All right. Okay, well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Workspace Results for the Year Ended 31st of March, 2023. In terms of the agenda today, I'll start off with a quick overview of the year, and then Dave will take you through the details of our financial performance, and then Leo is gonna take you through a little bit more detail of what we talk about as our operating platform. I think, in particular, the value that brings us as a business. I'll then conclude with some thoughts around our future growth, and then we'll open up for questions as normal. Moving on to the overview, if you, if I may, I might just start off, just a reminder of our workspace model. We are the leading provider of workspace across London on a flex basis.
While many others have actually joined the flex revolution, and it's now definitely become a much more of a mainstream product, we've been in this business now of offering flex space for over 35 years, and I'd like to think we know it well. Over that time, we've built up a very extensive portfolio of properties. We now have over 5 million sq ft of space at 76 core locations. By virtue of our long-term ownership of these properties, we do drive actively the repositioning and the redevelopment and regeneration of these buildings. It's not just about the buildings, it's about the areas and communities that we work in as well. That long-term added value, both to the buildings and to the communities that we interact with.
We've also got over 4,000 customers across a whole diverse range of sectors. Also, I'll come back to this later, and you'll recall, I made a point at the half year as well, they all use their space in very different ways. We need to move away from the idea that the word office is much more around workspace. Lastly, it's all underpinned by our proven and scalable operating platform that we've developed, and it's evolved over many years. This is what Leo will be covering a little bit later. In terms of performance in the year, hopefully what you'll take away from today is a really strong set of trading results. Delighted with the performance we've achieved in the year.
In terms of the valuation, you'll see that the actual pricing we've been able to achieve through the year has really protected that valuation across the year. We've also been engaged in a whole range of projects, value-add projects, both short and longer term, and again, they've added real value to the business. They've also contributed significantly to our progress in achieving our net zero targets for 2030. Also, we've made good progress now on our capital recycling plans. First, I'd like to talk about what is the real driver of the success of the business, which is our customers. In the year, we've seen good levels of customer demand, and on the back of that good level of customer demand, we've been able to achieve good levels of lettings, a conversion rate of around 14% through the year.
Delighted with that level of activity consistently through the year, despite the best efforts of strikes, bank holidays, et cetera. In terms of occupancy, if you look at the bottom left there, we've now got back to in our like-for-like portfolio, to our stabilized occupancy targets of around 90%. That's the level where we start to being able to drive real pricing tension. If you see on the bottom right chart there, the rent per square foot per quarter, we've actually been able to grow rent per square foot consistently over the last seven quarters. More notably, in the last year, we've been able to increase rent per square foot more significantly, and as you'll see from our results, overall rent per square foot is up 9.4% in the year. A really fantastic result.
In terms of where did those customers come from? Well, we've given you a split here of the customers by sector, the over 1,300 lettings we've done through the current year. You'll see it's a very broad spread. Actually, by sector, if you look at it's actually very similar to our overall customer base. It just highlights that resilience of our customer base across a whole range of interesting businesses. On the right-hand side, I've just given you examples of four of the customers who've joined us in buildings this year. Starting in the top left there, a video production company. It creates videos and animation content for social media. They joined us in Westbourne Studios in Ladbroke Grove. Then to the right, then you've got a fashion stylist based in our Chocolate Factory in Wood Green.
We've got a arts auction house that's joined us at Barley Mow Center in Chiswick. Lastly, at Kennington Park in the Oval, we've got a sustainable cosmetics company that's grown significantly with us over recent years. All great examples of what I'd say are typical Workspace customers. I guess there's just two characteristics I would bring out of that. Firstly, I appreciate this may not be the same message you've got from others, that there's more to business life in London than the City in the West End. You look at these locations, they're all interesting, well-connected locations across London that attract our type of customer. Secondly, they all use their space in very different ways, very much tailored to their needs of their business, and also around creating an identity, a personalization of their space.
Two really important characteristics of our business model. In terms of that demand, I guess one of the follow-on questions is just how big is that market for our type of customer? We've done quite a lot of work on this recently, and we estimate there's around 1.2 million of the London working population that work in our target service-based SMEs across London. That's over 20% of the total London working population. I think sometimes people just forget just how large this population of SMEs in London is, a real driver of the London economy. Of those 1.2 million, they work in around 138,000 SME businesses. We provide a home to around 4,000 of those businesses, so around 3% market share. We're by far the biggest provider of space to these London-based SMEs.
We've got a huge opportunity still to go for in this market, a very fragmented market. On the right-hand side of the, of this chart here, what I've highlighted is the spread of that 138,000 of target businesses across London. Again, as it reflected what I said earlier, it's not all around central London's, areas of London. Only around a 1/4 of those target SMEs are based in the more central locations of London. If you want to capture that demand, you need properties spread across the whole of London, which is what we have. It's not just about the buildings, you've also then got to have the right flexible offer. Forgive me for this rather, you know, unusual chart, but it's, the taxes here are the flexibility around space and the flexibility around lease.
I've just shown you here, four typical types of flex offer that you may see. If you start at the bottom right, the serviced offer, that is very typical offer where you have a flexible lease or even a license, but it, but you don't have any flexibility around the space. It's typically provision of a fully furnished office. If you move to the bottom left, turnkey offer, that's a very similar offer, but for larger floor plates. There, you have fully fitted out floors for generally for larger occupiers. Again, much more limited flexibility in terms of lease. Moving up then to the more traditional offer, there, actually, you do have flexibility around the way you use your space. Typically, the occupiers here will be taking large floor plates or even whole buildings.
They can fit out the space as they want, again, much more limited flexibility around their lease offer. What we offer is true flexibility. The flexibility to use your space as you want, tailored to your business needs, able to personalize it, to really create an identity for your business, but also, obviously, offering a flexible lease. Our typical lease being a 2-year lease with a rolling six months break, which is hugely important for customers when they want to change their space requirements, either increasing their space, reducing their space, move from one location to another, very much tailored to their business needs. That's what Workspace offers. We offer true flexibility, and that's what differentiates us from others in the market. Okay, I'd like now to hand over to Dave to take you through the financials in a little bit more detail.
Thanks, Graham. Morning, everyone. As Graham says, it's been a very productive year with a strong trading performance. Net rental income was up 34% and trading profit up 29%. In terms of the balance sheet, the valuation has proved very resilient, down just 3%, with NTA per share down 6%. Net rental income for the year was GBP 116.6 million, reflecting stable occupancy and strong increase in pricing over the last 18 months, combined with the benefit of acquisitions, which also impacted on admin expenses, which were up 11% to GBP 21 million. Net finance costs increased to GBP 34.4 million, reflecting the higher net debt following the acquisition of McKay, and also the rise in interest rates during the year. Although interest cover remains comfortable at 3.8 times.
Overall, we saw strong growth in trading profit after interest, up 29% to GBP 60.7 million. There was a decrease of GBP 93 million in the property valuation. This, together with exceptional costs of GBP 4.3 million, resulted in a loss before tax of GBP 37 and a half million. Adjusted earnings per share was up 23% to GBP 0.317. In view of the strong trading performance, we'll be paying an increased dividend of GBP 0.258, up 20% on the prior year. On an underlying basis, rental income was up 13% to GBP 110.7 million. With occupancy stable, this was fundamentally driven by an increase in average rents, with like-for-like average rent per square foot up 9.4% in the year.
With higher average occupancy this year versus last year, and energy costs fixed since September 2021, we've also seen a reduction in unrecovered service charge and other non-recoverable costs, resulting in underlying net rental income up 17%. Growth in rental income was accelerated by recent acquisitions, which contributed eighteen and a half million pounds in the year, in line with expectations. Admin expenses remained under tight control, and on an underlying basis, up just 2% in the year. Admin costs from McKay acquisition were GBP 2.1 million, though by the end of the year, we'd achieved synergy savings of over 80%, well ahead of our 50% target, reducing costs to just GBP 0.9 million on an annualized basis.
Turning to the balance sheet, the property valuation at 31st of March increased GBP 339 million to GBP 2.7 billion, reflecting the acquisition of the McKay portfolio. Debt increased likewise, with total net assets broadly flat at GBP 1.8 billion. Overall, EPRA NTA per share was down 6% to GBP 9.27, reflecting the decrease in the property valuation. Looking at the movements in that valuation over the year, the GBP 434 million of increases from acquisitions and GBP 56 million of CapEx was partially offset by GBP 60 million of disposals and the modest underlying revaluation decrease. This slide sets out the key drivers of the valuation movement. On the left, you've got the valuation by property category, and on the right, you've got the movements in the year.
In the first row is the like-for-like portfolio, which accounts for 70% of the overall value. The like-for-like valuation was basically flat in the year, down just to 0.3%, with a 14% uplift in ERV per square foot, offsetting a 55 basis point outward yield movement, with equivalent yield moving to 6.2%. We saw the same dynamic in completed projects, and further down the page in the McKay London properties. With strong ERV growth, more than offsetting yield expansion and valuation up. In the refurbishment and redevelopment categories, we saw an overall decrease. The most significant movements included GBP 8 million reductions at both Havelock Terrace and Rainbow Industrial Park, reflecting the change in industrial yields.
The valuation at Rainbow was also impacted by a reduction in expected residential values, as was the value of our residential scheme at Chocolate Factory in Wood Green. Movement in industrial yields also drove the decrease in the value of the McKay non-core assets. Overall, we've seen strong ERV growth, offsetting yield expansion on a highly reversionary portfolio with low capital values per square foot. Moving on to cash flow and net debt, cash conversion remains strong, with more than 98% of rent collected for the year so far. This has generated operating cash flow of GBP 70 million, of which more than covered dividend payments of GBP 44 million. We spent GBP 363 million on acquisitions and continue to invest in our planned pipeline of refurbishment activity, with total CapEx of GBP 60 million in the year.
Overall, therefore, net debt increased to GBP 902 million at the end of March. The majority of the group's debt comprises long-term fixed rate facilities, totaling GBP 665 million, with shorter-term liquidity provided by committed bank facilities. Together with GBP 12 million of cash, this case gave us a total of GBP 148 million of cash and available facilities at the end of March. I thought it'd be helpful to show the pro forma impact of the GBP 82 million of non-core disposals we announced earlier this month. The proceeds will be used to repay floating rate bank facilities, including the remaining GBP 50 million outstanding on the McKay acquisition facility. Following completion, on our cash and undrawn facilities will increase to GBP 180 million.
Our LTV reduced to 31%, and our pro forma average cost of debt will be 3.8%, with 80% of our debt at fixed rates. We have significant headroom on our financial covenants. With additional planned disposals, we'll further reduce leverage and reduce our exposure to floating debt further. Following the extension of our bank facilities in December last year, on a pro forma basis, our average drawn debt maturity will be 4.4 years, with no significant maturities until 2025. Looking forward, we start the year with good earnings momentum. This year's results will be underpinned by our opening rent roll, and based on the level of customer demand that we've been seeing, we anticipate stable occupancy and continued pricing growth, both across our like-for-like portfolio, but also augmented by further letting up on our completed projects.
As we've seen this year, such pricing growth drives not only rental income, but also helps to drive ERV, helping to offset any further yield pressure on valuations. The current high levels of inflation continue to put pressure on costs, although the majority are recovered from customers, and we're well-positioned with energy costs fully fixed and other costs tightly controlled. Our ongoing capital recycling will reduce leverage and enhance earnings as we repay more expensive floating rate debt. Capital expenditure this year will be around GBP 60 million as we continue with our project pipeline, although this will be partly offset by planned disposals. We have a robust balance sheet, and all commitments can be funded from existing facilities. I'll now hand over to Leo to take us through our operating platform.
Okay, thank you, Dave. Good morning. Today, we want to take you through the performance of the portfolio and some highlights from the year, alongside some opportunities for future growth over the short and longer term. In doing so, we want to bring out the important role that our operating platform plays in the delivery of these results and that growth going forward. The key message we want to leave you with today is that we have a powerful combination of a portfolio of distinctive properties that we own and control, that alongside a highly effective operating platform, drive improved outcomes for our customers, our community, and our investors. We've built a highly effective, scalable, and valuable operating platform.
As we tried to show on the left, the customer is at the center of what we do, and our platform is shaped around meeting their needs to drive improved customer service and improve financial outcomes. Through the following slides, we'll walk through that customer journey and that interaction with us and our interaction with them. Through the initial customer perception, through our brand and marketing efforts, through inquiries, viewings, and lettings with us, our customers stay, renewal, and move within the portfolio, and how we drive value over the short and longer term as customers churn throughout out of the portfolio, with ESG embedded in our model throughout. Our operating platform delivers significant benefits to us and our customers, thanks in large part to the direct customer contact and direct engagement throughout the journey with us.
This provides us with direct feedback from our customers, and it gives us real-time visibility on demand. That gives us a feedback loop that we can use to help shape and evolve our product, and our in-house teams give us the responsiveness and agility to execute those changes swiftly and capture that demand. Ultimately, by focusing on the customer, we drive improved financial outcomes. This powerful combination of owning our properties, our truly flexible model, and our operating platform underpins the strength of our business and is our differentiator in the market. Our in-house marketing team has developed a strong and distinctive brand around our distinctive offer to improve customer awareness and product recognition, and our inquiry levels as a result. Where we see pockets of softer demand, increased momentum, or just have a new product offering, we have the agility to immediately scale up and flex our marketing efforts.
That engagement plays out with our existing customers, too. We have a dynamic and popular social media and events program that helps build and reinforce that visibility and differentiation within the market. We ran two key brand strategies over the year across multiple waves, combined with an always-on digital campaign. In terms of outcomes for the year, we achieved a sector-leading 62% prompted brand awareness, as well as being ranked as the first choice consideration for surveyed SMEs looking to move or expand, putting us in a really positive place to continue to capture that demand and retain our customers. Our in-house inquiries, viewings, and lettings team give us direct customer engagement rather than via a third party.
That enables us to work with the customer on their search, to meet their needs, and find them the space that they want, resulting in a better outcome for both of us. For example, our customer search is not unlike a home search. It starts with a relatively functional approach of needing a certain amount of space in a certain location. Over time, it frequently evolves and is driven by more emotive factors, such as trying to find a home for their business that truly represents their brand and will work for their people. By working directly with the customer and understanding their needs, we can shape the search and find a better result for us both over the longer term. Our in-house teams also provide us that real-time feedback on trends and demands. We can respond quickly to changing customer needs by evolving our product.
For example, subdividing units or adding amenities, or by flexing our price point. As a result, by getting to know and working directly with the customer, we drive improved financial results. Over the year, we captured significant volumes of inquiries, viewings, and lettings. We completed over 1,300 lettings in the year, worth almost GBP 35 million in rent roll. We enhanced like-for-like pricing by almost 10% without sacrificing our robust occupancy levels of just under 90%. Once in our centers, customer experience is at the heart of what we do. Our vertically integrated platform is shaped around providing market-leading service levels. Multiple teams across the business contribute to this, from center management and customer experience teams, facilities management, sustainability, building upgrades, survey and feedback teams, meeting rooms, cafe and events teams, tech teams, to name a few.
That enables us to run the portfolio effectively and achieve our optimal trinity of high customer satisfaction, sustainability improvements, and enhanced financial performance. Over the year, we achieved very high levels of customer satisfaction. 84% of our customers agreed or strongly agreed that we provide great customer service, reflecting the work and commitment of those in-house teams. 87% of our customers agreed that the atmosphere in the center is positive and welcoming, something of particular importance in bringing people back into the Workspace post-COVID. That highlights the value our customers place on our offering of physically coming into the centers to build their team, develop their brand, and house their business. We drive customer satisfaction through regular direct contact. In addition to our daily ad hoc interactions with the customer, we completed over 11,000 scheduled customer catch-ups.
That gives us a key point to resolve issues, improve satisfaction, drive retention, and better understand our customers and their needs, underpinning our positive customer ratings. With over 2,500 customers attending our extremely popular events and over 20,000 meeting room bookings in the year, our centers offer much more than just real estate, but great service and a range of sought-after amenities. Our in-house renewals team builds on this customer contact, and they continue that direct interaction, engaging with the customer to again understand their needs and optimize outcomes, allowing us to enhance pricing while retaining customers. Over the year, 88%, or over 700 of our customers that we approached at lease expiry, renewed with us.
This led to an overall trend of our customers, or contributed to an overall trend of our customers staying with us for much longer than our typical two-year lease term, with an average stay of over five years, and often much longer than this for individual customers. That customer contact, that understanding of demand, and that direct engagement enabled us to enhance pricing on renewed leases by 20%, equating to a GBP 3.4 million uplift in rent roll, without sacrificing retention or customer satisfaction. Our model and our operating platform offer true flexibility to our customers. We give the ability to move within the portfolio outside of lease events as our customers' business evolve. Over the year, almost 400 customers, or around 10% of our customer base, took us up on that and moved within the portfolio, helping underpin our strong retention and occupancy figures.
Despite these increases, our portfolio remains affordable at just over GBP 40 per sq ft for the core like-for-like portion of our portfolio and offers good opportunities going forward, as Graham will bring out. As customers do churn with out of the portfolio, that offers us a further opportunity. The combination of our platform and owning our assets gives us the ability and the agility to respond to evolving customer demand. We can improve buildings to further grow income and grow value, either through targeted short-term projects or longer-term value add. Our building upgrade team taps into that insight and our view on demand and can execute improvement at real pace. This is a highly attractive opportunity to grow income within the portfolio. We can swiftly upgrade units and improve pricing, ESG, and customer experience. That rapid turnaround is really key for us.
It gives us robust cost control and very clear sight of letting demand and outturn rents, giving us a very strong risk-return profile and compelling return on investment on this part of our portfolio. Over the year, we upgraded over 400,000 sq ft and improved 12% of the portfolio area to EPC A or B, while reducing energy use by rolling out smart meter install for improved visibility on consumption, driving income growth, reducing operating costs, and further future-proofing the portfolio. A couple of examples of this in action over the year. At the leather market, we upgraded floor of part of the estate, that within six months, have been fully refurbished and fully let, driving a 60% increase in rent roll and over 50% project IRR.
This project is very representative of the speed with which we can deliver highly attractive return on targeted investment, and we've already rolled on to the next floor in the building to replicate this targeted investment and continue the success into this financial year. We're also underway at the Mill, where we're rolling out our model by improving and subdividing a full floor, tapping to that demand for smaller, high-quality units in our flexible leasing model. We're forecasting a 30% uplift in income over the traditional ERVs in the sub-market, as well as a over 10% project IRR, whilst again, delivering sustainability improvements and improved customer experience. In addition to our shorter-term targeted upgrades, the portfolio offers a highly accretive set of opportunities over the longer term to drive income and value, reposition our assets offering, and capture evolving customer demand.
Our development team responds to these demand drivers using our in-house data and give us a proven long-term track record of refurbishing or redeveloping our buildings and delivering a highly sustainable product, frequently driving significant social value in re- regeneration areas of London. Over the year, ongoing strong levels of customer demand for our refurbished product saw us commence two additional projects at the Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey and Chocolate Factory in Wood Green, in addition to Leroy House, which is on site already. Through these projects alone, we expect to drive almost GBP 8 million in future rent roll. In addition, we achieved over a quarter million sq ft of planning successes throughout the year, including The Busworks shown here on the right-hand side, ensuring that the next phase of value add can push ahead at the right time. The Ministry embodies this customer demand for our refurbished product.
Having substantially upgraded and extended this former light industrial property, we've seen a threefold increase in average ERV, significant sustainability improvements and positive social impact, as well as delivering an ungeared IRR of over 11% each year, consistently over the 24 years since acquisition. We're on site with Leroy House in Islington to replicate this success, refurbishing an asset we've held since 1995. We're on target to complete next spring to deliver improve customer experience, improve rent roll and price point, while once more delivering highly positive ESG outcomes. Beyond these projects, we have the ability to further grow our income through the phased commencement of over 1 million sq ft of additional developments beyond those already on site. This is a phased pipeline over coming years, with timing at our discretion.
Our sites are almost all income producing in the period leading up to redevelopment, giving us the ability to grow and maintain that income. This also gives us the ability to optimize the ultimate outcome by controlling timing of when we commence the projects to align with key drivers of demand and preferential market dynamics. This ability to constantly re-review, review, and re-phase our projects of and pipeline of projects, while maintaining and growing the income in the lead up to that, is a real differentiator of our development activity and our model. In combination with our organic growth, our short-term upgrade program puts us in a really strong position to grow earnings going forward. There's a deep commitment throughout the business to deliver on our ambitious ESG targets.
In terms of EPCs, we're on track to meet regulatory guidelines by or ahead of the 2030 deadline, through our rolling upgrade program and development pipeline, with 43% of the portfolio now A and B rated. In terms of practical energy consumption, the true test of a portfolio's sustainability credentials, we set ourselves the ambitious target of reducing consumption despite starting from a highly efficient baseline, with our portfolio already significantly better than industry best practice. Over the year, we achieved a very positive outcome of a 5% overall energy reduction, in line with our 2030 net zero carbon commitment, and a 27% decrease in gas as we phase out fossil fuels from the portfolio. Sustainability matters to our customers. It drives advocacy, retention, and for us, therefore, financial performance.
Sustainability isn't so much about certifications or badges that might matter to larger corporate tenants. Instead, our customers focus on three key elements: running energy-efficient buildings and providing green energy at a fixed cost, our adaptive reuse and preserving London's legacy of historic buildings, and where we do make interventions, doing so while reducing waste, reducing materials, and lowering our embodied carbon footprint. Lastly, delivering social impact for our community, our supply chain, and our broader stakeholders. excuse me. By delivering on these and future-proofing our portfolio, we align with the priorities of the market and our customer, and as a result, we can deliver strong financial outcomes for our investors. With that, I'll hand over to Graham.
Okay, well, thanks, Leo. Hopefully, from what you've heard from both Leo and from Dave, is you'll get a flavor of the hard work that's been put in by the teams across Workspace this year. Delighted with the results that we've been able to deliver, not just the strong trading result we've delivered, the 29% increase in trading profit and the 20% increase in dividend, that's great. Also, the valuation, the fact that we were able to drive the pricing across our portfolio to be able to re-reduce that valuation reduction from the movement out in yield to just 3%. In terms of value-add activity, I think Leo's given you a flavor of the immense amount of activity we do across this portfolio, both short term as well as longer term, really adding value.
As you can see, they're generating significant double-digit returns, well ahead of our benchmark. That's fantastic for us, as we will continue to drive that activity forward as we in the coming years. They also benefit, though, all of those that are giving very good income returns, is moving forward aggressively on our ambitions around net zero targets for 2030. As Leo highlighted, energy consumption reductions, movement in EPCs, EPC now 43%, up 12% in a year. These are all done at the same time as we're generating very significant income returns, it's a win-win for us. Lastly, in terms of the capital recycling, we made GBP 60 million disposals in the year, and we've announced another GBP 82 million of disposals since the year end.
While it's been slower than I would have hoped, we are now making good progress. All in all, I think a fantastic year of delivery. Looking forward, I think just really to repeat what we've highlighted earlier, three key elements. We've got a fantastic market opportunity. We've got a very diverse, very significant market opportunity across London-based SMEs. We know the market well. We know we've got the right product. We know we've got buildings spread across London to capture that demand. Also, vitally, and as Leo sort of highlighted, we've also got to have the right flexible operating platform, not only to attract that customer demand, but also then retain it, and we've got that as well. We've got the three key elements for a very successful future growth for this business. What will that look like in terms of financial performance?
Well, I've just shown you here a waterfall chart, one that you may well have seen before. This just highlights, really, I think, the scope of potential income upside in the coming years. If you start on the left-hand side of this waterfall chart, here we show the rent roll at the end of March, GBP 140 million. The next three columns highlight the reversion within three core elements of our portfolio: the like for like portfolio, the completed and projects underway, and then also the McKay London and the Southeast portfolio. The reversion there, if you add it all together, is around GBP 35 million of income uplift. To achieve that reversion, we need to move all our customers up to current pricing levels, and also for those customers, those buildings that are less than 90% occupancy, move them up to 90% occupancy.
There's two elements to our model that work well there. Firstly, we've got relatively short leases, typically two-year leases, so we can move customers up in terms of pricing relatively quickly. Secondly, we've got an operating model that's very good at attracting customers, so I'd be very confident about then filling up our buildings up to 90% occupancy. If we can do both of those in a relatively short timescale, we can deliver GBP 35 million of income upside. With that upside, which is around 25% uplift on our current rent roll, there's very little cost associated with it. The majority of that uplift in income falls through to the bottom line in terms of trading profit growth. Our current trading profit is a shade over GBP 60 million, I'll leave you to decide the timescales that you think that may come through.
What you can see, that's a very significant uplift on our current profitability. In terms of looking forward, that's a real underpin of potential growth in trading profit in the coming years. I haven't yet talked about the areas on the right-hand side of this chart. First of all, further pricing growth. I'm only talking about moving people up to current pricing levels. We're already seeing further pricing growth in the current year, so again, there's a further upside there. In addition, this is only really focused at the moment on existing projects. Leo's highlighted, we've got a vast project pipeline ahead of us, and that's both the longer term projects, as well as those shorter term asset management initiatives as well. Lastly, of course, any impact from further acquisition or disposal activity.
In terms of outlook, what I would say is I do think we're very well positioned in terms of being able to generate strong income and potentially dividend growth in the coming years. Alongside that, from a valuation perspective, I think the ERV growth that we've been able to show over the last couple of years and going forward, I think we're still being able to push pricing forward, will help offset any concern around yields moving out further. As yields stabilize, I do think there's real opportunity for us to see significant valuation increases as we continue to deliver pricing growth, as well as delivering on these value-add project initiatives that we've got. As again, as I highlight, both the shorter term and the longer term pipeline that we've got in front of us.
On that note, I'd like to thank you for your time this morning, we'll open up for any questions. I would say just quickly, we'll do questions from the floor here first, we'll then open it up to conference, to the conference people joining us, lastly, any questions online. Any questions from the floor?
Thank you. Hi, morning, Alison from Bank of America. Two questions from my side. First one is on the valuation. Apparently, it's outperforming the overall U.K. office market. Also compared with some of the other listed office name.
Yeah
I t's a quite good number. I was wondering, what kind of assumptions that value was actually put into this valuation change, especially on the, let's say, exit cap rate or discount cap rate they are putting on your portfolio?
Yeah, I mean.
Sorry.
I'll hand over to Min. I mean, from my perspective, I mean, very much, the valuation, you know, CBRE have been doing our valuation for a number of years. It is a traditional red book valuation, so there isn't anything particular. We don't have the complexities that others may have where, say, in a service office type market, I know there's been debates about valuations there. Ours is a very traditional lease, if you like, so actually, it's done very much on a traditional red book valuation. I don't know if anything else that you're referring to there.
Yeah, because I was just wondering, do you think, you will see sort of, yield stabilizing or is already kind of bottoming of your valuation?
In terms of yields?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I'd hate to forecast where the government's gonna be putting interest rates. I'll leave that to others to forecast. Certainly, I'd say that, you know, we are seeing potential for mitigation of any outward yield movement by further pricing and ERV growth. When I look at where our yields are now, I think they look sensible in the context of the current market. The cap values look low, I'd say, compared to others in the current market, particularly for the comparatives in some of the sort of markets we're strong in, like on the South Bank. I think our values look pretty conservative. I'd be disappointed if we saw much more significant outward yield movement, because I think then you start to see cap values look very attractive.
We do have a good engagement with our valuers. I guess the other thing I would say is because we do so many transactions, they do see very good pricing evidence of what the real underlying value of our buildings are in terms of rental values. I don't think we're exposed there in terms of whether or not they are a reflection of the true underlying rental values.
Okay, thank you. Second question is on the tenant lease, because I know part of your leases are already based on the service, like service office offer. Is that correct? It's not just a pure office offering service, but it also sort of like offering some service charge to the tenants as well? It's more like a ready-to-fit plus some service charge?
Yeah
B ut on top of the rent. I just wonder, for that portfolio, what's the average price you can actually charge to your tenants?
Leo, would you like to?
Yeah, I hope I understand the question correctly. When we're quoting our rents, you know, up here or in any other kind of publication, they're net rents. They're net of the service charge. Our customers do have a service charge that we either include within the pricing. We offer them a sort of more inclusive pricing that will include elements of service charge, things like Wi-Fi and connectivity. It's not a serviced office pricing point in terms of. When you see, when we quote GBP 40 per square foot on a like for like portfolio, that is net of service charge, net of any inclusive offer around energy or Wi-Fi.
It's roughly around 10%, if I would say, the service charge, as you say, and that doesn't include, remember, we don't include rates within our offer because a lot of our companies are able to take advantage of the reduction in rates for smaller businesses.
Thank you.
Neil?
Good morning, Neil Green, JP Morgan. just on the retention rate of 88%.
Yeah.
Just to get your take on how that compares to history. Also, obviously, the 700 customers renewed in 2022, 2023 at a 20% uplift. Looking ahead, do you see 2023, 2024 as a bigger year for renewals with potentially more aversion, or are we kind of looking more the same, please?
Yeah, I'll take the first one, and then I think, again, I'll just get Leo to answer the second. I think on the overall retention rate, historically, it's been lower. I'd say there's one key element to that, is I think we've learnt a lot about customer engagement over the years. I think we're much better at managing the renewal process now. It's nothing about pricing. I mean, pricing is obviously an element, actually, the way that we manage our renewals process has improved significantly. It's really part of our overall customer service sort of program, is to improve the, when we contact customers, who contacts them, how we manage that process.
Despite the fact, as Leo's highlighted, that you're putting up pricing over the last year by pretty much on average, around 20%, so quite significant increases, actually, customers have stayed with us at very high rates. Historically, the retention rates have been around 80%, so I would have expected it to not have been as high as it is. I'm delighted it stayed as high as it is, because we, as you know, we've been pushing pricing quite aggressively this year. Leo, perspective for the coming year?
Yeah, I was going to echo a lot of what Graham said around the customer service and the engagement with the customers as being a differentiator and a driver of that performance. I'll be a little careful on the forecasting the future years. Broader trends is we still do have a quite a large number of in-place leases that as we, you know, come out of the kind of any post-COVID 2-year term, we've got quite significant opportunity on. You know, obviously, as we roll out our upgrade program throughout the portfolio, that gives us, you know, a, an over and above underlying opportunity to increase and improve the pricing.
I think as long as we continue to focus on engaging with the customer and explaining the uplifts and helping them through that, then, you know, I see very good opportunity for that going forward.
I think, you know, the other thing, and you've heard us say this many times before, is the rent that customers pay is a relatively small part of their overall cost base. These are service-based businesses. By far, the biggest cost for our customers is their staff. Yes, they don't want to overpay for their space, and I think we, you know, we're very much the affordable end of the market, but it's typically only 5%-10% of their overall cost base. I think despite the fact that you're seeing quite significant price increases, overall, in their cost base, and bear in mind, inflationary costs around salaries is probably even more significant to them.
Actually, you know, I think in context, we are still at the very much the affordable end of the market, so I think we still got significant opportunity to continue to grow rents.
Thank you.
Do you? Next, Denese.
Denese?
Yeah, that's right.
Callum Marley from Kolytics . So good to see that like, for like average rent per square foot was up 9.4% and occupancy broadly stable at 90%. Just wondering where you broadly are relative to pre-COVID levels. Maybe just to follow up on that previous question, do you think you can continue to capture elevated inflation that we see at the moment within your rents?
It's always hard because obviously there is some changes in the mix of our portfolio over the years, but I'd say we're pretty much back at pre-COVID levels pricing when you look at individual buildings. And actually, in many of our buildings now, we're actually ahead of pre-COVID levels. I think I'd love to say in a year's time, we move away from discussions around COVID, and actually, it's just around fundamental growth in demand, driving pricing for our buildings across London. Aided also by the, you know, continuing upgrade and repositioning of the space, as Leo has highlighted. I think there is still real potential for us to move forward on pricing, but it is back to pretty much pre-COVID levels now. I'm sorry, and your after, your second question was what?
Do you think you'll be able to capture the elevated inflation that we've seen recently?
Inflated inflation. I mean, that really comes back to, I think, the fundamental health of the SME community across London. I mean, I do think, you know, we are a bellwether of the vibrancy of that SME population, and at the moment, there are no indications that we can't continue to nurture that demand to push pricing forward across our portfolio. The beauty of our portfolio is, if you look at the rents by building, they're all different price points. You know, as much as we talk about maybe, you know, GBP 50, GBP 60 a sq ft rents in more central areas, in somewhere like Deptford, it's probably at GBP 20, GBP 30 a sq ft, maybe in Wood Green, at GBP 10, GBP 15 a sq ft. The dynamics of our portfolio are very different in different locations, and that's great.
It's not all about pushing central London pricing. It's a much broader canvas we've got.
Just quickly, a follow-up. your like-for-like capital values were, I think, GBP 700 a sq ft on one of your slides. I appreciate your portfolio is spread across London.
Yeah.
Do you have a sense of where this is relative to replacement costs?
I haven't been asked that question for a long time. It's a very good question. I don't, as a matter of fact, but insurance-wise, I think it's. I'm just trying to remember. Bear in mind, you know, we've got not just the buildings, we've also got something like 75 acres of freehold land across London as well. I don't. I can't recall. Sorry, I'd need to go back and forth and find out what the insurance cost is, the rebuild cost we haven't done for a while. I would say it'll be significantly higher.
Morning, I'm Denese Newton from Stifel. Just two questions, really, on activity post-period end. First, if it's any interesting information about inquiries or lettings and how trends have progressed since the start of this quarter. Secondly, just on the investment market, I think you mentioned you've continued to make disposals post-period, and just wondered who the buyers are, any information on pricing and how deep that market is?
Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of momentum, I mean, it's been interrupted to some extent. We've had even more bank holidays, including Easter and the Coronation. If you take away the sort of the dead days when actually there was no one around, momentum has continued to the current year. I mean, in terms of deal level activity, inquiries will obviously update it when we do our AGM in July. You know, we're seeing still good levels of demand and activity. I guess, you know, it ebbs and flows through the year, but I think, you know, very comfortable where we are there. In terms of. Second question was on investment market.
I mean, I think, in terms of the non-core assets are now relatively discrete, sort of GBP 30 million or so, very quite small assets. We are actively progressing with disposal of those. Yes, it's quite a good demand for those assets of that size level, those sub-GBP 10 million type assets. As when we complete on those exchanges, we'll update the market. Any more questions from here? Have we got any on the conference line?
There are no questions right now.
Okay, thank you. Duncan, any online?
We've not received any questions on the website either.
Okay, awesome. Clean sweep. Okay. I'll try not to smile, but thank you very much for your time today, and hope to see you soon.
This presentation.