Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PSP Swiss Property Q1 2025 results conference call. I am Moira, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing Star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Giacomo Balzarini, CEO of PSP Swiss Property. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 results release. As always, I will give a quick headline rundown on the major items we saw. As you know, Q1 follows pretty quickly the full-year release, so there is, by habit, not much news. If you start on the letting market, we continue to see a very positive sentiment on the prime locations, especially in Zurich and Geneva. That is a continuum. Meanwhile, we saw that also on the letting side, and we continue to see a bifurcation between prime and non-prime, being on the letting side, being on the rent side. If you look at the letting successes, just a few highlights, which are probably not material with regard to the rental income, but are quite important with regard to letting levels or vacancy rates.
The one is on the redevelopment of the Bauwerk in Bern, where we had a letting success at rents slightly above CHF 400, which are pretty strong rents for Bern. Clearly, it is a very centrally located building. It is a rather small space, but I think we are positive on that side. Secondly, we fully let now a Limmatke. If you recall, we had offers to let the spaces slightly below CHF 800. We tried to stick to our target, and we now have fully let the building and relit the last two floors at rents above CHF 800. Finally, non-prime, but working on since about 15 years, we have almost fully let the Rheinfelden with the remaining office space. There is just a little bit of retail vacant. I think these are quite nice successes. Although, as I said, not really material with regard to the overall rental income.
With that, we are confirming and reiterating our vacancy rate guidance. If you go to the transaction side, the market is intact. Also, we see limited transaction on the prime side. This is not due to the fact that there are not potential buyers, but there's still very few potential sellers. There has been a transaction on the Carré des Banques in Geneva, which an asset has been traded. There is an asset on the market, a slight one on Rue du Rhône, but there is still only a few transactions in that market, predominantly due to the fact that we don't see really sellers on that end. If you go quickly to the results, on the one hand, although we are a bit below the market consensus, we are fully in line with our projections. We have a slight positive impact on the cost side.
This is due to an effect on the building at the Rue du Marché, where we got the HBR label, the sustainability label. Through that, we do not need to pay the property taxes on that building for the next also 20 years. We had accrued an amount, the yearly amount on this tax amount, and we were able to release it now in Q1 for the last five years. This is a one-off effect for the quarter. This HBR label, which is a sustainability label in Geneva, has its positive impact on that building. The second element is on the valuations.
As you know, we have typically no valuation changes in Q1 and Q3, but also this year we had a positive incidence on a building on Bahnhofplatz Weissbadplatz, where we had to ask the valuer due to a leasing contract to review the valuation, which triggered an uplift of roughly CHF 13 million on that building. You saw that on the income line. With that, if you look forward on the valuations, and I anticipate a potential question, if you look at the current transaction market, if we look at the structural vacancies and the market rents, I would expect that there is a slight uplift on the values towards mid-year if there is nothing material which is changing, predominantly due to the fact of market rent levels and structural vacancy rate adjustments.
If you go quickly on the major highlights on the projects, the one to highlight is the project in Wallisellen and the Richtpark. We got the official rezoning. Although there's still an appeal period going through, so legally it will go through by mid-year, the local communality and the population had a positive vote on the rezoning on all the projects which were planned, of which also ours was part. Secondly, on the Löwenbräu side, we are progressing with building permission and potential operators on the repositioning of the Löwenbräu West building. Here we will disclose more towards mid-year, but we are also pretty positive on that side. If you look a bit on the consensus difference on the income vis-à-vis what we delivered, you might interpret that the taxes were higher. In fact, we had to adjust the rate tax for the Geneva properties.
Orderly tax going forward, the tax rate has changed 14% - 14.7%, and this has an impact on the taxes we had to pay in Geneva. This probably explains a bit the differences between our net income result and the consensus. With that, I'd like to go straight to the Q&A and open the mic.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press Star and one at this time. The first question comes from Steven Bowman from ABN Amro. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Quick one. Like-for-like growth in Zurich, it's slightly negative. Could you please comment on that one?
Can you repeat that? I didn't understand it.
Yes, sure. If I look at like-for-like growth in Zurich, it is slightly negative, minus 40 basis points. Could you please comment on that?
Yes. If you recall, last year we had a strong contribution on the turnover rent in one building, which is not a repeat. This is basically the fact why it went through Zurich.
Okay, clear. The second one, since you are adding the Geneva redevelopments, could you please comment if there are any other developments also in that area? What I mean is that the municipality in the past mentioned that they want to revitalize the Carré des Banques a bit. Maybe if there's some update on that.
I would say nothing really material. There was a larger transaction of the BNP building in that area, but that's a few years back, a repositioning. I think the overall revitalization of that area is ongoing. There are also the buildings which were at the time sold by Lombard Odier, which will be reconverted, but I think that adds all to the quality of the Carré des Banques. Nothing we would be worried about, rather positive for the overall area and our project. We have seen that, by the way, also by the letting success to a bank already on the Rue du Rhône and also on the letting success of the Rue de Hesse we have seen. We are rather positive on this side.
Very clear. Thank you so much.
The next question is from Ken Carter from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first one is regarding the expiries in 2017 and 2018. We see there is 16%, which is a rather high number. Could you give us a bit of a color on the potential effects on the vacancy rate there or where you see those renewals? The second question is on Wallisellen. Last time, you said once you have the permission, you will give us a bit of a color on where this journey is going. If you would sell the whole project, what the potential associated profit with such a sale would be, how far you would go in the development by yourself, if you would take an asset swap with, for example, Swiss Life as an option. That is basically it. Thank you very much.
I think to the second one, you're absolutely right, but we don't have the permission yet. I think we have to wait for the approval period. Oh, I think it is here. We will disclose more details in the half year or in Q3. I think this is quite a rather complex project with many involved parties, and one has to really think through before making public statements. I think what we can reiterate is the overall communality, the mayor, the whole city are in favor of this overall rezoning, which will bring more residential areas to the communality. We are positively impacted, but we are working together with the local authorities to develop an interesting project and how it will then look once we are through. We will obviously, in our responsibility, disclose it. Whatever we talk now, it's premature. I hope you understand.
With regard to the.
No, no, but I think this is more than fair.
With regard to 2026, as you remember, we had an expiry on Rue de l'Arquebuse with the tenants of Pictet. We are working there, on the one hand, on the reletting of the full building. We are in discussion with tenants. Secondly, we are also thinking about the potential reconversion. I think this is the largest in the next year. In 2027, we have some retail expiries, but we are very positive based on the demand we see that we can really relit or prolong those contracts. There is one or two office tenants, which we know that this will come to maturity, but I think this 16% is an ordinary process. We will provide the vacancy rate guidance as we get closer to it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ken.
The next question comes from Eleanor Few from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Just one question from me. Your cost of debt has been quite flat for the last few quarters. Maybe just how do you see it developing over the years to come?
We are currently also looking at the market that we could refund at those rates. We could issue a bond today at those rates. I think I do not see at the moment major increases. If we work on the credit side, we are rather decreasing it even. I think we would be rather around the 1%, plus minus. I do not see at the moment, also based on the refinancing needs, substantial impacts to it.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Star and 1 on your telephone. The next question comes from Holger Fisch from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Two questions from my side. The first one would be on the income taxes. Could you just remind us of the background for the unusually high income taxes there in this period?
Yes, I mentioned at the beginning, but perhaps I was not so clear. We had to adjust the local tax rate in Geneva from 14%- 14.7% as they're moving up towards targeting the 15% tax rate. This explains the tax adjustment in Q1.
Okay, thank you. On the conversion of the Löwenbräu West to a service apartment, you also have some service apartments in Basel, and if I'm not wrong, you are not operating them on your own, right? This will be done by yourself.
Absolutely.
Could you remind us how many service apartments do you have in your portfolio currently?
The only one we have is sizable is really the Hochstrasse. That's the only one we have. We had one in Zurich, which we swapped in the transaction with Swiss Life.
Okay, thank you.
Just to add, I think in general, we are not operating any of those activities. We are always looking at what is the best user of the building, which medium-long term can provide us with the highest rental income and add value to the overall area and to the overall building. Then we go through normal bidding processes once we have identified it.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Giacomo Balzarini for any closing remarks.
Yes, thank you very much. Before wishing you all a happy week, we have, as most of you know, planned for a property tour Thursday night and Friday morning in Geneva. Thank you for all those attending. If there's anybody who would like to attend, we'll host a dinner in the Carré des Banques on Thursday night, where we have also guest speakers on the local market, and we will do a property tour visiting all the projects and assets in Geneva Friday morning. So everybody who is not perhaps now already signed up, happily invited. You can do that online, or you can write to Vasco or myself. Thank you very much. Happy good week. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.