PATRIZIA SE (ETR:PAT)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2024

Nov 14, 2024

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nine Months 2024 Conference Call. I'm Vicky, the call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Verena Schoppe- de Alvarenga. Please go ahead, madam.

Verena Schoppe-de Alvarenga
Associate Director of Investor Relations, Patrizia

Welcome, everyone, to our analyst and investor call for the results regarding the first nine months of 2024. This is Verena Schoppe- de Alvarenga speaking. I'm happy to have our CEO, Asoka Wöhrmann, and CFO, Martin Praum, with us today to present you an overview of our operating business, market environment, financials for the nine months 2024, as well as the guidance for the full year, followed by a Q&A session. During today's call, we will refer to the results presentation, which you can find on our website in the IR section home under most recent publications. In case of questions, the IR team is more than happy to take your calls. As usual, this call will be recorded and made available on our website. We will also offer a call transcript for further reference. With that, I would like to hand over to Asoka to start the presentation.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Thank you, Verena. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. Also, welcome from my side, and thank you for joining our third quarter nine-month earnings 2024 analyst call, and what are the key takeaways from our third quarter results before we go and deep dive the numbers, Martin? First, we are still operating in a subdued market environment. Second, we see a continued resilience of our asset base. Third, clients are shaping their risk-return profiles for the upcoming cycle. On the positive side of market developments, very clearly, interest rates are stabilizing. Overall, uncertainty is fading away, which helps the market recovery. On the less positive side, we are facing ongoing economic headwinds, not only in Germany but in many markets across the world, and geopolitical uncertainties. Both will dampen the economic recovery.

However, looking at the overall transaction volume in Europe, we see more investment activities in the market, albeit coming from very low levels. We see a stabilization in all major asset classes. Within that, the residential is leading, followed by industrial and logistics, as well as hotel. The office sector remains a challenge asset class, and it is impacted by structural changes in our societies, in our economies, and fundamentally changing future of work demands. What is also very clear in the upcoming cycle is clients look for diversification, optimized, and more tailor-made risk-return profiles, and performance is key for their investment decisions. This is an advantage for us. We can navigate clients through the market volatility with our broad product platform and offering for Real Estate, Value Add, Residential and Infrastructure investments. Let's move to page four of the presentation, please.

As you know, in the investment cycle, equity raise precedes the investment process, forthcoming investment process, so looking at equity raise in the first nine months 2024, we gained momentum. This is different to last year. This is due to the positive shift in investor sentiment, certainly still on relatively low absolute levels, but we can see first sign of recovery. Equity raise substantially increased to EUR 0.7 billion, an increase in percentage-wise almost 170%. EUR 450 million for real estate investments, or equity raise for real estate investments. That means a percentage-wise 62% rise, and EUR 280 million for Infrastructure investment, the raised equity, that nearly translated in percentage by 38%. This is certainly a significant improvement compared to the quarter three of last year, so we continue to diversify our transaction activities also.

If you look at the right hand of the slide four again, we achieved more than EUR 1.3 billion of signed transactions, 52% in real estate and being net buyer in this segment, 48% in infrastructure, and our fund of funds business, AIP, Advantage Investment Partners, which was mostly driven by acquisitions. Overall, what we see is an increased demand for Infrastructure investments, in particular regarding the energy transition megatrend. This is driven by two needs: need for decarbonization and need for acceleration of the transition to renewable energy solutions. On the real estate side, we see increased demand for value-added products, particularly in residential and logistics, but also alternative sectors.

Investors are testing clearly the waters and returning to the real estate market, which leads to a more participant or real asset market, broader, saying broader real asset market, which leads to more participants and more deals, resulting in a greater pricing transparency, which is relevant for the recovery. This trend is reflected in the major transactions we announced in the last months. And let's go to the next page before Martin starts and deep diving into the numbers. Looking at the latest large transaction we accomplished, you can see our strategic focus on Smart Real Asset Solutions and real estate infrastructure gets more traction. So we achieved three large volume transactions in infrastructure. All are related to the energy transition megatrend. A major investment in renewables in Portugal, expanding our Energy-from-Waste platform in Italy, and investing in a leading rooftop solar company in the Philippines.

In our real estate investment business, I would like to highlight a larger value-added transaction recently signed. This is a major refurbishment project in the prime office sector in London. You can see Patrizia continues to strengthen its positioning even in a subdued market as a smart real asset manager of choice in the industry. And we are expanding our global investment footprint across Europe and Asia-Pacific. And with that, I will hand over to our CFO, Martin Praum. Martin, please.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you so much, Asoka. Let me kick off on page seven of the presentation with the financials of the first nine months. Let's look at assets under management. You'll see that the AUM is around about 2% and virtually unchanged if we look on a quarter-on-quarter basis. I think it's interesting to mention that we have bought more for clients than we sold. So we've been a net buyer in the market, and this net organic growth supported AUM by EUR 0.4 billion. We had some cash out to clients, but certainly the valuation impact of EUR 2 billion did, at the end of the day, have an impact on AUM, which now stands at close to EUR 56 billion. Asoka already mentioned that we've been active in the market, and certainly in transaction volume, closed of over EUR 2 billion is low compared to what Patrizia delivered in the past.

However, if you compare that number to the market and many other players, Patrizia is still a quite active investor for clients even in this market environment. I think this is an important message. Let's go to page eight. I think this is an evergreen slide you're all familiar with. The diversified AUM portfolio that we have is really helping and shows resilience. If we look at the peak of the market in terms of AUM, we're now down roughly 5% in terms of AUM, which I think is a good number given the market environment we're acting in, and it's really good to have this diversified base as a basis for our business. In terms of split AUM by sector, not much change, but you'll see that going forward, this will change more towards infrastructure.

We will certainly focus on living strategies, and also you'll see more value-added strategy investments in line with our strategy. Now coming to profitability, let's go to page nine of the presentation. You'll see the split of our three major revenue lines: management fees, transaction fees, and performance fees. Management fees today make up 86% of total revenues, performance fees around 9%, and transaction fees 5%. If we look at management fees, top line, they're down 8.6%. But we have to bear in mind that last year we had a higher contribution from real estate development services for our clients, and also we had that structuring fees that supported the nine months in 2023. If we adjust for that, then management fees are down for like 4.5%. This is also more in line with the effect from lower AUM. Transaction fees, actually here we've seen a trend reversal.

Transaction fees are up here and here, and we also expect a good contribution from transaction fees in the fourth quarter of this year. I'll talk about it later when we talk about the guidance, and performance fees, not surprisingly, also down year- on- year. As I said, we've been a net buyer. We didn't have too many realizations for our clients, and this certainly has an impact on performance fees, but overall, revenues are down 13% year- on- year, and this certainly is the major driver for the reduced EBITDA and profitability of the company. Let's look at the cost side, very, very important in this market environment. Operating expenses are down close to 3% year- on- year, so you'll see the first effects from our cost-cutting measures. We had a few in the past, especially on staff costs. You see the first effect of the FTE reduction.

We reduced over time close to 100 FTEs. Secondly, if we look at other operating expenses, they are up 0.6% year- on- year. But bear in mind, this position includes two major one-offs. If you exclude them, then also other operating expenses would be down 5% year- on- year. So summing up, I think the direction is right, but we have much more to do on the cost side to help at least partially offset the revenue pressure that we still experience in our business and in the market. On page 11, you'll see the full picture and the composition of our EBITDA. My key message here is that at first glance, you'll see a material reduction in EBITDA, down 73% to around EUR 30 million this year.

But as we mentioned in our releases and in the interim report, we had a significant negative consolidation effect of EUR 13.4 million in the first nine months. So this has impacted numbers and also one-off costs of around EUR 5 million. So if you adjust for both, then you'll see that EBITDA is at a different level and much higher than reported. However, to be fair, and you will see that on the side as well, other income has supported the EBITDA as well. This other income includes, for example, the bonus pool releases because for cost-cutting measures, we decided to not use the entire bonus pool from last year and release it this year. And this is the positive impact you see here. So at the end of the day, we had costs from the last year that we shifted, and that's helping us this year in our results.

Overall, I think it's important to bear in mind the one-off I mentioned because that will become relevant when we talk about the full year guidance later in my presentation. Let's go to the balance sheet on page 12 of the presentation. In terms of available liquidity, we stand at around EUR 120 million, which is slightly lower compared to last quarter, where we were at around EUR 130 million. The balance sheet overall, if we look at net equity ratio of over 60%, is still solid and especially helpful in this market environment. No doubt, available liquidity has come down over time. We've used the liquidity, especially to support new fund initiatives, to co-invest, and to warehouse assets. And for that, I'll give you a more detailed overview on page 13 of the presentation. Also here, the picture is unchanged from last quarter.

You'll see our balance sheet, and you'll also see that overall, we have deployed around EUR 1 billion of our corporate capital into strategic investments, but also into seeding and warehousing investments. So we've utilized our balance sheet a lot because we saw certain opportunities in the market. Some of these opportunities will stay a little bit longer with us than initially planned due to the market environment. But for others, I think we will also be able to deconsolidate given funds raising progress in these funds. For us, the most important here on this slide is that we are convinced of the assets and the asset quality that we bought and that we are comfortable to hold them on our balance sheet, even if it's a quarter longer than initially planned. In addition, the assets we have on our balance sheet are also fully in line with our investment strategy.

You know that we have five key investment areas, and the assets we have include value-added strategies, living, and also European infrastructure. With that, I'd like to go to the guidance page, which is on page 14. We have confirmed the guidance for the full year, and also we have not changed the guidance range, especially if we look at EBITDA of EUR 30-60 million. I think it's clear that this market environment does not allow for a clear path of recovery of the market. So clients are very picky, and we have to offer our clients very specific products for the needs that they have. And again, our diversified product offering is helping here. Another point is that Patrizia, and especially profitability, still to a certain extent depends on market activity, on transaction and performance fees.

This has an impact on why we left the guidance as broad as it is. And lastly, we have consolidation effect, and it depends on timing when they'll kick in, which will impact the fourth quarter. And also, we might have other one-offs impacting the profitability. Again, another reason for leaving the guidance range as it is. Overall, I think, and this is something that Asoka also mentioned, most important to us is that equity raising is gaining momentum, and also our deal pipeline starts filling up. And these are encouraging operational signs for stabilization and improvement in the environment. To help you bridge the gap to our guidance, let's go to the last page on page 15. We are aware that consolidation and deconsolidation effects are sometimes tough to digest. So we want to give you guidance on what we think will happen.

If we start with our EBITDA at EUR 30 million after nine months, we do expect that one of the funds and assets we have consolidated will deconsolidate in the fourth quarter. So the negative impact that we've seen will be reversed. And also, we expect a profitable fourth quarter, higher transaction fees, and also lower costs. And that's why we feel comfortable to have this guidance range. Whether we come up at the lower or at the upper end of the guidance range really depends on the speed of fundraising. It depends on timing of realizations and timing of transactions we sign for our clients. And also, as I said, there could be a positive one-off effect related to historic M&A transactions and performance achievement of certain products and teams. With that, I'd like to close my remarks, and I'm happy for the operators to start the Q&A session.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. First question from Andre Remke, Baader Bank. Please go ahead, sir.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

Yeah, good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. A couple of questions from my side. First, starting with the consolidation, which you expected on the equity investment in the fourth quarter. How is the probability of this, or is it the other way around? Is there any risk related to that that will not happen? And what is the share of the EUR 13 million you could probably recover? This is the first question.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Yeah, hi. Sure. Hi, Andre, and thank you for the question. First of all, we see a very high probability of that happening. We have good fundraising momentum for that product, and that's why we also included that in our guidance, as we are confident that this will happen in the fourth quarter. In terms of the magnitude, I have to become a little bit more technical. You know that we had a negative impact on EBITDA of EUR 13.4 million from this temporarily consolidated fund. But you have to bear in mind that as it was fully consolidated, and there are also other investors in that fund, there are minority shareholders that also have to bear part of the loss. And if you look at our P&L, you'll see that bottom line, the EUR 22 million loss split between Patrizia shareholders and minorities.

And of that EUR 13.4 million, around EUR 5 million is actually to be borne by minorities. So the net effect on Patrizia after nine months was around EUR 9 million. And in the fourth quarter, we would expect a reversal effect, which is only relating to Patrizia and its shareholders, and that would be in the direction of, say, EUR 8 million or so as a positive impact on Q4.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

With no effect on the minority side?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Correct.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

Okay, perfect. Then you mentioned other extraordinary positive effects. Is this a meaningful amount?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

It could be meaningful. It certainly would be one-off and probably also non-cash. But again, that depends on certain target achievements. That's why we cannot comment on that at this stage. So we'll have to wait until we have better indications of how the rest of the year runs.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

Okay, fair enough. Then you mentioned that potential transaction fees are expected for the fourth quarter. What about performance fees? Do you expect any performance fee apart from the Dawonia fee booked already in the first quarter of the year?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

We do indeed expect some performance fees in the fourth quarter, but at a very low level compared to the previous quarters. So it'll be a minor amount. So rather a much stronger pickup in transaction fees in the fourth quarter.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

Okay. And the last question is, you mentioned to be a net buyer currently in the market. How is your transaction pipeline for the fourth quarter? Is it similar, i.e., geared more towards acquisitions rather than to disposals? And do you expect this to continue also for the next year, or are potential disposals just more delayed and will follow with the stabilization of the market? We all know the discussions. What I'm asking is, you have 15 billion of assets under management in offices, which you also on your own describe as more facing structural issues.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Yeah, yeah. Sure, Andre. So first of all, pipeline, as I said, is building up. And yes, we have more acquisitions planned than disposals. In terms of the asset classes, it is really a variety. And it even can include office. For example, if you have a value-added strategy, I'm just referring to the latest mandate that we acquired in London Pinnacle, which is a classic value-added refurbishment project where our experts can add value to clients. So it's, as I said, the pipeline is building up. We see clients are more willing to talk about new ideas, new investment strategies. And it's really, especially in our focus areas, living, value-added commercial, and especially infrastructure where we're talking about new ideas.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

But you do not see a risk that offices or your clients, which have a stake in offices, are about to sell more from their positions to reallocate to other asset classes?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

No, that certainly could happen, Andre. But I want to remind everyone that the majority of our AUM and assets are in core investment strategies. So high-quality location asset and counterparty risk. And this is why our clients also didn't have the pressure to sell in the last few, say, quarters and years. So they're happy to stay with their investments. But structurally, you're right that if you look at asset allocation, it would be rather investors selling commercial, especially office, for the benefit of new investment strategies like logistics or infrastructure.

Andre Remke
Co Head Equity Research and Real Estate Analyst, Baader Bank

Okay, I see. That's from my side. Thank you very much.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you, Andre.

Operator

The next question from Jochen Schmitt, Metzler. Please go ahead.

Jochen Schmitt
Equity Reasearch Analyst, Metzler

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I have three questions, please. Firstly, on the Dawonia fund, there is still no news on your talks with investors, how you will proceed with this mandate in the longer term and how your deferred funds fee claims will be treated. Could you please comment on that? Second question, maybe a bit technical, but nevertheless, on the negative contribution from the equity result in the nine-month report, you mentioned scheduled startup losses, but also an impairment on a convertible loan as reasons. Could you give some more explanation here? And third question, very briefly, could you give an indication for depreciation and amortization to be booked in Q4? These are my questions.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, on Dawonia, we can only reiterate what we said last time. We are still in constructive discussions with our investors. As a reminder, the complexity with this fund is that basically for a prolongation, we have to agree basically with 100% votes from all investors on a prolongation. And this is simply technically something that takes time. In terms of asset quality, the kind of future outlook for the asset, I think we're all aligned that Dawonia is still a great asset and a great fund. In terms of the equity result, you are right. We had initial losses for a fund, which is normal in the life cycle of a fund, that when you set up a fund, that the fund first creates losses and then turns into profitability after a few quarters.

This is driven by initial expenses, advisory, etc., when assets are bought. The special effect we had in the consolidated fund was that this includes an EV charging business. And in this business, in this company we have consolidated, there was one of the service providers that went into financial distress. And the company where we invested had given that service provider a convertible loan. And we assume that within the insolvency proceedings of that service provider, the majority of the value will not be recoverable. And given we have currently temporarily consolidated that fund, this also hit our numbers after nine months. Again, the majority of that negative impact, as I illustrated to Andre a few minutes ago, will be recovered, and we expect a positive impact in the fourth quarter. Now, you might ask, how is that possible? It is possible because we talk about two different approaches.

When we consolidate an asset at equity, then you will see the full impact of profits and loss in our P&L. So basically, the initial amount that we consolidated is impacted by running losses in this case. And then when you deconsolidate, it depends on the valuation of the participation, and that includes the future outlook of the business. And that can be different from the accumulated losses incurred. And that explains why we expect a rather net neutral-ish impact of that. In terms of depreciation amortization for the fourth quarter, we would guide for around EUR 12 million for your models.

Jochen Schmitt
Equity Reasearch Analyst, Metzler

Thank you, Martin.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you, Jochen.

Operator

The next question from Lars vom Cleff, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Two, if I may. The first one, I agree. 2024, very volatile, hard to predict, and it's far too early for a 2025 outlook. But just for me to get a first feeling, do we have to prepare for another year with significant one-offs given how you currently do the business? And then also, not at least given your ambitious medium-term targets, would you agree that the improvement we shall expect of business conditions we shall expect for next year would rather still be muted and not coming, or business activity not coming back in full force again?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Perhaps with the answer, I'll give my final view, and Asoka will then chime in. First of all, if you look at the composition of our nine-month results, then I think it's important that the outlook for 2025 certainly depends on the business volume, business development, and also our cost-cutting measures. And also, if you exclude the one-offs that we've shown, you'll see that the results were supported by other income. And this is something we do not budget for next year. So our budget is based on operational business, business growth, and also further the cost containment. But we have to bear in mind that to increase management fees, you always have to build up a pipeline. And this certainly takes a little while to translate into management fees.

So if we look at the market today and the environment, we would say that we would probably look for a flattish development 2025 versus 2024. With that, I'll hand over to Asoka.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Yeah. No, thank you, Martin. Last, I think your question regarding 2025, it is 2024. I think most of us, we thought second half of the year we can see a sharper recovery of the market, but we have not seen. And that is not because of interest rate and inflation, let me see, fears. It is a subdued growth, economic uncertainty, all that. I do think 2025, we are planning carefully. Even we are positive. What we are seeing for 2023 is, as we described today in this call, and the first time that we can call year on year, the capital raise or equity raise is starting to, let me say, get more traction. And I do think 2025, there will be more transaction in the market and more opportunities we can see. Some people want to still exit.

That means they are also willing to exit because the market transparency is there and people are looking for great opportunities. I do think 2025 will be still a mixed year, even though I do think it's much more positive than 2024. And with our broader platform, we are expecting to get more gain on a capital raise side that will translate that. It depends on when the capital is coming to us and the fee schedules are going to get started. But I do think next year it's quite up on growth because on the cost side, we are doing everything what we can do, but it is quite dependent on the market next year.

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Thanks. Very helpful.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Yeah. Your questions?

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. I guess as far as you are able to answer the question at this stage, that was extremely helpful. And now that I have your attention, Asoka, of course, I'm well aware that the current business environment rather needs the management focus to foremost be in-house focused. However, given that, as you say yourself, market sentiment continues to show signs of improvement, and also given that you have treasury shares worth more than EUR 50 million as an acquisition currency, would now not be a good time to also think about potential external growth again?

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Yeah. No, I do think, Lars, thank you also for this question. You're always forward-looking, but I do think let me also say, I can see and I'm looking really deep into the market. There are opportunities, but most opportunities are troublesome. Let me say, opportunities. We are shaping our organization and platform the way that we want to really play an important role in the next cycle. In my opinion, Lars, we don't want to help or solve other ones' problems. We have to reshape and prepare ourselves for the next new cycle. What is full of opportunities, even we are not seeing fully that will show up in 2025. But I do think next cycle is very different. We are well positioned, but at the moment, we can't show it.

But M&A per se is for us, or let me say, inorganic actions is not my first priority. But even though if there are any opportunities, we can do. And let me say that can add either new skill set, other geographical destination, and what we feel that is great, we will not touch. That is a clear view I want to outline today. It can change in six, eight, nine months. We are still consolidating our own platform, and we have to do our homework well. Even though you guys are not seeing that at all, as Martin said, we are doing that, and we are focusing on that. Focus is relevant in this, let me say, part of the cycle.

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Crystal clear and fully understood. Many thanks.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

The next question from Manuel Martin, ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.

Manuel Martin
Senior Equity Research Analyst, ODDO BHF

Thank you, gentlemen. Two questions from my side, please. One by one. The first one, follow-up question on outlooks and potential scenarios. Given the elections in the U.S. that we have seen with Mr. Trump and now upcoming views on maybe interest rates higher for longer, is it something that you have discussed with your clients and which could also influence 2025? I.e., have you been implementing lower interest rates in your 2025 scenario? And what could happen if interest rates stay higher for longer? That would be the first question.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

I may take that, Martin and Manuel. Thank you for the question. Yeah, it's just nearly one week ago. I do think it will be interesting to see now, and we are seeing that already in some market segments, what Trump administration will trigger in the U.S. and might also impact the rest of the world and Europe, especially. I think it was a planned rate cut by the Fed, more or less directly after the election, one election by Trump. It was not a forced action by administration. But I do think you are right, Manuel. I am still, and as a former CIO, I would say I'm still looking with curiosity how the Fed is going to react. Is that really more pronounced rate cycle front of us, or are they going to a little bit take back, but not much more than what we can see?

Because if you think about customs and introduction of customs and more or less means deglobalization means inflation, rise of inflation in all the economies in the Western world, is it right for central bank policy? I do think interest rates, in my opinion, and I have a very clear view, it will not go down dramatically if we will settle around 3% around the world. That is a normal world. It's still, compared to all the historical business cycles, quite low. Don't compare this cycle with the last 15 years with all the monetary policy, let me say, support after Lehman happened. I do think that will not come back to negative or zero interest rates. But I do think interest rates will be either managed or will stay around 2%-3% around the Western world.

Only the exception will be Japan, which is more or less. It looks like in a hiking cycle. So therefore, I do think we have to take all in. We have to consider the interest rates around that. That means all business models, what we are offering to clients, are expecting much higher returns compared to the core anchor rates. Plus, we have to expect more volatility in the future. So this is why I think, to be honest, for me, the real assets can be a great weapon, but it also not 25, 26, 27. I can see real assets as a good medicine against financial repression. That means negative real rates if that comes through. Let me say, the Trump world is coming, and let me say, triggering a growth potential around the world, especially triggered by the U.S.

Inflation will have to go up, but the central banks are a little bit will dampen, but not going to enter into a new hiking cycle. This will be the scenario where I can see, especially the real asset can perform well. I do think real assets are lagging the liquid markets by, I think, miles now, and they have to catch up. They are showing attractive opportunities in the markets as we see in the pipelines what we can see for our clients.

Manuel Martin
Senior Equity Research Analyst, ODDO BHF

Okay. Okay. Thanks for that view. That's very helpful. And my second question, hopefully a bit less tricky, is about the valuation result of Patrizia. After nine months, I think Patrizia had a kind of decelerating devaluation effect in the third quarter. Can you give us maybe an update on the assumption that you have for the property devaluations for 2024? And maybe, if possible, kind of feeling or outlook for 2025, please.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Sure. Hey, Manuel, I'll take that over. If you remember when we began the year, we had an indication or assumption for something between 3%-5% devaluation. Now, if you look where we stand today, this is better than we thought. But don't become overly optimistic because due to our AUM structure and some of the assets only being valued once a year, there might be some lagging effect on valuation. That's why we would expect perhaps slight devaluations towards the end, but very unlikely the 5% upper spectrum. And some of that will also have an impact on 2025, and then we do expect stabilization and a slow improvement. Also, for the assets that we have on our own balance sheet, we've also included in our assumption for the full year smaller devaluation effects.

You have seen some of that already in the nine-month results, which is shown below EBITDA.

Manuel Martin
Senior Equity Research Analyst, ODDO BHF

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question from Kai Klose, Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Kai Klose
Senior Equity Analyst Real Estate, Berenberg

Yes. Hey, good afternoon. It's Kai Klose at Berenberg. I've got three questions for me. The first one is on page 15. Just want to check. You mentioned that you expect in Q4 a positive deconsolidation effect of EUR 8 million, which means that you do not recoup the EUR 13 million negative effect which we had in Q3. Just want to check that. Second question is on the split of management fees. You mentioned the reduction by 9% was partly due to lower development fees and the absence of client debt structuring fees. What was the earnings contribution from these two items in the management fees before, and what can we expect going forward? And second question is regarding page 13, the warehousing assets.

At which price or at which value you expect them to get off the balance sheet into a fund product to increase the liquidity of the company again? Thank you.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you, Kai. On the first question, you're right that on EBITDA level, we will not or unlikely recoup everything of the EUR 13.4 million, but on net income level, as I mentioned before, that will be virtually fully offset, and so that's why we expect the positive impact in the fourth quarter of the year. In terms of management fees, last year, we had a positive impact from real estate development service fees, which was around EUR 10 million-EUR 11 million that supported management fees, and debt structuring fees was close to EUR 4 million, and if you look at the nine-month results, we didn't have any debt structuring fees, but we had real estate development service fees of between EUR 6 million and EUR 7 million that supported the results. Going forward, we will say we expect a single-digit million EUR or higher single-digit million EUR support from service development fees in our management fees.

Your last question was on the warehouse assets. Our base case assumption is that, as I said, we'll deconsolidate one of the funds already this year. Given our solid balance sheet, there's certainly no pressure to sell certain assets at this stage, but we would expect a strategic decision on these assets within the next 24 months.

Kai Klose
Senior Equity Analyst Real Estate, Berenberg

If I may, on the last one, we have two value-add offices. You expect these two assets to get off the balance sheet or one of those into a fund, or will it be the residential project development?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

No, basically, the deconsolidation in the fourth quarter is relating to the infrastructure fund. The value-add office properties, this is something we want to develop further. And so we're going to invest CapEx and turn that into core. So that will take a little while. And then probably in terms of ranking, what is going to leave the balance sheet first, it's probably going to be the logistics exposure before the other ones will follow.

Kai Klose
Senior Equity Analyst Real Estate, Berenberg

So the two warehousing assets are expected to stay on the balance sheet for longer?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

At least the current plan is that we want to develop these value-add assets. As I said, value-add is our expertise. This is what we're good at. We have the great people to do that and reposition assets, and I think it's much better value for the company and also shareholders if we develop these assets.

Kai Klose
Senior Equity Analyst Real Estate, Berenberg

And the last question on that. So it's not likely to become an asset for a retail fund?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Oh, absolutely. That could also, at the end of the day, become a fund for our clients. But again, on these warehouse assets, we'll have these decisions later.

Kai Klose
Senior Equity Analyst Real Estate, Berenberg

Thank you.

Operator

The next question from Philipp Kaiser, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.

Philipp Kaiser
Equity Research Analyst, Warburg Research

Hello, everyone. Thank you for the presentation. Thanks for taking my question. First, starting with a follow-up on the depreciation amortization. Martin, you mentioned EUR 12 million for the fourth quarter. Does this include potential impairments on these balance sheet assets already?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Philipp, no, no, it does not. There might be a single million digit add-on to that.

Philipp Kaiser
Equity Research Analyst, Warburg Research

Okay. Perfect. Thanks for clarification. The next one on the cost base, so there are still at least some improvements here. Are there still room for improvement in the next quarter? So can we expect a further decline in the last quarter? And the follow-up on that, when do you think you reach a bottom here where the measures cannot have any positive impact anymore? When we can expect the cost base to start to increase again?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

I think, and I'm looking at a shortcut, we both agree that the cost base has to come down further, Patrizia. You'll certainly see impact in the fourth quarter of this year, and also, if we look into 2025, to us, this means further cost base consolidation, and if you remember the plan that we've set out to the market with our ambitious 100 billion AUM growth target, if we have significant revenue growth, then this has to be much stronger in terms of growth than cost base to create operating leverage and scalability to enable a better profitability of the company, so we all have super focus on this topic.

Philipp Kaiser
Equity Research Analyst, Warburg Research

Okay. Perfect.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Yeah.

No. We've done already in quite a focus, as Martin said, alluded earlier on the personnel costs. We will now do more as we reduce also. I think that a little bit muddling through the consolidation effects in the G&A. We will look much deeper into G&A and other overall platform costs. So therefore, you can expect more to come. We will manage that very diligently due to our top lines. And I think our profitability has to increase and our operating leverage has to go up. Okay. Perfect. So overall, we can expect for the next year also declining cost base, taking all the costs into account. It's too early that we will not guide you directly to 25, but that is the direction of what we are going into.

Philipp Kaiser
Equity Research Analyst, Warburg Research

Perfect. Thanks a lot. And the last one is on your guidance.

So you reiterate your broad guidance range as you expect the negative effects to be revealed in the last quarter. From your current visibility on the last quarter, would at least the lower end of your EBITDA guidance reachable without the deconsolidation of the positive effect?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

We have no doubt we're not going to reach the lower end of the guidance. So in another way, yes, we're confident that the EUR 30 million is doable.

Philipp Kaiser
Equity Research Analyst, Warburg Research

Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot. That's all from my side.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder for questions, please press star and one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from Lars vom Cleff, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Yes. Thank you very much. Just a quick housekeeping question for Martin. After we already discussed the amount of G&A we shall envisage for this year. So doing the back-of-the-envelope calculation, I end up with around about EUR 30 million, EUR 34 million, EUR 35 million for this year after rather EUR 45 million to EUR 50 million for the years before. Is this, let's say, EUR 35 million G&A our new run rate we shall also expect for the next couple of years? Or will that change again?

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

First of all, if you look at G&A, you have a technical impact from amortized funds that we depreciate over time. This stack will become lower with running depreciation. So this is something that should decline over time. So we would guide for, yes, still double-digit G&A going forward, but probably in the area of EUR 30 million, perhaps EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million.

Lars vom Cleff
Director of Small and Mid Cap Research, Deutsche Bank

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Please pass the last question, gentlemen. I would like to turn the conference back over to you for any closing remarks. Thank you.

Martin Praum
CFO, Patrizia

Thank you so much for listening in and all your questions. As you know, the IR team is more than happy to take up any follow-up questions that weren't answered. We very much look forward to being on the road again soon. The next event we will attend will be Deutsche Börse's Eigenkapitalf orum in Frankfurt end of November, so very happy to see many of you at that event and discuss Patrizia on 25th and 26th of November. Stay healthy and speak to you soon. Bye-bye.

Asoka Wöhrmann
CEO, Patrizia

Thank you. Goodbye.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now.

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