LondonMetric Property H1 2026 Earnings Report

LondonMetric Property EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 6.70
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

LondonMetric Property Revenue Results

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

LondonMetric Property Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 11/20/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, November 20, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00AM ET

LondonMetric is a FTSE 100 REIT that owns and manages desirable real estate that meets occupiers demands and delivers reliable, repetitive and growing income-led returns and outperforms over the long term. As a real estate owner, we look to help occupiers, communities and stakeholders grow, thrive and revitalise in an evolving and complex world.

LondonMetric Property H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: EPRA earnings rose to £148.6m and net rental income increased 15%, supporting a half‑year dividend uplift of 7% to £0.061 and the company’s 11th consecutive year of dividend growth.
• Positive Sentiment: The portfolio is now 54% logistics, portfolio value is up 20% to £7.4bn, and management expects about £28m of additional contracted rent from reviews and renewals over the next 18 months.
• Positive Sentiment: M&A and active recycling (including Urban Logistics and Highcroft) have added scale and income, contributing roughly £27.6m of incremental rent and driving EPS and dividend progression.
• Neutral Sentiment: Gross debt increased to £2.8bn (LTV ~35%) and net finance costs rose 31% to £59.7m, but management says ~94% of drawn debt is hedged and plans bond/refinancing activity to stabilise financing costs.
• Positive Sentiment: Operational strength — rent collection at 99.5%, gross‑to‑net leakage ~1.5%, like‑for‑like annualised rental growth ~5.2%, and average rent review uplifts of 18% — underpins income durability.

Presentation

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Great. Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to LondonMetric's half-year results presentation. It's very rare that we're in such salubrious accommodation as this. I hope it's rent-free. It's an office building, it must be. Sorry, cheap shot. Okay, that's the tick, tick, der went off. Right, go down the list in a minute. Right, so normal lineup this morning. I'm going to give you a quick overview. I'm going to hog all the good numbers, pass over to Martin. He'll do a deep dive for you, and then I'll come back to talk about our activity and the makeup of the portfolio and our outlook for the periods ahead. Then we'll open it up to Q&A, and we have our team in the front rowing, which actually now includes Carl, which is good. Any really difficult questions are going his way.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Hopefully we'll wrap up by about 11:00. We retain our position, in our opinion, as the U.K.'s leading triple-net income REIT. Our objective is to continue to own mission-critical assets across the winning sectors of real estate. I'll come on to talk about this a little bit later because it is a theme throughout the presentation. We want to make the right macro calls. Logistics is our strongest exposure, partly because it gives us the best rental growth. That is back up at 54%. We have our hospitality entertainment, which is dominated by our hotels and our theme parks at just under 18%, and our convenience retail assets at 14%. Those are our three key areas, with healthcare making up the fourth. As a result, our objective must be to grow our income. That is what we are.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We are a triple-net income compounding business. Our net rental income, as you can see in front of you, is up 15%. We will come on to talk about that in a little bit more detail. That has obviously allowed us to progress our dividend. We announced this morning a Q2 dividend of GBP 0.0305, which gives us actually 6.1% for the period, which is up 7% on where it was last year. We expect that to continue. We are well on track for our 11th year of dividend growth. We also operate the lowest cost platform in the sector, with a sector-leading EPRA cost ratio down from, I think, 7.8 at the full year to 7.7. Despite Martin's objections, we obviously think that that should fall lower in the coming periods. The portfolio is focused on reliable, repetitive, and growing income.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

This is a strap line that we've now used for many, many years. It doesn't need to change. That is supported by, again, 5.2% like-for-like annualized rental growth. That is largely been driven by two things: uplifts on rent review. You can see there 18% is our average uplift. Open market was at 24%. Our open market logistics was 27%. Our leasing and re-gears delivered another 24% above previous passing. You put all those together, that is how we deliver that 5.2% annualized income growth. In the period, this translated into GBP 10 million of additional rental income. Again, we'll come on and talk about—we've got a good slide on this later on in the presentation. We have a further GBP 28 million that we expect to collect over the next 18 months from rent reviews and lease renewals.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We expect that and hope that will be higher because it does not include asset management initiatives and it does not include the leasing up of vacant space that we currently have in the portfolio. The total property return you see there at 3.3%, we come on to talk about that in a little bit more detail later on in my second stint. Turning then to the financial highlights, EPRA earnings were up at GBP 148.6 million. That is driven by a 15% increase in our net rental income. You see there on the right-hand side. That has driven an increase in our earnings per share at GBP 0.067, up slightly on where it was this time last year. Equally important, it is 28% higher than where it was in September 2023. We have seen a 28% increase over the last two years in our EPRA earnings.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

That has allowed us, as I touched on on the earlier slide, to increase our half-year dividend to GBP 0.061. Again, that's up 7% in the year. It's actually up 27% over the two years. Total accounting return for the period, 4.1%, if I exclude the huge banking fees that we paid for in our various M&A transactions. If you strip those out, it's at 3.3%. Portfolio value is up 20% to GBP 7.4 billion. Relatively flat EPRA NTA, up on where it was a year ago, flat on where it was in March at GBP 1.995. Our LTV is up marginally at 35%, and that reflects the GBP 200 million cash component of the Urban Logistics REIT acquisition that we completed earlier in the summer. We feel pretty comfortable with that. It may go up, it may go down.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

That will be dependent upon opportunities that we see by and large in the investment market. Just, again, to steal one of Martin's slides, the dividend, I should say, you can see there 111% covered with a full cash cover as well. On that note, I'll pass over to Martin, and then I'll come back to take you through the portfolio.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

All right. Okay, morning. There's nothing here he hasn't covered. I'm going to do it anyway. Look, following an intense period of M&A activity and asset recycling, we've delivered very significant earnings growth and dividend progression. Pleased to report, net rental income is GBP 221.2 million, an increase of 14.6% over last year. The acquisitions of Highcroft and Urban Logistics, which contributed only for four and three months respectively, and other acquisitions during the period have added GBP 27.6 million of additional rent. We've also added GBP 6.6 million of additional rent from our existing properties and developments. We lost GBP 12.2 million of rent from asset disposals during the period. Our rent collection remains exceptionally strong. We've collected 99.5% of rents due. Our gross to net income leakage remains very low at 1.5%. Our administrative overhead for the period is GBP 14.6 million.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Our EPRA cost ratio continues to be sector-leading at 7.7%, I think reflecting operational synergies and the culture of cost control. The increase in overheads in the period is almost exclusively headcount and remuneration costs. Our headcount is now 54, up from 48 at the year end. That is a combination of former Urban Logistics employees, but also new recruits that we have made to ensure that we have the right level of resource and the right skills for the enlarged business. Our net finance costs have increased to GBP 59.7 million compared to GBP 45.4 million last year. That is an increase of 31.5%. This was due to the additional GBP 484 million of debt from our corporate acquisitions. That came in at an average cost of 4.26%, which compared to LMP's cost of debt at that time of 4%. We have also run a higher drawn debt balance during the period.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Despite the increase in financing costs, that tight cost control on top of revenue growth, income growth has driven our EPRA earnings to GBP 148.6 million, or GBP 0.067 per share, an increase of 9.7% over last year, and supports the increase to the dividend, which I think Andrew only mentioned actually three times for the period to GBP 0.061 per share, providing very strong 100% dividend cover and importantly, full cash cover. Our trading performance has been strong with the portfolio valuations increasing by GBP 29.1 million, allowing us to report IFRS profits of GBP 130.3 million. This actually reflects a reduction on IFRS profits compared to last year, but it does include the full impact of M&A acquisition costs and goodwill impairment in the period. There has been further significant change to the balance sheet this period as it reflects our most recent M&A.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

The acquisition of Highcroft added GBP 81 million of investment properties to the balance sheet, and the acquisition of Urban Logistics a further GBP 1.14 billion to bring the total value of the portfolio to GBP 7.4 billion. In addition to our M&A activity, our active asset recycling has delivered GBP 125 million of other acquisition, development, and capital expenditure, partly offsetting the divestment of GBP 155 million of non-core assets. This together with our revaluation uplift of GBP 29.1 million has contributed to the increased portfolio value. Gross debt, which I'll come on to in a moment, is GBP 2.8 billion, and the cash balance is GBP 206 million. The other net liability position at the period is GBP 116 million. Rents paid in advance accounting for GBP 78 million worth of that amount.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

In summary, therefore, our EPRA net tangible assets at the year-end were GBP 4.67 billion, or GBP 1.995 per share, producing a 4.1% total accounting return after adjusting for those M&A costs and goodwill impairment. As I have said, our gross debt balance is now GBP 2.8 billion. The increase is partly the result of our M&A activity through which we acquired GBP 484 million of new secured debt balance facilities and also other new facilities entered into during the period, which I will come on to on the next slide. Our debt maturity now stands at 4.2 years compared with 4.7 years at the year-end. We expect to maintain that level of debt maturity by the year-end despite the passing of a further six months as we launch into our public bond program.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Our average cost of debt is 4.1% compared to 4% at the year-end, and we do not expect our finance costs to increase materially as we manage debt maturities over the next three years. Our net debt to EBITDA stands at 6.9x, which is trending downwards as our earnings increase and is comfortably within our upper limit of 8.5x. Our policy continues to be to limit our exposure to interest rate volatility by entering into hedging and fixed rate arrangements. We acquired GBP 140 million of interest rate swaps through the Urban Logistics acquisition at an average cost of 3.2%. We continue to be well protected against adverse movements in interest rates, and at the period end, our drawn debt was 94% hedged.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

As a result of the GBP 205 million cash component to the acquisition of Urban Logistics, our LTV is now at 35.1% compared to 32.7% at the year-end. Looking further forward, we'll continue to manage our debt arrangements to ensure that refinancing risk is mitigated and that we're able to take advantage of our increased scale and credit rating to diversify our funding sources. We strengthened our financial position in the period by completing two new unsecured revolving credit facilities totaling GBP 350 million, with new lenders at margins below our existing comparable facilities. We completed a new three-year unsecured term loan of GBP 180 million at an even tighter margin, and we entered into a new GBP 150 million U.S. private placement as a credit spread ahead of any other private placement by any European REIT in the last three years. That amount was drawn post-period end.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Since that period end, we've entered into further facility for GBP 50 million with a new lender at a margin of 125 basis points. Crucially, I think this new well-priced liquidity has allowed us to repay on maturity facilities post-period end with AIG, ING, and Canada Life, which bore fixed rate pricing materially more expensive than our new debt facilities and was therefore earnings enhancing. Additionally, we repaid the most expensive tranche of our Urban Logistics debt of GBP 57.3 million, which was costing us 6.17%. As I said in the summer, our successful credit rating now allows us to plan for possible future debt capital markets activity in the form of a public bond issue to cover debt maturities in finance years 2027, 2028, and 2029. We are preparing for such an issue and expect to be active imminently.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Our contracted rent roll at the period end now stands at GBP 421.1 million with the inclusion of rent on the Highcroft and Urban Logistics acquisitions. Additional rent of GBP 9.8 million in the period was generated from active asset management, rent reviews, and re-gears. Looking further forward, reversion within the LMP portfolio and the newly acquired Urban Logistics portfolio is expected to add GBP 28 million of contracted rent. The rent roll will increase as a result to GBP 450 million. This is, I think, a conservative view of growth post-period end as it takes no account of that active asset management initiatives and initiatives not yet executed and the letting of vacant properties. This generation of significant earnings growth supports our confidence that we will continue to be able to grow our earnings and our well-covered dividend.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

With this in mind, we've increased our quarterly dividend payments, as Andrew said, for HY 2026 to GBP 0.0305 per quarter, an increase of 7% on HY 2025. Finally, just that look back at the last 11 years now, during which we've been able to increase earnings per share more than threefold. We're in our 11th year of dividend progression with excellent dividend cover and significantly ahead of the growth in CPI. Our total property return is strong, an 11-year CAGR of 10%, a very material outperformance against the MSCI All Properties Index. Our total shareholder return, driven both by share price appreciation and dividend progression, equates to a compound annual growth rate of 10%. On that note, I'll hand back to Andrew.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Okay, thanks, Martin.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Right, this is a look at how the portfolio sits today, GBP 7.4 billion split really against those four key sectors that I touched on in my opening remarks. Logistics now up from 46% to 54%. Our largest investment, as you can see there, at about GBP 4 billion, and that is driving and delivering the strongest rental growth. We see that continuing over the next few years through rent reviews and lease renewals. Hotels and leisure remain a key beneficiary of the shift in discretionary spending, and in the period, we have continued to add new Premier Inn investments through a sale and leaseback transaction with Whitbread, and hopefully, we have more to come. Our convenience investments is very much around the grocery sector. It is, we are Aldi, we are Lidl, we are M&S, we are Waitrose, we are Home Bargains, a bit of B&M sort of thing. We are not the big supermarkets.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

That we see delivers great, great solid income with around about 3% rental growth to come. In healthcare, we're working with Ramsay on initiatives that will improve the profitability and the desirability of our private hospitals, both from their perspective and for ours, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to talk about that shortly. Overall, as you can see from the numbers there on the right-hand side, it remains reversionary and on track, as Martin showed you on his last but one slide, to deliver further increases in rent over the coming years. That 3.3% number that you see there at the bottom of the column is effectively the CAGR of the 18% on the rent reviews and the lease renewals that I touched on in our opening slide.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We actually see that accelerating a little bit over the next couple of years, and that'll be as much around reversions as around how many reviews are coming through and where they sit. Investment activity, the macro environment remains uncertain. We still believe that interest rates are the yardstick by which all investments need to be assessed. Current swap rates, they move around. I mean, I think they peaked this year at 412, and I think about this time last week, they were down at 357, which was very exciting. All of a sudden, we're up about 15, I think we're 373 today. I mean, it creates uncertainty and that, without a doubt, impacts on liquidity, particularly on the larger lot sizes.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

I mean, we put in here, 20 million is a number, and we could bring it down a little bit, we could move it up a bit, but 20 million is what we think. Above that, we think that it gets more difficult because it does require some debt buyers. However, we are enjoying much, much more success, greater liquidity in the smaller lot sizes. We have sold year-to-date GBP 212 million of assets, average lot size of GBP 6 million. That is an awful lot of transactions. I think it is 36 transactions in the period. We are dealing with a completely different array of buyers. There is a lot of owner-occupiers, family offices, small property companies, local authority pension funds, and we are transacting in a wide range of assets, pubs, hotels, garden centers, children's nurseries, food stores, DIY stores, warehouses, waste disposal facilities. I mean, we have got them all.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We have got them all. We are seeing an unbelievably wide church of buyers and probably as wide a type of buyer that I've witnessed in a long time. I mean, I made a comment the other day at the board meeting. I think we've done and transacted on more sales to owner-occupiers in the last three years than I've done in my previous 30. Okay? It is a different market. The small lot sizes that we have is a massive strength for us. On the acquisition side, obviously, that GBP 1.4 billion that we've done year-to-date has been in the winning sectors that are going to deliver us the best income growth. It has obviously been dominated, as Martin's touched on earlier, with the two M&A transactions.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Not surprisingly, it is about reinforcing our logistics, our hotel, our convenience retail, and roadside, which are continuing to offer up, we think, superior rental growth prospects. The opportunities are coming from really four or five. We cut this. We changed how we cut this, really. It is sale and lease-backs. I referenced the Whitbread transaction that we did earlier in the year. Development fundings. We enjoy development fundings. A lot of developers are short of money, and we're only too happy to help them, providing it is in our winning sectors, and it has predominantly been logistics and grocery food as we continue to strengthen our partnership with some of our key operators like Marks and Spencer's. The pension fund industry is going through a dramatic shift, moving from DB to DC. That is throwing up portfolios.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

A lot of corporate pension funds are coming out of direct real estate, and that is throwing up an awful lot. It's not hardly a week goes by that you might read something in one of the papers or, sorry, one of the sites, React or CoStar or whoever, suggesting that so-and-so is selling their properties either in whole or in part. I mean, Santander recently has been in the news. St. James's Place has been in the news. We're seeing opportunities from that. I mean, we announced on Tuesday the acquisition of two assets from a Columbia Threadneedle portfolio that was probably sparked either through expiry or redemptions. We hunt there pretty aggressively. Obviously, the fourth one, which obviously I can't talk about, is opportunities that we see, obviously, in the other opportunities that we might see in the listed sector through additional M&A.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Excuse me. Our M&A activity, we have done four public takeovers over the last two years. That has added GBP 4.4 billion worth of assets, but more importantly, it has added GBP 267 million worth of new rental income. It has been a source. It has obviously given us great scale, but it has also given us great improvement to our earnings. We have, as we regularly update the market on, successfully exited a lot of the non-core and some of the weaker assets. I mean, over those two years, we have sold GBP 372 million worth of these assets. That is 8% of the assets that we have actually acquired by value, largely in line with our acquisition prices. Some are up, some are down, but I think we are virtually bang on at the moment. I would like to say that that was incredible skill. I suspect there is a bit of luck in there as well.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

As you can see, out of the 465 assets that we've acquired, we've actually sold the smaller ones, which is, we sold out of 89 of those. I mean, I'm not going to go through the individual companies that we've acquired and the progress we made because it's there for you to read just as well. The fact of the matter is the core assets that attracted us to these businesses in the first place are delivering for us. Rental uplift is GBP 12 million since acquisition. Again, this goes into that GBP 28 million I talked about over the next 18 months. Seventeen of it is arguably coming, is going to come through from some of the acquisitions that we've made over the last two years. That's the rub of why we like these companies. Okay?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We see them being pregnant with rental growth, and maybe the property market or indeed the equity market has not valued that potential growth maybe as accurately as maybe we think we might have done. We run an occupier-led business model. It helps frame our buy, hold, and sell decisions. As well as choosing the right sectors and buying the best assets in those sectors, we also actively manage our income granularity. Over the last six months, our top 10 occupiers are down from 38% to 33%. Our top three occupiers are down from 27% to 22%. We obviously want to own the right space, and we want it let on the right terms in the right location. One of our key things under this occupier-led business model is occupier contentment. Okay? We are very close to our customers. We want to do more deals with them.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We want them to be happy. Our test is that we, particularly at the operational side of the businesses, so things like the theme parks, the hospitals, and the hotels, we are targeting a rent-EBITDA ratio of 2x. Okay? That is a magic number because that then ensures not only contentment, but it also gives us much better asset liquidity. I should say pub market, the pubs as well, by the way, would fall into that as well. That gives us the comfort of income durability. We look at something like that 2x test, and we expect all of our investments to hit that. If they do not hit that, we will have looked or have executed or are looking at exits. If I look around there, if I take Merlin as an example, that is a business that will hit our targets in the U.K.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

It's a business that has strong sponsor support. It was a take-private for those of you old enough to remember it for about GBP 6 billion by the Lego family or Kirkbi, which is its name, the Christiansen family, Blackstone, CPPIB of Canada, and the Wellcome Trust. It's also a business that has significant freehold properties. I think 50% of their earnings that Merlin report worldwide comes from freehold assets. It is what we consider to be an asset-backed. It's an asset-backed business model. They recently sold 29 of their Lego Discovery Centers back to the Christiansen family for GBP 200 million. They have these various levers when they need to raise money. U.K. profitability is running ahead of in 2025, is running ahead of 2024. We have the added comfort in this business that we have the top operating company.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Let's remember, we are talking here about a worldwide business that is the second largest entertainment firm in the world after Disney. I think there might be other people who claim to be that, but we think they are the second. Asset management, I think I have probably touched on most of these key numbers, like flag income growth, high occupancy. 67% of the income enjoys contractual rental growth, which gives us great comfort to support the numbers that Martin had in his slide, the GBP 28 million that we have already touched on. Interesting, and I think in some ways, if you said to me, "You have got one slide to take away," this is my favorite slide because it is what it is all about. This is what proves whether or not we have made the right investments in the right sectors and bought the right buildings.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Rent reviews over the period gave us an uplift of 18%. Urban reviews are up 22%. Urban open market was up 27%, which is what I referred to before. Lettings and regears, again, this is the ultimate test of the desirability of your buildings. The fact you're able to occupy contentment. People don't regear buildings if they don't want to be in them or if they're not happy. On average, those regears have been struck at 24% above previous passing rent. We have some vacancy. We inherited a little bit of vacancy under the Urban Logistics acquisition, and we're working through that, either through leasing or through disposals. That obviously, we're at 98.1%. Personally, I think that's a little bit low. We need to be targeting 99% plus. Ideally, I'd have 100%, quite frankly, or maybe just under.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

The asset management team have certainly contributed and helped drive that annualized like-for-like income growth of over 5%. When I think about the outlook, I'm not actually sure, but I'm pretty comfortable that this slide actually might have been exactly the same six months ago. It just shows that the world hasn't really moved on, has it? Macro events will continue to dominate investor sentiment. I've talked about the gilt and the swap rates always influencing the property investment markets. I say always. It wasn't always the case, but it certainly feels like it's been the case for the last few years. However, we do think the consumer's in good shape. Savings ratios are good. Employment's good. Wage growth is good.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Interest rate cuts and a decelerating rate of inflation that we got yesterday, was it, I think, yesterday or maybe the day before, I cannot remember now, will continue to improve confidence. It would just be nice if we got a little bit more confidence coming out of Number 11, Downing Street. We are in quite good shape. There are times when I have probably stood up here and I have taken questions on credit card debt or unemployment rates or low wage growth. I do not think those apply here today. By the way, I think we are in a very different situation to America. I will expand on that later if anybody is interested. In the real estate sector, I think there are structural cracks between the winners and losers. I think for us, we are looking for organic rental growth, contractual rental growth without CapEx. Okay?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

There are lots of sectors that are talking about high headline rents, but those have been bought through improved building qualities and facilities, tenant incentives. I'm talking about organic rental growth here. That's what you get in a rent review. That's what's great about a rent review. Lots of people talk about ERVs, but ERV doesn't pay the dividend. Okay? Cash does. Rental growth does. We are seeing why we want to be in logistics because we are still collecting that inbuilt reversions. Okay? It's coming through. It's like a helicopter chucking cash at you. I mean, it's just a wonderful, wonderful feeling. We think that our scale, as Martin and I have already touched on, continues to improve our efficiencies and supports our triple net income strategy. We expect to see further consolidation in listed markets with or without us. We think it will take place.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Without a doubt, the structural shifts in the institutional pension fund market are throwing up opportunities, and we would be disappointed if we were not a beneficiary of that over the coming period. That we expect, as a result of all of that, we expect further income growth, we expect further earnings growth, and we expect further dividend progression. We are well on our way to our objective for dividend aristocracy, only another 14 years. I expect to be here for it. On that note, thank you very much for the last 33 minutes of listening to us. Obviously, questions either in the room or, oh gosh, that was quick, or on the phones would be very welcome. Ladies first, maximum. Vanessa.

[Vanessa Guy, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Hello. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. Vanessa Guy from JPMorgan.

[Vanessa Guy, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

I'm having a look at your slide 13, where you show your four main core subsectors in real estate. It's been a moving target in terms of your buy, hold, and sell strategy. My question is, over the next six to 12 months, is there anything that stands out that you want to streamline probably and grow in another subsector? Anything that you have as an internal target? Are there any other sectors that are not there that you're interested in and possibly trying to build up?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Yeah. Okay. The first thing is I never give the guys and girls the targets because they have a habit of hitting them, and they hit them quickly. Our logistics has moved up to over 50%. If it went to 60%, that would be because we found some great opportunities.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

If it went to 50, it's because we found some opportunities to sell at amazing prices to people who coveted our assets more than us. Entertainment and leisure at 18%. That's down from 21% at the beginning of the year. I could see us buying some more. We like the budget hotel market. We've been selling out of some of the smaller Travelodge properties. It's a market we actually understand pretty well. We have brilliant relationships with both Travelodge and Whitbread. We'd like to maybe add a little bit more into that bucket. Convenience retail is great, but our ambitions there are only hampered by the lack of opportunities. Most of the investments we make there are fundings or our own developments. I mean, I think we're on site at the moment with four or five M&S Simply Foods across the portfolio.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Obviously, that will nibble up, push that percentage up a little bit. Healthcare. Martin's repaid the secure debt on the hospital assets. We're working through some asset management work with Ramsay. Let's say we have a fantastic relationship with them. That might improve liquidity and desirability. We'll have to see. It seems to be a hot topic at the moment, that sector. We don't have any targets. Just in terms of new sectors that you touched on there, Vanessa, we try and keep, I mean, I'm colorblind, so we can't do very many more colors. Within these sectors, there are subsectors. In logistics, there's mega, regional, and urban. Entertainment and leisure, there's the theme parks, and there are the hotels. In convenience, there are the discounters, the drive-through restaurants. I mean, we own 77 drive-through restaurants.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Chances are one of you is shopping or buying goods in one of our drive-throughs all the time. Okay? That is in convenience, as well as our Aldi, Lidls, M&Ss, and Waitrose. Healthcare is essentially the hospitals. There are nuances. Actually, some of those subsectors move at slightly different paces. We are getting good rental growth, for example. We get better rental growth, arguably, out of DIY at the moment than we might be getting out of GM. We are getting better rental growth maybe in urban than we might be getting out of regional. Even within those colors, the subsectors move at different speeds. Ana?

[Ana Escalante, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you. Ana Escalante from Morgan Stanley. My question is regarding logistics market rental growth. It is true that we are coming from very strong years and that market rental growth has decelerated a bit.

[Ana Escalante, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Do you think that that's just the normal digestion of those previous super strong years, or do you think we are starting to see some affordability issues here and there? Another way to ask the question is, at what point we can start seeing rents being too high or resulting affordable for some, or shall we expect that urban logistics rental growth to reaccelerate next year?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Great question. Again, it goes back to the answer I gave before around different parts of that logistics market moving at different speeds. We certainly see urban the strongest, and that is simply a demand-supply issue, except in London. I will come on to talk about that because I think that was your second part of one of your first questions. Urban feels good. For us, obviously, urban is defined by geography, but we also define it by size.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We'd be 100,000 sq ft down. We feel okay. Regional we define as 100 and a bit up to about 350-ish, give or take. That market definitely has supply that's been delivered on a spec basis. I mean, there are people out there that do spec developments, which I don't understand, but anyway, they do. Also maybe a pullback on demand of capital commitments and whatever with an uncertain economic environment going forward. Mega's fine as well because mega tends to be pre-let and built to suit. There's not a lot of, I mean, there's some people who I admire enormously who go off and build a million sq ft spec. I mean, you've got to, I mean, that is ballsy. Good luck to them, and I hope they do well.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

I think it's okay, but there is a bit in the middle where I think net absorption needs to increase. What I would say, and this applies not just to logistics, but it also applies to, we're seeing it very, very directly in our convenience retailers as well. We can't get developments to stack up. It's really difficult to get developments to stack up. That suggests rents have to push up. That might take a little, that might take a year or two to fold through whilst the net absorption, I mean, I think we had the biggest take-up, didn't we, guys, in the last, big take-up in the last six months. Excuse me. London is tougher for us. Even in urban, it's tougher. I think there's more of an affordability issue in London than there is anywhere else.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

It has had dramatic rental growth, so it is not surprising. I take the view that most things revert to the mean over a period of time, and that is what I suspect London is doing. London will still enjoy a great supply-side dynamic, but maybe the demand side at the current rents is a bit soft. I mean, I think our flagship sale, probably sales were about a year, nine months ago, ten months ago, we sold a warehouse that we bought in Parsons Green, which for those of you who know Fulham, there is not a lot of warehouses in Parsons Green. We ended up, we were going to let it originally to a dark kitchen.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Thought getting planning for the dark kitchen was going to be a bit tricky, as little mopeds going up and down the streets was not going to be overly popular with the finer residents of Fulham. We ended up letting it to a leisure operator who put in a fantastic facility for both adults and children alike and did an incredible fit-out. We ended up selling it, I think, for just over GBP 1,000 a foot. I think it was about GBP 1,060 a foot, which is probably about what this building's worth. That rent was GBP 50. That would be trickier. Yeah. Sorry. Max. Max behind you.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

Great. Thank you. It's Max Nimmo from Deutsche Numis. Just a higher-level question, kind of related. I was speaking to Martin before about kind of economies of scale versus opportunities of scale.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

Just in terms of cost efficiencies on one side, as you said, about the 7.7% EPRA cost ratio, but also the ability to kind of move the needle at the other end. I guess my question is around if you're still doing deals around that sort of GBP 6 million lot size.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

We're not buying six.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

Okay. If the lot size still remains relatively small, are you not effectively working the team harder and everyone having to run faster to kind of keep going at the same pace?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Definitely a lot of it. Jesus. We're not a charity. No, look, our average lot size on acquisitions would be significantly higher than that.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

In fact, you would actually argue today a very strong case that the arbitrage available in the direct market is to sell the smaller assets at 6 for very good pricing and reinvest them at 50, where the air is a bit thinner and the competition is less, and therefore you get a slightly better deal. Do not forget, what we're buying is not high operational assets. I mean, Will bought a portfolio of Premier Inns a few months back, let on 30-year leases. I mean, he'll probably be the only one who's seen them. I have no intention of, I don't have to worry about them. I mean, they're going to compound beautifully over the next 5, 10, 15 years. It's going to be wonderful. That doesn't need a huge amount of skill. I mean, the rent comes in from our key tenants pretty easily.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

That makes sense.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

Thank you. Maybe just kind of a follow-up. You talked about the sort of four to five opportunities that you have. In fact, four that are on the screen there. Maybe if we park M&A to one side, given there are not as many businesses left for that now. I guess just the opportunity set, how would you kind of rank them? It sounds like there is a lot that could come out of these sort of pension funds, but there is perhaps a bit of a learning situation needed for them in terms of what their NAVs are and how that kind of unlocks. Maybe just if you could rank them in terms of how you are thinking about them.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

One and two are amazing. Saying lease-backs and development fundings are amazing because those are the opportunities.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Effectively, you've got brand new leases, and those are very often scenarios or situations where you can influence the lease, not just the rent, but the rent review clauses and the term. Those are fantastic. We like those, but we're obviously not in control of how many of those opportunities will present themselves. I mean, we're working on a big sale and leaseback at the moment. We're working on a development funding at the moment with one of our key customers. We are absolutely, in development fundings, we want to be the occupier's partner of choice, or even the, we want the occupier to say to the developer, "Can you fund this through LondonMetric?" I mean, that's really what we want them to say. We had an example of that in the period. Fund expiries and pension liquidations, Darren deals with this. They're coming.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

There is a value issue, to your point, and there's also a timing issue. When are they coming? Managers are not, they seem to be more willing to drip things out and keep the feet train running for a bit longer than literally come up against a hard deadline. Look, you've got to be in it. We're buying tickets. We're doing a lot of talking on it. We've executed those assets that we announced on Tuesday from well, and we've got a few others that we're working through. It is coming. I mean, you've seen, I think Lone Star did the St. James's Place portfolio, didn't they, last week? It's either the, and then also the strategies that these managers employ is different. Sometimes it's being, most often it's been led by the investors putting in redemption notices. You might have a reluctant manager.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

There is whether or not they do the whole lot or whether or not they chop it up into sectors to try and get maybe a slightly better price. Again, you are not in, I mean, the whole thing about real estate is you are never in control. We do not sit there and go, "Press a screen. We want to buy." I know what we want to buy, but it is not on the screen. It does not appear on a screen like it might do in the equity markets. I think, look, I would, I mean, I do love one and two. I mean, I do love one and two, and three is going to be pricing dependent, and four we will not talk about.

[Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis]

Great. Thank you.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Matt.

[Matt Saperia, Real Estate Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Good morning. It's Matt Saperia from Peel Hunt. Martin, you are looking like you need a question.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

I really don't.

[Matt Saperia, Real Estate Analyst at Peel Hunt]

You sure?

[Matt Saperia, Real Estate Analyst at Peel Hunt]

I think you talked about, or you showed earlier on the debt maturity profile. You've obviously got a current cost of debt that's below the market rate. Yeah, I think you also mentioned that you don't expect your financing costs to go up. Can you just talk us through how you get to that conclusion given the maturity profile and the cost?

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Yeah, absolutely. We have a series of refinancings coming at us. When you look at our debt stack, it's too weighted in favor of our relationship banks, and there's not enough bond debt on it. We've done various private placements. We've never done a public bond. When we got our credit rating earlier in the year, that was the precursor to a public bond. We will do a series of those coming up.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

When you then look at what happens to our financing costs, you stop paying commitment fees on undrawn RCFs, and you stop paying the fair value amortization on the debt we've acquired through M&A. That is a lot. If your interest rate may nudge up, or your amortization of your cost of putting the debt in place may nudge up, the compensating fact that you do not have those other two components of your finance charge means it is almost exactly flat going forward over the next three or four years. Our cost of debt could go from 4.1% to 4.3%, but the number you see in the income statement for finance costs will not change. He's just saying that the lending banks have just been robbing us. Steve, you want that? You were not going to get away with it, were you?

[Suraj Goyal, Senior Equity Research Associate at Green Street]

Good morning. Good morning. It's Suraj Goyal from Green Street. Just a quick question on sort of e-commerce. Just wanted to understand what your sort of base case forecast is for 2030 and beyond, and how that sort of reconciles with the recent normalization that we've seen, also with sort of return policy changes for a lot of e-commerce players, etc. What that would look like in terms of long-term rental growth.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Let's stand up here just in case my mic's not working. Look, we form our strategy and sector investments based off evolving consumer behavior. U.K. penetration into online shopping is excellent. I mean, we're world-class. It doesn't stop. I mean, it's a bit like when retailers used to say to me, or retail owners used to say, "Oh, we've rebased the rents." It's as if it stops.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

There is an ongoing generation that actually enjoy the delivery of online shopping rather than the destinations that maybe my parents might have enjoyed more so. We still think it will continue. We think that it needs to get more efficient, and we are seeing operators increasingly putting more money into automation in order to make that work because it has to, there is no point in having it. It has to be profitable. I am not convinced that that influences our investments in urban logistics as much as it might in mega. We still think it is a trend that as we move through generations and my children become the key shopper, the idea for them of wanting to go to St. David's or wherever it might be, whichever shopping center it is, it just does not exist. They want to buy online. I think it is an attractive tale.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

You might argue that the bigger jumps are behind us, but we still think it, we still expect it to grow. I think food is different. I think food is different. That has probably, I mean, obviously jumped from about seven to 15 during COVID, and then it has come back. I think it has settled about 11, depending on which grocery you talk to. That is different. We are seeing, we are absolutely seeing those operators investing in their facilities, particularly cold. We are building a cold facility for M&S down in Avonmouth in Bristol. We think it will continue to grow. We think it is supportive. What we also expect is that the occupiers will want more efficient facilities. Their network needs to get more efficient if they are going to be able to use that to drive profitability.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

It wasn't that long ago when I could have stood up here and people talk about online shopping, but nobody makes any money doing it. Actually, I haven't had that question for a while because I used to just redirect them to the next report and accounts, actually, to see how profitable it actually was. Thank you. Suraj.

[Suraj Goyal, Senior Equity Research Associate at Green Street]

Okay.

[Eleanor Frew, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Morning. Eleanor from Barclays. The exposure to your largest tenants has been coming down, partly as a result of your acquisition activity elsewhere. Are you happy with the current top three concentration? I see it's below 2019 levels. If not, are you looking to accelerate reduction or happy to carry on diluting over time?

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Thank you, Eleanor. Look, I was asked actually on a call, a press call earlier about what are your tests on tenant exposure.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

The hard debt was always 10, although we did take that up to about 11 and a bit a few years back when Primark was our largest customer. We ended up selling one of the big facilities and bringing it back down again. Ten is a hard deck. I think we would like to improve, I would like us to improve our granularity so that nobody's more than 5. We will look to do that over the coming years. This is what happens, isn't it? When you buy portfolios or you buy companies, sometimes it's not all perfect because if it was, somebody else probably would have taken them out before you. Therefore there will be a sell down, and we're already making progress on that. It is a combination of that.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Obviously, as we've improved, increased the size of the business, that has brought some of the concentrations down a bit as well. Income granularity, as I said on this, is an important part of our business model, but understand and occupier contentment overrides all of this. Yeah, I'd absolutely expect it to stretch a bit. When we announced the, about, what was it? It would have been about 20 months ago now that we announced the deal with LXI REIT, we were going to be the proud owners of 146 Travelodge properties. That really bothered me. I now think we have 63 Travelodge properties. There are levers that we will pull.

[Eleanor Frew, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Thanks.

[Tom Musson, Director and Real Estate Equity Analyst at Berenberg]

Thanks. It's Tom Musson on Berenberg. Actually, just following up on Max's earlier point on the opportunity set.

[Tom Musson, Director and Real Estate Equity Analyst at Berenberg]

If we think about Europe, you might argue that you can access a lower cost of capital in some European countries. Now with your scale and with the triple net lease business model, that could be value accretive for the right opportunity. I just wonder how outwardly looking you now are when it comes to what's next.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Good question. I think that, look, we would look at Europe as not a country. We would look at Europe as a combination. If we are to look at investing outside of the U.K., I mean, we have a facility at the moment. We have Heide Park in Germany. We would probably identify two or three countries where we could predict and have a clear view of consumer behavior.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Also, we would want, obviously, it would be, we'd feel more comfortable if we were to go into another country with an existing customer. I'm not going to name any names. There would be a few tests first, Tom, but I wouldn't say that we're actively looking. We get European opportunities put through to us. I mean, the big opportunity in some ways from an equity perspective is that there isn't really a triple net champion in the European markets. That is the equity opportunity for us, which we're quite aware of. We do get a lot of incoming from some investors as to why don't you do it because then it would give us that European triple net exposure. The lease structures, the REIT regimes in these countries have to be friendly to us as well.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Like I said, we're obviously learning a little bit more about Germany now than we would have done five years ago. I wouldn't expect an announcement that we're just about to make a big acquisition in Germany.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

If you go back your 20 months to when we acquired LXi, we would undoubtedly have said that we will sell Heide, the German theme park. The truth is, Heide throws off great income. We put some EUR debt against it as a natural hedge, and it's cheap. Your view can evolve, can't it? It's a terrific asset, and perhaps the market's not right to sell it into today. We don't. Helpful. Thank you. I did used to say that Europe was for holidays. Stop saying that.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Any other questions?

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Okay. We've got a question from the webcast today from Andrew Saunders from Shore Capital.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Now you've been able to get under the hood of the ULR asset. What are your thoughts and what are your plans for the Melton Mulberry? Thank you, Andrew.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Look, I think Urban was a well-run REIT. Okay, let's say that. It was a well-run company. We're very pleased with what we've inherited. There are undoubtedly assets that we wouldn't have bought, but I've no doubt if the situations had been reversed, they might have thought that there are assets that we've bought that they don't particularly like. That happens. It's what we call beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Otherwise, we'd all be wearing gray gilets and light blue shirts. Look, Melton Mulberry is a difficult one at lots of levels. We're on it. We fortunately allocated a price on the way in that will allow us to get out without losing our shirt and trousers.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Yeah, I mean, the acquisition price was elevated. The tenant, obviously, longevity was not what was probably originally anticipated. We'll deal with it, and we'll move on, and the money will be reinvested. I mean, at the moment, it's not in any of our forecasts. If we do either let it or sell it, that will be money or income that comes in that isn't in our GBP 28 million that we're hoping to collect over the next 18 months. That would be on top of that. All portfolios have some problem children, like families.

[Martin McGann, CFO at LondonMetric Property]

Thank you for that. That's all the time we've got for questions. I'll hand back to you, Andrew, for closing remarks.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Thanks. That's great. We are literally just the right side of an hour.

[Andrew Jones, CEO at LondonMetric Property]

Thank you ever so much for your questions, your time, and your comments. Thanks. Have a great day.

Participants

Executives

• Martin McGann, CFO
• Andrew Jones, CEO

Analysts

• Max Nimmo, Director of Real Estate Equity Research at Deutsche Numis
• Ana Escalante, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Tom Musson, Director and Real Estate Equity Analyst at Berenberg
• Matt Saperia, Real Estate Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Vanessa Guy, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan
• Suraj Goyal, Senior Equity Research Associate at Green Street
• Eleanor Frew, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Barclays