Good day, and welcome to the Hamborner REIT Q3 Results 2022 conference call. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and this can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over to Niclas Karoff, CEO. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our Q3 2022 earnings call. As usual, also on behalf of Hans-Richard, and today, for the first time, on behalf of our new colleague, Sarah Verheyen, who joined our management team at the beginning of October, intending to take over the operational responsibilities here by the end of the year. Christoph, who's heading our IR activities is joining today's call as well. As usual, he will be available for any subsequent questions regarding our figures.
We will start presentation with a glance at the highlights of the first nine months, and afterwards, I will hand over to Hans-Richard, who as usual will provide all relevant financial results, followed by Sarah giving an overview here about the operational and sustainability activities. Okay. Let's move to the next page, key figures. Let's start with those. Yeah, despite the challenging economic conditions, we are keeping on track both strategically and operationally, and thus we're able to achieve very solid Q3 results. Regardless of our strategically driven sales activities, total rents on a year-on-year basis came down just slightly.
Once again positively affected by numerous rent indexations and also influenced by the onboarding of 2 core DIY properties in spring. As a consequence, FFO came down, additionally driven by certain one-off cost effects. Operational figures on consistently good levels as we think. More details by Sarah later during the presentation. Our financial profile remains very solid with an LTV of around 41% and as we think comfortable Net Debt EBITDA multiplier of 10.9x. Overall, a solid first 9 months of the year, which forms the basis for our updated guidance at the end of this presentation. After this short introduction, let's have a look at the development of our portfolio.
Following chart provides here a portfolio overview and, concerning portfolio value, taking mainly into account our acquisition and sales activity, portfolio value slightly up compared to year-end 2021. Concerning vacancy, yeah, despite various letting successes overall, vacancy here went slightly down during Q3 to 2.1%. Here let me point out that our core portfolio contained only 1.2% vacancy as of end of September. Once again, we think a proof for the high quality and stability of our assets. WALT went up slightly during Q3 to 6.7 years. Yeah, by the way, significantly higher compared to year-end 2021, where we have been at 6.1 years.
On the next page, like for like development on a year-on-year basis. Considering the current inflationary environment, we are continuing here to provide more transparency on the rental development, including details, as I said, year-on-year, like for like split of the effects from the different influencing factors. As you can see, we benefited from rent increases based on indexation clauses amounting to 4.2%. Positive effects from indexations were partly offset by higher year-on-year vacancy and lower reletting rents within our retail portfolio. Both aspects have been influenced by the assets with the former anchor tenant, Real.
Depending on the further inflation development, we expect some additional positive effects for the remaining year and as well as for 2023. On the next two pages, quick overview concerning transactions in 2022. Presenting you a short overview concerning our transaction activities and as well, then on the next page concerning the results of our portfolio optimization. As already mentioned, two newly acquired DIY stores have been integrated into our portfolio. Based on location, asset quality, and also the tenant profile, as we think a valuable addition to our core portfolio, securing further reliable cash flows.
As part of our strategic disposal program, we successfully sold the three remaining high street properties on latest fair value level and successfully completed our short-term divestment activities. Out of the former high street portfolio, there's just one asset left, which is part of our managed core portfolio. The results of our divestment as well as the positive effects of our portfolio on our portfolio structure here, you will find on this page. All in all, we were able to achieve a more focused and modern as well as easier to manage portfolio, which is especially reflected in the development of average age and size of our assets.
With reference to our comparably small team and lean corporate structure, this also allows for more efficient portfolio and asset management. Yeah, with this short overview, let me hand over to Hans-Richard.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Niclas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and from me also, a warm welcome to all of you. As always, let us now have a closer look at the financial figures. Let's start with the FFO development. With a total of EUR 63.2 million, income from rents and leases went slightly down compared to previous year, which mainly relates to the disposal of various retail assets during the last 12 months. The reduction of around EUR 4.8 million due to disposals is partly offset by additional rent, rental income from acquisitions of around EUR 2.9 million. Besides, rent development was positively affected by various index-based rent adjustments. Total maintenance costs increased to around EUR 5.6 million year on year. The expenses relate to regular minor ongoing maintenance and various planned measures.
On the one hand, the increase of more than EUR 1.5 million is caused by previous year's COVID-19 impact, where maintenance was significantly reduced. On the other hand, further measures originally planned for Q4, 2021 have been postponed to this year, partly due to delays in the application of building permissions, lack of capacity of building firms, as well as shortage of material or rather supply bottlenecks. Currently, we assume total maintenance expenses of around EUR 9 million for the full year 2022. As a result of the higher maintenance, net rental income declined to EUR 54.3 million, a decrease of 5.4% compared to the first nine months of 2021. Administrative expenses are nearly unchanged year-on-year as negative effects from cash deposit costs were almost entirely reduced in Q3.
Personnel expenses increased to EUR 4.4 million. This was primarily due to onboarding of additional employees, as well as to recruitment costs in connection with the appointment of our new management board member, Sarah. Other operating income was significantly lower as a result of substantial one-off effects in the previous years. In 2021, we received a contractually agreed lease termination payment of EUR 2.2 million from our former tenant, Real. The approximately 8% lower interest costs resulted from scheduled repayments, expiries of loans, and positive refinancing effects since the beginning of the year. As a result of income and expenses, the FFO came in largely as planned in the reporting period at EUR 37.3 million. The corresponding FFO per share amounts to EUR 0.46. Now let's have a look at our NAV and NTA development.
After the significant revaluation uplift at the end of last year, a consistently solid earning situation had a further positive impact on our NAV. FFO contributed with around EUR 37 million to the NAV development in the first half of this year. In contrast, the NAV was negatively affected by our dividend payment in May. As a result, NAV per share amounted to EUR 12.08 as at the end of September, a decrease of 0.2% compared to the end of December 2021, but a significant increase of 7.8% YoY. As in previous reporting periods, there is no material difference between NAV and NTA, which is only EUR 0.01 Lower on a per share basis.
Now I would like to give a short update on our financial situation, which is again continuing to remain very solid. The REIT equity ratio amounts to 59.6%, is therefore still well in excess of the 45% ratio required. The LTV per end of September is at 41.1%. Further debt indicators such as net debt to EBITDA or EBITDA to interest coverage ratio remain at solid levels at 10.9 and 4.8 respectively. Our average financing costs are on a comfortable level at 1.7%, with an average remaining term of loans of 4.6 years. In spring, we have finished our refinancing activities for the current year and signed follow up agreements for all loans scheduled for refinancing in 2022.
Given the current interest environment, the REIT financing terms are very attractive, with an average interest rate of 1.6% and an average maturity of 6.3 years. During the last weeks, we have already started the refinancing process for 2023 and just signed a follow up agreement for a loan expiring in June 2023. That is all from me for the moment. Thank you for your attention. Let me now hand over to our new colleague, Sarah Verheyen, who will provide further information on our operational business activities. Sarah, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Andreas, and good morning, everyone. First I'd like to quickly introduce myself. My name is Sarah Verheyen, and I joined the company as COO and CIO six weeks ago, and I'm working in the real estate market for more than 15 years now. Should you be interested in details about my professional background, please have a look at our website and feel free to get in contact with me directly. I'm much looking forward meeting you personally soon. Let me start with an update on the current letting situation on chart number 10. Despite the ongoing challenging market conditions we are facing, we were able to achieve numbers of letting activities in the year to secure leases for around 67 sq m .
Besides long-term renewals with existing food retail tenants, amounting to around 60%, we also signed various leases with new office tenants of 74%. As a result, and compared to H1, the total portfolio vacancy rate decreased to 7.1%, and the WALT increased significantly year to date to 6.7 years. While office and retail WALTs are at a comparatively high level at 7.8 and 5.2 years. There are only limited leases outstanding for renewal in the remainder of this year related to 1.3% of the total annual rents. These pending renewals essentially related to a small number of office leases that expire by end of this year, and we are confident to sign further lease agreements during the next weeks.
Let's move on to just a few remarks on our tenant structure. Compared to year-end 2021, there are only minor changes on the top tenants overview. With the handover of our last former Real market in the Mannheim property, the food and DIY retailer Globus has doubled its shares and now contributes 4.4% of our annualized rents. As a result of the market exit of Real, the Insurance Association VBG climbed up to the top ten tenants list on 1.5% in total. The food retailers currently still account for around 1/3 of the company's total annual rents, and due to the acquisition and closing of the 2 large-scale retail properties in Freiburg and Kempten, as Niclas earlier said, our DIY exposure increased by 250 basis points up to 11.4%.
In total, our retail tenants contribute to 56% of our annual rents, while the share of the office tenants is at around 44%. All in all, we can say that our tenant structure remains very solid, and the high share of our tenants with strong financial profiles and largely independent from economic conditions are part of our portfolio. In the current very challenging market environment, these tenants provide us with a stable and reliable cash inflows. Turning attention now to an extract of our recent ESG activities. As part of the company's ESG strategy, we defined four key areas for which we expect to generate major positive contribution in interest of our stakeholders and the overall society.
During the last twelve months, we focused on sustainability working areas, on environmental topics mainly, especially the preparation of a full carbon accounting for our entire property portfolio. Means a considerable part of our work includes the identification, collection, and analysis of relevant data. As defined in our stakeholder engagement program, we are in close dialogue with our tenants to increase data collection rates and quality of data required to run these carbon accounting program. Based on the carbon footprinting, we carried out additional ESG audits for selected properties to further verify the results and identify specific measures to further optimize the energy and carbon efficiency of those assets. As a result, we developed a catalog of potential measures, which will be further assessed and implemented over the next years by our asset management and technical teams within the company.
The results from our carbon footprinting analysis will form the basis for a decarbonization strategy with specific mid- and long-term reduction targets. Besides the ecological impact of our business activities, we are also focusing on social sustainability aspects. Means in particular in terms of company's responsibilities and attractiveness as an employer. Given the positive development of nearly all social KPIs, such as GDPR and employee satisfaction rates, we are confident to attain our defined goals. Furthermore, in the past months, we were able to expand our ESG management approach, both organizational and regarding processes. In 2022, our supervisory board established an ESG committee to advise the company on all relevant sustainability matters. Additionally, we established a dedicated sustainability department within the company that bundles all competences from different departments, like asset management, technical management, and also corporate level.
As you might have noticed, we've recently published our 2022 ESG report, which is available for download on our website, and that provides you with further information and results. Thank you for your attention. Let me now hand over to Niclas for a short outlook and guidance update.
Yeah. Thanks, Sarah. Taking over from there, concerning guidance. At this stage of the year and taking into account the Q3 results, yeah, we are able to confirm or even specify our guidance for the full year 2022. We still assume a rental income of EUR 84 million-EUR 85 million and now expect to achieve an FFO at the upper end of the former range between EUR 48 million-EUR 49 million. With reference to NAV per share, we remain at our expectation of a number around the level of the end of 2021. Based on this updated forecast, we should be in a position again to propose an attractive dividend to our shareholders for the fiscal year.
Finally, let me thank you once again for your attention, and now we are looking forward, as usual to your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question from the queue, please press star two. Again, please press star one to ask a question over the phone. We will take the first question from Esther [Gudrun], who's a freelance. Please, go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning.
I would like to say this in English. The question was, what were the investments in our assets, in the current assets? As you know, this was. I'm not sure, Ms. Esther, do you mean the acquisition or do you mean the investments?
The investments in the assets.
It was on [Foreign language] , I don't know.
Look.
We are referring to maintenance costs.
Maintenance, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
In the first nine months, we invest around EUR 5.6 million, mainly in the former Real areas. This was EUR 1.2 million.
Mm-hmm.
The other investments is more normal maintenance what we had in plan.
Coming from postponed investments or maintenance, what we had expected for 2021. That's the reason for this, for the stronger increase if you compare this to last year.
Mm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Okay.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from Kai Klose from Berenberg.
Hey. Very good morning. I've got two questions, if I may. The first one is on page 7 regarding the split of the FFO. Could you just shed a bit more light regarding the low amount of CapEx? Is this that you increase the maintenance in investments or what can we expect here for the remainder of the year and maybe also for 2023? Do you see any larger needs for CapEx from upcoming lease expiries? The second question is on page 9 regarding the financial situation. Just to clarify, you had 1.6% as an average interest rate for debt renewals. You mentioned you also extended the loan due in June next year. Could you indicate what's based on that is the current marginal cost of the of how much financial debt?
Hi, Kai. Let me start with the marginal financing cost. You know, this depends on the LTV level and on the duration. Overall, if you have this in mind, actually we expect interest rates between 4% and 5% at the moment. The second-
Which includes what kind of margin?
Yeah. You can have a look at the cost for that plus margin. Margin is, you can say, around 100-150 basis points. Again, it's very different.
Mm-hmm.
Depends here from LTV level and the duration.
Thank you.
If you can see, we have around 300 basis points. That's the cost for that on the market at the moment. Yeah. The second question was our maintenance cost for the full year. I had said we expect here EUR 9 million. For 2023, I'm sorry, here we are in the process to elaborate this at the moment.
Thank you very much. Just quick one here on maintenance and CapEx. CapEx were lower, maintenance were higher as expected. Do you have an idea how that may look in 2023 in the context of
No.
Upcoming lease expiries?
No, no. No idea at the moment. I believe CapEx, the first signs will be a little bit higher or much more than we had seen here in 2022.
I see. The very last question from my side. When it comes to debt renewals, what kind of duration you're currently targeting? Of course, in the context of LTV and in the context of financing costs, but you still aim for up to 10 years, or given the higher costs, you may go for 5 or 7 years.
Yeah.
What's your preference here?
That very depends from the asset what we finance. It could be 5 years, it could be 10 years, and it could be a shorter duration. That's, for example, for the last refinancing what we had made now for the loan expiring mid-2023, it was 5 years.
I see. Maybe the very last question for Mr. Karoff. I think previously you mentioned that you have the intention to go a little bit more unsecured, to increase the unsecured amount of debt. What are your thoughts here, maybe for the midterm, given the spread between secured and unsecured debt is quite high?
I think where we have a close look, obviously, what's happening on the unsecured market here, and what we always do is make the comparison as you outlined between both options, general options for financing. Yeah. We will do the math once we are up for decision which way we go. Therefore, as of today, we haven't made any decision yet. However, we are in a position here to be, if you look at our overall balance sheet position, that we can be very flexible here. Yeah. No decision yet made.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks.
As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. We'll now take the next question from Ventsi Iliev from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions, and the first one relating to valuations. If you look at CBRE reports, they actually show a 50 basis points yield out shift. Also, if you look at deals in the market, we see some discounted deals in other geographies. Could you comment on what you're observing in the market at, and what you're expecting, maybe not only for this year, but also next year?
Yeah. I mean, obviously to make a forward look currently for the next year is quite a tough call. What we see on the transaction market is that our transactions that take longer simply take longer. Some of it goes back to the seller. We still see transactions on the market obviously happening, but it's a market situation kind of a waiting situation from, I think, the point of view of various investors. Therefore, we are still active here on the market, but making any predictions at the moment is quite a tough call.
Okay. Thank you. Second one on like for like went well. As you commented, there's a negative reletting effect. Could you comment if this relates to the former Real properties? If yes-
Yeah.
What would be the effect excluding them?
Yeah, I think you have seen the split in the chart. It's indeed the rental effect. This was a rental effect, the minus. You can separate from this the plus what you have seen in the rental growth coming here from the indexation. We had an effect in cash in the minus of EUR 1.4 million in the first nine months.
Okay. Thank you. Last one. Given the current macroeconomic environment, would you say that the annual acquisition target of EUR 100 million is on hold?
I would say that as of today, based on the fact that we are on one hand still active in the market, but on the other hand are even more selective concerning acquisitions, you shouldn't expect that we meet this target. Yeah. As of today, I would expect it will definitely be below this figure. I mean, this figure, that's something that we anticipated in the first half year. Since then, obviously the market situation, the whole market situation has changed substantially. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. That's it from my side.
The next question comes from Philipp Kaiser, from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. Yeah, the nine-month figures, I think also underpin the robustness of the business model. I think also like next year will be a demanding environment. With like just two acquisitions to date, and also like higher refinancing costs for the amount of debt with outstanding and mature next year. Could you shed some light on the possible impact on the FFO you might also envisage for next year due to these effects?
You mean the effect from the acquisition activity or? I'm sorry.
Yeah. The combination of kind of lower acquisition than at the beginning of the year, kind of targeted, due to the change in the macro environment and also the higher refinancing costs for the debt which matures next year. Those both effects will have an effect on the FFO for the coming year. Any indications about the amount of the impact for next year?
I mean, you can do the math, I think, in a way a little bit as well. Obviously you see the average interest cost we have currently in our balance sheet. You see for every new acquisition we would do now, we have a different interest environment currently. You can see the refinancing, the average refinancing costs for the financing, which is up for next year is 1.7%. If you take the current market level for the debt costs together with the volume and you could, I think, you can do the math a little bit. What's the impact from the financing side there in case we do the refinancing here the way.
For the transaction market, I mean, if we would acquire next year additional assets, obviously, the same applies, on one hand to the interest costs. We have also the expectation that this will be reflected in a higher going-in yield for the asset itself. Then obviously you take in a way the combination. What will be the going-in yields on average here for acquisitions we don't see yet and don't have yet on the table, that's obviously very hard to predict. I mean, it depends. If you look at our strategy, we are talking about office and retail. We're talking about core properties as well as our managed to core strategy.
Obviously we are talking so about different market segments, which might have also, to a certain extent, individual developments within the next couple of months and quarters on the pricing side.
Oh, okay. Perfect. Understood. There's kind of no indication how like the low acquisition volume this year will impact the rental growth for next year.
This will not be a big effect.
So in the acquisitions, what we have done. This was in the first half year overall. With this, the impact will be limited if you see only on this.
We typically, as you can assume, I mean, we do it on a year-by-year basis concerning our acquisition planning. I think it's fair that you can assume that we do not expect to have the acquisitions we anticipate from the start of the year contributing on the rental side. This obviously reduces the impact for the current year then on the register page. On top of it, which we see now obviously, are the positive effects from the indexation, which is a certain offset as well.
Okay. Fully understood. Thanks, very helpful. All from my side.
As a final reminder to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. There are no further questions on the phone at this time.
Also on behalf of our team here, thank you very much for participating in the call. Also at this point in time, thank you to Hans-Richard. It has been his last call today. Obviously, he will stay on board for a couple of weeks. As it's his last call, I want to use the opportunity on behalf of our team here to say thank you for many years of service to the company here and, yeah, from my side.
Yeah. Thank you very much from my side, too. As you know, I will retire at the end of the year, and I would like to say thank you very much for all the interesting discussions what we had in calls, conference calls, and direct calls over the last 14 years. Thanks again.
Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.