Welcome everyone to our first quarter 23 analyst and investor call. This is Martin Praum, head of investor relations and group reporting speaking. I'm happy to have our CEO Designate, Asoka Wöhrmann, and our CFO, Christoph Glaser, with us in the room today. Asoka was appointed only a few days ago, and I'm especially thankful he committed right away to attend today's call to briefly introduce himself to our analysts and investors. Christoph will afterwards provide an overview of the business development and our preliminary financial results for the third month, as well as further details on the guidance for 23, followed by a Q&A session. Given Asoka only joined us beginning of the month, I ask you for your understanding that he will not be available for Q&A today. Christoph and I will cover any questions you may have today as common practice in the last few quarters.
During today's call, we will refer to the three-month 2023 results presentation, which you can find on our website in the section shareholders under most recent publications. The presentation includes the first quarter figures and details about our guidance for the fiscal year 2023. In case of questions, the IR team is more than happy to take your calls. As usual, this call will be recorded and will be made available on our website. We will also, as usual, offer a call transcript for further reference. With that, I'd like to hand over to Asoka Wöhrmann. Asoka Wöhrmann, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Martin. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Asoka Wöhrmann, and I am very happy to be here today to introduce myself. Some of you may know me from my previous position as CEO of a stock market-listed asset manager, DWS. It's probably not a surprise to you that I very much look forward to meeting some familiar faces again, but also to meeting new analyst colleagues, shareholders of PATRIZIA, and potential new shareholders shortly. Before I start, I would like to ask for your understanding that I cannot comment on PATRIZIA's strategy and performance during the today's call as I just came on board a few days ago. Give me some few weeks to deep dive into the organization and to get to know this great team better that build up PATRIZIA over the last decades.
I will certainly be available for Q&A starting with the next analyst and investor call. Talking about decades, I am really honored that Wolfgang, the founder and the majority shareholder of PATRIZIA, will hand over the CEO leadership of the company to me in the next months. At the same time, will stay on board as an active colleague, member of the board of directors and majority shareholder. Handing over the CEO role to a new person after building and running the business for decades is always a super tough and important decision, and I appreciate the trust Wolfgang puts into me. As you know him, he's a visionary and forward-thinking entrepreneur who takes bold decisions early and when they are best for the company. I must say, I'm really impressed what he and the team have built over the last close to 40 years.
Starting a business from scratch and developing it to a close to EUR 60 billion assets under management, investment manager with the emerging global footprint is something that truly impresses me. That brings you probably to the question, why did I join PATRIZIA? As you know, I have some experience in asset management, and PATRIZIA, to me, is at a decisive point in the evolution of the franchise. It is where some of the largest global asset managers stood 10 to 15 years ago. First, it is on the brink to develop from a leading Pan-European to a leading global player in real asset investment management. Secondly, from what I learned in talking to the board of directors and staff in the last weeks, it has a unique culture and all the ingredients to create something powerful that will last.
Thirdly, I see significant opportunities in the alternatives investment market globally, PATRIZIA offers a great real estate and infrastructure platform, but also the balance sheet power to successfully continue on its growth path. Will that power crystallize this quarter or next quarter? Probably not that quickly. We continue to be a subdued environment with lots of client hesitation to deploy capital and questions, question marks regarding interest rate levels and the right asset allocation strategy. For PATRIZIA, this situation, in my view, offers ample opportunities. Let me stop here and hand over to Christoph, who is in the best position to provide you with an update on our company. I very much look forward to meeting many of you shortly during one of our road shows or broker conferences.
As you can hear, I am excited to be here and lead PATRIZIA through the next phase of its evolution. Christoph, over to you.
Thank you very much, Asoka. Once again, on behalf of the whole team, welcome on board.
Thank you.
Great to have you on this call. Look, everybody, it's a privilege to be here again after we talked last time about fiscal year 2022. As usual, we're gonna cover strategic highlights and current trading first on a couple of slides. After that, we will transition to a financial update and a bit more information about guidance. With that said, I will start on page four. In addition to welcoming Asoka on board, I would also like to highlight to all of you once again that as of June 1st, PATRIZIA will have a new Chief Operating Officer, Slava Shafir, who comes to us with an abundance of operational experience in relevant sectors across the Americas, Europe, and other markets.
We are happy to have Asoka on the team already, and we're also looking forward to welcoming Slava Shafir as of June first. With that, let's go into the markets and what we see there. I'd like to start on slide five and briefly talk about what we see as of today, and then maybe add a couple of comments as to how we see things evolve over the next couple of quarters. At the moment, we're seeing an exceptionally low level of market activity and somewhat limited investment, especially in the real estate area, less so in infrastructure where there's more action going on.
On the left side of the page, when you look at signed and closed transaction volumes, and you compare, the three months of 2022 and the first three months of 2023, you can see a drop of total transactions signed by around about 60%. The transactions we did sign in this three months just behind us are two-thirds acquisition related and one-third disposition related. Again, we are more of a buyer than a seller because we're operating out of a position of strength. When you look at the closed transactions, the year-over-year drop is even more pronounced, and the EUR 300 million of transactions closed are purely acquisition-related transactions. Once again, you see what we always said would happen, that we would become more of a net buyer and not a seller.
Here it's quite pronounced in the first quarter, unfortunately, at a very low absolute level. It also underpins that we saw some organic growth in the first quarter because everything we did close was acquisition related. Equity raised has also been suffering on a year-over-year comparison basis by around about 90%, kind of expected. The good news remains that we have around about EUR 4 billion of firepower available in the form of cash and structures, in the form of committed capital, and a fairly moderate leverage on top of that, which is quite reliable simply because we have access to 250 banks. Our product shell is well positioned. We've talked about that before.
And with the firepower and structures, and the sales access we have to our customer base, we do believe that we will gain momentum when investment activity returns. Now, with that said, maybe a couple of additional comments. As I have been talking to our transaction and capital market teams as recently as this morning, the second quarter is gonna continue to be very weak. We've said that before that the first half is gonna be weak. I mean, April, in historical context, when you look back as far as 2009, has been the second-worst month over that period of time on the real estate side. The second quarter will be another weak quarter. We do believe there's a possibility that transactions will come back over the course of the third quarter.
We feel moderately optimistic about the fourth quarter, which is also traditionally from a seasonality point of view, being a good quarter. Key question remains, when exactly that's gonna happen and what the extent of it's gonna be, and that will also drive the answer as to how much transaction volume will be generated, the mix of it, and the transaction fee income related to it, and we'll get to that a little bit later. With that, let's move on to the financial update and guidance section, to page seven specifically. On page seven, you can see that, based on our relatively forward-thinking strategies deployed over the last couple of years, and a bit of focused M&A, we do see both continued net organic growth and also M&A-driven organic growth of our AUMs.
On a year-over-year comparison, looking at the end of the first quarter 2022 and how things developed afterwards over the next 12 months, you can see that our AUM has grown by around about 5% from EUR 55.3 billion - EUR 58.1 billion. The organic growth component of that is relatively significant, and you still see over that horizon a very minor positive valuation effect, which is obviously in the more recent past changed to a moderately negative trend in the recent short term. Net organic growth accounted for EUR 2.1 billion of year-over-year growth and is predominantly driven by infrastructure, office, and residential. I don't think I need to comment the moderate positive valuation effects right now.
The M&A driven AUM growth is largely driven by the consolidation of Advantage, which we happened to acquire in December last year, and we've talked about that already. Organic growth and M&A are the historic key drivers for the AUM development over the last 12 months. Let's look at the development between the end of last year and end of March, i.e., the three months of this year. There we see, in essence, a stable AUM in a challenging market environment. I think it speaks for two things. It speaks for the fact that we have a high-quality portfolio. What we do transact, we rather buy than sell. Secondly, the quality of the portfolio supporting that.
So 59 downwards to 58, and the main drivers are again, a very moderate net organic growth component. A moderate negative valuation effect of 0.7 billion. Then there is half a billion, which is linked to M&A and other components. I would like to be a bit more specific here, because traditionally, the first quarter is always a quarter where cash dividends are being paid to investors. So there is a bit of cash outflow from certain vehicles linked to that. So quite a normal thing to see here, and that is in that third bucket. So the key message here is perhaps that the net organic growth could not fully compensate for the negative evaluation effect, which is quite obvious, but expected.
The AUM guidance that we have given, which represents a range of EUR 60 billion-EUR 65 billion for the total year of 2023, assumes that there will be an overcompensation of valuation effects by net organic growth over the course of the year. This will have to happen over the course of the second half of the year, as I already alluded to before, hinging on the resumption of the transaction market. That's in a nutshell, the short-term past and the comment on the short to mid-term future. As you know, in that context, we do continue to believe that the valuation impact will be somewhere in the range of 4%-5% negative for the full year.
Having seen 1.2% so far year to date, we seem to be tracking all right in that respect. There's more valuations coming in June, in September, and in December. Our modeling suggests that we're gonna somewhere get into that space, and then we will see how acquisition and sales mix and transaction activity will stack up against that headwind. With that, let's go to slide 9. There again, we just wanna point out that the high quality of our assets and the broad diversification of our AUMs are key factor with regard to its stable development. Diversification levels remain high across geographies, across asset classes and a couple of other parameters. Again, the total balance is virtually stable.
If you ask me what we see in terms of trends today, we see definitely a flight to quality, have been seeing that for a while. We do see a lot of work around future-proofing assets from an ESG point of view, and we make a huge effort in that respect. Then there's a lot of focus on tech-enabled assets in parallel. The last two points, I guess, are going hand in hand in a way, because a good tech-based assessment and a good ESG future-proofing strategy, asset by asset, is really what's gonna differentiate us against competition going forward. With that, let's switch to the P&L, starting with slide 10.
I have to say, I'm actually quite pleased about the dynamic that's been unfolding here over the last quarters, including the first quarter of this year, because our recurring income has grown by 13.8% compared to the first quarter of last year. That's EUR 7.5 million, which is very nice to see. As expected, transaction fee income has dropped to an all-time low by another 50% or 51% to EUR 1.1 million. I had already alluded to that last time we talked that drop will continue and then hopefully see a V-shaped recovery later in the year.
When you look at performance fees, again, as anticipated in the past, still a continuation of a drop, but less pronounced compared to transaction fees. Again, the expectation is that here you will see an extended U-shaped recovery, taking us through the first half of the cycle, which is hopefully about to start in the second half of this year. The total picture of seeing total service fee income increase by 1.1% to EUR 84 million almost, slightly above last year's level under the given circumstances, is not great in absolute term.
We do feel good about it relatively speaking, and the quality of the mix has certainly improved, and that's something that will hopefully further future-proof the company and also support and carry our equity story in that respect. That's what we feel good about. Well, actually, let's say before we leave that topic behind, maybe one more comment on the composition of the performance fee, because we usually do get that question anyway. The EUR 20.4 million that you see there are largely dominated by round about EUR 19 million as a contribution from the Dawonia portfolio, which is valuation-wise, extremely stable, operationally performing well. We do believe that this contribution will remain a key pillar of our income profile going forward.
The levels of collaboration with our investors in that vehicle, and the evolution of strategic thinking there are quite constructive and on a very, very good track. With that, we go to the cost side of the PNL on slide 11. Again, a story here that started to unfold, which we like to see because we do see that our strategic reorganization cost containment has started to improve our net operating expected expenses as planned. They're down by 5.2% year-over-year. If you compare it on a like-for-like basis, i.e, you back out the acquisitions we've made along the way, the saving on a sort of former corporate future business component level alone normalized is actually even higher.
We feel very positive about that development, which again, is primarily driven by active cost containment, both in the parent side and G&A, as well as the ambition to maintain a positive operating leverage as a matter of principle between recurring income and costs. Maybe one little add-on comment here with regard to general and administrative expenses, which are usually around about a third of the total company's expense base after personal expenses being two-thirds of it. That part of the cost equation, we got down to the levels pre-acquisition of Whitehelm and Advantage Partners, i.e. a level of 2021 up and we hold that level after having acquired those businesses, and that gives us a quite significant advantage here.
The key message being, costs reflect positive outcome of recent reorg measures and show our ability for containment, quite due, under the current circumstances, and helping us to get the EBITDA equation into shape. Speaking about which, you can see the entire picture on the next slide, where you can reflect on the composition of our EBITDA, which is benefiting from a continued increase in management fees or recurring income and a lower net cost drive, both of which support the earnings before income tax and depreciation. Up from EUR 26.4 - EUR 27.2, that's roughly 3%.
The net sales revenue and co-investment income declined year-over-year. That's fully in line with budget and strategy because some of you may recall that in the first quarter of last year, we had a positive one-off linked to the disposition of a U.K.-based asset named Trocoll House, which we had as an on-balance sheet property, and that obviously didn't reoccur this time around. So the EUR 1.7 is what it is. Again, the main messages here are recurring income up, overcompensating for transaction fee income loss and performance fee being softer and delivering EBITDA growth of 3%. So we kinda like what we see. Could always be more. Under the circumstances, a pretty decent performance.
One thing that hasn't really changed, and if so in the right direction, is the strength of our balance sheet. I'd like to reflect on that once again a little bit on the next slide. It does provide for security and the ability to make strategic moves if we feel like moving them. Balance sheet and liquidity KPI is relatively stable, net equity ratio north of 70%. Available liquidity around about EUR 370, so quite rich. Certainly no need for any refinancing activities like you see elsewhere in the market. We will most likely come up at the shareholder meeting in May and ask for an authorization to continue our ongoing share purchase or repurchase programs. You will hear more about that when we meet.
Treasury sale shares have slightly reduced from EUR 6.5 million down, and that's because the first earn-out tranche for Whitehelm was delivered after cutting those accounts a couple of days ago. Whitehelm being in quite good shape and developing nicely, of course, under the current market conditions. Whitehelm also does occasionally see a couple of delays with regard to certain transactions, but the infrastructure markets are good. Valuations are expected to continue to grow in sort of mid-single digit environment and the teams are performing. We feel good. In summary, when it comes to balance sheets, good liquidity. We'll continue to actively deploy capital with a focus on strategic co-investments and M&A if and when it makes sense.
We will propose to continue the share buyback program. At the moment, short term, the treasury shares are down from 6.8 - 6.5 because we addressed the first phase of the earn-out for Whitehelm. The guidance related comments I would like to make are summarized on the next slide. Simply speaking, we are confirming our guidance as we have issued it. AUM guidance remains between EUR 60 billion and EUR 65 billion. Our EBITDA guidance remains wide for now, with a range of EUR 50 million - EUR 90 million. We have made up our mind to keep the deadline for now because of the second quarter related comments I made earlier. We may choose to narrow our guidance here as we proceed through the year, but at this stage it's too early.
Again, as I mentioned before, the main driver for the width of the guidance is the remaining uncertainty still as to what's gonna happen to the transaction markets in the second half of the year. Our EBITDA margin guidance also remains unchanged. Now, of course, with the first quarter under the belt, we feel good as to where we stand running up against these guidance ranges, especially on the EBITDA side and the EBITDA margin side, driven by both recurring income and cost performance. Obviously the jury will be out on AUM growth and the resulting AUM levels versus guidance because, you know, the key drivers there, valuation outlook being within the range we expect may be moderately better than we had communicated, i.e., 4%-5% versus 5%-6%.
On the other hand, the transaction activity is still very mute. The key question is whether transactions is the right mix in terms of focus on acquisition of assets will overtake or overcompensate the currently unfolding moderate headwind from valuation developments. We will just closely watch that over the course of the year. Depending on how it goes, the AUM outlook may get under a little bit of pressure or not, and the EBITDA outlook may get into even better shape or not. That's really the key points on the guidance. With that, I would like to proceed to the slide where we summarize the key takeaways for the first three months of the year. There's four points we've highlighted here for you.
There's probably more we could talk about, but those are the four we consider most essential. The market environment is very difficult or has been very difficult in the 1st quarter, probably one of the most difficult in the short, medium, and long-term past. The AUM levels have proven to be very resilient, relatively resilient. As I said, you know, valuation pressure is moderate and new AUM additions will be the key question and the timing thereof. We have no pressure to sell for leverage reasons. We do have, generally speaking, low leverage across all our portfolios. We do rely on very equity-rich investors. We spoke about that in the past. The management fee growth has managed to offset a temporarily weak transaction fee environment.
Balance sheet is strong, we'll remain buyers and not become sellers. We do foresee decent EBITDA development, and we do have the financial flexibility to move. As I mentioned before, depending on what opportunities arise, we could also see very, very quick and decisive action on either individual assets or portfolios or groups of portfolios or even M&A targets if they make sense. There always has to be, there will always have to be a strategic angle to that, either from a distribution diversification point of view or from a product suite enhancement point of view or from a geographic expansion point of view. We're watching along the lines of all these dimensions. Decent performance despite a challenging environment.
Uncertainties remain for now, and we keep relying on our strengths and we keep trucking. With that, then Martin, I guess, it's time to, hand over back to the operator. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. The first question is from the line of Andre Remke with Baader Bank.
Good afternoon together. Thank you for the presentation and your kind introduction, Asoka. Couple of questions from my side please, starting with the portfolio valuation or asset under management valuation, down by 1.2% on average. How much of the total assets under management has been revalued in the first quarter? Is this one quarter and therefore we could expect the 4%-5%, or how does the calculation look like? Also on the, your largest asset, Dawonia, has this been revalued too because there was a EUR 75 million lower value, or was this cash outflow, the cash dividend outflow? This is the first question, please.
Thank you very much. I'll certainly address them. Before I address both questions quite directly, I would like to make one more comment to make sure that nobody misunderstood my comment on the continuation of the share buyback program. We are going to ask the general assembly of PATRIZIA shareholders in late May for authorization to continue it. Depending on the outcome of that, we will continue the program. Just to clarify that for the avoidance of doubt. Now back to your two questions, which are obviously very relevant in the current environment. First of all, if we break down the company in a first step, you have, we're starting this round about EUR 58 billion of assets.
You have infrastructure in the mix, where we generally see mid-single digit positive valuation development. We do see a bit of cash and structures. We see a core portfolio of real estate, which adds up to the upper half of EUR 40 billion- EUR 50 billion range. In there we have about 1,600 assets that we constantly revalue some of them annually, some of them bi-annually, some of them quarterly. We do round about 2,200 valuations. Compared to the number of assets under review, we do about 1.35x as many valuations, simply because some get revalued several times during the year.
Now, when you break down this number of roughly 2,200 valuations or 135% of the asset number, about 32% of those happen in the first quarter, so round about EUR 14 billion. About 33% in the second quarter, then 29% in the third quarter and 41% at year-end. Obviously, in particular year-end, but also half year valuations are quite rich in terms of volume. And that's how you capture sort of on a rolling year basis, what you have to do. So the first main message is we do value several assets more than once, and therefore we do 2,200 valuations versus 1,600 is the time distribution I already explained.
Because of that, it's important to look at the valuation trends that we saw inside the first quarter, but also what we saw, for instance, at the end of the year versus the beginning of last year, i.e. the 12 months before that. It's also important to look at in aggregate over all over the last 12 rolling months. Perhaps spring 2022 and how it developed towards spring 2023. Inside 2022, we still in aggregate saw a positive valuation effect to the tune of north of 3%, between 3% and 4%. Then towards the end of the year, we started to see negative valuation effects linked to the fourth quarter valuations.
We continue to see that now in the first quarter where we see about 1.2% of aggregate downward valuations. If you ask me where those are, in the first quarter of this year, The most negative ones geographically were distributed across, I would broadly say, Northwestern Europe, so France, the U.K., Netherlands, where we saw anything between -3% to -6% in aggregate. If you ask me what we saw across asset classes, we saw negative developments in other uses up to 8%. Logistics, industrial around -3%, and then clinics and others maybe around -1%.
There were still asset classes where we saw sideward movements like commercial mixed use, like hotel, like office mildly positive, retail mildly positive, and also residential mildly positive. More pronounced positive, healthcare and student housing in particular, in some cases up to 25%. There's quite a mixed picture. And once again, before I answer the second question, what I was just referring to is for real estate, because I was making the point earlier that on the infra side, we are seeing a stable, positive valuation trend of round about mid-single digit percentage points, so 4% or 5%, for the infra side. Now to Dawonia. Dawonia, the portfolio of roughly 5.5 under AUM, is a very solid and very well operated business.
I would like to give you some numbers, so you get a feel for how real this value stability in that portfolio is. Between the end of the third quarter and the end of the year, the Dawonia book or value grew from. Sorry. It slightly dropped from EUR 5.45 billion - EUR 5.38 billion. This little drop of EUR 70 million is reflective of 1.5%, but it does include 1% related to single asset sales in the Munich area, which means that only 0.5% relate to actual valuation changes. Round about EUR 50 million of the EUR 70 million of value drop are just assets which have gone out, by the way, at book value or slightly above.
The other EUR 20 million or so are valuation effects. That is round about, sorry, 0.5%. Literally, sideways moves. Now, if you take that forward into the first quarter of this year, same picture, a very similar picture and even slightly better because now we're taking the EUR 5.38 billion and they're going as of the end of March to something like EUR 5.37 billion. There's only a EUR 10 million shift here, which is equal to 0.3%. The sideways movement continues and the super moderate negative change is actually getting smaller. The portfolio is literally stable. We always get the question why that is. Well, first of all, high quality assets.
Secondly, locations which are subject to the highest rent level changes in the past and in the present and in the foreseeable future. In the city of Munich, we're talking about 20%-21%. Secondly, when we did value these assets in the past, we have always valued them around the middle of the range bracket provided for certain market for certain groups of assets. We've never positioned them in the 4th quartile of that range like some of our competitors have. We also have always continued to deploy conservative and standardized and unchanged valuation measures. In the up cycle we have not, let's say, eaten the potential. We have remained conservative, and we're now getting the upside of that, being relatively stable.
Recent transactions suggest that, values, will continue to remain stable. That's a fairly, long-wind answer, but to a very important question, and that's why I've just decided to spend a bit more time on this, and it's important to understand that. With that, let's, go back to the next question, please.
Yeah. Thank you for the excellent answer here, many details. If I get it right, also the Dawonia portfolio will be valued on a quarterly basis, not once or two times a year, but on a consistent basis.
We're actually looking at that portfolio quarterly.
Yeah.
There's obviously a fully-fledged external effort in the mix once a year and also at the half year mark, a second one. If I'm not mistaken, at the first quarter and third quarter mark, we're doing it, or the Dawonia team is doing it on an internal basis with some possibility checks being done on the side. four points of reference a year.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks for that. Second question comes to the cost-cutting measures. We or you, the first effects, could we take the cost for the first quarter to kind of run rate for the following quarters, or is there more to come? You mentioned, you referred to the level two years ago. I'm not looking in my model to what are these levels, but more general question is what will come from cost-cutting measures?
Okay. First of all, back to the basics. The, you know, on the OpEx side where we see two-thirds of our cost base, there's a certain dynamic, and then there's a certain dynamic on the G&A base. Overall, the actuals are quite promising, and we appreciate the upside they have generated versus our sort of expectations. We are still a little bit cautious to suggest to take that as a run rate because, you know, the activity coming back over the course of the year, there's a possibility that we will track favorably, but not as favorably anymore as we have been tracking in the first quarter.
If I would, if I could take an internal perspective here, which we, which we don't generate, we have delivered better than expected in the first quarter against our internal goals, but we are not yet entirely sold on the question whether all of that will be sticky, whether some of it is just subject to time shift. Secondly, whether some of the expected increased business activities, especially in the front end, may not lead to a run rate which is not gonna be quite as good as it was in the first quarter. Directionally, I would say, yeah, you could take a shot at that. For the time being, I would say if you do that, maybe cushion it a little bit between prior experience and what you've seen in the first quarter.
Okay. Perfect. My last question goes to the performance fees. You mentioned the EUR 20 million roughly which, let's say, completely related to Dawonia. Is it fair to assume that this is the largest part this year? You, you mentioned you are expecting also for the second half higher performance fees, but, could you remind me where they should come from, if you are expecting mostly acquisitions in the second half and write down could probably, I'm not sure if I'm correct, but, hurt kind of performance fee?
Yeah. Good. Look, so first quarter, very atypical in the sense that around about 20 were driven by around about 19 from Dawonia. Again, you will, you'll see that contributor also next year and the year after, but at a slightly lower level. That said, for the total year, I mean, we haven't given guidance on the individual revenue streams this year, because of the uncertainties in the market. I would guess you can expect the number for the total year maybe to be close to twice that level. Which means in turn that there will be other contributors.
We do currently see one other fairly strongly contributing vehicle in the later parts of the year, and we're tracking that obviously very carefully. We're talking around about another EUR 10 million there. Then there will be a few smaller items which could generate another EUR 0- EUR 10 of performance fee income, all of which would be adding up to something slightly south of EUR 40. Obviously, it will be key to see those opportunities materialize, but as we're tracking them on a case-by-case basis, we feel reasonably confident that the transaction fee income line is the one that is very, very difficult to foresee at the moment. On the other two, we feel quite up to the game.
The additional performance fees you mentioned, will they only materialize if there is a disposal?
In principle, yes. Given the nature of the assets in question, the timing plans and the clients, or the vehicles and investors, they're, sorry, they're decked against. Given the fact that they are from a planning and agreement point of view locked in, I see those to be quite safe to assume.
Quite what? Sorry.
Safe to assume.
Yeah. Okay. Okay, perfect. That's from my side. Thank you very much.
You're more than welcome. Thanks for the questions. Thanks.
The next question is from the line of Philipp Kaiser with Baader Bank. Your question please.
Hello from my side, and thanks for the presentation and congrats to the quite good start to the year despite the challenging environment. Just only one question left regarding your guidance. After printing EUR 27.2 million at the DR and assuming a guidance ratio of EUR 50 million-EUR 90 million, could you a bit elaborate on your scenario for the lower end of the guidance for the course of the year?
Yeah, look, the lower end of the year, the guidance is EUR 50 as you've seen. At the moment, I would say we're tracking, let's say in the third quartile of the range, probably. So north of the midpoint. That's driven by all the things we've just discussed. The question will be what's gonna happen to the third and the fourth quarter from a transaction fee income as a negative, a potential headwind, and what's gonna happen to the stickiness of our cost performance, which we have so far seem to be quite okay. The two together, contrary to management fee perspective and performance fee perspective are gonna be the two drivers that will determine if our destiny is in that range.
At the moment, so assuming we're in the third quartile, if the market doesn't come back at all, I think we'll for sure drop into the second quartile of the guidance, i.e., below the midpoint. I don't expect to. Sorry, can you still hear me?
Yeah.
I do not expect us to drop into the first quartile of the guidance, i.e., the 50-60 bracket. In a scenario where transaction fee income will really not appear or reappear, and a portion of the cost run rate is going to be lost, I could see us in the second quarter. If we continue to be to do well on the cost side, I could see us still sort of between the second and the third quarter, more like in the upper part of the second quarter, even in a severe transaction fee headwind environment. That's kind of the dynamics we see.
We might know more as we come out of the second quarter and get into the early days of the third quarter, and then maybe will be the first point, where we may contemplate to narrow our guidance. As I said, that's where we are mentally here on this topic.
Okay. If we would assume the same market condition as what we saw in the first quarter and the course of the year, you would still reach the lower end of the guidance. Is that right?
That is the point of the range that I'm not worried about. At the moment, I'm mentally in the third quartile of that range. In a bad scenario, I'm in the second quartile of that range. I'm not thinking about the first quartile of that range. I would only get into the highest and fourth quartile of that range if I would get some opportunistic transactions under the belt on top of normal ones.
Okay, perfect. Thanks a lot. We're off on my side.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Lars vom Cleff with Deutsche Bank. Your question please.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I would have two and would ask them one by one if that is okay for you. First of all, Asoka, great to have you back in the asset management industry, and best of luck for and success in your new role.
It's a pleasure.
Speaking to some of my industry contacts, I tend to hear more often now that smaller real estate developers start running into problems, not at least as banks also seem to tighten financial conditions for new loans. Are you seeing and hearing this as well? Maybe adding to this, could the acquisition of a smaller, struggling developer be of interest for you?
It's a good question. I was actually just a few days ago, chatting with some of our very experienced real estate development colleagues and private equity background-driven transaction experts. We were asking ourselves the questions where we should maybe look for the most opportunistic play. One of the answers among several was that struggling developers, because equity is drying out for a lot of them. Leverage, very difficult to get. Liquidation of projects in development, difficult unless you drop from a 31 multiple to a 25, 24 multiple. The opportunities are there and they're all over the place.
The only way for some of these guys to stay in business is to accept debt or mezzanine instruments with coupons that are mind-boggling, you know, 25%, 30%, 35%. Basically almost assuming that there will be failure and therefore then, you know, a plot of land or a plot of land with some building rights or something under construction or something almost complete but short of fit out. And then those assets, you could then pick up very cheaply and given the skills we have around real estate development, ESG future proving and transactions in terms of placements into existing or new vehicles, would make this a huge opportunity.
We are looking into this space, but it would have to be something of critical mass. It would have to be something that we can handle from a skill set point of view. It'd probably have to be in a geography where we have more than average real estate development and asset management skills. Compared to competition, we are better than average pretty much everywhere where we are. But there are, let's say, certain markets where we would be more able, capacity and capability-wise, to handle this than others. The answer is yes. That is a huge opportunity, but it depends case by case because there's also a lot of complicated opportunities out there with compliance, legal, financial baggage, all sorts of things.
We don't need that distraction. It would have to be a fairly pure clear-cut play.
Understood. Many thanks. Then secondly, you already mentioned in the presentation also in the follow-up comment, that you are asking for the authorization to acquire and use treasury shares again, and precondition the AGM gives you the authorization. I would be interested in the timeline, given your high liquidity position. If you get the authorization, is the new share buyback program then something we should expect shortly, or is that just to have it in your pocket and ready whenever you're able or willing?
Let's take it step by step. We will ask for the authorization, and then we will certainly discuss how we do that from an intensity point of view or a sequence or timing point of view. You could do it gradually, like on a linear curve. You could do it, maybe on an exponential curve. You know, we had these discussions before. Let's first get the authorization, and then we think about how dynamic we wanna make it. It depends on a few things because, you know, other alternative opportunities to spend the cash may arise in the meantime. I mean, we're looking at co-investment opportunities literally on a weekly basis, almost at the moment, or bi-weekly basis. We're thinking about M&A opportunities on a monthly basis.
There, there could be a side shot, so to speak, from any of those two directions, which then will also have an implications on how dynamic we wanna make this part of the cash allocation. Just stay with us until we get through the authorization, and then we will probably revert back after that once we have made up our mind.
Very helpful and much appreciated. Many thanks and have a great weekend, Ekram. I'll go back into the line.
Thank you very much. By the way, we will be on a roadshow in the U.K. and Scotland and also the U.S., I think in June, Martin, right? We will also see you then. Any other questions from anybody?
The next question is from the line of Manuel Martin with ODDO BHF. Your question, please.
Thank you very much. Just one question from my side, please. From your perspective, if you have a look at the price of both in the market, there is a feeling of how far or how big is the difference between bid and ask prices in the property market. Are buyers and sellers approaching a bit or is it still a big difference? What's your impression, please?
that's a wide range. I'll give you some examples to give you a feel. Just earlier this week, I was looking at a vehicle where we have quite a few blue chip investors involved and round about 20 pretty decent office assets in the mix. Because a minority of investors was thinking about redeeming their contribution, we have lined up a handful of assets for disposal under the current conditions, which is, in this case, not an issue because they're good quality.
As we've lined up those assets, we're seeing, you know, we're seeing them positioned anywhere, 5% above book and valuation all the way to maybe -10% versus book. Let's say on average compared to, you know, say smaller single digit negative. Yeah, so kind of okay, quite good. When you think about maybe development examples, and you go in there and look at that, the difference of expectations can be as big as 20%-30% is something I saw recently. Again, we're more of a potential buyer there, and also on the established asset side, we're more of a potential buyer. That's kind of the range you're looking at.
Depending on the sector, depending on the, whether it's development or established, anything from, you know, Bits are up to 5% better than expected to 10% lower. On the development side, all the way up to 30% lower. The range you can calculate yourself. In the first sample it's about 15% revolving around zero and in the second one it's more like 30% starting at zero and going down -30. That's kind of the range. Now again, it really depends on the office side, it depends on a lot on ESG fitness. It depends a lot on all the traditional parameters. Retail side, again, you know, food is good, close to end user is good.
Logistics, last mile is good. Second to last mile is good. Infra in general is good, so we don't need to cover that one. The geography also does matter. As I said, we see in northwestern Europe a bit more of a delta, and we see a bit less of a delta in Germany, in central eastern Europe. We see good signs in slightly stranger markets like Mexico or further east, established markets like Japan.
Okay, I see. Indeed a very wide field.
Wide, it's wide picture. You gotta nail this down to asset class location and a couple of key questions around the parameters I alluded to.
All right. Thank you very much.
Bigger challenge is probably still that is the breadth of the bidder, you know, range. Like, there's usually not as many bidders anymore showing up than you had in the past at least at the moment.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
There are no further questions, and I hand back to Christoph Glaser for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Look, once again, appreciate the opportunity to be with all of you. We'll see some of you during the upcoming roadshows, which we really look forward towards. It's always great to dialogue about the company. On our side, we'll focus on the AGM at the end of May. The dividend will be up again. I assume you've taken note of that. There's not a lot of companies doing that at the moment, especially in our sector. We feel good about that. It will be paid on the 30th of May, which is also good news. Then we're obviously focused on onboarding Asoka and our new CEO, Slava. Sorry, COO, Slava, who will join us on the 1st of June. Thank you, Martin.
With that, I would like to close this call and see you and talk to you soon. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.