Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the half year presentation of DIC Asset AG. I now hand you over to your host, Sonja Wärntges, CEO of DIC Asset AG.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also, from my side, a very warm welcome to DIC half-year 2023 results conference call. Today, as usual, I'm joined by my colleagues from accounting and Investor Relations departments. Also, as usual, we will give a short presentation of our results for the first half-year, 2023, followed by a Q&A session. Dear all, you know the current challenges facing the economy, the global uncertainties, the interest rates, the inflation. Of course, these conditions also affect us and had an impact on our half-year results. Especially the transaction activity was affected by the lowered macroeconomic outlook and the new interest rate environment in Germany. Let's talk about the highlights of the first half-year of 2023. Our focus in recent weeks has been on generating additional liquidity, while at the same time maintaining our financial flexibility.
In addition to a major portfolio refinancing of EUR 505 million, which brought us around EUR 250 million in additional liquidity, we were able to notarize disposals of around EUR 132 million at the turn of the first half of the year. Thereof, around EUR 119 million were attributable to the Commercial Portfolio and will generate an equity release of roughly EUR 37 million after their transfer in the third quarter. With the launch of a new investment vehicle, the club deal for the Offenbach Unite property, we were also able to collect EUR 10 million of equity in a first placement. At the end of June, our cash position was around EUR 485 million.
As announced, we used roughly EUR 201 million to further pay down the VIB Bridge Loan in July, shortly after the balance sheet date. Another EUR 150 million will be used to repay our corporate bond, issued in 2018 at the beginning of October 2023. Operationally, we continue to see a high letting performance from our teams. We were able to let around 257,900 sq m in the six months of 2023. This represents an increase of 50% compared to previous year. In addition, we have seen like-for-like rental growth of 7.3% on the total platform.
Due to the currently restrained transaction market, which particularly impacts our transaction-related income in the Institutional Business segment, as well as due to higher than initially expected interest expenses, our FFO fell year-on-year to EUR 22.4 million. Due to additional write-offs on sold properties, the consolidated result for the first half year was EUR -16.6 million. Looking at the credit metrics for our Green Bond 2023, we continue to see sufficient headroom despite the current market challenges. In the context of the implementation of our action plan, Performance 2024, one of our primary goals is the optimization of our financial structure, first and foremost, by the reduction of debt. Ladies and gentlemen, the ongoing uncertainties are affecting our business. Therefore, we have implemented an action plan to face these challenges, with a strong focus on the following five key points.
We are looking to reduce liabilities and strengthen our liquidity. We have successfully reduced the bridge financing for the acquisition of VIB in two steps, from EUR 500 million to now EUR 200 million and restructured it. For the remaining amount, we have extended the maturity by another six months until end of July 2024. We will repay the corporate bond 2018, 2023, with a total volume of EUR 150 million in full at the beginning of October as planned. We intend to use the freed-up equity from further disposals to further reduce our liabilities. We focus on the operating portfolio business. Our letting business remains at a high level. We expect this to continue so that we will benefit from positive like-for-like growth on our platform also in the next month.
With our ES, ESG strategy in place and the current green building ratio of around 32%, the portfolio is attractively positioned for the needs of our tenant base. Tenant interest in our properties remains high, both for office and logistics. In addition, we continue to focus on smaller refurbishments in our portfolio to further create value. All these points stabilize our property values. On the basis of our internal analysis, we see a potential decline of the market value of around 4%-7% at the year end, 2023, driven on the one hand by higher interest rates and changing yield requirements. We are also working on the reduction of our operating costs. With the aim of becoming more agile, efficient, and focused, we are optimizing our operational processes.
In addition to making the structures of our real estate platform more flexible, we are also planning cost savings of 5%-7% of our annual operating expenses. We will also optimize our portfolio through transactions. We were able to realize disposals even in a difficult market environment, and will use the free liquidity from the sales proceeds to continuously reduce our leverage. A total of EUR 300 million-EUR 500 million of notarized disposals are planned this year. We are well on our way to achieving this, as around EUR 119 million have been notarized, as already mentioned. We want to be a reliable business partner. We have proven in the past that we are a sought-after partner for real estate investments in the German real estate market.
We are constantly expanding our range of real estate services for national and international institutional investors in the Institutional Business. We are firmly convinced that we will generate increasing cash flows from property management of third parties, again, as the transaction market recovers from next year onwards. What does this all mean now for our financial profile? As mentioned during the last weeks, we are working on the optimization of our financial structure. We are focusing on the short-term debt, which is currently the most expensive one. This is also reflected in the current average interest rate of 2.9%. After the repayment of roughly EUR 200 million of the Bridge Loan in July, our pro forma cash on hand amounts to roughly EUR 284 million after the balance sheet date.
With this liquidity, we will pay back the Bond 18/23 in the amount of EUR 150 million in October. We are currently also looking at the maturities in 2024, are already in discussion to refinance bank debt and checking other refinancing options, in addition to our general plan to reduce the outstanding debt through disposals. The average interest rate of 2.9% reflects the high cost of short-term debt. We are closely monitoring the development of the covenants. As of today, and according to our business plan, we continue to have sufficient headroom under all covenants, especially for the bond covenants. Now, let's take a brief look at the results of our real estate platform in the first half year. In total, assets under management with EUR 14.2 billion, remain stable on a year-on-year comparison.
The Commercial Portfolio saw a decrease from EUR 4.5 billion - EUR 4.1 billion, which was a direct result of the disposal activities year-on-year. As mentioned, our letting performance remains strong, and our teams once again performed exceptionally well. The letting performance on the DIC platform in the first six months of 2023, rose by 50% year-on-year to 257,900 sq m. Last year's strong rental growth continued positively in the first half year of 2023 as well. Like-for-like, the rental income rose by 7.3% for the entire portfolio under management. Both in the Commercial Portfolio, with a plus of 4.8%, and in the Institutional Business, with a plus of 8.5%, rent increases were realized primarily through indexations.
In the Institutional Business, the full lease of the Global Tower in Frankfurt had an additional impact. As of today, only 2% of the total annualized rental income would expire in 2023, if lease contracts are not prolonged. Roughly 68% of annualized rental income has a lease length until 2027 and longer. On our next slide, I'm giving you an overview of the development of our main income streams. As expected, after the end of the second quarter, our main income streams look similar to the picture in the first quarter of 2023. On the one hand, there was a strong increase in net rental income due to the takeover of VIB and the like-for-like growth of our rental contracts....
On the other hand, we saw a sharp decline in the real estate management fees due to a muted transaction market as expected. Our recurring income on the platform was slightly higher year-over-year, and the share of recurring income in relation to the total income rose to 100% in the first half year. We generated income from associate companies of EUR 2.8 million, which is below the previous year result of EUR 16.9 million. This is mainly due to the sale of a joint venture investment for EUR 10.1 million in the prior year period. Let's take a closer look on the development of the FFO year-over-year. The net rental income saw a strong increase of EUR 19.7 million.
As previously mentioned, this was due to the VIB consolidation and the like-for-like rental growth of our Commercial Portfolio. The recurring management fees saw an increase of EUR 4.4 million, but couldn't compensate for the decline in transaction-related fees, which was led to a negative effect of EUR 22.1 million. The net interest result was down, mainly due to the initial recognition of VIB, the unhedged interest expenses for the Bridge Loan, and one-off effects from the refinancing activities on the VIB level in Q1 2023. Our OpEx slightly improved on a normalized level, including VIB. In the previous year, EUR 10.6 million of transaction costs were included. All in all, this resulted in an FFO of EUR 22.4 million for the first half year.
Ladies and gentlemen, as usual, I'm concluding my presentation with a final remark on our guidance for the current fiscal year. We confirmed the recently updated guidance numbers as of today. We changed our expectation regarding the recovery of the transaction market. We now expect a recovery not before 2024. Nevertheless, we are confident to reach our disposal targets for the Commercial Portfolio. The freed-up equity after repaying any secured debt, will be mainly used to pay down our unsecured debt. We will also check for all options available to secure our flexibility. Thank you for taking the time to join our conference call today. We are now able to answer your questions.
we start with the first person, Andre Remke from Baader Bank AG. You can now ask your question.
Yeah. Good morning, Sonja. Good morning to all of you. A couple of questions from my side. Sonja, you mentioned, you are confident to reach a disposal of EUR 400-EUR 500 million this year. Do you have already some interest here or more concrete talks? Because time goes by, we are at the beginning of August, there is a potential summer break, et cetera, et cetera. So, is there already something more concrete in the marketing phase, as well as in negotiation with potential investors? This is the first question, please.
Good morning, Andre. Yes, definitely. We are in, we have a pipeline of transaction, of transactions, but we also are in close discussions with some disposals we would like to make, but it takes a little bit more time than in the past, so you can imagine. Therefore, we have a lot of interest in logistics. We have also special interest in some of our office buildings here from our, so to say, old Commercial Portfolio. So there is, there's a lot of interest from investors, but it takes also a little bit longer because if they need a financing and not all equity payer, so to say, they need a little bit more time, they need different calculations and so on.
We are in close discussions for some of them, we have also LOIs or in a closer discussion. Therefore, we have said we are still thinking that our disposal goals will be reached until end of year.
Yeah, excellent. Thank you for that. Another question. You mentioned a market value decline of 4%-7% at year-end for the entire portfolio. I assume this is for the overall EUR 14 billion. Some questions on that. Why did you not make an update on the, on the first half, at least for the Commercial Portfolios, portfolio? Do you want to avoid too much transparency ahead of potential disposal activities, or what is the reason for that?
No, the guidance is for the Commercial Portfolio only because it's for the value we have on, on our, or in our NAV and in, in the market value for the Commercial Portfolio. As usual, we make the evaluation at the end of the year. We have done this in the past because, if you remember, we have the amortization in our balance sheet, so the well, market values are for the NAV and all these measurements, so to say. We do not avoid transparency, but at the end of the day, we have established here internally a department for evaluation for or two months ago, I think, to keep this to keep more focus on the evaluation internally.
We also have asked evaluators whether they have time and can do a evaluation for us. To say it very clearly, because we have not done it in the past, they are fully full, so to say, with other evaluations, it was not possible to do it until end of June. As said, I think we have a very good analysis here internally, and from this analysis we see the 4%-7% for, on the one hand, our own old portfolio and the logistic portfolio, on the other hand.
The 4%-7%, is this more a status quo internal valuation, or does this also assume further potential price declines in the second half of this year?
No, it's at the end of the day, it's the status taken from the evaluations from last year and, keeping in mind what we have done this year and we want to do until the end of the year, so to say. There, on the one hand, you have the interest rates, and on the other hand, you have the rental income. As said, this is growing, so to say. According to this analysis, we have made the, yeah, the spread, or we have analyzed the spread we are talking about. I think it's the status today, for sure.
It keeps in mind what we plan to do until the end of the year, and therefore it's the best guess we can do internally now.
Okay, excellent. You mentioned this only refers to the Commercial Portfolio. What about the EUR 10 billion assets under management? Are there no questions by third-party investors about the current valuation? As their fees, I would assume at least partly will depend on market values, which are certainly lower than 1 year ago. Do you expect, in general, over years, write down on these values, i.e., the asset management fees, their risk of be lower next year?
The, the Institutional Business is a, other cup of tea, so to say, because there are other evaluations done, step by step, according to the time when, when they were bought. Some in March, some in June, and so on, at one, not once a year. What we see is, in, in general, the same trend. It's, if we have bought the last two years, a landmark, asset, it will be have, it, it will have a, a little bit more, decrease, and the, the older ones, so to say, will not have such an impact, and the trend is, is nearly the same here, what we see at the moment.
Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you. A question on your, on the recent rating downgrade by S&P. Could you comment a bit more on, on your situation in the covenants with regard to, to bond and as well as bank financing? What, what will be the risk if LTV would move to above 60% in case of, of further write downs? Especially the ICR ratio will probably decline further before it starts to improve next year because it is probably based on a, on a last 12-month EBITDA calculation. Any, any further risks here, or what is the consequence out of this?
Hi, Andre, Peer speaking. Maybe I can answer this question. I mean, we have a clear plan in mind regarding the, the, what we expect as a development for the whole company, regarding rental income, et cetera, et cetera, disposal gains, so everything which is relevant for the calculation of these credit metrics. We see sufficient headroom till the year-end regarding development. There is some pressure on these, on these covenants, given the high interest rates. As Sonja also mentioned during her presentation, we see still sufficient headroom above the, the, the thresholds of 1.8 for the ICR and also for the LTV covenants under the bond documentation. Maybe, which is important to mention here, that these LTV covenants are incurrence-based covenants, so not maintenance-based covenants.
That's what we can say so far, yeah.
We are in discussions-
Okay.
with S&P continuously, so to say, and we are preparing them with, with our ideas, as I said, is here. Yeah, the result is, make it happen, yeah. That's what we are doing. As Peer said, we are continuously, yeah, focusing on the covenants and the headrooms we have and controlling this. As said, and it's written down in the presentation, there is sufficient headroom according to the plans now, and I think the plans are not on a very high level, so that we think we can reach the plans and therefore also the headroom of the covenants, yeah.
Okay. Thank you for that. The very last question from my side, you mentioned cost reduction plans of 5% - 10%. Does it refer to the overall OpEx, on a admin level or also on the property level? Do we have to expect any, any kind of one-time costs for the implementation of such measures?
No. This is, we have started this reorganization, so to say, beginning of the year, and this is a continuous process according to our business. We do not expect one-time cost effects or something like this. It's, so to say, a continuously curve bringing the costs down. It's, it's an outcome of, of the reorganization, so to say. That we have looked at our processes and wants to be more flexible, more agile, according to the circumstances of the market, and therefore, we have reduced the cost and looked on the cost, and we see the potential of, as mentioned, 5%-10% over the next weeks and months.
Okay. That's from my side. Thank you very much. I wish you a good second half of the year.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Stefan Scharff, from SRC Research GmbH.
Yeah. Good morning, Sonja. Good morning, gentlemen. My first question would be about, you mentioned, to be and to stay as a reliable business partner for your third parties, and, new equity inflow here, could help for a higher fee level in, in future quarters. What is realistic here for the second half of the year and also for next year?
Good morning, Stefan. I think this point covers two items. The one point is our existing Institutional Business. As mentioned, we have got EUR 10 million in the second quarter, and we are focusing on the selling of the shares of this new vehicle. We also have some other ideas in mind, but I do not really know whether we can do this until the end of the year. It's, I think, more realistic to establish this beginning of next year. In the Institutional Business, there is, at the moment, a lot of focus on the existing business and on other existing vehicles we are working on. This brings me to the second item.
What we see and hear is that there is a lot of focus from institutional investors on the asset and property management. We had some who were interested to work with us on, on this asset and property management, new investors. Therefore, we are, yeah, thinking about how we can, can do this and whether we want to do asset and property management without the equity of the institutional investor. We have some ideas here, and it's, it's difficult at the moment to, to create new business. That's for sure, because of the transaction market and the decision, is it the right price at the right time from the institutional investors? Something happens always, and that's what we are seeing now and what we have done, yeah.
We want to establish the, the, new fund until the end of the year. We are also working on our other fund, where we sell the, the shares now. New funds, I think, will, we are focusing on with beginning of next year.
Okay, thank you. another question is your, your point with the selective reorganization. I could imagine this means also DIC, a lower number of branches or a lower number of staff. Perhaps you can say here a bit more about the reorganization plans.
It means the total company. The, the idea is to get processes in place, which makes us more flexible and agile to get the work done, but to get more responsibility in, in, in the parts of the process. We are still in discussion and still in finalizing, so therefore, I cannot say more at the moment, but I will when we have finalized this.
Okay. I, I see in your presentation, the lease expiry is EUR 14 million in 2025, quite high or a bit higher than the other years. Perhaps you can say a bit more what, what these expiry is here coming in 2025?
Yeah. That is, there are two assets which are coming in 2025. These are two big assets, so to say, and therefore, we are in discussion with the existing tenant. What we want to do is a little bit, that's what we have done with the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt some years ago. We have a lot of time now to get this done, but we are, yeah, on the one hand, in a discussion with the existing tenant, on the other hand, we are thinking about repositioning of this asset, but we are still working on this point. Yeah.
Okay. It's on the office side, I, I guess?
Yeah, this is, office.
Okay, okay. Perhaps you can also say a little bit more about the CapEx this year, what you can spend or what you do in CapEx measures, and also what is the plan here for the coming year?
Yeah. Let me calculate in my head, because I have to do VIB in addition to our normal exposure. At the end of the day, it will be around about EUR 23 million for the total company, so to say. For our own portfolio, it's like the last year's around about EUR 14 million-EUR 15 million, where we do the CapEx, very selective CapEx, on the one hand, the security ones, and on the other hand, the ESG ones.
Mm.
As said, we want to stabilize the values here, and not as normal on the letting side, to get the occupancy down. On the other hand, on the VIB level, we have not only CapEx, but we also are in developing new assets here. Therefore, it is compared to DIC old Commercial Portfolio, a little bit higher, but it also represents the number of creating value and getting the development done here. I think this is also the run rate for the next 12-18 months here, also for 2024.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question is from Jochen Schmitt, from Metzler.
Thank you. Good morning. I have two questions, please. Firstly, did gross interest income include a major positive contribution from liquidity in the second quarter? Secondly, the investment fund of VIB Retail Properties launched last year. Has this fund already been settled balance sheet-wise, or has there been not any relief on LTV by that yet? These are my questions. Thank you.
Thanks, Jochen. Can you repeat the first question because we didn't, didn't get what you said in the first question?
Yeah. gross interest income. Interest income in Q Q2 was, if I'm right, almost EUR 6 million, compared to a bit more than EUR 2 million in the first quarter this year. My question is: Was there, was there any boost from liquidity in the second quarter due to interest rate received?
Okay, now we got it. The interest, we can say on the one hand, we have, or let me say it in general, yeah. We have a lot of liquidity on our balance sheet, as you have seen, is coming on the one hand from the refinancing and on the other hand, from the normal business. We were in discussions with the banks for refinancing, or not refinancing, but for the bridge volume and the extension of the bridge volume. Therefore, we were discussing the payback amount and the payback time. It takes a long time to negotiate these things with the three banks, therefore, we had the liquidity on balance sheet, and we brought it to banks, so to say.
Because we get interests now for the for the for the amounts we have on our bank account, therefore the interest income increases incredibly, yeah. On the other hand, we paid, so to say, double interest because we had the liquidity there and didn't pay the the bridge back because we were not we had not finished the negotiation, and therefore, the interest income is much higher, and also the interest expenses are around about EUR 4 million higher than it would be normal if we had paid back the the bridge volume of EUR 200 million, beginning of April, instead of beginning of July. The second question was, let me see, the the new fund.
Unfortunately, there was no finalized progress in the second quarter. We are still in the discussion here with, with some investors. There was also more more interest coming in, in the second quarter. As said at the beginning, this, this all, all takes a long time to get done, and now there are holiday time and so on. We have no changes from this vehicle in Q2.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Manuel Martin, from ODDO BHF.
Yeah, hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions from my side. The first question is on, on the financing. I mean, the, the, the LTV is relatively elevated, and might, might go a bit up by the end of the year, depending, of course, on, on disposals as well. But, maybe can you disclose a bit your, your financing rates when it comes to mortgages and, and bonds? What's the current situation right now for, for DIC?
Good morning. We have, as you can see in our, in our webcast presentation, we have split it up here, to give a better picture on this side. As said, what you see is that our short-term debt is on a very high basis, as a, according to the long-term debt, which is on, on a lower level, as it's logical, yeah. Therefore, we try to refinance or refinance, pay back at, at the first step, and also in discussions for the option of a refinancing for the short, short, short debt-... position, so to say. The refinancings we have done on a mortgage level, were around about 4.4%.
I think this was exactly the right time to do this refinancing because the interest rates grow, grew during the last weeks and months, and I do not really know whether ECB will increase the interest rates again. At the end of the day, we were here at 4.4%. On the short term level here for the bridge and, especially for the bridge, we are on a higher level of around 8%. We have not placed a promissory note or a bond the last week, so I cannot really say how the interest rates would be there.
We are in discussions with banks, whether there is an option and what does this mean, so that we have a clear picture of what makes sense and how the calculations would look like if we do something on refinancing here.
Mm. Okay. Okay, thanks for that. My, my second question would be on the depreciation and amortization in the second quarter. This item was exceptionally high, with, I think EUR 41 million, driven by write-offs. Can you elaborate a bit on the write-offs? I think they are related to disposals. Maybe you can give us some background and highlight that a bit.
Yes. As such, we, we have a plan for the disposals for this year. Yeah, there are the market conditions as they are on the transaction market. On the other hand, we have some assets which are non-strategic, so to say, for us, and we are trying to do this as we have done end of last year with ex- Kaufhof in Chemnitz. That's hard work for our transaction team, but they are still making progress. We sold three assets from our portfolio, from the logistic portfolio, end of June. We also sold one asset from the Institutional Business, also a logistic asset, beginning of July.
What, what we see at end of June is that we sold one asset from the logistic portfolio, which was, was very big and which has a lot of CapEx over the next years. With eight, yeah, with eight separate parts, so to say, in this one, one asset. We made a decision to bring this on the market and to try to sell this even with a discount. This was, and this was what happened. We sold this asset with a discount. Because we had a notarized contract, we had to do this or we had to bring this new new knowledge on the value of the asset into the balance sheet.
Therefore, we had a depreciation of around about EUR 23 million here. On the other hand, we sold two assets, also from the logistics side, with nearly no discount. Because those are good assets, but at the end of the day, non-strategic assets. Also the, the fourth one we sold beginning of July for the Institutional Business, has nearly no discount. It's a spread according to the special situation of the asset. The one we sold with a discount was, I said, one with eight parts and a lot of CapEx coming out, coming up also from security reasons, but especially from ESG reasons. Therefore, we decided to do this, to not do this in the future and to sell it with a, with a discount we see now.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Hello? Are you still there?
Operator, can we get the next question from, I think, Philipp Kaiser?
I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah. Next one is Philipp Kaiser from Warburg Research GmbH.
Yeah. Hello, thanks for taking my question. Just two follow-up question. One, regarding the financial result. You already elaborated the high interest income in the second quarter, but also, your interest expenses was kind of EUR 3 million below the Q1 level. Could you elaborate a bit more on that effect and what the run rate for those positions for the next quarters? That would be my first question.
Yeah, good morning. It's, it's the effect I mentioned, some minutes ago. On the one hand, we had, well, not on the one hand, we had a lot of liquidity on our balance sheet and on our bank accounts, and, we brought them to work, so to say. Therefore, we got, the target scale or, or.
Yeah.
Interest income. On the other hand, we couldn't use this to pay back the bridge. We had to pay the interest of, of the bridge because we had to finalize the negotiation, therefore, we have run about EUR 4 million, if you want to say, double payment, because we had this interest payment for the bridge. Now we have paid back the EUR 200 million. We will not see this in, in the upcoming months, for the second quarter, this was so to say, the two effects of having that lot liquidity on the balance sheet.
Your interest expense was lower than in Q1, so it's a kind of positive effect of EUR 3 million out of this effect. I'm missing something here?
This was the other effect because, we had the, the disposal, so to say, for the, for the new vehicle, for the fund we brought the assets in, in Q1.
Oh, okay. Okay, thanks for that. My, my last question is regarding the real estate management fee. Your asset, sorry, your recurring management fee amounted to almost EUR 22 million. By just doubling, it would be below the your guidance. I think you assume transaction and performance fee in the second quarter. Could you shed some light on the visibility on those fees? Are they already locked in or in discussions or, yeah, could you shed some light on, on this visibility on the transaction performance fees in the second half?
Yeah, we are also there still in discussions and in, in different discussions. On the one hand, as you said, selling some assets and getting disposal and performance fees out of that. On the other hand, also in doing a club deal or two club deals we have in mind here. We also have, or we already have, defined some assets here, where we're in discussions with institutional investors for the interest and for, yeah, bringing the right investors together to do this, this club deal here. It's in an early stage, I would say, but this is, yeah, a good view we have now on this, the interest is still there.
Now we have to prepare on the one hand, the assets that we, we get this done, and on the other hand, the investors, so that we can bring them together and both are there when we, finalize it. We are still in discussion and have a clear picture on this, and now we have to make it happen, yeah.
Okay, thanks a lot. Very helpful. All from my side.
Thank you.
Next question is from Kai Klose, from Berenberg.
Yes, good morning. I've got a few questions from my side. The first one is, again, on the write-downs. You recognize that amount of EUR 24 million. Could you give, so again, a question on that again, could you ask, can I ask again, what was the average discount in disposals in H1, and what was the range from high discount to probably low discount?
My colleagues calculate the range now. I tell you something about the range. It was 2% from the two assets I have said, to 19% from the big asset, and the range was, I think, 13.6%, nearly 14%. The total range, so to say.
Thank you very much. In the context of the targeted EUR 300 million-EUR 500 million disposals for the full year from the Commercial Portfolio, is this average discount you just mentioned something to be expected or you expect to materialize?
Hopefully not, yeah. As said, the high discount we had on the asset, which had a very high volume and which was a special case, I think it will be a, yeah, also said it will be a mix, yeah. At the end of the day, yeah, we would not like to sell with 20% discount, yeah. If it is strategically wise, so to say, then yes, but if, if not, then not, yeah.
Two last questions regarding the split of the disposals of up to EUR 500 million. Could you indicate how much you intend to sell into the, so to say, open market, and how much into the funds, if any?
No, at the moment, we have, not plans to sell into funds. We have brought a Unite into a fund, and then this is in place, so to say, but we do not have plans at the moment to bring, the, the assets into new funds.
Thanks. The last question.
Selling on the market, so to say.
The last question is on the funds business. I saw in the annual report on page 57, that there was about EUR 250 million of committed equity is still available for transactions. Now, I saw it was about EUR 180 million. Is the reduction by EUR 70 million due to transactions you did, or did you, were there redemptions?
Yeah, we had EUR 180 million open here. This was due to redemption. There are some funds which have timelines in place, so to say, where the idea is if the equity is not used until a certain point of time, the equity is not there anymore, so to say. We also have in the EUR 180 million, additionally, I think EUR 50 million, which are also on such, based on such a contract. If we do not use them for transaction, they will go away until the end of the year. Openly said, I do not really know whether we can bring this EUR 50 million, EUR 50 million equity to transaction at the moment.
So decision of the, of the investor and it's, it's not easy to, to get these big transactions on the market at the moment.
Understood. Two last questions regarding the extension of the Bridge Loan. Could you indicate what is the step-up in the coupon in H2, I guess, and then H1 last year? Is the renewed or the new repayment date now kind of a fixed date, or is there a chance to get that extended in the case of lower disposable volume to the second half?
The next step is 50 basis points, I think in October. Yeah, it's not our, our goal to extend the bridge once again. We have a clear plan and we are focusing on this plan. I think there are always possibilities to extend, but that's definitely not our plan. Yeah.
Then we have a 50 basis points increase in the coupon in October. Assuming it will stay in place until June next year, what would be the additional step-ups in 2024?
No, the, the additional step-ups came, beginning of the next year, every three months, with 100 basis points then.
Many thanks, indeed.
Pardon?
Thanks so much, indeed.
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
The next question comes from Markus Schmitt, from ODDO BHF.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I've just one, and that is on the ICR calculation. I do not see here a reconciliation of that calculation. When I dig into the documentation of the bond, and take the LTM EBITDA, and the LTM net cash interest, I get rather to 2.4x, not 2.6x. Maybe I miss something here. Is it possible to get a reconciliation of that calculation?
Ah, yes, Peer speaking. Yeah, that's due to the thing that they are not part of this one-off expenses we had. That's why we calculate on the that base and came to 2.6 rather than-
Oh, okay.
four. Yes.
Okay. Basically, when I take the EBITDA, what you publish, and take the net cash interest according to the cash flow statement, this should guide me. I mean, I should not be too far off.
Yes, that's, that's correct, and then based on the last 12 months basis. Yeah.
Sure. Okay. Good. Thanks to know. Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you.
For the moment, this was the last question, but if you have any additional questions, please press nine followed by the star key now.
Okay, as we see, there are no further questions from the audience. Thanks again for joining our today's conference call. As usual, if you have any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to contact the IR team, either via email or via call. We are available through the whole day. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye. Have a nice day.
Thank you. Bye-bye.