Good morning and welcome to One United Properties conference call for presenting Q3 2022 results. My name is Zuzanna Kurek, and I'm Investor Relations Manager at One United Properties. I am joined in this call by Victor Căpitanu, Executive Board Member and Co-Founder of One United Properties, as well as Cosmin Samoilă, CFO.
Together, we will present you One United Properties Q3 2022 results, as well as answer any of your questions. Before we begin, I would like to mention that this call is being recorded and that the recording of this call will be uploaded on our website later this week. We will issue a current report announcing that the recording is available. As stated in the call invite, by joining this video conference, you automatically and implicitly consent to it being recorded.
If you do not consent to being recorded, please leave the call. In terms of organizational aspects, let me present to you first the setup of this call. Victor Căpitanu will deliver the opening remarks. We will then move to the next part of the call, where together with Cosmin Samoilă, we will deliver a brief presentation outlining the Q3 2022 results and key events that happened since our last call.
During our presentation, feel free to type any of the questions you might have, and we will answer them during the Q&A. After the presentation, we'll start the Q&A. First, we will answer the questions that we received via email prior to this call. Secondly, we'll answer the questions received from you via chat in chronological order. Please note that all participants should be on mute.
If you want to ask a question, please type it in the chat window. I would like to mention that we might be making Forward-Looking statements today during this call regarding the future performance of One United Properties and that actual results may differ materially.
We encourage you to review the disclaimer that we have included in our presentation, which you can see right now on the screen. This disclaimer applies equally to all the statements made in today's calls. I would like now to proceed to the first part of the call, and I invite Victor Căpitanu to share some highlights of the first 9 months of 2022 with you.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our quarterly call. I will share a few things about how was this 1/4 for us and some perspectives. The 1/3 1/4 basically has been a very good 1/4 for the company despite the general international stress and despite the volatility in the markets. I will tell you a bit about the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.
Interest rates have increased rapidly, but not as fast as inflation. Therefore, cash in banks is losing real value at a rapid pace. This means that we might see increased demand for our apartments due to the high inflation environment. People just want to protect their money.
Apartments addressed to the upper 1/2 of the market, as are the ones developed by One, also require less mortgage, so their demand is not so much affected by the interest rates as it is on the lower end of the market. Also, we'll probably see a flight to quality, home buyers investing more in the top quality properties in the best locations.
Once again, clients see the difference between unique, hard to replace locations and properties in the periphery and in secondary locations. They also see the difference between serious developers with strong balance sheet and opportunistic or small developers. On the office part, next year, we'll see a significant increase of the rental revenue due to the yearly inflation in 2022 and the indexation of our rents. Also, we'll see increased revenue due to more tenants moving in to their new offices.
A challenge this year has also been generally the construction costs. Nevertheless, we feel they have already peaked and as in major predictability in the future, as the negotiation power is moving from the supplier to the client, as it is normally to be. Client-focused organizations with strong balance sheets and great brand will outperform their peers.
Last 1/4, we have been very active. We managed to secure a capital increase of EUR 51.5 million from local and international investors in a tough 1/4 for any equity increase for a public company around the world at a record 3.5% discount to the market price. We'd like to thank our shareholders for trusting our company, our business model, and our vision.
Our cash position at thirtieth of September exceeds EUR 140 million, and we also have short-term receivables from contracts with clients in amount of EUR 189 million, both amounting to a total of EUR 329 million available for Short-Term investment. This amount will accelerate the growth of One on the medium and long term over the next 5, ten years.
We are investing in 10 new locations, which we estimate to bring additional gross profit of EUR 900 million over the next eight years. Three locations are already acquired and made public. One Herăstrău City is the first of them. One Herăstrău City is an ambitious High-Rise residential living development which will create an exclusive community within walking distance and with amazing views to the Herăstrău Park. We plan to develop 7 towers on this plot of land of almost 3.5 hectares.
One City Club, the second location, is a Low-Rise development, gated and exclusive compound close to the Floreasca 1/4 that will be built on a plot of land of approximately 11,000 square meters. Some people prefer low-rise gated communities, but centrally located in the city of Bucharest, and we'll address this demand with One City Club.
Eliade Tower is an old office building that is bordering One Floreasca City and sit on a plot of land of more than 4,200 square meters. We are analyzing best use for this plot and most probably will aim to build a new tower instead of the old one. One of our options could be to develop a High-End Five-Star hotel with High-End exclusive design residences on top of it. In the meantime, while analyzing, we are also collecting around EUR 500,000 rent per year from this building.
The other seven locations are in advanced stage of acquisition, and they will be announced gradually, most probably by the end of the next year. Going forward, we'll focus as always on our clients, residential buyers and office and commercial tenants. We will continue to improve our product, quality and design, energy efficiency, and to lower the footprint on the environment.
At the same time, we keep constant attention on maximizing the long-term profitability. Two years ago, we pioneered in our developments the Geo-Exchange system as an alternative to gas consumption for heating and warm water. This system decreases significantly the gas consumption by replacing it with the energy of the earth. Therefore, monthly invoices of our residents are lower, and impact on the environment is lower.
We implemented this system in One Peninsula 2 years ago, and we are implementing it in One Lake Club, One High District, One Lake District, and all other developments where it is technically feasible. We also would like to underline that ESG is a priority for our company. This 1/4, we got our ESG rating from Morningstar Sustainalytics with a score of 20, medium risk bordering low risk, with low risk in governance and medium risk in environmental and social.
Our target going forward is to become low risk in all 3 categories and to become an ESG role model for real estate companies in Europe. ESG will drive many of our decisions going forward. Focus on the governance of the company, improvement of the communities and society in general, and lowering the impact on the environment will all 3 continue to be priorities for us.
On the stock exchange performance, in a difficult year, we outperformed the local index, bringing a positive return year to date. Also we outperformed all regional and international real estate indices, which had a significant decline. Our volatility is also lower than most peers and locally listed companies. Our weekly volatility of 3% is lower than most of the listed companies in Romania.
In the meantime, we also became the largest listed entrepreneurial company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and also the most profitable company. We are looking forward to close probably the best year in the history of the company, and we see next 10 years of significant growth opportunity on the local market. I would like to thank you very much for listening and I would like to invite my colleagues to continue with the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Victor. Now I would like to invite Cosmin to discuss the nine months financial results.
Good morning. Thank you for participating at the corporate call for presenting the company results and the company evolution in the last 1/4. We had a very good nine months of the year with a consolidated turnover growing 45% up to RON 908.8 million. This turnover includes mainly the revenues from sales of apartments, RON 597 million.
Gains from office buildings under development, RON 39.3 million. Gains from bargain purchase, RON 94.1 million. Gains from completed investment property, RON 92.9 million. Also other revenues which are smaller in value. Together, gross result reached RON 479.5 million, meaning exactly a doubling compared to similar period of last year.
In the same time, the net profit increased even more with 120%, reaching RON 421.1 million. The income tax in these nine months amounted to RON 58.4 million, out of which 10.3 million is actual expenditure, while 48.3 million is deferred tax expense.
Related to the residential segment, we had a 15% increase in the revenues from RON 521.9 million last year to RON 597 million. In the same time, it was an increase even bigger in the net income from residential property sales. The increase was 56% up to RON 278.3 million.
This generated a 47% net margin, which means 12 percentage points increase compared to similar period of last year. In terms of sales, in the first nine months, the group sold 260 units. Most of the sales were recorded in One Cotroceni Park, 104 apartments, and in One Verdi Park, 84 apartments. Both developments are scheduled to be finalized and delivered to final clients next year.
Related to the commercial segment, there was a significant increase in the rental income and revenues from several tenants, increasing 722% from RON 6.3 million last year to RON 51.8 million this year. The effect of this significant increase was mainly due to the revenues generated in One Tower, which is currently leased 100%.
Revenues in One Cotroceni Park, phase one, which is currently leased 82%. At the moment it is not generating full income as there are still tenants being in the Fit-Out phase. Also included in this amount is the revenue generated from One Victoriei Plaza, which has been acquired in the 1/3 1/4 of this year, and is 100% leased. Also revenues generated by Bucur Obor, which is an asset consolidated in our group starting February this year.
We are expecting the rental income to increase even in Q4 and of course also in next years due to the finalization of all the tenants moving in phase and also due to the finalization of One Cotroceni Park phase 2 as well as the impact of the new acquisitions that will be seen in our results further on.
Related to the expenses side, excluding the Non-Cash expense with the stock option plan allocation, the G&A expenses increased only 35%, and this is mainly driven by a higher volume of operations in the company and costs related to being a public company. Also, the cost that we recorded in the capital increase operation that took place this year. The Non-Cash stock option plan allocation was in value of RON 44 million.
The stock option plan is awarded to the executive board of directors members. Following the meeting of the performance criteria related to the growth of the company in 2021. Including this non-cash stock option plan allocations, the G&A expenses increased 244% to RON 75.4 million.
In other operating expenses, we had RON 9.9 million, increasing from RON 5.9 million last year. Most of the expense here is related to sponsorships, RON 6.5 million, and most of these sponsorships are deducted from profit tax in the future period. Related to the asset side on the residential, we had new entries in this category.
At the end of 1/4 2, One Lake Club, phase 2, and also in the end of 1/3 1/4, we have One Herăstrău Vista, that both developments have had the building permit valid as of end of the 1/4. They are also in the sales stage. Still, inventory decreased 12% in the period due to the sales, with the residential property value reaching 303.5 million RON.
A very important aspect to mention that 82% of the apartments at these developments are already sold as of 30th September. Out of the developments that are already finalized, meaning One Mircea Eliade, One Mamaia Nord phase one, and One Herăstrău Towers, we have only 33 units still available for sale.
Related to the office, retail, and land bank assets, the non-current assets increased 58% to RON 2.4 billion. This increase is generated mainly by this major category in our balance sheet, the investment property category, which also increased 58%. We are observing in all the assets, we had increase in value compared to last year.
Most notably, it's One Athénée, 60% increase in value. One Cotroceni Park office phase 2, 50% increase in value. One Cotroceni Park phase one, 25%. The land for development One Floreasca Towers increased 15%. It's the land that, following the 1/4 3 end in Q4, received also building permit for residential development. We have new entries in this category. Bucur Obor, finalized the acquisition in first 1/4 of this year.
One Victoriei Plaza, which we finalized the acquisition in 1/3 1/4 of this year, as well as 29 apartments at One Mircea Eliade, which are designated for rental purposes. If we are referring to the cash position, we are observing a record high in the cash and cash equivalent position of the company.
This is mainly due to the successful closing of the share capital increase in the 1/3 1/4 of this year, during which the company raised RON 253.7 million. Also despite the continuous investments in the developments and also the cash outflows that we have to maintain the operations, still the cash position increased 37% compared to the end of last year. A very important indicator, the loan-to-value ratio.
The gross net Loan-To-Value ratio was 31% at the end of the 1/3 1/4. This slightly increased compared to the 25% we recorded at Year-End due to the acquisition of One Victoriei Plaza, which has been partially financed via bank loan of EUR 19 million and of course also other drawdowns for various developments that are in the construction stage.
Nevertheless, there is a very low leverage at the level of the company, also expressed by the net debt, which is only RON 100 million, being basically 2.4% from the total assets. Related to the liabilities, we have an increase of 58%. This is mainly due to loans and borrowings that are the main component of the liabilities.
As of 30 September, the total amount was RON 763 million. It's mainly represented by the amounts of bank loans in the subsidiaries One Victoriei Plaza, One Cotroceni Park Office, One Verdi Park, and One Tower.
An important aspect is also to mention that the maturity of these loans is on very long term. As of 30th September this year, for the investment loans, the average maturity to repay these loans was 9.1 years, and the total value was EUR 121 million. While for the development of residential property, the maturity is shorter. We have 3 bank loans in this category.
Maturity is still shorter because it's very close to the moment the residential development is finalized and the apartments are paid in full by the clients, and they are delivered. At that stage, gradually the bank loan is also repaid to the bank. We have EUR 32.8 million in this development for residential property loans.
The average interest is between 2%-4% for the period of the first nine months of this year. The increase in current liabilities was driven by also by Short-Term loans, 379%. This is basically the current portion payable in less than one year from the long-term bank loans.
Also, we had an increase of 64% in trade and other payables, which reached RON 202 million. Both these current liabilities are increasing due to the fact that the developments are closing completion stage, and they are reaching a higher level of liability, either to banks or to suppliers or to sell the apartments to clients. Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much, Cosmin. Now we're going to finalize this presentation with a short business update. In terms of residential Pre-Sales, we have sold in the first nine months of this year 260 apartments with a total surface of 24,500 square meters, 544 parking spaces and other unit types for EUR 103.8 million.
You can see similar to the last 1/4, there is a decline compared to the same performance of last year. We are excluding from the graphs that you can see the apartments sold to CCI at One Lake District and One Cotroceni Park last year via 2 separate contracts. Those are apartments sold in batch.
Therefore, we see, counting just the sales towards retail clients, we see that there were 276 apartments sold in the same period of last year with a total surface of 28.5 thousand square meters for a total of EUR 139.4 million.
As a reminder, as usual, these sales include also the Pre-Sales to the early clients. These are lower margin sales that help finance land acquisitions. The value of that in the first nine months of 2022 was EUR 12.5 million, and last year EUR 23.4 million.
In terms of the trends, you can see that the decrease in the sales was driven by the lack of available stock, and that only limited number of apartments were available at each of the developments. As Cosmin mentioned, a little bit earlier, the 3 developments that are already delivered, so One Mircea Eliade, the
One Mamaia Nord, first phase, and One Herăstrău Towers only had 23 units remaining. The rest of the developments, for all of the developments actually that were available for sale as of September thirtieth, we had sold 83% of units. If we exclude One Herăstrău Vista that was permitted in Q2.
Excuse me, it was Pre-Sold in Q2 at One Lake Club, where the sales started close to end of Q3 2022. That basically means 89% of the apartments were already sold. This is particularly important if we look at the evolution of One Cotroceni Park, where at the beginning of Q3, so as of 30th of June 2022, there were only 8% of apartments still available for sale.
That's a very small number. What is important regarding One Cotroceni Park, we have reported already in Q4 that there was a buyback of 67 residential units at One Cotroceni Park, which we have executed in Q4. We bought the apartments back from CCI One.
This operation is expected to generate an additional profit margin of at least 13% and a minimum of EUR 1 million additional profit. Part of these apartments were already placed and sold in Q4 of this year. In terms of the evolution, you can see similar to the last quarters, the most sought-after apartments were the 2-room apartments.
We have sold 161 of such units in the first nine months of 2022. The most popular developments were the largest ones, so One Cotroceni Park and One Verdi Park. In Q3, we saw especially an acceleration in the sales at One Verdi Park. Both of these developments are to be delivered in 2023, as you could see on the previous slide.
The value of per unit sold and per square meter increased in the first nine months of this year compared to the last year. I would like to mention that we are due to receive EUR 189 million in additional cash by 2024 from our clients. The split is the following: EUR 44 million in the fourth 1/4 of this year, EUR 135 million in 2023, and EUR 10 million in 2024. In terms of the highlights, as you very well know, stock has been a problem.
Lack of stock has been an issue we had in Q2 and Q3, and we are happy to report as expected that we have received a significant number of building permits in Q4. Basically, there were permitted 1,759 new apartment units that were added or will be added in this 1/4 to the sales team portfolio.
We are talking about apartment units available at One Mamaia Nord at the seaside, One High District, One Floreasca Towers, One Lake Club the first phase, because the second phase sales already started in Q3 of this year, as well as One North Lofts.
This is a reconversion of one of the 2 office buildings within One North Gate. We are awaiting the building permit for this, but the sales have already started. The development is estimated to be delivered next year. At this stage, we are still awaiting the building permit for One Lake District. This will be the largest development of One United Properties to date, where we will have 2,000 residential units.
The permit is fully submitted and confirmed to be complete with the authorities. In terms of other developments from Q4, as Victor mentioned at the beginning of this call, we have finalized the acquisition of Eliade Tower. You can see it here. This is the building in front of One Floreasca City on the middle picture.
This was an acquisition for approximately EUR 9.5 million. It has a GLA of approximately 8,000 square meters. It is approximately 50% leased. The building sits on the plot of land of 4,200 square meters, and we are in the process of determining what will be the purpose of that plot of land, as Victor mentioned.
Last but not least, we would like to announce as we did in the Q3 report, that we are maintaining the 2022 budget as it was approved in the general meeting of the shareholders in April. We are targeting a net profit of RON 548.7 million for this year. When we look on the stock evolution, you can see here a graph.
This is from starting from first of January this year to date. This is including the performance as of closing of Friday last week. We were the ninth most traded stock in terms of absolute liquidity, registering trades of RON 175.4 million in the first nine months of 2022 and 13th by liquidity to free float.
We have reached the market capitalization of 30th of September of RON 3.2 billion, which makes us the most valuable entrepreneurial company listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Here, I would like to underline that, today, checking the price, we are over RON 3.5 billion. We had a very good evolution starting from the end of October and throughout November so far.
In a volatile first nine months, we have performed better than the benchmark index that we had a total return of -8.7%, while BET TR, BET total return, decreased 10.5%. As well as we perform better than the real estate indices.
You can see here evolution, which was on average approximately a negative of approximately 40%. This concludes the presentation we have prepared for you. We will now open the floor for the questions. If you have any questions, please type them in the chat window, and we will address them in chronological order.
Before that, we have received 3 questions from investors prior to this call, and we would like to address them first. Victor, I will read them one by one and I would kindly ask you to address them. The first question was: Do you plan to access capital markets financing in the coming period?
Thank you, Susanna. We don't plan to access capital markets since we just raised equity in August, so very recently. Plus, as I mentioned, cash and Short-Term receivables are in excess of EUR 300 million, which is more than enough for the present growth strategy of the company. We don't plan to do anything too early.
Great. Thank you. The second question is related to the building permits we have received in the fourth 1/4. You received many building permits in Q4. How will the work start at these developments? Will they begin at the same time, or rather you successfully plan to start the construction works? Do you have sufficient workers to carry out construction works at the same time? Related question, did the sales at the developments permitted in Q4 already begin? If not, will they start this year?
We already started works on all the permitted construction sites. We have only one that is not permitted, One Lake District. The rest that are permitted, we started the works. We have started the sales in One High District 2 Fridays ago, ten days ago. We started sales in One Herăstrău Vista, which I think we already reported that they performed much better than expected. We also started sales in One North Lofts, and by the end of this year, we will start sales in One Floreasca Towers and One Lake club.
Thank you. The last question we received on email is: Why did the loan-to-value indicator increase this 1/4 after being at similar level for the last four 1/4s?
LTV, leverage is more necessary for investment than for development. In the 1/3 1/4, we acquired an office building called One Victoriei Plaza, which we leveraged in order to make optimal use of the long-term lease with First Bank, our tenant. The loan is being paid from the rents from the bank. This had the impact on the gross LTV, but net leverage is still close to zero.
Great. Now let's move to the questions we received on the chat. Let's start with the first one.
I can read it, no?
Yeah, go ahead.
We have from Jakub Caithaml. Hello. Good morning, and thank you for the questions. We have 5 questions. Can you indicate the range of how many apartments do you expect One may sell or pre-sell this year and in 2023, roughly? We cannot give an exact range, but the strategy of the company, as always, is to sell most of the apartments during construction.
Basically, the 1,700-800 apartments that were permitted in the last 3 months or so, we expect to sell over the next 2 years until completion. Basically, I cannot say for this year or next year, but in the next 24 months, we expect to sell most of them during construction.
Second question is how many apartments we expect to hand over this year and in 2023. Basically, we are handing over One Verdi Park, which we already finalized the procedure with authorities. We sign final contracts in the first 1/4 next year.
Next year, also a very important delivery by the end of next year is One Cotroceni Park, the residential park. These 2 by far are the largest. In total is 1,200 units. Besides the Cotroceni and Verdi, we are delivering also few other smaller developments like One Floreasca Vista, around 50 apartments and so on. How do you expect the net cash/net debt position to evolve during 2023 and 2024?
How much debt, net or other capital do you expect to raise over the next 2 years in order to deliver on your growth plans? Basically, our cash position and our receivables position is very strong and this covers very well the growth plan.
We are taking also Short-Term debt for residential, but with low leverage just to cover the gap during construction. Debt is more needed for investment loans. Let's say if you build the rental property, debt is more necessary. Basically we don't expect the debt to increase too much. We don't expect we need to raise capital over the next 2 years. We think the existing cashflow is okay. Four.
Question number four. One recently received permits for projects spanning nearly 1,800 apartments. One Lake District with another 2,000 apartments should follow. Can you indicate roughly what share of these nearly 4,000 apartments do you expect is going to be purchased with mortgage and how much with cash? Basically, if we look historically, less than 1/2 of our clients buy with mortgage.
We expect this to continue. What is good in the Romanian market is that there is a lot of home equity, a lot of owners that already own apartments, but they are old or in poor quality and they sell it to buy and move in a better apartments.
I think probably we continue to see less than 1/2 of buyers with mortgage. Question number 5: Do you expect to be selling apartments to CCI One also in these recently launched projects? No, we don't expect to sell to them. This transaction was almost like a one-off last year. I expect if we'll have more demand than supply on certain developments.
I mean, certain developments are One Cotroceni Park and later One Lake District. If on the short term in One Cotroceni Park we have more demand than supply that we don't have, it's possible that we will buy back more apartments from them as long as we can make a Back-To-Back margin on that.
If we make a margin with very low risk, we might continue to buy back from the apartments. On the selling side, we don't expect to sell them more apartments. Another question from Florin. Thank you. How do you see the evolution of the real estate market on short and medium term? Look, I think there are some important directions to clarify here.
First, I think the gap is growing between good quality locations and periphery and secondary locations. Basically we see from our sales every day that the demand is increasing for good quality locations. I think people are starting to avoid the periphery or the lower quality locations. We see increased interest for unique locations that are very hard to replace.
Also, what is important is the difference between Romanian real estate and international real estate. As you know, Romanian real estate is very low priced compared to the local purchasing power in comparison with rest of Europe. Basically, in Romania, you need around 6 years and 1/2 of salary to pay for an apartment, which in rest of Europe, Central Europe, is double, and Western Europe is even 20 times or more.
Fundamentally, the pricing of real estate is very affordable, and in parallel also, the purchasing power locally has a very good growth dynamic. Basically we are quite positive on the real estate that we are targeting. Next question from Karim. Thank you.
Can you please elaborate on the impact of inflation and interest rates on both future demand for apartments and construction costs, cost of debt? Basically, as I said in the introductory remarks, interest rates have increased, but not as much as the inflation. Basically, what we see every day is that people lose real value of their cash they have in the bank accounts.
Basically they lose money. In parallel with the pricing of property being very low in Romania, we see people looking to protect their money by investing in good quality property. Basically, what we see is the effect of inflation is bigger than the effect of the interest rates and we see very good demand.
For example, we launched One Herăstrău Vista and in less than a 1/4 we sold more than 60% of the development, which is quite unique. We never had this before. One High District, we launched it 10 days ago, and also the impact to the market was very satisfying for the company. On the demand, we see strong demand.
On the construction cost, we see construction cost probably peaked in the 1/3 1/4. Already the construction cost we see, we see it adjusting, and I think for the rest of the year and for next year, we see more predictability and probably no growth on costs or even decrease.
I think on the cost side, we have much more visibility today than in the past one year. The last question from Karim on the cost of debt. Basically if you look to our financial statement, you will see that our financial income and expense is close to zero in total.
Basically, because we don't have too much net debt, we managed to have the overall cost of debt is not so significant in the balance sheet of the company. Another question from Jacob. Thank you. Thank you Karim also. Thank you, Jacob. Many thanks for the answers. One follow-up.
How do you expect the transition to the higher mortgage rates to affect the secondary market? Do you see a risk that it could make it difficult for potential clients to unlock equity tied in their existing homes to move up in better apartments? Basically we have 2 more questions. Now on the transition to mortgage rates, I would like to clarify something for everybody that maybe is not so obvious. The Romanian market has 2 currencies.
The public sector is paying the employees and having the contracts in local currency, in lei. All the private sector is negotiating in euro and paying employees in euro or linked to euro exchange rate. This has been forever. I mean, even when we started to invest in property in 2000, 22 years ago, everything was accounted in dollar.
When euro came, everything switched and was accounting in euro. Basically all private sector accounts in euro and most of our clients, probably more than 98%, they are private sector. Maybe I don't wanna say 100%, but almost everybody is private sector. Our tenants are private companies. They pay linked to euro, but also our clients are private clients and their salaries are linked to euro.
Basically all these clients, if they take mortgage loans, they mostly take in euro, not in lei. Most of our clients are affected only of the increase in interest rate in euro, which is not so dramatic for the time being. The impact is in a way marginal plus our market always has been like this.
I mean, the interest rates that are today on the market are anyway some of the lowest there have been in the last 20 years. People are used with a little bit higher interest rate environment. I don't see a big impact on the higher mortgage rates on the private sector.
Do you see a risk that it could make it difficult for potential customers to unlock equity tied in their existing homes to move up into better apartments? Basically, it's part of the same question. I think private sector that is linked to euro and makes money in euro, I think is not so much affected on the interest rates because everybody counts in euro, not in local currency.
For the public sector, I think it would be more difficult also for people with lower salaries or, let's say low income, low to medium income people, it may be more difficult. What I think, it will be a gap between good properties in very good locations and periphery properties. Anyway, in Romania, in Bucharest, the gap is too small. It doesn't make sense.
The gap between periphery properties and central properties is too small compared to any other capital in Europe. It's normal this gap to increase. I hope I answer, Jakub. If not, please let me know in the chat.
If you have any other questions, please let us know and type them in the chat. If there are no follow-up questions, we will wrap up this call in 1-2 minutes. Thank you.
What I think also is important. I didn't have a question on this, but I would like to answer a question without being asked is that, you know, when One United Properties started the business in a difficult environment, maybe like today, maybe even worse than today, I would like to say specialist to navigate tough environments and to get out of it on top.
I think good companies that manage to get very well through these times will also outperform in the good times. I think now are the times when you see which companies are really valuable and which companies are not.
Great. If there are no further questions, we would like to thank you very much for joining this call. The next call will take place in February 2023 to present the preliminary results for 2022. We hope to see you also at the upcoming Wood & Company Conference in Prague in December. Thank you all, and have a great day.