Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Branicks Group AG Q3 results 2024. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Jasmin Dentz. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator. So welcome, everybody, to our Q3 results presentation for 2024. This call will also be webcast live on branicksgroup.com, and a replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the end of this call. Our CEO and CFO, Sonja Wärntges, will now give you an overview of our financials and our guidance. After the presentation, we will be happy to take your questions. Please note that management comments during this call will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the Safe Harbor statement contained in today's presentation. As always, all documents relating to our nine-month reporting have been made available on our website. I now turn the call over to Sonja for her remarks. Sonja, please, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Jasmin, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also, a very warm welcome from my side to Branicks Q3 and nine-month 2024 results conference call. Today, as usual, I'm joined by my colleagues from the Accounting and Investor Relations Department. Also, as usual, during our quarterly calls, I will give you an overview on what has been achieved in the first half year and in the third quarter on our key numbers, followed by a Q&A session. Dear all, in terms of a rough overview about what we have delivered so far, I would like to highlight the topics mentioned on slide number two. First of all, and maybe the most important message for today, we are ahead of plan in terms of our financial consolidation. Also, the last EUR 40 million tranche was due end of December.
We already fully paid back our bridge financing for the acquisition of VIB. This financial instrument initially amounted to EUR 500 million, and we are proud having achieved a complete payback as an important milestone in our financial consolidation. Our focus remains on further reducing our liabilities with a continued concentration on our governance as well as our liquidity situation. Looking ahead of us, the milestones are defined and approved in a solid plan, laying the foundation for shaping the company in the future. With regards to disposals, Branicks was a very active participant in the market in the first nine months of the year, selling 19 properties for EUR 417 million. This underscores the high quality of our Real Estate portfolio.
Including the transactions communicated in the fourth quarter so far, we are already close to the lower threshold of our guidance, which we are confident to reach with respect to our well-filled transaction pipeline. Our Commercial portfolio continues to be a sustainable cash flow provider and continues to generate stable and predictable rents, benefiting from rent indexation. Compared to prior years, we saw a slightly lower like-for-like rental growth due to expired lease agreements. At the same time, we realized an increase of the average rent from EUR 6.51 per sq m to EUR 7.72 per sq m, underlying the high quality of our Rentable Real Estate portfolio. In this context, I would like also to mention that our teams continue to successfully negotiate new lease agreements, like for Neustadt Centrum in Halle.
With EUR 8.9 billion assets under management, our institutional business remains the second strong pillar of our business model, recording a 2.3% like-for-like rental growth during the reporting period compared to prior years. The announced partnership with Encavis regarding our new asset class renewables has the potential for further successful activities, supporting profitable growth within this segment. Thanks to our strong and solid setup within this segment, we are ready to benefit from a market upswing, particularly with regards to increasing transaction fees. And last but not least, again, we saw further progress regarding our performance 2024 action plan. Aside from the continued OpEx reduction mentioned on the slide, we also saw progress with regards to the other points of this program. For example, the mentioned reduction of liabilities, the realization of disposals, the concentration on the operational portfolio business, as well as with regards to attractive investment ideas.
With regard to our financial maturities profile, we set the course already in the first quarter when the lenders of the 2024 promissory note loans amounting to EUR 225 million voted in favor of the company's restructuring plan. In doing so, the promissory note loans in question were extended to June 30, 2025. Another major milestone in the first quarter was the agreement with the lenders of the bridge financing for the acquisition of the shares in VIB Vermögen AG, completed in 2022, regarding an immediate repayment in the amount of EUR 40 million and an extension of the term concerning that at that point still remaining EUR 160 million until end of the year 2024. Since then, we were already able to pay back EUR 40 million at the end of Q2 and EUR 80 million in Q3 and the remaining EUR 40 million beginning of October.
In the meanwhile, also the secured bank debts are rolled forward. So let me also underline that our focus to de-lever our balance sheet while monitoring our green bond covenants remains one of the highest priorities. With 55.6%, the bond LTV covenant should have peaked and is expected to improve due to disposals and the planned redemption of the bridge financing over the course of 2024. We are aiming to reduce our LTV further in 2024 and achieve an even bigger head room in the midterm. With 2.0, the ICR covenant had also enough head room to the 1.8 threshold, and we are confident to keep our interest cover ratio stable, with even an improvement expected in 2024, also due to the successfully realized redemption of the bridge and, of course, above the 1.8 threshold.
In terms of our average interest rates, it is important for me to underline that over the course of the quarter and due to the redemption of the bridge, we improved the KPI quarter by quarter from 3.36% at the end of March 2024 to 3.21% as of end of June to only 2.8% as of the end of September. Let's now take a deeper look in the results of our Real Estate platform in the first nine months 2024, showing on slide number four. As already mentioned, our like-for-like rental income remains strong, and our teams once again performed exceptionally well. The like-for-like rental income rose by 1.6% for the entire portfolio under management. We see a slight decrease of 0.4% in the Commercial portfolio, driven by the asset class retail.
But we are on a good way to turn this around by having signed a new letting contract and having another one in the pipeline. In the institutional business, we saw a plus of 2.3%. And again, rent increases were realized primarily through indexation. In terms of square meters, the letting performance of the Branicks platform in the first nine months 2024 declined by 37% year on year to 218,000 sqm , mainly due to disposals. In total, assets under management with EUR 12.1 billion were slightly down compared to last year's nine-month period, mostly due to the disposals, which became effective in the course of the year. The Commercial portfolio saw a decrease from EUR 4 billion down to EUR 3.2 billion, which was a direct result of the disposals. The institutional business was also affected by the termination of a larger property management mandate.
As of today, only 1.1% of the total annualized rental income would expire in 2024 if lease contracts are not prolonged. Over 70% of our annualized rental income has a lease length until 2027 and longer. For larger expiries in 2024 and 2025, we already proactively started the discussions with the tenants. On our next slide, let me highlight the development of our main income streams. Net rental income fell to EUR 112.9 million , primarily because the prior year period still included rent from properties in the VIB Retail Balance I fund. The same effect resulted in the increase of income from associated companies that mainly consisted of deferred income from fund shares. And in contrast to the nine months, the result 2023 still contained the share of profits in VIB Retail Balance I. The Real Estate management fees slightly increased from EUR 33.3 million- EUR 37.4 million .
Apart from recurring assets, property, and development fees, this number also includes fees generated from transactions that occurred at a part of the settlement of the Global Tower mandate. Our recurring income on the platform with EUR 150.1 million was slightly lower year on year. Now let's take a closer look on the development of the FFO year on year that were overall in line with our guided expectations. The net rental income saw a decrease of EUR 12.9 million due to disposals and also due to the fact that the prior year period still included rent from properties in the VIB Retail Balance I fund. Development fees increased by EUR 4.1 million, while the share of the profit from associates and the OpEx development also had a positive contribution to our FFO.
The increase of our net interest result adjusted by non-recurring expenses was mainly due to the restructuring of our liabilities, and we are confident to see significant improvements here. In total, and to sum it up, we see the FFO amounting to EUR 36.1 million for the first nine months of 2024. In view of our expectations for the current business year, we still expect gross rental income in the range from EUR 160 million-EUR 175 million and Real Estate management fees between EUR 40 and EUR 50 million . FFO1 after minorities and before taxes of EUR 40 million-EUR 55 million . With regards to acquisitions, we were and we are very selective in order to preserve liquidity, and also the institutional investors are. Therefore, we reduced our acquisition target in our IBU segment to zero.
What remains unchanged is our disposal guidance of EUR 650 million-EUR 900 million, whereas EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million in our Commercial portfolio and EUR 150 million-EUR 300 million in our institutional business. Beyond our guidance for the current year, our midterm ambition also remains unchanged. We strive to transform Branicks Group towards a profitable ESG-focused and value-generating asset expert with sustainably strengthened cash flows and financial positions.
Our ambitions are clear, and we are working hard to achieve them. We want to substantially improve our earnings and cash flows, and we want to return to net profit and positive net cash flow in 2026. In doing that, we want to monetize our ESG expertise, and we have a clear midterm ambition to further reduce our debt, what will go along with improving the respecting KPI. Having said this, I would like to hand over to the moderator for your questions.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press nine and the star key again. Please press nine and the star key now to state your question. The first question comes from André Remke from Baader Bank AG. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Sonja. Thanks for the presentation. Basically, two questions, please. The first is on your disposal volume. What is the volume of closed disposals for the Commercial portfolio after nine months, and what is signed but not yet closed? So to have the complete figures because it's not included in this presentation.
Good morning, André. Thank you for the question. So let me look it up. So for the Commercial portfolio, we have closed one moment, please. We have signed EUR 369 million. The second question was, can you repeat this, please?
Is it 369 was signed and closed after nine months, right?
We have to look it up. One moment, please. So the 369 are signed and closed now.
Okay, perfect. And what is the not yet closed figure?
So in this number, it's not included the signed ones. So this is around about EUR 150 million.
Okay.
So this is of the 369. So 370+ 150 is 520. And you expect this, sorry. Which is signed and 369 closed.
Perfect. And you expect this to be closed until year-end?
Yes.
And effective also for the LTV reduction until year-end?
Yes.
Okay, perfect. And would you expect further transactions, which are not announced as of today, that this will have a potential closing chance until year-end, or will this be probably more moved to the first quarter of next year?
No, it's just other two columns of our transaction pipeline. So we expect some to be signed and closed this year, and we also expect some only to be signed but closed at the beginning of next year. It depends a little bit on the fastness of the community, so to say.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. Thank you. And then the second question is on your guidance. What is the reason for this very broad range in terms of FFO of EUR 40 million- EUR 55 million, I think, because nine months are already done. You spend at roughly EUR 30 million. What makes the visibility for the fourth quarter so difficult to estimate between EUR 4 million and EUR 19 million for the remaining quarter?
Yeah, this is a good question, but the answer is also clear.
So if you look on our disposals and what we expect to come, we are not very sure what comes. So also, this is a big range what we have open until the end of the year. And so it's one of the major points, the fees for the management fees, so to say, and some other costs also, yeah, according to the transaction pipeline we have until the end of the year. So we stood with the broader range in the disposals and also on the FFO level. So because we are not very clear, coming back to your first question, what comes in this year and is closed in this year and what is belonging to next year then.
Okay, understood. Thank you very much. That's all my side.
Thank you, André.
And the next question is from Markus Schmidt from ODDO BHF AG . Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking the questions. Good morning. A couple from me, please. First of all, you had quite an increase in EBITDA in Q3 to EUR 69 million. Could you explain the bridge here maybe? It's not clear how EBITDA could rise so much when your net rental income declined or your management fees went up. When I look at the income statement, do the math, I get to EUR 37 million in Q3 but not 69. This page 13 of the report.
So good morning also from my side. When I have understood it right, you mean why the EBITDA has increased in that amount?
Yeah, I mean, 69 I see here when I take the, I think, net operating profit before financing and add back the depreciation, I get to, I think, EUR 37 million, not 69. Maybe it's a typo. I just want to understand if it's maybe an adjusted EBITDA figure. So then I would be interested in what was the obviously material adjustment. If it's a reported EBITDA figure, then it does not work for me. So that is where I'm coming from.
At the moment, I cannot follow your numbers. So why the EBITDA increase is the transaction fee we have now in or from about EUR 6.5 million, but I cannot follow the numbers. So maybe we calculate it and take the next question first.
Okay, okay. Postponed. Okay, understood. Secondly, it refers basically a little bit to the same issue because I was wondering how you get to the ICR. I think you say it's still two times, but year to date, EBITDA declined. Obviously, when I go by the nine-month figure and net cash interest went up year to date.
Could you disclose maybe what LTM-adjusted EBITDA you used calculating the ICR of two times?
Yeah, so we have a certain governance calculation, so to say, which is agreed, and therefore we have some items in and some out. So I think we can go through after this call especially, but at the moment, we do not disclose this, and the calculation is done as we have, so to say, mentioned it in our governance calculation. But let's discuss us afterwards in the separate meeting then.
I appreciate it. Thank you. And send to others. Firstly, you mentioned or told me last time what the interest rates are you discuss currently with your bank debt lenders. I think you said last time it was about 4% all in.
Is that still the same level for you, or do you see already a bit of relief in terms of declined interest rates in the market? Maybe you could disclose it. And also, the second part of the question would be if you have started already discussions with your promissory noteholders in terms of refinancing the EUR 293 million due next year, and what interest rate do you discuss with them that would be interesting? I think the current rate is about 6% when I'm not wrong.
So to your first question, yeah, the interest rates decline a little bit. So as I said in the beginning, we have forwarded to secured bank debt, and at the moment, we talk about 3.8%-4.2% when we talk with banks, but it was only the four ones we have rolled forward, so to say.
Yeah, from the promissory notes, which are due next year, we are working on that. And one of the things is we pay them back via selling assets. On the other hand, we are searching for other options, and we are in discussions for other options. But at the end of the day, the main trigger would be our transaction program, which we are still working on for the end of this year, which is not done and not in the liquidity now. So we will come up with more liquidity then to pay back this. And as said, we are also searching for other options, but promissory notes are around about 8% interest rate. So at the end of the day, everything which is more expensive would lead to more interest rates.
We are very selective in what we can do here to get more debt in or to get the reduction of promissory notes with another debt, so to say, which is much more expensive.
Okay. So the 8% is what you pay currently on the promissory notes?
So at the average, with all the fees, it is around about 8%.
Okay. And finally, coming back to the asset sales, to simplify that a little bit, I mean, I saw you notarized one in Q3, and then you just announced new asset sales to VIB. So from today's perspective, what net cash inflow do you expect in Q4?
Yeah, the net cash inflow depends on what transactions will be closed and the liquidity comes in or not. So because it is not clear what transactions will come and will be closed, it is not clear what liquidity cash flow comes in.
Sure. But you said 369 was closed. So after repayment of debt, so what is the net cash inflow then on a, let's say, equity value basis in Q4? So the number you know already and will surely incur in Q4.
So I think this is also a question we should answer afterwards because I don't like to ask questions.
Okay. Good. But thanks a lot for today.
Thank you.
And the next question is from Stefan Scharff from SRC Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, Sonja. The other analysts took most of my questions, but just one general question about the market, in particular the office market. There were not too much new lettings in the first nine months, just 36,000 sqm . That's not too much. What is your view on the office market to develop in a recession period this year? And maybe there might be a recession or a weak growth coming for the next one or two years.
So good morning, Stefan. Yeah, that's a good question. We also always think about. So as you can see, the renewals are working. Yeah. So it's like always in the crisis, the tenants stay in the offices they have. Yeah. And I think this is the good news because most of them think that they need offices and that they want to stay and not to spend money for moving, yeah, in other things.
So what we also see is that good offices, so not only at our offices, but also when you look in Frankfurt and see what's going on here, there is a lot of interest in very good offices where the employees can work in a surrounding they want to work and want to come to office and so on. We also see that there is a trend back to office. So with a lot of our tenants, we talk. They ask not for lower space, but sometimes for more space, but for space, which is interesting because they want to stop home office work for more than one year a week, and on the other hand, I think that's positive, and that's a positive trend. We saw more interest from tenants in the last week.
On the other hand, it's office in total, which is more interesting also on the transaction market for investors. We already talked yesterday about this. So I think the spirit of office is coming back a little bit, but it's, as said, other offices than they were for five or 10 years ago. Yeah. And mainly in the towns, in the inner cities, they are very interesting. And what's much more interesting is the rents. Yeah. Or I heard of a contract yesterday. I was very astonished about the rent per square meter, which was paid there. Yeah. So it's the rents which are paid for square meters are going up. And also when they are indexed, the new tenants or the existing tenants pay them when they roll forward a contract or get a new lease contract.
But at the end of the day, it's like always in a crisis, the tenants stay where they are. Office is also interesting, but it takes much longer to get to a contract. Yeah. We saw the difference in retail. So I have mentioned it in my speech that we have a rent contract for a retail space. We have discussed this around about eight weeks, and then we get a contract. So it's the other way around for good retail space and for offices where much international companies are coming in and wanting office space, and they need much longer to close a contract.
Yes, yes. I think new rental contracts with good prices might also give support for the transactions. So that might be helpful then.
For the evaluation, so to say. Yeah.
Yeah. Another question is about the bank debt. The next two years, 2025, 2026, it's about EUR 200 million, more or less, the bank debt. What are your feelings after the talks with the banks about prolongations, about the bank's policy to structure their debt portfolio, and how they think about the economy here and the willingness and the conditions for new bank debt?
Yeah. So as you know, we are financed only with German banks. So I think this is a very solid and respectful discussion and basis. So they also have their points here with the regulators and what they have to do on the equity side when they give liabilities, so to say. But the discussions we already had about the two ones we had rolled forward were very good. They take a little bit longer, and they are very intensive about evaluation and the tenants and so on.
But at the end of the day, we were supported here also with not only the maturity and the interest rate, but also with the value of the liability. So we are satisfied with this, and we are also in the discussion for the prolongation for next year. And it's also a good and very profound discussion with the banks. And yeah, I think we will do this with the existing banks. So that's the feeling we have at the moment.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And the next question is from Jochen Schmidt of Metzler. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I have two questions, please. Firstly, you reported 16 million of extraordinary write-downs on properties due to this disposal activity in Q3. Does this whole amount refer to the approximately 56 million of signed transaction volume in the Commercial portfolio in Q3?
Or to ask the question in a slightly different way. For the disposals signed in Q3, the discount relative to appraisal value at year-end 2023 was slightly above 20%. Is that right to conclude? And second question, very briefly, what's your expectation for the like-for-like development of the portfolio valuation at year-end? These are my questions. Thank you.
So good morning. Yeah. To answer the first question, yeah, that's right. It's around about 20% from the market value. And the last question, when I understood it right, you mean the valuation effect of the year-end?
Yes, that's right.
Yeah. We expect 4%-7% here.
So slightly down from your expectation at the half-year results release. If I remember correctly, you said 5%-8% devaluation, now 4%-7%. And then the follow-up question would be, is that related to the disposals which you have already executed?
No, I think with every week we are going forward until year-end. And with the transaction market, we see new information, so to say. And we are in the process of the evaluation now, as you can imagine, with more than 300 assets to evaluate. And at the end of the day, we will see what's coming up. But at the moment, it's the same view which we had or since the beginning of the year. But at the end of the day, the evaluators are more positive than the beginning of the year. So for the institutional business, we have evaluations all through the year. And so we see more positive ideas from the evaluators. The number is relatively stable with or without the transactions we had in the last nine months.
Thank you very much.
The next question goes to Thomas Neuhold of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks a lot for the presentation. Thank you for my questions. I basically just have two follow-up questions left. Firstly, on the conditions in the rental market, can you give us some indication how rental rents compare to previously in place rents? Are you able to maintain the rent level or increase it? That's the first question.
Yeah, thank you for the question, Thomas. Yeah, I think you can best prove this by the like-for-like rental income, as said. At the end of the day, in the institutional business, we have around about 2.3%. What does this mean?
That means that the indexation stays also if we do renews or new lettings. And as said, in the Commercial portfolio, we are slightly down by 0.4%. Sorry, difficult to say. But that is mainly driven by two rental contracts in our retail asset class, which means that we have one insolvency in one of our assets. And this insolvency has brought us to rent of zero within three months. But we have a new contract here, which we have signed. We have reported this. So this will come up, and this was a special effect, so to say. So at the end of the day, we see that the like-for-like is stable or going up. And we also can roll the indexation done in the past forward.
Yeah, thank you. And the second question is on the outlook for the Investor Market.
I know it's a quite difficult question, but I was wondering what your views are, how the Investor Market could develop next year, and if you also have an opinion how prices could develop next year if there are no major changes in the economic environment or the interest rate environment?
Yeah, I think after yesterday, this is a good question to answer today. But in general speaking, there is much more interest in real estate than a half year ago. So I think the investors are coming back also in real estate investments. They are very selective. And as you can imagine, most of them are searching for the chance, so to say, ideally with 15%-20% yield. I think this is not the opportunities which are on the market.
If you look on single transactions, which are of which the market spoke, you see that at the beginning, the yields are very high. Then during the discussions and during the transaction process, there are another investors which are coming and paying more. We had two or three ideas for buying assets. At the end of the day, the prices were relatively high, and the yields were relatively slow so that we said we cannot do this. This was for the IBU business. We said, "Do not want this." What would I like to say? I think the transaction markets are coming back, and the prices will not go down as much as they went in the past.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
The next question is from Manuel Martin from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Hello, Sonja. Thank you for taking my questions. Three questions from my side. One is a follow-up question on the Investor Market and transactions. Because as you mentioned, you cut your acquisition guidance to zero. If I remember correctly, before it was something like EUR 150 million-EUR 300 million acquisitions for the institutional business, which relates somehow then to the Investor Market. Anything special there, or can you give us some flavor there why you cut the guidance there?
Yeah, good morning. So as said, Manuel, we are very selective with our ideas and with acquisitions. And so also the investors are. And at the end of the day, it's also a time frame point. Yeah. So even if we are in discussions with investors on the one hand and with sellers on the other hand, but it takes a lot of time to get such transactions done. Yeah.
We do not want to buy it on our own balance sheet so that we have a so-called seed portfolio and bring it then to the investors because of our liquidity. We want not to use our own liquidity to do such transactions on our balance sheet to give it then to investors. And therefore, we need on the one hand the investor and on the other hand the asset to bring this together on the same time frame. And that's very difficult at the moment. As said, the processes for transaction are very special. Yeah. So at the end of the day, you are discussing two to three months. Yeah.
And then like [Foreign language] , as we say in Germany, another investor comes and say, "Oh, I pay back a little bit more." And then the transaction is done after you have discussed the three months. So it's a very special situation in the market, I think. And therefore, you have to see what's going on. But it takes much more time than in the past. And time-wise, I do not think that we will do an acquisition over the next two months. Yeah. That's not possible, I think.
Okay. That's clear. Then my second of the three questions would be regarding Volkswagen. We all know that they are in trouble, and they are thinking about closing factories, production sites. If I remember well, Volkswagen is one of your major tenants. Maybe you have some comments on that, how this could influence Branicks's rental income, for example.
Yeah. I know what you mean, but that's only Volkswagen as a concern, so to say. It's a daughter company of Volkswagen, which uses the spaces. And this is not production, but it's so-called logistics, so to say. And they even need more space at the moment than lower space. So this is not influenced on the discussions they are doing at the moment. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Last question. It's a bit of technical accounting. I don't know whether you have the figures right now, but it's on the FFO table. There are some other adjustments in nine months and Q3, which are relatively notable. They calculated 12 million other adjustments in Q3, which is a lot if we compare that with 21 million FFO before non-controlling interest. Maybe you have some details. What's in these other adjustments, please?
Hello. This relates mainly to our financial liabilities and the redemption of those because there are certain recognitions we need to take in our interest rates. And whenever we pay back, then they are recognized faster than we expected them. And therefore, we adjust them for FFO. So it's mainly related to our effective interest rate adjustments.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And the next question goes to Philipp Kaiser of Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Hello everyone. Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick follow-up on this other adjustments. Could you indicate what you expect for the last quarter of the year? Could you give us a broad guidance on, are there additional other adjustments we should take into account by calculating FFO for the last quarter? It would be very helpf ul.
So good morning, Philipp. So thank you for the question. We are looking it up at the moment. So one moment. Thanks, Phil. Do we have another question which I can answer in the meantime?
No, all the other ones were asked already. So this was the only one left on my side. So if there's just kind of also just.
Oh, we have it now. It's around EUR 8 million.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot. Very helpful. It would be all for my side. Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much.
And the next question is from Ingo Heldt from MMI. Please go ahea d.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I have two questions. So shareholders of your subsidiary VIB have raised issues that gives me this reason for a special audit on the last general meeting, and those shareholders will pursue a court proceeding to appoint the special auditor. Has the board evaluated the risk of a court appointment of a special auditor at the level of VIB?
So good morning, Ingo. So as you said, you are in the Branicks Q3 call, not in the VIB Group Q3 call. And we don't have a detailed look on this court thing, so to say.
Okay. As your mother company, as your group, just to let you know, shareholders at VIB Vermögen are in the final stages of drafting a complaint to achieve a court decision to appoint a special auditor at VIB Vermögen. Second question. In the general meeting, you said that your revised strategy or that revised strategy of VIB also includes, quote, [Foreign language]. Valuable office real estate means modern buildings which fit in the megatrend New Work.
Could you please explain a little bit more detail what this New Work is, especially when it comes down to ESG standards and the vintage of those buildi ngs?
I think you can define office buildings in certain ways. One of it is, or I think the most important one is what rents are coming out of it, what cash flow is coming out of it, how is the valuation, and how is the rental situation there. On the other hand, we have some newer things, as you said, New Work on the one hand, ESG on the other hand. Yeah. At the end of the day, what chances do the buildings have for the future? That is how we define good office buildings.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we didn't receive any further questions, if you want to state another question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. And the next question is from Michele Fiumara from Helikon. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello. Good morning. I have a question on slide 21 of your Q3 report where you show that for the nine months of 2024, you have achieved EUR 269 million of disposals. And in the same period, you have also accounted for EUR 131 million of impairments related to these disposals. That would mathematically imply that you have taken 35% impairments on the disposals. So in answering a previous question, you mentioned a discount on book value of around 20% on the disposals. So could you reconcile the 20% versus this impairment on disposal ratio of 35%? This is my first question. My second question is on CapEx.
The only place in the various documents where I can see what kind of maintenance CapEx you spend on the portfolio is in the cash flow statement that you show in the quarterly documents. And here, it says that capital expenditure on investment properties for nine months of 2024 was around EUR 20 million. So I would like to understand if this is higher, lower, and what kind of recurring CapEx is needed to maintain the current portfolio. Thank you.
So good morning. Yeah. The first question is a technical answer, so to say. So if we are in a transaction process and we got the idea to sell something, yeah, and are near to closing and have another price than we have in our book, so to say, we have to impair this. Yeah. And therefore, you see the depreciation then in the profit and loss.
This does not, or this is not the number which belongs to the closed sales number. Yeah. Because if we have different quarters where we see that the sales price would be less than our value, then we have to impair this and depreciate this. It means that if we sell it in the next quarter, we sell it to the depreciated amount then. But the closing is then in one or two quarters later. So if you look on the disposals and the impairments, the two numbers are not combinable, so to say, comparable.
O kay.
The second answer, I hand over to Dirk.
Yeah. I'll take that one. The number in the cash flow statement, that's the cash outflow that relates to what is capitalized. So that is CapEx capitalized. And another amount on kind of maintenance CapEx, as you described it, that's in our number, the other property-related expenses where we have these CapEx, maintenance CapEx recognized that are not capitalized. So overall, it's more or less. Hold on a second. It's another EUR 8 million in the P&L that relates to maintenance CapEx. So overall, we have roundabout EUR 29 million-EUR 30 million CapEx and the most capitalized CapEx that relates to development.
Thank you. And going forward, you expect what kind of development CapEx is needed to bring your developments into fruition?
Well, I mean, it's hard to say. Our developments, the main development is at the subsidiary VIB, and that's various buildings and properties. And whenever we have marketed those properties, we start the development. So therefore, it's hard to say what we definitely expect, but it's pretty much kind of, I would say, the number as this year.
Okay. Thank you.
And the last question is from René Bourmer from AT. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yes, this is René Bourmer from Allianz Trade. I was just wondering, have you had any feedback from the rating agencies whether they're considering an upgrade in the near future?
Yeah, that's a good question. So we have continuous discussions with them. So they are updated every time. But at the end of the day, I got the impression that they think about an upgrade when we have paid back the promissory notes mid of next year.
Oh, that's still a long time out there. Yeah. Sorry to hear that.
Y eah. We are doing our business and doing the business plan, as said in the speech. And that's what we're offering also to the rating agency. But at the end of the day, they have their terms, so to say.
We have said that we postpone the promissory notes until mid of the year. Because they are postponed and not paid back, so to say, as originally planned, I think that's one of the major points when they are done to think about an upgrade.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. As there are no further questions, I give the floor back to Jasmin Dentz.
Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session. Thank you so much for joining us today. Our next IR highlight will then be the publication of our full year results scheduled for March 12th, 2025. Thanks again. Stay healthy. Let's talk again soon. Bye-bye.