Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HomeCo Daily Needs REIT FY24 half-year results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Sid Sharma, HMC Capital Head of Real Estate and HDN CEO. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending today's conference call. Joining me on the call today is HMC Capital CFO, Will McMicking, and HDN Fund Manager, Paul Doherty. Before we commence today's presentation, we want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We celebrate their diverse culture and connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and we extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. Let us begin on slide 4. This has been another half of continued operational excellence and discipline for HDN. This has been coupled with proactive asset recycling to rebalance the portfolio. The HomeCo Daily Needs REIT focuses on assets that provide convenient essentials for local communities along with last-mile solutions for our retailers. I'm pleased to say our operational focus has continued with NOI improving to 4%, plus we are on track for completion of AUD 70 million of projects that are delivering a 7% yield on cost. The top-line income growth in this portfolio remains very compelling. The drivers for performance are simple. Firstly, our foot traffic growth is up 5%. Our retailers' margins have improved, which drives tenant demand that ensures our leasing spreads are up 6.4%. Secondly, our cash collection is 99% every month we bill it, and our occupancy remains over 99%. And thirdly, like I just mentioned, our developments are on track, on budget, and delivering an excellent yield on costs. We have an experienced management team that has been running HDN since IPO, and we continue to extract embedded value from our assets, which we will demonstrate today. Our assets are located in the best-growth suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and these assets remain in high demand from tenants and investors. Convenience retail continues to outperform globally when compared to our retail peers. Over this half, we settled or contracted AUD 300 million of LFR centers broadly in line with our book values. There is no shortage of price discovery for the market assessing where NTA valuations should sit for convenience retail. The blended passing yield on these assets was 5.4%. Partial proceeds from these investments were used to acquire two brand-new Woolworths-anchored daily needs assets in two of Western Sydney's highest population growth suburbs, Kellyville and Leppington. These were secured off-market from the Woolworths Group with good holding income of 5.4% and development upside. These transactions helped accelerate the reweighting of our model portfolio, improving the overall income quality and growth of the business. The balance sheet remains in a strong position. Gearing of 34.3% is at the lower end of our range, and interest rate risk has been mitigated with over 92% of drawn debt hedged until FY25. All in all, we continue to deliver what we say we're going to do. On slide 5, many of you would be familiar with HDN's investment strategy, which remains unchanged. We continue to target a model portfolio of 50% neighborhood, 30% LFR, and 20% health and services tenants. This mix balances the best characteristics of defensive, reliable income streams with sustainable growth. We have low rents set at the bottom of the landlord cost curve, sector-leading re-leasing spreads, and a very high exposure to national retailers. We own 2.5 million sq m of land located in the best-growth suburbs of this country. This underpins our AUD 600 million development pipeline. We serve over 13 million Australians who live within a 10-kilometer radius of one of our centers. We're seeing over 90 million of visitations per annum. As a result, our assets play a critical role in serving our tenants' omnichannel strategies. In summary, we continue to deliver on all strategic and operating metrics this half. I'll now hand over to Paul to take us through the results in detail. Thanks, Sid. Turning now to slide 7. HDN owns AUD 4.7 billion of high-quality real estate occupied by more than 1,200 tenants. 9% of our income escalates annually by 3.8%, 70% of this by fixed increases and 20% by CPI. Only 2% of FY24 income remains to be committed in the second half. We've already commenced work on the FY24/25 expiry profile, and this is reduced to 13%. HDN's sustainable rents of just AUD 380 per square meter, combined with the high level of convenience and predominantly metropolitan location, provide a reliable platform for growth for our tenants and for unit holders. Moving now to slide 8. HDN again maintained occupancy and cash collections of greater than 99%. This is a metric we are very pleased to have consistently reported on since IPO, November 2020. It continues to underscore the portfolio's weighting towards high-quality assets and robust tenant covenants who are less correlated to the broader economic cycle. Net income growth increased to 4% in the period. This was driven by improved leasing spreads of 6.4% across 59,000 sq m. We're also very pleased to have consistently reported growing leasing spreads each period since IPO. Importantly, our leasing activity continues to maintain low incentives of just 5.2%, a slight reduction in June. Footfall remains elevated post-COVID as customers are increasingly living, working, shopping, and dining closer to where they live. This is amplified by the fact that HDN centers are all located in the fastest-growing suburbs of Australia. As Sid noted earlier, visitation across our real estate is 90 million customers per annum. This growth is well in excess of 20% over pre-COVID levels. As a result, HDN's retailers continue to perform strongly. Total MAT growth remained positive over the past 12 months and is up about 20% over pre-COVID levels. We continue to proactively remix the tenant base. Our focus is to increase exposure to more defensive, daily needs-focused retailers and maintaining high exposure to national operators. HDN's portfolio includes high-quality retailers. 33% of gross income is derived from our top 10 tenants, and seven of those are ASX listed. Moving to slide 9. On this slide, we provide some further detail about our top tenants and current portfolio weighting. As I said, we are rebalancing in line with the target portfolio weightings over time. I would now like to discuss our progress on sustainability, which we have set out on slide 10. Our HMC Group-level sustainability commitments are designed around our objective to create healthy communities. I'm pleased to report on the following initiatives delivered over the half, which demonstrate the progress we are driving across the entire platform. On environmental, we are on track to deliver our net-zero energy roadmap targets with a 30% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions to be achieved by FY24. This will be reached primarily through our key environmental initiatives, smart energy management program, and ongoing investment in solar power infrastructure. We're on track for EMS to be installed for all remaining feasible sites in FY24. In terms of solar rollout, we now have solar active in 12 sites, and a further 15 sites are in design and construction. We're proud of our continued progress with both initiatives across our HDN portfolio. On social, we have achieved our 50% gender diversity target across the whole organization, as well as across independent or director positions in the group. We are continuing to progress on social initiatives. Our Reconciliation Action Plan has now been endorsed by Reconciliation Australia. RAP initiatives are underway across the group, and our national partnership with Eat Up is progressing with initial planning underway across a number of HDN's assets. And on governance, HDN was awarded ESG Regional Top Rated Company for a second year in a row. HDN has also launched its second modern slavery statement, and we continue to adhere to responsible investment standards for all of our acquisitions. The team is proud of the tangible progress we are making in our sustainability strategy. Moving now to slide 11. This slide shows our net-zero energy roadmap on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by FY28. We can see progress against our targets over the last two years, as well as our initiatives to get us there in FY28. As discussed in the previous slide, we're well underway to achieve our FY24 targets in addition to planning for our upcoming target. I would now like to take you through HDN's growth opportunities, which commence on slide 13. HDN executed on over AUD 300 million in asset sales throughout the period. These were broadly in line with book values. This underscores the quality of our portfolio and highlights the level of demand for our assets. As Sid said earlier, proceeds from disposals have been partially recycled into the off-market acquisition of two brand-new Woolworths-anchored daily needs assets. These are high-quality acquisitions, and they help to improve the overall composition of the portfolio, provide greater income security over the long term, and accelerate the reweighting of HDN's model portfolio. Turning now to slide 14, which highlights our development pipeline. We're pleased to have upscaled the pipeline last year to AUD 600 million. It underscores in more detail the substantial embedded growth opportunity in the portfolio. We firmly believe this is a major differentiator for HDN. We're regularly asked if this includes longer-dated mixed-use or residential opportunities. The simple answer is it doesn't. This is simply the pipeline of core daily needs retail projects we have in front of us today. We will deliver these over the medium term. Development pipeline is a key strategic pillar for the group. It offers compelling risk-adjusted returns. It is accelerating HDN's tenant remixing towards more defensive daily needs tenants, and it is tenant demand-led. Turning now to slide 15. This slide provides some further information on the AUD 70 million of projects currently underway in the portfolio. All of these projects are 100% committed. Turning now to slide 16. On this slide, we wanted to highlight what we've always done when we make acquisitions. That is to optimize the leasing mix, which improves the income providing incremental value. While this example is in relation to Southlands, which we acquired in FY23, it's not something new. There are many examples where we have delivered these outcomes, including Gregory Hills, Marsden, Queensland, and Armstrong Creek to name a few. We expect to deliver similar outcomes at the recently acquired Kellyville and Leppington. Turning now to slide 17. Slide 17 provides some more detail on the individual projects in the portfolio. We are committed to targeting AUD 120 million or more of development commencements annually. However, we will exercise strong commercial rationale in executing this, and commencements will always be subject to achieving sustainable returns and maintaining balance sheet strength. I'd now like to hand over to Will to provide some commentary on the financial results. Thanks, Paul. Turning now to slide 19 to go through the earnings summary. Property net income grew to AUD 136 million in the first half of FY24, driven by the strong performance of key property indicators, which included weighted average rent reviews of 3.8%, re-leasing spreads of 6.4%, development completions, and active expense management. Overall, HDN recorded first half FY24 FFO of AUD 88.5 million or AUD 0.043 per unit. Turning now to slide 20. HDN has a robust balance sheet at December with net assets of AUD 3 billion and gearing at 34.3%. December 2023 net tangible assets was AUD 1.44 per unit, recording a modest 3% reduction versus June. This was primarily driven by a softening in the portfolio cap rate from 5.5% to 5.6%, which was partially offset by property income growth. The strength of the property portfolio has enabled continued asset recycling with the divestment of non-core properties broadly in line with book values and the acquisition of two brand-new Woolworths-anchored daily needs assets in high-growth Western Sydney locations. These are due to settle in the second half. Turning now to slide 21 to talk to capital management. December 23 gearing of 34.3% continues to be at the lower end of the target gearing range. Hedge debt remains high at 92% and provides strong interest rate protection in FY24 and FY25. During the period, HDN also refinanced its near-term debt expiries, which resulted in an improvement in its credit margin. A summary of the debt and hedging book is also detailed on this slide. I'll now hand it back to Sid to provide closing remarks. Thanks, Will. Turning now to page 23. We're really proud of the team and the results we've achieved this half. We're one of the few retail REITs to have had year-on-year top-line revenue growth offsetting the interest rate fluctuations over the prevailing period. Our focus remains, firstly, on operational excellence, secondly, on developments and selective asset recycling, and thirdly, having a robust balance sheet with appropriate gearing and hedging. We reaffirm our FFO guidance of AUD 0.086 per unit and distributions of AUD 0.083. Our management team and board remain disciplined and focused, as we have always done. I'll now hand over to the operator for questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Lou Pirenc with Jarden. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, Sid and team. Just one question on asset recycling. You've clearly made good progress in the last six months as you've done before. But if you kind of look at your current portfolio, kind of what percentage do you kind of see as opportunities to recycle capital, and how do you see markets for acquiring assets going forward? The markets for the type of assets we have, with the operating fundamentals and the land fundamentals that we have, continue to remain in really high demand. We're always opportunistic with the asset recycling program. If we see an opportunity that makes sense, we know that we've got the flexibility in our current assets to recycle out of LFR into core daily needs to rebalance our portfolio. Great. Then on page 13, clearly, you're selling and buying assets at similar yields. So I imagine it's just a question of different growth outlooks beyond that initial yield that kind of drives that recycling? That's right. That's exactly right. So we sold assets on equivalent yields to what we bought them on initially, but the growth outlook on what we've bought, especially from a development perspective, is outstanding. So what we bought in Leppington is three train stations away from the new Badgerys Creek Airport. It comes with a lot of excess land. It's a major town centre with a brand-new train station that opened two years ago. So the growth fundamentals of what we bought in Western Sydney, the fastest-growing corridor in the country, is really compelling, and we look forward in the next half to giving you some more colour around the development potential of these acquisitions, a bit like we did with Southlands this half. Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Cody Shield with UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning, Sid and team. Just a question on the acquisitions. Where are sales for those assets expected this year, and where's that going to be relative to the turnover threshold? We don't disclose the turnover thresholds of these assets. They're brand-new assets, so they're in ramp-up mode. Importantly, the rent per meter paid by the anchors and the specialties, which is what we always focus on, is sustainable and will grow over time. So we put some color out there. These assets should deliver a IRR of north of 10%. Okay. Great. Are you able to provide any color around the recovery of outgoings with tenants on those deals? What we said in the past, and the same thing holds, outgoings recovery rates for LFR centers are higher, 50%-70%. Outgoings recovery rates on neighborhood centers are 30%-50%. Okay. Great. Thanks. Your next question comes from Sholto Maconochie with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Yeah, just on the asset acquisitions and cap recycling, I think you've got your target weightings, 50% neighborhood and 30% LFR. LFR's 47%. Is it better to say you just dilute that exposure via the development pipeline and net acquisitions as opposed to selling the LFR and some LFR assets? Or how do you look at getting to that model portfolio? Yeah, Sholto, the way I'd look at it is every year, we want to aim for 1%-2% through tenant remixing in the portfolio, 1%-2% through developments, and 1%-2% through asset recycling. So that's how we frame it now. I think we've made some good progress in that, and we'll continue to make that progress in a considered and disciplined manner. Thanks. Good. And then, I mean, you've got pretty high hedging, 92%, so the BBSW doesn't make that much difference. But I think you were guiding to 4.5% at FY23. It's sort of running 4.3. Do you still assume 4.5 in the guidance currently? Yeah, that's right, Sholto. Yeah, the key point is high hedging now and into FY25. Yep. That's good. And then just on the development pipeline, that's still on track. Is that mainly focused on, again, the convenience sort of style thing and remixing some of the LFR? Or what's the sort of how do we think about the sort of style of development? Daily needs, health and wellness, and leisure and lifestyle in terms of priorities. Okay. That's it from me. Thanks very much. Thanks, Sholto. Your next question comes from Andy MacFarlane with Bell Potter. Please go ahead. Yeah, morning, Sid and team. Just a couple of quick ones from me. Just on developments, looks like there's a couple of numbers in the [inaudible] just in terms of completions. I see AUD 80 million and AUD 70 million in there. Just wondering what the difference is, and has that number come down, or what's the correct number for FY2024 completions? We're targeting commencements of 80 moving forward, so there's new. No. Sorry. 120. 120 moving forward annually. 70 is the target completions to the end of the year. Projects that are currently in progress. So it's AUD 70 million of CapEx out the door, Andy? That's what's on track for the financial year, and the AUD 80 million will be the as-of-complete number. So that's probably why the two numbers are there. Got it. Yep. Yep. That makes sense. Just in terms of yields and costs, obviously, you're still quoting kind of AUD 0.07 and growth numbers there. But just interested in what you're seeing in terms of better rents and stable costs and, I guess, where you think the trajectory's headed. Yeah, the rental outlook continues to improve. Our leasing spreads are a testament to that. Tenant demand hasn't wavered. So the rental outlook is really positive. What's interesting now is material costs have come down significantly, so there's some green shoots in terms of construction pricing. There are some improvements also in the labor market given the net migration that's come to the country over the last year. So we're seeing the outlook for construction improving moderately over the next six-12 months. Excellent. Yeah, one last one. Just in terms of on the rent side of things, yeah, see growth rents have crept up 357-380 over the period. Just wondering where you think the portfolio sits at the moment in terms of overall or under-renting overall. Compared to all of our peers in the sector, the short answer is we're under-rented because, firstly, the composition of our tenant base today, secondly, the age of our assets. So we think there's a lot of upside ahead on the rental rates, but we'll do it in a disciplined manner to make sure that when we are getting these great rental growth rates from our tenants, we're doing so in a sustainable manner where all of our retailers are improving their profits and margins and want to continue to work with us. Do you have a sense on the percentage of that under-rented then? Yeah. I'm not going to pin ourselves to a number, but I think you can do the analytics without comps, and we're well under if you compare us to our peers. Thank you, guys. Cheers. Thanks, mate. Your next question comes from David Pobucky with Macquarie Group. Please go ahead. Good morning, Sid, Will, and Paul. Thanks for your time this morning. Just the first one on sales growth slowing, if you could please just provide a bit more color on the drivers there. Looks like that was flat, but foot traffic was up 5% year-on-year. So just wanted to ask about the allocation of spend. Yeah, sure. Look, yeah, we're owners of real estate. As we've always said, the key metrics are rent collection, occupancy, leasing spreads, rental rates. Everybody asks for sales data. Now, only 30%-40% of our retailers provide it, so we provide the color. What you're seeing in that sales moderation in terms of growth is simply deflation coming through some of our tenants. They're still holding margins, and if you have a look at all the listed retailers that have released their results, margins have either remained flat or improved over the last little period. So not much of a read-through on the sales. The thing to look for and what we look for is our job is to bring wallets past windows. We're doing that job. We're doing it well, and we're growing our rents. Thank you. Maybe just to follow up on leasing spreads, up 6.4%, and they've been trending up since IPO, as you mentioned. I know you touched on this already a little bit, but sales are declining. I just wanted to ask how you think about spreads going forward, please? The way to think about it is every time we proactively remix our portfolio, our leasing spreads are double-digit. So I think there's a lot of good momentum ahead of us to continue those leasing spreads into the next period. Thank you. And just last one. You've refinanced near-term debt expiries, and you mentioned it's resulted in an improvement in credit margins. Just wanted to ask what that improvement was, please. Yeah. So we refinanced two tranches. The average term was three years, and it was 1.3%, so a 10 basis points improvement. We recently got an investment-grade credit rating, and that's flowing through to good credit margins. Thanks very much, guys. Appreciate it. Your next question comes from Richard Jones with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Good morning, Sid. Sorry, just a couple of follow-ons. Just in terms of the sales data, appreciate you only getting 30%-40% of your retailers reporting sales. Can you kind of clarify what is the mix within that bucket, and can you provide any color, perhaps, on how supermarkets versus specialties versus traditional large-format retailers are going from the sales data that you get? It's a pretty even spread, Richard. As I said, I think the thing to focus on, it's deflation. That's all it is. Goods deflation, supply chain deflation. Our volumes are up. Our foot traffic's up. So it's purely a bit of deflation coming through the sector. Okay. So I imagine the supermarkets obviously have to report sales, but you don't get much sales growth, sales data beyond that. Is that right, or? Yeah. No, it's an even split, mate, about 50/50 in terms of who reports. So we get enough supermarkets. We get enough of our LFR and specialty reporting. But it's only a small portion of the portfolio. And I think the point to call out is retailers' margins are improving. That's what's driving rental growth. Okay. And can we maybe touch on the re-leasing within the portfolio? Obviously, you reformatted a bunch of the old Masters stores that kind of initiated this vehicle. Most of those leases are still, I would assume, not, well, not come up. And so I imagine the bulk of the re-leasing you've done is in the old Aventus portfolio. Yeah, that's right. Can you clarify? That's right? Yeah, that's right. Most of the Masters portfolio had between eight-10-year leases. Not a lot of them have been recycled, some of them proactively just in terms of optimizing mix. But the upside is predominantly coming through a lot of the Aventus centers that we bought. When we did that merger coming on almost 2.5 years ago, a lot of people asked us why we did it. Well, this is the reason why, because we're getting great rental growth out of those assets, and we knew there was embedded upside to unlock with discipline and focus. Okay. I was just interested in how you think the rents sit within the old Masters boxes and whether you think the re-leasing spreads that you're getting from the Aventus portfolio is about what you'll get in Masters as it sits today, or do you think there's upside to that? It's a good question, Richard. As you may recall, before the merger two and a half years ago, the Aventus per square meter rents were higher than the Masters. That would imply that there's more upside in the Masters' leases when they start coming up in 2026, 2027, 2028. However, I'm not going to guide to a number on that. We'll just do it in a disciplined manner and hopefully just keep delivering a great result every half-year. Thanks, Sid. Cheers. Thanks, mate. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Alex Prineas with Morningstar. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just sort of observing some of the general retail REIT results out there, it's been a pretty consistent message that the smaller retail and convenience retail, those assets are the more liquid part of the market. There's been a lot of commentary around maybe institutional buyers are less active at the larger end of the market, but smaller buyers and sellers are more active at that smaller end of the market. You're actually sort of trading in and out of assets that are similarly sized at that kind of smaller end of the market, I guess. I'm just wondering, sort of have you got a view on why you're able to get that better growth profile on those assets that you're purchasing? Are you coming up against the same sort of buyers and sellers in the assets that you're getting out of versus the ones that you're getting into, or are there still really different markets for whatever reason of those assets that you're getting into that enables you to potentially get the same cap rate on what you're buying into there but with a better growth profile? Got a view on that? Yeah. No, I think I understand the question. The subregional end of town and the large regional end of town, both of which HomeCo doesn't play in, are frankly affected by fundamental rental growth issues. They have a tenancy mix and composition that is not fit for purpose in an omnichannel environment over the next decade. Convenience retail, whether it's neighborhoods and large-format retail, remain in high demand from private and institutions and increasingly global institutions. We've always said convenience retail, whether it's LFR or neighborhoods, will converge in yield and will converge in quality over time, and you can see evidence of that. We've recycled out of large-format retail assets at the same yields that we have recycled into high-quality, brand-new assets in Western Sydney from the Woolworths Group that we secured off-market. So that's our investment thesis historically, and I think you're seeing evidence of that. The last thing I'd say to it is the reason for our success is we are predominantly metropolitan-focused: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth. The fastest-growing suburbs in the country are where our assets are. We don't have a lot of country-town exposure, which are far more volatile with a lot less tenant demand. Our fundamentals are just better because of where they're located. So I wouldn't compare us in terms of asset quality to any other portfolio that's out there on the boards, right? This is a metropolitan portfolio. You couldn't replicate it. That's why we've been successful. Okay. And so say the assets that you sold out of, the buyers of those, were you seeing those buyers also maybe competing for some of the assets that you were looking to buy? I guess I'm just wondering. Yeah. As I said, privates, high-net-worth privates, domestic and global institutional funds are looking for convenience retail. Whether it's LFR or neighborhood, most of them that are looking for sustained growth are looking for convenience, and the fundamental drivers on both LFR and neighborhoods are still strong. It's the same group of buyers and sellers, but they can't get set. That's why we've got success. Okay. All right. Thanks for that. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Sharma for closing remarks. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for your continued interest in the HomeCo Daily Needs REIT. We'd like to thank our management team and our board for their continued support. This is a disciplined group. It's been disciplined for a number of years now. It's got a great group of assets, and all we do each day is work them very hard to extract value for our investors. Thank you, and look forward to catching up with all of you soon. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.