Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending today's SEGRO Half-Year 2025 Results Call. My name is Ada, and I will be your operator today. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, David Sleath, CEO of SEGRO. David, please go ahead.
Thank you, Ada. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our Half-Year 2025 Results Presentation. Thanks for taking the time to join us on what is clearly a very busy morning for you all. We're going to take a slightly different approach today with audio-only webcast, but we're live here in New Burlington Place, and we'll be taking your questions at the end, even if you can't see us. Let me start by highlighting three key points that we'd like you to take away from today's announcement. The first is that our existing portfolio is performing well. We've seen the first NAV uptick since mid-2022, consistent with the view that we shared earlier this year that capital values have stabilized. The active asset management by our teams on the ground has driven an impressive 7.8% growth in like-for-like net rental income.
That's been the key driver of the 6.5% uplift in earnings per share, and it's set to continue. The second point is that whilst European pre-let markets have been significantly slower over the past 18 months, thanks to the macro and geopolitical uncertainty, which has slowed down occupier decision-making, development prospects are now improving, and our near-term pipeline of deals in advanced stages of negotiation has picked up well in recent months. This is an important leading indicator of pre-let signings to come. All of this bodes well for the future, meaning that we're well placed to continue delivering mid- to high- single-digit EPS and dividend growth over the medium term. Finally, we're progressing with the build-out of our data center platform. We're progressing plans for our 2.3 GW Land-enabled Power Bank, and we've signed our joint venture to develop our first fully-fitted data center.
We'll go into all of these points in more detail shortly, but first, let me hand over to Soumen, who for the last time will be taking you through the key features of today's results. Soumen.
Thank you very much, David. Morning, everybody. Starting on slide four. The key takeaway, as David's mentioned from the first half results, is that our leasing activity within the existing portfolio is continuing to drive really attractive earnings and dividend growth. You can really see that illustrated on the top half of this slide, which is illustrating our key financial metrics. We delivered 6.5% growth in earnings and in dividends per share. We're recommending an interim dividend of GBP 0.097. That's in line with our usual practice of setting it at one-third of the prior year's full dividend. I would just note that we have an exceptional track record of delivering growth in our dividend every year for the past 12 years, and we're well positioned to continue doing this going forward.
The portfolio value increased to GBP 18.5 billion, with a small increase in the like-for-like valuation, which continues to demonstrate the stabilization in asset values. NAV per share is up GBP 0.03 to GBP 9.10, the first increase since 2022, and further supports our view that we have passed the inflection point in values. The balance sheet is in good shape, with loan-to-value at 31%, providing considerable capacity for growth. Turning to slide five now on the income statement. The wholly-owned portfolio saw 10% growth in net rental income during the period, which I'll break down for you on the next slide. Before we get there, just a couple of things to note on this slide. Capitalized interest was GBP 32 million in the first half, similar to the first half of 2024, and we expect the full-year number to be around GBP 65 million.
On costs, pleasingly, the cost ratio is down from the full year at 19%. We'd hope to maintain this in the second half of the year. It could potentially reduce this further as we expect our rental income to grow faster than costs. Net finance costs fell GBP 7 million, due mostly to interest rates. Also just to note that the differential growth rate between adjusted profit and EPS was down due to the higher average share count this half year as a result of the equity raise and the interim dividend scrip take-up during the first half of 2024. Turning to slide six now. Looking at that growth in net rental income in some more detail. We delivered strong growth in net rent, up GBP 22 million, an increase of 7%.
The largest contributor to that growth was the GBP 21 million of rent that we captured from the existing portfolio, with an impressive 7.8% like-for-like growth rate. The U.K.. grew really strongly at 8.4%, benefiting from the higher capture of reversion alongside asset management initiatives across the portfolio. The continent showed excellent like-for-like growth of 6.7%, which you will know is well ahead of inflation, due mainly to the better performance of our urban portfolio. Development completions added GBP 17 million during the period. Investment activity resulted in a net loss of GBP 3 million of income due to a higher-than-normal amount of disposals in 2024. We expect that impact to be lower going forward as we return to a more normal level of disposals. The last bar of other of GBP 13 million is a mix of take-backs of development, FX, and non-recurring items like lease surrender premiums.
Now, looking ahead from here, strong like-for-like growth, especially from the reversion in the portfolio and new income from the development pipeline, will continue to drive rental income strongly in the coming years. Turning to slide seven on the valuation. The upward trend has continued from last year with a further small increase in asset values in the first half in both the U.K. and in continental Europe. This, along with our investment and development activity, has helped the portfolio grow to GBP 18.5 billion. Yields are pretty flat across the board. ERV growth for the group was 1%, with the U.K. delivering 1.4% growth and the Continent delivering 0.4%. You can see, though, some quite big differences between our markets. Those that have been more active in terms of letting activity saw the strongest growth, particularly the U.K., Germany, and Spain.
On the other hand, our more development-led markets, such as Italy and the Czech Republic, saw less progression as the absence of large Pre-let meant there was less evidence to support moving ERVs on. You can also see on the boxes on the right-hand side that our urban portfolio outperformed the big box, both in the U.K. and on the continent, as we typically expect due to the tighter land supply in these markets. Thank you. Turning now to slide eight on the balance sheet, which remains in great shape and provides significant firepower for growth with almost GBP 2 billion of available liquidity. Loan-to-value has increased slightly to 31%. Our credit rating is stable at A minus, and our debt metrics are in good shape, with net debt to EBITDA at 8.8 times and interest cover at over four times. On to slide nine.
We have low refinancing requirements in the next few years due to the financing activity of the past year, including new bonds out of both SEGRO and SELP. We've got a diversified long-duration debt profile with an average debt maturity of 6.6 years, which, as you can see on the graph on the left, has debt stretching out till 2042. The graph on the right helps to quantify the impact of what's to come in terms of interest costs from refinancing, and it hasn't changed much since the full year. Based on refinancing debt as it comes due at current rates in the same currency, the overall cost of debt moves up only 10 basis points this year and by 50 basis points to 2027, but only up to a level that's still lower than in 2023. As a reminder, that's about GBP 25 million.
Not immaterial, but it's much, much lower than the reversion we hope to capture in that period. It absolutely supports the earnings growth going forward. To conclude from me on slide 10. The existing portfolio has delivered an impressive 7.8% like-for-like NRI growth during the first half of 2025, and that's helped support 6.5% growth in earnings and in dividends. That really shows that our business is capable of delivering some of the strongest earnings and dividend growth in our sector, even when our development engine is turning more slowly. We believe this growth is sustainable due to the reversion we have available to capture, which David will come on to shortly. We saw an increase in NAV for the first time since 2022, supporting our view that we're past the inflection point. We have a strong balance sheet with limited near-term refinancing needs.
With that, I'll hand you back to David.
Thank you very much, Soumen. Okay, let's now start to dig into those areas that lie behind the financials, starting with the performance from our existing portfolio. As we said before, we have a great portfolio of assets concentrated in Europe's most attractive sub-markets, particularly the major business and population centers and distribution corridors. We have an excellent land bank. We have a market-leading operating platform with local teams everywhere dedicated to staying close to customers and other key stakeholders. We believe these factors create a competitive advantage, which help us to deliver great results and source new opportunities. Excuse me. We argue, therefore, that SEGRO is structurally advantaged to outperform over the medium term.
That advantage is further enhanced by the weighting of our portfolio, with 2/3 of our economic interests being concentrated in the largest, most congested, and densely populated cities of Europe, where land supply is highly constrained and, in many cases, shrinking, where the occupier base is both diverse and dynamic, and where our ability to drive performance through active asset management is strongest. The remaining 1/3 is represented by big box logistics assets. Here, we own and manage one of the best-positioned, most modern portfolios in Europe, offering stable, secure income with more moderate rental growth and asset management opportunities, but with more development potential. No one else has this quality and structure of portfolio, and it's simply irreplicable. Let's now take a moment to talk about occupier demand, which continues to be supported by these four enduring long-term structural trends.
Undoubtedly, these forces have been dampened by the macro over the past 18 months, most recently by all the noise associated with potential trade wars following Liberation Day. That said, overall European take-up remains close to pre-pandemic averages. What's been missing from the market are the larger pre-let or build-to-suit projects, as occupiers have chosen to delay big investment decisions in the face of this macro uncertainty. We know from direct conversations with customers that they do want to expand and take new space, but uncertainty has meant that they've been less keen to commit to something that might not be fully operational for two or three years. Instead, they've been much more short-term focused, often taking second-hand or speculatively developed space to satisfy their immediate needs rather than committing forward. Right now, though, we do feel more optimistic about the market. The e-commerce sector is becoming more active again.
One particular global online retailer is out looking for space after a two-year hiatus. We're also seeing new players enter the European market. For example, we've signed six deals with one particular Chinese e-commerce business in the last month alone, covering multiple geographies. We're observing more activity amongst 3PLs. Generally, we're seeing good new inquiries and a strengthening of our pipeline of near-term Pre-let in recent months. What have we actually signed in the first half of 2025? You can see here it's GBP 31 million of new rent commitments, with the vast majority coming from the existing portfolio. The relatively small contribution from development, which is the red bit of the bar, is reflecting exactly what I've just been talking about. In fact, if you also look at the bar for the second half of 2024, you'll see that development lettings have been low for a good 12 months.
I'll talk about the future pipeline shortly. In the meantime, our asset management teams have delivered some impressive performance from the existing portfolio. We signed over 60 lettings of existing space, some with existing occupiers expanding or moving around within the portfolio, and also welcomed several new customers into the portfolio. The logos on the right give you just a flavor of some of the active customers. We've continued to push rents where we can. For example, we achieved a new record rent of GBP 35 per square foot on one of our estates in Park Royal. The highlight of the period is that we completed over 100 rent reviews, renewals, and re-gears, which have produced about GBP 10 million of new income.
Now, with the timing of lease events being weighted to the second half and a more encouraging development picture, we're expecting the second half of the year to be quite a lot stronger than H1 in terms of new rent commitments. Digging into that reversion a bit more, we achieved, on average, a 55% uplift in our U.K. rent reviews and renewals, with over 80% being achieved on some leases in Heathrow and East London. This is our fourth consecutive year of impressive reversion capture, and it's set to continue. Meanwhile, occupancy has improved very slightly to 94.3%, and retention has stayed very high at 90%. This partly reflects the market dynamics I referred to earlier, with more occupiers tending to stay put rather than expand into new space.
It also reflects, I believe, the quality and the mission-critical nature of the space we provide, along with our excellent customer service. You can see here that the portfolio is currently 15% reversionary, most of which has arisen since 2021 and mostly in the U.K. since we have annual indexation uplifts on the continent. That gives us GBP 116 million of rental uplift to capture, GBP 67 million of which comes up for review or renewal in the next three years. This will more than offset the GBP 25 million impact of refinancing that Soumen told you about and should support attractive earnings and dividend growth even before considering the contribution from development. Before moving on to development, just a few remarks about our investment activity.
We went into quite a lot of detail with our full-year results as to our approach to capital allocation and how our focus on total returns drives our portfolio choices. After a very active and successful year of disposals in 2024, we've not pushed the button on too many sales so far this year. Frankly, that's because investor sentiment has been dampened by the macro, and we feel better pricing will come later. We've remained selective about investment acquisitions. These, of course, tend to be opportunistic in terms of timing, and they always depend on us finding the right quality of assets that complement our existing portfolio and offer creative, risk-adjusted returns.
The acquisitions we completed so far this year have all been via SELP, which included the former Tritax EuroBox assets in Germany and the Netherlands, plus a modern logistics partner near Prague, which together represent great additions to the SELP portfolio. Development remains the focus of our capital deployment, given the more attractive returns it offers to us. However, the lower-than-expected level of pre-let signings in the first half does mean that we've pushed back the start dates of some projects, and we are reducing our CapEx guidance for FY 2025, which we now expect to be around GBP 400 million. Let's now talk about development. We completed six projects in the first half, equating to GBP 19 million of new rent. 92% of it was leased as at the end of June, and it's expected to deliver an attractive yield of 7.7%.
All of it was rated BREEAM Excellent or higher, reflecting our determination to develop the most sustainable and energy-efficient space for our customers. Looking forward, we have GBP 50 million of rent in our current and near-term pipeline, GBP 34 million of which is projects currently under construction, and GBP 16 million is associated with near-term Pre-let. Combined, they're expected to deliver a 7.3% development yield. Roughly 50% of it is pre-leased, or 32% if you look solely at what's under construction. Now, that's lower than our usual 60% to 70% run rate. As you can see from the chart on the top right, the absolute volume of spec development is actually pretty similar to normal levels. The missing piece, again, is the big Pre-let that I mentioned earlier.
Regarding the spec space that's under construction, half of it is in our German urban portfolio, where we're seeing strong demand, and about half of that is already leased, under offer, or part of active leasing conversations. There's also some quite encouraging news on potential Pre-let, which we refer to as our near-term pipeline. These are projects which are signed subject to some conditionality or where we've agreed terms with the occupier but are going through legal documentation. The volume of these dropped off quite materially during 2024, and you can see that they remained low through to the end of the year. That explains why we've signed fewer Pre-let in the last 12 months. However, as you can also see, it's picked up again. We currently have seven projects in that near-term pipeline representing GBP 16 million of rent.
While that's not quite back at the level we've been running for most of the last decade, it's much healthier than it was. Behind this, we're discussing about 30 other customer requirements. On top of the current and the near-term projects, we have an estimated GBP 356 million of additional rent associated with our remaining land bank, which we'll build out over the coming years. From the bars on the pictures on the right-hand side, you can see that the opportunity set is weighted slightly towards urban, and it's also weighted more to the U.K. than the continent. You'll see from the map that we have opportunities in most of our existing markets. What I can tell you is these are absolutely terrific sites in great locations.
The returns from this land bank are attractive, with an average development yield of about 7.5% or above 10% on a cash-on-cash basis, excluding the land cost. On top of that, we also have a pipeline of land options providing an additional GBP 123 million of further opportunity. Bringing together the opportunity from our existing portfolio and our development pipeline, as we usually do, we still have the ability to more than double our rent roll over the coming years. The existing portfolio offers the potential to add GBP 255 million through rent freeze burning off, leasing up the vacant space, and capturing reversion. The development pipeline offers a further GBP 529 million of opportunity through completing our current and near-term development projects, as well as building out our land bank and options, including the assumption of power shell data centers only. There's additional upside in the form of redevelopments of existing assets.
The chart doesn't factor in any further ERV growth or indexation. It doesn't include the accretive effects of our capital recycling activities, and it doesn't include the potential upside from the development of fully fitted as opposed to power shell data centers. This brings me to the final section of our presentation. As you know, we've been operating in the data center market for over 20 years now. We have a strong understanding of that market, relationships with the major data center operators, and an established data center team. Therefore, we've had a head start on most others in this space. Today, we have 34 data centers leased as power shells or land leases, and our data center portfolio represents GBP 56 million of headline rent, growing to over GBP 60 million with projects under construction, so around 7% or 8% of rent roll.
This equates to half a gigawatt of capacity, and mostly it's in slow. We've been working hard over the last couple of years to expand the opportunity set by sourcing land and power across the established and emerging data center markets of Europe. In February, we shared an overview of our 2.3 GW Land-enabled Power Bank, showing the 1.8 GW of development potential. We also provided an indication of the key markets were this capacity sits. We've not updated the numbers on this slide. We intend to do that annually. However, we have been progressing the pipeline, firming up the certainty and timing of energy commitments and adding to the size of the opportunity. Even what we've shown you here represents a massive opportunity for SEGRO. It's one of the biggest Power Banks that anyone in Europe controls. It's across multiple geographies with about 30 different sites.
Most of these sites are located in attractive, established availability zones near major population centers and business centers, where demand is expected to grow faster than the supply of sites with power. In most cases, we have certainty or at least a high degree of confidence that power and planning will be forthcoming. Given the scale of the opportunity in front of us, we've also been reviewing our data center strategy. In March, we announced the creation of a joint venture with Pure Data Centres Limited to develop our first fully fitted data center. This was a neat deal that brought together a piece of land in Park Royal that we'd recently taken back for redevelopment, with 70 MVA of power that our joint venture partner has brought to the table.
Jointly, we intend to develop a 56 MW IT-load data center that we're targeting to pre-let to a hyperscaler on a net lease basis. It's a large potential investment, about GBP 1 billion of gross capital, but the funding structure using non-recourse development finance means that our equity commitment is relatively modest. The anticipated returns are good, with a 9% to 10% yield on cost and a very attractive return on equity for SEGRO. By making our first steps into the fully fitted space in this way, SEGRO will benefit from the experience and impressive capabilities of our joint venture partner whilst creating a lot of value out of a relatively small plot of land. Today, the JV itself is up and running and is on track to submit a planning consent in the second half of this year, and we're targeting to sign a pre-let next year.
With that in mind, what is our data center strategy going forward? It's very clear. It's all about optimizing the value creation opportunity and making the most of the sought-after and scarce land and power positions that we control. Now, let me explain what I mean. In some respects, power shells and fully fitted data centers are similar. At least the building structure is going to be the same for each. For the fully fitted model, we would also build the internal data halls and install the machinery and equipment, so things like backup generators, cooling systems, etc., whilst the customer would install and operate their own IT equipment, so the servers.
There is considerably more technical complexity involved in building a fully fitted data center, which is why we're likely to work with experienced partners on our initial ventures into this space. There is also a lot more capital intensity involved in developing a fully fitted DC. Since we expect both these models to deliver returns well above our cost of capital, there is an attraction in deploying the additional capital into fully fitted DCs since the economic profit generation, or the value creation, if you like, should be considerably higher. It is these potentially superior economics that have attracted us to move further up the value curve in the right circumstances so that we can capture more of the economic profit embedded within these rare sites.
We're not saying that everything will be fully fitted from here onwards. It is going to be very much a case-by-case, site-by-site assessment, evaluating the commercial opportunity, the supply-demand dynamics, the timing considerations, and ultimately the expected returns and the risks involved in each opportunity. The truth is, there are rarely two sites that will look the same. We will be flexible in our approach. We've successfully developed and leased over 20 power shells in recent years, and I'm sure we'll do more in the future. Now we have the capability and the flexibility to follow both models. Indeed, there will also be some situations where we choose to simply sell the land. I know the analysts listening today will be keen to get an idea of how many fully fitted data centers we might do, along with the timing and more precise figures to help with the modeling.
I'm afraid we're just not going to provide that information at this stage because there are too many moving parts. To give you a rough idea, we're currently looking at a handful of sites with something in the region of 300 MVA capacity that could potentially go down this fully fitted route. To conclude, and maybe coming back to the key messages that I shared with you at the start of the presentation, our prime portfolio of assets in the most supply-constrained markets is delivering strong like-for-like growth in rental income, which is underpinning attractive earnings growth. The embedded rent reversion plus the leasing up of good quality vacant space will support more of this in the coming years. We will add to this through indexation, further market rental growth, and the benefits of our active asset management. There is further upside from development.
Right now, development volumes are relatively modest, particularly compared to the past few years and where the future potential sits. As I have explained, there are encouraging signs that development Pre-let are picking up again. With over GBP 500 million of estimated rent at a DY of between 7% and 8% compared to the current marginal cost of funding of, say, 4%, there is every reason to believe that as development volumes improve, we can drive our earnings growth rate towards the high single-digit level that we have averaged over the past eight years. On top of that, the 1.8 GW of capacity in our Land-enabled Power Bank and our flexibility to deliver on this both as power shells and fully fitted data centers provides us with a very significant further value creation opportunity.
These factors mean that SEGRO is well primed to continue delivering profitable growth in both income and dividends in the years ahead. Thank you for your attention. We are going to move now to questions, and we will be joined for those by James Craddock, our U.K. Managing Director, Marco Simonetti, who runs Continental Europe, and Andrew Pilsworth, who leads on data centers. We will take the first questions from the conference call line, and then we will go to the webcast. Ada, I think over to you to run the Q&A, please. If you can, by the way, please limit.
Thank you, David.
I was just going to say, could you please limit it to one question for starters, just to give everybody a chance to answer a question?
Thank you so much, David.
Just a reminder, you can press star one to ask a question on the conference line. The first question comes from Frédéric Renard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to come back on one of your comments. You said that you expect H2 to be quite a lot stronger in terms of rent commitment. I just want to have a view on where you think it will happen and maybe, liaising back with your development requirement CapEx that you cut by around 20%, do you think you could surprise up positively the market if development comes back? Thank you.
The comment I made about the second half being stronger than the first half is a combination of two things, really. One is that. We know the timing of lease events.
In other words, we know what dates rent reviews are due, and we know where current negotiations are on a bunch of open rent reviews. That's why I think I said we secured GBP 10 million of rent from reviews in the first half. We've got great visibility that we'll be reporting quite a bit more than that in the second half. Even before taking account of space under offer, and there's some of that vacant space that's under offer, we're pretty sure the second half will be stronger. That's the primary driver on that piece. The second bit is around development Pre-let. I mentioned we've got GBP 16 million of pre-let income that is quite well advanced. Some of it actually has already become unconditional in the second half, and hopefully the rest of it will do also.
Two reasons why we think both parts of the bar that we showed you in the first half will be bigger in the second half. In terms of what does that do for CapEx, I think it depends on how quickly we get on site with some of those Pre-let. That's the key factor. Realistically, we don't think we'll have got on site fast enough to have materially changed the likely CapEx that we'll have in the full year this year. We still think probably GBP 400 million is the right number for this year. Clearly, getting on site with those projects sooner rather than later will be a key determinant of how much we spend next year.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Rob Jones from BNP Paribas. You may proceed.
Thank you. Yeah, morning, team. My one question was just on the London Urban Logistics portfolio.
If you had any figure for either the change in occupancy over the last six months or how ERVs are growing in that specific part of your wider portfolio. Thank you.
Yeah, good morning, Rob. Thanks for your question. James is sitting right here. I'll let him answer that one.
Yeah, thanks, David. Morning, Rob. As you know, we report on our urban vacancy, which is circa around 90% at the moment, which is broadly stable from the last period. What I can tell you is that we've got some good interest and conversations on our existing portfolio. About a third of our London vacancy is either under offer, in active conversations, or with proposals out to customers.
Thank you very much.
The vacancy is 10%, not 90%. The occupancy is 90%. Thank you. Just very clear on that.
Cheers, guys. Thank you.
Next question is from Marios Pastou from Bernstein. You may proceed.
Great. Thanks. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you for my question. Just on your fully fitted data scheme, maybe if you could provide some comments around any discussions you're having with a potential occupier. I appreciate this is targeting a pre-let in 2026, but if you could maybe provide a bit of an update here, it will be useful. Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, Andrew Pilsworth here. He's spending a lot of time on that and all matters data center. Why don't you cover that, Andrew?
Yeah, absolutely. Morning. The key focus for us on our site, key focus for us on our site at Premier Park right now, we're making good progress. The key focus for us, as David mentioned in his script, is progressing the planning application.
We're in continual discussion with customers, including hyperscalers, and we're very, very confident about the prospects for this site. As David also mentioned, the target remains to do a pre-let in 2026.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Zachary Gauge from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Morning, everyone. Just a question for me on capitalized interest. I think you're guiding to that being, give or take, flat this year versus last year. Could you just sort of talk through the mechanics of that? Maybe I'm thinking about this too simplistically, but I would have thought as your CapEx guidance has fallen and you're obviously spending less on development and you've got schemes which have now started to complete from previous years of stronger pre-let activity, that that number should be coming down.
If it's not coming down in this year, should we be expecting it to start coming down in 2026 and 2027?
Do I say that, Zach? So,
yeah, please.
You're absolutely right. We capitalize interest against projects that are active. Obviously, the most visibly active are the ones that we are building new buildings on for Pre-let or through spec. We're also active on sites like Radlett, in Berlin and others where we're putting infrastructure work in place in order to build the buildings in future. That work is also capitalized as well. When we start the work on site, the whole project and therefore the land with it goes into our capitalized bucket. That's why you're not seeing the capitalized number fall so much.
Okay. To try to think about that, though, in terms of earnings growth, is it fair to assume that unless the Pre-let therefore pick up and start to generate the rental income off those sites, that that is going to be a headwind at some point?
No, I don't think it is. In the extreme event that we never lease those or never lease the buildings on that land, then yes. That's, I think, an extreme case. What I think we've got is obviously a delay that we're seeing in terms of when we're getting these Pre-let signed up.
It actually will not really change the ultimate outcome, which is when these buildings are finished and leased, you'll see the rent come onto the income statement, and you'll see the interest that applies to essentially both the build cost, the infrastructure cost, and the land also come onto the income statement as well. It will make no difference to the earnings impact at all.
Okay. Thanks.
Next question is from Suraj Goyal from Green Street. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. It's just on the ERVs. If I understand correctly, the ERV guidance across the big box and urban on average is approximately 3% to 4%. Obviously, ERV only grew by 1% in the first half, particularly weak on the continent at 0.4%.
I appreciate there were some nuances, but are you confident that this will pick up towards the end of the year towards 3%, or is this now the expectation for the foreseeable future?
I think it ultimately depends on the occupier markets. It's very hard to give any real forecast on a three or six-month basis because it's such a short period. It depends on lease events. Quite often, if you look at the overall number of Pre-let done in the market, that's low. We know that, and that means the opportunity to create and set new market evidence is more limited in that space. If you look across our numbers, trailing the 12-month average is 2.7% rental growth, so slightly below our long-term guidance range. At this stage, we don't see any reason to change our forward guidance. We're still comfortable with what we've put out there.
Second half, we'll see. We signed 60 lettings in the first half of the year. I can't tell you at this juncture where the 60 or 70 lettings we'll do in the second half are going to settle. Certainly, we feel that rents are moving forward, but we're not quite at the same rate that we expect on a midterm basis.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Zheng Quan from Kempen. You may proceed.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. When highlighting that your disposals were below run rate for H1, you mentioned that investor sentiment has been dampened and that you expect better pricing for your disposals later. Taking this into consideration, how do you see potential for opportunistic acquisitions being on the other side of the table?
Yeah, I mean, we've got our eyes and ears open across the business, always looking for accretive opportunities where the returns look great and the portfolio fit is strong. I think we've made it very clear. We've got a ton of opportunity in our development pipeline through the existing industrial logistics plans we have, plus data centers. Our priority, given the choices, is to deploy capital through the development route. We'll certainly make accretive acquisitions if the right ones come along. Ada?
Okay. We will move to next question from Jonathan Kownator from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning. You had impressive reversion, obviously, this half. Your overall reversion in the portfolio is now 15%. There is increasing supply teams in the market from market data. Can you explain how you're seeing that reversion shape up over the next sort of 12, 18 months?
Are you going to be able to continue capturing these levels, or is that going to fall quickly as you obviously capture that reversion, that impressive track record that you're developing at this stage?
Yeah. Look, morning, Jonathan. We put a slide in, didn't we, showing the timing of when the reversion comes up for capture. Clearly, that's assuming flat rents. We're not expecting rents to be flat. As we've said, we're expecting rents to revert to the, or the growth rate to revert to our long-term guidance. Whilst we're not going to be, I don't think we're going to be putting 5% or 10% per annum on market rents, we think it's perfectly reasonable to expect 3%, 4%, 5%, that kind of level. Yes, the total amount of reversion will shrink over time, but it's over a multi-year basis. The reversion never gets captured in one year.
Even if you've got a year or two of softer market rental growth, as long as it reverts to the level we think it will, that should mean we can sustain strong like-for-like growth for quite a few years to come. We're not too worried about that tailing off. Frankly, if it's a little bit. If it's a little bit lower, sooner or later, the development engine that Soumen referred to us will start turning faster as well. I think what's really attractive about this portfolio is the combination of the strong like-for-like rental growth and the ability to really run that development engine quite fast, with data centers offering some cream on top of that.
The new supply that you're seeing is not something to worry about anymore with your assets?
No, we're really not worried about supply levels anywhere, frankly.
In the sub-markets we're in, it's pretty well constrained. Vacancy rates are a little bit up on where they were, for example, during the pandemic and soon thereafter. Overall, vacancy rates in all of our key markets are pretty modest, frankly. There is not a lot of new space being built on a speculative basis right now in our markets.
It's mostly old space or lower-quality assets, you're saying?
There's a bit of older space coming back, but mostly not competing with what we're offering and where we're located.
I mean, John, the good news is, as David said, you've seen vacancy tick down in our portfolio as a whole. You've seen ERVs up 1%, which tells you that there's still good rental tension there. Incentives on our standing portfolio are actually down a touch across half 124 to half 125. The underlying operating conditions are still pretty healthy.
That reversion capture, and we sort of laid out the 2025, 2026, 2027 amounts totaling GBP 67 million, I think, they're very visible, and we're very confident of capturing them, and more, frankly, as more rental growth comes through.
Great. Thank you. Very helpful.
Next question is from Paul May from Barclays.
Morning, guys. Just keeping it to one at the moment. You were confident the full year on sort of developments in the outlook for the operational market and tenant take-up, which subsequently proved to be a bit too optimistic given the outturn over the first half and obviously the guidance reduction in CapEx now. You're now confident again that we're going to get an uptick in that improvement coming through in the occupied markets and development. What risk is there that actually that also proves to be too optimistic and we don't see that coming through?
I think we've seen from some of your European peers a little bit of a more subdued outlook. Just wondering the sort of differentiation you're seeing in your optimism that it will pick up now. Is there any risk to that?
Yeah. I think it's a fair challenge, Paul. We've had various points over the last 12 months, right back to mid-last year when we were starting to see some green shoots and optimistic things were going to pick up. Frankly, the geopolitics and the macro has produced a few rabbits out of the hat. It'd be wrong to say we're through all that because who knows where some of these trade deals are going to settle.
I'd say the real reason why we've got more confidence at this time it will actually be the start of something is that pipeline of near-term Pre-let that we've actually got ready to start. If you look back at each of the quarterly statements we've put out right back to the middle of last year, we didn't have those near-term projects ready to go. We do now. We know we've got customers who want to take that space despite having factored in all that macro uncertainty. I think they come to a point when occupiers say, "We need to get on and take some decisions and start planning for the future." It feels like that's there. Now, what the geopolitics does over the next couple of months, who knows? You can't discount that having an impact. Right now, the evidence is in that near-term pipeline that things are picking up.
Thank you.
Next question is from Callum Marley from Kolytics. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question. Just kind of a follow-up to that, I guess. You've outlined the strong organic and earnings growth and mentioned that the portfolio is impossible to replicate, yet performance year to date has been one of the lowest in the global industrial sector across global REITs. When you're speaking to investors and potential new investors, what are they waiting to see to get excited about the SEGRO growth story again? Put another way, what do investors not understand about the SEGRO growth story?
I hesitate to answer that, given I'm speaking to a call full of investors. To telling you what I think you're thinking is a slightly dangerous place to start. However, I'll start with something I was struck by just this morning.
We've had a real glut of results announcements in the last 24 hours, as I think all of you are aware. I haven't checked this precisely, but I think our earnings and dividend growth is right up there. It's funny, when I look at some of the commentary attached to some of the others, which are described as strong. In our case, that earnings and dividend growth is sort of, "We've seen that, done that. Let's talk about development." I think if there's a single thing I think the market's slightly missing, it is this strength of the underlying portfolio to drive extremely healthy levels of return. The optionality that comes from a fantastic land bank increases that overall return potential through development. It's in that order. We haven't even started talking about data centers in terms of the results over the last 24 hours.
I'm sure you'll all have seen Meta and Microsoft last night. You've added a lot more around the kind of investment they intend to make into the world of AI, which then will further support our data center story. I think there's a little bit of looking at a single area, which is development, which is actually one part of a much wider business. I'd say actually at these levels where our shares offer 4.5% dividend yields and a very, very high confidence and visible ability to grow that at very healthy levels from here, I think that's probably—I think there's a little bit of glass half empty when I sort of look at it glass half full from where I'm sitting.
This is the last question from the telephone line. We will now move to questions on the webcast.
Yes, we have just a couple of questions from the webcast. The first one is with regards to the mention of record rents at Park Royal. Can you give us any more color on this? What sort of occupier demand are you seeing in this part of the portfolio, etc.?
James, do you want to answer that?
Yeah, no, sure. Look, I think as I've referred back to our capital markets day, our London portfolio generally, in particular our West London portfolio, has an incredibly diverse customer base. There isn't a single sector that necessarily dominates in terms of the deals that we're seeing. I think the diversity of customer base is one of the strengths of the London portfolio, and we're continuing to see that play through.
Thank you.
We have another question, particularly on strength of structural trends on the continent and what we're seeing there in terms of e-commerce-led demand and whether defense, given some of the recent announcements, could be a potential source of demand.
Marco, do you want to pick that one up?
Y es. Good morning, all. This is an emerging sector, and we are monitoring defense as many other sectors that David mentioned before in the speech.
Perfect. There's one more that's just come through. Some news recently on open market rent reviews in the U.K. Do we think there's any impact of that on the SEGRO portfolio?
Can James answer?
Yeah, thanks. I think from a SEGRO perspective, we anticipate the impact of that to be limited. As you've already seen, we've got an under-rented portfolio. You can see that from the reversion that we've still got there to capture in the portfolio.
Also, it's this piece that we have curated a portfolio in the U.K. that we are in the strongest markets, which we expect to perform better than anywhere else over the medium and longer term. Ultimately, we're still primed for good rental growth, and it should be limited impact.
Yeah. Not really something we lose any sleep over that one. Okay.
That's it for my side.
I think we're done. Great. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening. Have a great day. We'll look forward to catching up with many of you, no doubt, in the coming days and weeks. Have a good summer.
Thank you.