Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of alstria office REIT-AG regarding the results Q1 2022. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participants have difficulty seeing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Olivier Elamine, who will start today's conference. Please go ahead. Thank you very much and welcome everybody to the cloudy Hamburg today. I'm here in the room with Alexander Dexne, which is alstria's CFO. I have also Ralph and Julius from our IR team. My name is Olivier Elamine, and I'm the CEO of alstria. Thank you very much for your interest in the company. Before we move on in the presentation, just a short reminder on the disclaimer, the usual disclaimer about forward-looking statement and duty to update. Then without any delay, I'd like to jump into the presentation. The first quarter of 2022, I think from an operational perspective was clearly illustrated by a stronger letting market compared to where we were the year before, which also coincides with the relaxation of some of the COVID concerns. Not necessarily of the COVID rules in Germany, which are still being relaxed as we speak, but at least COVID concern by corporation. We have seen increased activity on the letting side, which has transferred into substantially higher leasing than the year before. We are still cruising below where we were before COVID, but we have been doing substantial progress here. That obviously translates in our revenues, which are up 3.8% compared to the year before. FFO is slightly down, and that, again, if you remember our conversation at the end of last year, reflects essentially the fact that we had higher real estate operating expenses, which are linked to some backlog that we had during the lockdown. Overall, I think the quarter has translated from an operational perspective, pretty much in line with our expectation. EPRA NTA is up, reflecting the net income for the quarter. The net LTV at 27.7%, and I'm guessing we're gonna spend a bit more time on that in the rest of the presentation, so I'm just gonna move on to the next slide. It's been a bit too fast. Sorry about that. The portfolio itself has not materially changed. Our transaction activity was limited to 3 sales, which we're gonna discuss in a minute. The portfolio itself still have, as you know, an average size of around 12,800 square meter per assets. The average value per square meter at 3,400 EUR per square meter is still substantially below replacement cost. I think it's a point I would like to highlight in this presentation, especially at a time where there are concerns about inflation and everything that goes around it. We still have a relatively strong portfolio, well located in the major German cities, with a relatively low capital value per square meter, and we feel very strongly about the defensive constituent of our portfolio. This is also reflected in our long WALT of six years on leases, which for most of them are CPI indexed. Our contractual rent is at EUR 193 million, and the EPRA vacancy rate at 7.7%. Letting, as I said, has been performing relatively well in the first quarter this year. Obviously, the first quarter is not impacted by any of the unfortunate event in Ukraine. It reflects essentially the improvement in letting market following an easing or at least the perception of the COVID pandemic being put behind us. That have reflected into increased take-up from tenant and increased discussion. We are still seeing, as we speak, this take-up increasing, and so we do expect that the full year results are gonna be slightly better than what they were, the year before. There's clear improvement on the letting market. We can discuss at a later stage the investment market, which is probably a bit more volatile right now. Again, linked to a number of macro events, not necessarily directly linked to the underlying letting markets. We have signed 34,100 square meters of leases, which represent 11,000 square meters of new leases and 22,500 square meters of lease extension, which in total represent around EUR 30 million of future income for the company. We are keep on increasing the average rent per square meter on the portfolio, as you can see on the bottom right of the chart. We have been also active in the transaction market. We have sold three assets during the period for a total consideration of EUR 97.1 million. That's the price net to us. The lettable area of that portfolio is around 35,000 square meter, which reflect an average capital value of EUR 2,800 per square meter. As you know, we are still in the process of what we call selling the periphery and buying the center, which is reflected in the capital value of those assets. Those assets translate into, again, to the latest IFRS book value of around 21%. If we move now rapidly to the balance sheet, very little movement on the balance sheet itself. Investment property are a bit down, essentially reflecting the asset sales. The equity is a bit up, reflecting the net income. The net financial debt is down 4.7%, which reflects essentially the cash inflow of the asset sales and the operating cash flow, which is increasing our cash position and therefore reducing the overall net financial debt. Overall, our G-REIT equity ratio is still pretty strong at around 70.4%. And our EPRA net tangible assets per share is at EUR 19.90. If we move into the P&L positions, our rental income, as we've discussed before, is up by 2.8%. FFO, we've discussed that as well, is down 6.3%. SG&A is up materially by around 36%. This essentially reflects the takeover from Brookfield, and a part of the SG&A has been impacted by the high share price that followed the takeover. A substantial part of the remuneration within the company and of everybody within the company actually is share-based or was share-based. And that basically has substantially impacted the SG&A cost for the quarter, which is reflected in the current number. I guess it should be perceived as a good news for everybody who actually tendered the share into Brookfield offer. If we spend a bit of time on the debt side, I think this is. I'm gonna have another slide looking at the future. This one is more looking at the current situation. We currently have a net LTV of 27.7%. As you know, we have been reviewing our financial strategy following the takeover from Brookfield, and our intention is gonna be to increase leverage at the company level going forward and to use some of the proceeds of that increase to pay out a dividend once the increase will be done and/or buy back shares, so basically to return capital to our shareholders. This graph here is showing our current financial structure with the next bond maturity coming up in 2023. We are, as we speak, in the process of refinancing that in more details. S&P has confirmed our rating, taking into consideration the new targets in terms of leverage at BBB- with a stable outlook. Our new financial policy is summarized on this slide. Our intention is to keep the company LTV in line with investment grade requirement at around 50%. We have appropriated already an amount in our German GAAP accounts to be prepared to potentially return capital to the shareholder. We also intend to manage the LTV of the company in a way that on look-through basis if you consider, which is something that the rating agency are doing, if you consider, the debt at the level of alstria, but also the debt at the level of our shareholder, to keep that LTV below 55%, which would be one of the requirement to remain within the investment graded universe, which remain one of our target as we speak. Our dividend policy is gonna change and have changed actually. Our dividend for the next AGM has been set to the minimum legally required. We intend to keep it this way in the future. Beyond the repayment of the proceeds of the levering up of the company to around 50%, I mean, the regular dividend policy would be to limit the dividend payment to what is required by law and essentially retain as much earnings as possible within the company. One of the benefits of, I think our partnership with Brookfield is it is gonna allow us to accelerate the capital rotation, and basically sell more of the mature assets with the sale proceeds being used to first of all maintain the investment grade profile of the company, reinvest in the business. Once the first two targets have been met, potentially further optimize the capital structure. We would be using both secured and unsecured financing instruments to get to the new financial structure again within the boundaries of the investment grade rating. That's something we are currently working on in more detail. I'm sure we're gonna have some question about that, and I will be more than happy to address them in the call. We will hold our next general meeting on June tenth, 2022. It's gonna be a virtual meeting, which is gonna be available on our website for our shareholders. We're really looking forward to receiving your questions. You can already send questions to the company that will be addressed during the general meeting. If you have some question, please do so. Rapidly looking into the outlook and maybe spending a few words on the investment market, which I have not touched base on in the previous slides of the presentation. Letting markets, as we discussed, are recovering from the COVID pandemic as we speak and improving. Investment markets are more volatile, and we expect them to be more volatile in the short term. The different macro changes that are taking place, and that include the war in Ukraine, that include the inflation, that include the tapering of the financial incentives by the ECB and the, and the asset-buying programs. All of those are creating some volatility in the market and some transactions are being paused, waiting for or to better understand what the next financial environment is gonna look like. There is still liquidity in the smaller part of the market, but when it comes to large transactions, which we're not so active on as alstria, there is clearly more concern and clearly people are taking a bit more time to decide whether or not they want to move on with the transaction. One thing which is pretty evident in the transaction market is the increased focus on ESG. As you know, alstria has been leading the space in real estate not only in Germany but across Europe when it comes to ESG, so we feel relatively strongly about that. We see that clearly as one of the main growth opportunity that the company has going forward. Our purpose is to buy non-ESG compliant assets to convert them into ESG compliant assets and then put them back into the investment market. That's something we intend to continue doing in the future, and we really feel invigorated by what's happening right now around that topic and the way people are been looking into that. That's it from my perspective. I would now open the floor to questions. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speaker, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Reminder please for the first press question. As a short reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad. We receive the first question. It is from Manuel Martin, ODDO BHF. Your line is now open. Manuel? Oh, sorry, Olivier. I was on mute. Excuse me. Hello. Two questions from my side, please. The first question would be related to the return of capital to your shareholders. Could you elaborate a bit on that move? Because, I mean, you can use a penny only once. So if you spend it on returning to shareholders, you cannot spend it in investing in the portfolio of alstria. Do you see a contradiction there or maybe not a lot of CapEx opportunities? Maybe you can tell us something on that, please. Yeah. I think if you look at our balance sheet, both at year-end and today's, we currently have, and Oscar correct me if I'm wrong, EUR 377 million of cash on the balance sheet. Which is more than enough to fund our development pipeline for the next 18-24 months. We also have secured, and I probably did not mention that in the call, a EUR 200 million RCF, which basically provide us with an initial EUR 200 million liquidity line, which is a 3 years revolving credit facility here. From a liquidity perspective, we are very much in tune with what we need. I think where you're right is obviously our preference would be to reinvest the proceeds of the refinancing into more accretive acquisitions or items which we could buy in the market, which we have been looking at actually since we have run through the balance sheet review. So far, we don't feel that the investment market has adjusted it in a way that appropriately reflects our view of the market and where we feel comfortable into pricing assets. We're not seeing today material investment opportunities, which basically trigger for us the view of just returning capital. Where you are right is obviously once you have returned capital, well, you don't have it anymore. We also feel kind of comfortable enough that having today like a dominant shareholder like Brookfield, if the company was to need more capital, then we would get access to that capital. Again, there is no commitment obviously from Brookfield to do that, but they are in the business of driving and growing the company going forward. I feel very much comfortable that this would be the case. Clearly keeping EUR half a billion or 1 billion of cash on the balance sheet would not be the most optimum capital structure. As I said, we already have EUR 377 million plus the EUR 200 million revolving credit facility, which is enough cash for us to be running the business in an efficient way from a pure CapEx within alstria's portfolio. Mm-hmm. Okay. I understand. Maybe as an additional question to that topic. There might be also a kind of bottleneck in the market. I mean, even if you would have the cash, you could not spend it on all the refurbishment measures, because maybe of lacking craftsmen or whatever. There may be also a bottleneck on that side? Well, there is clearly a kind of constraint on the construction market today. The way it's translating is essentially by increased construction costs, and increased costs into our refurbishment project, which I guess goes hand in hand with the inflation. The main limiting factor for us in order to accelerate our refurbishment is not so much that we're not finding companies. I think alstria's credit is good enough for us to be able to find companies who are willing to work for us. It's more the fact that before we can work on a building, it needs to be empty, and that usually takes time. It's not that we could vacate the entire alstria portfolio tomorrow morning and retrofit it. Everything we have empty, we are working on right now. I don't. I mean, we would not be able to do much more than what we're currently doing simply because the assets are not ready yet to be refurbished. Okay. Understood. My second question would be regarding the interest rate environment. I mean, interest rates have gone up more on the Treasury side, U.S., and then maybe here in Europe. However, do you feel anything in the market or do you see anything in the market regarding property valuations? Any impact coming from the interest rate side? Yeah. As I said, we are seeing that for large transactions, for large volumes, which probably require a bit more structuring from a financing side. Some people are taking their breaths, and maybe holding up. We're not necessarily seeing a deal being pulled off, but it clearly takes more time to structure the deals. Having said that, I mean, when we look at the valuation, we take a lot of comfort by the low capital value of our portfolio, and we feel very much hedged on the downside, from that perspective. Clearly, you know, I think the assets which are trading at 12,000-15,000 EUR per sq m, I think those are probably much more sensitive to where interest rates are going and to how yield might evolve. I mean, obviously, you know, you'll assume both increase in rent in the future and also some kind of financing and the higher the capital value, I think the more sensitive you're gonna be to where interest rates are going. Okay. Thank you very much. So far, we have no further questions. As a short reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions. I hand back to you, Olivier, for some closing remarks. Thank you very much, everybody, for your interest in alstria. We're obviously available if you have any follow-up questions here to follow up and answer those questions. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking to you again for our half year result presentation. Thank you very much. Have a very nice day. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.