Catella AB

STO:CAT B

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Operator]

Welcome, [Audio Gap] Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Christoffer Abramson, to begin your meeting.

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. We'd like to turn to Page 3 to begin our presentation. Most of you, of course, know Catella tell us quite well. And following our announcement recently to wind down IPM, Catella now has 3 property-focused business areas: Property Investment Management, Principal Investments and Corporate Finance. Catella manages around SEK 112 billion in its Pan European Property Investment Management business and as a leading adviser in Corporate Finance in several large European markets. Principal Investments our newest business segments, is where we invest our equity directly, and we now have close to SEK 700 million of capital invested as of the second quarter of this year. We want to reiterate, as we have done in previous quarters, that we are not a traditional property company with material long-term balance sheet exposures. We are still and will be, first and foremost, an investment partner, an investment manager, where we now at times partner with equity. We then move to Page #4 of the key operational highlights during the second quarter. I will come back obviously to the details on the following pages. But we are -- start with, very, very proud of an exceptionally strong second quarter for all of Catella's core business segments. From a group perspective, we announced the formation of a new leadership team during the quarter, and we have also added an ESP manager to further strengthen our focus on this critical area of long-term sustainability. I'm personally very excited to build Catella's future with such a talented group of people, and they add a lot of fun to the mix, too. We're focused on the future. And that's what we'll talk about in this presentation today. But I'd like to briefly highlight also that the transformation of Catella is progressing well, with the bank wind down on track for the end of this year and the liquidation of IPM should be finalized also on time, on track with no more than the already communicated onetime charge to the P&L. Having exited the bank now and, of course, having only a minority interest in mutual funds and having exited IPM means our business is somewhat smaller than it has been in recent periods, but we are confident that it will be positive for the long-term value creation of the company. And as you can see, with our growth in the presentation, I think we've replaced a lot of operations with higher quality of earnings going forward. Property Investment Management continues its strong track record of organic growth and profitability with assets under management now at SEK 112 billion, several new sustainability-focused funds under development and significant amounts of additional committed capital already available for investment and continued growth. In Principal Investments, we've made our biggest step to date during the second quarter, both with a significant investment in a JV development project in Central Düsseldorf and also delivering on our strong pipeline in logistics developments in Sweden. Catella's invested capital is now up to close to SEK 700 million in 11 ongoing projects. Corporate Finance delivered an excellent quarter, in fact, our second best ever, and with particular strength in large M&A transactions, which we believe is very important and continued focus area for Catella as a whole. We move on to Page #5, we give a summary of the group's consolidated core results, that means adjusted for discontinued and divested operations. I want to start with explaining that the cost attributable to our shareholders for the liquidation of IPM is just over SEK 100 million, including a write-off of SEK 39 million of goodwill. This is what we have already communicated to the market in a press release. And we stick by that number, and the progress is good in the liquidation. However, as we follow IFRS accounting rules, we show the full impact of roughly a little bit over SEK 140 million. But as we own just under 61% of IPM, we want to reiterate and clarify again for the actual impact to our shareholders is around SEK 100 million. IFRS does not make this easy for our investors or ourselves, but we hope that this clarifies SEK 100 million, and we can now focus on the core ongoing businesses going forward. So if you look at the core numbers, Catella's group delivered strong financial performance in all aspects during a very solid second quarter, with income up 17% to SEK 478 million and operating profit up 55% to SEK 113 million with profit margin up a solid 6 points as well. Property Investment Management, PIM, I will sometimes refer to as PIM, continued to grow strongly with assets under management at SEK 112 billion and the rolling profit margin still in the 20s. The AUM growth primarily stems from various residential funds, but also new sustainability focused and commercial funds. Principal Investments added nearly SEK 400 million of invested capital during Q2, mainly from the landmark mixed-use project in Königsallee in Düsseldorf and by continuing to develop our logistics project in Norrköping, which is about 70% to 75% completed and adding 2 more logistics projects in Örebro and Ljungby in Sweden. Catella's invested capital is now close to SEK 700 million with 11 ongoing projects. But of course, realized profits, as you will see from the chart as well, will take time even though we see attractive markets already at this moment for several of our assets. Corporate Finance. The corporate finance market rebounded broadly in Europe in the second quarter. And Catella, I would say, delivered beyond our expectations. SEK 43 million of operating margin from SEK 188 million of income is really good in and of itself. But adding that most platforms actually across Europe performed really well, a very broad sign of strength and that we successfully delivered as an adviser in several large M&A transactions make it an even better quarter and show solid strategic progress for Catella across Europe. We jump ahead to Page 7 where we start discussing Property Investment Management in a bit more detail. This is a chart that we are very proud of, and it's a big fundamental aspect of Catella's ongoing growth. Over the past 5-plus years, PIM has grown its under management by an average of 23% annually. And during 2021, we have continued to deliver on significant growth with strong underlying profitability. PIM remains the main growth engine of Catella. And we have a clear strategic focus on raising new capital and launching new sustainability-focused funds while organically growing our asset management platforms and also launching select new platforms that fit strategically with our core competencies, which we'll keep talking about in the coming quarters. The growth of the business, the underlying assets under management has also resulted naturally in increased fee income with fixed fees around SEK 630 million in the last 12 months, which is up 10% compared to the year prior, and variable fees, which are based on good fund performance as well as transaction fees were about SEK 430 million during the same period, an increase of nearly 30% compared to the same period the year before. Let's move on to Page #8, look a bit closer at the AUM growth of the Property Investment Management this year. As you are aware, we divested our asset management operations in France during the first quarter. And adjusted for the sale of CAM France, PIM has grown its AUM by over SEK 11 billion or roughly 11% in the first 6 months of 2021. The AUM growth continued to be mainly driven by our modern residential funds. But it's also supported by solid growth in our commercial funds and new asset management mandates in the U.K. APAM platform. Looking ahead and very importantly and positive as well, we feel very, very good about our growth abilities to continue this path for PIM, where we have nearly SEK 10 billion of unlevered already committed capital in our funds ready for deployment and 3 new funds recently launched -- being launched with -- showing strong investor demand. So we feel strong about the coming quarters and our continued growth. On Page 9, a little bit about the financials for PIM. So again, despite having divested CAM France, we have increased income after assignment, expenses and commissions by SEK 15 million or 6% year-over-year. And in Q2, PIM delivered an operating profit of SEK 84 million, so a year-over-year increase of 10%, driven by both an increase in fixed fees and in performance fees. Just mentioned, we feel very positive about our ability to grow from a position of strength and that we have a well-diversified existing portfolio with a relatively modest risk profile in the current environment. Let's move on to Page #11 where we have a sort of an overview of principal investments. As you know, this is a new segment for Catella. And sort of the first time, we give a more detailed overview of this business segment. It's an area of increased focus for us. And over the last year, we have continued to invest. We now have a diversified portfolio of projects in different asset classes across Europe. Most of our projects come through our development partners, Catella Project Management, CPM; Catella Logistics Europe, or CLE; and Infrahubs. With both CPM and CLE also generating material management fees for the group, where sometimes our equity component of that investment is limited, which is again one of the strategic aspects of what we're -- how we're trying to grow and how we use synergies across our platforms. The numbers on this particular slide, Slide 11 represents the estimated total project development cost to give everyone some investment perspective of the overall site while Catella shares of these investments are detailed on the next slide. But principal investments have also recently launched 3 more Infrahubs projects and 2 attractive investments through CLE, putting our total portfolio now, as I mentioned, 11 active and also 2 additional just-to-be-initiated projects. We also have some minor co-investments through our asset management platforms, which we do not detail here in this presentation. So let's move on to Page #12. Let's take a little bit of a look at what the portfolio that we have ongoing into the end of the second quarter. In total, Catella has invested SEK 688 million of capital in these 11 active projects at the end of Q2, with close to SEK 400 million added in the second quarter, primarily in Königsallee in Düsseldorf and with Infrahubs continuing to invest in Norrköping and also ramping up the investment in Ljungby. As you will see from the estimated completion column, a decent number of the current projects are estimated to be realized and generate profits in the coming 18 months, a very exciting period for us. And we also see a solid pipeline of potential investments replacing those, which we believe will generate attractive new deals in 2021 and beyond, still, of course, focused on meeting our IRR return requirements of about 20% on average. If we then move on to Page #14, we take a look at the Corporate Finance business. As I mentioned earlier, the corporate -- the European corporate finance market had a relatively strong quarter in comparison to, say, a quiet Q1 and also, of course, compared to a COVID-affected Q2 last year. And Catella also managed to increase our overall market share. European transaction volumes grew about 20% compared to last year, whereas Catella's transaction volumes more than doubled or actually tripled compared to the same period last year. Catella advised on transactions valued at about SEK 17 billion in the quarter, with Sweden having a particularly strong few months and France also continuing to transacting well. As mentioned, we see a very positive development that we grew volumes broadly geographically and between asset classes. And also that large M&A advisory was a significant share of our business in Q2 with slightly higher margins. Let's move to Page 15, continue to talk about Corporate Finance, the financial overview. Corporate Finance generated SEK 43 million of operating profit from SEK 188 million of income in Q2, representing a margin of 23%. Again, very, very solid broad growth. And some key areas of strength, we're, as I mentioned, M&A advisory, particularly in Sweden with M&A advisory for Järntorget, Stenhus Fastigheter and then a very large sell-side advisory fee for Studentbostäder in Linköping. So really large transaction and a very strong position in the Swedish market, not just in traditional sell side where we already were ranked #1 last year. French residential sales continue to be very, very strong with several large block transaction advisory. And in Denmark, we completed a sale on Biblioteksparken. And we had continued broad strength, particularly in Finland and Spain, but also in other markets. And in Spain, really strong performance in residential sales as well. So very happy about Corporate Finance. There's, of course, some seasonality in this business. But if we look at how we've been performing in the second quarter in the past, this was exceptional. I will now hand over to our CFO, Mattias Brodin, to cover the financial summary, which begins on Page #17.

[Mattias Brodin, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Christoffer. Financial summary for ongoing operations. The second quarter had a stable income growth and underlying profit. Looking at the overall adjusted Q2 EBIT results will make a significant improvement by [52%] compared to Q2 2020. Main driver behind the positive outcome is Corporate Finance for higher-transaction volumes that led to an increase of variable income by 80%. Further, fixed income increased with 80% due to higher AUM property funds than APAC. Compared to Q2 2020, the profit share agreement of performance fee in CER I fund has come to an end in 2021, which has led to less cost for retirement, expenses and commissions. The personnel cost increase related to the positive EBIT outcome and are especially linked to Corporate Finance performance and higher performance-based salaries. Key ratios for Catella core showed strong margin of 24% and an EPS of 0.61. Both ratios improved during the quarter, which shows us that our core businesses is performing rather well. You have to remember, reported figures are heavily impacted by the provision of approximately SEK 100 million regarding IPM wind down and a goodwill write-offs of the same. Continuing to Page 18, financial and liquidity position. Catella has a continued strong balance sheet and equity ratio. Total assets increased by SEK 311 million to over SEK 4.5 billion. The positive development is related to additional investment of SEK 0.5 million in our profit development projects, mainly [indiscernible] and Norrköping, and issuing of our senior bonds, which increased group cash with SEK [ 408] million net. Catella has significant available liquidity of SEK 980 million to invest in further business development and projects. Still, SEK 429 million is hold by Catella Bank and will be available for application to return [indiscernible] license is approved, which is expected during the second half of 2021. Net cash has decreased due to our own reinvestments, primarily in infra, taxes and [indiscernible] in France. That was all regarding Catella's financials, and over to you, Christoffer.

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Thank you, Mattias. Before opening up for Q&A, I would like to briefly summarize the quarter from our perspective again on Page 20. We're excited about this quarter. And we feel that the transformation is continuing well, and the core operations -- our core businesses are performing well across the board. In our largest business area, Property Investment Management, we show the ability to continue to grow profitably and organically basically. Very strong track record over a long period of time and looking good for the coming quarters. Principal Investment continues to invest in regions and segments, supporting our IRR target. And we have, as I said, select number of investments being completed in the next year, 1.5 years. In Corporate Finance, the market rebounded, and Catella gained market share through our broadened and attractive service offering. We have a new leadership team in place, devoted to executing on the strategy and creating long-term value for Catella. The strategic transformation is progressing well. And all noncore Catella business areas will be exited by year-end, which frees up capital and time and resources to focus on our core business growth. To accelerate the work with our sustainability agenda, we have appointed a head of ESG. Besides better illustrating the part Catella plays in society, it will also better enable ESG profile growth going forward and also by attracting the right capital partners that we want to work with. As a final point, we currently see a good pipeline across our businesses, areas, markets and indicating a good remainder of 2021. And with that, I would like to thank you all for your time today, and we will now open it up for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And currently, we have 2 questions in the queue. The first is from the line of Patrik Brattelius of ABG.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Well, I would like to start with a question regarding the Property Investment Management. And you write in your report that the lower assignment costs helped this quarter to give a higher performance-based fees to the operating profit line. So what exactly is impacting that from year-to-year?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Yes. So -- and an important question, Patrik. In 2020, in SR1, European Residential Fund, we had an agreement with a prior partner to share part of the performance fee. So while the total performance fee, Mattias, correct me if I'm wrong here, was close to SEK 90 million or SEK 85 million -- SEK 88 million last year in this quarter, our net fee for sharing was SEK 73 million, if I remember correctly. This year, we received SEK 64 million but retained all of it. So if you think about SEK 15 million of assignment expenses going the other way, and this year, we have 0. The net impact, however, is SEK 9 million lower performance fees, but still a very, very strong performance in the fund. But that's how that gross and net really works out.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Okay. And was that just a onetime split? So going forward, we don't -- we should not expect that to be the performance fee to be shared with any third party?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Yes, that's correct. But it's not a onetime. It had occurred in the past. But it is -- that agreement has ended, and we now retain 100% of that.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Okay. Perfect. My next question is regarding the Corporate Finance, which was one of your strongest quarters historically as well. But how do you view the pipeline going forward here into the second half of 2021? And what is your view on how COVID is currently impacting the market? Is it still some COVID left over? Or has that disappeared and it's more back to a normal transaction market similar to what we saw in previous years before COVID hit the society?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Patrik, it's a complicated question with no straight answers. But I think it's fair to say that, a, we're very proud of the performance in this quarter and that we have a broad strength. That to me is the #1 sort of indicator of what's going to happen in the future. Look, the pipeline in Corporate Finance, as you know, is -- you can look at the pipeline, and our pipeline is strong. We have a number of large transactions, but those are -- if they happen, they happen, and it's a big number. If they don't happen, they don't happen. But the underlying core performance remains strong. And if you look at our markets over the last year, the biggest challenge for us has been some of our markets have just really been heavily impacted and not produced a lot of volume at all. Now that has started to pick up, and it's picked up broadly. I'm not a COVID expert, but what we can see is that it is somewhat easier to transact. I'm not saying that the market sentiment is totally back. And there's a little bit market-to-market. As you know, the Swedish market maybe has remained more open than others, and it goes in waves a little bit. But we have seen a broad recovery, and we've seen a stronger performance from Catella in larger transactions. And that's a move in the market that we have made on purpose. It's a strategic shift. We want to be part in broader and bigger transactions with higher fees. And what the future holds with COVID, your guess is as good as mine. All I can say is we're -- perhaps the broad performance and the pipeline in large transactions looks good. However many will actually happen, we don't know, but we're happy with the pipeline.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Do you believe it's a catch-up effect that we see here, that transaction that were supposed to occur in 2020 has been postponed and that is what we are going to see now? Or is it -- this is the underlying pace?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Looking at our own transactions, I can't speak for competitors or the market as a whole. But looking at our own, we don't really see it as a catch-up. I think the market activity picks up. We haven't had a lot of transactions completed this year that were sort of sitting, waiting in 2020. It's more that, as you know, over the last year, a lot of buyers and sellers and lessees and lessors have chosen to restructure and rework and expand rather than transact. And now we're back in somewhat more of a transaction environment. So we haven't really seen material impact of transactions that just were on hold and then executed. We'd rather seeing that a bit more transaction activity. And with M&A transactions and advisory that we've had, none of those were delayed transactions from last year. That's -- those actions take a lot of time. So when they came from and when they originated originally, I don't think it really has to do with COVID delay but rather executing power.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Okay. My last couple of questions is regarding the principal investments. You've shown a very detailed table in the quarterly report on Page 12. It was also in the presentation. Just to my understanding here, when you write estimated completion, can we also expect to see an impact on the P&L on these quarters? And then should we look at what Catella has totally invested in equity and assume an IRR to see -- to calculate or make an assumption what the P&L effect of these property development project? Or how should we think about this? When we are going to see a P&L effect from these and how that will...

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

No, I think it's a fair question. And again, Patrik, each investment might be slightly different. But number one, yes, you should look at our share. And that's what you can sort of project your own IRR calculations based on to look at profit. That's the best estimate that we have, and that's how we will measure it. Number two, we don't have a perfect correlation between estimated completion and when profits are accounted for, more likely cash profit. You may not know, we follow IFRS as far as revenue recognition principles for development projects, which means that it's effectively a percentage of completion approach, not exact. But we will have some forward funding transactions that might generate -- help us with cash flow in the short term, but generate profits over a longer period of time before the finished project is delivered. There's also revenue recognition impact whether the property is not only completed but leased. So there are several components in how you recognize profit. But in a simplistic model, if you want to do that, you can look at our invested capital and apply our targets and look at estimated completion as a portfolio of roughly maybe the quarter after or something like that as a profit taking.

[Patrik Brattelius, Analyst]

Perfect. Very helpful. Then just as a last question, what can you say about the IRR projection? I know you have a target of 20%. But can you say anything regarding this, if some projects are significantly above or perhaps even a little bit below expectations at this point?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

As you know, Patrik, we don't provide profit projections in the market or to anyone. Look, every investment will -- unless we hit 20% exactly, every -- some investments will be below, and some will be above. All we can say is that our current projects look good as a whole. Some are better than others. But we look -- we're still projecting 20% on average.

[Operator]

And we currently have 1 further question in the queue. [Operator Instructions] And that next question comes from the line of Jesper Henrikson of Redeye.

[Jesper Henrikson]

Congrats to the good results. Also I appreciate the improved communication in the report. If we start with PIM, you delivered solid numbers and continue to grow the AUM. And given that your plan is to grow AUM further, how much can you grow with the existing organization and how much new employees do you think you'll need?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

It's, again, a very hard question to give an exact answer to. I think where we are today in our existing funds and our existing platforms, there's naturally somewhat of economies of scale. But as you know, launching new funds, raising new capital, that front-end work and acquisition work requires people, and you can only manage so many funds. But back office and our headquarters, obviously, we don't think we need to increase at all to manage that growth. So there will be some economies of scale, clearly. Launching new platforms, which is a clear objective of ours as well, less so. I mean that requires the full platform establishment. However, we feel that we now have a headquarters organization that can manage significant growth in platforms. So it will be that sort of economies of scale.

[Jesper Henrikson]

Great. And going forward, where do you expect to see the most AUM growth geographically?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

I think, look, in our underlying portfolio, it's -- I'm not going to say it's more of the same, but the regions where we are large is naturally most of the growth will come from there. But we are looking at new markets and new types of investments. But I can't guess on that yet. But we'll be very happy to report on it when we initiate something real. Obviously, a clear objective of ours is sustainability focused and ESG funds. We have a long track record in several of our platforms of sustainability-focused funds, but we want to get better. Just like everyone else, it's a clear focus, and it's the right capital partners that we want to work with, and it's the right thing to do. That's -- we look at that from existing funds, new funds and how we can generate new platforms benefiting from that and helping societies as well.

[Jesper Henrikson]

Good. And if we move over to Principal Investments, this is clear that we're receiving more focus. And you have very large projects in terms of development cost, in principal investments. And you mentioned that you aim for an IRR of 20%. But could you put some more color on how we should think about profitability of these, if that's possible?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Yes. I think similar to Patrik's question, I think the easiest estimate is to take our invested capital and project on average 20% IRR on that. I know that, that's not easy and these are long-term projects. And I think we will become more and more transparent as we start divesting some of these projects. And you'll see running run rate performance, accumulated average returns, but we're at the infancy. We have just started. We could take Grand Central from last year, which is the only material divestment that would really skew our IRR because it was an exceptional investment, and we hope to have more of those. So right now, we're a bit early in the game. But I think if we sit here a year from now, we should have a different track record and more detailed profitability metrics we talked about. But as of now, what we focus on is a total IRR of 20% on average on the invested capital. But also as we highlighted before, this equity is invested to generate more deals for Catella as a whole, to generate more AUM, to generate more advisory fees. And hopefully, and we feel very strongly about this, we will talk more about this in the coming quarters, which we see in our pipeline.

[Jesper Henrikson]

Great. And regarding the Swedish logistics project, could there be a plan to include like all of those into a new fund? Or are there any thoughts about something like that?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

We've discussed this before, and we've made no secret that we are looking to launching Swedish property funds. The intention is to create several funds. But of course, logistics is a market that we feel very strongly about and has a great macro performance and outlook. So I think that's clearly something that we're looking at. I wouldn't say all of that, that's a very strong statement, but we're clearly looking at it.

[Jesper Henrikson]

All right. And regarding the German projects, you put the shovel in the ground in Seestadt. What are discussions about the sale of, for example, the first stage of that thing?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

I think it's -- we've just put the shovel in the ground literally, so I think the sale discussions are a bit premature. I think we're very happy about the recent developments in the political and permit developments there. That has enabled us to get going on this project physically. As you know, it's a large, multiyear, multi-stage development. But I think it's too early for me to discuss the sales prospects.

[Jesper Henrikson]

All right. And then last, regarding Corporate Finance. You delivered good numbers and you say that German operations are improving with improving results. Would you say that you're satisfied with the current status of the operations in Corporate Finance also in the German market?

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

We're never satisfied. But it has been really good progress. And we've had both a couple of large transactions, both executed in the pipeline. We have -- after the second quarter, also, we did a transaction where we supported our residential fund in a large transaction. Obviously, it's a completely independent adviser, which shows, again, the strength of synergies and continuing to believe in the development of this platform. Look, Germany is a huge market, and we are not that big yet. But it's something that we're working on. And all we can say is that it's been good progress this year, which is the right direction. And we have continued to manage our cost base while delivering some transactions which we were not successful in last year. So that's all good for us. Again, not satisfied, but it's a few steps in the right direction.

[Operator]

And as there are no further questions on the line, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

[Christoffer Abramson, CEO & President]

Yes. That's -- we have no more comments. Thank you for very good, insightful and challenging questions. And thank you, everyone, for listening, and we look forward to seeing you again in a few months with another good quarterly report. Thank you, everyone.