Well, ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Landsec's 2024 Full Year Results. So over the last three years, we have been focused on two clear strategic priorities. Firstly, increasing our investment in best-in-class assets, where through our competitive advantages, we can drive long-term growth, and secondly, preserving our balance sheet strength. So including the sale of the hotel portfolio that we announced last week, we have now sold around 40 assets since late 2020, totaling some GBP 3.1 billion, and the vast majority of these were long-term, single-let assets, where our ability to add further value was limited. And we've reinvested at accretive returns in a targeted number of our key places, such as Victoria, Piccadilly, Bluewater or Cardiff. As a result of that, around 80% of our current portfolio is now concentrated in our 12 largest places.
As we continue to invest in shaping and curating these unique multi-let locations, we expect them to drive superior income returns and growth over time. At the same time, our proactive disposals mean that our capital base has remained strong, and our 32% LTV is lower than it was two years ago, before the rise in interest rates and the correction in real estate values that followed. This now provides us with significant financial capacity to capitalize on the future growth potential in our pipeline and to acquire high-quality assets that will supplement our existing best-in-class portfolio at an attractive point in the cycle. This strategic focus remains critical, as it has never been more important to own the right real estate. The normalization in cost of capital over the last two years means that value drivers across all of the sector have fundamentally changed.
Over much of the prior decade, leveraging up the spread between income yields and ultra-low borrowing costs, or picking high-level sector themes, was often enough to drive performance. However, irrespective of sector, there is now a growing distinction between those assets that meet customers' future requirements and can therefore deliver income growth, and those that don't. Vacancy across the overall London office market is elevated at 9%. UK retail vacancy is above 10%, and even big box logistics vacancy is now 8%. However, the very best assets in each sector are in short supply and therefore continue to see high occupancy and rental growth, which means it can be very dangerous to look simply at market averages. The quality of our portfolio is demonstrated in its continued outperformance, as is shown on the charts here.
In London, utilization of our offices is up 18% over the past year, significantly ahead of overall growth in commuter activity. Our occupancy has continued to increase, now at 97.3%, even though overall market occupancy has been falling. Similarly, in retail, our occupancy is up to 95.4% and outperforming the wider UK retail market. As footfall growth in our locations is well ahead of the UK market, we are seeing more competitive tension as brands focus on fewer, bigger, better stores. We have now seen a clear inflection point in retail rents, and as we are now capturing positive rental uplifts on relettings and renewals across both sectors, we expect like-for-like income to continue to grow. At the same time, the outlook for investment markets is improving.
Back in late 2022, we said that we expected property values would continue to adjust for some time as markets would have to align to a new higher rate reality, and this has indeed proven to be the case. And even though we do not anticipate a sharp reduction in long-term rates, the recent relative stabilization is clearly a positive. Drawn by the historically attractive pricing of good quality income in London and in the best retail destinations, we are starting to see interest emerge from investors who have not been active in these markets for some time. And reflecting this, 60% of our portfolio effectively saw stable values in the second half, and yields overall were flat in the final quarter.
Absent any macro shocks, we therefore think that the value of high quality assets has largely bottomed out and will start to grow in the foreseeable future as rents continue to grow. Having now sold the vast majority of assets that we said we aimed to sell back in late 2020, our net debt is GBP 1.1 billion lower than it was before the market correction. Given that we're starting to see more signs of interesting acquisition opportunities becoming available, we have the capacity and intent to be a net investor from here. With an attractive 5.7% income return and continued ERV growth, this means that we are well placed to deliver on our 8%-10% return on equity target. All of this is underpinned by continued strength in our operational performance. We continue to lease space well ahead of ERV.
We are capturing positive reversionary potential on relettings and leasing renewals in London, and for the first time in a number of years, now also in major retail, where rents have started to grow, supported by strong growth in both sales and footfall. In mixed use, we secure planning consent for our 1,800 homes development at Finchley Road, where we're now starting the first enabling works ahead of a full start on site next year, and we continue to optimize our plans for the rest of our pipeline. In terms of financial results, EPRA EPS was stable versus last year, in line with our guidance, as our strong operational performance, with 2.8% growth in like-for-like net rental income and efficiency improvements offset a rise in finance costs. Our dividend is up 2.6%, again, in line with our guidance.
At -4%, our return on equity improved versus the prior year, even though the impact of rising bond yields put pressure on valuation yields in the first half of the year in particular, and meant our NTA overall was down 8.2%. At the same time, we've reduced our energy intensity by 3.7%, which means we remain firmly on track to reduce this by 52% versus our 2019-20 baseline by 2030. Forty-nine percent of our portfolio is now rated EPC A or B, and that's up from 36% a year ago. And that will increase further from 2025 onwards, as the benefits from our net zero investment plan begin to come through. So on to our operational review.
Now, although the principal use of the places we create and curate differs across our business, the success of each of them comes back to our three key competitive advantages: the high quality of our portfolio, the strength of our customer relationships, and our ability to unlock complex opportunities. These are valuable and scarce attributes, which are essential in sustainable value creation. For example, in working with two of our key customers at New Street Square to decarbonize their office while upsizing their space and extending their leases by over 15 years, or in the completion of three highly complex developments over live tube stations this year, which combined delivered around GBP 240 million of profit. It is these competitive advantages which underpin our ability to continue to drive growth across each of those key places, be they office-led, retail-led, or mixed in use.
In terms of central London, the market continues to polarize, with customers firmly focused on the space, which has the right transport connectivity, the right sustainability credentials, and the right amenities. For many employers, space which is lacking these characteristics is now simply no longer an option, almost irrespective of price. We continue to tailor our capital allocation accordingly. For example, with the pipeline that we have created in South Bank, which sits within a few minutes walk of two of London's busiest train stations, in an area rich in cultural attractions, and which has the second highest density of bars and restaurants in London, after Soho. Our continued presence in Victoria, again, right next to one of London's busiest rail terminals.
So even though London office take-up across the market was just over 10% below its long-term average last year, the outlook for demand remains encouraging, and space under offer was close to an all-time high at the end of March. Overall vacancy is elevated at 8.8%, but as the chart on the right shows, this is still mostly a building issue rather than a market issue, as almost 40% of all vacant space sits in just 1% of office buildings. And as the supply of the very best space remains low, this means that rents for this space continue to grow, as we're seeing across our portfolio. Against this backdrop, we continue to reshape our portfolio.
We have sold over GBP 2 billion of mature standalone office assets since late 2020, and reinvested into profitable developments, such that our 5 largest multi-let places now make up 88% of our central London portfolio, all exhibiting high occupancy and strong ERV growth, and we have room to build further on this through future development. The scale and the scarcity of each of these places allows us to continue to curate them and drive further growth. For example, with new leisure concepts in Victoria, a new iconic rooftop restaurant at Piccadilly Lights, or interactive digital media space below the lights. So what are we seeing from our customers? Well, the utilization of our offices continues to grow, especially midweek. As you can see in the daily turnstile tap-in data on the left here, up 18% for the year.
At the same time, our customers are planning for significantly more space per employee than they did pre-pandemic, as they're designing for more collaboration, meeting, or well-being space, which continues to translate into sustained demand. Over the past 12 months, we've only had four customers leave, and we quickly relet three of those spaces. And across the 36 new lettings or renewals that we signed, 17 were for customers upsizing, 12 kept the same space that they occupied previously. Only seven customers reduced their overall office footprint, mostly by reducing space elsewhere, as only one customer reduced their floor space with us. With our portfolio virtually full, this strength in demand continues to drive rental growth. And so our leasing performance remains strong.
We signed or are in solicitor's hands on GBP 35 million of lettings, on average, 6% ahead of ERV, with relettings and renewals on average 15% above previous rents. Our occupancy increased further to 97.3%, significantly ahead of the wider market, and less than 1% of our space is available for subletting. On our two retained developments, we delivered around 20% profit on cost, despite the softening of yields, and both were effectively full within 4 months of completion at rents materially ahead of initial ERVs. We've recently opened 3 new Myo locations, adding to the 2 existing ones, where we saw average occupancy grow from 86% to 93% during the year. All in all, our successful leasing drove 5% ERV growth, which is at the top end of our guidance for the year. I'm moving now to retail.
There continues to be a similar trend of growing demand for the very best destinations, and we continue to shape our portfolio to ensure it is positioned for this. We sold our 2 smallest retail outlets during the year, and prior to that, increased our investment in Bluewater and St David's, such that our 5 largest assets now make up 75% of our retail portfolio. We've continued to invest in our assets over the last couple of years, but we'll be adding to this more meaningfully with a number of new initiatives. These will see us repurpose existing space to create a new F&B destination in the center of Leeds, new public open space, leisure offers in Cardiff, and enhance the visitor experience at Gunwharf Quays. These initiatives will drive further footfall and sales, and support the growing demand for space in those locations.
What underpins this demand is that for many key brands, the stores they have with us are outperforming their overall sales growth, as we show here on the left. While at the same time, overall online sales are no longer seeing the growth that was present before and during the pandemic, partly as the thin margins in online have been challenged by the marked rise in cost of capital. And this means we continue to benefit from brands' focus on fewer, bigger, better stores. As major retailers such as Inditex and H&M announce they're increasing their investment in the best physical space to improve customer experience, alongside their more convenience-led out-of-town or digital channels. The chart in the middle shows that even though several brands are reducing their total number of stores, they have increased the average unit size for their remaining stores by around 20%.
Aside from demand from new occupiers, this means that many existing customers want more space or more stores in our destinations. As there is effectively zero new supply of retail space to meet this growing demand, this is starting to drive competitive tension and rental growth. Our continued investments in our retail team and our data and tech platform continues to support the strength in our operational performance. We have now seen a clear inflection point in income, as for the first time, we are starting to capture positive uplifts on relettings and renewals. Now, this was still modest during the year at +1%, but has improved further since then, with deals in solicitors' hands now +6% to previous passing rents.
We have been leasing space well ahead of ERV for a number of years now, and it continues to do so over the past 12 months. But this shows that rents have now also turned the corner in cash flow terms. And moreover, occupancy increased by 100 basis points and is now effectively back to pre-pandemic levels. ERVs were up a relatively modest 1.4%, as valuers' assumptions continue to trail our actual operational performance. Yet to us, the strong growth in cash income is the more relevant measure. So in terms of investment, we continue to invest in our key places in ways that will drive future earnings accretion. We plan to invest more in major retail destinations, such as with the additional stake in Cardiff that we bought just over a year ago.
Following a period of very limited transaction activity, we're now seeing clear signs of activity levels starting to pick up. We also plan to invest around GBP 100 million into new initiatives across our key assets over the next three years. We expect both new investment and accretive CapEx to deliver high single-digit initial income returns. In London, we started two new schemes during the year in Victoria and South Bank, which will deliver highly sustainable space with low embodied carbon into these attractive locations. We expect these projects to deliver a gross yield on cost in excess of 7% and a yield on the incremental CapEx we're investing of over 10%.
Overall, these opportunities not only provide an attractive return on the new money that we invest, but they often also enhance the return of our existing assets in those locations, either through improved operational flexibility, increased amenities, or better services for our existing customers. Beyond this, we have built a substantial pipeline to expand our existing key holdings or to create the next generation of scarce urban places. In London, we have four sites in South Bank, which could deliver a further 900,000 sq ft of Net Zero office space in one of the most vibrant parts of town. Two of these projects already have detailed consent, and the first could be started later this year once deconstruction of the existing building is completed.
We also secured 2 planning consents during the year for major developments at Liverpool Street in the City and the next phase of New Street Square. The earliest start for these will be 2025 and 2026, respectively. That reflects vacant possession time frames, and both are located in close proximity to Elizabeth line stations. In mixed use, we have 2 major near-term opportunities. The first is Finchley Road, Zone 2 of Central London, where during the year we secured planning consent for our 1,800 homes master plan and a detailed consent for the first 600 of those homes. As planned, we have started the first site's enabling works, which, subject to further preparatory work, could put us in a position to start the first phase of development in mid-2025.
At Mayfield, next to Piccadilly Station in Manchester, we are working with our partners to optimize the development strategy, where we have the option to start the first office late this year, which then unlocks future residential phases. These opportunities add up to a pipeline of GBP 4 billion of highly sustainable space, with our consented schemes currently showing a 40% reduction in embodied carbon. Now, even though all of this can be managed in discrete, manageable phases across an extended period, the overall size of this pipeline is more than we would be comfortable undertaking on our own balance sheet. We are likely to look to supplement our own investment with other complementary sources of capital over time. That brings me to how we are thinking about capital allocation, risk, and returns.
So clearly, the marked increase in cost of capital has had a significant impact on the prospective returns of the investment opportunities available to us. Major retail looks to offer the best risk-adjusted returns in our universe, as income returns remain high and there is clear evidence of rents returning to growth. This is therefore likely to be our key focus in terms of near-term investment activity beyond our two committed developments. Returns from London investment from here also look more attractive than they did 2-3 years ago, given the increase in yields and continued rental growth for best-in-class space, which bodes well for the return prospects of our portfolio.
Returns from future development, be that in London or mixed use, continue to offer a premium to comparable investment assets, and of course, offer the opportunity to deliver modern, high-quality space into a polarized market, where demand is concentrated at the top end. Development does, however, entail more risk, and while rents continue to grow, margins have been eroded by cost inflation and higher exit yields. We need to ensure that developments offer a sufficient risk premium versus the returns on any assets we might choose to sell from here to fund our investment. As a result, we've been working hard to optimize our pipeline of development projects to ensure that they reflect this new reality. Now, in some cases, this involves revisiting design or specification.
For others, it might involve working out less capital, less carbon-intensive options by retaining more of the existing buildings and income. In all cases, however, we will only commit capital to new developments where we are happy that the prospective returns on offer justify the increased risk. Now, Vanessa will share more on our thinking here later, and I'll now hand over to her to talk you through our financial results.
Thank you, Mark, and good morning. The wider market conditions improved as the year progressed, and our operational performance has remained strong. Given our strong capital structure, this provides us with a positive outlook. Let's start with our financial headlines. In line with our guidance, EPRA earnings per share was stable versus last year's underlying performance, as growth in like-for-like income and a reduction in overheads offset the impact of higher finance costs. Our dividend is up 2.6% to GBP 39.6 pence. Again, in line with our guidance, and it reflects a dividend cover of 1.27 times. Further yield softening during the first half of the year, in particular, meant that despite continued ERV growth, our NTA value per share was down 8.2%.
Our return on equity was -4%, and with value starting to stabilize, the outlook for this is now more positive. And moreover, our balance sheet remains strong, and pro forma for the hotel portfolio sale and net debt to net debt to EBITDA is now low at 7x, and our LTV is 32%. So turning to EPRA EPS in more detail. Like-for-like gross rental income was up GBP 16 million or 3%, reflecting our strong leasing performance and the quality of our portfolio. Service charge expense increased due to the start-up costs of our completed developments, so net rental income was up GBP 11 million. Admin expenses were down GBP 7 million, despite high inflation, which I'll cover in a bit more detail shortly.
As a result, we had a 4% increase in our operating profit, which offset a GBP 18 million increase in finance costs due to the interest expense on our completed developments and an increase in our average borrowing costs. EPRA EPS, our EPRA EPS was stable versus last year's underlying level, and that's in line with our guidance. Our net rental income was up 2.8% on a like-for-like basis, and this was supported by positive rental uplifts on relettings and renewals, growth in turnover income, and higher occupancy. Central London office income was up 1.4%, which was partially offset by lower variable income at Piccadilly Lights following last year's outperformance. Yet this remains a highly valuable asset, with income up 9% over the past two years.
Major retail was the strongest performer, with like-for-like income up 6.9%, as the over-renting in the portfolio, which had persisted for several years, has now turned to positive reversionary upside. Our subscale and mixed-use assets saw like-for-like income rise 3.1%. Disposals more than outweighed acquisitions, while our completed developments only contributed income for part of the year. So as a result, net rental income was up GBP 11 million. And we continue to focus on improving our operating efficiency, as we have done over the last two years. Our overhead costs were down 9% last year. That's reflecting the benefits of our organizational review during the prior year, and procurement savings. We expect further cost efficiencies to offset inflation this year, and as we continue to automate and streamline our operating platform, we expect further cost savings beyond that.
Over the last 2 years, we've delivered GBP 21 million of cost efficiencies, which has helped to offset inflation and to reduce costs. But you do not necessarily see the benefits of this when you just look at our OpEx cost ratio, as this also reflects the impact of our capital allocation decisions, where we have sold mature, low-yielding, and yet high-margin assets, and we've invested in more operational, high-yielding, and higher return assets. Adjusting for this, our OpEx cost ratio would have been almost three percentage points lower. But our overall income return and our total return on equity would have been lower as well. So we'll continue to optimize our efficiency, but our main focus remains on driving our overall returns. Turning to our portfolio valuation. The March rise in interest rates during the first half of the year meant that global investment activity has remained subdued.
As a result, our valuation yields softened, so despite 3.2% ERV growth from our strong leasing activity, the value of our portfolio was down 6%. The impact of the higher interest rates receded as the year progressed. 60% of our portfolio valuations were stable in the second half, and overall, yields were flat in the final quarter. In central London, ERV growth came out at the top end of our guidance at 5%, but this only partially offset a 46 basis points increase in yields. The benefit of repositioning our portfolio towards the West End over the last few years is clear, as our West End offices continue to outperform, with values virtually stable in the second half. Development values were down 9.9%, which reflects the risk premium for the early stages that these projects are at.
Yet we remain confident that these schemes will deliver attractive returns once complete. And the valuation of our major retail portfolio was stable over the year and up slightly in the second half, even though value has assumed ERV growth of 1.4% continues to trail our actual operational performance. Our mixed-use assets were down 14%, which was driven by yield expansion at MediaCity and a shortening of income on existing retail assets in London and Glasgow. But a revised approach to these schemes should see us rebuild income and value in the future. Across our sub-scale assets, the value of our hotels, retail parks, and retail parks was broadly stable. Yet subdued investor sentiment towards cinemas meant that our leisure assets were down 8.2%, despite positive operational performance.
Looking forward, the relative stability in interest rates means that values look attractive for assets which can deliver income growth, although we think secondary values will likely have further to fall. Again, we expect ERVs for our London office, for our London and our major retail assets to grow by a low- to mid-single-digit % this year. Our return on equity was -4%, while our NTA per share was down 8.2% after dividends paid. We continue to target a return on equity of 8%-10%, 8%-10% per annum over time, and that's comprising of a mix of income and capital returns delivered through ERV growth and developments. Although fluctuations in valuation yields means that we won't be exactly in that range each individual year, as we've seen last year.
The chart on the left shows how each of these components contributed to our return on equity. In green, you see the return, which is driven by income, rental growth, and developments, and the light gray bars and the dotted lines overlay the effect of yield movements. Last year, our return on income, ERV growth, and developments was 9.5%, which shows that as yields stabilize, we're in a strong position to deliver on an 8%-10% total return. This outlook remains underpinned by the strength of our capital structure. We maintain our strong investment-grade credit rating, and our corporate bond spreads are the lowest in the sterling real estate market, giving us a clear competitive advantage.
Our GBP 300 million bond issued in March with a coupon of 4.75% and a spread of 103 basis points is a great example of this. On a pro forma basis, our net debt to EBITDA remains low at 7x, and ICR at 4.4x, as we have managed our balance sheet effectively through the recent period of rising interest rates. Including our disposals since the year-end, our pro forma LTV is low at 32%, and our net debt is down GBP 1 billion over the past two years. This gives us significant headroom to invest at what we believe is an attractive point in the cycle. As values are starting to stabilize, we would be comfortable to see our LTV increase from here for the right opportunities.
Although we remain within, we will remain within our 25%-40% target range. In terms of our capital allocation, we maintain a clear view on growing our income, total return, and portfolio quality. We've sold GBP 625 million of assets since March last year, on average, in line with book value. This brings our total disposals since late 2020 to GBP 3.1 billion. So while we will continue to recycle assets, our focus is now shifting more towards investment. The illustration on the right shows the interplay of our sources of funding and opportunities to invest. Mark outlined our return expectations earlier, so we plan to invest most of the existing balance sheet capacity, following our recent sales, in major retail and our committed pipeline.
We expect to fund investment into new developments, principally through recycling out of mature and non-core assets, and given the size of the pipeline, we intend to supplement this with other sources of capital over time. So in summary, our high quality portfolio, our strong operational performance, and balance sheet capacity means we're well-placed to deliver attractive total returns. Our earnings guidance, of course, should be seen in the light of our recent capital recycling. We expect to see like-for-like income growth at a similar level to last year, but how this translates into EPS growth depends on the timing and the quantum of investment activity from here. We have sold significantly more than we acquired over recent months, so with all else equal, this reduces our annualized earnings by around 4%.
This is reflected in our guidance that before reinvesting any of the recent sales proceeds into acquisitions, we would expect EPS this year to be slightly below last year's level of GBP 0.501. For the year to March 2026, we would expect EPS to be slightly above last year's level, reflecting a combination of continued like-for-like income growth and the reinvestment of the majority of our recent sales proceeds. As our dividend cover remains at the upper end of our 1.2x-1.3x policy range, we expect dividends to grow by a low single-digit % again this year. With that, I'll hand you back to Mark.
Thank you very much, Vanessa. I will now wrap up with our view on the current environment and what you can expect to see from us in the year ahead, and we'll then move to Q&A. Our actions over the past three years mean that Landsec is well positioned. Our balance sheet provides capacity to invest at what we believe to be an attractive point in the cycle, and our increased focus on best-in-class places means we are well placed to drive income growth in a world where demand is increasingly concentrated on quality. Reflecting this, we again expect ERVs to grow by a low- to mid-single-digit percentage.
We said six months ago that we expected investment activity to pick up in 2024, and for values for the best assets to start to stabilize, and this remains our view today, as the best assets, which offer genuine rental growth, now offer an attractive risk premium versus real interest rates. Our operational performance remains strong, with growing occupancy, growing rental uplifts on relettings and renewals, and growing like-for-like income. Performance drivers in real estate have fundamentally changed, as irrespective of sector, asset quality, the ability to curate this, will be much more of a differentiating factor than it has been over much of the past decade, something which plays to the strengths of our portfolio and to our competitive advantages. So to summarize, while uncertainties remain, the overall macro outlook has clearly improved, and we continue to build on the positive momentum in executing our strategy.
We expect like-for-like income growth to be similar to last year and to deliver further operational efficiencies. And having sold over GBP 600 million of assets since our half year results, we will focus on reinvesting these proceeds into accretive growth at what we believe is an attractive point in time. We'll continue to optimize the significant potential in our pipeline, yet as the size of this will, over time, exceed our own balance sheet capacity, we will continue to explore opportunities to access other sources of capital to leverage our platform value, accelerate our overall growth, and to enhance our returns. As yields are starting to stabilize, our attractive income return and continued rental growth means we're well-placed to deliver attractive returns on equity in the future. And with that, we will now open the floor to Q&A.
So as is usual with the Q&A, I'm gonna take questions from the room, first. We'll then go to any questions from the conference line, and then we'll finish up with any questions that are posted via the webcast. So, a roving mic will be making its way to you, so just wait for that. There's two questions down in this row here, and I think I saw a question over here after that.
Hi, morning. It's Sam King from BNP Paribas Exane. Thanks very much for the presentation. Two questions, please. The first is just picking up on your comment on retail rents reaching an inflection point, and how that ties to market-wide vacancy that's still running above 10%. Is that referring to your existing portfolio or more of a market-wide comment? I'm just, you know, thinking about this in the context of capital allocation and your comments that future acquisitions are likely to be retail-focused. And then the second one is just on the valuation breakdown. Clearly, there's a trend of valuation declines decelerating, but one of the segments that sticks out is London mixed-use urban, where values are down 10% over the year, but 9% in H2. Appreciate it's a small part of the portfolio, but any additional color on that would be helpful.
Thanks.
Sure. Thank you. So with respect to the comment on retail rental growth, I mean, it's not a market-wide issue, because, of course, you know, there is fundamentally still too much retail floor space within the UK. But it does go beyond our portfolio to any catchment dominant prime center. We included the graph, I think, within the slides there, that just showed, you know, for a number of the key listed brands, who give quite a lot of color on their plans for their portfolios, that whilst often there's a reduction in the total number of stores, what we are seeing is quite a material increase in the size of the stores they want to retain.
And a lot of that is driving, is because they want to be driving on the channel, and sort of a blending of channels, rather than looking at things entirely separately. So what we see in our assets, and there will be other catchment dominant assets beyond our portfolio that see the same thing, is you're starting now to see competitive tension for space, where, you know, for a particularly suitably sized unit, you've got multiple retailers either looking to expand into that space or come into that space. And, of course, as soon as you start to see that tension, you do then start to see rental growth, and so that's what's reflected within our pipeline. But it is very much gonna be limited to catchment dominant prime retail centers.
I think then your, your question about sort of valuation, in particular, the, the mixed use urban in London, which, as you say, is relatively small in terms of overall, but is, is clearly a part of the business that we want to be investing in over time. The key thing that tends to go on, particularly mixed use in London, so you'll see that in particular the O2 Finchley Road, to some extent, our Lewisham Centre as well, but is that as we look to move those assets towards a development opportunity, there's inevitably an erosion of the in-place income towards block dates to facilitate development.
Now, when we underwrite our investment into those developments, we, of course, take that into account, but you do book that on each valuation before then ultimately, if one achieves our underwrite, recovering that through the subsequent development phase. Now, we did talk a little bit within the presentation to evolving our approach slightly to some of these mixed-use urban sites, and just to flesh that out slightly further. Clearly, development costs, development margins, economics, have moved on over the last couple of years.
So what we've done on all of our sites is look at, actually, is the right solution here to completely remove, you know, demolish the asset and replace it with something new, which gives you quite a big significant in cost, or actually are there less capital-intensive, less carbon-intensive options, where you can retain more of the existing asset, and then look to develop incrementally around that. I think that's something you'll see, not just with us, but across the market as being a feature going forward. It makes sense from a carbon point of view, it makes sense from an economic point of view, but I think it needs a different skill set to simply development, because you have to think through how the existing asset is gonna evolve and change, and integrate with the new additions.
Great. Thanks.
Good morning, Ben Richford from Bernstein. Just in terms of your capital management, in future years, you've got intention to become a buyer again. You've got a big development pipeline, and just, how's that gonna be balanced against disposals or other means to fund them in aggregate?
Yeah, so we had a graph that we Or not a graph, probably more of an image that was included within the slide that just sought to show, broadly speaking, how we were thinking about sort of source and application of funds. So we have clearly balance sheet capacity at the moment, and we've been clear that we see buying high quality income through high quality retail assets as being the best risk-adjusted option for us right now. But we do have a very attractive long-term pipeline that gives us the opportunity to deliver, you know, best-in-class, highly sustainable assets into a market that's increasingly discerning around those things. So funding that really is gonna be a combination of two things.
It will be further disposals in the future, but those will be disposals that would happen, you know, post the point of committing to new development. So the trigger for committing to new development is confidence in our ability to achieve disposals in appropriate point of time, rather than selling in advance. We have the size and strength and flexibility of balance sheet to do that. And we've also talked about if we wanted to fully bring forward that pipeline more rapidly,
then we would need to supplement our existing balance sheet with other sources of capital. That's not something that's critical that we need to do, because we could deliver that pipeline more slowly in incremental phases ourselves. But we do think there is an interesting opportunity to potentially accelerate the delivery of both mixed-use and central London assets in the right way by bringing our partners in to pursue scalable strategies.
Great. Just one other question, thanks. Queen Anne's Mansions, it's in the lease expiries in three years out. There's a big rent roll down, so could you just explain that further, please?
Yeah. I'll talk in general terms on Queen Anne's, and then Vanessa perhaps can just give you the more specifics on the numbers. So Queen Anne's Mansions is in St. James's, currently occupied by the Ministry of Justice. And they will be vacating that space at the end of that lease. So we're currently working through options for that. Given its proximity, given the nature of that asset, I think we would see that as offering a whole range of opportunities across different sectors, not necessarily purely retention as office, but that's something we need to work through. But in the meantime, the valuation, of course, reflects a bit of a burn-off of the lease within that. But Vanessa, is there anything more to add?
Yes. So probably just worth referencing page 40, actually, where we've put a bit more detail in on Queen Anne's. It's, admittedly, an incredibly small print, but there is, it does include a GBP 20 million incremental lease incentive where we effectively, some time ago, fitted out the asset and that unwind. So it's really an unwind of that contribution to that CapEx cost. But you can see the year in which that unwinds, where we have a GBP 20 million impact, which is 2026-2027.
Thank you very much.
Great, if we could, we've got another mic coming down for a question over here, and we'll grab that one back from you there, and then we'll come back to the front row for the next question.
Thanks. Sam Cullum from CoStar Group. Thanks for the presentation. On one of the early slides, you mentioned that you've got positive reversion across both sectors now, or both major sectors. I was wondering if you could give a sort of number on roughly the uplift you think you can get on stabilization or sort of on reaching those reversionary potentials, and looking at sort of bottom-line earnings over the next few years, how does that compare to maybe the interest and finance costs you're expecting as you sort of review, refinance debts out to, say, 2027 and beyond?
Yeah, so I probably sort of reiterate some of the guidance that we provided within there. So in terms of how that capturing reversion value starts to flow through to the bottom line, we've guided to like-for-like rental growth for the year ahead to be similar to what we've just achieved at the 2.8% for this year. We've also said that we see this as being a long-term trend, so I think you could look at growth going beyond that current year.
We've also said within earnings that whilst we would expect to see, before you make any assumptions for the quantum and timing of reinvestment, that earnings go back a little bit this year because of disposals before being back above 2024 levels by 2026. So I think, all things equal with that, you should be able to see that we expect to see continued like-for-like growth, and through that efficiencies, we'd expect to be able to offset any increase in interest costs.
Okay, so even looking at sort of the 2027 and 2029 bond, you'd expect increase in net rents to offset that and have growth from 2026. Obviously, high level, you're not giving direct guidance, but-
Yeah, we don't provide sort of guidance out. I think providing guidance for 25 and 26 is pretty unusual, but we're not gonna go further than that.
Okay. Thank you.
So there's a question at the front here, just mic on its way.
Hi, Adam Shapton from Green Street. Just one, I guess, a little bit of a follow-up on, on the previous question. You said before, assumptions about redeployment of, of disposal proceeds in, in 2025. Can you, can you give a bit more color on what, what we could expect? Are there, you know, other acquisitions in, under discussion? Might there be acquisitions of non-income producing assets as, as I think there were last year? And any, a bit more guidance you could provide there.
So, I certainly provide a little more color. I'm not sure that necessarily is going to translate to any more guidance-
Yeah.
But happy to provide a little more color.
That's all true.
So as we've said, we see the biggest opportunity to be acquiring high-quality income, major retail, at what we think look, you know, very attractive returns because of having passed that inflection point on rents. So clearly, in making that comment, we've got a firm judgment on our ability to execute in the market, and we are definitely seeing signs of things starting to improve. A lot of broken capital structures that have stood in the way of assets that might otherwise have traded in recent years, I think now are starting to be addressed. So our focus would most sort of certainly be on that.
With respect to sort of when those things land, if I just sort of flip it for a second to the three major disposals we've made in the last couple of years: 21 Moorfields, Deloitte, and most recently, the hotels. All of those deals took more than 12 months, and all of those deals looked different at the end than they did at the start. And so while the investment markets are working like that, it's quite difficult for us to provide guides. Everything just takes longer. Everyone's just a little more slow, moving more slowly, a little bit more cautious on that. So we've got to reflect that, which is why we've deliberately provided guidance, sort of pre-reinvestment, so that when we then provide news going forward of that investment, people have got a base position from which to assess the impact.
Okay. And one more if I may. On the introduction of, or potential introduction of, private capital, you sort of made the qualitative comment that the pipeline is larger than you'd be comfortable taking onto balance sheet. Are you able to quantify that a little more? How do you think about reaching that conclusion? Is it ratio of developments to operational real estate? Is it a matter of, you know, basic balance sheet metrics? 'Cause there's obviously another way you could expand your balance sheet capacity, and that's by issuing equity, in the sort of more conventional re route, rather than introducing private capital. So what How do you, how do you reach the conclusion that that's more than you're comfortable with?
Yeah. I'm gonna ask Vanessa just to sort of share how we think about sort of our balance sheet guidelines, and then perhaps we'll talk more generally about how we're thinking about capital in that context.
Yeah, so in terms of when, well, when we're looking at our balance sheet from a sort of capital operating guidelines, I think reiterated a couple of times before, that we're focused very much on our 3 core leverage metrics, being LTV, which post the hotel transaction is at 32%, and our target is 25%-40%, to operate within that range. We've got net debt to EBITDA is also an important measure, because we're looking at the earnings profile. And we aim to keep that low below 8 times, and we're at 7 times, and we've been in that position for a little while. And also interest cover as well. We always aim to be ahead of 3 times cover, and again, we're around 4.4, post the hotel.
So that they're the kind of measures that we use, rather than just fixating on one particular area. But again, we would be looking at that, at the moment, in its current position, giving us an opportunity which provides around GBP 1 billion of capital that we could reinvest. Of that, we need to allocate some, of course, to our committed developments, which are committed CapEx remaining on those schemes, about GBP 400 million, and the rest of that, we would expect the majority to largely be invested into our acquisitions, so some accretive acquisitions.
And then, just one overarching way of how we think about development versus investment, is we try to keep our sort of exposure to development activity at 10% of gross assets, in sort of committed terms. And that just means that, you know, when we're committing to development, you're always having to take a view two to three years out of the market you're going to be delivering into. So were there to be external shocks that meant, for whatever reason, that you didn't deliver the returns you were expecting, you've got a balance sheet that can withstand that.
So in terms of how we're thinking about capital, generally capital allocation, I think it's always important that the first point you should look at is if you've got capital and assets that you think are ultimately sort of non-core to you, you should be looking to recycle that capital, and we've been, you know, busy doing that over recent years. We're obviously getting towards the end of that program. I think we should then look at. Yeah, I think it's good for a business to have access to multiple pools of capital, because they won't all be open at once. They may indeed all be shut at once, but at least some of them may be open at certain times.
I think there is an interesting sort of debate to have, to think about longer term, in terms of on what basis might have reconsidered to raise equity. I think there are some situations now you might look at where if something's accretive to earnings, but dilutive on the face of it to NTA, I think that's something we would sort of need to, you know, need to think about. So I don't think we would slavishly say, "Must be NTA, otherwise we don't raise."
Clearly, we don't want to do something that's sort of dilutive to that and earnings, but there are opportunities you might imagine to buy ahead of our earnings yield, and to move the earnings of the business on, without necessarily having the same impact on NTA. But it would have to be for the right opportunities, and you heard us talk about it a fair bit, and you'll hear more of this from us in the future. I think just the importance of businesses like Landsec owning genuinely scarce real estate that has a degree of irreplaceability to it. I think that's the sort of thing permanent capital vehicles should be looking to do.
Okay, thank you.
So, question now, Zach, just behind you. So, a hand there. And then, so Paul, over here after that.
Thanks. It's Zachary Gage from UBS. Just one from me. Timber Square, I noticed that the ERV for that scheme seemed to drop by GBP 1 million from the half year, from GBP 30 million to GBP 29 million, and the size of the scheme increased slightly by 5,000 sq ft. So I made it a 4.6% decline in ERV per square foot. I was wondering if you could just talk through what drove that decline in ERV?
Yeah, I mean, I think it will largely be a value-add view of the market. I mean, I think where we look at our ERVs, and particularly in that South Bank area, I think we still expect to see significant outperformance. If you look at what we delivered at Lucent during the year, what we delivered at Portland House sorry, not Portland House, N2, Nova during the year, the actual income, the leasing we achieved was double digits ahead of those same ERVs.
So I think values will always form their own view, and of course, they have to. That's what we rely on. I think our view of what we will achieve will continue to support at least the sort of assumptions that were in place previously. Pass the microphone. Are there any other questions after this one in the room? I've got one on this side after that. Thank you.
Thanks. It's Paul May from Barclays. You mentioned quite a lot around cash flow and the focus there, and I think I note the point on equity and looking at that as driving earnings growth rather than NTA. At what point do you think that you'll stop commenting around ERVs? And because there seems to be a lack of ERV movement into like for like rental growth, I think particularly in London, it was up 5, and like for likes were up 0.4. At least in retail, we're seeing that positivity. When, for the portfolio, do you expect that to shift, to be able to capture that reversion, that ERV, and actually drive cash flows forward?
I mean, for us, in terms of the business, I mean, that is absolutely happening, has been happening for some time. I mean, for example, I know that this year, we'll through our AGM, get to our three-yearly review of rent policy, and what shareholders will see within that, and we've consulted on, is a greater focus on driving like for like income growth. So for us, it's a key focus. It's what teams are incentivized around. Of course, we have to have a sense of where the ERV is, and the values need to have a sense of ERV, so we'll continue to report that. But in terms of how we're making investment decisions, it's where is the cash flow today, and where do we think we can move that cash flow to?
Thank you. And then just a second one, just a little bit more on regional offices and mixed-use assets. I think they were seen as quite a big opportunity for investment as part of the original strategy when you came in, and there was a lot of investment in 2021. Was that simply a low interest rate story, or is there a future for those investments in a higher rate world?
I think there certainly is a future. I mean, if I look at the main investments that we made, were effectively to gain exposure to the Greater Manchester market through Mayfield, through Media City. And what drove that was a view that the economic growth performance of Greater Manchester as a region had outperformed London on a 5- and 10-year view into the pandemic, that it had the ingredients for that going forward, which we saw as being good diversity in terms of the economic performance of that, in terms of the sectors that contribute to that. Very strong universities, high graduate retention, stable political leadership. Those things are. And I think an international brand as well, and that's it, and all of those things remain the case.
Clearly, when you're dealing in the regions versus margin versus London, the the sort of margin dynamics and land and build costs are somewhat different, so it means you do need to work differently. But we've actually seen this on the build cost side of things, for example, much less upward pressure on regional projects than we have in London, I think for a whole variety of reasons. But then on the flip side of that, we've also seen, and it was, you know, you can see it in the valuation numbers,
that just with a lack of transactional activity on yields, you've seen valuers move yields out. Now, we're investing in scarce urban places for the long term, and we look at MediaCity, we look at what Mayfield will be, they absolutely have those criteria. So we're gonna see some fluctuations sort of in between, but I think, you know, regional office doesn't quite capture what MediaCity is and how we will evolve that or what Mayfield will become.
Thank you.
So, a question here, and then, Miranda, in the middle towards the back.
Thanks. Morning. Tom Musson at Goldman Sachs. Just one please, on underlying earnings flat year-on-year. There was still varying levels of surrender premia, I think, going into both years there. FY 2024, for example, I think still includes a material amount from the King's Cross deal. So I just wonder what the year-on-year move was if you exclude all the surrender premium from this year and last year, and how much do you assume within the earnings guidance going forward?
To you.
Yeah, so I think, probably worth just sort of talking a little bit more generally about surrenders, is that the earnings guidance that we've always given post-COVID has made an assumption around where those surrenders, we expect those surrenders to be. And so last year, we did actually make an adjustment to our underlying earnings position, for a couple of exceptional surrenders, so that was about GBP 22 million. And then that left the sort of underlying surrenders, more aligned to the year before, which was around GBP 16 million, and then the year after. So this year we had surrenders, surrenders were in total about GBP 18 billion. And what we did see generally across the portfolio is probably a little bit less activity around, people right-sizing and reorganizing their space.
So we probably had slightly less overall on that underlying, position than we probably expected. However, we did get one surrender through from, on the King's Cross asset, which is some space where we took that space back to refit for Myo. So I think generally speaking, that sort of, the unders and overs kind of worked out broadly to be broadly in line with the underlying position of around GBP 16-18 million. Going forward, I think our expectation is probably that this will, drop off. So our guidance is based on an expectation that probably surrenders will be broadly about half of that next year, just given what we know to date.
That's great. That's helpful. Thank you.
Great. Yeah, so microphone coming your way.
Miranda Cockburn from Berenberg. Two questions. Just firstly, just a brief one, page 40, that gross reversion of GBP 20 million, can you just break that down between retail and office? Because you did say that retail is now positive.
The 26, 27 number?
The total to 2029, where it says, "Gross reversion-
Yeah
under lease provisions," which is GBP 20 million now, is that mostly I mean, I'm assuming it's mostly all offices still there?
It's largely offices. It basically, within the, within the retail side, we're still seeing pretty flat because, the valuers aren't necessarily taking any reversion through to the valuation. So you saw that a little with the operational performance that we've had this year, where we've only actually seen the RV growth of 1.4%, where actually we've outperformed that. So from a retail perspective, that's, it's pretty much nil.
Then just secondly, can you just talk a little bit more about Victoria? Because it's obviously a big part of the portfolio. It's 100% occupied. You've obviously got Thirty High, which, you know, you're going to be developing out. Then after that, does it come to a bit of position where it's, you know, looking ex-growth from your perspective, or where do you see the opportunity in the medium term for Victoria?
Yeah, I mean, so I think if we just step back and just a second of what Victoria was targeted to be and what it delivers, it's a West End location that delivers sort of city-style, standard, modern floor plates that you can't really find in any scale anywhere else within the West End. And we're seeing that driving pretty strong, consistent growth, and, I mean, we've certainly got deals and negotiations at the moment where people expanding into space that's gonna become available because we've got one or two occupiers that are moving into N2, that have moved out of other Landsec assets, and all of that space is earmarked for people to move into.
So I do think, because we're gonna see a lack of that type of product in the West End, the outlook for rental growth is fundamentally strong. If you then look at Thirty High, I mean, that obviously is giving us more or less 30 floors of space to let. I think with a sort of transfer floor and club room and stuff, it's probably 27, 28 floors that we're actually gonna be letting there. And that'll be coming to the market sort of later this year. So I think that will be a really interesting opportunity to demonstrate rents moving on, I think, particularly in the upper half of that building with the views that it offers.
We're also alongside Thirty High, we got planning within the last couple of weeks just to invest in some of the urban realm around Cardinal Place, just to to lift and and modernize that a little bit, which I think is just gonna add further to the appeal to occupiers. So I think then around the edges, we're always gonna then look at, right, are we happy that we wanna keep all of the assets we have, or might there be an opportunity to do a little bit around the edges? We're obviously seeing the former House of Fraser being developed by BentallGreenOak, and that helps again demonstrate that location. We know John Lewis are vacating their head office on Victoria Street, so there's gonna be an interesting opportunity for someone there. You've got
And this has probably been going on for a long period of time, but you've talked to Network Rail about their plans for Victoria Station, as something they'd like to see investment in and around. I think there's a lot that will be happening to that part of London that will continue to drive demand. So we see, yeah, having been able to put together such a sort of a scarce, contiguous ownership, we think that will drive value longer term. I don't think there are any more questions in the room. I think we have one question at least that I'm aware of on the conference call, so I'll go to that. I think Ventsi at Kempen. I might just need to wait for the conference call to open on the line here.
Sure. The next question is from Ventsi, from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Well, actually, just one question. You identify higher IRRs in your pipeline than major retail, but acquisitions, of course, have an immediate impact. How do you balance that? And what's higher on the agenda for the current year, and perhaps does that change beyond the current year?
Yeah, so we provide within the slide sort of an indication of, broadly speaking, the ranges that we see on IRRs in the different opportunities. So retail, as we said, is the one that we on a sort of risk-adjusted basis, because of the level of income, the confidence for the right assets of those delivering growth, if you can be acquiring higher single digits, you don't need to be making particularly heroic growth assumptions on top of that to be getting towards double digits unlevered returns.
So that's what we would expect to see there, and for the right sort of assets, you know, we'd expect that, you know, that there should be a fairly even lease profile in terms of being able to capture that rental growth in underlying cash flows pretty much immediately. So I don't think we'd expect anything particularly near term to be diluted to that on those acquisitions. On developments, we've indicated sort of low double-digit returns. As you might imagine, the returns on offer and that we would seek in the regions are somewhat higher. Those that have a residential element, be they in London or in the regions compared to office in the same geography, has a
Will have a lower starting initial yield, so you're probably looking at residential in London, having a gross yield on cost in the low sixes, netting down probably to five, but with much less upfront vacancy, much greater diversification of the rent roll, and the ability to deliver annual rental growth from there. So it's a different profile, slightly different profile to IRR from those types of projects, but we think again, that sort of gets us to around that low double-digit level for London, a bit higher for the regions. I believe with no further questions on either the webcast or the conference call, thank you so much, everyone, for taking the time this morning. Obviously, please feel free to reach out to any of us for anything that you'd like to cover in addition to the content from today. But enjoy your Friday in the city. Thank you.