Hamborner REIT AG

Hamborner REIT AG

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 4, 2026

Operator

[Welcome?] to the Hamborner REIT Half-Year 2026 Financial Results Conference Call.

For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad or clicking the raise your hand icon in the lower right corner in the video player.

Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Please go ahead.

Niclas Karoff

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our conference call concerning our figures for the first half year of 2026.

I'm Niclas Karoff, and pleased to be here today together with members of our team, including my colleague Christoph from the IR team. As usual, I will start with a brief presentation, after which we will open the floor for a Q&A session.

We hope everything will run smoothly from a technical standpoint and look forward engaging with you. As usual, let's start with an overview of our key financial figures as of 30th of June.

Rental income amounted to €45.1 million, representing a moderate decrease of 1.3%, primarily reflecting the impact of our property disposals during the last 15 months. FFO came in at €23.8 million or 29 euro cents per share, down 4.4% year-on-year.

Influenced by the dividend payment in June and individual value adjustments within the property portfolio, our loan-to-value slightly increased to 45.2%. Accordingly, EPRA NAV decreased by 3.9%, yeah, compared with year-end 2025 and amounted to €8.72 per share as at the end of June.

Operating performance remained resilient, with vacancy rate and the portfolio's weighted average lease term remaining at solid levels of 4.1% and 5 years respectively. As always, we will walk you through the details on the following slides.

Let's start and take a closer look at our earnings development. Rental income amounted to €45.1 million, and as mentioned before, the 1.3% year-on-year decline was primarily due to property disposals completed during the first half of 2025 and the first quarter of this year.

In the first half, income from passed-on costs increased by 7.3%, mainly driven by higher ancillary cost payments of our tenants. Operating expenses remained largely stable, decreasing by 2.1% year-on-year to €10.1 million in the first half of this year, mainly due to the property disposals.

Maintenance expenses amounted to €3.6 million, compared with €3.5 million in the last year. Yet, the slight increase reflects ongoing maintenance work and various smaller plant measures.

As in previous years, major maintenance projects and larger tenant improvements are scheduled for the second half of the year. As already indicated in connection with our full-year guidance, we currently expect an increase in maintenance costs of approximately 30% in 2026.

The increase mainly results from several tenant improvements as part of our letting activities during the course of this year. Although these measures have a short-term impact on our cost base, the expenses are an investment in occupancy, tenant retention, and the sustainability of our future cash flows.

Administration expenses increased mainly as a result of higher governance and reporting requirements alongside continued investments in software solutions and increased insurance-related expenses. Personnel expenses rose slightly year-on-year to €4.1 million.

This development was mainly driven by valuation effects in connection with the company's long-term incentive program and does not reflect a structural increase in the personal cost base. The negative development of other operating income must be viewed in the context of a higher compensation payment received last year as a result of the early termination of a leasing agreement.

Other operating expenses were significantly lower compared to the previous year, influenced by reduced external consultancy costs. Interest expenses increased by around 8%, primarily reflecting the refinancing at higher interest rates during the second half of last year and the first quarter of the current year.

Interest income was down by approximately 15% as a result of lower income from short-term cash investments. Eventually, total FFO for the first half of this year amounted to €23.8 million or 14 euro cents per share, representing a year-on-year decrease of 4.4%.

On the next slide, we will briefly review the development of our key portfolio figures. Following the disposal of the DIY store in Ditzingen, which was transferred to the buyer in the first quarter of this year, our portfolio comprises 63 properties.

As of 30th of June, total market value of our property portfolio amounted to €1.32 billion. Compared with the year-end 2025, the value decreased by €32.6 million.

Besides the disposal of Ditzingen property, this mainly reflects the revaluation of selected properties as of end of June. Although we did not carry out a full external revaluation, we also apply a high level of diligence to our property valuation process during the year and, when necessary, involve the appraiser in the revaluation to address specific property market- or location-related changes.

In this case, based on recent letting successes as well as on more cautious assumptions regarding individual location developments and cost projections for future letting activities, we have carried out write-ups and write-downs for a total of eight office and retail properties. Including the valuation enhancement for an office property in Cologne, which had already been recognized at the end of the first quarter, total value adjustments in the first half of the year amounted to a minus of €20.7 million or 1.5% of the total portfolio value.

Operational key figures remained largely stable during the first six months of this year. EPRA vacancy rate increased slightly as of end of June 2026, remaining at a low level of 4.1...

or I'm sorry, yeah, remaining at a low level of 4.1%. As mentioned earlier, the portfolio WALT amounted to 5 years, with 6.2 years in the retail portfolio and 3.6 years in the office portfolio.

Concerning rent development, on a like-for-like basis, annualized rental income again increased by 1.6% year-on-year, primarily reflecting indexation effects. A positive impact of indexation was partly offset by the higher vacancy level and slightly lower rent levels for follow-up leases, which is a consequence of the strong indexation effects over the past 2.5 years, particularly in our office portfolio.

Against this background, we take a more market-oriented approach to follow-up leases and new lettings. In individual cases, this may include accepting moderate rent adjustments where this helps support occupancy, secure future rental cash flows, and avoid additional capex for tenant improvements.

Compared to previous year, rental income was also affected by the property disposals, which reduced rental income by €1.2 million or 1.4%. As at the end of June, our annualized rents amounted to €88.7 million.

Yes, part of the strategic realignment of our portfolio announced in February this year, we successfully completed the first transaction under this program in the second quarter and signed a sale agreement for our office property in Neu-Isenburg. The agreed sales price amounts to €13.5 million and was therefore slightly below the most recently appraised market value.

Subject to the fulfillment of a contractually agreed condition, additional proceeds of up to approximately €200,000 may be realized. We deliberately selected this asset as the first disposal under our strategic alignment based on the individual letting situation of the property, its current stability, and the market development at the micro-location, we believe that now is the right time to sell it.

The transfer of ownership is expected to take place in the third quarter of this year. We intend to reinvest the proceeds as soon as possible into properties in the FMCG and DIY sectors, in line with our expanded acquisition profile.

During the first half of the year, our tenant structure was only slightly affected by index-based rent adjustments, letting activities, and property disposals. Therefore, our tenant list remains largely unchanged, and the top tenants accounted for 53.7% of total rental income.

This continued stability of our tenant base is ongoing an important factor for the resilience of our business model. Especially in the current macroeconomic environment, our strong tenant structure supports the stability of our cash flows and provides a solid foundation for the further development of our operating business.

A further indicator of this is the consistently high level of tenant satisfaction, which is shown on the next slide here. Since the beginning of the year, we have signed lease agreements covering more than 23,000 square meters.

As in previous years, the majority of our leasing activity was driven by lease extensions and the exercise of renewal options by existing tenants, resulting once again in a very strong retention rate of around 88%. Looking ahead, Hamborner does not expect any material concentration risks arising from upcoming lease expiries.

As illustrated by the lease expiry schedule at the bottom of the slide here, lease maturities remain well diversified over the coming years. While our lease maturity profile provides a high degree of visibility on future cash flows, we also see opportunities to generate additional income from our properties.

As announced last week and as part of our ongoing efforts to continuously enhance the sustainability standards of our properties, we are expanding the charging infrastructure within our portfolio together with Electra, one of the leading European providers in this field. In the first phase, we plan to install 140 fast charging points at 20 retail locations over the next 12 to 24 months, generating recurring additional revenue of around €0.6 to €0.8 million.

The revenue potential consists of a fixed component and a variable usage-related component. In the second phase, the number of charging points at the 20 locations could be increased to up to 248 depending on the demand at each location.

This would result in an increase in total recurring revenue to around €1 million to €1.2 million. Based on our partnership agreement, all required technical investments will be carried out and financed by Electra, meaning that no corresponding costs will be incurred by Hamborner.

The implementation by an experienced external partner also supports a fast and efficient rollout. By integrating fast charging facilities, we should be able to enhance the attractiveness of our properties and at the same time unlock additional revenue and value creation potential for our portfolio.

The project is therefore a further key element of our strategy to develop sustainable and future-oriented property locations. Let's now move on to our company's financial situation.

The development of our debt situation was mainly influenced by the dividend payment for the 2025 financial year and by the valuation adjustments within our portfolio mentioned earlier. Our LTV therefore slightly increased to 45.2% as at the end of June.

Importantly, this increase was not driven by a higher debt level. Compared with year-end 2025, financial liabilities decreased to approximately €628 million, mainly due to loan repayments and scheduled amortizations.

This reflects our continued disciplined balance sheet management. At the end of June, our debt portfolio had an average interest rate of around 2.2% and an average remaining maturity of 2.8 years.

The average maturity has come down slightly as we recently tended to favor shorter financing terms. This was mainly a response to the development of the interest environment and a steeper yield curve, which has made long-term financing somewhat more expensive.

Looking ahead, we will continue to closely monitor market conditions. Depending on the individual asset situation, we may consider on average longer-term financing again, with the aim of gradually increasing the average remaining maturity over time.

This potentially also applies to our refinancing requirements in the second half of this year, where we remain well on track. Finally, let me turn to our outlook.

Despite the continued challenging market environment, our operating business is developing according to plan. Based on the first half of the year, we remain cautiously optimistic for the remainder of 2026.

We therefore confirm our full-year guidance as published at the beginning of the year. For 2026, we continue to expect rental income in a range of €87.5 to €89.5 million and FFO between €38 and €42 million.

The development of the operating result will continue to depend on cost developments, particularly in maintenance and interest expenses. We will continue to manage all cost positions with a high degree of discipline.

At the same time, we will take a balanced approach and carefully weigh short-term cost impacts against measures that support occupancy, strengthen the quality of our portfolio, and secure future cash flows. Our recently announced strategic adjustments, including the stronger focus on...

the focus on retail properties, the expanded acquisition profile, and the gradual reduction in office exposure, remain important elements of our medium-term strategy. However, apart from the recent disposal in Neu-Isenburg, our guidance does not include any assumptions regarding further transactions.

Overall, we look positively at the remainder of the year and believe that our stable operating performance, disciplined cost management, and clear strategic focus provide a solid basis for achieving our full-year targets. With that, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to conclude the presentation and open the floor for your questions.

Far, thanks so much for your attention.

Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial the pound key followed by 5 on your telephone keypad, or click the raise your hand icon in the lower right corner of the video player to enter the queue. To withdraw your question, please dial the pound key followed by 6 on your telephone keypad if asking via phone, or click the raised hand icon again, which will appear as an X to cancel your request when using the video player.

The next question comes from Thomas Wissler from mwb research AG. Please unmute your microphone.

Thomas Wissler

Yes, hello. This is Thomas speaking.

Thanks for the presentation. I just have two questions, if I may.

The first one is regarding your FFO, obviously. You have achieved, I think, €24 million by the first half of this year, and given your guidance range of €38 to €42 million, this implies that in H2 you expect a significantly lower FFO.

Can you maybe just identify any elevated cost blocks which we might model into our model for the second half in order to get to your FFO, or is the FFO guidance meant to be rather conservative?

Niclas Karoff

Yes, hi, Thomas. Thanks so much for your question.

Obviously, you have seen this in the past that that our results in the second half year, second half of the year will be influenced by by other topics to a stronger extent. In this case, we expect during the second half of the year additional costs as as pointed out on the on the technical side for the total year on a level of approximately 30% higher than last year.

If you do the math and based on how much we have invested so far during the first half year, you get a feeling for this point. Then, additionally, please take into account also that we expect higher financing costs during the second half of the year or the effect from it.

Overall, we we expect approximately 10%, roughly 10%, more or less, higher financing costs than compared to 2025.

Thomas Wissler

Great. Thank you very much.

Maybe one additional question regarding your portfolio rotation. You just signed the disposal of Neu-Isenburg, and, I think you mentioned that you want to recycle the capital into higher-yielding, grocery-anchored retail.

Can you give us maybe an idea, what is your target net initial yield for new acquisitions in order to get to FFO-accretive targets?

Niclas Karoff

Yeah. It's not too easy to say, because it's quite a mixture.

We are typically looking at the moment more on the core-plus to value-add side on the acquisition side. There we are talking, obviously, about substantially higher in-going yields than if you compare it with a classical core product on our side.

If you talk about, let's say, on a multiplier base, you can say typical projects we are looking at at the moment, they start around 10, 11 times rent and go up maybe to 13 times rent. That's just a rough, but that's on a gross base, yeah, not on the net base.

Thomas Wissler

Gross base. Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Operator

The next question comes from Philipp Kaiser from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.

Philipp Kaiser

Yeah. Hello, everyone.

Thanks for the presentation. Thanks for taking my questions.

Just a couple of follow-ups, starting with the already mentioned maintenance topic. You cited during your presentation that major maintenance projects and larger tenant improvements are scheduled for the second half of this year.

How much of those maintenance projects can you already be quantified so that we get a rough idea what's really already kind of off-booked? Because we saw in the last years that maintenance came always in below your envisaged goals.

Niclas Karoff

Maybe thanks first of all for the question, Philipp. Two comments on this.

I think I understand your your point looking backwards if you look at at the last years, couple of years. I think last year we we didn't do too bad finally concerning our our maintenance expenses here.

Coming back to your questions, currently we we have commissioned maintenance measures for the second half of the year with a total volume of approximately €3 million. This should give you an idea of that we think currently we are we are pretty much on track here.

Philipp Kaiser

Could you repeat the number? I couldn't quite catch that.

I'm sorry, yeah.

Niclas Karoff

We have currently commissioned maintenance measures for the second half of the year—

Philipp Kaiser

Yeah.

Niclas Karoff

—currently with a total volume of approximately €3 million.

Philipp Kaiser

Ah, €3 million. Perfect.

Thanks a lot. Thanks for the clarification.

The next one is on potential further write-downs. As far as I understood, it was not a portfolio-wide external valuation that you carried out, it was based on specific assets.

Is it a kind of office cleanup, and now for the second half nothing should be expected on this side, or are there any potential further write-down risks you see in your portfolio? Hello?

Can you still hear me?

Niclas Karoff

I'm sorry for this. We were still on mute.

Sorry. Philipp, concerning your question, sorry, it was our mistake.

Sorry for that. I repeat again.

If you look at what we did concerning the valuation all in all during the course of this year, you have seen together with the asset in the first quarter, you have seen nine assets with revaluations out of our portfolio: two write-ups and seven write-downs. By the way, the two write-ups concern two office properties.

Apart from this, the office market overall is still to a certain extent under pressure from an overall perspective. What we simply do is we run through our portfolio on a regular base, irrespectively if it's office or retail properties, and we simply run through all the assets and have a look where we see or if we see some significant changes here because of new situations.

Then we follow our internal procedures, yeah? There is not a point that I would make any predictions coming from this year to the portfolio as it is today, yeah?

Our intention is to keep on track here, to be very transparent on this, and to do it in a very diligent way. That's all I can say, yeah.

Philipp Kaiser

Okay. Thanks so much for the detailed answer.

My next one is on the Neu-Isenburg sale. The property was sold at €13.5 million, almost matching the current carrying amount, but marginally below the last appraised value.

Could you give us an indication which discount current bidders are demanding for secondary office to get a better idea of this deal and probably future deals in this asset class?

Niclas Karoff

Just maybe a question from my side. Obviously, I don't want to answer your question with another question, but if you talk about discounts, are you referring to overall market perceptions, or more on the tactical behavior concerning individual transactions?

Philipp Kaiser

More on the overall market conditions. What was your experience in this particular deal?

How many bidders, what was kind of the bids across the line? On this side.

Niclas Karoff

Yeah. Understood.

Obviously, we don't have a full market overview, and it's always based on where we are active in Germany, but what we see still is that, transaction-wise, let's look at transactions in B and C cities—not by quality obviously, but by size, meaning B and C—you see, but that's I think that's something that, to a certain extent, this applies also to the A markets, still a limited number of investors on the institutional side clearly driving the market, especially family offices, smaller and larger-sized family offices, as well as certain smaller or mid-sized funds coming to the market or being active in the market. It's not comparable to the level that we have seen before the interest hike a couple of years ago.

That's still the situation, that's what we observe on the office market. Having said this, you still find interesting potential buyers which have a pretty clear view on what they are looking for, meaning they have a clear focus on the kind of product they are looking for.

They're very much looking for stability, very transparent cash flow profile, and transactions that can be checked as part of the due diligence in a very good way, meaning that everything is open on the table and you can really get a firsthand impression of if it's the right asset or not. That's what we see.

Coming in with a clear story. These are the kind of investors that we see at the moment more on the market.

Concerning pricing, I think there's still a certain flight for quality that you can see in the market, not only the A market, but also in B and C markets, meaning the overall asset has to tick a lot of boxes, starting from the cash flow profile, as mentioned, up to ESG-related topics. This narrows the market, for obvious reasons.

Obviously, that's a feedback I give you from today's perspective, in 6 months might be different. That's why we try to remain very flexible also concerning the kind of assets that we bring to the market on the office side, so that they can fulfill these kinds of requests, yeah?

Overall, maybe one comment on size: lower sizes are overall, or appear to us, more attractive than really assets with large volumes or even larger portfolios, yeah. That's also something that we take into consideration.

If you look at the overall profile of our office portfolio, I think also concerning size, not only, but also concerning the individual size of the assets, it fits pretty well at the moment to what's looked by various investors.

Philipp Kaiser

Perfect. Helps a lot.

Thank you very much for this detailed insight. That's what also raises a follow-up question regarding your strategy repositioning.

The February announcement is now backed by one transaction. Taking into account everything you already described on the office market, any major changes on the speed of this office sale?

Anything changed between the announcement and now?

Niclas Karoff

Not fundamentally. We knew that the market is where it is, and that's what we took into account when we started this process here, meaning that at the moment it might appear a bit slow, but you did say this, but that might appear because we just sold one asset and didn't buy another one.

That's exactly why we said, "Okay, we take a medium perspective on this whole rotation process. We don't see ourselves under pressure.

We want to maximize value here." I think it's also fair to say that transaction processes simply, in many cases at least, they simply take longer than before, yeah?

At the moment, you see process between 6 and 12 months, whereas it was substantially shorter a couple of years ago for various reasons that I think we also have talked about here before. That's something that you have to take into account as well, meaning we are active on the sales side.

We will bring further assets to the market shortly now. The same applies also on the acquisition side, where we are pretty active here.

It simply takes its time at the moment. Keeping it in a disciplined way, that's one of our highest priorities here.

Philipp Kaiser

Perfect. Thanks a lot.

My last one, after we now spent some time with detailed information on the disposal side, when it comes to cash recycling, how's the acquisition side looking at the moment in the current market environment? Are there a lot of attractive assets out there, or is it the same as you already described for the disposal office side?

Niclas Karoff

On the acquisition side, we really get a lot on the table, especially in connection with the widening of our acquisition profile. This clearly has helped us a lot.

What I just pointed out concerning the sales processes is something that you see also on the acquisition process, not because we intend to be slow, but it's simply that you have to cover various things. Also, if you consider the fact that we are concerning the widened acquisition profile in a core-plus or value-add side, there are in certain transactions simply more things to cover also on the due diligence side than if you're looking at a pure play core property.

This takes a little bit more time. Apart from this, we feel we are on the right track here, and continue to be really active.

Maybe one additional comment also concerning acquisition within this shift within the portfolio and reinvesting, we also take into account the development of the LTV, and we want to remain disciplined here. This will also have an impact on how fast and how aggressive we are on the acquisition side, yeah.

Philipp Kaiser

Perfect. Thanks a lot for all these detailed information.

Helped a lot. That's all from my side.

Niclas Karoff

Thanks.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Then

Niclas Karoff

I keep it short. Thanks so much again for your attention, and hope to see or talk to you shortly.

Thanks so much, and have a good week.