Welcome to the PPHE Hotel Group interim results investor presentation. Throughout today's recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged; they can be submitted at any time just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your question at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during today's meeting. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. I now hand over to the management team presenting today. Good morning to you all.
Good morning and thank you, and welcome to our 2025 half-year results. I'm Greg Hegarty, I'm the Co-CEO of PPHE , and I'm joined today by Daniel Kos, the Chief Financial Officer, and Robert Henke, our Senior Vice President of Commercial. We are pleased to announce a solid performance and strong strategic progress in what remains to be a very volatile macro and geopolitical environment in the backdrop. However, before we progress through the presentation, we would just like to show you a short video of our strategic progress this year.
Thanks, Mark, for playing that video. That video is a summary of some of the key projects that we've delivered in the course of this year, as well as an outlook on what's ahead.
What we'll do as we go through the presentation is expand upon the work that's gone into launching these new exciting projects, as well as our future pipeline and the details that come with that. To introduce PPHE very briefly, we are a unique company within hospitality real estate. What makes us unique is that we buy, build, and operate hospitality assets, where what we see in our sector is typically companies focus on one element of it. They buy assets, they own assets, or develop or operate. We have everything integrated into PPHE Hotel Group, ensuring that we fully control the value chain. We have been established since 1989 and have been listed on the London Stock Market since 2007. We're part of FTSE 250, and since December last year, we're included in the EPRA NA REIT Index.
Within our group, we have 51 properties today in operation, as well as a number of growth opportunities consisting of about 16,000 accommodation units, which consist of 10,000 rooms, hotel rooms, and self-catering apartments, and about 6,000 campsite pitches, mobile homes, and premium lodges, predominantly in the Croatian coastal area of Istria. Altogether, our portfolio is valued at GBP 2.2 billion. We go through an annual valuation cycle with external valuators, and the next set of valuations is due in December. Within our group, we cover eight countries, including seven capital cities where we have a presence today, whereby London and Amsterdam are our key markets in terms of business drivers, growth, demand, and so on, but also the real estate value. The vast majority of the GBP 2.2 billion sits within central London and central Amsterdam. We have a compelling pipeline, which we'll touch upon in the presentation.
The way we sort of market our sort of properties through our management platform is utilizing a number of different commercial brands, which span from upscale select all the way to a luxury lifestyle. We tap into different segments of the consumer markets. We have about 4,500 team members that work across our hotels and campsites every single day. In addition to the accommodation that we provide, we have diversified income streams from meeting and events, for example, where we have well over 250 meeting rooms, including some of London's largest meeting spaces. We have over 100 food and beverage outlets, i.e., restaurants and bars that we operate. If I look at our sort of, you know, investment reasons, I have already mentioned that we are unique in the industry by being an operator, an owner, and a developer of assets. We fully control the entire value chain.
Our focus market is Europe. Europe has very robust hospitality demand patterns throughout the cycles of the world as well. It is predicted to continue to grow in terms of leisure and business travel the long term moving forward. What we do as a business, we like to buy land sites, office blocks, or maybe tired hotels, and then we invest in a new proposition. Typically, hotels, but also in Croatia, we have taken land sites where we've created holiday villages, so to speak, through the introduction of mobile homes and premium lodges. We take something that is maybe undervalued, underappreciated, we invest, we develop, we launch, and then drive the day-to-day operations and extract the commercial value through refinancing or maybe part selling, and then we reinvest in the next growth opportunity.
This business model allows us to grow from within the group without sort of diluting shareholders, and we have multiple sources of capital that we actually are able to tap into to grow the group. Greg will explain the management platform a bit later, but an additional sort of strength to our bond is the fact that we don't need to engage third-party operators. We have all the disciplines in-house that are needed to develop and operate hospitality properties on a daily basis. This is the cycle which I described. We buy, we develop, we operate, we extract value, and invest in the next opportunity that comes along. In terms of assets and geographical strength, like I said, active in eight markets, so that's the UK, Netherlands, but also Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, and most recently Italy, where we've just opened our first hotel in Rome.
Most of the value is within city center locations and predominantly through a sort of freehold ownership base. Out of the GBP 2.2 billion, just over GBP 1.6 billion is owned on a freehold basis, and the rest of that value is on a long, at least, auto-aggranded structure. We have predominantly city center hotels, but we do have elements of sort of leisure in Croatia. In the UK, Netherlands, and Germany, we do have a presence in regional cities, but it's a small part of our group. As you can see here, 75% of the value sits within capital cities where demand is strong. Greg, do you want to explain the operations platform?
Yeah, thank you, Robert. As Robert's already alluded to, we do have an award-winning hospitality platform. This is a proprietary in-house model, which allows us to manage all areas under a management agreement, which is unique.
It generates both base fees and incentive fees for our properties. We have full expertise over the cycle from development to commercial to general hotel operations. We have access also to the Radisson Hotel Group's distribution system, loyalty program, and purchasing scale whenever we need to yield on it or drive efficiencies within the business. This platform is also readily and scalable at any time, which gives us as a business clear benefits. It allows us to obviously have full operational control of how we operate and manage the business. It also gives us an opportunity to become uniquely aligned with owners and operators. One, obviously, being an owner ourselves, we do actually keep ourselves in tune with we are doing management agreements to make sure our expectations for the hotels and the assets are completely aligned.
Most of all, our agreements and our tacit knowledge give us the ability to be or have the ability to sell, you know, an asset unencumbered in most cases. That gives us unique flexibility among our other competitors who do operate in this space also. Moving on to slide eight, we'll talk about a little bit of strategic and operational updates. Performance-wise, occupancy was up for the first half. We have started to see normalized rates and travel patterns stabilize as what we've seen in the past, probably going pre-COVID levels. Obviously, post-COVID, we had exceptional growth in average room rates. We are now starting to see some normalization in those travel patterns. However, our revenue was up 4.7% to GBP 199.9 million, predominantly supported by our new and refurbished hotels. Our like-for-like revenue was up 1.3%.
However, notwithstanding, our EBITDA was down 5.7% to GBP 45.5 million, a little bit impacted by our openings of our new assets and partly down to increased payroll costs within our operating regions. I think if you were to look at the U.K. and Pacific, you know, we've done an enormous amount of efficiency measures where the wave of inflation was forecast to be circa 7%. We've actually managed to impact, negatively impact, to 4%. This has made us an efficiency gain at EBITDA level to being down like-for-like 4.9%. Daniel will talk a little bit about that more as we go forward. I'm pleased to say, obviously, we had a RevPAR growth of 1.4% to GBP 109.3. From a strategic progress point of view, we opened the art’otel Rome Piazza Sallustio in March. We're very proud of that. It's a five-star asset in Rome, beautiful hotel located near Via Veneto.
The opening of that hotel completed our long investment cycle, the biggest investment cycle the company has had. We're pleased to say that's now completed and the assets are now open and starting to perform. At the art’otel London Hoxton, we've also continued with our phased opening of the asset. We launched the 24th floor event space, Panorama. We're also opening this week, going into next, our restaurant and bar on the 25th floor called Solaya. That's our destination restaurant at this asset. We also continue to expand our pipeline with a GBP 17.5 million investment into the City of London site on Lehman Street, which will be our first Radisson RED Select Service Hotel in the capital. We also continue to increase our stake in Arena Hospitality with a GBP 15.5 million investment, taking our share of Arena Hospitality to 65.5%.
We also exited out of a property in Berlin, which has no impact to our EBITDA performance. We exited at lease early and took the opportunity to exit it at this point. We also acquired a freehold in an adjacent development to our Park Royal Hotel on the A40 for GBP 10 million, which generates a yield of 8.3% adjusted. However, we also secured further planning permission on that site for a 460-key hotel. Very pleased with our continued progress there. I think the focus going forward is to complete the hotel opening, including the restaurant, the bar, and actually, we are also launching five floors of CAT A office space, 5,000 square meters at this hotel, which actually leverages our office space with an operating hotel, giving the market some unique services, which obviously will help generate a return on that asset.
We also continue to stabilize the performance of our new assets, such as Hoxton and Rome, to make sure they deliver their potential. We are continuing to maintain a tight cost control, and we are also continuing to invest in acceleration of tech and automation within the operating units currently. Most of all, we're starting to roll out our Select Service brand and making sure our design schemes are aligned to that area. Thank you. Moving on to future contribution from our pipeline. As I've alluded to, five new hotels launched across five capital cities in two years, all yet to stabilize. On maturity, we're expected to deliver at least GBP 25 million incremental EBITDA. The art'otel Rome is gaining momentum. It opened, as I said, already alluded to in March.
However, it is one of the highest performing customer service-orientated hotels in Rome, with top scores on Booking.com of 9.6 and TripAdvisor 5.5. We are starting to see strong demand from embassies, corporates, and international luxury business travel. That's Hoxton. In Hoxton, we opened Panorama, as I've already alluded to. The restaurant's opening next week, and that will help us really solidify that asset as a destination within the Shoreditch area. I'm also proud to say we teamed up with Michelin Star chef Kenny Atkinson, who operates two Michelin Stars in the northeast of the U.K., and it's his first dabble into the London market. We're incredibly proud of that. The offices launch, as I've alluded to, next week. We also upgraded two of our Arena Campsites to four-star hotels through investment in mobile homes and amenities.
As we have already alluded to, we do see, with the acquisition of Lehman Street in the City of London, being our first Select Service Hotel, we forecast that to be a circa GBP 19 million project opening in 2029. That coincides also with our planning permission, which we have on Westminster Bridge Road, which we've already further communicated. That will also be a Select Service Radisson RED operation. We already have planning permission for a subterranean hotel at our hotel in Victoria, which is currently going through some minor amendments of that scheme. We look forward to further updating you in due course on that. Daniel?
Yeah, thank you very much, Greg. The group's performance for the first six months of 2025 has been quite resilient, particularly given the external headwinds that we've been facing. These include obviously the geopolitical uncertainty worldwide, but also the cost inflation that is facing our industry. Our reported revenues during the period increased by 4.7% to just shy of GBP 200 million. On a like-for-like basis, when we exclude the art’otel Rome and three months of the art’otel London Hoxton, revenue was up 1.3% to GBP 193 million. The stabilizing average room rate that we reported in the first quarter unfortunately continued into the second quarter and resulted in an overall rate decline of 1.1% in the first six months of 2025 to GBP 151. I'm quite pleased to say that we managed to offset these impacts of normalizing rates by increasing our occupancy levels by 180 basis points to 72.4% on average.
If we look on a like-for-like basis, average room rates declined by 2.2% and occupancy has increased by 214 basis points to 73%. This occupancy drive has resulted in a 1.4% increase in RevPAR, and on a like-for-like basis, that was 1.1% driven again by strong occupancy. If you look at the trends between the separate territories, our major territories really, it was quite mixed. Whereas the Croatian region, which is not obviously the main summer season but the pre-season, showed a 10% rate growth and a 1.7% occupancy growth, the Dutch region unfortunately reported the opposite with a 2% rate decline and a 2.5% occupancy decline. The U.K. region showed the largest occupancy growth of 3.6%, 360 basis points on a like-for-like basis. We had a record second quarter reporting 88.9% occupancy. In June alone, we reported 92.4% occupancy in our hotels.
That's a level I've never seen before, meaning you're full pretty much on every day, and the Sundays are typically a bit slower. However, the U.K. also reported a like-for-like rate decline of 3.7%. While occupancy is an important contributor to RevPAR, our margins are very sensitive to the movements in room rates and obviously the government-imposed cost inflation. As a result of national minimum wage increases in all territories and a substantial increase in national insurance costs in the U.K., our wage cost growth was expected to reach 7% blended. However, proactive cost control has resulted in this increase being limited to just over 3% on a like-for-like basis. The combination of these trading threats and obviously the previously announced lower contribution from the art'otel Hostel meant that RevPAR in the period was down 5.7% to GBP 45.5 million, which was 4.9% lower on a like-for-like basis.
Just to reiterate, approximately one-third of our EBITDA is realized in the first half of the year and two-thirds is realized in the second half of the year. We remain in the second half very much focused on controlling our costs further and we're accelerating a few new exciting technology implementations and process automations to drive further efficiencies. The NAV was up to GBP 21.28 per share. Obviously, external valuations will be performed at the year-end again. The increase in the first half was mainly due to foreign exchange results and the acquisition of minority shares. On a 12-month rolling basis, our adjusted EPRA earnings per share were GBP 1.19, down from the December number of GBP 1.25. On that basis, the board proposes an interim dividend of GBP 0.17, which is in line with last year. Go to the next page. Thank you.
We reported a GBP 49.9 billion adjusted EPRA earnings for the rolling 12 months ended June 2025, which decreased 6.2% versus the GBP 53.2 million in December. On a per share basis, as I said, it's coming down to GBP 1.19 per share. As you can see in the first waterfall chart, the EPRA earnings were negatively impacted by a GBP 3.1 million negative decline in income of the existing estate. This decline is mainly due to the negative contribution of the newly opened art'otel, but also obviously the margin decreases I've just alluded to. EPRA earnings are also negatively impacted by the increased finance expenses. These finance expenses largely increased due to the opening of Hostel and the opening of Rome this year. Their finance expenses are now fully contributing. The impact of the new openings to EPRA earnings should obviously be temporary, with the ramp-up of these properties in the coming year.
Moving on to the next slide of cash flows. In the past six months, we reported a free cash flow, so before expansion CapEx, of GBP 21.7 million. This cash flow was mainly utilized to pay the dividends and to buy out minority shareholders in our listed subsidiary of Arena Hospitality Group and to buy units in the Park Plaza at Westminster Bridge. We have nearly come to an end of our substantial CapEx cycle on the most recently opened hotels in Rome and in London, with some final payments expected in the months ahead. The last six months' expansion CapEx also included a GBP 10 million renovation of two camps in Croatia, which upgraded the facilities, and we added new luxury mobile homes on these sites.
Free cash flow is obviously expected to increase and will be allocated to the company's progressive dividend policy and its expansion CapEx to the new pipeline hotels. Should new minority shares or units be offered, we could allocate free cash flow if these are yield-decreased. Regular bank loan repayments are in line with our debt strategy, which I'll detail on the next slide, Robert. We have a very strong balance sheet. Zooming in on the debt position, it's an GBP 890 million gross debt, of which approximately two-thirds is sterling denominated and one-third is euro denominated. The net debt is GBP 100 million lower, which translates to a conservative 34.5% loan-to-value with the properties at market value. The bar chart in the middle shows you the maturity profile of the remaining facilities.
We currently have an average interest rate of 3.8% and all of that is fixed rates, with an average maturity of 3.4 years. This average interest rate is expected to go up slightly with the upcoming refinance round. For the upcoming GBP 250 million refinance round, we have pre-hedged GBP 100 million already until 2031. This was done early 2022 at substantially lower interest rates compared to the current market. We've already proactively started refinance discussions and received positive feedback so far. Given the low LTV, we expect no issues in the refinance. Greg, over to you to be part of the problem.
Thank you, Daniel. Current trading and outlook, city trading in all of our territories remain consistent with what we've seen in half one. However, we are showing modest improvement and progress in half two. We do expect ADRs to get towards 2024 levels towards the end of the year. Croatia has delivered a strong summer season, I'm pleased to say, and occupancy continues to support RevPAR. However, margins remain sensitive to rate shifts and cost inflation, and we are doing what we can to minimize those impacts. The near-term EBITDA for 2025 is expected to be broadly in line with 2024, reflecting short-term trading and the phased contribution from the art'otel London Hoxton. Hoxton has been opened and been deliberately phased to maximize its long-term position, resulting in slower initiated profit contributions.
The board reiterates that the recently opened assets are expected to contribute at least GBP 25 million of incremental EBITDA upon stabilization, with timelines expected to optimize long-term value. Looking ahead, we remain confident in the potential new openings in our pipeline. At the same time, however, we are mindful of the external macroeconomic headwinds from full year 2026 onwards, including potential VAT rise in the Netherlands, coupled with business rate pressures coming from the U.K. in 2026, all of which the business is trying to minimize any potential impact to investors. Thank you.
Thanks. We're moving on to Q&A now.
That's perfect. Thanks, guys. I just thought I'd give you, just to interrupt you there, and just allow investors to submit any further questions that they have. Please do just use the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. While the guys review your questions submitted already, I would like to remind you that the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides, will be available via your investment company dashboard. Robert, as you can see, you've had a number of questions from investors throughout today's presentation. Firstly, thank you to everyone for your engagement. If I may just hand back to you, and of course, where appropriate, read out the questions and give response where it's appropriate to do so.
Thanks, Mark. Daniel, I've started with you. You mentioned that the anticipated wage cost growth was about 7% and the actual impact was 3% through efficiency initiatives. Can you give some examples of what has been worked on and delivered in terms of efficiency and what you expect to see moving forward into the second half?
Yes, we've, first of all, focused quite a lot on our back office. We obviously, with 51 properties, run quite a large back office. We've adopted quite a few AI use cases to a lot of the, you know, repetitive tasks that we do, like paying invoices, answering emails. That has led with, you know, our natural turnover in staff that we didn't need to re-recruit quite a few staff members on that basis. We've also been looking at clustering hotels and clustering back office even further. What's on the roll are a few software, very large software implementations. We expect to launch in the second half a fully upgraded new property management system, a front office system, which will make check-in and check-out a lot more efficient. Also, the communications to our guests will be a lot more efficient.
From that, I have high expectations that we'll be able to drive more efficiencies.
Thank you. Greg, you summarized the pipeline with land sites and development opportunities in London specifically. Can you give a bit more background which you think will be the first ones to be developed or prioritized at least?
Yeah. Obviously, we have an active, well, we have two active planning permissions. First is Lehman Street. We acquired a site with planning for GBP 200,000 and also an office. That is currently now being prioritized. We will be opening a select service model. That is a high standard of accommodation with a number of self-service amenities in the ground floor and like Daniel's already alluded to with technology. We are prioritizing select service growth currently over full service growth, followed by Westminster Bridge Road. We have our site on the A40 as well, which still needs to be planned a little bit more. We do see Lehman Street targeting towards 2029.
Excellent.
Thank you. All of this has to be funded for, which presumably will be done through sort of further loans. Daniel, you touched on the leverage for the group with so much development CapEx ahead. What sort of levels of leverage are you comfortable with?
Typically, if we develop a new hotel, a round of development, we typically take loans that are 55%- 60% loan-to-cost of the project. I'm saying loan-to-cost because typically if we complete the development, there is a valuation jump, which typically brings the loan-to-value down to 45%- 50%. We not only look at LTV. LTV is important for lenders because it kind of gives them the security of the asset backing in prime cities like London and Amsterdam. We also look at yield on debt, if you like. Yield on debt is kind of a cyclical proof KPI, which is the EBITDA divided by the amount of the loan. Banks typically at the moment are still willing to give you 8.5x-9x EBITDA. I'm not saying that's where we're going, but that's levels that we are comfortable with.
On the coming refinance round, we intend to refinance the existing nominal and basically go further on with the low LTVs that we're showing.
Thank you. Continuing on development side, Greg, you mentioned you see a lot of opportunity in select service with the Radisson RED opening in the City of London and other select service developments. Where else do you see opportunities for growth outside of London?
Yeah, we will prioritize our current territories with development. I think one of the main targets for us is a continued development of Rome. We opened our luxury lifestyle hotel, the art’otel, there. You know, we would love to open a Park Plaza in Rome of some sort. Our development teams are actively looking at this territory specifically, as well as the obvious benefits that we have in all our territories of synergy management and awareness, et cetera, and our development capability. Obviously, you know, Rome and Italy is an active target for us. That's obviously where we are also seeing, you know, some really, really good schemes. Not to say that we wouldn't look at other territories, you know, if the opportunity was right, but you know, we do see some significant benefits coming out of the Italian region.
Thank you. Daniel, there was reference earlier to the sort of increased shareholding in Arena. Do you want to summarize the strategy behind it and if you're looking for maybe increasing that stake further?
Yeah, we have no intent to fully privatize Arena. We're very happy with the public sales listing. We have a block seller. We firmly believe in the story in Croatia. We firmly believe in the value of Arena. The track section was yield-decreased, so it was more of a capital allocation point, I would say. Again, we have no intent in terms of proactively taking this company private. We firmly believe in the strategy and the value of that company.
I must also come back to the question, Robert, about what you just said about development. Croatia, our peninsula around Pula and our availability to continue to develop that area is still there. There's still lots of potential value in that peninsula specifically. As we've seen, we've upgraded two campsites this year. There's more to upgrade. There's more to reposition. Croatia is also the area of focus for us.
Excellent. Obviously, the deliverable for these investments is an increase in EBITDA. The company had set a target of at least GBP 25 million of incremental EBITDA from the new pipeline. On stabilization, do you want to sort of explain, Greg, what stabilization means in our business?
Yeah, typically when you open an asset or a hotel, like we have two, we have Italy and we have Hostel, we usually trend them on a three-year cycle. Usually at the end of that three-year cycle, that's what we would then call the property is stable in its market. It's competing with its competitor sets of hotels within the area. It's had an opportunity to penetrate local corporate and event business and become more established. That's when you say actually the hotel is at its peak occupancy and its peak rate premium. We see our assets predominantly where Hostel, Rome, et cetera, coming around about end of 2028, 2029.
That's when you expect sort of these hotels to have stabilized?
Yes.
It sounds like there's a lot going on within PPHE Hotel Group still.
Yes.
To help drive that momentum, can you sort of summarize what is happening within now in the next maybe 12 months within Hotel?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, GBP 357,000 in the shortage market was quite a disruptive force to the competitor set when we opened that. We were very mindful of how we priced and delivered that hotel. It's a luxury asset. We want to make sure that asset gets the rate premium it deserves for the value investment we've got into it. We’ve strategically phased the occupancy in line with that to make sure we get the maximum average rate potential. We’ve also just completed the full bedroom product. We just launched the suite penthouse floor, which is the 23rd floor, 360° panoramic views of London, absolutely stunning. We opened the 24th floor panorama meeting and event facility. Next week, we're opening Solaya, the destination restaurant, with Kenny Atkinson. Most of all, next week, we're taking it to market, 5,000 square meters of office space.
That's over five floors, cafe, ready to be, you know, let. We’re looking forward to having that launch in the market there as well. Come towards the end of this year, we hope to have the whole asset actually driving and actually disrupting that market.
A final question, just mindful of time for you, Daniel. The VAT increase in the Netherlands, is that a sort of a final or is that still subject to government decisions or budget decisions?
Yeah, so what I mean, in the Netherlands, we had quite an uncertain political environment with a very lengthy process to get the government. When we had a government, this VAT increase was proposed, and then not long after, the government fell again. This VAT increase, as now so far as we know now, is going to be effective on the 1st of January. You know, Holland has a vote in October. I do not expect any government being formed before 1st of January that would reverse this. We are anticipating on a VAT increase of 21%, yes.
That's great, Robert. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. I think you've addressed all the questions for investors. Thank you once again to everybody for your engagement. I know investor feedback is particularly important to you all, and I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and their expectations. Before doing so, if I may, Greg, just come back to you for a couple of closing comments, and then I'll redirect investors for their feedback.
Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to say thank you for your time. Thank you for taking the opportunity to listen to myself, Daniel, and Robert. Hopefully, you are a little bit more informed of PPHE , and we are looking forward to the future. Thank you.
That's great, Daniel, Greg. Thank you very much indeed, and Robert, for your time this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could please ask you not to close this session as we're now automatically redirecting you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of PPHE Hotel Group, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and wish you all the best for the rest.