Good morning, welcome to One United Properties conference call for presenting the Q1 2022 results. My name is Zuzanna Kurek, and I am 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, and Cosmin Samoilă, CFO at One United Properties. Together we will present to you, the results for Q1 2022, as well as answer any of the questions you might have related to our performance. Before we begin, I would like to mention that this call is being recorded and that the recording of this call will be available on our website later this week. As stated in the call invite, by joining the video conference, you automatically and implicitly consented to being recorded. If you do not consent to being recorded, please leave the call.
In terms of organizational aspects, let me present to you the setup of the call. In the first part, Victor Căpitanu will deliver a few opening remarks. After that, we will have a brief presentation outlining the Q1 2022 results and the key events that happened since our last call. During the presentation, feel free to type any of the questions you might have in the chat window, and we will answer them during the Q&A. Please note that during this call we will only answer questions that are sent on chat as well as questions that we have received prior to this call via email. After the presentation, we will start the Q&A session. Victor Căpitanu, together with Cosmin Samoilă, as well as myself, will answer any of your questions.
Firstly, we will answer the questions that we have received via email prior to this call. Secondly, we will answer the questions received via chat in chronological order. Please note that all the participants are on mute. If you want to ask a question, please type it in the chat. Finally, 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 might differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer that we have included in the presentation, which you can see now on the screen. This disclaimer applies equally to all the statements made in today's call. I would like now to proceed to the first part of the call, the presentation, the introductory remarks from Victor Căpitanu. Victor, the floor is yours.
Morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our call. I would like to give you introductory remarks of some things that I think are important to highlight for all of you today. First is about the activity of One United Properties. Many times people consider we are just a developer of apartments. In reality, One United Properties is not just a developer. It's a developer and an investor, and the investor part takes more and more part year by year, and you'll see it progressing over the last years, and you'll see it in the future years. Most probably over the next five to 10 years, the investor part will be much more significant than the development part.
This is very important to know, because this changes the value of the company and how the company makes profit. Once again, One is not just a developer, it's an investor and developer. Investor is the first thing to underline going forward. Now the second thing would be regarding the profit sources of One United Properties, which I would like to clarify because sometimes also they are not well understood. Everybody thinks that, you know, we only make profit from apartments that we build and sell. This is not true. We have six sources of profit. The first source of profit is development of residential to sell, so this is the most known by everybody.
The second source is development of office and retail to rent, so basically commercial property for rental, like Hala Ford or like One Cotroceni Park or One Tower. The third line is development of residential to rent, which will start to show in the balance sheet with this year. Already, we see in the first quarter development profit related to apartments developed to rent, and by the end of the year, we'll start to see also the rents from residential contributing to the bottom line of the company. Of course, small for this year, but going forward will increase. Small compared to the overall profit of the company. The fourth source of profit is acquisition of discounted property, so basically opportunities.
We find opportunities because we are present in this market as a company for 12 or more years and me with my co-founder, Andrei, for more than 20 years, and we see opportunities every day. We find opportunities, for example, like Bucur Obor, which we recognize the discount that we got in the acquisition, we recognized on the first quarter. We did similar deals in the past, and we will continue to do deals like this in the future. The fifth source of profit is the rents from office, retail, and residential.
Basically all three segments will bring rental income for the company starting with this year. Of course, the sixth source of income is increase in the value of finished property, which is either due to increase of rents or improvement in the property. If you invest or if you get higher rents, automatically the property will be more valuable and will be worth more. Also this can increase due to improving market conditions. As we know, Romania is still one of the most undervalued property market in Europe. The apartments are one of the cheapest. Also the rental property has the higher yields. Even yesterday I spoke with a friend in Prague.
I see prime rent yields in Prague are around 4%. In Bucharest is 6.5%. Still is a big gap. You know, Romania has a very big potential going forward, has the critical size, is the sixth-largest economy in Europe. Bucharest also where we focus is one of the largest cities in Europe and one of the richest. I think going forward it makes no sense property to be so undervalued compared to the rest of Europe. By the way, probably all of you saw today, Romania posted a very nice GDP growth for the first quarter. I think the economy growing like this it's helpful overall for all the industries.
The third thing that I would like to speak about is the capital increase that we plan to do. Basically, the more or less EUR 100 million that we showed that we want to raise is not needed for existing development of the company. This money is to be used only for new opportunities. Basically we have a very good pipeline which is secured, that where we want to invest this EUR 100 million more or less equity, which we estimate after investment to generate sales of EUR 2.3 billion and profit of EUR 900 million over the next 7-8 years after investment.
Basically we think it's a good opportunity in the market to raise money and to invest in new deals in order to take advantage of the profit opportunity in the market. There is no rush to do it, so we'll do it only when is a good moment for the company. We'll start early, probably this month, the pre-emption right procedure in order to give opportunity to the retail investors to take part to this capital increase. In terms of the private placement to follow for the rest of the money, we will not be in a hurry. We'll wait for the good moment for the company in order to get good conditions. Of course, we have alternative for that.
There are banks calling and offering convertible bonds, which theoretically seem more attractive for the company. Basically if we will not find good conditions for the capital increase, it's possible to go on the convertible bonds route. One more thing, since we listed the company, we promised to the investors that we'll focus on the liquidity of the share. We managed to get included in the main index of the market in just two months after being listed. In December last year, we joined the FTSE Russell Global All Cap and Global Small Cap indices.
Since we got listed in the last 10 months, we were the number eight on the market in absolute liquidity, and the second-largest in terms of liquidity versus free float. We are quite happy how we stay in terms of liquidity, and we want, we wanted, I wanted to underline these results. These are the four things that I wanted to, let's say, underline in the introductory, and I will ask Zuzanna. Zuzanna, please, if you can continue with the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Victor. I would like to start with, since we have quite a lot of new investors joining our call today, with a little bit of introduction about One United Properties. Throughout this presentation, you will see that, as Victor mentioned, we have six sources of the revenue. We focus in terms of the segments on three main segments, on the residential, office, and retail, where, in each of, in the residential, we have both sales and, in the future, starting from this coming quarter revenues. On the office segment, we have the revenues as well as the gains from the revaluation. On the retail segment, we have the revenues from rent.
On this slide, you can see the four most important highlights, the financial highlights from the first quarter of 2022. We are happy to report 82% increase in the consolidated turnover, which amounted to RON 349 million. On the residential sales, we saw an increase of 19% reaching RON 197 million. This led to the positive evolution from the first quarter of the year, together with cost control on the G&A side led to a EBITDA of RON 213 million, 260% increase, and a four-fold increase of the gross profit. Looking on the highlights per each of the segments.
On the residential side, I would like to mention 120 apartments sold in the first quarter of this year, which is almost tripling compared to the first quarter of last year. We continued to see excellent sales at One Cotroceni Park as well as One Verdi Park. At One Cotroceni, 76 units out of 868 units were sold just in Q1, and at One Verdi Park, we're talking about 36 out of 334 units. On the office side, starting from this quarter, we see more significant revenues coming from the office as well as retail segment following the almost full lease of One Tower, which as of the end of Q1 2022 was leased at 91%. The completion of One Cotroceni Park, the first phase.
Here, I would like to mention that we still have a lot of tenants who are in the fit-out phase, therefore, the effect, the rental effect, of One Cotroceni Park is not yet fully visible on, in our Q1 results, and we will see the rental income growing quarter on quarter throughout 2022. On the retail side, I would like to mention the finalization of the acquisition of Bucur Obor. This is a commercial space in Bucharest with 26,000 square meters of GLA. As well as we have announced the acquisition of the former Ford factory, which is going to be restored, and upon completion, it's going to have 13,000 square meters of GLA.
Now, let's jump into the Q1 2022 results, and we're going to give you a little bit of color on more on the results generated in the first quarter. As I mentioned, the consolidated turnover increased 82%. In terms of the structure of the turnover, I'm gonna break it down by the categories. Revenues from apartment sales, they amounted to RON 197 million. Gains from bargain purchase, that was RON 97 million. That represents the difference in the acquisition price versus the evaluation price of Bucur Obor as of the end of Q1 2022. Gains from completed investment property amounting to RON 44 million.
This is the 29 apartments we have at One Mircea Eliade that are going to be rented out, and they are a long-term in line with the long-term strategy of One United Properties to increase the rental revenue. We have the rental revenues generated by the office and commercial division, which amounted to RON 8.6 million, and other operating income, RON 2.1 million. The gross profit reached RON 208 million, fourfold increase compared to Q1 2021. I would like to mention that we are referring throughout our results to gross profit because of the income tax. The income tax for the first quarter of this year amounted to RON 41.6 million.
The actual expenditure was RON 5.7 million, while the remaining 30, approximately RON 36 million represents the deferred tax on profit. Analyzing the residential figures, worthy to mention is that the net income from residential division reached approximately RON 84 million in the first quarter of 2022, generating 42.5% net margin, 17 percentage points increase compared to Q1 2021. As I mentioned, the increase is driven by a continuous excellent sales at One Cotroceni Park, our latest development to date, which targets the medium to medium-high client segment, as well as great sales at One Verdi Park, where we sold 36 out of 330 units available in Q1.
On the commercial side, which includes both office and retail, we saw a very significant increase, as the rental income and the revenues from services to tenants reached RON 8.6 million. The effect was driven by One Tower, which is leased out at 91%, One Cotroceni Park phase one, as I mentioned, this is currently leased at 78%. However, not yet generating full income as most tenants are still in the fit-out phase, as well as Bucur Obor. In the first quarter of this year, we did not record gains from office buildings under development. As you probably know, we do it on a half yearly basis, and you will see the effect of that in the first half of this year, or you can see our annual report.
However, we did record gains from bargain purchase in the total amount of RON 97 million, which represents the gain from the transaction of purchasing the majority stake in Bucur Obor. In addition, we have RON 44 million in gains from development of residential investment properties for rent, which corresponds to 29 rental apartments at One Mircea Eliade. On the G&A, we saw an increase of 36% of general administrative costs. The administrative costs grew 44% in the first quarter due to significantly larger scale of the business and the cost related to One United Properties being a publicly quoted company. As a reminder, we effectively floated on the main market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange in July of last year. Other operating expenses amounted to RON 6.9 million.
They are not included in the slide in the G&A expenses. We present them separately. These grew primarily because of the increase in the sponsorships that are related to CSR activities, which amounted to almost RON 3 million in the first quarter. These will be fully deductible from profit tax. Other items under this position include the cost attached to property expenses for residential developments completed and not yet delivered to clients. On the asset side, if we look at the inventory, you can see that the inventory decreased from RON 344 million to RON 308.5 million since the beginning of 2022 due to the great sales at One Cotroceni Park, One Verdi, and of course across our full portfolio, and the recognition of these sales in the first three months of 2022.
Additionally, on the line with One Mircea Eliade, you can see the effect generated by the reclassification of the 29 apartments that we mentioned earlier from inventory to investment properties. On the office and land bank slide, when we talk about the non-current assets, those increased approximately by 30%, reaching RON 1.9 million, driven by 30% increase in investment properties which reached RON 1.8 billion as of the end of Q1 2022. The increase, when you look on the table on the right, you will see that this is primarily driven by the addition of Bucur Obor, the transaction finalized in Q1 of this year, and the 29 apartments at One Mircea Eliade that were reclassified from inventory.
Additionally, as you can see in every quarter, we registered a constant increase in the value of the investment properties due to their continuous development, increase in projected revenues, and improved zoning and permitting status. The cash position increased 11% at RON 500 million currently as of the end of Q1. It was RON 566 million, which is approximately almost EUR 150 million. We have announced indeed the share capital increase that was approved in the general meeting of the shareholders as well as later we had an issued decision of the board regarding the share capital increase. I would like to mention here that we have a very strong cash position.
This cash position will be used to accelerate the delivery of the ongoing developments, where the funds from the potential capital increase or other funds raised this year will be used, invested in new developments in accordance with the pipeline that we have that I will present to you a little bit further on. Now, we move on to the usual business updates. You can see on this slide the value of the residential pre-sales and early sales, as well as the total surface of apartments sold in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous year. We have sold 120 apartments with a total surface of almost 10,000 square meters, as well as this amounted to EUR 28.6 million in the first quarter of 2022.
Other than that, we also have included in the graph the pre-sales to early clients. These are lower margin sales that help finance land acquisitions in the total amount of EUR 4.3 million. Each quarter we present the overview of the sales per development. Similar to the previous two quarters, you can see that most of the apartments sold were apartments at One Cotroceni Park, our largest development to date, as well as at One Verdi Park. At One Cotroceni Park, we started the sales in the second half of 2021, and at this point, as of the end of the first quarter, we had only 96 units remaining available for sale. You can see this development will be delivered at the end of next year, the fourth quarter of 2023.
In terms of other developments, we have seen a varying degree of slowdown compared to the Q1 of 2021 due to the lower availability of the stock as majority of the other developments are either already delivered and almost fully sold or will be delivered in the coming period. In terms of type of apartments preferred by our clients, again in Q1 of 2022, we see the most significant increase in the two-room apartments. I would like to clarify here that two-room apartments means one bedroom apartment actually. So you can see the two-room apartment registered a significant increase compared to the first quarter of last year.
This is driven by high demand at One Cotroceni Park, where indeed majority of the apartments sold are the two-room apartments. We also see 67% demand recorded for three-room flats. The decline in the larger units is related to the particularities of the available stock. On the selected highlights from additional highlights from Q1 in terms of the land bank at the end of Q1, 2022, we had a land bank of over 173,000 square meters, where we will build over 4,200 apartments.
We estimate construction kick-off this year for One Lake District and One High District. We have a planned share capital increase which was approved by the general meeting of the shareholders as well as the details were further the framework was published for the decision of the board of directors in early this month. You can see it in our current report section. The intention is to issue 330 million new shares, of course, subject to market conditions. The funds from the capital increase will be invested in new developments and new pipeline.
On the governance side in April, we had the annual general meeting of the shareholders where apart from approval of the financial statements for 2021, approval of the dividends, the second tranche of the dividends, I would like to remind you that we pay dividends twice a year. The second tranche of the dividend was approved in April to be paid on May 30 this year. Other than that, we have also approved the new board of directors which has a one-year mandate. On the sustainability side, we always give you a little bit update on what we are doing in terms of sustainability.
We are extremely happy to report that we have appointed the very first ESG committee to the board of directors that will assist us in the definition of the sustainability strategy for One United Properties. This is premier on the Romanian market. On the pipeline that Victor also mentioned a little bit earlier on, we continue to see significant growth and consolidation potential in Romania. We on the real estate market, we are currently in advanced negotiations for 10 future developments, as well as we have other more than 20 other developments properties that are currently in early discussions or in negotiations.
The ten potential developments that are in more advanced stages are primarily focused on medium and medium high income residential properties where you see we had the excellent results with One Cotroceni Park where, as I mentioned, we have 96 out of almost 900 units after just three quarters of sales, which is an excellent results for a development that is going to be delivered at the end of next year. These ten potential developments, they translate into approximately 10,000 apartments that could be developed over the next seven years. If these properties are acquired and developed, they could generate GDV of more than EUR 2.3 billion and a potential gross profit for the company of more than EUR 900 million.
As a note, I would like to underline that approximately 10% of the developments are for the office and commercial use. Our focus is to invest with priority in Bucharest, where most of our pipeline is located. On the 2022 outlook, this is the budget that was approved by the general meeting of the shareholders. You can find the more detailed outline of the budget on our website. What I would like to mention is that we maintain this budget for 2022. As Victor mentioned, just as a conclusion, we are very happy with the evolution that we had since the listings, as well as the first quarter of this year.
The average daily traded value for One shares in the first quarter was approximately RON 1.5 million in a volatile first quarter, as you all know. We managed to outperform the benchmark index BET, which declined approximately 3% while One United Properties shares appreciated approximately 4%. We are one of five blue chips that managed to register a positive evolution in this difficult period. This concludes the presentation of the Q1 results. We will now open the floor for questions. Please type the questions in the chat window and however, firstly we would like to answer the questions that we have received prior to this call via email from our shareholders and potential investors.
I will be reading out the questions, and I will kindly ask Victor or Cosmin to take them one by one. The first question is: How do you foresee the Romanian real estate market in the foreseeable future?
Thank you, Zuzanna. Thank you for the presentation. Regarding the Romanian real estate market, we believe a lot in the growth and the potential of the market. As I said in the residential sector, that we cover the first 50% of the market, the problem is more in the supply than the demand. You can see easily in our numbers that almost everything we have under construction is sold, so probably like 80% more or less, maybe more than less. We see more of an issue to get permits in due time on the lands we own and to build and deliver the product.
In a way for offices similar that now that COVID is finished and we see demand rebounding on office space. I think developers investors that have the good location with the building permit have a big advantage in the market today where it's more a problem of the supply than the demand. Also regarding the general stock in Romania, especially on the apartments, it's very old, one of the oldest in Europe and also probably the most undervalued in Europe, probably the cheapest in Europe. Same goes with the office stock. The yields in Romania are one of the highest in Europe. This makes the commercial space one of the cheapest in Europe.
As I mentioned, if you compare the prime yields in Romania for office in Bucharest is like 6.5%. Most of the Central Eastern Europe is around 4%-5%, and Western Europe is probably around 3% or so. We continue to be optimistic with the growth and we see very good opportunities to acquire. We mentioned the pipeline in which we want to invest the new capital. This proves that there is big opportunity in the market and significant profits to be made down the road.
Thank you. The next question is, what large scale projects do you have with a starting date this year for construction?
Okay. For this year, we have four larger scale developments that are under permitting. They are filed for permit. The projects are done. The building rights are in place as always, and we are waiting for the building permit. They are One Lake District, One High District, One Floreasca Towers and One Lake Club. All of them are more or less focused in Sector two in the area of Lake Floreasca, Lake Tei, Lake Plumbuita. Basically, they are in the area of Floreasca, Glucoza, in proximity of the lakes and areas where the demand is very robust in Bucharest.
In general, the sale price for these developments comes from as low as EUR 1,500 per square meter to as high as EUR 3,000 per square meter. This on average, probably particularly can be even more. I hope I answered the question, Zuzanna.
I think yes. Next question, what is the purpose of the share capital increase operation?
Okay, as I mentioned also in the opening remark, the purpose of the capital increase operation is to invest in new opportunities. We have 10 properties secured, and we have few more under advanced negotiation. We believe the capital deployed in these properties will generate a significant profit for the company. We estimate from deployment to take around 7-8 years to realize gross development value around, so sales basically around EUR 2.3 billion with profit in the range of EUR 900 million out of it. Basically, we see a big opportunity to invest. This is the main reason of the capital increase.
We have two questions related to the current context. The first one, do you foresee an impact of growing interest rates on apartment sales?
Regarding the interest rates, as you know, from the 100% of the market, we only cover the top 50% of the market. As we see it, I think the lowest 50% of the market, which is with a much limited income, I think it's more affected by the increase of the interest rates than the highest 50%. Still we see more a problem of supply than demand. Probably there will be an effect from the interest rate, but I think it will not be significant. Also, it's important to know that people in Romania are used to higher interest rates because this was the environment for many years.
It's not like such a big shock like in Western Europe. Also, the population in general is not so much in debt, and property in general doesn't have so much debt. There is a lot of home equity in Bucharest and Romania. Generally, the effect of increasing interest rates is not so significant as in Western Europe.
The next question is related to the impact of the war in Ukraine. Have you seen so far any effect of the war in Ukraine, be it negative or positive?
Of course, there is no positive effect from a war. It's a tragedy to start with and it has a lot of effect on everybody. Now on our business or on residential, what we see a bit slower sale than expected for March and April. Still we are very happy with the results and especially compared to the past. What is important is that considering that most of the stock under construction is pre-sold and we don't have so much for sale. It's very important to know that any apartment that you don't sell, let's say in March, and you sell in August, doesn't change the profitability for the company.
On top of it can bring even more profit to the company. There will not be any impact by the fact that maybe some apartments are not sold in March and are sold later down the road. Especially that we don't have them in such a big number. On the office, we see more interest in the last months because the work coincided also with the more or less with the finishing of the COVID. We see the demand for offices being more robust and we hope to have an interesting year for the office leasing department.
The next question, are you satisfied with how the construction works at existing projects are progressing? Do your contractors have financial issues? Are works progressing within the established timeline?
Yeah. Basically, we work only with very well-established construction companies. We do due diligence on them and their financials. We do a very thorough bidding process when we select the contractors. Also, we don't rely on one of them, so we always make a mix. We always have exposure to different contractors. Regarding the construction sites, we are happy how they go. They go on the graphic and there is of course some pressure from the supply chain, but you know that we mentioned also that before that, we try to mitigate this by signing you know longer term contracts, so suppliers and contractors know well before time what they have to deliver and what prices they get. This is a way that we use to mitigate this.
Thank you. We now have the last question that we have received via email prior to this call. Therefore, we kindly invite you, if you have any questions to Victor or to Cosmin, to type them in the chat and we will take them next. Then the question that we received via email, the last one, was, what is the reason behind the significant increase in the net margin for residential sales? Why 17 percentage points increase in Q1 2022 versus Q1 2021?
Thank you. Basically, there is no exceptional increase of the margin. If you look to last year also, the margin was around 40%. Basically, this is our margin that we do from residential sales. Probably first quarter last year was exceptionally low for some accounting reason. I don't know if Cosmin has any explanation why it was so low the first quarter last year. Maybe you say it and I explain a little more about the margin after you explain this.
Yes. Last year on the first quarter, the impact was because in Q1, 2021, we received a building permit for One Cotroceni Park. Basically we reclassified this asset from investment properties to residential inventories, and we started to recognize revenues from residential sales for the pre-sales that were contracted that stage. Because the development was only in the start of the construction, the revenue was high, but the margin was lower. This is the way we are calculating according to IFRS 15. When the stage of completion is low, the profitability is also low. In the context the stage of completions increases, the profitability also starts to increase on each development. Basically, this was the impact of Q1 last year.
Thank you, Cosmin. Basically the margin is not an exceptional increase. This is our margin, like 40%. I would like to explain again why the margin is on residential maybe higher than other developers, because there are some particularities to our business that some other developers that only do residential don't have, and that's why they have a lower margin. Basically on top of the typical, maybe 25% margin that comes purely from developing residential that other typical developers have, we have some vertical integration that increases the margin for our company. First one is because we are not taking a general contractor. Because we are doing the general contracting ourselves, and we are contracting directly the subcontractors, this has a direct effect on the cost and on the margin.
Basically, on top of the typical residential developer margin, we have also a margin that is generated, a very good margin that is generated from the fact that we manage, as a general contractor, all the construction sites. The margin of the general contractor comes on top of it. We have an extra margin because we develop mixed-use developments. Very few developers have the capability and the know-how to develop mixed use. This is a challenging endeavor and it's very profitable, and if you have it's a very big market advantage and it's very in demand for the market reality of today. Basically, the fact that you do mixed use, you use...
You build office, residential, commercial all together, gives you a better negotiation power when you buy the plot. You have from start a better cost on the development due to the size of the development. Basically, this is an extra margin generated from the fact that we don't develop only residential, but we develop mixed use. I would say the fourth component of the margin, which I think also has a significance, is the fact that the company is not just professionally managed by professional managers, but is managed by the two founders and significant owners of the company.
The fact that we take decisions every day knowing that most of our personal money are invested in this company, this helps getting a better margin for the company. I think this is important to explain why our company has a larger margin than other just pure residential developers.
Thank you, Victor. If we do not have any further questions, we will conclude this call. Prior to that, I would like to let you know that our next results are going to be the half-year results, which will be published on 28 of August. After, as usual, we will have the results calls both in Romanian and in English on 23rd of August. Thank you very much for joining our call. If you have any follow-up questions, we are here at investors@one.ro. Thank you very much, and we look forward to seeing you at the next call.
Thank you.