Unite Group H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 25, 2025
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Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So delighted to be announcing another strong set of results for 2024. '5 percent EPS growth of return on equity of just under 10%, and the balance sheet is in good place providing us with capacity for growth.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And this performance to me really demonstrates the strength and resilience of our model in a year when the sector faced into some challenges. And that resilience comes from three key factors. The first is our alignment to the strongest universities. The second is our price point products and platform, which allows us to play into the sweet spot of where the demand is. And the third is our unrivaled relationships and nominations with the strongest universities in The UK, which importantly is also opening up that exciting new growth opportunities.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So in a year that has seen a decline in international students, where there has been some uncertainty about university finances and there's been cost and funding cost growth, we have outperformed our competition, we've delivered rental growth, and we've absorbed those cost pressures to deliver earnings growth and a strong return on equity. Looking forward, the structural growth in our market continues to support a sustainable rental growth outlook. On the demand side, we expect that there will be more students this year than there was last year. The UK demographics are still supportive and the recovery of international student applications is starting to come through. And we have a more supportive policy backdrop again, which is encouraging both UK and international students.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

On the supply side, new supply is significantly down, and that's really being driven by the development viability challenges, and we are continuing to see HMO landlords leaving the markets. This supports our rental growth outlook. And we have a well funded growth pipeline and a balance sheet which is able to flex. Our leverage levels mean that we have capacity to fund our pipeline and that will accelerate our earnings growth, and we

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

have further capacity to push leverage if rates

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

do start to ease. Earnings growth has been driven by a strong operational performance, delivering that 8% rental growth and 97.5% occupancy, and that supports our 5% increase in dividend. We're currently 70% sold for the next academic year. And whilst reservations are tracking behind the exceptional performance over the last two years, we are in line with historic levels. We are seeing a bit of a delay in students booking, and that's because we saw some late discounting by some of our competitors at the end of the sales cycle last year.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

But importantly, we've had a strong underpin from our nominations agreements, giving us real confidence in the university recruitment for next academic year. And as I say, we expect overall student numbers to be ahead of last year, both UK and international, and that's what supports our guidance of occupancy of 97% plus and 4% to 5% rental growth. Our return on equity of 9.6 percent was driven by an earnings yield of just over 5%, a property valuation growth of just under 5%, And we've had good progress during the year of continuing to build our pipeline as well as our university joint ventures. On the demand side, the overall data for 2024, '20 '20 '5 intake is supportive of that growth. UCaaS data is showing growth from our core cohort of 18 year olds from The UK and also internationally, importantly, from China as well.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And this builds on some encouraging Visa data that came through in January, again showing that there is starting to build momentum on international students. On domestic students, the demographics continue to provide a helpful tailwind over the medium term. We're expecting to see further double digit growth over the next five years, which equates around 100,000 additional 18 year olds by 2,030. And universities are playing into this trend. We saw last year that universities recruited heavily with The UK intake.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

That was up 4% with high and mid tariff university and again shows how important our alignment to those strongest university is into our performance. We're well positioned to address the affordability concerns through our mid market price points. We're well below much of the premium end stock in the market price. A recent Knight Frank report showed that PBSA is seen as better value for money than both HMO and university stock. Increasingly, we are seeing universities choose more affordable products rather than the high price point, high amenity for their nominations agreements.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And these factors really support our occupancy in both 2024, '20 '20 '5 and beyond. Now there's been a lot of talk about university finances over the last twelve months, and it is clear that they are having to look at their cost structures in response to frozen fee levels and a fall in international recruitment this year. And these are generally high profile, and they're not great for their reputations. But these are institutions which have been around for a long time. They are asset rich with low levels of leverage, and they have cost structures that can be made more efficient.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And we will look to support those universities wherever and how we can, and actually, that could present some opportunities for us as well. International students make up 28% of our customers, and the unexpected shock last year to international recruitment came as a result of changes to the visa system. But we were actually able to maintain our sales flat year over year despite these falls. We're encouraged by a more welcoming tone from the government and successive announcements from ministers, and we're expecting to see an international education strategy later on this year, which again, expects to be supportive of international students. Immigration controls are being introduced by some of the other major destination for international students in both Australia and Canada.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And the British Council suggests that they will see fewer students going to those destinations as well as seeing an expectation that U. S. International recruitment could fall as was the case in Trump's first administration. So we've demonstrated that our international demand and offer is robust, and we can flex even when there is a year of change. So we expect 2024 to be a low point for international recruitment and gives us a really good platform to build from this position.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

On the supply side, we're continuing to see limited additional new beds coming through with only 11,000 beds delivered in 2024. That represents less than 1% increase in the total number of beds which are available. As I say, that's down primarily to the viability changes challenges with rents having to pay £200 to £220 a week just to justify building given the current cost of capital. Development is taking longer due to planning and regulation. And what is being built tends to be studio dominated.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So very high price point, and it's not meeting the needs of UK Students or the universities for their nominations agreements. University stock is becoming older and more obsolescent. We're seeing beds leave the market every year. And as I mentioned, high mode landlords are continuing to leave the market. We've seen around 8% leave already, and 30% of HMO landlords have indicated they're planning to sell up given that continuing pressure around licensing regulation, environmental compliance and funding.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And the Renters Rights Act, which we expect to see later this year, further shifts the dial towards the students and continues to raise standards. But given the structure and the type of accommodation that we offer, PBSA is expected to be exempted from that Renters Rights Act, and that again places PBSA in a relative position of strength versus Hymo. So overall, we still feel that our supply and demand characteristics support rental and earnings growth and really give us the confidence to continue to invest in our marketplace. And I'll come back to that after Karen and Mike take you through their slides.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to update you on a strong financial performance in 2024. The business delivered 5% growth in adjusted earnings per share, underpinned by the strength of our operating performance. This also supports a 5% increase in our dividend.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Net tangible assets per share increased by 6% with growth driven by a strong leasing performance for twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five academic year. This together with the underpin of our growing earnings supported total accounting returns of 9.6%. Our balance sheet is in excellent shape with the capacity to invest for growth. Following our equity raise, net debt EBITDA reduced to 5.5 times. We delivered a robust operating performance in the year with net operating income increasing by 8% for our like for like properties.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

This reflected the high occupancy and rental growth carried forward from the twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four academic year and the rental growth secured for twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. Property activity contributed an additional £4,000,000 in rental income with acquisitions and development completions more than offsetting the impact of our disposals. Operating costs increased by 6% on a like for like basis. This reflected increases in our staff costs linked to the real living wage and the impact of higher utility prices following expiry of our cheaper historical hedges. These changes resulted in our EBIT margin increasing marginally to 68.1%.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

This was slightly below our expectations due to margin lower occupancy than anticipated for twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five and cost increases for a state's work and our central teams. Looking ahead, we see EBIT margins improving by around half a percentage point in 2025 through rental growth, lower underlying cost increases, and efficiencies. Our operating performance was the key driver of the 5% growth in our adjusted EPS in 2024. Overheads net of our management fees were flat on an underlying basis in the year. We also incurred £12,000,000 of implementation costs in relation to the upgrade of our technology platforms and expect to recognize a similar level of costs in 2025.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

We saw funding costs increase in the year, reflecting a higher cost of debt on refinancing activity and the increased share count following our equity raises in 2023 and 2024. Together, this resulted in adjusted EPS of 46.6 p. The business delivered another strong year of return on equity in 2024. EPRA NTA per share increased by 6% to $9.72 p. This was underpinned by a 4.8% increase in property valuations on a like for like basis.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Valuations increased on the back of the rental growth secured for the twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five academic year. This more than offset the impact of a 10 basis point increase in property yields and the loss of multiple dwelling relief in the first half. Development and asset management activity added 4p to NTA as we made progress with planning and construction activity. We expect development to make a higher contribution to NTA growth in 2025 as we accelerate our activity on-site. The NTA movement in the second half reflects nine p of initial dilution from our equity issue and the reinvestment of the 10 p gain on interest rate swaps from the first half.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

We continue to make good progress with our fire safety remediation program. Our year end balance sheet reflects the additional costs of planned work in 'twenty five and 'twenty six. These costs have been partially offset by a further 32,000,000 of successful claims in the year. Overall, cladding costs net of claims resulted in a three p reduction to NAV in the year. We expect cladding costs equivalent to around 1% of NAV in 2025 and then reducing from 2026 onwards.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

For 2025, we expect to deliver total accounting returns of eight percent to 10% before yield movements. This is underpinned by our recurring earnings and rental growth. Over the medium term, we expect total accounting returns to increase to around 10% as development activity accelerates and cladding costs reduce. The business has significant opportunities for new investment and we have the balance sheet capacity to deliver this growth. The group raised 1,500,000,000.0 in funding in 2024 through a combination of equity, debt and disposals.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

This provides funding for delivery of our development pipeline through to 2028. We remain committed to maintaining a high quality balance sheet and net debt EBITDA reduced to under six times following our equity issue. We expect this to increase back towards its six to seven times target level as we deliver development projects. Our cost of debt increased by 30 basis points in the year to 3.6, and we expect it to rise to 4.1% in 2025 as a result of refinancing activity and drawing new debt at higher marginal rates. Disposals remain an important part of our capital discipline, helping to make funding available for new investment and ensuring our portfolio is aligned to the strongest universities.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

We anticipate a further £100,000,000 to £150,000,000 of disposals in 2025. We're confident of delivering another year of growth in earnings and dividends in 2025. This reflects the income visibility from our sales performance for the twenty twenty four-twenty five academic year and the progress on reservations for twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six, where we expect to achieve rental growth of 4% to 5%. As I mentioned earlier, we expect this rental growth to deliver an improvement in our EBIT margin of around 0.5 percentage point to 68.5%. While underlying cost inflation is slowing, we will be impacted by the increase in employers' national insurance contributions with effect from April 2025.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Completions of development and asset management initiatives will accelerate this year with delivery of million of projects, which will offset the expected impact of disposals. After reflecting the expected increase in our cost of debt, this translates to 2% to 4% growth in our adjusted EPS. As in previous years, we'll provide more visibility on earnings as we make progress with direct let sales for the upcoming academic year. Next, I'll take us through the business's property activity. 2024 was a busy year for our teams who delivered around CHF 600,000,000 of investment activity across development, acquisitions and asset management.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Our investment strategy is focused on enhancing the quality of our portfolio to support sustainable long term rental growth. 93% by value of our portfolio is aligned to Russell Group's cities, which have delivered long term outperformance. And we see our exposure to these markets increasing further as we deliver our pipeline. We've already deployed half of the proceeds of our recent equity raise and will accelerate development activity in 2025. '20 '20 '4 was also the year in which the business secured its first university partnership with Newcastle University, and and we're confident of announcing our second university JV in the coming months.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

We've increased our development activity in the past twelve months through a combination of new site acquisitions, planning milestones and construction activity. Committed development activity now totals just under £1,200,000,000 and this follows planning approvals for February beds in London, Bristol, and Glasgow during the year. We delivered our newest building in Nottingham in 2024, and the project delivers our latest design concepts in a smaller scheme targeting postgraduates and returning students. We'll deliver two projects in 2025 in Bristol and Edinburgh with a total development cost of £142,000,000 At Avon Point in Bristol, we secured a nominations agreement with the University of Bristol for half the beds, and this supports a target yield on cost of 7.2% for this year's deliveries. The proceeds of our 20 foot 24 equity raise helped to fund the acquisition of our newest London scheme at King's Place in Burgh.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

The consented scheme is targeted for delivery in 2027. At our Travis Perkins scheme in Paddington, we're reviewing our options following a disappointing refusal at planning committee last month. The decision underlies the difficulties in delivering new supply in our strongest markets. Development is taking longer to deliver and will be disciplined over our future starts to ensure we're delivering the best risk adjusted returns for shareholders. For our university partners, high quality and affordable accommodation is key to enabling their growth ambitions.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Our local communities also have a clear need for new purpose built student accommodation to help free up much needed family housing. Our university partnership model helps to achieve both of these outcomes by using university land and our expertise to accelerate the delivery of new homes. We secured our first university joint venture in 2024 with Newcastle University for the development of 2,000 new beds on university land at Castle Leazes. We expect to achieve planning approval in Q2, which will support a phased delivery of the project in 2028 and 2029. The existing halls are now closed and United is providing the university with 1,600 beds during the redevelopment.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

I'm also pleased to say we're close to securing our second university joint venture. Many of you will have seen that we've begun local consultation with Manchester Metropolitan University for a 2,300 bed development in Manchester City Centre. We're excited by the opportunity to work one of The UK's most successful modern universities and will provide further detail in the coming months. Looking further ahead, we see a significant opportunity for more university partnerships. Based on the requirements we're seeing from our universities, it's likely that future deals may also include an element of stock transfer and refurbishment of existing accommodation.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

And this is something where we're well versed from experience with our own portfolio. Our combined pipeline of traditional development university partnership now totals just under 8,000 beds, of which over half by value is located in London. This will add just under 30% to the value of our portfolio once delivered. Billion of this pipeline is already committed and fully funded. These schemes will be delivered between now and 2029 adding million to our net operating income.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

The timing of development deliveries has been impacted by the recent introduction of Building Safety Act gateways for high rise residential buildings. We're in the early days of these new regulations and have experienced delays in securing pre construction approvals. As a result, we've taken the decision to move back the delivery of our Freestone Island project in Bristol by twelve months to 2027. We do expect the BSA approval process to become more efficient on future schemes, and we've taken action to mitigate potential delays on other 2027 and 2028 projects. Our acquisition disposal activity is focused on improving the quality of our portfolio.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

This ensures we're aligned to the strongest universities. Over time, we see our alignment to high and mid tariff universities continuing to grow alongside our exposure to London, which remains acutely supply constrained. During the year, we disposed of just over 300,000,000 of properties to recycle capital for reinvestment and exit assets with lower rental growth prospects. Going forwards, we expect to maintain a run rate of disposals around 2% to 3% of our portfolio each year. We acquired eight properties in the year for a total of million in Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff and London.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

All of these properties were already managed by the group and provide opportunities to accelerate value add initiatives under full Unite ownership. We also continue to invest in the improvement of our properties and delivered GBP 48,000,000 of asset management initiatives in the period, achieving a 10% yield on cost through a combination of rental uplifts and utility cost savings. And with that, I'll hand you over to Karim.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Thanks, Mike. As Chu and Mike shared earlier, we've had another strong year and once again highlights the strength and resilience of our industry leading operating platform. It all starts with the relationships that we have with leading UK universities, which offers us a high level of income protection even when there are demand changes as we saw with international demand not coming in as strongly at the end of the cycle. These relationships also open doors to new growth opportunities as we've seen in Newcastle and in Manchester. We then have our passionate teams who deliver for students every single day, offering them a real home across affordable portfolio, in which we continue to invest capital to make sure we are delivering value for money.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Our focus on student support and welfare means parents and HE Partners know we are there if needed. And finally, we have our proprietary technology platform, which last year saw the first of the major upgrades that we've got planned to make sure it stays industry leading. Taken together, these capabilities help us deliver a great place to live for our students and strong return for our investors. Joe shared at the start our top line performance and I wanted to add a little bit of color around what drove this performance. We have been very, very focused on total revenue and drove like for like rental growth of 8.2%, beating even the excellent performance we delivered last year.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Our occupancy of 97.5 was in line with historical averages, but ahead of the market, which was at about 94%. This outperformance was built first and foremost on the strength of our university partnerships and the nominations that we have with them. Nominations grew 4% this year and are now 57% of our total sales. Our focus on being aligned to the strongest universities was key again. These universities took more beds with us as they benefited from the flight to quality that accelerated last year.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

We also renewed about 80% of these agreements and have taken a balanced but robust view, both on the rates that we sell them at, but also the quality of the terms. Another driver of our performance has been the strong revenue management capabilities we now have at Unite. This allowed us to adapt our commercial strategies, securing more domestic norms when we started to see direct led softness in some markets. It helped us shift out of some other international markets into the ones that were growing and we focused a lot on retention of our existing residents. These changes together with the mid tier price points that we have helped us get to our rental growth target without having to rely on the discounting that Joe mentioned that a lot of our competitors had to do as they were overexposed late in the cycle with a lot of higher end internationally focused studio based rooms.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Overall now, 72 of our rooms are with UK domestic students, which I believe provides us with a strong and stable foundation for the business. Looking ahead, we are currently 70% sold versus 79% at the same time last year. A few factors are driving this difference. Firstly, after two years of exceptional growth, we are adjusting back to the long run booking patterns for the sector. Secondly, some of the early panic buying that Joe mentioned has given away to more rational consumer behavior.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Students who saw discounting at the end of the last cycle from our competitors are understandably just waiting to see if they could get a better deal if they wait just that little bit longer. But we are encouraged by what we can see in the lead indicators and after they reiterated our guidance for 4% to 5% rental growth for the academic year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. So what's driving our belief? Firstly, in the undergraduate space, applications are up 4.3% for high tariff universities and two thirds of our properties are against these universities. This has resulted in continued strong demand for our core first year nominations focused offer where secured rents support our rental growth guidance.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Secondly, we know that our breadth of all inclusive offers at affordable price points makes us relevant to more students looking for accommodation. As you can see over here, we are very competitive against all forms of other accommodation, from corporate PBSA, which has focused a lot on the higher end, higher priced studios filled by international students, but also now to HMOs as well, when you look at the total cost of accommodation. Finally, international student applications are up 3% year on year. I'll come on to that in just a second. So we believe we're actually well positioned to deliver our rental growth guidance of 4% to 5%.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Just as an example, if we look at the 2022, '20 '20 '3 cycle, we ended that year on 99% occupancy, and but we were 67% sold at the same time and we're 70% sold right now. The key will of course be a strong clearing and the recovery in international demand to come through fully. We'll keep you updated on progress as the year goes on. Just a few words on international demand, which I'm sure is top of mind for everybody. As Joe mentioned, the last cycle did see fewer international students than expected, and that was predominantly in the postgraduate space.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

But as the government narrative has changed, we have seen this reflected in Visa application data, which was starting to trend back up and saw a 14 increase year on year this January. Applications with China, which is a key market for universities, is up 9% year on year as well. And we could start to see that in our sales data as well in February, where things have started to tick up versus January. We also expect the international education strategy due this year to continue to highlight the value international students have and add to our HE sector and create the right environment for The UK to be seen as a preferred destination of choice for these international students. I think sometimes we tend to forget just how good our UK HE institutions are, with 27 in the top 200 on the global rankings, that's second only to The U.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

S. Which brings me on to my last message, the fantastic feedback that we continue to receive from our students and from our HE partners. This year, we delivered the highest ever NPS in Unite's history with a score of plus 50. That's an increase of eight points year on year. Our HE partners also six scored us plus 37, which is 5% higher than last year, which was the highest that we ever had at Unite.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

This clearly shows that what we're doing in our properties at the front line and back through our central teams is working really well. I have in the past talked about Support to Stay and our wider service programs before, and they remain fundamental to our success. Additionally, we have increased our investment in our existing estate, where we have upgraded over 5,000 rooms and just launched our next gen designs. Hopefully, some of you got to see that at Stapleton House last year when we had the Capital Markets update in London. Another huge step forward has been the upgrade to our digital platforms through a new student app and website, which was the first part of the Prism upgrade.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Since the launch of the student website, we've had nearly 5,000,000 views and over 400,000 students have used our new property search tool. Our student app has also allowed us to drive more self-service, which has helped us reduce calls to our contact center by 14%. This year, we will introduce a new resident experience platform, a new facilities management tool, as well as a new finance system. And next year, we will launch a new booking engine and a property management system. These investments are critical for us not only to sustain the high levels of satisfaction, but also drive further margin improvement.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

And on that note, I'll hand back to Joe.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Mike. So one year into my new role, I'm delighted with where we are as a business. Last year, I talked about the real strength and quality of our business and that we wanted to focus on creating a great place to live, a great place to work and a great place to invest and to accelerate our growth over the next five years. And I think we've made a really good step forward over the last twelve months against all of those ambitions.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

We delivered a great set of results in conditions that were not straightforward. And this was down to the attributes that we have built over many years, which have stood us in good stead looking back, but also we can really build on going forward. We've got the best operating platform in the sector that drives customer service at affordable rents. Our market leading scale allows us to invest to continue to enhance that customer service and also our efficiencies. And our relationships and alignment to the strongest universities together with that right product that we talked about means that we have a very strong underpin to our performance and we're protected from any demand shocks.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Those relationships go back many years and universities consistently renew nominations agreements with us. And importantly, they are opening up those new growth opportunities that we've been talking about. We continue to drive the quality and alignment of our portfolio through the active portfolio recycling that Mike talked about and focusing our development and acquisitions on the strongest university cities in The UK. And we've got a great development capability and a pipeline of 8,000 beds, which is heavily focused on London and nominations agreements, which will further enhance that quality and alignment. And we're operating a sector which shows those structural demand drivers, which continues to support our ongoing rental and earnings growth going forward and provide us the confidence to keep investing in our business.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And looking at that investment outlook, we are looking at a wider set of investment opportunities going forward. We raised around GBP 1,000,000,000 of capital last year, and we've got a clear path to deploy that. The capital environment does remain challenging. The cost of capital has increased. Development is getting harder, and we continue to recycle capital into that market to make sure we maintain that alignment and reinvestment capability.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So we need to remain disciplined around how we and where we deploy that capital. So we've increased our target development yields to 7% in London and 8% in the regions.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Now we will be flexible on that if

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

the schemes come forward with planning or with nominations agreements in targeting more option agreements in our development activity. Clearly, income producing assets have the benefit of immediate income. And so we have been spending more time looking at those acquisition opportunities with a focus on older first generation assets, where we feel we've got an opportunity to reposition those to drive higher earnings yields as we showed with the USAAF and the London acquisition that we did late last year. Asset management investment continues to offer really attractive returns, but these are granular schemes. They are high on resource, and it really caps our deployment at around GBP 50,000,000 to GBP 75,000,000 each year, but we will continue to invest and roll out that into our existing portfolio.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

And as Mike touched on, University joint ventures offer us a really meaningful and exciting medium term growth opportunity. We're making great progress on our second deal with Manchester, and we expect to be able to announce a closure of that deal within the next three months. But I'm having lots of conversations with the Vice Chancellors right now about how they can address the challenge and the need to provide more better affordable accommodation. And it's exciting to see a number of those discussions move into include income generating assets as well. So we will deploy our capital into a wider set of opportunities going forward, and that investment will build on our core returns from the operational side of our business.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

We have really good visibility of our medium term investment horizon, and that drives the mid single EPS growth and TAR of around 10%. And the visibility on that comes from the building blocks that we've talked through this morning. The market fundamentals and platform driving our rental growth, this remains core to our value creation. We are seeing our rental growth outlook returning to more normalized levels of around CPI plus 50 to 100 basis points as inflation moderates. Our margin improvements will come through that technology driven efficiencies and also softening cost pressures.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Our deployment of capital is clear, funded and accretive. So those wider opportunities that we are talking about, we must remain disciplined around how we allocate those to ensure that, that capital deployment will continue to drive and focus on the earnings growth that is so important to us. And we'll continue to manage net debt and LTV at our target levels. As I mentioned, we see upside opportunity that if rates do start to ease. So wrapping that altogether, I think we've delivered a really strong performance in 2024, demonstrating the resilience of our model and the quality of our portfolio alignment to universities, that mid market price point and the strength of our nominations agreement.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Our earnings outlook for 2025 is 2% to 4% increasing to mid single digits over the medium term, really driven by that structural demand supporting ongoing rental growth from the wider range of investment opportunities, including the growing momentum in university partnerships and the capacity that we have on our balance sheet to continue that investment path. On that note, I will open up to some questions. If we start in the room, we've got one down at front with Sam. We've got a mic somewhere. Melissa's running around.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Just here.

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

Hi, morning. It's Sam King from BNP Exane. A couple of questions, please. The first one on the Paddington development project. I understand that you hold the land for that under option, but you've now had planning rejected twice, essentially, for the scheme being too big, where you originally went from 800 beds down to 600 beds for the second time.

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

What's the plan moving forward? Are you now essentially in a game of planning ping pong with Westminster City Council where the scheme just gets smaller and smaller until they say yes? And I suppose linked to that, the yield on cost for the first iteration was the same as the second iteration. So at what point does the marginal reduction in beds start to impact the yield on cost for the scheme?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yeah. It's incredibly frustrating that when you have a recommendation for approval and it gets turned down by a committee for the second time, we'd work really hard with the vendor to renegotiate the land price to reflect that lower density of the scheme. We've got options whether we ask for that scheme to get called in by the mayor or we appeal or whether we just feel it's time not to proceed with that scheme if we think the time and commitment to that. So and if the returns don't stack up, then we won't proceed with that scheme. I think we've shown that we can replace those developments with other opportunities if they come forward.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

But we are working through to get the optimum output. And it but it's got to meet our target returns if we're going to take it forward.

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

Should we think that as a minimum yield on cost of 7% for London projects?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. I think we're targeting 7%. As I say, we'll be slightly flexible on kind of location scheme specifics, but that's what we're aiming at, sort of seven or around there for London development schemes.

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

Okay. Thanks. And then just on reservations and momentum that looks like it slowed slightly. If I look at the January trading update, you're at 66%, that was 4% behind last year, and you're now at 70%, which is 9% behind last year. I appreciate that's in line with the long term average, but what impacts does that have on your ability to drive rents if you become more reliant on clearing?

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

And I suppose also, does that change in student habits of looking to catch late cycle discounts reflect something structural in the market?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Garren, do you want to take that one?

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Yes. So if I start with the second question first. So I think in terms of student behavior, I don't think it fundamentally changes how they think about sort of accommodation sales. I think given the extent of discounting that happened sort of last year, especially when it comes to internationally focused product, the agents who often advise a lot of the international students have sort of have played a role in that as well. And I think as they recognize that the pricing has been set appropriately and there's a steady flow and there isn't a deep discounting, we don't expect it to happen this year.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

I think you will start to see students buying at the time when they get the offer done, when they've got that secured or when they've got the visa secured. Those are probably the two key moments when the application is approved by the university and they get an offer and when they secure a Visa depending on which market you're from. So I do believe we will get back to sort of normal sort of standard patterns or booking behavior. And certainly from our point, our commercial strategy is does not rely on deep discounting. We have a very strong nominations base.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

We have the right sort of price points. So we're not going after that sort of customer. I think in terms of if first, in terms of sort of where we are with momentum, I think again it's going back to where it used to be. I think when we look at our sort of forward indicators, like I said, we are seeing coming out of Chinese New Year, coming out of university starting to make the offer, students are much more engaged in the process. And the feedback that we're getting from our international agents certainly is that students are interested in The UK more than they were last year.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

And therefore, you should start to see an uptake in sales, which we've already started to sort of see in the last couple of weeks. So in March and April will be key months to see how strong the recovery will be and that will influence as we go forward our guidance.

Samuel King
Vice President at BNP Paribas

All right. Thank you.

Andres Toome
Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC

Andres Tholme from Green Street. So a couple of questions. I guess, firstly, on just your profit margins on EBIT. So you have a guidance for about 50 basis point increase for this financial year. So and there's obviously a range.

Andres Toome
Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC

So maybe you can give a bit more color in terms of what does that hinge the outcome, obviously, the top line, how you progressed through the leasing cycle. But is there anything on the cost side as well which you can give a bit more clarity on?

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Yes. You're right, Andres. So we've guided that we expect to improve the EBIT margin by around 0.5 percentage point this year. That's a function really of the rental growth we've already locked in for the academic year underway and the rental growth we expect to deliver for the next academic year. That range in earnings outcomes, the sort of difference between 2% growth at the bottom end and 4% growth at the top end is really principally driven by where we end up on the strength of rental growth and occupancy for the next academic year.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

And that also has a flow through impact on margin as well. So assuming we get to around the midpoint of that 97% to 98% on occupancy and 4% to 5% on rental growth, that will leave us in that range on earnings.

Andres Toome
Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC

And then more on the cost side, I guess, energy costs have gone up a lot, right? And maybe even going beyond this financial year, how is the hedging strategy looking? And how do you sort of expect to play that out?

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Yes. Our hedging strategy on utilities hasn't really changed, and it served us very well since the spike in utility costs. So to sort of give you a reminder, we generally hedge sort of eighteen to twenty four months forward. And the benefit of that is when we come to set prices for the next academic year, we know the cost of utilities we'll be providing to those customers. So for this financial year, we're already fully hedged on utility costs.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

For next financial year, we're just under half hedged on utility costs. In 2024, we actually saw utilities step up by a double digit amount, and that was the roll off of some of the better, cheaper hedges we'd had in the past. We actually don't see as much of an impact in 'twenty five. So we're looking at more like a low single digit cost increase in 'twenty five utilities.

Andres Toome
Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC

So I guess for 2026, it could be quite material then seeing that spot prices have gone up quite a lot?

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

There's a bit I think there's a few factors as well in there, Andreas. So we've already locked some of that in. So that mitigates some of the sort of the near term price pressure you're seeing. I think one of the other things to highlight is within that asset management investment that I talked about, typically, there's around GBP 10,000,000 to GBP 15,000,000 each year of energy investments. And what they do is generally reduce our energy use by we target 2% to 3% sort of underlying reduction in energy use through CapEx.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

That slightly offsets the price pressures we're seeing as well.

Andres Toome
Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC

Perfect. And then my final question on replacement costs and on the development economics. You sort of mentioned hurdles are going up. So I guess you're not seeing strong cost inflation on development side anymore? Or is it more a function of just your rental underwriting being a bit more bullish on that front?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. We've definitely seen construction costs inflation moderate, but it's still running at 2% to 3%, so it's not coming down. So the pressure on development returns is really flowing through into design and land price that we have to be able to generate savings there in order to hit those revised development hurdle rates.

Max Nimmo
Managing Director - Real Estate Research at Deutsche Numis

Max Zimmer, Deutsche Nummis. Just picking up on the kind of capital allocation point you discussed earlier and talking about looking potentially at more acquisitions. Just trying to get a bit of an idea in terms of what you would be looking for in terms of, your running income that you're looking to buy at and what the yield pickup would be on asset management

Max Nimmo
Managing Director - Real Estate Research at Deutsche Numis

on top

Max Nimmo
Managing Director - Real Estate Research at Deutsche Numis

of that, just to thinking about the earnings profile going forward of those things?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. I think that the acquisitions we made last year give you a good indication that we're buying assets probably at a 5.5%, six % yield on day one, but with the opportunity then to grow that by a further 50 to 100 basis points through the repositioning work that we do. And we do think that, that immediate income that we generate and we can generally do those works over the summer or in occupations. We're not losing a year of income in order to do that asset enhancement work. So I think it's just a nice kind of addition to our opportunity to deploy capital when that development perspective is getting a little harder and it really supports that key driver of earnings growth that we're seeking to generate.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So we may have run out in the room. Have you got any, Mike, that have come through on the

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Yes. We've got a few on the webcast. So the first one is from Veronique Mietens at Van Lascholte Kempen. You mentioned you see a lot of opportunities for collaborations with the universities, but do you also see other acquisition opportunities of yielding assets in the market as well?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. It sort of builds on Max's point that we are seeing those opportunities. And what's interesting that a number of them are below replacement costs as well, and that's particularly attractive to us. So as I mentioned, some of those older first generation assets. And so I think we will see quite a few portfolios trading or coming to market this year.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Now they won't all be for us, but we will look at them. We'll assess it. And particularly, where we think we've got an angle to enhance that day one income is where we'll be deploying and looking to deploy capital.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Got another one here on University Partnerships from Tom Furlong at CCLA. Please could you explain why you're comfortable partnering with Manchester Metropolitan given it is a lower ranked university?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. Manchester Metropolitan University is a great university. It's had very strong student recruitment. It is a modern university. It's mid ranked.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

It's mid tariff. It's got a operating surplus, and it doesn't have any debt. So when it goes through the filters and we understand their plans, what they've done historically and are going to do going forward, We do see a long term opportunity to partner with universities like that going forward.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Great. The next one is from Cameron Foote at Northern Trust, and this is on Build to Rent. Can you update where you are with your investment in your Build to Rent site And what your aspirations are on the sector going forward?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. So our 180 Stratford site continues to perform well from an operational perspective. We've got a plan to invest around £15,000,000 of capital into the communal spaces and do a rolling refurbishment of those assets. As we stated, Lalsett's results, we still like that asset. We're generating kind of good data on how we run build to rent, But the growth into that market will be using co investment capital, and we just feel that the market to extend that program right now isn't the right place to deploy capital just given the other exciting opportunities that we've got in front of us.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

So we'll continue to run that and to learn from it. We've got a small addition to our Edinburgh scheme, which has got about 100 beds, which are available for build to rent. So again, that will further extend the trial, but it's relatively low level in terms of new capital that we'll put into that scheme going forward.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Great. The next one is from Jonathan Kannatore at Goldman Sachs. Your renewal rate on one year nomination agreements is lower this year. Can you please provide color as to why?

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

I have to take that. So the first reason for that is, so whilst we love nominations and we sort of see that as the bedrock for our business, it is not nominations at sort of any sort of rate. So we are quite clear. And there's sort of three core principles. The first is we need a level of strong level of guarantee in those rents.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

Second is we want them to be multi year. And third, we want the terms, especially around caps and collars and catch up mechanisms to be right. And we have been very, very commercial in our thinking around these sort of agreements. So in that process, we have decided not to renew certain schemes. They tend to be with smaller providers.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

They tend to be with sort of secondary institutions, and we have repurposed those rooms towards our larger sort of more mid to higher tariff universities as well. The other place where we have taken some rooms out is we normally would have nominations with some distribution partners because we have grown our own direct led capability. We feel we can actually now market those ourselves, which we have successfully done in the last few sales cycles. So again, we have come out of those distribution agreements and put them back on TL. The third reason is we have taken some properties back because we wanted to refurbish them and reposition them.

Karan Khanna
Karan Khanna
Chief Operating Officer at Unite Group

BridgHouse in Edinburgh as an example was nominated. We took it out directly. Oddly enough, that is now on a multiyear nominations with the University of Edinburgh. So those are the three key reasons for a lower renewal rate.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Great. One more on the webcast from Zama Nabinde at Catalyst Fund Managers. How should investors think about spreads for incremental debt funding in the year? I'm happy to take that one. So I think we've generally seen a trend of spreads coming in quite strongly over the past year.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

What that's helped to do is slightly offset the obvious increase we've seen in interest rates. It looks at the moment like spreads that spreads for business like ours are probably in the range of 125 to 150 basis points for unsecured lending, and we'd hope to be towards the lower end of that.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Great. Thank you all for questions, both from the webcast and in the room. Just looking around, not seeing anyone waving. Is there any recall? Anyone on the call?

Operator

Sorry. There appears to be no conference call questions at the moment.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Sorry, one more has just come in

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

real time.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

Sorry, two more. Making you work. So Veronique again from Kempen. Given the more difficult development environment in The U.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

K. And the proven solid platform of Unite, is it a possibility to look for opportunities outside of The U. K?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

The question or the answer is the same as it's always been. We still see enough opportunity to go in The UK, so we're not looking outside at the moment.

Michael Burt
Michael Burt
CFO at Unite Group

And then one final question from Mike King at Cohen and Steers. To what extent can the market absorb the new supply, which looks very high in some cities such as London, Bristol and Edinburgh?

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Yes. I think the overall levels of supply remain low, and I'd say 60% below historic levels. There are some cities where we've got higher levels coming into the marketplace. We've seen this over time, where certain cities have an influx of two or three new beds buildings each year, maybe a couple of thousand rooms. And very confident in those strongest markets that the demand will be able to absorb that supply.

Joe Lister
Joe Lister
CEO at Unite Group

Very good. Thank you all for coming. Really appreciate and look forward to seeing you around and about. Thank you.

Executives
    • Joe Lister
      Joe Lister
      CEO
    • Michael Burt
      Michael Burt
      CFO
    • Karan Khanna
      Karan Khanna
      Chief Operating Officer
Analysts
    • Samuel King
      Vice President at BNP Paribas
    • Andres Toome
      Senior Research Analyst at Green Street Advisors, LLC
    • Max Nimmo
      Managing Director - Real Estate Research at Deutsche Numis
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Earnings Conference Call
Unite Group H2 2024
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