Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us for Aroundtown's Q3 2021 results call. You should have received our press release and can view this presentation at Aroundtown's website, either on the home section or under financial reports of the investor relations section. I'm Sylvie Lagies, Aroundtown's Head of Communications and Sustainability. With me today will be CEO Shmuel Mayo, co-CEO Barak Bar-Hen, CFO Eyal Ben David, and Chief Capital Markets Officer Oschrie Massatschi. For the duration of the call, all participants will be on a listen-only mode. Following our presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. Please feel free to send us your questions via email, also during the presentation. The email address is info@aroundtown.de. With that, I'd like to pass you over to Oschrie Massatschi, who will start presenting you our results.
Thank you, Sylvie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 2021 earnings call. In our last call back in August, we already informed you that our portfolio, excluding the hotels, returned to behave nearly at pre-corona levels, and therefore, we continue to focus on the improvement of assets and our disposal pipeline, as we will report at length in this call. On slides three and four, we summarize our financial and business highlights for the first nine months of the year. We will go into more details of each KPI later in the presentation, and we will also confirm our guidance for the full year 2020. By accelerating our successful disposal program during 2020, we have reiterated the sound valuations of our portfolio.
Slide five highlights the achievements of our EUR 2.1 billion signed disposals year to date, a 3% margin over book value, and a rent multiple of 18x, of which over EUR 770 million were closed by September. The margin over total cost, including CapEx, amounted to 57% on average. As you can see on the chart, the disposals were made up of 76% retail and wholesale, 17% office, and the remaining 7% a mix of hotel and development rights. Currently, we are in advanced negotiations for additional disposals worth about half a billion EUR. Selling these non-core and mature assets will further enhance our overall portfolio quality, support debt repayments, funding our buyback program, and of course, strengthening our balance sheet. The proceeds of our disposals have benefited several strategic decisions. Please turn to slide six for an overview.
EUR 290 million of share buybacks have been completed by Q3, and nearly all the EUR 1 billion program has been completed year to date. As the weighted average share price was EUR 4.9, we achieved a 47% discount to our Q3 EPRA NAV of EUR 9.3 per share, making the share buyback program highly accretive for all per-share KPIs in the coming periods, and therefore, creating further shareholder value. Essentially, we increased our portfolio quality through the disposals and reinvested part of the proceeds into our own properties well below transaction levels. We also used the disposal proceeds to repay over EUR 1 billion of debt during the period, and the proceeds also further strengthen our liquidity profile for future acquisition opportunities.
Moreover, as we are now able to better assess the pandemic potential impact on the full year 2020 results, we propose to our shareholders a balanced dividend distribution of EUR 0.14 per share, which reflects 50% of the company's dividend distribution policy and is subject to the OGM approval next month. On the next few slides, Shmuel will give you an update of our strong investment locations and portfolio diversification.
Thanks, Oshri. Moving on to our operation and the portfolio overview. Slide eight emphasize the two key markets, Germany and the Netherlands. 86% of our commercial portfolio investments are located in these triple A-rated markets, with Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam making up 59% of the office portfolio value with a high asset quality. A key element of our investment strategy has always been our multiple strong diversification in terms of asset types, location, and tenant diversification. On the right-hand side of Slide nine, you can see a breakdown of the geographic distribution as well as the composition by asset class, of which our office portfolio makes up 52% by value, followed by hotel properties with 24% and the residential asset 13% through our holding in GCP.
These diversification elements enable us to have a limited exposure to macroeconomic or domestic changes, which in turn will not affect our complete portfolio. The pandemic has a significant impact on the hotel industry, which accounts for a quarter of our group portfolio. However, our diversification with the hotel portfolio in terms of segments and location enable this sector to partially recover during the summer holiday and double the collection rates in comparison to Q2. Going forward, these three asset classes will remain our key external growth drivers for future acquisitions. Once market transactions meet our acquisition criteria, while strengthening our dominant position in the top-tier cities of Germany's and the Netherlands. Oschrie, please continue.
Thanks, Shmuel. Moving on to slide 10. An additional layer of diversification is our large tenant base with well over 4,000 tenants, of which the 10 largest contribute less than 18% of the rental income, resulting in a very low dependency on any single tenant. The public sector represents the largest office tenant with 23% of office rents, while the more severely impacted sectors by the pandemic, such as air travel, oil or tourism, represent less than 1% of our office share. Our portfolio overview presented in the bottom of the slide was updated to EUR 21.8 billion, mainly due to the EUR 2.1 billion signed and partially completed disposals. Note that this table excludes the signed disposals which we classified as held for sale.
The portfolio's rental income, like for like, resulted in an increase of 1.7%, 0.2% coming from occupancy increase and 1.5% from in-place rent increase. The WALT was maintained high at 8.8 years. The collection rates for all our asset types, except hotels, recovered fast after the lockdown in Q2 was lifted. Excluding our hotels, the collection rate after nine months is at 96%, basically at pre-pandemic levels, and including hotels, our collection rate is sufficiently high at 85%. You can see how the aforementioned diversification on multiple levels leads to protecting our operational performance and even limits volatility in our overall collection rates.
While the hotel collection rate achieved a strong recovery since Q2, the subsegment of business and conference hotels continues to suffer from the pandemic because of reduced air travel and new lockdowns in most parts of Europe. We will further elaborate on the collection rate of the hotel segment later in the presentation. However, should the recent news of vaccine developments materialize soon, we expect the revival for global demand of hotel rooms to accelerate drastically in the course of 2021. Turning to slide 11. During the first nine months this year, nearly 100% of our portfolio was revalued by external appraisers. The overall commercial portfolio, like for like revaluation gains, amounted to 3.6% and excluding hotels, amounted to 6.5% in the first nine months of 2020.
Total revaluation and capital gains amounted to EUR 736 million in the first nine months and supported by the EPRA NAV increase to EUR 12.3 billion. As anticipated, Q3 revaluation gains are positive but lower than the profits recorded in the comparable period, reflecting a more conservative approach taken by the valuers due to market uncertainties. The revaluation and capital gains in our residential assets through Grand City Properties were also positive and amounted to EUR 270 million, which contribute to our equity investee balance as a proportion to our holdings. German residential assets have proven to be one of the most resilient asset classes across Europe and remain a valuable diversification to our commercial portfolio.
With all the updates about vaccinations and potential recovery of the market following the availability of such vaccinations, we see it's still difficult to foresee the full impact of the pandemic on the economy. Nevertheless, we feel comfortable with our valuations, which are also supported by recent deal prices in our key markets, our disposals above book value, and other indicators, as will be shown on the next slides. On slides 12 to 15, you can see the locations of our properties from an aerial view of the sub centers of Berlin and Frankfurt. The figure on the slides is the percentage share of our portfolio of the city you look at. You can see on these slides the top tier locations our properties are located in. In the appendix, you will find more of these slides of our additional locations.
As you can see on slide 16, the German office market entered the pandemic this year with record low office vacancies across metropolitan regions. Independent sources estimate an average of 4% vacancy by the end of this year with several cities, such as Berlin and Munich, even below 2.5%. During the first three quarters of this year, it has become evident that the pre-let ratios even increased quarter over quarter, whilst building permissions have slowed down due to an increased backlog amongst authorities. This led to a continued demand pressure on existing stock that resulted in a 2% year-over-year prime rental growth in the top seven German cities. Slide 17 highlights the uninterrupted strong demand for German office assets.
In the first nine months of 2020, office transaction volume in Germany came in just 10% lower compared to last year's record of EUR 44 billion. Recent market deals punctuate the stable prime office yields this year at around 3%. This is supported by the continuous high demand and large spreads of prime office yields to German government bond yields. Currently standing at 3.4% compared to an average spread of 2.6% in the last 15 years. As seen on slide 18, with 52%, our office segment represents the largest portion of our group portfolio. Key cities like Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Amsterdam alone account for 59% of this segment, followed by many additional top-tier cities across Germany and the Netherlands.
With a WALT of nearly five years and no dependency on any single tenant or location, we maintain a well-diversified and robust tenant structure, of which more than half the rent derives from the strongest industries, such as governmental, health or energy. Our largest office tenant segment is the public sector with 23% of the rent. Turning to the hotel market on slide 19. We are all well aware that the hotel industry continues to face challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions and lockdowns across Europe. However, we have been seeing first signs of recovery since the summer months and want to highlight the tailwind our three core markets, Germany, the U.K., and the Netherlands, enjoy from their very high degree of domestic travel share. These high ratios demonstrate the independence of international tourism for the demand of hotel bookings in these key markets.
Therefore, we expect that the naturally high ratio of domestic hotel demand from leisure and business travelers will act as a catalyst for faster recovery for our tenants. Moving to slide 20, we show a summary of our well-diversified pan-European hotel portfolio consisting of 176 assets and externally operated by over 30 different experienced operators. These assets make up 24% of our group portfolio and have a 17-year WALT. With 85%, the four-star segment represents by far the largest and benefits from an increased number of domestic, leisure, and business travelers alike. As you can see from the geographic distribution, our hotel assets are located in the strongest cities of Europe, such as Berlin, London, Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Brussels, and many other top-tier locations.
All these cities share the high demand for residential apartments, an asset class that has proven to be very resilient during the pandemic, and we keep the option to convert some hotels into micro apartments should the environment for the hotel business deteriorate in the future. On slide 21, we want to highlight some key elements of differentiation of our hotel portfolio to peers. Our double and triple net rental agreements with external operators are fixed, plus CPI linked without any variable components. From less than 10% of open hotels during the lockdown in Q2 to over 70% of operating hotels today, our hotel tenants have accumulated much knowledge in running the hotels more efficiently, optimizing costs, and ensuring a safe environment for guests and staff.
As explained before, we saw significant improvement in the collection rates across all asset classes since the lowest point during Q2 of this year. Presented on slide 22, the hotel nine-month collection rate stood at 60% and improved from 21% in Q2 to 58% in Q3. The remaining rents are deferred, and we are in negotiation with tenants about the form of payment plans. On the operational level during Q3, we reached an agreement with many of our hotel tenants in which the lease agreement was extended with high increase in rents in return for an easement in rent payment for the next few quarters. In addition, we used this period to accelerate refurbishment works in several hotels, which were originally planned for the next years and resulted in a small decrease of current rents due to works interruption.
These works will lead to a higher return once completed. Also in Q3, we continue with our conservative approach and created a EUR 35 million extraordinary rent provision for the quarter to reflect the scenario that not all the rents will be collected. Any collected amount will therefore support future results. Due to the second wave of the pandemic started following the summer holidays and the further restricted traveling in Germany, collection rates in October amounted to 50%. Slide 23 shows we have over 30 different strong third-party hotel operators. These tenants have a strong track record of successful operations through numerous cycles, including the 2008, 2009 crisis. Our hotels are leased to a diverse branding blend, each of them matching the unique hotel strengths. Our largest tenant in the hotel portfolio, Center Parcs, with 6% of the group's rental income.
I will now hand you over to Barak for the next part of the presentation.
Thank you, Oschrie, and good morning. On slide 24, we show some market data on German residential, which illustrates very strong resilience as a result of ongoing demand-supply imbalance. Our 40% strategic holding in Grand City Properties is reflected on slide 25. We see this diversification into the top German city plus London as the most resilient asset type in Europe, benefiting from strong demand and very low deferral ratios. This is also reflected in the low level of deferred rents of merely 1% in the first nine months.
Residential assets account for 13% by value of our group portfolio share. You can see from slide 26, as a result of the disposal of our wholesale portfolio in the second half of this year, the logistics and wholesale segment decreased after our assigned disposal to 4%. With top locations remaining Berlin, NRW, Kassel, Hamburg and Munich, this segment experienced no decrease in the collection rate during the pandemic. Our retail exposure is illustrated on slide 27, and has been reduced from 9% after the merger with TLG to 7% of the group portfolio value, as we concluded many successful disposals of that asset class this year. Over 40% of the remaining assets are essential goods stores and located in top metropolitan regions such as Berlin and NRW.
We continue to view retail assets in general as non-core, and we look for opportunities to recycle the capital into our core asset types. Now to you, Sylvie.
Moving to slide 28. With the growing importance of sustainability on our business practices, we want to highlight some key achievements in this area as we have integrated sustainable development in our long-term business goals. Sustainalytics and RobecoSAM are just two of the global ESG rating firms to have improved our scoring in their latest reports. While Aroundtown is ranked second highest among all real estate firms in the newly established DAX 50 ESG. Our governance was strengthened with an enhanced management board, and we have a 50% independent board of directors, of which one-third is female. Although we improved our international ESG standing over time, we see ourselves still at the beginning of a long-term goal to further improve our ESG ratios along with other more familiar business and operational KPIs.
That wraps up the operational section, and I will now hand you over to Eyal for an overview of our financial results.
Thanks, Sylvie. Let's continue on slide 30. We have been placing great emphasis on our conservative capital structure to strengthen our fundamentals throughout this pandemic and beyond. Until mid-2020, we have no major debt expiries coming up, and maintain low cost of debt of 1.6% with an average maturity of 6.2 years. Yet 74% of our assets are unencumbered, and the loan to value remains defensive at low 34%, ensuring that we continue to have sufficient headroom above all our covenants and stay well below our stricter internal board limit of 45%. Year-over-year, we maintain also in Q3 a high interest cover ratio level at 4.4x . Our successful disposal program has generated sufficient proceeds for the share buyback, debt repayments, and further increased our liquidity.
Therefore, we have strong liquidity position available for growth opportunities and economic challenges, but we plan long-term and will monitor several funding options across markets when we see that acquisition pick up again. On slide 31, we present the consistent organic growth with a like-for-like rental income of 1.7%, and is a combination of 1.5% from in-place rental growth and 0.2% growth in the occupancy. In spite of the slower new lettings, rent level across our key markets remained stable or even increased year to date. Our recurring net rental income resulted in EUR 730 million, and the net profit for the period amounted to EUR 812 million, generating EUR 0.44 earning per share for the nine months. Moving to slide 32.
The adjusted EBITDA during the first three quarters of this year grew to EUR 723 million, up from EUR 557 million for nine months in 2019, resulting in a year-over-year increase of 30%, mainly driven by external growth. The adjusted EBITDA is after excluding EUR 23 million euros contribution of asset classified as held for sale, and therefore referring to the recurring portfolio. Slide 33 provides a detailed view of our FFO I, which grew to EUR 438 million. Our FFO I after perpetual notes attribution amounted to EUR 371 million, an increase of 12% from EUR 331 million at the comparable period.
As introduced for the first time in our H1 earnings results, we have created an extraordinary rent provision in response to the continuous uncertainty of the effects from COVID-19. Our FFO I after perpetual notes and COVID-adjusted amounted to EUR 301 million, or EUR 0.22 for the first nine months of 2020. Due to the successful disposal transactions closed in the first nine months in the amount of over EUR 770 million, the FFO II increased to EUR 648 million, reflecting EUR 280 million disposal gains in the first nine months. Moving to slide 34, we present the updated EPRA NAV for September, which grew further to EUR 12.3 billion.
The EPRA NAV per share grew by 7% to EUR 9.3 at the end of September as a result of profits in the period and lower base due to our buyback program. On slide 35, we reconfirm our full-year guidance for 2020. As announced in the H1 results, we can now confirm the successful signed disposals of EUR 2.1 billion year to date. We see ongoing uncertainties in the market over the hotel industry and take a conservative view for the full-year performance, although we saw a partial recovery during summer of the collection rates from our hotel tenants. For the full year 2020, we confirm an FFO I after perpetual notes in the range of EUR 460 million-EUR 485 million, or EUR 0.35-EUR 0.37 per share.
The FFO I per share guidance after perpetual and COVID adjusted conservatively accounts for extraordinary rent provision for the full year in the range of EUR 105 million-EUR 120 million. Naturally, as part of our risk management and assessment, we maintain this provision, but we'll continue to work with our tenants on a case-by-case level to collect the full amount of rents in the coming months. We can reaffirm the FFO I per share after perpetual and COVID adjusted, which is expected to be in the range of EUR 0.26-EUR 0.29 per share. We are aware that we took a conservative approach and emphasize that these provisions are an extraordinary adjustment. Once the effects of the lockdowns and travel bans are over, we expect to reach the high collection rates and show further growth on a per share level.
That concludes our Q3 2020 presentation. The appendix holds plenty more information for you all to review. I will hand you over to Sylvie, who will lead the Q&A session.
Thank you, Eyal. Before we invite your direct telephone questions, we would like to answer questions that we have received by email prior to this call. For simplicity reasons, we have taken liberty to group similar questions in order to answer as many questions as possible. Allow me now to read out these questions. First question: How much of the share buyback program did you execute so far, and what do you plan to do with the shares held in Treasury? Will you start another buyback program?
We bought back our share for a volume of close to EUR 1 billion. Far, we bought back EUR 204 million shares at an average price of EUR 4.9 per share, as we said earlier, which is about 50% discount to the September 2020 EPRA NAV. The majority of the buyback was settled in October, the strong positive impact will become apparent in the year-end figures as well as in the coming quarters, creating high growth on a per share basis. We bought back 30% of our share capital. As approved in the last OGM, we can go up to 20%. Therefore, we can launch a potential additional share buyback program of 7% swiftly and without a general meeting.
Our operational and financial results in 2020 validate the stability of our portfolio valuation, which is further validated by our recent disposals above book value. This gives us the confidence to use this unique opportunity of the steep discount to our share price to utilize our funds through a buyback at this significant size, which will increase future per share KPIs on which our dividend policy is based on. We funded the buyback with the proceeds of the disposals, and we disposed above book value and bought back our share at a very steep discount, which created long-term accretive shareholder value. By disposing mainly non-core properties of mainly retail and wholesale, we also further increased the focus of our portfolio on stronger asset classes and increased the overall asset quality.
We will consider to buy back more shares depending on the discount of our share price to NAV, acquisition opportunities we see in the market, the execution of the disposal pipeline, and we would do it along further debt repayments to maintain our low leverage ratios. We will keep these shares in Treasury to be used for future scrip dividends, acquisitions, capital increases, and more. As the shares are held in Treasury, they will not carry any voting rights and are also deducted from the per share KPIs, thus increasing each shareholder's share in the company.
Next question: What are your considerations to propose a dividend payment now instead of June 2019?
In May, during the pickup of the uncertainty related to the pandemic, we decided to postpone the decision for dividend payments for a later stage in the year and to preserve our strong liquidity in a very risky and volatile period. Now that we are nine months after the beginning of the pandemic, we assess the impact on our operation for this year to be limited and short-term on our hotel segment. Please note, dividend and share buyback are both cash usages which favor shareholders. The buyback and at the currently high discount provides a very unique opportunity for long-term higher per share KPIs, as I said before. Also, the FFO per share, which future dividends are based on. The buyback results in a higher dividend payment for the next years.
Next question: Did you use any of the disposal proceeds to repay debt as well?
Year to date, we repaid over EUR 1 billion debt, primarily bonds and bank loans with near-term maturities in order to maintain our conservative capital structure and balance our long-term debt maturity profile. Our average debt maturity duration is 6.2 years.
What is your experience about the office market performance? What are the market trends you see currently? Did you experience any change in the office letting market after the slower performance in the past months? What do you expect going forward?
Over half of our portfolio are offices which are located mainly in Germany and the Netherlands. In particular, 59% of our office portfolio is located in our top four cities, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Amsterdam. The office markets in Germany and the Netherlands have been very strong in recent years, entering the crisis in a very strong position, characterized by a lack of supply and high demand, which gave landlords a lot of pricing power, resulting in continuous growth in market rent and occupancy rates. Although the pandemic softened the characteristics, we so far continue to feel the supply-demand imbalance persists. According to market reports, the vacancy in our top-tier markets was at record low levels prior to the pandemic at circa 3%. While in comparison to 2007, before the global financial crisis, the vacancy rate was at 9%.
According to market reports, vacancy is expected to stay below 4% in Germany's big seven, and Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Amsterdam have the lowest office vacancy rates in Europe. Particularly for Berlin, which is our largest office location. CBRE reports a market office vacancy rate of 1.8%, and they expect a further year-over-year decline in 2021. The high pre-let ratio, coupled with low vacancy, resulted in increasing prime rents in Germany's big seven year-over-year in Q2, and remained stable during Q3 on a quarterly basis. Amsterdam follows the same performance, where prime office rents in Q3 were over 2% higher year-over-year. Nevertheless, the uncertainty about the macroeconomic development and the on and off lockdowns in certain cities leads tenants to postpone decisions to take up new spaces or demand, which impacted our letting activities in the last months.
However, we expect tenants who have been holding off to resume once uncertainty is cleared. We have seen in Q3 a stronger letting activity in comparison to muted activity during the lockdown in Q2, and more requests from existing and prospective tenants which were held back in Q2. Therefore, we expect a positive catch-up effect once the pandemic will come to an end. We experienced a stronger prolongation activity at shorter terms as our tenants are postponing their decisions and wait for the uncertainties to settle. We prolonged over 240,000 sq m office space in nine months of 2020 at EUR 11.3 rent per square meter. As a comparison, in the nine months 2019, we prolonged over 180,000 sq m office space.
For new lettings, we continue to experience an overall cautious sentiment, but potential tenants became more active in property visits. The interest in new lettings is highest in top tier locations. We have signed over 90,000 sq m of new lettings in nine months, 2020, at 13.6 EUR rent per square meter. This compares to around 120,000 sq m new lettings in nine months of 2019. The new letting process takes longer due to longer decision making time as potential tenants postpone signing for new spaces as they wait how the current crisis further develops and hesitate to expand into additional space. On the other hand, we also experience tenants who needed to expand in order to cope with the distancing requirement of its staff.
Large tenants, which have previously focused on centralizing into large office complexes, are now considering decentralizing into many smaller locations in order to avoid clustering of employees. With the positive news from several new vaccinations, which might soon be distributed, the uncertainty will vanish and we expect a catch up effect of pent-up demand, which would support rental and occupancy growth further. Market reports, which were issued prior to the news of successful vaccination trials, are assuming a strong economic recovery in 2021. Also, the Ifo Business Climate Index improved significantly since bottoming out in April. In addition, the government supported the market with unprecedented stimulus packages. According to market reports, Germany's stimulus program will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, which will increase the demand for office space by over 2,000,000 sq m in Germany's big seven.
The economies of Germany and the Netherlands entered this crisis with a strong position with strong economies, low unemployment rate, and low debt burdens. These factors are crucial for a fast recovery as the governments of Germany and the Netherlands have greater power and capacity to offset the negative impacts of this pandemic.
Next question. Can you give more breakdown of your rent like for like, and why did you realize a lower like for like compared to previous periods? What is the reason and what do you expect going forward?
The like-for-like for the period was 1.7%, driven mostly by in-place rent increases with marginal increase in occupancy. We had strong increases in Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Utrecht. The like-for-like is lower compared to previous periods. As in the current market uncertainties, tenants postponed their decision to expand and let new space.
On the other hand, we experience also an increase in lease extensions for the same reasons that tenants prefer to keep the current situation. Going forward, it is difficult to assess the current market environment. In case the uncertainties persist, new tenants will probably continue to postpone their decisions, which will make it difficult to let new space. We believe the tenants' hesitation created pent-up demand, which will release when the uncertainty weakens. This would favorably support our new letting achievements and increase our like-for-like going forward.
Next question. How do market transactions reflect the current environment?
Recent reports demonstrate that the high demand for German office real estate continues. Latest deals in the market are sold at low yields. We have seen this with our disposals and from the offers we receive. We also see this in other market transactions. Although at a lower rate compared to last year, transaction volumes are still significantly higher than the 10-year average, which reflects investors' expectations of the long-term stability of the German office market. A large amount of capital is still looking for investment with attractive risk-return profile, as around EUR 100 billion of government bonds expire each year, and the spread of prime office yields to bond yields is at historically high levels. Under this scenario, German office real estate offers stable or even upside opportunities. This high demand supports the valuations in our portfolio as well.
For our own asset sales activities, we see a very high demand for German properties, which is like a safe haven. We are in around 30 sales processes in parallel and see many bidders in each process.
What is your assessment of the impact from the working from home trend? Did you experience any impact so far?
Working from home is not a new trend, in particular in Germany and the Netherlands. However, the trend got a lot of attention since the first lockdown. We believe that the importance of physical presence and meeting will not be replaced by home office. There are companies which have never initiated a concept into their working mentality, and the lockdown forced them to become familiar with this concept, and they realized that it can work. However, it was not tested for a long period and also not in a growing market. It was tested in a locked market in which many industries were not fully operating and no material pressure on performances was made. Therefore, we do not believe the lockdown resulted in a new drastic perception for the usage of office space.
We think that a flexible usage of office space and an increase in mobility is going to improve further along technological solutions. The most prominent arguments which are in the market are that tenants could cut costs by reducing their office footprint, but there are several challenges companies will need to overcome. In general, we believe this cost incentive is mainly only really relevant in cities with very high rents and long employee commuting time due to high living costs in central locations such as Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, and more. The rents and living costs in the top cities in Germany and the Netherlands are significantly lower in relation to similarly ranked markets and, thus, provide a lower cost saving potential, and employees can afford to live more central and, thus, live closer to their office work.
Moreover, permanent home office policies will bear high cost for companies investing in infrastructure and equipping employees. We believe that employees will require more living space and accordingly will demand higher compensation. Furthermore, working from home has already been quite prevalent in countries like the Netherlands, with a relatively high degree of self-employment and over 35% of total workers having had experience with telework. Yet, at the same time, office vacancy has reduced significantly in recent years, especially in Amsterdam, and office rents has increased strongly. Although government-enacted working from home might have worked well for many companies which had to stick together in the crisis, it is a different picture when working from home is voluntarily or selectively enforced on the workforce.
There are several hurdles to overcome which become exponentially harder the larger the company is, such as maintaining productivity, creativity, teamwork, morale, but also in attracting and training of new employees. Flexibility of working space is an advantage, but enforced limitation to substitute central and representative home office location with your home is not always the best solution. We also see the pushback from new working from home standard in government discussions. A few weeks ago, Germany's Labor Ministry had pulled back from putting forward legislation to give all citizens the legal right to work from home. Initially, there was a discussion that everyone had the right to work 24 days a year at home, so less than two days a month. We did not receive so far any specific requests from tenants around this topic from our tenants.
Next question. Your rent collection is nearly back to pre-crisis levels, except for hotels, although hotels improved significantly during summer. How did your hotels perform over the summer, and what do you expect for the winter, also now that many countries are in a lockdown again? What do the collection rates for each asset type look like so far for November? What do you expect for December? When do you expect the hotel industry to recover with the vaccinations coming soon?
The collection rates for all our asset types, except hotels, recovered fast after the lockdown in Q2 was lifted. Excluding our hotels, our collection rate is at 96% basically at pre-pandemic levels, and including hotels, our collection rate is at 85%. In Germany, part of the easing measures, the government allowed tenants to defer rents until end of June if they are affected by the lockdown. Rents can be repaid within two years and carry up to 8% annual interest. Hotels make up 24% of our portfolio, with the majority of our hotels located in Germany. Although the travel and hospitality industry is significantly impacted from governmental restrictions and lockdowns, the summer was characterized by strong domestic leisure travel, proving a certain level of recovery potential. The uncertainty regarding air travel restrictions, potential quarantine, and lockdowns in other countries refrain tourists from traveling abroad.
The recovery differs depending on the location and type of the hotel. Countries which are less dependent on international travel, such as Northern Europe, experienced a faster recovery after the lockdown was lifted. As Germany managed to deal better with the pandemic, hotels in Germany were able to open up earlier than in other countries, and hotels in resorts or regional locations performed very strong as during summer holiday season, tourism shifted towards domestic vacation within driving distance. Our leisure hotels in Germany and the Benelux reached high occupancy levels during the summer, including our Center Parcs assets. In some countries, such as the U.K., the lockdown was longer, thus negatively impacting the hospitality industry stronger. As to international tourism and business travel, the level is still significantly below the pre-corona level, and therefore, city hotels were open but didn't perform well.
As mentioned in our presentation, the collection rate for Q3 increased to 58% from 21% in Q2, 2020, reflecting the fast recovery during summer holiday season. In addition, during Q2 and Q3, for few hotels, we have brought forward large investment programs which were planned for 2023 onwards and require the hotels to shut down. Therefore, during the refurbishment works, we won't collect rent, but expect to get higher rents and returns once the works are completed. We also accelerated soft refurbishment works planned for 2021 and 2022, which enabled partial operation as the works will be done for entire floors while these hotels remain open. We agreed with our tenants a rent reduction for such partial closure, and we collect higher rents once the works are completed.
We also managed to reach an agreement with many of our tenants, which prolonged the letting period significantly at higher rents in return for abatements in rents during current periods. Our hotel portfolio run rate already includes the agreed decrease in rents due to the refurbishment works and prolongations, which are also reflected in our like for like results for the period. For November, hotels in Germany and the U.K. are allowed to remain open, but only for business travel and essential stays and not for tourists. In the Benelux, hotels are mostly able to remain open, also for tourism, but certain restrictions apply. With the ongoing lockdowns and lack of business and long-haul travel, Q4 will provide difficulties for the hospitality industry, although expected to be at a less severe level compared to the extensive lockdown measures in Q2.
Due to the softer restrictions, a higher share of our hotels is currently open with over 70% compared to 9% during the first lockdown in spring. For our largest hotel tenant, Center Parcs, nearly half of our assets are closed in November and partially some parks until mid-December. We experienced that our tenants learned from the first lockdown and are therefore able to react quicker depending on how their business is being affected. Wherever available, our tenants utilize government support schemes as they did during the last lockdown when the cost structure was immediately optimized. The German government has announced financial support for businesses which are forced to close due to current lockdowns. It was announced that up to 75% of November 2019 revenue will be compensated. If our hotel tenants receive support, we would be able to collect our rent sooner.
The summertime showed us the strong and fast recovery potential the industry has, which is the result of the traditionally high share of domestic travel and staycation-oriented markets in Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands being less dependent on international travel creates stability, and these hotels are expected to recover first again. Also, countries with stronger fiscal support packages for the hospitality sector, such as Germany, are likely to fare better in comparison. We believe that even with the vaccinations coming to the market soon, international travel won't be at pre-corona levels immediately. It will take some time, and we will see continued strong domestic travel demand for some time, which should benefit our hotel locations. Once travel will be allowed freely again and the availability of the vaccination, we expect a full collection of the contractual rents.
Next question. What amount of provisions did you account for in your guidance, and do you still expect to achieve it? On which FFO figure will next year's dividend be based on?
We accounted for provisions of uncollected rent at the amount of up to EUR 120 million. We reconfirm our guidance based on the performance of the first nine months and the substantial amount of conservative provisions we accounted for already. The next year dividend will be based on this year's FFO I per share, including COVID adjustments.
You have achieved positive revaluations. How do you assess the resilience of your valuations, and what do you expect going forward?
We have had over 90% of our portfolio revalued in the first nine months of this year, which includes all of our hotel properties. These valuations have also been carried out during the COVID-19 related lockdowns. As a reminder, all of our property values are based on independent external valuators. As the valuators incorporate into their assessment, among other factors, market rents and vacancies, as well as transaction values, the current impact, as well as the expected impact from the crisis, is incorporated into their valuations. We just feel very comfortable with the values of our properties, which reflect a certain level of stability. As you can see, overall, we have had positive revaluation gains in the amount of EUR 736 million, which resulted in a like-for-like value development of 3.6%.
Our competitive advantage here is our strong diversification in terms of different asset types, locations, low tenant dependency, as well as good central locations where our properties are located. Revaluation gains are the result of operational improvements as well as yield compression, of which the yield compression contributes around half of the value increases. Overall, yield compression was 0.1%. The strongest revaluation gains were in our office portfolio. The high quality and the central location among Germany's and Netherlands' top cities support this growth. In addition, our disposals provide another level of validity for our valuation, as we were able to sign disposals of approximately EUR 2.1 billion above book value. Further, there have been significant amounts of market transactions at yields and values, which have seen in the pre-crisis time, especially in German office segment.
Looking forward, we expect the valuation to remain resilient, also supported by news about vaccination being available soon, a continuously strong transaction market, a large amount of funds flowing into the market, and a continuing strong demand evident in the increasing pre-let ratio for office space, even during Q2.
Next question. You recently announced to have signed disposals at an amount of EUR 2.1 billion. Can you please give some more details about what and where you disposed, and what is your strategy going forward? Will you dispose more?
Year to date, we signed disposals at an amount of around EUR 2.1 billion, at again, above book value. The disposals are mainly retail and wholesale properties, but also include offices, hotels, and land for development. The assets have been mainly located in various cities in Germany, such as Frankfurt, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne, as well as Amsterdam and many smaller non-core cities. They have been sold at a multiple of 18x and had a vacancy of around 3%. We are currently in advanced negotiations to dispose further properties at an amount of half a billion EUR. We are continuing to dispose properties which are non-core, either in terms of location or asset type, and plan to reduce our retail portfolio to under 5%. We also dispose mature properties for which the upside potential was mostly lifted.
The disposal proceeds are used to strengthen our liquidity, support our debt repayments, and fund the highly accretive share buyback.
Your property acquisition was very limited. Are you currently looking for further acquisition opportunities?
After the merger of TLG and its EUR 5 billion portfolio, we paused our acquisition activity at the outbreak of the crisis. Our acquisition strategy is focused on accretive and high quality additions to our portfolio with a substantial upside potential, which create long-term shareholder value. We are continuing this strategy through the share buyback, as this is currently the acquisition opportunity with the highest shareholder value potential we see. The approximately 40% discount of our share price to NAV provides us a unique opportunity with substantial long-term value creation. We continue to be active on the deal market for further acquisition opportunities and are currently looking at a pipeline of over half a billion EUR. After the asset sale and share buyback, we maintain a firepower of EUR 2 billion.
What is the status with your development projects, and how much CapEx is committed?
Our strategy follows the analysis and identification of unused or underutilized space on plots of our existing properties where we can convert to stronger asset classes. After receiving building rights, we will either sell these at high gains or potentially develop when the risk is low in our top location if it will meet certain criteria, such as pre-let contracts and at more than 10% unlevered NOI yield over the cost. We identified as of September 2020 development rights and projects in the amount of EUR 1.7 billion of mainly residential and office properties, mainly in Berlin, with approximately 50%, Paris 15%, 11% in Frankfurt, 4% in Hamburg, 4% in Munich, Dresden 5%, Rotterdam 5%.
In addition, we have classified specific hotels to development. These hotels were expected to undergo a significant turnaround, including a complete facelift and adding more space to the hotels. With the current heavy restriction on the hotels, we have accordingly decided to bring forward these works and keep these hotels closed, so we can accelerate the CapEx works while the market is mostly closed. These hotels include city hotels, where the pandemic currently has a large impact, and where we expect the demand to catch up once the pandemic will be behind us. The total amount reflects only around 5% of our total assets, and committed is currently EUR 200 million, less than 1% of the portfolio value, and is related to the ongoing project.
Of our ongoing project, we expect approximately 15,000 sq m office property development in central Dresden to be finalized by the end of this year. The property is currently pre-let 70% to the German federal government and an international blue-chip company at a 10-year lease, and we are in advanced negotiations to close further lease contracts on the last remaining spaces.
Next question. Will you hold on to your hotels or would you consider to dispose and reduce or even acquire more hotels?
We believe the crisis did not change the concept of the hospitality industry. We expect the hotel market to recover from these unprecedented times and expect a fast recovery. The current enacted government restrictions are short-term limitations impacting the performance of hotels, but do not change the industry long term. The summer months have proven the fast recovery potential hotels have on the back of the demand from tourism, especially from domestic demand. Hotels perform differently depending on location, target group, star category, et cetera, which became evident during the recent air travel restrictions, where the demand for leisure hotels in resort or rural locations was strongest. Within hotels, we have a strong diversification due to the wide distribution in terms of locations and type. We continue to believe in this asset type mid to long term.
Following our general strategy for all asset types, we would consider selling hotels selectively, depending on whether we get good offers and if we extracted the majority of the upside potential. We would also consider acquiring further hotels, but in the current situation, we prefer to be patient and wait for unique situations which could arise from distressed sellers or similarly, which come at significant discounts. Our high liquidity is a competitive advantage and provides us with the firepower to act and to benefit from potential opportunities.
Your FFO I for Q3 was somewhat lower than in the first two quarters. How much of that comes from the disposals and how much from the other effects? How much of annual FFO contribution did the to-date disposed assets account for?
The decrease is predominantly related to the disposals and properties classified as held for sale, of which approximately EUR 20 million of FFO is related to in Q3.
The DAX is to be extended to 40 companies next year. How do you see your chances of an inclusion here?
Our current market cap ranking will probably not be sufficient to enter on the current basis, but we do see good chances to enter with at least a partial share price recovery.
Those were the questions that we received prior to this call. We can now start the open session for your questions. We would appreciate if you can ask all your questions at once, and we will answer them one by one.
The first question is coming from Rob Jones. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everybody. It's Rob Jones from Exane BNP Paribas. I've got four questions in total, three and a request, I should say. Just flicking back to the question around market cap that was raised just now. In terms of treasury shares, should I be, when I'm thinking about the market cap, including or excluding the treasury shares? Because the kind of Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, et cetera, is having the higher market cap, i.e., the kinda mid-EUR 80 billion rather than the high 60s, once you take out the treasury shares. Just an understanding of which one is the correct one to use in terms of your view of index inclusion, et cetera.
Secondly, with regards to the buyback that's recently been completed, can you give us the figure in terms of NAV accretion on a per share basis to come in relation to shares that were repurchased post 30th September, and therefore will be the accretion as part of the full year 2020 NAV? Thirdly, can you give some detail, I think you've kind of answered this already, but in terms of the provisioning for the rest of the year, does that also reflect 45% of rents that have not been collected, and therefore your provision is 45% of that for the rest of the year? Finally a request. Slide 19, where you've got the STR data.
Really interesting slide, but there's obviously the description that you've put right over the top of the line chart. I wonder if it's possible to get that chart either in graphical form or data form from yourselves as well. Thanks very much.
Hi, good morning, Rob. Thanks for the questions. Referring to the market cap, the market cap itself is including the treasury shares. Normally for inclusion in indexes, they are excluding treasury shares held by the company. Referring to the second question in the NAV accretion. We expect overall that the complete buyback program that was concluded to affect more than 10% on our results by the year-end. Referring to your third question about the provisions, we did include in the guidance, so the EUR 105 million is including all what we expect to be for the full year. Now, if eventually we see that Q4 is looking better in terms of collection, for sure we will make an update and not put all this amount as a provision.
Hi, Rob. Yes, Tim. Regarding your question on the slide with the STR data, so when we published, there was no updated data, so this is a few weeks old, so that's why we excluded it here.
All right. Thank you all for your questions and participation in this call. These were all the questions we received. We wish you a peaceful and healthy Christmas period. Stay safe, and we look forward to speaking to each and every one of you soon. Goodbye.