Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Vonovia Interim Results for the nine months 2022 analyst and investor call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your telephone. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. It's my pleasure, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Rene. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Frankie, and welcome everybody to earnings call for the first nine months of this year. Your hosts today are once again CEO Rolf Buch and CFO Philip Grosse. I assume you have already downloaded today's presentation, but in case you have not, you will find it on our website under Latest Publication. Rolf and Philip will now present the results and also give a general business update. With that, over to you, Rolf.
Thank you, Rene. I have six points of highlights. First, our operational performance remained strong in Q3. I realize that the interest of many of you lies elsewhere at this point, but I really believe that we cannot overemphasize how important it is to run a business with a long-term operational stability, and that is why these numbers matter. Organic rent growth was 3.3%, and vacancy remained at a record low level of 2.1% for the group. Rent collection remains at a very high level. I'm also very pleased to see that our customer satisfaction keeps increasing. We measure customer satisfaction through an independent third party every quarter, and the most recent results were better than ever before. Operationally, Q3 was not only fully in line with our pre-crisis expectations.
On a standalone basis, it also was stronger operationally than each of the first quarters before. Operational, operating expenses were down 7% compared to [Q2 22] and 8.5% better than Q1. EBITDA rental was 2.1% higher than Q2 and 4.4% stronger than Q1. There is momentum on our side, and while the macroeconomic headwind continues, we can face them standing on a very solid operating basis. At the end of the day, the group FFO was up 35% in absolute terms, driven by the inclusion of Deutsche Wohnen and 4.2% per share. Second highlight, our final guidance 2022. We confirmed the guidance for top line EBITDA and group FFO, all of which were defined before the macro environment turned difficult on the Ukraine war, higher inflation, and higher interest rates.
On rental growth, we said at least 3.3%, and we are now slightly upgrading that to 3.4%. We think that we will not quite be able to meet the initial 3,300-unit sales volumes for recurring sales by year-end. The appetite for this product has not vanished, but the demand is lower and transactions are taking longer. On the positive side, pricing is holding up very nicely here. In fact, Q3 saw the highest margin this year. We are increasing our guidance from around 30% to more than 35% for the Value-Add fair value step-up. This probably drives some confusion because people think the Value-Add decrease is going down, but you cannot see this on this figure.
Finally, we are reducing our investment program from 22 again as a result of very different costs of capital. Third, integration of Deutsche Wohnen. The integration process is close to be finished, and starting January next year, the financial and operational system and processes will be integrated, and Deutsche Wohnen's operations and financials will run on Vonovia's platform. The bottom-up synergy analysis that we have now completed not only confirms the EUR 105 million EBITDA synergies that we have guided but also yield another EUR 30 million of synergies that will be realized mainly in the value-add segment. This basically concludes the integration as far as our reporting is concerned. Starting with the full year, I expect that you will see the Deutsche Wohnen numbers fully integrated into the group reporting.
In line, what we have said at the time of the acquisition, we have fully integrated the full DAX company within only one year, harmonizing the operational and financial systems, processes, and reporting structures. Fourth highlight, valuation. We remain confident that our subsector will not experience any large value losses. As valuations had mostly peaked and moved largely sideways on limited transaction evidence, we saw no valuation uplift in Q3. The condo market was stable, and we believe that this was driven by the larger transaction volume in this segment. Volume in the multifamily home segment were considerably lower, which makes the data less reliable at this point. For the year-end valuation, we continue to monitor the markets. To be clear, small fluctuations are not unusual and can always occur, not just on a single market basis, but also in the portfolio.
I cannot rule out a small decline by year-end, but I certainly do not anticipate anything even close to what some of the participants seems to be afraid of. At this point, it is still more a normal fluctuation, since values are no longer going up so the fluctuation is happening around the zero line and may end up in a very low single digit value decline in Q4. Guidance for 2023. Q3 is usually the quarter where we also give you the initial guidance for the guidance for the following year. This year it is not different. While things are no longer as predictable as they were 12 or 18 months ago, our underlying business gives us the strength and the confidence to present what we think is a very robust guidance for 2023.
This is particularly the case if you put this into the context of the market turmoil and the general uncertainty. We do expect growth for our top line and the adjusted EBITDA for 2023 as well. This is in spite of a smaller portfolio volume going into 2023 and further disposals that we expect throughout the year. Growing top line and EBITDA on that basis means that we clearly believe that the business will continue to perform well and it will not be impacted too much by higher inflation or challenges in the rent collection. For Group FFO 2023, we expect to come out slightly below our estimates for 2022. I emphasize slightly here, but I do want to caution that at this point, we will probably not be able to fully compensate higher interest and expenses and especially taxes as a result of the accelerated disposal program.
Turning to investments, we again reduced the investment program compared to 2022 and now expect to invest around EUR 850 million for modernization and space creation. To be very clear here, we had an initial guidance of EUR 2.1 billion-EUR 2.5 billion for 2022 when we gave the first guidance in March this year, especially to reflect the much bigger portfolio, including Deutsche Wohnen. That was an equivalent of 2.3% of gross asset value, more or less in line with the previous years. For 2023, we now have cut that by more than 60%-0 .99% of gross asset value. I think this shows how we can and how we do adjust to the changed environment.
If you consider that we are growing the rent a bit faster than expected in 2022 and yet again faster in 2023. Also we are investing much less. This serves to show that the market rent growth is moving in the right direction. Finally, number six, our free cash flow. Last, but certainly not least for the page, we are estimating the free cash flow for 2023 to be around EUR 2.8 billion. This is a combination of EUR 1.3 billion cash on hand that we expect to start 2023 with, plus another EUR 1.5 billion free cash flow from our operating business and proceeds from non-core and MFR disposals. The estimated EUR 2.8 billion is after dividend payments and before any potential proceeds from joint venture partnerships or the disposals of Deutsche Wohnen nursing business. One final word to these joint venture structures.
The process is ongoing and we are in discussions with potential partners. We understand the strategic review process at Deutsche Wohnen regarding the nursing home business is at a similar stage. Please do understand that we will not negotiate with potential partners under the surveillance of the public. You will hear from us results when we are ready to sign. Let me now hand over to Philip. He will start with the segment results.
Thank you, Rolf. Moving to page five, please. As you can see on the page, the high absolute growth in EBITDA and FFO was of course mainly driven by the inclusion of Deutsche Wohnen. Also if you look on a stand-alone basis, you can see nice growth as well, 5.6% for segment revenues, 2.6% for adjusted EBITDA total. With year-end numbers, we will show the Deutsche Wohnen contribution in the relevant segments today. Yeah, to that extent, for the last time, we will have to show Deutsche Wohnen as a separate segment again. For the rental segment, you get a rough estimate if you combine the EBITDA rental and the EBITDA from Deutsche Wohnen on a pro forma basis, and that does not include much in terms of synergies yet.
While the combined volume cannot be seen in the individual EBITDA segments, it's obviously very visible in the interest rate payments. They are higher because of the absolute debt volume as a result of acquiring Deutsche Wohnen. The increases you see in taxes was driven by the additional taxes of Deutsche Wohnen as well. It's by the very high EBITDA contribution this year in our Development segment. If I look at the tax margin, that remained broadly stable in the year-on-year comparison. If you put it all together, you get to a group FFO per share of almost 2 EUR, which is an increase of 4.2%. When we adjust this for minorities for dividend purposes, we look at an increase of 1.1% from last year.
Let's take a closer look at the different segments, and let me start with the rental segment on page six. Vonovia stand-alone operated on a slightly smaller portfolio volume of roughly 4,000 fewer units in the nine months 2022 compared to the prior year. On that basis, we still saw increased rental revenue, which was offset by higher operating expenses. It's important to keep in mind here that we had built in precautionary COVID-related provisions at the outset of COVID in 2020. In 2021, it turned out that we did not need any of them, and we were able to fully reverse these provisions. This obviously had a positive impact on OpEx, roughly EUR 9 million. Finally, you don't really see any meaningful synergies in these numbers yet, as 2022 is the integration year.
At the end of the day, all of this resulted in a marginally higher EBITDA contribution. In terms of margin, we continue to run at a high level with 78.7% as of Q3 2022. What is interesting is that if you look at the three quarters individually, you see that Q3 rental EBITDA was the strongest, 2.1% better than Q2, and 4.4% higher than Q1. There's very good momentum. This is largely driven by lower operating expenses, and that, by the way, even includes a single digit precautionary provision for energy-related payment defaults. Moving on to page seven for the operating KPIs. As you can see, organic rent growth was 3.3% and slightly below the prior year.
This comparison is always a bit off because you have different underlying rent indices in odd years and even years. The comparable 2022 number for market rent growth was, by the way, 0.6%. Vacancy, as mentioned by Rolf, reached a new record level with 2.2% or 2.1% if you include Deutsche Wohnen. In Germany, our vacancy rate is already below 2%. On page eight, I would like to give you an update on what we have seen in terms of new rent indices. As you will be aware by now, this year is dominated more by the smaller locations for us. The trend we see from Q1 and Q2 continues. For the four cities shown in the chart, plus another seven smaller locations, the new rent indices were quite a bit higher.
To be clear, this is a theoretical uplift we could get. Prior to screening the local portfolios for their eligibility at this point in time. As we have shown in Q2, there will always be a good chunk of assets to which the rent index does not apply because they have been recently modernized or re-let at rents above the respective levels of the rent indices. For 2023, we expect the more meaningful rent indices for our portfolio, including Berlin, Dresden, Dortmund, Kiel. This is going to be a very relevant year for the non-investment driven rent growth. With that, back to Rolf.
For the last time, one page about Deutsche Wohnen integration. On page nine, we are progressing nicely in the integration of Deutsche Wohnen, and we are coming on to the final stretch. By January 1st, 2023, we will have all the operational and financial systems and processes integrated. Our recent bottom-up synergies, as I already mentioned, confirmed our initial assessment of EUR 105 million EBITDA synergies and identified an additional EUR 30 million, mostly in the value-add segment, and we aim to realize beyond 2022-2024. This basically concludes the integration. Starting with the full year, I expect that you will see the Deutsche Wohnen number fully integrated into the group reporting. This will also be the way of how we manage the operational business.
What that means is that in line with what we have said and promised at the time of the acquisition, we have fully integrated a full-fledged Deutsche Wohnen in only one year, harmonizing operational and financial systems, processes, and reporting structures. This without any noise in the very politically important city of Berlin. Let's move to page 10. Let's continue with the Value-add segment. The story here is very similar to the last quarter. We saw continued growth both in external and internal revenues. The main challenge remains: we have a substantial labor shortage. That means we cannot do the amount of work with the internal resources that we initially planned. We need to rely more on subcontractors, which are more expensive than insourcing. This problem is compounded by the increased absence ratio due to COVID illness and quarantine.
The result of all this is the EBITDA contribution was both basically flat at EUR 160 million. To page 11. Our recurring sales volume in the first nine months 2022 was lower than in the prior year period, but the fair value step-up was more than four percentage points higher at around 44%. We are continuing to see demand for this product, but volumes are clearly lower, reflecting the more cautious stance some buyers are taking in line with the more challenging financing environment. Nonetheless, we did sell 458 individual units at a 44 fair value step-up in Q3 alone. Driven by the lower volumes, the EBITDA contribution was slightly down by only 1%.
Finally, what is important, the cash conversion was similar to the prior year period at 87%, resulting in EUR 330 million of free cash flow, which of course makes Philip happy. With this, over to Philip.
Yeah, this is for me to step in again. Moving to page 12 on the development segment. As you can see, EBITDA contribution was coming out at EUR 113 million. This is an uplift of 40% above the prior year level. That was especially driven by the development to sell, including a larger project that we have completed and talked about already in the first quarter. Not only was the volume higher, we also saw higher margins with an average of more than 20% for the to sell. Development to hold is still pretty high, but as we have indicated before, we are in the process of shifting most of the to hold developments into to sell.
Of course, you do not see the impact right away as there's still a bit of an overhang from some legacy projects. Please do expect the contribution from development to hold to become smaller in the context of our revised capital allocation strategy. Also in our balance sheet, you will correspondingly see a shift from the investment properties to our working capital. Let's move on to our prior NTA on page 13. We did not have a valuation uplift in the third quarter, and as a consequence, the NTA also did not change much. A short reminder, the deferred taxes in the NTA calculation relate to our hold portfolio only. Lower deferred tax volume compared to year-end 2021 is the result of our increased sales portfolio. Adjusting for this technical effect, the NTA per share would have been up 4% roughly.
Please note that also the purchase price allocation of the Deutsche Wohnen acquisition under IFRS has now been finalized, and this led to small changes in some of the line items for 2021. Let me say a few more words on valuation, moving on to page 14. As Rolf said, we remain confident that our subsector will not experience any larger value losses. Values seem to have mostly peaked and have been moving sideways on very limited transactional evidence, though. As a consequence, we saw no valuation uplift in Q3. As also indicated in the charts, it's a rather heterogeneous picture across different markets. In Berlin and Dortmund, for example, we have seen values still pushing higher for condos. All in all, this data is based on thin market evidence. Year-end valuation, we will continue to monitor the markets.
At the end of the day, small fluctuations can always occur, not just on a single market basis but also in a portfolio. What that means is we may see a small decline by year-end, but we certainly do not anticipate anything even close to what some market participants are expecting. Since values are no longer going up, this fluctuation is happening around the zero line, and it may end up in a slow single digit percentage value decline for Q4. Some of the reasons why we still don't anticipate major value declines are shown on the top right-hand side of the page. Most of you will remember this from our capital markets day, that we had a longer version of this, that we believe that especially the traditional conservative financing, the capital gains tax, and the high transaction costs provide some resilience to our subsector.
This is obviously in addition to the accelerating supply-demand imbalance we observe. Let's turn to financing on page 15. Two things to highlight on this page. First, as you know, remaining maturities for this year are already covered, so no issues in 2022. Second, you have probably seen that Moody's took our rating down by a notch to Baa1 with a stable outlook. Moody's rating is now harmonized with our S&P rating. The rationale for Moody's decision is not so much company specific, but largely based on their view on the German resi sector, including the expectation of a 10% loss in value by year end 2023.
I think it's also important to note that Moody's confirmed that, A, our liquidity is adequate, B, that we have good access to debt capital with a well spread maturity profile, a good level of unencumbered assets, and well diversified funding sources, and C, that we maintain sufficient headroom in terms of covenant. I don't expect the new rating, by the way, to have any impact on our financing terms, and that is because the market has been focusing on S&P's BBB+ rating in pricing our bonds anyways. Moving on to page 16 for our debt KPIs. LTV, slightly above 43%, essentially unchanged vis-à-vis Q2, and net debt EBITDA is up 0.2x. This small increase as a reminder, in the multiple is a function of the underlying calculation methodology, which looks at the average debt over the last 5 quarters.
While the EBITDA has gone up, we also replaced in the numerator one quarter with a lower debt for a quarter with higher debt. Starting next year, you will see that this KPI moving towards our target range of 14x-15x, given the envisaged de-leveraging of almost EUR 3 billion of gross debt. Moving on to page 17. Here we show the upcoming maturities quarter by quarter for 2023 and 2024, as well as the breakdown between bonds and secured financing. As you can see, even on a quarterly basis, it's a pretty even profile. Now to be very clear, we are trying to keep maximum flexibility and we will not commit to anything specific yet.
It's probably fair to say that we will put a stronger focus on refinancing into secured markets with marginal cost of debt currently between 4%-4.5%, and hence 200 basis points cheaper than in the unsecured market. We are in advanced discussions with different lenders, and I do expect to see good progress over the coming months, so well ahead of the respective maturities. On the bond side, we want to repay the vast majority of upcoming maturities in 2023 through funding that we generate from reducing our investment program and selling assets. The magnitude, of course, depends on how much cash we can reallocate at the end of the day, but as you will see on the next page, we are quite confident that we are talking about very meaningful volumes.
On page 18, we want to give you an idea as to what the different action items mean in terms of freeing up cash. To begin with, it's probably worthwhile to point out that we are expecting to begin the new year with a cash-positive cash balance of about EUR 1.3 billion. A sort of housekeeping remark, I will add that we also have a EUR 3 billion undrawn revolving credit facility and commercial paper program. Now, in terms of our expectation of actual free cash flow generation, the chart uses the year-end 2022 cash on hand as a starting point. We have the estimated FFO for 2023. On top of that, there is recurring sales cash flow to the extent it is not already included in the FFO. This is something people often tend to forget.
The FFO includes the EBITDA contribution only. The actual free cash flow generation is much higher, usually around 90% of sales volume. We deduct capitalized maintenance. The next block is new and something that we have not done in the past. We are including a specific expectation in terms of disposals, both from asset sales as well as cash recycling from development to sell. This, to be very clear, does not include any assumptions for potential JV partnerships or a potential disposal of Deutsche Wohnen's nursing business. I'm sure you will ask me a dozen questions or more details regarding these disposals, but please do not expect me to add much more to what you can see on this page. The next block is portfolio investments, which are substantially lower than we had originally planned for.
All in all, our expectation is to have free cash in excess of EUR 4 billion, adjusting for the dividend payment as per our dividend policy to get to roughly EUR 2.8 billion. This is remarkably close to the unsecured maturities falling due in the coming year. We have already pointed out that we have reduced our investment program on page 19. I want to put this into context. For 2022, we estimate a volume of EUR 1.35 billion, and for 2023, a volume of EUR 850 million. If you look at where we have started originally, with a midpoint guidance of EUR 2.3 billion for 2022, we gave the first guidance in March this year and compare this to what we are guiding for 2023, there is a 60%+ reduction.
If you put this on a relative basis, such as the investment volume over gross asset value, we are going down from 2.3% in 2022 to 0.9% for the initial guidance of 2023. To me, that is a very, very strong message that we can and do adjust to the changed environment. We are stepping on the brake hard for now, but we are not doing anything stupid here. Projects underway will be completed. There's no point in leaving things half-finished. We are also finalizing the preparation on those projects that are now being put on hold to make sure that we are able to react quickly once things change to the better again. You will probably ask me what the reduced investment program means in terms of rent growth and our climate path.
We will answer the rent growth question with the guidance, and to the climate path, as Rolf mentioned initially, it now really pays off that we are well ahead of the broader market in past investments, so we can afford to undershoot for a limited period of time. Cutting back in 2023 will clearly not jeopardize our long-term goal of becoming climate neutral by 2045. On to the guidance and starting with 2022 on page 20. Top line rental income adjusted EBITDA and group FFO are all unchanged. Our business is running smoothly, and we are sticking to all line items here. Rent growth, as mentioned before, be slightly up. We now expect 3.4% for Recurring Sales. We are taking down the volume a bit from 3,300 to now 3,000 units.
Given that we have sold about 1,700 during the first nine months, you can see that we will need to pick up the pace in Q4, and the fact that we are guiding 3,000 should be understood as a sign of confidence that we can close that gap in Q4. All this is coming at a better margin than we have originally anticipated, and we are increasing our guidance for the value step up from roughly 30% to more than 35%. In my view, this is probably quite on the conservative side, and I would not be surprised if we come out closer to 40% than to 35. The dividend guidance is also unchanged in line with the FFO guidance, and that, as a reminder, is 70% of our group FFO post minorities, to be precise.
We had already mentioned the investment program several times. Here we guide EUR 800-900 million for building and apartment modernization and roughly EUR 500 million for new construction. The former is a bit lower, the latter a bit higher. The reason is simply that some of the construction projects cannot be switched as quickly, and in some cases, it still makes sense to take the new construction onto our balance sheet. Finally, we are ahead on the SPI. Please expect this one to come out better than initially guided. Page 21 is for our initial 2023 guidance, and here, even in a more challenging market environment, we continue to have a high degree of confidence in our business to put together what we think is a pretty robust guidance in a very uncertain environment.
You can see the individual KPIs, and I probably don't have to go through them one by one. What I want to point out, though, is even though our portfolio is smaller going into 2023, and is expected to shrink even further as we move through the year because of disposals, our top line and EBITDA continues to grow. This is also a strong indication of our conviction that inflation will continue to have a very manageable impact on our cost structure and that we do not anticipate a material change in our rent collection. Similarly, even though we are making large cuts to our investment program for 2022 and 2023, the organic rent growth is accelerating. We are overcompensating lower investment-driven rent growth through higher market rent growth.
This higher market rent growth is exactly the trajectory that we have been talking about for some time now. We are not just yet committing to a hard number, but we expect rent growth in 2023 to be higher than 2022. For the FFO, we do not think that we can fully compensate the higher interest rate and taxes from accelerated disposals, as well as the sharp reduction in our tax-deductible capital spending. We are guiding for an FFO slightly, but only slightly below 2022. This also depends quite a bit on disposals versus refinancing.
We don't want to be more specific than this for now. With that, with some closing remarks back to Rolf.
Thank you, Philip. Let me quickly conclude the presentation before we go to Q&A. First and foremost, I want to underline that the basis of our operating business is probably stronger than ever. Supply-demand imbalance is shifting even more in our favor. Germany is seeing a similar number of refugees as it did in 2015. On top of it, we are bound to see an increase in labor immigration, and the government is taking steps to pass a more modern immigration law to support it. At the same time, new construction volumes are getting lower and lower. This has crisis written all over it, and I would not be surprised if the government reacts with more ambitious subsidies, systems to make this crisis a little bit less steep. There might come opportunities.
The impact of the supply-demand imbalance is obviously in the accelerated rent growth. Don't forget, next year's Mietspiegel will not really be impacted much by inflation yet because the six-year lookback period. We are already seeing better rental cost momentum. If you look at our guidance for 2023, you see that we are able to overcompensate the new meaningful chunk of disposals from 2022, plus the additional disposals we expect to make in 2023. We believe our EBITDA will still grow, and this shows our inflation is manageable in our cost structure and our rent collection will stay at a very high level. Operationally, our business is very much intact and estimated to deliver growth in 2023 as well. Of course, the larger environment is currently challenging.
Cost of capital is high, financial conditions are tough, and there is a high degree of uncertainty which we even recognize if we talk to you. We are adjusting to this challenging environment. We have ramped up our disposal efforts, and we are strengthening our free cash flow through significant reductions in our investment programs. This will give us options because results are usually never good if you're selling, if selling is your only option. We may see a small value decline in the magnitude of a lower single-digit % in the first quarter. I don't think this would surprise many people, and if so, this will be a positive surprise. This kind of an environment that may be expected. That is a far cry from massive value declines that some market participants fear.
Make no mistake, we continue to feel that it is important to free up capital and to reallocate it towards paying down debt. We want to do so from a position of strength and with alternatives in order to achieve the best outcome.
All right. Thank you very much, Rolf and Philip. Rene, before I hand over to you for the Q&A, one small favor to ask. In this kind of setting, it's always difficult if you ask several questions all at once. You can ask as many questions as you want, but ideally, we'll go through them one by one. That'll make it a bit easier on our end to answer them. Let's get things started, Rene, and take the first question, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. We have the first question from Charles Boissier for UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I will do one by one. The first one on guidance. For like-for-like 2023, you mentioned it will be higher than 2022. You also had mentioned that there will be some important Mietspiegel prints in 2023, so Berlin, Dortmund, et cetera. I just was wondering what variations could those Mietspiegel bring to your 2023 like-for-like?
I know I said just one question, but on a related basis, the Senator for Housing in Berlin, Andreas Geisel, he mentioned just very recently that there will be this moratorium on, for the state-owned housing companies in Berlin, not to increase rents in 2023. Just what is your confidence level in being able to pass the full Mietspiegel for Berlin in that local environment? Thank you.
Yes, there is the debate of the government because, you know, they have a re-election in Berlin because the old election was declared or will be most probably declared not valid. This shows a little bit some issues which we have in this part of Germany. Anyhow, because of this election, the government says that they want to have the municipality companies not to increase the rent during the year 2023. From my understanding, the Mietspiegel will be based on data from 2021 and 2022, so this is clear. Also the rule of the Mietspiegel says that this kind of rent will then normally has to be excluded from the Mietspiegel because this is a public decision and not a free market. It's very interesting what happened as well.
The government had declared that these companies are not able to not increase the rent, they have to be recapitalized by the state. We are coming now to a situation that the public landlord has to be recapitalized because their balance sheet is over. I think this is also a strong message to politicians that probably it is the end of pushing more efforts and asking for more efforts from the landlords. In this context, I would like to add that the last program also provides a liquidity help given to some East German rental companies already because they need it. Vonovia is far away from using those liquidity helps because we don't need it. It's just showing what we are always saying, don't only look on the listed sector, but look on the whole sector.
As long as in a regulated market, as long as you are better than the average, you're doing well. The average is now getting into problems. This, I think, is the end of more regulation.
I think the first bit, if I got it right, is about composition of our like-for-like rental growth guidance for next year. Here we will see a sharp increase, roughly a doubling in the non-investment driven market rent growth. As mentioned, it is largely positively impacted by rent indices in very relevant markets for us. What I can also add is that for the investment driven like-for-like rental growth, there is obviously an impact by reducing the investment volume. At the same time, that impact is not that pronounced, given that we are completing what we have started and kind of are still benefiting from past investments.
Okay. Very clear. Philip, you mentioned you were expecting some questions on page 18 with the disposal bucket. I just was wondering, if it's not joint venture and nursing and also you have the recurring sale already in one of the boxes. By deduction it's probably the non-core recurring sales from the multi-family homes. I just was wondering about that latter element, the multi-family home recurring sale. Essentially what I think Rolf was saying is selling to the local tenants because it's a big bucket within the EUR 13 billion program. I think it's EUR 6.3 billion. What's your initial.
What was the initial reception from potential investor on that disposal program?
To give a bit more granularity once again on page 18. On recurring sales, this is really about our condo business, and that is reflecting what we have been guiding for next year, 3,000-3,500 units. When I move to asset disposals and development to sell, that is a combination of asset disposals which form part of our non-core business as well as multi-family homes. I think the interesting bit here is that our target investors we sell to is kind of a very different investor universe. In the non-core bit, you have a lot of product which is interesting for state-owned housing companies, which continue to have good appetite to expand their housing stock. In multi-family homes, I think it's still too early to say.
Markets are difficult, but we have just started to prepare for the first units. There is not much to add at this stage. To guide, or to provide more details as to the split of non-core versus multi-family homes, please allow us to have some flexibility here. I think the key message is what we are guiding for in terms of free cash flow. Obviously we have a plan as to how we want to achieve that. Even if we were to experience more difficulties in some of the elements, we have other elements to replace. Buchwert, our joint venture partnerships, and even more important in my view, the nursing business.
All in all, I feel very confident that we deliver on the targets we have repeatedly announced of delivering our balance sheet by roughly EUR 3 billion next year.
To be very precise, the EUR 2.8 billion does not include any joint venture disposals and the nursing home disposals. This will technically come on top.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Andres Toome from Green Street. Your question, please.
Hi. Good afternoon. I'm just wondering about the 2023 guidance and, maybe, you can unpack a little bit the adjusted EBITDA total figure, that we're seeing here. How much of disposals does this assume? Is it fair to assume the same sort of volume, that you have in the free cash flow bridge, that you presented on the slides?
I mean, in the EBITDA, you have the contribution of our Recurring Sales business, that's 3-3.5 thousand units. It's slightly more conservative assumptions, when it comes to the margin above book value, where we have set ourselves the goal of realizing at least 25%. Is that answering your question?
What I meant was.
The other disposal proceeds, when it comes to non-core or multi-family homes, do not form part of our adjusted EBITDA.
Right.
Outside our KPIs by which we steer our company from an operational perspective.
Right. What I meant was the rent roll that you would lose from disposals that you're sort of alluding to in that free cash flow bridge.
This is, of course, included, so you cannot plan a key free cash flow without including the rent which you are losing if you are disposing in the EBITDA. This is included.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe diving a bit deeper in terms of the EBITDA rental side, what's your expectation there in terms of sort of more organic basis? Obviously, you do get the boost from Deutsche Wohnen synergies as well, but how are you budgeting that, excluding that sort of component, in terms of, are you expecting like for like growth, in so far as the rental rate increases will offset any sort of operating expense headwinds?
What we are saying here, I think it was said, is we are seeing a faster rental growth than this year. Of course, the composition of those rental growth is less investment driven and more organic rent driven. This compensates actually some inflation, which we cannot compensate. This is why the EBITDA becomes higher.
It's also compensating the rental income we lose by increasing disposals and the respective impact that has.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. That's very clear. My next question is around just thinking about dividend as well. You did sort of mention that obviously the transaction market is quite difficult at the moment. If truly disposals don't come through, is that sort of the next lever for you to use to sort of balance your cash flow needs?
We cannot hear you very clear, but I think the question was around the dividend policy.
Yeah, around the dividend. Can you hear me better now?
Yes, a little bit.
The question was if disposals don't come through, as you sort of alluded, that transaction market is quite difficult, would the next lever for you be to reduce the dividend to have a better cash flow position?
I think we have said that the dividend several times, that our dividend policy is well known and it has not changed. To repeat, we are paying out around 70% of the group FFO, post minorities, to be precise. To be more formal, the management board and supervisory board will make a proposal in the end of Q1, beginning Q2, to the AGM. Formally, the AGMs or the shareholders decide the dividend. I repeat, our dividend policy, it has not changed, and this is around 70% of FFO.
Please also recognize that what we have planned for and what is underlying the guidance is essentially only a portion of various processes we have initiated, which will free up cash. Again, that is excluding joint venture partnerships, and that is excluding nursing. Against that backdrop, I do feel very confident that we are able to free up some of the capital deployed. Against that backdrop, there is no need at this stage to speculate about the dividend. We are very clear now, the dividend, 70% of FFO post minorities is what we are planning for.
Okay, understood. My final question is around the RCF and commercial paper program. You indicate around EUR 3 billion. How much is that actually assigned RCF versus commercial paper that you have to sort of go and tap on an ongoing basis if you wanna bring in any money on that side?
I look always at the two in conjunction. That means I either use the RCF or I use the commercial paper program. Both have a size of EUR 3 billion individually, but I would never, ever use the two at the same time. To complete on that, I mean, the RCF is underwritten for two years, has an option for us to extend. I feel very comfortable with that instant access to liquidity, if for whatever reason needed.
Thank you. That's it.
The next question comes from Marc Mozzi from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Very good afternoon all. I have three questions from my side. The first one is about your recurring sales. Just wanted to understand how you can set a higher level of recurring sales next year while you're not gonna achieve more than 3,000 this year. What sort of assumption do you assess here? How do you get to that 3,300 and not less? That's my first question.
Marc, I think the guidance for this year is 3,000. The guidance for next year is between 3,000 and 3,500. We think that we will put more efforts, but keep in mind that we have reduced actually the step up significantly. We are here, as Philip said, at least 35 this year. Because of the non-growing values, of course, that's why we think it will be a little bit less step up. That's why we are very confident that we will can meet more or less the figure of this year with a smaller step-up figure.
Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Sure.
Again, what you have seen in the valuation part, you see that the condo sales is a very robust business which is very stable. To be more precise, the condo sales we are selling to people who need an apartment in the city. If you look on what we are selling here, this is probably a very, not cheap, but a very price realistic thing what we are selling in the big cities as individual apartments for people who want to live there. This is a completely different market.
Okay. On development to sell, we haven't much discussed about it, but looks like that most of our house builder have seen volume that's operating recently. What sort of color can you give us in terms of sales rate you expect for next year? A related question to developments is, in your bridge, Philip, on slide 18, do you take on board the change in working capital requirement needed for those developments and the development cost needed for the development to hold, which according to my numbers, would reach both accumulated about EUR 700 million?
On your last question, I mean, we are basically shifting capital, which form part of our investment properties into the inventories. That is capital already deployed. If I talk about the cash recycling in the development to sell, that is the net effect of the investment required for our development to sell and the proceeds we are going to achieve by disposing the finished product to investors. What you can see on page 18 as part of the box asset disposals and development to sell is for development to sell the net effect of the two.
Marc, again here, the big part of the development to sell is individual apartments because this is a history of BUWOG, as you know. Individual apartments, we are attacking here actually a market, in the big cities where people need to live. The imbalance of supply and demand is here playing directly into our favor.
Okay. The third one for me, it's just about what sort of cost inflation assumption do you have on your cost base, and particularly for labor cost?
I cannot disclose it to you because then we would probably disclose to our unions what is our negotiation position. It is very comfortable to say.
Okay.
You know that in Germany at the moment we have the debate of the payment EUR 3,000, which we can pay without social cost directly to the people. The debate is this so you can do it over 24 months, but you can do it shorter. This gives us this year a very good way to compensate, especially the lower income people. There's very little additional cost because we don't have to pay any social charges on this, and they don't have to pay any social charges. What is completely included, we are very confident that we will meet the inflation problem.
Again, in our business, inflation is not a big issue because if you're operating with above 80% margins, the point of inflation, which is especially labor cost-driven, is not so meaningful.
Okay. Maybe a final one on your market rent rental growth. So you said it's gonna double next year, so we're talking about 2%. If I do basic math, EUR 800 million CapEx plus times whatever yield of 4%-5%. That would mean another 1.2% of traditional rent. We're still at a kind of a 3.5% organic rental growth next year. What about 2024, 2025? Are you gonna see the 2% market rent continuing to grow as this is about a moving average here?
So, um-
The indexation calculation.
To be very clear, if I'm doing just the math, the Mietspiegel is covering the last six years. Your question is actually what will be the Mietspiegel in the year 2024 and 2025. The next Mietspiegel. Because they are covering the last six years, the last two six years will fall out and the most recent six years and the most recent two years are coming in. By definition, the momentum will grow and not go slower because we have seen significant higher rents in the last two years. What we see also now is a significant higher rent because of the higher cost of construction. The momentum is a long-term momentum, and this has all to do with the six years average.
Brilliant. Thank you very much. That's it for me. Have a lovely day.
The next question is from Jonathan.
Probably, Marc, let me add one thing. Before the next questions, let me add one thing. What you see here, what we have now taken the decision to reduce massively the new construction. This is not Vonovia, the only one who's doing it. Everybody's doing it at the moment. We will see a massive reduction in new portfolios coming to the market. This means that the imbalance between supply and demand will get much worse. This needs a political reaction. It is just a question of when it will happen. Something has to happen. We are running in a social catastrophe in Germany, don't quote me here, if we are not doing anything. Because the homeless people will go up, a lot of other things will happen, and the government will not accept it.
There needs to be an action. At the moment, we see the German government be able to react very quickly. We cannot predict anything on this. That's why we have nothing in our budget and in our guidance. Something will happen.
Clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Jonathan Kownator from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. I just want to continue on the theme that you had just mentioned. You are saying that Germany is running into a social catastrophe because effectively there is no supply available anymore and there's no one adding new supply. What is the solution here that you think is acceptable for Germany? Because effectively the regulation right now and the cap on rent is actually breaking the system, right? You said you can't add more regulation, but how do you think the government is thinking about it? Because obviously either they have to subsidize massively new housing or they have to remove or lighten this regulation one way or another. How do you think they're going to lean on that, and how are they thinking about it?
We are talking with the government about the magic triangle, right? We have three components. One is the construction cost and related to the financing cost too. The cost which you need to get your construction and your interest rates covered. The second is the subsidy, and the third is the rent. It's clear for everybody that you can fix two of this triangle, so two components, but the third is the resulting. If you want to fix all three, the result will be no more construction. It's very simple. It's mathematics. Now the debate is, and we have to go through this debate, that probably now the gap is so big that optimizing only one is probably not enough.
We have to talk about rental costs, we have to talk about more subsidies, and we have to talk about less cost because the conditions we have to use and the standards has to be reduced.
Is there?
All three has to happen together.
Is there, I mean, no one really talks about that, but I just want to try to understand if politically there is a scenario whereby actually, because the problem here is that just rents have been kept artificially low to help on wages. Is there a scenario where inflation helps increase wages at a country level and ultimately the rents would be slightly deregulated or allowed to increase a bit more so that you can actually build more, appreciate also that they maybe not even enough as you're highlighting. It's the one where usually people have the opposite view, but ultimately, you know, that would be almost the easiest because on the other two, the government has to pay a lot of money, right?
To be very clear, I cannot predict at this call what the government will do. What I can predict that if we are coming to 200,000 new construction, and not 400. Having the problems of the big city increasing, I think the government cannot lay back and do nothing. There is, of course, an argument, which is that if the disposable income is going up and we are only saying 30% of the disposable income should be not exceeded to spend rent. Nobody's saying that less than 30% is a good target. I think if the disposable income is increasing, there's also more room for the people to pay for higher rents. It's not my role to talk about this publicly.
Okay. Thanks. Understood. If I may, just another question. Just coming back to the value-add business, obviously it was pretty flat year-over-year. You've talked about higher costs. It needs still to be rolled to Deutsche Wohnen. How are you expecting this business to develop into next year? Are we expecting flat contribution? How fast can you roll it to Deutsche Wohnen? Or are you seeing actually even increasing costs, which means that contribution could a bit decline. Thank you.
To be very clear, the problem of the value-add business, or not problem, but the challenge they are facing is that they have a fixed price with the rental business for the full year, and cost inflation and availability of people. The cost inflation was going up, so it has to be covered by value-add. Plus, the availability of people and subcontractors were difficult because it was very difficult to find construction capacity. Probably in the next year, first of all, we are doing less investment, which actually will increase the internal percentage of internal work, which is helpful. Secondly, if what I assume is right, and we will have much less construction in the next year because everybody's doing the same what we are doing, the pressure and the availability of craftsmen will go down.
This will definitely help the value-add business.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Marios Pastou from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. First question really is on valuation expectations for the portfolio. We've had Moody's, you know, stating or including in their numbers a 10% value decline to come next year. You've got a share price that is pricing in meaningful discounts to the underlying property values. We've also, you know, had positive comments from yourselves that you're expecting a low single-digit % decline to come in the latter part of this year. You know, how do we bridge the different gaps and is that confidence based on your discussion with your external valuers? I suppose is my first question.
I mean, obviously we are validating our views with our external appraisers, but they are facing, if you will, the same difficulties of very little transactional evidence. If you look at the data points, and I'm basically repeating what we said beforehand, if I look at the data points, we see in the low single-digit % area decline for multifamily homes. If that were to be confirmed, but that is a TBC with additional transactional evidence, which will feed into our systems throughout the year, we may end up in a small value decline. That is certainly a possibility. Again, for now, transaction data are very thin.
I think for me, the more important question really is on valuation, what midterm outlooks we should expect. Here, the story no one wants to hear remains that the supply-demand imbalance and what I've talked about is accelerating and is becoming dramatic, which is positive, typically not a negative surprise. Second, the huge gap between replacement costs and the valuation of our standing assets. I think medium-term there will be support, but yes, short-term there will be fluctuation. People have to adjust to the changed environment. With all of that, some changes to the valuation of our investment properties we cannot exclude for now.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you. Just onto slide 18. Sorry, a question on this particular slide. You know, if we're looking at the bridge towards the free cash flow, you know, how should we think about it? This probably follows on from a previous question as well. You know, thinking of no asset disposals to come in a more difficult environment or a difficult market, how would that bridge then look? You know, or to put it this way, how much of that free cash flow generation is purely from asset sales?
Well, that's probably because this question is coming very often. We are giving here you a slide where we are saying that this management team is committed to have under the explanation that Philip is doing a cash free cash flow of EUR 2.8 billion after dividend payment. This is a commitment like our commitment of the rental cost, like our commitment on FFO. You normally, you know that we as a management team are normally doing guidance which we can fulfill. Of course, if some playing field where we are playing, we can do a little bit more ground core, we can do a little bit more multifamily homes. There's a lot of pillars which we have to play.
In the end, we will feel very comfortable that we will deliver the EUR 2.8 billion free cash flow under assumptions laid out in page 18. Please, we will not give you more disclosure and especially breaking it down because this gives us also a little bit of flexibility to react. Keep in mind, we are here in a business to business relationship. We are discussing with people which partly are probably on this call. To discuss my sales strategy with the public will harm my price. It's not a B2C business. It's a B2B business. That's why please, and I apologize for not being so precise, but this, I think, is in the interest of all our shareholders.
There is a confirmed commitment of this management team that we will deliver EUR 2.8 billion free cash flow at the end of 2023, which will be used for, as Philip has said, delevering.
Very clear. Thank you for the additional comments.
The next question is from Rob Jones from Exane. Your question, please.
Hi, team. It's Rob Jones from BNP Paribas Exane. I'm just gonna follow up on Marios Pastou's point on slide 18. I appreciate your comment, Rolf Buch, but I get my ruler out and I measure the height of those bars 'cause that's what we do as analysts. Your asset disposals in development to sell column implicitly is about EUR 2.1 billion. Now, if we assume that EUR 0.6 billion is the development to sell disposals, for example, we get to about 1.5 for asset disposals on that chart. That is to scale.
To be clear, you're saying that figure, which ultimately drives a big element of your EUR 2.8 billion free cash flow post the divvy, is excluding Deutsche Wohnen and any JVs which would be further upside from a free cash flow perspective. That's correct, right?
Yes, exactly. This is without JVs and without nursing home. To be also very clear, we are in good discussions, but if I put a guidance for JVs or nursing homes in an official document, I'm dead. Because then the other side of the table will say, "You have promised it, so now you have to deliver." We cannot negotiate. That's why we have done guidance, under the assumption that JV and nursing home will not happen. Having said this, it is not our objective that JV and nursing home will not happen. We want to do both, but we have not put this in the guidance.
Fine. Very clear.
To be very clear, Philip and myself, we are working hard that it will happen. Just to make clear that the guidance is not including it.
Of course. I understand that. Thank you. Second question, back to slide 17, bullet point three in that top left-hand side, you say advanced discussions for sizable secured financing. Now, I wrote some products about this the other day, and I'm thinking about your capacity to take on more secured borrowing. Now, when we look at your unencumbered asset ratio, I think from memory it's about 163, covenants at 125. You obviously don't wanna get to the point where you're very close to your covenant breach, but of course, asset value declines obviously push down that UAR, percentage figure. Do you have a figure you can give me in terms of, say, for example, a 10% decline in the value of the portfolio leads to an X% move on the UAR?
The reason why I'm asking is because on our numbers, we get to a position where you don't have a huge capacity to take on more secured borrowing because you end up closer to this covenant in the event of portfolio value decline, despite the fact that obviously today, theoretically, there is a greater ability to take on more secured financing. Of course, part of that would be used to refinance some of the bond portfolio in the next 24 months.
Yeah. This is again assuming things we don't assume. If I look at our current ratio, there is sufficient headroom to roughly increase the secured debt volume by EUR 8 billion. That having said, by no means I have the ambition to move up the secured debt book in that magnitude. We will always want to have the flexibility to play around with different markets and don't just focus on one market. All of that having said, in terms of priorities for the remaining refinancing we will undertake for the upcoming maturities in 2023, yes, the focus, the priority is on the secured financing.
That has not been misunderstood that there is no unsecured financing going to happen. This is simply obviously because of the delta in refinancing rates, but this will not shift us anywhere close to being at risk of reaching the covenants.
That, Philip, leads me on to a perfect segue to my final question, which is when you're obviously planning to largely redeem rather than refi the unsecured over the next two financial years, obviously, aside from the point you've just made around the unfavorable cost of that relative to secured, and I think you said it was about 200 basis points cheaper for secured versus unsecured. Obviously, we obviously need to overlay your de-leveraging intentions, which you've made clear to us at the moment. When you speak to the various different, you know, debt capital markets teams across the investment banks and your kind of banking counterparts, is there actually an element of a lack of unsecured debt availability that's driving part of your decision-making process to largely redeem the unsecured where possible rather than refinance?
It's not purely about cost of debt and indeed ultimately appetite to de-lever the business from a gross debt perspective.
It is not at all a question of appetite. To the contrary, I'm actually getting inbound calls from big institutional investors on the debt side who have appetite. But what I simply have to recognize is that in the 10-year tenor, we are talking about an incredibly risk spread of 350 basis points. That is so far off compared to other sectors in terms of risk premium, that this is currently not a very attractive proposal for us. On the other side, I have a banking market which is looking for new business, and who wants to expand relationships and who's telling me, it's not 350 basis points, it's 100 basis points to 120 basis points.
That's a very, very different proposal. Again, it's not at all about our ability not to refinance in the debt market, but currently they are not overly attractive to us.
Crystal clear. Thank you very much, team. Thank you.
The next question is from Manuel Martin from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Thank you, gentlemen. Just one question from my side. On your investment program, we have seen that you have been downscaling your investment program over time, adjusting to the respective environment. Now for 2023, we have arrived to approximately EUR 850 million planned investment program. Is there a possibility for you to further downscale that program if things become more difficult? What could be the headroom to the downside?
To be very clear, what we have done is actually, we are more or less not completely, but more or less, we will not start new construction and we will not start new modernization if they are not already announced. Of course, theoretically, you can stop also modernization, which are already announced but not started, and you can also stop construction, which we probably have started to prepare the land or things like this. There is actually more room to reduce, but this would mean then this would come with a cost. That's why we would probably not go for it. But this is for 2023. If we continue this route in 2024, of course our investment will be much lower in 2024.
The reason is very simple, and I think Philip has declared it. The cost of capital and actually the cost of debt has at the moment a magnitude that doesn't make sense to confirm new investments for the future or in the context that we would see a change in construction costs, that we will most probably see changes in subsidies. I think it is what we are doing the same, what some investors are doing at the moment. We are keeping our powder dry, and this means delever in our case. We will see. We will see in summer next year, in March next year, what is the new situation, and then we will make our plan for 2024.
Hmm. Okay. Not impossible, but, you must not reduce. You can reduce, must not reduce. Depends on the situation, if I get that correctly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Sander Bunck from Barclays. Your question, please.
Hi. Good afternoon, team, and apologies for yet another question. First one is on the kind of following up on the privatization sales. I would have actually thought that there was scope to further increase the privatization sales, given that you've obviously added the Deutsche Wohnen portfolio to your existing pipeline. Now it looks to be more in line with kind of what you've done over the last couple of years, and margins are lower than what was historically achieved with Deutsche Wohnen. Why is it effectively kind of a lot more of a cautious stance on both the volume and the margin, or is it just one of the two?
I think we are probably with the new guidance a little bit cautious about the margins. I admit this. You know, in the past, we were selling based on, and the margin was calculated based on our book value. The book value was always lagging a little bit behind. In times where the values were increasing fast, we actually always have this time gap. That's why we ask our sales team to achieve a higher margin. Now the argument is the time gap is because the market is flat, the time gap is gone. We are coming back to what we were used to in the past was 20%, normally 20% uplift on fair value. We are now at 25% because we still think that the market can deserve it.
This is how we reason it. In the past, it was more above 30% because we added 10% because of this time delay. I think now the time delay is over because we have flat markets. That's why 20%-25%, I think is a good number.
Is there scope to accelerate the privatization business to accelerate that further and accept even lower margins? Or is that not really possible?
It would be possible, but this is not what we are trying to do at the moment. This would be, for example, one mitigant if we have issue selling something else.
Okay.
What he probably said to say in order to probably properly play this market and to also optimize outcome, you basically have to play around with the privatization stock multiple times what you actually envisage for the given year. Second, typically it is value optimizing if you sell a vacant apartment, and obviously, vacancy is nothing we can influence, impact. Given the situation we have described, vacancy is going down, tenant churn is going down, and that kind of also has an impact on that business.
Theoretically, yes, but in terms of what we look to achieve with that business, for now, I think it's a good guidance, and to that respect, also a nice cash contribution we can expect for the next year.
Yeah. Fair enough. Also understood regarding the vacancy is just with the tenant churn of 8% per annum, means that roughly 8% of the apartments become vacant per annum. Appreciate that not all of them can be privatized, but even if it's just half of that, there should be scope for significant acceleration. I guess that.
Again, let's not discuss again. I think I understand that you want a detailed split of how much we are doing with condos, how much we are doing with multi-family home, how much we are doing with non-core. We have said, give us a little bit of freedom to deliver the EUR 2.8 billion, and we can probably sift a little bit between these different buckets. That's why you're probably asking us this again and again. Give us some freedom, and I've explained why, because we are in business to business relationships.
I-
We don't want to destroy value for our shareholders.
Understood. Okay. Thank you. Very quickly, lastly, just to confirm, basically organic growth going up on the back of strong Mietspiegel, but inorganic growth going down slightly because of lower maintenance spend. The 3.5% kind of that's currently being guided and mentioned, that is you believe that is sustainable in the medium term? Could even go up in the kind of medium term? Or is that what should we kind of assume there?
I have said that we see a momentum. It's a seven years average. This is not going up and down because this is technically just the average of the six years. This is a good advantage of the German Mietspiegel. We see a momentum of going up. That's why, yes, we see a momentum of going up and this will continue. The inflation impact will come in the year, just technically speaking, in the year 2024 and 2025. This is the average of six years. This is not a guess. This is just because of this model, how the Mietspiegel is working, the momentum is a long-term momentum.
Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from Thomas Neuhold from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, I have a follow-up on the lower investment program. You mentioned you will revisit the CapEx for 2025 next year, but you also mentioned that your long-term CO2 reduction targets are not at risk. I was wondering for how many years could you keep a lower CapEx program in place not to put the long-term target at risk? You also have this 2030 CO2 reduction target of achieving less than 25 kilos of CO2 intensity per square meter. Is this reachable if you cut your CapEx program for a couple of years, or do you need to re-spend on modernization rather sooner than later then or?
Now I'm actually getting much more in the detail. The modernization standard we are having is of course not only one fits all. It's, as you know, it's only one more on the heating systems and one more on the building. The building is expensive, the heating system is relatively cheap. There's a low price for reduction of CO2 by investing in heating systems, and there's a high investment per CO2 saving in the buildings. What we can even do, and this is the 2030 target, we will probably pull. For example, we are not stopping any replacement of heating systems by heat pumps next year scheme. That's why we are still spending some money. We are just adjusting it a little bit more to the more efficient CO2 reduction.
Spending. That's why I'm not afraid at all with my climate path and there's a target there.
Okay, great.
That's why to answer your question, in the next few years, there's no issue. If you ask me about the next 15 years, we one day have to continue to spend also in the building substance. But this is not a question of a few years.
Okay. Gotcha here. The next question is, I was wondering, do you see also potential to cut your maintenance expenses, or are you already at a very efficient level?
No, you know, we are spending a little bit more than normally should be used because the times were very good. We have cut a little bit in the maintenance, but I think this is nothing. If you're doing a guidance, you always have some positions of reserves as well.
Okay. My last question is, you mentioned that the cost of secured financing is up to 4%-4.5%, and for unsecured, even additional 200 basis points. I was wondering if the cost of debt stays at these levels, what is from your perspective a prudent or sustainable LTV or net debt to EBITDA ratio level to run your business in the long run? What you think your potential time frame is for you to reach these new levels then?
I think asking about future interest level is like asking about future stock price. Look, I do see stability in the risk margin on the banking side, and there have been some recently introduced capital buffers on the banking side, which impacts pricing that has made margins a bit more expensive, which is why they've moved to roughly 100-120 basis points. On the capital market side, the kind of risk premium, it's difficult to understand in comparison to other sectors, and also operates so our ability to actually take the interest rates are moving is, I think, subject to many variables.
Very, very tough to make a forecast on that. In terms of our capital structure and our financing philosophy, I think we've been very clear in that we have three leading debt KPIs. All of them need to remain in the guided range, which is 40%-45% LTV, which is 14x-15x net debt to EBITDA, and by keeping these dedicated KPIs in the given range, we secure that we maintain our current still very good investment grade rating of BBB+ by Moody's and S&P respectively. That is for me the key focus. It also means that depending on how things evolve, different net KPIs increase in relevance.
For a long time it has been LTV that shifted towards net debt to EBITDA. I think it's fair to say given the refinancing rates I was citing, that ICR is shifting more and more in our focus.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question is from Simon Stippig, from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, team. My first question would be in regard to capital allocation. I see you're doing changes to the investment program and obviously you also intend to pay a dividend. Nothing changed on the dividend policy. My question is in what do you plan to do with the EUR 2.8 billion? I assume that you want to pay back or pay down debt, especially on the unsecured side. What determines, for example, an investment into your own shares? Also going forward in the medium term, if you potentially sell larger chunks from your asset disposal, multi-family homes, non-core, and also on the JV side, just to understand your thinking around that.
I guess an 8% dividend yield is quite attractive even if I compare it right now to the secured running 10-year bond. Yeah, that's my first question.
I think we talked about this once. We have the luxury to have that discussion for now. Our focus is very much on de-leveraging the balance sheet. We have given the target of EUR 3 billion that requires some proceeds from disposals as we have discussed. If there are additional buckets of money to spend at the appropriate time, we will decide based on the market environment, and the situation we are facing at the appropriate time, what is the best use of proceeds.
Okay, great. Thank you. Do you still intend, in regard to the dividend, to also offer shareholders a scrip dividend?
I think this is very unlikely from today's perspective given how our stock is trading, and I think we have balanced our investments in a way that a scrip dividend is not needed in terms of equity support. This is highly dilutive. That's not gonna happen this year.
Okay. One more in regard to Deutsche Wohnen. I just wonder, the remaining Deutsche Wohnen shares, will they be ongoing to be listed on the stock market? Or, is it still the view that this is very cheap equity to you?
You know that we had this debate for a long time. There is a real estate transfer tax law, which actually prohibits us to buy more shares from Deutsche Wohnen. We can do, but this will be very expensive. The strategy, what happens with the Deutsche Wohnen, we are only a shareholder, so we have to ask this question, the Deutsche Wohnen management. We as a shareholder, we are happy with how it is.
Okay. Maybe just one last one regard to Sweden. Your strategic view of growing the Swedish business for the longer term, of course, not in the medium term, but in the longer term, to have one country segment in Sweden. Is that still the current view? Or could you also imagine to make changes to the capital allocation regard to the Swedish portfolio?
No, I think we are very happy with the Swedish portfolio. As we have discussed several times, the Swedish portfolio, because of the different rental regime in Sweden, will react faster to market changes. For example, next year in Sweden we will see a significant faster growth of rent because they are negotiating based on the rent every year. That's why you will see there a little bit different mechanic. In the longer view, Sweden is very similar to the German business and the Austrian business. We feel comfortable in all these three markets.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's it for me.
To be honest, in Sweden it's the same phenomenon. There is an imbalance. There is waiting lists. In Stockholm, there's waiting lists of more than 1,000 people for one apartment. The imbalance of supply and demand, which is one of our fundamental driver in our strategy, is the same in Sweden than in Germany.
Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to Rene for closing comments.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Frankie , and thanks everyone else for joining this call today. We have quite a few investor outreach events coming up in the form of roadshows and conferences. We're hoping to see many of you in the coming days and weeks, and you will find a list of events, if you do want to participate on page 49 of today's presentation, and of course, the most up-to-date version always online. As always, in case of any questions, after this call or down the road, please do reach out to me or my colleagues. With that's it from us for today. Stay safe, happy and healthy, and see you next time. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.