Echo Investment S.A.

Echo Investment S.A.

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Q3 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptNovember 27, 2025

Weronika Ukleja

Good morning, everyone, and welcome at the Q3 financial results presentation of Echo Investment Group. My name is Weronika Ukleja, and I'm the company's spokesperson.

This couple of months were marked by some exciting milestones, including our strong divestment activity, which we will walk you through in just couple of minutes. This presentation will be led by our CEO and CFO, please join me in welcoming Nicklas Lindberg and Maciej Drozd.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Nicklas Lindberg

Morning.

Maciej Drozd

Good morning.

Weronika Ukleja

Directly after the presentation, we'll move to our Q&A session. As always, you are invited to ask questions online.

Without further ado, I believe, Maciej, it's your turn. Please, take it away.

Maciej Drozd

Thank you. Good morning, and let's start from the highlights.

As it was already mentioned, the highlights start with the disposals. Libero, the largest transaction of single retail assets in Poland this year, was closed in October.

That's a great asset, very well leased, with certificates, et cetera. We are very proud to be so advanced with the market with this largest single transaction this year.

Brain Park in Kraków, it's an office building. The deal was closed in November.

The whole development comprises three parts. That's the part C, and I will talk later about parts A and B to be sold quite soon.

Resi4Rent sale, the largest transaction in the PRS segment signed in Q3, not closed yet, pending regulatory approval. We are, again, very much ahead of the market.

It's not only the largest transaction, but it's also a transaction comprising a great assets that we built over number of years. Towarowa 22 office house is the first office building of Towarowa 22 development, which we not only completed this year, but also sold our 30% share to our JV partner, and it's only the beginning because the project is very large and we'll talk about it a little bit later during this presentation.

Archicom sold its only office development, City 2. That happened already in Q2.

Very well located project, very high quality, great tenants, and, again, we are proud of this successful transaction. If we sum up all of that and also what we intend to do, we have a very impressive and long list of assets that were already sold, the deals were signed, or they are in advanced negotiations or exclusivity.

All of that is expected to generate free cash of above 800 million PLN, and large part of that already happened. At the same time, we'll have an effect of reduction of our debt of more than half a billion after end of Q3.

It's still a lot is going to happen in terms of that reduction. Part of that happened, but part of that linked to deals like Libero or Brain you will only see in our reports in the coming quarters.

If we look at our actions in 2025, of course, we continue to dispose yielding assets, but we are also starting new projects in Towarowa super quarter, but we also are looking for new plots in the CBD of Warsaw. Living sector is the most important sector that is providing the biggest profits to us, and we are investing in this one heavily.

We are, at the same time, disposing PRS projects, but we are also starting new projects, and we are starting also new projects in the student segment, when we opened 1,200 beds in Q3. In finance, as I already mentioned, we are creating liquidity by the disposals, we are reducing debt, the project-level debt at the moment, and we are also paying dividend, which is, I think, extremely important to our shareholders, that we announced 80 groszy per share dividend to be paid in December this year.

All these actions will have a very important effect of changing our balance sheet structure to a more asset-light and with less debt, project debt, but also less corporate debt. What is our focus going forward?

What is our strategy? Obviously, we are divesting yielding assets.

We are looking at the reduction of debt, our new target of net debt ratio is to be between 20 and 30%. We continue growth in the living sector, it's residential for sale, Resi4Rent, and student space.

We are also focusing right now very strongly on creating further operating efficiency to reduce our overheads as we grow. All of that translates into operational targets.

We intend to strengthen competence center between Echo and Archicom with the effect of reducing overheads in 2026 and later. We focus very much on JVs and Archicom, where the capital intensity is less, we need to invest less equity in this segment.

All of that, again, is going to create more asset-light structure of the group in the future. I already mentioned before our Towarowa 22 project, where office house was the first development that we completed and sold.

Currently, we started another office building, office tower, of over 50,000 square meters and also residential tower of 14,000 square meters. That will be part of our JV, and the construction works already started in Q3.

This tower will have 40 floors and will be exceptional in terms of quality of architecture, terraces, outdoor garden, et cetera, and, of course, it will be part of this fantastic development. We already see very high tenant interest because in city center of Warsaw, we see low supply and strong interest of tenants that want to move to new, high-quality buildings.

To sum up Q3 highlights, we sold 619 apartments, and if you look at the whole year, we increased our residential sales by more than 20% year on year. We handed over 700 apartments, which was a good quarter, but Q4 will be much stronger.

As I already mentioned, we sold our stake in T22 Office to our JV partner. We raised financing for our new project in Wrocław.

We opened successfully free student space projects in Kraków with over 1,200 beds, and we sign this landmark deal of 18 projects sold to TAG in PRS segment. After the end of Q3, Management Board approved dividend payment that will happen in December.

We sold Brain Park C. We sold Libero, the largest single asset retail deal in Poland this year.

We also completed Zenith in Łódź. It's interesting.

Nicklas will talk much more about residential segment later. What is interesting is it's our first full prefab project put into operation in a very, very short time of around 12 months of construction.

What are the financial data for the quarter? In Q3, our net profit exceeded 56 million PLN.

It was better than the consensus, within the range of consensus, no surprise here. The main driver was strong handovers, much stronger than a year ago.

If you compare Q3 this year and a year ago, you can see the difference in revenue. It's more than doubled.

Looking forward, this is what we expect. With a growing residential business, with strong handovers, our results will improve with this driver significantly.

Of course, this quarter was also under the pressure of the valuations. I will explain it a little bit more detail at the end of the presentation, but the handover effect, the profitability of our residential business, was much stronger than effect of a fair value decrease.

On this slide, you can see what already happened this year with 714 handovers in Q3, and also what we do expect in Q4 to achieve 2.4 thousand units handed over this year thanks to strong Q4 performance. Let's look at how we look at our balance sheet and at the value of our assets, which we do each quarter.

If we look at our residential business as listed business, which is Archicom, and correct in our books value to reflect the market value of Archicom shares, then what we call it a combined market value of our assets achieve 6.7 zł per share. It's important for us to look at this metric because we believe that the Archicom share price reflects much better value of this asset than the historical cost, which is on our balance sheet.

Now, Nicklas.

Nicklas Lindberg

Yes, thank you, Maciej. If we continue talking about the living sector, which is the sector where we are going to grow mostly going forward, we can see here that the sales and the handovers in the quarter were strong.

We have a very, very strong Q4 ahead of us, where we're going to do a lot of handovers and a lot of sales, because this is the strongest quarter of the year. Here we are really focusing now on all our aspects to be able to hand over and sell as much as we can.

We have strong quarters already now in the fourth quarter, and going forward we will see even more strong quarter. We have a land bank that is adjusted to the the new needs of the market.

We're doing much more in the popular segment of the market, because what we see today in the popular segment, that's where we are selling a lot. That's what we talked before, that we are changing our strategy to go more and more into the popular segment in the residential.

What also what you see, the the sales is stable on the markets. We see, for the first time in many quarters now, that the supply is going down.

We see the bigger developers are getting bigger and bigger, and we see our market share, we are taking market share every quarter on a market that is not increasing, but we are taking a bigger and bigger market share. We are seeing also prices are stable, and we're seeing that our cost level from construction is slightly going down.

We are now seeing forward for '25, '26 that we will be able to keep a stable margin on all our projects. This slide we have showed to you back in the days, and we continue seeing now that we are following our path.

This year we will end up in the range between 2,800 to 3,000 sold apartments. We will hand over 2,400 apartments, and next year will be the year where we will continue further increasing our growth in sales and handovers.

This is all in the plan that we have talked to you for many, many quarters. We continue executing a plan that has been laid out, and we still believe this is the right plan, and we believe a lot of growing in the sector of the living.

If you look at the sales, they are up a lot in the first three quarters. The fourth quarter will be very, very strong for us, and that's why we're seeing here that most of the growth will happen now in the fourth quarter, both from a handover and from a sales perspective.

We are starting up a lot of projects, we are completing a lot of projects, and as we see now, our sales and handover teams are working seven days a week now to be able to fulfill our targets for the full year. Handovers is a thing that is now a effect of us continue growing our sales.

You will see, compared to the handovers of 2024 until 2025, we will do a massive jump in the handovers. This is something where we have talked for many, many quarters.

This is the level where we would like to continue growing our sales, continue growing our handovers. We see a lot of synergies in Archicom.

We see, like Maciej is saying, how we can make it even more effective. This is where a lot of our growth is going to happen going forward.

I will come back to Echo and how we're going to grow in Echo and what we're going to focus on in Echo, but it's a clear path. This quarter now is a clear proof that the strategy we've been talking for many, many quarters is now being implemented.

We're seeing the positive results of it. We see how it makes Echo Group an even better group than it was historically.

The offer on all the different markets is strong. You see that we continue opening up on all the different markets new projects.

The market where we talked about before that we had a weaker land bank, we have now starting to open up much more here. Kraków used historically to be a project a city where we had less ongoing.

Now we have really started a lot of projects, we're getting a bigger market share there. We're continuously making sure that on all the markets where we'll be present, we are having a market-leading position, which is the strategy we talked about before.

We're going to be number one to number three on all the markets where we will be present. Katowice is a project where we went in and did one broad project on the market.

We are selling very, very well, but the market, we have figured out, is too small and too shallow for Echo Group to be there, we will focus on looking at new markets to enter. Here, like we said before, Tricity has always been a focus on the area of where we want to grow, and this is something that we continue looking at now and we will continue looking going forward.

What you see here, which is very important, you will see that we have a strong market share on all the different markets where we're being present. Warsaw, we have a very, very strong market share.

This is actively that something we have said for many, many quarters. This is where we want to grow.

Warsaw is the capital, the most profitable market to be in, in Warsaw, in Poland, and this is where we want to continue growing. Wrocław has been our home market, continue being so, and that's why we want to continue growing, being better.

Looking on the map here, adding on Tricity, it will be a complete map for where we want to be present all over Poland. In the living, in the Resi4Rent segment, what Maciej said before, we are now signed the PSBA.

We're going to divest a half of our portfolio. We are continue growing our portfolio.

This is not like we are leaving the PRS market. We believe a lot in the PRS market.

We saw an opportunity that we can divest part of our portfolio. We took that opportunity, we are recycling that cash, and this goes in the same way as with the rest of the things we're doing.

We are putting out We're taking out cash, we invest in the business, we reduce debt, and we pay dividend to our shareholders. All the things that we're doing is following these three steps of how we're going to do our business.

We have a strong leasing across the whole portfolio. We are between 98 and 99%.

We are completing another project this year, both in the Resi4Rent segment, and we are selling off Kępa and Browary, where we have very, very strong sales in both projects, and they will be fully sold out in Q1 next year, which is a strong proof that our market is working both for renting, but also to divest them as individual units when we see that giving a better return for our shareholders. If you look at our strategy, like we said before, we're going to continue selling off project when we think it makes sense for us and the returns are right there, but saying that, we're going to continue investing into new buildings and continue constructing much more.

We are not going to continue growing up up to 10,000 again. We're looking for individual opportunities, and in that way, we're going to divest, we're going to continue investing.

This is a long-term strategy for PRS segment. We are not going to leave the segment.

We believe it is long-term. We're going to continue investing heavily in this segment.

If you look at the our 10.5 thousand, we're selling off half of it. We're continuous having a big portfolio ongoing.

We continue having a lot of construction going. We are buying projects now as we speak.

A big focus will be on Warsaw, where we want to grow our market share now after the divestments of the first portfolio. You will see now, going forward, a lot of investment for us in the PRS segment in Warsaw.

Student housing is a market we entered just a year ago. We have been able to complete 1,200 units to deliver to the market in Kraków.

As we have announced, we're starting up our first project in Warsaw. We're going to start up more projects in Warsaw.

The focus on our student space is Warsaw and Kraków, where we see a great potential to do much, much more projects. We see that our what we're delivering is really sought after by the market, we see that we are really found a spot here.

We continue developing. We continue focusing here, going to be the market leader in this segment of student space.

We see here that there is a lot of opportunities to continue growing. Here you see pictures of the project we have delivered.

They are beautiful project. Already at the day of the occupancy permit, the first tenants moved in.

We have another locations confirmed. Big focus here on Warsaw, and continue growing our platform.

We will announce much more shortly here how we're going to continue growing, how we will do more projects, how we see student space going forward to be developed to be the top three of the student space market leaders in Poland. Here you see the Kraków project, where you see we deliver high standards for the students.

We're always adapting to the latest trends on the market. We're doing it with prefab.

That's the way how we can get very, very quick to the market. We can guarantee the quality, we can guarantee also timely delivery, which is crucial for us here.

Because all of you remember, it was a little bit more than a year ago when we announced the first JV with Signal, where we allocated the first money, and one year later, we already have 1,200 units under operations. This shows how quickly we can move, how we can make sure that we do the best possible for the shareholders' return of the investors into Echo.

Here we said before, continue growing the platform. We're looking for more plots.

We're going to announce every quarter much more about student space, here you will see a lot of our pipeline going forward and what we will focus on. Commercial office and retail, which is a very, very interesting part of our business.

I am a strong believer in offices. What you see here also in retail, we sold off Libero, a great shopping center that we had since 2019.

We have been driving the growth. We have been focusing on continually delivering the best tenants in the shopping center.

We just signed this year with TK Maxx, continue proving the quality. We sold Brain Park C.

We're in advanced negotiation on B and A, so that we will shortly come back to you to deliver more results about this one. We completed the first office building on Towarowa.

We started up the second one. Very, very strong tenant interest, and also banks are also approaching us to borrow money, and we see construction costs being on attractive levels.

Strong leasing across whole Poland. We see rental growth, we see less building being built, we're seeing what the quality we deliver and the project we deliver is highly sought after in all the different markets.

Warsaw, where we say Warsaw, we're going to do CBD Warsaw around Rondo Daszyńskiego. Here is the lowest vacancy rate ever.

What we are delivering here will be really spot on to the market. We are focusing now how we can get an even higher presence on the CBD market of Warsaw.

This is really where we're going to focus on continuous growing. We're going to report much more to you going forward of this, but I'm a strong believer in offices, I'm a strong believer in CBD Warsaw.

This is where Echo will put a lot of capital to continue growing. Towarowa 22 is a great example of this.

We have just now started, and when you go by the project, you will see a massive progress every day. Here we also now focusing on starting up the next phase of the offices here.

The whole project will be consisting of offices, residential, and retail in the ground floors of the building. Here we will see the first building, office building, is started, the second one will be started early next year, we will continue now pushing our permitting to be able to deliver much more office project where the market is not delivering enough projects for the sought after by the tenants.

This, combined with a rental growth and we see a cost that is stable or slightly gone down, makes sure for us this is the right moment to continue developing offices. If you look in the regional cities, there are a few buildings ongoing.

We have two buildings in great locations. We are keeping costs at the right level.

We are seeing a big tenant interest, and we're going to continuous reporting now shortly that how we will lease them up, and when we're sitting next time in March to report to you how it's going, you will see a very good leasing update on both these projects. Going forward, we are going to focus on Warsaw CBD with offices, it's going to be around Rondo Daszyńskiego, where we are going to put much more of our capital to be allocated.

CitySpace, we have now been able to grow to a size that we feel it's great. We are now renegotiating all our leases across the whole portfolio.

We see an increased profitability. We see the business has being stabilized, and now as we are focusing more and more against Warsaw, we're also now analyzing what is the right way of handling our CitySpace, and this is something we're going to report more going forward.

This is a great example: we bought it as an add-on to our business, we have stabilized it, we have made it profitable, and now is the right time to look at the next step for CitySpace. Galeria Młociny is constantly growing in how we are getting up the turnovers there.

We are replacing the tenants, we're getting in new tenants, we are making sure that this center is really, really going well. What you see now also, there is a big part of this building of 8-9,000 being offices that we have already now re-let for another 5 years, showing the interest of this project.

Going forward, like Maciej said, this is a project that is also stabilized for us, and now in 2026 is for us the time to analyze the next steps of this center. From an ESG perspective, I think it's super important to put ESG into practicality.

What we have done here together, we built a school for the city with 450 students in a school that is the state of the art and really showing how you can work together with the cities. This is the part of transformation of modern Mokotów, how we turned it from an office area to residential area, and how we did it in a way that is both profitable for developers, but also profitable for the inhabitants of that part of Warsaw.

I think this is something that we are going to continue working closely with the cities, and this is a good proof that the model is working.

Maciej Drozd

Now we are going to look again at the financials in a little bit more detail than than before. As I already mentioned, that net profit for the quarter was in excess of 56 million PLN.

It was driven mainly by by the margin that we achieved from residential sales. You can you can see at the slide that our margin was 37%, which is strong, as Nicklas mentioned before.

Of course, we are to certain extent under the pressure of of valuations. As you can see, the negative effect of fair value valuation of Libero to certain extent offset by positive effect of of the Brain Park driven mainly by by by the savings.

Overall, the picture is positive, or very positive, because it shows that the growing living business, living living sector sector that we are developing in, which is mainly comprising Archicom, but in this case it was Modern Mokotów project still completed in in Echo, provides strong margins and is is a very good driver of our results, and that's what we expect going forward. You can also see that the selling costs were high.

This is the effect, this is the effort that we are making, that Archicom is making, to build the brand and to be known. Archicom was, as Nicklas mentioned, a Wrocław company.

It was not recognized in the whole Poland. Now is building very strong presence, including Warsaw, which is very, very important, a very profitable market, but, of course, requires also a lot of effort, a lot of marketing effort, which means cost.

Overall, it's a strong quarter and we are we are happy with the result driven by living segment. On the balance sheet, you can see the transformation that we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation.

Residential assets growing, quarter by quarter, and that that will continue. It's it's inventory, it's our residential assets, it's it's land, it's construction in progress.

What is very important, as you will see on the next slide, it's to big extent this growth is financed by clients' prepayments. This growth on the asset side goes together with the change, with the transformation of our balance sheet on the side of our liabilities, where we replace the bank debt, we replace the financing coming from financial institutions, the bonds, with client prepayments in a in a big way.

On this slide, you can also see projects that were already disposed of in Q in Q4, you see Libero, you see Brain C, and, of course, you see Brain A and B in investment properties and assets held for sale that are in the process of being sold, which we intend to complete next year. I already mentioned the fact that our prepayments from customers are more and more important source of financing.

Of course, you also see you still see on this balance sheet at the end of Q3 project debt that was already partly reduced in Q4 with the sale of Libero and Brain, and you also see the bond debt that we intend, to reduce from free cash coming from the sale of the asset, in particular Resi4Rent, in the coming quarters. Our net debt ratio was still at the end of Q3 at the level that was customary for last last few quarters, but we intend this to go down, and our target that we look for to achieve in in next years, in next quarters, goes down to the range between 20 and 30% from the old range of 30 to 40%.

This is driven by the fact that we'll have less assets that require high level of financing, less yielding assets on our balance sheet. We'll have more JVs and more living segment assets, which are financed by client prepayments.

Maturity profile of our bond debt is shown on this on this slide. You can see that there's nothing in in this year.

In '26, it's the the amount is not very material compared to to the size of our business. We are going to look proactively at the maturities in '27 and '28 using the funds that we generate from the disposals already signed and the ones that we intend to sign soon.

As you can see, based on what we already achieved in 2025, that we are able to not only build the assets and lease them very well, but also to to sell them on the investment market. Based on on that performance, the Management Board decided that it's it's it's appropriate to pay dividend, to pay advanced dividend in December this year in the amount of 330 million, it which is 80 groszy per share.

We we did it in the past, and, of course, the the break that we had was driven by more difficult conditions on the investment market. Now with our performance, with the disposals of assets, with the growing living segment, our intention is to to come back to regular to more regular payments of dividends in the future years.

Thank you.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you so much, gentlemen. We'll go to our Q&A session.

There is no surprise that our record-breaking transaction with Resi4Rent caught our viewers' eye. We'll start with this question.

Niklas, it goes to you. Are the PRS projects remaining after the transaction with TAG subject to sales negotiations?

Nicklas Lindberg

We are now doing the discussion with TAG that we are now waiting for the approval of the Competition Authorities, which we're expecting to happen now shortly. What we are also looking for here as well is to continue growing our platform.

If we're going to doing 2026 sell off some other units case by case, it depends what kind of opportunities that are coming on the market. Like Maciej said, we're focusing a lot on an asset-light strategy, which is the part when there comes opportunity, we will, of course, look at them.

It's nothing that we actively are looking at the moment. At the moment, we are now focusing fully on closing the TAG transaction, which is a big transaction, will be ground-breaking transaction, and important for the Polish market.

Then after that, we will look at the next steps. The focus, like I said before, we're looking to buy more assets in Warsaw to continue growing our portfolio in Warsaw going forward.

Weronika Ukleja

We are staying in the PRS sector. Next question: living, maybe more of a residential-for-sale sector.

Nicklas, still question to you because you were the one to talk about it through the presentation. Will it be possible to sell 2,800 up to 3,000 apartments by the end of the year?

Nicklas Lindberg

Yes. What we see already now, we had a very strong October.

We see a strong November as well. We are well now, and that's also why we have moved the range from before when we said 3,000 to 2,800 to 3,000, as that is the span that we clearly believe that is somewhere where we will end up in based on the sales we see today and the sales recorded in October, what we see for November, and also the prediction we're having for December.

In this range is where we clearly expect to end up at the year-end.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you. Understand.

Sticking into the residential business, this question is more of an ideological one, I will let you decide who answers this one: will the housing market continue to expand, and what is the optimal level according to the company?

Nicklas Lindberg

What you will see, Poland's getting more and more of a mature market, you see that the housing market is something that will continue expand. What you're basing that is, if you look at the overcrowded rate, or you see how many people living for household in one apartment or per room, Poland is still among the most overcrowded households across Europe.

You will both see that prices has gone up a lot in the recent 2 to 3 years, you will see there will be much more need for a more affordable housing. That is why we have moved our segment more into the popular segment.

We're delivering much more project in that area. We see a strong sale.

You will also see that the market is changing, that everybody cannot afford to buy or want to buy, depending want to have the flexibility to move around. That's why we are also growing a lot in the PRS sector.

Because our strong belief is you should be in both sectors, both for people who want to buy and people who want to rent. It's all depending what stage are you in your life and what do you prefer to do.

There's coming up a lot of younger persons today that doesn't necessarily want to be tied up to owning an apartment in a certain location and want to have the flexibility of renting. I think that we have positioned us well in both these areas, and the residential market in Poland will continue growing, and we see a positive outlook for that.

Like we communicated before, our target is to get to 4,000 sold per year. Here we are on good way, and we will later on communicate our target for 2026, where you will see that we continue growing in the sales and also in the handovers.

We are very, very positive about the living sector that both me and Maciej has stressed out before.

Weronika Ukleja

Yep. It's visible and clear that we are believing in the living sector.

Now I have a question concerning our belief in commercial sector. Maciej, maybe you will take this one, because I want to ask, what is the progress on the talks regarding the sale of the remaining assets intended for sale, including which commercial projects are we looking to sell?

Maciej Drozd

Right. I think you could have already seen on the slide that we are in advanced negotiations or even in exclusivity regarding the remaining parts of Brain project.

This is likely to happen sooner than later. We are also completing early next year two projects that are under construction, this is Vita in Kraków and Swobodna in Wrocław.

Definitely we have an ambition to not only complete them, but also to sell them on the market. As I mentioned, the market is demanding, it's not easy task, but I think we have proven with our track record this year that we can do these things.

Niklas mentioned Młociny, we will look at that, of course, for the reasons that the performance of the asset is currently strong, so that's another possibility. I think this are the most important parts of our portfolio that we consider to dispose.

Also as Niklas mentioned, and that was one of the questions, we are open to look at disposal of other assets, but opportunistically, right? We are not in the ongoing process there, but our strategy is not to keep these assets on balance sheet.

Our strategy is to dispose, but of course we need to look at the right moment and the right price and take a decision if this is optimal, right, for the company to balance different needs. Again, I think that's one of the focuses that we have for 2026 to deliver on many disposals, for sure, yeah.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you. I am aware that we cannot talk in details about some lease agreements in offices in Towarowa, but maybe there are some comments that you would like to share with us, Nicklas, about new lease agreements for offices on Towarowa 22?

Nicklas Lindberg

On Towarowa 22, you will see this is one of the few offices ongoing in the city center of Warsaw. That's why also I'm pushing to start up more offices on the same area, because I think we are in a unique moment where there's a lot of tenants want to move into this location, and there's a very few buildings ongoing.

We have a big interest from tenants to move there. When it comes to lease agreement, we will communicate lease agreements once they're being signed.

What we can say in this question, there's a big, big interest from occupiers to move into our projects.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you so much. Staying with you, Nicklas, is Echo looking for new partners to implement projects with JV platforms?

Nicklas Lindberg

We are doing JVs both in Echo and in Archicom based on the opportunities we see on the market. From an Echo perspective, like Maciej say, we're much more now moving into an asset-light strategy.

For us to do JVs, ideally we like to do JVs like we're doing with AFI today on Towarowa when we do it on bigger projects. It has to be up to critical size for us to consider doing JVs on this market.

I don't think we'd do JVs on smaller projects, that is not what I see ahead of me, but I see we're doing more JVs on bigger projects like the one we're doing on Towarowa. This is a big part of our strategy going forward, as it fits very well to how we want to grow the business.

It fits well to that you have an offtaker. It fits well to that we don't need to deploy so much capital, and it's used all the benefits that we're having within our organization.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you. We are still being asked about our plans and prospects for the office market in Warsaw and regional cities.

You mentioned that we are focusing on the CBD Warsaw. Do you care to add something to this question?

Nicklas Lindberg

In the regions today, we're doing two beautiful projects in the regions that we are completing this year, that we, like Maciej saying, we're targeting to divest. In the regions, we will focus much, much more on the living sector, because as we see today, the capital and the tenants are mainly focusing on Warsaw today, and that's why we will adapt our strategy to fit in well with today's needs.

We still have the capacity inside the organization if we will see tendencies that the office market will change in the regions that we can adjust and then come back again. At the moment, it's Warsaw CBD that is our focus.

Weronika Ukleja

Thank you so much. Changing the subject to financial and debt reduction that we mentioned earlier, Maciej, what are our plans regarding this subject?

Maciej Drozd

Right. Just let's expand on what I already said.

When we look at, of course, the project-level debt, that goes without saying that it's being repaid when we dispose of the project. When we look at the corporate, and the bonds in particular, there are two ways.

One is that they are coming to its maturity date, and, as you could have seen on the slide, we have 150 million maturing next year, of course we will repay them on the respective maturity dates. That is easy, which means we actually do not intend to issue new bonds to refinance or to replace the old ones.

We are also looking proactively at the bonds maturing in '27 and '28 to repay them early with the funds coming from the disposals, right? Of course it's a very different process because you don't have a fixed date like maturity date, you have a little bit more flexibility here.

Still, it can only be done on certain dates when we have this opportunity, right? It's a little bit active process, but we look at that and we intend to go into this direction in 2026.

Definitely we don't consider at the moment any bond issues in particular, yeah.

Weronika Ukleja

In that way, you answered my last question with your last sentence. I think this is it for today.

Thank you. On behalf of me and Echo Group's Management Board, thank you for joining us today and engaging with us in a conversation through the Q&A session.

We hope to see you in March, when we are going to sum up our 2025 activity. Thanks again, and see you soon.