Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the MERLIN 2020 Results Presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star and one on your telephone. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Inés Arellano. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome, and thank you for joining MERLIN's 2020 Results Presentation. First of all, we would like to highlight the importance of abiding by the disclaimer contained in the document. Today, Ismael, Miguel, and David will take you through the presentation, and we will thereafter open the lines for Q&A. With no further delay, I pass the floor to Ismael. Thank you.
Thank you, Inés. Welcome to MERLIN's 2020 full year results presentation. As you all know, 2020 has been a quite challenging year. The first thing I have to do is expressly thank the staff and the management team of MERLIN for their determination and performance against a quite complicated market backdrop. What has happened in 2020? On page four of the presentation, you have a quick snapshot of what has happened. Basically, in offices, we have lost 1.7 points of occupancy. That can be split as around 40% space reductions, 15%, one client that has moved to its own building in an industrial park. 10% voluntary cancellations of contracts because we needed them for the territories of other clients. 25% regrettable insolvencies or distressed situations, and 5% lack of agreement on rental prices.
In terms of lease activity, leaving aside the renewals, which have scored 83% of the total negotiations. We have signed 44,000 sq m in the year, minus 45% as compared to last. That representing around 6.5% market share in both Spain and Portugal. The rents have grown 2.2% like for like, despite the occupancy drop, mainly as a consequence of a positive re-lease spread of 3%, which is, as you can imagine, not a consequence of a strong market growth, but rather is attributable to the fact that we are trailing far behind estimated rental values. As in many other commercial real estate companies, we were trailing behind market rents during the up cycle. As a consequence, many of the contracts we renew, we increase the rent simply because it's far from market.
The delta between us and market has shrunk from 13% in 2019, to 12% in 2020. It still provides a very interesting cushion in case the market continues to deteriorate. In logistics, while delivering new product to the market, including a port of 237,000 sq m, we have been able to more or less maintain the occupancy at 97.5%, which is very close to full occupancy. We have transacted 137,000 sq m, -11% only year-over-year compared to 2019, representing around 9% of all the total square meterage transacted in Spain and Portugal. Rents have gone up 1.8% like for like, mainly owing to a 6% re-lease spread. In this case, there is market growth. In shopping centers, we have resisted relatively well in terms of occupancy, slightly increasing. This is also because of the sale of the Mercury portfolio.
Without that effect, it would have been flat. Have transacted 20,000 square meters during the year, which is not bad. Minus 47% year on year, but certainly showing that there continues to be some activity in the shopping center market, despite what people is writing and saying in conversations. In terms of rents, we recorded a minus 1.2% like for like growth, owing mainly to a 4.1% re-lease spread. That comes mainly from contractual step-ups. It's not that this market has shown any signs of growth in 2020. There are not a lot of data available because, as you know, this market is now completely out of session.
It's complicated even for us to obtain reliable data from the majors, CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle, and we need to rely only on the Asociación Española de Centros y Parques Comerciales in order to obtain reliable data for activity in shopping centers. Net leases has proved, once again, to be a safe haven for the company, keeping relatively flat the occupancy and increasing rents 1.2% like for like, mainly on CPI indexation. Overall, in the portfolio, we have lost 57 basis points of total occupancy, so less than 0.6%, which is a quite remarkable performance and a testimony of the resilience of our company, which is more solid than many people might think. In terms of gross rents, the drop in the year has been 4% to around EUR 503 million.
Of course, after incentives, which is where we have taken the biggest hit, owing to the shopping centers, the retail commercial policy that we have adopted is only EUR 441 and the drop as compared to last year is 13.8%. Similarly, in EBITDA, EUR 365 million, the drop is 14.1%. In FFO, of course, the operating leverage plays its role and is EUR 262.4 million, representing a 16.8% drop compared to 2019. Net tangible assets up 0.5% and LTV stable at 39.9%, including transfer costs with the old method, 41.1%, which is also a very interesting milestone achieved during the year because most external observers were expecting a sudden drop in the valuations of our portfolio. Moving on to page five. This is simply anecdotally the drop in rents of shopping centers meant that logistics has now overtaken retail as a revenue contributor in the company.
We think this is temporary, but it also reflects what the future trends in this company will be. It's temporary for now, but it might not be temporary in two years' time because certainly logistics at the pace we are developing and delivering product may easily overtake shopping centers as a revenue contributor in the company, particularly if there is a new normal, a re-equilibrium in rents in the shopping center industry. We expect to continue the trend. We have close to 100,000sq m in pretty advanced negotiations in terms of obtaining prelets in this year, in 2021, which will represent additional rent for the future. We are significantly approaching our target composition of rental income in the company. That, as you know, is 50 offices, 20 logistics, 15 and 15 net leases and shopping centers.
We are very close to reaching that composition of income when attributing proportionally our cash flow obtained in ZAL Port, in CILSA in Barcelona. On page six and seven, what we wanted to simply convey to you is that the company has not stopped. The crisis did not mean any sort of paralyzation of our activity. We have continued working on the different initiatives that we have underway in the company, with the idea basically to through sustainability and technology better serve the people in our portfolio. As commented many times with you, we are now starting to look through our tenants and try to take care of the ultimate people that works for our tenants, which are the end users, the clients of our portfolio.
David Brush will go deeper and expand into the initiatives in terms of sustainability and technology, which are simplified in page six and seven. On page nine, you can see how the different magnitudes of 2020 compare to 2019. I pass the word to Miguel Ollero, who will now give you an idea of how the different financial magnitudes looked in the year and how they compare with past years.
Thank you, Ismael. Good afternoon, everybody. I am going to go through the numbers which are reflecting in the end what Ismael has been highlighting at the very beginning of the conversation. That has been the big impact that the coronavirus crisis has been taking in our portfolio. As a starting point on gross rent basis, we reached EUR 503 million of rents, which compares to EUR 526 million coming from 2019. The main reason behind is, as Ismael was commenting, we have been going through asset sales. We were commanding close to EUR 300 million of sales back in 2019, and we have also been achieving the EUR 200 million mark of asset sales during 2020. That means that we were starting the year with -EUR 26 million of rents. That is the main driver of the difference between 2020 and 2019.
In between, you have the like-for-like evolution that Ismael already highlighted before. That was overall a 0.4% like-for-like evolution of the rents split between office, logistics, net leases, and shopping centers. Second w e go to gross rents after incentives, we are at EUR 441 million, which compares to EUR 511 million last year. Here again is where the COVID is already taking its dent, in the sense that on regular incentives, we were pretty in line with the prior year, EUR 15 million versus EUR 14 million.
In the end, we have EUR 46.7 million of additional incentives, which are linked to our commercial policies that we were putting in place, especially for the retail activity of the portfolio. This is, in the end, the main driver of the big drop in the margins that we have been experiencing during 2020. At the level of net rents, we have minus EUR 70 million.
394 million EUR against 463 million EUR. At the regular basis, we were able to reduce this impact to 60 million EUR, 365 EUR versus 425 EUR. This is also driven by the fact that the management compensation was cut down to zero, has been able to compensate a bit the big impact at the performance basis of the portfolio. In the end, on FFO basis, we were reaching 262 million EUR, well ahead our guidance by mid-year, reaching EUR 0.56 per share, which means a reduction with regards to the prior year of EUR 0.11 per share, which are mainly driven by the coronavirus impact in the accounts. Finally, with regards to the net profit on an IFRS basis, we have 56 million EUR of net income, which compares with 563 million EUR prior year. This is mainly driven by the difference in valuation in our asset base.
This year, we have been reporting a EUR 100 million impact on valuation, whereas prior year was EUR 357 million positive. As you can see, if you sum up the impact of coronavirus plus valuation, it is the one that is fixing the difference between one year and the other. Finally, on the NTA that we are reporting, it is quite flat. It is 0.4% up with regards to the prior year. I'm not going to look touch base on page 10 and 11 because Ismael already covered with regards to like-for-like operating, and also with regards to the average occupancy ratio and evolution of different asset classes. I will hand over back to Ismael to go in a farther and deeper analysis on what has happened in every single division in the company.
Thank you, Miguel. Well, on page 13, we discuss basically offices. You will see the reconciliation, the bridge between what we have done in 2019 and what we have done in 2020. Notable to see the effect of the Juno disposal that represented the sale of around 4% of our rent in offices, 11% of our area and more than 30% of our clients. That was clearly an opportune sale because most of the clients were SMEs and would have given us a headache during a convoluted year like 2020. Occupancy has not been stable. We have lost occupancy in Madrid and Barcelona. In Madrid, it's been basically a piecemeal.
In Barcelona, it has been mainly the effect of the exit of a virtual travel agency that was in distressed situation with whom we made a voluntary agreement to make sure they left their space before getting into what we call in Spain, Capítulo Cinco, in the U.S. it would be Chapter 11. The like-for-like growth by area has been reasonable. In Madrid, plus 1.3%, in Barcelona, plus 5.4%, and in Lisbon, plus 3.9%. In terms of relet spread on page 14, the average relet spread has been 3%. Madrid jumps to the eye because it's a negative figure, -1.4%, but that has been mainly the effect of a decision we took, which was the extension of the Endesa contract from 2022 to 2030, was coming from a sale and leaseback started in 2002, and the contract was completely out of market.
We waived the delta differential in rents for two years in exchange for eight years more of contract. As a consequence, we registered a 16% hike in terms of rent. The relet spread shows negative with that. If you were to exclude that effect, it would have been a healthy 9.1%, which, as I say, is not a consequence of market growth. It's a consequence of the fact that we were significantly behind market in terms of passing rent versus ERV, both in Madrid, in Barcelona and in Lisbon. As you can see also in the corresponding relet spread of those two cities. If you move to page 15, that addresses a question that we have been recurrently receiving during the year. What happened after the COVID, the pandemic eruption in the month of March?
I may say that our fears were probably similar to yours. As the time went by, we have to recognize that the market activity has more or less maintained. We have had a healthy activity with more than 80,000 sq m of new contract signed at a premium of 7.3% to, in 2019 ERV. This is mainly owing to the premium quality of the buildings involved in those new contracts. Probably for the generality of the market, of the other portfolio, that would have been impossible. In the case of the buildings we contracted during the year, it was possible. We have renewed close to 143,000 contracts. Renewal rate has been 83%, especially high in a year like this because we average between 78 and 82. This year has been high because in times of convolution, people normally is less prone to making changes.
We have obtained a release spread post-COVID of 0.9%, which is not bad. That is more brilliant if you take out the effect of the investor renewal, because it would have been close to 13% on a full portfolio basis, including Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon. On page 16, we simply want to express four reminders of what is the current situation and why our portfolio has behaved in such a resilient way. The first one is we enjoy a very strong tenant roster. In offices, but also in logistics and shopping centers. In what refers to offices, 95% of our clients now, after the June disposal, are large corporates as per S&P definition. Less than 8% of our clients are in vulnerable industries, again, as per S&P definition, and 70% of them are using our offices either as headquarters or main rep office in Spain or Portugal.
We enjoy a very, very strong and very, very resilient, by nature, tenant base. We also have a relatively faint maturity schedule in our portfolio. In 2021, we only have 15% of our office contracts expiring. As commented, we enjoy a 12% reversionary potential against ERV as a buffer against potential market declines if the situation doesn't improve in terms of vaccination or herd immunity after the summer. We have a very strong tenant diversification. Our top 10 clients only represent 31% of our rents. Pretty resistant portfolio. We have a very dedicated team, and as commented at the beginning, and our collection rates are reflecting it. 99.8% collection rate in a very difficult year like 2020. Collection means collection.
If you go to our accounts, you go to our balance sheet, you will see that our trade receivables have not only not increased, but they have diminished by close to 5%. Whereas in the market, if you look around, you will see that our peers have expanded their trade receivables by not less than EUR 20 million in most cases. Our cash flow is cash. I don't know where it flows, but certainly it's cash. We also enjoy as a very interesting cushion for the year and for the future, additional rents. In offices, EUR 12.5 million net effect in the year of additional secured rents that will kick in during 2021 and will help us compensate whatever happens in the market in case it doesn't improve towards the second half of the year.
On page 17, we simply make reference to the fact that we have become a full one-stop shop in the Iberian Peninsula in offices. Because we offer conventional space, but we now also offer flexible space. Which in Spain is particularly important because the work from home law establishes a number of cash incentives to the people that decides to work at home, which is not applicable when you work in a remote corporate center, which is the legal consideration when people is actually working from a flex office solution. We allow also corporates to have their staff working from closer to home or particularly interesting in the case of audit firms, now that they are no longer allowed to sit people in the corporate headquarters of their audited client. We also allow the firms to have people working closer to where the client is.
Currently, LOOM only represents 1.5% of our stock. Certainly, we believe this figure will go up over the coming years. In 2021, it will be easy that these figures increases by around 1%. It will never represent a tremendous part of our portfolio, but certainly it will grow in the future because our clients are demanding it. We have a number of clients now which are fully serviced by us, both in conventional lease and in flex solutions. On page 18, you will see how our LOOM brand is currently spread in Madrid and Barcelona. In Madrid, we have six spaces operating with 1,100 desks, to which 700 desks should be added, of which 400 in the second quarter of 2021, to reach within 2021, no less than 1,500 desks.
In Barcelona, we have two spaces operating with 350 desks and we expect to add another 625 desks, of which 100 in the third quarter of year 2021. We will finish year 2021 with 500 desks operating in Barcelona. Occupancies. I know this is a data point that very few people relates to the market, occupancy is improving a little bit. In Madrid we are now at 50%. In Barcelona we are at 59%. Overall in the portfolio, we are now in the region of 52%. Our peak was close to 70% in 2019. Our trough, when the crisis erupted in the month of April, we went down to as low as 37%, 38%. We are recovering, we are quickly recovering. As you know, this is a type of service that requires a relatively low occupancy.
You can never be at 100%, because if you are at 100%, you are no longer serving your clients. You have to remain always between 70 and 75. In exchange, you obtain rents which on average are between 1.4 and 1.7x of what the market normally commands. This is how this works and this is the way we operate it. In logistics, page 20. Reasonable performance with a like-for-like of 1.8%. EUR 4 million of additional rent owing to the new operation of two fully owned sheds in 2020. Beyond the numbers you see here, there is ZAL Port, which is consolidated as a participated company in which we don't have a majority. We only have 48.5%, which is where the majority of the deliveries have concentrated in 2020, this year.
In terms of what has happened in different cities, in Madrid we scored a flat occupancy with a like-for-like growth of 6.2%. This is market growth. This is pure market growth. In Barcelona, we lost three point something points of occupancy owing to the closure of the Nissan factory. Those were mainly suppliers of Nissan that we lost in 2020. Also we experienced a relative weakness of rents in PLZF. Not so much in ZAL, but in PLZF as a consequence of the Nissan exit. In the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, we recorded a minus 2.4% like-for-like growth, but improved 0.9% in terms of occupancy to 100%. Re-spreads were good across the portfolio, although the sample this year was particularly small. Very few examples of renewals. Only one in Madrid, three in Barcelona and one in other locations. The re-spread was excellent.
On page 22, you will see what has happened in ZAL Port, which is of course a very important part of our logistics portfolio. Currently the operating stock is 632,000 sq m. We must remind that when we arrived, when we took control of ZAL Port, the operating stock was less than 250,000 sq m. The rest has been developed by us. We have work in progress in excess of EUR 100,000,000 million that will represent additional rent of EUR 8 million. Important to say that when we finish this, we will finish all projects and all land available in ZAL Port. ZAL Port will become simply a rent producer, but there will be no further development activity unless we can secure additional land in the close vicinity of ZAL Port. The occupancy went up by 80 basis points in the year and the re-spread was -0.3%.
Almost flat in the year with a good sample of 41 contracts signed in the year. The total rents of ZAL Port jumped from EUR 46 million to EUR 56 million. When the new deliveries are in place, we will be reaching around EUR 64 million total rent in ZAL Port, which is very interesting, particularly when you compare our pro rata share of that and you add that into our existing logistical footprint.
On page 23, we make a quick summary of the existing sqaure meter we have in operation. 1.8 million sq m, of which close to 80% or more than 80% has been developed by us, not bought in the market. With a work in progress in excess of 1 million. We are billing currently, we are invoicing gross rents of EUR 86 million, and we should derive another EUR 55 million from the work in progress.
With a very good gross to net because it's logistics basically. Our locations are spread mainly in seven locations, which represent around 95% of the logistic traffic in Spain. We are only not present in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. For the rest, we are in all important hubs, with a significant presence in Madrid and Barcelona, but also very significant in Valencia and Lisbon and Seville, where we are market leaders. On page 24, you will see how our logistic footprint compares to the one of our competitors, which is quite a favorable comparison. I remember the questions we received when we started in 2014 about our ability to develop a significant and meaningful logistic platform in competition with the mammoths of this world.
I think this is now water under the bridge, that we have done a very good job in establishing ourselves as the leader in logistics in the Iberian Peninsula. This is backed by a fantastic tenant roster, of which you have the logos on the bottom part of the page. Very remarkable is the fact that, as a peculiarity of MERLIN, we have close to 30% of our portfolio is end users. People that are our clients in the retail component of our portfolio. As you might remember, we have been operating together logistics and shopping centers since 2014, since inception, since we went public in the IPO. The reason was that we always thought that one way or another, offline and online would converge. If they converge, shopping centers and logistics would need to understand each other.
This is something which we have been working on for many years, and there's been a significant cross-fertilization between the two portfolios. We have a lot of clients in logistics that come from shopping centers, but we are also using our shopping centers to provide logistics services to our logistic clients, as will be commented on in other pages. On the following page, we will see the main actions that we are experimenting in terms of omnicanality. We are working in last mile with GLS, with Royal Mail, and Revoolt. In click and collect with Inditex and IKEA. In flexible logistics with logistic clients like Luís Simões, Airpharm , and Paack. We have, in our shopping centers, a number of clients which are moving from digital to physical and now need logistic services.
We have also physical clients that are serving from our existing logistics facilities, the digital world. Like Leroy Merlin, Carrefour, or MediaMarkt. We have a number of clients in our portfolio, which are what we call omni-clients, clients that are with us in shopping centers and also in logistics. Shopping centers, page 27. Of course, footfall and tenant sales significantly affected by the pandemic. Many people are trying to make sense of the drop in footfall and the drop in tenant sales. It is impossible to reconcile, because it depends a lot on which exact city of Spain your shopping centers are located. The overall closure during 2020 in Spain, the average in the country has been 27%. All shopping centers in the country, except retail parks, have been closed for more than one quarter of the total year.
Closed, meaning zero footfall and zero sales, except for the first necessity goods. Our portfolio has been especially affected because we have a strong presence in Catalonia, which has taken the lead in terms of shopping mall closures with more than 42% of the time of the year with malls completely closed. We are in relatively big municipalities. Again, another signal of good management by many majors has been to order the closing of shopping malls in their municipalities. We have been affected not only by autonomous community restrictions or national restrictions, but in many cases also by municipal restrictions, depending on the closure of what the government calls sanitary areas. It's been a disaster, basically, the year, and we have been operating as we could.
Probably even worse than closures have been restrictions, because there are different interpretations of restrictions, and there are autonomous communities, namely Catalonia, where when they say 30% maximum attendance, they calculate 30% and we don't know on what. Because the maximum attendance in a given shop normally is well beyond the normal attendance. It's calculated mainly for fire exit purposes. It can be 100 people, but the normal people in the shop is between 10 and 20 on a normal day. The calculations have not been done on the maximum attendance, they have been done on the normal attendance. It's been a Mongolian clusterfuck. It is impossible to compare or try to reconcile the different figures in this division. Notably, we disposed of three secondary shopping centers that represented minus EUR 11.5 million in rent in the period.
We are happy with it because, of course, in secondary areas, some of these centers have been suffering a little bit more than we would have liked. In terms of commercial activity, re-spread, as commented, is 4.1%. This is mainly owing to contractual step-ups, so no big merit in here. 45,000 sq m contracted. What is particularly notable is that when we started to do our first evictions towards the last quarter of the year, we have been able to evict and rotate by a new client close to 10,000sq m, 9,934 sq m that have been re-tenanted with only a net loss in the period of 1,364. Thanks to very focused asset management initiative and a very good asset management team, we have been able to re-tenant most of our void owing to the COVID crisis.
2021 has also started strong with more than 4,500 sq m re-tenanted in the first two months of the year. On page 29, you will see a reminder of how our commercial policy went during the year. Our total expenditure or loss of income has been close to EUR 47 million. Of course, this is not the total toll we have taken as a consequence of COVID, because if you want to calculate that, you need to add the loss of mall income, the loss of variable income. There are many factors that you need to take into account if you want to calculate the total hit of COVID, that we estimate in around EUR 64 million for the whole portfolio. EUR 47 million were loss of income owing to commercial policies.
That includes full protection on the closures of the third wave, which is a renewed commitment we reached with our tenants in mid-October. In mid-October, we also put together what we call Commercial Policy 3, foreseeing that the first half of 2021 will continue to be war territory. We didn't think that it would be easy, the start of the year. As you might remember, we have taken all this straight into the year P&L. We haven't linearized, we haven't done any kind of accounting trick. It is straight represented in our 2020 P&L. We think, and the market is probably now agreeing to that it was a bold move, particularly taking into account that we took it on the 19th of March. It was a bold move that tried to protect occupancy, to reduce litigation.
What we call in Spain, we tried to take the bull by the horns rather than simply go around it. We have avoided significant zombification problems because all that tenants are now being evicted, and they were given the possibility to be protected by our measures. If they couldn't, of course, we are replacing them by healthy tenants. It has enabled our asset management teams to focus on the eviction and rotation, on the re-tenanting, because all contracts were extended through 2022. Next year is going to be a problem because, of course, we have many contracts expiring, and there will be an intense renewal activity. At least in 2021, our asset management teams are concentrated in eviction and rotation, in re-tenanting of our schemes. It is having a positive impact, not only in terms of image, which of course, has been significant.
Also we have a good maturity profile. We can proudly say that most of our clients at present are creditworthy tenants because in Napoleonic legal systems, when you extend a contract two years, you know that you are assuming a personal responsibility for the amount you have signed. All clients that extended their contracts two years were making some sort of prejudgment of their own ability to resist the COVID and weather the storm and continue trading in 2022. It's not simply like, "I sign, I get protected by your policy, and then I do whatever I want." It is not that simple in Napoleonic or in continental European, Roman-based legal systems. The litigation is absolutely significant. We have had 49 evictions launched, of which 11 have been finished without problems. We are obtaining best-in-class collection rates even in shopping centers as you can see.
We are attracting new tenants because they believe that we are a partner that can be relied on. I mean, basically that we protect people when they need protection, and this is, of course, helping us in terms of commercialization of our spaces. On page 31, I will pass the floor to Miguel, who will comment on valuation and debt position. I will come back at the end.
Let's go into valuation. On page 31, you have here the outcome of the valuation. In the end, as I stated before, the valuation was flat, slightly negative, 0.6% down. This was mainly driven by the fact that in shopping centers, we were getting a hit of 8% in valuation. Sorry, 8.7% in valuation. That means close something around EUR 260 million of valuation loss in this division. That is the one that has taken the hit this year. A little bit in hotels, which are a minor part of our portfolio, but there was a -6.2 like-for-like valuation in that, I shouldn't say division, but two assets that we own within the portfolio, which are not relevant at all. The other side of the coin is logistics. Logistics, we got an 8% like-for-like evolution valuation, which implies EUR 40 million up.
In offices, which is our largest division, we have a slight increase in value, 1% only, which means EUR 60 million of valuation up. In the end, as I said, it is a quite flat year in terms of valuation, -0.6%. If we move into page 32, we should see that in the end, the GAV of the company went up 0.5%, mainly driven by the CapEx that we have been putting in place within the portfolio. First of all, to highlight in terms of disposal, we were disposing close to EUR 200 million in assets, mainly driven by the disposal of three non-core shopping centers in the month of February last year, one year ago. Some BBVA branches, EUR 25 million in BBVA branches. As you know, we continue on a very selective basis, selling down BBVA branches, mainly located in the city.
New locations which are the most prime locations within the portfolio in order to define up the quality of the portfolio. In terms of acquisition was a quite mute year because in terms of asset acquisition was only EUR 15 million coming from the acquisition of a small office building in Barcelona, which is going to be devoted to be a new office building that will be in operation by the end of this year. Also we have the Silicius estate that is coming from the transaction that we closed on the shopping centers. Finally, it's important to remark in CapEx, it was a year also despite the situation we were living in and which CapEx was also part of our activity, EUR 236 million of investment, mainly focused in office, shopping centers, and logistics.
In offices, the investment was EUR 87 million, mainly focusing the refurbishment of Monumental building in Lisbon, the Castellana 85 building in Madrid, and the Diagonal 605 in Barcelona. Shopping centers, EUR 46 million investment. As Ismael was commenting, we were about to finish our Flagship program. The big CapEx this year was mainly devoted to Saler in Valencia and Porto Pi in Mallorca. The two of them will be finished in the first half of 2021. Finally, logistics. Logistics has been more than EUR 100 million investment. This is the asset class at which we are investing largely, and this is where the growth or expansion of the portfolio is coming from and was EUR 100 million. I should be highlighting that we have been able to deliver to Carrefour 100,000 of committed warehouse in Germany this year.
Finally, the valuation, as we were commenting, EUR 100 million down as in real estate asset valuation, the 0.6% we were commenting before. If we move now to page 34 and looking at the debt position of the company. We have finished the year in a similar net debt position to the one we had in 2019. As you know, with the COVID coming in, all the measures that were required in terms of subsidies or rent discounts to the different retailers, we put in motion also some other activities in order to have a financial position as strong as possible and have been able to maintain in the same level. In the end, we have finished the year with a loan to value of 39.9%, very similar to the one at which we were closing the year before. In terms of average cost, also pretty in line.
During the year, we were retaining some debt. We were putting in place two bond issues, one on 15-year basis and another one on seven-year basis, with which we have been refinancing partially our two debt expiries that which are coming in 2022 and 2023. We were buying back partially the bonds expiring in those years. At the same time, we were paying back two mortgage loans of EUR 175 million. We have been able to reduce the average maturity of the portfolio and keeping a similar cost, which is composed of a fixed rate basis. Close to 100% of the debt within the company is in a 100% fixed rate basis. Liquidity is something we are looking at, and we have been able even to reinforce the liquidity of the company above around EUR 1.25 billion of liquidity within the company, which is remarkable.
Also it should be a solid liquidity looking forward in that we don't have any specific refinancing during this year. Finally, we move into page 35. This is something that has been selected, but it's something we are very proud of. That is the exact collection rate we have been able to implement all across our different divisions. This is also a reflection of the resilience and the quality of our tenant base. As you can see, in many leases and logistics, we have been able to collect in the fourth quarter all of the rents that we have been invoicing. In offices, it's only 0.2% of the rents pending collection. To me, this is business as usual. It's not nothing different to what is happening in every single day out of the COVID situation. At shopping centers, 2.4%. It is also close to business as usual.
We know that this is the asset class at which you should be expecting a higher bad debt within the portfolio. 2.4, again, we should be looking after to reduce it furthermore, but honestly speaking, it is close to business as usual. Now we are moving to the next section, and with that, we will take the lead.
Thank you, Miguel. On page 37, ESG is obviously a topic that has become more and more important, and we really do put ESG at the core of our business. I'm going to focus on the E part of ESG over the next few pages. Page 37 is really a summary that encompasses all of what we're doing. If you look on the asset side, create more sustainable assets. Energy efficiency measures, that sensorization, that smart building systems to reduce the use of energy to the extent that we can. Photovoltaic projects, that's where we're actually producing our own power from photovoltaic we put on the roof for self-consumption. The other that's not here specifically is we rebid our energy supplier in 2020, and now 100% of our energy is now provided from renewable sources.
Again, very much on the energy side, making sure that we are as sustainable as possible. Certifications, which is again, very much about the things you do, you have to do to obtain certifications, is much around energy efficiency, and we now have over 2,500,000 sq m certified. We made significant progress. On the construction side, sustainable construction. That's promoting the use of sustainable materials. We're covering a pilot program. We're using paint that actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere. As we go forward, when you look at, I'll talk about this later, the DCN and Renazca. Those are all about how to use the most current and most sustainable building construction materials. Renazca is about re-energizing a space and making it greener and making it more sustainable from water use and recycled materials.
On the mobility side, again, in MERLIN Hub, we've developed a full cluster of mobility working in conjunction with our tenants. Last mile logistics, running pilot programs, which are now expanding, about using the parking facilities of our offices and our shopping centers as last mile logistics with fully green vans and emission-free vehicles. On the electric charging front, expanding our already existing portfolio of electric vehicle chargers, more than doubling the number of chargers in place and including the beginning, have started to install truck chargers for electric vehicles as well. All of that really showing how it is that we're very focused on trying to improve the sustainability of the business. If you look at page 38, well, I'll highlight this. Beyond the things we're doing today, we've also started to look at how do we actually have a net zero emissions policy by 2030.
We're well on our way to doing that. All of those projects initially were done with an aim to create more sustainability. Now the idea is let's look at all those projects and how do we advance those with a goal, a specific goal of being at net zero emissions by 2030. As I highlighted earlier, a lot of those initiatives are not simply us, but they're us working in conjunction with our tenants and with the employees of those tenants. Because the more buy-in you get on these types of initiatives, the higher the adoption rate. We're really making sure that we try to do everything we can that these actually are effective plans. Page 39 is getting into the specifics of the photovoltaic self-consumption installations. Phase I will be across 24 assets.
It implies an investment of EUR 26 million. It'll end up with 37,000,000 MW installed. It's across both logistics facilities, which are really the biggest. That's where you get the most scale because of the flat roofs. Also in our shopping centers over parking facilities and using the office building roofs. Highlighting this is that our policy has been, we're generating a return on that investment through the savings we're generating. That's a higher than return that we're achieving on any of our actual real estate developments, while at the same time providing some of that savings to our tenants to lower their occupancy costs.
It makes us more competitive in terms of attracting tenants, at the same time generating a very significant return on the capital investment. Beyond phase I, which is 37 MW, we're looking at then all of our other facilities where we could, if we end up doing the maximum amount that we think possible while we're studying it, something between 100-125 MW in total across the entire facility. Which would end up being a little in excess of 10% of our total energy consumption for the company. You can see at the bottom, the impact that just this phase I has, putting it into pure environmental terms, the amount of CO2 emissions that are saved per year, and the equivalent of what that means in terms of almost 75% of the current trees that exist in the city of Madrid.
DCN on the following page, DCN in Renazca. DCN, as you know, Madrid starts at a very low level of class A sustainable office. It's one of the lowest percentages of class A sustainable in Europe. When you look at DCN, here's an opportunity with green space to create the new standard for sustainable buildings in Madrid. It's a sea change, if you will, in terms of the quality of the supply of office that will exist. Renazca, similarly, those who know, it's the Rockefeller Center of Madrid. In fact, it was designed after Rockefeller Center. Today it is a very, to be honest, bleak and hard scape area. We've created a consortium, which MERLIN were really the impetus behind, but it's a consortium of all the owners within the AZCA area.
Creating what I'll refer to as a business investment district, effectively, where those owners will put up the capital, which is EUR 25 million. That's not meaningful when you consider the amount of scales of value in that area. The contribution is relatively small in comparison. In exchange for that, get the opportunity to manage the ongoing space on behalf of the city going forward. We ran a competition for that. The winner of that competition was Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, who are probably best known for having done the High Line in New York City, which has been a hugely successful urban redevelopment scheme. The whole idea was to create more biodiversity, create more sustainability, improve the water resources, and actually recapture some of the original water resources that a river that used to run under that area.
That will create another green lung for the city of Madrid. Page 41, getting back to mobility. We really started this idea of trying to create mobility services within the MERLIN Hub, which we talked about before. 40,000 daily users. We've worked closely with the tenants of MERLIN Hub to create a fully encompassing urban mobility project. It's not just us doing it on our own, but again, doing it in conjunction with tenants covering all matters of more sustainable mobility. Finally, if you look at page 42, this is our last mile logistics project. A pilot is about to start with GLS. That will start in April of this year. We've been running a pilot with Revolut down in Barcelona. The Revolut pilot has been so successful, they're now expanding that out into other areas.
The idea here is we'll use the parking garages of our facilities that are not used during the night. During the day when they're in use for the occupants. Once you move to the nighttime, you set up these last mile logistics facilities using zero emission fleets. The trucks come in, drop the goods, the vans come in, pick it up and deliver it. It's a very efficient way for those logistics tenants to run a last mile service. We get the double benefit of further solidifying the relationship we have with the logistics providers, and we generate incremental revenue from that space that was previously not being used. Early days on that, but I think the early response has been quite good, and we're very bullish about the adoption for that going forward.
Page 43, something to highlight our efforts in getting our buildings certified. You can look into offices, shopping centers, logistics. Significant improvement in the certification rates from 2015 to 2020. If you look at the certifications we're achieving, 98% are either good or very good from BREEAM, 80% gold or platinum in offices. In shopping centers, 87% very good or good. Warehouse logistics, where it's more complicated because your tenants drag you down, obviously, in terms of your ability to achieve those high levels of certification. We saw about 88% gold or platinum, and the recent delivery of the warehouse in Alpicat of Alpicat IV being the largest warehouse logistics facility, and also getting a platinum certification. Page 44, getting back to those certifications. Again, you saw the level on the previous page.
We also exceed our peers, the global average and the European average, in terms of our GRESB score. We've also now adopted the Carbon Disclosure Project, again, exceeding the average performance of our peers, both globally and in Europe. We've had gold EPRA reporting since 2017. On AEO, we were an early supporter of this new AEO standard, which brings more transparency and professionalism to the measurement of space in Spain. Historically, there was no real standard for how space was measured, making it difficult for tenants to compare across buildings. We are well advanced in certifying our buildings, and that's a standard that we think more and more will be embraced and adopted by the market. Finally, on page 45, technology. Sustainability and technology being really important things going forward.
We have really been making a very strong effort to try to bring real estate from the analog world to the digital world. It's probably one of the most analog industries. That starts with sensorization to allow us to measure usage in space, to be more efficient in our energy uses. It allows us to manage our retail space better by knowing much more clearly who's shopping in our centers, where they're shopping, where they're from, what their needs are. On digitalization, we now have up and running with our tenant engagement app in both our LOOM facilities and in Merlin Hub. Much closer tenant engagement. A lot of those mobility services we talked about are provided through that app. We've implemented Salesforce with our CRM app.
Phillips, another company that actually came through our PropTech scheme, which is digitizing the leasing of kiosks and temporary space, a much more efficient and much faster way to, and we think a better way to improve occupancy in those spaces. Mayordomo, which after we selected them as a winner of our PropTech challenge last year, they were selected the global PropTech of the Year by IMMERVIS. They've really made great strides. We actually own a 7% interest in that company, and they're moving in a way where they're actually going to be, I think, part of the last mile logistics solution with their smart locker solution. Again, you can see how we've really been trying to employ technology across the portfolio. We're in the early innings, whether you're a baseballer or a cricketer, we're in the early innings of the game.
There's a lot more to do. We've made quite good progress in doing that. I will say as well, we have Fifth Wall here. That's been a really very beneficial relationship with Fifth Wall as we develop these technology implementations. They've been a key part of helping us vetting and implementing those activities. With that, I'm going to pass it back to Ismael to talk about value creation.
Thank you, David. Well, on page 47, we simply explain as a reminder that we continue trying to efficiently rotate capital. During 2020, we rotated three shopping centers and 19 BBVA branches. This continued in early 2021 with the rotation of three logistic warehouses, two of which in Madrid, one in Zaragoza. Average age of the biggest of all them, beyond 20 years, at very interesting yields. As depicted in the following pages, we are redeploying that capital into continued fueling of our Landmark I, Flagship, and Best II and III projects. On page 48, you will see two buildings which are now in finishing stages, should be delivered in the second quarter of 2021. Castellana 85 in Madrid, which will become the headquarter of Accenture in Spain and Elecnor, a construction company from the Basque Country.
Monumental in Praça Saldanha in Lisbon, which will become the headquarters in Portugal of BPI. Both with very interesting yields and costs. On page 49, you will see the summary of the project known as Landmark I. After going through the filter of the reprioritization of CapEx, we carried out in March after the pandemic. With the delivery of Castellana 85 and Monumental, the only pending project that is in priority one will be Plaza Ruiz Picasso in Madrid, which is a 31,500 square meters building, which upon redevelopment will reach 37,000 square meters. This is a building that we have already emptied, and we'll start construction very soon with a view to delivering it to clients towards the end of 2022.
You can see that upon completion of Ruiz Picasso II, the yield on cost of the program has been very successful and very interesting from a capital recycling perspective. On page 50, we simply wanted to give you an update of what is happening in Madrid Nuevo Norte. The most significant highlight of the year, and one that creates a very significant value enhancement for the project, is that we have obtained definitive approval of the Modificación del Plan General from the municipality of Madrid, with the green light also from the autonomous community of Madrid. This means that from a legal standpoint, the project is now 100% cleared. There are other things that need to be done till completion. From a legal standpoint, the land is now land ready to build upon receiving it from the National Railway Authority towards the end of the year.
What are we doing now in this project? Basically, we are now negotiating in final stages the Convenio de Infraestructuras, which we have obtained, or we have achieved what we believe is an important milestone, which is that the Convenio de Infraestructuras has now become a multilateral agreement. Originally in this project, we, the private developer, the private promoter of Madrid Nuevo Norte, DCN, we were obliged to reach bilateral agreements with the different public authorities involved in the development of the project. We have now put together all those bilateral agreements into one single multilateral agreement in which every party expresses its obligations and rights, the funding, and as an annex, we include the projects. Architectural, technical, industrial engineering projects which are needed in order to develop all the infrastructure in the area. That is a very important achievement.
Very important achievement because it has allowed us for the first time, and this was something we couldn't even dream in our best scenarios, we have achieved the possibility of overlapping the different infrastructure works. Up until now, the way we had devised the infrastructure schedule for the area was basically one in which the different administration were intervening one after the other because they normally do not coordinate one with each other. With the new multilateral agreement, they will coordinate and there will be a significant overlapping that of course needs to be determined in the future, but will mean no less than two years and a half of advancement in the conclusion of all infrastructure works required in the area, which is very important.
Once the Convenio de Infraestructuras is approved, which we estimate for the second quarter, we should now move into or should proceed to the acquisition of the land from the National Railway Infrastructure Authority. Towards the very end of the year, we should proceed to a disbursement of, I think it's EUR 14.9 million together with our partners in the project because we only own 14.5% of the project. We should proceed to a capital increase at DCN level in order for BCN to fund the EUR 221 million that are owed to the National Railway Authority as first payment, as first installment of the acquisition of the land. On page 51, you are seeing two pictures of how Saler and Porto Pi are starting to look. Saler is an interior picture and Porto Pi is an exterior picture of the works. Both are approaching completion.
They should both be ready towards second quarter of 2021. Very nice looking and very successful in terms of commercialization. On page 52, you see a summary of the Flagship plan after the reprioritization of CapEx following the COVID. With the delivery of Saler and Porto Pi, we are basically done. We have finished all the expenditure in the Flagship plan. As for Best II and III on page 53, you see the deliveries that we have done in 2020 and 2021. San Fernando II in 2020, Zaragoza Plaza II in 2020, Sevilla ZAL which is 2020 and 2021, and Azuqueca II which has happened around one month ago in 2020. We have delivered that turnkey project to Carrefour in order to be their national distribution hub for non-perishable goods.
On page 54 and 55, you have a summary of how Best II and Best III are progressing after the reprioritization. You will see that after the delivery of San Fernando II, which is now let at an 85%, and Azuqueca II which is let 100%. There was one module of Cabanillas Park delivered in 2020 and the rest will be delivered in 2021. Cabanillas Park II has moved from priority three-four to priority one because we are now in advanced negotiations with one potential pre-let. As soon as those negotiations with the potential pre-let are concluded, we will move 47,000 sq m of the 210,000 of Cabanillas two from priority three-four to priority one and develop it because we have a client. Likewise, in the case of Cabanillas, G and H that were being developed speculatively, we are now in advanced negotiations to lease them 100%.
A very interesting deal on cost, the one that you know from other editions of this presentation. For Best III, Valencia Ribarroja for Dachser and Zaragoza Plaza II for DSV were delivered. Also have been delivered part of the different developments in Sevilla ZAL, which have been let to Cold Atelier, a cold storage facility, Amazon Cuatro Vientos and Rhenus. Only the 2021 deliveries are pending, for which the pre-let are now fully concluded. Very interesting project, this one, and one with a very high yield on cost. For Lisbon Park, as you know, we were developing 44,000 sq m spec at the time COVID started. Thank God, negotiations have moved significantly. We are under now very significant, very advanced negotiations. Two modules out of six will only be vacant once we deliver the fully concluded shed in this year.
The other four have now been let. Very interesting news on Best III. On page 56, you will see the effect in 2021 of the WIP, which is basically net EUR 14.4 million. In a normalized year, it is EUR 22.2 million. For the exercise in which we are now, which is 2021, we will record an additional EUR 14.4 million of rent that will help to overcome whichever hiccups we might have in the performance of other assets if the pandemic proves more long-lasting than expected. On page 58, we have provided you with our outlook or our true and frank impression of 2021 piece. We know we run a risk when conveying our own prudence and preoccupation to the market because many people get almost depressed and start saying that management has been downbeat in their expectations and all that.
Many other people fall into what I call wrong stuff extrapolation. They basically try to extrapolate trends from what is simply the ordinary management of a big commercial real estate portfolio. When we see trends, we advise you that we are seeing trends. When we only manage assets, we try to explain to you that we are only managing assets. In many cases, those trends that are supposedly guessed by many people in reality is simply the result of market uncertainty. There are moments in the market in which there is more activity, less activity, but we try to explain to you the way we see it, and we try to do it with a criterion of prudency. We have to be prudent managers.
We are managing a lot of money from a lot of people in the world. We are trying to do our things as best as we can. In offices this morning we have been receiving many calls. How can you point to a slight decline in occupancy? Because this is what I am seeing right now. When I get my forward occupancy report, as of today, of course, Spain is still in a very delicate moment of the pandemic. I would say the national feeling is one of desperation. We are very far below other countries in terms of vaccination rhythm. People is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. As a consequence, the tone of the economy today is quite negative, which is helped in a way by not super brilliant initiatives from an economic management standpoint in the last months.
With this in hand, when we look at our forward occupancy report, we are seeing a void of between 1.5 and 2 points of occupancy in 2021. Is this not recoverable? No, of course not. If the second part of the year is a good one, eventually with one lease up of one of our buildings in the A1 corridor, which is now empty, eventually we could reverse completely all this trend. We need to inform to the market what we are seeing in our numbers, and this is what we are doing as we speak.
Out of this 1.5%-2% potential additional vacancy that we might see during the year in the portfolio, approximately half, 0.7%-0.9%, may come from what we believe are clients in some sort of distressed situation and with risk of insolvency. Of course, this is a completely subjective assessment, and this is one that we are asking our asset managers to do. It is not based on any scientific criterion. That is based on the behavior of the client, how we see them, what is the physical occupancy of the office, what is the motivation of the people we see in the office. Many aspects which can only be gauged by people who are down to earth in the day-to-day management of a given building.
Those clients eventually, I don't know whether 30% of them, 50% of them, or three-quarters of them may eventually stop paying during the year, and this, of course, will move sooner or later into vacancy. The remainder of the decline in occupancy we expect should come from less need of space. Many people say, "This is because of work from home." I wouldn't say so at present. Maybe in the future, but not at present. It's simply the result of a lower need of space on the basis of green economic perspectives for many of our clients. It's as simple as that. However, we have very little maturities in the year, 15%, and the quality of our clients is good, as we were commenting at the beginning. It's not more grave than that.
Simply, we will experience a little bit of occupancy that we will need to retenant, as we are doing in shopping centers in a much better market because offices, of course, is not under significant pressure like shopping centers. The flex space will help because we forecast that it will gain relative share from its current small base of around 1.5% of our portfolio. What will happen in logistics? In logistics, we believe the year will continue to be good. The performance of the market is good enough. The fear we had about the potential for an oversupply in certain areas of the A2, now with the sheer evolution of the e-commerce, probably those fears are allayed. We shouldn't be now fearing, in the short term at least, any sort of oversupply in the A2 corridor.
A4 corridor is absolutely healthy and Catalonia, the problem there is lack of product, because if there was more product, there would be more activity. The market will continue to be good. However, don't be surprised, but also don't be misled if in the first quarter, and particularly in the second quarter, you see a dropping of occupancy in logistics because we need to do a little bit of portfolio cleanup. Why? Because during 2020, given how wrong our clients were in their calculations of space needs, we have been providing them with every corner of empty space we have in the different sheds. Now in 2021, we need to make sense of all that, and we need to convert those contracts into urban lease law long-term contracts if the clients want.
If they don't want, of course, they will need to vacate the premises, and the premises need to be re-tenanted with somebody who can commit for a long-term contract. It's important to have provided them with help in a difficult year, but we are not a charity organization, so we cannot continue providing them with help indefinitely. In terms of retail, the tone, I believe, is going to be relatively flat. We might see some decline in occupancy if we cannot cope the rhythm of re-tenanting with the rhythm of eviction. If we go faster in eviction than re-tenanting, eventually we may affect the occupancy. Frankly speaking, I don't know. Maybe we go slower in eviction than we go in re-tenanting. It needs to be seen how the year will evolve in terms of retail.
What I am sure of is that the commercial policy will continue to protect our occupancy levels overall because the partnership that we have developed with a number of tenants will be a long-lasting one. With all that in mind, we have put together a guidance for the year. The guidance is basically to repeat the FFO of 2020. Many of you say, "This is poor. It should be more." Frankly, I am not in a position to make a different statement for the full year because it will be a bet rather than my own impression. I would be happy if we can do slightly better cash flow than last year, given the circumstances.
Of course, if the second part of the year is better than expected, eventually we could beat the numbers, and you know that in past years, we have normally tried to be prudent in our guidances, and then we have tried to beat them towards the end of the year. As for the 2020 payout, which determines our DPS, we have recommended to the board EUR 0.25. However, the board is sovereign, and there are voices in the board that want more dividend. Openly, I can tell you, as I have told you privately to many of you, that when doing your model, you should calculate EUR 0.25 because as a minimum, it will be EUR 0.25. If we can then go to EUR 0.30 or EUR 0.35, nice surprise. I will be betting on EUR 0.25 as a base case.
We want to make clear that in a year like this, we should be prudently retaining a little bit of our cash flow in order to make sure that the CapEx actions do not mean an excessive LTV. This is what we are doing. Of course, we will continue doing and at some non-core disposals. It's not that we are going to go out of our way. We will continue doing a normal program of disposals. In the year, it should be EUR 150 million-EUR 400 million, of which we have already made EUR 50. It's not that you should expect tremendous amounts, because non-core disposals, the following year, weigh on cash flow.
While we keep an eye on the LTV and of course, on the coordination of sources and uses in terms of CapEx, we are not going to go wild in terms of disposals because we need this company to be low LTV, but also cash flowing as it has traditionally been. Many of you are also asking why not a better guidance on FFO if we are in the middle of a reflation trade? The reflation trade is a conceptual thing, and we fully agree with it for the future. For 2021, you need to know that most lease contracts in Spain are indexed to the CPI as of 31st December. The CPI as of 31st December 2020 was negative. We are going to have an impact in our mainly in office contracts and in many other contracts of around -0.6% owing to CPI.
This is a given. This is something we know. There are some contracts which are not indexed to 31st December, indexed to a different date, but normally they tend to be indexed to 31st December. Reflation trade, yes. Do we see it? Of course, yes. Do we see it for the future? It's visible already in January and February in the underlying CPI in Spain and in the European Union, not that easy, not that quick, not in the coming months. It's not immediate. If we move into closing remarks on page 60, I simply want to bring your attention to the fact that although criticized in many occasions by the market, we are running a company with a diversified business model, where we want around 50, 47% of our rental income to come from offices. That income can be categorized as stable.
No matter the fact that you may lose a little bit of occupancy, it is broadly stable. We also operate around 18% of our rents in logistics, clearly growing. We derive some 18% from net leases. I would call it rock solid. We have 15% in retail, which is weak, but better than many people think. This is the picture for the year and in fact, for the future. We will continue suffering this year. We will continue adjusting the valuations of shopping centers. Other than in the investment market, other than in valuations, shopping centers, whenever they are allowed by the public authorities to open, they open and perform. Our portfolio is a super high-quality one. 92% of our offices are in prime CBD and nearby areas.
90% of our logistics are suitable for e-commerce, 95% of our shopping centers are either urban or prominent. On page 61, you have a reflection on why the cash flow stream of this company is stable and predictable. Many of you call it resilient. The reason is that we have EUR 2.9 billion in contracted rents to first break. If we were an infrastructure company, that would be the backlog, that if you take into account the full duration of the lease contract, that will be EUR 5 billion. Only 9.9% of our rents mature before the end of 2021. Our incentives have been fully booked in 2020. It is not that you can expect any effect of linearization in future years. We have secured annual rent from our growth plans amounting to EUR 22 million extra income per year.
That will kick in in full from 2022 onwards. In 2021, it will only be 14 million. We have now a fully funded CapEx program. Our debt profile is healthy with a 39.9 LTV with the transfer cost. 41% is not considered. Our covenants are at 60%. We have no significant debt repayments till May 2022, and we are accumulating cash to make sure that we can pay with internally generated resources. Our liquidity position is EUR 1.25 billion. We have best-in-class collection rates and very low risk of bad debt in the future, and we have a triple B stable rating by S&P.
On page 62, and as a final reflection, simply to say that between 2014 and 2016, we built a portfolio of super high quality in a record time that allowed us to reach a leadership position in all the segments in which we operate, offices, net leases, logistics, and also in retail in the Iberian Peninsula. Less known probably by the general public, we dispose of hotels, residential, and a lot of non-core offices and retail. EUR 4.2 billion sold since 2016, of which EUR 2.2 billion attributable only to MERLIN. For the people that call us a proxy to the Spanish market, I would ask a little bit of deeper reflection on what our company has become.
In 2018 to 2023, we have been optimizing the quality of our portfolio through the Landmark and Flagship plans, which are now approaching completion, and through Best II and III, which is the greenfield development of a lot of logistics, where a lot of alpha has been added because we have self-developed around 80% of our current product, which is a lot. In 2020 to 2025, simultaneously with the extension of the Best II and III plans and all initiatives deriving from Landmark, Flagship, and eventually Landmark II and Flagship II, we are committed to offer the best customer experience and to become the most technologically advanced REIT in our Iberian market. This is done through putting an accent in sustainability, in innovation, in technology, but also flexibilizing our services and enriching our user experience.
The fatherhood, the paternity of this strategy has been shared by all the management team of this company, and I believe they deserve a lot of credit for it, but has also been led by the wisdom of David Brush, who has been our colleague for now six to seven incredible years. Now I will pass the floor to David so that he can address you in what will actually become the last yearly results presentation conference call he will be participating in MERLIN.
Thank you, Ismael. I promise to keep this short. I know it's been a long call already. I think many of you already know. You either saw the announcement in December or you have spoken with Ines, Fernando, Ismael subsequently about the decision that I've taken. I want to be able to color on that and more importantly, talk about the relationship I am going to continue to have with MERLIN for the next year. Just on the first point, I moved to London in 1998 with my wife and four children to globalize the opportunistic investing business of Bankers Trust. It was meant to be a three years. I like to say I'm in the 22nd year of a three-year assignment.
In fact, when I came to Madrid in 2014, when I took the decision to leave Brookfield and join this fabulous project, I said to my wife, "I think it'd probably be about five years." Who knew at that time what MERLIN would become and how this would take off and become so successful. In April, it'll be seven years. You can see where I'm going with this thing. During that time, my children have all moved back to the States, went to university there, settled there. Now two of them are married. The gravitational pull of the States got stronger and stronger. Like with many other things, COVID has accelerated trends that were already in place prior to COVID and taken them further.
The time I think now is really right for me to move back to the U.S., mainly for personal reasons. That's really the genesis of the decision. That said, it's not going to be immediate. I signed a one-year agreement. That's not window dressing. I know many times these are just a way to kind of make someone feel good about their departure, but I am not leaving Spain. Monday morning, the 1st of March, I'll be back at my desk doing largely the same thing I was doing previously, but my focus will be narrowed more as we go forward. There are three things I'm going to really concentrate on during this next year.
I say minimum year or two, by the way, because if it's going well and everything's happy at the end of one year, there's nothing that says that I can't do it longer. The first is I'm going to continue to focus on the application of technology to our business. It's a passion of mine. It's something I've been very interested in. It's something I feel like I played a major role in, and I will continue to do that because, as I said earlier, we're in the early innings of digitizing a very analog business. The second is I'll continue to be very involved in LOOM. Again, I was there at the inception. I'll call it a product, if you will, or service, because I don't think it's an industry in its own right.
We've talked about that before, it's another arrow in the quiver of a property company to be able to provide service to its clients. I think that is only going to be accelerating in the post-COVID world. Flexibility is going to be a key element. I'm going to continue to pay close attention to that and help as much as I can in furthering the growth of that business. The third, I would basically say, is any new projects, working with both the board and management that represent the convergence of technology and real estate. There will be new opportunities, I think, that emerge or present themselves. Again, that's something I feel very strongly about and passionate about, so I will continue to focus on that. No goodbyes, no testimonials, none of that.
There'll be no retirement dinner because I'm not going anywhere for a while.
Thank you, David.
Okay, operator, could you open the line for Q&A? Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, that is star and one to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Bart Gysens from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have two questions, if that's all right. The first question is on the payout ratio, and the second question is on the office valuation. On the payout ratio first, look, I appreciate this is a suggestion to lower it to the board. You've been flagging this. I just wanted to understand, is this linked to the pandemic, or is this linked to the fact that you want to lower your loan-to-value ratio? We just want to understand, and it would be helpful to understand the potential duration of running with a lower payout ratio. Once this pandemic is out of the way, will we go back to 80%, or do you want to run with a lower, say, 50% payout ratio, as long as your LTV or your net debt to EBITDA hasn't come down to a different level? Thank you.
Okay. Bart, look, I would say it is owing to the pandemic, because as a consequence of the pandemic, it is even more important to lower our loan-to-value ratio. As you know, our long-term ambition was to go from the 40 we were to around 35, 36 in the old measurement. In the new measurement, it will be 34, 35. That was our idea. The crisis found us owing to the pandemic in 2021 rather than a flattening market in 2023, 2024, which was what we would not have normally expected. We were not releveraging the company on the basis of the growth in value of the assets, and normally that would have sufficed, in a normal market to be at 35, 36 in 2023, 2024.
As a consequence of the pandemic, we see ourselves in a situation in which it is even more important to make sure that although it is hard to believe that in the short term, unless we sell one big non-core package, we are not going to go to 35, 36 anytime soon. At least it is important to make sure that we don't exceed 45, which is normally where problems normally start with the rating agencies. It is pandemic related, I would say. The idea, if we go back to a normalized market in, say, fully normalized in 2023, would be to go back to the 80% AFFO payout ratio that we have usually had in the company. As a reminder, all people who are here in this room, we are all significant shareholders of the company.
In many cases, we are levered, and of course, we love dividend. We believe that it was in the best interest of the company to retain a little bit of cash out of prudency to make sure that in case you cannot sell non-core or deliver in other ways, you do it through retention of cash flow.
Great. My other question is on the office valuation. On slide 33, you talk about the movements in the yield. Now, the EPRA net initial yield on the office portfolio hasn't really changed. It's still 3.6%, but you disclose a significant drop in the exit yield that the valuers have assumed and a significant increase in the discount rate. Can you just understand us in maybe why you disclose it in this way? Secondly, what the rationale was of the valuers to assume almost 50 basis lower exit yield, but actually higher discount rate in the meantime. Thank you.
Yes. Bart, look, the reason why we put the discount rate in this results presentation was precisely to bring your attention to the fact that this year there's been a change in criterion because we changed the valuer. The usual valuer of the portfolio has been Savills. This year we have moved to Jones Lang LaSalle, and they have a different way to reach basically the same figure. Inés can explain to you what has been the approach of Jones Lang. That is exactly what I just commented to you.
As you know, Bart, we have a policy of rotating the appraisers. In average, it's around three years, but we don't do it all at once. We actually do it on a staggered basis. This time it's been the office mainly, and exactly for the reasons that Ismael mentioned. We thought it was important to show you that this was not only a change on the exit yield, because otherwise you would have expected a much higher GAV like to like increase, right? It was just a difference in those assumptions. That was it.
Great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Papadakos from Green Street. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. I have also two questions. Just one on your office occupancy performance going forward, Ismael. What you described to me sounds very much like what I expect for the overall say Madrid office market. You say that you have a high-quality portfolio. A lot of it is in CBD or prime areas. How come then you're not outperforming the overall market? I would have expected that given what you say about your portfolio. That's the first question. The second question is, you made a comment about the board obviously has to take a lot of things into account, including you got to manage the company for cash flow. Isn't it better just to manage the company for total shareholder returns?
I say that because I guess in terms of where you're trading, wouldn't it be a smarter capital allocation to actually sell a lot of assets and you can either deleverage or return that extra cash to shareholders, but basically shrink the company? That would have been what I would have expected the board to think is a smarter capital allocation.
Okay. Well, question number one, office performance. The reason why we go with the market is very simple. It's six buildings in the A1 corridor. We have an endemic problem of occupancy in that area, which in turn stems from the fact that that area of Madrid has been densified with a lot of residential construction, while the corresponding infrastructures have never been executed as a consequence of the delay of the so-called Operación Chamartín. The only caveat to that is that as we speak, the works have started. The new works for the so-called Nudo Norte have started about one month ago, and they should be ready towards the end of 2022. I know it's a long period, but it is what it is.
If you were to perform our portfolio for the buildings which are endemically empty in that area, the occupancy would be significantly high. Anyway, you can also see that our peers are lowering occupancy significantly. It's not only being us. The market is of course weaker. It is not a consequence of oversupply because there is no problem with oversupply in Madrid. Again, for a mathematical reason, because we have not yet fully recovered from the past crisis. In the A1 corridor, we had rent signed at EUR 27.5 in the past cycle. Now for the best buildings, are LEED Platinum, you are lucky if you get EUR 18.5. For the buildings which are farther from Plaza de Castilla or lower quality from a, let's say, physical setup standpoint, you get in the region of EUR 15.
Since the market has not recovered from the past crisis, there has been no new construction in the area. There is one other big development being done by Tishman Speyer, and we have also some land available in the future in case we want to develop some extra product in the area. However, the catalyst for the change in that area will only be reached when the new aerial train is ready. That will be four to five years from now. When the new subway is up and running, which should be maybe five to six years from now. Only those two infrastructures will really mean a big change in the area because those will include that area into, I would say, urban Madrid. It will no longer be a highway, an exit. It will become part of the Chamartín area.
This is what I can tell you in terms of performance of the occupancy of offices. Regarding the sale of assets and distribution of extraordinary dividends, et cetera, of course, we sell assets, and we keep our asset rotation program alive every year. We don't sell assets like crazy because if we sell assets like crazy the following year, we'd need the cash flow. That has happened to us in a number of years now, including this. You sell assets, then you don't have the cash flow, and this company is a mix between, yes, keeping at bay the LTV, but it's also trying to retain some cash flow. This is what we are trying to do, manage the company on a going concern basis.
We cannot manage the company as if it was a private equity firm, which of course, we could do it because that has been our tradition, our past. Selling things, and realizing the capital gain and distributing that capital gain to shareholders, this is not what I would say the orders or the mission we are getting from our current board of directors.
Excellent. Thanks very much.
Welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Pedro Alves from CaixaBank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Just two questions, please. The first one, somewhat related to this topic of disposal. In terms of the rebalancing of segments. In the long term, your target still assumes 15% in shopping centers. If you eventually have the opportunity to sell, would you do it, or you are still committed structurally to have this exposure to shopping malls? Or would you consider the exit even at some discounts to appraisal values, which the stock market already assumes for the devaluations? That way you would reduce your LTV and potentially raise firepower to scale logistics. Just if you could update us on your thoughts here, would be helpful. The second one is on shopping malls. Moving to 2022, what would be the percentage of leases potentially up for renewal?
Based on the tenant profile, what is your estimate of occupancy that you can reasonably lose?
Okay.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Pedro. Look, in terms of selling shopping centers, if I have to give my honest response, there are three shopping centers that we consider non-core. They represent only 0.9% of our total portfolio. Yes, there are three shopping centers that we consider non-core, only because they are located in cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants of primary catchment. One of those is a clear down performer. The other two are very good performers. One of them, a newly discovered performer, because it is an outlet and has started performing very well during the pandemic. As you know, the average ticket of spending normally goes down during times of uncertainty, and it has started to perform very well. It never was in the past. Those three, yes. They are non-core to us. Eventually, if we have the opportunity, we will divest.
The other 12, I am not that sure. Maybe there is one that could be doubtful. The other 12, no, because the other 12 will end up representing between 12% and 14% of our portfolio, and they are extremely complementary of our logistics effort. As commented before, we are engaged in a cross-fertilization exercise between logistics and shopping centers. Those shopping centers, particularly the ones which are more urban centrally located, are essential for that strategy. It is important to have a building with a cargo dock in a central location in a city if you want to do pop-up last-mile logistics, because pop-up last-mile logistics, doing them in an ordinary office building with no cargo dock is much more complicated because the breakage of the cargo needs to be done with palletizers, and this is much more complicated than doing it through an automated cargo dock.
Of course, if you ask me, if they pay me a good price or a premium, of course, eventually we might consider rotating them. In the current circumstances, the market has disappeared, liquidity is very low, and selling them at any discount simply for the pleasure of selling them and pleasing all of you because we no longer have retail, I believe it makes little sense in terms of protecting the ROE of our investors. As for leases next year, more than 40%. I believe the number is 42%. 42% of our leases mature next year. Regarding what is our visibility on how many of those will be renewed, in principle, I believe the vast majority of them will be renewed because they have the opportunity not to extend.
We have had a number of clients that have not extended and have been excluded from the protection measures and are being evicted and rotated out of our shopping centers. Whoever took the decision to extend the lease, as commented before, made a prejudgment of the future feasibility of its own business and considered his business, his or her business, was feasible, was going to survive the pandemic. I don't see many of those people not renewing. A very different thing is what is the re-equilibrium of rent. Yes, there could be significantly harsh negotiations in rent, but they are going to be much better than our current level of cash flow. In this case, we are playing for a winner.
We are not playing for a loser in this occasion because we have already taken the hit in our cash flows, and whatever the final re-equilibrium of rent is, it will be better than what we have now. This is the way we see 2022 in shopping centers.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Fernando Gil from Alantra. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Hello all. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have three questions, if I may. First, on the occupancy impact that you said, Ismael, about 1.5%-2%. Is it possible to say how much of this would come from offices, shopping centers, and logistics? Second question would be on the CapEx. You've invested over EUR 200 million in 2020, and you have given details on which projects you've mostly invested in. My question is, any outlook for 2021 and for every single type of asset you have? The third question is on disposals again, but on the BBVA branches. My question here is, would you consider in selling a big portion of these branches?
What would be the maximum that you would consider to sell, and also, what would be the minimum threshold or premium you would ask for you to sell them? Thank you.
Okay. All right, Fernando. Look, in terms of the occupancy drop of 1.5%-2%, that is offices only.
Okay.
For the portfolio as a whole, it will be much less because this will be compensated by whatever we do in logistics. Eventually, what we might do in shopping centers and the net leases, which is 100% almost by definition. I think we are now missing one former Caprabo supermarket in Catalonia. The rest is fully occupied.
Okay.
I haven't extrapolated this to the full portfolio.
Okay
much less than that.
Okay. Thank you
for offices.
Okay
For the CapEx 2021, I don't have it handy and by heart. Inés will feed you with any numbers or reconciliation you might need. We will continue with the CapEx plan in 2021. The lion's share, in fact, of the remainder of Landmark I, Flagship, and Best II and III was in 2021. 2022 is much more moderated. 2021 will still be relatively intensive in CapEx. I don't have the figure now handy with me. As for the BBVA disposal, look, I cannot give you an idea of price, et cetera. What I can tell you is that conceptually, this is a non-core portfolio for us because we are not vocational operators of bank branches. This is an inherited portfolio. This is a heritage of the company. It's a wonderful one.
It is providing us with much needed cash flow, particularly in these difficult times. It should also be taken into account that pro forma of a disposal of BBVA at book, simply at book, the leverage of the company will go down to 34 with the old measurement and around 32, 33 with the new measurement. Of course, the quality of income you lose would result in a much higher quality of balance sheet, allowing you to play for new opportunities. Although frankly speaking, we are not seeing a lot of opportunities in the market. It is not that there will be plenty of Castellanas ready to be bought over the coming ten years because the first ten holders of Castellana assets are either completely unlevered or lowly levered.
It is not like in 2008, where people was 72% leveraged on average, and there was a lot of activity in 2014. Now it's a little bit different. The base for, of course, any negotiation will be our book value. It is true that in recent times, and as a consequence of the famous reflation trade, everybody is now seeing a lot of inflation looming in the horizon, and we are now being approached by what David Brush calls geographical accidents. Deep river, shallow ocean, high mountain, so you name it, all the hedge funds and the like that are coming to see us regarding the BBVA portfolio. Why? Because they are seeing a tremendous inflation trade in there. In many cases, they are thinking about enjoying inflation and then selling to BBVA in their wild dreams at the BBVA discount of flows.
The numbers they come at are absolutely stupid, in our opinion, because they do not reflect the pure real estate value of the portfolio, but they simply discount all the pending cash flows at BBVA discount rate, which is probably nonsense, but this is what they do. It is true that this portfolio, with a 1.5 times European inflation multiplier, it is now gold. A lot of people want it, and eventually, we need to end up arguing about its value with somebody. We will significantly defend the premium because we believe that premium is more than warranted in the current inflation circumstances.
Okay. Thank you very much. Just a follow-up on the last one. If you, in the end, you sell a big proportion of it because the price they pay is crazy. What would be the priority for you? You just said that there are low or limited opportunities right now in the market. I don't know, maybe DCN increase the stake from BBVA or doing some greenfield logistics or offices. I don't know. What would be the priority? Only deleverage and return to shareholders. What would be the priority for you?
In principle, Fernando, LTV control first, second, money back to shareholders. Whether through the form of a limited share buyback program or eventually through extraordinary dividend, we will need to check it. Primarily and significantly, the lion's share of the amount, LTV control, and part of it money back. DCN. If it is a condition by BBVA, of course, we might think about it. It is not currently our top priority because of the time span between now and the obtainment of cash flow, which the first cash flows in this project will come in year 2025, 2026. It is not a super high priority of ours to invest now in something that will only mature in 2025, 2026, because it will leave too much of our money, let's say, rendering no fruits or bearing no fruits in the balance sheet of the company.
We need to make sure that if we do something, it is balanced. Greenfield development in logistics are complicated because land now in many of the big logistic corridors in Spain is sold at prices of platforms. Eventually, the data center program, of which we cannot provide details today, eventually that could be another possibility.
Okay. Thank you very much, Ismael. Very clear.
Okay.
Your next question comes from the line of Celine Huynh from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. I think you kind of answered my question already, but if you can add a bit of color around it, that would be great. It is regarding your FFO guidance. Can you comment on the assumption you are factoring there, especially regarding occupancy losses and disposal? I remember you talked about 5% of your retailers being at risk of insolvency. How do you consider that into occupancy losses for this year? Thank you.
Sorry, Celine, the line is cutting off somehow. We couldn't hear you well. You mentioned FFO guidance and?
Yes. The assumptions you put in there.
Okay.
Especially on occupancy losses for retail and on disposals.
Well, of course you correctly spotted that if we have EUR 14 million of extra rent and we are guiding to a flat FFO is because we are considering EUR 14 million of performance erosion. This is true. We are probably estimating at the maximum our occupancy erosion in offices, in shopping centers. It is very difficult to give you an upside case. I prefer to refrain from creating now out of my heart an upside case. The base case is a relatively flat FFO because the WIP that comes into production is somehow offset by erosion in performance of the different business lines.
If you want to go in greater detail, you can discuss with Inés, out of the blue to provide you with an upside scenario, of course, we have shown to the board a number of different scenarios, I prefer not to disclose them in a results call.
Oh, okay. That's great. Just to be sure, I'm just going to slightly push you on that. I think the big picture for retail is pretty clear for this year. Can you comment a bit more about offices if you're expecting a bit of underperformance?
Well, in offices, the situation is as follows. The fundamental equilibrium between offer and demand, between supply and demand remains. Prior to the pandemic, that equilibrium between supply and demand was slightly skewed towards demand. That was causing both occupancy and rent to be going up at the same time, which, as you know, is not typical in real estate. Sometimes you fight for occupancy at the expense of rent. Sometimes you fight for rent at the expense of occupancy. We were more or less simultaneously raising both occupancy and rent. That fundamental equilibrium remains, and what is more important, it is not broken by an oversupply situation. What is happening is that the market, as a consequence of uncertainty, is having a blunter demand. The demand is clearly now hesitant. It is reluctant to trade. It's reluctant to engage in long-term contracts.
People is simply waiting to see what happens. This is why I say sometimes that what the future will bring will depend more on the epidemiology or whatever happens with the pandemic than out of pure real estate or economic equilibriums. If Spain can speed up the vaccination rhythm and can have a significant chunk of its population ready by end of the summer, we expect a good fall and winter. Very simply, deposits in Spanish banks have grown in one year, in 2020, by 14%. Spanish saving rate is now in the region of 25%. Never since I have short trousers did I see a savings rate like that in Spain, not even in the worst years of the end of the Felipe González. There has been no economic destruction, no destruction of infrastructures, no destruction of manufacturing facilities.
There has been no erosion of the population pyramid in the most productive segments of it. Of course, we have lost a lot of lives, disgracefully, on the top of the pyramid, but not different to a war or different to a natural disaster. We haven't lost lives in the mid part of the pyramid. Monetary authorities have reacted very quickly and very swiftly, and there is abundant liquidity out there in the market. In principle, the scenario looks set for a, I don't know whether quick, but at least intense recovery if the pandemic gives place to a more normalized way of life. If that happens, of course, we believe offices, because there is no fundamental imbalance. Because in terms of office price per square meter, if you take the CBRE index of most expensive cities in the world, Madrid is on 56th place together with Bristol.
Because real estate represents 4% of the salary cost of an employee in Spain, because commuting time to the office in Madrid is between 20 and at the maximum 40 minutes for 90% of the workers. The hike in productivity of work from home owing to the commuting time is not applicable here to Spain. Because the government in Spain has put together a legislation to protect the work from homers that oblige the companies to pay them a premium that can be between EUR 120 per month to work from home. Which is probably mind-boggling for most companies and eventually not promoting significantly WFH in Spain. There are a number of reasons that led us to believe that in a normalized environment, offices should, I don't know whether shine, but certainly recover space and continue performing as well as they performed in the past.
Now based on everything you just said, which doesn't sound overly bearish to me, is that crazy to say that your guidance is a bit conservative?
Yes, it can be construed as conservative, Celine, but better play safe. We better play safe. This is a big company. We are in uncertain times, and we don't want to look cool in front of the market and guide to fantastic results because frankly speaking, we don't know how long will the pandemic be and whether the South African or the Manaus strains are going to jump over the different vaccination campaigns and the herd immunity will never be reached. This is why we prefer to be a little bit prudent, Celine.
Thank you, Ismael.
You're welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Richford from Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. I recognize how long the call's gone on, hopefully quick. Just a question on offices, one on like-for-like as well, shopping centers. Offices, can I just check, are you talking about a healthy level of activity, versus leasing volume that was down, I think, 45% in the year, if I'm not mistaken? Can you square those two? Second on offices, what's happening on tenant incentives or net effective rents at the moment? Are we seeing a downward trend there? The second question on shopping centers is, have I missed something on the like-for-like, down 1.2% when it's down by over 20% in Spain for Klépierre Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield? I must have missed something, but perhaps you can just help me with that. Why is it not worse?
The valuers' rental assumptions on shopping centers, what are they putting into their cash flows for the next couple of years directionally?
As for offices, when we said that the post-pandemic activity was healthy, of course, it was healthy, but it was lower than last year. Healthy means that we received many calls by people implying the market was completely stopped. There was no activity, nobody was moving, there were no leads, no people visiting offices. We tried to demonstrate at all times to people that life continued, and there continued to be people visiting offices, of course, less activity than the prior year because the prior year had been a normal one, but still relatively healthy. As for net effective rents in offices, if you know our trajectory, we are not big fans of playing games with face rents. Yes, this year, of course, owing to shopping centers, we have taken a very significant hit and hence a big delta between gross and net rents.
On average, this company prides itself for having been always within 4%. Normally, our total incentives were in the region of 4%, and that can be proven if you look at the historical numbers. There's always been very little difference. We haven't played what we call in private equity, the tease the German strategy, of signing very high facial rent with lots of concessions, lots of tenant concessions, so that when the backing valuer will come, we would only show the main paper, but not the side papers that were kept in a drawer. We try to be a little bit contrarian here because this is a listed company and our incentives, other than the ones that we have given for shopping centers, in other words, if there is a normal year, 2021, you will see our incentives going back to around 4%.
Because given that we are not straight lining or we are not carrying incentives from one year to another, as soon as the pandemic effects go out, you will see our incentives going back to normality. In offices, the market has increased a little bit the market practice in terms of incentives. Prior to pandemic, it was in the region of three months of free rent for an average five-year contract, 60 months. That was like a 5%. Today it has moved more to six months. That will be kind of the new normal in the market. It has almost doubled. That is all. This is what we are seeing in the market as we speak. In Spain, not a lot of fit-out. Freehold contributions are not that typical in the market. You see some, but not a lot.
That is basically how the office market is behaving, which is, I would say, relatively healthy, but particularly having worked in other countries in my past life. The new normal in Spain is quite healthy in terms of how credible the indication of rents is.
Regarding the like-for-like growth in shopping centers, the -1.2% that you see there is basically due to the loss of variable components. It's been netted off somehow by some step-ups and obviously the leasing activity that we've had. It is not bigger because we always report on a gross level, and as you know, all the COVID incentives have been given as pure incentives in the P&L. That's probably why you cannot reconcile our number with some others.
Okay. Thank you. There was just one final question there on the shopping centers, just in terms of what the valuers have assumed. What is the trajectory of rents from here, I guess as a like-for-like into 2021 and 2022, for example?
Look, the models of the valuers are relatively flat in rents. They have put the accent mainly in increasing the discount rates and widening a little bit the exit yields. My impression is a little bit different. I believe there will be a new normal of rents. Nobody knows what the new normal of rents will be. There have been a number of research efforts in this matter. For example, Bart Gysens has written on that. He says that the new normal will be in the region of -20% for prime, super prime shopping centers. We might agree with him. We believe that part of the incentives we are giving today, if we consider, as we consider, that most of the e-commerce additional penetration reached very quickly within the pandemic will become structural. This will provoke tenants to go slightly down in sales per square meter.
In order to compensate this, you will need to lower the rents. Long term, I don't know whether in 2025 or 2026, I don't know, but the new normal could be in the region of what Bart Gysens guided to.
Is that a 20% from here or from a pre-pandemic level?
From pre-pandemic levels.
How much have we taken so far?
Look, on average in 2019, we have taken more than 40% in 2020. In 2020, we have taken more than 40% hit in ordinary rents. This year, we expect to lower it to below 30. If you go to something in the region of 20, you have further room to improve over the coming years.
Okay. We've dropped 40, recovered 10, and there's another 10 to come, potentially.
Yes. That would be a fair assumption. A little bit crystal ball, of course, because it will depend. If there is a revenge spending kind of wave, eventually, I don't know, shopping centers will shine again. I don't know.
Okay. Look, I accept that. I appreciate the answers. Thank you very much, and I'll leave it there.
Thank you. I believe there are no more questions. We'd like to thank you. We've already taken enough of your time. Thank you very much for attending this very long call. As always, we remain at your disposal for any further questions or clarifications that you may have. Have a nice weekend, and thank you. Bye-bye.