Right, good morning everyone. I think we'll start.

Welcome everyone to Hammerson's 2025 full year results presentation. I've met a number of you already over the last few weeks, but for those I haven't met, I'm Rob Wilkinson.

I joined Hammerson as CEO in January of this year. I'm with Himanshu Raja, our CFO of course, who's joining me for the presentation this morning.

In terms of the actual presentation itself, I'd like to start with sharing with you a couple of my first impressions of the company since I joined, obviously looking back at the achievements and results of 2025, our outlook for '26 and beyond. I'll pass then to Himanshu to comment on the financials in a bit more detail, before some closing remarks, and then obviously be delighted to take any questions at the end of the session.

If I start, since October of last year, I made it my priority to visit all 10 of our flagship destination assets to meet with the teams. One thing that's very clear is that the extent of turnaround that's been achieved over the last 5 years is nothing short of remarkable, and credit should go to Rita-Rose and the team for what they've done over that period.

It also clearly positions Hammerson now at a situation where we can now leverage our platform and assets as we go forward. Three things have really stood out for me about the company since I joined.

The first is the quality of our unique portfolio of retail-led destinations across the UK, France, and Ireland. We are the leading pure-play company in those markets, and today 98% of our destinations are rated A or better by Green Street.

A fantastic portfolio. We've also got a fantastic team.

We have a first-class integrated platform, which is built on a management team that is best-in-class and passionate about driving the destinations that we manage across our portfolio. This sits alongside our data-led technology platform, which provides us with customer analytics, allowing us to drive excellence and continue to outperform the market, as you'll see later.

Finally, the strength of the company financially and our access to equity and debt capital markets, as obviously demonstrated last year with our equity and bond issues, which were very successful and were both heavily oversubscribed. A lot has been done, but I can assure you there's plenty more to do, plenty more to come, but I do believe that Hammerson is extremely well-placed now to embark on our next phase of growth.

If I turn to the results themselves for a minute, they are undoubtedly a strong set of results and ahead of consensus. Our net rental income increased by 23% year-on-year to £180 million, driven by in part the JV acquisitions we undertook last year alongside like-for-like rental growth of 3%.

Our earnings have increased by 5% as we've gradually reinvested the proceeds of the sale of the interest in Value Retail. Those increased earnings have generated increased dividends up 6% year-on-year, which is reflective of that growth, but also a sign of our confidence in the future.

Our portfolio is up 33%, a little above £3.5 billion sterling, and that's been driven again by those JV acquisitions alongside capital growth of 4% in the year, which itself was driven by ERV growth and yield compression in the UK and Ireland. That's translated into a 6% growth in NTA to £3.94 at the end of the year, and a total accounting return of 11%, marking a return to positive territory for the company.

Very strong results overall. As I look at our key priorities as I see them, well, put simply, it's to continue doing what Hammerson has done very well for several years.

We will continue to drive the returns of our existing assets and portfolio. We have a strong track record of repositioning our assets and creating significant value from that, alongside leveraging, as I mentioned, our technology platform to optimize our brand mix and also enhance the customer experience at our centres.

All of that will help us to continue to increase rental tension across the portfolio. Second, we will continue to maximize both the value, but also the optionality of our strategic land, either developing it ourselves, in partnership, or in certain cases recycling capital from assets in due course.

Finally, we need to scale up, and it's not about growth for growth's sake. This is about focusing on accretive, disciplined acquisitions that are consistent with our strategy, but will allow us to enhance our operational efficiencies, therefore driving earnings growth into the future.

If I look a little bit at those priorities in more detail and what we've achieved, at an operational level, it's been a very strong year as well. Our occupancy has increased to 96%.

In fact, six out of 10 of our destinations are now above 98% occupancy, and that's led us to a shift in mindset and strategy from leasing up the assets to rent-up as we look to increase the rents across our centres. We've seen increase in footfall, we've added 3 million visitors during the year up to 170 million visitors across 2025.

This is in stark contrast to our national benchmarks. As you can see from the chart in the middle there, the yellow are our benchmarks; they're either flat or negative compared to the growth that we've achieved.

All that translates into the important things for our retailers with sales of more than £3 billion sterling in 2025. A statistic that I particularly like is what we call the new for old.

This is taking the former underutilized or vacant anchor space within our schemes, repositioning them into new concept, and across those we've seen an increase in sales densities for our retailers of 40% compared to pre-COVID levels. If I shift to leasing, another year of very strong performance across the leasing front, a record level of new deals at over £50 million signed during the year.

As you can see, at substantially above, in fact double digits above, passing rent or ERV, leading to additional rent of around £260 million to first break. We've had a number of firsts across our portfolio, either regionally or first within the portfolio for the likes of Sephora, UNIQLO, M&S, and Lululemon.

Pleasingly, we have more of those happening during 2026 as well. 2026 has started strongly on the leasing front as well, as you can see our pipeline of around £20 million is a very positive start for the year on the leasing front as well.

Our final part of driving the performance of our destinations is repositioning, and clearly 2025 was a very active year on that front as well. If I start with Cabot Circus on the left, the opening of the M&S store in November was incredibly strong.

It increased footfall in the centre on the day by 50, 5-0%, and M&S themselves had record sales as well. We've invested in an overhaul of the car park installing frictionless technology, which has driven, apologies for the pun, an increase in usage of just under a quarter, up 25% on the year in the car park.

Recently a couple of weeks ago, we opened in a grand ceremony the ODEON Luxe at Cabot Circus, which is the only cinema in Bristol City Centre, which will help obviously drive activity further and into the evening, which then obviously has a benefit for the F&B provision within the centre. We've got further openings in the centre this year with UNIQLO and Sephora to come, and we've just started the regeneration of Quakers' Exchange and beginning the public realm works there as we speak.

A lot has been done, but still a lot going on and a lot to come within Cabot Circus itself. If I turn to The Oracle, we obviously introduced Hollywood Bowl and TK Maxx there last year.

Hollywood Bowl had their best ever opening at The Oracle. That obviously helped footfall up 9% in the second half of 2025.

Our net rental income is up 10% on the scheme, and more to flow through from the upsizing of Zara and Apple within The Oracle during this year. As many of we still have the Debenhams, the former Debenhams unit, within the centre on which we have multiple options, both retail, but some of you may have seen that we also got outline planning for the residential scheme at Reading Riverside earlier this month.

Again, lots to do still at The Oracle. Finally, Les 3 Fontaines in France.

The extension phase there, as you'll recall, is fully pre-leased to Primark and Nike, and what's really pleasing is to see the kind of halo effect of that already as we've made further lettings to an Apple reseller and to Aroma-Zone adjacent to that scheme. Cergy is now 90% occupied, which it never has been before, but we also expect that to increase as that scheme opens and starts to trade from Q1 next year.

We expect further leasing activity from that as those retailers have opened. If I move on to the pipeline and how we look to maximize the value and optionality as I mentioned, you've seen this chart before.

We've updated it since you last saw it. On the left-hand side, you've obviously already heard about the Bullring and Dundrum repositionings.

Worth noting that we continue to benefit from those repositionings even today. In pink, obviously already mentioned The Oracle, Cergy, a little bit further to the right, but also to mention the completion of the Ironworks at Dundrum, which completed in October, and we are obviously in the middle of leasing that up.

We've got about a third leased and very strong demand for what is very good product in a tight market. Looking at the recycling side of the equation, the box in blue in the middle, we completed the sale of our last interest in Leeds a couple of weeks ago, and that completes our exit from the Leeds market entirely.

We sold the last site for £6 million, slightly above book, we've realized a total of £32 million in the last sort of 18 months or so from the complete exit of our interests in Leeds. On the right-hand side, you have our longer-term development programme, where we're looking at master planning options, obviously, and that includes Birmingham with the Martineau Galleries that I've mentioned already.

Actually the Birmingham estate is almost a perfect example of a way of describing how we look at our strategic land holdings. We are clearly right in the centre of Birmingham, and the iconic Bullring sits at its heart.

That itself is now 98% occupied, and so we've got significant spillover into Grand Central. You can just see to the right where we've got retailers taking space within that as demand spills over from the main centre itself.

At Grand Central, moving on to additional opportunities, we have our Drum project, which is a great example of projects within our schemes that are integral to them. We're currently working up a mixed-use office, retail, F&B, and leisure scheme at The Drum, which we'll look to take forward in the months ahead.

Another part which is integral is at the top of this image, Edgbaston Street Car Park, on which we have outline planning for 700 residential units or 1,500 student, or a combination of the above. Again, these two, as I say, are integral to the scheme and provide synergies in terms of footfall.

On the bottom left, a little further afield, you have Martineau Galleries, which is a very large office and residential dominated scheme. This is a much longer-term project on which we will look to maintain control of the master planning to maintain control of the overall environment, but ultimately we will look to maximize value and recycle capital in due course for that project.

Coming back to increasing our scale, which obviously allows us to leverage our operational efficiencies and the platform that I've referred to already, it also helps us to increase diversification, liquidity, and obviously deepen the relationships that we have with our retailers. In the last 15 months, we've invested just under £760 million in buying out four of our joint venture partners at a yield in excess of 7.5%.

Those deals have been significantly accretive to earnings, and as I've mentioned, we've been able to execute them without adding any management resource. Very accretive from that standpoint as well.

We will continue to target further accretive acquisitions, both internal and external, so long as they are accretive to earnings and they are consistent with our strategy of investing in retail-led destinations. Finally, if I turn to the outlook for '26 and beyond, we're expecting net rental income growth of 20% next year, driven by a full-year effect of the JV acquisitions of course, but also like-for-like rental growth of between 4 and 5%, earnings growth for the year of around 15%.

It'll be a touch less on the EPS because of the share issue last year, and Himanshu will comment on that. We have a clear line of sight as well to our earnings into 2027 as we benefit from the leasing activity that we've had in '24, '25, and beginning of '26, and also the Cergy 3 scheme coming on board.

Again, a very positive outlook as we go forward for earnings into 2027. On that note, I'll hand over to Himanshu to comment on the financials.

Thanks, Rob. Good morning and welcome to everyone this morning.

As usual, let's just jump straight into the financials. As Rob said, another strong year of financial performance for us, starting with the top line, net rental income up 23% year-on-year, and like-for-like growth of 3%, exactly in line with our guidance.

Just unpeeling that a little bit, it was really pleasing to see the UK up 4%, and we had particularly strong performances both at Westquay and at The Oracle. The like-for-like in both France and in Ireland was around 2%, solid performances in our French operations and really strong performance in Dundrum, benefiting from the repositioning of two, three years ago, and also strong performance in Pavilions.

Turning to the earnings line, EPRA earnings slightly above consensus at £104 million, up 5%. The key is that we saw really strong operational gearing come through, with the EPRA cost ratio down nearly 4 percentage points to 35.9%.

Finally on the P&L, the IFRS profit of £232 million is our first full year positive IFRS result since 2017. On the balance sheet, an increase of 33% in valuations driven by the acquisitions, yield compression, as well as ERV growth, and then the beat on NTA up 6% to 394p, and I'm going to unpeel those in more detail.

Credit metrics were robust, LTV of 39%, and remember on net debt to EBITDA, to annualize the effect of the acquisitions, which we've shown in today's release at 8.1 times. Let's now turn to the earnings walk.

Starting with the reported number of £99 million last year. You'll remember last year naturally included the contribution from Value Retail, it included the contribution from Union Square, and also two months benefit from the acquisition of Westquay.

Adjusting for those, for the like-for-like portfolio, the rebased earnings would be at £76 million. Then starting from that, we saw £1.4 million from the disposal of the non-core land in Leeds, like-for-like growth, the £3.6 million uplift, and a £35 million contribution from the acquisitions.

The increase in net administration costs principally reflects inflation, but also the loss of management fees now that we own four of our UK assets, four of five UK assets, at 100%. Net finance costs were up £7 million, really two moving parts there called out on the slide, the largest being the lower interest receivable of £10 million as we redeployed cash into yielding acquisitions, and then the interest payable improved by £3 million from the successful refinancings that we did in 2024.

Turning then to the NTA. Remember when you're looking at the NTA, the cancellation of 9 million shares from the share buyback, which was suspended at the half-year as we deployed funds into the acquisition of Bullring and Grand Central, and the equity issuance, which is 48 million new shares from the equity raise.

The walk starts at 370p. Earnings added 20p, as you can see on the slide.

The £120 million property revaluation adds a further 23p. Dividends, naturally, an outflow of 16p, the £82 million of dividends.

Then you see the effects of both share buyback and the equity issuance flowing through to deliver that 394p. To valuations.

As Rob said, just over £3.5 billion sterling of value today, and a capital return and a total property return of 10%, a capital return of 4 and an income of 6. Just going left to right, starting with the UK, the UK was up 13%, benefited from an average 21 bps yield compression, and we saw that coming through at Bullring, we saw that come through at The Oracle and at Cabot Circus, really underscoring the benefits of the repositioning.

It was pleasing to see ERVs up also 3% in the UK. France total returns were 5%, really driven by income growth, while yields were stable.

Ireland posted a 12% total return with 20 bps inward yield compression and a 4.5% growth in ERV, really reflective of the fact that our Irish assets are 99% occupied. Finally on developments, a 14% return, which includes the uplift from the discounts that we achieved on the land elements of our joint venture acquisitions.

Just to close on this slide, and to share with you our reflections on ERVs and yields. Whilst we saw ERVs up 3% in 2025, there is more to come as there's a lag here in valuers fully reflecting the leasing spreads coming through on ERVs.

To yield compression, you can see on the right-hand side of this chart the range of yields today compared with where the peak yields were in 2016, 2017. On the far right, you can see the 5-year swap rates.

Whether you compare the yields today to those at peak or to the spread to current swap rates, they continue to look elevated, and therefore it was really pleasing to see the tightening of yields coming through in the UK and Ireland as the sector became much more attractive to that wider pool of investors. The balance sheet, we've been very disciplined in our capital allocation in 2025.

We've seen strong support from both equity and debt markets. During the year, we saw our credit ratings strengthened from both credit agencies.

Our credit metrics remain robust and are fully aligned to maintaining a strong investment-grade credit rating. We are in a good place at this point in the cycle.

Liquidity remained high at £1 billion, and our refinancings in 2024 and in 2025 have largely addressed the upcoming maturities. Since the year-end, we've repaid a further £104 million of debt from cash on balance sheet, and you'll see in the additional disclosure at the back, the resulting maturity chart.

Moving to my last slide and more detail guidance. We expect EPRA earnings growth of 15% to around £120 million, with EPS growth of around 10%, taking account of the equity issuance.

In terms of the key line items, we are forecasting an acceleration in our like-for-like growth to 4 to 5%, and total NRI growth of around 20%. Our flagships gross-to-net will be at around 80%.

We will maintain administration costs broadly flat through continued strong cost control, notwithstanding the loss of around £1 million of annualized management fees following the JV acquisitions. Pleasing to see our EPRA cost ratio come in around 4 percentage points.

As you look forward with the growth included for both '26 and 2027, we expect to see the EPRA cost ratio come down by 3 to 4 percentage points in each of 2026 and in 2027, such that in 2027, our EPRA cost ratio will be below 30%. Net finance costs will be about £60 million from the lower cash balances after the acquisitions and falling rates, partly offset by the higher interest from the October 2025 bond issue.

Then finally to CapEx. We expect to spend around £30 million to complete the repositioning at Cabot Circus, at The Oracle, and Cergy 3.

Our ongoing asset management leasing CapEx, we guide to about £34 million. Philosophically, we always seek to fund that from FFO after dividends, and we'll be in that position starting in 2027.

Then finally to the dividend. The dividend has increased this year with earnings.

Our payout ratio remains at 80 to 85%. Of course, with growing earnings, we grow dividends.

With that, back to Rob.

Thanks, Himanshu. Just to conclude then, we will clearly remain focused on capitalizing on Hammerson's strengths.

We will look to continue driving returns from the existing assets and portfolio. We'll look to scale up in order to really use the operational leverage that is inherent within our platform.

All of that alongside what you've heard from Himanshu gives us great confidence in the future, and we've got, as I said, a very clear line of sight to our earnings growth in 2026, which is strong, but also into 2027. I'm very excited about where we are in Hammerson's journey and as we embark on our next phase of growth.

Thank you for listening, and I'm very happy to take any questions. Thank you.

There's one here in the middle.

Hi, Bjorn Zietsman from Panmure Liberum. Himanshu, just a question on the earnings walk.

If we sort of strip out the VR disposal benefit and the NRI acquisitions, the adjusted EPS or adjusted earnings number would have actually gone backwards. I guess my question is, over the past 2 years, how much benefit has come from project repositioning or asset repositioning, like the Bullring?

Do you have to do more deals in future to continue to drive earnings beyond FY26? Thank you.

What you've seen, Bjorn, is if you reflect back on the repositionings being with Bullring and Dundrum, there's always a lag before that comes through. With the completion you now see at both Cabot and Oracle, which will complete and is fully funded in our guidance in 2026, that's where you now begin to see that acceleration coming through in that NRI.

That's across the board, not just in the UK. We see it coming through from the lease-up at TDP where we went through a 10-year anniversary cycle last year.

You'll see it coming through on Cergy, and we continue to see that coming through. Largely the repositionings have been complete, and we're now reaping the benefits of the investments we made both in leasing incentives and in CapEx now coming through.

Thanks. Good morning.

It's Tom Musson at Berenberg. Clearly good results today.

Can I just ask, in your November trading update, you talked about medium-term guidance of an 8 to 10% EPS growth CAGR. Today you sort of mentioned to expect further growth in EPRA earnings in FY27 and beyond, just wondering if that 8 to 10% outlook in the medium term on earnings still holds?

Tom, that was based, if you recall at the time, following the disposal of Value Retail, it was based off the 2024 rebased earnings, which were £76 million shown on my slide on the like-for-like portfolio. Projected forward on a 5-year CAGR, that still holds.

It was off that '24 base.

Thank you.

Morning, it's Max Nimmo here at Deutsche Numis. Just you're talking about scaling up but it needs to be accretive.

Just as you kind of look around sort of your universe, as it were, where do you see the kind of most accretion that you can find? Is it within the UK and extracting value from that strategic land or do you think actually maybe we go further into Europe here where we can find higher yields and tighter financing?

Just any views you have from that perspective. Thanks.

Sure. I'll answer that to a degree, Max, and certainly come back later in the year with perhaps a little bit more precision.

In short, today across pretty much all the European markets, there is a spread between the yields at which you can acquire and the cost of debt, and of course there's differentials, as you mentioned, between UK and Europe. I see both of those as being attractive, but I think what will drive our acquisition strategy going forward is really about specific situations of assets that we like and where we can actually create further value through repositioning, as we've demonstrated so far.

Just the spread of markets themselves doesn't provide the answer to the question. You've got to look at the specifics of each opportunity.

What I've said to the team so far is that having been through a period over the last 5 years where the company has had to do certain things to ensure that it continues, our focus now is we should be choosing what we do and where we do, and so we're spending some time looking at that, looking at the opportunity set across the markets in Europe. As I said, we'll come back later in the year to give more commentary on that.

Hey, Oliver Woodall from Coresight. Just kind of following on from that, if an acquisition opportunity does present itself, what is your appetite, given LTV has come up or is that you're going to provide color later on the same answer?

No, I think, look, we'll be open to acquisition opportunities if and when they present themselves. We will not sort of necessarily wait.

If the right opportunity presents itself, we will act. In terms of the second part of your question, which Himanshu might comment on as well, we're comfortable with where we are in terms of our balance sheet metrics.

We've got our guardrails that we want to stick within. I think it's important to note last year obviously we were able to demonstrate the ability to combine both equity and debt to fund acquisitions, and that's certainly we would look to do going forward.

There are other avenues as well of funding acquisitions. That could be in partnership again, could be through recycling capital from some of the disposals.

I think we certainly will be open to acquisition from now and we'll be looking to stay within the kind of metrics that we have today from balance sheet standpoint.

I would add that the acquisitions that we've done in 2025 have been a net credit positive from a credit agency's perspective. You saw both credit ratings strengthen, and that was just a reflection that we now have rental-driven EBITDA streams, not joint venture distributions under our control.

You'll continue to see, as you run the numbers, that net debt to EBITDA strengthening as you go into 2026 and 2027.

That's clear. One more on the tenant health across your portfolio.

I don't know if you give an occupancy cost ratio number anymore or if there's any color you can give how that's looking across the different geographies?

Sure. Do you want to comment on the OCR side?

Tenant health overall remains robust. The OCRs now across UK, France, and Ireland are in their mid-teens.

Actually, rent to sales only now makes up about 10% of the OCR. Rates where there's a lot of talk about rates represent about 2 to 3%.

Across our portfolio, with the 2026 revaluation, we'll actually see the multipliers come down. On average, across the portfolio, we'll see an 8 to 10% benefit on rates coming through for occupiers.

It's more National Insurance and other costs that the occupiers worry about, rather than rent to sales or rates.

Thank you.

Hi guys, thank you. Tom Murray from Green Street.

Just the French macro picture looks a little bit weaker at the moment, and indexation expected to be on the lower side next year. How does that kind of play into your guidance for 2026?

It's fully factored in, obviously, in terms of the outlook guidance that we've provided. It's a market that is much lower volatility and has much lower cost of finance, and therefore it's still a major contributor to our earnings today and going forward.

Obviously, we'll keep a watching eye on what happens in France. Himanshu, anything else you want to add?

I would just add that that acceleration of the NRI growth of 4 to 5% equally applies to France. Indexation, as you say, really is pretty much zero for 2026, but it's the benefit of the lease-up at TDP and the opportunities that Rob has already talked about at Cergy that really begin to come through on the '26 numbers.

Thank you.

Anyone else in the room? Okay.

I don't know if there are any questions that have come through. Yes, I think so.

Josh, thank you.

Nothing that we haven't already covered, in the interest of time, if you'd like to draw conclusion. I'll just remind everyone, we've obviously got a short turnaround, please do move back to the drinks area.

Thank you, Josh. Look, again, just thank you for being here and for listening.

Sorry.

Apologies. Apparently we have some questions on the phones,

but

not online. Okay.

Hi all. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions and the presentation.

Just two questions. One again about those investment markets.

I appreciate that you can't go into full detail, but just maybe from an overview perspective, do you see more opportunities arising or more discussions over the last few months, or do you feel that investment markets are still a bit in a lockdown across your three different geographies?

Thanks, Véronique. The short answer is that we do anticipate further investment activity and growth during 2026.

I think a number of potential sales have been headlined already, and we do expect those to come through during the course of 2026 in the UK. I think in general, as well, the environment for investment is likely to improve slightly in 2026 as interest rates potentially continue to come down gradually, and investor sentiment across Europe has started to improve.

I think we'll see what's happened already a little bit in the UK start to spread into Europe as well. In short, we expect there to be further investment activity, and we will certainly be looking at that.

Perfect. Thank you.

Then one other question. You honestly have quite a positive outlook, both from improved top line and bottom line.

I'm just curious, what would you say is the biggest challenge for Hammerson in 2026?

I think the biggest challenge actually are sort of factors that are somewhat outside of our control. It's really coming back to, particularly the UK macro picture, perhaps France as well, and the impact that has on consumer.

I think those are probably the potential headwind risks that we face more than anything that's sort of specific to our portfolio. Overall consumer.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Okay. No, just once again thank you all for listening.

As I said in summary, very exciting time for Hammerson. Again, thank you for coming here for your questions, and look forward to seeing you further.

Thank you. Thanks all.