Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining the Schroder European Real Estate Investment Trust Half-Year Results for the six months ending 31 March 2024. I'm Jeff O'Dwyer. I'm the Fund Manager of the Trust, and I'm joined by Rick Murphy, who's the Finance Manager. Just a bit of housekeeping first. You have the opportunity to download the presentation that I'll be giving together with the interim report. You can do that via the webinar. Also, we welcome any questions that you may have. You can also click on the little icon there to provide any questions. Rick will go through those at the end of the presentation. And then finally, we welcome any feedback. At the end, there's a survey that you can undertake. We welcome your thoughts.
The plan is I'll run through a business update. I'll give you an overview and a bit of flavor on markets, what we're doing to ensure not only that assets and income is growing, and we're creating value, and we've got the company in the strongest position possible, but also how we can and ways that we can grow the share price. After this, I'll hand over to Rick, who'll give an overview on the financial results. Overall, this should take about 30 minutes, and that should leave us about 15-20 minutes for questions at the end. So what I wanted to do is just sort of remind people as to what we offer. Obviously, it's a unique proposition.
It's the only UK-listed company that provides a diversified exposure to real estate assets in growth cities in continental Europe. I think one of the other points, we're actually seeing a bit of a change in terms of we've seen a bit of a flaw in terms of where values are, particularly for certain sectors, and I'll come onto that, a bit later. Secondly, there's a real difference that Europe provides in terms of the underlying leases. Unlike the UK, European leases face annual indexation, so we're capturing sort of annual growth, and then we get to ERV, typically at five years, or 10 years.
You may recall that about 12 months ago, the Management and Board made a decision to go quite conservative, and we decided to maintain as much capital as possible, put the company in a really strong position from a gearing point of view, and provide us with flexibility to move forward. So it's pleasing to be able to sit here today, to be running a vehicle that is set up to now grow and look at investing, not only in the portfolio, but potentially in other initiatives, to grow earnings and improve price. Obviously, for a new investor coming in today, it's extremely appealing. You're getting an 8% dividend yield from a dividend that's 109% covered, and Rick will talk a bit more detail about that later.
Really, the share price today is reflecting a 40% discount to NAV, and I'll give you some evidence later as to why we believe in the strength of the NAV and the realistic, and how realistic that's been priced. And then finally, the strength of Schroders' expertise. We're not only sort of a Global Investment Manager, but we have local multi-sector expertise, and we're thematic-led. This is increasingly pertinent as we look to pivot the strategy to make sustainability central to the theme. This has been recently implemented in the UK Trust with great success and well received by investors, particularly as a growing understanding that better quality certified assets are outperforming not only in terms of returns, but liquidity to occupiers, lenders, and investors. I'll now hand over to Rick to run through the financial results.
Thanks, Jeff, and good morning, everybody. Excuse me. So turning to the financial highlights for the six months ended 31st of March, 2024, and focusing, first of all, on the income side of things of the company. So really pleasing to be able to say that EPRA earnings have moved along a further 3% over the six months. We have been at EUR 4.2 million, and we now stand at EUR 4.3 million, and that increase has been underpins by rental uplift with indexation, strong occupancy, and strong rent collection. That, in turn, has fed into a dividend cover of 109% for these six months. And then just a reminder on the income side of things, that all of the income of the company is inflation-linked.
Around 80% of that is annual indexation, and around 20% of that is linked to a hurdle. Then, just on to the next bullets, around rent collection. So, we announced at the last presentation that all rents have been received for the past six months, excluding Seville, which we wrote our investment down to nil back in 2021. And again, that's been the case for this six months. So again, really pleasing to be able to say that all rents have been collected and reflective of that strong tenant base, those covenants, and their ability to pay any indexations that come through in the period. Just with regard to the debt side of things, two successful refinancings in the six months.
One was the office asset in Saint-Cloud, Paris, which was refinanced around Christmas, and then the other was the Rennes asset in France, which was refinanced in March 2024. From an LTV net to cash perspective, the company is modestly levered. That's around 24%, net LTV, 33%, gross to cash. And we just want to draw out here as well the strong balance sheets. So as at 31st March, available cash of around EUR 26 million, which we think provides very strong flexibility for accretive investment opportunities as we move into the second half of the year. And just finally, on the performance side, a NAV total return of -1.3%, and that was driven by capital unrealized valuation falls in the six months as yields moved out during the period.
On the next slide, we just got a bit of a breakdown of our EPRA earnings. It's touched upon a 3% increase, and we can see here that we have been at GBP 4.20 million for the six months ending 31st of September, and this has increased to GBP 4.32 million for the six months to 31st of March. That's been driven by, we see on the top line, increases in rental income, driven by, those indexations, a lowering of the cost base, increased interest received due to active treasury managements, and a small fall in taxes. All in all, those drivers have more than offset the net finance costs, which also increased in the six months.
In the bottom line there, we can just see a reminder of dividend cover, so dividend cover of 106% for the prior six months, and 109% for this current financial period. On the next slide here, we just got a summary of the dividends. Going into COVID, during COVID, and then the aftermath after, and again, just a reminder here that over the last four quarters, the company's declared dividends of 0.0148 EUR per share. We can see there again, in the prior six months, that 106% dividend cover, 109% dividend cover now, which we believe demonstrates good headroom and stability of that dividend base should there be any changes in future, such as increased finance costs.
Just on the next slide here, we've just set out a bar chart of SE REIT and some other diversified listed maybe not so peers but other listed entities. We can see that SE REIT, as a company, has the second lowest LTV net of cash at only around 24%. And this combines with a share price dividend yield of around 8%, and then that dividend cover and headroom which we spoke about, we think makes SE REIT an attractive investment proposition. With that, I'll pass it back to Jeff.
So just sort of focusing a bit on the portfolio, and many of you have seen this slide before, but it's 15 assets, well-diversified. We've got about a third in offices. We've got around a third in the industrial sector, around 17% in select retail, which is primarily grocery and a DIY unit. We have some alternatives, which is focused on a data center and a car showroom, and we're sitting in around 11% cash. I mean, one of the key points I want to highlight here is just where we are exposed. And you can see here we've got exposure to Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Paris, and then on the logistics side, in some very strong growth industrial areas, both from an urban and industrial perspective, also from a pan-European perspective.
The other point, I won't go into each, each asset, but I wanted to highlight here, is just the lot sizes that we have focused on. Most of the lot sizes are really in the sub-EUR 30 million, and that's where we're seeing the most traction and most sort of investment volumes occurring. Just to sort of touch a little bit on offices, because I think that is the one sector that still has a bit of a question mark over it, and it's the one sector where, particularly for the two German office assets, I feel really comfortable because we're in two cities here that have one of the lowest vacancy rates in the whole of Europe. In the case of Stuttgart, you've got vacancy at around 2%. We're coming off rents here of around EUR 15 per square meter per month.
To put that into perspective, prime rents in Stuttgart are now 36 EUR per sq m. There's just no choice for occupiers. We've got the government in this particular building. They just don't have any choice to go anywhere. If there was a new building that was to be constructed, you'd need to be achieving rents of high 30s, if not 40, to justify construction. So I feel really comfortable about holding an office asset where you have very tight supply, and you've got a really strong understanding of where that supply can come from and the cost of that. And then equally, in Hamburg, we've got a fully leased asset, multi-tenanted asset, again, off rents of mid-13 EUR per square meter per month. Prime rents in central Hamburg, one stop away, are now 35, 36.
So again, if you have an office building that is accessible and affordable, you're still gonna hold up very well. And obviously, the office markets across continental Europe have behaved very differently to what one has seen here in London, and also particularly in the U.S., where most employees can get to their building a little bit more readily, given the transport connections and also the fact that the people often live in the city center, and we haven't seen the impact of work from home to the same degree. Obviously, on the retail side, I touched on two select assets. Again, parts of retail that have performed exceptionally well, one being the grocery asset in Frankfurt. It's an initiative at the moment that we're thinking of potentially selling that asset.
We've just regeared the main lease with Lidl and a couple other smaller specialties. That particular regearing is still to come through the value, but again, it's an asset that is highly liquid, and we're gonna test the market from a value sense there. And then we're left with the DIY asset in Berlin, which is sitting on four hectares of land in a capital city. I feel really comfortable about holding that particular retail. I touched on the lot sizes and again, this point around focusing and where we're seeing stronger investment volumes, it really is in that sub-30-million ticket size. So if we needed to sell these assets, particularly given the city exposure that we have and the growth city that we've focused on...
There is liquidity there, and it's really the bigger assets that's at EUR 100 million plus, where there's been a bit of balking, particularly from an office point of view. It's those sort of bigger assets there, where institutions are really shying away from making investments and waiting for pricing to move. On the right-hand side, you can see here, just in terms of where values are. I did sort of touch on the—I have seen some draft numbers for June valuations, and actually, it's pleasing to say that the values will be flat. So I think we have seen a bit of a floor now, particularly for the industrial sector and particularly for the select retail that we have.
I mean, the other point here is just where our real estate is now priced, you're getting this premium to where the risk-free rate is. We've done this across an average, across Germany, France, and the Netherlands, which is roughly 2.8%, and you can see here that our premium to that varies from roughly 2.5% through to 4.5%. I've excluded the data center, because that's a fairly unique asset, and I'll talk about that in a bit more detail in a minute. But in terms of pricing, traditionally, in the past, real estate has traded at around a 200 basis point premium.
You can see here, we've got more than that covered and feel that values are certainly representative, particularly where debt has now moved to, that debt still remains accretive to these sort of yields that we're valued off. Just a little bit on markets. I know we're all sort of welcomed the interest rate movement two weeks ago from the ECB, where they cut rates by 25 basis points. House view here is that we'll probably see another potential one, if not two, further falls in interest rates over 2024. I think that will be a real positive to sort of, I guess, investors coming back and really looking at real estate again, particularly around the lot sizes that we've focused on.
The sentiment across the sector and the different sectors is quite disparate. Obviously, I talked about offices. We're seeing really strong and central offices holding up really well and seeing good rental growth for that better quality offices in accessible locations. Obviously, secondary offices still remaining mixed and probably limited liquidity that goes with secondary offices. Across the retail side, grocery remaining very strong and urban retail parks, again, a part of the retail sector that's holding up really well, both from occupier liquidity and investors. On the secondary shopping center side, that continues to face challenges, and particularly around trying to price or understand where a sustainable rental or net rental can be pegged for retailers to make money.
On the industrial side, again, across Europe, we're seeing stronger rental growth, feel very comfortable about having the exposure that we do have there, particularly around urban industrial and core logistics in pan-European locations. We still see stronger rental growth, and that's starting to come through now in the valuations and what is upholding and allowing us to make the comment that we feel there's a flaw in terms of where values are at the moment. Obviously, in alternatives, there's limited transaction evidence around alternatives, but we are seeing sort of continued focus for data centers, both from an occupational and an investor perspective. And then obviously, the living sector is really one of the big pluses.
We don't have any exposure in the living sector, but investors are very much focused, particularly around multifamily, student accommodation, and select hotels and co-living. So just to focus a little bit more on what have we done over the period, obviously, we have been focused on regearing leases and trying to strengthen the income side and really move forward, that indexation that I touched on or Rick touched on in terms of helping with the earnings growth. We've got a little bit of vacancy that we're working on. That vacancy is about 4% across the whole portfolio and really is linked to Saint-Cloud, and that's the one asset that has the main vacancy. It's about 15%.
There's potentially about EUR 570,000 of ERV potential there, so the teams are working hard to try and de-risk that. Frankfurt, I touched on, really strong and positive to come out with the lease regearing. We've had Lidl sign a new 15-year lease, that will come through to June's valuation. But we're taking the opportunity to test the market here, to see whether we can achieve a value that underpins current valuation. The thinking there is that we could use the proceeds to potentially repay a little bit of debt, but also, possibly look at a small share buyback, given the 40% discount that we have, or recycle that capital to a better use as well. Metromar, again, Rick touched on, we've written this to zero.
We're in the process of working with the bank about potentially moving this on. That would remove or reduce our LTV by about 3%, so a really positive story there. And then also, what we've been able to do is really progress in terms of the sustainability audits that I touched on at the full year, at the end of last year. We've done sort of 12 audits and Net Zero Carbon modeling. We're in the process of reviewing all those initiatives. We're trying to work out, well, where are we gonna get the best bang for our buck? It's a bit of a wish list that the consultants have come out with, and it's now up to us to really work out, well, what are those initiatives that give us the best return on that capital allocation?
It helps with our hold-sell analysis as well. But it really is a really strong way of how we see an opportunity to improve the quality of the portfolio and also grow earnings on the back of that as well. It's also helpful in terms of our regearing of leases and our relationships that we have with tenants, and being able to provide a solution to the tenants, where we're giving them better quality accommodation, and on the back of that, we can secure longer leases and also drive rental growth on the back of that as well. So just a little bit on the sustainability. I've got to be a bit sort of open here that we still need to go through internal and external approvals.
Obviously, our intention is to try and move the vehicle and evolve and make sustainability a key part of the strategy, and something that's been successfully presented with the UK Sister Trust, and investors have given some very strong support to that, and we're looking to piggyback on what the UK REIT has done. The reasons we're doing this is obviously it enhances asset liquidity, not only to occupiers, but also to lenders and investors. There is a proven, particularly for offices, we're seeing a proven growth in terms of rents and a lowering of yields that go with better quality certified assets. We see this as a way of differentiating the company as well and having this the thematic approach.
It also is a way for us to potentially attract new investors, particularly those investors that will be looking at sustainability and have preferences for thematic investing as well. So being able to move this to and making sustainability key to our strategy will allow a broadening of that investor base, and that often attracts sort of smaller wealth managers and also retail investors. And obviously, with all this together, we hope that this will improve the share price and help grow shareholder performance. This is the best example of why we're thinking about the pivot. We had a really successful repositioning of an office asset in Paris.
Many of you who have been shareholders of the trust for some years would have benefited from the profit that we've made here, because we were able to make some special dividends. So we effectively took a fairly tired, Grade C office building in a good sub-market of Paris, in Boulogne-Billancourt. It was an asset that was single-tenanted to a company called Alten. They liked the location, but they wanted a better quality building. Obviously, us, with our expertise, not only in terms of our asset management and our ability to turn and create a better quality office building, we were able to turn this into a much more, sort of more certified asset in terms of WiredScore BREEAM In-Use certification.
We invested EUR 30 million, so we took the asset from EUR 40 million, invested EUR 30 million, and at the same time, we decided to sell the asset on a forward-funding sale at roughly EUR 100 million. So that crystallized about EUR 30 million of pre-tax profit, and that allowed us to make these special dividends to shareholders. So we don't have something of the same scale, but we have a number of initiatives where we think we can do something similar. And a couple of assets that come to mind is the data center that we have in the Netherlands, the office building that we have in Stuttgart, and to a lesser extent, some of the smaller industrial assets that we have across France and the Netherlands.
So we have a proven track record in being able to de-risk and turn fairly tired assets into institutional quality and actually see yields rerate, move rents accordingly, and capture that profit, which enhances shareholder value. We talked about sort of some of this growth that we're starting to see come through. Obviously, most of the leases are annually indexed. The only nuance is in Germany, where typically there's roughly around 20%, subject to waiting for the compounding of the indexation. You still get the index, but you need to wait typically until that compounding reaches about 10%.
Just looking through here, obviously, we all have welcomed the news of inflation coming back, and that's been helpful in terms of the ECB being able to reduce rates, but forecasts for 2025 and 2026 are roughly somewhere between 2% and 2.5% of indexation coming through. So that's the kind of growth in the short term that we think we'll be able to deliver. Obviously, behind that, we're also in markets where there's supply constraints, where there's competing demands for uses, and where we're coming off relatively low rents. So we naturally believe there's gonna be ERV growth that will exceed that indexation.
And that's the beauty of focusing and having a strategy fixed on really focusing on those sub-markets that are also gonna benefit from transport infrastructure changes as well, where you actually will see a ERV growing faster than indexation. Just on the debt, I think we've done a really, really exceptional job here in terms of positioning the company and de-risking the debt that we had. You may recall that last year we had sort of three or four refinancings that we have had to do, and that was one of the reasons why wanting to retain the capital that we have.
We've successfully, over the period, not only refinanced the office asset that we had in Saint-Cloud, when we extended that by another four years with the existing lender, the margin on that we secured is at about 1.9%. We also were able to refinance the logistics asset in Rennes. We did that with SaarLB, the existing lender as well. The margin on that went from 1.4% to 1.6%. We locked in the five-year swap at around 2.7, so all-in cost there at 4.3%. You may recall from the slide earlier that the logistics assets are valued off around a 6.5%. These particular assets are valued off around a 6%.
So you can understand why debt is accretive and why it suits sort of the assets and the yield profiles that we've focused on. We've done a really good job in terms of de-risking. Yes, the average cost of debt has slowly gone up, but we're in a position, and it has an impact on our dividend. The only other sort of next refinancing that we have is really to 2026, and that's the two retail assets that we have in Germany against the DIY asset and the grocery. And then in terms of Seville, obviously, I touched on that before, that we are in discussions about potentially moving on that, moving that on, and that would reduce the gearing profile for the company by another 3%.
So just sort of moving forward then, just to sort of give a bit more color around that if we refinanced and we had the cap that we've got on Saint-Cloud, which rolls off at the end of this year, we then have another cap at 3.25%, the average cost of debt could go to 3.9%. So what impact would that have on our interest expense? Therefore, it would mean about another EUR 111,000 a quarter. Now, given that we have 109% cover, the dividend's not gonna be impacted by this potential increase in interest expense. The other positive, obviously, I touched on before about indexation growing rents, that actually you're gonna see rental growth covering this interest expense as well. So that puts us in a really strong position.
There's a lot of investment trusts out there that have still got to refinance their debt, and there's gonna be a bigger impact on their ability to maintain dividends, whereas actually we have successfully mark-to-market our debt. And as I touched on, there's really only one sort of debt in 2026 that needs to be refinanced. And obviously, as a house and as a company, we're a modest user of gearing. The maximum we can go to is 35%. And really, we have been keeping a very modest level and headroom against that, and hence that 24% net of debt that we're running the vehicle at the moment.
So just to sort of focus a little bit more on the priorities and what are we doing to try and grow not only share price performance, but also earnings and income. And I'm conscious that KPN is a very key part of the income. It represents about 17% of our overall income. They're a publicly listed telecoms company, market cap of about EUR 13 billion. They've been in this location for about 20 years. They currently run a data center, some offices, some high-security part of their business there. We're in discussions, I mean, actually, in the Netherlands on the 27th to see them. We're trying to sort of, and our focus here, is to try and regear this lease and have them extend. We think the data center is a pretty key part of their business.
It is an asset that is depreciating in value, and you would have seen over the months, and we're very open, sorry, over the quarter is very open about that the valuers are pricing this asset as a depreciating asset. Until we can actually regear the lease with KPN, they're gonna continue to take the remaining income and then the residual land value. So that's another option that we have, is that we have the ability and we have zoning for medium-density residential. There's opportunities for the land to be used for other uses as well, so that's in the back of our mind. But our primary focus is to try and regear the lease with KPN and have them extend on a longer-term basis. It is over-rented, and that's something that I'm conscious of, and...
But it's up to us now to try and provide a solution to KPN, where we can turn this building into a better quality asset that meets the sustainability requirements for them, but also secures their strategic needs, particularly from a data center perspective. Obviously, Frankfurt touched on really positive that we regeared that lease again, securing Lidl there for the longer term, and on the back of that, we've been able to secure some of the specialties. We had some good success with another Schroders fund, where we sold some similar assets in Berlin. We were pleasantly surprised with having sort of 20 bids.
So on the back of that, we're gonna test the market, and I think we will be successful in achieving a price there, and that allows us the ability to use that capital to a better way. And I touched on that we may look at a bit of a share buyback, if share buyback if we are seeing the shares at such a deep discount that we currently have at the moment. Obviously, sustainability, I gave the health warning.
We've still got a lot of internal approvals that we have to go through and obviously, FCA approval accordingly, but obviously improving a portfolio for sustainability credentials, we believe in sort of enhancing asset quality and earnings potential, and leveraging off Schroders' expertise is what it really puts us into a strong position to now use the capital that we have in the best way. And then, obviously, investors, it's a really strong going concern. Yes, it's not a huge company, this, but as a going concern, it's exceptional. We're targeting retail investors and smaller high-net worths. And obviously, the viable income and the thematic investing that some of the investors are looking at will be appealing to them.
They're the sort of main priorities that we're focused on in terms of trying to grow earnings and look at shareholder returns. I'm not gonna go into detail on this slide. There's a lot on this slide, I appreciate that, and I'll let you sort of take this away. But I just wanna say that we really do believe that this vehicle has been oversold. I appreciate that the whole listed sector has been oversold. I do think that we're at an inflection point at the moment, particularly where we're seeing a fall in values, particularly for the industrial select retail. Probably a little bit more downside in terms of some of the offices, but being in the cities that we have exposure to, I feel really comfortable about.
And really, having the cover that we have and having the earnings growth that we have, that gives investors a lot of comfort around the sustainability or the viability of this dividend going forward. And if you can buy that dividend today, that's delivering an 8% yield, and you're buying a 40% discount, that to me is an extremely compelling investment case. We've just run over the 30 minutes, which is what I said we'd try and hit. I'm sure there's some questions that Rick has, and happy to answer those.
Yeah. Thank you, Jeff, and thank you to the audience for all the questions that have come in so far. Jeff, one of the main ones we got is around the balance sheet. Audience have pointed out that SERIT's in a strong position and has that available cash of around EUR 26 million. Maybe just a little bit more color as to maybe how that might be invested in the next six months. You've obviously touched upon a potential small buyback, but maybe just a little bit more about any opportunities you're seeing maybe for the next six to 12 months.
Yeah, and I mean, it's a really strong position that we are in, and we deliberately went conservative.
Mm.
Circa 9-12 months ago. We did that to make sure we got through the refinancing risk, which we've now done.
Mm.
We also did it as a means to look at the sustainability audits that we've gone through, and what capital do we need to improve the quality of the assets? Are we better off investing in the assets, growing earnings that way, rather than running out and buying a new investment to grow earnings?
Mm.
I think it's the former that we're focused on at the moment. I touched on earlier, we've got a lot of initiatives that we're going through and trying to work out where do we get the best bang for our buck to make that investment. We will potentially look at a new investment, but I think at the moment, where we're trading at a 40% discount, it's very difficult to present a case. It'd have to be extremely compelling investment case to go to the board or go to our investment committee, given the shares are trading at that 40% discount. So I think if we were to sell, for instance, Frankfurt, we might look at doing a very small share buyback. It's probably the best use of capital from a mathematics point of view.
We know that share buybacks don't necessarily solve the discount question, but it is the best use of capital. But certainly, I think we will be in a position to potentially... If we do see the share price discount close, we will be in a potential opportunity to maybe look at a new, smaller acquisition that would probably be more on the industrial side, where we see stronger rental growth.
Great, thank you. And then just a quick question around LTV and maybe, its trajectory over the next few quarters. We've touched upon that, LTV, 24% net of cash, 33% gross, and helpfully, with regards to the sale of Seville and maybe where the market is, but next six, 12 months, again, Jeff, maybe where that LTV might go to for the company?
Well, I think, the big driver of the LTV is gonna be values in terms of the denominator.
Mm-hmm.
I think I touched on that we're actually seeing a bit of a flaw. I think that's really positive. We're not gonna be doing a lot. There's no refinancing.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously, the positive is what can we do around moving Seville on? And that's, that's extremely positive in terms of moving gearing even lower. So, unlike some other trusts out there that are sitting on sort of 50%-60% leverage, I feel really comfortable about-
Mm
... the direction of this vehicle and now where we can actually spring to. Now, a good example is, say, Apeldoorn, 'cause we've got a few assets where the assets are not levered. So if we had a scenario where we went to KPN and said, "Okay, we're gonna turn this into a BREEAM-rated, certified, Grade A building, and it's gonna require us to invest, I don't know, EUR 10-15 million," well, then I could gear that asset, so maybe our gearing on the back of that would go up a little bit, but it would have to be an initiative like that for us to move the gearing and use that gearing as a way of creating value.
Yeah. Great, thank you. We got a question around Seville. A little bit of the background and if there's any more exposure to the company from the Seville assets going forward, and maybe just a little bit around what happens with that asset.
Yeah, look, I mean, we wrote Seville to zero circa four years ago. It was an asset that was-
Mm
... a dominant center in its catchment. It was the end of the main train line in Seville. It was... Had two very strong points of difference. One was fashion, had all the Inditex brands in there, and H&M as well, and had a very strong leisure angle with cinema and food, and was performing exceptionally well. We did a little, small little refurb on that, so it was presenting really well. The pandemic came. The center was forced to close, like many centers across the globe, and the fashion side didn't survive, and we had a situation where Inditex pulled all their brands out, H&M left, and obviously, the leisure side really struggled as well.
Coinciding with that, we had a new bit of competition that came out of the ground, a new prime shopping center, so that really had an impact on secondary assets. So we were very quick-
Mm, mm
... to write and be very open with investors. And obviously, being a diversified investor, you can't get everything right. We had the great news around Paris and, yeah, frustratingly, we had some exposure to this, and thankfully, we only had 50% exposure, and thankfully, we had some debt. So we actually had a position where we could actually draw a line in the sand as to, and with non-recourse debt, it allows you to do that. So that's another reason why we don't have an umbrella facility and why we try and ring-fence our debt when assets do go wrong.
And you don't, obviously, think assets will go wrong, but the pandemic did create stress for this, and it is an asset now where we're trying to work with the bank about moving this on, and for a new investor to invest in this and try and sort of turn the asset around. But it's not for us.
Yep, yep. Great, thank you. We've also had a couple of questions around the income side and what you're seeing. So in the last six months and also maybe going forward in the second half of the year, where the company's looking to regear or complete new leases, how they are with regard to current ERVs, and what the current... Yeah, what the company's currently achieving with regards to that letting side of the company.
Yeah, happy to. Actually, there's a slide in the appendix I've just opened up here now. You can see here that if you take out Apeldoorn, there's actually a bit of reversion, positive reversion, across the rest of the portfolio. We think there's probably a little bit more reversion, particularly on the industrial assets. These are ERVs set by Knight Frank, who are the independent valuers for the trust. Obviously, Apeldoorn is heavily overrented, and that's part of the solution and negotiation that we're trying to have with KPN about securing them.
But in terms of it comes back to the strategy and how we set our stall up, was to be focused on locations that would benefit from transport infrastructure changes, locations where there were supply constraints, where there was competing demands for users, and fundamentally buying assets off low rents. So you put those four together, you're gonna get rental growth or ERV growth, notwithstanding that we're getting the indexation that I touched on earlier. So, I think we will do slightly better, particularly across the industrial and some of the retail, in terms of better than that early 2s indexation that I touched on. Obviously, you don't get the same duration of leases that you get here in the U.K., so that's why our unexpired lease term to final term is about five years.
Notwithstanding that, we did regear, obviously, Lidl at 15 years. But there is ways and angles that we're trying to work with tenants. I mean, the next one's coming up is, for instance, Nestlé in Rumilly.
Mm.
So we feel-
Mm
... we're in a strong position to be able to regear that lease. We're trying to work with them.
Mm-hmm.
Again, initiatives to try and improve the quality of that asset from a sustainability point of view. But on the back of that, moving the rents to help pay for that as well. Similarly, we've got the car showroom in Cannes leased to Stellantis. It's the best and the biggest site with the most amount of frontage in an agglomeration of 22 car showrooms. If Stellantis didn't wanna stay there, I think we'd be able to find another operator that would take that space. And we feel that there's rental growth in that particular asset as well. So I think... Yeah, to answer the question, I think there's stronger than indexation growth to come through and obviously regearing leases is a key part of our asset management strategy to try and grow earnings going forward.
Great, thank you. We had a question as well, just on the cost base. And that's it can be seen to be trending down and around the focus of that. So there's probably one more from my side. So that is absolutely a focus. We're very conscious of the size of the trust and the costs and charges. Something we always flag is around that the average tax rates in the different countries in which the company invests is around 23%. And with our corporate structure, our effective tax rate's around 5-6%. So we do think that there is definite advantages of that for investors. But that's absolutely something that we are focused on, and will continue to do so.
Just conscious of time, I think the sort of final question is probably just around, again, the sort of future, maybe the sort of next six months and maybe what your focus might be. And you know, you've touched upon maybe some of the uses of the capital, maybe some of the sustainability considerations and work you're doing, but maybe just a final thoughts as to next six months as to where that time will be spent for the company and the board.
Yeah, look, I think it's a really strong position that we have to be able to move the company now to, to sort of create value. And obviously, having circa EUR 26 million of cash that we've got, having a really strong balance sheet, the ability to possibly use some, some debt in a better way, maybe recycle an asset, the regearing of leases, particularly around KPN, I think they're really the key focuses that I'm driving-
Mm
... working with the asset management teams on the ground that we have. Obviously, coupled with that is the thematic pivot that we touched on and the success that the UK vehicle has seen, and particularly around-
Yeah
... new investors that have come into the trust. And that's an area that I'm working closely with the distribution team. We also have some consultants that help. Obviously, we changed broker last year with Panmure Gordon. That's been very helpful in getting out to the regions and trying to diversify the shareholder base as well. And I think all that's positive and will continue to be positive in terms of trying to move the share price and close this discount. I think this news around the ECB, the first to really lower rates and potential for a second rate cut on, or even a third rate cut through 2024, I think will crystallize investors' minds as well. The news around sort of valuations, I touched on the draft numbers that I've seen for June.
All that, and we're at a very early inflection point that I think over the next sort of three odd months, I think we'll start to see investors sort of focusing on investment trusts, and particularly those trusts that have been out of favor, and realizing actually, these are really strong going concerns. And if you can deliver a strong, viable dividend that can also grow and that has a good dividend cover, and then you're in cities, and you're in assets that are liquid and lot sizes that can trade, I think we'll see a real positive impact across this trust.
Great.
So I'm happy to sort of stop there. We're at sort of 45 minutes. Really appreciate everyone dialing in. Would appreciate your feedback in terms of the survey that you have, but I'll stop there, and thank you.
Yeah, thank you.