GDI Property Group

GDI Property Group

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Feb 15Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 23, 2026

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Stephen Burns, Managing Director and CEO.

Please go ahead.

Stephen Burns

Good afternoon and welcome to the GDI call. I'm joined by David Williams, our CFO, and I thought I'd start on page 3 of the presentation, which is the highlights.

We really do continue to drive the FFO growth, which is up 29.1% for the half, with a good co-living contribution, up some 37%, and property FFO up nearly 14%. We continue to basically drive the property FFO, as you'll see from the charts, which shows this has been a good three-year effort.

The NTA was stable at $1.20, with Westralia Square and Murray Street car parks increasing in value despite cap rate expansion. Our Morambah co-living acquisitions takes total rooms to over 920, we feel we're building a good business there, which is showing through in the results.

We've seen the rewards of strong leasing efforts, not only in this half, but over the past couple of years, achieving over 13,000 square meters of office leasing. It's worth pointing out that this result that we achieved was underpinned by a really strong December quarter for the broader market, which saw in the order of 49% of the year's leasing activity achieved in that final quarter, which brings us really to the momentum carrying through to the first quarter of 26, which looks strong both at a GDI and a market level.

Turning over the page and continuing the highlights, we've completed over $250 million of asset sales across the business, including the car yard sales of $74 million, which was achieved at 50% over the acquisition price and settled on Friday. We continue to see good interest in selected asset sales, and the office market appears to be on the verge of transacting.

We're very focused on $100 million non-core targets, and that is ongoing. We extended the facility by $25 million and have over $52 million of undrawn liquidity.

Probably the highlight has been this leasing environment definitely strengthening into the end of the year and continuing on. The five-year supply gap in office buildings is resonating strongly, not only with commentators, but tenants.

Tenants now with three-year expiries are looking to bring them forward to avoid what is likely to be a big jump in rents. Tenants are still expanding.

68% of the 25 year deals were expanding tenants, and tenants also continued to move into the CBD, accounting for 27% of deals in 25. There's still some very large unfilled inquiries, such as 20,000 square meters for Western Power.

We're likely to see something new for Perth called withdrawals, which is likely to add to the supply shortages. An example would be St Martins Centre at 40 to 50 St Georges, which is likely to result in some 27,000 square meters of net withdrawal.

It's worth mentioning that this is something that hasn't really been discussed in Perth, but those of you who remember Sydney benefiting from the metro withdrawal of buildings, it is quite a factor, and it will go to vacancy forecast from now on. Of course, we're going to see rents rising significantly.

They will have to go anywhere near the breakeven rents for rational construction. It's probably worth noting that the last time there was a supply gap of five years back in 2000 and 2009, the net effective rents rose nearly three times.

At the moment, we're seeing agents revising their forecast for rental growth. CBRE is about 39% over the next five years, and the variety of other agents are also forecasting such growth figures.

They're, in my view, likely to significantly underestimate the actual growth that occurs, we're likely to see a squeeze occur at some point. I'll just quickly hand over to Dave to concentrate on the financial snapshot.

David Williams

Afternoon, everyone. Stephen's already mentioned a lot of this, but if we turn to page 5 of the presentation for those of you that have it in front of you, the NTA is $1.20, as it was in June.

The main assets that were revalued were the Westralia Square ones. They went up slightly, $5 million in total.

That notwithstanding the cap rate going from 6.375 on both out to 6.5. The two car parks were also revalued.

One went up $4 million, one went down $1 million, and that's largely resultant of the performance of the Murray Street one, which is CBD located, is continuing to perform very, very well. The result of that, our gearing is 35%.

The syndicated facility and how they measure it, the LVR is 41%, as it was in June, and the ICR is 2.3 times versus the covenant of 1.5. Stephen's already talked about the strong year-on-year growth in FFO.

There's a little chart down the bottom to show you how strong that has been. The distribution, we determined for the first half a distribution of 2.5 cents and are confirming the intent to pay the cash distribution of 5 cents for the year.

I just want to point out that for those that read the tax components of the distribution, it is again out of capital that is for tax purposes. There is a lot of depreciation benefits that we're holding from the building of WS2 and some of the spec fit-out strategy.

From an operating point of view, the distribution is getting very close to being covered from operating earnings. Turn over to page 6.

Again, Stephen talked about the nearly 14% growth in property FFO. All the major assets are improving largely on the back of higher occupancy.

Westralia Square is an interesting one because it's got a public car park for 350-odd cars in it. The revenue on that just keeps going up and up.

That's been a great performer for us. The car park at Murray Street, like I said, was up; the Wellington one was down a bit, so that's consistent year-on-year.

197, it's all about just the occupancy increasing. It's now up to 91%, and not all of that 91% is rent paying just yet, but it's not far from it.

Funds management division FFO was down in the six months. That was largely because we sold IKEA, which settled in June.

In this current six months, there will be a disposal fee for the dealerships that settled on Friday, so that will flow through for this six months. Co-living, we'll go into a little bit more detail later.

They have outperformed where they were this time 12 December 24, and you add in also the accretive acquisition of Morambah, and that's really an interesting part of the business that's performing very well. Net interest expense was lower.

We had an expensive swap that expired in December as well. The facility went up marginally, $5 million during the period, and corporate costs are pretty flat.

If you just look at the debt on page 7, this is pretty much what you saw in the August presentation. The only real change has been $5 million of debt was drawn down in the period, and an expensive swap has expired.

Stephen Burns

Turning to the Perth, WA economy on page 8, the macro backdrop looks positive for the office market and Perth and WA in general. If we look at the private mining capex, it's nearly doubled from 2019 levels of $17.1 billion to $35.5 billion today, and exploration capex has increased strongly as well, which adds, obviously, directly to the office leasing inquiry.

Domestic economic growth is strong, which is circa 3% for the September quarter versus 1.9% for other states. We're seeing strong wages growth, unemployment below the national average, strong population growth, and very strong retail spending.

If we turn over the page and focusing on GDI, the CBD office sales front, we've witnessed five sale campaigns concluding with an actual transaction. Nonetheless, they're still sitting there.

We're likely to see some of those transact over the next period. What was interesting was that there were some fairly solid bids.

About 59% of the book was bid for those assets was from syndicators and about 26% from high net worth. There was a little bit of foreign interest, but it mainly flowed through to other asset classes, like Mapletree buying student accom and a number of our assets where we sold non-office, such as IKEA for $164 million.

It feels like it's getting close. 2025 really looks like the year of the standoff on the sales front.

Average volumes for Perth market were in the order of $734 million, and last year there was virtually none in the office, there'll be a catch-up period most likely once the buyers and sellers work themselves out. We think that we're likely to see some bids after the recent campaigns.

We've seen two more assets come onto the market. One of those is at 81 St Georges, is more likely to be a conversion to resi, a withdrawal.

We're hopeful that we're basically on the edge of a transaction campaign that is going to be successful. I think that the best way to sum it up is that the transactions are really the missing piece to the strengthening story given that Perth office looks to be on a structural upswing, particularly from a rental perspective given the economic rents required and the supply gap.

You can see through the bottom chart there, it's really pointing towards the potential supply. Commentators have still got Rio in there, which is questionable in 2030-plus.

The blue lines there really reflect the backfill from tenant movements, and it's worth noting that a little bit of withdrawal could knock that supply out very quickly. Turning over to the supply gap and the impact on vacancy, the positive net absorption continues.

We saw over 79,000 square meters of leasing deals done in the over 500-square-meter scale. Around 83% of that was done in A- and B-class space, indicating that tenants have been cost-conscious.

68% of tenants have expanded. 27% of all deals represented tenants moving to the CBD, with more to come as mentioned.

There's been a definite pickup in the government EOI campaigns, and we've also seen effectively the withdrawal of 20,000 square meters for DEMIRS development in Northbridge not taking place, which will again have to come back in terms of demand for fitted-out or non-fitted-out space at some point. GDI's experienced good leasing interest in our East Perth office assets, which is really interesting.

It's probably the highest level we've witnessed, and there's multiple inquiry across those buildings. If we look at the chart, it really shows absorption scenarios for different levels.

Again, it hasn't netted off for the withdrawals that I mentioned before, and the likely candidates there are going to be St Martins Centre and also the 81 St George asset, to mention a few. Basically you can see that there's a distinct lack of supply on the horizon.

The vacancy rate can tighten quite considerably based on those various scenarios. Average take-up or net absorption's been around 20,000 in the past.

We expect it could be quite a bit higher. A lot of the vacancy in the prime end resides in one building.

If we look to the next page, just a little bit on rents, clearly, market rents need to rise substantially. The market seems to have a range of between $1,180 to $1,300 net face for the premium end.

If we use a rent of $1,260, they'll need to grow from around $880 today, which is about 64%. As mentioned, CBRE is forecasting 69%, which may prove conservative.

Most of the premium vacancy resides in QV1, out of 55-odd-thousand square meters, there's about 23,000 sitting in QV1, which can be moved pretty quickly because there's some shuffling going on. It only takes one or two tenants to move out of A-grade into premium, or one of the tenants coming in from the city, such as Western Power, and it'll fill it very quickly.

Incentives are still sticky, tends to be the case, but it varies according to the condition of the space, whether it's refurbished, whether it's a spec fit-out, or whether it's an existing fit-out. That's healthy at the moment.

They're likely to come down keeping in mind that the Brisbane market has done well, and it's still got very high levels of incentives. Turning over the page, in terms of the property portfolio, noting there that the non-office property component is shown around 18%.

After the successful settlement of the car yards, that'll drop to around 12%. Valuation policy resulted in independent valuations for WS1 and WS2, as Dave mentioned.

They held their value and increased ever so slightly despite cap rate expansion, showing the growth in income, particularly for WS2. We saw Murray Street car park lift by $4 million despite having a fatter cap rate.

Wellington was a bit softer, and Townsville was a bit softer. Turning on to page 18, to save turning through every page of the pres-o, we're going to talk a little bit about co-living.

David Williams

Thanks, Stephen. I think we'll just give a little bit more detail than in this presentation than what we've done in the past, and you might want to sort of have a finger on page 23 as well as we do this.

When we made the investment, we had an objective of a 20% return on the initial invested capital, which was $33 million, which is about $6.6 million for the year of FFO contribution, and it only had the Norseman asset and South Hedland. South Hedland, the head office is six people now, plus some outsourced accounting staff.

There's over 100 all up, including all the site workers, very very stable at site manager level. The beauty of having the four facilities now, we're able to move site managers between the villages, are able to grow assistant site managers into site managers.

There's pathways. Staff retention at a more senior level is easier with more of them.

It's sort of showing through in the results. The team's done a really good job at Hedland.

It's gone from I won't say last resort, but the capex investment and BDM investment has meant that we are preferred supplier status for a number of users in the South Hedland market now. Did over $5 million.

There's a chart on page 23 which compared the Dec 24 to Dec 25 across each of them. We're really pleased with how South Hedland's going, and the preferred status gives us a lot of comfort around what that ongoing occupancy will look like at least for the next sort of 12 to 18 months.

The Norseman, we face Pantoro Gold. That's since we invested in 23, Pantoro's been on a pretty incredible journey.

We've put 76 rooms on the mine site. They have a very, very quick payback, and we're in the process of delivering another 64 rooms.

They will be delivered shortly. Norseman is going very well, Pantoro going very well, and the price of gold is very high.

I think our challenge is to keep up with the room demand of Pantoro. Newman's a really interesting one.

We settled in May 24. The first six months to Dec 24, it did about 900 grand.

Again, putting the team's magic on it, Chris and his team, changing the branding, focusing on the delivery of the service, focusing on BDM, it did double that to Dec 25. Then in October, we settled the Morambah acquisition.

It's 245 rooms. The first thing they've done is rebrand it, changed it from three different brand names to two.

144 rooms have the benefit of a take-or-pay contract with Stanmore Coal, and the other two are more of the traditional style mine accommodation. The other two are brick motels, and there's work to do to bring them up to the occupancy and performance that we want.

I look at what we did at Newman and have some comfort that we'll be able to achieve those similar results on those two rooms, which is about 100 all up of the 245, and have solid growth as we look forward to the next couple of years.

Stephen Burns

Turning on to page 19 and reinforcing strategy, we're very focused on doing what we say we will do, and to that note, we believe we are executing in line with strategy. We're relentlessly focused on leasing, and with a strong result for the period, we're very focused on the remaining lease-up, utilizing the spec fit-out strategy, of course, which has proved very fruitful to filling space.

Financially, we're driving the FFO growth whilst balancing out those liquidity requirements to deliver a full-year 5 cent distribution. We continue to recycle at good prices, with over $250 million realized and more to come.

We're very focused on bringing performance fee outcomes to account, and we're carefully managing the strategic growth plans at both a property and a business level, and noting the improved contribution that Dave has just talked to on the JV business. We're always focused on asset improvements.

That's our job, and returning the benefits to investors, including Mill Green and assets within the funds management business, such as Broadmeadow. With that, I'll just turn the page onto page 20, which shows at Mill Green, we're working on a staged concept, with initial focus very much on an extension of our spec fit-out strategy, which is really to fix up the ground floor vacancies for 197 St Georges and 5 Mill, which run together, and boost the income from retail repositioning and tenant amenity.

Then if you turn the page, longer term, the total site lends itself to a stage repositioning. There's nothing to worry about there.

We're not rushing out to spend money, but you've got to best position your assets to extract the best prices. With that, if we turn on to the next page, Broadmeadow sits in one of our funds, and it's interesting to note that it received a big boost in valuation up from $44 million to $78 million.

It's basically a rezoning from industrial to mixed-use, which could include up to 1,700 residential units. The key here is that this can deliver a very high performance fee to GDI, which on our numbers at the moment is in excess of $17 million.

With that in mind, it's important to realize that you've got to position your assets to get the best prices, to take advantage of the growth, and to optimize values for investors. In summary, GDI is well-placed for FY 26, particularly given the Perth office market tightening.

I'd just like to thank you for listening, and I'll hand over for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

Your first question comes from Andy MacFarlane with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.

Andy Macfarlane

Oh, hi, Steve, Dave. Hope you're both well.

Thank you for your time. First one, if I may, just in terms of fundamentals, just interesting in terms of what you're seeing in terms of incentives and leasing spreads and some of those metrics in the rental market in Perth?

Stephen Burns

Sure, Andy. I think the rider on incentives is you've got to break it up by the type of space.

If you looked at refurb space, varying quality and location, you could be anywhere between 38% to 50%. That's what most agents will quote you, and you're probably looking at 5- to 10-year terms, and that could be in premium to A-grade for that space.

You've got the spec fit-out category, which is where we concentrate, because the incentive's a lot lower. It could be between 5% and 25%, noting that we have done some without an incentive.

Not all landlords are willing to do spec fit-outs, and the lease terms there tend to be on a 3- to 7-year, and it's mainly in that A-grade space where you can capitalize on your spec fit-out strategy. I think existing fit-outs or next-generation fit-outs, they're going to vary between 20% to 45%, depending on how strong your marketing is.

It's going to be a lot of variability in quality, style, and location, but they tend to be for your 2- to 7-year ranges as well in terms of lease term. It's fair to say, Andy, that the incentives are still there in the Perth market, but what is interesting is that we've noticed a few cases where tenant reps have missed out on deals because they've been holding out.

We are at an inflection point on basically a bit of a handover of power to the landlord, because it is tightening up, particularly if you've got river views, etc., in good space, it's noticeable. The other trend there, Andy, which will come together with the incentives, is that a lot of the renewals, a lot of tenants, particularly big ones, are looking at their space expiring in, say, four years' time, and they're going, "We don't want to get hit with that rental growth," so they're trying to bring it forward now and negotiate a deal.

Andy Macfarlane

Thanks, Steve. Any color just on lease spreads, if so?

Stephen Burns

Because you've got such a variability in incentives, we tend to get a pick-up in situations where we do a quick shift. In 5 Mill or 197, we can actually make a positive spread, but quite often you're basically converting capital to income, it depends.

I wouldn't give an average figure. I know rental growth for the market was up around 4.1%, but a lot of the instances that we see, and building by building, because we've got lower outgoings in a lot of tenants, we can be quite competitive, we can push the rents.

Dave, did you have a comment there? Oh,

David Williams

Andy, just in terms of our portfolio in particular, both 197 5 Mill Street's got pretty short leases, it's always at market leases that rolling profile. 197 has a lot of the hard work's been done, they're not long leases, we are conscious of that sort of 28, 29, and are very happy to have expiries dropping into that period.

Again, the Westralia Square complex and WS2, a lot of the leasing's been done in the last two years, we feel as though our portfolio is pretty much at market at the moment, if a bit soon to be below.

Andy Macfarlane

Thanks, guys. Something on the UGL portfolio.

Looks like you've made some good inroads there kind of disposal-wise, got one one asset left, Broadmeadow, and a nice little mark-up. Spoke about this a little bit in the past, but just any sense on disposal for that unit trust or fund, and therefore, when a performance fee might manifest, if so?

David Williams

That was originally a seven-asset fund. It is a great story for investors in it.

Six of the assets have been sold, one still to settle. When that settles, the investors would have received over $1 back for the money they put in, and their units are still valued at $1.21 after all fees and costs.

The Newcastle Council last year delivered their Broadmeadow Place Strategy, which identified this site for mixed use, as Stephen's already talked through. We are going through a DA to get it rezoned in accordance with what Newcastle Council want for it, we're not really pushing the envelope on what they want.

To be fair, since we bought it, we've been working with the council about its alternate use. Once that DA is formally received, we would look to wind up the current fund, but certainly wouldn't be looking to move on the site.

Stephen Burns

Yep.

David Williams

If you saw me how long it'll take, we hope to have the DA for rezoning in this calendar year, and then the council process that may take a year. That's why we talk around what the fee would look like if it was done at 31 Dec 27.

It may be sooner, it may be longer.

Stephen Burns

I think also, Andy, just in terms of the scale of it, it's sitting in the fund that it's in now, at some point they'll need realization. As far as GDI staying involved, there's 10 years plus of profits in this type of deal, it's a matter of how you look to position for that, bring the requisite expertise and all that to pass.

It would go through a different form of funding at the right time.

David Williams

Yep. Yep.

Andy Macfarlane

Dave, just on Norseman, you talked a little bit about that. Sounds like things are progressing pretty well there.

Just wondering what you're kind of seeing in terms of room rate growth and I guess what that might mean on an annualized EBITDA basis?

David Williams

The ones that are contracted, Norseman and a good chunk of Morambah, you're basically getting the CPI increases. It's very formulaic in the relationship with the main user on the take-or-pay.

It's been volume increases at Norseman that's added to the earnings, very very good payback on the temporary ones on the mine site. Hedland and Newman, we would trade room rate for occupancy certainty to some extent.

We actually had a very good occupancy in FY 25, but the revenue was down because there was more certainty to it from what it was in FY 24 when we first bought it. The answer is it's not as simple as just saying you're getting CPI, right?

It's about occupancy, it's about certainty, and you trade those two.

Stephen Burns

Tends to be around occupancy of your existing, and where required, for example, at Pantoro, to meet their needs, it's about expansion and how you deliver additional rooms, right? We think we've got a good spread across the different types, but it's not just as formulaic as adding a room rate and increasing it.

It's a bit more nuanced than that. As Dave mentioned, obviously at the start of the JV, we started off with six years of night sold forward to Pantoro, and all they've done since the gold price has gone crazy and they've started pulling more gold out of the ground is that they've had to expand, we're flat out keeping up with their expansion.

In terms of other asset opportunities, we're very mindful of not adding too much to the GDI balance sheet, we look at other ways to recycle and to fund that, as we've explained before. You can see from our sort of investment philosophy, we're very focused on that target return of over 20% on our initial capital, because it really does deliver a good level of cash flow and profitability to GDI.

Andy Macfarlane

Final one, if I may, just interested in some color around if you're able to talk on your comfort of the 5 cent distribution kind of going onwards, and just I guess in relation to income and kind of what's coming through. Dave, you talked a little bit about an element from capital, but just wondering, yeah, just comfort levels there around what's coming through from income going forwards?

David Williams

What I did mention, and if you go to the cash flow in our accounts, you can see cash flow from operations is getting very close to covering the distribution, which it hasn't done for a while given we're in leasing-up stage of WS2 and building it and then leasing it up. If you look at the FFO numbers compared to the distribution numbers, we're very comfortable to talk around the 5 cents.

Andy Macfarlane

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Stephen Burns

Thanks, Andy.

Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone.

Your next question comes from Lionel McFadyen with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.

Lionel McFadyen

Hey, guys. Hey, Burnsy.

Thanks for the run-through. Just a quick one, it's on the incentive amortization and the sort of cash flow.

Just it looks like your leasing costs and incentives, and Andy touched on this, have jumped to 10.1 from 8.1, PCP, it's sort of 20% of your If my math is right, 26% of your gross rent and recoverable outgoings. I'm just more interested what do you expect the peak level incentive amortization as a proportion of gross rents will be going forward given you've got sort of 197 SG2 and 5 Mill Street?

Stephen Burns

Lionel, are you trying to bowl us out, mate?

Lionel McFadyen

No, no, it's just a sort of [laughter]

Stephen Burns

No, they're just breaking down the numbers here. What do you got?

The $9 million, we've got $9 million versus

Lionel McFadyen

You're at 26%, right, because you've gone from 10.1 to 8.1. I'm thinking, okay, you guys have got a bit of spend ahead of you, and I'm just trying to reconcile when the drag could start reversing, or when we might be able to see a lower incentive requirements.

Stephen Burns

Here it is. Yeah.

We're just looking at where you got your numbers from. Hang on.

Have you got that?

David Williams

A business like GDI that runs towards leasing risk in markets that we like will always have a high incentives number. We truly believe that when you buy an asset like the Westralia Square complex where you're staring at 100% vacancy when we bought it, and building a new building like WS2, we put incentives as a capital item, and our cash flows reflect that.

If you go to the cash flow statement, it shows that the incentives are a capital item. I think if you hold an asset through multiple leasing cycles, they start to sort of really start to be viewed more as an opex number rather than a capex number.

As our buildings get full, we would like to think that at that building level, we often bring in a partner or realize the asset or move it on. That is difficult in Perth at the moment, but generally would like to say that once the building is fully leased and we've got it to maturity, we will look at what we can do with that building.

At the current portfolio, it is pretty full, you're getting close to peak number.

Stephen Burns

Lionel, if we're at over 88% and improving on that, the incentive levels should drop. In this case, they should, because a lot of the vacancy sits in good space.

You've got two floors in WS2, for example, where we're holding out for better rents given the squeeze, and it's premium space. If you were just full of not good space, then you might have to pay more on it, but you can actually get there different ways, Lionel.

You don't have to necessarily push an incentive through there. It's only if you really need to spend and to get them, and we're getting above-market occupancy levels now, we can start to pick and choose.

I think the more important way of thinking about it is we want to capture the growth of this cycle that we see coming, we're happy to sit there with a bit of vacancy, we're not going to just go and spend on incentive to cap our rents, right? It gives us a bit of flexibility to bring some good tenants in and really gap the market.

David Williams

It's all about filling the space, Stephen talked about interest in our East Perth properties, one of which is on the balance sheet, 180 Hay. 5,000 meters

Lionel McFadyen

could

David Williams

come with an incentive which would come to that line and then be amortized, right? However

Lionel McFadyen

Okay. No, thanks, guys.

Yeah. One final one, Townsville.

Can I ask

Stephen Burns

Yeah, Townsville.

Lionel McFadyen

Townsville Because what I can't work out there, guys Well, when I say I can't work out, you own what, 43.7%. You've written it down by 4.4 to 40,

Stephen Burns

you

Lionel McFadyen

got it what's that, 8.75 cap rate. What I'm just trying to work out, what's a realistic assessment of a releasing risk and an outright sale?

Has that been considered?

Stephen Burns

We tried to sell it a year or two ago. Ran a full campaign.

Beautiful beautiful document. Didn't get anywhere.

It's got a shorter WALE on it. There's a bit of movement in the tenants.

We've signed a heads of agreement with one of them for an extension, which is good. That was over 4,000 square meters of space.

That's a very good deal. We believe we'll get a renewal on another large space user there, because they've spent so much on their fit-out, they're likely to stay.

If you look at the Townsville market, there's only four properties suitable for government occupation, and three of them 100% full. We feel that we're in a good position to be able to extract some value from that notwithstanding the shorter WALE and a bit of movement in the vacancy.

Yes, we'd be delighted to sell that for the right price, but like all our assets, we'll try not to sell them at the wrong price, Lionel.

David Williams

Perversely No worries,

Lionel McFadyen

guys. No, thank you.

David Williams

Perversely, there's been more activity in the North Queensland office market in terms of capital transactions than has been in Perth. There was a similar-sized asset traded in Cairns in June last year.

Lionel McFadyen

Right. Okay.

No, guys, thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one.

Your next question comes from Zack Ward, private investor. Please go ahead.

Oh,

Matt Ward

hi. Thanks for the presentation.

Looks like you're doing quite a good job there in a lot of ways, but your share price is 60-odd cents, 62 cents, and your NTA is $1.20. If you bought back shares, presumably there's a potential 100% upside almost.

Can you tell us what sort of strategies you're using? It seems to me like you need to get bigger.

The market cap of 300-odd million just seems too small. I'd have thought a scrip deal with somebody done based on NTAs might be a way to go with some as long as they're decent properties, decent people.

What are your thoughts on that?

Stephen Burns

Agree with you there. If you can get us an equivalent scrip where we get the benefit, we're all for it.

If you look at some of the other people that have gone through this exercise of swapping scrip out or realizing their portfolio, one, I would argue they did it at the wrong time and didn't optimize it, but two, they weren't suitable candidates for us. If looking in the rearview mirror, there wasn't many stocks where we felt we had to have their assets.

If someone wants us, then that's up to them to tell us all about their scrip. We're basically running the business and trying to drive the FFO up like we have and the other businesses and the cash flow and maintain the distribution.

Totally get the point, and theoretically a buyback at current prices would result in a lot of money if it was for the whole company. To be able to fund a buyback at that size, you've got to be able to sell your best assets at the right price.

Now, there was a sales campaign of five assets in Perth run last year and none of them sold, it's not transacting yet. You can't actually get the leg of the trade that you need to get the money to do the buyback, so that's in simple terms what you can't do.

Totally if there's better scrip out there and it increases our size and gets us liquidity, that's great. At the moment, we'll do what's in our control and try and optimize the return.

At some point, the transactional market will return. As we've stated, part of our strategy is obviously to sell a whole lot of non-core, and then at some point we would JV on our good assets, but only at the right price, because otherwise it's like doing a steeply discounted rights issue, and we're not in that business.

Matt Ward

Oh, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I'll now hand back to Mr. Burns for closing remarks.

Stephen Burns

Thank you very much, all, for joining us on the call, and look forward to catching up with those who want to see us on the marketing afterwards. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.