British Land Company Plc (BLND) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

We'll make a start. Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us. Great to have a nice turnout in the room. Probably helpful the tube strikes were called off. I was a bit worried we'd be presenting to ourselves, but no, here we go. So today we'll follow the usual running order. I'll start with a strategic update. Then David will take you through the financial performance and our attractive earnings outlook. Over the next 30 minutes, you'll see how this is driven by two things. First, our market-leading positions in sectors with strong fundamentals. And second, our active approach to asset management. We've long believed that hands-on asset management is a key source of outperformance. Never has that been more evident, and Kelly will give you some great examples later. So let me start with the occupational fundamentals of our markets and our competitive positioning within them. Our campuses and retail parks now represent 90% of our business. and they're market leading, both in scale and in quality. And I'm struggling to remember a time when the occupational fundamentals were as favourable as they are today, with net absorption very strong and supply constrained in both our markets. Together with our active approach to asset management, this is translating into attractive ERV, like-for-like and earnings growth. This underpins our conviction in delivering 8-10% total accounting returns through the cycle. I thought it would be helpful today to touch on two topical themes, inflation and artificial intelligence. As we all know, inflation rose dramatically after the invasion of Ukraine, and conflict in the Middle East is likely to exert further upward pressure on prices. So how much of this inflation are we likely to capture in our rents? To answer this, l...