Echo Investment SA

WSE:ECH

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the quarterly results of Echo Investment Group. My name is Weronika Ukleja-Salak. I'm the company's spokesperson. And I'm here with Maciej Drozd, our CFO. And joining us from another studio, there's Nicklas Lindberg, our CEO.

As usual, we'll start up with the presentation, and we'll finish it up with a Q&A session. So if you have any questions, please stick around until the end. And so I think we're ready.

So Maciej, please go ahead.

[Maciej Drozd, executive]

Good morning again, and let's start to look at our Q1 results presentation. As usual, I would like to start from the highlights. And I think what everybody knows is that, that residential market continues to be very strong. And I would like to highlight that Archicom, our residential company, is very well prepared to benefit from the market environment. We have secured land bank for over 10,000 units, including 4 new projects that we acquired in the first quarter for more than 1,300 units.

Our focus in residential remains to sell 4,000 units in 2025. So we are working towards this goal. The sales are going well in all the projects on all markets and Archicom is growing in a profitable way. We have a very big focus on Warsaw and Wroclaw, which are our main residential markets. And -- we are, of course, very much focused on managing the costs, which is very important to achieve strong margins.

So once again, our residential business started a few years ago from around 800 units per year being sold. Last year, we sold around 2,000 units. And this year, we look at around 3,000 units and again, with a focus to sell 4,000 already next year.

I would like to highlight something new that happened in our residential segment, which is a start of the first premium project, which is part of Towarowa 22. Towarowa 22 is a large 6-hectare plot project with around 200,000 square meters of mixed use and Archicom just started the first building, which is part of this project. And the first building is 140 apartments close to Miedziana Street and part of this building will be in premium standard and the remaining part in high standard. So this is new, and we started to sell this under Archicom Collection brand, which is the brand for the premium product in Archicom.

It's already known -- well known that we signed a JV agreement with Signal Capital Partners. We obtained anti-monopoly approval and we work very, very vigorously towards the goal of building 5,000 units within next 3 to 5 years. And of course, we would like this to happen sooner than later. So later on, we will talk about the project that we already started. So there's already a number of projects that we secured and that are already started towards opening already next year.

So if you look at some numbers for Q1. We sold 410 apartments in the group, which is more than a year ago. We handed over a similar number of apartments. We started construction of office building, which is part of Wita project in Kraków. Wita project is also a very interesting project. It's a mixed-use destination project very close to Kraków main railway station.

We also started first residential building of Wita, so not only office part, but residential, and we are about to start also the student housing part. So -- all each -- all parts of these projects are already underway.

If you look at the financial part, we were very active. We issued bonds both by Echo and Archicom and both to individuals in Echo and to funds to institutions where we refinanced already bonds maturing in 2025. And I would like to talk about this about -- about our approach to refinancing of the bonds a little bit more later.

Again, after Q1, after end of Q1, we are focusing on rezoning of our commercial plots. We have a number of plots, and we will talk about this a little bit more in detail later that are great residential plots. And in the current market, of course, it makes perfect sense to change the zoning from commercial to residential to benefit from the very supportive residential environment. And something like that already happened in Katowice and the construction will start soon in Q3, Q4, when we start the sales of this project. And this is a new market for our residential business. And of course, we are very happy that we started that.

I already mentioned Towarowa, the start of premium market in residential. In finance, I think what is very remarkable, and we are very proud of that, that together with EPP, we refinanced a project finance on Galeria Mlociny Shopping Center. This is EUR 145 million, but what is the most remarkable is that this financing fulfills the rigorous criteria of EU taxonomy and that's why we were able to achieve very good terms of this financing.

We also -- we continue to be active on the bond market, which is very supportive. We completed our programs -- our prospectus program for EUR 300 million already now and we continue to refinance 2025 bonds.

So let's look in the segments in a little bit more detail. So in resi, I think what needs to be highlighted that in Q1, we bought over 72,000 square meters of residential area which is a lot, and we'll continue to do that. We are very, very active buying great land at very good prices.

I already mentioned, but I would like to repeat that, that we are working on reclassification of land from commercial to residential zoning, which is obviously increasing its value in the current environment.

And in the commercial segment, we have strong leasing market, so we have strong demand, which is partly due to the quality of our projects, but partly due to the fact that the supply is shrinking. So there's simply not much that can be leased in terms of a new product on the office market.

We have a number of completed -- of recently completed office buildings in which Wroclaw and Kraków, which are ready to be disposed, and we see growing interest of investors in the office market. And we believe also that expected ECB actions, meaning decrease of interest rates will affect in a positive way investor appetite in the coming quarters. So we do see growing interest from investors.

And we also see in retail, which is quite remarkable, very good performance, including increasing rents, meaning the rents on reletting are good or better than before. So the environment that we see in the commercial segment in terms of leasing, in terms of client interest is supportive, it's good.

Once again, in more detail in residential for sale, part of our leasing segment, I already said that the market is supportive, it remains strong despite of the fact that the credit support was planned for last year. And in fact, this year is only partly active, only for those who filed requests last year. So there was some impact at the beginning of the year, but not much.

Despite of that fact, we see that the market is strong. We are selling well. And of course, the market does expect a new program which is still not clear when and how it will be implemented. But I think it's important to underline that our projects are mixed, the portfolio for our project is mixed. So part of that is addressed to more popular segment that can be more affected by the programs. And part like Towarowa is actually a different segment, which is not impacted by financing. It's really cash buyers who are buying that type of apartments.

What we are doing in this environment, we focus on buying the land, on receiving building permits, on obtaining building permits and starting the projects. In particular, in Warsaw and Wroclaw, which are the most active markets for us and the markets in which both the demand and pricing is very strong.

In Resi4Rent, we continue our program of building over 10,000 apartments. We -- just to remind you, we have already over 4,000 units under operation. And we expect to have over 6,000 by the year end, by handing over more than 2,000 units during this year. So everything goes according to plan and we see that the rental market is also supportively strong. We do see growth of rents, not as strong as before. But definitely, the market is very favorable. So we continue to implement our plans.

Student Housing is a new activity for us. We started to build a platform with Signal Capital Partners to develop around 5,000 beds in 3 to 5 years. We hope to do that sooner. We already start the first projects. Nicklas will talk more about that and we search for more plots in Warsaw, Kraków, Wroclaw, so in the cities where the demand is the strongest.

In commercial segment, we can see that the number of projects entering the market is very limited. This is affecting the rents, meaning the rents are growing. This is being noticed by investors. And we believe that what is important is that the fact that the interest rates will start to go down, which will affect the cost of financing for investors and will improve the pricing.

So we are focusing on leasing, so to make sure that all the projects are fully leased, which is happening also including our new projects like Towarowa or Swobodna, the project that we started recently. And we also start to engage in discussions with potential investors on the disposal of our office projects.

In retail, the -- both clients and tenants are showing a good performance, meaning clients come more and more often to our shopping centers, tenants are paying increasing rents. And we do expect that, that will be noticed by investors because retail performance is very clearly strong and improving year-on-year in a consistent way.

Construction market remains to be -- remains good for us, which means that the pricing and our ability to negotiate good prices, good terms is very good. We are very happy with that. We are happy with the availability of construction companies, resources and material. So we can really implement our plans in terms of starting projects and delivering projects in a very good way.

Let's look at the financial data, which, of course, is one of the main purposes of this presentation. So our net profit was slightly higher than a year ago, PLN 13 million versus PLN 11.5 million, and it was higher than the PAP consensus, which was PLN 7 million. So all good. And in the later part of presentation, I will give you more detail what is behind the numbers.

I think it's important also to look at the share price and also how we value different businesses. I think it's important because clearly, all of our viewers are interested in Echo. But probably not all of you spend a lot of time looking at the details of our numbers and of valuation principles how we value our assets. And I think it's good to remind -- to remind you how that works.

And I would like to start from the observation that Echo share price increased this year by 20% and Archicom share price increased by 50%. And we believe this is the recognition of the fact that we are successfully implementing our strategy.

But how that is reflected on the balance sheet, how it affects our books. And that slide is a little bit more complicated. So I would like to ask you to focus and follow what I'm saying because it requires a little bit more attention than usual.

So let's start from what businesses Echo has, what business segments we have, right? I think as you perfectly know, we have residential for sale business, which is almost entirely, but not fully in Archicom, there are some assets that were not transferred because they were not -- we were not able to transfer them for administrative reasons. But we do have -- we do own 74% -- over 74% of Archicom and we do own some other residential assets that remained on Echo balance sheet.

Resi4Rent is another strong and well-developed segment and this is 30% of our JV. Resi4Rent is the JV name. And I think I already talked about some of operational characteristics of this business today.

We also do have a large commercial business and of course, this is comprised in retail. Mlociny and Libero that I mentioned, it is comprising office projects, which are both completed and in development and in particular, it is -- within this segment, we have Towarowa 22, which is a JV in which we own 30%. And of course, this is the project that just started.

So if we look at the book value and the book value per share in these segments, we can notice that actually the largest segment by book value is our commercial segment, and that's more than PLN 2 per share. Our residential for sale business is a little bit more than PLN 1 per Echo share and Resi4Rent about PLN 0.70. So altogether, it's a little bit more than PLN 4 per share, which is our book value.

And where does this book value come from? So if we look at the commercial business, we value our projects when they are in advanced construction. And when we also have leases on particular projects. So of course, completed projects are valued at the market value, but projects that we are starting or that we started are valued during construction, but not at the beginning, but when we have -- when we reach leasing threshold and we also reach a construction threshold, so not from the start.

So in particular, that means that, of course, all the land is at cost, at historical cost. So in particular, if we focus, for example, on Towarowa 22, only one of all the buildings -- of all the projects that is part of this development has been, to some extent, revalued in Q1. Everything else is at cost. I am talking, of course, about projects not started or to be started, right? Projects, again, projects that are completed valued at market value.

Resi4Rent, where we do have 30% JV, is done in a similar way. However, revaluation to market the value happens later. It happens really when we are close to the completion of the project because we can do timing at that time, market trends for particular project. So it happens actually later -- statistically happens later in terms of project timing than in commercial assets. So I would say that projects in Resi4Rent, which are completed -- so projects -- these 4,000 units that I mentioned before, which is already leased. They are revalued. But if you look at our over 6,000 portfolio that is to be developed and some of the projects to be started, this is basically kept at cost.

And then last but not least, or maybe actually the most interesting part is Archicom and our residential business. Because if you look at the book value that we do show it's around PLN 1 per share. But if you think about Archicom as a listed company, then of course, Archicom shares have value per share. And on this basis, you could value this business, this segment using the prices from the stock exchange. So if you do that, you would see the value per share -- per Echo share of course, not the Archicom share but Echo share, of over PLN 4 instead of a little bit more than one, right?

So it's a very big difference. And I think it's interesting because you would -- of course, the asset is accounting principles based on which we are required to show all the residential assets at cost and only recognized profit upon handover. But at the same time, because we have an active market, which is valuing this very same assets, Archicom assets on a daily basis, you actually have 2 numbers, right? One number is a historical cost. But another number is a current share price of Archicom that you can use to value these assets.

So if you add all these numbers, which is actually book value for Resi4Rent, commercial business, et cetera, and market value for Archicom, you would arrive not at PLN 4, but at almost PLN 7 per share, which I think is quite remarkable. And what it tells is really that depending on valuation principles and which prices you use, you may have a very, very different result. So I think it's remarkable. And I think it was important to explain to everybody how these assets are being valued and why, but of course, the conclusions are for our viewers to make.

And I would like to give the floor to...

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

To Nicklas. Nicklas, the floor is yours.

[Nicklas Lindberg, executive]

Thank you. I will now talk a little bit more about the residential for-sale market. Like Maciej has highlighted before, this is a market that has grown dramatically. We have, by this year's first quarter, now sold 410 apartments. We have increased the offer in all the different markets where we're being present just because we see a growing market, we have been able to secure a land bank through times where it's important that you have a strong balance sheet like we're having. And it's important that you can do the deals quickly.

And this has made us able to secure a lot of new assets that we can develop quickly after we are starting. Archicom has a lot of cash as well on the accounts that we are now converting into land bank. So as you will continue looking going forward in the coming quarters, we will secure a lot more land. Because land is the key ingredient for us to continue growing our residential business.

So for this year, there will be a lot of focus for us to start up new projects and also to secure more land bank for the future growth that Maciej was talking earlier about.

We see here a strong sale on all our markets, and we see a limited supply. The project that we are now putting to the market is project that went through the permitting process for many years. This shows that it's the best project in all the different locations where we are putting into the market and one of the examples was the M7 that we released to the market last week where there's a huge interest to go into the new Archicom collection, but it's really shown a totally new quality and a totally new way of approaching the market that we have never before been able to show in the way that we can do it.

We see prices increasing in all the different markets and here, we see last year, we were benefiting a lot from selling off a lot of land, but we have just been -- selling off a lot of projects that we just started. This year, we will continue starting up a lot more projects. We will start up 5,400 apartments to be able to meet the demand on the market.

If you see the sales now in Q1, we sold 410 apartments. In Q2, the figure will be totally different because in Q2 will be the quarter where we release a lot of new projects. So there's quite a few projects that has been in the stage of getting permitting for a long time, but now get into the building permit and where we have a huge interest for the market to buy apartments.

The handovers. We continue handing over apartments. This year, we will not hand over as many apartments as we did in earlier years, but it will still be a year where we continue handing over apartments. We are focusing on sales. We are focusing on growing our business, and we're focusing on getting up to a steady stage of 4,000 apartments sold per year, which we really sure that Archicom is just in the beginning of the journey of turning it into one of the dominating residential players on the Polish market.

Here, you see the offer of the Echo Group, and you will continue seeing it, like I said before, this is an increasing offer for every month now. We're starting many, many more projects. And like Maciej said, we are focusing on Warsaw, Wroclaw, Kraków, the market where we see a very low supply but a very strong demand, where we can put unique projects on the market that I'm sure is going to facilitate the future growth and success of Archicom.

The land bank, which is the backbone of our business is continuously growing. We are making sure that at all point, we put in as much land into the land bank as we're taking out of the land bank. This is for us to be able to continue getting up to a higher stage of ongoing projects, sold projects and by that way, continue growing our business and ramping up to the 4,000 that is planned for next year, which is a significant milestone for our business where we then come up to the top 3 players on the Polish market.

We are being present on the 5 markets. We are now also looking into Katowice where we have rezoned land bank from [indiscernible] that is spot on in the city center of Katowice, which will be a fantastic project. So we are continuing looking at this. We're continuingly focusing on growing our market share. And as you see here, Kraków is one of the markets where we now are adding on with even more projects to be able to get a bigger market share on that market.

The living in the Resi4Rent segment is a very, very interesting market. We have over 4,000 apartments up and running. We see rental growth in all the different projects. We're going to be able to hand over another 2,100 projects part of this year, which will mean that we're above 6,000 apartments handed over. We will also -- and after we have started 10,000 apartments that are up and running and under construction, which means that we are by far the biggest developer and the biggest platform in this segment.

And for us, it's important to keep that scale, keeping that dominance because that makes us being able to steer the market in the way that is continuously being a great market. We continue making sure that we deliver high-quality projects to the inhabitants of the different cities. So there is an alternative for people that cannot afford to buy can now have the possibility to rent in central locations.

The institutional market in Poland is just in the early days of development. You will see going forward that we'll continue developing as other mature market has developed. And I think in the coming years, you will see that the institutional rental market will be a clear alternative for a lot of people that cannot afford to buy due to [indiscernible] circumstances that are on the market today.

Resi4Rent has secured close to 11,000 apartments. We see here that we are starting up. Many of them, we see here, we are focusing a lot on the cost base to be able to deliver cost-effective projects. We have a lot of experience for the first apartment that we continue learning from every new project we are starting. We implement the changes into next project and all our new projects is just getting better and better with the learnings from the projects before. So I think the Resi4Rent has been a great project for us, something we're going to continue growing and something that we see a great potential in.

We are focusing on the portfolio. Here, we continue to focus and continue growing in Warsaw, where we want to have even more projects where we see a huge potential to continue to grow our market share. And this is also where we are focusing on adding on new projects. So we have a great portfolio spread all over Poland with fully leased buildings in all the different locations. And also, we see rental growth, and we are super excited of putting another 3 to 4 projects on the market this year.

You see here that in all our projects, all of the cities, we are continuing seeing them being fully leased. We don't see, like Maciej said before, the enormous rental growth, but we still see rental growth ahead of inflation, and this means that this project is really a future-proof project that I think a lot of investors will look for going forward.

After the successful entry into the Resi4Rent market, we looked at the student housing market, which is also a market where there's a huge undersupply on the Polish market. Here, we've been able to set up a platform with Signal Capital Partners. We plan to engage of Echo more than EUR 30 million, and we will be 30% JV part of this project. So it will be over EUR 100 million that we're putting into the resi -- into the student housing market.

This is super interesting. We have already now secured a first project like Maciej saying. We are starting them up now as we speak, which means that already by end of next year, you will see a proof of concept where we are starting the first new project that we roll out in the market.

Here, we're looking very deeply into prefab construction, which will be a way for us to accelerate the construction process and quicker come to the market. Here, we have secured more than 5 locations. And in the Q2, we will be much more precise with this. We will show you much more pictures of the ongoing construction and you will see much more of ideas. But the whole thing here, like we're doing in all the other businesses, we allocate the capital, we quickly deploy the capital, and we quickly get it into income-generating assets, which is the strength of Echo to quickly get into something new and turn it into something that is generating new cash.

The student housing market is a market that is just in the early days. This will continue growing for many, many, many years ahead of us. And we think this will be a great complement to the Resi4Rent business that we're already having. And here, we also are now building up a new competence. We will continue making sure that we are implementing the learnings from other operations and also the strengths of Echo, we have had all this in-house competence that is helping us to develop at the optimal cost with the best quality possible.

If you see here, here's a comparison between the different markets. And you see here, Poland is growing quickly and will continue growing even quicker when there will be more supply on the market. Because Poland has supply gap that you need to cover here, where there is a lot of older student homes, but it's not up to today's standards where we will be able to deliver a totally different quality that will facilitate the growth of the market even quicker.

Rents. We see growing in all the different markets. And we see going forward as well, we continually seeing a growth of the rents that will be higher than the inflation that you will see in the market.

Commercial is a market that is super interesting today. We have started up Towarowa in Warsaw, in Wroclaw and we started Wita in Kraków. We are negotiating actively with tenants on all our locations we are signing LOIs. We see really that the quality we're delivering and the lack of supply in the market will really boost going forward in rental growth, but also we see now as we see that the first decrease of interest rate from ECBs and Horizon. So we think this by able to start up in the best locations, spot on city centers in the 3 biggest cities, we will have a huge market advantage going forward in the coming 1 to 2 years. Will there be no supply in the market, and we will deliver the best projects with all these 3 criterias in place and all the latest things implanted into the buildings to deliver a totally different quality to the tenants that are now coming back to the offices and have different expectations than they had before.

We see here, like I say in this slide, as we have fewer rents, it pushes up rents, it pushes down the demand for rent-frees and also for fit-out contribution. So we think in the market is in a totally different stage than it was historically. And we think now as investors' appetite will come back, this will be the right thing to continue put in part of the Echo money into.

Here is the Towarowa that is a fantastic project that we're going to develop up to 200,000 square meters of mixed use. This would be a city within the city. And here, we have a going one office building and one residential building. And over the years, you will see more buildings being started up, and then you will see really how we did, as we did with the brewery, where we're really creating a new city center within Warsaw. Which is unique and also which is also the strength of Echo of having so many different competencies under one umbrella to be able to really do with city transforming project that is the backbone of our business.

Here you see another project that Maciej talked about before. This is next to the railway station in Kraków, where we're drilling a truly mixed-use project consisting of all the different functions that we have within our platform. And here you see even here, we're going to do some student homes, which will be excellent location to students in the city center of Kraków. And also this project has a building permit that will have a very quick entry to the market.

This is a little bit talking about how the project is, how many different square meters we're having here, and it will be an office of around 19,000 square meters where we already see a huge demand from tenants who want to sit in this location and also who appreciate the mixed use that we are creating.

Swobodna is opposite the MidPoint. It's really the expectation. MidPoint, as you remember, is sold and already fully leased. And we see now big tenants looking to go into this project. And here you see on all levels, we are putting in terraces, really to make sure that your office becomes your home away from home.

We have also a lot of modern buildings in co-locations being established. We have React, fully leased. We have Brain Park, fully leased and also the new lease signed [indiscernible] that takes all the remaining space of the building. City 2 fully leased, and Brain Park II also fully leased. Libero, Maciej talked about before, we see rental growth. We see also we are changing tenants. And also, all of this we're doing to continuously improving the center that has a stronger and stronger footfall. So this is the project that we're putting in the market where we will see the investors' demand already coming back. We see already we are in talks on some of the buildings. We have investors who are saying this might be the time that they continue looking into Poland because they see Poland has the right fundamentals on the market.

We see office [indiscernible] going forward, we see a strong leasing market. We see a strong leasing market at the end of last year, we see even stronger leasing market this year. And end of this year beginning and the first half of next year, we think we will see the investors coming back to the market in a totally different space than we've seen so far. So I think it's very important that Echo stays in the office segment and also having a very diversified business that has helped us through COVID and in uncertain times after [indiscernible] war and other things. By our diversified business, we have been able to continue deliver no matter where the market has been.

We have a co-working space as well that is continued growing in importance. All our tenants want to have co-working as a possibility in all the buildings where they're signing leases. Here, we have city space that continues growing and Echo location, continues growing in all the different locations around Poland and will open up more locations as we see it this year.

Galeria Libero, like we talked before, very much growing as a center. And it's now slowly getting up to be much more mature as a center. And we think this year will be a strong year. Next year will continue being a strong year. And that's why we put it on the list of the projects that we're analyzing now to divest, assess, reach a maturity stage where we think it's really coming up to this true value.

Galeria Mlociny continues to strengthen the position. The footfall is increasing dramatically now in the coming months. For you who have not visited yet, you should go there to see really the new attractions we put into the center is a totally new center. And also, we see it both in the footfall and the turnovers in the center, but it's highly appreciated by all the inhabitants living around Galeria Mlociny.

From an ESG perspective, we are continuously focused on our ESG. We're implementing it into all our projects, and it's a natural part of all our business. We are continuing to revise our targets. We're going to -- by the end of this year, continue updating it as we do every year. And also, all these things are available on our homepage. By doing this mixed-use project, where we put a lot of greenery, a lot of places around for the inhabitants. This is a big part of our ESG strategy to create places around the city where people can meet and also socialize.

[Maciej Drozd, executive]

So now let's look again in a little bit more detail on our financials. So as I already mentioned, we had result -- net profit, which was better than a year ago and better than the consensus. It was a result of around PLN 360 million sales revenue with an average margin of around 35%. And in terms of fair value, we need to notice that the quarter was affected by negative foreign exchange movement, which affected revaluations, which was negative PLN 34 million. However, of course, if you look at the project level, Brain Park, City, or Libero, all these projects do show accumulated gain. So they are profitable. However, this quarter, as I mentioned, because among others, of foreign exchange movement had a negative impact on our profit.

If we look at our balance sheet, I think it is stable. It does not change a lot from quarter-to-quarter. Our cash figure remains strong, which is important. Total asset value did increase slightly, and I think it will be affected looking forward by the growing inventory. So our residential assets will grow by acquiring more projects, by putting more projects under construction. So on that part, you should expect it to be growing.

We do have a number of properties for sale, so investment properties. As it was mentioned, City 2, React, Libero and Brain. So depending on the timing of the disposal, they will get -- be taken out of the balance sheet together with that. So please remember that a significant part of the debt you have is a project level debt. So that on a project like Brain, Libero, React, City 2, et cetera, et cetera, which is consolidated on our balance sheet.

We are managing actively our liabilities, and I will speak about this later. Our net debt ratio is within the target of between 30% to 40%. So we are fine. We expect that upon the disposal of the investment properties, as it was mentioned, the net debt ratio will decrease because it will both affect liabilities, which will get out from our balance sheet, but also will produce net cash.

Here, there is a slide which is showing what's going on and how we actively manage our liabilities. There's a lot of detail that I would like to explain in a more global way that what you see here is how we are moving by refinancing -- how we are moving liabilities from near-term maturity, so from 2024 and 2025, 4 or 5 years forward. So this is what we are doing.

We do this proactively. And in particular, we focus on 2025 where our objective is to move the bond liabilities by 4 to 5 years and also to make sure that our corporate lines will be extended and they are being done -- this is being done on a regular way.

The market and the environment is very supportive in this area. So in fact, we are implementing this strategy with great success.

In terms of dividend, I think you already know if you follow that we paid already advanced dividend for 2023. So the Management Board and Supervisory Board approved this recommendation that we do not recommend any other payment in respect of '23 on top of advanced dividend.

And that is all, and I think we can move to the Q&A session.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Yes. Thank you so much. You talked a lot about Echo shares and their value. So I would like to stick with this subject because we have one question referring to our estimates of Archicom's value. Does -- we believe that -- do we believe that Echo shares are undervalued?

[Maciej Drozd, executive]

Well, I think it's, of course, up to the viewers to make these conclusions, right? I think what is quite visible is that there is a quite significant gap between the book value measured in a sort of way required by accounting. And what we would say is the market value, if you take into account Archicom shares, right? So that's, I think, important observation.

And you can also looking at the parts make an easy math. If you just add the value of our residential segment based on Archicom plus Resi4Rent, actually, you are already much higher than our current book value or market value, which basically means that the commercial business is for free, right?

I mean you can also look at this in many, many different ways. And I repeat, it's really up to our viewers, right? To make any conclusions. But I think it's important that we draw attention to the fact that we have very strong performance of Archicom that is not at all reflected on Echo balance sheet. This is really the main message, right, that accounting principles are not allowing us to reflect in any way the strong performance, but it's a fact, right? And of course, we are happy that the market is recognizing the growth of Archicom and how well it is developing.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Thank you. Let's leave at that and leave the conclusions to our viewers. And there is one question to Nicklas regarding residential business. Nicklas, could you please give us a little bit more color on our Q2 sales according to various market reports, the demand is cooling down.

[Nicklas Lindberg, executive]

If you look overall the market, I guess the demand is cooling down. What you see here is that the smaller developers are struggling much more than the bigger developers. Because you need to have a very strong land bank, you need to be able to put a lot of new projects on the market.

What we are seeing here, we are being present in the biggest market where there's a lack of supply. So we're putting a lot of projects in Warsaw, Kraków, Wroclaw, where demand is not cooling down in that aspect. What you see is cities that like Wroclaw is having much projects ongoing, where you see much more that the demand is cooling down in those areas.

So what we see here, we are putting projects on the market that are having this year in a unique situation in the bigger cities where there is a lack of supply and the demand is very, very strong for the projects we're putting in these unique locations.

So we are very bullish about our performance for 2024. We see already now that the sales figures until today are very, very strong. And we think now as in the coming days or weeks, we're going to start up any more -- many more projects in Warsaw, we think we're going to continue seeing even stronger sales in those markets. Because many of the projects we have already now before we have started and really we have started with the presale of them, where we see a very, very big interest for customers to acquire apartments from us.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Thank you so much. And sticking to the residential sector, Maciej, could you please respond to the question regarding 3,000 flats sold in 2023. Is this goal achievable without [indiscernible] the apartment for the start loan?

[Maciej Drozd, executive]

Well, I think we are, of course, working very much towards achieving this goal no matter what are the circumstances. But of course, you cannot deny that they could affect the market.

I think what is not helpful is lack of clarity, definitely because it is creating confusion for customers, right? Because they don't know if they should wait or they should buy. I think this is something that it will be great if that will be clarified quickly. So customers would know if they should buy using normal credit because many people qualify for ordinary loans, right? They don't need to wait for that program. But of course, they do wait because if they expect better outcome, right? And it's important that there is clarity.

I think we are focused on this goal no matter what. But clearly, that would be helpful, right, the program implement or at least it's made clear how, when, on which principles, et cetera it will happen.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Yes, clarity is key. Thank you so much. And I think last question about residential for sale goes to Nicklas. Nicklas, could you tell us about plans of Echo Investment Group to enter Tricity? Do we plan to enter this part of the country with residential for sale?

[Nicklas Lindberg, executive]

We are constantly analyzing Tricity as a market. For us to enter Tricity, we need to find unique way of entering there where we will get up to a bigger scale. We have until today not found really that angle. We are, at the moment, we're analyzing quite a few projects there that is interesting that we continue looking at. We are parallel with this also analyzing a lot how we're going to grow in Kraków, is also a super interesting market.

For us, it's easier to grow in a market where we're already being present today than entering a new market that takes a longer time for us to do. And we will not enter a market for 1 or 2 projects. We need to get up to a critical scale.

So to answer your question, yes, we are analyzing entering Tricity. Will it be this year or next year, I don't know. The key aspect as of today is to continue growing in the markets where we've been present and continue using the synergies we see within the group to be able to create even higher profits and getting up to our scale that we have assumed.

And to be clear, the 3,000 units is not assuming that we will enter Tricity or any other market.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Thank you so much. And going back to you, Maciej. Now commercial sector and one question about our outlook on cap rate this year. According to our Q1 report, we have valued our commercial office using higher yields. Can you comment on that, please?

[Maciej Drozd, executive]

Right. I think we are cautious in the environment where there was no transactions practically last year. I think we need to make an obvious observation that the market needs to become more active to give everybody comfort on the cap rates and also the interest rate environment is very important to the timing. So we are valuing assets in a way which we believe is cautious.

However, uncertainty is obvious in this context. But we are optimistic in terms of investor interest, and we have seen that before that, that market is cyclical. So we believe that both interest will come back and the price improvement. So we are working to stay in this market because we believe because of cyclicality, within 1 or 2 years, it will be back to a much better environment.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Thank you so much. And I think we have time for one more question. Nicklas, could you get this one?

It's about Resi4Rent. Could you please comment on rental growth at the Resi4Rent platform. And tell us, does the occupancy remain stable?

[Nicklas Lindberg, executive]

Yes. I talked earlier before about rental growth, but it's important to put it into a perspective as well. What we see here is that we have more than 4,000 units under operation. We're going to add on another 2,000 units. We have a huge synergy, how we maintain our assets and how people have been able to move around between our different assets.

Because once you move into our Resi4Rent portfolio, you can move all over Poland to the different locations. And what we have seen now and looking back for the last 10 years, rental growth in the Resi4Rent market has always been above inflation with 2% or something similar to this.

What we are seeing this year, we see continue seeing a rental growth that will be in our portfolio between 6% to 8%, which is good based on today's market situations. By doing that, we are still keeping an occupancy level across these 4,000 units that are between 97% to 98%. And that's the level where we want to keep it up because you don't want to have your assets 100% leased. You want to have some vacancy always to be able to continue having an upward pressure on rent. And also making sure that you always have available apartment if somebody is entering.

So we have a very, very strong market. We have been able to facilitate about the growing market. We have been able to find synergies by being more effective on how we run our projects. We've been able to increase rents and still keeping an occupancy level of 97%, 98%, which is basically fully leased as we're constantly adding on new projects to the portfolio.

[Weronika Ukleja-Salak, executive]

Thank you, Nicklas, and I think this is it. Thank you, Maciej. And thank you all for joining us today. If you have any other questions, please contact me or Grzegorz Iwanski, our Head of Investor Relations directly. And we'll see you very soon because in September. And in the meantime, please have a great summer.