Good morning and welcome. It's great to see so many familiar faces here in our events center in Salisbury House, and a big welcome to those on our webcast this morning. I'm Lawrence Hutchings, Chief Executive, and I'm joined today by Dave Benson, our CFO. This week, in Monday to be exact, marks my first anniversary at Workspace. Our agenda for this morning: we have a high-level overview of performance in the first- half. I'll hand over to Dave Benson to take us through the financials in detail. Then I'll take us through our first update on strategy since we launched back in June, which was five short months ago, and we'll then move to Q&A. It's been a very busy time for Workspace. The economic backdrop continues to be challenging, not least because of the uncertainty around the upcoming budget.
We are controlling the controllables and taking a series of actions to deliver the Fix, Accelerate, and Scale strategy that we laid out in June. We're starting with our focus on stabilizing, then rebuilding occupancy. Before I go into that, I'll summarize the first half performance, including some early and encouraging success indicators. There should be no surprises on this slide. We are clear on our expectations. The performance in the first- half has played out broadly as we expected. Back in June, I said things were going to get tougher before they got better. Let's start with the performance metrics. I'll highlight a few. On the light blue line, like-for-like occupancy is down, as we said, and that's driven a fall in rental income and also in valuations. Importantly, we've taken cost out of the business, so our admin expenses are down 5.6%, roughly GBP 2 million annualized.
We've held our dividend flat, and it's well underpinned by our cash flow because we understand how hugely important dividend is to our shareholders. On the dark blue line, Dave Benson will talk through this in detail, but our valuation movement has been driven by lower occupancy and contracted rent, along with a fall in ERVs, and this reflects our pragmatic approach to pricing, although importantly, yields have held broadly flat. I'd like to provide more detail on what's driving the operational business. These are the interesting lead indicators that I referred to, and they demonstrate our strategic actions are gaining traction. Conversion and retention are key, and together they drive occupancy. Inquiries are down in a softer market, but our conversion is up 1% year-on-year to 16%, and importantly, in October alone, up another percent to 17%.
Retention has also increased, and this is a key focus for us, and I'll go into some detail on that later. A new metric that we're showing this time is our NPS, Net Promoter Score. It's up 14 points to +47, which is a great achievement. Our rent per sq ft is marginally up, however, that is mostly driven by these fixed 5% annual increases or first-year increases that we have in our standard lease model. This is a strength of our business, and it means that we are never far away from some form of reversion opportunity. I'll hand over to Dave to take us through the financials. Thanks, Dave Benson.
Thanks, Lawrence Hutchings, and good morning, everyone. As Lawrence Hutchings says, we are operating in a softer economy, and we are seeing some customers deferring decisions in the run-up to, in the uncertainty area, in their run-up to the autumn budget. Against this backdrop, as the top left-hand chart on this slide shows, we had slightly fewer inquiries in the first- half of the year compared to the same period last year. However, as Lawrence Hutchings will cover later, we have been working hard, and the inquiry-to-deal conversion ratio has continued to improve. It is well above historic averages, with a significant pickup in Q2. As expected and highlighted in our quarterly trading updates, we have, however, seen a fall in like-for-like occupancy, down 2.5%, largely driven by large customers leaving the Centro Center in Camden. Excluding those vacations, like-for-like occupancy would have been down to 81.7%.
Like-for-like average rent per sq ft was broadly flat, reflecting our selective price reductions and promotions, which have helped to drive new deal conversion and customer retention. Turning to the income statement, underlying rental income increased slightly, GBP 0.5 million to GBP 67.3 million. The total rental income was down 2.9% to GBP 58.7 million, following the disposals made over the last 12 months. This was partly offset by lower administrative expenses, where we streamlined our support functions to deliver annualized savings of GBP 2 million. Net finance costs increased by GBP 1 million, reflecting a decrease in capitalized interest following the completion of Leroy House in October 2024, and also an increase in the average interest rate following repayment of GBP 80 million of 3.3% private placement notes in August 2025. Overall, trading profit after interest was therefore down 6.4% to GBP 30.6 million, with adjusted underlying earnings per share down to GBP 15.80.
There were one-off costs of GBP 4.5 million in the period, largely in respect of the restructuring of the support functions and the implementation of our new CRM system, and these, together with the decrease in the property valuation, resulted in a loss before tax of GBP 71.1 million. Taking into account the trading profit performance and confidence in the longer-term prospects for the company, we'll be paying an interim dividend of GBP 9.40 per share, in line with the prior- year. On the balance sheet, and notwithstanding the decrease in the property valuation, which I'll come back to in a moment, we've maintained our capital discipline, with trading profit funding last year's final dividend, and the proceeds from property disposals largely funding capital expenditure, resulting in net debt slightly increasing to GBP 833 million, with NTA per share of GBP 7.21.
Coming on to the valuation, overall, we saw an underlying decrease of 4%, reflecting largely lower occupancy. On this slide, we set out the valuation movements by property category. On the left-hand side, you can see the valuation as of 30th September, and on the right-hand side, you can see the movements in the period. In the first row is the like-for-like portfolio, which accounts for around three-quarters of the overall value. As you can see, the like-for-like valuation was down 3%, driven by lower occupancy, with the yield improvements largely offsetting a 2.3% decrease in ERV per sq ft. We did continue to see smaller spaces performing relatively more strongly, with units less than 1,000 sq ft seeing a decrease of 0.7% in ERV, compared to an average decrease of 3.6% for larger units.
We also saw a significantly better-than-average performance in our high conviction and pilot sites, with the valuation of pilot sites down by just 0.4% and our high conviction down by 1.6% on average. Valuation movements in the non-like-for-like categories were also impacted by decreases in ERV, which in some cases were compounded by yield expansion, particularly in Southeast offices. Turning to debt, we continue to maintain a wide range of facilities with a spread of maturities, largely fixed interest rates, and significant headroom. Over the past six months, we have successfully refinanced GBP 200 million of bank facilities, extending the maturity until 2029, as well as extending the maturity of a further GBP 215 million of facilities by one year. The facilities have the option to extend their maturities by a further year, as well as increasing facility amounts subject to lender consent.
Overall, this gives us significant flexibility, with no additional refinancing required until 2027. As I mentioned before, though, we have seen a small increase in our average cost of debt following the repayment of the GBP 80 million of private placement notes. Looking forwards, the softer economy and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty continue to create a tough operating environment. As previously announced, H2 earnings will be impacted by a number of factors, including the lower opening rent roll, although we do expect less pressure on occupancy from large customer vacations in the second half. We will see the increase in the average cost of debt, as mentioned already, but we will also see the full six-month benefit of the cost efficiencies that we implemented in the first half of the year.
We expect full-year capital expenditure of around GBP 60 million as we complete our refurbishments at Atelier House and the Biscuit Factory, alongside tactical capital light refurbishments to enhance our offering in our conviction and high conviction buildings. This capital expenditure will be offset by proceeds from property disposals. I will now hand back to Lawrence Hutchings to talk through our strategic progress.
Thanks, Dave Benson. There are three elements to our strategy: Fix, Accelerate, and Scale, and they are all underpinned by our objective to achieve operational excellence in our platform. That is the point where we're able to deliver highly efficient, sustainable growth in underlying recurring income. I call this the new workspace, where Workspace is once again a clear market leader. We've been working hard to execute over the last five months. I will go into more detail on each element over the next few slides. As we execute, we're starting to see traction, and it gives me confidence that we have the right strategy to deliver a recovery in income-led shareholder returns. I'll update you first on Fix. This is the most critical area of our strategy, and it speaks directly to occupancy, which then flows through to income, valuations, and shareholder value.
We are laser-focused on stabilizing and then rebuilding occupancy. There are two drivers to our occupancy: new customers and retaining our existing customers. Many people do not realize that in any given year, typically 90% of our revenue comes from our existing customers. The more we can retain, the better position we will be in, particularly in a market where the cost of acquiring new customers has grown. Within the retention area is our expansion and contraction of existing customers. We have almost 4,000 customers on our platform, and they have a diverse set of needs and requirements. They are dynamic, and we support them in a variety of ways. Often, this is in the shape of supporting their upsizing when they win a new piece of business, or at times when they need to contract before then expanding again. This is part of the appeal of being at Workspace.
Interestingly, our customers stay on average five and 1/2 years on an initial two-year lease. Our platform and nearly 40 years of experience supporting London's creative SMEs places us in a very strong position. However, experience, legacy, and platform in themselves are not enough. How are we driving these improvements in retention? Our customers are the owners and the CEOs of these businesses. They're in our centers daily. Therefore, the function and presentation of our buildings is absolutely critical, as is the service they receive from our center teams and especially the people that are on site every day because they interface with them all the time. We've put in place a huge amount of initiatives to support our retention.
Our customer teams are taking more responsibility and leveraging their contacts and relationships to deliver expansions, contractions, and lease renewals, which were previously run by our head office teams. We have further empowered our center teams to resolve the issues that come up on the ground. Nothing frustrates our customers more than faulty facilities, so we have to be right on top of it. Our new CRM platform now makes it easier for customers to raise issues and access a range of services and support. We are also delivering more events and value-added services. All of this action is delivering tangible results. Firstly, as I mentioned, like-for-like retention is already up 2% to 85%. In October, when our center teams took over responsibility for expansions, we saw a 12% increase versus the Q2 monthly average. Our customer satisfaction score is up 1.5% to 91.2% since March.
Our cleaning and maintenance score is up 3.9% since March. Finally, our value-add offers and skills academy has received a 9.8 out of 10 review from our customers. We are tactically investing in our buildings to create better environments, and our pilot projects are the test centers for these improvements and innovations in both our product and experience. We are investing modest sums in the areas that our research and feedback tell us matters most to our SME customers. At Vox, we have seen the most significant changes. This high conviction building has seen occupancy improve 400 basis points to 79% since we launched the project back in June. We have spent GBP 700,000 on high-impact areas, including breakout areas, receptions, meeting rooms, informal seating areas, corridors, and putting new phone booths in.
Pleasingly, our NPS at Vox has improved to +78 from +41 just a year ago. Over at the Leather Market, our NPS has increased to +37 from +16 a year ago. Occupancy at Leather Market is 82%, and being transparent, marginally down. However, that is mostly driven by the impact of a failed customer's business. Importantly, at Leather Market, we have 5,600 sq ft of space under offer. That translates to about 4% in occupancy. However, let's not just listen to my views on the impact and changes that we're making to resourcing in our centers and presentation. Francesca Paola Calate, who is our General Manager at Vox Studios, has some fascinating insights of her own on the impacts.
The impact has been incredibly positive, and we have seen a positive outcome also in the sense of community as it created because customers feel much more confident to bring people in and to spend much more time with us. My role has completely changed because before I was much more reactive, while now I'm much more proactive. The pilot has brought up also a much bigger view of our revenue, of our loss and earning. It's given me, it's empowered me to actually bring all this knowledge into customers' meetings, to understand their needs, listen to them and feedback, and get the best outcome for both of us. When it comes to renewals, when it comes to an expansion, what I try to do is to listen to the need but also match our Vox Studios commercial goals. Since the pilot started, I've managed to expand five customers.
They all were looking for a larger space, and because they love the new setting of Vox Studios, how it does look, they have decided to expand with us.
It's been really, really positive feedback. The customers really love the new space. I think it's just a real good experience and a good first impression when people walk through the door. Since we've heard from it, it's been a real wow factor now.
Fantastic. Turning to new customers. In a competitive market, how do we improve our performance in attracting new customers to our platform? It is not simply about the number of inquiries, rather the quality and relevance of those inquiries. I am pleased to say Will Abbott and the team are rising to the challenge. We are leveraging a huge amount of third-party data and market research more than at any time in our history to increase our market share of London's creators, makers, disruptors, and innovators. This has led to a 20% increase in first-choice consideration in our brand tracking over the course of the last financial year to date. This remains significantly ahead of our largest Flex peers. The broadcast video on-demand ad campaign that I know many of you have seen has resulted in a 22% increase in booked viewings during the campaign period.
Our new drive on targeted social and digital ads has delivered a 40% increase in click-through rate to our website from LinkedIn. Whilst our website accounts for circa 60% of all our leasing deals, brokers remain important, especially in our larger spaces. Our increased focus on engagement with these firms has seen viewings from brokers up 12% over the period. Our focus on local marketing has driven an increase in walk-in viewings, especially at our lower occupancy sites, including the Chocolate Factory, Westbourne Studios, and Screenworks. Better leads are translating to better conversion. We're working across the board. We're training and coaching our sales team and building a more commercial mindset. We've reviewed their incentivization, and we're taking a more pragmatic approach to commercial terms. We've freed the leasing team up from expansions, contractions, and renewals to focus on new business solely.
We're trialing new initiatives like furnishing units, inclusive deals, and more flexible terms. As you heard from Francesca, the center teams also have an important role to play. They're busy taking viewings, proactively improving units based on feedback from customers, viewings, and from our sales and leasing teams, and they're undertaking common area upgrades and maintenance on a more regular basis. We're doubling down on technology, and I'm really excited about how we're using AI. Elodie, our sales agent, is accelerating conversion, working 24 hours a day when our SME customers are online. Viewings on a Monday are up 25%, and there is more to come from Elodie. We're also using AI to generate floor plans and unit layouts, along with this cool tool that enables our sales team to present the unit in several different design and layout options for our customers that struggle with spatial reasoning.
You'll see the majority of our units on the website now have CGIs to help with space planning. We have more improvements coming with our customer site, including a new landing page and improved navigation. I'm pleased to say we've launched the new landing page today. What are the next steps on Fix? As I've said, empowering our center teams, shifting accountability to the coalface, and incentivizing them to provide better customer experiences whilst driving revenue. It's working. We're going to roll out this evolution of the structure across our portfolio. This creates a need for better data and revenue management tools, which we are continuing to enhance and roll out. Finally, this focus on driving revenue is being supported by our first Head of Revenue, James Graham, who joins us from IWG in early January.
James Graham will oversee the sales and retention initiatives across the platform. As you can see, we are 120% focused and moving at pace to address the occupancy challenge. Importantly, we're making progress, but we appreciate we have a lot of work to do. Turning now to accelerate. This is about optimizing our GBP 2.3 billion of real estate portfolio and our platform. We're fond of saying we have two verticals in our business, a super fast-moving, dynamic operating business, which delivers circa GBP 140 million of revenue a year. Sitting next to that, a real estate investment business that optimizes our real estate portfolio. These two verticals are supported by a series of corporate functions. I just want to take a moment to remind everyone of our conviction-led approach following the extensive portfolio review we did earlier this year.
We're on track to meet our two-year target of GBP 200 million, which equates to circa 30, sorry, 20 assets. We've sold GBP 52 million so far this year, which is broadly in line with book value. That's on top of the GBP 100 million of disposals we made last year. Most of these assets are outside London. They're smaller. They're not in our SME business format, and they don't speak to our target customers. We have a further pipeline of disposals, and we're constantly reviewing our portfolio with a very critical eye. We'll not shy away from recycling more, including the change of use opportunities where we believe the SME market has shifted in that location. Capital discipline is always important, especially given where we are in our recovery.
As we stand here today, one of the best uses of our capital is rebuilding occupancy and letting up the space we already own. The swing from vacant to occupied is circa 130% of the rent when we include the empty business rates and service charge liabilities. Whether this is investing in pilot-type projects that you have just seen or the subdivision of larger spaces into our smaller studio formats, the impacts on occupancy, income, income growth, adjusted profit, and valuations is meaningful. This includes investing modest amounts on new sources of demand to accelerate our rebuilding of occupancy. Importantly, we do not have any further large projects, as Dave Benson mentioned, beyond the completion in the coming months of the Biscuit Factory and Atelier House in Camden.
Instead, we are focused 100% on leasing the floor space we already own, which means we have structurally lower CapEx commitments for the next phase of our recovery. We have guided to lower leverage, reducing our interest drag and improving our balance sheet metrics. We have a proud history of dividends and dividend growth, which are fully covered by our trading profit. Our guiding focus is on ensuring we always have the most appropriate capital structure and on delivering shareholder returns. Accelerate also incorporates the next phase of our pilot projects, which is now moving into business as usual following their success. We have selected China Works and Cargo Works in Southwark. These are beautiful, characterful workspace buildings in amazing locations in what I call London's creative hinterlands, out of Zone 1 through to Zones 3 and 4.
These are locations where our extensive research tells us there is a high proportion of our target SME customers and their staff living, working, and socializing. Growing occupancy through targeted investment in high-impact areas enables us to drive income growth. These projects are high impact. They're efficient use of capital with modest investment, delivering tangible near-term results on both conversion and retention. We said when we launched our strategy, all three elements started together immediately. We're confident in our ability to fix occupancy and deliver capital recycling to optimize our portfolio and our platform. We're going to be creative and entrepreneurial where we see growth opportunities within our capital constraints that deliver immediate impact on our occupancy.
There are ways that we can capitalize on our unique real estate customer base, adding other complementary formats to our larger campuses that create new sources of demand and provide services to both existing and potential customers. Cube is an example. More on that in a moment. MicroStorage is another example. There are others we are monitoring, targeting different high-growth sectors within London's dynamic and growing SME space. We believe we are uniquely positioned to access these opportunities as both owner and operator of our buildings. Turning now to Cube, this is a great example of our strategy at work. We're unlocking an exciting new source of demand for London's growing content creators. Many don't know London is one of the world's leading locations for content, and there are well-established Flex platforms, including the Ministry in Elephant and Castle.
Our deal with Cube at the Old Dairy is one of a pipeline of sites we've identified in London, as we support Cube's growth with our real estate and modest amounts of capital. The combined investment is less than it would cost us to fit out the space, and we're excited by the halo opportunities we can create for like-minded businesses to locate near the Cube facility. We're also exploring ways of working together, including creating podcast studios in our assets that are operated or powered by Cube. We are looking forward to learning from each other operationally over the coming months. We welcome Amin and Nick to the Workspace platform. Turning now to next steps.
One of the most insightful things for me over the last 12 months and the most eye-opening things has been to get out into our buildings and visit our customers and just see how truly diverse and successful some of them are. We've started a podcast series, and I think some of you have seen the Wild cosmetics company podcast I've done with Charlie Bowes, who is the founder there, which is a phenomenal success story. Within five short years, he's just sold that business for GBP 230 million to Unilever. There are many others within our business. One of our challenges is how do we get the Workspace story and how diverse our customer base is and how our studio spaces are used by such a variety of different people in such a variety of different ways.
We kicked off a video at a strategy session, which we got really good feedback from. Every time we take sell side or investors off to our buildings, they always come back pleasantly surprised about what they've seen. In fact, we had an investor tour a few weeks ago, one of our larger shareholders, and he said to me after walking around the Leather Market, he said, "This restores my faith in London." We have a video for you just to provide more insight into the types of customers we host on our platform and what they're doing with their businesses.
People need an incentive to come in, and quality of space is a huge part of that. In addition to that, community and engaging on a human level, that's what's really, really important.
We were in desperate need of a space for ourselves that we could create our own identity. We've curated our space. We can work with materials and colors and finishes and create palettes and moods that work for our projects. Our neon branding and the furniture we've managed to put into the space really reflects our brand identity. We were able to build our own office cubicle for our founder and director. We've also fit a sort of wine bar setup here in the office, which I think is pretty unique. Having the space to do it in Workspace has been key. We love working here at Workspace because we have been able to adapt this so completely to our business needs. Being able to exist in a space that allows us to do all of those things is really special.
With Workspace being such a community for us as jewelers, we have the luxury of having our fine metal casters within the same building. We have diamond setters, mounters, engravers, and polishers. It is all under one roof. This is really the perks of being in this building. We are a community. We are always going to be part of that community as long as we are in Workspace. We have met a lot of businesses and been able to collaborate with them as well, which has only helped grow our business more. This is the second space that we have had in this particular building since we moved in. I think that was one of the things that really appealed to us is that flexibility that as the team grows, as the business grows, we can also move into larger spaces. From year one to now, we have grown at 400% year-on-year.
What's been brilliant about working for Workspace with that growth is now we're starting to hire people. We're going to go from three to six people in about three months. When we found Workspace, it was just amazing because it was somewhere we could call home as a brand. It all happens at Workspace.
Fantastic. We remain laser-focused on our fix, accelerate, and scale strategy, starting with rebuilding occupancy, which will drive a recovery in earnings and deliver shareholder value. To put the occupancy challenge in perspective, if we converted every single inquiry we had in a single month, we wouldn't have an occupancy challenge. I appreciate we're not going to do that, but it gives you some indication of the volume that we're dealing with in terms of inquiries and the deliverability of what we need to do.
We're closer to our customers than we've ever been, and we're far more responsive. This is giving me confidence that we're seeing the early signs of progress as we presented today. However, I am aware it's early days, and we have a lot to do. We're clear what it is that we need to do and how we are going to execute, and we are executing at pace. I'd like to move now to Q&A, and we'll start with questions on the floor, and then we'll move across to the webcast. Thank you. Could I just ask that we introduce ourselves for those on the webcast so everyone knows who's asking the question? Thank you.
Good morning. Neil Green from J.P. Morgan. Two, please.
Firstly, on the occupancy side, given your lease break profile, you were able to flag the large unit vacations well ahead of time, so we saw that coming. Have you seen or are you watching any further potential large unit lease breaks potentially back in the secon- half or first- half of next year? Generally, any comments you may have around when and what level occupancy might trough out, please? Secondly, incontinency leasing activity has continued post-period end, and you've got some space under offer. Interesting to see if you can tell us any more around how those leases compare to ERV, given the ERV impact on the values in the first- half, please.
There are probably three questions there. Maybe I'll have a shot at the first one, Dave Benson. The second one, Neil, just remind me again. Second question.
Occupancy and
trough. Yeah.
Yeah.
The third one is how the deals post the period close, effectively how they look against ERV. I think Dave's probably reasonably well positioned to answer that as well. Picking up the first one, we've been very transparent about one of the key drivers of occupancy during this last period has been the vacation of a large occupier in Camden, which is where obviously our new office is, and there's a reason for that. There aren't too many 45,000 sq ft occupiers within our portfolio. There's one other large occupier in West London that we're monitoring very, very closely. I think after those two large occupiers, we stepped down a long way into the sort of 10,000-15,000, if that makes sense. There aren't many of those in our portfolio either.
We stepped down again into the sort of 5,000 sq ft-8,000 sq ft mark. The sweet spot of our business remains 300 sq ft-1,200 sq ft units. As you would appreciate, businesses come in and scale with us, effectively. There are many great examples. Some of them stay with us. Wild cosmetics company has elected to stay. We have moved out of our corporate space in Kennington to facilitate their expansion. There are other cases where that business is sold, effectively. That is what success looks like for our SME customers, some form of exit. As you appreciate, there are times where part of that exit is that the business gets taken up into the mothership, as we call it, effectively. We get that space back, and the process starts again with dividing the space back up into small units.
We are being far more pragmatic. We've seen some improvement in larger unit demand. Where that's taking place, we've been comparing that to the alternative of subdividing units. Hopefully, that answers that question. Dave Benson, I might hand over to you. We're being very careful about guiding to a trough in occupancy as you would appreciate.
I think it would be rash to guide to a trough against the macro that we've seen, particularly a week before a budget. Having said that, we are very focused, as we've talked about, on what we can control and the drivers and the early indications. Our early indications are positive. The visibility, as Lawrence talked about, in terms of the large units, which have been a big driver of the movement in the first half, are much less in the second half, which is positive.
I think we're controlling the things we can control and moving those in the right direction, absolutely. I think the other thing I would say is that there is uncertainty. As I said, I think it has resulted in some customers and potential customers deferring decisions until after the budget. When we speak to the customers, they are positive about their, overwhelmingly, they are positive about their prospects for growth next year. I think that augurs well for next year. In terms of ERVs and work pricing, we're seeing, as we saw, ERVs down in the first half, and that's really been driven by the deals we're doing. We are still doing deals that, I mean, for us, as Lawrence says, the key focus at the moment is on driving occupancy. You have a 130% return on driving it, and that is wholly our focus.
We are being creative about how we deliver that occupancy. Pricing is one of those factors. We will continue to be pragmatic on pricing.
Thank you.
Just to add to that, we're fond of saying in the business there's two levers, effectively: occupancy and rate. If occupancy comes off a little bit, we let rate off, rebuild occupancy, pull rate on, effectively. As you appreciate, supply-demand economics fundamentally within the building. Where we have tension, we can drive better rental outcomes. There's no question. What we've also realized with the pilot projects is that where we're investing and improving the environment, those rent increases at the end of that two-year lease are much easier for us to achieve.
We're getting feedback from our customers saying, "I'm okay with paying a 5% or 6% increase because I've seen you're investing in the building." Denise down the front here, I think.
Good morning. Denise Newton from Steve Phillips. I had a question. Obviously, you started to disclose retention rates, which is a new metric and will be a good guide for trends in occupancy. I just wondered, with the current rate at sort of 85%, where should we benchmark that against sort of historic retention rates? What do you think would be a realistic target for improvement in that, and how would that then impact occupancy?
Yeah. I think in recent times, the last few years, retention has slipped. There's no question. I think going back just before I joined, we had several months where retention numbers were meaningfully lower than that 82%.
As I mentioned earlier, there are really two key drivers to occupancy: what we are putting in from the top, new business, and what we are losing, effectively. As you would appreciate, in a competitive or uncertain market, the cost of customer acquisition goes up, as you would appreciate. Retaining more existing customers is fundamental to us. We have seen periods where, and obviously, we are providing averages over the reporting period. We have seen months where we are getting closer towards 90%. We are not guiding to a target at this juncture. We have gone through forensically, and Will Abbott is here in the audience today overseeing the sales function until James Graham arrives and doing a great job. We have been forensic in going through line by line those customers. As Francesca Paola Calate mentioned, we have moved from being reactive to proactive.
We're positively engaging with our customers to establish what their intentions are in advance of these lease events and seeing how we can go in and help. Sometimes help looks like contraction. Sometimes help looks like expansion. Just to expand on that for a moment, the balance over the period of expansions versus contractions has been positive to expansions, about 60/40, effectively, is the ratio we're running at the moment. It is another metric which we think is important. We will continue to update and report against these retention numbers. I think it is early for us to be providing a guide. We are doing better than we have done in recent history, effectively. We think there is a lot more that we can be doing. As I say, the pilot project's retention has improved, effectively. It is running above the averages.
That's what's giving us confidence, not just the physical changes, but the resource changes, taking the responsibility from the leasing team, effectively, across into that team. If you think about it, Francesca Paola Calate knows these people personally. These CEOs are in our business, in our centers every day. She sees them. She knows them. Now she's empowered to have those discussions as well as part of the wider discussions. We're seeing the same in Leather Market. We've now handed that up. We've already handed that across to the other center managers, and we're seeing benefits. It is a key area of focus for us.
Thanks. Good morning. Adam Shapton at Green Street. Two questions. The first one is a technical one on valuation. I might make a fool of myself with this question.
Am I right in thinking that there's a structural occupancy assumption in the valuation that the valuers take, and presumably you agree with them?
I mean, they obviously form an independent view. I mean, our view as directors is obviously it has to be materially, and we have to be comfortable with it. Different valuers take different approaches. This year, we have two valuers. We have Knight Frank as well as CPRE valuing different parts of the portfolio. They both do Redbook, very similar approach, but slightly different assumptions. There is within there an assumption around void, yes, for different properties, units, etc. The key driver, though, really is the occupancy as we have it. Contracted rent at the moment. That's really what's driving it. It's less about the endpoint. It's much more about the fact that the occupancy at the moment is lower. Yeah.
Okay. My question was, has that assumption changed in the last two years? In your statements, you've very consistently pointed to where income would be at 90% occupancy, which you might say is leading people to think about that as the structural occupancy number. Is that still right? Is that what your valuers are assuming?
That's our long-term average, isn't it, Dave Benson? Is 90%?
Yeah. I don't think there's been a fundamental shift. It's more the fact that we have a new valuer who has a slightly different approach. That's Phil.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you. On retentions and renewals, it's great to see the number increasing. If you split out those renewals from your like-for-like numbers, are you able to say what your renewal rates would be versus previous passing? I know within your like-for-likes, you've got step-ups, right, and fixed increases within terms.
I don't know. You mentioned there's people increasing and decreasing in GLA. What's the renewal spread of that?
Typically, we're better to be dealing with the existing customer from a commercial terms outcome than a new customer, typically. Typically.
Sorry. Let's say I'm paying GBP 50 a sq ft and I've renewed. What's the renewal spread? Is it versus previous passing?
The renewal spread is different. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips. The renewal spreads look different with the smaller units compared to the larger units. We're being a lot more pragmatic on large units at the moment. There's more competition in that large unit space, if that makes sense. We're being a lot more pragmatic there. I don't have the average with me.
What we know is that small unit sweet spot of our business, we've got more leverage there, if you appreciate. The renewal spreads, we'll get the 5% kickers on the first anniversary, as you appreciate, standard lease model, two years, 5% uplift year one. Effectively, we go to market at—when I say market, it's not a true market rate review, but we're able to set a rent at the end of that period. As I say, we're typically renewing at passing or marginally above, is my understanding. On the small units, the large units is where we still have some pressure.
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between small and large. Absolutely. I mean, you can see that in the other E spreads that I talked about. For the smaller units, it's a much smaller decrease.
In terms of, I think, your question around existing versus new deals, fundamentally, we are and always have been very transparent on pricing. Our pricing, you can see it on the website. Our customers talk to each other fundamentally. Yes, we're doing some promotions and deals, and new customers may benefit from some of those. There isn't as big a difference as you might perhaps imagine.
Thank you.
Morning. It's James Carswell from Peel Hunt . Just on the occupancy, can we just make sure I'm thinking about this correctly? The expansion of Wild cosmetics company Cosmetics and then your own move to Canada, that's presumably in the 80% like-for-like number you brought today. Likewise, Cube, which I think was post-period end. It was. The benefit of that is still to come in the occupancy number. Is that correct? Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, the expansion is actually post the end of September. That is not in the September occupancy number. You are right, Cube, no, that is not in there either. Neither is—so they will be taking space in the Old Dairy, but that space is currently occupied. Effectively, it will be replacing occupied space.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I have been seeing a question to Denise. Maybe on the conversion rates. I mean, it is obviously great to see it improving. What is the kind of the holy grail in terms of the conversion rate? Do you think you can get to it?
We are converting 18% roughly, Will Abbott, are we not, of deals that come into the system. We think there is capacity to improve that, get to 20%, get to 22%. I think it is in that sort of league, if that makes sense.
The flex industry uses a whole variety of different measures. Some are looking at conversion from viewing. Some are looking at conversion from inquiry, as you would appreciate. Us getting accurate benchmarks is a little challenging. We think there is definitely further improvement to come from conversion. Will Abbott, I think that's fair. Yeah.
I think back to the point on tension, I think as we start to see occupancy increasing, then we'll be more aggressive on pricing, which then means you'd expect to see conversion coming down. Our priority at the moment is to bring in customers, build occupancy, and to the point made already, once we've got that customer in place, then we can start to work with that customer, expand that customer, and push rents up over time.
Perfect. Then just final question on business rates.
I think I'm right in thinking there's some changes to operators and landlords that issue licenses rather than leases.
Correct. Yeah.
I think you typically issue leases, so it doesn't impact your sales. I mean, does that give you a bit of a competitive advantage where some of your peers are going to have to potentially pass that on to customers, or is that a very different space and not really in your market?
The leases give us an advantage in terms of mitigation. I think all the press that you're seeing at the moment, and I suspect what you're referring to, James Graham, the flexible space organization, effectively owner's organization called FlexSA. In fact, one of our team members is chair of FlexSA this year. They're lobbying government very, very actively. Council has approached these things differently, as you'd appreciate.
There's enough ambiguity in the business rating system to allow for that to happen. It really has a big impact on those operators that run hot desks. My understanding of it is that previously, the hot desk flex operators, of which we're not one, as you'd appreciate, have run an argument successfully with councils that the business rate should only apply to the desks. That's the least area. If you go to one of those operators' websites, they're leasing space by the desk, effectively. The fact that it sits in a wider environment with a whole lot of amenity, they've argued that it's really just the desk that should be rated.
My understanding is it's either City of London or Camden has effectively argued with one of the other flex operators and imposed a rating charge on them that ignores that and says, "No, no, we're charging on the entire floor plate, effectively, rates." There is a significant impact, as you'd appreciate. Fortunately, that's not how our business operates. We don't run a hot desk model, effectively. It doesn't have a direct bearing on us, as you would appreciate. We do a lot of work around business rates. We have a business rate team. We have people that help us with that. Yeah, this current issue that's getting all the press does not have an impact on us.
Perfect. Thank you.
Morning. It's Tom Mussin at Berenberg. Curious, I suppose, just on your sales agent, Elodie. How much does that cost to run?
What's the sort of equivalent number of people you might think it'd be required to drive your inquiry levels to the levels that they are? I wanted to just get a sense of the efficiency gain there. Is there a lot more that can be done here going forward with AI in other areas, not just generating inquiries, but in supporting retention as well?
Yeah. I'll get Will Abbortt to answer some of the specifics around that. I'll give him a moment. Just to pick up the use of, firstly, the use of AI in the business, which was the last point that I think you made. We are trialing out what we call AI verticals.
We showed you today that we can do a unit overlay now, effectively, that helps our customers because you appreciate some of our creatives will look at a blank space and see that it's hugely exciting, as you appreciate, because they're running a sound studio or they're a podcaster or whatever it is, or they're an influencer and they're creating an infinity wall so that they can promote their product in there. There are so many different uses. Being able to provide a blank space option, we believe, is important, effectively. However, there is also a percentage of the market that does not have that spatial reasoning. They have a more regular type layout. They want some desks in there, effectively. How do we help them envisage? They look at a blank space. I do not know how many desks I can fit in there.
I don't know how many people I can get in there. How can we help them at that point on the website? That is absolutely critical. That is where that AI is helping us. We've also been using AI in space planning, which has been phenomenal. We take a blank floor and we say, "Right, we need to subdivide this into our standard small unit format." That used to take three weeks. We did an exercise a few months ago. It was done in hours and to about 98% accuracy once we gave it the parameters. That is another area. We think our business should lend itself very, very well to AI applications. We have a very high volume of small transactions that are very similar, as you'd appreciate. We're pushing through 120-130 leasing deals a month, as you would appreciate.
I was looking at some numbers from one of our peers the other day, one of our listed peers. We do as many deals in a month as they did in a year. It is not the same value of deals, as you would appreciate, but the deal volume is enormous. That also would suggest that AI applications will have the ability to make a very positive impact on our efficiency and speed, effectively. Just before I hand over to Will Abbortt on this specific question about the costs of Elodie and what the next evolution of that is, I just want to remind you about, and this is where our customer is so different. I mentioned earlier, we deal with the CEOs and owners of these businesses. They are in and out of our businesses constantly. Typically, they start as small businesses.
We're part of what they call business administration. It's not their core business, effectively. They're trying to make money, promote their product, grow sales, deliver the next phase of innovation and what they're doing. We're the bit that gets in the way, effectively. Does that make sense? It's a bit of administration that we need, like VAT returns that they need to deal with. Often we find that they're coming online to us at 9:00 P.M. or 10:00 P.M. They've had their dinner, sitting at home, like, "Right, I need to deal with my space requirements." Of course, the difference between we'll get back to you tomorrow and we can deal with it immediately, or Elodie can deal with a lot of it immediately, and there's further evolutions in Elodie, will make an enormous difference.
Because getting someone booked in in a competitive environment versus, "I'll call you back tomorrow," is a huge—that could be the difference between winning that piece of business and not winning that piece of business. I'll hand over to Will Abbortt. He's the expert in this area, Will.
Hi. On your question about cost, roughly the equivalent cost of one sort of inquiries agent, or in fact, less annualized. Importantly, it's not about replacing people. It's about freeing up that team to do higher value work. The first implementation of Elodie was really over the weekend, which is why we saw the big impact on Monday mornings for viewings booked in. Triaging inquiries, initial inquiries, going back quickly, capturing them in that window of opportunity to then pass them on to the team to complete the conversion into the sales team.
We have a version as well for meeting rooms. We also have a version for broker interactions. Each one trained specifically against the requirements for those incoming inbound queries. We are also training on outbound, which will be something we'll be rolling out in time. We are just in the final stages of testing our agent, Elodie agent, to sit on the homepage to capture that first contact and help people through that initial sort of top of funnel, if you like, conversion. Beyond that, as Lawrence touched on, we are trialing AI in a range of different places, automating campaign creation. We've talked about the image creation. It's something that's absolutely integral to our plans going forward.
It's very helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. Any other questions from the floor? I'm not sure if we're going to need questions on the webcast. Claire's going to translate it. Thanks, Claire.
Just one question. From Richard Williams at Quota Data, have we had any dialogue with Saba Capital, new shareholder?
We have not, at this stage, met with Saba. We have had some email communication with Saba. We anticipate meeting them at some stage during the roadshow. At this point, we have not had any detailed conversations or dialogue with Saba.
That is it.
Any other questions? If there are no other questions for the floor, I would like to close today's presentation. I would firstly like to acknowledge the enormous amount of work that has gone into delivering this first five months of strategy implementation by our team across the business. We acknowledge change is a difficult thing. It takes a lot of energy. I think as human beings, we are wired to resist it. We fully appreciate the enormous amount of change that we are making in the business.
The response of the team has been phenomenal. As you can see from these results, we're very pleased. We know there's a lot to do. We know there's a long way to go. I think we've made a really strong start. I just want to acknowledge the team firstly. Secondly, to acknowledge the team that's got us here today. It's been lots of late nights. We fully appreciate it. Thirdly, to thank all of our shareholders and the stakeholders, the people in this room for your time today and your continued support. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you at the next update. Thank you very much.