This is the course call operator. Welcome to the conference call presenting IGD's H1 2025 results. Let me remind you that all participants are in listen-only mode. As for the presentation, a Q&A session will follow. To be assisted by an operator during the conference call, please press star and zero on your phone handset. I'll turn the conference over to Mr. Roberto Zoia, CEO and General Manager of IGD. Mr. Zoia, you have the floor. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you very much. I am sure you received or downloaded the presentation summarizing this first half of the year. The results were approved this morning by our Board of Directors. We'll walk you through the presentation and then, of course, leave as much room as possible to use your questions.
As we all know, it's been a very intense half year, the one we just completed, that was a turning point for the company after the disclosure of our business plan. The key points of this semester, of this half year, were the refinancing. We underwrote in February EUR 615 million as to a grant loan. We repaid the existing, we redeemed the existing bond, which was the most expensive instrument, both price-wise and term-wise. We are back into paying dividends out. On the business side, we launched our new strategy of disposals in Romania. Two assets were disposed of in the first half, and a third one was disposed of in July. As you will notice, the outline we gave, the guideline we gave, although difficult, is starting to produce satisfactory results. Let's move to page three of the presentation.
The main quote lies: the business is performing well, I should say, because we experienced a growth in net rental income on a like-for-like basis of 2.9%. EBITDA went up 1.4%. First and foremost, our SSO lands at EUR 19.8 million, up 8.2% versus H1 2024. At last, and we're very proud and satisfied with it, we are back to being profitable, a net profitable group of EUR 10.6 million. It can be compared with the -EUR 32.5 million of H1 2024. After three years, it's definitely a satisfactory result. When it comes to our operating performance, Q2 we produced excellent results despite the first quarter where we had experienced a slowdown in growth. Q2 picked up and recouped the first three months. Tenant sales are up 1%. Footfalls for Italian malls are up 3.9%.
A very interesting result is for our hypermarkets, freehold, owned by IGD, and the turnover went up 2.5% for those hypermarkets. All that is indeed the outcome of a very efficient and effective leasing activity. As you know, we provide a guideline of 98% level of occupancy. We are now at 95.99%, almost 96%. That means that in one year and three months, we managed to achieve occupancy for an additional 1.3% in our shopping malls . Our two-year WOB is still there. Describe the home options beyond contracts. That is very considerable for business. That means that new contracts are being signed with us. It's a very long-term contract we are entering into. As you can see, we have either remarketed or relet 4.3% of our total mall rent, with a 1.6% upside in the first six months of the year.
The most important thing here is this 2.2% in Q2 2025. On the one hand, our operating performance and tenant sales were very positive. Therefore, the return for us, the reward for us, is to be able to grow rent. We have new, very important openings, meaningful openings for the group. The strategy is to attract meaningful, again, anchored tenants. There again, it did an excellent job in most of our malls you see from, again, for a leasing contract. On page seven, I'm very pleased to show you this slide. Just to show you our ability to respond to whatever happens, asset management on the one hand and the way we lease out our assets. If you remember, in 2023, there was a big flooding in Emilia-Romagna. You see a picture on the left, a picture of what happened to our malls.
We've refurbished and redone almost the entire mall. We've re-looked everything by also changing internal layout for that very mall. As you can see, the results are one of a kind. Our exceptionally good hypermarkets increased their sales by 10%. Tenant sales went up 3%. Footfalls went up 8.5%. Always talking about asset management. We are still selling the last apartments in Livorno. Out of 115 apartments, we've managed to sell [112]. There are still to be sold, of which two already have a preliminary contract signed with the notary deeds that are expected to be completed in the next few months. From the sales side, the apartment sales have been completed. Now we are focusing on the permits and authorizations to actually modify as many years have elapsed in the meantime ever since we got to Livorno.
We are looking for the right final permits to work on three main procedures areas to then sell the three plots of land that are still there available. Already in our business plan and in the previous quarters, we've already provided a guidance stating that IGD is to be turned into an ecosystem. What do we mean by that? It's not having just a relationship with tenants, keeping on spaces and rent, but somehow to enrich the offering. That means you have to enter the digital world in order to be able to offer that. We have successfully launched some loyalty apps that are helping us get our customers better to profile them, build profiles, come up with promotions, events that are perfectly tailored to the profile of our customer base. We've enhanced our proprietary relationship with tenants with our IGD Connect platform.
It is a platform that is aimed at providing a digital tool to build relationships between IGD, our people who manage malls, and tenants, of course. We collect data, and data are then exchanged in a traceable way. We want to strengthen, of course, the very concept of relationships with our clients and tenants. On the marketing side, we wanted to enhance our cooperations with retailers for marketing purposes. To date, we launched [audio distortion], which is a new way to build a relationship or enhance a relationship with tenants and do things together.
We've been experimenting with this format, unsuccessfully so, I should say, with all launched initiatives that help tenants, whenever they have a promotion or a new opening, to build a preshow with a number of events that could provide either notoriety or brand awareness for the retailers or enhance the fact that there are discounts being offered or a light. That indeed has been a very, we were very passionate about, and it's been providing excellent results and very much appreciated by retailers. We also have six months of very strong interest or investors going back to showing a strong interest for retail real estate because in the past, if you remember, there were other preferred asset classes, logistics, hotels, living, you name it. In this quarter, more specifically, retail real estate traded for about EUR 2.2 billion. For instance, the Grandi Stazioni Retail deal for about EUR 6.7 billion.
That is indeed a record figure for retail real estate. That means that investors are back. More specifically, they're back in the real estate arena. Grandi Stazioni, I'm very happy to mention it because for those of you who really have the opportunity to approach that business or all you have to do is travel around to see it, it's exactly like our business. It's a transition. It's a long-term life since it's expiring. It's EUR 1.3 billion, but the underlying cash flow is being provided by rent and revenues from retail media. This is exactly what we are doing. Really enhancing footfalls means having better returns and revenues for retail media and also somehow enhance sales for them. Therefore, retail is back in the game, so to say, and under the focus of investors.
Let's have a look at IGD's core portfolio, which is growing 0.48% versus the full year 2024. It may just look like just a point something growth, but it's very important. In this half year, this + 0.48% in IGD's portfolio was only stemming from core business. From our core business, was produced by our core business. In the data we have in June, we do not yet have the normalization rates, and the exit tax rate has not yet been, this division has not yet been embedded. This growth has not yet been embedded. It's a limited growth. It's a small growth, but it was specifically generated by our core business. That means this is consistent. Tenant sales are up, and tenant side is a positive performance, and valuations are also positive, appraisals valuations. We also have an increase on page 13.
You see an increase from 0.53% in malls and hypermarkets. They are long-term contracts, so you do not see an abrupt increase. This 0.48% is substantially provided by the benefit used by malls in Italy without any decompression of cash flows. Main financial indicators or ratios. LTV, loan-to-value, is flat at 44.4%. Let me remind you that we paid out a dividend in May, and we started the long journey of reducing our cost of sales. We have a full year 2024, which was slightly more than 6%. Today, we stand at 5.3%. We are already seeing the benefits thanks to the transactions that we have performed. After the cashing in of the first installment of the refinancing of August, the idea is to further reduce it to 5.3% going forward.
If you look at our operating performance, you will see that I'm sure you remember that in 2024 until April, we have had a foot portfolio that had a EUR 5.2 million impact. We also disposed of two Romanian assets for about EUR 0.4 million of net rental. On a like-for-like basis, you see we end up with EUR 1.4 million all representing an upside or greater revenue, therefore leading to a net rental income of about EUR 15 million. EBITDA has a very similar performance, exception made for the fact that we further strengthened our team to focus on net rental or net revenue from services. They had gone down last year, but this year we have a slight change for the better. That leads us to having the core business EBITDA that is very close to last year's EBITDA, with a slight increase of EUR 0.7 million.
Positive news, or on a positive note for everyone, is that we're finally starting to see a financial management, a financial position that's less cumbersome. If you look at the total for financial management in the first six months, we spoke about EUR 5 million and EUR 6.4 million for our core business. That's the savings net of non-recurring charges and IFRS 16. That leaves us to start having an SSO that is indeed more in line with expectations. Our SSO, page 18, SSO. Here too, we have a change in income scope from EUR 18.3 million first half 2024, we land at EUR 19.8 million first half of 2025. Plus, that entails EUR 8.2 million and a growth of EUR 8.2 million. That's not trivial.
If we look at a like-for-like basis, we end up with an increase of EUR 7.1 million, up 55.9%, mainly given by financial management with this EUR 6.4 million we managed to save. Eventually, or at last, I should say that we have no longer non-recurring items. That was the write-down of the food fund holdings. A non-write-down or intending to set value on our real estate assets leads us to benefits from the financial perspective, but also benefits of having negative non-recurring items. We land with a net profit of EUR 10.6 million. Our net financial position is down thanks to the disposals. Despite that, we still process about EUR 6.2 million worth of CapEx. With a declining net financial position despite the CapEx, this term tells you that you start perceiving and seeing the positive results provided by the disposals we have engaged in.
Our maturities profile, we've talked about it several times. It's page 21 in the presentation. They were standard. The 2027 test was removed. Today, we are quite confident. We are not standing still. The main effort we are doing today, we already have a team working on it. We are closely monitoring the debt market to find a suitable window for a possible issuance and provide that or subject to the conditions that are beneficial or more beneficial than the actual cost of debt. We are only just starting to focus on that because of the volatility we have experienced over the last few months. It's still a time of uncertainty. We haven't yet found a very favorable time window, but we are getting ready for it because that would really further help us further declining our cost of debt.
At a business plan level, we are focusing on sustainability, and we keep on working on certifications that are very useful for markets, for banks, and even for the (Inaudible) funding. Being energy compliant, having assets that are energy compliant is very important. We're working also on photovoltaic power to cut costs in energy costs in our shopping malls. We have two tests running with artificial intelligence to make our energy systems more efficient. If that works, we will further increase it. We are also still installing EV charging stations. It's a new approach. According to me, it's very important to also have a fixed income cost when it comes to utilities and consumption costs vis-à-vis our retailers. We have to be reassuring from that perspective. Together with a purchasing group, we are purchasing energy.
There are different industrial players, commercial players that are part of this consortium, [Consortium of Trade and Energy]. They've already bought energy for 2025 with a 61% coverage. First and foremost, we blocked prices for 2026 to cover up to 73% of the energy needs in our mall. If you notice, we blocked the price at EUR 99.3 with a PUN price that until a few days ago, it was EUR 109. We managed to cover our energy requirements and needs. Even if we don't know what the price of energy will be going forward, in our job, being able to provide our retailers with a safe data as to energy costs, fixed and safe data is very important. When it comes to ESG, that's another goal in our business plan. This morning, our Board of Directors approved a new policy called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
It's the first step we have made to get by year-end a full certification as we've already certified almost all of our best practices. I think this is of paramount importance. As you know, this year, there was a lot of movement from the organizational viewpoints. My idea, or the idea we are pursuing, is to set priorities for those who were already part of our business plan. We managed to experience growth across the board and also in our Diversity Equity, and Inclusion policies. I think that it's not just a matter of focusing on a gender equality policy, but also on diversity and fairness and equal pay, especially when we talk about trade union agreements. We really need to be very inclusive, very transparent when it comes to our employees. A company like ours relies on people, on human resources.
The more they are engaged and passionate about their and loyal to the company, the better results you get. I am very happy that we managed to approve this policy. In the coming hours, this will be published on our website. I think this is a good policy indeed. We land at our guidance for 2025. If you remember, our SSO guidance was EUR 38 million in March for the full year 2024. Today, we feel confident to increase it and give you a EUR 39 million guidance, up 9.6% versus 2024. That is driven by the results we have achieved and our will to try and produce the best possible SSO to then have a very good impact on our shares, share price, and dividends, the dividends we pay out for shareholders. Year-end will be a full event.
We've already attended many events in the first half, but we'll attend even more in the second one. I met many potential investors, people who already are shareholders of IGD, people who, investors who stepped out and are now getting back in. This new deal somehow we are trying to provide within our company means that it's very important to have one-to-one also talks and meetings with all stakeholders. I think I'm going to stop here. In the annexes, you'll find even more details, but I'd rather give you room for your questions. Thank you very much for joining us.
This is the course collaborator. We're now starting the Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, press star and one on your phone handset. To be removed from the Q&A queue, press the star and two on your phone handset. Please use your handsets to ask your questions. If you want to ask a question, press star and one on your handset. Thank you. First question comes from the line of [audio distortion] . Go ahead.
Good afternoon to all of you. Good afternoon, Roberto. Thank you. Congratulations for the results you achieved, and thank you for the presentation. First of all, a good operating performance of your own, of the hypermarkets you own. Could you give us more color on that? Maybe could you give us a market comparison between your performance, I mean, the performance of your hypermarkets and the peers' hypermarkets? The stores in Romania, if you show the assets at book value, they have 100% off the list. How do you see the negotiations with other assets? How are the negotiations faring for the other assets in Romania? What can we expect? Can we expect a difference, a gap between the book value and the value disposed at?
Thank you, [Arianna]. The hypermarket topic, according to me, is the combination of two factors. First of all, over time, we've already performed some disposals, and now you're starting to see the fruits. We've started to cut costs. We have to be able to enable tenants and hypermarkets to have a more aggressive sales policy. We see that they are starting to have some very interesting promotions. We have a lot of shopping malls that are very close to cities. If you compare it to the idea of out-of-town hypermarkets, we have many hypermarkets that are very much urban hypermarkets in town. Those hypermarkets perform well because people get good prices. People go there almost on a daily basis. Visitors go there on a daily basis.
Footfalls are showing very good results in the South of Italy as well, Catania, which is a co-master franchising. They did a restyling that is going really, really well with the hypermarket. You have the Arena Group with SuperConveniente in Palermo. They're doing really well too. We get to Naples. In Naples, they are having excellent performance. As you saw in Cesena, the hypermarket in Cesena did a growth of 10%. It did that because it's practically in town, and it's being used as an urban shopping center. In some areas, in some geographies in Italy where the shopping mall is quite the town plaza or a place where people can gather and at the same time they can go shopping. If you offer hypermarket at interesting prices, appealing prices, it could be very beneficial. Proximity right now is what helps us, the proximity to the city center.
Romania, you rightly said that the first assets had a very high occupancy rate. On average, it's about 95% for these assets, the occupancy rate. My goal is to, because of another EUR 9 million-EUR 10 million in 2025. Here too, we have negotiators that are at a very advanced stage where occupancy receives the right amount of attention because out of three assets, they have expressions of interest, and there are just small or minor modifications in the higher floors to turn them into multifunction buildings. I'm very confident because in less than six months, or almost six months, we managed to dispose of three assets. Let me tell you, it's quite complex because these negotiations normally go on a long time. It's private counterparties. It's not that you have lawyers talking to lawyers. It's one-to-one dialogues you have to have with these private investors.
You see the results because we are lucky enough that our Romanian portfolio is made up of very centrally located buildings or malls. Normally, they are on two floors in the main square of the city. That really makes them more attractive above and beyond the retail usage. They're interesting from a real estate perspective. Also, in the press releases we've disclosed, if you look at the sales price versus the gross nettable area that you hear at GLA, we are around EUR 1,000 inclusion, slightly more than EUR 500 for the last sale. That means that we really managed to market. For a real estate investor buying at EUR 5,600 per sq m, it's very interesting indeed as a price.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from the line of Federico Pezzetti with Intermonte.
Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. First, valuations or appraisals. You've already said that they are slightly higher, all driven by your core business. From a quality perspective, were appraisers conservative in their work? I see that even rounding up, the exit yield goes from 7.2% to 7.1% to 7.2%, the exit yield for the Italian core portfolio. What can we expect from here to year-end, from now to year-end? That's also for the net yield. What should happen in order to see a possible decline considering that the market, when it comes to trading in the real estate retailers, the market has been picking up. One curiosity when it comes to Porta Mare, the three areas, the three plots that you want to dispose of, if I'm not mistaken, you still have to get some permits.
You mentioned before that you're still waiting to get permits between 2024 and early 2025. What can you reasonably expect from now to year-end? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Appraisal valuations. Thank you for your question. This slight revaluation, growth in valuations, it's not a rate drive. It's all business, so to say. Appraisers in June try to keep rates unchanged because on [net exit], you need to have some more transactions to be able to see a trend, to identify a trend and then be able to lower it. Also, on [audio distortion] or normalization rate, discount rate, we have to consider that appraisals were run between May and June at that time, which was quite complex because of the tariff talks and for whatever was happening. Therefore, I think that at least as far as discount rates are concerned, there's still room to have rates close to 8%.
Discount rates close to 8%. It's very high, whilst the cost of money at ECB level is down. On the exit yield, there are a number of yields underway. We have to wait and see. Should there be any interesting transaction at aggressive prices, I think that we may even hope in a lowering. It's very important, as I said before, to consider also what happens with hypermarkets in the South of Italy. As far as shopping malls are concerned, they were Palermo Forum, Centro Sicilia, Catania. They're two excellent shopping malls, but they're in Sicily. Roma Est is still Rome. Until not very long ago, we saw that the North, to focus mainly on the North up to Bologna, but now Roma Est and then the two malls bought by Bennet, they are industrial players who are willing to buy shopping malls.
Bennet, the one they bought in Parma, there's a Ipercoop in there. Indeed, they probably did not have the ambition to have a consistent type of management. Bennet bought two. Despite that, Klépierre bought another one. The retail market today is very different from that of offices or other asset classes. You look at the performance, the asset flows, and the latest transactions are all in line with this trend I have just depicted. I think I am happy. We had an improvement in our appraisals without touching rates. Let's hope that in the next half, year half, we'll have a yield decompression so there can be somehow an improvement in our valuations or appraisals. On the 20th of July, the city council approved the new urban planning and there's a plot policy. There's a constraint on the entire city of Livorno, not just on the plots we owned.
The authorities are asking to look at the project first before they give clearance. They have to be 200 m from the sea, and we fall within that category. We are looking at the documentation to then be able to come up with projects to share with the authorities. We also have negotiations in place with the neighbors, with the port authorities, etc., so that we come up with a consistent plan and get clearance as soon as possible. We have a disposal plan for 2026. My idea would be to complete the projects and submit them to the authorities by end of 2025, early 2026, and then with a new permit and authorizations to quickly move on to disposing of those plots.
Thank you very much, Roberto, for your answer.
The next question comes from the line of Federico, Simonetta Chiriotti with Mediobanca. Please, madam, go ahead.
Good afternoon to all of you. I have some questions. First one, the projects you have in the pipeline, because you said the market is more buoyant. Can you tell us more about, can you elaborate on them? The second one, cost of debt. Do you expect a reduction from now to year-end or in the, because it's limited in 2025? One more thing I'd like you to comment on are the key arrangements for your core business, key indicators for your core business. You had a strong improvement in Q2. To what extent was this driven by the performance of your assets or to the market performance?
Thank you very much. On the sync , we're working. We're working a lot. We have a couple of ideas we're looking into. We are talking to possible players willing to contribute their portfolios into our sync. Of course, we are trying to explain the tax regime effects. I have an equivalent portfolio in our sync. There must be portfolio consistency. My idea is that the portfolios have to be very similar. It has to be a similar, if not better, portfolio than IGD, and it cannot become a basket of non-performing assets. I do confirm that if it's an appealing project and the players who are interested in this project are either funds who see a short termination or companies, very large companies that are based in Italy and tomorrow, say, in the future, could have an interest in looking into a partnership with IGD. I hope that every quarter we meet and talk to you, I hope to be able to give you an update. I do assure that it's a hot topic for us. Cost of debt.
We are already seeing that from 5.50%, it's going to be 5.30%, starting from August 8th because we have a refinancing in place. We set the interest rate for six months for the next six months, every six months, let me say. What we will have in August is going to be 5.3%. The real action to reduce this will be, on the one hand, an issuance. We are also working with the banking system. We are working to see the first maturity, that of 2028. In 2028, we have a so-called [Elmett one]. That was a financing, a funding contract that was signed in December 2022. It's an instrument. It's a costly facility, not as a bond, but right now, it's the most expensive facility or instrument. We are working on it. On the one hand, we are working on a possible bond issuance.
On the other hand, we are also working on a possible refinancing of our 2028 maturity, the first maturity in 2028. The bond issuance has two advantages. On the one hand, the cost reduction if we find the right time window. The second aspect is that we would be thinking of, for instance, an issuance for EUR 300 million. It would free up about EUR 600 million. The unencumbered assets would be very appealing also to rating companies. That would be a virtuous cycle. On the one hand, we would reduce the cost of debt. We would free up mortgage assets. That would leave us more room for refinancing transactions or other types of transactions. That is something we are looking into right now. We have 2.9% growth of core business, and it's all business. I mean, the growth is driven by the business.
There's just a 0.7% incident as far as inflation is concerned. If you notice, it's 2.2%. The market is indeed, market performance is positive vis-à-vis shopping malls. In addition to IGD's data, I normally give you data for CNCC. I cannot say it in advance because they're going to release the information tomorrow. IGD is absolutely in line with the panel of the 330 shopping malls that we monitor as CNCC, meaning the association. If I'm not mistaken, we see a general recovery, generalized recovery. Very important is also the development of chains. Very recently, there's been a proliferation of new chains that have come to Italy. We captured a few of them, and we showed them in the slides today, both for restoration and textile, but also Rituals and others for different types of product categories, so to say, that are booming quite fast.
The market of shopping malls in Italy, if you look at European plays, comes second only after Spain. We are better than France, better than Germany, and better than the Scandinavian countries. These are public data about Italy and shopping malls. That means our model, the Italian mall, is working. Online shopping is somehow slowing down. We have it's the way we manage operations, and the market is also helping us.
Thank you.
Let me remind you that if you want to ask a question, you may press star and one on your phone handset. For further questions, please press star and one on your phone. Mr. Zoia, we have no more questions in the queue.
Thank you very much to all of you, and see you next time. Have a good summer.
This is the course collaborator. The conference call has come to an end. You may disconnect your phones. Thank you very much.