Welcome to the KlaraBo audiocast, the teleconference Q4 2021. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present CEO Andreas Morfiadakis and CFO Jenny Appenrodt. Speakers, please begin.
Hello, a warm welcome to the very first audiocast of KlaraBo as a listed company. My name's Andreas Morfiadakis, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of KlaraBo. Also today I have the CFO Jenny Appenrodt with me here to present the reports that we released this morning. We thought that we were gonna go through KlaraBo in brief shortly, and then talk a little bit about the Q4 numbers, and then go a little bit more in details through the financials, and then round up with the business model of KlaraBo. If we turn to page three. KlaraBo in brief is a residential property manager and developer that exists in most areas of Sweden. We are from...
We have projects in Trelleborg in the south to Visby in the east and Sundsvall in the north. We have three areas of growth strategy. The first one is new construction, where we're aiming to build sustainable and environmentally certified and cost-efficient rental apartments that are mainly built in wood. We have two partners in the Baltic region that supply us with these volume modules that are built in factories and then transported to Sweden. At the moment, we have close to 1,500 apartments in our project portfolio. The second area is renovations of existing properties.
At the moment, we have close to 5,500 apartments in our property management, and we have identified that 3,500 of those have uplifting potential when it comes to increasing the rent. The third area is, of course, acquisitions. The company has a growth strategy both with the new construction and the renovations, of course, but also when it comes to acquisitions. On a daily basis, we are looking for new land and building rights and also investing in existing properties that we can find in the market.
Like I said, we do have 5,500 apartments under management, close to 1,500 apartments in our project portfolio, and we have a value of the investment properties as of 31st of December of SEK 7.6 billion. If we go over to page four. The financial and operational targets were set earlier last year. I'm not gonna go through all of them, but one of the operational targets is that we should commence construction of at least 200 apartments per year. The outcome of 2021 was 219. Another target is that annual growth of long-term NRV per share shall be higher than at least 15%.
For the outcome of 2021, it was 43%. We shall also have annual growth in income for property management of at least 12%, and the outcome there was 98%. The dividend policy is that we, in the long term, shall pay out 50% of the income from property management after tax. However, for 2021, the board has proposed to the AGM that no dividend is going to be paid. If we go to page six, you see the fourth quarter results in brief. We can sum it up with that it was a very strong quarter, where basically all the numbers have improved significantly.
Revenues, NOI, income from property management have all pretty much doubled up since compared to the same period last year. We also see that the value add work that we are doing on a daily base is continuing on a very high level, and that gives the shareholder value. For the quarter, we have refurbished 78 apartments, which is the highest number so far in KlaraBo history. As a result of that, those 78 apartments, we see that the graph on the right side below, we see that the gap of the rental value development relative to the general market continues growing, which creates value.
This is also one of KlaraBo's operational targets that we shall for each quarter see that this gap is increasing. Finally, what we have done in the last quarter, we did repay a vendor note of SEK 360 million, which is one of the reasons that we have a very low LTV level at the moment. It is actually the all-time low, and that will give us great possibilities going forward when it comes to investing in new construction, the existing properties, and of course, in the transaction market. The loan to value ratio for the group amounted to 42%. Page seven, the highlights of last quarter.
Of course, the IPO at the on Nasdaq Stockholm was the highlight. We think that it was a very successful IPO. We printed new shares of SEK 830 million. The IPO was heavily oversubscribed and adding over 5,000 new shareholders to the company. We did get a lot of attention during the process. Like I said, we thought it was very successful. We did, like I mentioned, repay the vendor notes of SEK 360 million, which lowers the LTV level.
We also finished the new construction project in Motala, and that was actually the first product that we have certified with the Miljöbyggnad Silver, which has been very successful. Then, after the end of the period, we did present the first transaction of 2022, which was 126 rental apartments in Umeå, with an underlying property value of SEK 175 million. We also got a new land allocation in Skellefteå. Skellefteå, as many of you probably know, has a huge deficit of housing, since they have many infrastructural projects going on. Getting a land allocation in Skellefteå has been something that we have been looking forward to. That land allocation will give us approximately 130 apartments, and we see that construction start is probably at the end of this year already. Now I'm gonna return to page nine, and I'm gonna let the Klara Bo CFO speak.
Hi, everyone. I'm Jenny, and I will present you the financial numbers for quarter four. Now we're on page nine, as Andreas said. We delivered a strong quarter. Surplus ratio ended at 54.6% compared to 52% last year. Revenue on a like to like basis was up by more than SEK 2 million compared to quarter three, which is the sharpest increase since the beginning of KlaraBo. The pace of renovation has increased during the quarter. As Andreas said, we have carried out 78 renovation projects compared to 49 in 43. This is mainly driven by the properties that we have in Trelleborg, Visby, Kristinehamn, and Gävle. Apart from Trelleborg, the properties in these locations were acquired in mid-2021, and we have started to carry out renovations mainly in 44.
With the exception of Visby, where negotiations are still ongoing, we have, in all these locations, reached agreements with the union of tenants regarding the rental levels for renovated apartments. The increased electricity prices that we've heard a lot about have not had a major impact on the results in quarter four, mainly explained by the fact that the price of the majority of the volumes for KlaraBo for quarter four had been fixed. Central administrative costs include a little more than SEK 7 million of costs in connection to the IPO. Total cost for the listing ended at SEK 42 million, where approximately SEK 35 million has been put directly to equity and the remaining amount via the P&L as administrative costs. We have accounted for SEK 300 million as changes in values of properties as a result of both continued lower yields and completed investments.
All our properties are, on a quarterly basis, valued by external valuation firms. We were expecting an adjustment of the yields as there have been transactions at very low yields in the market in locations comparable to where KlaraBo is present. We have also completed the construction project in Motala, as Andreas talked about, whereby the property has been fair valued by an external valuation company, and the gain has been booked to the P&L. Earnings per share after dilution for the quarter amounted to SEK 2.17 . If we look at the right-hand side of the slide, the current earnings capacity, we can see that based on the contracted rents as of 1st of January this year, and based on our budgeted costs, the surplus ratio is at 58.6%.
The rental revenue is up by 2.3% from the preceding quarter as a result of the occupancy in Motala, continuous value-enhancing measures, and our improved economic occupancy rates. The increased surplus ratio of 58.6%, which is up from 55.1% in the beginning of the year, is mainly explained by the gradual increase in cash flows due to the implementation of value-enhancing measures, reduced maintenance of our renovated properties, and also a higher surplus ratio of our construction projects compared to our existing investment properties. The settlement of the remaining vendor notes in quarter four has reduced our financial costs by approximately SEK 30 million on an annual basis. This has, however, been offset by a newly implemented interest rate swap, where we have fixed the interest rates for four years for an amount of SEK 500 million.
The net effect is a reduced cost of close to SEK 10 million. The interest cover ratio on a forward-looking basis ended at 3.28 points as a result of the improved cash flow and the repayment of vendor notes. Finally, income from property management per share in accordance with the earnings capacity presented here declined from SEK 1.37 in the preceding quarter to SEK 1.28 in quarter four, and that is a direct result of the increased number of shares. If we turn to the next page, and now we're on page 10, we have the balance sheets. Total assets are up from SEK 7.7 billion in September to SEK 8.5 billion in December.
Investment properties at SEK 7.85 billion have increased by the amount of changes in value of properties that we talked about, fair value of the newly constructed property in Motala, the acquired project property in Malmö that took place end of December, and finally, investments in both existing properties and new construction projects. The two share issues in December in connection to the listing have increased equity by a net amount of SEK 830 million after having deducted the transaction costs that were associated. We used approximately SEK 400 million to settle the vendor notes and to finance the acquisition in Malmö end of December. We closed the year with a cash balance of SEK 616.5 million. All financial ratios have improved as a result of the listing.
The LTV, which you have already heard about, ended at 41.6%, and the equity rate's at 49.3%. We would free up an additional amount of SEK 1.1 billion of cash if the LTV of our properties would go up to 65%. If we turn to the next page, and we're now on page 11, we find the cash flow statement for the year. Cash flow from operations amounted to SEK 63.8 million. This cash has been used to finance investments in new construction and also investment properties. 7% of the cost of new construction is financed by bank loans, and the remainder by our own cash flow.
Value-enhancing investments are financed on a daily basis by our cash flow, but the properties are refinanced on a continuous basis in line with increased market value and the re-reduced LTV. The outcome of completed renovation projects up till today shows that the net value increase of the projects exceeds the money that we have put in as investment. New share issues during 2021 increased our cash balance by approximately SEK 1 billion. As already stated, we ended the period with a cash balance of SEK 616.5 million. If we turn now to page 12, here we have a summary of our debt portfolio. Our long-term financial liabilities amount to approximately SEK 3.8 billion. We currently only have traditional bank debt, where we are borrowing from five Scandinavian banks.
The average interest rate margin amounts to 1.9% at the end of December. We use derivatives to extend our interest rate tenor, where our average interest rate tenor at the end of December is close to two years. According to our finance policy, a maximum of 60% of our interest rate maturities are allowed within the next 12 months. On the credit side, a maximum of 30% of the loan stock may expire within a rolling 12-month period.
Okay. Thank you for that. If we turn to page 14, we're gonna go through the business model of KlaraBo. The first area then is the property portfolio, the existing properties. Like we said before, where they are valued at SEK 7.7 billion at the year-end, which amounts to 18,500 per sq m. The average rent for the apartments that are not renovated, meaning the 3,500 of the total 5,400 apartments, have an average rent of SEK 1,025 per sq m. This gives us, after rents that are negotiated with the Union of Tenants, an uplift potential of close to 30%-40%, depending on which city these apartments are in.
KlaraBo has four regions where south and east are the biggest ones when it comes to rental value, market value, and of course then also a number of apartments. The two biggest cities that we do have are in Trelleborg and in Visby. In both those, we have approximately 900 apartments in each city. They have both been acquired from the respective municipality in those cities. If we go over to page 15, you see this graph that I on the left-hand side that I also showed in the beginning. That is one of the most important graphs that we have, and you will always see that in each presentation that we do.
What that graph shows is the gap between the rental value development that KlaraBo has been able to do with the existing properties compared to the general market increase that everybody gets in the cities with the negotiation with the Union of Tenants. During this time, from Q1 2019 up until the year-end of 2021, we have increased the gap with 8.4 percentage points more than the general market has received. This is done by uplifting of the apartments refurbishment. They are taking place when the tenants are actually moving out. We're not forcing any refurbishment on existing tenants.
As soon as the tenants move out, we identify if the apartment needs some uplifting. If it does, we do go in and we in most cases do a total refurbishment, and those take approximately four to six weeks. We also work with smaller renovations, and that can be replacing of kitchen cabinets, installation of washing machines and safety doors and so forth. We're also transforming storage areas to smaller apartments. We just here in January redid five apartments in former storage area to five new apartments that are approximately 30 sq m for each.
We're trying to identify areas in all the existing properties that we have to create value and so forth. If we turn to page 16, we just have a few numbers about the transaction we did in Umeå. Umeå is, of course, a university city in the northern part of Sweden and has a population of approximately 90,000. We acquired 126 apartments. It was an off-market transaction. These two areas in the center of Umeå were constructed in the 1960s and in the 1990s. We have identified that 100% of those has that refurbishment potential.
We have already started testing the market there. So far, everything looks exactly according to plan. Like I said before, the underlying property value of those were SEK 175 million, fully rented and located in the city of Umeå. If we continue to page 18, we're gonna talk a little about the new construction. What we do when it comes to the new construction is that we are using a module-based building system that is developed in-house.
At this moment, we do have two partners that we work with, both in the Baltic region. We are trying to find one more since the project portfolio now has increased quite a bit. We believe that we need to increase the partners with at least one or maybe two more partners going forward. All these modules are being built in wood. The facades, you can of course change and put whatever facade you would like to, that works with the detailed plan of the site. We have constructed these floor plans so that they are the same in each product.
All those pictures that you see here on page 18, they have exactly the same floor plans in all those three. They are one to four room apartments, and they amount to 35-85 sq m. The construction time of this is approximately 10 months from the time that we actually start producing them up until tenants can move in. If we go over to page 19, you see a summary of the property portfolio. We do have a rental value of the existing properties today of SEK 491 million per year rental value.
If we, when we finalize the entire project portfolio, we are aiming to add another 163 million in estimated rental value. Like we said before, we have close to 1,500 apartments in this portfolio. It is estimated market value at completion of SEK 3.4 billion. Most of the, approximately half of the apartments are in the southern part of the country. The property portfolio has increased since last quarter, and that is mainly due to that we have renewed a land allocation with the municipality in Visby, which gives KlaraBo an exclusive right to acquire land when the detailed plan is done.
This land allocation is right next to the existing properties that we already have there. Another change that has been done is the investment support. Like, probably many of you know, the government terminated the investment support late in December. We had to recalculate four to five of the projects that we had before. Despite of that, we do see that the marketing in those areas that we have the projects in is strong. Even though the rental value has gone up through the termination of the investment support, the profit seems remain satisfactory for all these products.
The conclusion of that is that we do like the investment support. It's unfortunate that they have terminated it, but the projects that we have remain satisfactory even though the investment support has disappeared. The page 20, we just have a summary of the completed and ongoing projects that we have. At the moment, we have either completed or ongoing projects of 332 apartments. The yield on cost of these are 5.7%. The total construction cost, including land, including VAT and capital and so forth, has been close to SEK 25,000 per sq m.
As you can see on the pictures, they do have a totally different design from the first apartments we built in Bjurholm and Sollefteå to the one in Höör that is ongoing at the moment or Boliden that is ongoing. What is the same for all these apartments is that the floor planning is exactly the same, one to four bedroom apartments.
If we then turn to page 22, we have a list of our shareholding. We got approximately 5,000 new shareholders through the listing. As Andreas said, the offering to subscribe for newly issued B shares in connection to the listing was heavily oversubscri bed. In the end, we issued approximately 24.6 million new B shares. On December 31st, we had in total 131.8 million outstanding shares. As part of the new ownership base, we have established property funds like
Okay, we go to page 24. Just to sum up everything, the investment highlights. The company of KlaraBo is a pure residential company that has 85% of residential. We are always aiming to acquire new properties. When we do that, the high level of residential needs to be maintained. We have two areas. The one is new construction. We have a project portfolio of 1,500 apartments. We have said that we are gonna commence construction of at least 200 housing units during 2022. We're well on track of that.
Only the land allocation we got in Skellefteå earlier this month gives us 130 apartments that we hope is gonna be under construction late this year. We also see that the renovation model that we have in the existing properties of close to 5,500 apartments is paying off. We are increasing the rental value, and at the same time keeping a real occupancy rate at a very high level. In our view, the apartments that we have are fully let, which of course is very important. Finally, the LTV ratio of close to 42% gives us great possibilities going forward.
It will gives us the opportunity to continue investing in the new construction in the existing properties, and also helping us in the transaction market. We are looking forward to the coming months and quarters and see what the actual future actually has for KlaraBo. With that, the presentation is done, and we're just gonna open up for some questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Markus Henriksson of ABG. Please go ahead.
Hello, Jenny and Andreas. A few questions from me. Starting off with the projects. You expect to start apartments in Karlstad, Falun, and Kävlinge here in 2022. Some of those are quite large. We have Kävlinge at 238 apartments. Do you see in front of you that you can start all of these in one stage, or do they need to be portioned out so that the market demand can swallow these volumes?
I believe the project in Kävlinge is gonna be portioned out.
For the other ones should be able to start in one stage?
That's our best estimation at this time. Yes.
Okay. You also state that, for these projects that you have construction start here in 2022, we have a few that have status three in your project portfolio. States that you have not received building permit. Does that mean that you have granted zoning plan on all these projects, or how should we read that sentence?
Very close to getting a zoning plan in Karlstad, the zoning plan is in place. It's just Kävlinge and Falun that the zoning plan is not ready yet. Those are the projects we have together with SBB. The information we have is that the zoning plan is getting close.
Okay. Thank you. We also know that the CPI for commercial properties is 2.8% for 2022. For residentials, it's a bit different. We have a yearly indexation that differs between regions depending on agreements with the tenant associations. What do you expect for your portfolio in 2022 if we exclude renovations?
We have received an offer in Trelleborg which exceeds 2%. I mean, we do expect that we're probably gonna be around 2% or maybe a little bit higher.
Okay. Thank you for that. Also for the projects that are set for completion here in 2022, when during the year are these expected to be completed if we look at Höör, Trelleborg, and Helsingborg?
Höör is going to be first half of this year. Trelleborg is going to be the second half of this year. Helsingborg is I would say early second half of this year.
Okay. Thank you. Last question for me. I saw that you signed a new interest rate swap. So now you have a bit longer interest maturity up to 1.9 years. But you also have a relatively large share of refinancing to be done here in 2022. How do you think ahead regarding interest maturity, and how do you believe the interest rate level will be affected here given the dialogues you have at the moment with banks?
We are continuously looking at the interest rates, of course. As you said, we did the swap end of quarter four last year. We will continue to see what we can hedge. Right now, we believe that interest rates have come up a lot, so we decided to only do SEK 500 million. The plan was actually to do a bit more in December. That also goes for the amount that we need to refinance in quarter two this year. We will see whether we can hedge it out, but the plan is to at least follow the financial policy we have, and then we'll see where we end.
Okay, thank you for that. Those were my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Just as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. There'll be a brief pause while any further questions are being registered. Our next question is from Oscar Lindquist of Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andreas and Jenny. A couple of questions from me as well. I was wondering, could you give a rough breakdown of the value changes seen in Q4? How much of that is coming from yield compression on the renovations, please?
Okay. The majority of the SEK 300 million is coming from the value-enhancing measures we have. Around 30%, a bit more, is coming from yield compression.
Okay. Thank you. On renovations, you renovated approximately 80 apartments in Q4. Is this a run rate we can expect going forward?
I believe so, yes. However, I mean, there's always things that we can't control. I mean, the churn of apartments needs to be the right apartment. It always depends on which tenants are actually moving out. We are believing that we have reached a new level and we should be able to maintain this level for coming quarters.
Okay. Thank you. On central administration, you mentioned that you see costs affected by the integration of Kuststaden. Could you specify that effect in Q4 and to what extent we should see that going forward?
In Q4, we're still working with the integration of Kuststaden. In quarter four, we mainly integrated all our systems. Our main system is Vitec. There was a big work basically integrating those two systems into one system. I would say that going forward, we have been through most of the integration work and what's still outstanding is basically the personnel side, so basically where our resources should be planned, and hence we don't forecast a lot of extra expense coming from the integration.
Okay. Thank you. That's all for me.
Thank you. Any more questions?
Thank you. Just as a final reminder on the audio lines, if you have a question, that's zero one on your telephone keypad. We have a question from Markus Henriksson of ABG. Please go ahead.
I can just take a few follow-ups. Regarding acquisitions, you announced one in Umeå. Could you say something about what you see in the market right now? How is your deal flow? Do you have any concrete dialogues, et cetera?
I thought that the beginning of this year was a little bit slower when it came to deals on our table. However, the last couple of weeks, I've seen an increase in the discussions when it comes to transactions. At the moment, we do have several things that we are looking at, but nothing that is really concrete at the moment.
Okay. Thank you. Last question. If we look at the project portfolio, we can see that you recalculated a bit regarding the withdrawn investment support. Project margins have decreased from 22% to 19%, then some rental levels have increased for some projects. If we take Kävlinge as an example, where it's up to around SEK 1,850 per sq m, do you see in front of you any potential problems with the reallocations or long-term vacancies at rental levels in places like Falun and Kävlinge?
I mean, those are the estimations that we have and that we actually believe in. We do think that all these cities are managing those rental levels. Like I said before, I do think it's a little bit unfortunate that they have withdrawn the investment support, but that's nothing we can do about at the moment. The numbers that we have in the report is, of course, the best estimations and what we actually believe in today.
Great. Thank you for that. Those were my questions.
Thank you. There are no further questions on the audio line, so I'll hand back over to the speakers to answer any email questions.
No questions in writing have been submitted. Okay. If there are no further questions, on behalf of the company, I just would like to say thank you for listening and have a good day.