Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much indeed for joining us for the European Real Estate Investment Trust results this morning. My name's James Lowe. I look after sales for the Schroders Investment Trust business, and very pleased to be joined this morning, by two of my colleagues. We have Jeff O'Dwyer, Fund Manager of SEREIT, and also Rick Murphy, who is a Finance Manager. Just before we hear from the team, a couple of bits of housekeeping from myself. If you'd like to ask the team a question, please do so in the Q&A tab on your screen. I'll ask the guys at the end of the presentation. Also, a couple of downloads that you can do yourselves this morning. You can now have a look at a copy of the results. There should be a link you can click on, and also, you can download a copy of the presentation to follow along with the slides. With that's all from me. I'll hand you over to Jeff to start the presentation. Jeff, over to you. Great. Thanks, James, good morning, everyone, and thanks for dialling in to listen to the interim results. Many of you, if not all of you, will be aware that trying to price risk, value, and liquidity at the moment is pretty challenging, and we've seen that sort of increase over the last 6 months. Obviously, discounts rates are blowing out. Trying to sort of value or take a view on sort of the macro risks, particularly where sort of interest rates are moving, are all challenges that we're facing. Notwithstanding that, the portfolio has performed exceptionally well over the period, and there's a couple of sort of areas that's sort of testament to why we're seeing this resilience. Mainly, I think if you think about the strategy of how we set the vehicle up, really focusing on what we deem to be winning cities. You think about the portfolio being primarily, or heavily weighted towards cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Paris. Obviously, we're diversified, I think that's been really helpful as well. Not just being sector specific but having that diversification. We've increased our allocation to the industrial side, where we're standing at around 30%. We've reduced our office allocation, to around 35%, and we have some select retail that is performing well. I'll go into a bit more detail later about some of the positives that go with each of the assets that we've invested in. I mean, one of the big pluses, and this is one of the real nuances that goes with investing in Europe relative to the UK, is the indexation, and the fact that the leases are linked to that. All the leases have an element of annual indexation. Some of them, particularly in Germany, which about 20% of the portfolio, is subject to a hurdle. Once we achieve that hurdle, then you get the index. We're starting to see some pretty strong growth coming through. Again, I'll talk a bit more detail on inflation later. Other sort of key points, obviously, we've been able to achieve very strong rent collection. Since the pandemic, we've been at about 100%. Occupancy across the portfolio is very strong at around 96%, and we have an unexpired lease term of around 5 years. We did a little deal over the period. We've been very disciplined in how we've been approaching the deployment of capital, and we were able to find and source an off-market logistics asset in the Netherlands. This was an asset that really strengthened not only the income profile but also the sustainability credentials that go across the fund. Just on that, I mean, we are slightly pivoting, just in the way we're looking at deploying the capital. We've got about EUR 20-odd million of cash, the overall portfolio being EUR 243 million, of which EUR 23 million is cash. We're going to take a slightly more conservative approach. Instead of sort of running out there and investing, that capital, we're gonna look at ways that we can improve the quality of the existing portfolio from a sustainability point of view. Again, I'll talk a bit more about some of the sort of findings that we're getting, not only on the ground through occupiers but through lenders, as to why we're looking to focus on that, and we believe that we can drive returns through investing in the portfolio, rather than adding to the portfolio. We're doing a full sustainability audit across each of the assets to take that view. Before I hand over to Rick, and I won't take Rick's thunder here, but I'll just touch on, really, by maintaining that cash, we're strengthening the balance sheet. We know that we've got some headwinds coming up. We know particularly we've got some refinancing. We know where the cost of debt is moving, so we want to be in the strongest position possible for this company to deal with these headwinds, and hence, retaining some capital is going to put us into that best position. It may well be that come sort of Q1 next year, we may be in a position to do another little investment, and we think markets are moving that way. For now, we're going to retain that capital and ensure that the company is in the strongest position possible. With that, I'll hand over to Rick to talk through the financial results. Thanks, Jeff, and good morning, everybody. Turning to the financial highlights for the six months ending 31st of March, 2023, and beginning, first of all, with the cash position. As Jeff's just said, we think that the cash position, as at the financial period end of EUR 33 million, puts the company into a strong position, looking forward to the next 12 months, whether that's with regard to refinancing, so upcoming in the second half of this year and going into 2024. Potentially, the opportunity for a small acquisition, maybe going into next year, and in particular, with regard to sustainability-led initiatives and capital expenditure to enhance value. The EUR 33 million on the balance sheet is after and post the EUR 12.2 million that was invested to acquire the industrial asset in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, during the interim period. From a gearing perspective, modest LTV net of cash of 23%, 32% gross of cash, which is comfortably below the company's net LTV cap of 35%. With regard to refinancings, we had three refinancings coming up in 2023, and the largest of these was the Hamburg and Stuttgart loan facility, and it's pleasing to be able to say that this has already been refinanced in the interim period. Not only was it successfully refinanced, but the loan principal increased from EUR 14 million to EUR 18 million, and the margin on that loan was held at 85 basis points. As Jeff touched upon, very, very good rent collection across the portfolio. All rents received on all assets, excluding the Metromar shopping centre, for which the company wrote down its equity investments 2 years ago. From a dividends perspective, EUR 0.037 per share has been declared over the period. That's $0.0185 per share for each of the December and March quarters, giving a attractive dividend yield of just over 7% on the current share price. With regard to income, in particular, in the current inflationary environment, we can see here that all company leases are inflation-linked in some way, 80% of those being annual indexation and 20% linked to some form of a hurdle. Just finally, on the highlights, an increase in EPRA earnings of 5% over the 6 months against the 30th of September 2022. Moving next to the NAV. Here we can see the bridge of the NAV, between the closing NAV as at 30th of September 2022, which is EUR 188.2 million, or EUR 140.8 cents per share, and how we've got down to our closing NAV at 31st of March 2023, of EUR 177.1 million or EUR 132.4 cents per share. All in all, in that bottom line, we can see a 6% fall in the NAV. Just moving back to that top line, of that 6% fall, we can see 5.2% relates to unrealized valuation losses in the 6-month period. We can see in the comments on the right-hand side that there have been small gains on certain Dutch industrial assets over the six months, but these have been offset across the portfolio, in particular with regard to offices, Saint-Cloud, Paris, Stuttgart and Hamburg, as yields have moved out over the six-month period. With regard to transaction costs, EUR 1.2 million was invested over the six months to acquire the Alkmaar asset in March. Capital expenditure on the direct portfolio, EUR 2.2 million was invested, predominantly at the office in Saint-Cloud, Paris, and industrial assets in Houten, in the Netherlands. With regard to Paris Boulogne Billancourt, no further development profit has been recognized in this period, and there still remains approximately EUR 1.3 million of pre-tax profits to come through, we're expecting in the second half of this calendar year. With regard to Seville and the JV investments, as we can see here, we fully wrote down the groups and companies exposure to that shopping center in Seville, Spain, back in March 2021, and there's been no reversal of that impairment in this six-month period. EPRA earnings, IFRS earnings, less capital items, were EUR 3.8 million. Non-cash capital items were EUR 0.7 million, in part, deferred tax reversals of some of those valuation losses in Germany in particular, and a dividend paid to investors of EUR 2.5 million during the financial period in January 2023. Just moving to the summary income statement here, we've just set out the EPRA earnings before exceptional items for March 2022 versus March 2023, and we can see the growth of those EPRA earnings. EUR 3.14 was where we stood a year ago, and EUR 3.77 is where we stand now. A EUR 0.63 million increase over the six months. We can see here that whilst finance costs have increased on the like-for-like period, not least with three-month Euribor moving to positive last summer, this has been offset by in part, rental income and some of those indexations, and also small falls in the property cost base and the fund cost base over the period. All in all, that's meant that dividend cover was 63% as at March 2022. It's 76% now. Just a final point I wanted to draw out is that the company acquired its investments in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, in mid-March. That rental income of about EUR 700,000 hasn't started really running through to these numbers yet, but that would be a boost of around 5%-6% to dividend cover. The current run rate of dividend cover going into the second half of the financial year will be more around the low eighties. I'll pass it back to Jeff to talk through the dividend. Just on the dividend, we have obviously, in the past, been paying EUR 0.0185 per quarter. That has been uncovered, and really the key part of that was until we reinvested the sale proceeds from Paris Boulogne Billancourt. Obviously, today there is a bit of a change that we haven't announced. We have declared EUR 0.0185 for this first quarter, but giving some direction going forward, that we're going to be moving the dividend policy and rebasing the dividend back to a sustainable basis, so therefore, paying out 100%. The rationale for that, I mean, it was a heavily discussed point with the board. I mean, there was an option to continue doing an uncovered approach, which some of the U.K. peer group do, but we felt that it was probably the most prudent and responsible thing, really, to reassess, particularly in light of some of the headwinds that we're facing, whether those be the macro headwinds, some of the refinancing that we have over the next 18 months, general market sentiment, and also this point that I alluded to before, where we are looking at the sustainability side and how can we improve the quality of the assets. And I think that's a key area where we're seeing, particularly banks being much more discerning on the type of real estate that they're investing in, and also the counterparty that they are willing to lend to. It's very clear that particularly for offices, that actually sustainability is becoming much more important, therefore, that need to invest and move the needle and the profile of those assets and the certification is something that we need to do, and hence, the rationale for retaining some of the capital and moving the dividend back to a 100% approach, and therefore that EUR 0.0148 is the direction that we're giving. Growing that, as we see indexation coming forward, as we can do some asset management and potentially through some further acquisitions down the line, and also that investment into the portfolio through those sustainability and creating value that way. Just on the refinancings, I mean, Rick touched on what actually now in hindsight, is a fantastic refinancing that we did in Germany around the Hamburg and Stuttgart office building, being able to secure the margin there at 85 basis points. That's the main reason why we elected to increase the loan principal from EUR 14 million to EUR 18 million. We've used that additional EUR 4 million to now repay Rumilly. That's the top item there. It was a small or is a small asset, small loan. Banks really their preference is to be lending on sort of EUR 10 million ticket sizes. This was one that was a bit of anomaly, where you're really dealing with regional banks, and the cost of that was going to increase. We felt actually it was more appropriate to use the cheaper financing out of Hamburg and Stuttgart to repay that. Overall, LTV falls a little bit, so at the moment it's 32 with Rumilly in there, but subsequent to the payment, falls to about 31, and then if you reflect the cash that we've got, so net of cash, we're at sort of low 20s, which is a really strong position in to be going forward and particularly setting us up to deal with these refinancing risks. Just to give you a bit of color on some of those discussions that we're having, obviously, the loan, it's a group of logistics assets in the Netherlands, with HSBC, that expires in September. We're in the market talking to a couple of banks. Pretty comfortable that we'll be able to refinance that and potentially, at margins, in line, if not slightly lower, than the margins that we have in place there. We're gonna add the Alkmaar, so the recent sort of long income deal that we did. That will improve the loan pool across that. Depending on what those final terms are, we'll probably take that debt and help secure the position there. The next loan that we have is sort of early next year, again, a logistics asset, again, a sector where banks are very keen to lend on. I don't have any concerns about refinancing that. That's the asset in Rennes. Thirdly, we have, the Saint Cloud, which is an office building, EUR 17 million to refinance at the end of next year. That probably sits in a sector that banks are increasingly being a lot more discerning on how they're looking at offices. That's probably one area where we're trying to sort of bring forward discussions now, to secure and manage that expiry. It may well be that we use some of the capital that we have, to repay some of that loan, depending on where we go and some of the discussions that we have with lenders. Outside of that, it's really only one loan, which is really in 2026, against the 2 very strong retail assets that we have in Germany. Again, feel very relaxed about the position that we have and the type of profile for that retail, and being able to refinance that. That's the loan book. Just to be clear, we set up our debt as non-recourse. Again, Seville, just to touch on that is ring-fenced. There is no recourse back to the PLC. We're working with the lender. Obviously, that loan expires, middle of next year, but trying to sort of move that asset on, and working, and everything we do is with the bank in conjunction. We'll start probably a marketing process on that over the next few months. There's a couple of assets that are unlevered, in particular, Apeldoorn, which is a data center mixed-use asset that we have. We have sort of intentions to invest in that, and we'd probably look to leverage that asset to pay for any refurbishment that we do there. A couple of the smaller logistics assets, particularly in Nantes and Venray, are unlevered as well. With Alkmaar, we'll probably add that to the loan pool that I touched on earlier. Just to sort of give you a bit of flavor around the increasing cost of debt, at the moment, we have an average cost of debt of around 2.5%. If we take out Seville, and we repay Rumilly, obviously, that average cost goes up to about 2.7%. We're trying to give you a bit of flavor here of what impact is that having on sort of interest expense, and then how are we offsetting that, and where can we cover that? You can sort of see the look through here as we move through the refinancings. Q4 '23, we've done the Dutch regear, and we've assumed here that we do that at an all-in cost of, say, early fives. We have an increase in quarterly interest of about EUR 100,000. Roll forward another six months, we've done the Dutch regear, we've done the Rennes refinancing. Average cost of debt goes to about 3.4%, so therefore, quarterly interest cost increases by about EUR 150,000. Finally, if you roll forward to the end of next year, and we've refinanced Saint-Cloud, what is the impact on, again, on a quarterly? You can see here that actual annual increase or costs on interest expense is about EUR 1 million a year. We need indexation of around 6% to sort of be covering that, and we're starting to see that, if not in some countries, even higher indexation on the inflation side. That's helping sort of pay for that or cover that interest expense. We've given a bit of sensitivity around values. I think there's still a little bit more nervousness still to come out, particularly as rates will potentially increase. Particularly on the office side, we may see a bit more deterioration in asset values. Giving you a bit of a doomsday case here, the values across the whole portfolio were to fall 25%, well, what impact does that have on our LTV? It's still within reasonable limits. We're not breaching any covenants at that, and we're still pretty comfortable. I think we're much more comfortable to be sitting here today at the leverage that we're coming off. bearing in mind the headwinds rather than, say, coming off LTVs of sort of 50% plus, I'd be a pretty nervous manager if I was in that position. Thankfully, we're coming off a very strong balance sheet. Inflation, I talked about earlier, and you can see here that we have had some pretty, I guess, heavy numbers, and all our tenants have been paying that index that's been coming through, and it's pretty disparate across the different countries, with France being probably the lowest levels and the Netherlands being the highest. The ECB, similar to the U.K. and most central banks, really working to try and reduce inflation. This is a consensus view. We, within Schroders, we have a probably slightly more bearish view on where inflation and controlling inflation, we think it's gonna take probably a bit longer, and it'll certainly be beyond 2024, where any levels of sort of ECB targets being met, and that's probably gonna be pushed out more to 25. Inflation will be here for certainly probably somewhere in between 2% and 3% for a little bit longer. Obviously, by having a natural hedge and the indexation clauses that we have, that's a real differentiator that you have for Europe versus sort of UK investing. We have an element of cover here and a hedge that goes with the style and nature of leases. Just on the strategy, we're not changing in terms of the diversification story, having that sort of strong hospitality mindset, having entrepreneurial teams on the ground, that local expertise, that's where we're gonna control and create value going forward. It's not gonna be through financial engineering. It's about really sweating the assets and more traditional asset management, and really, you need specialists to be doing that. Through the ESG side, we're doing the full audit across the portfolio. We are, as a house, have expertise across a broad range of sustainability. It's an area that Schroders is pushing across all of their products. At the moment, the portfolio has a GRESB rating of 4. We've got aspirations to get to 5, and some of the items that we've identified in terms of how we can move the needle from a sustainability point of view, we believe that we can get to that 5-star rating. Obviously, the change we've done the little investment in the Netherlands that I talked on, but we are going to retain a bit of capital, not only to look at what we need to be investing in the portfolio to improve that sustainability, but also maybe potentially doing another transaction sort of Q1 of next year. Until we've actually gone through the audits, we will reserve what the intention of what we do in terms of a new transaction. I think just on the sustainability side, what we are finding is it's not just occupiers, particularly at the sort of the larger corporate side, that are increasingly looking at the nature of the buildings that they're, that they're occupying and making sort of their post-COVID occupational decisions. The style and the nature of the building is becoming much, much more key and how sustainable that is. The better-rated buildings are certainly seeing stronger rental growth and therefore much, much more demand and much, much sort of lower vacancy rates. On the flip side, we're seeing sort of banks also a willingness to lend on that type of real estate, particularly on the office side, and being much more discerning on that type of real estate. Also, the counterparty that is taking that debt, they wanna know that they can manage that risk, they wanna know they can manage the sustainability risk. We're a proven manager of that. We've just done that in Paris with Boulogne-Billancourt very successfully. That allowed us to create that profit and return those special dividends that we did to shareholders last year. Again, having that proof and that on-the-ground expertise around sustainability management, moving what is a Grade C building to a Grade A BREEAM-rated building, that's one of our expertise. De-risking an asset and creating value is what we're looking to do. Just on the portfolio, won't go into too much detail, just conscious of time, but again, being diversified, we've reduced our allocation to offices to around 35%, increased our industrial allocation to around 30%, and the retail exposure really at around 17%. We have that alternative zone on the data center and the car showroom at around 10%, and that sort of cash position, which is around 10% as well. Really well-balanced. I think going forward, that's all has helped us with the returns that I touched on earlier and set us up, particularly relative to sort of other specialists. I know that we've never been a house that has gone out and bought the best asset on the best street or the primest asset. We've all been, always been very considered in identifying sub-markets that are supply-constrained, that would benefit from sort of rental growth, where there's competing demands for users, and above all, where there's transport connection changes. That's where we're starting to see some positives there. That affordability, accessibility and affordability that goes with assets we're starting to see, and that's why the valuation resilience is remaining. Overall, sort of net initial yield is around 6.2%. Again, not buying prime real estate. We're never chasing assets at sub 3%. That's probably seen the biggest deterioration. If you, if you've seen sort of 100 basis point changes in yields, coming off a 3, you can understand why, you're sort of seeing big, sort of negative, total returns around that, rather than with us, where we're seeing sort of 50 basis points moving from, say, 5 or high 5s to early 6s. That, it's sort of less, less of an impact on total return. Again, being diversified, bit of vacancy. That vacancy is mainly, primarily focused on the Saint Cloud office exposure, working very hard about trying to de-risk that. It'll be an asset, will continue to be bumpy, just in the nature of that and the location of that. Outside of that, the rest of the portfolio is pretty well 100% occupied with an average unexpired lease term of about 5 years. I feel really comfortable with the diversification that we have. Obviously, many of you have probably seen this slide before. I'm not gonna go through each asset, but again, mainly just to talk about the office and the retail. I mean, office is still getting a very, I guess, heavy sort of view, particularly what's happening in the U.S., and a lot of investors are trying to read through what's happening there, which I think is quite incorrect to take that direct read-through to what we have in Europe. We've got In Germany, we've got two office assets, both in very accessible locations and in areas where supply is really constrained, and Stuttgart is the best example. It's in a market where vacancy rates are at the lowest level in the whole of Europe, so at about 1.5%. There's just no choice for occupiers. This is a building that is a Grade C Grade D office building, but we're off rents that are less than half of where prime rents are. We have the ability to, just like we did in Paris, with Boulogne-Billancourt, the ability to invest in this asset, move the needle in terms of rents and help pay for that sustainability investment and turn this into a Grade A building, should the tenant, when the tenant is the government tenant, should they require that. Equally, if they don't wanna be in a better quality building, we're happy to sit with them, regear that lease, do some minor sort of sustainability works in terms of the moment we're looking through some LED improvement and things like that. We've got flexibility, and that's the nature of being in a sub-market where there's no availability and rents are affordable. You can actually. You've got a lot more to play with. In Hamburg, same example here, we're off rents that are nearly a third of where prime rents are. We're in a sub-market that competes from multiple uses, so it's a very strong residential area as well. It's a fully occupied building. Again, multi-tenanted. We have a number of occupiers in here that would like more space, so I feel very relaxed. It's a Grade B building, very relaxed about being able to maintain full occupancy for this. That's the type of offices that we like to own. The Saint Cloud in Paris, slightly different. It's gonna be an asset that will be continue to be a little bit more bumpy, mainly because it is an older style building, and it's part of a condominium. We don't have 100% ownership, so we need to work with the other owners, in order to implement that, those sustainability initiatives. The big rationale here of why we bought this building was that the main train station, or a train station, was gonna come outside the building in 2029. Until that happens, we probably won't see the reversion growth that goes with that, so hence that sort of bumpy comment. It is off rents that are extremely low at around sort of EUR 200 a meter relative to where prime rents in the sub-market at 450 and prime rents in Paris at around 950. It's a back office location, a really good story that goes with that. On the retail side, it's really only two retail assets, and we have Berlin sitting on 4 hectares of land, leased to a DIY specialist in Hornbach. Berlin being the capital, being massively undersupplied in terms of residential. There's a real angle here to create a higher and better use of a multi and a high-density, mixed-use sort of concept here. That will probably take a longer term, given Hornbach will probably exercise their options here. Again, happy to take the income. It's valued today of around a 5.5 net initial yield. With Hornbach, they've got 3 5-year options. They'll probably stay there for that duration, but it's sort of a land banking play, particularly once you get banking position, I think the value of this land will be substantially more. We're really relaxed about taking that income. Equally in Frankfurt, having a Lidl grocery, again, the type of retail that we like, working with Lidl about expanding their footprint and regearing that lease. It's in a very strong urban location, and really that particular sub-sector of retail, we see stronger legs in. The logistics side, again, in very sensible locations, buildings that are fully leased and off rents that are affordable, we certainly believe we'll see stronger rental growth going forward. That's probably enough in terms of detail on some of the assets. Little bit on where we see how we can create sort of value. Obviously talked about Berlin longer term, talked about sort of some of the vacancy in Saint Cloud, about de-risking that and creating the opportunity there to achieve about EUR 450,000 in annual income if we were to de-risk that. Metromar, we're sort of working on really trying to stabilize that for sale. Frankfurt... In terms of expanding the Lidl and creating a little bit more value and income through there, really medium term, it's some sustainability angles around Stuttgart and also in Apeldoorn. It's an asset leased to KPN, so the leading Dutch telecommunications company. They have a data center here and an office portion. They're still trying to work out what their post-COVID sort of desires are. It's a sub-regional sort of location where we're trying to entice them into turning this into a hub location. It's not just a data center, but we turn it into a call center, office building, and a high-security part of their business as well. We're still 3.5 years left on that lease. That particular market, from a data center point of view, is changing very quickly. There's no more licenses being granted in the Netherlands. Power is a concern, so if you have an existing data center, it's a real plus, and that's something we're increasingly getting more advice around to really understand what we have there. That's sort of angles of how we can improve the quality of the portfolio, particularly around some of the sustainability angles, and where we can allocate some of the capital that we have. Just on markets, apologies, there's a lot on this, and I can't necessarily read all of that from where I'm sitting, I won't go through everything in detail. I think the sense here that the really rates will continue to potentially sort of increase here as central banks, particularly the ECB, uses monetary policy to try and curtail inflation. We think there will be a couple more, potentially 2 more, increases in interest cost. Notwithstanding that, office markets are remaining pretty positive. I think one of the key reasons here is that we didn't see banks lending on speculative development. We didn't see occupiers taking too much space. Things are much more balanced. I think in terms of my other comment about this slide is more on the investment side. We definitely have seen volumes really fall to less than a quarter of what we have historically seen. Investors are pausing at the moment. You can understand, I think, yes, my opening comment about trying to price risk, trying to sort of price sort of macro concerns. Pricing liquidity at the moment is very challenging and hence, a lot of investors are staying on the sideline, and therefore, we're not seeing the volumes and transaction evidence, and therefore, value is having a very difficult time in terms of trying to get that evidence. We think that will probably continue certainly for the rest of the year, but we may see a bit more opportunity. I won't call it distress. I think there will be a number of owners out there that when they try and sort of refinance, as I've touched on earlier, that I think banks will be a bit more and certainly a lot more discerning on the type of borrower that they're lending to. They want to be lending to specialists. I think there will be a couple of parties that will be struggling to get the same financing terms and therefore may be looking to sell assets or may have to free up equity for other requirements. We think there will be better buying opportunities over the next six to nine months. Just to sort of give you a read-through, I know many of you look at the US markets as well, and certainly reading from an office point of view, it's pretty dire. It's very different, and I think a couple of comments I'll make here. One of the reasons it's very different is that leading into the pandemic, there was a massive oversupply of offices in the US. There was also. You think about space per capita, it probably double what we have here in Europe. There was that sort of overhang where the US needed to deal with sort of moving away from sort of big, traditional offices and more sort of open plan and hence sort of higher density. You've got the situation where I guess, a lot of sort of US commute using cars and transport rather than public transport, and typically live outside of cities as well and have a little bit more space, whereas in Europe, a lot of people live in the city center, in urban locations. Public transport is a lot better, so they're back utilizing the office in a much higher way than relative to the US, and hence why we're starting to see less work from home and certainly on the continent, people back in the offices. I guess the balance, and I touched on earlier, where we didn't see that disequilibrium where we saw an overbuild or we saw occupiers taking too much space, that's why sort of vacancy across Europe has remained much more in check. In particular, if you were to draw down, and I don't have a slide on this, I think I have it in the appendix, actually, where if you look at sort of grade A offices and the type of office that really occupiers want, the availability of that sort of space is probably less than a third of what that vacancy is. Again, a very, very tight availability of office space from an A grade, and that sort of ties in with the strategy around that sustainability comment about improving the underlying certification. In summary, look, we think the European REIT is a very compelling investment case, particularly gives you a diversifier away here from the U.K., not only in terms of economies that you're investing in, but certainly the cities that you're taking exposure to. The underlying indexation is a real key positive here, and it is a natural hedge that we're providing. We've got disciplined and specialist teams on the ground. I think that's a really key part. Again, going forward, looking about real estate and creating value, it's gonna be through active asset management that you're going to drive that and having a specialist team that can deliver that. Being in and having our strongest teams in the Netherlands, Germany and France sits well with where we're allocated. Obviously, we're in the strongest growth areas, again, a key part of the story was investing in those areas that would grow faster from a GDP, a population, or a employment perspective. We haven't deviated away from that, again, a really strong... We see stronger growth as we start to see GDP improve and we come out of the recessionary concerns. We'll see stronger growth in those cities that we have allocated to. The sustainability side, again, improving the quality is not only gonna improve the liquidity to occupiers, but the liquidity to investors and also the ability to get better financing terms as well. We see that as a key part of being able to invest in the portfolio going forward. I think overall, we're well positioned to deal with the headwinds that we have. Having a strong balance sheet coming into these headwinds, I'd rather be in this position with a low LTV and having some cash and to be, have that flexibility, rather than being at a higher, managing a higher levered vehicle. I feel much more comfortable on the board and the direction that we're giving investors, that we're being able to set this company up to deal with those headwinds. Yes, we've taken a bit of a haircut on dividend, but the quality of the portfolio is going to improve and being able to ensure that the company gets through, what we still see in terms of those headwinds. That's the main priority. Look, come... Once we do these refinancings, come sort of Q1, Q2 next year, there will be the ability to look at new acquisitions, and tying in with that is a sort of better buying opportunity as well. Here's the opportunity. We're trading a 30% discount. We do think that's compelling. Based on sort of current dividend, even if you rebase that back to the 80% on today's share price, you're about a 6% dividend yield, fully covered. Again, that sort of headroom and strong balance sheet that we have, we think that's a very compelling case. I'll stop there. I'm sure there's questions that are coming in and happy to answer. Over to you, James. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. There are indeed lots of questions. If you do have a question as we go through this Q&A, please do send it in, and I will ask the team. Jeff, just sort of circling back to one of the comments you made in your concluding remarks there around some of the differences that we see in the European real estate market, that of the diversified UK REITs. One of the points you made at length was around inflation and the inflation linkage within the portfolio indexation of the leases. One of the first questions we have here is around that inflation linkage and whether there's caps involved. I know you get that on some of the longer-term income products. Is that the case here? In all the portfolio, there's no caps other than the recent Alkmaar deal. That's the first time, actually, we've come across a cap, and a lot of the occupiers are starting to think through as part of their leasing renegotiations. They're saying, "Okay, well, we wanna cap this." They don't wanna be dealing with the 14.5% that happened in the Netherlands for those leases that were coming up for an index in January of this year. I mean, it's gonna be market-led, and also depending on what, I guess, rent you're starting off as well. It's all part of the overall negotiation story. The big... You're right, the big differentiator, and it is a hedge relative to what you're facing here in the U.K., is that our index, yeah, our assets are either annually indexed or in the case of Germany, you're waiting for that hurdle. We are getting that growth going forward. You get to capture, obviously, market rental growth at the end of the lease. The question is, well, is your ERV growing at the same level of indexation? I think for some sectors it is, and for some sectors, it's not. I think certainly on the logistics side, I would say that we are seeing sort of rental growth that's at least in line with indexation. Yeah, really positive. All our tenants have been paying the indexes, and we haven't had any concerns of non-payment, and hence that 100% rent collection that I touched on earlier. That's a great segue into the next question, just came through, which was around tenant risk. You just made the comment there around the ability of occupiers to be able to pay the inflation uplifts within their leases. Are there any other risks around tenants that you're seeing at the moment, other than the fact that there's not a risk that they won't be able to pay the inflation uplifts? In the appendix, actually, we do give a bit more detail around sort of diversification and the type of industries that we have allocations to. I think probably the biggest concern is really on the, I guess, smaller moms and dads' retail side, and we've obviously written the Metromar shopping center to 0, so it doesn't impact us. If you think about the retail that we have, Lidl, Hornbach, two very, very strong companies, we've got no concerns around that. You think about our biggest rent allocation is to KPN, again, a massive public company, market cap of EUR 15 billion or something. Got 0 concerns around them paying their rent. You look through some of the office, we've got the government in Stuttgart. We have a good cross-section of SMEs in Saint Cloud, also in Hamburg as well. That cross-section, you can see here on this slide, the different sectors that we have. Again, some of these sectors are benefiting from some of the headwinds that we have, or the markets are facing. I think we're pretty well set up and don't have any concerns around rents being or our tenants being able to pay the rents that we're charging. Sort of moving then slightly on to another good question that's come through. We've just obviously discussed the sustainability of rents there being relatively strong in our view, in the portfolio. Moving on to the point of sustainability, which you actually also talked about, we've had a question that's just come through just where one of our listeners wants to understand how the regulatory landscape in the EU differs to that in the UK. Just for listeners' benefit, in the UK, there is a requirement coming in that commercial buildings get to an EPC level of C and above by 2027. Is that something you're seeing in EU regulation also? Well, actually, the U.K. have copied the Dutch. I mean, the Dutch were very, very early, sort of providers, if that's the right word, but very, very early into identifying that actually minimum requirements. They said, actually, your office building needed to be a C by 2023. today, we don't have any offices in the Netherlands, but, I mean, the one asset that is part office is the Apeldoorn asset, which is a C. I mean, Germany's starting to deal and move their focus on... They won't call it EPC ratings. They're looking at a different system, but again, it is increasingly becoming a key point, like the U.K. here, and we are conscious that occupiers are requiring this as well. As a responsible investor, and we wanna be giving the best buildings and creating and obviously reducing our footprint as well, and we have aspirations within Schroders in terms of what we've signed up to in terms of net zero as well. That's all part of the audit that we're doing, and we're not just gonna invest in these buildings just for the sake of it. We have to link it to moving rents, and also regearing leases. Certainly, there is change occurring across the different countries, but the UK has probably followed where the Netherlands was. That's really useful context. Thank you. There's actually been a number of questions on sustainability come through whilst we've been discussing that, I'm gonna stay on sustainability for a minute. I will go on to other questions, I promise. There's just a question here that's just building on the conversation we're already having, Jeff, here on sustainability. You're obviously gonna do these audits on each building. This is maybe too early to say, but can you say anything about whether you would consider either sort of selling any assets on sustainability grounds going forward. Then, I guess those sales proceeds then going back in to fund new CapEx and acquisitions for more sustainably focused buildings. Possibly, that's part of the whole critique and your sort of wholesale analysis and the due diligence that we do. Mm-hmm ... on assets going forward. I mean, I would like to think, I mean, I use Stuttgart as a good example. I'd like to think that we would be able to manage that investment and create value through that. I mean, we're coming off rents there of, around EUR 15 per square meter per month. Prime rents there are early EUR 30s, so there's a really strong opportunity to move the needle on that. Yes, we need to invest in the sustainability initiatives, that, for me, feels a bit like a Boulogne-Billancourt, where we were successful in taking what was a grade C building, turning it into a grade A BREEAM-rated building, making it much more institutional, creating a longer-term lease with the tenant. That's what we're good at. That's sort of our expertise. We've got, in terms of teams on the ground that deliver that. May well be that we look at a new acquisition that sort of ticks, and we can de-risk, and it won't necessarily be sort of brown to green, but we can, I guess, de-risk those type of items where some other investors can't do that. Look, it's all part of the equation. There may be some assets where it's not worth our while to be investing, and it doesn't mean that we won't achieve the value, but we may well sort of pass that asset on to someone else, and we'll always look at the best use of that capital. Yeah, it's part of the overall equation. Just a final question that's come through on the sustainability side, just building on that concept of brown to green. Are you seeing transactional evidence starting to come through of this, the so-called green premium? Certainly on the occupier side. I think the investor side is still a bit early. I think the market's sort of paused at the moment in terms of volumes, sort of people falling off a cliff. Definitely on the occupier side, that's where we're seeing much stronger rents. We'll continue to see stronger rental growth for those better quality buildings, particularly for the bigger corporates as well. That's again, the liquidity, not only for occupiers, but the liquidity, then trying to sell into a market, also trying to get debt. I think this is a key part that we're starting to see, and I think it's probably early stages, where banks are being much more discerning, particularly for offices, on the nature of the building and also the counterparty that they're lending to. I've stressed that a couple of times during the presentation, but that's gonna be an increasingly key point from a bank's perspective. Moving off the topic of sustainability now. We've had a couple of questions that have come through on discounts to NAV. I think it's a fair question to ask. You mentioned within the presentation around discipline, around capital allocation within the company. The question here is really around buybacks and whether you think that there is an ability. Well, whether the company should be buying back and whether that's a good use of capital and whether it can be done at the moment. Look, we get this question a lot, and we had this question when we were trading at a 10% discount. The board does look at this and constantly, in terms of thinking about what's the best use of capital. Look, being a small vehicle, obviously, buybacks erode the size, and we'd probably lose a bit of the potential to do some diversification. I think for now, it's probably not the highest priority for the board, but it does certainly get, or I get questioned every time if I was to take an investment or to look at a sustainability initiative. I'm gonna get that question: "Are we better off using that capital?" I think for now, we see the opportunity to improve the quality of the portfolio. Certainly positioning the portfolio that enhances the liquidity to occupiers and then on the investment side as well. Yeah, look, it may well be the board may say, "Well, actually, let's look at some share buybacks," but I think that's probably not the highest priority at the moment. No, makes sense. Thank you. Just moving slightly further away from the discount and on to markets now. We've had a question come here, come through here from one of our listeners around making the point that as you mentioned, sort of liquidity in terms of transactions in the, in the property market is low at the moment. What does that mean in terms of the sorts of disposal yields you're seeing across the European real estate market at the moment? I mean, there's a lot in to answer that. I mean, I was in the Netherlands last week, and there is a small office portfolio that's in the market at the moment being sold by a motivated vendor. If you want to sell in today's market, you're gonna be taking, I don't know, some pretty, I wouldn't call it opportunistic pricing, but certainly pricing that's very different to where we were 12 months ago. I think there's certain assets, select offices, select retail. I think the logistics side, if you've repriced and maybe there's still a bit more downside on the prime side, but certainly the type of logistics that we have tend to acquire, which is in that sort of 5%-7.5% net initial yield basis, where debt's still accretive, I don't really have any concerns around value and being able to achieve those sort of pricing in the market. I think some offices are gonna probably see a bit more deterioration, particularly given some of the, as I touched on with the Dutch portfolio that's in the market from a motivated seller, valuers, if they see that, they may have to think about, well, how does that impact their evidence? Obviously, being a motivated seller, that's not under our ICS approach. We may see a bit more of that coming through. At the moment, we're just not seeing. The gap between vendors' willingness to sell and buyers' willingness to buy is still, there's still a bit of a gap, we need that to sort of move to see a bit more evidence. I'm asking you to get your sort of crystal ball out here slightly. We'll run these questions, but I think it's an interesting question, it'd be good to get your thoughts on it. Obviously, the discount is pricing in quite a lot of pain at the moment, at 30%. Values have already come off quite significantly already. You just alluded to the office market, where we might see some more pain. Do you think the market is currently pricing risk correctly? Or, I mean, you sort of said it's hard for valuers to correctly value properties at the moment. Where do you think the direction of travel here is? We've seen a lot of distress already. Is there more to come across different sectors, or should we think of this as maybe an inflection point, and now, moving into a time where we can be more opportunistic in terms of making new acquisitions? Yeah, I think for certain sectors, I think pricing is starting to look a bit more attractive. I think for certain logistics, light industrial, urban, last mile, we still think there's legs on the continent with rental growth for that. Hence why we did the Alkmaar deal at a 5.6 sort of 20-year income. There's certain parts of retail that still haven't found a bottom, and I think the difficulty with that is more, not so much to do with the yield, but to do with the numerator and trying to actually come up with a sustainable net income. That's the challenge for some retail and making sure that retailers are making money, and that's an area that we just won't focus on. Obviously, within retail, grocery, DIY, retail warehouses are looking pretty attractive and have been repriced accordingly. That's an area that we do like. Offices, yes, that's probably an area where, particularly secondary offices, regional offices, there's probably a bit more downside on that side, and also offices that don't tick the sustainability side. Obviously, we know that construction costs are increasing. The reward or the discount rate required to take on that risk has probably increased as well, so that needs to have an impact on pricing as well. Outside of that, look, we've got a little bit of alternative. We've got the data center, and that's an area that's still holding up well in sort of strong demand on that side. We've got the car showroom. Again, that was just a good real estate play. That wasn't really a market play, but just to sort of say, actually, that was the best asset in an agglomeration of 22 car showrooms. The biggest site, most frontage with alternate use angles longer term. That's probably fairly priced. Yeah, I mean, I can't give a general comment about, well, are we at the bottom, but I think there's sort of some parts of each sector where there's probably a bit more deterioration. Equally, we have seen yields, probably, particularly for some of the industrial stock, maybe hit a floor. Jeff, you talked about the debt facilities that we have in place as part of the European REIT. One of the questions that's come through here is around the flexibility, the additional flexibility that you have by being able to go to finance in different jurisdictions. Is that something you're finding useful, and you're seeing different terms in different countries available to you when you're looking to finance assets? Definitely, I think if you think about the German lenders, I mean, they're very keen and much, much more focused on lending in Germany, and hence, sort of goes to the ability to refinance the Hamburg- Mm. Stock out at 85 basis points. We're now talking, I don't know, you think about the Dutch logistics, you're sort of at margins there of 200 plus. The German appetite is not sort of crossing over to look at that particular subsector. It's a little bit granular as well. I think that's the area where banks are suddenly saying, "Okay, well, I've got so much opportunity to lend here. I don't need to go and take on a granular portfolio. I don't need to go to the Netherlands. I can sit here and lend on a big logistics asset or a top-quality grocery asset or a DIY asset, or a grade A BREEAM-rated office building in Germany, and get sensible pricing, rather than chasing different jurisdictions. Yes, it does vary across the countries. That's where, I mean, again, one of the reasons for retaining that capital is that if we were gonna see the pricing of the Dutch logistics be too prohibitive, well, we would have just repaid that debt. I mean, there was no point if that debt was gonna be at 6%. The best use of capital for us was to repay that and again, improve the balance sheet, reduce our LTV, and maybe position ourselves to take some more gearing at a later stage. Great. Just conscious we're coming up close to time now, so if you do have any final questions, please do send them in. I'll ask the team. Jeff, maybe just a final question from me to you. You've given lots of detail about the trust, lots of info about sort of where we've got to, some of the progress we've made. What's the really important initiatives for you to execute in the second half of this year for us to get into sort of end of 2023 to 2024 in a good position? ... I think there's sustainability audits, so that's for me, the number one priority to really understand, well, how can we move the needle on these and position these assets, to, so they're the most liquid to occupiers and investors? I guess the balance sheet side, refinancing, I did talk about I feel we can refinance the Dutch. I think we can refinance the Rennes logistics. It's probably Saint Cloud where I don't have any clarity. We're trying to sort of bring that forward, now, so that's part of the de-risking. Fortunate that we have a strong balance sheet that I, if worst case, came to that, and we had to refinance, Saint Cloud or pay some of the debt down, we're in a position to do that. I wouldn't want to be in a position where I'd have to be selling assets, trying to take, I don't know, as a forced seller, as now is not the right time to be, to be pushed into that. I think the risk that we have, I think we can manage. Yes, there's bigger macro risks that goes to the point about pricing equity, and it's a really tough position, and you can understand why there's a lot of nervousness and difficulties in pricing equity. I mean, in the nearly 30 years I've been investing, it's probably the hardest period to price that equity with all the risks that we're dealing with. Certainly with the things that we can control within this Trust, I feel comfortable that we can get through this and have a company that's in a great position coming out the other end. Perfect. Well, thank you, Jeff. That's all we have time for this morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you to Rick and Jeff for the presentation, and thank you very much to our listeners for sending in your questions. If you'd like to hear more on the Trust, then please do go to the website, and you can obviously download a copy of the report, which has a lot more detail in there for you, and you can, as I said at the start, download a copy of the presentation. If you have a Schroders contact, please do feel free to get in touch with any follow-up. With that's all we have time for. Thank you for listening and goodbye.