Good morning and welcome to the Primary Health Properties Trading U pdate. I will now hand over to CEO Mark Davies. Please go ahead. Good morning, everybody. Happy New Year to everybody who we've not met yet, albeit, as you can tell, we've got off to a busy start to the year. Thanks to all of you for dialing in to listen to our update this morning. As you can see from the update that we made, it's a fairly long and detailed update. Richard, myself, and the team just felt that with everything that we were doing last year and so many announcements, up on the screen, as you are aware, this was a good opportunity to just bring everything together, so there's more facts and figures than you might expect from a typical update at this point of the year, but we felt that would be beneficial to you, and that's certainly the feedback we've been getting this morning. In terms of the highlights, it's clearly been a transformational year for PHP. The combination of PHP and Assura is going to prove to be a big success, and we created a strong platform, GBP 6 billion healthcare REIT. We got the CMA approval through on the 29th of October, so we got stuck into the integration, on which we had a very detailed plan, and as we announced this morning, we're already through 60% delivered of the total annualized synergies of GBP 9 million. This has been the reason we've been able to do this so quickly is there's obviously duplication of roles, so that impacts people and the people costs and duplication of things like professional fees, so we've acted on that. We're 60% of the way through and we'll continue to provide, you know, further updates to the market in due course. One of the really pleasing things about the combination of the companies, 'cause we got economic control of Assura from the 12th of August, is the strong rent review performance that came through in that sort of, you know, four-month period following the acquisition, an additional GBP 8.3 million of rent, which is 6.8%, but on an annualized basis, 3.2%, which is ahead of the guidance that we gave at the Capital Markets Day as recently as July when we told the market they were projecting a 3% increase. So that just, I think, just supports, not just the positive rental growth outlook, but supports the combination of the companies, the increased exposure to inflation, and long leases. So that, that's one of the highlights of the update, obviously. You know, the enlarged group is now really well placed, you know, to take advantage of, think of that improving rental growth, and we're making good, good progress. You can see from the update we've provided, some detail around the developments, that we're pursuing. Assura had a strong development capability and a bigger team than PHP. So we're seeing the benefit of that. And of course, the read across from these projects, which are on the ground from a rent perspective, particularly those projects that we highlighted in the table in the update in Tetbury and Weston-super-Mare, they're going into the USS joint venture at a very attractive yield from our perspective, which makes those projects profitable, but also they're setting a rental tone of and a rental evidence above GBP 300 a square meter. So that's good, good for the future. Just on the subject of JV, we are making good progress in expanding the existing joint venture with USS. I think we feel very fortunate to have such a credible and strategic joint venture partner as USS. They have, as you would imagine, a low cost of capital, probably as low as you could imagine, and that will enable us to do more with them. Currently, we've got GBP 170 million of assets in the JV, with a target to get that to GBP 400 million. Of course, that's extremely advantageous to us at a time that we're seeking to raise some proceeds to pay down some debt, so more on that in a minute. USS are totally bought into the healthcare real estate sector in the U.K. I'm pretty confident that once we get to that GBP 400 million level, which we will do quite quickly, that there will be capacity to expand that joint venture above and beyond its original mandate. A few sort of initial observations from the USS JV, because we have had three or four meetings with them in a very sort of short space of time. They like the social impact of what we do, as do we, of course. And for that reason, we are working on a number of sort of strategic projects, including things like LIFT, which will become available to the market in the next sort of two to three years. Really good progress with USS. And also on the private hospital side, you can see from the announcement this morning that private hospitals are performing well, which we're very pleased about. But also we are making progress in identifying a strategic partner to work alongside, and the proceeds from the establishment of that joint venture will take the leverage back down in line with our policy. So we've got our results coming out in a few weeks. So, we're expecting them to make a further update on that. And of course, we've had strong support from the debt and the equity capital markets in the last few months. We're very grateful to all of you for supporting us on a transformational transaction. Richard and his team have been very busy on the sort of refinancing side and completed, as you can see from the announcement, a number of financing activities. The undrawn headroom available to us now has increased to GBP 552 million from, I think it was GBP 300 million, Richard, wasn't it? When we last updated the, That's right, yeah. Yeah. So look, a transformational year. Those are the key highlights, and you know, I think maybe just to finish it on the Assura joint venture, I think it's fair to say that we are pleasantly surprised, not just with the progress that we're making on the integration, but we think there's a lot of, you know, low hanging fruit within the portfolio and in the way that portfolio has been run and managed, and therefore that upside we're seeking to capture as soon as possible, and I think we're, you know, obviously very excited about the prospect of being able to do that, and it would be wrong of me not to mention our dividend has now increased for 30 consecutive years. So we're celebrating our 30th consecutive year of dividend growth. Those are the sort of key, key highlights. Richard, did you wanna add anything to that at all? No, no. I think the only thing perhaps just to mention, Mark, is the strategy and financial framework that we've set out in the announcement. Obviously is key to now get leverage back down below our 40, sorry, our 50% cap. As Mark's already mentioned, we're working hard on delivering that through the joint ventures, and a few other disposals. And obviously that will drive the financial metrics. We're getting net debt EBITDA 9x-9.5x, interest cover target of 2.5x. And obviously those are key targets we need to focus on over the coming year. There's obviously a lot of refinancing work to do, over the course of 2026, to refinance the £1 billion bridging facility that's left. So there's a lot of work ongoing in the background. As Mark said, hopefully deliver more news around that refinancing with the full year results in a couple of months. Yeah. So I think on that note, we'll, with so many of you on the call this morning, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to allow you to ask us any questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Oli Woodall of Kolytics. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hey, yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one on your LTV target you've mentioned. How are you balancing trying to get down to below 50% versus making sure you don't take a hit on NAV and, you know, disposing at a high yield than you'd like? Do you have any kind of more information around that you could give? Yep. No, that's a good question, Oli. Thank you. The assets that we're injecting into the USS JV, you know, I mentioned previously that the cost of capital of USS is an attractive, you know, proposition for us. I can't, you know, give an exact figure, in terms of the, you know, commercial sensitivity that sits around that. But maybe the best way of me to answer that question is to say that we're very confident that those assets are being sold into the joint venture, at book value, or very close to book value, either slightly above or slightly below. The private hospital portfolio that we've acquired through the Assura merger is performing well. Operationally, it's also performing well. You can see the rental growth coming through in this update. And again, we're sort of in the mix of, you know, commercial negotiations with potential strategic JV partners right now. And I'm confident again that we'll not be prejudicing our NAV with the transfer of those assets into the joint venture. There's a big transaction being done in the market in private hospitals at the moment. We're not actually involved in that transaction. It's over GBP 1 billion worth of Spire hospitals. And the valuation yield on that asset transfer, or sorry, disposal, is helpful to us in terms of the evidence it's setting for the, you know, discussions and negotiations that we're having with our strategic JV partners. So sorry, that's a long, long, long answer to a short question, but yeah, we're confident assets are being disposed into JVs at book value. Yeah. And just to Mark's comments, I think those disposals will probably be at yields which will not be too dissimilar to the marginal cost of debt on the bridging facility. So I think the impact on earnings won't be significant, Oli, which I think you're also sort of questioning. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That's clear. Thank you very much. And just one more quickly, if I may. I wonder if you could quantify the kind of gap between what district valuer is they're assessing versus what construction costs would kind of justify, you know, how do you think rents need to develop within the U.K. if you could kind of turn that tap on again? Yeah, you'll have heard us say before, you know, historically that, you know, that gap on projects that we've looked at at PHP has been as wide as 20% or sometimes even higher. But if you look at the projects that we announced this morning, there's obviously a weighting there to Irish projects, as you can see. So clearly rents in Ireland are now being set at a level which allows us to develop, but we don't have a district valuer there to think about. So that's helpful. But there's two primary care developments that are currently in process or progress. The Tetbury Primary Care Center in Gloucestershire and the Weston-super-Mare primary care scheme. These are really fantastic assets. They'll be sold into the USS JV at an attractive yield. And those rents are above GBP 300 a square meter. and that allows us to make an economic return, which is accretive to shareholders. So yeah, we're seeing that evidence. We've talked about it before, and we've seen green shoots before, but that's now coming through in projects that we're you know currently on the ground now. Yeah. And just to Mark's comment on the asset management program as well, we've reported the announcement today where we're seeing rents increase from just below GBP 190 per square meter to just under GBP 220 per square meter. That's a 15% increase. And those are on existing assets. And they said great rental evidence for the rest of the portfolio. And those rental terms will be rolled out through the rent review program, albeit over time when the reviews come due. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Makes sense. Yeah. Thank you. We're definitely, we're definitely more confident, Oli, now on development. You'll not have seen PHP produce an update with as many projects as this for quite some time, many years, I think. And that reflects the bigger size of the business, the greater development capability that we have with the team in the combined business. And the fact that, you know, economically rents are getting to a level where we can pursue these projects. And we have the USS JV as well as, you know, a sort of strategic partner to work alongside with a lower cost of capital. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Tom Musson of Berenberg. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, gents. Just a question around your 3% organic rent growth target. Obviously current performance, just above 3% supported by the index linked leases and also the private hospitals. But if we assume inflation trends back towards 2%, and as you, you're saying, private hospitals may feature in your disposal plans, I just wonder for how long we should expect you to be able to maintain that 3% organic rent growth? 'Cause I, I think I'm right in saying open market rents have never really managed to outpace inflation over the long term, either at Assura or PHP. Morning, Tom. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think if you go back quite a long time, there was an extended period of time where those open market rents were ahead of inflation. But that was many years ago. And you can see from the announcement we made this morning, in primary care, you know, those open market rent reviews that we did, and we did many, closer to 2% than 3%. It was tempting to sort of try and update the market in terms of our forward-looking guidance at this update because we, you know, as you know, Tom, 'cause you were in the room, we only, you know, updated the market at the capital market stage recently as July with that 3% forward-looking guidance, which clearly we were, you know, confident about. I think the time to review the guidance around our forward-looking rental growth prospects is either at the results, which are imminent in a few weeks' time, or certainly when we are absolutely sure, you know, what the portfolio mix looks like, and the retained exposure to the private hospital portfolio. You know, it's on public record from announcements that we made last year that we are expecting to, you know, sell assets in our private hospital portfolio, and our preferred route in doing that is to do that into a strategic joint venture, so at that point, we'll be able to forecast with very good and dependable accuracy, you know, what the forward-looking guidance looks like for rent and rent review going forward. Yeah. It's something I'd also just reference the 15% growth that's coming through the asset management program, that I mentioned earlier, 'cause obviously that is key to setting rental evidence for the rest of the portfolio. Yeah. That's helpful. Thanks, Richard. Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. And we will now move on to our next question from James Carswell of Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, Richard. Morning, Mark. Just a slight follow-on from some of the previous conversation on the development side, all sounds very encouraging in terms of some of those conversations. The statement obviously talks about the pipeline and it will be progressively accretive. I mean, given where you are with some of those kind of negotiations, I mean, are you expecting to kind of commence more projects in the current kind of period, the next kind of three to six months, or will that be further down the line? Yeah. Morning, James. Yeah, the pipeline is definitely growing. You know this company very well, James, and it's probably been you know quite some time, as I mentioned, that you know we reported an update with as many live projects as this. So it's extremely encouraging. So we feel we clearly feel we've got momentum in the U.K. and in Ireland. There is a you know a growing pipeline. So for example, we won a significant contract with the East of England Ambulance Trust to develop new ambulance hubs across the East of England. It's a 10-year assignment, but there will be you know many opportunities for us to create new sites, probably as many as 20 new ambulance and emergency operation centers, which we have a track record of doing and a development capability within the business. So yeah, I think it's really gonna start to pick up. We will only pursue developments, of course, if we're satisfied on a risk control basis that we are getting the appropriate risk-adjusted returns. It's advantageous to us, as we've pointed out, particularly in our you know primary care portfolio where we're setting you know rental evidence above GBP 300 a square meter for future you know rental growth prospects. And of course, we've got the USS JV. You know, I think we maybe undervalued the prospect of pursuing development projects and then effectively selling those assets into the JV with USS. Of course, we have a 20% stake, so we you know retain that economic stake. But assets can be injected into the USS JV as well as we're seeing you know yields as low as 4.5%. So it's very attractive. So it feels very different, James. We'll be very, you know, conservative and, you know, not cautious, that's the right, that's the wrong word, but we'll be looking at everything on a risk-adjusted basis. And if we think we can get the right returns by allocating capital into development projects, then, you know, that, that'll be a good thing for our long-term prospects. Great. Thank you. And just maybe another quick one on the debt side. Obviously some of the bridging loans have already been repaid, and clearly the deleveraging's gonna be a big part of the kind of the strategy to repay the rest. But just for the kind of the remainder of that loan, and I appreciate you've got time and clearly kind of market rates, et cetera, can move. But sat here today, I mean, do you think it's likely to be bond issuance to replace that? Do you think it's likely to be kind of bank debt or possibly a convertible? Just you're kind of thinking on the kind of the refi of whatever will be left of the bridging loan post the deleveraging. Thank you. Yeah. So I think, James, the key now is to deliver the deleveraging to get the LTV back to our target, and then look to the bond market and the bank debt market, 'cause we do have a large number of shorter dated bank facilities that need to get refinanced, particularly on the PHP side, move it to an unsecured basis, and term it out for longer, for different durations, but also term out some of this debt through the bond market. And we are sort of looking at options around that, and hopefully there'll be more news around that when we come out with the full year results. Yeah. James, Richard and I, as you know, were already on a journey, if you like, with PHP to become an unsecured borrower. And we had a, you know, we had a very credible plan, that we intended to pursue to move, you know, our capital structure more towards unsecured borrowing where we felt we could do that at a lower cost, and access a much bigger pool of capital. The Assura transaction has accelerated our plans, because they, as you know, were an unsecured borrower, with over GBP 900 million of listed bonds, very attractive coupons. So we now have access to that market. Fitch currently have a rating at BBB+, I think, Richard, isn't it? On the business. You know, we will maintain that rating. I'm confident, on the basis that we, you know, deliver on all our plans, which are moving along very, very nicely. So, yeah, it's access to a, you know, huge pool of capital in the bond market that we didn't have before. So I think you will see us doing more, inevitably, unsecured issuances, you know, in the future. Brilliant. Thank you very much and well done. Thanks, James. We'll now take our next question from Alexander Totomanov of Green Street. Please go ahead. Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Two questions for me. First one, are all ECC in Ireland indexed annually or do some index on a three or a five-year cycle? I'm just trying to reconcile the 4.1% annualized rent increase in Ireland, that was explored this morning, with the, in the rent review table with the CPI in Ireland, that's around the 2% mark, and second question, you mentioned refinancing the bridging facility this year. Would you expect some savings with regard to your cost of debt from this? I don't believe there was any disclosure on the margin facility last year, but would you expect refinancing to be maybe 10- 20 basis points lower in terms of margin, or would you expect it to be flat? Yeah, just, so I'll pick up on the Ireland point and then, Richard, maybe pick up on the, on the credit margin point. The annualized increase on the Irish portfolio that we announced this morning is 4.1%. We capture the inflation on the leases that we have in Ireland every five years. I think that was the question that you asked. The line was a little unclear, but was the question, was that the question you asked that how, how? Indeed. And the five-year increase? Yeah, five-yearly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Richard, do you wanna pick up the credit margin point? Yes. So I mean, yes, we would expect savings in the credit margin, probably slightly higher than the number you quoted, really reflecting a much larger scale of PHP now we've merged with Assura. And the other critical thing is to deliver on that BBB+ credit rating that Mark touched upon earlier. But I think the other thing to note on the bridging facility, it's quite cheap at the moment, but the margin does step up over time. That facility documentation was put on the website at the time of the merger, so it's all public knowledge. That's why, although the facility is for two years and there's options to extend it for another two years, it really needs to get refinanced quite quickly over the course of 2026 before it becomes too expensive. But obviously, we are expecting margins to come down across the enlarged group, as a result of the merger, reflecting the increased size and scale of the business now. Yeah. And that's, you know, one of the things that we think about a lot, as we're pursuing these negotiations with USS and our private hospital partner. You know, we're keen to raise those proceeds as soon as possible because that gets us back in line with our LTV, net debt, financial policies. But as Richard said, we're highly motivated to do that because, you know, the facility that we put in place at the time of the acquisition, as attractive as it is today and was at the time, you know, that will start to ramp up later on in the year. So we're well on track to be able to accommodate that. And progress is very, very positive. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Max Nimmo of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Morning, guys. Thanks for the update. I think most of my questions have been answered, but just maybe to clarify on the development point, on a risk-adjusted basis, you guys are quite comfortable with development in Ireland, the private hospital stuff and things that you can sell into the USS, JV. Is that fair to say? Not necessarily. I kind of expect you'd let NHS assets sit in your own balance sheet at this point. Then secondly, just on the rents that have been signed at Tetbury and Weston-super-Mare, then feeding that through into the rent review process, how wide can that, you know, read across go? Does it tend to be quite read across for the local area, or can that be kind of a wider read across for the sector and, you know, into when it does finally feed through? Thanks. Thanks, Max. Yeah. Two good questions. Very appropriate. Just on the development point, yeah, we are pursuing projects in Ireland, because the rental terms on those projects have increased to a level which allows us to do that. And of course, our cost of capital in Ireland is lower 'cause we're borrowing in euros. And that's why we've got. Well, there's three projects, I think, in this morning's announcement on the primary care side, as you identified, you know, the two projects that we're currently working on, pursuing onsite, go into the USS JV at a low cost of capital, which helps the economic returns on those projects. So I think there's definitely more of that to do. The only bit that you didn't pick up, I think, is the fact that we're doing, you know, private hospital developments as well. There's the project in Peterborough that we're doing with Ramsay. This is a really excellent scheme. We're not disclosing our yield on cost this morning. Hopefully at some point soon we can do that because that's delivering a very, very handsome yield on cost, way above and beyond the yield on cost that we've announced this morning. So yeah, so that's a third strand, if you like, on the development side. In terms of the rental point that you make on that, it is geographically defined or there are, say, localized. So for example, in Tetbury, which is in Gloucestershire, we have. This is one of the big advantages, by the way, putting these two portfolios together. We have, obviously an increased, you know, representation, and a portfolio, a bigger portfolio in that geography. So yeah, absolutely. It's really, really helpful, to, you know, to our future prospects. So, you know, the more developments that we can do, the more evidence that we can send, that's gonna help the team, who've had a very active year, by the way, on rent review performed obviously very well for us. And they're obviously enjoying, you know, the combination of the portfolios and the benefits that it brings. Richard, do you wanna take a quick? Great. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue. I'll now hand over for webcast questions. So are there any questions coming from the Q&A facility, Richard? Yeah, I've got three. I'll just read them out, Mark. One from, first one from Matt Saperia at Peel Hunt. Have you committed to any new development schemes since you last updated us? So I, I think there, Matt, we, I mean, it's in the table, Matt. You've got you, your primary care center in Ireland and the, and the Ramsay private hospital in Peterborough, which came through the Assura portfolio are probably the key ones. Yeah. I think the other thing to note is we'll probably give more details on the pipeline when we come out with the full year results, in a few months. Yeah. Good question, Matt. We, we're definitely spending, you know, more, more time as a business on, on development. We've not been able to say that for years. So this is a really good thing, not just because of the returns that we can make, but as, you know, Max identified on the last question, the read across and the evidence that this provides, you know, to the, to the portfolio. Okay. Then the next question from Bjorn, Panmure Liberum. If equity markets are supportive, are there any attractive acquisition opportunities you would look at? Could you quantify any potential acquisition pipeline? Yeah. Thanks, Bjorn. Look, we're so focused on our priorities, and the plan that we set out, at the time we successfully acquired Assura, last August. So we've set those priorities out very clearly, you know, to integrate the companies, to deliver the synergies, to further establish strategic joint ventures, and we're making such good progress on all of that. You know, we're not really thinking about acquisitions. Look, we wouldn't be doing our jobs properly if we're not thinking about, you know, next year, the year after, and beyond. So look, there's always things coming our way, but we're not really, you know, deploying any resource or any time to acquisition opportunities. I mentioned that big private hospital portfolio that's being sold in the market currently. We keep an eye on those things because you know that gives us good intelligence and good information to help us make you know strategic decisions, but no, Bjorn, we're just so focused on our priorities right now that we're not you know not even thinking about acquisition opportunities. But you know once we come through the other side of our integration and other priorities you know the answer to that question may be very different. And you know that might not be that far away 'cause we're making such good progress on the integration and the JV stroke disposal negotiations. So yeah we'll provide more updates obviously on the future on that, but for the time being we're focused on what we need to do. Okay. The last question from Mike Prew at Jefferies. Are the disposals to lower LTV mostly through sales into JVs, or will there also be outright asset sales? And if so, will these be biased to the Assura portfolio and on what criteria? Yeah. Thanks, Mike. Good, good questions. I don't think there is a bias to, towards the Assura portfolio or, or the PHP portfolio or otherwise. The only, you know, obvious, point to, to make on that is that we've said publicly and we've said this morning and we're saying today, that we're looking to, you know, sell the private hospital assets into, into a strategic joint venture. Like, like any, like any REIT or, or any property owner, you know, we're not precious about any of our assets. You know, any of our assets are for sale if somebody wants to, wants to buy them at, at the right price. We're confident that we can inject these assets into JVs at, at book value. If we were selling assets into the market, I think we'd be equally as confident, you know, because we said publicly last year at the time of the Assura acquisition that we were seeking to realize proceeds from asset disposals and a focus on the private hospital side. We have been unsurprisingly inundated with interest from high quality institutions who are attracted to, you know, the high conviction growth fundamentals that they see in that private hospital space. So yeah, we could sell out completely. There are buyers out there that would do that. But we don't think that that's the right strategy. And that's why we're focusing on a joint venture, retaining an economic interest in those assets, and, you know, benefiting from the, you know, the guaranteed growth coming through in the future. So thanks, Mike. And I think, Richard, that brings an end to all the questions that have come through. Yeah. Online. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, maybe if I could just sort of close out by, you know, reiterating my thanks and gratitude to all of you, not just for dialing in this morning, but your support to our company, particularly over the last 12 months, but, you know, also over many years. We are proud to put a dividend increase up on the screen this morning. It is our 30th consecutive year. But now we're very focused on the future. We want to continue and maintain that strong track record of growing a fully covered dividend in the future. There's a lot of upside for us to capture, as we're combining these two portfolios. PHP, as you will know, always had a, you know, strong track record from an asset management perspective, a rent review perspective. And we are applying that approach and those disciplines from the PHP side across the combined portfolio. And as I said earlier, there's plenty of low hanging fruit for us to go for. We're clearly ahead of even our own expectations on the delivery of the integration and the synergies. You know, Richard and I've done this before in other businesses. So you know, we're well placed to you know, deliver this well in advance of the plan that we set out at the time of the acquisition. The quality of the team that we now have is fantastic. You know, the new colleagues that we have that have come across from the Assura side are excellent. And many of them bring a skillset to the business, particularly in, you know, development, and private hospitals, but many other things. And this is a powerful platform to deliver sector-leading growth to our shareholders in the future. So there's loads for us to do. We're very focused on our priorities. We remain disciplined. Our cost ratio, which has always been one-off, if not the lowest in the sector, will come down again further, and we'll provide obviously more guidance on that, and our results in a few weeks' time. So maybe on that note, thanks again for listening to our update this morning. We'll see you again, no doubt, in a few weeks at our results, which we're looking forward to getting up on the screen, a very positive statement to make to the market. Of course, because you all know so well, feel free to drop Richard or myself or anyone at PHP a line if you have any further questions or you'd like to meet with the company in the next few weeks. On that note, thanks very much from Richard and myself and everybody at PHP. Wishing you all a very good day.