Entra ASA (OSL:ENTRA)
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Apr 24, 2026, 4:25 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Feb 12, 2021

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to Entra's 4th Quarter Presentation brought to you live here from Oslo. As you all probably are aware of, it's been an intense Q4 for us following the strategic interest for the company. The current status is that Castellum withdrew their offer earlier this week, and the SPB voluntary offer is still in the market with an expiry on February 26. Our Board of Directors came out with a recommendation stating that they recommend investors with a long term perspective to not accept any of the offers. That was also supported by the fact that our 2 largest shareholders, Baldr and the Government Pension Fund Norway, currently holding 30%, already had publicly announced that they had no intention to accept the offers.

Clearly, this has had an impact also on our organization and our company. However, we are very proud to be able to see that we, In spite of this and also in spite of the COVID-nineteen situation, can present very strong operational results, Also record high net letting and starting several new projects securing future growth for the company. So moving on to some highlights in the quarter. As you can see, rental income came in at NOK 5.90 in the quarter. That's relatively flat year on year, explained by the fact that we have had several large properties brought out of the management portfolio and over into a project phase.

This has, of course, impacted our rental income and also left us with higher operating costs seeing that we have to cover quite a lot of the common costs on these properties. Net income from Property Management was at SEK362,000,000. And in respect to valuations, it's been a strong quarter. Our portfolio was revalued following a strong and significant yield compression in the Norwegian property markets. So property values are up with SEK 4,500,000,000 in the quarter, leaving us with Profit before tax of SEK 4,900,000,000 Key events.

Of course, the strategic interest has been Important part in the last quarter, very strong net letting of NOK 166,000,000, And we also finalized one project and started up 5 new developments in the quarter. Our board is proposing a semiannual dividend of NOK 2.5 per share for the second half of twenty twenty, and that's NOK 4.9 for the full year. This remains to be approved on our Annual General Meeting in April on 23. As already mentioned, this was a strong quarter in respect of letting. It's actually the best quarter we've had since we were IPO ed back in 2014.

And we signed new leases and renewed leases for a total of NOK 2.56 1,000,000 kroners or 86,000 square meters. We're off 49,000 of that in our project pipeline. In the midst of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we clearly see that this states the strength in our portfolio, the attractiveness of our locations and also the products we have developed. We have also, in this quarter, seen leasing that lease contracts were terminated for for €30,000,000 Out of that, around half of it was tenants who chose to sign new leases with us in other parts of the portfolio. So net letting, as already mentioned, SEK 166,000,000 and As you can see from the table at the bottom of the chart, this quarter, we had a lot of very large contracts, Very high quality tenants, and we were, of course, pleased to see that these also enabled us to start several of the projects which we will get back to.

Our occupancy is currently also very high at 97.9%. That is probably as close to fully let as we We'll get also seeing that several of our assets have been taken out into a project phase. Our average lease duration is currently at 6.9 years. Including the project portfolio, we are at 7.1 years. We finalized one project in the quarter.

That's the Christian Augustgarten 13. This is a building which is located in the Tullin quarter. It's a redevelopment of 4,300 square meters. And out of that, 900 square meters is an infill new build at the back of the building. It's fully let to spaces, and it's been a pioneer project for us in respect of a circular economy.

And it's a project which has caught the eyes of the entire industry and also regulators, both in Norway and across Europe. We're proud to see that we actually achieved the target and more so where 80% of all materials going into this building has been then reused materials, both in the existing building and also from imported reused materials. That means that we managed to reduce the CO2 emissions from The materials in this project with a total of 70%. And if you look at the total climate accounting for the project, we are at 45% lower carbon emissions compared to a reference building. This is a very innovative project, and it also means that it has been More costly than what we normally do build at Entra and also a bit more costly than we originally anticipated.

However, we've seen that it's a project which has really stepped up the industry and the supply chain in respect of starting to think circular economy. And it has also been important for us in respect of learning What we should do and not do when we work with reuse in our coming projects when we will start continue to work with creating climate neutral projects in the future. So the total project cost is here at SEK 317,000,000, And the yield on cost is 4.5% upon completion. One of the projects we have announced to start is this at Stenescarta 1 in Oslo. This is a building which literally It's sitting on top of the metro station next to the central station.

Here, we have parking spaces in the basement. We have 4 floors of shopping center owned by Stenenstrom. And on top of that, Entra owns 30,000 square meters of office from the 5th floor upwards. We have decided to do this redevelopment in 2 phases. The first phase will be starting now, Seeing that we have signed a lease contract with Supra Steria, they signed a contract for 10,500 square meters and have the option to reduce or increase with 2,000 square meters, leaving us then with a minimum occupancy rate or Pre let ratio of 57% when starting the project.

It has a project cost estimated to SEK 1,200,000,000, Estimated yield on cost, 4.5 percent, and we expect it to be completed in the Q2 of 2023. This project, we are targeting a Vream Nord Very Good Environmental Certification. We also announced that we will be starting Schweigorskate 15. This building is located 3 minutes' walk from The central station, it's 23,000 square meters. Also here, one of our largest contracts in the quarter was signed with Natura.

We are at the pre let ratio here of 31%, and it's got an estimated project cost of SEK 1,400,000,000. Yield on cost expected to be around 4.7%, and also this project should be completed in the Q2 of 2023. The 3rd project we announced in the quarter was this one in Bergen, Moldan Svieren 628. This was a building we acquired just about 15 months ago. We were pleased to see that we already have signed 1 huge lease contract, bringing us up to 44% pre let ratio, enabling us to start this redevelopment also in Bergen.

We also have firm negotiations ongoing with the 2nd tenant, which will increase the preload ratio substantially. Estimated project cost, SEK 600,000,000, 5.2 percent estimated yield on cost, and this is expected to be completed within the end of the year. So as you can see, our ongoing project table has been increased. We're very happy about that. The 2 top projects on the list we have been reporting on for quite some time.

You can see that we have 2 red arrows on Innovacietebskarta 729. Here, the project cost is slightly up following lease contract and some additions to the building. This will be financed over the rent from that tenant. The yield on cost is, however, slightly down. That's following the The fact that CPI came in lower than we had expected for 2020, leaving us with a decimal round off on the yield and cost on this project.

At Universiti Tetzkalter 2, the rebel project, this is a project we're developing As a hub for technology, we started it at a very low pre let ratio and are pleased now to see that we have reached 52%. Oslo. And also here, we have a very strong interest and pipeline for this product. This is, however, also a product where we will be providing So a lot of meeting room facilities, conferences, food and beverage. So the rent for this project is also based on some turnover Rent, which, of course, will be potentially impacted by a continued COVID situation with social distancing.

The 2 next projects, Santoulasplas and Turjenschostate 12, we have Launched on the Q3 presentation, you can find more information about these projects in that presentation. They have been started at 60% and now 92% pre let ratios, very attractive products. And at the bottom, you can see The refurbishment projects which we have ongoing, they are all fully let and progressing according to plan, on time and cost. We've also done some transactions in the Q4, closing in the Q1. We We acquired one building in Stavanger.

That's the police station where we had an option to acquire the asset for SEK 126,000,000. And we had our value our NUSEC estimate the fair market value at SEK 313,000,000 following the acquisition. It's fully let to the Norwegian police. It had a 1 year lease duration when we acquired it, and now we have increased the Duration there to 6 years. In Melendalswein 1A in Bergen, we acquired property of 5,800 square which is for NOK 208,000,000.

This is located right next to the project we started in We're in Auswein 6 to 8, a very nice add on to our existing portfolio. Lease duration of 2.7 years, and Oslo. We can see that we also have the opportunity to add some value to this going forward. At the same time, we chose to rotate out and sell Tolboden in Bergen. It's a nonstrategic asset, small asset, 1800 square meters.

It was sold 21% above book values for the 4th quarter. A few words on the market situation. Let me start by COVID-nineteen. Firstly, Norway has held up very well through 2020, mainly because of the very strong support packages provided by the Norwegian government, both in respect of supporting people and businesses. And COVID-nineteen continues to affect our Lives.

We went back into a partial lockdown in January, and it's still a bit early to see what this will mean for us in respect of economy and also long term effects on the demand for office. However, the Norwegian government has very strong vessels, and they have clearly stated that they will continue to support both people and businesses through this crisis. We have kept a very close dialogue with our customers through the last year to better understand how this working from home situation will affect their future workplace strategies and also their expected net take up of space. What we are hearing from our tenants is that they clearly see that they will probably provide more individual flexibility in respect of letting employees choose where they want to work from. However, all surveys we have seen in the Norwegian market on this topic clearly states that, that is probably going to be limited to somewhere between 1 in 2 days per week.

When we talk to our clients about that, they are also very firm that they don't really expect this to have any Material impact on their expected net take up because they also see that they probably will use the office space differently going forward and will be in need of more collaboration rooms for Teams meetings, etcetera. Now if we take a look at the letting markets, what we experienced through 2020 was that we had a clear slowdown In March, April, May, June, activity started picking up again. And after the summer, we had very high activity in the letting market. And if you look at the total volumes signed for Oslo through 2020, we actually can see that we had volumes at the same levels that we saw as normal for the years 2015 to 2018. So it was a busy quarter sorry, year, and that was also very much confirmed through our strong activity in Q4.

If you look at the vacancies on our consensus report, you can see that The line steps up a bit through 2020. Vacancies increased slightly. However, that has been very limited to the east fringe of Oslo, where we saw some newbuild volumes coming into the market through 2020. If you look at the city center of Oslo, vacancies are currently around 3% to 4%, and there is very limited new Supply coming into the city center of Oslo. Actually, most of the new supply there is our own redevelopment projects currently in the market.

At the bottom graph, you can see that the newbuild volumes has been also put out from our consensus report. Here you can see that there is expected some 170,000 coming into the market this year. And when we dig into those projects, what we know Is that around 70% of that volume is already pre let. So we are very comfortable with the market situation, which is also why who we have chosen to start some of our projects at lower pre let ratios than we have done in the past. If you take a look at the blue graph blue line, it seems like rental growth has stopped up and declined over the last year.

That is actually not something we recognize from the marketplace. We We have experienced through 2020 that rents have actually held up very well in all the negotiations we have done in 2020. If you take a look at the markets in Trondheim and Bjburgen, also there, we've experienced very stable vacancy levels and letting activity. We have 2 projects which we are preparing in these markets, and we have strong also interest for those projects coming out with the right locations. Transaction markets.

We saw very high activity in the transaction market, predominantly than in the second half also. Following the key interest rate policies policy rate reduction of 1 150 basis points. We also saw a strong yield compression in the market in Norway, meaning that The prime yields currently in Oslo are around 3.2% to 3.3%, and that's down from 3.7% in the Q3. If you look at Trondheim, prime yields are currently around 5.25%. In Bergen, they are at 3.75%.

This quarter, you can see or in full year of 2020, you can see that the transaction volume was around SEK 110 €1,000,000,000 which is actually the highest activity we've seen since 2015. So very strong transaction market, also supported by an open and attractive financing market. So moving on to some financial Figures, Anders, the floor is yours.

Speaker 2

Thank you. The Q4 provided a very strong end to 2020 and particularly the net letting, as Sonja mentioned, of 166, But also the start up of the new projects. And we're particularly happy with the start up of those because that has been we're working on that for the Last three quarters, so to speak. COVID-nineteen has clearly slowed us a bit down. So we're very happy to see that we're now starting them up.

If you look at the balance sheet, those The ongoing project portfolio, we estimate between NOK 11,000,000 and NOK 14, NOK 15, Remaining to be captured from those projects. So additional between NOK 11.15 per share In additional value stemming from the already started projects. In addition, we have the shadow pipeline. Also on the net letting side, we Continue to deliver on the management portfolio, again, leaving the vault at, as I said, at 7 years And a 98% occupancy rate. On the COVID-nineteen, we have seen a very strong Payment from our tenants, as expected.

We were a bit cautious on the 2nd quarter, so we made provisions for bad debt. As things have progressed, we see that those provisions were probably a bit or they were a bit too large. So we have reversed them gradually over the 3rd Q4. So the net effect from COVID-nineteen in our books, If you take the total revenues of SEK 1766,000,000 for those quarter 2, 2, 4,000,000 is 0.8%. So it's very small effect from COVID-nineteen in the Entron numbers.

Okay. Looking at the revenues from for this quarter coming At €590,000,000 it's €1,000,000 up from the 3rd quarter and a full €6,000,000 up from where we expect it to be from our sort of our guidance from the last quarter. The SEK 6,000,000 uptick mainly stems from a couple of one offs and then a very strong letting in the 4th quarter. If we compare it to the Q4 last year, we're down with SEK 5,000,000. We have taken out a total of Five assets for redevelopment throughout the year.

That has given us a net reduction in revenues of SEK 25,000,000. That has partly been offset by a very strong net letting. It's 3.1% on the quarter and 2.5% for the full year, Which is basically compared to the CPI of SEK 1,600,000,000. So again, a very strong net letting or like for like growth coming from our Arletting. On the net income profit margin coming at SEK 3.62 and profit for tax at SEK 4.9 billion.

I'll come back into the Cost part of that in particular and also on the value changes. Cash earnings coming in at SEK 8 per share on the 4 quarters rolling as expected. Also the basis then for providing SEK 4.90 in dividends for the year, 63% of cash earnings, 12% CAGR on the cash earnings since 2014. NRV coming in at €189,000,000 as we announced a couple of weeks back. If looking at the NAV, It's a 15% CAGR since 2014, 18% CAGR if we include the dividends of SEK 24.65 That we paid out throughout this period.

On the triple net, it's 16% and 19% correspondingly. On the P and L side, I'll just make a few comments on the cost side because they are a bit higher than what we would expect. Firstly, we have incurred costs of about SEK 11,000,000 due to the bid situation for Entra. SEK 11,000,000 for this quarter no, for the Q4. We expect to around SEK 7,000,000 for the Q1.

Then we Put in place a new ERP system in Entre on and we pushed the big green button on February 22 last year. That has led to additional cost for us in the range of SEK 16,000,000 for the full year and the bulk quite a bit of that coming into the last quarter. That is being split evenly between admin cost and operating cost. Thirdly, as these assets that were now started for redevelopment We're put out of operations. We still incur the ongoing costs of running those, be that People still maintaining them, working on them, electricity, insurance, tax, etcetera.

That has it's a total of SEK 6,000,000 for the full year. And I mean, we always had those because otherwise, we invoice that to our tenants on as Part of the common cost, but now we need to incur the cost ourselves. And for when those kind of large, big And a large number of projects, it will mean a cost effectiveness of SEK 6,000,000 Also should note, we are in a tax payable position of SEK 26,000,000. We discussed that on the Q2 presentation that we expect it to be in the range of SEK 30,000,000 to SEK 40,000,000 for the year. The key driver for tax loss carry forward in real estate companies like ours is, first, The tax depreciation on our assets and second, the part of the redevelopment costs or the The development CapEx that we're able to cost out directly.

And as a result, for the delaying start of these redevelopment projects, Oslo. We are in a small tax payable position this year. We do not expect to be in a group tax payable position for 2021, 2022 and probably not in 2023 either. If you're going looking at the summary of the known effects, how will the our revenues look like in the coming year coming quarters coming 6 quarters, we said finally we're starting to see the effect on the delivery on those new projects that Sonja I described earlier, especially the U2 and U729 in the last end of this year, where we're going to be passing SEK600 Monthly rent now inside in quarterly rent. And we expect that from that date, we will not look back on terms of the SEK 600,000,000.

And again, with that project portfolio we're now seeing, it's we're poised for a very strong revenue growth coming into 2022. Looking at the balance sheet, starting off SEK 52,000,000,000 we invested SEK 385,000,000 On the quarter, SEK 40,000,000 of that is a small add on acquisition, Thomas Scott Lead Plus up at where we're adding the Some parking spaces that we will convert into offices and storage. The rest is basically on the project portfolio. Then we come to the big value changes of almost SEK 4,500,000,000. If you look at the split on the pie chart to the right, 78% of that value development stemming from yield, 19% stemming from the project developments.

If you look at the full year, €59,000,000,000 or almost €6,000,000,000 of value changes, 70% comes from yields, 15% from projects and 7% from net letting. If we're adding the portfolio that we have up in Brion, that will be Sold off to JM and also the Oslo S Utvikling. We have a total balance sheet of more than SEK 58,000,000,000, so quite significant. On the financing side, it was kind of a normal quarter in the start. We issued SEK 800,000,000 of CPs and another SEK 1,000,000,000 in the 7.5 year green bond, Leading us now to a total debt portfolio of a bit more than SEK 21,000,000,000.

Of that, 48% is now green, Corresponding to Green Bonds and Green Bank Loans. You see we run a very still a very solid ship, LTV At 37%, a record low for Entra and an ICR at 3.5%, which Both gives for sort of the certainty and the stability of the business. And with a combination of the SEK 7,300,000,000 we have in available undrawn RCFs, It is gives us also massive flexibility in terms of growth, both on the Project development part, which is our main lever for growth, but also in acquisitions if we find that if we want to do that. Average rent interest costs coming up to 2.38, so 5 bps above last quarter, basically following the increase in Ebor. We find that the financing market is very favorable.

CP market is open and attractive. The bond market is very attractive currently. Margin have contracted significantly. We have seen that due to the strategic interest for a bid situation in Entra, our bondholders have been reluctant to enter into agreements with Entra. So we With Entra, so we basically been in a standstill period since they started in November.

We now see that the sentiment of the bond market is such that they are Seemingly willing to lend us money again, so we will be back in the market probably in quite a short time. And then the bank market, as always, very happy with our 5 bank partners that are supportive to our business and our story and will provide any sort of liquidity and financial stability that we need. So that was a quick run through on the financing. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Anders. Okay. Seeing that we are at the year end, we'll also give you some closing remarks looking back on our strategy and how we have performed through 2020. Entre has had the same strategy for the past years. Our The strategic focus areas is to 1, provide profitable growth 2, provide the best customer experience and 3, be an environmental leader within our industry and as a foundation for that, providing Sustainable Business Development and Operations.

In respect of sustainable operations, we have used KPI energy consumptions to follow-up our efforts. And as you can see from the graph to the left, we've had a strong development there over the last years. And in respect of our portfolio, we continue to invest in sustainability. And currently, you can see that 58% of our revenues or rental incomes and property values are actually Bream certified at very good or better. That's already certified or in the progress of being certified.

Enfra has been top in class in respect of customer satisfaction for years, and We were very, very proud to see that we actually reached 87 points in the year 2020. That's relative to an industry average of 81 points. And this is, of course, very important for us and one of the reasons which we managed to maintain such high occupancy rates in our portfolio. In respect of Profitable growth, as you can see from the left side, rental income growth has been 35% over the past 5 years. That's taking into account that we've actually divested assets for around SEK 7,000,000,000 in this period, selling off the nonstrategic assets.

And flattish, as you see also for the past 2019 2020, as we've already discussed. On the right side, you can see that our NAV, NRV value has grown by 103% over the period. This underlying value growth is driven by strong operational performance, strong netletting, the project pipeline and, of course, also supported by market rental growth and yield compressions. Entrance growth has, in the past and also going forward, mainly been driven by our project pipeline. And we have a strong and proven track record of delivering very profitable projects.

Here, you can see that we've developed 20 projects since we were IPO ed, all of the project at very attractive returns, Total investment of around SEK 10,000,000,000 with a 26% value uplift on completion and giving us then SEK 14.2 per share from the project development pipeline. Now we've been through our ongoing projects. And if you take a look at the left side here, you can see that the project portfolio of 147,000 square meters will add rental income of SEK 450,000,000 to our top line over the next 4 years, as illustrated in the graph. On the right side, you can see that we also have an additional pipeline of pipeline of short term projects. These are projects we currently are in the market with marketing.

We do expect that we should be able to start 2 of these projects in the Q1 and probably another 1 or 2 projects within the next 12 months or so. At the bottom, you can see the long term pipeline. Here, we have a land bank where we're working with the zoning of the land, Oslo. And we expect that we should be able to develop another 250,000 to 300,000 square meters based on that pipeline. So closing remarks.

2020 was another very solid year, 23% NRV growth and 4% Dividend Growth. Net letting of NOK 202,000,000 for the full year. Occupancy is currently at 97.9 We completed 16,000 square meters of development and started another 97,500 square meters through the year. Uncertainty, of course, prevails with the COVID-nineteen situation and the long term effects for the office The region market is characterized by solid market fundamentals and also very strong transaction markets, which we see in 2020. And Entrance large and solid development pipeline will continue to fuel significant growth in the years to come.

Thank you. That's all from me. We have some questions here. With your low loan to value at 37%, do you intend to find new So would you consider, for instance, a buyback program?

Speaker 2

Well, clearly, LTV of 37% is low for Entra. When we were IPO ed, we were in the very high 40s. Our Policy is to be south of 50% over time. While 37 is pretty much on par with our Continental peers. We believe that Entra, with its very long Walt, at 7 years, our 58% public tenants with a AAA rating sort of substantiates Not a need, but the that we can have a higher LTV than most other companies.

That said, 37% is low. We will invest some between SEK 2,500,000,000 and SEK 3,000,000,000 in our projects in 2021 alone And so significantly higher than the normal SEK 1,000,000,000 to SEK 1,500,000,000 that we do invest. That said, it's very high on the agenda on the management and the board. But given the special situation that Entra is in, It will that discussion will be postponed some months until we see how Entra moves How will progress as an independent company or as part of a bigger and bigger and bigger system? But the answer Yes, it's very high on the agenda and the board will work on this together with management in during the springtime.

Speaker 1

The yield on cost on your recent projects is lower than Historical levels, should we assume similar levels going forward in the pipeline? Yes, that's also reflecting that we have higher initial values going into the project. So I think it's fair to say that We would see that specifically on the redevelopment projects. And then Yes, I think that's fair to say.

Speaker 2

If I just add to that. Historically, we have been Sort of typically 100 to 150 bps or basis points above market yields on our yield and cost. If you look at the existing projects, They are still in the 100 bps higher than the market yields. And as you know, there's a nonlinear So a regression between 100 bps on a very low market yield is a lot better than 100 bps on a high market yield naturally. So in that way, the profitability on these projects that we're now starting is very, very strong.

I mean, doing that on 4 between Oslo cases between 4.5% and 5%, while the prime yield in Oslo is $325,000,000 to $330,000,000 And these assets typically, if you look at the EUSA, Unitratra 7 to 9, doing it at 5.8, We can sell that in the market for probably 3.5% any day of the week. So these projects are very profitable for us. That said, redevelopment projects are usually less profitable than new builds Because especially when the walls and the roofs are fixed, you're not able to add new capacity. But and These are mainly redevelopment projects that we started off now, these are the 5 big ones. So but again, I think the short answer is these projects are very profitable.

You got more than 100 bps difference between the market yield, yield and cost, and we're very happy with those.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you. That seems to be the questions for today. So thank you all for following us this quarter, and we hope to see you again next quarter. Have a nice day.

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