Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's cash acquisition of Lok'nStore Group PLC. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please note this call may be recorded, and I will be standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Caroline Thirifay. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you, Ashley. Good morning, everyone. I'm here with Marc Oursin, Isabel Neumann, and Jean Kreusch. We are very excited about the announcement made today. The Rule 2.7 announcement is a statement of Shurgard's intention to make an offer for Lok'nStore. The transaction is governed by the U.K. Takeover Code. As such, during today's webcast, our script and responses will be limited to the information contained in the announcement. With that, I will turn the call over to Marc.
Thank you, Caroline. So, good morning, and welcome to our information call. The purpose of this call is to share with you information related to the proposed acquisition of Lok'nStore Self Storage by Shurgard Self Storage. I propose that we go through the deck. We are on page 2, which is the transaction summary. Let's first focus on the strategic portfolio rationale section. The acquisition of Lok'nStore actually doubles the size of Shurgard in the U.K. We go from 48 properties to 100, including pipeline, and is representing 2 years of total Shurgard growth, which is very significant. Increased exposure to London, Southeast Region, and Manchester, which have attractive underlying market dynamics and demographics. With a highly complementary with Shurgard London's focus portfolio. Another aspect of it is the high-quality purpose-built stores with large growth potential through 2 things.
First, existing stores occupancy ramp-up, currently 67% today, up to 90% at full stabilization. The stabilization of the secure development pipeline, representing another 29% of the current Lok'nStore fully built out MLA. This acquisition has a combination of existing assets and attractive development pipeline, which enhances our growth profile. If you look at this portfolio, 17 owned stores, 9 leasehold stores, and 17 under management contract. Secure development pipeline of 8 owned stores and 1 store under management contract. Further reinforce our U.K. future growth potential and leveraging Lok'nStore's strong track record in developing quality assets. Secondly, the key financial elements of the offer are 100% cash and a price of GBP 11.10 per Lok'nStore share, representing a total equity value of GBP 378 million, and a total all-in cost of EUR 613 million.
So Shurgard will acquire the entirety of Lok'nStore share capital, with shares to be delisted upon closing. The transaction is expected to be executed by a Scheme of arrangement, and currently we have a 16% premium to spot as of yesterday's closure of the market, and a 32/37 premium if you look at the VWAP one month and three month. The board recommended the deal. I mean, the board, the board of Lok'nStore, of course, recommended the deal with a 19% hard prerequisites from the key shareholders, including Andrew Jacobs, who is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Lok'nStore, who has 13% of the shares. Initially financed also with a bridge facility, and we expect to complete that deal by July 2024. So thirdly, looking at the operating and financial benefits for Shurgard and its shareholders.
Future stabilization NOI yield at 8%, circa 8% at maturity, 5-6 years, inclusive of ramp-up of existing sites and secure development pipeline. Secondly, total estimated operating G&A and tax synergies of GBP 4-5 million in the first full year, with incremental tax saving as the business grows, knowing that Lok'nStore will be integrated into our Shurgard U.K. rate structure. The pro forma capital structure post-deal with Shurgard guidance levels, we remain committed to a robust balance sheet and our financial policy in the medium term. And last but not least, accretion on Shurgard adjusted EBITDA earnings per share, mid-single digit dilutive in 2024, neutral for 2025, and accretive as of 2026. So to conclude this page, remember that this proposed transaction is nearly doubling our size in the U.K. and representing almost 2 years of footage expansion guidance for our company, Shurgard Group.
I will let now Isabel, our CIO, presenting you more information and details regarding the strategic rationale.
Thank you, Marc. It's a very exciting day for Shurgard. The first point to note is how complementary Shurgard and Lok'nStore are geographically. Shurgard is focused on London, while Lok'nStore is a leader in the Southeast and has a very strong foothold in the Greater Manchester area.
... The acquisition of Lok'nStore allows us to add two additional and very attractive U.K. growth markets to our portfolio, the Southeast and Manchester. The Southeast has very attractive demographics, with more than 9 million people and the highest income per inhabitant after London, and the Greater Manchester area has a 4 million population and is the second largest metropolitan area after London. So we will have three core areas in the U.K. for which we will be able to continue our growth: London, Southeast, and Greater Manchester. More importantly, the acquisition of Lok'nStore will double the size of Shurgard U.K. from its current 48 to 100 stores when you include the pipeline.
Before, we were already a leader in London, and with this transaction, as you can see on the graph in the top right, for the U.K. as a whole, it puts us right up there, more or less at par with Big Yellow. As the European leader in self-storage space, Shurgard is present in seven countries. As you can see from the table, the U.K. currently represents 18% of the portfolio. The Lok'nStore transaction will allow us to increase the proportion of the U.K. in our total portfolio to about 25% of our total European store count, so further enhancing a very well-balanced geographic portfolio. Secondly, a key driver for us is the high quality of the portfolio. Some facts: the owned portfolio consists of 171,000 square meters, including the secured development pipeline.
76% is purpose-built and very high quality, and the Lok'nStore team have really done a tremendous job over the past years with the portfolio. The portfolio is very young, with 43% built since 2022. Furthermore, we will generate income from 18 stores under management. If I can ask you to turn to Slide 4. A third point that underpins our strategic rationale is the additional growth potential this transaction generates. As Marc already mentioned, this transaction accelerates the growth in the U.K. and more importantly, also for Shurgard as a whole. To put this into perspective, we have committed to opening 90,000 square meters per year, as you all very well know. This transaction adds an owned MLA of 171,000 square meters, including the pipeline, which represents almost 2 years of the overall Shurgard European-wide development pipeline.
It gives you an indication of the growth it generates. So let's look a little bit closer at that growth. First lever of growth, the current owned portfolio is 121,000 square meters, with 26 operating stores that has an overall occupancy of 67%. Remember, 43% of the portfolio opens after 2022. The second lever of growth is the development pipeline, which is 50,000 square meters with a further 8 stores. This is an additional 30% pipeline versus Lok'nStore's current MLA. And the third lever is we aim to bring all these stores to Shurgard's standard target occupancy of 90%. We expect to reach this in 2026 for the current operating stores and within 2 years of opening for the pipeline stores.
Putting this all together, the Lok'nStore pipeline of 50,000 square meters and 8 sites, combined with Shurgard's own announced pipeline of 149,000 square meters and 25 stores, brings the total pipeline for Shurgard to approximately 200,000 square meters and 33 stores, or about 12% of the fully built-out MLA. Moving to Slide 5. Recap on how this transaction fits within the Shurgard strategy and how it impacts our scale. Shurgard has 48 U.K. stores focused in London. This includes our 5 development stores, due to open in 2025 and 2026, and representing 252,000 square meter MLA. Lok'nStore has 52 U.K. stores, including 9 pipeline stores. Thirty-four of these are owned, these stores and 18 are under management contract.
The owned stores represent 171,000 square meters MLA. So on a combined basis, we will have 100 stores and 423,000 square meters MLA. On a total Shurgard basis, European-wide, this brings our store count from currently 301 stores to 363 stores, and from a current MLA of 1.5 million square meters to 1.7 million square meters. So in summary, A, we will double our U.K. footprint. Two, we will extend our reach from London to include the Southeast and Greater Manchester. Three, a very concentrated portfolio in three core and highly attractive areas, which, four, will make it a very efficient portfolio. And five, the transaction accelerates the overall Shurgard's growth. I will now hand it over to Jean.
... Thanks, Isabel. As Marc mentioned, we have a bridge in place to finance the deal. At 11.1 GBP per share, the equity value is GBP 370 million. The total all-in cost of EUR 630 million includes EUR 83 million of CapEx to be spent to finalize the Shurgard pipeline of eight stores, refurbishment CapEx of EUR 13 million, and transaction costs estimated at EUR 32 million, with the remainder comprising the target net debt and lease liabilities. Initially, before we take out the bridge, our pro forma leverage will increase to 25% LTV and 6.2x net debt to EBITDA.
However, we always focused on having a robust balance sheet, and we reiterate our financial policy, which is a target LTV at circa 25% and 4-5 times net debt to EBITDA, and a short-term medium maximum of 35 loan to value % and or above 5 times net debt to underlying EBITDA. We aim to finance Lok'nStore and Shurgard future development pipeline with a mix of debt and equity as appropriate. We remain committed to a robust balance sheet and to continue delivering attractive returns to our shareholders. The anticipated transaction timeline is the following. On page 7. We expect the publication of the scheme documents early May or within 28 days of today's announcement. The earliest date for Lok'nStore shareholder meetings is anticipated at the end of May. We then anticipate the court sanction hearing and closing in July.
Yeah. Thank you, Jean, and thank you, Isabel. So for your information, this presentation is also available on our website. So, I would say, take the benefit of going through this document again. Now, Caroline, let's open to the Q&A session, please. Thank you.
Thank you, Marc, Jean, and Isabel. Yes, we take your question.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, that is star and one. We'll take our first question from Marios Pastou with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, all. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two questions from my side to kick things off. Do the existing portfolio have 17 stores under management contract, I believe? I think you had some under these arrangement in your Paris portfolio previously, one or two stores. So does this limit Shurgard at all in terms of operation? Could you consider buying any of these stores back into the portfolio in the future? And how do these look in terms of how they yield versus the owned stores? And then secondly, you mentioned that it will take about five to six years to fully extract the upside. How does this compare versus, say, other acquisitions or developments across your existing expansion? Thank you.
Okay. So regarding... Thank you, Mario. So Marc speaking. Regarding the third-party management contract, we will first assess the situation, and we will come back to you after having done that. So it's too early to comment more than this, and I'm sorry, you might get some frustration about this exercise, which we cannot easily understand, but that's what we can say today. So that for the first question. The second one, you know, we have never - we have always said in our annual report press release that when we do purely organic development, we are around five to seven years, so we are perfectly in line with what usually we have.
In terms of the first question, sorry, is that in terms of coming back to us in terms of what you could potentially do in the future in terms of buying them back or just more generally in terms of their operation?
Yeah, yeah. So we here again, we need to clearly assess this business and the performance of the stores as we do for all the portfolio in detail.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Marc Mozzi with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions as well. I have only one question, which is regarding the deferred tax liabilities that Lok'nStore have, which is about 60 million GBP. Is that gonna be removed, the fact that you're a U.K. REIT, and how that is that gonna work? Are you gonna have to pay something for it? I just wanted to understand how things are gonna move here, because I guess it's part of your EUR 613 million of total cost, which means your enterprise value is higher than the GBP 378 million you've been indicating, if you include those 66 million GBP deferred tax liabilities. Just wanted to understand how the math works here.
No, it's not part of our acquisition cost. We are planning to basically integrate Lok'nStore business into ours, and as a result, it will become a U.K. REIT.
Those GBP 66 million will disappear?
... Yes.
And if I use the math-
The line is not that, Marc, Marc, the line is not that great. So what exactly did you say that at the end regarding the GBP 66 million deferred tax liabilities?
What I'm trying to understand is you're paying for it right now, because to get to the EUR 600+ million of total acquisition costs, including development pipeline, transaction costs, and so on, that will bridge exactly the GBP 328 million, whether it's pound, euros. But the gap to me is the GBP 66 million deferred tax liabilities that Lok'nStore have, and the fact that they're going to move from being a non-U.K. REIT to a U.K. REIT with you, how that's going to move things? How things are going to move? Are you going to offset those GBP 66 million? So actually you're paying for it now, but then you, you're going to recover it because then it's going to be removed. But I'm just trying to understand.
Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, we're clearly doing a standard move for a regular corporation moving into a REIT, and we follow those rules, and the accounting treatment will be aligned to that.
Okay. Well, let's have a chat outside of this call, but, yeah, just want... Yeah, just want to understand how you get to EUR 613 million of the total cost.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Marc. Yeah.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Frederic Renard with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Just maybe two, three questions on my side. So if I look at the share price of Lok'nStore, it's currently above your bid price, so it could lead to speculation on potentially a counteroffer or maybe a revised offer. Maybe two question there. Do you have firepower for paying more, in your view? And in the case that the bid will be successful, what if you only own 40% of the company at the end? Are you going to consider different, ownership scenario?
Sorry, what is the second question? I didn't hear very well.
Have you considered any different ownership scenario? Meaning if you own only 40%, only 50%, only 20% of the company.
Oh, okay. Thank you for the question. All right. For the first one, we cannot speculate on any other potential interest in Lok'nStore. That's the answer. On the second one, we have presented a structure with which is we buy all the shares, and this is integrated, as Jean said, into our U.K. REIT scheme. That's what we are looking for.
Does that mean that if you don't have 100% of the share, you won't pursue the deal?
No, this is the Scheme of Arrangement in the U.K. You know that in the U.K. you have two ways. When you go to public companies, takeover, you have what's called Scheme of Arrangement, and the other one is offer. And the first one allows you, when you reach 75% of the votes at the shareholder meeting, to actually integrate, I mean, you get a company, and therefore, you can delist the company as soon as you reach 75% control.
All right. Okay, and maybe last question. Can you comment on the mid-single-digit dilutive impact on the primary earnings for 2024? I would like to know maybe what is the current interest rate of the bridge funding and the maturity attached to the bridge facility. Thank you.
Well, Jean, will you this is not, this is not disclosed-
Yeah
... yet, so we cannot comment on the bridge, the details of the bridge. And the dilutive, I cannot say more than it will be, as we said, mid-single digit dilutive on the earnings 2024, for sure.
On consensus expectation, I guess, then.
Sorry?
On the consensus expectation, you expect the mid-single digit dilutive impact.
Right.
Oh.
In 2024.
Yeah, in 2024.
Okay.
Which is, which will be roughly six months out here. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Frederic.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Charles Boissier with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just to understand on the strategic fit of Lok'nStore. So Shurgard in general, my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is you really like capital cities and the larger cities. So here it's slightly more spread out. Obviously, I take the point that it's around London, but you also have Portsmouth and many other cities in the Southeast. So how much is core of this portfolio? Would you say that 100% is core, or would you expect that there is a portion that you would look to sell in the future? Thank you.
Isabelle?
So at this point, we cannot comment more than what has already been disclosed. But as we said, you know, the Southeast and Manchester are two very attractive areas for us, with, you know, attractive demographics. So those are essentially in our transaction. And of course, as Mark already mentioned, we will evaluate all the stores for as we take them into our portfolio and, you know, if need be, adjustments made, but at this stage, there is no further commentary around that.
... Okay, clear. And second question, you mentioned you will fund the pipeline with a mix of debt and equity, so obviously, the pipeline is over the next two years. So, the way it's labeled, my understanding is this is new, fresh equity as opposed to the equity you raised last year. Is that a completely wrong understanding? Thank you.
No. Not a wrong understanding. So therefore, it's the right understanding.
Very clear. Thank you.
Charles, just if you look at page 5 that Isabel presented, back to your point regarding out of these two core areas, that's what we call London, Southeast, and Greater Manchester, most of the properties are third-party management properties, so we will simply asset that. As said, Isabel.
Great, thanks.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Sam King with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. Thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side, please. The first is: What gives you confidence that you can grow occupancy in the Lok'nStore portfolio materially higher than where it is now? And the second is just in relation to the types of assets within the Lok'nStore portfolio. You know, at Shurgard, you clearly pride yourselves on being majority freehold ownership, but the percentage freehold in Lok'nStore is lower, and there's obviously the managed portfolio as well. So if you can just add some color on how you're thinking about that, and when you initially looked at the transaction, was the managed portfolio a negative element in your view? Thanks.
So regarding the, I will answer to the first one, and Isabel will take the second one. So regarding the first one, so about our capacity, understood well, to grow the business to the standards that we have, so this 90% occupied. You know, we have we think a pretty good, and we have mentioned that many times in the public disclosures and meetings we had for Shurgard. Our let's say, pricing policy and mechanism related to that makes us pretty comfortable to get there within the timing that I've indicated. I would say that's the answer for the first question. And regarding the second one?
So if you look at the portfolio, out of the total stores that Lok'nStore has, in terms of the operating stores, there are 26 stores which are they operate under their own stores, and then 17 which are managed stores. Out of the 26 owned stores, nine are leasehold and seventeen are freehold or performed. So this is, it's a very high, as you mentioned, it's a very high quality portfolio, whereby the majority is very much purpose-built, and 42% have been kind of built only in the last couple of years. And then towards the managed stores, there's 17 of them, with one in the pipeline.
As Marc said, you know, we will evaluate all of those as we are taking over the portfolio.
The pipeline of eight stores is also fully freehold.
Yeah. So in total, there will be 25 freeholds and 9 leaseholds.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you-
And again, sure. Yeah, actually, sorry, just to comment, the exercise is a bit maybe frustrating. I repeat that because we cannot really answer more than what is actually in the deck, in the 2.7 announcement, that are publicly on our website. So, again, excuses for that, but more to come in the coming month, and happy to be able to, you know, to elaborate more on your questions. But again, it's as frustrating for you as for us. Ashley, yeah. Any other questions?
Yes. We'll continue. We'll have our next question from Kanad Mitra with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning.
Hello.
Thank you for taking my question. Hello? Am I-
Yeah, go ahead. We are, we are listening to you. The line is not great, but go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Can you please comment on the 8% stabilized yield, because it's kind of at the lower end of your guidance, at the acquisition yield that you have reported for this transaction?
The stabilized yield at circa 8% is in our guidance, and in our guidance for yield is for organic development and MLA between 8%-9%.
At stabilization.
At stabilization and here we are 8, so.
We're in.
We're in the guidance.
Okay. Thanks. That was the only question that I had.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ashley?
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Kai Klose with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Good morning. I've got one question. On page four of the offer document, you mentioned there is a condition that Lok'nStore need to somewhat amend the business model in order to make it consistent with Shurgard model. Could you give more details on that?
It just, you know, a normal process that we're aligning terms and condition to ensure that we're in line. So it's not much.
What do these terms and conditions include?
Well, we cannot today disclose more than what we have written, Guy, again. So, but, I mean, nothing major. It's quite standard in our processes as well. When we do acquisition, we always align terms and conditions of the target to ours. I mean, that's a standard process for us in all acquisitions we do.
Understood. Okay, thanks.
You're welcome.
Okay, we'll take our next question from Andres Toome with Green Street. Please go ahead. Andres, your line is open. Please check your mute function. Okay, we will take our next question from Vincent Koppmair with Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just had maybe two last question, given all the previous question you already had. The first question would be: How does the rent of Lok'nStore compare, compared to those we usually see in Shurgard?
Hello? How does the rent compare?
Yeah, yeah. So I got one, but then it dropped. The line dropped.
Yeah.
Ashley?
Hello?
We lost the line.
Yes.
Oh, you're there. Okay, we lost someone, I think.
Yes. We lost the previous person. I think his line was cut.
Well, Vincent Koppmair's line is connected.
We can answer.
We can answer to the first question on the different.
Okay, so it's hard to compare because it's different area than where we are. So, you know, it's very... We don't really have stores in those areas, so we cannot compare our U.K. portfolio with theirs from a rent point of view.
Any other question, Ashley?
Yes, we will take our next question from Andres Toome with Green Street. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Can you hear me now?
Yes, very well. Go ahead.
Perfect. Thank you. So, my first question is about, the stabilized yield of 8%. So obviously, part of the story is pushing up the occupancy, and I guess part of the story is also getting operational synergies, as you know. But I'm just wondering, how much of, rental rate growth are you assuming to get there over the next few years? And I guess it comes back to the previous question as well, insofar as, what are the sort of differentials in terms of rental rates? And I guess your assumptions perhaps assume that some of these stores are underrented to get to that stabilized yield over time.
So Andres, we cannot comment these details. As we said, the targeted model is to reach 90% and a certain level of rental that we call stabilized rent at maturity. That's the way we look at it.
And we, you know-
And synergies.
Yeah, and you know our model from a revenue point of view, you know, so we will apply that model going forward. First, boosting the occupancy and pushing the occupancy to our usual mix of price and promotion. And then-
Combined with the CRI.
And then, pushing prices afterwards once we reach our-
Yeah
... stabilized occupancy. So, very similar to what we have always been doing in our portfolio.
So, I guess, is your assumption or perception that perhaps Lok'nStore stores today are a bit underrented insofar as you do plug into your machine, you do get sort of excess upside than the current management has been able to extract?
We cannot elaborate more, but globally, we, you know, the... As said, Isabel, this portfolio is the proportion of, let's call them, young properties or unstabilized, is very, very significant. And that's why we think by taking over and applying our commercial policy, as Jean mentioned, we will bring this portfolio to this level of yield, combined with the synergies.
Okay, understood. And then my second point is about synergies and the part of it is the tax savings. I'm just wondering, you sort of mentioned transaction cost of EUR 32 million. So are there any synergy implementation costs that are already included in that EUR 32 million, or is that just purely other transactional costs?
Indeed, there is a part of it.
In the GBP 32 million transaction costs, we have advisor fees from both sides, tax, stamp duty, financing costs, hedging costs, delisting costs, one-off integration costs that are included.
Okay, one-off integration costs. Very cool. Thank you. That's clear.
You're welcome.
Okay, we have question from the webcast. First question, John Vuong: Could you provide more color on the split of the EUR 4-5 million of synergies that you expect?
... No, we cannot.
Second question. Do you think, do you plan to dispose assets that are not in the three regions you talked about, Cardiff, Cornwall?
As we said already, we will assess this precisely. And as we also repeatedly, if you look at the map on this page, five, most of these properties are third-party management contract.
Question from an investor: Could you please give us a sense of the valuation and high yield for operational assets under day one income?
No, cannot comment on that.
We cannot comment on that.
Separately, how is the EV on LTM EBITDA multiple and EV on LTM EBITDA multiple?
Cannot.
Okay. Question from another investor: Please give us more color on the leasehold stores profitability, as I believe it was not something Shurgard like to own.
Yeah, we cannot give the details on this. I'm sorry.
Okay. Could you please give us more color on the terms of the bridge facility? We answered that question. No colors for the moment. Question from another investor: Did you look at any other U.K. self-storage portfolios other than Lok'nStore? What made you choose Lok'nStore over other option?
First, this option was on the table. It was on the market, potentially. And secondly, it's a great portfolio. That's why we made that deal. We proposed that deal, sorry.
Another question: Your offer implies a 2.6% yield on Lok'nStore 2023 earnings. This seems rich and hard to understand how you get from there to the 8% yield at maturity.
Okay, so it's, it's not rich because, again, it's simply related to what we have said, and Jean mentioned that in terms of model. Don't forget that this portfolio has a very large proportion of properties that are not stabilized, and therefore, what we are looking at is to get this 8% yield due to the fact that we will ramp up the occupancy. And again, back to our commercial policy, plus the synergies, this will bring a level of NOI related to the total cost that we have mentioned, the EUR 630 million, that would be at 8%.
Okay, I think it's for you now, Jean. Hi, regarding the upcoming capital increase, what will be the timing approximately? Do you intend to come back to below five times EBITDA?
We have given guidance in terms... And we intend to stay within those guidance of 2.4-5 times net debt constant EBITDA, debt to underlying EBITDA. You know that we also have a short- to medium-term guidance of 35% and over five times, which we are currently here. In terms of timing, so we are perfectly within our guidance from a target from a leverage point of view. When we raise equity, I mean, obviously here we monitor the market for favorable macro market condition and find a constructive window. There is no other anything, no other consideration from that point of view.
You said a couple of times you will evaluate all stores and come back to investors with information. Does that mean you did not have access and were not able to do due diligence at the store level before making this offer?
We have done a thorough due diligence, meaning that, we have visited the properties, we have access to, some information, and based on that, we have been able to propose this offer, which is, I think, seriously prepared and, I would say, considered by, the management and the board of, Lok'nStore. So we come back, yes, if this deal goes through, then, we have, of course, an even better understanding of the performance of, these properties.
Okay. And here, I think, what is adding the Lok'nStore portfolio to your operating platform do that Lok'nStore couldn't have done before?
Repeat the question?
I think it's a problem in English, but what is adding the Lok'nStore portfolio to you, to your operating platform do that Lok'nStore couldn't have done before?
Oh, okay. Well, since, obviously, it's, we have said many times, the publication that we have in our annual report and also company presentation, scale does matter. So obviously by having more properties of that kind, as we said, it's two years of development. This will go from 300 to 350, including pipeline, if I remember well, more or less. It means that this will absorb also our central cost more and faster than what it could be. In the case of Lok'nStore, that they cannot do that.
Thank you, Marc. What is so attractive about Southeast and Manchester versus your strategy, which has been to focus on London?
... Really? Oh, okay. So, so here again, if you go to page, I think it's page three, where you see, three red blocks, what do we say?
And what we have said, by the way, sorry, in the past to all the investors we have met, during our, let's say, full year presentations and all these things for the past five years, we said, "Scale doesn't matter." Which means that it's not that at that time we said, "London, London, and we don't like Southeast, neither Greater Manchester." We said, "If we find someone who is bringing us scale right away in these two areas, who are, by the way, which are, sorry, after London, the best one in terms of demographics." Just for information, Southeast region is 9 million people, which is the size of London within 25, with the highest level of income per capita after London in the U.K.
If you look at Greater Manchester, we are talking about 4 million people, which is the second metropolitan area after London, M25 in the U.K. So here we have this great opportunity that someone, which is fitting perfectly our strategy, is bringing us scale right away in another an area which is Southeast region, as big as London, 9 million people, high level of income per capita after London, and secondly, Greater Manchester, which is the second metropolitan area in the U.K.
Okay. Can you comment on the Lok'nStore customers, what percentage is business versus domestic?
Well, we said, I think we didn't write, but it's in the annual report of Lok'nStore, where they are mentioning it's 30%.
Okay.
Of the total. Of the total.
Last question for the webcast: Can you give the mix on debt and equity in relation to the bridge financing, please?
I don't understand the question.
I don't understand the question. I mean, the bridge financing, it's 100%.
Debt.
-debt.
Yeah. Okay. That's-
This is for the podcast, Caroline?
Yeah.
Ashley, do you have any other questions from the audience?
Oh, well, once again, that is star and one for your questions. We will pause a moment to allow any further questions to queue. It appears that we have no further questions on the phone line at this time.
Thank you. And I think that we... You want to?
So just to repeat, as we've already said, we have a very limited in the amount of information that we can share, as per the U.K. Takeover Code. So we have been only limited to share what has been published already in the 2.7 and in the presentation. But as Marc said, as we progress with this transaction, we will be able to share more information.
Okay.
Good. Thank you.
Thank you, Marc, Jean, and Isabel. For your information, this presentation is available on our website, and we thank you all for joining us today.
Thank you, all, and have a good day.
Thanks.
Thank you. This does conclude today's program.
Thank you.
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