CI Banco SA Institucion de Banca Multiple FF/00939

BMV:TERRA13

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Kelly, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Terrafina's First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you for your attention. I will now turn the call over to Francisco Martinez, Terrafina's Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

[Francisco Martinez, executive]

Thank you, Kelly, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2022 conference call. And we're very pleased to have us today from Terrafina Mr. Alberto Chretin, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Carlos Gomez, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Chretin will take us through the company's overview and operations, and Mr. Gomez will discuss the financials.

Before we begin, we would like to refer you to the note on forward-looking statements in this quarterly report or any information expressed or implied during the call may include forward-looking statements, which could involve certain risks or uncertainties. Terms such as estimate, project, plan, believe, expect, anticipate, intend and similar expressions may identify such statements. Listeners are cautioned that forward-looking statements made during this call or by the company's management may change based on various important factors out of the company's control. These comments represent the company's judgment at the time of this call and has no intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Thank you again for your attention. And at this point, I will turn the call over to Mr. Alberto Chretin for his remarks.

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Thank you, Francisco. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. I am pleased to share our first quarter 2022 results with you. We had another good quarter, supported by a solid industrial real estate space and favorable supply and demand dynamics. This is especially true in the Northern regions where the largest percentage of our portfolio is located.

We continue to work on our development activities and made good progress in our 3-year growth plans throughout the quarter. I will go into this in more detail later in the call. But first, let me start with some key highlights for our operations during the quarter.

Leasing activity reached 1.5 million square feet, from which 1 million were renewals and 500,000 were new leases. The Northern region was the busiest with the most of the movement concentrated in Ciudad Juárez, Ramos Arizpe in Chihuahua. These markets had an average occupancy rate of 98% and a $5.32 per square foot rental rate during the quarter. We believe this outstanding performance shows there are still many opportunities ahead for additional growth. Demand for new space from electronics, automotive and medical sector players has been growing. We expect as we continue to grow as new shoring and shelter insurance continue and global production is reorganized to offset supply chain constraints.

As we recently announced, we will develop 3 industrial class A properties totaling 800,000 square feet of GLA. Of these, more than 80% will be for a build-to-suit facility in Ciudad Juárez with a 10-year term lease contract. The remaining 150,000 square feet will be developed under the joint venture with one of our property managers in Apodaca. We expect this project will be pre-leased before completing its construction, further confirming the growth trends we discussed previously. These developments will require a total investment of $47 million and will generate approximately $4.5 million of annualized NOI when stabilized.

These buildings will be developed on our own strategic line results and will be certified on the lease standards aligned with Terrafina's ESG strategy and commitment. We intend to continue to increase our presence in core markets through these kind of projects and locking value for our investors by leasing best-in-class assets to multinational tenants that see Mexico as a strategic manufacturing hub capable of supporting their operations.

Moving to our operating portfolio. Our consolidated occupancy rate remained stable at 94.7%. Occupancy in the North closed at 96.5%, in the Central region at 95.1%, in the Bajío at 88.8%. Out of a total of 14 contracts that matured during the quarter, 10 were renewed. We currently have approximately 80% of the space that was not re-leased under negotiations. We expect these leases will be signed during the second quarter of 2022. Our average rental rate was $5.46 per square foot. These implies a 3% or USD 0.16 increase compared to the first quarter of 2021 in [ leasing rate ] with average market rent levels. Some of the main Northern markets like Tijuana, Chihuahua while [indiscernible] Monterrey reported an average rental rate of [ $5.66 and $0.63 ] per square foot after posting the highest growth than the rest of the country.

Bajío saw rental rate in Jalisco and Querétaro that averaged $5.58 per square foot. In the Central region, our properties in the state of Mexico reached rents of $6.9 per square foot. These numbers are attributable to higher demand from logistic companies facing limited inventory space. Our net asset value per certificate increased 6.3% quarter-on-quarter as the appraised value of the portfolio grew with the contribution of new developments in our operations. We expect these trends to persist as the quality of our assets in the markets they serve become increasingly attractive. These revaluations have also had an important impact on our leverage ratio, significantly decreasing our loan to value to 34.1%.

On the share buyback front, we remain active during the quarter. We bought 6.7 million certificates at an average price of MXN 28.36 per certificate. We will keep evaluating the possibility of acquiring more certificates during the rest of the year, which will have a positive impact on our AFFO certificate metric. Total distribution for the quarter reached $19.5 million, which will translate into a payment of USD 0.025 per certificate. Considering the average share price in the quarter of MXN 27.87, Terrafina's annualized dividend yield was 7.4%.

Finally, before I pass the call over to Carlos, I would like to reiterate, I'm very pleased with the successful refinancing of our 2022 bond. At the end of the first quarter of 2022, we had the opportunity to pay the outstanding $89 million of the loan facility that mature on November of 2022 with a combination of cash and part of our sustainability-linked credit facility. This refinancing improved our cost of debt as well as Terrafina's debt maturity profile. We are already seeing the benefits from this in our FFO. Thank you, and Carlos, please go ahead with the financial highlights for the quarter.

[Carlos Espinosa, executive]

Thank you, Alberto. And thanks to all the participants for joining us on today's conference call. Please note that all figures discussed in this call are in U.S. dollars. But Mexican peso figures can be found in the earnings report. Additionally, NOI, EBITDA and FFO figures exclude noncash items as well as nonrecurring and transaction-related expenses, the latter of which are all included in the AFFO. We will focus on same property comparisons for the main financial metrics.

To start, same-store net collections in the first quarter of 2022 reached $48.5 million, a 1% increase compared to the first quarter of 2021 consolidated results. Rental revenues and NOI reached $47.6 million and $46.6 million, respectively. Both results imply a year-on-year increase of 1.3%. For the first quarter of 2022, we reported an NOI margin of 93.8%. EBITDA totaled $41.5 million, a 1.3% increase with an 83.6% margin. Finally, AFFO reached a total of $27.5 million, a 0.5% year-on-year decrease.

Moving on to our balance sheet. We closed the quarter with $33.3 million in cash. The reduction is explained by the company's use of $24 million to pay part of the 2022 bond outstanding amount. Nevertheless, we consider that being within the $30 million range is an appropriate level of cash to broadly cover all of our operational needs. Our investment properties closed the quarter at $2.5 billion, a 7.8% year-on-year increase as a result of the appraisal value for new developments that were recently added.

Our total debt at the end of the first quarter of 2022 close at $909 million, with an average cost of debt of 4.46% and average weighted maturity of debt was 6 years. Finally, our LTV improved to 34.1%, which was above our expectations of 35% by 2023. Thank you for your time and attention. I will now ask the operator to open the line for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Alan Macias with Bank of America.

[Alan Macias, analyst]

Just one question. You had a good start in terms of adjusted FFO per share and dividends per share in the first quarter. What has kept you from raising your 2022 dividends per share guidance?

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Thank you for the question. No, I think we stand by our guidance. The guidance that we gave was for the year. This first quarter, we had a slightly less than budgeted TIs. So that's -- that was one of the reasons why the dividends per share for the first quarter were higher than the average. But we expect to have during the year, a very robust pipeline of development and also preservation of the expirations. So that's why, to answer your question, we don't expect to change our guidance. We had a good quarter. And we expect that this trend is going to continue, but there may be some adjustments throughout the year. So we stand by our guidance.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from Juan Ponce with Bradesco.

[Juan Ponce, analyst]

During the quarter, you completed 700,000 square feet of new developments, but total GLA grew around 210,000. So just wanted to confirm with the 490,000 difference is dispositions and if so, if you could please disclose what cap rate these properties were sold out. And if the remaining 500,000, I think it is square feet to be sold will be completed in the second quarter. That's my first question.

[Carlos Espinosa, executive]

Yes. Well, first of all, yes, the combination -- the final GLA is going to be composed of the new developments that are going to come into the portfolio, minus the dispositions. As you know, the sales for the first quarter were going to be between $15 million and $20 million, and we expect that we're going to comply with our plan to -- of dispose between [ $15 million and $30 million ]. As a matter of fact in terms of sales, we already announced $16 million that will be closing with the second quarter of 2022.

And in terms of the current rate, we are going to sell these facilities, a lot of these facilities that we selling are empty facilities. So basically, the price for those are going to be at or above the market value. And in some cases, where they are leasing approximately about between the [ 8% and 8.5% cap ] rate for the ones that are leased, considering that these are facilities that are in secondary and tertiary markets.

[Juan Ponce, analyst]

Okay. And my second question is on the development front. When do you expect the recently announced developments to deliver the NOI that you guys disclosed?

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Probably around the third quarter of this year.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from Francisco Suarez with Scotiabank.

[Francisco Suarez, analyst]

Congrats for the results. The question that I have is that can you give us some idea of what might be the difference between in-place and market rents in your overall footprint? And if there are any major differences regionally that we should be aware of?

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Yes, the rents in the markets -- in the primary markets are increasing substantially. We see that there is going to be -- as you can see that, for example, the building that we leased in Tijuana, we lease them at close to $9 per square foot a year, which is a record high. So on the -- I will make the depreciation -- the core markets, and that's why we're focusing our development activities on the core markets because all these were -- not only the trend is for the rents to grow, but the actual rates are higher. As a matter of fact, we see that the tenants and when while talking to the brokers, the tenants are looking for -- they don't ask for prices, they ask for availability. And that's why we're very active on the developing on markets like Chihuahua, like Tijuana, Juárez and Tijuana. So the market rent in those primary markets is bound to grow substantially. And again, that's why -- as I mentioned, that's why we are focusing on developing in those markets.

Now when you consider also secondary markets or tertiary markets, the rent continue to stagnate around the same levels. So that's why we're also disposing of some of the facilities that are in those markets.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from André Mazini with Citigroup. Your next question is coming from Juan Macedo with BGM.

[Unknown Analyst]

I was wondering if you could give us some color on the time line for your developments? When do you expect to deliver them?

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Sure. We had our plan for 3 years includes about To deploy about $200 million of -- between $150 million to $200 million during the 3 years. As you see that during the -- during 2021, we developed -- the plan was well between 50% and 67% more or less, where we developed 72. And then for the second -- for 2022, we're already developing this project that we already announced is [indiscernible] of $37 million. So that's what we expect to fully comply with a 3-year plan of $200 million to develop in the 3-year plan. And we really have about 70% of the scheduled development for 2022.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great. And just a quick follow-up. You mentioned earlier that you expect the NOI of this new development to enter by the third quarter, right?

[Carlos Espinosa, executive]

That is correct.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There appear to be no further questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Alberto Chretin for any closing comments.

[Alberto Castillo, executive]

Thank you. Well, thank you all for attending today. I would like to finish the call by thanking everyone in Terrafina as well as our partners for helping us deliver a good quarter once again. I'm confident that we will stay on the right track during 2022. The team is excited to strengthen its relationship with all of our stakeholders as we continue to consolidate our operations and look to work for more initiatives on the sustainability front. We look forward to speaking with you all again soon. Thanks for your time, and have a great day.

[Operator]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.