Ladies and gentlemen, good morning everybody, and welcome to our results presentation for the first half of 2025. With me here is DEMIRE's CFO, Tim Brückner, and our CIO, Ralf Bongers, and Julius Zinnauer, our Head of Investor Relations. I'm sure many of you have already had the chance to review our results, results which I would again characterize as solid. In fact, based on our performance to date and current outlook, we see potential to raise our guidance for 2025. Despite a still challenging economic environment and difficult real estate markets, we successfully completed several property disposals. The proceeds will be used to further reduce our debt and our loan-to-value ratio. At the same time, we are seeing clear operational progress with strong growth in our letting performance.
After covering some of the highlights, let's turn to the executive summary slide and I'll briefly walk you through our key metrics that developed in this first half year. All four of our strategic pillars contributed to a solid first half of 2025. Among the key highlights are the continued strong letting performance and the meaningful progress we've made in our asset disposal program. The asset management contributed with an annualized contractual rent of €54.5 million, sorry. While this is lower compared to the end of last year 2025, the contractual rent grew compared to the end of the first quarter. This is due to the successful lettings, for instance, in Rostock Shopping Center. With more than 40,500 sq m , we leased 2/3 more space compared to the previous year, despite the challenging market environment. This was driven by our enhanced asset management setup.
Deutsche Telekom partially left spaces in our asset in Bonn, which countered our letting achievements in Rostock and Langenfeld. The EPRA vacancy rate increased to 17.3%. On a positive note, the new letting improved to a WALT of 4.8 years. We continue to take an opportunistic approach to transactions with a focus on smaller non-strategic assets and mature properties. The executed disposal will deliver proceeds of approximately €40 million. This is only partly shown in the H1 figures, and some closings are pending. The financials show a rental income of €27.8 million for the first half year of 2025. This is approximately 22% lower compared to the previous period and due to the disposals mainly Langenfeld, Leipzig, and the LIMES assets. The smaller portfolio also affects the funds from operations or the FFO1. They reach €5.0 million for the first half of 2025.
The net LTV was 42.4%, which is only slightly higher compared to the year-end 2024. With regard to our proceeds, we successfully extended two maturing mortgage loans in the first half of 2025 and continue to work on refinancing the remaining upcoming maturities this year. In June, we published our annual sustainability report highlighting the 40% reduction of our company-owned carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, we expanded our ESG data collection and made further progress on rolling out smart metering across the portfolio. Given the earnings performance for the first half year and our current outlook for the remainder of 2025, we see room to revise our full-year guidance upwards. We see a rental income of €52 million- €64 million for the full year of 2025 and an FFO1 of €5 million- €7 million. Ralf, I would like to ask you now to give us some insights on the portfolio.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, everybody. I would like to explain a bit the portfolio highlights and comment a bit on this. The annualized contractual rent decreased slightly from €56.4 million down to €54.5 million. The reduction is mainly due to the disposal of two smaller assets and an increased vacancy in one of our larger assets. As already mentioned by Frank, the letting performance increased significantly from 25,000 sq m in the first half of the year 2024 up to more than 50,000 sq m in this year. The largest drivers are prolongations with our tenants Deutsche Telekom and our asset in Kempten. Here we're talking about more than 9,000 sq m. Another significant prolongation is a prolongation of more than 10,000 sq m with the DIY markets. Yes, coming to the EPRA vacancy, the EPRA vacancy increased a bit.
That is mainly driven by the leaving by our tenant Deutsche Telekom. They are leaving part of their rental space in our asset in Bonn. This effect was mitigated by our significant letting achievements in our assets in Rostock and Langenfeld. The WALTs increased slightly from 4.6- 4.8 years. This is mainly due to the prolongation with Deutsche Telekom in our asset in Bonn and letting achievements in our largest asset in Rostock. Yes, now I would like to hand over to Tim Brückner, our CFO.
Good morning, everyone. Some quick insights on the P&L and the balance sheet. As Frank and Ralf already mentioned, rental income is down driven by disposals, mainly with the comparison period looked back in Leipzig and the deconsolidation of the LIMES portfolio mid-last year. We are talking about €28 million in rental income and an NOI of €18.6 million, which is an NOI margin of roughly 67%, which is a little bit higher than last year. We hope to stabilize and increase that going forward. We have some losses from fair value adjustments in properties. Obviously, it's not the same properties as last year. We were looking here at ongoing disposal processes and some special situations and have taken write-offs of roughly €28 million. We have also impaired some financial assets. Those are at number five in connection with depreciations of intercompany loans granted to the LIMES portfolio.
Given the expected outcome of the property disposals from the LIMES portfolio, we had to take some write-offs for our intercompany loans into the structure here. We show slightly decreasing D&A expenses, and we will obviously try hard to decrease our D&A going forward, which has to be in line with the lower rental income. As you can imagine, with our corporate structure, it's not that easy, but we will try hard. Finance expenses, you see a big shift versus H1 2024. Quite easy to explain. You all know that we have taken on a roughly €100 million shareholder loan from our main shareholder, Apollo, last year, and that interest on this €100 million increases our financial expenses significantly. When we run further down through the P&L, you see that our FFO1, as previously defined, is negative.
After the adjustment on the shareholder loan interest, it is the before-mentioned + €5 million. Frank already commented on an increased guidance. On page 11, you see our shortened balance sheet. What you see in investment properties and non-current assets held for sale is that we make some further progress on property disposals. As Frank said, we have signed some deals already, and Ralf is obviously working hard with his team to conduct further sales such that we can pay down the envisaged €50 million to avoid any further penalty interest on our bond. Given the negative result in the period, number two, you see that our reserves are declining. We hope to stabilize that, obviously, let's see where we end up at the end of the year.
What has already been mentioned as well is that our third-term financial and these liabilities are partially already refinanced and on the remainder of one loan. We are working hard, and we are quite confident that we sign a new loan agreement here in Q3 this year. Does this, Frank, reflect to you or no? Let's have another look at net LTV. Net LTV, given the revaluations, is slightly up to 42.4%. We expect that, given the upcoming disposals in Q3 and Q4, to decrease to about 40% by year-end. The average cost of debt is about stable. That obviously excludes the shareholder loan. You can imagine when we refinance existing loans that are from the pre-increase period time that our average cost of debt will increase slightly further in the upcoming months. Now, Frank, back to the guidance.
Thanks, Tim. All in all, as said, we delivered solid results for the first half of 2025, and we were prepared for the developments ahead in the remainder of the year. In the view of the earnings performance in the first half year and the current outlook for the remainder of the year, we see room to raise our guidance for the full year 2025. We are confident to achieve now a rental income guidance of €52 million- €54 million and generate FFO1 of €5 million- €7 million. Before we move on to the Q&A session, I'd like to reiterate our priorities in DEMIRE going forward. We remain firmly focused on strengthening our financial position with debt reduction and financial optimization as clear priorities. As part of this strategy, we will continue to pursue asset sales where they are economically justified.
At the same time, we are placing strong emphasis on our operational excellence to unlock the full value of our portfolio. Thanks for listening, and we are now happy to answer your questions.
The first question is from Philipp Sennewald of NuWays AG. Phillip, over to you.
Thank you very much. Thank you guys for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. I would say let's do them one by one. First, on the new guidance, this really implies little to no FFO in the second half of the year. Can you ground this a bit?
Yeah, Philip. Given that we are selling further properties, we face increasing costs on the portfolio management, and we have a bit of a backlog in maintenance expenses in H1, where we think that those will come through in H2. We would expect that, as you say, that there's little to no FFO contribution in the last six months of the year.
All right. Thank you. On the letting performance, can you tell me which percentage of those 40,000 sq m is new business and what percentage is extensions of existing contracts?
The new business is roughly 15% of it, that's roughly 6,000 sq m . The rest is letting performance for the prolongation of existing lease contracts.
All right. Thank you. On the disposal of the two smaller assets you mentioned, what were the net proceeds there?
Sorry, I don't have the exact numbers available here.
Okay, I'll do that. Maybe we can get back to this later.
Sure, we'll send something along.
Cool. Tim, you mentioned NOI margin improvements, but you also talked about stabilizing and also improving this. What is your target there?
At least we were able to stabilize the NOI margin, which I think in current times is a bit of a success, but at a very low level, 67% for, let's say, commercials because that operator in Germany is not good enough. I think we came from values around the 80% mark. I don't see that going back to the 80% mark soon, but obviously, we are trying hard to get that to the low 70s again in the nearer future.
Okay, low 70s, understood. Two further questions.
On the two assets, we sold Bad Kreuznach for €3 million and the assets at €1.8 million.
All right. Thank you. Maybe two further questions, if I may. You had some property devaluations now in the first half. What is your view on that for the second half? I mean, at least when I look at the results on property disposals, you make a slight gain there. What can be expected in the second half for property valuation?
The current valuation effects are mainly driven by the disposal processes. When we talk to investors, and Ralf, please jump in, we see that processes still take quite long and the financing processes with banks are very difficult. We still see price pressure in the current transaction markets. On the other hand, when you look at market statistics, the big brokerage firms, you can always read that there's a stabilizing effect. When we talk about our year-end valuation, at least from the current perspective, I personally think that we should see more or less stable portfolio values.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. That's helpful. The last question is on the potential penalty payment that is included in the prolongation agreement for your corporate bond. When I look at your cash flow statement, you haven't paid back too much of the bond so far. Will you be able, from today's perspective, to avoid this penalty payment?
It is our clear plan that we do that. We have several property disposal processes in an advanced stage. From today's perspective, that's the plan.
Unfortunately, these days, a deal is only signed when it's signed. I mean, yeah, sure, it looks promising, but nevertheless, buyers might step away in the last minute. Yeah, sure, that can always happen.
You can achieve it. I mean, that can always happen, but it's good to hear that you're positive here. All right. Thanks, guys, for your answers. That was my question.
Thank you very much. There are no more questions in the queue, everything seems to be quite clear. DEMIRE is in the middle. If you still have a question or a follow-up, please press nine, S tar. Last call. Please press nine, S tar. There is a question from Christian Aus, BlackRock . Please, over to you.
Yes, good morning. I just have two quick follow-ups, please. The first one would be on the remaining refinancings you have to do or maturities you have to address in 2025. Can you just give us the size of the one loan that's remaining?
It's close to €30 million.
That's just one loan for one portfolio?
It's one loan for a sub-portfolio of fair value REITs.
Okay. Thank you. The small bond redemption, or bond, yeah, the bond redemption is just around €5 million in July. That was related to the original transaction, and it happened at par, right? You can buy that in the market.
It was a redemption using the pool factor methodology. As I know that you are very in-depth into the transaction, it covers the so-called earmarked amount that we had to repay before the restructuring date has its first birthday. There was the legal requirement or the contractual requirement to do it at that point of time in the year because the money was raised via a financing or a mortgage financing of another property. As you know, in the terms and conditions, there's a rule that 85% of the proceeds of mortgage loans have to go into repayments of the bonds.
Okay. At par, so at pool factor.
At least the earmarked amount, yeah. Yeah, we did it at the pool factor, yeah.
Okay, that means the notional is now below €250 million?
Correct.
Okay, all right. Thank you.
Thank you very much. At the moment, there are no more questions in the queue. With that, I'm closing the Q&A session and handing the floor back over to.
Thank you again for dialing in and your continued interest in DEMIRE. We'll be back with our Q3 results on November 6th and look forward to speaking to you then again. Thank you very much.