Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today's second quarter results call. We'd like to apologize for the inconvenience caused by our conference call provider's technical difficulties, and we very much appreciate your flexibility to rejoin Vesta's results call today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow today's prepared remarks, and as a reminder, this call is being recorded. With me today are Lorenzo Dominique Berho, Chief Executive Officer, and Juan Sottil, Chief Financial Officer. The earnings release detail our second quarter 2023 results, was released yesterday afternoon, and it's available on the company's website, along with our supplemental materials. On today's call, management remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ.
For more information on these risk factors, please review our public filings. Vesta assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. Additionally, note that all figures included herein were prepared in accordance with IFRS, which differs in certain significant respects from U.S. GAAP. All information should be read in conjunction with, and is qualified in its entirely by reference to our financial statements, including the notes thereto, and are stated in our U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Lorenzo Berho.
Gracias, Fernanda. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It was an exciting and eventful quarter for Vesta. We announced our initial public offering in late June, when Vesta raised the most funds by a Mexican company in nearly 11 years, bringing the total to $446 million with the overallotment. Our shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at market open on June 30th, under the VTMX ticker. Vesta's IPO enables us to continue funding our growth pipeline, capturing the important opportunities you've heard me describe in the past. During the second quarter, we continued to see strong fundamentals. Mexico's industrial production beat expectations in May, led by the construction sector, as the nearshoring trend continues to boost demand for infrastructure. Industrial output rose 1% from April, compared to the 0% forecasted by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Nearshoring is therefore one of the most important structural changes for Mexico's economy in decades, today, Vesta is optimally positioned and funded to capture these opportunities. Turning to Vesta's second quarter results, we delivered a nearly 21% year-on-year increase in revenues, driven by $6.6 million in new revenue-generating contracts and a $2 million inflationary benefit. Second quarter leasing activity reached 1.6 million sq ft, including new contracts with outstanding companies such as Eaton, Amphenol, Sumitomo, and Iron Mountain, among others, and 769 sq ft in lease renewals. An excellent example of today's nearshoring trends is Vesta's long-term client, Amphenol Corporation, a Connecticut-based major producer of electronic and fiber optic connectors, and one of the strongest rated and most stable clients within Vesta's portfolio.
Amphenol leased a portion of Vesta's new Vesta Park mega region in Tijuana, for which we recently held an inauguration ceremony. During the second quarter, we also saw continued positive signs within the Bajío market, particularly from the light manufacturing, automotive, and logistics industries. CBRE noted 2.6 million sq ft in net absorption during the first six months, ended June 31, 2023, a 50% year-on-year increase. Gross absorption reached nearly 3 million sq ft in the first half of this year, also a 50% year-on-year increase. Vacancy also continued to decrease, ending the second quarter at 3.9, the lowest level since 2018. This is an early sign of what we believe will be an ongoing trend. Commercial activity is expected to increase during 2023, as companies in the region have announced expansions and new investments.
The development plans Vesta has in place for our Bajío land reserves will capture this trend to further close the gap between Bajío and Vesta's other regions. Vesta currently has 3.2 million sq ft in total inventory and build-to-suit projects under construction. During the quarter, we began new construction on only 1 build-to-suit building for Eaton Corporation at the Vesta Park, Querétaro. We have started the year focusing on laying a strong foundation to accelerate Vesta's new builds in the second half, with upcoming new projects in Juárez, Monterrey, and Mexico City, among others. We're working with development teams to target larger projects within our five strategically defined regions, focusing on manufacturing and e-commerce opportunities. We expect to begin construction of around 3 million sq ft in the second half of 2023.
Before I turn our conversation over to Juan, I wanted to touch upon some important updates in the first half of the year related to our ESG goals. During the first 6 months of 2023, we completed our Vesta environmental diagnosis, which was then used to calculate the baseline of our energy, water, and waste consumption at Vesta's offices and our industrial parks. These results will enable Vesta to standardize our operating processes, implement a comprehensive waste management plan, and to implement water and energy efficiency measures at our parks, offices, and throughout our operations. We were also extremely delighted to have been included within the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, announced last February.
The Gender Equality Index helps bring transparency to gender-related practices and policies at publicly listed companies, and is further validation of Vesta's culture of inclusion, our related corporate policies, and our investments in women in the workplace, our supply chain, and the communities in which Vesta operates. We encourage you to take a look at our 2022 annual report within our website's investor and ESG sections, to learn more about our related progress towards becoming leaders in ESG. With that, let me pass our conversation to Juan, and I'll return for some brief closing remarks.
Thank you, Lorenzo. Good day, everyone. Let me begin with a summary of our second quarter results. Starting with our top line, total revenues increased 21% to $52 million, mainly due to rental revenue coming from new leases and inflationary adjustments on rental property during the quarter. As a reminder, most Vesta leases are indexed to inflation. Therefore, we continue to benefit from the favorable effect of higher than expected inflation on our top line results. In terms of the currency mix, 86% of the first quarter revenue was denominated in U.S. dollars, a slight decrease from the 86.7% recorded in the last year comparable period. Turning to our cost structure, total operating costs reached $4.4 million in this quarter from $2.6 million in the quarter of 2022.
This was mainly due to higher other property-related expenses, including legal expenses, as well as security and public services related to expenses at our Vesta Park. Adjusted Net Operating Income increased 19.4% to $48.5 million, driven by higher rental revenue, while the margin contracted 86 basis points to 94%, mainly due to higher costs from rented properties. Administrative expenses were up 12.2%, reflecting the year-on-year peso appreciation, which in turn impact Vesta employee benefits, legal, auditing fees, as well as higher non-cash expenses, due to an increase in the company's long-term compensation plan.
Adjusted EBITDA reached $43 million in the second quarter of the year, a 17.5% increase compared to the prior year's quarter. The margin decreased 207 basis points to 82.5%, as compared to 84.5% from the same quarter last year. Moving down the P&L, other income reached $67 million compared to $33 million in the second quarter of 2022. This increase was mainly due to higher property revaluation gains and higher foreign exchange gains. We closed the quarter with a pre-tax income of $108 million, compared to $67 million in the second quarter of 2022, while Vesta FFO increased 27% to $31 million.
Now, turning to our CapEx and portfolio composition, we invested $35 million in the quarter, mainly in the construction of new buildings in the Northern and Bajío region. As of June 2023, the total value of our portfolio was $2.9 billion, comprised of 204 high quality industrial assets with a total GLA of 34.6 million sq ft, and with 86% of total income denominated in U.S. dollars. Year-over-year, our stabilized portfolio grew 5.8% to 33.7 million sq ft, with an occupancy of 96.9 from 94.5 in the second quarter of last year. Our land bank stood at 37.6 million sq ft as of June 2023, reflecting a 1.1 decrease from March 2023.
Turning to our balance sheet, we closed the quarter with a total debt of $929 million. Net debt to EBITDA was 5.4x, and our loan-to-value ratio was 30%. Cash and equivalents stood at $51 million, which when combined with our undrawn $200 million committed credit line, provide us with a total liquidity position of $251 million at the end of the second quarter. As Lorenzo previously mentioned, subsequent to the quarter end, on July the 5th, we closed our initial public offering in the U.S. and raised a total of $446 million that will enable us to accelerate our growth plan, while access to a broader investor base. On July 17, we paid a cash dividends for the second quarter, equivalent to MXN 0.30 for ordinary shares.
... This conclude our second quarter 2023 review. Fernanda, could you please open the floor for questions?
Yes, thank you. We will now move to question and answer session. To ask a question, you may raise your hand using the Raise Hand icon located on your webinar page. To withdraw your question, press the same icon at any time. Our first question comes from Rodolfo Ramos from Bradesco BBI. Give me a sec. One second. Yes, Rodolfo?
Yeah, we can hear you, Rodolfo.
Perfect. Thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon, Juan, Loren, and Fernanda. A couple of questions on my side. The first one is a follow-up on your comments, Loren, on the Bajío region and the supply dynamics that you're seeing. I mean, the Northern, there's certainly no question about it, but just if you can comment on the dynamics that you're seeing there in the Bajío region, in particular, if you can talk about Aguascalientes, where you have, you know, one third of your land reserves, and, you know, whether you see any potential there to increase your development pipeline.
If I'm not mistaken, you haven't included any projects there, so just wanted to see what the plan is there, and if not, you know, if land sales are an option. That would be my first question.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Rodolfo, for your question. Definitely what we have seen recently is a very important uptick in terms of demand in the Bajío region, in general terms. We saw that with several transactions in Querétaro, in Aguascalientes, and also in San Luis Potosí, where we were able to close with Eaton in Querétaro, a larger facility on a build-to-suit project. We leased also to Sumitomo in Aguascalientes, another supplier in the auto industry. We have also closed a couple transactions in San Luis Potosí to get us to basically being fully leased in San Luis Potosí. In Querétaro, we see a strong demand, a strong pipeline building up. In Aguascalientes, is pretty much a similar situation. Nevertheless, Aguascalientes, it's a more automotive-related market.
What is interesting to see is also that rents are starting to increase, which is good news. That means that there's real estate fundamentals are strong. The vacancy rates have dropped, and supply is still not enough for the demand that it seems that we are gonna be still seeing. We're excited about the Bajío, pretty much following similar trends to the North, just a little bit later. Of course, we, we might consider some land sales in some markets, like Aguascalientes. Nevertheless, we want to be patient also, because we think that there could be a good wave of opportunities coming in the rest of... In pretty much in the whole Bajío region.
Thank you. My second question was on the normalized level of administrative expenses that you're expecting. I mean, now, I don't know if the U.S. listing, you know, will have any recurring expenses, or just to help us think of that, you know, $6+ million dollars that you reported this quarter, how should we think about that on a more normalized, ongoing level going forward?
Rodolfo, first of all, on our expense level this quarter, in administration expenses, I think that a significant portion of the increase was due for the exchange rate. Please bear in mind that, as you can imagine, the IPO expenses of the New York Stock Exchange were capitalized, as it is normally done. Looking forward, in the U.S. stock market, will require some incremental expenses, mainly in auditing charges and things like that. The benefits that we get for being in that market far benefit the company a lot more than the expense side would be.
Yeah. Thank you, Juan.
Thank you, Rodolfo. Our next question comes from Javier Gayol, from GBM. Go ahead, Javier.
Hi, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yeah, perfect.
Great. Congratulations on the results, Loren, Juan, Fernanda, and thank you for taking my question. I was wondering regarding CapEx. I think you mentioned it at the beginning, Loren, that you're going to do strong investments for the remaining of the year, mainly, I think you mentioned Mexico City, Juarez, and some other region. Just to understand, if you believe that by the end of the year, you would be able to reach that $350 million CapEx deployment program, that, I think that was the guidance or that was the expectation? If so, how many projects are you guys expecting to bring to the table over the next couple of months?
Great. Thank you, Javier, for being on the call, and thank you for your questions. Just to give a bit of more a better picture what we are working on. End of last year, fourth quarter, 2022, we were able to start construction of approximately two million sq ft, which currently are under execution. Actually, it was a major quarter for construction starts, and therefore we saw somehow a slower first and second for this year. However, we see a very strong dynamism in most of the markets. That's why we are laying the ground to start construction for approximately three million sq ft throughout the next quarters.
That's gonna be, that's a very good number, and that reflects clearly the greater demand that we're seeing is, in most of the markets. That, together with a couple land acquisitions, as well as some infrastructure that we need to put in place for many of the parks to anticipate for potential demand, that will take us close to the approximately to the $300 million mark that we mentioned. However, I mean, I'm not giving any just exact numbers, but this is just to give you an idea on how active we're gonna be.
And definitely, we see that that actually is probably third quarter is gonna be a very good quarter for a lot of, a lot of CapEx and new construction starts.
Great. Great. Thank you, Loren, and thank you for the time.
Gracias, Javier.
Thank you, Javier. Our next question comes from André Mazini, from Citi. André, please go ahead.
Sure. Hi, Loren, Juan, Fernanda. First off, congrats on the U.S. IPO. It was quite an achievement. So two quick ones. First, on the recycling of waste and water that Loren mentioned in the beginning, do you see that also becoming a bigger concern for tenants with the whole ESG preoccupations and focus that we've seen over the past years, of course? Are they demanding, like, specific metrics, such as LEED certification or some others, like the top tenants, maybe the international guys, that you might have and some competing player, a little bit less structure, wouldn't have? Another way of putting it, would that be a competitive advantage, a tangible competitive advantage, vis-a-vis some other players? The second one, also follow up on the Bajío.
Of course, like, common knowledge would think that, you know, there's ample land in the Bajío, competition would be easy to go there as well, because there's ample land. On the other hand, we've seen permits being harder, also the securing of water and energy also being a challenge. How is that force shaping out? Is it still new supply easy to be had in the Bajío, or because of the permitting water, energy situation, it's harder at the margin for new supply to come along in the Bajío? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Andrea, for being on the call and for your question. I will start with the second one on the Bajío. What the Bajío is, it's about several markets. And what we believe is one of our main advantages is that we have good land with great infrastructure, which means great utilities in terms of water, in terms of telecommunications, and also in terms of energy. So even that there's more land available, there's really not a lot of land with improved infrastructure. Actually, land with good infrastructure for industrial is increasing dramatically in terms of pricing. So even if there's competition that would like to enter the market, it's really not easy to have improved land. Land is available, but not improved land with the infrastructure.
That's why we have a main advantage, and now that we see a stronger, a bigger wave coming now in the Bajío region, we think that we have a greater advantage too, in the region. It's not gonna be easy for new competitors just to enter the market. Regarding the water waste management and other ESG initiatives that we have, we believe that Vesta has very well designed its sustainability guidelines for construction, and that's why we share them also with our clients. We have a very strong focus towards getting all of our new projects being certified, LEED certified, most of them, and actually with a higher degree of certification, let's say, yeah, higher, let's say higher qualifications.
We believe this is a great differentiator to most of the market. There's several developers that actually have been shifting from retail, office, and even housing to industrial, and probably the lack of experience is putting them more to develop, let's say, basic type of buildings. Vesta has way higher standards, including certifications and LEED standards, and that's gonna be very helpful for the type of companies and clients that have very high objectives in terms of their meeting their global net zero objectives, meeting a higher standard system in terms of sustainability. That's why it's not surprising to see the type of clients we're closing transactions with. These are great companies. Investment-grade companies that have great business practices.
That's why matching a Vesta park, a Vesta building, Vesta in class, to those types of clients makes our buildings have a competitive advantage to the rest of the market.
Thank you, Lorenzo.
Gracias.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jorel, from Goldman Sachs. Jorel, please go ahead.
Thank you all for taking my questions. My first question is, I was wondering if you can walk us through the thought process on the leasing dynamics for your development pipeline, excluding build-to-suits. You know, if I look at your development pipeline as of 2Q23, I see that, you know, some projects are 100% leased, and other projects are not leased at all. I was just wondering, how do you, for the projects that you're currently developing and which you will add to your pipeline in the future, are you more targeting pre-leasing them before they're done during the construction process? Or are you looking more towards delivering them and then starting to do lease-up?
The second question, sort of tied to the same thing. You know, you added a build-to-suit in Querétaro, this quarter. It's interesting because the yield on cost on that one is actually one of the highest yield on costs on your pipelines, about 10.6%. Is this a unique situation, or are you expecting build-to-suits to perhaps have higher yields versus inventory, which, you know, I would think typically isn't the case? Thank you.
Thank you, Jorel, for your question. Well, sure. Let me walk you on our thought process on leasing. We're developing a lot of spec buildings. That's correct. We believe that our strategy towards spec has been created, given great results. We definitely market our buildings from even before starting construction. Sometimes we're able to pre-lease those buildings, sometimes we hit the market with buildings available, gives us also an opportunity to lease them up in a, let's say, short period of time. Both ways are attractive because in the end, when you have such a strong market, what one of the...
The demand is incredibly strong, one of the main things that we are doing is being very disciplined in having great companies. When I say great companies, it's investment-grade. It's going to be long-term leases in U.S. dollars, adjusted, our lease agreements are, all of them are being adjusted to inflation annually. The idea of still target, and some of them are done on the construction phase to pre-leasing, but some of them come later on. The market is so strong, and our product type is real, has high, the highest standards, that we believe that those buildings will be leased up in a short period of time. We are very confident on that strategy, and returns are pretty attractive.
You mentioned the yield on cost for Querétaro's build-to-suit project. Well, it's a good risk-adjusted return, 10.5% yield on cost for a long-term lease with a good company. One of the key characteristics about our approach in Querétaro is that since we acquired the land at a competitive cost, plus we included greater infrastructure at competitive cost, we have a good cost basis for our land. The land acquisition strategy for Vesta is key because this is where you can really be able to develop at higher returns. We need to anticipate to find the land, acquire the land, put the infrastructure in place, and then be able to market that, so that when opportunities like this build-to-suit can come, we can benefit from that.
Returns are gonna be different market by market, transaction by transaction, but the idea is to have good spread investments in either spec, build-to-suit projects, and even some opportunistic acquisitions. Thank you, Jorel.
Thank you. one follow-up, if I may?
Mm-hmm.
Should we expect then, the bulk of your portfolio as you develop it and you finish it, that it's going to be mostly unoccupied, and then you lease it up post-delivery?
Not everything is post-delivery. I would say that now with such strong demand, we might see a good portion being pre-leased, a good portion being 30%, 50%, probably. What we're definitely gonna continue to do is doing spec buildings, and actually try to turn them in what we call spec-to-suit at some point. We're gonna be, still continue to have a balance of both.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jorel. Our next question comes from Carlos Peyrelongue from Bank of America. Go ahead, Carlos.
[Foreign Language]
Sorry, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yes.
Sorry about that. My question has already been answered. Thank you.
Gracias.
Thank you, thank you, Carlos.
[Foreign Language]
Our next question comes from Francisco Suarez, from Scotiabank. Paco, you're on.
[Foreign Language]
Paco, can you hear us?
[Foreign Language] Paco.
He's already on. Paco, can you hear us? Okay. Next is Anton from GBM. Anton, you're on.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me there?
Yes, perfect.
Perfect. Thank you for taking my question, and congrats on your results. Mine is a little bit of a follow-up on Javier's question on the CapEx deployment, just to see if I got it right. You're expecting for next quarter, around three million sq ft of development start. This is besides what you already have in your current development pipeline, right?
Yes, that's correct.
On that current development pipeline, you have, like, $30 million that you were expecting to deploy during July. How is that deployment going? Will it be finished during this quarter, or if you could provide some detail on that?
Sure. I think that it's hard to give detail on each month, Anton. Probably because in the end, what we like to see the overall picture. For us, it's important to concentrate for the construction starts for this following semester, second semester of 2023. However, these are larger cycles. Actually, what we're working today already in projects that will be even started in first quarter of 2024, because our CapEx projections are not only for the year, but also for the upcoming years. In a broader case, in a broader way, we expect to have a good three million sq ft of construction starts for the end of this year, but we will continue to have a sizable amount for 2024.
Sometimes it falls in one particular month, sometimes that changes, but the general picture does not, should not change materially.
Perfect. That's pretty clear. Thank you.
Gracias.
Thank you, Anton. We're gonna go ahead and try again with Paco from Scotiabank. Paco, can you hear us?
Yes. Hello, can you hear me now?
Yes, perfect.
Oh, sorry, apologies for this. This was my mess on my end. Apologies. The question that I had, I was a little bit concerned to see the low leasing in your new developments that are about to be delivered in the third quarter in the northern part of Mexico, where nearshoring is actually the strongest. Can you give us a little bit of a color on what your expectations are on the lease-up period on these spec properties going forward? I remember a lot of something that you said once to me, Lorenzo, in the sense that you always prefer to have an empty building rather than, you know, a low quality tenant.
I want to understand why, if overall conditions are so strong, your overall leasing reported at the end of the second quarter was kind of relatively low in the northern part of Mexico. If I may add to a related question, a strong competitor from you actually confirmed that it had a lot of issues in starting new projects. They basically said about energy-related problems and entitlement as well. I just want to get a sense of what your views are, generally speaking, on all your land reserves, not only in the Bajío region, as you expected, you already explained that. Thank you.
Great, thank you, Paco. Well, I think that definitely demand is strong in the north part of Mexico. Particularly, we have projects in Monterrey, Tijuana, and Ciudad Juárez. However, we are on the construction phase for many of them, as you can see in part of our pipeline, and we are on marketing stage on actually all of them. Sometimes they get close in an earlier stage, sometimes a bit later, but I think that only one quarter does not really give an overall picture. I think it's probably a combination of quarters. If you recall what we did earlier this year by being able to close with important transactions-... into
Juarez with DB Schenker, with a project that actually it's just started construction this year, or let's say end of last year. The same in Tijuana with Amphenol, TCL, Arvis, Home Depot, and the same for Monterrey with Polaris. For the rest, we're in the marketing stage, and I'm pretty sure that if it doesn't fall this quarter, it will probably fall in the upcoming quarters. However, it doesn't have any material impact on the rent collection. That's why I reiterate our disciplined approach to have good companies with good leases, and hopefully we can be able to lease up at a good moment and start generating income soon. That should not have a major impact.
Again, I, what is important right now in our development pipeline, is that we continue to execute well, finalize the projects, and hopefully being able to lease them up soon. Regarding energy, yes, energy has been an issue, has been an issue for a, for a while in different markets. We are addressing those issues with particularly when it comes to light manufacturing when it comes to logistics, it's not a main thing, but when it comes to light manufacturing, that's when we have to anticipate for, to our clients, and that's how we have been dealing in Tijuana, for example, and Monterrey. However, with high consumers of energy, it is definitely very challenging. Heavy industries are gonna still see that very challenging.
That's why for us, it's important that whenever we acquire land, we also start the bureaucratic process of getting energy as soon as possible, so that when tenants start their operation, there's already some energy in place so that they can start for whatever manufacturing process they might have.
Got you. In other words, you are not experiencing that sort of issues like what's been disclosed by your competitor?
Sure. I don't know what they disclosed. There's definitely issues we are facing. We're finding solutions to that, if, in the end, I think that there's energy in the country. It's just challenging to get the enough energy for certain regions. In our case, that's why anticipating has been key for our projects.
Got you. Just to be clear, no changes whatsoever in your underwriting policies. I mean, you still abide to this idea of having the right tenants, the right leases, I mean, and compensated by the rents?
Yes, absolutely.
Fantastic. Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much. Take care.
Thank you, Paco. Our next question comes from Francisco Chávez, from BBVA. Hi, Francisco, can you hear us? Francisco, we cannot hear you. Okay, perhaps we will go to the next question from Felipe Barragán, from BTG. Felipe, you're on.
Beautiful. Thank you, guys. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I have a pretty quick one. This quarter, you guys, delayed the Apodaca 2 project. I'm guessing it's just a one-off. If you could just explain, you know, what happened, if it's something that could happen again, That's it. Thank you very much.
Hola, Felipe. Thank you very much for your call. Yes, that's. The project was delayed particularly because it is a project that is already leased. It's a lease to Polaris, actually, this is a negotiation that was there for a while, and there were certain improvements that they wanted to do to the building, and they asked us to kind of hold on for a period of time so that they could, let's say, phase out together with us while we were under construction, so that they could get the reparation in place, and get the improvements, their tenant improvements in place at the same time. That is, even that is offset by the long-term lease agreement we did with Polaris.
It's a combination with that manufacturing facility as the other logistic facility, which is a building number 1, that it's already, it's already been delivered. It's actually also because of other potential projects that we are analyzing with Polaris as well.
Great. Appreciate all the color. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, Felipe. We will try one more time. Francisco Chávez, can you hear us?
Hi.
Yep.
Yes.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yep.
Yes, perfect.
Great. Thanks for the call, and congrats on the strong results. I have two questions. The first one is regarding your land bank-
... which remained flat quarter on quarter. Do you plan to make some acquisitions soon? When can we expect some news regarding the land reserve that you acquired near Mexico City? The second question is regarding the FX and the impact on your EBITDA margins. Do you plan to do some hedging activities in order to cover a share of your expenses denominated in Mexican pesos? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Francisco. Juan, would you like to answer, the question related to FX, and I will answer the rest, please?
Sure. Look, Paco, I think this is an important question, and thank you for asking it. The company is significantly long dollars. Our expenses are in pesos. I believe that this is the right profile for a company where more than 70% of my investors are dollar-based. Right now, the peso has appreciated, therefore, we have some impact on our income statement. By the way, I think the impact is more significantly on the cost of maintenance of properties rather than on the administrative cost. Nevertheless, I do not hedge those peso expenses.
I think that I have the right profile for my investor base, and I think that most of you will understand that at this moment in time, the strong pesos are hurting the margins of most industrial companies in Mexico, no? I don't see why I should spend some actual cash in just playing an exchange game that, over the long term, will be beneficial for Vesta and most of my shareholders.
Perfecto, Juan. Thank you. Regarding our land reserves, we have acquired land in the last months, in the last quarters. We will start construction soon in Mexico City and other markets, which will immediately, by starting construction, that will reduce our land bank because this will be construction in progress. There are certain markets where we are already evaluating land acquisitions, the markets where we have plenty of land for the next couple years, we are not gonna be acquiring more land. We wanna have a very, very disciplined approach on land acquisitions.
It's land that we might be using whenever we if we buy new, if we already have land, we wanna take the most advantage of it when needed, even sell some land if there is an opportunity, in some cases, as we have done in the past. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. This concludes our question and answer session. I'll now like to turn the call back over to Lorenzo Berho for closing remarks. Please go ahead, Lorenzo.
Gracias, Fernanda. I'd like to share my sincerest gratitude to our dedicated employees and to our valued stakeholders, who have been an important part of our success on this journey. We look forward to this exciting chapter, and we'll continue to leverage Vesta's privileged position, time and experience, and demonstrated track record with our determination, bold vision, and our optimism about this moment for Vesta and our country. Thank you, everyone, and goodbye.
Thank you once again, everyone, for your patience and flexibility today. We again apologize on behalf of our conference call provider. You may disconnect your lines at this time.