-up the moment in which the business plan, the fund's business plan, will achieve the results that were somehow agreed upon with the investors. And then we look at the loan-to-value. Again, this is a consequence of all the above, is improved by 330 basis points, landing at 4.8%, mainly due to the disposal effect. If we move on to page four instead, we see the operating highlights, and I'm very much attached to these results.
As we said the first time we talked to one another in May, we told you what the corporate goals were, what our weaknesses were, and strengths were, and we are really working hard to improve our core business and see to grow up. Q1, we had a downside of 3.5%. We were down 3.5%, then we went to Q4, where renewals and turnover led to a growth of 3.6%, and now we have Q3, where we land with upside for 8%, so over the nine months, we end up with a result of plus 2.4%. We're up 2.4%, and you have to bear in mind that the fourth quarter started a bit poorly. The same effects we can see in Romania as well, so in the first nine months of the year, we still achieve an upside, up 4.27% with renewals and refills, so as I said, up 4.27%.
Among the weaknesses that we have listed for our portfolios, I have mentioned WALB, the weighted average lease break. And as you can see, we started from a Q1 where we have 1.78, then moved to 1.82 in Q2, and now we land at 1.9. So it's a small growth indeed, but it's a constant growth that will be with us going forward because this is one of our portfolios that we are most of. And then also a priority for us, as I said from the very beginning I talked to you, is not to increase the occupancy, the financial occupancy of our malls and hypermarkets. So in Q1, we had 94.76%, Q2, 94.96%, and we land at 95.06% at the end of September 2024. So the main sales indicator and operating indicators that we have given you as a priority, we told you we would focus on them.
And as you see, step by step, this is what we are actually doing. Let's move on to page five. Let's see our performance. We really have footfall picking up, up 1.4% vs 2023. And then tenant sales are basically flat. And very positive footfall and sales-wise was September, the month of September. And also October is, well, so far we've only looked at footfall, but they are growing, which reconfirms our belief that our shopping mall formats are standing their ground. And collection rate 95.2%, it needs to be at 97% in Romania. Very interesting, if you move on to page, you see the new openings that we have had, mainly Primark. It was opened at the Livorno Porta a Mare waterfront mall together with Sinsay that opened just some time before that.
With the opening of Primark as an actual structure, the Porta a Mare Waterfront mall is one of the projects that is growing most, is growing sizably day after day, month after month. Very interesting. It's also to underline that for Primark, it was the first small-sized point of sale or store. The first stores they opened were 6,000 square meters. This is 2,500 square meters at first. It's doing really well.
And we believe that this is a replicable format also in other shopping malls. Let's move on to page seven in our presentation. And here we look into net rental income and its growth over time. On the one hand, you see there's a decline because of the change in the real estate consolidation scope. We disposed of the disposal of EUR 2.2 million, but on a like-for-like basis, we go from EUR 82.2 million the first nine months of 2023.
We land at EUR 85.2 million on the first nine months of 2024. So on a like-for-like basis, the growth would be 4% in Italy and 9.9% in Romania with the average of 4.5% represented in the highlights, the total consolidated. And then the core business EBITDA down EUR 6.2 million, and then a growth of revenues both for the Porta a Mare Waterfront Mall and also thanks to some minor items that take us to EUR 77.7 million EBITDA for the first nine months of 2024. On page nine, you see our financial position. What I mentioned before, we have witnessed a growth of our financial position, both the total figure and the adjusted one, taking us to a delta of EUR 14.8 million, which means it's 50% more. And I'm not going to repeat that.
Of course, here we have the funding for 2022 and 2023 on the bank side, but what we weigh most, despite the re-agreement we made in May, is the very high cost of the bond issued in November 2023. And also, of course, we have a net FFO, which, net of the change in real estate perimeter, which is downside due to EUR 14.8 million change in NFP, which is only partly offset by higher revenues and higher EBITDA delta in our core business. And that leads us to say that the guidance we provided the market when we presented our Q1 results, that guidance is definitely confirmed. I can say that in the last quarter, it might be even slightly improved thanks to the core business results that will help us improve the guidance we've been giving to the market.
And I'd like to say to that, where we can see the group net results. As I mentioned before, we have EUR 32 million, which is the group net results for the first nine months of 2024. And we have lower write-downs or impairments and fair value changes and the EUR 29 million impairment or write-down, which is the impact of the Food stake. Despite that write-down, we have a net result of EUR 32 million. Had we not had that impairment or write-down, we would practically have been in perpetual equilibrium or substantially in equilibrium, equal balance. The financial position, if we compare it to the results we achieved in Q1, we see an improvement both on the LTV side, going from 44.9- 44.8, the average cost of that going from 2.05- 6.03.
And there again, thanks to reduction of the lowering of the most cost of the part of the debt that was most expensive. And then Interest Cover Ratio for Covenant from 2.1 times- 1.94 times, Interest Cover Ratio 1.7 times to phase in 1.7. But by the way, let me also say that on the Interest Cover Ratio, we should be around again 2.1 times again. And besides, in my job over the last month, especially, we're talking about how that maturity profile, we are consulting with banks, we are consulting with investors to reshape our maturity profile, especially the 2027 maturities, as we all know, it's EUR 570 million. And we are trying to move forward with these consultations. And the class that we can put on the table when it comes to negotiating is the EUR 1.1 billion of unencumbered assets we rely on.
Therefore, over these last few weeks, we have been, as I said, working hard to negotiate our debt. Short term, there won't be major differences in charges, but there will be a very, very long extension and lowering of the 2027 maturity profile, which I think you probably see as most, well, it's the atmosphere of the one that you and I are all focusing upon so far. Let me wrap up by focusing on our agenda. We have decided to, well, the board meeting decided that we are going to present our new business plan on November the 21st. It's going to be the business plan 2025-2027. Again, it will be presented on November the 21st. It's the first business plan presented with the new corporate governance.
For whatever happened over the last three years, instead of having a call as we have today, we came up with the idea of creating a chance, an opportunity to meet you in person. On our side, we need to do all the instructions. It would be possible, still be possible indeed, to both take part in the event, both in person or from a remote connection, both from Italy and from abroad. Therefore, the presentation of our business plan will have the same features as today, but for those of you who will want to be there in person, we will be very happy to welcome you and present the plan in presence. The event will be in Milan.
Then by the end of the afternoon, we'll send you all the details if you want to actually attend the business plan presentations directly and in person. So while I'm reading out the annexes, I would like to take this opportunity to listen to your suggestions or questions and I'm here ready to take them and answer them. Thank you.
This is the conference operator. Let's now start the Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, press star and one on your phone. To be removed from the Q&A team, press star and two on your phone. Please ask your question using your receiver. If you want to ask a question, press star and one now. The first question comes from Arianna Terazzi with Intesa Sanpaolo. Go ahead, Madam.
Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you so much.
We can have a couple of questions for you. On where I would like to ask about your performance profiles and tenant sales in September, could you elaborate on that and give us some more color if I understand correctly? The individual performance versus aggregate data from you see. And then the upside, the upside in the like-for-like, could you elaborate on that? And then the business plan presentation. Will you give us an update also on the sales in Romania? Thank you very much.
Perfect. Let me say that I'm talking about the CNCC panel. The CNCC panel talked about the malls. It's 230 shopping malls and in the 230 shopping malls, probably 60% of the total national costs were difficult. And there were ups and downs. In 2023, there were comparisons with 2023 where inflation was very, very high.
And so in the first few months, we all suffered. We were all sick. And I'm not saying that everyone is saying that. Sales and sales are no longer a big opportunity for buying. And July sales, they depressed the entire industry, not for shopping malls only, but for online and for city center shops as well. And then September, with the change of the season, it went well. And then October, I only saw, if we just for the time being, we only looked at doing well. 330 shopping malls. It's a national piece of information, and then we have to be broken down. But going from minus zero to plus four is fully in line with what was expected, just like the footfall, going from 0.7%- 4%. And hypermarket, it's more or less the same. And again, the inflation has come to a stop.
There was a repricing on many products, especially food products. So what I'm seeing is data above and beyond some of our shopping malls, but we have three calls. We sometimes have corners in some centers. This is more or less the pattern. It's very much widespread as a pattern. I must say we are definitely within the average. It's in the last three months, it's the next three months, we perform as if there are no major issues at stake. And we are very happy with it. On the interview, talking about real estate, there's a renewed interest in transactions between the first nine months in the retail area. And honestly, EUR 3.2 billion of retail transactions are very much affected by the EUR 1.2 billion of the transaction we had in Montenapoleone. But retail is under the radar of the main investors that we have today.
We have a big remarketing work here. Plus 8%, it means there's a lot of renewals. The fees is about 2%. Rental fees are about 2%, but we do not see it so much as + 8% on a constant basis. I want to be very honest with you. What I want to give you as piece of information is this minus 3.5% + 3.6% + 8%, showing you a trend there. It's a long march. It's a long pathway. We are moving consistently with what we have promised and what we have said. The last question, thank you very much for asking. I have a lot of negotiations still open for disposals in Romania. We have already outlined a strategy to sell both either single assets or small portfolios. We are interactive.
We are talking to many family offices, let's call them that way, who are very wealthy Romanian family businesses who would be interested in buying real estate, retail also. Normally, these are families who started with one store and then went on to two or ten stores. And very often, they sold their stores to large retailers, but they still have a passion for it. So it's negotiations that are still on the way. They're complex. They are lengthy. But I must say that, honestly speaking, I found that they are very much interested. It's not institutional negotiations. I want to state that very clearly. It's not that we've been exchanging letters with prices. We have a due diligence, but very often, you have to have meetings in presence. I often go. Next Monday, I'll be in Bucharest all day. I have seven meetings there.
But we are confident that we can dispose of these assets within a couple of years, 2025, 2026, maybe not the entire portfolio, but to complete a good chunk of it, dispose of a good chunk of it. So far, the market seems to be quite reactive when it responds when it comes to assets as wealth, which are in the full center of these medium-sized Romanian cities.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Emily Kyriacou with Mediobanca. Go ahead, Madam.
Good afternoon to all of you. I have a couple of questions. The first one on asset valuations and appraisals. I think there were some impairments, and I would like to know more about it and write down. And then tenant sales versus renewals. On the one hand, renewals went really well, and tenant sales not so well, maybe.
Could you elaborate on the sustainability of rents also in view of 2025, where we don't know where consumption will be heading in 2025?
Okay, thank you very much. These impairments and write-downs basically are what we do, what we engage in on a quarterly basis. There are many of the two master leases, which, as we know, we have revenues on the one side and rental costs on the other side, but for IFRS 16, sorry, they are written down, and as we have already stated, these two master leases that are Fonti del Corallo and Centro Nova, Fonti del Corallo in Livorno and Centro Nova, will be expiring, one in 2026 and the other one in 2027, so it's just the residual effects that we will have to drag on for some more time, but they are revised every three months.
And then to them, we add the CapEx that were accrued over the three months. And if we don't have an appraisal or valuation at fair value of the freehold assets, firstly, we impair them, we write them down. And then once we have the appraisal, we write them up again. So it's a technical effect, quote unquote. Tenant sales, here we talk about very, very general trends in data. -0.2% is on 1,326 contracts. +8% is on a limited number of contracts. But right now, we do not see any special tension as to the rental fees, the rents. Consumption, we know we're very careful and rather concerned.
But the policy that was undertaken in the past and what we are now discussing with our tenants for a new way to somehow stick together is paying off because we are somehow improving our landlord-tenant relationship by offering marketing activities, the opportunity to use our digital tools, and in some special cases, maybe this is not the time for tension, indeed. In 2024, we did not have, neither have a weight of inflation because, as you can see in revenues, in our income, this is all organic growth and not driven by inflation. Because in some cases, inflation was even below 1%. The inflation rate that was used for renewal of rents, so for the time being, I don't see any issue from this perspective.
Thank you very much.
Let me remind you that if you want to ask a question, press star and one on your phone.
For further questions, press star and one on your phone. The next question comes from the line of Giuseppe Grimaldi with Equita SIM.
Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for your presentation. I have a question. I hope you wouldn't ask before, but I will not answer the call a bit late. Could you give us an update on the recently launched business unit for management, third parties, management for third parties? How is the sales pipeline? Have you involved any other players, actors, or entities since the announcement at the beginning of the year?
Well, there was the question on the services to third parties, business unit. More than what we can say is what our two main customers say, Prelios SGR and Fabrica SGR.
What they say is that, well, their portfolio, their lease portfolio, which was the supermarket portfolio, disposed of in 2021, is doing really well. One of the assets has been affected by the floodings in 2023. It has been able to be up and running in a very, very short time, and the same applies to the food part. We have a modus operandi, whereby every week we have a follow-up between clients. Sometimes we even have the two investors, the two American investors, log in and our investors do it. They manage it. They are clear about the fact that we have to be followed in a different way and managed in a different way from other asset classes, and we already have three renewals of medium-sized services. We have remarketed other services.
And we will see when we close the account year-end; we'll see the variable fees because we have an asset management contract for property management. There will be a fee. But then we have a variable fee that is tied in with the leasing activities that went really well. And we're setting things up so that this business unit has a first-name part. We have the reference people to work with both locally and the head office that work specifically for the business unit. And we are already talking to a number of potential clients to really widen this business unit to make it grow. And now we are talking about the first nine months of 2024. But during the business plan presentation, we will devote a part of the presentation to this business unit.
We'll have a few slides so that you have a feeling of how it's working. We're not talking about big figures, but it's an activity that requires zero investment with very good margins, very good profitability. But it's also helping us to have a managed portfolio that is even bigger than the one we own. So this really unfolds synergies when it comes to building a network. If you build a network, you have more tenants, you have more opportunities offered to our tenants, more service providers because facilities, if you have an asset under management, we have one or 1.5 asset under management that change a lot. And that is also applicable to services and also to our internal operations. It's an activity where the growth of dedicated resources is not directly proportional to acquiring new contracts.
So going forward, we could have more revenues with the same costs to improve our profitability. But what is very important today and now is to keep on staying on the assets that we sold and keep managing those assets even if we've sold them. So we create value for our investors. And for us too, we create value for us as we stayed in those funds who are investors. And we prove to the market that there's a new operator, new player offering services to clients and more specifically to institutional clients.
Thank you very much for the update.
Further questions, please press star and one on your phone. Mr. Zoia, for the time being, there are no more questions in the queue.
Very well. Then we will see you on the 21st of November.
I would be very happy to have the largest number of persons to really meet you and talk to you. It's an opportunity for maybe one-to-one meetings during or after. I think it's an excellent opportunity, at least on our side. For me, it's an excellent opportunity to present our business plan to you. I would like this business plan to really convey all the energy I have and we are putting into our operations so that it really can give its best. Thank you very much to all of you, and have a pleasant afternoon. Goodbye.
This is the conference operator. The conference call has come to an end. You may disconnect your phone. Thank you.