National Security Emerging Markets Index ETF Price & Performance (NSI)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our twenty twenty four preliminary Preliminary Results Analyst Call. Today, our CEO, Bern Staley, accompanied by our CFO, Elke Snyder, will comment on the results presentations published this morning on our website. At the end of the call, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. For now, I would like to hand over to our CEO NSI, Good morning, everyone. We have a solid set of results to present to you today. And we know your time is valuable, so let's go straight into the presentation. Slide 4 shows our strategic priorities. These our decision making in all aspects of our business and will come back to them in a lot more detail when we talk about the outlook for 2025 we discussed them in a bit more detail. Slide 5 shows the highlights of the results.

Got a strong 5.2% increase in like for like net rents.

And that is basically the main driver of the increase in earnings to €2,.09 This also explains why we've been able to increase the dividend to 1 as we have committed in the past to pay out at least 75% of EPS. Finally, 1 to make for this slide. 2024 saw a small decline in the values.

Of 2.7% overall.

But the NAV has been stable due to the share buyback that we did during the year. Slide 7, shows the strong concentration of our portfolio to Amsterdam. Which at year end makes up about 55% of our assets. Part of the portfolio continues to sort of be the bulk of our assets and continues to be the backbone of our activities. And our activities in respect to disposal continue to basically filter through in that asset. As we do our asset rotation, Amsterdam will continue to grow going forward. Slide 7 shows NSI strong concentration sorry, Slide 8 shows the asset rotation that we've done. In 2024 NSI. We already talked in a lot more detail at the previous results release at the full year 2023 about the sale of Amsterdam Landauport, a project that we sold to ING. We had 2 asset disposals in the 1 in Denbos NSI, 1 in Eindhoven that we both sold 1 to the municipality and 1 to a group of private investors over the last eight years since 2017 NSI, we've sold for over €700,000,000 of assets, $7.29,000,000 euros to be precise. That is a lot when we set it against the total portfolio value of about €1,000,000,000 overall.

The only acquisition that we did during the year And the first acquisition that we did in the past three years, basically signaling that we see the market starting to shift more favorably and that this is some time to start buying assets. Was the Cyberstein Building in Utrecht? And interestingly, the disposal price of Dembos was more or less the same price as we paid to buy Syprastane in Utrecht. And once this is fully let, it will trade with a better cash flow than we sold in Danbos. And at the same time, the building is in a much better location. It does have rental upsides. And substantially more potential longer term. So generally a good trade from our perspective. Over the last last month, we've already been able to improve the label to A plus and we basically gave the go ahead to invest 3,000 in the coming two months to help the leasing of the remaining NSI. For which we know already is interest from the markets. Slide 10. Shows again how prime the location of our portfolio is. Of this asset is. It's next to the station and it may not be in Amsterdam, but in all fairness, this is the second best location in the country after Amsterdam.

Slides [indiscernible] Shows that over the last five years, discussions around COVID and working from home have not had an impact on the way we've managed our occupancy. Yes, there may have been an impact on sentiment with respect to offices, but for all that negative impact, we have been able to lower our vacancy over this period. We're now at 5.1%, and it would have been 4.5% if we exclude the Dec. 0 acquisition of Cybersteen. It shows to you that there is still good demand for offices. If they're in the best locations, sustainable and offer services, There will be demand for customers. It therefore is this vacancy number is testament to the quality of And it also confirms that our disposal program of provincial assets was definitely the right course of action over the last eight years. Slide 12. Shows the improvement in our operating metrics from a rental point of view. And again confirms the strength of our portfolio. GRI outgrowth has outpaced both CPI and ERV growth over the past six years. And whilst the reversion rate potential appears to be slowly eroding, in 2024, we have been able to lease well ahead of ERP.

We will see if 2025 will indeed confirm that our ERVs are lagging the market a bit, which is what we expect. Slide 13 shows how we kept the rental growth. We invest in our assets and in our services that we create for our customers. H and K slowed the Dijk in Amsterdam is very well regarded by the wider markets for the product that we've created. And the impact is clear, as you can see from these slides. With a strong increase in rents, a good return on the investment made, and ultimately customers that like the product that we've created. Elka, over to you. Thanks, Ben.

Okay. We're going to have a look at our revaluations. Over the full year, as said earlier by Verint, revaluations were slightly negative.

On this sheet, you can see on the left hand side euro amount and the split between the positive and negative revaluations and on the right hand side that same split, but then in number of assets.

As you know, '23 NSI a bit of a tough year looking at valuations. But looking at 2024 NSI, our outlook on values is much more positive. We see a nice number of revaluations at this time. 17 in total, showing positive revaluations. And we believe that this can be seen as the values are bottoming out. [indiscernible] Moving on to the next topic, sustainability. We remain a leader in the industry with respect to sustainability. As you've seen earlier, we have a strong performance on all indicators, like crisp but also on this sheet on the bottom right, you can see the Bream values. A whopping 44% of our assets are in excellent buckets, where in general, the Dutch market, about 10% of those assets are in the excellent buckets Strong focus remains on improving our energy usage. This can be seen as 1 of the most important contributors to our sustainability journey. On the top right, you can see our EPC energy performance certificates. And you can see we've been moving steadily towards more and more A or better. This is almost not for us an incredibly interesting thing anymore because we're already scoring so well. So we've moved our focus internally to really looking at energy intensity, So just actual kilowatt hours per square meter per year which we follow with the current performance.

You can see on the left. Here we have to put effort into both the performance of the building itself via our own investments, but also in supporting the energy mindful behavior of our tenants. To date, our current performance is far ahead of the pathway set for Paris Proof where we want to be at 85 by 02/35 and we strongly believe in continuing our sector leadership here. Okay. Let's now move on to the financials.

On the first sheet, you can see the upper earnings. So this is the rundown from gross rental income to net rental income to our EBITDA earnings, so our direct investment results. Quite noticeable, I think, are the costs are really in check. Both OpEx and administrative costs are lower than in 2023 NSI, The latter, so administrative costs, is mainly related to the cost of our employees, And we have maintained the core of our staff, as I think I've said at the half year, to plan and be ready for growth. But in some areas, we've kept open some vacancies to absorb wage increases. So even though we are not focused on cost minimalization, we, of course, still keep our eye on being smart about costs. Financing costs are higher, as you can note, than in 2023 but we'll come back to that just a little bit later. We also see corporate income tax as a result of the internal structuring we did in 2023 NSI, following the announced changes in the Diet Treat regime. We show a direct corporate income tax rate of a little below 4%.

Okay. Now I'm going to talk you through 2 bridges.

The first 1 being the EPRA earnings per share. This slide shows a bridge from the 23 EAPRA EPS to the 24 EAPRA EPS. From left to right, to keep it A little bit structured for you. You can see that we have no impact on the acquisitions. And you might think, hey, you have acquired Typi but of course that didn't come in until Dec. 0. So no impact yet visible in this chart on GRI of this acquisition. Of course, we will see an impact in the 25 bridge. The marginal disposals impact that you see includes the mistrend on Landauports, which was a building that we sold to ING beginning of the year. H and K A then H and K then BOSS that we sold in 2023 NSI. And in 2024, as Beren said, we had the disposals of Binnhoftenbos and Ferrenort Eintelf on And all of this together led to a marginal negative impact on GRI disposals. Practically said, we just have fewer square meters to rent Big positive impact on GRI like for like. And that just shows the impact of indexation and managing our vacancy well. Very marginal negative impact of service costs not recharged so I'm not going to go into that.

And then you see the 2 cost buckets that I mentioned earlier, where we're performing well. Both OpEx and administrative costs are lower so it has a positive impact on our our EPS. Financing has become more expensive. Due to both higher variable interest rates and a lower income on our swaps. We did redeem 1 of our loans early, that was the Berlin Hip loan, and we had to accelerate the depreciation on some initial costs for taking up the loan and of that $0,.11 that you see as a negative impact on this chart, $0,.02 was due to that early redemption. Direct income tax is €150,000,0.0 now and that €1,000,000 higher than it was in 2023, leading to the $0,.05 $0,.05 drop there.

And in total then, we have an EPS of €2,.09 over the year per share. And if you might wonder, the share buyback you don't see explicitly in this graph, but the impact is about $0,.06 and is divided over all of these components that I've mentioned before. Okay. That was bridge 1. Now moving on to bridge 2. That is the EPRA NTA per share.

Again, moving from left to right, going from 23% to 24%. The dividend you must recognize is 1,.52 You also recognize the EPS of €2,.09 and the impact now we're moving into the indirect impacts of the revaluations about a little bit below €1.5 Then we have some profit on book value of the sales of Lannerport ING, Fevernorte and Eindhoven. And Binnerhof in Nembos, all combined delivering €0,.12 And then 2 small impacts deferred tax relates to an indirect result on taxes corrected for movement in the deferred tax liabilities and we have another impact that is composed of of a number of also indirect items. Such as, for example, the own use of a floor in 1 of our center buildings as our own headquarters. The effect the additional effect besides the effect that's included in the EPS on the of the share buyback is $0,.84 As the denominator, Simplic Goods is becoming smaller with less shares freely floating. Now all of this results in NTA that is at par in 2024 with the level that we had in 2023 NSI. Okay. Now moving on to the final 2 slides. With respect to financials. Looking at our balance sheet, cost of debt, a tad bit lower end of NSI after having gone up last year at the time due to rising variable interest rates and a reset on our swap rates in the NSI right, loans of value, quite comfortable.

Well, very well within our external hurdle of 60% in our bank covenants but also at the low end of our own internal guidance. At the bottom left interest coverage ratio it is due to an average higher variable rate over the full year of 2024 NSI, And by the end of the year, it was lower, but on average a bit higher. Hence, the movement in NSI risk coverage ratio. Net debt to EBITDA, final chart on this slide, it's on your bottom right. Looks improved and that's on the back of about €3,000,000 higher EBITDA and a lower slightly lower debt of about €650,000,0.0 Okay. Final slide on the financials. A very important topic for us We're looking at our financing, some maturity and hedging profile. As we sold Landauport Development, ING, we were in less need of capital throughout the year. Thus, we reassess the loan book at the half year mark.

We did discuss it with the half year results, but just to reiterate, on July '5, we paid down on the Berlin Heap loan, by drawing down in our existing RCF facility. The impact twofold. 1 of them, low maturity profile change as the RCF's maturity is heavier, shorter than the Bear de Nippon was. That's obviously also impacting the average maturity that you see on the top right. In addition, we now have all of our lending fully unsecured. So none of our assets are collateralized leaving tremendous funding flexibility for the future. We are mindful of leaving enough time to arrange financing. As all of you can see that we have some work to do for the 26 loan book. And we are starting up further conversations with the banks this quarter. As interest rates have risen since the point in time when these loans were taken out, we are expecting all in financing costs to go up upon refinancing. Okay. So that concludes our slides on the financials. Now moving back to Berenz for the outlook. Thank you, Jelke. The final slide is the outlook for 2025 NSI. And then let's go through our strategic priorities. Amsterdam Specialists, You should expect to see more asset rotation away from our non focused markets and preferably into Amsterdam.

But as we show with the Seibersteyn acquisition, if we find the right asset in another location that makes perfect sense, we will certainly pursue that as well. [indiscernible] Today, the majority of our assets are offices, it doesn't have to be going forward. We'd like to be flexible about it. We've appointed someone internally that will look at new investment opportunities other than offices. [indiscernible] We're willing to pursue the right opportunities if they're attractive and logical in the context of our business. So that respect, see if 2025 is the year that's going to bring something. But it's something that we certainly have in our perspective. In our results release, if you go to do that, we talk in a bit more detail about further operational operationalization, it's hard word, of the office sector. 2025, we'll see us embrace this further with the rollout of turnkey solutions and services beyond H and K. We're finding that If you're a tenant of in search of less than 1000 square meters, and your contracts are going to get shorter that a lot of tenants can't take the cost of fitting out their entire space themselves. So this is going to be more of a opportunity for the landlord to take further in resource in return for higher rents.

We see a clear opportunity in this market and we'll pursue that beyond H1Ks for the wider portfolio. Sustainability is a multiyear process. The aim is still to be Paris aligned by 02/35 NSI, and this year the most visible contribution to this will be the delivery of H and K Rotterdam, Alexander. This is going to be a Paris proof asset on delivery. And so far, the interest for this type of product already is turning out to be quite good. Our initial leasing is already ahead of budget. Finally, growth. We have been very careful deploying capital in recent years And as I said, Cyprus was our first acquisition in three years' time. So we are very careful how to deploy capital. We see in this market the potential for more deals And whilst we would like to grow, to improve liquidity for shareholders, to improve cost NSI, and because there are other benefits we will not pursue this at any price. Every deal needs to make sense. If we find them, we will bring them to you. It's still early in the year. We'll see what comes from that point of view. But also from timing perspective, it's still early in the year with respect to guidance.

Based on the portfolio we have today and what we know now, we're comfortable to provide EPS guidance of this for this year of €2.5 and €2,.15 and basically a stable level of earnings for this year. There's a small negative from the disposal of 2 assets at the end of last year. That is not entirely offset by the acquisition of Saberstain. And we're canceling in a small increase in taxes. And that's as a negative offsets the like for like rental growth that we're penciling in. Therefore, more or less stable at this point in time. With that, I would like to hand it back to Martin for Q and A. Okay, great. So let's see. Okay. I see the first NSI I can hear you. Great.

Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the solid results and beating the estimates and your guidance as well.

For this year, you already gave a little bit of guidance and a little bit of granularity, but Bernd, just coming back to what you ended on the note on the EPS guidance, you mentioned at this time you see it more or less stable. But what would be some of the assumptions behind the 2.5 EPS growth mainly?

Obviously, what could possibly help is we have as you can see from the presentation in the appendix, a number of leases that are coming to maturity this year. And we automatically assume that we have an element of tenant retention, typically somewhere between 6085%. It's always hard to predict which tenants are going to stay, which tenants are going to leave. So we've made our assumption that some tenants will leave this year. If that ends up happening, but we immediately release then that is a positive because we automatically always assume a small element NSI vacancy for an intermediate period of time. Or if some of the tenants actually do extend and only just gave notice to try and renegotiate, then obviously that's also positive.

Very clear. I had a follow-up question on the other main topic. And I would say that your general tone being very optimistic, at least the beginning of this year, which is also very appreciated. And you mentioned some reopening on the market and put potential acquisitions at the right price, as you have mentioned. But what would be your ideal scenario for 2025 in terms of growing our acquisitions?

We may want to acquire, but obviously, we're very much dependent upon what the other side of the transaction wants. Writing interest rates or still high interest rates There are a number of Festus that held out We think in anticipation of a fall in interest rates to make their refinancing easier. Or to basically expect a small bump up in prices Some of those people's can't wait much longer because they've got a finite life fund. And there will therefore be more transactions. And even though we are now starting to see deals There is my best guess a potential volume of sellers that may want to come to the market but we're not sure that the depth on the buying side is there. Which means that it may well be the right opportunity to buy at this point in time. We've seen a number of deals of good assets at relatively high yields that could well be of interest to us. If they happen and materialize in the markets that we focus on. So ideally, high yielding assets in some of our core markets.

Very clear. And do you have a potential size of growth that you would aim or like to aim to for this year depending on the assets?

No. Because once you put a number out there, you become a slave to that number. Let's just take every individual deal 1 at a time and see what ultimately might make sense. Even though we may want to grow We still are a relatively small company. And that means that with our low LTV, we have room to grow. But the potential to grow without raising equity constrained by the the size of the business and the balance sheet today.

Very clear.

I have 2 last question if possible. So you mentioned, of course, cost of debt as well. What is currently or what is the current spread on your marginal cost of debt currently to to do a new acquisition because you mentioned that on the bank side it might be a question mark? Elkay, you want to take this?

Yes. So obviously, our projected cost of debt is going to be higher than our current cost of debt. Over 24%, we were at an average of about 3.5% over the year. But we do expect to go above 4.

Yes.

So the bank margin is going to be over 150 basis points, but less than 2 Okay.

Clear.

And then my final question, and then I'll leave to Florenty other questions, is you have mentioned, of course, with the hiring and the similar to the last couple of press releases on potentially entering new segments. Especially for example, residential or reconverting office assets to residential assets. Could you give a little bit more detail or is it still all open to, well, investigation on your end itself to look what you would like to do?

Let's talk about it when it becomes more clear what actually comes our way and what we think is most sensible. So I think it's too early to talk about that in more detail at this point.

Okay, clear. Thank you very much and congrats again for the good results. Thank you, Vincent NSI.

Now going on to Francesca Verdina from ING.

Yes. Hello. Good morning, everybody. Can you hear me? Yes. Good morning, Francesca. Yes. A little follow-up question Can you make a little comment also about the dividend payout going forward? Second question on tax. Can you elaborate a little bit more about what drove the tax rate reduction, Gupta, to the indication that you gave us with the nine months results. And the third question is about the market. What type of assets do you do you see coming to the market? What type of yields can be considered interesting enough for you going forward? And can you refresh our thoughts about your investment grade?

Criteria for 2025. NSI, you said to be open to other asset classes besides offices. What is the sector that you think is the most appealing at the moment? Thank you.

Okay. On the dividend payout, the minimum payout we've basically set is 75% of earnings. So if the earnings aren't changed, there's no automatic need to increase the dividend. If the earnings do increase the dividend will follow in line. On tax, Helke?

Yes. Corporate income tax. I think we guided a little bit higher than we're guiding right now at the Q3 financials. But we're following our government policies quite closely because it's been changing a little bit over the past month. At the results, we at that point in time were under the assumption that the earnings stripping arrangements would change for the negative for us. Because there would be less deductibility possibilities. And that was going to be the new guidance from government at that point in time. It has changed over the past two months. Leading to a situation that's pretty much at par as how we had known it for the first half year. And that actually leads to a little bit better guidance. NSI we guided above 10% earlier.

And now we're stating about 5% to 7%. But that's under the assumption of course, that the rules will not be altered again.

Okay. And do you see any discussion going on the FTI regime the moment.

We're following it closely, but no news there yet.

Okay.

Okay.

On the deals and the type of deals that we see and the assets that are being sold, it is a wide range. We've seen assets in Amsterdam on the Canal trade at low 5% yields.

We've seen good assets in Rotterdam trade at 11%. It's a very wide range. I this point in time. And the market is pretty discerning. If it's the right product in the right location, there is still good demand and the market is competitive. [indiscernible] there is an element of location issues or needs to be sustainability upgrades, then yields automatically blow out. Our criteria how much time do you It's a difficult process in that. It's not just a 1 number that we're looking prospective IRR and whether or not it's better than what we have as the average IRR portfolio. And then still, if it's a better asset, then obviously, you would expect to be willing to accept a lower IRR. If it's an asset with much more value add opportunity or some other risk elements that need to be taken into account than you would expect or warrant a higher IRR. But work on the assumption that we're looking at IRRs [indiscernible] at least 7% or 8%. And the sectors that are most likely Let's basically come back to that when we've got more to say It's too early to talk about that at this point in time.

That's fair enough. Many thanks.

You're welcome. Thank you, Francesca.

We're now heading on to Gerardo Ebenez Herrero from Francois Kempen. Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Yes, I was wondering in the guidance in the higher range of the guidance, if you have penciled in any additional share buyback for 2025? Or is that something that you could be considering if you don't manage to source those acquisitions?

Thank you. Fair question. No, there is no assumption on buybacks in our guidance. It's not something that we have in mind at this point in time We've been told by a variety of investors that were small and liquid. And I think a buyback wouldn't necessarily solve it. And my personal history tells me that a buyback, no if it does anything longer term for your share price anyway. So it may be a way to manage capital I think if the market [indiscernible] doesn't improve to the point that we see the deals actually happening. I. E. In terms of liquidity, we may keep our powder dry because the yields that ultimately will come will be more attractive than doing the buybacks. [indiscernible] And maybe 1 additional question on my side. Could you also provide some color on your expectations on cost side for this year? Do you still expect to increase NOI margin? Or is there additional headroom there? Thank you.

Work on the assumption is more or less stable.

Okay, clear. Joining on to Roy Coulter from [indiscernible] Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. I have just 1 left basically on the stock dividend.

So in 2024, you actually did a buyback and now you're proposing a potential stock dividend. So can you please elaborate a bit on the rationale of doing that?

We thought about doing a stock dividend last year, but it sort of seemed illogical whilst you're buying back shares at the same time. The reason to do a stock dividend is that we have a variety of investors that are international and it helps them from a tax planning point of view because there is no dividend withholding tax on stock dividend issues.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Heading again to Vincent Kukmer from the Groove Papercam. [indiscernible] Good morning again. I just had a follow-up question that I came up with in while listening to the other questions. You had previously also mentioned that you're still looking at some asset rotation and potential disposal strategy [indiscernible] Do you include any potential disposals as well in your guidance? Or do you have any target for twenty twenty five disposals? Thank you very much.

We have some internal targets with respect to assets we would like to sell. But our guidance is based on the So there is no assumption on any disposals or any acquisition.

Great. Thank you very much.

Okay. We see no further questions. So think we will leave that for now as it is. Thank you, everyone. For joining us and asking the questions. And we will make sure to speak to everyone that's interested to speak to management. Please reach out to me otherwise, we will close the call for now.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.