RAM Essential Services Property Fund

RAM Essential Services Property Fund

AASX:REP
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AUD
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314.53MMarket Cap
Mar 04Next Earn

Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 26, 2026

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Scott Kelly, Managing Director and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Scott Kelly

Thank you very much, Ryan, and good morning, everybody. As you've just heard, my name is Scott Kelly.

I'm the Group CEO of Real Asset Management. I'm joined this morning by George Websdale, our Head of Real Estate, Doug Rapson, Head of Listed Real Estate, and Chang Liu, Fund Manager on REP.

The plan is that we will take the next 20 minutes to run through the presentation we posted this morning, and then have some time to round out with some Q&A. On page 2, you can see the agenda.

I'll run through the highlights, hand over to Doug, who'll walk you through the key components of the transaction. Chang will run you through the portfolio as at 30 June, and George will take you through the financial numbers and the future strategy.

Turning to page 4. The big news is on the top right in that we have moved to an unconditional sale of the five retail assets netting over $200 million for the fund, and representing a bit more than a third of its assets.

The transaction is due to settle Q2 FY 2027. Accordingly, a major focus for this presentation will be what we're going to do next.

That said, we still have the standard set of numbers giving you an update on the portfolio. In terms of leasing, we've done 21 deals over the period, achieving average spreads of 4%.

The weighted average rent review sits at 3.5%, with 56% of the leases being on a net basis, thereby providing protection against cost inflation. 84% of those leases have fixed increases or CPI-linked reviews, and the WALE will be extended post-transaction to 8.1 years, reflecting the increase in the healthcare weighting.

Also important to note, there are no arrears on our private hospital exposure. Income was trimmed in the last quarter, as George will cover, but one could argue that is unsurprising given rates have moved up three times in the last 6 months.

However, that level of income still equates to an attractive yield. Post-transaction, gearing will sit at 16.8%.

As that debt is reduced, the hedging will be just adjusted in lockstep. As at 30 June, 61% of the debt was hedged.

Our stated strategy was to move to a specialized REIT focusing on healthcare. This transaction gets us there and gives us the capacity to make accretive acquisitions in our chosen sector.

However, we are very aware that we're sitting on a significant discount. That's not unusual in this environment.

Ex-Goodman, 95% of REITs listed on the ASX are sitting at a discount. It does mean that we are actively considering all options for the fund moving forward, which George will allude to.

With that, I'll hand over to Doug.

Doug Rapson

Thank you, Scott. Turning to page 5.

Following the fund's announcement in late July and subsequent update in mid-August, we are pleased to confirm the contracts for the divestment of the five retail assets have unconditionally exchanged. The assets divested are: Coomera Square, Springfield Fair, Coles Rutherford, Tanilba Bay Plaza, and Mowbray Marketplace.

They've been acquired by a newly established fund with a major institutional investor. The net realized value from the retail assets was $218.6 million, with proceeds comprising cash and a 10% equity interest in the new fund.

This interest provides continued exposure to the income and benefits of the retail assets for REP unitholders. Importantly, the deal was completed direct, with no acquisition or divestment fees paid by REP.

This also includes no broker fees. In terms of the fund structure, it is a discrete five-asset fund with a 5-year investment term and a minimum 2-year hold.

The discrete nature means there is no forecast requirement for REP to allocate additional capital to fund further acquisitions. The targeted distribution of the fund is 5.5% to 6% per annum.

This represents a major milestone in the strategic transition of REP to a healthcare-focused portfolio. Chang will go through the changes to the fund composition pre- and post-transaction in detail as part of the portfolio performance section.

However, I wanted to quickly call out several key metrics. WALE will increase by 1.3 years, providing extended, secure cash flow.

A 21% increase in healthcare income with a 17% increase in tertiary healthcare income from private hospitals. Future net property growth will be driven by a higher forecast income through an increase in leases with CPI and fixed annual escalators coupled with an increase in net leases.

Turning to page 6 and the rationale for our move to a healthcare focus. The thesis for investment in healthcare, which was outlined when the strategy transition to a specialized healthcare fund was announced, remains strong.

Management is confident of the strategic benefits of the transition to healthcare. Demographically, Australia has a growing population.

Importantly for healthcare, it also has a growing and aging population, with the over-65 cohort growing at two at 2% over the next 30 years to reach approximately 8 million people by 2051. As this large cohort continues to age, demand for healthcare services will increase across both the public and private sectors.

Government expenditure continues to increase at both the state and federal level, growing at 3.4% over the last 10 years. There's also been a significant investment into emerging services, including mental health.

Some 45% of Australians hold private health insurance. The robust nature of private health cover will continue to underwrite demand for these services and support usage in the private setting.

Finally, the unique occupier environment and lease structure presents significant benefits, including: there is significant investment from the operator and landlord in the construction and fit-out of healthcare assets, coupled with time and investment from operators in securing key staff and contracts. To mitigate risk and receive appropriate payback from that time and investment, operators are typically seeking to sign long-term leases.

This provides an ongoing, stable income stream for the fund. A high proportion of CPI-linked rent reviews drive strong income growth in a higher-for-longer inflationary environment.

Lease structures are predominantly triple net, with outgoings borne by the tenant. This provides a natural hedge against increases in expenditure due to inflation.

In addition, the longer leases and triple net lease structure typically result in less capital expenditure for incentives and building works, as well as lower repairs and maintenance costs across the assets. In an environment of elevated debt costs, the ability to limit capital assigned to investment that is not income- or value-accretive is critical.

I will now pass over to Chang, who will step through the portfolio performance.

Chang Liu

Thanks, Doug. Turning to page 8, portfolio summary.

I'll begin with the summary and key metrics for the portfolio as at 30 June 2026, before explaining how the recent announced transactions will materially reshape the fund. To reaffirm, these transactions, including the five retail assets and two smaller, non-core, low-yielding medical assets, being Mildura and Rosebery.

Let's start with the portfolio metrics at 30 June. The fund contains 26 properties, including 19 medical and seven retail, with a combined total property value of $662.6 million.

The weighted average cap rate sits at 6.2%. Occupancy remains stable at 70 97%.

The portfolio contains over 110,000 square meters of lettable area and 234 tenants. The two charts at the top are showing tenant mix and income exposure, which illustrate the quality of the income across our portfolio.

On the tenant mix side, 98% of the portfolio is essential service-based tenants, highlighting the strength of the tenant covenant. Of that 98%, 43% are essential retail with nearly 55% healthcare.

Importantly, 26% of that are from tertiary healthcare, which is predominantly income from private hospitals. The non-essential exposure is under 2% only.

Let me also call out the low proportion of the discretionary tenants in our portfolio, which has obvious attractions in this environment. On the income exposure side, 84% of our income is subject to annual escalations.

Roughly 58% is fixed, 26% is CPI-linked, and 15% formula-based. In a moderating inflation environment, that fixed weighting gives us dependable growth, and the CPI component gives us upside if inflation runs hotter than expected.

Overall, the blended weighted average rent review came in at 3.5%. Now let's look at these figures post-transactions.

The portfolio will be left with 19 assets, with two retail assets being Punchbowl Plaza and Ballina Central, the remaining 17 being medical assets. The fund metrics change significantly in four key ways following the transactions.

Firstly, the healthcare income increases by 21 percentage points to 74% post-transactions, especially the income from tertiary healthcare, which will be at 43% of the total portfolio, representing an increase of 17 percentage points. Secondly, WALE goes from 6.8 years to 8.1 years, mainly because of the longer lease tenure from our healthcare tenants.

In addition to that, an extra 7% of lease expiries will move out beyond FY 2031. The expiry profile at the bottom of this page will get flatter in the near years as more expiries were moving into the final bar.

Thirdly, the income quality improves. The fixed review and CPI-linked income will increase by 8 percentage points from the 84% as you have seen here.

The net lease structures will also increase by 3% close to 60%. That means more contracted growth and more of outgoings risk will sit with the tenants.

Lastly, gearing will fall substantially to 16.8% on settlement, which George will cover in more details in the later slides. Now let's move on to the page 9, valuations.

We have had 96% of portfolio externally valued within the last 3 months, which compares favorably to our peers and gives the confidence around our valuation and, therefore, our NTA. The weighted average cap rate moves out 11 basis points since December 2025 from 6.09% to 6.2%, as flagged in the highlights.

The waterfall on the left is relatively clear. We opened at $675.5 million book value.

The capex and other fair value adjustments were quite neutral. Overall, valuation movements were $12.5 million, reflecting that 11-bips cap rate expansion.

Then the book value closed at $662.6 million at 30 June 2026. This represents a small decline of under 2% across the half year.

With that, let me hand over to George to run through our financial performance.

George Websdale

Thank you, Chang, and I'll just move on now to slide 11. FY 2026 has been a year of consolidation and transition for the fund, and this is reflected in the FFO of $14.7 million, which is $9.8 million lower than FY 2025.

The key driver for the change in FFO between the periods relates to income lost due to asset sales, one-off income recognized in FY 2025, together with other non-recurring items incurred in FY 2026. Pleasingly, like-for-like property income grew by 4.4% to $38 million, and underlying FFO grew by slightly lower 4.1% to 14.6 $17.6 million, reflecting the impact of higher financing costs.

Distributions paid for the year totaled 4.55 cents compared to 5 cents in FY 2025. Just moving on to slide 12 and the balance sheet.

Gearing increased in the period to 43.5%, reflecting softer valuations and a reduction in the value of assets held for sale or sold during the period. However, post the settlement of the retail transaction, which Scott noted is expected in the second quarter of FY 2027, gearing reduces significantly to 16.8%, and borrowings reduce from $267 million to $75 million.

The portfolio's hedging was retained at around 60%, and we're working with our treasury team on the short-term and medium-term financing strategies following the transaction, with preliminary lender support received to refinance the facility post-transaction settlement. The reduction in debt puts the fund's balance sheet in a strong and stable position for FY 2027.

Now just moving on to slide 14 and the future state. FY 2027 guidance: DPU per security is forecast to be between 3.6 and 3.8 cents per unit, assuming an FFO payout ratio between 90% and 100%.

Based on current securities trading, this provides investors with a yield between 8.5% to 9%, with 90% of the distribution being tax-deferred. Moving on now to slide 15.

The key question is: where to now, and what is the fund positioned to do to maximize value for investors? The execution of the retail transaction positions the fund as a healthcare-focused REIT with low gearing, a stable income base, improved portfolio, longer WALE, and embedded value-add opportunities.

Management will continue to actively manage the existing portfolio to extract value for unitholders. However, this should, as management had expected, be the time that the fund takes advantage of the high-quality healthcare acquisition opportunities presenting themselves in the market.

However, we're clearly unable to do that, as deploying capital to accretive acquisitions is not realistic when we continue to trade at a deep discount to NTA. Whilst the retail sales reset the fund's balance sheet and position the portfolio to provide repeatable, stable income moving forward, negative sentiment towards small-cap REITs and the fund make it challenging to expect the NTA trading gap to close materially in the near term.

Accordingly, management will continue to actively consider and pursue alternate capital strategies. These may include recommencing the on-market buyback.

While the financial metrics of this are compelling, limited liquidity in the stock makes executing a meaningful buyback challenging. Another option may be an off-market buyback and take-private.

However, this requires a new capital partner or partners who support the healthcare strategy. We are also considering a progressive sell-down of the fund's assets, which would provide a return of capital.

However, the on-market depth of capital for healthcare remains thin, and the timeframe to execute an orderly sell-down is long, and means liquidity in the stock is likely to be even lower. As we explore each option, we're going to focus on maximizing investor value, speed of execution, and providing investors with investment optionality.

With that, I'm going to hand back to Scott to wrap up.

Scott Kelly

Thanks, George. Turning to page 17, I'll quickly sum up.

The underlying portfolio remains resilient. Occupancy is high, rental income streams are growing, either through the structure of the leases or upon renewal.

Inflation protection remains strong both through the net basis of most of the leases and the fact that 84% enjoy either CPI linkage or a fixed annual uptick in rent. Almost all the assets have been revalued very recently, providing robust and accurate valuations.

We said that we've moved to a specialized REIT with around 80% weighting to healthcare, and this transaction we've announced all but gets us to that weighting. Having got there, our original plan was to seize the significant market opportunity to acquire well-priced medical assets.

We will have the dry powder to do so given the fact that we'll land at 16.8% gearing. However, we must recognize that rates have been on the rise, and REP, like almost all REITs on the ASX, is sitting on a significant discount.

That means we must consider all possible options with the obvious target of maximizing value for unitholders, which we're actively doing. With that, happy to hand over to questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press *2. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

Your first question comes from Cody Shield from UBS. Please go ahead.

Cody Shield

Morning, guys. Thanks for your time this morning.

Look, just trying to get a read on, yeah, how we should be thinking about the next 12 to 18 months. Obviously, you're saying that you're considering a few different pathways for the fund.

It might take a little while to get there. You're talking about acquisitions probably not being the best use of capital, buyback being tricky.

How should unitholders kind of think about the next 12 months just in terms of how are you going to deploy some of those proceeds while you're working through these different options?

George Websdale

Obviously, once we execute the settlement of the transaction, over the course of the next few weeks, we'll be considering all of those options. Obviously, a buyback is very logical, and that feels like it's something we have done previously, and we're looking at that.

In terms of the status of the portfolio, which obviously quite stable now, we think we can provide you with those repeatable, stable returns moving forward. Ultimately, our positioning at the moment is to do all we can to change the trajectory of the fund and close that gap to NTA.

Cody Shield

What quantum in terms of the buyback, if that's the path you go down, would you look to be deploying?

Scott Kelly

I guess we've got a few months up our sleeve because the deal won't settle until the end of the year, end of the calendar year. We will see what position we're in at that point.

Obviously, we are, I think officially, the smallest REIT on the market. That limits the liquidity for a conventional buyback, we'll be thinking about a larger buyback.

We've got a few months yet to see how things progress. We may be in a situation where the rate cycle is turned, but we're actively considering most things, but ultimately, Cody, it will depend on the maths of the situation at the time.

Cody Shield

Got it. Then just the last one for me, just your distribution guidance, 3.6 to 3.8 cents, just safe to assume that that's all organic growth for FY 2027 baked into that, no other initiatives?

George Websdale

Correct.

Cody Shield

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

George Websdale

No problem.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jason Taleb from JDT Advisory.

Please go ahead.

Jason Taleb

What's the rationale for maintaining the 10% stake in the retail fund? Is there a mechanism for disposing of that in the future if you choose to do so?

George Websdale

Look, the rationale is, obviously, we think there is an opportunity to continue to collect the income on that, and that's going to provide an accretive yield to us. We're going to be a partner in that fund, and, obviously, as we've mentioned, the fund's a 5-year investment vehicle with a 2-year hold.

We think there will be an opportunity to sort of unlock that in the medium term. We see that as an attractive investment for the fund.

Scott Kelly

Just going back a step, the strategy announced 2 years ago is an 80% weighting. Why was it 80?

Because we still like the assets, and we'd like to maintain some exposure, it gives us flexibility. This holding gives us exposure, obviously, a diversified exposure to five different assets that we know well.

Jason Taleb

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Your next question comes from Craig Haskin from Eastern Hill Advisors. Please go ahead.

Craig Haskin

Hi, guys. Thanks for the presentation.

Just a quick one on the buyback. Given the discount to NTA, why you sort of seem to be hedging your bets on an on-market buyback and liquidity.

There's 500, was it 500 million shares on issue, you guys own 30% of them. Liquidity is a function of the price you pay, and every cent that you spend from here up to 70 cents is accretive to unitholders.

I'm not quite sure why you're hedging on a on-market buyback. Further to that, you've been working on this capital transaction, and well done on getting it over the line, for quite some time.

What actually has to happen between now and whenever you make some announcement as to what you might do? I assume you've already had quite a bit of time to think about this, feels a little bit odd that you've announced the transaction, you've cut your distribution back to sort of cash, and now you're sort of hedging your bets on the what's next.

Scott Kelly

I'll have a crack at that first, Craig. We're not hedging our bets.

We're just simply saying these are the options. We don't get our money until the end of the year, the things might move between now and then.

What we're really saying is if we do the regular buyback on-market, we have limited liquidity. What we're saying is we look to do more than that.

We will look to do more than that because that won't have much of an effect. We've done that before, and given our liquidity, that's challenging to move the dial.

What we're actually saying is we're open to do more of it, and we're looking for mechanisms to do that. It's not a hedging thing.

We're just simply signaling that we're open to all mechanisms to get a significant buyback, not the on-market, which frankly won't move the dial at all. I don't think it's hedging.

We're just flagging we're open to full options.

Craig Haskin

Thanks. Is it at the AGM that we'd expect to get some more clarity, or the stock's just sort of going to bounce around here with trading on the yield and sort of waiting for the what's next?

Scott Kelly

As we track closer to settlement, obviously, that strategy will be solidified depending on the circumstances at the time. If we're sitting at a 40%

Craig Haskin

discount— What circumstances? We've had interest rates back up.

We've had cap rates back up. We're in a resilient and defensive income stream.

What's the big event here that's at the time? I'm happy to be corrected, but what's the big operational or financial or whatever delta of this?

If you've done your deal and the money's coming, it is hedging, cuz you're hedging your bets. What's the delta of what's going to change between now and December?

Absolutely, we could get a rate rise or two. What other great externality is going to change what should be a pretty simple decision equation?

Scott Kelly

What we're saying is we expect to do that, but we need to be in a position to give people clarity on that. We're flagging that we're open to it, but, for example, rates may not go up in the next few months, and we might be looking at 2027 where rate cycles turn.

The discount may have narrowed. It probably won't, but we need to get to that position where we have certainty around those things.

We are absolutely flagging that we're open to doing a more significant buyback than an on-market buyback. We just need to get to that point.

Craig Haskin

Your stock price would do well to actually have a little bit more clarity for shareholders than that. Maybe you can set yourself a target to make some absolute definitive announcement in the AGM, which I'm assuming is sort of sometime October-November, you're within cooee of the transaction closing, right?

Scott Kelly

Happy to consider that, Craig. The other thing is if we do a significant buyback, it's a likelihood, as George mentioned, that we would require equity partners to execute that.

If you think about, that would probably mean about $100 million of equity. Obviously, that's a significant piece of the jigsaw.

Craig Haskin

Thanks.

Scott Kelly

Cheers.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from John Powell from Prism Debt Capital Advisory.

Please go ahead. John, please unmute your line and proceed with your question.

As there is no response, we will move on. If you wish to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

There are no further phone questions at this time. With that, we conclude our conference for today.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Scott Kelly

Thanks, all.