Unite Group Plc (UTG) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Great, good morning everybody. Thank you all for coming along and those of us joining today. I see you fighting over the snacks on the chairs, so please enjoy that. And for those joining us online, sadly we won't be posting them to you today, but hopefully you can come next time and enjoy them. So this morning, I'm going to just run through what we're seeing in the markets and progress with our strategic priorities. Karen will then take you through the 26-27 sales position before Mike talks through the financials and property. And then I'll wrap up and open up for Q&A as usual. 2025 was a year of considerable change for us in our sector and whilst our performance was strong across the majority of the portfolio, we have seen that pace of change accelerate, which has impacted our occupancy. More students are opting to live at home and international postgraduates have declined again since their peak in 2022, which meant that occupancy was weak in three of our cities, which impacted the overall performance. And whilst it's still early, we are currently tracking three percentage points behind last year, which is all in the nomination space, which Karen will come on to talk about. We have seen the smart shifts like this before, and we know that we can respond positively. So we set out a plan in November to reposition the business, and I'm proud of the start we've made across the three areas. First, we've been accelerating the repositioning of the portfolio. We've got a high quality, well located portfolio at the right price points. and we've already started selling assets as seen by the USAF disposal announced today and we've launched a portfolio of £300 million just last week as well. Secondly, we will play to our strengths. We have unparalleled relationships with univers...