Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to BR Properties' first quarter of 2021 results conference call. To start here today, we have Martín Jaco, CEO, and André Bergstein, CFO and IR Officer. This event is being recorded, and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company presentation. After BR Properties remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. At that time, further instructions will be given. Should any participant need assistance during this call, please press star zero to reach the operator. The event is also being broadcast live via webcast and may be accessed through BR Properties website at www.brpr.com.br, where the presentation is also available. Participants may view the slides in any order they wish. The replay will be available shortly after the event is concluded. Now, I will turn the conference over to Martín Jaco. Mr. Martín, you may proceed. Thank you, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for your interest and your presence in this conference call regarding first quarter 2021 results of BR Properties. In terms of the dynamic, I'll start with a brief introduction of the context and main highlights of our results, and then I'll turn the word to André, who will make all the detail analysis of the results of the first quarter 2021, and we'll leave a generous amount of time for Q&A and any other clarification that you might need. Let me start by the summary with the main highlights of the first quarter. First of all, I'd like to talk about the general environment, the context as a whole. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that we are in the COVID crisis. We're talking about a full year within this crisis, and it's been a very, very difficult time for everybody, for all different companies, for personal individuals, for all the world. We've seen a lot of losses of lives, still people getting infected, and it's a very sad time in that we have passed. Since the last quarter of last year and this first quarter, I think that we're talking now in a much more positive environment, and we improve in terms of positive overview since today we have a solution, and the solution is really the vaccine. Vaccine is being applied all over the world. The issue now is not anymore if we have a way out of this pandemic, but yes, the solution is right there. The way out is already known. Now is the question of timing, of how fast we can vaccinate everybody. This is a much better environment that we have last year. This is a great advance that we have, excellent deal for everybody. This is the context that we are right now. When we talk about this context, what it really affects BR Properties when we talk about this last year, it's good that we have this year in terms of results, a full year of results, four quarters, that we can discuss facts instead of just speculation. That was from the beginning of this pandemic, a lot of speculation, a lot of assumptions that at the end of the day, didn't turn out to be true. The issue with all the speculation or assumptions is that they are generalized, and of course, they did not rely on what is really the effect on each and single company as BR Properties. The main speculation and assumption that we're talking is that it was said, and it was repeated for a long time that the office market was doomed to disappear due to all these home offices. There will be a tremendous amount of vacancies growing drastically, a lot of discounts, people not paying their rents, a lot of defaults. That was the general overview that we had in the beginning of this crisis. When we look at the four quarters of results of BR Properties, and the first quarter of 2021 is not different, we see that the results of BR Properties has a completely different behavior than all those speculations were implying. First of all, the results were in line with all the expectations of the company, with the numbers pre-COVID-19, and the last quarter results were above the average of the consensus of the market as a whole. We're talking about excellent results once again in the first quarter of 2021. The reason for having a distinct behavior than what everybody was expecting mainly in the office market, it's due to the strategy that we implemented over the last FIVE years. We already talked that on the previous quarter, I'll try to be brief. The strategy involved changing our portfolio profile for a much more AAA portfolio. AAA on what we consider to be a AAA property, which is not only technical specifications, but technical specifications aligned with a lot of service provisions to the tenants in the building and the surroundings of the building, and the presence of large-scale public transportation and all the other different manners of transportation. This, in our concept, is what we call a AAA property. That was a change that we wanted to implement over the last five years in the company because we saw that that was the behavior that the tenants were going. The issues that since we have COVID, they only accelerated this perception, and we're seeing that those good quality space have been much more absorbed than they used to be in the past. This was part of the strategy, and this is around 50%, having the right strategy, but the other 50% come from the implementation of this strategy. The operational results through all those five years to get to this strategy implementation are extremely important. This is due, first of all, to the team that we have. As we always said, we have the best team on all its departments to get the best that we can extract for the marketing benefits of our shareholders. Because we did, at the right timing, the right moves. The highlights when we come to the first quarter results, translating everything that I just said to numbers, that's what we have. First quarter 2021, in terms of leasing, 12,000 sq m of new leases signed. This is one of the record years for the first quarter of a year. We usually have very slow beginning of the years, since companies have a lot of time throughout the entire year to close their leasing agreements. Probably they do that by the end of the year, the second semester, mainly on the fourth quarter. This year we started very strong. We remember that the fourth quarter of last year, we did 57% of all the leasing in 2020. We're talking about two consecutive quarters with very good new leases. That is to say, gross absorption in our portfolio. As a whole of the companies that were early terminated in that space, and the new leases, we have a positive net absorption in our portfolio in the first quarter. This is quite on the other side of what the market has perceived, and the market has an overall negative absorption throughout 2020 on the first quarter 2021, but we have a positive net absorption. This is a very good information of the quality of the portfolio. Another issue that we have to reflect about the vacancy rate. If we have this movement, where is the vacancy throughout this entire year of pandemics? We have that our physical vacancy stayed the same throughout those four quarters, around 21% of physical vacancy since the beginning of the pandemic and up to today. That is to say that each square meter that we were losing for early termination, we were able to replace, and in some cases even grow. The important point on the vacancies when we look from the perspective of the financial vacancy. The financial vacancy reduced from 21% to 18%, thus showing that the space that we lost was replaced in terms of area by the same area, but in buildings with better lease values. That is to say, the buildings have as much more quality and therefore had a better pricing in relation to what we expect. The decrease in financial vacancy, that's another very important point that we presented on first quarter 2021. The recycling. We still continue with the recycling strategy of our portfolio. We do not collect properties. As we always said, we are very active on the management of our portfolio, and we concluded the sales of three non-core assets at NAV value. The growth of this sale that's already inside the company was used to continue the buyback share program that we have in the company. In a nutshell, we are selling our assets, our non-core assets, at a basis of 100, that is to say, at NAV price, and we are buying back our shares with a 40% discount. We're selling at 100, and we're buying back our core portfolio by 60. This is a huge gain for our shareholders, and we'll continue this movement as we did last year and this year. That also shows that the market is active. It is active on the leasing side, as we showed you, and is active on the sales and acquisition. Same thing that we did, the sale of those assets. We continue the acquisition and the expansion of our portfolio by concluding the acquisition of the other two towers of Parque da Cidade, that we already have mentioned that on the last quarter's result. We continued at full speed with the development of the Cajamar logistics space, close to São Paulo, to be delivered by the first quarter of next year. Another important issue that we see on the first quarter of 2021 is the passing of the inflation. There was a huge discussion, it was almost unanimous that it would be very difficult for landlords to pass to tenants what will be the inflation, since inflation was very high. We always stated that this is the wrong question to be asked. The question is not if inflation is high. The question is that if we apply the inflation index, the final result on the lease, this lease value will be below or above market value. As we said, most of our leases were signed on the low cycle of the market, therefore, they are at very low prices. Most of our leases, even if you apply the inflation index, which was high, was still on market values. That's why when you see the growth of the same areas compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, or when you compare first quarter this year to first quarter last year, you see a very important growth. That is that we are being successful in passing the inflation in our lease agreements. Capital structure. We were able to get another BRL 400 million in new finance. In a moment, André will go into all the details that I'm just mentioning right now. We still continue with a very secure and very conservative approach to capital structure. The debt is pretty much in line to what we expected at historical low cost ever. Deleveraged when we compare to what used to be the company. Also the dividend policy, the new dividend policy that we announced, it was approved by our general assembly that was held some weeks ago. It was approved what we already had anticipated on the previous call that we'll make a dividend payment every three months, every quarter. Instead of making just one payment in the year, we'll make more regular, that is each quarter, from a result of what will be the higher value from the minimum 35% that we have to pay, or the 50% of the FFO, whatever is bigger. That's exactly what we are doing right now. As a conclusion, when we take all those movements that we have in terms of operational first quarter with all the department, all the areas, leasing, sales, acquisition, debt, everything was working and working at full speed. The conclusion was an FFO margin of 53%, one of the largest and very, very in line to what we were expecting and above what the market was expecting. Therefore, all those general expectations, all those assumptions that we're doing in the beginning of the pandemic, it didn't prove to be right when we analyzed the specific portfolio of BR Properties. The quality of our portfolio still continues to attract important tenants both in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and we continue our journey of growth, of leasing, and implementing our strategy. Having said that, let me just pass now to André to enter into the details of the results of the first quarter 2021. André, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Martín, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending the call. Well, regarding the financial highlights of the first quarter of 2021, I would like to talk about the following points. In the first quarter, our net revenues, even with all the impacts from the pandemic, reached BRL 82.3 million, 80% above the first quarter of 2020. This increase mainly comes from new leasing agreements signed during the last 12 months, together with the inflation adjustments we had. In the first quarter, the average rent per square meter per month of the same commercial property portfolio was nominally up 12% in the last 12 months, and the average rental grew by 7.6% versus the fourth quarter of 2020. We keep managing our properties according to the pandemic restriction phases, having all the protocols and taking care of the employees' health always. Since March, with more restricted phases, the presence in our office in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro has been changing. Even with that scenario, the volume of rent relief is restricted to some of the retail tenants, which represents less than 1% of the company's gross revenue. G&A expenses excluding vacancy expenses, stock options, and taxes, amounted to BRL 14.2 million, 2% down versus the same period of 2020, despite the rampant inflation we are having. These results show the company's total absolute commitment toward maintaining high levels of operational efficiency. We have been in the same level of G&A expenses for the last five years. Our delinquency level closed the quarter at 1.8% of our gross revenues. The small increase over the last quarter came from only two tenants with whom we are negotiating to pay the outstanding balance. The 0.9 of December 2020 is being paid. Being conservative, we keep the provision until the debt is fully paid. Considering revenues and G&A just mentioned and vacancy expenses marginally below same quarter of last year, adjusted EBITDA reached BRL 61 million, 14% up versus the first quarter of 2020. EBITDA margin achieved 74% in the quarter. First quarter adjusted net financial expenses got to BRL 17.2 million. Despite the increase in the Selic interest rate by 75 basis points in March, to 2.7% per annum, it remains at historically low levels. The current level of interest rates made possible for BR Properties continue to present low net financial expenses. In the first quarter, the average effective cost of debt was 4.8%, equivalent to CDI + 2.1% per annum, a 40% basis points drop comparing with the first quarter of last year. Excluding non-cash and non-recurring effects, the companies post in the first quarter FFO of BRL 43.5 million, 6% down versus the first quarter of last year. Our FFO margin achieved 53%. We got to the net income of BRL 13.4 million in the quarter. Net debt was BRL 1.7 billion, and our cash position got to BRL 962 million. In February, we issued our 16th debentures in the amount of BRL 400 million five-year maturity and a cost of CDI + 2.3% per annum. The proceeds were used to strengthen the company's cash position. Directed mainly to the investment in Cajamar construction. With Parque da Cidade acquisition disbursement, the net debt EBITDA closed the quarter with 7.4, with a Net Loan to Value of only 20%. We keep our low leverage strategy, managing our capital structure while new opportunities appear, both of new investments and properties recycling. Also in the first quarter, the company announced the signing of an agreement aiming the sale of Souza Aranha one and two and Porto Alegre building, totaling 7,500 sq m of TLA for a total amount of almost BRL 64 million. In April, the proceeds from the sale were received, the cash of the company. This sale follows the company's strategy designed in recent years, aiming among other goals, to recycle part of our portfolio. The sales were made at NAV, while we have our share trading at around 40% discount to NAV. We sell properties at NAV and buy shares with 40% discount at NAV. It makes all sense. Until April, we have already bought back around 4,250,000 shares at an average price of BRL 8.9. In accordance with our new dividend policy, it was approved in our AGM, the distribution of dividends in the amount of BRL 71 million, equivalent to BRL 0.15 per share. This amount will be paid through the year in three installments in June, September, and December. Considering the BRL 23.7 million that we have already paid in April, that the total amounts distributed in dividends throughout 2021 will reach BRL 95 million, equivalent to BRL 0.2 per share. Since the beginning of the company, sustainability has played a key role in the company's strategic planning. As of 2020, we have started to understand the ESG materiality and which subjects are relevant to the company and its stakeholders. This year, the company is continuing its social environmental journey and intends to develop its communication and transparency on ESG topics. Well, those were the financial highlights of BR in the first quarter of 2021. We will now open for the Q&A session. Thanks very much for your time and attendance. Thank you. The floor now is open for questions. If you have a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone at this or any time. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the hash key. Questions will be taken in the order they are received. We do ask when you pose a question, you speak your handset to provide the optimum sound quality. Please hold while we pose your question. Our first question comes from Nichole Lewis from Bank of America. You may proceed. Great. Good morning, Martín, André. Thank you so much for the call today. What I'd be interested in hearing is a little bit of what you're seeing when you're looking at the São Paulo and the Rio markets. I think you're in a unique position that you have a AAA asset in both these markets that you're currently leasing up. What kind of tenants are looking to rent? Is this all flight to quality? How are the contractors seeing any difference in contracts in terms of duration, maybe tenants wanting a shorter period, or are you needing to give any sort of incentives such as grace periods? If you can give us a little bit more color on the leasing activity in the two assets in São Paulo and Rio. The second question is in terms of space needs. How are your conversations going with your current tenants on their space needs on both sides? Maybe companies seeing more employees working from home, maybe needing less space, but also, on the other side, with companies looking maybe to add to space, as they need to increase the amount of space that they have per employee in their current situation. Thank you very much. Nicole. Thanks for your question. Let me start tackling this. Let's start with Rio de Janeiro. That was the larger number of activity that we have. Rio de Janeiro is interesting when you talk about the profile, for instance, of the tenants. There was always this saying that in Rio de Janeiro, the oil and gas is responsible for everything that goes on with the office. We've seen that the oil and gas industry have done almost zero in the last 12 months in terms of leasing activity. Leasing activity for the AAA such as our portfolio has been very good and healthy. If you take a look, for instance, in what happened in the Passeio. Passeio, we have today 98% of occupancy. Unfortunately from our point of view, we have tenants that want to be inside Passeio Corporate, but we don't have any more area for them to occupy. There have been financial companies, there have been tech companies, there have been service providers from energy side, there have been service provider from consultancy service. All the different sectors, but almost zero from oil and gas. 98% of occupancy in Passeio, 92% of occupancy in Manchete. We have the vacancy in Ventura. Ventura is by far the best office of Rio de Janeiro with a prime location, prime technical specification, services, transportation, everything that characterize a AAA from our perspective. If you see the latest leases that we have done, none are related to the oil and gas. We just did IBM. We closed another one related to insurance companies. We closed others related to energy sector, but not to oil and gas. This is the type of absorption that we're seeing. Who's taking the space? All the other sectors, but the oil and gas, and we hope, and we do believe that still this year, by the second semester, the oil and gas will continue. Oil and gas did major investments throughout the last three years in Rio de Janeiro. They invest in a very long-term investment, but as soon as they're coming out of the blueprint, they will need additional space. So those guys will come to the market again, so the market will continue growing. We're seeing some cases, tenants expanding, much more related to financial tech or tech areas. Some other tenants, maybe they are reducing their space, either because they're implementing home offices they didn't have until now, so they need less space, or in some cases, because their economy is not doing well. Even so, when they're downsizing their structure, they left poor quality space for a good quality space. If they need less space, maybe they can find a much better quality space right now. The famous flight to quality. This is the type of leasing that we're seeing, some expansion and some flight to quality. The flight to quality movement, that's the interesting piece because it brought to our pipeline of potential tenants, some tenants that were not in our radar. Prior to the COVID, we have a pipeline. This pipeline we shared throughout the last quarters that it continued very active. Of the 100% of the tenants looking for areas prior to COVID, only 20% say that they will not continue with their movement. 80% say that they will continue as they did beginning fourth quarter last year and first quarter this year. Not only those companies, we have new companies looking at our properties, at our assets because of this movement. Okay, now that I know that we have a solution, we have the vaccine. I know this is how I'm going to act. I know this is the strategy of home office that I'm going to implement. I want to be in a better location. Companies that were not in our radar are now in our radar. The pipeline is very strong in Rio de Janeiro. Same thing happened in São Paulo. Of course, São Paulo, much larger economy, but again, all the different sectors of the economy, you saw latest transaction. We're talking about energy company, service provided, contractors. All the different sectors, financial, tech, again, all the different sectors working in the city of São Paulo. Again, the flight to quality is a major reason for the movement that we saw. Take a look at Parque da Cidade. Almost 50% of the first tower already pre-leased because we just received the tower now in the first quarter, and they was already with this 50% lease pipeline. Probably will continue with this speed of leasing throughout this year and 2022. Perspectives are good. Again, same tenant, same suspect that we used to have, and we've been working very close with them throughout the last year or two years, 12- 24 months. N ew entrants that we have seen the last quarter of last year, companies that were not in our radar in São Paulo, they are now in our radar because they realized, yes, that's what we need. There's a new paradigm of quality. That's what we've been implying. This paradigm of quality was supposed to happen, in our opinion, probably would take 5- 10 years to happen. With COVID, it was all accelerated, and due to all the work that we did in the previous five years, we were in this position that we have this type of quality the tenants are looking. Although the overall market is vacancy increasing, our properties are keeping stable and sometimes reducing vacancy because of those types. It's both São Paulo and Rio, all the different sectors of the economy working, except in oil and gas in Rio is not making any movement yet, still very strong and expansion some cases and flight to quality definitely more than 50%. Relating to existing tenants, the conversations that we have, as we said, we were able throughout this last year, the four quarters, to keep our physical vacancy stable. We have business as usual tenants, some reducing their area. The areas they were leaving behind were being occupied by new entrants, by new leases. We were able to keep a zero gain. All the spaces that we were losing, we were leasing because we have this demand from the tenants. I think it's a natural movement. Yes, we have some tenants that they will decrease their space because they had zero home office policy, so probably they need less space, 10%, 5%, 15%, will depend on the company. Some other companies, we did expansion throughout this period. Some companies in Passeio Corporate recently expanded throughout 2020 because the market was doing good and they were already implementing home office and they wanted much less density per employee than they used to have. Much more space between the working station, working places, so they needed additional area. It depends on each company. There's not a rule of thumb that we will say the number will be a reduction of 12.5%. There's not this thing. It will depend on each sector, on each company, the characteristics, the time that they are passing. More important, all we really can say is that the winners will be those AAA assets that we mentioned as the ones that we have in our portfolio. That's the important part. We have growth absorption to absorb our properties. That's the position that we wanted to place ourselves, and that's the position that we are right now. Great. That's very clear. Thank you so much, Martín. Thank you, Nicole. Remindering, if you have a question, please press star one. Excuse me. This concludes today's question- and- answer session. I would like to invite Mr. Martín Jaco to proceed with his closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir. Well, thank you very much for your time and for listening to our results of the first quarter 2021. As always, any other doubt or clarification that you might need, the company is 100% at your disposal. If you want to give us a call, send us an email, whatever is the way that you want to contact us, it'll be a pleasure talking to you again. Thank you very much, and everybody have a nice day. That does conclude the BR Properties conference call for today. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a nice day.
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