Entra ASA

OSE:ENTRA

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Sonja Horn, executive]

Good morning all, and welcome to Entra's first quarter presentation here in Oslo. We will start, as we always do, with some highlights in the quarter. Rental income this quarter is up by 32%, NOK 781 million versus NOK 591 million same quarter last year. Net income from property management up 17%, NOK 433 million. And in the quarter, our external appraisers have increased the property valuations with 3.6%, leaving us then with net value changes of NOK 3.146 billion in the quarter. Profit before tax of NOK 3.583 billion.

In the quarter, our net letting came in negative with NOK 17 million. I'll get back to some more details on that a bit later.

We started 1 redevelopment project and 1 refurbishment project in the quarter. And we also successfully closed the transaction, acquisition of Oslo Areal and also the divestment of Hinna Park.

Our Board decided to pay out the semiannual dividend of NOK 2.6 for the second half of last year, leaving us then with a total of NOK 5.1 for the full year of 2021. And the dividend is to be paid out on May 3.

As I said, we have signed, sorry, new and renewed leases for around NOK 65 million this quarter. Out of this, NOK 24 million in our projects, around 30,000 square meters. In the quarter, a total amount of NOK 69 million of contracts were terminated. One of these contracts representing NOK 52 million with KPMG, which was related to one of the buildings which we acquired through the Oslo Areal acquisition. And this was also as expected when we worked with the acquisition, leaving us then with a net letting of negative NOK 17 million in the quarter.

Occupancy remains high, 97.3%. And our average lease duration is currently at 6.4% or 6.6% if you include the projects.

The largest contract signed in the quarter was a renegotiation with a parking in Trondheim for 4,300 meters. In Stenersgata, Sopra Steria signed an additional 4,000 meters using an option to increase. And in Kristian Augusts gate, in the Tullin quarter, a private tenant has signed 1,600 meters. Telenor, 1,600 meters in one of our buildings in Trondheim where we will also then start a refurbishment next quarter. And in Cort Adelers gate, an architect firm signed 1,500 meters.

We started Vahls gate refurbishment in the first quarter. This is a building which is located around 7, 8 minutes' walk from the Central Station. It's been occupied by the municipality of Oslo's building and planning authorities, and they had an option to increase for another 10 years. We're happy to see that this was signed for a new 10-year period, seeing that this is an area of Oslo which will go through a very interesting transformation during the next 10 years.

So here, the project is fully let. We are targeting a BREEAM-in-Use Excellent for the project. Estimated project cost of NOK 775 million, including the initial value, and yield on cost here of 4%. The expected completion for this project will be in the second quarter next year.

Also in Trondheim, we have started a redevelopment of a building in Kongens gate 87. This is a building which was previously rented by the tax authorities, which moved into one of our projects earlier. And we were happy to see that Microsoft was the first tenant to sign a contract in this building. Pre-let ratio now at 22%, but we have clearly seen a lot of interest for the building after we announced the start of the project.

The estimated project cost here is NOK 235 million and a yield on cost of 5.6%. And here, we will be targeting a BREEAM Very Good. Also this project to be completed in the second quarter next year.

Moving on to our ongoing projects. St. Olavs plass, there has been no changes in our project in St. Olavs plass in this quarter.

In Tordenskiolds gate 12, as you can see, we have delayed the completion of this project with some time, moving us into the fourth quarter. However, this will not affect the estimated project cost or yield on cost in this project, seeing that we have sufficient buffers in place.

Moving on to Stenersgata 1, starting with the good news. Here, we have increased occupancy with -- to 79% seeing that Sopra Steria used their option to take more space.

Unfortunately, we here also have to report a significant cost increase on this project. To explain, we have to go back a bit to the start. This is a project which is located on top of an existing shopping mall owned by a third party. So the complexity in this project is very high. When the previous tenants vacated the building, we were in a position to renegotiate a new contract with an existing tenant, which is occupying a big part of this headquarter building of [ Entrehera fostusa ]. So we managed to negotiate a contract where they prolonged their space in [ Fostusa ] with 10 years and at the same time signed a large contract for more than 50% of the space in the new redevelopment for a 10-year period.

At that time, we didn't have the building permit for the redevelopment. And that means that we decided to start the redevelopment in a more stepwise process, starting with the interior work and moving on to the exterior once the building permit came into place. Hence, in this project, we didn't use the typical turnkey fixed price contracts which we use for these kind of projects in Entra.

Unfortunately, we saw during COVID that the municipality of Oslo has had massive challenges with handling the processing of building permits with all their employees working from home. So in this project, the building permit came in with as much as 9 months' delay, and we only received the final building permit in the first quarter this year.

So we must admit that we have significantly underestimated the risk and complexity of this project. And we have, therefore, now increased the project cost with NOK 150 million. This can, in broad terms, be split into 4 groups. Firstly, around NOK 50 million is caused by the delay in the building permits, seeing that we have had to do several reconfigurations and also the on-site rig from the contractor has been extended for quite substantial time. And of course, also prices have increased over these months. Secondly, around NOK 50 million has been caused by the new requirements coming into the new building permit which was achieved. A significant part of this is related to the facade. We had originally planned for a system solution on the facade where we also had secured the price in the market. And now we will be building a tailor-made facade. And also new entrance solutions, outdoor solutions and sidewalks where qualities have been increased and more costly. Thirdly, NOK 15 million is caused by us having chosen to put in additional environmental solutions to ensure that we will meet the requirements in the EU taxonomy. And finally, around NOK 35 million caused by the fact that we clearly underestimated the complexity of the solutions in this project. One example being the fact that we knew that we had to split the technical solutions between the shopping mall and the office building. And we clearly see now that we have underestimated the complexity of this work.

It is important to add that we have kept all the risk buffers at the same level in this project, seeing that there still is complexity left in the project and also given the challenging market situation and supply chain situations we see going forward. So we are now comfortable that we will deliver the project within the revised project estimate. The estimated yield on cost in this project is then down from 4.5% to 4.3%, which still is a very profitable project for us in Entra.

The next project on the list, Schweigaards gate 15. Also here, you can see a red arrow on the estimated project cost. Here, we have increased the cost with NOK 60 million. This is a redevelopment, which we decided to start with a very low pre-let ratio of 31%, seeing that the building is located right next to the Central Station of Oslo and also given the underlying market dynamics in the letting market.

Now the letting side in -- through the pandemic, we have experienced that all our letting processes are much more timely. And the letting in this project has, therefore, also been delayed. This means that we have chosen to use what we call the stop standard clause in the fixed price turnkey contract, which means that we will complete the vacant space up to a predefined level. And the turnkey contractor, of course, has been under a lot of pressure working with this project through COVID and also in the -- given the current market environment with increasing cost on input factors. So any change orders we do in this project we see that we will be getting disproportionately expensive prices. However, also the future tenant adaptions will also be needed to be sourced in the current market environment, which is why we have then increased the cost with the NOK 60 million.

Our buffers also in this project, risk buffers are intact so we're comfortable with the revised estimates. The good news is then that the letting market has been very strong, and we expect to fully compensate the increasing costs through higher rents in the remaining vacant space.

On the other projects on the list, there are no reported changes this quarter. In Holtermanns veg 1 in Trondheim, we're at 29% pre-let ratio. Also here, we will use the stop standard contract, but seeing that this is a standard product in a newbuild project, the completion ratio is much higher and the remaining cost to be handled in the current market environment is much less. So here, we expect to see that the risk buffers are sufficient.

I just wanted to show you this picture because there is an annual prize in the Norwegian property market, kind of an Oscar where the real estate developer of the year is nominated. And this year, Entra was the winner of this prize for our project, Rebel, where we were given the prize for the work we have done in that part of the city. So you can read the jury's reasoning on the presentation letter.

So a few words on the market situation. Now it's very, very difficult to have a very firm outlook under the current market environment. We clearly see that the visibility is much more blurry again, moving from one crisis to the next. COVID is history in Norway, almost forgotten. However, it's much too early to really assess the long-term effects of the Ukraine situation. The challenges have moved from industries being affected by COVID lockdowns to what we are seeing as supply chain challenges and price shocks affecting industries with a strong dependency on raw materials and energy.

For the time being, the Norwegian economy is doing very well. GDP growth is expected to be as high as 4% in 2022. The activity growth has been very strong post-COVID. And the employment growth is expected to be as high as 2.4% in 2022.

Now there is, of course, more uncertainty and less visibility going forward on the long-term effects of the supply chain challenges we're seeing, causing price pressure, inflation rates to increase and higher interest rates.

There has been, however, little effect on the demand for office following the pandemic. And as I mentioned, employment growth has been very strong in Norway and even stronger within the office-related jobs.

In Oslo, the vacancy levels are currently low at 6% and even lower in the city center of Oslo. And as you can see from the bottom right graph in the picture, the new volume coming into the market is very low in 2022 and also '23. And we probably will see some delays in new supply going forward, seeing the increase in construction costs currently.

Now according to our consensus report, market rental growth is expected to be around 6.5% in 2022. And some of the leading market specialists expect to see as high growth rates as 10%.

A few words on the transaction market. Now what we saw in the first quarter is that the activity level actually remained pretty high through the first quarter, partially also explained by the fact that there were some overlays from the fourth quarter. However, from end March, it seems to be that the market has become more cautious and selective. Potential effects of increasing interest rates are still to be evidenced in the transaction market, but may cause yields to expand, particularly in secondary yields. The interest for central offices, particularly Oslo, does, however, remain very strong. And the defensive characteristics of property investments, as inflation protections may be given also more weight going forward. Low supply of new buildings coming into the market in Oslo and the strong market rental growth expectations may also have balancing effects on potential for higher yields in Oslo.

So over to you, Anders.

[Anders Olstad, executive]

Thank you. It's been a rather eventful quarter for Entra, in addition to the closing of Oslo Areal and the divestment of Hinna Park. I think there are 3 things that I would like to focus on in the presentation. Firstly, we have some extraordinary one-off costs totaling to NOK 21 million in the quarter. We have significant value increases, NOK 2.8 billion on the portfolio side. And lastly, on the status on the development on the financing cost.

Starting on the revenues, NOK 781 million, so we're up by NOK 104 million from the fourth quarter. Main reason being, of course, Oslo Areal and a strong CPI growth, partly offset by the divestment of Hinna Park. If we compare it to the first quarter last year, we're up a full NOK 190 million.

And as usual, we have -- there are 3 sort of main factors explaining it. Firstly, we have acquired new assets with a total revenues of NOK 143 million. We divested 2 assets, so a net increase in revenues on the quarter by NOK 131 million. Secondly, the projects have contributed another NOK 37 million. And we took a couple of assets out of production, so a net contribution from the projects of NOK 34 million. Lastly, we had a very strong CPI growth in Norway at 5.07%. And with that CPI growth with a like-for-like of about 5.2%, so additional sort of 10, 12 bps additional -- in additional to the CPI.

Net income for Entra coming at NOK 433 million, and profit before tax at NOK 3.6 billion. I'll come back into that on the later exhibits.

Cash earnings coming in for the quarter annualized rolling at 8.8%, total 11% CAGR and an NRV at NOK 235, again, comparable to the current share price of around NOK 175. So it's a sort of significant rebate on the [ substant ] values of the company.

If you look at the CAGR for the NRV, it's up 16% since 2014. If we include that we paid out dividends of NOK 29 since 2015, the CAGR is 18%. So again, a solid and strong value growth consistently throughout the last 7 years.

On the actual P&L, on the operating cost coming in at NOK 64 million as compared to NOK 49 million in the -- for the first quarter last year, we had to look then at the cost percentages. And if you look at the cost percentages on the owner cost -- on the operating cost, it was -- we ended up at 9.3% for 2021. It was 9.2% in the fourth quarter. And we're now on the first quarter at 8.2%. And at sort of in the low 8s, that is sort of a level that we are comfortable with.

We do expect, however, that to increase somewhat during the year. The main reason is that the Oslo Areal portfolio is managed by a third party, and we will take that portfolio into our operations at the end of the third quarter. And from -- during the second and the third quarter, we will need to build up our own people and our own systems -- we have our systems. We need to build to employ people. So we will have double costs for the management of the Oslo Areal portfolio during the second and the third quarter. That will take up the cost somewhat.

Second point is on the net other income -- other costs, we have a net of NOK 1 million positive. Normally, we would be around NOK 5 million, NOK 6 million. The reason that we're only NOK 1 million now is that we have a one-off cost of NOK 6 million. That stems from 1 tenant that we temporarily moved into another location, and we basically have to accrue for the full NOK 6 million of costs in this quarter. So it's a one-off NOK 6 million in the other costs part.

Third point I would like to make is on the admin cost, we're coming in at NOK 65 million. We did, for this quarter, set off an extraordinary provision of NOK 15 million, 1-5 million, for the severance packages for the people employed in Oslo Areal and that will no -- that will not follow with us in Entra. So a total of NOK 15 million in one-off additional costs for -- in one-off costs on the admin cost for this quarter alone.

And then you see that the financing costs have increased quite significantly since first quarter last year. The reason is basically that the interest cost is pretty much the same now as it was in the first quarter last year, but the debt has increased by some NOK 18 billion. I'll come back into the debt side with some thoroughness left afterwards.

Looking at the sort of how will revenues look like in the coming 6 quarters. We closed the Oslo Areal and the Hinna Park divestment sort of midway into January. So you see that will have an effect of a positive NOK 8 million also in the second quarter. We will have additional revenues of NOK 10 million from the projects, and this is an interesting part. The biggest contributor on those NOK 10 million is Universitetsgata 7-9, which is a multi-tenant asset that we completed last year.

And what we see is in these multi-tenant assets, when the tenants will gradually move in to that asset over -- typically up to 3 quarters of the year, so the revenues will not start immediately, but we will have sort of sequential increase in revenues. But that U 7-9 is now filling out quite nicely. So it does have an effect on other multi-tenant assets that we will be completing.

Then you will see that the revenue is expected to be pretty flat throughout the year. They will have a big step up again in the first quarter next year, primarily driven by the completion of Tordenskiolds gate 12 in Oslo, in addition to the regular CPI effect.

In our estimates here, we put in 3.5% CPI. March to March, it's at 4.5% in Norway. And so there is probably some conservatism in our estimate there for the first quarter, but we have decided not to ramp it up yet. But actually, for the people that follow this closely, we put in 3.5%.

Over to the balance sheet. Including the NOK 13.5 billion at Oslo Areal and the divestment of NOK 1.950 billion of Hinna Park that was fully consolidated in our balance sheet, even though we had a 50% ownership stake, we invested NOK 650 million in this quarter, which is basically on par with what we had last year. We invested a total of NOK 2.2 billion, or NOK 2.224 billion to be exact, in our projects last year. And we expect it to be on that level, maybe a couple of hundred millions higher for 2023.

And then we have a strong value uplift also in this quarter at NOK 2.8 billion. And if you look at the pie chart on the right-hand side of this exhibit, you see that almost NOK 1 billion or 34% stems from the -- an added value contributed to our long-term project pipeline; i.e. unsold assets or unsold potential, which by the appraisers have been, we expect, fairly conservatively valued, but still adding another NOK 1 billion to our balance sheet.

Then we have the 27% coming in from yield effects. What we did see in the last quarter that -- let me take one step back, we used 2 appraisers. One appraiser basically took the full effect of the very solid and strong transaction market during the fourth quarter and put it into our books in the fourth quarter valuation. The other appraiser basically used this first quarter for the same exercise so -- and that was basically uplift on the yield. And it's a fairly broad-based yield, not only in Oslo, but we see the same in Drammen, in Bergen and in Trondheim and in Sandvika. So it's a fairly broad-based yield compression also in this quarter.

Then we have the market rent, again primarily in Oslo, where we do see, as Sonja said, very low new supply coming into the market combined with a strong underlying employment growth in the office sphere. So clearly, it's good to be a landlord in Central Oslo also in the next couple of years.

And then we have a final effect of the acquisition of Oslo Areal, where basically we took the -- according to IFRS, you take the tax rebate and add that to the balance sheet values. There's almost NOK 400 million there. That is the way IFRS says it shall be done.

So again, all in all, it leaves us a balance -- or total balance of close to NOK 85 billion now.

On the financing part, I'd like to take a short step back and talk about how we managed this throughout 2021. In the first quarter last year, we had a standstill period given the strategic interest in Entra. Basically, no bondholders would subscribe to the Entra papers during that quarter, given the uncertainty of the situation and the future of our company.

During the second and the third quarter, we -- the market turned extremely positive and we issued bonds of approximately NOK 11 billion at very attractive prices and at long maturities. At the same time, we extended all our bank debt with 1 year. Then in the fourth quarter, we prepared for the financing of Oslo Areal, where we basically went to our partner banks and asked them to finance Oslo Areal, and we were able to do that on an average maturity of 2.9 years, and at what we believe attractive margins. So again, the value of long-term relationships with banks cannot and should not be underestimated.

In the -- this leaves us basically now -- and also for the first quarter, it's been a very quiet one on our side. Basically, margins have expanded dramatically. And Entra, we're not in the habit of printing papers on those margins. So we have decided to not do anything as of yet and rather maintain again our close relationships and our buffers with our partnership banks.

This leaves us with now a bank debt of a bit more than NOK 39 billion as you can see in the graph to the very left.

The green part of the bank financing, it was at 69% last quarter. When we added the bank debt now, that was regular loans, so the green financing is now at 46%, which we will take it up again as we eventually roll much of the bank debt into new bonds -- into new green bonds.

Then on the middle graph, the EPRA LTV and ICR. And as most of you know, EPRA came out a couple of weeks ago with a new definition of LTV, which basically says -- includes hybrids and pref shares as debt, not as half debt, half equity as is common for the rating agencies. And in addition, all companies have to assign their appropriate share of debt and asset values for the joint ventures. And so clearly, this number at 48% is included -- that's based on the EPRA definition. Entra does not have any hybrids. We do not have any pref shares, but we do have a couple of joint ventures, which basically took up our LTV by roughly 1 percentage point.

If we use the Moody's definition of LTV, we're at 46%, 4-6. So again, for us, it's about a 2 percentage point difference between the EPRA LTV definition and the Moody's definition.

ICR coming in at 2.9%. If you look at the interest rate on the right-hand side of the exhibit, we're now at 2.28%. That will increase over the next 2 quarters to around 3%. That is our all-in financing cost, by the way, it's not just into the base rate. And going closer to 3% and which, again, during 2023, probably with the current forward rates, increase to about 3 -- sorry, the low 3.20s.

Our debt maturity is about 4.5 years. Our hedge maturity is about 2.8 years. And our fixed rate ratio is 46%. So again, a fairly solid balance sheet also on the financing side. Actually, a solid base -- a solid balance sheet, not a fairly solid.

On the market, we see that the CP market is still active. We just did 1 last week at a margins of 55 bps. Margins on the bond markets are active and are open. We do see that the margins have not come down to levels that we are comfortable with. Again, we're not in the habit of printing expensive bonds. So if we did a 5-year today, according to the latest numbers, we'll do around sort of a bit more than 110, 115 bps, so to speak. And the bank market again, I cannot sort of emphasize enough, the -- we're very happy with our 5 partnership banks and continue our relationship with them.

I think that concludes on the financing part, Sonja. Thank you.

[Sonja Horn, executive]

Thank you, Anders. Okay. Some closing remarks. So as I said, limited visibility on the effects of the supply chain challenges and also pressure on inflation and interest rates in the market. We see it seems to be that the investment market has become more cautious and selective, particularly in the last couple of weeks. And the interest, of course, for central office properties in Oslo remains strong.

We clearly see very strong market rental fundamentals in the letting market, particularly then in Oslo. And we expect to see a solid income growth from our ongoing projects going forward. We also are happy to see that we still have a large long-term pipeline of projects working on in Entra, further enhanced with the acquisition of Oslo Areal.

So that concludes the presentation from today. And I think we maybe have some questions, Tone.

[Tone Omsted, executive]

First one, do you see a potential for any further cost increases in your ongoing projects going forward?

[Sonja Horn, executive]

Well, we have now revised -- revisited the project calculations in all our projects. And based on our knowledge now, we're very comfortable with the estimates in our calculations. So we think we should be good.

[Tone Omsted, executive]

And then secondly, how will the increasing construction costs affect your -- the timing on your project pipeline going forward?

[Sonja Horn, executive]

Well, we will clearly use the time now in the second quarter to assess the market and see where it goes. We would have to see that on our newbuild projects that the potential increase in construction cost is also then financed through increased rent levels. And whether it will take some time before the letting market picks up on that remains to be seen, but it could potentially also delay some of the newbuild projects in the market environment.

But then again, if we see at the material components there's also a slight difference between newbuild projects where you typically would need more of the materials like concrete and steel, so newbuild projects probably will be more affected than refurbishments, in the months to come at least. But it's too early to conclude. We'll assess through the next quarter.

So that concludes the questions for today. Thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you next quarter.