Welcome. Thank you very much for joining us this morning and to hear our results presentation. As ever, we've got a full deck of slides to take you through some great stories that we want to tell you about. Very nice to see you in this shiny new venue with amazing audio. I can hear myself speaking, which is a rare thing. Welcome. Let me start by saying at our interims in November, I talked about near-term challenges in our markets, and these are evident in our year-end property valuation. I also talked about our conviction that the fundamental long-term attractions of London and its property markets remain very much intact. Since then, central London has got busier and busier, and it's pretty much back to its buzzing best.
Even the most enthusiastic hybrid working organizations have realized that great offices in great cities have a crucial role to play in the world of work, and workers are returning. Our message to you today then is a positive one. GPE's positioning is strong. Our product is in demand. Rents are rising. We're developing. We're growing our flex offer. We're buying again, and our financial strength is enabling us to take advantage of today's increasingly interesting markets. Over the next few slides, Nick and I will give you the main messages from the results and provide the evidence to support our positive conviction, looking at our flex operations, the market itself, a broader business update, and finishing with our outlook. We'll then open it up to you.
We have much of the executive team on hand here to help answer any questions that you have, be they live or indeed online. There is the email address that you can use if you wish to go online. Let's kick off first of all then with the headlines of these solid results. Our property valuation was down 6.6%, split equally between the first and the second halves, yet our ERVs were up 2.1% with a stronger second half, meaning that pretty much all of our NTA fall of 9.3% was down to yield expansion. Meanwhile, our balance sheet at March was even stronger than the year before, with LTV at only 19.8% and immediate liquidity available of more than GBP 450 million.
Before I summarize our operating performance, I want to give you a quick reminder of how we've evolved our strategy to meet customers' changing needs and how from here it's all about execution. You know our strategic givens shown here. 100% central London, repositioning properties to deliver for our customers first and foremost, and we're doing really well here, growing our Net Promoter Score, shown on the right, to 44 versus an office industry benchmark of only 3.8. Along with sustainability as a strategic imperative, low leverage, and our disciplined approach to capital management, we're always matching our risk to the cycle, as you can see on the chart bottom left. Buying more than we sell in weaker markets, selling into market strength, having completed business plans.
This year was no different as we bucked the trend, selling 50 Finsbury Square, our first net zero carbon scheme, at a market-beating yield and buying into new opportunities at good value. As we think about the strategy from here, it's all about execution. With ambitious growth plans across the portfolio in HQ and flex spaces, building on our industry leadership in sustainability, only last week launching our new and improved sustainability statement of intent, alongside delivering a 19% reduction in energy consumption over the year, and consolidating our customer experience leadership too, with the launch of our important promise to them in our customer service proposition. A differentiated strategy. Don't forget, we've been here before, over multiple cycles. We're good at executing. We know how to do it well, and this time will be no different. Our approach is clearly working.
We're operating well from a position of strength and with lots of opportunity. First, we delivered another period of record leasing, shown by the bar chart, and radically reducing our vacancy rate down from 10.8% - 2.5% over the year. GBP 55.5 million of lettings delivered, 3.3% ahead of ERV, with our flex spaces almost 11% ahead. There's more to come with GBP 5.7 million under offer, 18% ahead of the March 2023 ERV. Second, we have a significant and growing opportunity across GPE, with a CapEx program covering 1.4 million sq ft, being 49% of our portfolio or 63% of our net assets.
In HQ repositioning, we have seven schemes covering 1.1 million feet, all targeting net zero carbon, with four on-site or near-term projects where we'll invest some GBP 0.7 billion of CapEx. In our flex operations, we're increasing our ambition. We've grown from 13% of our offices this time last year to 21% -day, we now want to get to 41% or 1 million feet over the next five years. We've started the year well, too. We're working on four major flex refurbs covering 158,000 sq ft today. We've been adding to our opportunity too. Five acquisitions totaling GBP 127 million since March 2022. Today, we have circa GBP 100 million under offer to buy.
Third, with our financial strength an absolute given, built on our low LTV, low and fixed cost debt, plus plentiful liquidity, we have significant capacity to exploit this opportunity, we are in a strong position. With a clear and differentiated strategy that will move the needle, we're delivering our performance against MSCI, a sizable 4.8 percentage points over the past year. We have material income and value growth to shoot for, and a senior team with deep experience across multiple cycles, all of which is supported by great balance sheet strength. Plus, we remain passionate believers in our capital city's prospects, as I'll talk about in a minute. First of all, over to Nick to look at the numbers in more detail.
Thank you, Toby. Morning, everyone. I'll walk you through the details of our valuation and financial performance, as well as our balance sheet strength, with significant capacity for investment, particularly as we extend our flex ambitions. Starting with the numbers. The group's property portfolio now stands at GBP 2.4 billion. Whilst EPRA NTA fell 9.3%, NDV fell only 5.7%, given our attractively priced debt book. Following the sale of 50 Finsbury Square, EPRA LTV has fallen to 19.8%. As expected, EPRA earnings fell to GBP 24 million, taking EPRA EPS to 9.5p. With our strong financial position, we are paying a total dividend of 12.6p. More detail on the property valuation, where you can see retail fell less than offices.
Office ERV growth was healthy at 3.3%. Higher still at 4% for our flex spaces. Overall, portfolio yield expansion of 42 basis points was the principal driver of the 6.6% valuation decline. Our West End properties fell only 5.2%. As shown on the right, our topped-up initial yield is 3.8%, rising to 4.8% on an equivalent basis and 5.6% on a reversionary basis. Whilst our equivalent yield has increased, it has consistently been in the 4s, significantly higher than witnessed in some other UK sectors and European office markets.
Bottom left, we show the portfolio composition with 70% of the portfolio laden with development and active management potential, and the remaining 30% in long-dated properties, which we've created all prime West End and with exceptional recycling opportunities. Finally, the best continues to relatively outperform at both the valuation level shown in green and ERV growth level shown in purple. By EPC rating, our A and B spaces outperformed, as did our freehold and long leasehold properties, along with our higher capital per sq ft spaces too. As you'll hear from Toby, we think these trends will continue. The market expectation is that the worst of the valuation declines are now behind us, particularly at the prime end. We'll of course, be creating more prime as our development activities transform our pipeline assets and enhance their EPC ratings into high capital value, modern, sustainable spaces.
Turning to EPRA NTA, which fell 9.3%, predominantly driven by the property valuation decline of GBP 0.73 per share. EPRA earnings added GBP 0.10, whilst dividends reduced NTA by GBP 0.13. With other items, NTA stands at GBP 7.57. Moving to EPRA earnings, where we guided to a decline. Again, I'll show you that we had some ups and some downs on the prior year. Rental income was up strongly by GBP 8.3 million, with like-for-like rental income growth of 6.5%. However, JV earnings and JV fees both fell, given the one-off surrender premium at Regent Street in the prior year, along with the sale of our income-producing redevelopment at Old Street.
Property costs fell GBP 2.5 million as we significantly reduced portfolio void levels, whilst admin costs increased by GBP 3.3 million with our MSCI beat lifting performance-linked bonuses, along with our investment in digitization and customer-first initiatives. Interest costs also up GBP 3.8 million, overall earnings were GBP 24 million, resulting in EPRA EPS of 9.5p. We expect FY24 EPS to be broadly stable on FY23. We are paying a final dividend of 7.9 pence, consistent with the prior year and reflecting our financial strength. Our financial position is as strong as ever.
Shown top left, EPRA LTV has reduced to 19.8% and remains one of the very lowest in the UK REIT sector. We continue to have significant debt covenant headroom and have now extended the maturity of all our GBP 450 million ESG-linked RCF to 2027, whilst also outperforming its 3 sustainability KPIs. With no maturities until FY25 and good access to incremental liquidity, including through disciplined recycling, we have extensive investment capacity. Shown bottom left, our weighted average maturity is more than 6 years and 95% of our debt is on a flexible unsecured basis. Our available liquidity is more than GBP 450 million. The weighted average interest rate of our drawn debt is only 2.7% and is 97% at fixed rates.
Whilst the interest rate on our floating rate RCF has risen to 5.1%, you can see bottom right that should we fully draw down on this facility, our overall weighted average interest rate would remain sub 4% all else equal. Moving to our organic growth opportunity with more than GBP 800 million of total prospective CapEx into a supply constrained prime office market. Just over GBP 700 million will go into four office dominated HQ repositioning schemes, including our fully pre-let 2 Aldermanbury Square . At New City Court, our largest uncommitted scheme, we anticipate bringing in a JV partner once we have planning consent. Overall, these schemes will deliver prospective ERV of GBP 60 million, a seven-fold uplift on the current rent roll.
Shown bottom left, as we continue to grow our flex space offer, we currently have GBP 126 million of prospective CapEx. The majority of this is into dedicated, fully managed buildings and having grown our footprint five-fold since 2018 to more than 400,000 sq ft today, we are on track for organic growth to more than 500,000 sq ft, even taking account of flex space we'll lease for a period as we deliver new HQ developments. Our existing flex spaces are performing well. With our unique product offer, we secured GBP 11.8 million of flex lettings over the year, nearly 11% ahead of VRV to customers from a wide variety of sectors. Following our largest ever flex letting, The Hickman is now 100% let or under offer, and it showcases three of our four office product offerings.
It also reaffirms our long-standing customer relationship with New Look, with a case study providing all the detail in the appendix. We've also completed 14 fully managed lettings in the last 12 months, with the 8 West End deals achieving an average rent of GBP 212 per square foot. Our highest rent to date has been at Dufour's Place, where our recent renewal with Wunderkind at GBP 278 per square foot compares with GBP 181 achieved just over 18 months ago. Post deduction of OpEx and rent-free, the net rent of GBP 171 is 185% higher than the comparable ready-to-fit rent, representing good business for GPE. Top right, we show our excellent financial performance with our fully managed spaces delivering a 54% beat to ready to fit on a cash flow basis.
Crucially, our customers are happy too, with our market beating NPS of 44, higher still at more than 60 for our fully managed spaces. As a result, we are increasing our ambition, now aiming for more than 1 million square feet of flex space by 2028 through the overlay of targeted acquisitions. There is a clear market opportunity with 20% of the London office market expected to be flex by 2028, and more than half of London occupiers expecting to have at least 10% of their office footprint as flex. There's a clear opportunity for GPE too, with more scale providing clustering benefits to our customers and enhanced OpEx management for us. We will access additional fit-out CapEx economies whilst also leveraging the flex team capability that we've built out.
Plus, we have a proven acquisition track record with clear criteria and a disciplined approach. As you'll hear later, we expect to unlock further acquisition opportunities. Importantly, we have the financial capacity to deliver our growth opportunity. Shown in dark green, our committed CapEx totals GBP 326 million, and the dark pink line shows pro forma LTV would rise to the high twenties in the medium term, although that's before factoring in any value creation. Overlaying potential uncommitted CapEx of GBP 506 million in the light green would take indicative LTV into the thirties. In yellow, the simple sensitivity table shows the impact of illustrative acquisitions and sales as we maintain our capital allocation discipline.
While there are a few moving parts, we remain absolutely committed to our through the cycle LTV range of 10%-35%. This CapEx will deliver our significant rent roll growth opportunity with a potential uplift of GBP 86 million. Starting from today's rent roll of GBP 106.4 million, up 2.2% over the year, leasing our void and refurb space will add GBP 27.8 million. We expect to deliver three quarters of this as flex space. Beyond this, we have another GBP 7.4 million available through reversion capture. Shown in purple, you can see the additional GBP 51 million of rent to come at our HQ repositioning schemes, of which GBP 25 million is already pre-let. Overall, this gives a total potential uplift of 81%.
To wrap up from me, NTA per share declined due to yield expansion. Although we delivered 2.1% ERV growth and the best spaces continue to outperform. We have maintained our ordinary dividend and expect EPS to be broadly stable in FY24. We continue to have sector-leading debt metrics, and with more than GBP 450 million of liquidity, we have significant capacity for investment. We have an extensive organic growth opportunity too, with prospective CapEx of more than GBP 800 million, which will deliver a rent roll uplift of 81%. Plus, we have increased our flex ambition, now aiming to grow our footprint to more than 1 million sq ft with further acquisitions expected. We've now created GBP 2.4 million of social value, meaning we're well on our way to beating our GBP 10 million target.
You can also find a full update on our social impact strategy in the appendix. Overall, GPE is in great financial shape. Now back to Toby for a few comments on the market.
Thank you very much, Nick. A few comments then on our markets. Whilst macro conditions remain weak overall, they are much improved since last autumn, and Central London feels every bit as busy as it did before COVID. This improvement is not being felt everywhere with a clear and widening gap between the performance of the best spaces in the best locations versus the rest. We're seeing healthy demand for well-located and designed spaces that are fit for hybrid working, and customers are clearly favoring sustainable spaces too, and that is exactly what we're delivering. It's no surprise then that we've been hitting record leasing numbers as we successfully dial into the two richest seams of demand, Prime HQ and great flex spaces. From here, we think London's fundamentals remain compelling. Its population is growing.
Barriers to entry are rising through both the planning system and sustainability concerns, which in turn is keeping the supply-demand equation in our favor. All themes then that we stand to benefit from. Starting top right, the PMIs for both jobs and business activity in London have recovered since the autumn, Oxford Economics expect 145,000 new jobs to be created by 2028, That's about 15 million sq ft of new demand. Meanwhile, current City and West End leasing activity remains robust, as you can see, bottom left. Take up for the year to March was ahead of the 10-year average, although with a slowdown in the last quarter, as you can see. Yet activity today sits above the 10-year average, Space under offer right now is holding up well too. Looking at averages masks what's really going on.
We first identified the bifurcation in customer demand between the best spaces and the rest a few years ago. Look what's happened to rental growth of Prime versus Grade B since 2020, shown bottom right for the West End and the City, with a very clear outperformance by Prime spaces. You can see why by looking at vacancy rates in the table, with Prime West End at only 0.6% -day versus 6.7% for second-hand space across central London. Given that our activities are focused almost entirely in prime locations, these conditions bode well for us. What about the forward look? Well, you'll remember we've been warning of a shortage of Grade A new supply in central London for years.
We've updated our projections, and we expect the shortage to remain extreme, with new deliveries shown by the bars way lower than market commentators predict, as you can see from the pink diamonds. We think 2.8 million sq ft of speculative space will complete annually between now and the end of 2026, compared to a 10-year lease-up of 5 million sq ft annually, which suggests we need to be building almost 80% more than we are every year to meet this average level of demand. Returning to our rent bifurcation story shown top right, and Savills predict rental growth for the best spaces across the whole forecast period from here.
We would agree, although we expect the West End Prime to stretch its lead against the City rather than track together, as shown here. Either way, with 68% of our portfolio in the core of the West End and 92% near an Elizabeth line station, we're well-placed to take advantages of these conditions. Now, a quick word on retail. The graph bottom left shows West End Prime Zone A rental movements since 2009 in blue, with central London in red. The clear story is that rents have stopped falling and even grown recently in some core locations. The rates revaluation has helped, as has recovering sales, plus 9.4% in Oxford Street East versus 2019, for example, and the New West End Company expects tourism numbers to return to pre-COVID levels by next year.
Lastly, the investment market. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the increased cost of capital, equity looking to invest is down 17% since last November. So too is the quantity of assets for sale. The multiplier is actually up since November, with most of the demand coming from Asian and European investors. As with rental growth, we are seeing strong bifurcation between the best and the rest, with the best achieving decent pricing, as we have shown, and the rest often not selling at all. Combine this with an inevitable increase in refinancing challenges, we expect to see more opportunities emerge and conditions that play well to our positioning and to our strengths. To sum up, our view on London markets.
In the near term, the drivers for rents, shown on the left, feel stable across the board, with the shortage of new developments providing some compelling impetus for the medium term. Looking at our own portfolio, shown bottom left, the middle column shows we delivered office rental value growth over the year at 3.3%, comfortably ahead of our November estimate of between 0% and 3%. Given this run rate, we've increased the top end of our office guidance for the year to March 2024 to 5% and shown for the first time the expected bifurcation of prime versus secondary, with prime office rental value growth of 3%-6% predicted. We also expect retail to fare comparatively better too, giving overall portfolio rental value growth of between 0% and 5%.
We also have a more stable outlook for yields, shown on the right. You can see at the bottom, we still see upward pressure on secondary yields, but less than in November, with robust demand for West End prime pointing to more stability and the best assets continuing to outperform. Let's turn then and look at some of our operations over the year and starting with our significant CapEx program, which you will remember is timed to deliver into both an economic recovery and a supply shortage. Having finished and sold 50 Finsbury Square, we now have one committed scheme, being two Aldermanbury Square, four major refurbishment projects, all for our fully managed offer, and a further six near and medium-term developments, bringing the total as at March to 11 schemes covering 49% of the portfolio.
Since which, we've bought into two further flex refurb opportunities that I'll touch on in a minute. First, turning to our four significant HQ developments, they're all prime, all with exemplary sustainability credentials, and all with capital value upside from the March balance sheet values, particularly when you remember the supply shortage I referenced earlier. Good timing. Top left, two Aldermanbury Square is 100% pre-let with a strong circular economy contribution as we're reusing much of the steel from its demolished predecessor. Unsurprisingly, as both cap rates and construction costs have moved against us, performance has softened, as you can see on the table, with an ungeared IRR dropping from 10% in November to 4.4% in March. We expect the quality of the building and its income will stand us in good stead when interest rates reverse their recent trajectory.
Our remaining three projects could all start in the next 9-12 months. Taken together, these 4 best-in-class schemes generate a 118% area gain, a 220% ERV increase, and represent some 49% of our net assets. They will really move the needle. Turning to look at our acquisition activity, we've been buying again. First, a word on market fair values. Interestingly, in the period up to our interim shown on the left bar, we reckoned 51% of the GBP 750 million we were tracking traded at prices more than 25% ahead of our view of fair value. Contrast that with the period since November, shown on the right, GBP 524 million of deals, none mispriced to the same extent, with the majority now 10%-25% overpriced.
A sign perhaps of a tempering of buyer enthusiasm. Let's see. In any event, we bought two assets in the first half, the larger being St. Andrew Street in Farringdon for GBP 30 million, a perfect fully managed opportunity where we expect to deliver a healthy stabilized yield of 6.8% and an accretive ungeared IRR of about 7.5%. Since November, we bought 141 Wardour Street, also for our fully managed offer, and again, with a strong expected IRR of 12.7%, as well as Bramah House opposite our Woolyard campus on Bermondsey Street in Southwark. Taken together, GBP 90 million of acquisitions during the year, all adding eventually to our flex portfolio, all in prime locations, underwritten off sensible rents and capital values, and with accretive IRRs. Let's sum up and consider where next for GPE.
In short, as I said at the beginning, it is all about execution. As you can see from the chart top left, we were a net seller last year, even after CapEx. Far this financial year, we've been a net investor. What can we expect for the balance of the year? First, we'll be progressing our significant near-term CapEx program. It's well timed, and from today's numbers, we expect to deliver strong income and value growth. Second, we'll be growing our flex portfolio from 414,000 feet today to 1 million feet over the next five years, both organically and through acquisitions. As you've heard this morning, we're really excited about our prospects here. We've carved out a unique and profitable strategy. We've built the operating infrastructure, and there's a big opportunity for us to grab.
Third, we expect to buy more opportunities. We're seeing value emerge in selected areas and asset types. Today, as you can see, bottom left, we're reviewing circa GBP 750 million of deals, of which circa GBP 150 million is for flex, all of it off-market. We have circa GBP 100 million under offer to buy. We'll also be selling, as we always are, crystallizing value once business plans are complete. We have circa GBP 150 million under review for sale today. A very clear operating direction to pursue over the next 12 months, executing our plan and built around our tried and tested capital allocation discipline. As we think about our sizable and exciting opportunity, GPE is also a business with clear strategic priorities centered on our focus and deep knowledge.
We have evolved our strategy to best serve customers' changing needs. The result is two complementary business streams, both with great potential. A differentiated strategy with customers and sustainability considerations at the heart of every decision we make. Meanwhile, our markets are increasingly interesting, stable in the near term, but with a big bifurcation between the best and the rest, and with a positive medium-term outlook. Employment indicators are still supportive. Demand for prime and flex is healthy. Rising barriers to entry has created a serious supply shortage and rents are rising. Whilst investor demand remains robust for prime liquid assets. We reiterate our enduring belief in London. It remains one of the world's most attractive mixed-use locations. It continues to act as a magnet for both new industries and talent, and office workers are returning.
Its best retail has turned the corner and the streets are busy again. Of course, the Elizabeth line is open and making a difference, positively affecting at least 92% of our portfolio. Plus, the portfolio itself is full of opportunity in HQ repositioning where we really can move the needle. In flex, where deep customer demand is supporting our ambitious growth plans, combining to give us organic income growth potential of 81%, and to which we expect to add as acquisition opportunities are now emerging, all of which is made possible by both our strong balance sheet and our powerful collaborative culture and our deeply experienced team. We've restructured for evolving customer needs, but still with the same clear purpose and unifying values, supporting our communities and our people, and drawing on the expertise of a team who've traded successfully through multiple cycles.
GPE is in great shape with all to play for, and so it should be no surprise to hear that we remain confident in our positive prospects. Okay, thank you, Nick. We have in front of us, some of the team who might be able to help answer any questions you have. Who would like to go first? We have microphones floating around the room, I think. Thank you.
Callum Marley from Kolytics. Just two questions from me. I'll do them one at a time. Rental growth has materially lagged inflation this year. Can we expect that to catch up and under what circumstances?
Well, straightforwardly, we've given you the rental growth expectations. You can see at the top right that the chart there suggests that's nominal numbers, clearly, but it's in the right direction as compared to where it was during COVID at least. That's a positive. We've also shown on our traffic light slide, which the projections from a % perspective for our portfolio and for the first time given you the prime versus a secondary split. Just to be clear what I mean by secondary here, these are assets that we will convert into prime spaces, and we own them for that very purpose, right? If we did nothing to them, they would deliver less rental growth than prime. Whether they turn into net real growth will depend largely on what happens to inflation, clearly.
The print this morning is perhaps less positive than some were hoping for. It does appear to be stickier than certainly we were thinking was likely to be the case earlier this year. Let's see as this year progresses. There's no question it's going to fall. The extent to which it does, I guess, is the determining factor in exactly where that real growth ends up. Just harking back to one of Nick's slides on the flex spaces, you know, you could see there some really serious growth as we've delivered spaces that customers are looking for in flex and shown you some remarkable growth numbers. We are dialing into areas of the market where we can generate real net, real growth even with inflation as it is because we're delivering spaces that customers are after.
The more we can carry on doing that, so much the better.
It-
That was your first question, Calum. There's another one.
Yes. You've painted a very positive story today. Yet yourself and other REITs in this space are trading at a significant and persistent discount, especially looking at the share prices this morning. What is the equity market missing there?
Well, it's a very good, very big and very complicated question. Not one that I'm gonna go into at length, but I'm very happy to give you my longer views outside the room. I think in essence, equity markets are not really focusing on what companies such as us are saying. They're pricing in far bigger, more fundamental moves in questions such as inflation, global interest rates, global growth, macroeconomic issues that are frankly nothing that we can control, and of course macro political issues which are unhelpful as well. I think the story is deeply confused by all of the externalities and is frankly not really focusing on what we are doing.
What we are, however, doing is showing the same discipline that we have always shown around capital allocation, around seeking ways to deliver returns ahead of our cost of capital, selling assets where we know we can no longer deliver accretive returns and buying into those and developing and creating spaces where we can. I think if you, if you were to carry on doing what we are doing over the cycle and over a longer period of time, as we have shown over the last 20 or so years, we can trade at broadly an average of around about par, which is where we should be. Let's see. As perhaps some of that noise dissipates, hopefully it will, then maybe, company specific characteristics will come back into vogue. Let's see. Nick, anything you wanted to add to that?
No, I mean, the only thing that I would add is that, you know, we sit here with a business plan that we think will deliver our cost of capital. We're very excited about delivering that. As Toby says, we hope that the equity market catches up. Clearly it's something that we'll keep under review. If the equity market never catches up, that's something that we as a board would consider thinking what the alternatives are. Today, we're, you know, very excited about what we've run you through.
Thanks, Calum. Good questions indeed. Who else? Yes, in the front here. Max.
Thanks. Max Nimmo at Numis. Maybe just kind of following on, you talked a little bit some of the global themes that we're seeing. I think we're probably all seeing the headlines of what's happening in San Francisco, Manhattan, these kind of places. Maybe just how you see London within that kind of global city context. That'd be my first question. Secondly, just on the, on the flex side of things. In terms of the assets that you're trying to target, is there any, anything specific within the exact types of buildings you're looking at that, that we should be kind of looking for? As well, you talked a bit about the economies of scale that you're getting in flex.
Do you have some internal targets of where you want to get to on sort of, flex costs per sq ft or anything like that, would be helpful.
Okay.
Thanks.
Max, thank you. There are three components to that. I'll take the first one on the global city. Mark, perhaps you could just comment on what you're seeing in demand and the variety of demand there. Dan, how about you touch on the specifics of what we're looking at when we think about acquisitions, and Nick, maybe economies of scale on flex. Macro question around global cities, Max. Really good question. There's obviously a lot of noise around U.S. views on office real estate in particular. We're well aware of that. We obviously have a large U.S. shareholder base as well, which we're very pleased to have.
I think we're making the case as much as possible for cities like London as opposed to, perhaps less capital city-orientated places, particularly in some of the older cities of North America, where, for example, in London, you have immense variety. If you just take the West End, you have got a combination of people living there, businesses large and small wanting to be there, publicly listed corporations, global HQs, through to small family offices and startups. You've got an entertainment industry, a retail industry, green spaces, you name it. It's all there in a very livable city that has had to the previous and current mayor's credit, a significant investment in public transport infrastructure and the Elizabeth line in any city anywhere in the world is a game changer.
You've had some of the conditions necessary for creating a place that is incredibly powerful. And it's been brilliant at reinventing itself over hundreds of years, almost a thousand years, in fact. It has this heritage which is incredibly strong. It's also the only global city in the U.K. Unlike in the U.S., where there are multiple places one might locate to with differing tax structures, clearly London is in one country, and it's the only global city in the U.K., which I think is also very relevant. It's super accessible, which is very helpful. We're seeing a massive difference between places like London and some of the American, North American cities you referenced. As I said, it's much busier than it was a year ago. Workers are definitely returning.
We see that in our own numbers, we see it in our own vacancy rate, down at now, in fact, sub 2% from the 2.5% we referenced at the end of March. That's all extremely positive and clearly rents are rising. That's the first point. Mark, just in terms of occupier and the demand and the variety that you're seeing.
Is that on? There you are. Active demand at the moment is it's about 9.3 million square feet, which is above the long-term average of 8.9 million. In terms of the spread, it's no surprise that banking and finance is still very much driving demand with nearly 40% of that demand. Then you have professional services, which fundamentally is the legal sector and accountancy. Legal sector last year was a record take-up of 1.5 million square feet. We've got a lot more requirements that are out there. Clearly, Clifford Chance is one of those big deals from last year.
The other big sector is media and technology, where the talk at the moment is all about the doom and gloom for media and technology. Actually, it's 11% of the total demand. If you're looking at new searches, even over the last quarter, there's been about 2.5 million sq ft of new demand that has started to filter into the market. The majority of that is coming from banking and finance as well. Again, in terms of size brackets, there's very much a spread between healthy numbers between 50,000-100,000. Actually over the last 12 months, 20,000-50,000 sq ft bracket, that has doubled in size. The 10,000-20,000 has almost doubled.
In terms of take-up, over the last quarter, about 25% was the churn, 5,000-10,000 sq ft. That churn is also returning to the market and is maintaining the level of awareness. One of the slides, Rich, if you can put slide 67. Yeah, okay, you're ahead of me. Great. This is a really powerful and interesting slide. It's from CBRE, and it talks about the structural and cyclical demand. You can see there. I'm standing in the way. You can see there, that CBRE predicting that within lease expires over the next 5 years, you've got 44 million sq ft of potential new demand.
Toby talked about the net new jobs for London of 145,000 over the next five years. CBRE's view is that actually that cyclical demand could be as much as 19.3 million sq ft over that same time period. Again, if you look at the bars, the professional sector and actually the creative are the two biggest drivers for that expansionary demand. All round, it's pretty healthy.
Max, a real variety, and that is one of the city's great strengths. When we're thinking about buying, Dan, what are the things we're looking for?
Morning, everyone. Yeah, flex, particularly, for our purchases, we've got some... I mean, buying is easy, but buying well isn't easy. We've got some pretty strict givens. We have a sort of checklist effectively for everything we do. For flex, it's really about location and all the, all the things one might expect, West End, King's Cross, South Bank. We're looking for transport, Elizabeth line is very important, more in the HQ space and the flex space too. Certainly for the HQ, as you come east, it becomes even more important towards the city. If you talk to occupiers at the moment, they very much view, in the city locations, the Elizabeth line as something which is an absolute, almost an absolute prerequisite.
We like amenity, 'cause our customers like amenity, particularly for the flex spaces, you know, cafes, bars, restaurants, all the stuff that we like to do after work. You know, clustering around other holdings on the flex side, particularly this is relevant. You know, look at the recent acquisitions, Bramah House, right across the road from Woolyard. We can gain operationally from that. The question, second question you had, you know, you can use the same people to manage those assets, so you cut down on your operational cost and make your flex model more efficient.
I mean, in terms of actual specifics for flex, I mean, we find that most of our customers don't really, for the flex spaces where they're happy to pay those premiums, they don't really want to be taking space over sort of 6,000-7,000 sq ft because at that point, your businesses get to a size where they've got enough, you know, the overhead and they've got enough infrastructure to actually employ somebody to deal with all the things that our flex customers don't want to deal with. We tend to limit the floor plates of our flex acquisitions to, I mean, 5,000-6,000 sq ft is perfect. So sort of if you've got an individual floor, that sort of... I could go on for ages, depends how long you've got.
If you've got any buildings you wanna sell, I'll be available later. Yeah, 20,000 sq ft-60,000 sq ft with those sort of sizes are meeting all those criteria and, you know, we're in. As I said, it's, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there at the moment. There's a lot of quiet conversations. Owners are getting used to the idea that assets are worth less, so they're more likely to sell them. You know, we're absolutely out there scanning all of these things.
Very good.
with a view to growing our businesses. Sorry.
Excellent. Well, you drifted expertly into economies of scale, which Nick, I think you.
Yeah.
-wanted to say. Anything you want to add on that?
I don't know if I need double microphone, but anyone might hear me twice. I mean, I think in terms of, and Rich if you go to Slide 13, we've been very clear in the targets that we're looking to beat from a financial perspective, which you can see top right. Crucially, what overlays that is we're only gonna do this if we if we beat our cost of capital, which today is about mid-7s, and we certainly anticipate we'll be able to do that through flex, through a combination of the refurbishment return that we generate as we take the space from typically poor quality into high quality through the yield on cost that we've been generating, typically in the mid- to high-5s for our fully managed space, and then the overlay of capital return.
When we think about economies, as Dan referenced, clustering is important. One of the things that we know is that our customers wanna be in great locations, many of our customers grow, and we want to provide the opportunity for them to grow within our own portfolio. Given the flex portfolio is 93% occupied today, having more space available will help, particularly given that most of our customers who are signing up for flex are staying. We had 11 lease events over the last 12 months. 74% of those, the customer stayed. As the example I set out earlier, with Wunderkind, they're willing to pay a much bigger rent than they were only 18 months ago. As Dan touched on, there's economies from OpEx through clustering buildings.
We're driving the economies on the CapEx side. We don't wanna drive it too hard. The reason I say that is our product is about high quality, high experience. We've been typically targeting 120, 130, Cat B fit out. We'd like to get that down nearer to 100. We don't wanna go too far because this is about a high quality product. The other thing that we're able to leverage off is the fact that we can, we've now got circa 14 people in the business who we would effectively view as full-time equivalents, focused on flex. We've got some great capability within the business, but we can also leverage off the broader platform.
You know, the sustainability capability that Janine has, the brand and the marketing that Anisha and her team deliver is something that we can leverage off, which is a cost for some of our flex operator competitors, but not necessarily for us 'cause we're already incurring this overhead as we deliver, you know, for our HQ space. We do think that growing to 1 million sq ft will deliver real benefits for our customers, but also for us. If you talk to many of the flex operators out there, they kinda said when they got to half a million, three-quarters of a million sq ft, they started to feel as though they got scale. I think we're moving towards that position ourselves.
it will only work if we get the right buildings, but also we, if we keep our customers happy. you know, I pointed out 62%, customer 62 Net Promoter Score. In one of our buildings, Dufour's Place, which we've taken you around, we got 100. every single customer would recommend that space to one of their peers. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to do that because we don't have any space in our building at the moment. if we did, I'm sure we'd be pushing on that 278 even higher.
Brilliant. That's great. Thank you, Max.
Thank you.
Neil. 1 mic. Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning, Neil Green, J.P. Morgan. Just continuing on the flex theme. With the raised guidance you put out today with 1 million sq ft and your history of recycling capital, crystallizing gains and keeping leverage low, how do you kinda think about potentially wanting to recycle flex office product in the future, please?
Thanks, Neil. Really good question. Rich, can we go to the back of the deck? There's the. Well done. There you go. Thank you very much.
Mm-hmm.
Right. The reason I'm showing you this, Neil, is because this shows the history of our selling out of HQ, not flex. The point I'm trying to make here is that when we're creating large HQ buildings, not always, but often we sell them because we've created as much value as we can realistically expect to create, and they simply become market-driven assets rather than assets that we can create value from having finished and leased these developments. That's why we sell them when their prospective IRRs are not sufficient to beat our cost of capital. In flex, you would imagine, given some of the numbers Nick has just shown us, that actually the opportunity to carry on beating our cost of capital is very real.
We're likely to hold more of that end of the spectrum, which by the way, we always have. Interestingly, the smaller buildings we've typically not sold as much as we have in the larger HQ spaces. I think no change is really the message. We can carry on recycling the very large assets when we choose to because typically they are best in class often anywhere in the world. Think of Hanover Square, think of our recent disposal of 50 Finsbury, where we absolutely nailed the pricing, and we think we could carry on doing that with our next round of developments if we chose to. In our flex spaces, I think we will likely hold onto them as we grow the revenue and thus the value.
As you've seen, they were some of the best value performers this year as well. I hope that helps on that one. Thank you, Neil.
Thank you.
Yes, John?
Hello.
Tim Leckie. Tim Leckie, Liberum. You had quite a chunky increase in costs coming through this year. I presume a big slug of that is the increased investment in flex and the fact that it's a heavier cost business. What's the look forward on the cost base, please?
You, you're right. It was also some performance related bonuses to do with the MSCI performance. Yes, digitization costs, flex investments certainly are relevant. On a forward look, the rate of increase slowing a bit, Nick?
Yeah. I mean, I would expect. Sorry. Very rude to speak with your back to somebody, my mother told me.
Well, don't take it from me.
I mean, I think our expectation is there would be further growth just simply due to the inflationary pressures. We've got a slide in the back which shows there's been some quite material increase in headcount, and a decent chunk of that has been around flex, but it's also been around our broader, customer proposition.
Rate of growth slowing?
Yeah, rate of further growth, but rate of growth slowing. Yeah.
Thanks, Nick. Thanks, John. I saw another hand, Oz, do you have your hand up? No. Okay. Yes, over here. Thank you.
Thank you. Marie Dormeuil from Green Street. Just two questions from me. With regards to the flex, you keep... I mean, every six months we've kept an increase in the target, so it's quite a shift also in just the business model of GP. What... You know, if you can give us a sense of, okay, the 40% is actually maybe a medium-term target, or you think there's potential for this number to grow further, and how we have to think about GP in the future. Maybe another question with regards to asset value. You, you were showing us outlook that your fees are growing for the office space and yields could be stabilizing.
I mean, of course, it's a question mark, but if you can give us a sense of where you think values, if there's more pressure on values or you think we're nearing some kind of stabilization?
Okay. Business model. I sort of half answered that in relation to dispositions earlier. I mean, I think if you go back to what we said when we started our flex ideas back in 2017, the idea then was that there was clear evidence that smaller customers were looking for their owner, the building owner, to provide services and take the aggro away from them, in a way that most other walks of life were clearly happening through the Internet and so on. And we saw a real opportunity in offices in particular, at the smaller end of the spectrum, for us to dial into that and charge for it, which is essentially what we're doing.
As you may remember, the average office occupier in London pays something like 7%-10% of their salary bill in rent. Their people are 10 to 14 times more important than the rent they pay, right? From a P&L perspective. Thus, it makes a lot of sense for them to invest in services and spaces that they want their people to be in. This building is a really great example. I would imagine that Numis would tell you that productivity has gone up since they moved into this building. Even if they're less occupying it densely than the previous building. It's just a better space. It's got more attractions to it. That was what we were trying to dial into.
I don't see that as a change in business model, particularly if you, if you think about the fact that the vast majority, like, and Nick, I think you referenced 30% of the market into flex by-
20%.
... 20%
Which would be in London would be 50 million sq ft.
Yeah. Now, if you were to isolate the small end of the market, our view has always been that actually the majority of customers at the small end of the market will be in some form of flex-oriented space, be that fully managed or fitted. So, if you're not in that game, you're missing out. Has always been our view. It doesn't change the basic model of us HQ repositioning large buildings that we build for global corporations and lease to them. Then smaller spaces that we have dialed into this very rich seam of demand. That, I think is a great thing for us to be doing. As we think about our outlook, can we just go to the traffic light slide, please, Rich? Values, as you as you raised the question there.
Bottom right, we're suggesting that for prime spaces, best-in-class spaces, that bifurcation we've been talking about suggests that the very best spaces, are possibly going to see values rising in the not-too-distant future. We think that secondary, out of demand, functionally obsolete, needing significant amounts of investment in them, as Dan said earlier, probably values falling. It's, the trick for us is to focus on buying that product that we can improve in great locations, and create from secondary assets, prime assets, but always in a prime location. If you combine rent growth at the best end of the spectrum and flat yields, all else equal, values go up. Let's see. Does that answer your... Yes, behind you. Thank you.
Morning. Eleanor Frew from Barclays. I just have a question on your dividend cover. It's another year of uncovered dividend. You've indicated being more open to acquisition going forward. When do you think your earnings will catch up with your dividend? That's assuming that your dividend is stable to growing. Thank you.
Lots of dynamics in that, including acquisitions, as you rightly referenced, and development and so on. Nick, do you want to comment?
Yeah. I think the answer is, the medium term. I mean, we've had two years of dividend uncover, similar to what we had in the last cycle. The level of uncover to this year is GBP 6 million or GBP 7 million, so it's pretty small in the scheme of things. We will stick with our policy, which is a progressive dividend policy. Which is, when it's covered and we're growing earnings, we grow the dividend. When it's uncovered, we keep it flat. As Toby said, the dynamics from here, and we've given guidance that we think earnings will be broadly stable for the next 12 months. The level of buying and selling will have an impact, and clearly what will also have an impact is what we're buying and we're selling.
It's likely that the assets that we're selling have income on them, whereas the assets that we're buying may have no income on them because the opportunity is to take that space that is ready to be refurbed, and move forward. I think we'll stick with the policy that we've currently run for many years from here on in.
I would just add to that, the other side to that policy is people don't tend to buy GPE for its dividend. They tend to buy us for our value creation and total return. As we showed last cycle, and we're showing again, we're more than happy to invest in that total return generation, that value creation generation through principally development, which by its nature means taking out income short-term, so that we can bring back higher revenue and thus higher value creation, to generate a total return that is satisfactory for investors. That's the idea. Thank you. Good question. We're running out of time. Maybe one... Yep, thank you.
Morning. I'm James Carswell from Peel Hunt. Just wondering what you're thinking about in terms of pre-lets going forward, and you clearly you're pretty optimistic on rental growth for those best-in-class buildings. I think also your two Aldermanbury Square, you signed a really good pre-letting deal, but the profit's been squeezed given build costs and yields and you're unable to increase the rents. I mean, sat here today, are you do you think you're less likely to sign pre-lets looking forward? How are you thinking about that?
Good question. Can we go to the HQ redevelopment slide, please, Rich? The four, maybe the next one. Thank you. As you rightly referenced, top left is pre-let. That has by its nature fixed one of the key levers that you use to create value. We're referencing here the fact that yields have moved against us aggressively. Hopefully as interest rates change their trajectory, we can see some change to that performance. Let's see. On the other three, I think we would say that the bottom two being smaller, are bite-sized chunks that you can imagine pre-letting is a relatively safe bet is never a thing one should say, 'cause it isn't safe to assume.
you know, given the supply side that we've referenced, given the depth of demand Mark talked about earlier, I would say they're a good bet that we can pre-let, if not all, some of those spaces. New City Court being a bigger building, is less likely to have a high proportion pre-lease because typically you don't get multiple floors being pre-let by single customers. I think we will pre-let some of it, and again, time will tell. It's a cracking scheme. It's got fantastic amenity. It's in a great spot. All of the things that we look for, Dan referenced earlier around characteristics, are in spades in all three. We're giving ourselves the best possible chance to pre-let.
By the way, we will never hang out for tomorrow's rent, and turn away a customer who is willing to come and lease from us today. We will always take the best deal today, because one of your single biggest risks in development is clearly vacancy risk and lack of revenue. And once you've let it, you've given yourself options, joint venturing, forward selling, et cetera. Thanks, James. Yes.
Hi, Adam Shapton from Green Street. Just one on the growing share of flex or planned growing share of flex, two related questions. You mentioned mid-sevens as your current cost of capital. What do you think happens to your cost of capital if 40% of your portfolio or thereabouts is flex? Can you sort of share any color in terms of your conversations with your valuers about flex generally? I know there's a breakout in terms of what happened to ERVs and yields I think in the presentation, but some sort of color around those themes would be great.
Let me do the first bit. Nick, if you wanna take the valuer conversation bit. It's a really good question. I think that as evidence builds up of the trading of flex, and by that I'm referring to the speed with which we're leasing it, the retention rate of customers, and Nick referenced 70% retention rate, and the current occupation rate of 93%. As we build up evidence in our flex operations, to show that the space we're creating is deeply demanded, I actually think your cost of capital is not negatively impacted, which in a sense is where I can see where you're coming from. If anything, it might be positively impacted because you've got less capital recurrence, you've got less need to carry on investing and developing in it.
some of the heaviest bits of what we do are less demanded, and your revenue recurrence is very strong. Equally, if you can show that into the balance sheet, generating capital value growth, I think there's a strong case to make for, actually, at worst, no impact on your cost capital, if not actually potentially an improvement. I do think that the bigger determinants of cost of capital for us are around capital allocation discipline, our willingness to rotate out and sell buildings once we have created value, and our timing on developments. Getting that time, those things plus, of course, leverage. Not having too much nor too little, by the way, financial leverage and flexing it as we go through the cycle.
Those tend to have been the things that have given us an attractive cost of capital, and so long as we preserve those characteristics, I think the cost of capital story remains robust.
On the valuation, I mean, Rich, if you may go to Slide 52. I mean, the main area of focus with the value was kind of historically around what's the appropriate yield to apply to the service income, because effectively they're taking a split yield approach. Initially, they were at 10% cap rate. They've now moved it to 8.5, and it's been stable there for a while. Our sense is that over time, as there's more evidence in the investment market around where these products trade and there's more predictability and certainty around that income, that 8.5 could come down. I think the other thing I'd say is there's now more evidence in the market for valuers to look at with regards to where rents are.
It's very easy for them to find evidence of the RV for fitted spaces, but I think they're now finding it easier to also find evidence around where fully managed spaces are. Clearly, there are assumptions that they are assuming with regards to rent-free leasing velocity retention. The data is getting better and better as there is more evidence that's provided both by our peers, but also from our own portfolio. We do think that there is potentially upside to come over time in the valuation approach, because it does feel that for assets where the underlying yield may be in the very low 4s, to be applying an 8.5 for the service income arguably is too high. Let's wait and see.
What we do know is they're, well, our valuers tell us they're being absolutely consistent in how they do this, across the market. Hopefully, you're getting consistent, valuation approaches from us and from our peers.
Thanks, Nick. Time for one more, I think. If there is one more, if there is not, which there doesn't appear to be. Very good. Okay, guys, thank you. Just to wrap up from us, demand-supply balance feels like it's in a really interesting place as we go from here. We remain a passionate believer in London and its prospects. Rents are rising, we're buying again, and we've got some great developments to deliver with our flex business to grow as well. Lots to play for. As ever, we're around for any questions that you guys might have. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. Very good to see you, and thank you, Numis, for hosting us. Thanks, everybody.