Morning, and thank you for the introduction, Jake. For those that don't know me, my name's Michael Morris.

I'm the Chief Executive of Picton. I've actually been with the group since launch.

I'm Saira Johnston. I'm the CFO at Picton, and I joined Picton a couple of years ago.

Today we're going to give you a quick overview, talk through the results, give our views on the market, what's been happening in the portfolio, and then some observations and outlook, with the opportunity for Q&A at the end. Many of you will be aware that with the Takeover Code we are somewhat restricted on what we can say regarding the announcement of a possible offer, but we will try and be as accommodating as we can and work through that in the Q&A.

Just by way of background for those that don't know Picton, we're a diversified UK REIT focused on income and value. We have a long-term track record of outperforming through that diversified approach.

You can see on the chart below that track record of outperformance at a property level. We have a long-term debt structure across the business and a fully aligned team, and we will talk to some of these themes through the results.

In terms of the last 12 months, I think it's been good performance recognizing the actual sort of market backdrop, UK politics, global politics, and the impact that that's had on the economy. Positive total return, positive shareholder total return.

At a property level, we've seen good ERV growth, and more generally, we've been adapting the portfolio, reducing office exposure, and we'll come on to all of these points in a bit more detail in a minute. If I hand over to Saira, she can talk you through the financial results for the year.

Thank you, Michael. I'll just start with a few highlights and then turn to a bit more detail on our NAV and earnings for the year.

Overall, as Michael said, we're pleased with our results. We've delivered a good set of financial performance, delivering both positive total return and positive shareholder returns.

We're reporting profit after tax of £26 million, or 5 pence per share, and EPRA earnings of 4 pence per share, and I'll come on and explain that in more detail later on. We've paid dividends of 3.8 pence per share.

You'll recall that we increased our dividend by just under 3% last year, and we're pleased that we've maintained that level of dividend cover over the 12 months. From a net asset value perspective, the net assets were down on last year as a result of our buyback program, but from a NAV pence-per-share basis, they increased by about 2%.

Finally, as Michael mentioned, overall total return for the 12 months is 6.1%. Moving on to the net asset value movement, we saw an increase of 2%, which was really underpinned by moderate but continuing valuation increases, as well as accretion through our share buyback program.

At a portfolio level overall, the valuations increased by 0.7%. We saw fairly flat valuations over the last 3 to 6 months, but overall 0.7% for the 12 months, and that's net of the capital expenditure that we've incurred on the portfolio, and which we'll talk about later on in the presentation.

We have seen variations across the sectors as we'd expect and no doubt you'd expect, with industrials continuing to lead a large contribution of our valuation increase, and now representing nearly two-thirds of our portfolio. A point of note on our retail and leisure at 4.1%, the largest contributor in percentage terms, but not pound-million terms, and that was as a result of a lease re-gear that we did on our hotel occupier in Carlisle, where we received a capital receipt of £2.4 million in lieu of a lower rent and a longer term.

In terms of our share buyback program, we deployed just over £17 million into that program at a discount of 25%, and the accretion of that was 1 pence per share over the 12 months. Moving on to EPRA earnings, EPRA earnings closed at 4 pence per share for the year, and we saw accretion through our share buyback program similar to the NAV, and also we saw stabilization of our cost base, both from a financing cost perspective and admin costs.

If we talk through a couple of things impacting each of our sectors and net property income, those are, firstly, in respect of the industrial sector, we continue to see really positive reversion coming through on the portfolio, and that was roughly 5% across the board year-on-year, and we'll talk to some stats on that, but we still believe that we're seeing increases on rent reviews and new lettings, which is really positive. Our office net property income was lower than previous year, and that's as we took back space which is currently under refurbishment.

Finally, in terms of our retail and leisure assets, there we had a couple of lease re-gears where, as I've mentioned, we've taken lower rents in lieu of a longer term, and really there we're looking at those lease re-gears on a total-return basis, not just solely from an income perspective. Finally, a quick reminder on our debt.

Not much has changed in the quarter or the 6 months. We continue to have an extremely strong balance sheet, a strong cash position, and there's a significant amount of value in our long-term fixed-rate debt structure.

You can see that through our EPRA NDV, which closed at 107 pence per share, there was another 2 pence increase in the NDV over the 12-month period, reflecting the higher interest rate environment and the value of our debt being fixed. In terms of loan to value, that remains conservative at 24%.

It increased slightly over the 3 and 6 months as a result of the buybacks, but is maintained at 24% over the 12 months. Our weighted average cost of debt is 3.7%, and that's clearly well below the prevailing market financing rates.

Debt maturity just under 6 years, we've got really good visibility on our financing costs going forward. Our revolving credit facility remained undrawn at the year-end and also throughout the period.

The final slide in this section talks to capital allocation. This is something that we've talked about in previous presentations, and really this just sets out how our priorities looked over the year.

You may recall that we started the year with a strategy to reduce our office exposure and also lower yielding assets, and as a result of that, we disposed of Stanford Building and had net proceeds of just under £35 million. That was reinvested predominantly into the existing portfolio and into the share buybacks.

From a portfolio reinvestment perspective, we deployed £8.8 million into the portfolio, mainly in our offices, and we'll come and talk about that in a bit more detail later, but we believe that's key in terms of increasing our occupancy and unlocking that ERV growth, where we've seen just under 5% growth year-on-year, and that's despite having sold one asset. We've got a further £8 million committed.

In terms of the share buybacks, well we've seen that accretion in the NAV and also in earnings. The final two points here, we made one small sort of tactical investment opportunity, purchasing freehold of an existing interest, £0.2 million, and we repaid some of our debt, but only to the extent that that was scheduled amortization.

Thank you. Just to give some quick observations on the market, clearly dominated by lots going on with UK government, UK budgets, and then we started '26 with some quite positive signals, but clearly what's been happening in the Middle East and the impact on financial markets has obviously dampened any sort of property market sort of recovery.

I think ultimately though, base rates remain lower than they were a year ago, there's been quite a bit of volatility on longer-term rates, and inflation probably there's an expectation that that might be slightly higher than we've seen. If we now turn the page and think more about how that's impacted the property market, overall for the year, relatively low total returns of 6%.

You can see the highest sector was retail at 8%, industrial at 7%, offices being the laggard at a much lower level. What's making up those total returns?

Capital growth, rental value growth very strong in the industrial sectors relative to offices, which has seen weaker capital growth, but nevertheless some modest rental growth. In retail, lower capital growth, lower rental value growth than the other two sectors, but retail does generally offer higher initial yields, a higher income return, and it's that higher income return that has led to that overall slightly higher outperformance relative to industrial.

Looking at the monthly data, this rolls back 12 months. I think it's perhaps a little bit more interesting to look at just this year.

The headline for this year in terms of rents is rents are up about 1% on average over the year, industrials being the higher sector at 1.1%, retail at 0.6%, and offices at 0.5%. You can see positive growth, but relatively modest.

In terms of capital growth, well industrial and retail has delivered the same capital growth at 0.4%, and offices down at 0.3%. You can probably just make out the burgundy diamonds at the bottom that show the office sector, which although those values are still trending lower, the rate of decline has reduced quite markedly compared with the sort of September, October, November of last year.

Thinking about our own portfolio now, it's a diversified portfolio. We have 300 occupiers, really diverse cash flow, and we, as we say, we do adapt the portfolio as market conditions dictate.

A year ago we had 64% in industrial sector and 24% in offices, and you can see where we've reduced or added to exposure through the disposals Saira mentioned. The portfolio does have lower occupancy at the minute.

We'll talk to that in detail. We think that's very much a cyclical occupancy point rather than structural.

That leads to a slightly lower initial yield than we would like off the portfolio because of that current occupancy rate, but the reversionary yield, which obviously assumes renting at full ERV, is 250 basis points higher, and I think we'll explain how we'll unlock that in later slides. In terms of the activity, the team's been really busy despite the market.

I think we did nearly 25% more transactions than in the preceding year across the portfolio. The key standout number for us is the nearly 5% improvement in rental values across the portfolio.

Part of that has been driven by investment into the portfolio upgrading assets, we'll talk to that in a minute, and the ungeared property return is just under 6%, with again the majority of that in this year coming from the income component of our portfolio, recognizing that sort of backdrop that I mentioned. In terms of industrial, the like-for-like increase was 1.2%.

That's before capex, so as Saira mentioned it was 0.6% after capex. ERV growth was stronger in our industrial assets than elsewhere as you might expect.

As at today, there's nearly £8 million of reversion between what is currently contractually due versus current market rates. That's going from the £23.3 million up to £31.2 million.

We do have slightly lower occupancy in the industrial sector than we have historically, but two of those voids make up nearly 90% of our entire industrial void, and we will explain in more detail where we are on those assets later. In offices, our asset upgrade program has been delivering results.

We have reduced exposure to this sector over the year as well. Valuation increase of 3.5%, but there was a capital expenditure there, the net number or office values did come off at 0.7% over the year, and that perhaps reflects some of the challenges in that sector.

Overall, we saw nearly 4% ERV growth across those office assets. Again, there's a material reversion in this element of the portfolio, with the ERV of £17.6 million being £5.3 million higher than the current contracted rent.

Our retail and leisure portfolio is less than £90 million, it's a relatively small part of the overall portfolio. The majority of our assets are in retail warehousing, but we do have some high street and some leisure as well.

Overall, the valuation increase was up 1.4%, but Saira did mention a re-gear transaction that we undertook with a pretty material capital receipt, which is why in the accounting numbers the uplift is 4.1%, ERV growth lower than the other two sectors at 1.4%, and this element of the portfolio, for us, has less reversionary potential than elsewhere, in part because we're already running on a high occupancy. In terms of portfolio activity, I think we've seen good progress across all elements of the portfolio actually.

In the industrial sector, it's very much been about capturing that reversion, and transactions in Harlow, in London around the M25, and in the Midlands have all helped drive ERV growth, both in terms of letting activity, refurbishment activity. In some cases, we've surrendered space, we've been paid to take space back early, but overall that growth I think is really a positive 7% on these four key assets as opposed to the 6% across just the industrial sector.

In offices, that refurbishment program has been paying off. You hear a lot today about the London and the big six centers, but we've had space in the South East, in Colchester, where we've effectively let three out of four suites in a building; Chatham, where we surrendered space last year, have now just done two lettings; Manchester's been a bit tricky for us, but we have now just upgraded some of the space to provide a fully fitted space, which hopefully will make it easier to lease; and in Milton Keynes, we've had leasing success as we've upgraded the asset there.

In the retail and leisure portfolio, Carlisle was the asset where we restructured with a hotel occupier; Leeds, we took a unit back, re-leased ahead of the passing rent, ahead of ERV; and in Bristol, we've restructured some leases off lower rents, reflecting overrenting, but moving the lease lengths out, and again proving higher rental values than had been previously thought.

Just turning to a bit more detail on our reinvestment into the portfolio, as we've mentioned, this has been an area of focus during the year. We've continued to upgrade our assets to both retain and attract occupiers, and we've spent £8.8 million during the period, and of that about three-quarters of that has been spent on the five projects in the chart on this slide.

You'll see four of those in the office sector, again that's looking to unlock that reversion and manage occupancy, and also one project in Gloucester. I think the key point of note here is that all of those capex projects have really been linked to either occupier retention or new lettings, and that's a really key thing that we think about when we look at allocating capital.

We look at the risk on delivering on the return on cost, trying to link that spend to lease events is a really important part of the way we think about our capex. We've got a further £8 million committed across the programs.

Specifically in respect of our office assets, and clearly a key proportion of that refurbishment has been in the office part of the portfolio, we're now in a place where nearly 85% of our office assets have either been fully decarbonized, and by that I mean they run on electric, not gas, and also as part of those sort of works we've been upgrading occupier amenities, common areas, et cetera, et cetera, just to bring them up to what occupiers want today. Tied in with that, as Saira said, we have had leasing success as well, and you can see on the map there, we only have three assets now, one in Leeds and two in Scotland, where they run on gas rather than electric, and I think that's testament to the work that we've put in probably over the last 5 years or so to upgrade the underlying quality of assets in the portfolio, and we'll come on to that as we talk about sort of recent leasing successes.

A bit more detail on occupancy and key voids. Occupancy at the year-end was impacted by timings of key lease events during the year and across the portfolio.

If we look at our historic occupancy, actually overall at a portfolio level, our historic occupancy has been 92% compared to the 84% at the year-end, and 78% of our vacancy is less than 12 months old. If we look at that by sector, typically the blue dots, which represent retail and leisure, we typically expect to run that in the mid-90s, which has been aligned at year-end.

In industrials, we've run at 98%, 99% occupancy over the last 5 years, clearly at the year-end it was lower than that, and that's really as a result of the two lease events at Rushden and Radlett, which Michael will talk to. Similarly, offices, again timings of the lease events have impacted the year-end, and our refurbishment program has also meant that we're carrying slightly higher void as we refurbished the space ahead of re-letting.

The chart at the bottom I think shows quite nicely the area in hatched is where it's been vacant for more than a year, we have had some space in Manchester and Milton Keynes, and indeed Colchester that's had perhaps a longer void than we'd want, but equally, we've had leasing success in all of those assets in the year, and actually you can see where it's not hatched, those vacancies are really less than 12 months old, and as Saira said, we've got to refurbish space before we release it, but we don't see any key issues with any of those assets vis-à-vis a re-leasing perspective.

Moving on to outlook, we still believe there's a significant amount of upside through re-leasing the vacant space and also resetting rents to ERV. As Michael said, the net initial yield is 4.9% and reversionary yield of 7.5%, there's a big gap between those two, and we really see that in two buckets: the first one being the £8.8 million for letting our vacant space, and the bulk of that is really in those two industrial voids that Michael talked about.

The second part of the reversion is reversion through resetting market rents either at future rent reviews or future breaks or expiries. You can see the chart at the top with the shades of our sectors shows that the majority of that reversion, whether it's vacancy or future resetting of rents, sits within our industrial sector, which is a real sector that we're very comfortable with, and there's clear evidence that we can see in our lettings of being able to unlock that reversion.

If we look at the timing of the market resetting of rents looking forward, so that £4.4 million, what does that look like, when does it come in, you can see on the chart at the bottom that again there's a significant amount of that to come in in the next financial year, and also concentrated on our industrial assets. We think that's a real opportunity.

There's no point having reversion embedded in the portfolio if you can't unlock it and you're tied into very long lease lengths, we still believe this is a significant area of potential opportunity.

Bringing things sort of right up to date, alongside the actual annual report, we announced this morning sort of post-period end activity, and I think that's quite encouraging, especially recognizing some of the noise out there. We do have quite a lot of interest in our vacant space.

Saira mentioned, I think we've got £8.8 million of voids, but actually we've either got proposals out or are having negotiations across 5 out of that £8.8 million. Now, there's no guarantee that every single one of those proposals made is going to turn into an agreed letting, but I think actually just that level of interest perhaps maybe is contrary to how people might think the market is at the minute, we're very encouraged by that.

Within that £5 million, we've actually got in-principle terms agreed in respect of our second-largest void that came back in I think it was October last year. There's still a few finer details to work out.

It's quite a big upsize for that occupier, and there's a lot more to the transaction than just simply the property side of it, but we are very encouraged by that, so much so that we're sharing that with investors today. We've done a number of lettings in the industrial and office sectors since March, 2% ahead of this March's ERV, the fact that those terms are agreed higher than what the valuers had in this March I think is encouraging.

Then literally as of yesterday, we exchanged and completed on a small asset in Cardiff, and Saira mentioned that during the year we bought in the freehold of something that we already owned, it was a leasehold interest that we had bought off the council many years ago, and it formed part of, if some of we sold a building in Cardiff a couple of years ago for student accommodation, it was an office asset and we sold it to student. We kept this asset, we bought in the freehold, by buying in the freehold we could unlock a disposal to a developer, and we've sold that for £1.2 million at a material premium to the March valuation, which I think is encouraging.

Really to wrap up, I think as both a board and as an executive, we're focused on shareholder value. I think the portfolio is well-positioned.

Hopefully we've given you some encouraging signs around some of the leasing activity in the portfolio and how we might unlock that reversionary upside. The business is well-structured, we've got a low LTV, and we've got a good debt book.

In so far as the strategic review is concerned, it was announced in May of a proposed offer for the business. That's not yet a formal offer for the business, and as we work that further forward, we've been engaging with stakeholders, we will do as part of this annual results process, and obviously there's due diligence to resolve, et cetera, through the process, we will update the market as soon as we're able to on the progress of that.

I think I'm going to end there, Jake. Is that good?

Thank you, Jake. We have had a number of questions from people, and and I'd like to, personally thank you for submitting those questions.

A number of those questions relate to the strategic review and indeed the proposed offer. I am in a position where I I can't answer them, which does sound like a cop-out, but you you appreciate that we are somewhat restricted with what is in the public domain and where we are in in in the process.

The Takeover Code prohibits sort of providing specific information. I think what I would say is that anyone that has asked a question, those questions will be shared with the board, and the board will see that shareholder feedback, and as we move forward, that feedback will be taken on board.

I would like to thank anyone that has asked a question, but but you probably appreciate why why I'm not in a position to specifically answer. Like I say, thank you for those comments, and we will share I will make sure they're shared with the board.

I have had one that isn't about the strategic review, I will answer that. That is, it says, "To what extent is leasing demand today being driven by expansionary occupiers versus relocations and consolidations?"

That it's a good it's a really good question. I think probably there's a different answer in every single sector.

We see consolidation happening in offices, but people moving to better-quality space, better-quality locations. We equally see, we've had an office occupier that moved to Colchester, and that's that's a straight expansion, they're in the defense sector, and and and that's driving that.

In industrial, I think, everyone wants to use space efficiently, but good-quality space, we are seeing expansions from existing occupiers as well. I think relocations is an interesting one.

I think people only really want to relocate when they need better-quality space. It's expensive to move buildings, it's expensive in terms of fit-out, it's expensive in terms of double overheads, I think people are doing it for business reasons.

I think when you look at some of the activity that we've had, you might argue, is now the right time to be doing this? Actually what we've seen specifically, probably in the last 6 months, is I think people are somewhat frustrated with the macro position, be that UK politics, as I mentioned, what's been going on in the Middle East, and actually people just need to get on and run their businesses for what they need.

Actually it's it's really down to a local level that actually, if I can move, have better space for my staff, or actually just simply need the space from a logistics perspective, then I'll go ahead and do it. I think we're seeing both expansion and consolidation, but it's very company-specific at the minute, is is my answer to that, which I hope is helpful.

Firstly, thank you all for joining today and taking the time to listen to us. I should say that a copy of this presentation is on our website, there's a video on our website, and as at this morning, the full copy of our annual report and accounts is on the website if anyone wants to look into that in any more detail.

I think it's fair to say that there's lots of good things going on within the business, and the team is resolutely focused in ensuring that we deliver on those for shareholders alongside everything else that we have going on. Thank you for your support, and thank you for listening.