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Andrew Coombs: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to today's presentation of Sirius Real Estate's Interim Results for the Period Ending September 2025. My name is Andrew Coombs. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Sirius Group, and I'm joined this morning by Chris Bowman, who is the Group Chief Financial Officer of Sirius Real Estate. Together, we will take you through this morning's presentation. As you all know, we are an on-balance sheet, best-in-class owner and operator of mixed-use light industrial business parks on the edge of key towns in Germany and the United Kingdom. Please remember that Sirius operates in both the German and the U.K. markets under the brand of Sirius in Germany and BizSpace in the U.K. The group currently operates over EUR 3 billion of property, 90% of which is wholly owned by the group. This consists of 160 sites in total, 77 in the U.K., 76 in Germany and 7 sites within the Titanium joint venture in Germany. Let's now turn to Page 4 and look at the highlights for the period. The Sirius Group is a rigorous, well-run and very importantly, growing organization. We have proved the resilience and the reliability of the business model during COVID, during the gas crisis in Germany and most recently, through a period of rising interest rates in Europe and the U.K., during which we have successfully protected valuations in spite of yield expansion. In that time, we have continuously, without exception, grown our revenues. We have continually, without exception, increased our dividend payments. And as I said, we have made sure that the value of our properties goes up, not down. In the period to September '25, we successfully grew like-for-like rent roll by more than 5%. And as a result of the acquisitions in the period, we have grown the total rent roll by more than 15%. We have done this by maintaining occupancy in Germany and increasing it by just over 1% in the U.K. And we've increased like-for-like pricing in both markets by more than 4%. As a result of this, we are announcing a dividend of EUR 0.0318, which at per share level is a year-on-year increase of 4%. So let me now ask you to turn to Page 5, and Chris will take us through the income statement.
Chris Bowman: Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everybody. As Andrew said, over the next 4 pages, I will run through some of the highlights of the P&L and also the balance sheet, just picking out some of the key items. So on Page 5, just starting at the top, very pleased that the -- that increasing like-for-like rent roll of 5.2% has underpinned growth in rental income of 7.7% for the first half versus the first half last year. So you can see there, we've achieved EUR 112.6 million of rental income. That has translated to a 4.9% increase in net operating income. As I've mentioned in the past, as we have acquired assets, we're in acquisition mode, very active acquisition mode. As we've acquired assets, some of those assets tend to have higher service charge leakage than in our existing core portfolio. So there is a small drag, which we turn around relatively quickly on service charge costs that you can see there. That is obviously upside for the future to come through. Looking down at EBITDA, you can see of that 7.7% top line, we've achieved 9.7% increase in EBITDA. So very pleased to achieve some operating leverage there. As we grow the asset base, and we grow the income base, we are keeping a very tight control of our costs and to then improve our margins. Specifically within that corporate costs and overheads dropping from 24.8% to 22.7%. We have been very careful from a headcount perspective and found efficiencies. We've also tightened up and had various initiatives internally to improve our cash collection that has allowed us to be tighter on provisioning and again, has provided upside there. Moving on. I'm going to be -- unfortunately, I'm going to continue to talk about headwinds of finance cost, unfortunately, for the next 2 or 3 years. We do have the finance cost headwind that we continue to outrun. So you can see there our net finance expense goes from EUR 6.3 million to EUR 9.4 million, and -- but still, we more than have outrun that with the growth in -- at the EBITDA level to achieve an FFO, up 6.6% of EUR 64.7 million. As I think those of you know us already, FFO is what we -- is our core target in the business. It's the cash flow, it's the profitability of the business that we really focus on. We are an operationally focused business. We are not trying to guess the property markets or play valuation yields. We're focused on providing profits -- growing profits to provide growing dividends. So very pleased to achieve that 6.6% increase in FFO. I've included the detail all the way down to profit after tax on this page because there are three items that I think need further explanation. One, headwind, and two, tailwinds. So within the foreign exchange, you can see there EUR 14.3 million, there is a EUR 14.2 million of that is what is classed as a realized FX loss, which relates to sterling cash balances, which we held at the beginning of the period in anticipation of that cash being placed into U.K. assets -- U.K. investments. So it was a very busy first half for acquisitions. We acquired over EUR 200 million worth of property in the U.K. We held the appropriate level of cash in sterling to do that. When that cash converted from the cash line into the investment properties line, it was mark-to-market at the FX at that moment. So it is -- unfortunately, it does all flow all the way through EPRA earnings. So you'll see it, but it is a one-off, and I'll happily take questions further on that. On the upside, we have EUR 14.4 million of valuation gain. So that is purely for the first half. I would expect to achieve better than that in the second half. But again, that's with virtually no yield contraction. We'll come on and talk about later. That's really valuing the increase in rent roll that we've achieved. And then further down the page, you can see the profit after tax is materially up 56.8% at EUR 87 million. And part of the fiscal stimulus that Germany is -- has enacted is the reduction in the corporation tax rate from 15% to 10%. That goes down by 1% a year from 2028. What that means is that our deferred tax liabilities on the gains in our property portfolio reduce. So you can see there's a EUR 29.8 million reduction in deferred tax liabilities that flows through the P&L and hence drives that profit after tax number up. Going over the page to Page 6, just reflecting that on a per share basis. We have the EUR 98 million of NOI converts to EUR 0.0652 per share. These numbers all still have the impact of the additional shares that came into the share count from July '24 equity raise. So prior year, there was a weighted average number of shares, now this is on the full number of shares that is outstanding. And the interest and current tax equates together to EUR 10.8 million. That's a EUR 0.72 cost line gets us to the EUR 0.043 of FFO. Below the FFO line, really the thing I would flag is that EUR 14.2 million foreign currency translation that then has an impact on the adjusted earnings and EPRA earnings, but as I say, is noncash. If you look at our cash flow statement, our operating cash flow broadly correlates with the FFO. We have paid out in dividend EUR 0.0318 or proposing to pay out EUR 0.0318, as Andrew said, up 4%. That equates to a 74% payout ratio for the first half. That will start to transition down going forward, and we will settle around 70% payout ratio in the next 3 to 4 years as we go through the financing windows. On to Page 7, just looking at the balance sheet. At the top line, you can see that our investment properties have increased by EUR 300 million. So within that, you have the EUR 295 million of acquisitions that we actually completed on in the period. You've got EUR 14.4 million of valuation gain across the group and then a disposal of some smaller sites in the U.K. is the balance. The cash balance has come down to EUR 424.9 million, of which EUR 389 million is ours, excluding the deposits of tenants. The EUR 179.9 million movement is net of the bond tax that we did in the period of EUR 105 million. And then on the bottom half of the balance sheet, really, the only thing to flag there is that the debt outstanding is at EUR 1.416 billion. Bear in mind that we have the repayment of the June '26 bond coming up for EUR 400 million, hence, why the cash balances are relatively inflated and also the debt balance is relatively inflated as well, but those two net each other off. Just a reminder, we also put in place EUR 150 million RCF during the period, which provides that liquidity to repay that debt. Looking down NAV, reported NAV is up 0.8%, benefiting from that valuation gain. Adjusted NAV is down 0.9%, roughly EUR 0.011. Again, there is a foreign exchange unrealized currency translation there of EUR 29 million, which in simple terms is just converting our U.K. assets into our reporting currency of euros. Bear in mind that if you then convert the entire NAV back to sterling, our sterling is up on a sterling base -- our NAV is up. On to Page 8, just quickly just running through the waterfall of NAV from EPRA at each end from March to September. I think EPRA NAV going from EUR 117.6, we target ourselves on adjusted NAV, EUR 118.89. As I say, the EUR 0.02 headwind is the unrealized FX of EUR 29 million. We achieved EUR 27.5 million recurring profit after tax in Germany. We had EUR 17.7 million upside in valuation in the German portfolio as well as then EUR 19 million of profit after tax in the U.K., which is EUR 1.27, a small valuation loss after CapEx of EUR 2.2 million in the U.K. Net of the dividend gets you back down to EUR 117.84. So really, the delta in there, the movement is the FX, which without the FX, we would have been up in NAV terms. I'll hand over to Andrew on Page 9.
Andrew Coombs: So Page 9 deals with the organic growth in Germany. And just before I delve into the numbers, let me give you a little bit of the narrative because if I cast my mind back to the beginning of the period, the first quarter of this financial year, so April starting quarter, it's easy to forget that the German government had only just taken power in April of this year. And I think it's probably fair to say that the new government was still establishing itself and certainly hadn't gained any momentum at that point. And we certainly felt that in the trading. The first quarter of this year in Germany was a tough quarter. We made our numbers, but the effort and the workload that we had to put in to achieve that was certainly much greater than it normally is. We saw the momentum start to establish itself in the second quarter. And I'm pleased to tell you the 6 weeks following the end of the period, we very much feel that, that momentum is gathering pace. I would describe Germany, at the moment, is in a transitionary phase. And it's quite confusing because when you look at numbers like the numbers on German manufacturing, you don't see any substantial increase at this point in time. Lots of people, therefore, turn around and say, what's happening in Germany and are things good in Germany. What we see on the ground is we see reorganization. So we see factories stopping production. We see things being reorganized. And they're typically being reorganized towards defense. But the problem right now is that you have to stop producing what you produce in your factory in order to strip it out and prepare the production lines to produce defense-related items. And that's what I mean by a transitionary phase. And that's why the production numbers are going down. But what is happening is the preparation is being laid for -- in a couple of quarters' time, those production lines to be up and running and operating not just one shift as we often see here in the U.K., but typically a continental shift pattern of three shifts every 24 hours, at least six days a week. So what we believe is that Germany is preparing to substantially increase its output. We've seen this before in previous years. We've seen it where they've used in the past, furlough or kurzarbeit as they call it in Germany, where suddenly what happens is the economy appears to flip. Some have called it in the past, the German economic miracle. It's no miracle at all. It's Germans preparing before they flip the switch. That is exactly what we see happening in Germany at the moment. And in that period, what we were able to do is we were able to grow the like-for-like rent roll by EUR 7.2 million, so 5.3%. We were also able to increase the overall annualized rent roll by 12%. But the difference between that 5.3% and the 12% is, of course, acquisitions. We were able to increase pricing by 4.7%. Would you believe it? That's a little bit more than we wanted to do. We are in an occupancy-led strategy here. What that means is that we want to control our pricing to about 4% and get the rest of the effect out of increase in occupancy. When you've got a workforce who've been used to putting prices up, not only do you have to get your processes and your systems to do the right thing, you've got to get people to do what is the opposite of what we've been asking them to do for years, which is put prices up by less. And actually, in that regard, we slightly failed because our occupancy remained constant and price, we were aiming for 4%, price nearly hit 5%. You can see that in doing that, what we did is we had to lower our move-in rate, and what we achieved was a move-in rate that was just marginally higher than the move-out rate. So move-in at EUR 7.66 versus move-out at EUR 7.52. But all of that was successful in lifting the underlying like-for-like rate per square meter in the portfolio as a whole from EUR 7.38 per square meter per month to EUR 7.73 per square meter per month. So a delicate balance largely due to the first quarter, but successful in as much as we continue to push rate up in the portfolio. And in doing so, we've been able to make sure that we at least maintain our occupancies. We go across the page, and we look at that rent roll movement, you can see the EUR 7.2 million is reflected in the difference between EUR 135.3 million and EUR 142.5 million. What we faced was EUR 19.5 million of move-outs and the way in which we compensated for that was really the EUR 6.2 million of CapEx-assisted move-ins together with the EUR 14.1 million like-for-like move-ins. Those two gave us a total of EUR 20.3 million, so EUR 800,000 above the move-out effect. And then the uplifts, the pricing at 4.7% gave us 6.4%, and that 6.4% together with the 0.8% gets you to the 7.2%. But really, the exciting thing is those acquisitions in the right-hand column. And bear in mind, the last EUR 40 million of acquisitions in Germany that completed only last week, not included in these numbers. But what you've got is you've got over EUR 9 million of second half effect to come from those acquisitions. That EUR 9 million will build closer to EUR 10 million. So that's a EUR 20 million annualized effect that's going to bake through into next year's numbers. Now half of it will get eradicated by increased interest rate, and Chris will talk about that. But we've got sufficient acquisitive growth here to be able to deal with the increased interest and still have EUR 10 million of FFO growth. Put on top of that, the 5% organic growth. And I hope what you can see is rather than using interest rate increases as an excuse to go backwards, what we've been able to do through careful planning and careful execution over the last 18 months is put ourselves in a position where we can outgrow next year's problem. If I go across to the following page, we can talk about valuations. So the first thing that I would draw your attention to is on the right-hand side above the total assets black headline, net yield shift of 1 bp. That shift is the yield coming in, not going out. Why the valuers would have bought us in by 1 bp, I cannot imagine, but I would suggest it is a signal. And the signal is clearly that the direction of travel is that the yield is shifting in, in Germany, not out. Clearly, it's made very little, if any, difference because we started in March '25 with a valuation of EUR 1.890 billion, and we get to September '25 on EUR 1.921 billion, clearly, a EUR 31 million shift there. That EUR 31 million shift comes from EUR 2.3 million of additional rent roll valued at a gross yield of 7.4%. And what you can see in the bottom right-hand corner of this page is you can see after the acquisitions that we're talking about have been made, the yield at a gross level goes up slightly and the capital value per square meter goes down. That is because we are buying vacancy. That is because we are buying lesser quality rent roll because that is exactly our runway to put our machine across the top of it and improve it. So the reason that you are seeing that gross yield go out is because of the opportunity that we're buying and the belief that we can do something with that opportunity by putting it over our platform. If I go across to the inquiry stats, what we can see here is the number of sales, the number of customers we have acquired is 3% down. The sales volume that we've acquired compared to same period last year is 2.5% down. However, what we are pleased about is sales conversion is at 14.6%, up from 12.8% and close to our long chased target of 15% sales conversion. We are at last beginning to hit those numbers on a regular basis. What this shows is it shows the pain in quarter 1 of the first half, and it shows our ability to work the platform harder in the form of sales conversion in order to make what we've got count and drop more frequently to the bottom line. So this reflects the first quarter, but it also reflects the strength of the platform to deal with issues as and when they arise. If we go across to some of the acquisitions, I'm not going to go through every single one because they've been covered previously in lots of different announcements. But I draw your attention to Dresden. Dresden is, we think, one of Germany's best kept secrets. Silicon Saxony, where there is the most incredible amount of inward and foreign investment going in. Tim Lecky and I were in Dresden a few weeks ago. What did we count something like 17 cranes on the horizon and not 17 static cranes, 17 working cranes within the eye line in Silicon Saxony building things. Lubeck. Lubeck is in the area that benefits from the biggest infrastructure spend that is currently going on in Germany. And if we go across the page, we see Dresden again, no surprise. And we see Feldkirchen on the right, just outside Munich. This is an asset where 1/3 of the rent roll is a defense supplier, a defense supplier who specializes in the manufacture and development of optical devices, most notably night vision technologies for the military. If I go across to Page 15, let me hand across or hand over to Chris.
Chris Bowman: Thanks, Andrew. And so just on Page 15, I just thought it would be good to update everyone on the current status of the portfolio and also on the next 2 pages on CapEx as well. Really, Page 15, I think, is the kind of secret sauce in Sirius for the growth of Sirius. That is how do we take the Sirius platform, put it to work on our property portfolio and take assets which have value creation opportunity and capitalize on that value. How do we create that value for shareholders? Now we break down our portfolio into the 2 buckets of value-add and mature. You can see there that the -- roughly speaking, it's 1/3 mature, 2/3 value add. And really, the value-add piece is the piece where we go to work on these assets to essentially try and mature them to try and put them into the mature bucket. And what -- why do we do that? We do that because of the opportunity to drive value. So you can see the average yield -- gross yield is 6.8% on our mature assets, 7.9% on our value add. Importantly, the gap between net and gross yield, the leakage on service charge is 90 bps on value add versus 30 bps on mature and also how the valuers then value that greater income and better performance. On average, we are at EUR 1,277 capital value per square meter in the mature versus EUR 868 in the value add. You can see what we have to achieve to get from one to the other in terms of occupancy, on average, 78.9% versus 94% and also the upside from rate. So by improving our assets that have this opportunity in them, we get many benefits, not only additional rent roll, but how -- but also then better net operating income because better management in terms of property expenses. We get valued better by the valuers. And obviously, we've achieved higher rate as we improve the quality of the site as well. It becomes an ever-improving cycle essentially on those assets as we improve them. Now we have overall 336,000 square meters of vacancy to power the growth in the business. On average, we typically look to improve roughly 100,000 square meters a year. That links into our CapEx plans each year. And so you have at least a 3-year runway of growth in the business. And obviously, as we're acquisitive at the moment, we are continually replenishing that opportunity. Over the page, just looking at where we are really putting capital to work to help on that journey from value-add to mature. In the first half, we have invested EUR 18.6 million in our CapEx programs, roughly split 2/3 Germany, 1/3 U.K. The value-add CapEx is that piece of the pie that really generates the high returns. We put a minimum 30% return on investment. So that's cash return on what we spend. So we're looking for a 3-year payback on incremental rental income from all of our value-add CapEx spend. You can see again, it's split roughly 2/3 Germany, 1/3 U.K. On the right-hand side, you can see some of the pictures of where we've actually put that capital to work. Bottom right, Vantage Point, when the range -- when we moved the range out of Vantage Point, essentially, there was three large halls left for us to tackle. We have already refurbished one of those halls. We put EUR 1.5 million of CapEx into that hall, and we have let it to Big Doug, which was an existing tenant on the site. I think for those of you who have been to Vantage Point, I remember we visited them before they were moving into the new space. Pleased to say they have now moved in. And the effect of that EUR 1.5 million spend allowed us to achieve double the rate on that space that it previously was achieving. New builds, we are in a cycle here where we have just finished the new builds at Gartenfeld. So on the top right there, you can see 1 of the 3 halls we built at Gartenfeld. So just EUR 800,000 went into just final completion of that hall. We've rented all three of those halls at Gartenfeld at far better rates than we expected. And then from a works perspective, just under EUR 10 million spend on works. So we keep a very, very tight lid on our -- that's essentially the maintenance CapEx. That's often the likes of renewing lifts, for instance, that type of spend. But within there, there is EUR 2 million of spend on ESG, which is principally PV solar in Germany as well as EUR 2 million in the U.K., which relates to EPCs and our continuing drive towards C and B. Over the page, Page 17, just to -- I've rolled this forward essentially. So I'm looking back over the last three years, what is our spend, and how are we performing. We have put 293,000 square meters of vacancy. We have put CapEx into value-add CapEx. That equates to EUR 31 million of spend, on average, EUR 106 per square meter. So this is not what I'd describe as kind of high-risk CapEx. We're not -- as a norm, we're not completely rebuilding or knocking down space. We are typically refurbishing space. The most complicated it tends to get is subdivision and the fire safety regulations that come with that. But it's very much low-risk and low-cost refurbishment. We've achieved EUR 12.7 million of rent improvement of that. So -- and at the moment, the occupancy is 74%. That continues to build as the CapEx we've spent in the most recent period, some of that space continues to be let up. And we're achieving rates of EUR 4.91, which gives us a return on investment of 41% cash return. Just conscious of time, move on to Slide 18. As I say, new builds, we have just come to the end of the A, B and C halls at Gartenfeld, and I would highlight that we've achieved a yield on cost there of 9% on a site which is valued at 5.5%. So obviously, as that income is valued at 5.5%, we've achieved 21% IRR on those developments, which is on surplus land at Gartenfeld. In the pipeline, there is an additional EUR 25 million of projects. That's spread across. There's a site in Dresden -- there's two sites in Dresden where we have opportunity for development. And there is also another space at Gartenfeld as well where there is further development. I'll hand back to Andrew to talk about U.K.
Andrew Coombs: Okay. I've got switching to U.K. mode now and think about the U.K. picture, which is a different picture from the picture I described in Germany. So let's start firstly with the annualized rent roll. The annualized rent roll, which obviously benefited from acquisitions. Many of you have seen Hartlebury, was up 21%. 5.1% of that comes from the like-for-like rent roll. And as you can see, what happened here was we were more successful in convincing our sales force to be able to lower price and in doing so, raise occupancy by 1.2%. However, you've got a slightly different situation here with your move-ins and your move-outs. We actually dipped below the move-out rate on the move-ins, but we were still successful in that equation in terms of lifting the like-for-like underlying rate in the portfolio by 4.1%, namely from 14.38p (sic) [ GBP 14.38 ] per square foot to GBP 14.97. How did we do that? Well, we did that with our expansion initiatives. As you can see, what happened is we had 344,000 square foot move out, 302,000 move in. But what we were also able to do is to work the existing base of customers to get some of them to take more space and some of them to take more products. So we've had to work very hard here in the U.K. in order to be able to get that 1% of occupancy and also to be able to not just maintain, but increase price by at least 4%. That 4% is important because we know inflation in the U.K. isn't as much as 4% at the moment, but it could be soon. And we don't want to be caught out by that. We don't want to be trying to catch the inflation. We want to make sure that we are in a process in the U.K., where we're always ahead of inflation in terms of the way in which we manage that rent roll of customers. So rate per square foot is up by 4.1%. Move-outs are at GBP 18.44, which is 57p or 3% lower than the move-outs. That's had about a 1% overall effect because your new business affects about 1/3 of your total. It's your renewals that affect typically the other 2/3. And what we're seeing in the U.K. in contrast to Germany is we're seeing the U.K. get harder. Germany is getting easier. U.K. is getting harder. We are not panicking about that. We believe that the platform in the U.K. is now well enough developed and strong enough to be able to overcome that market effect, and that's exactly what you're seeing in the figures on this page in front of you now. If we look at the way it's built, you can see GBP 59.3 million rent roll moves in September '25 to GBP 60.4 million. You can see that the move-outs and move-ins that the move-outs are not quite covered by the move-ins. But look, that pricing uplift of GBP 3.8 million becomes so, so important because that's what gives you the final edge. And then if you look at acquisitions, GBP 14.4 million coming from acquisitions. As you know, in the last 6 months, the acquisitions have been slightly more weighted to the U.K. than Germany. That will change now going forward. We are going to be looking at a predominantly German-only effort, at least until May, June of next year. If we have a look at what that looks like in a valuation perspective, net yield shift of 4 bps. Well, that's going out, not coming in. So again, the 4 bps don't really make much difference, but the signal from the values is that -- in the U.K. yields continue to widen. If we look at the bottom right-hand corner and you see the assets being included not just on a like-for-like basis, but the acquisitions that have been made in the period, you see the opposite to what I described in Germany. You see a gross yield coming in to 12.3%. At March 25, it was 14.1%. And you see the net yield coming in from 9.5% to 8.8%. That is reflective of the quality of assets we've been buying in the U.K. When you think about Hartlebury, when you think about Vantage, when you think about Chalcroft, I could go on. We have consistently been buying higher quality assets than the assets we inherited when we bought the business. They typically have longer lease lengths. That's not long lease lengths. That's longer lease lengths. So what we're doing in the acquisition program that we've conducted thus far in the U.K. that we are going to be pausing on until at least June of next year. What we've done is actively gone out to increase the overall quality of the portfolio, and that's reflected by what you see in the bottom right-hand corner. If we go across the page, what we can see in the U.K. is we've been able to attract more inquiries. A little bit deceiving there because we're not passive. It's not like we just sit there and say, what does the market give us in inquiries. We have worked much, much harder to acquire more inquiries that we've -- then been able to convert into sales. Please don't look at these numbers and think U.K. market is going up, because this lead flow reflects what is happening when you just passively sit there and try and collect whatever the market gives you. These numbers are misleading if you read them like this. We have had to work a lot harder to increase that inquiry flow in the U.K. If we go across to the acquisitions, I've talked about Hartlebury in the middle here. Bedford on the left-hand side, interesting enough, 1/3 of the rent roll in Bedford is underpinned by a company that manufactures parts for ejector seats for the defense industry. In fact, they make parts for the ejector seats in the F-35, Typhoon Eurofighter. So when you see these orders being announced by U.K. defense industry, that factory is one of the beneficiary of those orders. Chalcroft, I'm delighted to tell you that we've had very strong interest from a major supermarket. So Chalcroft next door to it has got hundreds of new houses currently being built. And we're in advanced discussions with a major supermarket to develop on the front land of that site, one of the big four supermarkets to serve that residential area. So call that a stroke of luck, call it whatever you like, but that's going to be quite good for us. Let me hand over to Chris.
Chris Bowman: So I don't intend to -- just on Page 24, I won't go through these line by line, but I think the highlights, obviously, on -- in aggregate, we have acquired an 8.1% gross yield. You've seen earlier that our existing portfolio is valued around 7.4, 7.5, and in aggregate, we have acquired EUR 338 million, of which EUR 295 million completed in the period. Feldkirchen just at the bottom there in November, completed last week. So that is also now on balance sheet. I think if you look at timing, then just to reiterate Andrew's point earlier, the majority of these acquisitions actually completed towards the end of the first half. So really, that annualized rental income of EUR 25.8 million has yet to actually flow through into the P&L, but there is significant growth to come through, which is in the tank for future periods. On the disposals, Pfungstadt, we have notarized the recycling of that asset, EUR 30 million in Germany, that completes at the end of this financial year, so at the end of March for EUR 30 million. Just to head off, I'm sure I got a question on Tyseley, why have we sold an asset in Tyseley at 16.6% gross yield. There was also significant maintenance cost there and getting straight to the point, it needed a new roof, which would have been an additional EUR 3 million spend. So from a business planning perspective, it made sense to realize that asset at this time. And it's also linked to the continued consolidation of the U.K. portfolio. We're just looking to exit some of the non-core smaller assets, and you'll continue to see us do that. Page 25.
Andrew Coombs: Okay, folks. So just before I introduce Page 5 (sic) [ Page 25, ] let me remind you that we are currently within our stated mission to get to EUR 150 million. And according to consensus, we should get there at the end of the '28 year. We obviously want to do it earlier, but we should get there at the end of the '28 year. Now if you look at this page on the left-hand side, it picks stuff up at the end of the financial year last year, so March '25, when we did EUR 123 million of FFO. As you know, consensus is that we'll do north of EUR 133 million this year, and we are trading in line with those expectations. So when you come out of this year at EUR 133 million, looking at doing something beginning with EUR 140 million next year, you then need to start thinking beyond your EUR 150 million goal. There is no point in a long-term business like property or wait until you get there and then go, let's pause, congratulate ourselves, start again after we've had a holiday and a bit of a break because you lose the momentum. You've got to start thinking far enough ahead about what you do now that determines your result in 3 years' time. Think about it, we buy a property now. And in some cases, it becomes -- you really get into the value add next year. But in a lot of cases, it takes 2 or 3 years to get into that sweet spot of value creation. And therefore, unless you're thinking about it now, you're not going to be there in 3 years' time. So it should be no surprise that now that we are in the EUR 133 million a year, moving into the EUR 140 million-something a year, that what we do is we start to plan beyond the EUR 150 million. And this is not just for shareholders. This is internally in the company. We are having meetings with people, and we're saying, what's next? Are we properly resourced? Do we have the right sites? So what you're seeing for the first time on this page is you're seeing us publicly talk about the next leg of the journey. Now beyond the EUR 150 million, the ambition will be EUR 200 million. But the first leg of the journey from EUR 150 million to EUR 200 million will be the leg to EUR 175 million, and that's what you see laid out here. And one of the things that you should take great comfort from is if you look at that pillar that says EUR 40 million, well, half of that is already done. Half of that has been executed, closed off, in the bag, in our control. What we need to focus on is the other half of it. And this EUR 175 million, when we get to this EUR 175 million, this should be driving a dividend at roughly a 70% payout ratio, a dividend that's somewhere in the region of about EUR 0.075. So at the moment, we're heading towards EUR 0.064. This EUR 175 million takes you to EUR 0.075. Now it does matter the detail of how you get there. But at the moment, it kind of doesn't because at the moment, it's about the aspiration. It's about the mindset. It's about the shape of your thinking to be pushing towards that EUR 175 million, to be able to realize the value creation and the value benefits that come from that. And that's why we're laying it out in public because we've already started to talk about it internally and plan for it. But what you should take some comfort from is the mindset of this company is to grow. And in spite of the headwinds that Chris has spoken about, those headwinds are not a reason for us to stop. They are a reason for us to accelerate. They are a reason for us to expand our thinking because if we're going to achieve the growth trajectory that we're used to, we need to think beyond the problem of the finance headwinds, which I hope we've demonstrated thus far, we are capable of overcoming. Let me turn to the next page and let Chris take you through financing.
Chris Bowman: So yes, just on Page 26, just on financing, just as a reminder, on the balance sheet, we have EUR 1.21 billion of unsecured borrowings. That is in 3 bonds. So June '26, EUR 400 million comes due. That is essentially refinanced. We have the cash plus RCF to be able to repay that, and we have that cash earmarked for that. So that is done. November '28, we have EUR 465 million outstanding at a 1.75%. That is our last refinancing of what I call legacy debt. It's been great. It's been fantastic, but we need to take that journey back up to market. So EUR 465 million comes due in November '28. I would guide you now to we will refinance that in autumn of '27. And that is factored into all of our forecasting, et cetera, to still outrun that, still grow FFO and get through that journey. January '32, we have EUR 350 million outstanding at 4%. That was a bond we issued in January this year for which we had around EUR 2 billion of demand. So we've got great support from the debt capital markets. And obviously, we also tapped the '28 bond in the summer for EUR 105 million. Again, great support for that issuance. We do remain below a benchmark issuer. So we're having investment-grade rating that was reaffirmed by Fitch. But in the bond markets, over EUR 500 million gets you to benchmark issuer size. The reason I flagged that is because at the point that we become a benchmark issuer, you should expect our marginal cost to start coming in a little bit as well as we essentially become an issuer that investors need to look at as we go into those indices. On the secured side, EUR 232 million with Berlin Hyp and Deutsche pbb that is secured out to 2030 on a portfolio of German assets at 4.25%. Net LTV is up at 38.3% at the period end, reflecting the acquisition activity during the period. Interest cover over 4.5x. Net debt- to-EBITDA 6.7x, well below 8x where we target. As I say, we also signed a EUR 150 million RCF in the period with BNP, HSBC and ABN AMRO. There is an accordion feature in there to be able to increase it by another EUR 100 million. I have verbal indications of wanting to do that from banks. So we are in a strong position liquidity-wise. And as well, as I said, we have a bond tap in the period. Page 27. I'll just summarize before handing over to Andrew to conclude. So I think what have we seen in this period, we've seen fantastic strong organic growth as well as acquisitive growth that is in the tank, which has partly come through in the period, but will really start to accelerate our performance in the second half and beyond. So 6.6% FFO growth, underpinned by that 5.2% like-for-like rent roll, but the 15.2% increase in total rent roll gives you the marker as to where we are heading. U.K. and Germany, both performing well as discussed. And acquisitions, we've touched on. We've increased the dividend by 4%. That is ahead of expectations. I think the market was only expecting between 1% and 2%. I think you should take that as a sign of confidence from Andrew and I and also our Board in the future performance of this company. We want to continue to focus on generating cash flow, which we reward shareholders with through dividends. So I'd guide you to that kind of level of increase going forward as well. We're in a strong position on the balance sheet side, EUR 389 million of unrestricted cash plus the RCF that's undrawn, 38% LTV, and we've touched on the bond and RCF earlier. I'll hand over to Andrew on 28.
Andrew Coombs: Okay. So really, the sort of second and third point here are all about the 5% growth. I just want to sort of cover something that I think is quite important because the group continues to trade in line with management expectations for the full year, but the cynics around the table might possibly look at the 5.2% like-for-like growth and compare it to the same period last year at 5.5% and think actually, it's less than it was this time last year. And of course, factually, you'd be absolutely correct. I wouldn't draw a great deal from that at all because when we say that we're trading in line with expectations, we mean we're trading in line with expectations. And I would draw your attention to the half year in 2022, where in the first half of the year, we achieved 2.4% like-for-like growth. But what actually happened when we looked at the full year is we came out at nearly 6.5%. What we always do is try and make sure that our problems are stacked into the first half. If we have a lease that is a big move-out that's due to go on March 31st, we'll try and push it years before it happens into April. When we're signing something new, if we know that it's a high proportion of a site, we will tend to make sure that the lease can only terminate in the first half of the year. We deliberately try and stack our problems into the first half to get a better and accelerating run in the second half. And if you look historically at our performance in H2 versus H1, you will see time and time again that our momentum accelerates in the second half. We would plan to be somewhere in between that 6% to 7% like-for-like for the year, probably somewhere around the midrange of that. Please do not think that because we're 5.2% this year and 5.5% last year, that there is some kind of slowing effect here. That is not what we are seeing, particularly given the momentum that we're anticipating in Germany. We accept things are going to get more difficult in the U.K., but we believe that will be balanced out in Germany. And please let's not forget that what we have done here in this last 6 months is not just gone out and acquired EUR 340 million of property, but we have continued to operate the company and do so well with a decent set of numbers. So one has not distracted the other. We have demonstrated the ability of the portfolio to do both and to do both well. And what I'd like to finish on is the 10-year track record of performance and growth where this company is concerned, and particularly at the top, the dividend, where we are now paying our 24th consecutive increase in dividend. And as Andrew Jones would say, dividend aristocracy is, I think, 25 years of progressively increasing dividend. We are now reaching the halfway point on that journey. Thank you very much. Happy to answer any questions people may have.
Timothy Leckie: Tim Leckie, Panmure Liberum. Just two questions. I think one for Andrew, one for Chris. Andrew, the 15% sales conversion from inquiries, what's behind that? Is 15% the number you -- is that a final point, or do we push on? What is your thinking there? And then after that, for Chris, you mentioned the margin improvement once you hit the EUR 500 million. Could you just perhaps remind us where you see your current spread, and what the improvement might be at that higher volume?
Andrew Coombs: So when we consistently get to 15%, yes, we definitely will push higher. When I started this company, sales conversion was less than 3%. And when we started to target over 10%, there was almost rebellion because people said it's impossible. We're now touching 15%. And once we get above 15%, that target will increase. How have we done that? Well, we've done that by working out the component parts that make up sales conversion. And despite it not being broken, taking them apart, dismantling them and looking at every individual piece and working out how we can do it better. And specifically, the piece that we are doing better that is improving our sales conversion is self-storage. And what we have worked out, and I'm not suggesting that we worked out a better way of selling self-storage and self-storage specialists, not at all. But we have worked out a better way of doing it than we've been doing it in the past. And that is beginning to have a material difference on the overall sales conversion of everything we sell.
Chris Bowman: Chris here, on the margin, if I just take 5 years -- 5-year money, for instance, in the bond market, we are -- because we are sub-benchmark and the margin has tended to move around a little bit in the range of 160 to 190, and it's been particularly volatile over the last week or 2, given macro. I think the opportunity for us once we're into benchmark is to be at least probably 10 basis points tighter, but also less volatile. So -- and we will, I would expect, start to come in towards the lower end of that margin range. So that's the margin over 5-year swaps.
Thomas Musson: It's Tom Musson at Berenberg. Yes, just again, a question on conversion as it relates to the U.K. business, which I think is slightly under 9%. Have you got the same 15% conversion target for the U.K. as well? And is sort of achieving that a realistic prospect over time, or are there perhaps any sort of structural differences between the platforms, and how they operate in the two different geographies? And then the second question, now that the U.K. business is larger and so FX becomes more of a consideration, would you consider using hedging instruments going forward?
Andrew Coombs: I take the first part if you take the second. So firstly, the U.K. business has a 10% target. We didn't get to 15% from 3% in Germany by saying the target is 15%. We got there in incremental steps, and we broke the journey down. And we're into the journey to 10% with the U.K. business. The U.K. market is a different market from the German market. The U.K. market is more intermediated. And from that perspective, getting control of initial inquiry is more competitive than it is in Germany. But interestingly enough, the U.K. inquiry market is changing, and it's changing faster than it's changing in Germany. And it's changing specifically and faster because of the use of AI. So what other operators may or may not realize is 25% of the property-based Google traffic of 12 months ago is now going through AI. And what that means is that a broker's life, particularly a web broker, is much, much harder. What that means is whereas web brokers used to spend time talking to customers, customers are spending much less time talking to brokers and more time talking to AI. And when I say talking, I mean talking. Instead of typing and tapping into a screen, people are talking to their phones and the AI mechanisms are bringing back the kind of conversation that normally would have happened in a call center broker-type environment. So that whole thing in the U.K. is shifting. The only piece that isn't shifting is pay-per-click, PPC, because AI is not touching PPC at the moment because it's not tried to monetize itself. And what you really need to be doing if you are a smart operator that wants to keep control of your inquiry flow is you need to start understanding this because this is now moving, and it's changing the passage of an inquiry, particularly inquiries for flexible space, an inquiry that instead of going through a web broker is going through, not in every case, but in 1 in 4 cases, going through AI. And you've got to work out how you deal with that because that is going to change the marketplace. So of course, we're concerned about getting to 10%, et cetera. But actually, in the U.K., what we're more concerned about is how we continue to capture inquiries because prospective inquiries of a certain size are now more interested in talking to an AI machine than they are talking to a broker or a call center. Still predominantly the broker and the call center has control, but that control is tipping out of the brokers' and the providers' interest and towards what I call mechanical AI systems. And we're going to need to know how to compete with that. So that will come to Germany, but it hasn't started to touch that market properly yet. You can see it much more clearly in the U.K. market. And that's why I say, don't be confused about the fact that our inquiry numbers are going up. Our inquiry numbers are going up, not because we're sitting there, our inquiry numbers are going up because we're going out and working other channels and doing things whereby we can take control earlier on rather than watch AI steal the bread from our table. Chris?
Chris Bowman: Okay. I've spent a lot of time on investigating hedging and my conclusion is that it's brought with danger. So -- and it's a drug which once we -- if we got into, it will be very hard to come off. So I think to manufacture hedging, be it buy forward euros, let's, for instance, say, buy forward the entire U.K. portfolio to fix the value at the end of the financial year, for instance, and at that point, I would have to realize at the end of the financial year, a gain or loss on the portfolio on that forward, and I'd have to almost certainly roll that hedge, and there'll be a significant cost to putting that hedge in place. And ultimately, we are a business exposed to two markets. So I'd be trying to manufacture the exposure to the U.K. out of the balance sheet when in reality, we are exposed to two different markets. So going and putting in place some sort of derivatives to try and manage hedging, I've seen lots of CFOs get into all sorts of trouble trying to go down that road. And I don't want to be sitting here talking about the mark-to-market of derivative instruments every time I come and talk to you. So we have a shareholder base, which is spread across euro, sterling, rand, and I'm sure some are dollar-denominated as well. So investors who invest in us, I largely leave it to them to deal with hedging. Now the only structural piece of hedging that could, at some point, make sense is simply to put sterling debt into the balance sheet. So match the debt with the asset base. And I completely understand that challenge and that question. There's two points I'd say. Number one, in euro terms, we are still maturing on the balance sheet as an issuer in the debt capital market. So there is still upside in terms of the cost of our euro-denominated debt versus in sterling, we are certainly subscale to go into the debt capital markets for debt. So we will be forced down the secured lending route, which obviously creates much less flexibility from a balance sheet perspective. And obviously, the difference in cost between euro and sterling, I'm sure, has probably blown out even further in the last few days, but was 200 basis points. Let's say, it's between 200 and 250 basis points. There is a funding benefit to us through the FFO, and we are ultimately cash flow focused from an FFO perspective. And what I'd also say is then when you look at the portfolio, we're split, I think, 71%, 29% at the moment between Germany, U.K. With the acquisition activity that we expect going forward, which we expect to be more German focused, that balance will start to push more towards Germany again. So we will continue to be very much a minority exposed to the U.K. So I think my answer is no. I'm not going to get down the kind of manufacturing hedging. At some point in the future, it will make sense to put sterling leverage in, but we're on a journey at the moment. And I know it's difficult at the moment given the FX effects that you see on the balance sheet that -- to sort of have a knee-jerk reaction and say, "Oh, we must hedge." I think that's brought with danger. We're not going to go there.
Matthew Saperia: It's Matt Saperia from Peel Hunt. I'm also going to ask one question to each of you, if I can. Andrew, I think on Slide 9, you talked about the 4.7% like-for-like rate growth as a failure and -- as much as it was above the 4% that you were targeting. Are you going to ask your colleagues to do things differently going forward, or are you still happy for them to push rate ahead of what you might be targeting when it comes to new demand?
Andrew Coombs: Well, specifically, what we are saying more in the U.K. than in Germany is we need to increase our sales volume. And if we have to reduce price within certain parameters and corridors to do so, that's what we must do. And what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of people sort of nod to that, but then kind of still favor price over occupancy. And therein lies our challenge because I think as things tighten in the U.K., what we're seeing is we're seeing tenants look for smaller spaces than they normally would. And what that means is we have to win more customers than we normally would to maintain and increase our occupancy. And to do that, you either have to get more inquiries and/or you have to improve your sales conversion. And one of, not the only thing, but one of the ways you improve sales conversion is loosen on price a little. Now all of that is in a very controlled environment, where we make sure that people can't lower the price so much that we start to bring the average rate per square meter or square foot in the U.K. of the portfolio down. But whereas we used to be in a very nice world where you just said, as long as you sell higher than they move out, it all works. Now you're having to operate in a corridor whereby you do sometimes have to sell at lower than the move-out rate, and you better make absolutely sure that you can make up for that in your renewals and expansions. Otherwise, you're going to start ticking the average rate per square meter of your portfolio down. So this is quite a delicate area. And in the U.K. rather than Germany, this is going to get kind of more detailed going forward. And some of that is because the average size that people in the U.K. are inquiring about is getting smaller. So what you have to do is work the platform harder to get more customers. So this is not a sort of -- you set it and leave it for 6 months, this is daily management. We have a professional sales force that's properly trained in specific methods with specific processes and systems that are managed on a daily basis, and we're continually pushing buttons and pulling levers where this is concerned. It's quite intense.
Matthew Saperia: And Chris, on Slide 18, you talked about a EUR 25 million potential future new build program.
Chris Bowman: Yes.
Matthew Saperia: Two parts. One is sort of what time frame are you talking about? And the second part, I'm assuming that's not exhaustive across the whole portfolio. There must be...
Chris Bowman: No, no, no. So that's specifically four opportunities, that is one at Gartenfeld, two at Klipphausen and one at Dresden site, MicroPolis. The Gartenfeld opportunity new build is likely to tangibly start in the new year. The Dresden MicroPolis site is probably going to depend on -- not necessarily a firm pre-let, but at least some very strong indication. And the Klipphausen site, I think we've talked about Klipphausen in the past, it's been a sort of poster child for us of success, and we have development land around the existing site, which we acquired at the time of original acquisition, and there is opportunity to build additional production holes there. Net-net, I think I'd guide you to the EUR 25 million of opportunities, you're probably looking at EUR 10 million per year actually coming through. So it is a separate bucket to our business as usual CapEx. It's capital that has to compete with acquisitions for use essentially.
Sarim Chaudhry: Sarim Chaudhry from Jefferies. Just a quick one. I think this is for Chris. On the divi, you got mid-70s payout and then you doing medium-term guidance of 70%. I think previously when we've spoken, that was going to be in the mid-60s. So what's that change?
Chris Bowman: So we absolutely still have the aim to be at 65% payout ratio of FFO. And the model being 65% payout ratio plus the CapEx broadly equates to FFO as a whole. So we are, therefore, self-sustaining as a business. Actually, we are getting tighter and tighter on CapEx. So actually, we do have a little bit of headroom from CapEx versus dividend there. But we also flexed the payout ratio between 65% and 75% off the back of the fund raise, the equity fund raise last year and prior year to reflect the short-term dilution to FFO per share as we put the capital to work. So at the moment, you're essentially at kind of max. You're about 74% payout ratio. You should see that come down even at the end of the year, and you should see it come down and settle around 70%. What I'd also then say is that I think we are so confident and the Board is so confident about the growth prospects of the business going forward that we're also mindful that we're having to go through the financing headwinds as well over the next 3 years. So we are flexing within that 65% to 75% and saying that we want to settle around 70%, and we'll get there over the next 18 months, and we're happy, comfortable staying there through out to FY '29. On that chart, you saw the waterfall to get from EUR 123 million to our new target of EUR 175 million. The additional interest expense of EUR 34 million is all of the additional interest expense. So that is the journey of refinancing done. And in fact, there is an additional small amount of additional debt in there as well. So that is -- there is no more kind of headwinds to come beyond that essentially. And then obviously, once that journey is done, the results will be free to really outperform.
Andrew Coombs: So can I just pick up on that because there's nothing new in this. We have always, for over a decade, operated in that 65% to 75%. We've always made sure that when we are facing things like deployment of capital, other types of headwinds that we flex up to 75%, knowing that we can come back down to 65% again. We're doing exactly the same. The difference is what we are saying is that we recognize that we are unlikely to get back down to the 65% until such time as we've overcome that interest rate challenge. And that ultimately won't be until the year ending March '29 because in December '28, we have another low interest bond to overcome. So realistically, we're going to be in that 70% to 75% corridor until we overcome that second bond. But once we do, the growth profile of this business will no longer have the headwinds. So therefore, you will really see the top come off it, and we'll then be able to return back to 65% in a very -- whereas to try and do it in this period, we think that that's unnecessarily kind of ambitious in terms of getting back to that 65%. So we're operating in the same way as we've operated for a very, very long time. We're just trying to give guidance to say, in the past, we've got down to 65% like really quickly. Because of these successive headwinds, we are probably going to be in that 70% to 75% bracket until we get to '29 and then we can put it back down to 65%. Still a very well-covered dividend.
Maxwell Nimmo: Just a quick follow-up question. I think you talked -- sorry, it's Max Nimmo at Deutsche Numis. You talked a bit about the U.K. previously and saying we kind of just need to wait until we get through the budget. But it sounds like from what you're saying now that it's actually a bit more of a longer-term structural issue that's harder -- and so investment in this market is unlikely to be until, I think you said, next summer and that...
Andrew Coombs: Let me tell you why that's changed. That's changed as a result of Thursday of last week. It's changed because what we can all see now is the leadership of the current government is under threat. And I don't care if they all came out and said, we've made friends, and we're all going to live happily ever after and not stab each other in the back. I won't believe it until I see the results of the May elections next year. And that roughly coincides with the announcement of our end of year results. So I'm not saying that we might not make the odd exception for a very small amount of money if it was something to do with defense or self-storage in the U.K. But unless it's in like a really exciting vertical for an amazing price, as far as I'm concerned, we are paused in the U.K. now until we understand the political outcome until at least the middle of next year. Clear?
Maxwell Nimmo: Very clear, year.
Andrew Coombs: Folks, thank you very much indeed.