Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Branicks Group AG First Quarter 2025 results. 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.
Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everybody, to our Q1 Results Presentation for 2025. 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 the 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 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 three-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.
Thanks, Jasmin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and also a warm welcome from my side to Branicks Q1 2025 results conference call. I'm joined by my colleagues from the Accounting and Investor Relations Department. As usual, during our calls, I will give you an overview on what has been achieved in the last quarter, and I will present our key numbers as well as our unchanged outlook for 2025 to you. This will be followed by a Q&A session. Dear all, in terms of a rough overview about what we have delivered and achieved during the first quarter 2025, I would like to highlight the topics mentioned on slide number two. First of all, again, we achieved major milestones in terms of our financial consolidation and the reduction of our liability. Although our promissory notes are only due this summer, we already paid back EUR 115 million.
In addition to that, we paid back bank debts in the amount of approximately EUR 4 million and successfully refinanced real estate financings in the amount of approximately EUR 27 million. Our focus still remains on further reducing our liabilities with a continued concentration on our governance as well as on our liquidity situation. With regards to our external disposals, you all know that the first quarter is traditionally a weak one. Nevertheless, we managed to sign one transaction that is expected to be closed during the first half of this year. Branicks is again an active participant in a challenging transaction market, and we stick to our EUR 600 million-EUR 800 million disposal target. Our transaction pipeline is well filled, and our transaction teams are working successfully in realizing the deal. Our commercial portfolio continues to be a sustainable, unpredictable cash flow provider.
Our clear strategic focus on the two asset classes, office and logistics, is once again reflected in the high percentage rate these two asset classes constitute with regards to their market value. Our portfolio continues to generate stable and predictable rent, benefiting from rent indexation. The ongoing portfolio optimization results in a like-for-like rental growth of above 0.1%. At the same time, we managed to increase the average rent from EUR 8.96 per sq m to EUR 10.19 per sq m. In this context, I would also like to mention that our teams continue to successfully negotiate lease agreements, like most recently the extended lease agreement with a leading German software group for the office property in Eschborn until 2035.
Further selected letting successes were the extension of the lease for Verdi Trade Union Training Center in Saalfeld until 2032, as well as the 10-year contract with the organic food company Eschsan in the Greater Bremen area, where the other tenant is Coca-Cola. This shows again that customer proximity and objective high-quality properties, particularly in terms of sustainability criteria, are still in demand even in a challenging market environment and are leading to dynamic business in both the office and logistics asset classes. With EUR 8.4 billion assets under management, the institutional business remains the second strong pillar of our business model, recording a slight like-for-like rental growth during the reporting period compared to prior years. 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.
Last but not least, again, we continue to be cost-sensitive and manage to generate a 12% OPEX reduction compared to last year's Q1. With regards to our financial maturities profile, we continue to pursue our deleveraging path. After already having reduced our financial liabilities in total by EUR 667 million in 2025, we achieved further milestones during the first quarter 2025. One of them, with regards to our promissory notes, has been paid down ahead of plan by a total of EUR 150 million in Q1. Of course, we pay back the outstanding EUR 110 million end of June 2025. During the first quarter 2025, we also achieved to pay back EUR 4 million bank debt and to roll further bank financings of EUR 27 million to 2030 and later. In addition to that, we managed to convert EUR 20 million bank debt maturity from 2025 to 2030 and later.
In view of our EUR 400 million green bond that is due 22nd September 2026, I know that most of you are eager to learn more about our plans. Please be ensured that, of course, we have this maturity in our heads and exploiting different options in this regard. Nevertheless, it is too soon to talk about concrete steps, but let me underline in this context that our focus to deleverage our balance sheet while monitoring our green bond covenant remains one of our highest priorities. With 58.2%, the bond LTV covenant still has enough headroom to the covenant level. It is expected to improve due to disposals and the redemption of the 2025 promissory notes. We are aiming to reduce our LTV further and to achieve an even bigger headroom in the midterm. With 2.1, the ICR covenant has also enough headroom to the 1.8 threshold.
In terms of our average interest rate, it is important for me to underline that over the course of the quarters and due to the redemption of the bridge, as well as due to additional optimizations, we continuously improved this KPI during the recent quarters from 3.36% at the end of March 2024 to 3.1%-3.21% at the end of June 2024 to 2.81% at the end of September 2024 to 2.67% at the end of December 2024 and to 2.46% now. Let's now take a deeper look in the results of our real estate platform shown on slide number four. Our teams once again performed exceptionally well, so the like-for-like rental income rose by 0.5% for the entire portfolio under management and remained strong. The commercial portfolio shows a slight increase of 0.1%. Our institutional business is a slight plus of 0.6%. This was realized primarily through indexation.
In terms of square meters, the letting performance of the Branicks platform declined in Q1 by 28% YoY to 78,900 square meters, mainly due to disposals. In total, assets under management with EUR 11.2 billion were slightly down compared to last year, mostly due to disposals which became effective in the course of the year. The commercial portfolio saw a decrease from EUR 3.7 billion down to EUR 2.8 billion, which was a direct result of the disposal activities YoY. The institutional business was also affected by the termination of a larger property management mandate. As of today, only 3.3% of the total annualized rental income would expire in 2025 if lease contracts are not prolonged. Over 85% of the annualized rental income has a lease length until 2027 and longer. For larger expiries in 2025 and 2026, we already proactively started discussions with the tenants.
On our next slide, let me highlight the development of our main income stream. The net rental income fell to EUR 35 million, primarily because we successfully sold assets last year. Income from associated companies that mainly consisted of deferred income from fund shares decreased to EUR 1.1 million. The real estate asset management fees increased from EUR 9.7 million to EUR 10.8 million, driven by stable asset and property management fees and increasing performance fees. Our income from rent and management fees on the platform, with EUR 42.8 million, was slightly lower YoY, nevertheless still showing a very high degree of recurring income streams. Now let's take a closer look on the development of the FFO YoY that is overall in line with our expectations. The net rental income saw a decrease of EUR 6.5 million due to disposals.
Management fees increased by EUR 1.1 million, driven by increased performance fees, and the share of the profit from associates decreased by EUR 0.5 million. Our OPEX development again had a positive contribution to our FFO, showing results from our performance 2024 program. The increase of our adjusted net interest results amounted to EUR 8.3 million. This is adjusted by non-recurring expenses amounting to EUR 6.6 million, mainly due to refinancing activities for our promissory notes. In total, to sum it up, we see the FFO amounting to EUR 11.4 million after the first three months of the business year, and that is exactly in line with what we expect with regards to our full year guidance range. In view of our expectations for the current business year, we stick to our guidance.
We expect cross-rental income in the range from EUR 125 million-EUR 135 million, real estate management fees between EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million, and an FFO1 after minorities and before taxes of EUR 40 million-EUR 55 million. With regards to acquisitions, we foresee no acquisitions for our on-balance sheet activities and EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million within our EBU segment. Our disposal guidance lies in a range of EUR 600 million-EUR 800 million. There are EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million in our commercial portfolio and EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million in our institutional business. Beyond our guidance for the current year, our midterm ambition remains unchanged. We strive to transform Branicks Group towards a profitable ESG-focused and value-generating asset expert with sustainably strengthened cash flow and financial position. We have a clear midterm ambition to further reduce our debt, what will go along with improving the respecting KPIs.
Having said that, I would like to hand over to the moderator for your question.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star and two. The first question is from Markus Schmitt at ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just two for me. Actually, three, but I think you will not comment on the 2026 bond refinance, so I'll skip that. In terms of the potential asset sale you mentioned, can you indicate maybe what size that is and what the potential discount to book value might be? And secondly, the vacancy is increasing for some time. Is that rather driven by the asset sales, or is it rather organically?
I mean, it would be helpful to understand the split here. Thank you very much.
Good morning. Thanks for the question. At first, yeah, we will only answer the two questions. Second, please understand that I cannot talk about ongoing deals, so I think that makes no sense. We are still in discussions. We have a good, yeah, we are in good discussions for all what we need, so to say. We have to wait until the signings are finished, and until that, I cannot comment on that. The second question was the vacancy rate, and I have understood this right. There, let me highlight some points. At first, the vacancy rate increased by three major, yeah, lettings, so to say. One is Halle. You know about that. This is the big retail center in Halle.
The second one is the Zircon Tower in Wiesbaden, and the third one is the business park in Regensburg. We have already let the Halle building, so we are working on the refurbishment there, and they will come in end of the year, beginning of 2026. This is already let. The Zircon Tower, we have done the letting with a big pharmacy company, more than the former tenant had. We had a little bit more of the square meters. This is also done. They will go in, I think, yeah, in the third quarter, third or fourth quarter. We are in the Vermarktum, in the letting. Marketing. Marketing and letting phase for the business park in Regensburg, so we have not already a letting there. This is a going-on vacancy rate for the next month.
A split from sold assets to the, yeah, existing vacancy rate. Let me look it up for a moment, please. It is around 25% from selling and 75% from the existing portfolio.
Okay. Given that you expect some positive things to happen there, and you just mentioned the letting initiatives, where do you see prospectively the vacancy rate over the next, let's say, 6-12 or 18 months?
It will take us a little time. As we said in the last call, if we take Halle, for example, into account, it is 1 percentage point, 100 basis points, so to say, from 8.7. 7.3, yeah, basis points. The other things, I think, we are stable, I think, around 7%. 7% prospectively.
Okay. I understand. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Thomas Neuhold, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot for the presentation. Thank you for my questions. I have a couple of questions. Maybe we take them one by one. Firstly, on your cost-cutting progress, you perform quite well here. I was wondering if you can quantify the further potential you see here in bringing down operational costs further. That's the first question.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for the question. So we have called it performance 2024, but it is still ongoing in 2025, and we expect it from about 5%.
Thank you. The next question is more of a top-down question. You finally have now a new government in place.
I was wondering if you can share a little bit of your feedback and also the feedback of your clients, what they think about the planned macroeconomic policies and also the policies f or the property space in Germany and what impact that could have on your business.
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think it will, yeah, this is only my personal idea, so to say, but I think it will have a positive effect, yeah, especially for the industries because it's expected that there is a little bit more industry experience and a little bit more understanding what the industry needs, yeah. Nevertheless, it's not only Germany here. It's a big context in the European strategies and also the world strategies. I think on a short-term basis, I do not see any extremely changes, neither to the positive nor to the negative order, so to say.
Thank you. My last question is on your guidance. It is currently relatively broad. It is EUR 42 million-EUR 55 million of FFO, and you achieved EUR 11.4 million in the first quarter. You plan more disposals. I mean, is it fair to assume that achieving that might be rather difficult, and you might end up probably at the lower end if you are successful with your disposals?
No, we thought a lot about the guidance for the FFO for this year, and we stood with the guidance we have done last year. At the end of the day, you see that we have EUR 11.4 million in the first quarter, so we had a good quarter. We could arrange the things we expected to be.
The management fees, as you see, increase, and it is done by a very detailed look on the institutional business and understanding what the asset and the institutional business needs. Therefore, we can create performance fees on lettings and refurbishments and so on, and we expect they have to come more until the end of the year. You can see this in our guidance for the management fees. Nevertheless, it is expected that these actions have to be finalized and closed so that we get the money out of it. This is the most interesting part where we do not really know when the money is paid then, yeah. Therefore, we stay for the moment with a broad range for the FFO and also for the management fees, but we expect not to be the FFO lower than our range. It is the other way around.
As you see what we have got in the last year as a total, and compared to Q1, we are better than last year's Q1. We are in the right direction, but we will think about the guidance at the end of June for our next quarter call, and then we might get a smaller range than here when we see what the first half year has brought.
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Johann Schmidt Metzler. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning. I have two questions, please. Firstly, your cash position of EUR 105 million at the end of March, how much of that is restricted? Second question on your cash flow statement. Does CapEx in Q1 relate to ongoing development projects, and how much CapEx do you expect in financial year 2025?
Do you have to fund that by unrestricted cash at balance sheet or maybe by credit lines arranged in the past? These are my questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much for these questions. The first one is easy. It is EUR 66 million. The restricted, the second and third questions are a little bit more complicated. To answer the third one, we have to split the CapEx into two parts, I would like to say. The first one is the constructions we do, especially on the level of VIP. Therefore, we build new assets, so to say, new logistics and light industrial assets, and they are all arranged with a credit, with a liability, but it is not 100%, but around about 70-75% cost refinancing. The other one, the other big part, is the normal CapEx, so to say.
What is the normal, yeah, the normal work on the existing asset and the commercial portfolio? These are normally not financed by credit lines, so we have to use our normal cash. At the end of the day, with a shrinking portfolio, the CapEx also shrinks, and the total number for this year, I have to look it up one moment. We expect around EUR 10 million for the portfolio for the rest of the year.
Sorry, a follow-up question, if I may. On VIP level, could you also give a CapEx figure expected for the full year?
Excuse me, I have a misunderstanding maybe. The EUR 10 million includes the total company, so the VIP and the Branicks portfolio.
What is the normal, yeah, the normal work on the existing asset and the commercial portfolio? These are normally not financed by credit lines, so we have to use our normal cash. At the end of the day, with a shrinking portfolio, the CapEx also shrinks, and the total number for this year, I have to look it up one moment. We expect around EUR 10 million for the portfolio for the rest of the year.
Sorry, a follow-up question, if I may. On VIP level, could you also give a CapEx figure expected for the full year?
Excuse me, I have a misunderstanding maybe. The EUR 10 million includes the total company, so the VIP and the Branicks portfolio.
Yeah, but sorry, this is what you need to finance by cash at balance sheet because if I'm right, you had around EUR 12 million of CapEx in Q1, if I got that correctly from the cash flow statement.
Yeah, but this includes project developments.
Yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll follow up on that offline. Thank you very much.
Yep. Please call us so we can discuss this separately. Thanks.
The next question is from Stefan Scharff, SRC Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning to all. My first question is, you mentioned that you are in a strong position and ready for a market upswing.
Can you please say here a bit more where you see the market at present with all the economic difficulties and political turmoil and what you expect here for the coming months in terms of transaction activity, in particular, let's say, for the office market?
Y eah, good morning. As I said to the former colleague, we expect for the near term no intensive changes in the letting market and in the transaction market from the political decisions made, so to say. I think, as said, it might be a little bit better for the industries because we have a government who has a lot of experience with industry and so on, but we see also the European and world markets, and therefore, it is not so easy to say what's going on. What we see at the moment, there is no shift in letting or something like this.
What we see also is that the transaction markets are there where they are. We see foreign investors coming to Germany. They find Germany more and more interesting from the logistics side as well as the office side. Also for office, we see some family offices coming back, not the big institutional investors. What is happening there is that, as we say, there is a lot of value-add and core plus money, but not core, and they want to find the right assets and the right product, so to say. There is not such a lot of product, so this will, yeah, will come to an, yeah, how do I say this in English? They have to near it up, so to say, yeah.
At the end of the day, office is interesting for family offices, for money, which is counting on a long-term perspective, and for the communities by itself because they, as you have also seen from other competitors, sometimes buy old household buildings and so on to bring the towns in a good shape. There are a lot of different things, and what is our advantage is that we know a lot of the players in the transaction market, and we know them, so we are in discussions with a lot of them and know also the right ones. To sum it up, the office market is coming back on a lower level. The logistic market is to differentiate between some industries.
For example, for automotive, they look in a very detailed manner what automotive, yeah, companies are in if you want to sell a building, and the transaction market is challenged by very professional investors.
Okay. Other question is about your like-for-like rental income. It was up 0.5% in the first quarter. That is remarkable for the economic situation, but it is a bit below the hike in like-for-like from the last quarters. What do you expect for your like-for-like rental income for the full year? What is your opinion about your lease expiry profile? About 30% of your leases will expire the next three years, and are you already in negotiations with your tenants to find new goods and long-term contracts with good square meter prices here or even higher square meter prices than with the old contracts?
A long question. I start with the like-for-like.
As mentioned, the most or the biggest results are coming from indexations. As you know, the inflation rates are going down or went down over the last quarters, and this is the result we see here. We think it will be stable on this level, but we do not expect an increase here over the next quarters. Yeah, this would be unreliable, so to say. I have to remember what the next question was. The lease expiry is the next years. Yeah. We have some bigger things, so we are still in discussion here because the one idea is to go with the existing tenant, but the other ones and the most interesting ones are to refurbish the assets, yeah, because as I said, there is a lot of interest in value-add and so on.
Therefore, we are thinking about umnutzung or refurbishment or something like this where it is possible, and therefore, we do the one discussions with existing tenants or new tenants in the existing areas and floors. On the other hand, we are thinking about umnutzung and refurbishment. We are working on this, and as you know, this is our key competence to do such things, and I'm very confident that we manage this successfully.
Okay. I see. One last question about your debt side. You managed some good progress by the repayment of the promissory notes, and you also stated some favorable conditions for new loans and new debt. Can you give us a bit more details here on those new conditions and what this means for your equity stake in this new contract and what you expect the refinancing market to develop?
Yeah. The bank debts, we refinanced all of them and rolled it further, so to say. The interest rates, if you talk about them, are around about 3.6-3.9%. Yes, we had to give a little bit equity to this. It's around about 7%-10% in addition, so to say. It's on a very low level.
Okay. Okay. What's your feeling about the banking, the policy of the banks? How do they act? Are they more restrictive in a more difficult economic situation, or is there not too much difference compared to the last one or two years?
Yeah. No, they are looking very detailed on the assets and especially on the plans for the next year, so on the maturities, so to say, what is happening with the asset over the lifetime of the maturity of the liability.
As you know, we have for each of the assets a very deep calculation, a business plan, and so therefore, we discussed this with them. They have a good understanding of the assets on the one hand. On the other hand, yeah, they have to see that they are in a position where they can argue that they finance real estate, but at the end of the day, we have always more than one bank who will refinance or will finance the assets, so we can talk with them and find the best one for us. They are very supportive. I do not see a change over the last month. As said, they have a deep knowledge of the assets and what we are doing here, so we discussed this with them.
At the end of the day, we deliver, as you can see, with the Halle letting contract. As you can imagine, this was part of the refinancing, and therefore, they do this then.
I see. I see. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Philipp Kaiser, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple from my side, starting with the real estate management fee. Just for my understanding, the EUR 1.1 million additionally achieved to the EUR 9.7 million, is this coming from transaction fees or from the newly charged service fees you announced in the full-year call?
Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for the question. No, we have no transactions at the moment in the institutional business because most investors, we have a lot of them, over 170, as you know, in our more than 30 vehicles.
They want to stay with the vehicles and with the assets because they have still attractive yield profiles. There are no transactions. We have sold in the last month one small logistics asset in Muchheim. It was very small. To answer your question, the fees are coming from the services, as you mentioned, we are doing in the existing portfolio. The most interesting things are the leasing fees when we do big letting, so to say. The other one is if we do refurbishment in a smaller or bigger way, and therefore we get the fees, and this is the major part of the additional EUR 1.1 million. The recurring fees are still stable, as you said. We have not changed the vehicles and not the investors, so the recurring fees are stable.
The other ones are performance fees from our new and good existing services.
Perfect. Thanks for the clarification. Is the 1.1 still roughly the ballpark we could expect for the coming quarters or any, yeah, volatility in this service fee expected?
Yeah. The service fees are more or less performance fees, so they are not coming on a month-by-month basis, but they are coming if we have done the, yeah, the markdown and the work, or yeah, you know what I mean, yeah. This might change a little bit from one to the other quarter, but at the end of the day, as a run rate, you can expect it as a run rate, but we expect a little bit more to come because we have some bigger things to do here where we get naturally more out of it.
Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Makes fully sense.
Thanks for the clarification. Then a follow-up on your OPEX reduction. You achieved a 12% reduction on a YoY basis. As far as I remember correctly, the admin expenses in Q1 last year were impacted by a one-off. If you would adjust for that one-off, what would be the reduction then compared to the first quarter this year?
No, in Q1 2025, we had not had a one-off, so.
I mean, in Q1 2024.
Yeah. Exactly. In 2024, we had no one-offs because the one-offs, generally speaking, are mostly coming from our refinancings, especially bridge and promissory notes. The decision and the, yeah, the clarification on this was made end of March, so we had not had a one-off in the first quarter 2024.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks for that. Perfect. The last one is with regards to your LTV levels. You sold a bunch of assets last year.
You already repaid a lot of debt, but your LTV remains on a very high level. When can we expect that the LTV or all your measures you already did and you will do in the next couple of months will also be reflected in lower LTV levels?
Yeah. The lower LTV levels are coming from, as it is said, from value and loan. The existing LTV level on Q1 is mainly driven because we had a depreciation of one asset we had sold in Q1. We have not sold it, but as you know, if we sign the contract, we have to build up the selling price into our books, and therefore the LTV only that we would or has reduced, but not the L because the L will reduce when we do the closing and the liability is paid back.
We have this, yeah, this confusion, so to say, a little bit during the quarter. At the end of the day, we will see this if we have done all our transactions, and this will count into the measure of our KPIs. As said, I think expect it to be end of the year, beginning of 2026, round about this year.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks for the information. Very helpful. That was all from my side. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
You too.
The next question is from Manuel Martin. ODDO BHF, please go ahead.
Thank you. Hello, Sonja. Two questions from my side, please. One is because I had some acoustical problems on the like-for-like rental growth in the commercial portfolio.
I understood that one driver of the 0.1% growth was indexation, but I had problems to understand the second part, and it must have been something offsetting because the level is quite substitute with just one 0.1% growth.
Yeah. What I said is that we do not expect a big change here during the year because, as you know, the inflation rates go down or went down over the last quarters and months, and we do not expect them to go up. Therefore, the indexation is a direct output of this, and therefore we think this number will be stable during the year, and we do not expect an increase here in the indexation.
Okay. Okay. Thanks. My second question is about the market. What is your impression when it comes to prices in the transaction market regarding office and also logistics?
Because I could imagine that there are some differences. And it's to get a bit the feeling, what do you think about property valuations during 2025? Because you depreciated one asset as far as I can understand, so maybe there's still some devaluation potential in the portfolio.
Yeah. I think we have to differentiate between evaluation and selling prices. In the evaluation, I think the peak is done, so to say. If you look at what our competitors did and what we did, at the end of the day, I think during the last two to three years, there was a special range, some did it in one year, some over the years, but I think we have had a peak. To say it clearly, I do not expect a depreciation for the existing portfolio end of the year.
It is a different thing if you look on the selling prices, so to say. We do not sell the best assets, so to say. We sell assets where we have a look on it and say, "Okay, why should we sell it, and to whom can we sell it?" To say it clearly, the selling prices are lower than the evaluation, yeah. I cannot say exactly how much, but at the end of the day, when we sell, for example, yeah, a prim as we have done, yeah, we have to work on prim; we have to put money in, and this is part of the evaluation. When we say we sell it now and do not put money in and do the refurbishment, it is on a lower level, naturally, yeah.
Therefore, I cannot speak about the selling prices at the moment, but they would be lower than the evaluation. I think that's for sure. On the other hand, I don't expect a decrease in the evaluation for the existing portfolio until end of the year, yeah, around about zero, a little bit, but I cannot say exactly yet, but don't expect a big number, yeah. The market for office, as said, it is coming back, yeah, for special investors, so to say, especially long-term investors, family offices, and so on, and foreign investors. They are looking very deeply where the asset is and so on, and they want to invest in value-add or core plus, yeah. That's the part here. Logistics, they also look very deeply into what the tenants are, what the asset itself is.
This different views you have to manage, so to say. It is not possible to sell everything, but it is possible to sell office and logistics and light industrial on a mid level, I would say, yeah. I think we have also seen a peak in logistics. The price will not go up anymore, yeah, because of all these trade discussions and so on. When they are ended, it might be another picture, but at the moment, I think we have the prices on a stable level now.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Adam Megyeri, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to pick up on a previous question first. You mentioned EUR 66 million of restricted cash.
Could you give any more details as to what really that restriction is for and what that cash will ultimately be used for, whether it's going to be unlocked at some point?
Yeah. Good morning. It's mostly coming from project development. And yeah, when they are free, we can use it as free liquidity for what we want, so to say. Understood. So it doesn't include any sort of tenant deposits or something. It's purely for development. Yeah.
Great. That's helpful. I also wanted to just check on the disposal that you agreed in March, conscious it's not the largest, but if you could share any details, that would be helpful as to what the asset was that was sold, and maybe if you can give any indication as to the sales price compared to the book value.
Unfortunately, I cannot talk about it because we have an agreement with the seller that we only talk about this when the closing has been finished.
Okay. Fine. Last point from my side, I just wanted to check whether any decision has been made in relation to the intercompany loan that comes to you in the next couple of months. Has that been extended, or are you still in discussion? How do you intend to tackle that?
We are in discussions now.
Generally speaking, on your disposal plan, I mean, conscious a lot of the assets that are being marketed are going to be sitting in the VIB pocket, right, logistics assets, etc., that I think have been in the news of being marketed.
Do you see any risk of getting that cash from VIB up to the Branicks level, given that's where the obligations fall due, or do you feel you have adequate avenues in place to make sure that that cash is transferred to where it is needed within the group?
No, we have our disposal plan. It's some VIB assets, yeah, but also some from the Branicks portfolio. At the end of the day, VIB decides what they want to sell and what they want to buy, and therefore we are in discussions with them what they want to buy from the old, as I said this way, old Branicks portfolio. We are on the selling side for the old Branicks portfolio, and this will be a major part of the sellings coming up over the next month.
Makes sense. Thank you very much. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
The next question is from Joseph Pschorn, XAIA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You stated that the annualized rental income is at around EUR 147 million. Do you factor in a certain rent number for the vacant properties, or does this annualized rental income only include the rented properties?
We understand you strongly, but if I understood it right, I think you said where the annualized rent is only from the rented ones or all of the assets?
Yes. You stated the annualized rental income is EUR 147 million, right? But it is only the properties which are rented out, right? You do not factor in any. Okay. That is interesting.
No, no, no, no. Yes. It is only the. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
If you calculate the market value of the portfolio, you do include the vacant properties, right?
Yes. Okay.
If you then calculate the gross rental yield, you then include the vacant properties into the denominator, right?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Okay. The gross rental yield basically is somewhat depressed to where it could be.
Yes, it is. Okay.
Understood. Lastly, because you did buy any bonds back in the last quarter, but you did not buy any more this quarter.
No. No.
Is there an intention from your side to continue doing any more buybacks?
We are looking on all options, as you said, politically correct, so to say, but more I cannot say at the moment to this. T
here is at the moment no intention to capture any more discounts by buying big bonds.
As said, we are looking on all options as today. I do not have the intention.
Perfect. That is it from my side. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Tigran Shakhkian, HSBC. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you very much for the presentation, and actually you answered most of my questions. I will just ask the remaining ones. Just coming back to the topic of disposals, could you please provide more color on the quality of the sold and remaining assets in terms of revenues and profits that they generate, in terms of vacancy rates, in terms of rent? That is the first question.
You mean the sold ones in the past, or what do you mean?
Yeah, yeah. What has been sold already and what is still in the company on the books.
Yeah. In this year, we had only sold one, as I said, or I cannot really understand at the moment.
Basically, I am asking are you selling.
Yeah. From the rent, so to say, from the TRI, we have EUR 8.2 million less than in the last year from the sales of 2024.
Okay. Just to compare the quality, are you selling more quality assets or just what you are selling, what you are keeping in terms of the revenue?
It's a mix, yeah, so to say. We have sold assets which is better than another one, but at the end of the day, it's a mix, yeah. It was a lot of assets, so therefore it's naturally a mix of all of them from the asset class, from vacancy rates, and from the rents.
Okay. I see that the plan is to sell EUR 600 million-EUR 800 million this year, and you are very much on track on it. Are you planning to continue disposals after 2025?
No. I think, as said to the former speaker, we are always discussing options, yeah, what we can do and what we are doing at the end of the day. As you can imagine, at one point in time, we think about other options than selling assets, yeah. For this year, we have the concrete plan what we are doing, and this is put in our guidance, and we are in a good way or on a good way to do this. Yeah, most of them over the next month. When we have paid back the liabilities, we are planning what we do next, and we are still in discussions about these things, but not so concrete that I can talk about this today.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we cannot talk about concrete strategy, etc., but could you please elaborate a bit more on your top options that you are considering? Obviously, I'm not asking about your exact strategy, but what are your top options and tools to deal with the upcoming maturities?
Yeah. The natural one, yeah. Selling, refinancing, yeah, with different partners in a different method, so to say. There are some discussions which would be more likely than others, but at the end of the day, it's the total program, yeah, you would do on the same level, yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's it from me.
Thank you.
The next question is from Antonio Casari, Northlight. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking the question. Trying to get the number or a bit more clarity on the disposal.
You mentioned that the change in asset held for sale is due to one property which purchase agreement was notarized in March and expected to close in the second quarter. If I look at the increase in non-current asset that's for sale, it's EUR 36.6 million. Is that a good proxy?
Yes. That's right.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The last question is from Nick Linnane, Sefton Place. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is, where do you have or what prospects do you have for recovering any money from the related party loans of EUR 110 million, and what sort of timeframe would you put on that? Secondly, what's the prospect and timing for recovering cash from the roughly EUR 55-60 million investment in DIC Opportunistic Fund? What's the timeframe for realizing money from that fund?
Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for the question. I think it will be, it's depending on development and finishing of projects, so to say, most of it. At the end of the day, we expect it in 2026.
For all of the individual things, they're all expected to be in 2026?
Yes.
First half, second half, any more color on that, and what exactly needs to happen?
Second half or end of 2026.
Okay. Just sort of follow up on one of the previous questions. Assuming that you sell some assets from VIB, what do you see as the means by which you can bring that cash from VIB level to the Branicks parent company level? Do you think that can be done by an increase in the intercompany loan, or that would require VIB to purchase more assets from Branicks?
No. Cash from VIB to Branicks is only coming via when VIB decides to buy assets from Branicks.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Gentlemen, that was the last question after the conference. Back to the management for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. This concludes our call and our Q&A session. Thank you so much for joining us today. Our next IR highlight will be the publication of our sustainability report on May 14th. Please stay healthy, and let's talk again soon. Thank you.
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