Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the DEMIRE AG's Q1 2026 earnings call. My name is Maxi Goodman from Lumi, and I'll be moderating today. We'll start with a management presentation and then move into the Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question, please click the Raise Hand icon. I'll briefly explain the procedure once the presentation is finished. With that, let's begin. Mr. Rüffel, the floor is yours.
Ladies, gentlemen, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the results presentation for the first quarter of 2026. Thank you for dialing in. With me here is Tim Brückner, CFO, Adrijana Glibic, our Head of HR, and a couple of other members of our team sitting in the room. Roughly two months ago, we presented our annual report. Today, at the close of the first quarter of 2026, I can report that our business is roughly progressing in line with plan despite ongoing macroeconomic headwinds, which we are all familiar with. Annualized contractual rent is down primarily caused by disposals and the higher vacancy level. I will get to that in more detail later on. Meanwhile, both our Net LTV and cost of debt declined slightly over the first three months of the year. On the transaction side, we continue to execute selected transactions.
We have sold two properties with total proceeds of EUR 17.5 million. During the quarter, we also streamlined the management structure, reducing the management board from three to two members and reallocating the responsibilities accordingly. These are kind of the highlights in the exec summary. Let's jump straight into the details, starting with page seven. Where I'll briefly walk you through the development of the key metrics. On the left-hand side, as you can see, the reduced asset base is reflected in our key operating metrics. Annualized contractual rent decreased from EUR 56.4 million at year-end 2025 to EUR 45.7 million at the end of the first quarter this year. Decline mainly driven by the disposals we did in 2025, as well as the higher vacancy level, which I already mentioned.
On the right-hand side, looking at the letting performance, we recorded 2,700 sq m in the first quarter compared to a fairly high number of 25,000 sq m in the prior-year period. I think it's important here to point out that Q1 2025 figure was a bit of an outlier because that was mainly supported by two larger lease prolongations, whereas in this quarter, we didn't have these comparable effects. That said, it's a big difference, but we do expect letting activity to pick up over the course of the year. I would even say within the next six weeks, where we have a big leasing pipeline, including some larger letting opportunities. This should help us close the gap to last year's overall performance. If you go to the next page, left-hand side, vacancy.
I mentioned it several times. EPRA vacancy increased from 16.4 at year-end 2025 to 21%. This rise is primarily driven by two assets that became fully vacant. I think since January, this is Neumünster and Schwerin, both with approximately around 12,000 sq m lettable space. At the same time, on the right-hand side, you can see that the weighted average lease term improved, increasing from 4.7 to 5.2. This is mainly attributable to the conversion of the master lease into individual rental contracts at the asset in Neuss, basically strengthening the overall lease duration profile. While vacancy increase in the short term, we have been able to enhance the cash flow through longer WALT. On the financial highlights, Tim, if you go to the next page, you can take that over.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. There's basically no surprise on the P&L and the balance sheet. As Dirk mentioned, rental income is down, driven mainly by disposals. What we successfully managed to do is to stabilize our NOI margin now at roughly 65%. We don't have any material impact from value adjustments in the first quarter of this year, but slightly increasing costs of financing, resulting in FFO, as expected, at EUR 0.3 million. The balance sheet has shortened slightly, driven by the negative result of the period and the effect of the disposals in the previous quarters from EUR 849 million to EUR 833 million . That's basically it from the financial highlights. Let's go to the next slide. Net LTV is slightly down.
We did not have any negative impacts from the valuation side, but we paid part of some loans, and this drives down net LTV slightly to 41.2%. At the same time, given that we have redeemed parts of a relatively costly mortgage loan from the proceeds of the disposal of the Flensburg property, the average cost of debt, excluding shareholder loan co-expenses, are now at 4.74%. When I look forward to upcoming renewals of loans, I would expect that this figure stays roughly the same over the next quarters. With that, back to you.
Yeah. I mean, that's short and sweet. I mean, all in all, I think we delivered solid results for the first quarter of 2026 and feel prepared for the developments ahead for the remainder of the year. Based on the numbers, we showed you, we can confirm our full year guidance, i.e., we continue to expect rental income in the range of EUR 41.5 million-EUR 43.5 million in FFO, 1 of approximately EUR ± 1 million. That's about it. We are very happy to take questions if there are any.
Thank you, Mr. Rüffel and Mr. Brückner for the presentation. We will now open the Q&A session. As a quick reminder, you can ask your question by clicking the Raise Hand icon. Once I grant you permission to speak, you'll be able to ask your question live. Let's proceed with the first question from Philipp Sennewald.
Yes. Hello, guys, and thank you for this brief presentation of your Q1. Quick follow-up questions on what you said. The two assets that became fully vacated now, how is your view there on reletting them? How advanced are the negotiations there? Can you tell us about the impact? On the two assets you sold in Flensburg and Bonn, were they sold at book value or below? What was the LTV on those assets?
Yeah, maybe I take the first question on the now empty assets. Schwerin, I actually been there last week. It's a difficult asset. Nevertheless, there was a surprise amount of interest, I would say, in potential new tenants. We, I think, signed already one lease for over 1,600 sq m, and I would say we have around four to five interested parties also in that range. I would say we are quite confident that we can bring up the occupancy at least back to 50% in Schwerin. Neumünster is a bit of a different beast. We have interested parties as well, surprisingly, I think two to three. If one materialize, I would say we bring it up to 25%. If we are lucky and everything goes in, it would be fully let.
That's early conversation, so we have to see. Well.
All right. Understood. Thanks.
The disposals of Flensburg and Bonn, they were both mortgage financed by one loan. In Bonn, we only sold a part of the building, like a small residential block, roughly EUR 1 million. In Flensburg, the property was sold, and EUR 15 million out of the proceeds were used to pay down the before mentioned loan. The values or the depreciation of the values were recognized already in 2025, so that we don't see any material impact in the Q1 figures.
All right. Understood. Yeah, maybe one last follow-up. With the EUR 50 million repayment at 2026, how confident are you you're gonna make it or do you even intend to repay those EUR 50 million?
I think what we mentioned last year in November is still valid. We have a close look at the market. As you know, we have quite a number of properties in the property sell for sale section of our balance sheet, and we try our very best to achieve those results. Given the current market sentiment, I think we remain cautious if we are able to execute successfully.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
We're not selling for any price.
Yeah, that's totally fair. That's totally fair. Understood. All right, guys, yeah, thank you again. That was it from my side.
There are actually no further questions. There is a further question from [Andrew Rowland] . You can now unmute yourself.
Hi. Yes. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Perfect. I was just going to ask, it's a bit of a follow on to the prior question. Obviously, the business now has in excess of EUR 50 million in cash. Is the intention to, you know, almost to raise proceeds from disposals to hit the sort of bond threshold, or would you just prepay part of the bond anyway? What do you see as a sort of sensible level of cash balance to retain within the business?
I think when you look at the cash balance of the business, you need to carefully differentiate between cash sitting at Fair Value REIT-AG and DEMIRE. You don't get quarterly numbers from Fair Value, obviously, if you look back at the 2025 numbers, you get a fair view of where the cash actually sits. Then you, well, can relatively easily figure out that the cash at DEMIRE is currently not sufficient to repay EUR 50 million in outstanding bonds. As said before, I mean, we're trying our best to execute the planned disposals, and if we are able to do so, there will be more cash at DEMIRE level. At this stage, we cannot give a clear guidance on how to proceed here with repayments.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I think there are no further questions, and we can conclude this call. Mr. Rüffel, would you like to share any closing remarks?
To be honest, not really. I mean, we mentioned everything. As I said, the lease-up numbers are not the best in the first quarter, but we are quite confident that for the next quarter reporting, the numbers will look much better. As I said, in Q1 2025, the 20,000 sq m was a bit of an outlier. So I think overall, we are on track with the business plan for this year.
Okay. Thank you then. A good day to everyone.
Thank you.
Bye.