Wereldhave Nv (WRDEF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to the Wereldhaven first half 2024 results webcast. Today I'll talk you together with our CFO Dennis de Vrede to the highlights of the results. As always, you can type your questions in the text box in your screen also during the presentation and towards the end of the presentation we will deal with the Q&A. So let's start with the key messages of these results. If we focus on the operational metrics, I think if we look at the Dutch market, as you know, which has been a tough market for us over the past five, six years, we saw a strong recovery last year, and that is continuing in 2024. Dutch retail sales were plus 4%. That is also above the level of inflation. So we have also seen volume growth for several of our retailers. I think that is also the result of the improved portfolio quality on the one hand through the disposals that we made in the past couple of years, but also the new full service center concept that we have created. Footfall plus 5%, but almost plus 10% for the full service center. I think service centers also a very compelling figure. Valuations, they were positive last year and that trend is continuing. Everybody sees that interest rates are stabilizing. But what we noticed is that our plus 3% in valuations was first and foremost driven by increased ERVs. Over the past two years, we've had several discussions. with the media and also investors, analysts, about the rental levels. We were indexing with very high figures. Can you maintain those rental levels? What you see in the first half result is an answer. The answer is yes. The leasing spread for the portfolio, for the core portfolio, was a positive plus 1%, and that is now also being reflected in the valuations. The Fitch credit rating, we reported on that a couple of w...