Hello, welcome to the Klépierre's first half 2026 financial results presentation, hosted by Jean-Marc Jestin, Chairman of the Executive Board, and Stéphane Tortajada, CFO. Please note that this conference is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. You will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing pound key five on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Jean-Marc Jestin, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our first half 2026 results. We started the year on a strong footing, carrying over our solid operational momentum from 2025 in a very volatile geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. The retail market has proven strong. Demand for high-quality retail space in our malls continue to exceed supply, contributing to a robust leasing tension and boosting our rental uplift. Our unique retail platform and mixed offering provide us with great confidence in our ability to pursue continued growth, sustainable value creation, and further increase our shareholder returns. Over the first half of the year, the group delivered a 4.4% increase in net rental income to EUR 571.9 million.
This performance was underpinned by a 3.3% like-for-like growth. It generated a solid 4.8% EBITDA growth, powered by disciplined cost management, which enabled a remarkable 60 basis points improvement in our EBITDA margin to 86.7%. Overall, we deliver net current cash flow of EUR 1.36 per share. Bolstered by sustained demand for profitable, well-located space combined with very limited new supply, rental uplift on renewals and reletting grew by 5%, while leasing volume was up 8%.
Footfall monetization gathered pace, with mall income solutions up 13.4% in H1. Our occupancy rate edged up to 97.1%. Our venues have gained further ground with retailer sales climbing 3.9%, comfortably outpacing national sales indices. Footfall edged up by 1.2%. This positive trajectory was broad-based across all our regions, notably in Southern Europe, which has remained very dynamic and across all segments.
With structural tailwinds, a supportive consumption backdrop, strong operating performance all in play, we continue to be compounding our NAV growth up 5.3% over first half to EUR 37.8 per share. Overall, this marks a growth of more than 10% over the last 12 months and above 20% over the last two years. On top of this, adding the EUR 1.9 dividend paid, we serve our shareholders with a total accounting return of 10.6% year to date. We have another half year to go. As I said, we remain highly confident in further capital appreciation. We are lifting our 2026 guidance to at least EUR 1.15 billion in EBITDA and to a net current cash flow per share at the high end of EUR 2.77-EUR 2.8 range. Let me now highlight what makes our business model so special.
We own the right malls in the right places for retailers. A unique portfolio, 70 assets, each a leader in its catchment area, and together they welcome 720 million visitors a year. We are positioned in the most dynamic parts of continental Europe, where revenue per capita runs 20% above national averages. Throughout the past years, we have been nimble in allocating capital to capture growth in the most dynamic catchment areas. Spain, Italy, and Portugal clearly stand out as we have invested heavily in growing our footprint, including through value accretive acquisition and targeted extensions.
The most recent Bari acquisition and full consolidation of Portimão perfectly illustrate this strategy, reinforcing our position in high-growth markets where our scale, retailer relationships, and operational expertise provide significant incremental value. Today, our Southern European platform has grown to represent 45% of the group net rental income.
Great locations are only half the story. We actively manage what is inside our venues. Our portfolio is a dynamic retail platform that we continuously shape to stay ahead of evolving consumer needs. Since 2019, we have grown health, wellness, and entertainment-related sales from 30% to 36% of our retail mix as visitors not only come to our malls to shop and purchase the latest fashionable pieces, but also to splurge on leisure experiences. While the fashion sector continue to evolve rapidly and remain a key traffic driver, we continue to promote the category's leading brands and fastest-growing concepts.
These dynamics have greatly contributed to steadily increasing footfall and the destination appeal of Klépierre malls. With 78% of our malls covering the full range of category killers, we offer the complete retail experience. That breadth is precisely what draws the top brands and the footfall to our destination venues.
Zara, Sephora, Mango, Uniqlo, Normal or JD Sports, to name a few. Our success comes down to active re-tenanting and speed of execution. Over the last two years, lettings to new tenants made up 48% of our total leasing volume. We are highly committed to delivering space and continuously refreshing our venues, opening and enlarging stores for established leaders and fast-growing emerging brands.
Our success lies in speed of execution, a key competitive advantage allowing swift retail expansion and market share gains by our leading omni-channel retailers, with some banners growing their footprint with us by more than 400% since 2019. This active re-tenanting and fast execution translate directly into strong numbers on the ground. Just over the past two years, across our flagship assets, sales density grew between 15%-32%, from Field's in Copenhagen and Le Gru in Italy to Nueva Condomina and La Gavia in Spain.
This strategy pays off, fueling strong leasing tension, and contributes to maintaining an elevated occupancy rate across the portfolio. Demand for space in our venues remain exceptionally strong. We are capturing the leasing tension in our portfolio, and this translates into another leasing volume growth of 8% year on year over the first half of 2026. At the same time, occupancy edged higher than a year ago to 97.1%.
Such leasing tension released further rental uplift on renewals and relettings, reaching a very strong plus 5% year on year and consistent with the prior four years middle single-digit growth. Allow me now to stress a significant incremental source of organic growth above and beyond our traditional rental activities. We strive to monetize our qualified 720 million annual visitors through targeted specialty leasing actions, retail media campaigns in our malls, and car parking services.
Mall income has accelerated further to 13% growth over the first half. Today, it represents 10% of the group total net rental income, and we expect that weight to further increase as we anticipate growth to remain in the double digits in the foreseeable future.
Our mall income strategy rests on several complementary growth levers. In specialty leasing, we are hiring more dedicated managers and rolling out a full digital platform to accelerate execution. In retail media, we continue to be modernizing our screen inventory and moving to a more profitable hybrid model. Finally, in mobility, we are expanding paid smart dynamic parking pricing to capture the scarcity of city center space while rolling out EV charging spaces. Before we take your questions, let me highlight a few points that underscore the strengths of our performance. Our top-line growth consistently outpaces indexation.
In the first half of 2026, like-for-like net rental income grew 2.5 points above indexation. It's not the market handing it to us through inflation. We are earning it. This is a clear and repeated demonstration of the real structural value we create. Looking ahead, our growth potential remains fully intact, supported by three pillars. Our unique portfolio generates EUR 13 billion in annual retailer sales. Best-in-class leasing and asset management platform, highly supportive market dynamics with no new supply and scarcity of physical alternatives. Together, these provide us with a long and visible runway for further growth. To conclude, our like-for-like net rental income has grown on average 3% above indexation since December 2023, while our NAV was up 26% over the same period.
Backed by a fortress balance sheet, the best credit ratings, and a historically low net debt to EBITDA ratio of 6.6X , our platform continue to deliver sustainable high organic growth. Thank you for your attention. I will now open the floor to questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. Please limit yourself to two questions. Thank you. The next question comes from Pierre-Emmanuel Clouard from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. The first one actually is on, I guess you have the question every quarter, but on potential acquisitions. It would be nice if you can guide us through what you are seeing on the market and if you are foresee any large acquisition in the foreseeable future.
Thank you, Pierre-Emmanuel, for your question, which is not the first time we have it. As you know, we have a fortress balance sheet, we are still committed to use it to make accretive acquisition, we are looking at different opportunities all over Europe, we stay very disciplined, both in quality and pricing, acquisition will come when it comes
Okay. My second question is on your EBITDA guidance. If I'm correct, your EBITDA guidance implies a +3.2% year-on-year growth, while you already delivered +5% in H1. Should we expect any material deceleration in H2, or should we be aware of anything happening in H2?
No, you should not expect any kind of deceleration in H2. It's just that you have seasonality in the business, we think this guidance is the right one at this time. We think we are more or less in line with market expectation also. It's a right place to be, I think, at this time.
Okay, understood. My last one is more specific about your retail sales and footfall figures. Can you give us the Q2 numbers for footfall and retail sales? It seems to decelerate a bit in Q2.
Stéphane is looking at it. I think we should look at it. Over the last six months, it has been, as you have seen, very strong Southern Europe, also Northwest and Central Europe and even Scandinavia. The only region where we see a more lukewarm environment is France, where it is only growing by 1.4%, and the situation is not really improving or deteriorating. I would say the pattern that we have seen in Q2 is quite similar across the regions. I think when we looked at the segments, the good news is that all the segments are positive. It is not for the first time, it is now for two or three years. Even fashion has also delivered a very strong performance with +4%. I would say, before looking at the Q1 and Q2 differences, Stéphane, maybe you can-
Yeah. Basically, our Q2 retail sales is 3.5%, and the footfall in Q2, +1.4%. Basically, it is quite consistent with the trend in Q1. That is why we think the trend over H1 is quite consistent. There is no big difference between Q1 and Q2.
January was very strong, February a bit lukewarm, March very positive. April, a bit shy of March. May was super strong. June was very strong. Yeah, it fluctuates from a month to another. I think it has been a good news to see sales developing so well all over the regions and all other segments.
I will add that the first view we have for July footfall, we do not have the retail sale. It's still early, but it's around 1.5%. Again, very consistent with the trend we have seen in H1 and in Q2.
Okay, that's clear. Maybe one quick follow-up question on potential acquisition. Given your current share price that is now trading above NAV, would you consider any contribution in kind with potential sellers, or is it something that you are not considering today?
What I like in your question is the word potential. As long as everything is potential, we can elaborate and speculate. I think we have been successful over the past years to do some very accretive acquisition. Just maybe that I don't frustrate you too much. I think the investment market has recovered in many places. We have seen more capital being deployed in Spain and even in Portugal, a bit in Central Europe, and a bit in Italy. The investment market is stronger, even though it has not completely recovered from pre-COVID times. We see a bit more competition, I would say, on the market. Once more, we want to be very disciplined, and the board of the company is also very disciplined on quality and pricing.
Yes, it takes a bit more time than what we could have expected, but we are still confident that we will have opportunities. The way we are going to finance it in the future will always be in the best way for our shareholders' return. It will have to be accretive NAV and cash flow. It will depend at that time where our share price stands.
That's clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Frédéric Renard from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you very much for the presentation. I was willing to come back on Pierre-Emmanuel's question on acquisition. I'm sorry for that. You just mentioned that you are very disciplined in terms of pricing. The way the market might see it is that you have the lowest cost of equity at the moment of the retail companies and probably the lowest cost of debt as well. On top of that, your leverage is quite low. Aren't you afraid of missing opportunities that might be accretive at some point just because you are probably too selective? That's the first question.
Selective, so we can turn around the issue as long as we want. I think when we say we are disciplined, I think we have a strategy, or we want to focus on the large cities and for assets where we can bring value. In fact, in many circumstances, there are some assets of great quality where we can't really add value and then pricing is challenging for us. I think our shareholders will always favor discipline and if it comes with timing, it's okay. We have seen many transactions of assets yielding quite high, which do not fit to our strategy. I think, yeah, our shareholders favor discipline and even if it comes with timing. We have a very strong balance sheet. We are among the few, okay. Being able to deliver such growth, okay.
With a net debt to EBITDA which is declining and a net debt which is stable. We are also pruning the portfolio. We have been selling a couple of assets. We are long-term committed. We don't look at the portfolio size or quality short-term, we really look it long-term. We may have some time a bit more disposal and less acquisition, but we are still committed to use our balance sheet the best we can for our shareholders. I think that maybe, I hope we will not have the same question coming.
No, it's fair. Thank you. A second question is, what is explaining the acceleration of, or at least the acceleration rhythm, I mean, the inflection point. The 13% increase in other monthly income in H1 2026 versus full year 2025. Is it specific lever that is increasing faster than what you may have thought initially, or how should we read into that?
No, I think even if we don't really like to itemize too much of business. We think there is a lot of question about ancillary income. I think the value of our footfall is much higher than what we thought five or six years ago. We clearly have identified three levers. We don't talk too much about data and AI. We are very on the ground. There are three levers that are contributing each to a good monetization of the footfall. It's specialty leasing, it's also retail media. We are improving quite fast and also mobility as we explained in the presentation. We really think we are not really at the beginning of the journey, but we still have a long road to go and we see it as a new source of revenue going forward.
Also maybe to add a bit of color for you, Fred. We have better occupancy in specialty leasing. We have stronger rental uplift in specialty leasing. Obviously, that's why the specialty leasing is increasing and accelerating. Because we have put in place a strategy relying on the ground people making the jobs, that's what we have explained in the presentation. We have hired dedicated managers in the shopping malls to boost the brand activation, the events, and to boost the specialty leasing. That's why specialty leasing is increasing and accelerating on the retail media because we expand and modernize all our screen inventory. Basically, it's a very specific strategy and with very dedicated action, and it pays.
Okay. Thank you. It's fair. Maybe if I may, a last one. I see capital appreciation still at 2.6%, so a very good level. I see that the yield is going down. How can you justify lower yield in a higher interest rate environment? Just purely on the growth?
Basically, we have two points. The first point is the cash flow growth. Basically, if you split the 2.6% like-for-like increase in the portfolio value, 2% come from cash flow growth because the cash flow is growing above our present expectation. That's the first point. Because of more income, because of rental uplift, all what we have explained in the presentation about the growth of the cash flow in H1. Second point, we have a 0.6% coming from a better market matrix. Just because the discount rate has slightly decreased, the exit rate is the same, but discount rate has slightly decreased because the investment market, as explained by Jean-Marc Jestin, has been much more active in retail in the last 12 months than it has been in the last four years.
Basically, there is an acceleration of the direct investment market and yeah, pressure translated in a lower discount rate because it's less risky.
Okay. That's fair. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Fred.
The next question comes from Kai Klose from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes. Very good afternoon. I've got just one question for me. This is on the CapEx or the capital expenditure, which in the first half 2026 were a little lower compared to H1 last year. I think that might be seasonal, but could you maybe give an indication what you're planning to spend in the second half as a rough number?
Well, I think for the second half, the CapEx will be probably around EUR 50 million.
Just because in the CapEx you see in the first half you have EUR 72 million. If you split the EUR 72 million, the like-for-like is around EUR 53 million, and we expect like-for-like to stay around this level of EUR 50 million in the second half. You have extension CapEx amounting to EUR 19 million, and obviously in extension CapEx, it may be slightly higher than what we have seen in H1.
Yeah. Probably because we are starting two extensions, that will be not a very material number anyway.
Got it. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Kai.
The next question comes from Nicolas Vaysselier from BNPP. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. Coming back on the acquisition and investment side, clearly you're delivering quite quickly given the operational performance of the firm. I was wondering if no change to the acquisition plans, could you be looking to be doing more in terms of investment CapEx in refurbishment, or an extension or even to go into more complex development projects? On the acquisition side, I was wondering if you have appetite for doing more deals like you've done in Portugal this year, taking out some minority interest in existing assets. That's my first question. Perhaps how do you see indexation playing out into H2 and next year? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Nicolas, for all those questions, just more than two. For an acquisition, I'm not going to repeat myself, so sorry to skip this one. On development project, we are committed to continue enlarging our flagship malls when required by the leasing tension we are facing. We are currently doing one or two in Italy, and then we are starting one in France, and probably next year we'll start one in Spain. It will be probably on the top 40 malls where we are deploying CapEx. The return on CapEx, it will never be more than EUR 100 million or EUR 150 million per year, I would say. The return we are getting on that additional extension will be around 8%-9%. That's what we have been delivering.
We put money at play in our malls, not only to get the return I just explained, but to make our asset even better and to increase footfall. We have just in the presentation given some example where we have done some re-tenanting and sometimes a bit of refurb, sometimes a bit of extension or a bit CapEx intensive asset management initiative. In Field's, in La Gavia, in Plenilunio, sales density over a certain period of time, it's quite amazing. We are dedicated to focus our development CapEx on making our assets better because the leasing tension is really big in our venues, we are not committed to make any, I would say, complicated development project, greenfield. As you know, we don't like that, and I think it's probably with very low return. On indexation, maybe you can add something, Stéphane.
Yes. Just for your information, Nicolas, you will find in the management report the detail, because we have a EUR 600 million pipeline of extension going forward, and we are just deploying our capital on this pipeline. Accelerating could be a challenge because there are a lot of regulation in Europe, and you cannot just accelerate. You need all the building permits or the authorization. We have the EUR 600 million pipeline, so we are confident to deliver it over time.
For the question for the way we do acquisition, I'm sorry, but we're not going to tell exactly what we are chasing. Yes, for Portimão we had the opportunity after 15 years of JV to repurchase our partner. There is no specific strategy when it comes to our JV partners.
On indexation, obviously the inflation environment is quite volatile, and has been very volatile over H1. For H2, indexation has already been done. Basically, the full year indexation is 0.8% and we index our
Invoices for the tenant beginning of the year. It has been done, and it will be 0.8% for the full year for 2026. For 2027, what we see today, based on inflation forecast by country, is something which could be around 1.4%, 1.5%. Again, it will depend upon the volatility of inflation in H2 will give us the final number for indexation in 2027. The first computation we have is around 1.4%, 1.5%.
All right. Thank you very much, and have a good evening.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Tom Berry from Green Street. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you, guys. Just a quick question on, I guess the other side from a disposal perspective. The Scandinavian portfolio is performing less strongly, is that something that you would consider sort of recycling out to the higher growth markets of Southern Europe?
Well, I would say no. I think if we look a big picture, I think the top 70 assets we own, it's 95% of the portfolio. We still own a couple of assets, which by nature are not the most dominant in their catchment area. Doesn't mean they are bad, but we don't have a lot of, I would say, prospect of development, and probably they are growing not as fast as the others. We continuously dispose this and recycle, but there is no specific area where we should be concerned or have a specific focus. It's a bit everywhere. We will probably in H2 announce a couple of disposals, but they will be quite minor in amount, maybe EUR 100 million. Yeah.
Thank you.
For the H1, we had very limited number. I think it's EUR 15 million. It may accelerate in H2, so for full year we could be around EUR 120 million, but H2 is not done yet. Yeah, it's more or less EUR 120 million, I think, for the full year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tom.
The next question comes from Valerie Jacob from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I just have a follow-up question on mall income. It's been growing very fast. It's now at 10% of the total net rental income. I just wanted to have your view on the further growth potential. How big do you think it can be in your business? Can we go to 15%-20%? How do you think about it? Thank you.
I think for the foreseeable future, let's say for the next three years, even though it's always difficult to predict at that. The business plan for us is to continue to grow it double digit. We have a very ambitious plan for that. We and the team, they have a roadmap, which is very ambitious. I am confident we can deliver most of it. This will continue to deliver double digit for the next couple of years. After that, we'll have to look at other sources of revenues. I think we are at the very early stage of how we can monetize our footfall. What we are doing today, we were not doing it six years ago, I'm quite optimistic.
Thank you. Just to follow up on that, as you showed in the presentation, you've been outperforming indexation quite strongly in the past few years. If I think of the past coming years, your vacancy, your occupancy size is quite high, your margins as well, and your rental uplifts have been around 5% for the past few years. There is a lot of growth in mall income as we just discussed, but am I missing something? Do you have another avenue for continuing to outperform indexation that strongly? Thank you.
No, I think the performance we had over the last three years, including H1, this show different things. I think first of all, the very starting point of growth is that retail ourselves have been growing all over the places and clearly are outpacing national retail indexes. The fundamentals are very good. I think the flight to quality creates a lot of leasing tension, but also customer loyalty and engagement with our venue. I think this flight to quality and the fact that only big malls are taking market share, I think it's very encouraging. Starting from there, indexation is low, but we can always deliver. The most important is that we still have a reversionary potential. The level of OCR, we always qualify it as at a reasonably low level compared to some of our peers or some other regions.
As sales are also growing, we have a continuous improvement of our ERVs, reversion is up. Occupancy is also at a high level, it will not be a big change in the next year. Maybe we can still improve it in some regions, this is not a driver. Reversion, low OCR, higher ERVs because sales are developing a very strong leasing demand. That's the main driver for growth. Specialty leasing, it's not coming from another planet. That's a lot of work. That's also an interesting source of very stable cash flow. I think we also are doing a bit of extension. We focus a lot on like-for-like, I would like to come back to one of the first page of the presentation. We do 4% NRI growth, okay? With a stable debt.
Even our CapEx intensity, which is quite low is also generating growth with a debt which is going down. I think the engine is also when we do development, we are putting CapEx in our malls for extension or refurbishment, it's delivering growth top line. It's a combination of different factors. I'm still very positive. I think we should not underestimate that the retail environment around us can be complicated. There are many malls or high street that are suffering, really the flight to quality give a premium, this will be the big support for growth in the next three to five years.
Very helpful. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jonathan Kownator from GS. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. Just a follow-up to the discussion, which was really interesting. Does that mean that you're essentially expecting the reversion that you capture to increase from sort of the 5% level that you're generating right now? If your sales increase and your OCR decreases, does that mean that you can continue to push the rent higher? Thanks.
I think reversion, it's + 5%. That's a healthy number. I think what we are, and I just said, I think the fact that sales are growing at that level, okay, in an environment where GDP growth is what it is in Europe. Clearly the sales is helping. Every time sales are outpacing indexation by 200 or 300 basis points, okay, this is increasing automatically our ERVs, and that good news. Then it create new reversion on the portfolio. Yes. The fundamentals are very strong, and I think we will still deliver substantial reversion on relating and renewals.
Okay, thanks. Maybe one follow-up. Both Inditex and H&M as two examples were highlighting that they're continuing to invest CapEx in their store networks, reducing also some of the tail perhaps. What do you see in your malls in terms of retailers reinvesting in their concepts, putting new CapEx? Are you seeing an accelerating pace, a constant pace, a decreasing pace? What can you tell us from the retailers that you have in your malls? Thanks.
We have 11,000 stores and we have a bit less than 4,000 retailers. We can go one by one. I think it's interesting is that in the presentation what we wanted to indicate is that the segment which has been going through a big transformation has been the apparel or fashion segment in many places, but also the shoes segment. As you can see, and it's quite substantial on a short period of time to see that the segment which is health, beauty, and entertainment going from 30% to 36% of the sales. It's a big change. Which mean that the curation of the fashion segment, which was very dominant in the past in our malls, the curation has been delivering positive sales development. Those who are replacing those tenants, they are investing in their stores.
I think the strength of the platform we have is that we are committed to seize any development opportunity of good retailers. We gave a couple of names in the presentation, but brands like Rituals, like Normal. For you maybe those names you are very familiar with, but they are opening new countries. I think where we are also very strong, we offer a platform for growth in different countries. Today, some of the brands that were very strong in Spain or very strong in France are now going to Italy and they are investing in CapEx. I think there is plenty of brands that are really investing in their concept, but also in their footprint, in their loyalty system and so on. Yes, I think it is thriving in all the segments.
There are, I would say, the usual suspects, and most of them are really investing in our malls, but also emerging brands that were not existing or not as big as they are today, which are also investing in our malls, making new stores. Expansion of off-site has been a key driver over the last three years, and I think it will continue. The flight to quality for us means a fight for CapEx. We need to be committed and the speed of execution, it's not just being an observer of what is happening in retail, it's just the fight for CapEx. If we are good in executing, obviously, you need to have the best malls, but if you have the best portfolio and you add speed of execution, you can deliver fantastic growth of retailers.
We have provided some examples, and some of them in a couple of years, they have expanded in our portfolio by 200, 150%, sometimes 400%. This speed of execution, this is driving footfall and driving sales.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Thank you, Jonathan.
There are no more questions, I hand the conference back to the management for any closing comments.
Thank you very much for attending and listening to us. This has been a very strong half year. Very strong retailer sales, good KPIs, good occupation, a lot of leasing deals, strong reversion, and growing cash flow and also asset appreciation. This has been a very strong H1 and we are also very confident on the rest of the year, and we will see you soon. Thank you very much for attending and for those who are taking a holiday break, enjoy it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Bye-bye