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Good evening, everyone. A very warm welcome to you all for Embassy REIT's fourth quarter FY 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Our speakers will address your questions during the question and answer session at the end. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mrs. Sakshi Garg, Head of Investor Relations from Embassy REIT. Ma'am, you may begin.
Thank you, Ritwick. First of all, we'd just like to apologize for the delay in starting the call. We were having some technical issues. Now welcome everybody to the fourth quarter and full-year FY 2026 earnings call for Embassy REIT. Embassy REIT released its financial results for the quarter and full-year ended March 31, 2026, a short while back.
This included our financial results, earnings presentation and a supplemental financial and operating data book. We'll be placing it in the investor section of our website at www.embassyofficeparks.com. As always, we would like to inform you that management may make certain comments on this call that one could deem forward-looking statements. Please be advised that the REIT's actual results may differ from these statements. Embassy REIT does not guarantee these statements or results and is not obliged to update them at any time.
Specifically, any financial guidance and pro forma information that we'll provide on this call are management estimates based on certain assumptions and have not been subjected to any audit, review or examination procedures. You're cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information, and there can be no assurance that we'll be able to achieve the same. Joining me today are Amit Shetty, our CEO, and Abhishek Agrawal, our CFO. We'll start off with brief remarks on our business and financial performance and then open the floor to questions. Over to you, Amit.
Thank you, Sakshi. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us on the call today. Marking our seventh year as a listed REIT, I'm happy to report yet another stellar year of performance for Embassy REIT. Starting with the key highlights for the year. We expanded our operational portfolio to 43.5 million sq ft, with a record delivery of 3.3 million sq ft of new office buildings, as well as an acquisition of a third-party marquee building within our core EGL asset. On this expanded base, we increased our occupancy to 94% by value, leasing a total of 6.4 million sq ft at an impressive 17% higher leasing spreads.
We successfully raised INR 11,200 crore of debt during this year, including INR 3,400 crore of a ten-year NCD, reducing our in-place debt cost by 65 basis points year-on-year to 7.25%. We delivered double-digit growth across all our financial metrics and grew our NOI by 15%, our DPU by 10%, and NAV by 16% year-on-year. With this continued business momentum, we're delighted to once again guide to a double-digit distribution growth for FY 2027. Let me now give you an annual wrap-up of our leasing performance. We leased a total of 6.4 million sq ft in FY 2026 across 86 deals, including 4 million sq ft of new leasing, 1.5 million sq ft of renewals, and 0.9 million sq ft of pre-leases.
The total leasing included 4 million sq ft of new leases signed at a 24% re-leasing spread, including a 20% mark-to-market realization and a 5% premium on market trends on average. I also want to highlight the robust re-leasing activity in quarter four, wherein we signed two large deals totaling 0.9 million sq ft of our upcoming project. This included one of the largest deals signed in Chennai market, a full 650,000 sq ft block taken up for setting up a new GCC by a new entrant in India. Overall, GCC contributed to about 60% of our total leasing, with demand primarily driven by technology, healthcare, and BFSI sectors. With seven new GCC entrants this year, we have now 102 GCCs in our occupier roster of 280 corporates.
We increased our portfolio occupancy by 300 basis points to 90% by area on an expanded footprint of 43.5 million sq ft. If we exclude our Q4 deliveries of 2 million sq ft, which is yet to fully stabilize, our portfolio occupancy stands at 91% by area. Next, on our development portfolio. We have revised upwards the total redevelopment potential of E-One block in Embassy Manyata to 1.4 million sq ft against the 0.8 million sq ft announced last quarter. With this, we expect the yield on cost is about 22%.
We have identified two more buildings in the same park which can undergo redevelopment post the expiry of the leases of the current tenants in the next couple of years. These buildings totaling 500,000 sq ft and have potential to go to approximately 2 million sq ft. During quarter four, we delivered 1.4 million sq ft E-1, D-2 block in Embassy Manyata and 650,000 sq ft Block four in Embassy Splendid Tech Zone, Chennai. With this, we have delivered a record total of 3.3 million sq ft of new office building during FY 2026. Our total office development pipeline now stands at 6.2 million sq ft. Of this, 2.9 million sq ft deliveries are scheduled over the next two years, and 60% of that is already pre-leased.
With a total capital outlay of INR 3,500 crores, we expect the total 6.2 million sq ft projects to add around INR 610 crores in stabilized NOI by FY 2030. On our hotel developments, we are nearing the completion of construction of our hotels at Embassy Tech Village and have received the occupancy certificate for the buildings. We are planning to launch these hotels in two phases. First, the Hilton Garden Inn in July 2026, and then the Hilton five star in March 2027. During Q4, we also launched the construction of the 116-key Spark by Hilton Hotel in Embassy Tech Zone in Pune, which we expect to deliver by December 2028. Moving on to updates on our inorganic growth.
We completed the acquisition of Pinehurst, a fully leased 300,000 sq ft office building aimed at consolidating our ownership in Embassy Golf Links. The transaction, valued at INR 852 crore, implies a forward NOI yield of 7.9%, aligning with our strategy of disciplined accretive growth. We also completed our first ever capital recycling, wherein we divested three hundred and seventy-six thousand square feet of two strata-owned blocks in Embassy Manyata for a total consideration of INR 530 crore. Currently, we are evaluating a pipeline of 12.6 million sq ft of potential acquisition opportunities from Embassy Group as well as from third parties. We will update the market at an appropriate time as we progress further.
Finally, on the macro front, amidst the ongoing geopolitical turmoil and debates on AI disruption, the Indian office absorption numbers continue to speak for themselves. With 20 million sq ft of gross absorption, last quarter recorded the highest ever Q1 leasing demand. 45% of this demand or 9 million sq ft was contributed by GCC, again recording an all-time high. Interestingly, only 50% of this GCC demand was from Fortune 500 companies, reflecting the continued emergence of the mid-market segment. If you see this overall demand in context of supply, only 8 million sq ft was delivered last quarter, of which 25% of that supply was bought by Embassy REIT.
This demand supply mismatch is favoring institutional office asset owners and has led to the drop in all India vacancies by 86 basis points year-on-year and a double-digit increase in rent in key micro markets, fueling the current office super cycle in India. With this strong macro background, we remain well-placed to continue delivering growth to our investors. I'm delighted to report that in the last financial year, we've delivered a 22% total returns to our 135,000 investors. These returns included a 15% price appreciation as our unit price continued to show considerable resilience in a difficult macro environment wherein the overall Nifty declined by 5%. With the stable and consistent growth narrative, we are well-placed to continue this outperformance. I will now hand it over to Abhishek to present our financial updates.
Thank you, Amit, and good evening, everyone. Let me begin with the financial highlights for FY 2026 and then provide some color on FY 2027. We are happy to report that we met our financial guidance for FY 2026 with strong double-digit growth. Our annual revenue grew by 13% to INR 4,582 crore and NOI by 15% to INR 3,760 crore. The increase was mainly driven by an uptick in our portfolio occupancy, new building deliveries during the current and previous year, and growth in the rentals. Our solar plant returned to its full operational capacity in Q4 and generated 45 million units. This resulted in a 49% Q-on-Q growth in our Q4 solar NOI. Our hotel operations in Q4 were slightly impacted by travel slowdown led by the current geopolitical situation.
Despite that, our FY 2026 hotel NOI grew by 5% year-on-year, with a 63% occupancy and an ADR growth of 8%. We have declared distributions of INR 616 crore or INR 6.5 per unit for the quarter, representing a 100% payout ratio. With this, our total distributions for the year amounted to INR 25.28 per unit, registering a strong 10% growth year-on-year. Moving to updates on our balance sheet. During the quarter, we raised INR 1,400 crore through our second ten-year NCD, priced at an attractive fixed coupon of 7.49% from one of the largest insurance companies in the country. With this, we successfully raised a total of INR 3,400 crore of ten-year NCDs this year, doubling the duration of our fixed rate debt book to 45 months.
Our net debt book now totals INR 21,000 crore, implying a 30% leverage ratio at 7.25% in-place debt cost. Through our active debt management, we have successfully reduced our in-place debt cost by 65 basis points this year and moved 60% of our debt book to fixed rates, thereby limiting our exposure to market volatilities. Next on our portfolio valuation. As per the independent valuer's assessment of our March 2026, our portfolio GAV grew by 15% year-on-year to INR 70,540 crore and our NAV by 16% year-on-year to INR 491.62 per unit. This increase was led by an increase in the market rents, a 25 basis point compression in our vacancy rate, as well as the new buildings delivered and acquired in our portfolio. Lastly, our outlook for FY 2027.
We expect to close the financial year with a portfolio occupancy of 92%-93% by area. We expect our FY 2027 NOI to be in the range of INR 4,150 crores-INR 4,350 crores, and our DPU to be in the range of INR 27-INR 28.6 per unit. At midpoint, this guidance implies a year-on-year NOI growth of 13% and a DPU growth of 10%, continuing our double-digit growth performance of last year. With this, let's now move to Q&A, please.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. We would also request participants to restrict their questions to two per participant. If you have follow-up questions, please rejoin the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. First question is from the line of Puneet from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you so much, and congratulations on great performance and NAV growth as well.
My first question is, with respect to actually NAV growth. Do you see more room for, you know, higher than organic rate of growth in NAV driven by, rental growth? Or do you think broadly the numbers now capture the extent of rental growth you witnessed?
Puneet, do you have a second question, follow-up question, or?
Yeah.
It's just this one question?
Yeah. Second one is on the rental contribution side from D1, D2, and Block four Chennai. When should we expect rentals to start accruing, and will it be fair to assume that at least all the deposits are already factored in? Third one on Cognizant, when does that start as well? Just these three.
Okay.
Puneet, on the first one, if you look at the NAV growth, the potential that we have, largely the NAV growth that is coming in for this year is on the back of rents and all the. Let's say one is the vacancy compression and all the new deliveries that we have done. Now, while considering the rents, what we have done is we have been a bit conservative all the while, and we have waited for the market to be stable and for us to see three-four quarters of actual delivery of those rents before taking that rent up. Now, if you look at now also we are doing 3%-4% higher than this market rent, whatever we have taken in the valuation and disclosed.
Definitely there is a potential going forward because one is this 3%-4% which we are doing higher, and the second is if the market rents actually go up by themselves, so that 4%-5%. This is also there.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
On the second question, which is the rental contribution for D1, D2, the rental will only begin during the later part of the year. That's one. The Cognizant deal is a pre-lease, so that is the delivery is in June of 2026, sorry. Hence, you know, there will be a rent-free period thereafter.
On your question on SD, yes, on the guidance we have factored all the SD for D1, D2, and Block four.
Have you received all the SD for D1, D2, or even that is yet to come?
Yet to receive.
Yet to receive. Block four for Chennai, which also starts June, when does the rent start for that?
Block four, currently we have some vacancy there, Puneet. About 400,000 sq ft is vacant of the 600,000 sq ft. For the 200,000 sq ft, you know, it's in various stages. Some rents have started, some rents will start shortly.
Okay. Broadly fair to assume second half for 2027-
Yeah.
This is when rents will start.
Correct.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants who wishes to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Girish Choudhary from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Congratulations on the strong performance for the year. A couple of questions. Firstly, on the development pipeline or sorry, I meant the potential acquisition pipeline of 12.6 million sq ft. How should we think from a timelines point of view when this will get converted into, let's say, the acquisitions? So that's number one. Number two, on the NOI trajectory versus the DPU trajectory, we have seen a lag in the DPU for reasons where the deliveries were coming in and there was a rent-free period. If I look at FY 2027 also, there is a lag. So when can we start seeing DPUs outpacing NOI? Can it be FY 2028?
Girish, on the second question, this is Abhishek. See, the main reason for the difference between the growth of NOI and DPU are two. One is the non-cash NOI that is getting generated because of deliveries and the lease ups that we do. The second reason is the increase in the interest cost because of all the deliveries that we are doing. As we continue to deliver more assets, you see under construction is, as of today, 6.2 million sq ft. As we continue to do that, this gap will be there for a couple of years. Once all the deliveries are done, that is when you can, you'll see that the gap has, you know, gone down. Yeah.
On the first question, Girish, on the acquisition, while we've always been telling the market that, you know, we want to do acquisition at a pace and time when we are comfortable, you know, there is a due diligence process that we undertake, which is exhaustive. Having said that, you know, we anticipate that this acquisition of about 10-12 million sq ft should be done in four-five years timeframe.
Got it. One can assume, let's say on an annualized basis or a steady-state basis, something to keep coming in every year?
I'll let you speculate that, but you know, our plan is to bring 10-12 million sq ft in the next four-five years.
Sure. One more if I may.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, on the leasing outlook, I mean, fiscal 2026 you had 6.4 million sq ft. How should we look at fiscal 2027? Both let's say from Embassy point of view and also at the market level, what are the RFPs you're seeing right now?
The market's looking very robust, Girish. You know, the projected absorption for FY 2027 is approximately around 84-85 million sq ft and the year after is also about 84-85 million sq ft. Again, the supply that comes into the market is in the range of about 65-68 million sq ft for the next two years. Clearly the demand is outstripping the supply. Having said that, you know, we're seeing about 20 million sq ft of RFPs in the market and 75% of those RFPs, we're seeing it in the Bangalore market as we speak. Just giving a little color on what's happening in terms of sector-wise.
Last year we saw about, you know, the first quarter this calendar year, we saw about 20-odd million sq ft getting absorbed, and, you know, about 45% of leasing happened in the GCC space, right? We continue to see the demand from GCC space, strong demand, strong RFPs, strong client engagement. You know, we're seeing both new entrants, mid-market entrants, as well as, you know, growth from our current occupiers.
Sure. That's helpful. On your leasing targets for the next year, how should we look at fiscal 2027?
We've guided, you know, occupancy at about 90%-93% by area, Girish. I think, you know, that's where we will, you know, end up, yeah. We would not want to put a, you know, a definitive number. Depends on the exits, depends on pre-leasing, depends upon renewals, all of it put together. It's too early to comment on that number right now.
Got it. Fair enough. Thank you and all the very best.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. You know, good to see the progress. Just couple of questions. Firstly, on the interest rate side where we are now seeing slightly firmer rates, overall, have you built that in your guidance for next year on DPU? Or, do you think we are fairly immune to it at least for another 12 months?
Do you have some more follow-up questions so that we can make a note of all the questions that you have?
Second question is actually on the Middle East conflict and the impact that you may have seen on construction cost or say deal closures. Thank you.
Okay.
Yeah. Abhinav, on the first question, see, yeah, we appreciate that, you know, the interest now, the markets have firmed up while repo has not gone up, but still, the interest rates have gone up. What we have done is, if you look at our portfolio, 60% of the portfolio is at fixed interest rate and, we have increased the term also. We have around INR 4,000 crores coming up for refi. There we have baked in that the interest rate at which we will refi will be higher. Also, on the variable rate loans, we have baked in that the refi of that or whenever the repo changes, it will automatically get repriced. In the lower range of the guidance, we have baked in all of this.
On the second question, the Middle East conflict, you know, on ground, the construction costs have firmed up. Having said that, you know, we always provide for some contingency on the construction cost, you know, factoring in these kind of events. Also, one thing that we've learned from the past is when the Russia-Ukraine conflict happened, you know, prices actually took off. Then, you know, over a period of time, prices also actually subdued. We believe that this is a temporary phenomenon and in the long run, you know, we should be okay.
No impact on deal closures as such?
From a deal closure perspective, there was some travel impact because a lot of decision-making, especially some of the large deals, you know, require traveling of the clients from their parent country. We saw some travel impact, but that's now eased out. Travel's back again, so we're seeing deal activity come back.
Okay. Just a related one here. On hotels, can you just also highlight how the trajectory has been in March and April given the travel impact?
hotels, if you see our occupancy is at about 63%. I would say that, you know, from a revenue perspective and also a RevPAR perspective, you know, it could have been slightly better. Having said that, you know, we've grown our ADR and our RevPAR by about 8% each. you know, overall, we're happy with the hotel performance.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Agrawal from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I have just a couple of clarificatory questions. Firstly, when you say that the occupancy of the portfolio is going to be from 90%-93% by area, where does this growth come from? What are the broad assumptions as to which market or which assets you'll see incremental growth coming in from?
Mohit, you know, quickly to start the financial year, we have about 4.5 million sq ft of vacancy in our portfolio. That's 10%, right? That's one. We have about 0.6 million sq ft of delivery that as well. Obviously, you know, there will be some potential pre-lease opportunity as well as renewals that will take place in the marketplace.
Okay. Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry. Go on.
No, I was saying that, you know, most of the leasing will come from Manyata. There will be some in Oxygen. There will obviously, you know, this will be the two portfolios where we'll see larger activities, as well as Chennai.
Okay. Do you see any revival in the Pune lease Pune markets?
Yeah. I mean, Pune market, if you see last year, Mohit, we did about 600,000 sq ft of leasing. But, you know, the sentiment's been strong given the infrastructure construct that have actually come up online. If you see the metro, the stations are ready, and July, like we said last time as well, I think the metro trains must be operational. Hopefully, you know, we're getting a walkway into Quadrant. That will really increase the value proposition of Quadrant as a prospect, you know, place for the corporate occupiers. That's one. The second thing is the Navi Mumbai Airport is operational right now, and Hinjawadi will be the first point of entry into the city. So that's another positive.
Finally, the link road or the tunnel road on the expressway, which bypasses the Ghat section, is also complete right now. That'll significantly cut down the travel time between the international airport to Navi Mumbai and Hinjewadi. I think with these three things, we are hopeful that, you know, the leasing activity in Hinjewadi will turn around. It'll take a little bit of time. You know, the thing is that the metro needs to get operational. I think that's when the corporate occupiers will get the, you know, the comfort that, you know, they can start evaluating this market.
Understood. Also, what is the carpet efficiency currently built into at a portfolio level in the valuation report? Is there any room to realign that, considering that, you know, the demand has been strong?
Mohit, we've always been very opportunistic, you know, in the efficiency. I wouldn't say that there's a one-size-fits-all rule that fits all the portfolio. For example, the Mumbai market works on a very different efficiency while, you know, Chennai market works very differently, right? But again, you know, wherever we have had the opportunity for a reset, we have done that. As well as the new buildings that we are doing, we are doing that at a lower efficiency.
Mohit, in the valuation, it is building by building, and it is really very different. The range is very high.
Is there still meaningful room for?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Okay. One last question is because of, you know, the entire, you know, MAT-related provisions in the budget, going forward, is there going to be any change in your cash tax rate or, you know, for the future years?
Mohit, we will continue to be under MAT in most of the entities. What will happen is, because of this change, for couple of years the impact is not significant. After, let's say, three-four years, there can be an impact. We were projecting to utilize this MAT credit. Now that if the credit goes off after three-four years, that utilization will not be there, and that is when the cash tax can increase.
For the next two years, the cash tax rate will continue to be similar to what was there in FY 2026.
Yes. No impact of this MAT credit write-off for the next two years.
Okay. Thanks a lot. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Just couple of questions. One on the follow-up on the interest side. So firstly, we know that gap of NOI and DPU, you know, is it all driven by the non-cash component of rentals or there is a portion of interest also included? I'm sure, I mean, with 0.6 million sq ft of deliveries, there might be, you know, some higher interest costs that could have we would have assumed. How much is that and, you know, any impact of, you know, the current interest rate environment, you know, we have assumed in our guidance?
Pritesh, you have the next question also?
Second is on the leasing. You know, while you indicated some deferrals on leasing because of Middle East, which have now recovered. Anything firming up on this AI-led disruption, where you feel, you know, there are interactions which are happening where people are right now concerned about what will happen with AI, and they don't want to take any decision as of now and, you know, prolonging that decision. Yeah, those are my two questions.
Pritesh, on the first question, yes, what we have done is. Yes, you are right. There are two components to why there is a drag between NOI to DPU. One is the non-cash portion of the NOI, and the second is the interest rate, interest cost increasing, largely because of the deliveries that we have done in the last part of, let's say FY 2025 and 3.2 million, which we have done during the FY 2026. These were the reasons for the gap.
In FY 2026, this will continue to be the reason for the gap in FY 2027 also because whatever we have delivered during the current year, for that there will be a full-year impact in the next year also. In the guidance, we have baked this. What we have also done is baked an increase in the interest cost because of the change in interest rate, because of all the refinancing that we will do will be at a higher interest rate than the outgoing entities. Also, the variable loans will be repriced whenever there is a repo increase, and hence we have baked in that also at 25 basis points there.
What I would say is that we are expecting that the interest cost will increase by somewhere around 11%-13% in the next year, and which will also contribute to this gap between the increase in NOI and increase in DPU. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, yeah. No, that's very much clarified. On the second portion?
Yeah. On AI impact, Pritesh, honestly, we've been talking to all our occupiers. In fact, we've recently had this occupier connect where we had about 280 of our occupiers come up. I think very clearly what we see is that, you know, hiring continues to grow across spectrum, across boards. Also, the fact is that, you know, all of them want to harness the AI. Basically what we understand is that, you know, AI is a very, very private, and it's not something which, you know, they will jump on the public forum bandwagons.
What I mean by that is, for example, a bank, you know, they will try to create their own datasets and then have an AI layer on top of it, which is private to them versus utilizing, you know, publicly available AIs. So what this means is India, you know, has the second-largest talent pool in AI and the largest pool of data scientists. So given this exposure, you know, lot many companies are coming into the country. Now, if I see the names that are leasing with us, earlier it was, you know, the Fortune 500 companies. Today, it's the Forbes Global 2000 companies, and there's a big beeline of mid-market companies coming into the country. So we are seeing the pie actually increase as well, significantly because of AI.
you know, while I keep saying this is a city of two tales. You know, the ITES story is very different, but the GCC story is very different.
Great. Fair enough. Good to hear that. Just on clarification on the interest part. Sorry, I think I forgot my question. No worries, I'll come back, you know, in case I recollect that. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Yashas Gilganchi from BOB Capital Markets . Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is how do you expect leverage to trend as you fund opportunities for inorganic and organic growth in your pipeline? What would make Embassy REIT consider funding any of these opportunities with equity capital? The second question is, I see that you are considering selling your hotel assets, but there are developments of approximately 634 key underway. Please shed some light on why these assets are being considered for recycling and how the new developments fit differently within your business strategy.
Yashas, on your first question, see, what our thought process is that we don't want to go to a leverage LTV of 35% and above. Today, we are at 30%, so we will want to maintain around 30%. If, let's say, there is an acquisition opportunity, what we will do is we will see a mix of debt and equity in such a way that the deal is accretive to the unit holders from the day one. For that, if we have to go close to 34, 35, still fine, but we want to be somewhere around 30%.
Okay. Would you ever consider issuing equity to fund any of these opportunities as you fund the growth pipeline?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely, Yashas. Whenever we have some firm deals, it will be a mix of debt and equity. We will have to decide that at that point of time, and we'll come to the market. It's not that we will never do an equity raise, but we will decide based on the deal.
Yeah. Just to add there, Yashas, if you see our past track record as well, you know, we've raised equity at the back of an acquisition so that, you know, it's not dilutive for our unit holders, right? That's been our principle as well.
You know, given the fact that we have about 10-12 million sq ft of deal pipeline, we'll be very opportunistic in the sense that, you know, whatever makes sense for that particular deal, you know, we'll either use debt, mix of debt or equity given on the deal construct. Moving on to your second question on the hotel assets. You know, we'd like to divest. Currently the plan is still in the workings. The idea is that, you know, if we are able to get good valuation, you know, the fact is that, you know, our peers are getting good valuation of about 18x E.B.I.T.D.A.
If we get the good valuation once, you know, we'll run the RFP process, and then if we find sense in the valuation, then we will go ahead on the divestment. The divestment is primarily aimed at reducing our debt leverage as well as, you know, funding for our new acquisition. You know, given the fact that the office business is meaningfully more in terms of profitability, we feel that, you know, this capital can be better deployed in the office business as well as deliver our existing debt as well.
Got it. Understood. Just please take another question. How close are you to finalizing the acquisition of Embassy Zenith? And when do you expect the property to start generating rents for the group?
In relation to Embassy Zenith, we are actually working on the diligence. There is a little bit of work that the group also has to do in terms of the structure. Given that, you know, once it's all fully baked in, we will come back to the market and we'll apprise the market. Having said that, you know, a portion of that asset is already generating rent, and a portion of that will generate rent towards the end of the year.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Participants, you may please press star and one to ask a question now. The next question is from the line of Pritesh Sheth from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the follow-up. Just one question. We know in terms of our the WACC compression that we mentioned while valuing the assets portfolio this time, we know how much was it? What's the WACC we are assuming? And do you think like you know, at one side we are assuming interest rates to go up probably next year sometime, we know this WACC compression and the increase in interest rate might offset and you know, impact our NAV. Or we have been for now conservative in terms of that WACC assumption to incorporate that interest increase. Yeah, that's my only question.
We are unable to hear you, sir.
Hello? Am I audible or is the management not audible? Because I can't hear the management.
We are unable to hear management. Just please stay connected.
Okay.
Well, let me just check.
Sure.
Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Pritesh. Sorry, I think we have got some technical glitch which gave me some time to prepare about the answer of your question, but I don't know. You know, this WACC compression was 25 basis point that we did during the current quarter, and now our WACC for completed stands at 11.5 compared to 11.75 during the September valuation. You have a valid question that you know, interest rates trajectory seems to be going upward and why at this time? See, what's happened is that the interest rates have been falling, and what the valuers decided to do is not take a knee-jerk reaction.
When the interest rates were falling during the first half year, they did not compress the WACC because they wanted to see that the interest rates have actually gone down. Now our interest rates are around 7.25% on an average. Even if it goes up without any repo increase, because in the last meeting also there was no increase in the repo while the market interest rates have slightly gone up, their estimation is that the WACC has actually gone down for the whole industry and hence they took that call of reducing it by 25 basis points, which was not a very high reduction to start with. The increase is also not expected to be significantly very high.
Let's say interest rate going up to 8%-9%, that kind of situation is not coming in the near future. That's why this call.
Sure. Got it. That's helpful and clarifies my question. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. With that, we conclude today's conference call. On behalf of Embassy REIT, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.