CTOUF (CTOUF) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Charter Hall Group 2026 Full Year Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Friday, the 21st August 2026. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. David Harrison, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer. Thank you. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for attending FY '26 results call, which our Group CFO, Anastasia Clarke, will present with myself. Turning to the group's earnings on Slide 4. FY '26 has seen CHC delivered operating earnings of $488.1 million, translating to $103.2 per security, representing 26.8% growth over FY '25. Today, we're also providing FY '27 guidance of approximately $1.14 per security, representing a further 10.5% growth over FY '26, which delivers a 3-year growth of 40% from FY '24 to '27, noting that the FY '24 result of $0.814 was an inflection year as I have called out several times. The group's return on contributed equity increased to 26.4% post-tax, reflecting strong earnings growth, equity inflows and disciplined capital deployment. We continue our long-standing track record of distribution growth, increasing DPS by 6% to $0.507 per security and guiding for a further 6% growth in FY '27. Group FUM increased $10 billion or 12% from $84.3 billion to $94.3 billion, whilst Property FUM increased nearly 14% from $66.8 billion to $76 billion. Net acquisitions, developments and equity flows accelerated during the year as we have continued to curate our existing and new portfolios. Whilst Group FUM grew approximately 12%, operating earnings per security grew almost 27%, demonstrating the strength of our platform and earnings diversification. Our balance sheet remains well positioned with 14% gearing and approximately $1 billion of balance sheet investment capacity and total group investment capacity of $6.4 billion across the platform. Turning to Slide 5 and our strategic pillars. Our strategy remains unchanged. We continue to access capital from listed institutional and retail investors, deploy capital into attractive investment opportunities, generate value through funds management, asset and property management, expand our development with and our committed pipelines and invest alongside our capital partners. We continue to execute on this strategy of accessing, deploying, managing and investing capital on behalf of our investor customers as we have for the last 15 years. On this slide, we talk to various milestones achieved over various time periods. Given my 22 years leading CHC, I tend to focus on the longer term. And it is pleasing to see that over the last decade, we've closed close to $60 billion in acquisitions, completed $14 billion of developments and existing asset improvements while securing $37 billion in gross equity inflows into our funds management business. I also note that our balance sheet property investment portfolio or PI, has tripled in size over the last decade from $1.1 billion to $3.2 billion. PI forms the Property Investment segment of CHC and its growth without raising new equity for over 12 years shows the power of our self-funding business model. The PI portfolio's growth not only enhanced our PI EBITDA, but it also supports the growth of our Property Funds Management business and enhances our flexibility and optionality in opportunistically taking advantage of specific asset opportunities and dislocation events in markets. As shown on Slide 6, we've delivered FY '26 operating earnings of $103.2 and as mentioned, provide guidance for '27 operating earnings for OEPS of $1.14, continuing a long track record of earnings and distribution growth. Over the last decade, operating earnings growth has exceeded 12% per annum. Our FY '26 earnings release today and our earnings guidance for FY '27 excludes any performance fee revenue. This reflects strongly on the sustainability of growth in our core earnings drivers across both funds management and property investment portfolios. Group FUM increased by $10 billion, as I mentioned, to $94.3 billion, as outlined on Slide 8. Our platform remains highly diversified by both capital sources and sector. Institutional Wholesale investors account for nearly 80% of the Group FUM and 70% of Property FUM. We also have another 15% represented by our managed REITs, whilst the remainder is in our direct business. FY '26 marks the first year Charter Hall has exceeded $90 billion in Group FUM, and we expect continued growth to drive Group FUM beyond $100 billion during FY '27. Property FUM increased by 13.8%, as I mentioned, from $66.8 billion to $76 billion. Growth during the year was driven by $11.9 billion of acquisitions, $2.1 billion of positive valuation movements and $1 billion of net development CapEx, partially offset by $5.8 billion of divestments as we curate our portfolios continuously. The majority of Property FUM growth in 2026 was acquisition-driven. And transaction-led in addition to the valuation movements mentioned. This outcome reflects the breadth of our capital sources, product development capabilities and transaction origination platform. Divestment activity was elevated this year as we took advantage of market conditions to curate portfolios across all 3 listed REITs, CQR, CLW and CQE, in addition to actively managing our portfolios across the unlisted funds and partnerships. Turning to Slide 10. The platform continues to manage the largest diversified property portfolio in Australia. We own and manage over 12 million square meters of lettable area, diversified across 1,620 individual properties. FY '26 has seen us grow the rent that we collect across that portfolio to over $4 billion. The Institutional Wholesale platform contributed 70% of the property platform and we are pleased to see many existing investors lift their allocations to property with us during the year and also the onboarding of multiple new institutional clients, allocating long-term capital within Australia from domestic investors and into Australia from our wide variety of offshore capital partners. Slide 11 and equity flows. We secured a record $6.7 billion of equity inflows during FY '26. The breadth of the inflows across multiple institutional clients from many different countries allocating to Australia is particularly encouraging. We also benefit from new Australian mandate wins and increased allocations to existing investments from existing clients and diversification across Charter Hall funds as existing clients broaden their exposure to our multiple funds and partnerships. The majority of inflows originated from Institutional Wholesale investors, reflecting growing conviction in the Australian commercial real estate market from a growing global retirement savings industry. We also saw Charter Hall Direct, our retail and SMSF, an adviser Investor Network grow its platform. where we've seen equity flows increased by nearly 60% compared to FY '25. Momentum of equity flows is increasing indirect and the pace at which new product launches are being oversubscribed early is pleasing to see. As outlined in our market update prior to results, we also secured new partnership capital for the second 50% acquisition of the O'Connell Street Precinct, 1 O'Connell and the surrounding properties. And we have also announced previously the $445 million acquisition of the Sonic life science asset on a 20-year triple net lease to a fantastic corporate customer. All of these latter inflows and acquisitions will be recorded in FY '27. Our office platform now manages close to $28 billion in total assets, the largest office portfolio in the country, which spans over 2.3 million square meters with occupancy of 95%, compared with the national average of 83%. We continue to materially outperform broader market conditions with notably low vacancies compared to market in all submarkets including what will surprise many, a 3.6% vacancy at the Paris end of Melbourne CBD. During the year, we closed on close to 300,000 square meters of leasing deals across 250 individual transactions. The average WALE of secured new leases on this re-leasing was 6.8 years. 92% of these leasing transactions involve tenant customers maintaining or expanding their office footprint. We are seeing improved office market fundamentals this year with growth in net effective rents, outpacing investor expectations. And combined with the ongoing limited supply or new supply due to the high economic cost of building new buildings. We expect to see pressure -- upward pressure on office rents in virtually every submarket that we are represented. Like-for-like income growth across the entire portfolio, including new leases and existing rent reviews was strong at 6.97%. I would like to highlight some important points on our office market position, as the largest office owner in Australia. We've close to 300,000 square meters of office leasing deals across 250 individual leases and with the aforementioned 92% of tenants either maintaining or expanding the space, we have high conviction on the positive trajectory of office fundamentals. Slide 13 and Industrial & Logistics. Our I&L platform manages close to $25 billion in assets across 6.7 million square meters of lettable area and about 20 million square meters of land. Our development pipeline is close to $7.1 billion in completion value. The portfolio is 99% occupied with a WALE of 8.7 years. Over the year, we closed over 600,000 square meters of leasing activity across 70 individual transactions. 90% of our leasing activity was with repeat tenant customers. At lease term expiry, we recorded very high tenant retention with over 90% of tenants renewing their leases with an average market rent review or leasing spread of 19% relative to prior passing rents. The portfolio remains materially under-rented, which is a tailwind well into the future, supporting future rental growth. While supply is increasing in some markets in specific locations, the sector remains constrained by ongoing planning constraints, lack of available land, lack of available power and encouragement of residential use into both greenfield and brownfield logistics regions. The biggest impediment to new supply is the cost of development. And whilst we've seen construction costs stabilize, the economic rent and in fact, the economic value of new developments still well exceeds the average investment value of our existing portfolio. The sector continues to benefit from multiple demand drivers requiring significant construction of new supply. And with the current market constraints to supply in many locations, we do forecast attractive rent growth over the medium term. Slide 14, Convenience Retail. And as I say to Ben Ellis, the new lucky seat. Convenience retail platform now exceeds $18.3 billion in assets with $6.9 billion invested in convenience shopping centers and $11.4 billion invested in net lease retail. The portfolio overall comprises over 2.5 million square meters of lettable area and, in many cases, double that in land area, and it is 99% occupied. We closed over 447 lease transactions during the year over a total of 90,000 square meters of lettable area. Obviously, in the shopping centers, given that we've got no vacancy in net lease. Our shopping centers across the nation recorded high tenant retention and a healthy 4.1% average leasing spread with new leases recording leasing spreads of just under 5%. Our net lease retail portfolio is at 100% occupancy with strong exposure to annual rent increases linked to inflation, which will further drive rental growth into FY '27. We have a large proportion of our net lease retail benefiting from a CPI print in September, which will drive December quarter rent increases. The launch of the Charter Hall Convenience Retail Fund, or CCRF, represented a significant strategic milestone for the group. CCRF, which was $3.3 billion in size at reporting date, creates a significant opportunity for the group where Charter Hall already has market leadership in both ownership and transaction origination with a further $1.5 billion of growth capacity likely to be realized shortly. Two-third of that is likely to be realized before December. The social infrastructure platform has $4.4 billion in funds under management with close to 100% occupancy and an 11.4 year WALE. We are pleased to announce the acquisition of the Sonic, Brisbane 20-year triple net lease asset with CPI-linked rent reviews during the year and look forward to growing the social infrastructure platform further with selected government-leased and high-quality corporate tenant customer covenants underpinning the resilience and security of income generated by these assets. Turning to Slide 16. Today, our platform services more than 5,700 leases across a highly diversified tenant base. Our top 20 tenants account for approximately 52% of platform income providing excellent covenant quality and visibility of earnings. During '26, we transacted with 10 of our top 20 tenant customers, demonstrating the depth of relationships across the platform and multiple leasing and acquisition transactions. One of the key differentiators for Charter Hall continues to be the breadth of relationships we maintain with major corporate government and institutional occupiers. We also commissioned independent surveys of both tenant and investor customers, and many of our fund and headstock chairs directly interview major customers to ensure the group is serving their needs appropriately. These relationships create a recurring pipeline of leasing, acquisition, divestment and sale and leaseback opportunities that are often difficult to access off market. Turning to the transaction Slide 17, which highlights '26 represented a record year for transaction activity, with $17 billion of property transaction activity across the platform equivalent to approximately 2.8x FY '25 levels. Acquisitions totaled $11.7 billion, divestments $5.4 billion, resulting in net transaction activity of $6.3 billion. Importantly, activity was not concentrated within a single sector. We saw transaction activity elevated across office, industrial, convenience, retail and social infrastructure, reflecting a broad-based investor demand from our investor customers and the market generally. Turning now to our Property Investment portfolio. The portfolio increased from $2.7 billion to $3.2 billion during FY '26. Driven by both valuation increase, retained earnings, driven reinvestment into growing the PI portfolio. Occupancy increased to 97.8% across the whole group platform, WALE increased to 8.7 years and rent growth metrics remain strong across the portfolio. One of the features of the platform is that it is diversified by geography, tenant and sector whilst maintaining a strong focus on high-quality assets and tenant covenants. Slide 20 illustrates the diversification of the Property Investment earnings segment across all sectors of the platform. No single asset contributes more than 6% of portfolio investments and approximately 26% of portfolio income is derived from government-related tenants. The key investment theme continues to be income quality. The portfolio benefits from long lease durations, strong government and blue-chip tenant exposure and built-in rental growth mechanisms. Turning to our development pipeline. The group's development pipeline increased to approximately $20 billion, making it one of the largest institutional development pipelines in Australia. Development completions totaled approximately $1.4 billion during '26 while maintaining a substantial committed and future project pipeline. The ability to create next-generation institutional investment stock remains one of Charter Hall's competitive advantages. Slide 23 highlights our industrial development pipeline, which is now at $7 billion, includes approximately 202 hectares of strategic land holdings nationally. We completed approximately $700 million of industrial developments during '26 and currently have $2.5 billion of committed developments underway. The scale of our industrial land bank is becoming increasingly valuable as planning constraints and infrastructure available become more important barriers to entry. We've also recently taken advantage of DC demand by the sale of industrial land at material premiums to cost and book values to data center buyers, which drives growth for our fund investors in both NTA, IRR and the capacity to recycle cash delivered at premiums to cost into other industrial and logistics developments and acquisitions. Slide 24 on office development. The office pipelines total sits at $7.8 billion, which Chiefly South continuing to be the centerpiece of the platform, which is on track for completion in mid '27. Pre-leasing has reached 70%, leasing momentum remains encouraging and we continue to target maximizing rents and occupancy as the project nears completion. A successful completion and leasing of the 55,000 meter of 360 Queen Street, Brisbane, project in the core of Brisbane CBD with virtually 95%-plus pre-commitments at PC and 100% 15-year government pre-leased asset for the new headquarters of the ATO in Barton, Canberra, demonstrates continued customer demand for premium sustainable office assets. We're steadily working towards the commencement of our next project in Brisbane CBD 60 Queen Street and the addition of the 1 O'Connell Street Precinct in Sydney has added considerable optionality to our future Sydney core CBD pipeline. Turning to sustainability, '26 was a significant year for Charter Hall sustainability strategy. Platform achieved Net Zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions from 1 July 25, supported through renewable electricity procurement, on-site solar generation and approved offset programs. Installed solar capacity increased to 96 megawatts, while sustainable finance facilities increased $8.2 billion. I'll now hand to Anastasia to run through the financials.

Thank you, David, and good morning to everyone on the call. Starting with the financial results on Slide 27. The group delivered another strong result in FY '26 with operating earnings post tax increasing 26.8% to $488.1 million, being $103.2 per security. Importantly, all 3 segments contributed to this growth. Property Investment EBITDA increased 17% to $341.6 million. Development investment EBITDA increased to $61.5 million, up $20.9 million on the prior period and Funds Management EBITDA increased 8% to $293.1 million. The group reported statutory earnings after tax of $427.9 million, an increase of 30% while distributions increased 6% to $0.507 per security. Property Investment earnings are underpinned by like-for-like income growth of 5.6% on our co-investments in funds. Together with a material contribution from the incremental deployment of $450 million throughout FY '26, plus the annualized income from the prior year's net equity investment of $196 million. In addition, we have continued to actively curate the portfolio, generating a positive yield spread and earnings accretion through capital allocation. Development investment earnings growth was driven by a 50% increase in development volume, reflecting both project completions and the subsequent realization of profits from asset sales. I'll return to Funds Management segment when we move to the next slide. Net finance costs have increased on the balance sheet, in line with higher drawn debt and higher undrawn debt capacity, underpinning our increased activity in property investment. Offsetting this is lower look-through interest expense from our co-investments in funds due to downweighting higher geared investments and reinvesting in lower geared investments compared to the prior period. Overall, net interest expense increased modestly by 2.3%. Tax expense is lower by 15% at $81.9 million from capital allocation efficiency, implemented across the staple between CHP, the trust and CHL, the company. Importantly, these benefits are durable and have permanently reduced the group's effective tax rate by approximately 5 percentage points. The group has maintained its long-term distribution growth policy of 6% providing reliable income growth to security holders while retaining earnings to support future investment in earnings accretive opportunities. Turning to Funds Management earnings. Funds Management base fee revenue grew 8% and transaction and performance fee revenue grew 40.3%, evidencing the typical pattern of strong equity inflows, underpinning deployment and transaction fees, in this financial result for FY '26, ahead of the annualized benefit of base fees in the subsequent FY '27 financial year. Property Services revenue declined 2.9% primarily reflecting elevated leasing activity in the prior year. Operating expenses increased by 6%, of which 3.1% is for the one-off FY '26 STI outperformance. The remaining 2.9% growth in underlying operating expenses is a result of the annual wage increase and inflation in nonemployee costs. Turning to the Charter Hall balance sheet. The PI/DI investment portfolio grew to $3.3 billion, up from $2.8 billion over the course of FY '26, led by net investment of $450 million into property investments throughout the year. NTA increased to $5.95 per security, led by retained earnings. Head stock investment capacity increased to $1 billion following the addition of new bank facilities and the successful debt capital markets issuance of AUD 250 million medium-term note, 7-year bond at the end of the third quarter. Gearing increased to 14.2%, reflecting the higher level of capital deployed into property and development investments throughout the year. Return on contributed equity increased to 26.4% post tax highlighting the strong returns delivered by the group during the year. Our focus remains on growing return on contributed equity through generating income and capital growth organically for the benefit of security holders. Turning to platform debt, Slide 30. Across the platform, we have continued to proactively source new loans and refinance existing debt to increase financial covenant headroom and lower credit margins for $22.6 billion of total debt facilities of $35.3 billion across 66 portfolios with debt in our funds management platform. These initiatives reduced credit margins on average by 20 basis points, helping offset the higher RBA cash rate and market floating rates, which we expect to moderate lower in calendar 2027. Credit market conditions remain highly supportive with strong appetites from both domestic and international banks and debt capital market investors. Before handing back to David, in summary, the group delivered a strong earnings result for the year ended 30 June 2026. The combination of elevated equity inflows and investment capacity on the balance sheet and in our funds platform underpins organic FUM growth and sustained future earnings growth. With that, I'll hand to David to discuss earnings guidance.

Thank you, Anastasia. Now turning to our FY '27 guidance. Based on no material change in market conditions, Charter Hall expects FY '27 post-tax operating earnings of approximately $1.14 per security, representing 10.5% growth over FY '26, which we note once again has no performance fee revenue within that forecast. Distribution guidance is for $0.537 per security, representing our 16th consecutive year of 6% DPS growth. We're now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Simon Chan with Morgan Stanley.

David, can you walk us through what was on your mind, when you made the comment during your prepared remarks about expecting to drive Group FUM beyond $100 billion in FY '27. I guess in what do you -- how do you think you're going to do that? Is it going to be acquisitions, revals, development, like can you give us some insights there?

Well, it's pretty simple. You've been following us for a long time. We've always got dry powder in terms of equity inflows, both allotted and committed but yet to be allotted, we have the largest transaction team in the country across all the sectors. So we've got quite high conviction around net acquisitions continuing. I think I called out that we've got confidence in valuation growth driven solely by income. And in addition to that, you've got a fairly large committed development pipeline that will continue to grow beyond $1 billion a year of completion. So it's a pretty simple math and that sort of drives the expectation.

Right. If I were to be a bit critical for your result today, right, I would say that the first half inflows was pretty good, but very good. And then the second half inflows in comparison was quite weak. Is that just the nature of the game? Or do you think because of what's happening in the world out there that we probably should expect a period of slower inflows in FY '27?

Well, there's a few comments I'll make about that. First of all, we have committed and not allotted inflows in various funds, and that will get allotted as we grow portfolios. CCRF is a good example. I called out, we've got $1.5 billion of dry powder, and that's before new inflows that we're expecting shortly. When I think about in the first 6 weeks of FY '27, we've got net inflows well in excess of $600 million already. And with the line of sight, I've got further inflows coming just in the first half of this year, I'm pretty comfortable with last year's run rate occurring. Part of the reason why it's not healthy for people to be doing quarterly balance sheet update is that it's never linear. So we might have a quarter where we have materially higher inflows than an average for the year. So all I'd say to you is there's certainly no expectation from our side that inflows again to slow down. The other thing I'd say is when we use our balance sheet to warehouse investments like the Sonic 20-year triple net lease, we will use our balance sheet and sell that down. So we put $160 million of net equity into that prior to 30 June, and I'll have it all out before the end of September. So when you guys sort of look at $160 million to $500 million in net debt, you can pretty well work out why 14% goes below 10% pretty quickly. So I'm not concerned around the granular analysis of one quarter over another, we'll just stand by our long-term trajectory of growing our net inflows as outlined in the presentation.

Great. I just got one more. It might sound like a weired question, Anastasia. What denominator did you use when you came up with $1.14 per share guidance?

What do you mean by denominator?

Outstanding security.

Just our shares on issue, Simon?

Just 473?

Yes, that's right.

We won't be changing the number of shares on issue, Simon.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Dodds with Jefferies.

Just thinking about underlying growth in '27. I mean, it was a very active year in '26 despite all the macro challenges, flows and transactional activity, both at record levels and you're still calling out plenty of dry powder. I guess if we just think about -- if we assume no further deployment or fund formation, just what the sort of annualized benefit from '26 deployment would look like on earnings into next year?

Look, I'll tell you what I've been saying for the last 20 years. We always have a bow wave of annualized revenue impact from strong equity flow years. So as you could see from both our half and full year results, equity flows come in, that then creates net asset growth that doesn't give you an annualized revenue impact until the following year. The same thing will happen in '28 over '27 and '29 over '28. So when we look at net FUM growth, as I outlined before, there's 3 or 4 drivers. It's net acquisitions, there's valuation growth. There's development CapEx, completions. And obviously, as we continue to drive net inflows that accelerates the growth in fee or revenue-generating assets under management. It's pretty simple. .

Okay. And then maybe just on transaction fee revenues of $43.8 million this year. They do feel kind of a bit light on just against $17 billion of transactional activity. I guess the blended sort of margin is about 26 basis points. So sort of well below that sort of 50 to 100 bps you make on acquisitions and disposals. So what was the kind of key driver in this lower number, in '27?

You've got to look at the net transaction numbers. So obviously, during the year, it's well publicized CQR transferred assets into CCRF and took an equity investment in CCRF. So we're not going to charge fees on those sort of transactions. The -- it's always dangerous just to do what you've just done is look at total transactions and divide them and try to get up to basis points. If you sort of look at our results presentations over many years, the actual dollar number of our transaction fees hasn't changed, but there will be occasions where we're not going to charge fees on related party transactions. So that's simple.

I can add to that. Obviously, we won some pretty key mandates, which was fantastic through the year and the mandates in winning them, you don't actually get a transaction fee, they're transferring their assets to us. And the balance sheet itself has obviously contributed a lot of growth in property investment income, and that's $1.5 billion of the transactions that obviously, we don't charge ourself fees.

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Calvetti with Bank of America.

Just one on tax. I mean, that decreased materially. How do we think about that into FY '27. I mean the effective tax rate that was in FY '26. Is that expected to continue increase, decrease? Just any color on that.

Thanks, Adam. Yes, the effective tax rate has reduced. We've been putting in effort for a couple of years now around getting the cash on the trust side and the right capital allocation across the staple. That's now complete. And so we've now got a locked in net effective tax rate that's about 5 percentage points below what it used to be before those efficiency drivers. So that will continue at that lower effective tax rate ongoing.

Just to be clear, the effective tax rate for '26 will remain the same into '27?

We don't give compositional guidance. It is somewhat dependent on how much of the growth in the earnings in '27 is made up of taxable income like your funds management earnings and development profits versus what's in property investment income, nontaxable. But broadly, no reason to say it won't pattern over time similar to what you're seeing. .

Okay. Great. Thanks for the color. And on performance fees, you've got 5 or 6 funds they're up for assessment this year. Can you just talk to whether those are in the money, maybe embedded performance fees and how you're thinking about their contribution to FY '27?

Look, I'll answer that. Every year, we've provided guidance. We don't include estimates of performance fee revenue, unless they're so materially in the money. I think we've all learned that volatility in interest rates and therefore, cap rates makes it a pretty fickle game, trying to do forecasts on valuations at June 30 next year. And at the end of the day, I'm not going to get drawn on whether they're in the money or not. The reality is we've provided guidance that doesn't have any performance fee revenue in it, and we'll see how things emerge during the year.

Okay. Great. One more, if I may. Just on co-investments, they ticked up about $0.5 billion over the year. Can we expect to see Charter Hall contributing a larger portion into new funds going forward, expected to tick up over '27 as well.

No. I would say our average percentage of equity under management will continue to decline as it has for 20 years. If I look at what we have co-invested in, say, CCRF our latest commingled fund, we've got $100 million out of $3 billion plus. As has happened with every other major open-ended fund, we might start at a certain dollar number that is a certain percentage and our percentage gets diluted over time. Our business model is not to try to keep pace with our super funds or pension funds or sovereign wealth funds or insurance companies have got much bigger balance sheets than Charter Hall. And I think the scale of our business and our track record of performing for our investors would suggest that we don't need to be co-investing at the sort of percentages that perhaps we did 20 years ago.

Just to be clear, David, that co-investment as a percentage has ticked up, your ownership stake has ticked up over the last 5 years.

It depends on -- that's not actually correct. If you split the funds by their type, whether it's institutional pooled funds, our percentage stakes have been coming down materially over the last 20 years. I started at 20% or 25% stakes in CPOF and CPIF pre-GFC, and we're down to very small percentages of them. Some of our partnerships where we might have a 10% stake and an LP has 90%, they do stay at those levels. But across the board, our percentage of equity under management has been trending down for a very long time. And I actually don't see that changing as we get bigger.

Our next question comes from the line of Tom Bodor with Jarden.

I'd just like to ask a question around equity flows. If I look at the difference between the growth in equity -- gross and net equity flows from first half into second half, it does appear that the redemptions might have picked up a bit in the second half. Is that the right interpretation? I think sort of from circa $900 million first half to about $1.2 billion second half?

They're not redemptions. So if in the case of CCRF, which we've articulated, if CQR sells assets into CCRF and takes equity, there's an in and out. If we have equity that is being bought by incoming LPs that buy equity from outgoing LPs, that's an in and out. So I don't think it's right to categorize that redemptions have lifted. And if I look at the pooled fund history of this business over the last 22 years, we've cleared every redemption queue that emerged at sort of 7-yearly liquidity reviews in funds like CPOF and CPIF within a very short period of time. And then even in the direct business, we've cleared the redemption queues that existed in the 2 office funds, PFA and DOF. So it's -- once again, it depends on the timing of liquidity events in those various entities or various funds. So -- but it's absolutely not right to say that we have redemption queues. Like right now, we have no redemption queue in any of the direct funds, any of the pooled funds. So I just want to make it very clear. We're not currently facing redemption queues.

Yes. That's very clear. And then if I look at the gross transactions, a bit of a stellar breakout year this year. I think you went from $6.1 billion in '25 to $17.1 billion in '26. So a massive effort. Just would be interested as we look into '27, what level of transactions are broadly assumed in your guidance?

Well, we're not going to, as Anastasia said, give you sort of compositional indications. What I'll tell you is that we'll be buying a lot more assets than we're selling as a ratio to what you've seen in '26. And that's a function of what I just said about a lack of redemption queues and a function of what I'd indicated will be a continued strong run rate in net inflows.

Excellent. And just a final small question on Southern Cross Towers. I think the government has indicated that they may vacate that asset. It's around 77,000 square meters to lease. I know it's not for a while before that lease ends. Just be interested in any comments around leasing that space.

It's not actually accurate. There's 2 leases in that building, and only 20,000 meters was subject to the lease that expires in FY '28, and the government hasn't exercised their option on that tranche. The reality is that -- the other tranche is into FY '29. We have already fielded strong corporate tenant interest for the 20,000 meters we have to lease in FY '28. And I'm pretty confident that that's not going to add to what I previously indicated as a very low 3.6% vacancy rate for the Paris end of Melbourne.

Our next question comes from the line of David Pobucky with Macquarie Group.

Just a follow-up one on flows. Can you talk to investor demand for listed product and how you expect demand from wholesale, [ insto ], retail channels to evolve over '27? Like, for example, direct funds, fund flows picked up in '26. Are you seeing a broadening number of global inflows allocating to Australian property? Just any comments on that, please?

Yes. So we've got over 150 institutional LPs across our platform. Obviously, from a total equity under management, that's majority domestic, but we've got an accelerating volume of new domestic investors and foreign investors. I would say we're seeing continued strong demand from offshore capital wanting to invest in Australia, broad-based from Japanese institutional investors, European-based, and other LPs around the world. We have obviously announced a couple of mandates with Challenger and CareSuper during the last financial year, which are additional domestic inflows. And as a general statement, I think the PE multiples in international equities at 1 or 2 standard deviations over historic norms is giving cause for our domestic and global investors to look more seriously at driving allocations into direct property because of the denominator effect; most of our clients are underweight their strategic allocation to property, both domestic and offshore, combined with a view, whether the market's got this view or not. The vast majority of our clients have a view that we've hit peak rates. And therefore, the vintage to invest in commercial property at positive gearing. I think the recent federal government changes has turned negative gearing into a dirty word, and we're seeing capital wanting to invest in positively geared long-lease commercial assets across retail, industrial, office, social infrastructure from all ends of the spectrum, from mom-and-dad retail to high-net-worth to financial advice clients through to the institutional end of our sources. And with respect to listed, you guys understand that sector better than unlisted. The REIT sector is still trading at discounts to NTA and at PE multiples that don't compete with the unlisted equity market. So until that changes, I don't see much equity being raised in listed REITs.

And just my second question on CCRF, please. Convenience retail, you posted, I think, a bit over $8 billion of gross transactions in the year. How much further acquisition and aggregation opportunity remains in the space? And what's the intended scale and ownership structure of CCRF, please?

I'll give you a stat. So we're the largest owner of convenience retail in this country at $18.3 billion, and we're barely 5% of the investable universe when you think about neighborhood and smaller subregional shopping centers, Bunnings, triple-net leased pubs, service stations. So we think the universe of continuing to selectively acquire assets we like, particularly in shopping centers, is very strong. There wouldn't be a week in Charter Hall goes by without us making offers or going to due diligence on further acquisitions right across the platform. So yes, we're pretty confident of our ability to keep acquiring assets. And in that space, particularly in the neighborhood and subregional space, the vast majority of the people we're buying from are closed-end retail syndications that have to sell. Privates, quite often, it's a family planning issue. Quite often, it's simply they've got to a point where a lot of the privates we're buying off are getting to an age where they don't really want to be actively involved in managing shopping center assets. And virtually in every case, our management team under Ben can extract NOI growth from better management of these shopping centers, driving rental growth. So yes, we see that as a big opportunity. And look, that equally applies in the other sectors that we operate in. So we sort of feel like we've got a relatively modest percentage of the investable universe in all of the sectors we operate in. And therefore, the growth capacity for us to acquire and develop to core in those sectors is still quite significant.

Our next question comes from the line of Benjamin Brayshaw with Barrenjoey.

I would just like to clarify my understanding of the one-time STI expense. Could you talk about how that's been allocated into the funds management business?

Yes.

Sorry, you're talking about the STI expense?

The one-time STI expense.

It's not an STI. Are you talking about the retention rights?

I'm just referring to the 3.1% increase in operating expenses for the funds management business included in a 6.0% increase on the PCP.

So Ben, we obviously outperformed in all 3 segments, and each of the outperformance has been proportionately allocated to each of those segments according to their outperformance. And so not all of it is in funds management. Some is in development. Obviously, that grew by nearly 50% in earnings, and some of it is in PI that also had significant earnings growth.

Are you able to say approximately what the quantum of that is in dollar millions?

In Funds Management segment, it's $9.2 million.

I just like to get your feedback on how you're looking to position the balance sheet in relation to the gearing ratio. And just some color on debt issuance in the second 6 months for the balance sheet, which seems to have increased the undrawn liquidity and the facility limit.

So look, Ben, it's really simple for me. We have no qualms about sitting 10% to 15% balance sheet gearing. If you listen to my remarks earlier, simply selling down our equity that we've warehoused for the Sonic Healthcare transaction takes us below 10% balance sheet gearing. So as I'm sure you're aware, we have an unsecured debt platform because of the capacity of us to bring down gearing and then reinvest to warehouse further assets for further capital partnering right across the spectrum, it's going to ebb and flow. There will be one reporting date we're in the mid-single digits and then another reporting date like now, we're at 14.2%, but it moves around quite a lot because it's a very modest level of drawn net debt for the business and the cash flows we generate. So that's the best answer I can give you.

In terms of, we added bank loans, and we issued a medium-term note. So we have taken the outstanding debt drawn with that medium-term note higher in the second half. And the rest of the loans we added bank loans are undrawn and they've increased the capacity, just to answer your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Jones with JPMorgan.

David, you started last year with original guidance. I think you upgraded at 3x. As we start '27, you've obviously got pretty good flow-on impacts from your FUM growth into largely recurring earnings in the funds business next year that should be in around where you've guided. I'm just interested to -- in your comments, you've, kind o,f pointed to similar equity inflow and a high level of transaction activity. It doesn't just seem consistent with where earnings are guided. I would have thought based on your commentary, you'd be expecting a much stronger result than the original guidance you're providing today.

Well, I'll just remind you, Richard, the Street, according to consensus, had FY '27 estimates for EPS at $0.97. We've just guided at $1.14, which is 18% above where the Street was in August last year. I love all the notes on 1% misses; in reality, we've been providing, as we have for most years for the last 21 years, a momentum story. I'm never going to come out and predict equity flows and therefore, put them into a guidance because I've never missed guidance, and I will not go out and provide guidance with any risk of downside. So all I'd say to you is, as is the case in every other year, we look at what's in front of us. I don't know what could happen in the world, whether it's geopolitics, bond markets, etc. So we'll factor in what we have high conviction on forecasting. And as some of the things I alluded to emerge, including inflows driving growth, we'll look at our reforecast during the year. But I -- having just delivered 27% growth and 10.5% guidance growth for this year, I'm not sure anything has changed around the characterization of this business being able to organically continue to grow and deliver earnings momentum for its shareholders.

Just a second question on data centers. You flagged some transactions through the course of the year. Are you able to just provide a bit more detail on that? And then also outline whether there's any balance sheet owned land or assets that you're potentially looking at data center exits as well?

So the first answer is we've had a couple of site divestments not on balance sheet. They're in our large industrial fund, CPIF. One I bought for $60 million and sold for $180 million. I was pretty happy with that result. And there's probably others that may also generate premiums to cost and current book values that we realize. I think I've made it pretty clear, we're not going to be a built-form data center developer owner. I think there's too many other experts out there that have got a longer track record and greater aspirations to be in that space. And in terms of the balance sheet, no, we don't have any incubated opportunities that would necessarily be just targeting power banks to then on-sell to data centers. I think when we have used our balance sheet to warehouse opportunities, they're generally to produce pre-lease product that might be suitable for our core funds in whatever sector, whether it's industrial, office, etc. So no, I certainly wouldn't want you to be thinking we've got some big development profit coming on balance sheet from being able to sell at premiums to data center buyers.

Our next question comes from the line of James Druce with CLSA.

One big picture question for you around office demand. You talked about sort of looking long term, and you've obviously seen a few cycles. If you look at the PCA data since 1990 and just look at the absorption numbers for every 6 months, '24 to '26 is only doing 50,000 each 6 months. If you go back to 2015 to 2019, that was doing more like 100,000 each 6 months. And if you go back to '04, '08, there was almost 200,000, 300,000 square meters of demand each 6 months for all the CBDs in Australia. So there's been a sort of, structural decline over a long period of time, and I get that there's work density issues there. I get there's work from home as well. But we should have cycled work from home by now, I would have thought. I'm just curious as to sort of, how you think about demand over the next 10 years.

Fortunately, I started this industry before 1990. So yes, I've been through a few cycles. If you look at -- I think you've got to look at office markets in almost 3 tiers. There's prime, premium, A-grade, there's lower grades, and then there's almost obsolete grades that will have to be and have been over many cycles converted to predominantly residential and hotels. When I think about demand, I look at it in the context of future supply because every cycle I've been through, major tenants, both government and corporate, always want to move out of older buildings into the latest and greatest new complexes. We're seeing it right now. I think both Carmel and I have called out for some time the bifurcation of tenant demand. So when I look at virtually every submarket we're in and 60% to 70% of the vacancy sits in 30% of the buildings that generally are the sort of, buildings that we don't own, you're seeing quite a shift of a structural shift of long-term structural vacancy in older stock and I would argue in suburban markets and an increasing demand for good modern product. We're actually seeing this in industrial as well. The reason why most of us that have got a capability of doing industrial pre-lease developments is that the demand is moving out of old sheds into the very latest because the amount of automation that warehouse users now want to invest inside their sheds means that the older stock is just not fit for purpose. And the same applies in office. So if I look at the last 10 office projects we've completed nationally, virtually all of them were either pre-leased 100% prior to completion or somewhere between 90% and 100%. And we've just delivered another one in FY '26 in Brisbane called 360 Queen. So your stats are right, but you need to look at the categories within each of the submarkets. So for example, on Chifley, we're 70% precommitment on the new Chifley Tower. I am in no hurry when I see double-digit net effective rental growth in the core of Sydney to lease up the rest of the building. And my team get annoyed because every 3 months, I decide let's put the rents up. And we've got similar conviction in Brisbane. I think it's a very tight market. And we're also seeing huge tenant demand wanting to move out of virtually 85% of Sydney's -- sorry, Brisbane CBD is in 30-, 40-, 50-year-old boiler buildings that are just not going to retain their tenants. So tenant demand is shifting to modern buildings. Now modern could be something that's 10, 20 years old or it could be a new building like we've just delivered on 360 Queen and what we will be delivering on our new project up there, 60 Queen Street. So that's the way I see office markets. Yes, we all know they've had elevated incentives compared to other sectors, but incentives are coming down at a rate of knots and net effective rental growth is happening, which is obviously good for the NOI line, but it's also good for your terminal value estimates that the valuers put on their 10-year DCFs because people are looking at putting lower incentives in their terminal values than what are existing incentive levels. So that's why we're sort of, high conviction on a segment of the office market that is not represented by PCA figures because PCA figures quote the whole of the supply. And the other thing I'd say is there's a lot of, obviously, political discussion now about net migration. People forget net migration and population growth drives a multiplier effect for demand in both industrial, retail, and office. Everyone understands retail and industrial, and they always sort of forget about office. So -- and to your earlier point, every week, you're getting another organization finally saying that this whole work-from-home thing is not working. So I think one organization this week has come out and mandated 5 days a week. I think we will move, and we're not quite there, but we will continue to move back to pre-pandemic attitudes around a flexible policy for our people. And I think the other thing that's going to accelerate demand for office and in my opinion, an acceleration of people getting back into the office and not working from home is AI could be quite a disruptor for companies who can't get the productivity out of the human workforce they have, and they'll go down the path of using robots. Like I've seen it for 20 years in warehousing where automation is being put into warehouses, and that's -- their payback is basically a reduction in labor force costs inside the warehouses. That's the only way you can actually justify the CapEx investment. So, yes, I'm pretty bullish about the right sort of office in the right submarkets for all of those reasons.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Suraj Nebhani.

Just a couple of quick questions. Firstly, Anastasia, on that, just clarifying that overhead comment. I'm looking at the employee costs in the statutory income statement, they've risen by almost $50 million year-on-year from $185 million to $235 million. Can you just talk to that overall number? How much is the STI, I guess, expense there? And what do you expect, let's say, heading into 2027?

Yes. So obviously, we did have a very, very good year with 3 earnings upgrades underpinning some size growth of sharing of the outperformance between employees and shareholders. And that's resulted in an extra $30 million of cost in the Group for FY '26.

Sorry, I would also state is actually in the Remuneration Report, shows 187% average STI award, which I think is justifiable given we just grew earnings 27% over '25.

So think of that 187% as 100% base pool, and you will have that expense in FY '27 and the 87% is the outperformance pool that is not at all in the guidance or expected in FY '27. Offsetting that, though, you do have an annual wage increase, and we do have some inflation coming through our nonemployee costs, and that's also on top of last year's wage increase. So, I would expect you will get about a half saving of that STI outperformance in FY '27 on FY '26. So about a $15 million decrease in FY'27.

And that comes through across various lines, right? I think you were saying $9.2 million in the funds management line sort of spread across the other.

That's right. But you should -- that will all just drop out of the -- it will be in the FY '26 prior period. But going forward in FY '27, if there's no outperformance, it's just all in FM.

Understood. And while we're talking about the Remuneration Report, I guess just a quick question on -- I was trying to find the retention ownership plan there. And any -- I just wanted to clarify, firstly, what was the final outcome there, the 5-year plan?

It's all in the Remuneration Report. It's an 80% award of the retention plan, 80% vesting.

Understood. Thank you David. And I guess a lot of focus on performance fees. I understand you're not giving guidance. I guess people are just trying to assess what does the earnings outlook look like. There's some strong performance coming through, it seems on some of the funds. But if I focus on the office side, can you talk to Chifley? And when exactly does it complete? And I would have thought there should be decent outperformance there or any expectation, I guess, that you can give on Chifley particularly?

Well, it is going to be a fantastic outperformer. But when I look around the ownership of Chifley between a large LP partner that was the original owner that we bought 50% from and 2 of our funds, it's just one asset in those funds. So -- and look, as I said before, we -- when we guide and say the guidance has no performance fee revenue, it doesn't mean that there may not be a realization. But I'm not going to come out and do forecast. I've seen too many cycles before on whether or not we may or may not generate performance fees. So I think the way you should look at it is that's our guidance without performance fee revenue. And if they materialize during the year, well, it's upside.

Final point on, I guess, the -- you mentioned listed pricing at a discount to NTA. Any sort of appetite for M&A activity in near term?

I've done 9 take-privates. So I've always got appetite, but I'm not going to talk about it today.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to David Harrison for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone. And I'm sure over the coming days, weeks, we'll get to meet at the various lunches and one-on-ones. And importantly, a big shout out to the whole of the Charter Hall family for the contribution over the last 12 months. It's had its challenges, but I think the team has performed exceptionally well for our investors and our tenant customers. And at the end of the day, you can't run a business of this scale without it being a big team effort. So I just wanted to thank our team. Thank you.