Grainger H2 2024 Earnings Report

Grainger EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 9.30
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Grainger Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Grainger Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2024
• Date: 11/21/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, November 21, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 12:00AM ET

Founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1912, Grainger (LON:GRI), a FTSE 250 business, is the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and a leader in the fast-growing build-to-rent sector, providing c.11,000 rental homes to over 25,000 customers. With a pipeline of secured build-to-rent development projects totalling c.4,300 homes and £1.3bn, Grainger is creating thousands more rental homes by investing in cities across the UK. Grainger works in partnership with a large number of public sector organisations to deliver new homes to local communities, including Transport for London, Network Rail, the Ministry of Defence, Lewisham Borough Council and the Local Pensions Partnership. The Grainger team is dedicated to the common purpose of Renting Homes, Enriching Lives, backed by a set of core values. All Grainger’s build-to-rent developments provide a range of customer benefits and added value, from professional on-site resident services teams, resident amenities including gyms, residents’ lounges, roof terraces, meeting rooms and co-working space for those working from home, and superfast 250MB fibre optic broadband. Grainger also takes a leading approach to sustainability, specifically Environmental and Social issues (ESG) and has an ambitious target to be net zero carbon in the operations of its buildings by 2030, to have a diverse and inclusive workforce and to make a positive social impact in locations where it invests and operates.

Grainger H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• In FY 24, Grainger reported 14% growth in net rental income, a 21% increase in EPRA earnings, and upgraded its EPRA earnings guidance to £60 m for FY 26.
• Grainger added over 1,236 new homes during the year and has a pipeline of almost 5,000 homes expected to raise net rents to €191 m at full delivery.
• £274 m of non-core disposals—the highest level since 2016—funded £270 m of strategic reinvestment, showcasing Grainger’s asset recycling expertise.
• The company is on track to convert to a REIT by October 2025, removing corporation tax on BTR income and underpinning its progressive dividend policy.
• EPRA NTA declined 2% to 298 pence, largely reflecting the removal of multiple dwellings relief and a 0.8% portfolio valuation drop, signaling tax and yield headwinds.

Presentation

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Grainger's full year results. Once again, we've delivered an excellent performance as we continue to accelerate our growth. That's growth in our income, growth in our earnings, and growth in our margin. We've added to last year's record year with another strong year of delivery, adding over 1,200 new homes to our portfolio. This growth is set against a backdrop of compelling fundamentals, of growing demand for rental homes and reducing supply, and a new government that is supportive of the build-to-rent sector. We are building a bigger business of significant value with a lot more growth to come. The agenda this morning is I'll take you through the highlights of our excellent financial and operational performance, our portfolio expansion, and how we are delivering compounding growth as our pipeline delivers.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

I'll also tell you about the government's rental reforms and how we are well placed for them. Rob Hudson, our CFO, will take you through our financial review, our growth in our income, our strong, secured, and de-risked balance sheet. And as it's less than a year away, he'll also outline our progress to reconversion. I'll then give you an update on the market together with how our operating platform is delivering leading performance, high levels of customer satisfaction, and then we'll finish on our investment strategy and our 2025 launches. So in the year, we delivered 14% growth in our net rental income and in our dividend. And this has been driven by the delivery of 1,236 new homes. We've also delivered strong like-for-like growth of 6.3% with high levels of occupation over 97%.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Although it's not on this slide, it's worth remembering that over the last three years, we've delivered 20% like-for-like rental growth, largely offsetting outward yield movement while retaining above-average occupancy and high levels of customer satisfaction. This year, we've delivered even stronger growth in our EPRA earnings, up 21%, demonstrating the operational leverage in our business model. Today, we are once again upgrading our EPRA earnings guidance for full year 2026 to GBP 60 million. We delivered GBP 274 million of non-core asset sales, and this was the highest level of sales since the start of our strategy in 2016, and with around 400 transactions, that's demonstrating our expertise in transacting. All of this work enables us to convert to a REIT in less than a year. Our strategic self-funded growth continues at pace. Our GBP 274 million of disposals have enabled GBP 270 million to be invested in our pipeline.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Despite higher interest rates and a subdued real estate investment market, over the last two years, we've disposed of GBP 468 million and invested GBP 582 million. We have a great track record of buying well, developing well, and selling well. The rotation out of our lower-yielding, older-dispersed stock into our new purpose-built communities has, as you can see, more than tripled our net rental income since the start of the strategy. Our rent is due to grow again rapidly with the delivery of our pipeline to GBP 191 million. We've expanded our portfolio in our key regional cities, and in most cases, we're building on our operational clusters. The Copperworks, our first scheme in Cardiff, was launched in February. In June, we launched our next scheme in Bristol, and in July, our next scheme in Birmingham, two of our top investable cities adding to our operational clusters.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

In September, we acquired another 65 homes to build on our Windlass Apartments scheme, and these homes are just launching. Importantly, we acquired The Astley in Manchester from M&G. Now, this is a great location. It's a fully stabilized asset, and it will add choice to our Manchester residents and drive margin through our operational cluster. The successful delivery of these schemes means we're upgrading our EPRA earnings forecast. And so to our pipeline. Our regulated tenancies and non-core portfolio represents 19% of our portfolio with around 1,500 homes. Our purpose-built build-to-rent portfolio is 9,500 homes, and we have a pipeline of almost 5,000 homes. This represents significant further growth. Our commitment to growing our portfolio since the launch of our strategy has been unrelenting.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

The lack of existing purpose-built homes to rent and our commitment to quality has meant that our team have commissioned or directly developed the majority of our homes. Now, the acquisition of The Astley from M&G represents a further route to growth, which we indicated at the half year that we'd be pursuing. So in addition to our usual forward funding and development route, tenanted acquisitions or acquisitions of existing assets or portfolios and asset repositioning are more levers we can now pull as this asset class matures and we continue our growth.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

And to illustrate this point, our future pipeline will be delivered from a variety of routes, from strategic joint ventures and partnerships, such as with TfL, Network Rail, the Ministry of Defence, from stabilized acquisitions like The Astley in Manchester, and from our strategic land portfolio in Exeter, Wellesley, and Berewood, and from future phases of our existing schemes where we've either acquired or contracted on the adjacent land next to our schemes at Cardiff, Sheffield, and Guildford. And as we deliver on our strategy, we have a proven track record of delivering compounding growth. Even during the pandemic, we had positive rental growth, and this has accelerated since. Now, unlike many real estate businesses, our EPRA NTA has remained resilient.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Whilst we've experienced yield expansion of 25%, this has largely been offset by like-for-like rental growth of 20%, and our delivery of our pipeline has maintained our NTA resilience. Our income has averaged 15% per annum, and we've delivered for shareholders with compounding dividend averaging 19%. With a strong pipeline and many routes to build our business, we see many years of strong growth in our incomes, earnings, and dividends. Our growth is fundamentally underpinned by a growing demand for renting and a shrinking supply of homes to rent. This provides us with a positive long-term outlook. Savills, using the English National Housing Survey, predicts a 20% growth in a requirement for homes to rent by 2031. That's over one million homes. The strongest demand they predict is coming from Grainger's core demographic, 25 to 34, and in Grainger's cluster locations.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We've had an undersupply of housing for decades, and the housing supply is worsening with planning applications and housing starts down. And the supply of small landlords is shrinking as they've been leaving the market. And I'm going to give you a few more stats on that later on. We have a new government, and they're looking to stimulate the supply of housing of all tenures, but it'll take some time to deliver. This new government has committed to increasing supply, but they've also stated openly and widely their opposition to rent control, which they acknowledge would worsen supply. Now, there are changes in the rental market, but we feel that Grainger is in a prime position to benefit. As people rent for longer, they have higher expectations. There are also changes with the government's Renters’ Rights Bill.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

But unlike many small landlords, this business is best placed to thrive in a changing rental market. So just looking at these proposed changes, increasing rental standards, well, we have a high-quality portfolio and a leading operating platform. Rising customer expectations. Our in-house operating platform has a customer-centric culture, and we are delivering excellent net promoter scores. There is a drive to longer-term tenancies, which we welcome, and our data and insights platform show us who are likely to stay with us. And on average, they're staying with us for 31 months. There is legislation coming forward to drive energy performance certificates to C or above by 2030. 94% of Grainger properties meet that standard. We have a modern energy-efficient portfolio, and the Grainger platform is powered by our Connect technology, enabling us to have insights and responsiveness ahead of our peers. This is my favorite slide.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We are ambitious for the growth of this business, and we have a strong track record of delivering on our ambitions. We have delivered strong growth in our income, and as we've pivoted from a trading business to a resilient investment business, we have delivered strong growth in our EPRA earnings. We have significantly improved our EBITDA margin. Our growth will continue as we grow our portfolio and drive efficiency further. We're growing our income, doubling it through our pipeline from 2023. We're growing our EPRA earnings. We have upgraded our guidance for full year 2026 to GBP 60 million, and we see the potential to drive a 50% increase from current levels in the medium term, and we're driving our operational leverage with an ambition to reach 60% EBITDA margin by 2029.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We have a track record of delivering on our ambitions, and this slide is why I say we're building a bigger, more valuable business. So the highlights in summary, it's been another excellent performance. We have strong market fundamentals. We have a positive outlook for earnings, and we have REIT conversion less than a year away, another major milestone in Grainger's transformation. We are set to deliver accelerated growth. And with that, I'll hand over to Rob to give you the details of our financial performance.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thank you, Helen, and good morning, everybody. Today, I'm going to be covering off the financial performance for what is another strong year of compounding growth, and I'll be outlining why we see many more years of strong growth to come. FY24 has been another year of excellent delivery. Like-for-like rental growth across our stabilized portfolio was 6.3%.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

This strong underlying growth, combined with continuing delivery of our high-quality pipeline, has driven a 14% increase in our net rents to GBP 110 million. EPRA earnings growth continued to be very strong, up 21%, demonstrating how top-line growth is further compounding our earnings growth through the operating leverage in our business, which is built for scale. As expected, adjusted earnings were lower by 6% due to lower sales profits as a result of our ongoing success in disposing of our regulated portfolio. Our dividend per share is also up 14% as we continue to deliver the strong, sustainable dividend growth. EPRA NTA was down 2% in the year to 298p. However, this would have slightly increased were it not for the first half change in tax treatment for the removal of multiple dwellings relief. Importantly, the second half saw a return to NTA growth.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Looking at the income statements in more detail, our overall Like-for-Like rental growth was strong at 6.3%, and this rental growth was split between PRS new lets at 5.6% and renewals at 6.8%, with rental growth in our regulated portfolio also strong at 6.6%. Stabilized gross-to-net improved by 50 basis points on the prior year to 25% as the benefits of our scale and our clustering model start to drive greater efficiency. Fees and other income increased due to compensation payments from developers known as LADs for the loss of rent on scheme delays. Interest costs increased due to higher average levels of debt throughout the year, combined with lower amounts of capitalized interest. EPRA Earnings saw very strong growth of 21%, demonstrating the strong compounding earnings growth that we're delivering.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Profits from sales were lower, reflecting our reducing Regs portfolio as we continue our strategic focus on growing recurring rental income. Other adjustments include a derivative valuation movement of GBP 6.6 million and an additional GBP 5 million fire safety provision. As a reminder, we have very little fire safety exposure as a business, given the majority of our portfolio has been built post-Grenfell. During the year, we've been progressing work on remediation, and the provision is before the benefits of any recourse to contractors. Now, turning to the moving parts of the 14% increase in our net rent for the year, strong like-for-like rental growth of 6.3% contributed GBP 6.1 million of this growth. The successful leasing of our pipeline launches, where demand for our products has been strong, means we've let up ahead of underwriting and ERV, and this has added GBP 10.9 million.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Our asset recycling program offset this growth by GBP 3.4 million. Looking forwards, we'd expect FY25 to be another year of double-digit growth in net rental income, and we'd expect to add a similar absolute growth in total net rents. This chart shows the key movements in NTA over the course of the year, and our EPRA NTA came in at 298p per share, which was down 2% or 7p for the year, but importantly, we saw a return to valuation growth in the second half, and the removal of MDR in the first half of the year had an impact of 8p per share. Excluding this one-off adjustment to purchaser's cost assumptions, then NTA would have slightly increased. Net rents and fees added 17p, with overheads, finance costs, and tax offsetting this by 10p.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Overall, our portfolio valuation for the year was down 0.8%, including the impact of the MDR relief change, and up 0.8%, excluding MDR. In the PRS portfolio, ERV growth of 5.2% more than offset the outward yield shift of 20 basis points. Valuations on the regs portfolio were down only 0.2%, demonstrating their resilience and strong demand given their unique nature. Further details of the valuation can be seen on page 46 in the appendices of this presentation. Over recent years, our assets have demonstrated resilience from a valuation perspective, with the continuing theme of strong ERV growth largely offsetting outward yield shift. But with yields now stabilizing, the balance of these two components should prove to be more positive going forwards. As a reminder, there are many elements of our business not captured within our NTA, as we've outlined on this slide.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Turning now to movements in net debt, net debt was marginally up in the year, with just a modest increase of GBP 37 million to GBP 1.45 billion. It was another big year of pipeline investment, with GBP 270 million invested in our new schemes, which was more than matched by our operating cash flows. As a reminder, we're a highly cash-generative business, and it's been another strong year for operational cash flow, which increased to GBP 304 million, with a recent record, GBP 274 million of gross sales delivered during the year in line with our plans. This higher level of asset recycling ensures our property-level returns are optimized and our income is enhanced as we recycle out of lower-yielding assets. It also provides capital for further investments and ensures we manage our net debt in line with our plans. Going forwards, we'd expect investments to be funded out of operational cash flows.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Our balance sheet remains in great shape with strong liquidity and a strong hedging profile, with rates fixed in the mid-3% for the next four years. Both net debt at GBP 1.45 billion and LTV at 38.2% have decreased from the half-year levels, demonstrating our ability to manage our capital structure by flexing sales of our highly liquid asset base. Our business continues to be highly cash-generative, which will continue to fund our future pipeline. In addition, we plan to reduce our debt and our LTV. Our strong operational cash flows and our highly liquid asset base give us substantial flexibility to deliver this. This LTV reduction will be managed with reference to our four-year hedge maturity. As LTV is brought down over the medium term, this will help mitigate the impact of rising finance costs as our low-rate hedging rolls off.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

This will ensure we continue to deliver strong earnings growth over the medium term as our finance costs rebase. REIT conversion is under a year away now and remaining on track for October 2025, and this will enhance our returns and support our progressive dividend policy. While conversion will not alter our strategy in any way, it does represent a significant landmark in the transition of our business away from a regs trading model to one with a strong compounding BTR income focus. It will remove any corporation tax on our BTR income and will grow our returns by 50 basis points per annum. As a predominantly rental business, we'll move to using EPRA earnings as our key earnings metric, although we will continue to report adjusted earnings, which include sales profits.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Our dividend has seen substantial growth over our transition period, and we remain committed to delivering a strong, progressive dividend. Post-REIT conversion, we'll move to a policy of distributing at least 80% of EPRA earnings as a dividend, with a top-up of regs sales profits in our initial couple of years to maintain our strong dividend trajectory, which will remain unchanged upon REIT conversion. FY24 was a strong year for net rent and earnings growth, but there is substantial growth in both to come. Pipeline completions will drive significant year-on-year increases in our net rent. Net rents will increase by GBP 38 million to GBP 148 million compared with FY24 as we deliver our committed pipeline, and that's an upgrade of GBP 4 million per annum since last year's guidance. Beyond that, our secured and planning and legal schemes will deliver a further GBP 43 million of net rent.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Combined, the entire pipeline will see our net rents continue to accelerate to GBP 191 million. This strong top-line growth delivers even stronger earnings growth as the operating leverage from our business model and our Connect technology platform continues to drive meaningful margin improvement. Near term, we're providing upgraded guidance of delivering EPRA Earnings of GBP 60 million by FY26. That's a GBP 5 million increase on previous guidance and our second upgrade over the course of the year. We also have the potential to grow our current EPRA Earnings by 50% over the medium term. That's just from the delivery of our committed pipeline and also after absorbing the impact of higher interest rates.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Key positive drivers of this include the benefits of like-for-like rental growth at our long-run average of 3.5%, the yield pickup from recycling out of our lower-yielding regs assets into our growing build-to-rent portfolio, and also scale efficiencies with EBITDA margins growing to over 60%. So that delivers a 50% increase in EPRA earnings even after absorbing the net impact of higher interest costs and reduced leverage. We see this as conservative as it excludes any further accretive opportunities as outlined by Helen and is based only on the delivery of our committed pipeline. We see Grainger is delivering a medium-term sustainable return of at least 8% with stable yields, and this comprises two components: our recurring earnings yield of 3.5%, plus 4.5% capital growth based on the long-run rental growth assumption of 3.5% adjusted for leverage.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

This total return is extremely robust, given the predictable income elements and a rental growth assumption that's backed up by decades of evidence. I've provided further details on this for you in the appendix. We continue to make good progress in our sustainability agenda. During the year, we've continued to drive our net zero carbon plans. At the start of the year, we launched our Scopes 1 to 3 net zero pathway. We have net zero asset plans across all of our PRS assets, and we've executed on a number of efficiency initiatives and upgrades. These have successfully delivered a 9% reduction in our Scopes 1 to 3 average operational carbon intensity during the year. We've prepared our SBTi compliant net zero plans and will work with SBTi assessors to hopefully achieve approval during 2025.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We've engaged our supply chain to help us meet our targets, including our ambitious aims for a 40% reduction in our embodied carbon output by 2030, and we've continued to drive strong community engagement following our community blueprint in the areas in which we operate, so to summarize, our liquidity and our balance sheet are strong, giving us the flexibility through disposals to reinvest into our committed pipeline and manage our debt. We've continued to deliver a very strong operational performance with strong growth momentum in our net rental income up by 14%, and which will continue at a similar level next year. With this, our dividend per share is up 14% and will continue to grow strongly as we convert into a REIT next year.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We're on track to deliver a transformation to our rent, EBITDA margin, and compounding earnings with a second upgrade to our FY26 earnings guidance to GBP 60 million, and medium-term earnings has the potential to grow by 50% based purely on our existing committed pipeline, which is fully funded and excludes any upside opportunities. This strong earnings growth underpins our medium-term sustainable total returns target of 8% based on stable yields, and with that, I'll now hand you back to Helen.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thank you, Rob. In this section, I'll illustrate why the U.K. residential market is so resilient and why Grainger has a key competitive advantage from our strong operating platform, our investment in technology, and our commitment to customer service, so unlike many other forms of real estate, residential homes for rent are a needs-based real estate asset class. Everyone needs a home to live in.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Population growth and housing for sale affordability mean that demand for renting is continuing to grow while the supply shortages worsen. Our population is growing, and the point at which people are committing to home ownership is delayed. This means people are renting for longer. The average age of a first-time buyer in the U.K. is 34 and 35 in London. And at the same time, the number of landlords exiting the market is growing. The pressure on smaller landlords by fiscal and regulatory changes has meant that we've seen 300,000 fewer smaller landlords since the first increase in stamp duty in 2016. And we have a significant fall in housing supply starts, which is only going to exacerbate the problem. And all of this means that we've got a positive rental outlook for Grainger.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We've seen strong rental growth over the last three years, and this has been linked to wage inflation, and we see a positive outlook. We anticipate the strong fundamentals of our market and our offer mean that in 2025, rental growth will continue to grow above the long-term average of 3%-3.5%. At Grainger, we have a fully integrated platform, which means we do all of our own leasing. We have great data about our customers, and we know that on average, our customers pay 28% of their household income on rent, and this insight and our customer surveys tell us that our customers are robust. In addition, our customer base benefits from a diverse employment spread. Our customer demographic is solid. 84% of them are in the 20- to 40-year-old age bracket, and this is the age that you tend to see the strongest growth in income.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

And all of this is positive for Grainger's rental growth. Now, I often talk about Grainger's leading operating platform because it is a key differentiator, and it is a driver of value. Our hands-on approach means that we have access to great data, and our market-leading data and analytics team provide us with great insights on performance. Our investment in technology gives online capability for leasing and servicing our customers. And the scale of the portfolio and our dedicated procurement team are improving our buying power, and they're driving efficiencies. And our best-in-class customer service team are keeping our residents happy and staying with us. And the outputs of a strong operating platform are evidenced by our strong operational performance. It shows in our results. This leading platform has delivered strong operational growth and strong like-for-like growth. High occupancy.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Just as a reminder, 95% is considered fully let in the build-to-rent world, and we're frequently over 98%. We've got high rent collection. We collect 99% of our rents first time. The lease-up of our new schemes has been ahead of underwriting. Grainger's rental growth has tracked wage growth, and all of this is driving improvements in operating margin and compounding our earnings growth. This is a well-oiled machine delivering great financial performance. Since our investment in our platform, we've been investing in customer service. Now, everyone at Grainger, no matter what role you have, is trained in the Grainger style of customer service. This investment has paid off. Our Net Promoter Score has improved again this year by 12%. We're now well ahead of many well-loved consumer brands. 89% of our Google reviews are five-star, and we have a 63% retention rate.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Our purpose of renting homes and enriching lives and our values support our ambition to be not only the largest listed residential landlord, but to be the most responsible. We have healthy customer affordability. We have high customer satisfaction. Nine out of ten Grainger customers really like their Grainger home. I'm particularly proud that we are recognized as a top employer. We achieved this year the National Equality Standard, the platinum standard for equality and diversity, and for the first time, we've entered the Top 100 Large Companies to Work For. We are environmentally responsible, with 94% of Grainger's portfolio already compliant with 2030 minimum standards, and we care about our communities with almost 600 community events enabling our residents to put down roots.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We're committed to our residents' safety with a safety culture that puts Grainger in the top 10% of all organizations undertaking the Health and Safety Executive Safety Climate Survey. Now, you've seen this slide many times. It's the foundation of our investment philosophy. Our research-led approach to investing continues with us concentrating on areas of high growth potential and supply and demand fundamentals. And we're open in a new location in Cardiff, and early in 2025, our first building in Oxford. So that's two more dots on the chart. London, of course, remains our best rental city. And our clustering strategy has been further reinforced as we build on our clusters in Birmingham, London, and Bristol. And next year, we've got further openings in London and Bristol. The benefits of clustering is that it gives us operational efficiencies, leveraging our brand and improving customer retention. And our expansion continues.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

2025 is another exciting year of launches and another £13 million of rent roll. Our London portfolio has new launches at Tottenham Hale and Canning Town, adding to our clusters there. Just as a reminder, we've invested over £1 billion since the start of our strategy in London, our strongest rental city. We have launches in two other great cities. We are launching our third scheme in Bristol and in Oxford, our first opening in this great rental city, which is why we are confident about future performance. We have exceeded expectations for the growth of this business, and our future performance is locked in because of the fundamentals of our market and the strength of our pipeline. We have a compelling investment case, and Grainger will continue to deliver compounded earnings growth.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

This is a low-risk business, and we're on course to deliver an 8% sustainable accounting return. Our balance sheet is in great shape. Our debt is fixed in the mid-threes for another four years, and our leading operating platform means that our EBITDA margin will grow to over 60%. We're in a market with strong fundamentals, and we have a track record of delivering for shareholders. So in summary, another excellent performance. We're in a market with strong demand. We have a positive outlook on earnings, and we are set to continue our accelerated growth. Thank you. I'm going to invite you to ask questions, and I will be joined by Rob Hudson, our CFO, Mike Keaveney, our Director of Land and Development, and Eliza Pattinson, our Director of Operations and Asset Management, and I've got other senior leaders in the room here.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

So anyone listening in, you can submit questions through the webcast. But I'll take questions in the room first. Chris.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Morning. Thank you for that. It's Chris Millington at Deutsche Numis. I've got three questions. I'll go one at a time rather than just blast a load of questions at you. I just wanted to push Rob a little bit more on the medium-term guidance about the 50% growth. And you mentioned a bit about debt paydown and also marking to market debt. I just wonder if you could kind of share a little bit more of that. And I presume there's no one answer, but just a range of kind of what you see happening there.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Yes, yeah. So I think the great thing with the 50% earnings growth is that we've got such strong growth, which is locked in.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

This is quite conservative because it's based just on our committed pipeline. The key drivers are the additional rents coming through from the committed pipeline, which are highly accretive given the platform that we've got and driving efficiencies. The accretion in EBITDA margin to 60% plus, which again, we see is very conservative, and it's locked in because really it's just leveraging the central platform that we've got. We know that efficiency is going to come, and we've got very good visibility over it. We've been quite conservative in terms of our assumption for like-for-like rental growth at 3.5%, which is the long-run average, but clearly we are performing ahead of that currently. Then finally, we do plan to adjust our leverage as I've outlined.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Again, the beauty of the position that we're in, because we've fixed our interest rates for the next four years, we have plenty of time to manage our debt to whatever scenario we fall under ultimately in terms of where interest rates settle down to. We will adjust our leverage to drive that level of earnings growth. For example, we had to refinance at the end of the four-year period towards where current forward yield curves are assuming. That would be around 5.5% and would equate to a deleveraging of around GBP 300 million. We would see that as being extremely achievable when you think about the context of having delivered GBP 274 million of sales in the last year. We've got plenty of optionality and flexibility. We have over GBP 1 billion of non-core assets to trade through. We're very confident over delivering that.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Should we think about the medium term in a similar context as the EBITDA margin, would that be a fair assumption?

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Yes, that's right, which would be about five years. Okay. Thank you, Rob.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Next one. It's just about comments around lower yielding asset sales. We obviously understand the strategy around regs, but I've seen there's been a disproportionate amount of build-to-rent and PRS sales in London in the current year. And we've now got the regional portfolio for the first time slightly larger than the London portfolio. I mean, does that say anything about your preference for the regions versus London or your desire for a bit more diversity? I'm just curious about what that signifies.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We're really committed to London as a city. I mean, it's a great rental city.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

It's where most of the population come to sort of at some point in their lives and particularly our demographic. The sales that we've made out of the London portfolio have been largely our older, smaller stock. And while they are PRS rather than build-to-rent, they tend to be reasonably high, reasonable yielding, but they've got much higher CapEx costs associated with them just because of the age and type of buildings that they are. So those are the things that we've exited this year, and that obviously gives us that upgrade on earnings.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

That's really clear. Thanks. Last one is just about availability of opportunities. You've shown us the slide again about the portfolios and the long tails. Just curious about what is the availability of stabilized assets or portfolios of assets? Is there any stress emerging in the market?

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

I imagine not with the rental growth, but again, just.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

No, there's no stress. There's no stress in the market. And you'll recall that at the start of our strategy, we had no option but to create our own portfolio because there was so little out there. There is more out there. And the acquisition that we got from M&G this year, which was effectively an off-market transaction, means that there were people that will reposition their own portfolio either because of management or funding or whatever. But we're not seeing distress. But this is a business and a sector that we know so well. We know every asset. We've seen it since creation, and it's still small enough as a market to get our arms around and know what we want to acquire.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities]

Thank you.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Miranda

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Cockburn, Berenberg.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Just following on from that, really, I guess just in terms of replenishing the development pipeline, how you're seeing the opportunities, are there still forward funding opportunities out there, more direct development? If you just talk a little bit more on that.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Yeah. I'm going to come to Mike in a moment. Obviously, we've got a great secured pipeline, which is schemes that we've got consent on that we can bring forward. And obviously, we've got our strategic land portfolio as well. But Mike, do you want to take the point?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Yeah, sure. So in terms of the pipeline, I mean, it's fair to say you'll have seen on the graph that we've got some forward funding developments on site, and then we've got some direct developments further out. And they are currently going through the planning process for revisions.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

We're also looking at additional value creation on those and the level of affordable housing and the grant funding. And irrespective with the Gateway 2 and the Building Safety Regulator, we expect those projects to be on site in 2026. That's how long it will take to get through that process.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

And in terms of new acquisitions, what's the market like at the moment? Is it competitive? So we're primarily focused, as Helen mentioned, on land. So land for future pipeline. And we're active in that market and looking at things all the time. And then stabilized acquisitions. The team run the rule over the entire portfolio of other people's stock very often. We track that closely. So yeah, it's a constant. We run an IC twice a week and a sourcing committee and a business development committee regularly.

[Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies]

Morning, team. Thank you for the presentations.

[Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies]

I'm Saurabh Chowdhury from Jefferies. Just two questions, if I may. So the first one, I think, as the other analysts have alluded to, it's regarding future growth and uplifting rents. Do you see any opportunities in perhaps repurposing some of the older PRS assets and what type of quantum could you look for there in terms of rental growth? And then the second question is, this perhaps is a bit early, but do you have any view on growth and impact with perhaps increased overheads following the government's latest budget?

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thanks, Saurabh. Great questions. In terms of future growth, there's a slide in the deck. I can't exactly remember the number of it, but it has got all the routes that we've got to growth, and one of them that I think you picked up on was asset repositioning.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We've got a fantastic track record in the business, particularly in what was the GRIP portfolio of repositioning assets and getting significant uplifts in value, and we have got a couple of opportunities within the portfolio to do that on core city fringe locations, so it will be part of our suite of things that we can bring forward. The other one is the one you asked about gearing to net. We've made fantastic progress this year to hit 25% in terms of our gearing to net. That's brought down, for those that can remember the start of the strategy, it was about 31%-32%, so we really have brought that down, and of course, things like the NI budget change will impact us, but we're actually quite light in terms of compared to retail and hospitality in terms of the number of people.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

But I think we all wait to see the impacts in terms of supply chain because obviously we all use people for repairs and maintenance, etc. But we're still targeting that 25%. I mean, the great thing for us is we're getting that top-line growth coming through.

[Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies]

Thank you. Thanks.

[Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies]

Thanks for that presentation. I'm Sam Knott from Columbia Threadneedle Investments. Just a couple of linked questions on that slide 21, the bridge of net rental income across the pipeline. So first, on the committed pipeline, is there a sort of breakdown of roughly how that growth to 148 splits between lease-up and stabilization compared to new builds, compared to just sort of three years of rental growth that you expect?

[Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies]

And then in the longer term, is there an indication of sort of total CapEx required and sort of where you're going to expect to fund that from, given that reconversion means that you'll be spending pretty much all of your operational earnings on paying out the dividend?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Yep, I'm happy to take that. So in terms of the rental bridge, we've actually broken out. This is on slide 21 of the pack. So you can see actually we have within FY25, we've got GBP nine million of lease-up from the completions in FY24 because a lot of them completed throughout the course of the year. So we've got very good momentum in those lease-ups. So GBP nine million coming through into FY25. And then the rest comes through as the new developments complete and lease-up over that period. So hopefully that gives you.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Is there any rental growth on the existing stuff embedded in that 148?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

So it's just in terms of today's rent. So we've uplifted to that, but obviously future growth would come on top. Thank you. In terms of the CapEx, there's GBP 220 million on that, just under GBP 500,000 of committed pipeline of cost to complete. And then of course we have optionality over the secured and the planning and legals. We have GBP 1 billion of non-core assets, mainly the regs and then some older PRS assets and some old land positions as well to trade out of. So that gives us really valuable flexibility in terms of being able to deliver growth and also to deleverage a relatively modest amount as I've already set out. So we can actually deliver both.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Great. Thank you.

[James Carswell, Real Estate Analyst at Peels Hunt LLP]

Morning. I'm James Carswell from Peel Hunt.

[James Carswell, Real Estate Analyst at Peels Hunt LLP]

Just going back to the EPRA earnings, the 50% increase over the medium term. I mean, I appreciate lots of the comments about how conservative that is. But if you just take the current kind of EPRA EPS, inflate it by 50%. I also appreciate the dividend policies are a minimum of 80%. But if you were to say 80%, you get back to a dividend not a million miles from where we are today. I'm just wondering, do you think when we get to that point in the medium term, will you still be collecting some of the trading gains from the regs, or do you think they'll have burnt off by then?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

That's a great question. Thank you for that, James.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

So certainly for the first couple of years post-conversion of REIT, we would expect a modest top-up of regs profits because we will maintain a progressive growing dividend. After that, because we've got such strong growth in EPRA earnings coming through, we would expect that fully funding from EPRA earnings and to maintain that very strong trajectory. And of course, with EPRA earnings growing 50%, obviously that's a great underpin to a strong growing dividend. What was the second part of your question?

[James Carswell, Real Estate Analyst at Peels Hunt LLP]

It was just where the contribution would still be there. Yeah.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Okay. So yeah, we will continue to see, I mean, the regs is a naturally declining portfolio, so we will expect our sales profits to roll off. We're selling around 10 to sort of the early teens in percentage terms through around 7%-8% vacancy.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

And we always top up with a modest amount of investment sales. We did about GBP 100 million this year. As the portfolio reduces, that's a naturally reducing quantum. And obviously, so the regs profits will reduce. But we would expect for over the medium term to continue to have some regs profits. But of course, that's being more than offset through the very strong growth in EPRA earnings that we've got.

[James Carswell, Real Estate Analyst at Peels Hunt LLP]

Thanks.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Tim.

[Tim Leckie, CFA at Panmure Liberum]

Thanks, Tim Leckie from Panmure Liberum. Just on the slide 22, the next one, that's on today's tax basis, right? So there's no contribution in that 50% number from the reconversion.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

So all of this guidance is based on pre-tax EPRA earnings. So that's the GBP 48 million figure. And we've reported that on a like-for-like basis because obviously it becomes one and the same post-reconversion.

[Tim Leckie, CFA at Panmure Liberum]

So the tax goes on top again.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

That's a further benefit in terms of our cash and our returns.

[Tim Leckie, CFA at Panmure Liberum]

And you say it's on BTR pre-tax profits. You've got about GBP 100 million rent roll at the moment net. So share of G&A and interest expense, what's that, 60-ish left? And you say 25%, 15 million, if we assume that on top of that?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Yeah, it is that kind of quantum. And of course, it's a growing benefit as the earnings compound. And then there's more scale to go because that's only a couple of years. Yes. It's the softest guidance I've ever seen. Love it.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Hi, Helen, Celine Stein from Barclays. I've got a question from you on the like-for-like rental growth assumption for next year. So the ONS pointed to an acceleration in rental prices in October, around 8%. But you're guiding to a 3%-3.5% rental growth for next year.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Do you think you're being too conservative here? And my second question is kind of linked to the first one. The new Labour government decided to address the housing shortage by increasing supply, but supply completion is going to take some time. So could it be a case that we see higher than historical average rental growth for longer than you expect? Thank you.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thanks, Lee. Yeah, the ONS tends to have a real lag in it. And I think that one of the things that we do about actively managing and having our own operating platform is that we capture rental growth very quickly. So there is a lag effect in ONS. And so our 20% rental growth over the last three years, obviously, is significant. If you rolled back the ONS, it would be a lower number. So I'm talking real time now.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We've always worked on the basis that if you see long-term inflation and sort of 2%, and this goes back decades, you normally get 1-1.5% on rental growth above inflation. So if we do get higher wage inflation coming through, we could see higher rental growth. So that's the sort of, that's the fundamentals. And it's one of the things that's great about our business model is that you have that inflation linkage. And because of the way we operate it, you get it very immediately. Your second point about supply and the fact that small landlords are going, but also the supply is not coming through. Supply and demand will affect pricing. But the other thing we also look at is customer affordability and occupancy.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

And so that's ensuring that we actually have well-let buildings where people stay with us because that reduces a whole host of other costs rather than just pushing the rents and then actually seeing a more flight of residents. So it's a very carefully calibrated way we look at it. But as Tim sort of said, we could be on the cautious side, but 3%-3.5% is we think we'll be above that for 2025. But I think our business model is predicated that that is the long-term rental growth. Thanks.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Morning. It's Thomas at HSBC. I'm just on page 51 looking at the committed pipeline, the gross yield targets there are sort of between 5.5%-6%, which are struck at the point of underwriting. Just wonder where those are today if you mark those to market.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Just to double-check, I heard correctly, on your earnings guidance, just as it relates to the pipeline growth,

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

is that based on underwritten rents or today's rents, assuming there's a slight difference? Do you want to take the second one first, and then I'll come back to the investment case?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Yeah. Based on that, it's based on today's rents, but we're not including future anticipated growth beyond that.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Thanks.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Yeah. And worth saying that we do normally rent above underwriting because remember, when we underwrite our schemes, it's usually three years in advance before we start on-site, which brings us to returns. Our returns in terms of, we've obviously considerably changed our investment returns. We're looking at between 7 and three quarters and 8% IRR on our schemes.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Okay. Thank you.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

Questions. Great questions. Have we got some online?

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

We do. Got a few online.

[Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development at Grainger]

I'll read them out now. First one is from Carly Young at Royal London Asset Management. We sort of covered this earlier, but it was about the tax measures most recently announced in the budget and the cost-based impact for Grainger.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Yeah. So obviously the main one is NI in terms of cost. I should say that for our competitors, if you like, the small landlords, they saw a much worse because it increased stamp duty to 5% on second homes, which obviously, again, impacts our competition more than us because of the way that we develop and also that we value, as you know from the MDR discussion earlier this year, we include a 5% stamp duty in any event in our schemes.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

So the main one is NI and National Insurance changes, which actually are quite small for the business, less than GBP 500 million in terms of direct costs annualized. But we're looking at obviously the supply chain and keeping an eye on that.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thank you. And the second and final question from online is from Gerardo at Kempen, a two-parter. The first question, please, could you provide some indications on expected regulated tenancy sales for next year? What's the decline in the sales this year?

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Yeah. So I think it's one of the things that those that have followed Grainger for a long time will realize that part of the strategy was to sell out. Our vacant sales are a fact, really a function of whether or not people leave us because they're long-term residents. Average age in that portfolio is still 78.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

We get between 6%-7% per annum vacant. There is a view that that will accelerate over time, and actually, the other thing as Rob identified, because we're coming out of some of those regions, we actually are doing some investment sales, which don't generate as much profit because obviously we sell to investors, and so we don't capture the reversionary surplus in those, and that is in part why our regulated sales were down this year. We did a good number of them, but some of them were investment sales. Rob, do you want to add to that?

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

I think you've summarized it well, but in the main, we did around GBP 100 million of reg sales for the year to September. We do have a naturally declining portfolio for the reasons that Helen's described.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

So we would expect each year for that to reduce naturally as that unwinds over time. The reason that we declined a little bit more than that specifically for the year to September was not only do we have the reducing portfolio, but we had a very strong finish towards the end of the previous financial year. So there was a timing difference as well. But in the main, it's just the impact of having a naturally reducing Regs portfolio. There's always in the low teens less to sell each year.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

There was one final question from Gerardo around the pipeline, particularly the planning and legals part of the pipeline. When could we start seeing some commitments to that and some of the launches from the co-investment projects? I guess that's perhaps TfL.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

I think Mike's indicated the 2026 would be the early start on-site in terms of that as we go back around planning changes, etc., on that portfolio. The thing about doing that pipeline is that you never quite you don't realize how things drop through into the individual segments, but in that outer pipeline, we have got things like, for example, our Cardiff land, our Sheffield land, our Guildford scheme, etc. They're all in that outer pipeline, and some of them can come through very quickly once planning is achieved. So it's land that we control that we're taking through the planning process, and I should say, because I haven't really talked about it, that the change in the planning system could accelerate that quite considerably. I've stunned everyone into silence. Thank you so much for spending time with us on this cold morning.

[Helen Gordon, CEO at Grainger]

Thank you for everybody that joined online. We are here and available to answer any questions that you have. If not, just email either Rob, myself, or Kurt, and happy to speak to you about any queries. But thanks once again for spending time with us.

Participants

Executives

• Mike Keaveney, Director of Land and Development
• Helen Gordon, CEO

Analysts

• Analyst 2
• Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Numis Securities
• Analyst 1
• Analyst 3
• James Carswell, Real Estate Analyst at Peels Hunt LLP
• Saurabh Chawdhury, CFA and Equity Analyst at Jefferies
• Analyst 4
• Analyst 5
• Tim Leckie, CFA at Panmure Liberum