Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Wereldhave webcast for the first half of 2026 results. I'm here today with our CFO, Remco Langewouters, and myself. I am Matthijs Storm, the CEO of Wereldhave. I think most of you know me. We'll take you, as usual, through the slide deck of the first half results. If you have any questions, you can already start typing them in the chat box at the bottom of your screen. Towards the end of the presentation, we will deal with all the questions as usual, and we will go into the details. With that, I'd like to start with the key messages of the first half results. First of all, the valuations. Some of you might remember that in the second half of 2025, we had slightly negative revaluations of the portfolio, and I think, in particular, the Dutch investment market. If you talk about retail, in our press release, we also make reference to a pretty large recent transaction at, in my view, a pretty tight yield, is improving significantly. That was one of the drivers why the revaluations in the first half of the year were positive, but also driven by higher passing rents. That you can see in the next bullet. Like-for-like gross rental income increased by +4.3%. We'll get back to that in a second. I think as Wereldhave, we regard ourselves as pretty defensive. We're well protected in the current macroeconomic environment against higher interest rates because we have pretty low committed CapEx. Remco will go into more detail later. In addition to that, we completed the refinancings for the year. We'll give you more detail later. Last but not least, we have about 2/3 exposure in our rent roll to the more resilient daily life or convenience retail if you wish. Also with regards to our transformations, we achieved some major steps in the mixed use. Please recall that mixed use is an important element of the Full Service Center transformations in Knauf Shopping Schmiede in Luxembourg that we acquired last year and also Cityplaza Nieuwegein. In the USPP markets, we completed a refinancing with MetLife of EUR 60 million and Fitch, the credit rating agency, reaffirmed our BBB credit rating. In May, I'm not sure if all of you have followed our recent AGM because it's in Dutch, but all the resolutions were passed, so I think that's very positive. Mostly, with regards to potential new equity, we now have the approval from our shareholders to issue up to 20% of new equity without prior consent of the shareholders, because we already received it. As you might recall, in the past, this was only 10%. If we then look at the forecast for the year, we are looking at a direct result per share of EUR 1.85-EUR 1.95. That is unchanged versus the forecast that we provided in the first quarter and with the full year 2025 results. Lastly, we are in pretty advanced stages of capital rotation of a Dutch asset to be put into a joint venture, an existing Wereldhave asset, with the proceeds being reinvested into a Belgian asset. That could be quite compelling. We will get back to that after the summer, but also with regards to the potential disposal of a Belgian non-core asset, which will help the loan-to-value, which indeed increased a bit in the first half of the year, as I saw in some of your notes. Please bear in mind that is always the case because we pay the dividend in Q2. Remco will also elaborate on that further in the presentation. With that, I would like to go to the numbers itself. I am not going to read it all out as usual. What you can see is that the direct result per share is unchanged versus last year. Because of the seasonality, we do expect to land somewhere in the middle of the EUR 1.85, EUR 1.95 as we already forecasted in the previous quarters. It is mathematically not correct to multiply that EUR 0.91 figure by two. If you have any questions about it, then Remco is very happy to answer them. Loan-to-value, already mentioned. It actually decreased versus the first half of 2025 by 80 basis points. If you look at the mixed-use percentage, we had a nice improvement of about 1 percentage point amongst others, driven by the leases in the Full Service Center transformations. If we then look at the like-for-like rental growth, important metric for us, increase of +4.3% on a gross basis, particularly the Netherlands here stands out as you can see. What you can see in the call-out box on the top right is that, of course, indexation is a major driver of that, but also other income as we elaborated intensively during the full year 2025 results back in February. Leasing slightly positive, however, particularly in Belgium, there were some items in the property expenditures. We will get back to that later. That is why the net like-for-like rental growth is quite a bit below the gross figure in this first half of the year. Going further into the results, the operational business, occupancy rate, almost 98% for the core portfolio, but also the total portfolio. Actually, usually in the first half of the year, because of the seasonality, the occupancy declines a little bit from the 98% because you have less temporary leases, which are always gaining traction in the fourth quarter. Actually, we managed to maintain an occupancy rate of 98%, which I think is a good performance. Leasing spreads versus ERV, significantly positive at +12% for the core portfolio. That is quite an improvement versus the previous quarters. The only negative figure you can see here is the -1.9% in the Netherlands. That is driven by two major leases which were caused by law. We call that Article 303 in the Netherlands. I think during some of the roadshows, we also discussed this with you. That is unfortunately one of the negatives in the Dutch market, that you sometimes have cases where you are forced by law to go into a new lease agreement. Those two leases cost a negative figure. If you would take them out, you can see we had a lot more activity than that. We did EUR 4.5 million of leases. Then the spread would have been roughly neutral. If we then focus on the LifeCentral strategy from a footfall, also tenant sales, but also total return perspective, you can see that the Full Service Centers continue to outperform the traditional shopping centers in the portfolio. Footfall, particularly in the Dutch market, we have some quite nice outperformance. I think in Belgium we are more or less in line with the market. Footfall continues to grow at a pace of around +2%, +2.5%, which I think is quite good, particularly given the fact that, in March, the Iran situation, of course, occurred, and some other global political tensions remain. Despite that, we don't see a change in the footfall pattern. In Luxembourg, you can see there's no figures for the market because there is no market reference, but we're also positive year- to- date. We then focus on the tenant sales, in Belgium, +1% growth and in the Netherlands +2%. I think here you can see a little bit of the effect of the macroeconomic situation, not in the total figure. If you zoom in Belgium, home wear and household and shoes are more cyclical categories, of course, than the convenience retail. If you look at the Netherlands, you see health and beauty also a little bit more cyclical than some other categories. For example, you see that the supermarkets in the Netherlands are +8%. That is, of course, a very resilient category, which is still performing very well. We then look at the rent roll as a total, we always focus on the percentage exposure we have to daily life retail, the convenience retail, the resilient retail, which is still around 64%-65%. Of course, when we do an acquisition or a disposal, that can have some impact as well. We still believe with all the transformations that we are working on, we will be at 70%-75% in the future. A short update on the leasing. In Belgium, we signed about a little bit shy than EUR 5 million of new rents, significantly above ERV and old rents. I want to mention is a new lease with ONLY from the Bestseller group in Tournai Les Bastions. That's a former JBC store where we achieved a significant rental uplift, which is helping and contributing to the overall result. Also some new leases in the Ville2 Shopping Center in Charleroi that we acquired last year. You can read it here yourself, but I think it's encouraging to see that the leasing has a lot of traction in that center. That is also the case for Luxembourg, the two assets that we acquired last year. I think the lease that is most remarkable to mention is the Basic-Fit lease in Knauf Schmiede, adding mixed use to the center, 1,400 sq m. We're in advanced stage also with a new F&B operator to expand the F&B area there as well. We're taking significant steps in the transformation of Knauf Schmiede to a Full Service Center. Also in the Netherlands, a very active quarter. We signed a lease with Lager 157. You can see that 2,670 sq m in Tilburg, also the TK Maxx opened in Tilburg. Our leasing team has done a fantastic effort to improve, particularly the area of the Pieter Vreedeplein. Also new leases with the Cotton Club in Zoetermeer. That's the asset we hold in joint venture with Sofidy and also Van Uffelen in Middenwaard. Decathlon in Hoofddorp is also a very important addition we had in the Full Service Center development. Only one unit left, a pretty large unit to be leased. Initially, we thought it would be a gym, but now we've leased it to Decathlon, which I think is an improvement versus the initial business case. We are very happy with that. If you look at the leasing market and all the deals we are negotiating, if we dive into the Salesforce system, if you look at the pipeline you don't see the impact actually of the Iran situation. There's a lot of larger deals under negotiation. None of them have been put on hold. I think also in the third quarter, we're actually working on that already. We agreed a new package deal with a major discounter of three new leases actually last week, which is not in the set of results but will be in Q3. We don't see any changes there. We then focus on the occupancy cost ratio, as you noticed in the second quarter, the rents increased slightly more than the retail sales. For that reason, there is a slight, but only a slight uptick in the OCRs. We still believe that the OCR of 13% in the Netherlands is perfectly suited for our retailers and also in Belgium a little bit higher. As you can see in the call-out, that's driven by the fact that the sales productivity of the Belgium portfolio is higher than our Dutch portfolio. With that, I'd like to hand over to Remco. Thank you, Matthijs, and also a warm welcome on my behalf. Here we show the evolution of our cost basis. As you all know, we have been working on reducing our cost over the past years, and we are monitoring that through our EPRA Cost Ratio and our direct general cost. For the latter, we expect to come a little bit below the general cost from last year at year-end. On the direct result, we show an improvement of 3% for the year. If we exclude from that the impact from the acquisitions and the disposals, the NRI is growing by EUR 1.3 million, mainly driven by the Netherlands, where on the back of the indexations, other income, as well as the parking income. We saw an increased interest expenditure, which was mainly due to the matured interest rate swaps and caps in Belgium, as well as some additional tax charges, which are essentially split into two parts. One is related to the acquisition we did last year for Ville2, which we acquired in a taxable entity and converted to a fiscal transparent entity mid Q1. That's sort of a non-recurring tax expenditure. On the other side, you see the impact of the higher income in the Netherlands on the tax charge. Our outlook, as Matthijs already mentioned, we reconfirmed at EUR 1.85-EUR 1.95. If we translate that into the dividend expectations for the AGM next year, that equates to EUR 1.35, which is essentially a 71% payout. The payout is a bit below our policy for 75%-85%, and that's mainly because our LTV is still at 44%, which is above the guidance or the target of 40%, and we think it's prudent to keep it at these levels. On the transactions, despite the uncertainty in the market during the first half year, we have been able to add two additions to our portfolio. One is the supermarket in Ville2, which now provides us with 100% control of the shopping center there. That's a plus for us. In addition, we also acquired the HEMA unit in Overvecht. Both of these acquisitions were financed through contribution in kind, so we used the equity to fund the transactions. On a positive note in that regard, also on our last AGM, the shareholders approved the resolutions that now allows us to issue up to 20% of new shares, which provides us with the flexibility to do further equity-backed acquisitions. As Matthijs already mentioned earlier, we are working on a capital rotation project, which is currently in the LOI stage in the Benelux. On the next slide, there are two overviews of the transaction that we did in the first half year, but I'll hand it back to Matthijs for the Full Service, LifeCentral update. Thank you, Remco. On the strategy, as you can see on this slide, the mixed-use percentage is an important KPI for us to monitor, increased to 17%. I already mentioned that earlier as well. Also important to mention in the second bullet on the top right, the Cityplaza, a new healthcare cluster opened that's part of the larger transformation. We'll get back to that in a second. If we look at other income, as we elaborated during the full year 2025 results back in February, that's an area where we see significant growth in revenues and in income. What you can see here on the slide is that we're still nicely on track to meet the EUR 8.6 million target for 2026. We're working hard at the moment on the tender of the Belgian and the Luxembourg screens, which will certainly cause an increase, which will be visible in the 2027 direct result. Lastly, the EV chargers in Belgium. There we have a lot of traction. I think during the last roadshow, we also elaborated on that, and that is helping our numbers as well. On Cityplaza in the Netherlands, one of our largest centers in the middle of the country, just south of Utrecht. You can see the map on the top right. What I like here is that a lot of elements of the strategy are actually included in the center. The health and fit on the top of the center. This has always been a difficult passage, a difficult corridor from a footfall perspective. Now we have healthcare as a new tenant. On the left side, you can see that we right-sized some of our ownership. We sold it to a residential developer. We also introduced our every.deli, our fresh food gallery, so to speak, opposite the Albert Heijn supermarket. You can see the eat and meet. This is performing very well. In the past, the F&B in the center was very fragmented across the center and basically closed at 6:00 P.M. Now we have a couple of F&B retailers which stay open until 10:00 P.M., 11:00 in the evening, which of course, is helping their turnovers. We've created a very lively square in the heart of Nieuwegein, basically, which is helping the performance of the center. Lastly, the Basic-Fit on the first floor on the right side of the picture. We're still working on a number of items, as you can see on the bottom left of the slide. The realization and the finalization of that health and fit cluster, but also the look and feel upgrade of the galleries is still in the design phase. There's a little bit more CapEx to come in Cityplaza. Remco will talk about that. Luxembourg, this is actually a project that I'm very excited about because last year we acquired Knauf Schmiede and Knauf Shopping Pommerloch in Luxembourg. As you might recall, we bought Knauf Shopping Pommerloch at a 7.3% net initial yield, but Knauf Schmiede above 9%. Of course, a very nice acquisition price, but also admittedly, Knauf Schmiede was a center where some work on the first floor had to be done. We thought that was a perfect case for a Full Service Center transformation. Give the consumers in that area of Luxembourg and Belgium, because half of the consumers come from the Belgian market, give them more reasons to come to the center and spend more time in the center. From that perspective, it's very nice, as mentioned already, that we signed the Basic-Fit. We're in an advanced stage with a large F&B operator, as you can see on the bottom of the slide. We've also worked on the routing of the center that is on the top right. We've created two additional retail units, so additional space to be leased, and the good news is it's leased already. Also The Point, our multi-service desk, our concept that many of you know will be implemented here in the center. It's actually going quite fast and faster than we expected, that's the good news, which is also why the temporary income is a little bit lower, as Remco explained. In the waterfall of the direct results, you'll see towards the completion of the project, there will be a nice uplift in the rent in 2027. With that, I'd like to hand over back to Remco, who will tell you a little bit more about the CapEx. Thank you, Matthijs. The CapEx pipeline is EUR 61 million. As you all know, we added last year EUR 36 million to the pipeline for the newly acquired assets. We forecast that for the remainder of the year, we will be spending EUR 8 million basically on the transformations that Matthijs just mentioned, the healthcare cluster in Cityplaza, but also the transformation in Knauf Schmiede. I think it is also good to mention here that given the current market uncertainty here, we have limited commitments, which provides us with flexibility here. On the capital allocation and our IRR framework, we remain monitoring the Green Street continental European average IRR, which came out at 7.4%. We set the internal threshold at 8%, and at this moment in time, we have one asset in the hold bucket and one asset in the sell bucket. For the asset in the hold bucket, we are assessing the opportunities to bring the IRR above the 8%. Essentially, this is similar to what we saw at year-end 2025. On the yield shifts of our completed FSC transformation, it is good to mention here that we outperformed the market in that regard for all these FSCs. On the residential profits, this is also one item that has been mentioned already before. We see this as the icing on the cake. I think essentially at this moment in time, we are adding and looking at the residential development in our joint venture, Zoetermeer, so together with our joint venture partner there. Going through financing evaluations, where we kick it off with the valuations for the half year. Overall positive results on our core portfolio, EUR 17.3 million or 0.8%. That is essentially driven by the increased passing rent, both in the Netherlands and for the Belgian assets. On the other hand, we see almost EUR -4 million revaluation in France, which was driven by a yield increase and a decrease in ERVs. For the offices in Belgium, they remain relatively flat compared to last year. The debt to EBITDA, as mentioned also already before, our LTV went up to 44.1%, primarily due to the dividend that was paid in the first half year. If you compare it to the half year 2025, we are down 80 basis points. Also our debt versus EBITDA, which is monitored by Green Street, we still remain one of the lowest of the peer group in that regard. Our target for the LTV remains below 40%, and essentially, we see the options of disposing non-core assets in France or Belgium, joint venture existing assets or other partnerships similar to debt. As well, with the optionality that we have been provided with at the AGM, we can do equity-backed acquisitions to also reduce our LTV. On the debt profile, compared to year-end, we see a slight decrease in the interest-bearing debt, which is essentially a net effect of the cash that was on our balance sheet at year-end from the disposals, combined with the dividend payments that we did in the first half year. Our average cost of debt is at 3.55%, which is remaining stable but will likely increase a bit towards the end of the year. I think it's good to mention here that from a covenant perspective, we are well within our covenants at this moment in time. What you see here is on the debt maturity, the refinancing, we already communicated that earlier, the refinancing of the EUR 250 million RCF, but also a EUR 30 million facility in Belgium helped increase the debt maturity. If we look on the next slide and we look at the bottom graph, what you see there is also mentioned in the key messages. We refinanced the EUR 40 million that is maturing in July with a $ 60 million USPP with a 10-year tenor. If we include that on a pro forma basis in our results, the weighted average debt maturity increases from 3.8- 4.3 years, which is a positive evolution. On our debt mix, essentially remains relatively stable. We repaid a bond at the end of March, which was financed through the bank loans. Good to mention here that for next year, we have about EUR 150 million of debt maturities coming up, of which 70% is situated in the second half of the year. We are starting the projects there to refinance those. On the next slide, you see also the evolution of the debt maturity. As you can see, with the USPP, we end up at the 4.3 pro forma. Essentially three items to highlight here. We have identified additional potential to add charging points to our shopping centers, of which 14 were already realized in the first half of the year. We are recertifying all our Dutch assets, with BREEAM including all the tenant spaces, which is due to be completed in the fourth quarter. I think good to mention here is that in the Vier Meren asset, we are replacing gas boilers by hybrid system that will help us reduce the carbon emissions and brings us a step forward towards Paris Proof. With that, I hand it back over to Matthijs for the management agenda. Thank you, Remco. The management agenda to close it off, please type your questions while we're speaking and also towards the end because some questions already came in, but very happy to answer them. Management agenda, you can see here the targets for 2025, 2027. Scale, as already mentioned, I think two things that you will see after the summer break, we're actively working on capital rotation, which is a Dutch asset in a joint venture, with the capital being allocated in the Belgian market, I think with a very nice spread on yields. That could be pretty enhancing for the direct results. In addition to that, we're working, as you might have seen in the press release, on the disposal of a Belgian non-core asset. Remco already elaborated a little bit on that with regards to the loan-to-value. That will also help in that perspective, again, after the summer, we will have more news. Total return, we're at 7.7% annualized, we need to make a small step up in the second half of the year to reach the 10%. Capital reallocation, I already mentioned the projects we have concretely under discussion. Full Service Center transformations, we will complete one asset this year and one asset next year. ESG from GRESB perspective, we're currently at a four-star rating. We just submitted our data for the new season. France, there's no news to mention. We're discussing the Mériadeck center in Bordeaux with two potential investors. We don't have any news at this stage. Potentially, after the summer we'll see. The Paris asset, there's no active discussions at the moment. As we already mentioned last time, we are also considering to keep that asset in our portfolio once we've disposed the center in Bordeaux and have it managed by the Belgian team. The last phase of the balance sheet, de-risking the loan-to-value, I think in particular, the disposal of the Belgian non-core asset plus the retained earnings in the second half of the year. As Remco already mentioned, the CapEx is quite low in the second half of the year, that will certainly help the loan-to-value towards year-end. Lastly, the other income. I think we're nicely on track to meet the targets as we have published. With that, we go to the questions one more time. If you have any questions, please type them into the screen. Let's go to the first question, which is from Francesca Ferragina from ING. Thank you, Francesca. Hello, Matthijs. Two questions from my side. The first one is on the MGR. This is negative in the Netherlands. Could you make a comment on that and give more ground? Secondly, could you provide an update about the CFO appointment?" Thank you, Francesca, for that. The MGR in the Netherlands, indeed, there was a negative leasing spread of -1.9%. As you might have seen, the occupancy rate has been stable, which I think is, for the first half of the year, particularly good. We're working on a lot of new leasing deals as well. Indeed, the spread was negative, as I mentioned, that's caused by two leases with a more negative spread caused by the Dutch law, the Article 303. We have talked about that, I think, in the past. If you would take them out, we would be roughly flat. We also think that for the second half of the year, the spread will improve if I look at the leasing activity for the third quarter. In addition to that, your question on the CFO, Remco is standing next to me. As you know, Remco is the interim CFO of Wereldhave. That is still the situation. The supervisory board will reconsider after the summer what would be the next step. You'll certainly hear about that. As you can see in these results and also in this presentation, I think Remco is doing a very good job. Then we have a question from [Tom Barry]. "Both H1 acquisitions were funded via share issuance to the seller, not cash. Is that the template going forward for acquisitions and which markets or cities look most attractive?" Thanks for the question, Tom. Indeed, we funded those acquisitions with new equity, albeit at a quite higher share price than today. I think we're now trading around EUR 19. I think back in those days, about six months ago, we were more like EUR 22, EUR 23. I think we've underperformed the market a little bit. It's good to say at the current share price, we're not considering to issue new equity. I think the share price should stabilize a bit and provide us with a lower cost of equity. Hence, we are working on the disposal of a non-core asset. Hence, we are working on capital rotation with no new equity involved. I think it's important to mention. Indeed, if the share price recovers to the levels that we've seen in the first quarter of the year, yes, of course, we would reconsider to use new equity to fund acquisitions with one difference. We now have the approval of the AGM to also do an ABB, an accelerated bookbuild, which means that we can also buy an asset and do the equity issuance ourselves, sell the shares to potential investors and use the cash to pay for the acquisition, and that's different than versus the past, where we acquired the assets through a so-called contribution in kind, whereby we paid the vendor of the asset in shares. That is a good difference to mention. We have another question from Tom. "How are valuers treating the other income line? Is any other income capitalized into the property values? And if so, at what multiple? Is it wider or tighter than the real estate?" Maybe, Remco, you can explain a little bit, for example, how the digital screens are- Yes. being taken into account. Sure. The income and the other income is included in the appraisals. The valuers, they take a different view on the other income because the nature of the income is different in comparison to regular leases. The multiple that will be applied to it differs from regular leasing contracts. Thank you, Remco. We go to the next question from Alex Kolsteren from Kempen & Co. Thank you, Alex. "Thanks for the presentation. Two questions which are cost related. When looking at the EPRA costs, your OpEx and SG&A cost base is up EUR 3.5 million compared to the first half last year. Some of that comes from Luxembourg Ville2 impact, I assume. Can you talk about the other main drivers?" I think Alex is combining here the operational expenses and the general expenses. What are the drivers of the higher cost base? Maybe, Remco, you can elaborate a bit on the higher indirect G&A. The indirect G&A? Maybe just start with that. Okay. The indirect G&A, that has also impacted this half year due to the departure of the CFOs, as well as we incurred still some acquisition and integration cost for the Ville2 acquisition last year, also the supermarket that we acquired earlier this year and the Overvecht unit in the Netherlands. In addition to that, I think maybe in general, speaking on the cost and the increase, I think it is a combination of two factors. On the one hand, we had some adverse service cost settlement in the first half year, which increased our cost a bit this half year. On the other side, what we saw last year is that we had some refunds, for instance, on the real estate transfer tax. That had a positive impact last year, that is then coming back this year with a negative impact. Thank you for that, Remco. Then Alex is also asking with regards to the second half of the year, do we assume that the NOI margin, so the net rent versus the gross rent, will be comparable to last year or higher or lower? Yeah. I think our expectation at this moment in time is that it will improve. If we look at it, these are really incidentals or non-recurring items that we incurred in this half year or last half year, and we don't expect the same to occur at this moment in time for the second half year. The NOI margins should improve in the second half. Thank you, Remco. We have a question from a private investor. "You've highlighted the PULSE portfolio in the Netherlands as a reference transaction. Given that deal, how do you see the Dutch investment market developing now, and what's your view on the near term?" I think I already made reference to that at the start of the presentation. We see that as a very positive reference for the Dutch retail investment market. If you look at the capital value per square meter, which is almost EUR 3,000 per sq m, that compares very favorable to our existing valuation in the Netherlands, particularly if you take into account that I think our location scores, the quality of our locations is higher than in this particular portfolio. Maybe good to say for the sake of clarity, we don't have anything to do with this transaction. This is just an ordinary market transaction, but I think it has a positive impact on our property valuations. It should have a positive impact. I'm scrolling through the list. I think we're through the questions. If you have any questions, please type them in and we're very happy to deal with those. Otherwise, you know how to reach us. The details of Fleur van der Erve, our Investor Relations, are on the website. You can email her or call her with any other questions you might have. Also from a media perspective, Rik Janssen, his details are also on the website. For any media sources, very happy to connect you to Rik to answer all your questions. I don't see any additional questions popping up on the screen. With that, I'd like to thank you for your attendance. Have a great and fantastic summer break, and we'll be back after the summer with more news regarding the capital rotation. Thank you for that and have a good day. Thank you.
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