GECFF (GECFF) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Gecina 2026 Half Year Earnings Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Today, we have Benat Ortega, CEO; and Nicolas Dutreuil, Deputy CEO in charge of Finance as our presenters. I will now hand you over to your host, Benat Ortega, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review our performance for H1 2026. Three themes will guide today's discussion. The first half of 2026, we continue to deliver growth in both revenues and earnings. This growth comes with stronger long-term fundamentals, a higher quality portfolio and [indiscernible] leverage, and we are actively working to build tomorrow's self-funded sustainable growth for the next years. I'll come back to this point at the end. Let's start with H1 2026 achievements. Leasing activity was sustained this semester. We signed 48,000 square meters in 6 months, sustaining a rental uplift of 13%, while keeping our occupancy high around 94%. Looking ahead, our pipeline of surfaces under term sheets now reaches 50,000 square meters, including discussions with major tech players. We expect this discussion to close before the end of the year. On the multifamily side, we signed 650 leases with a strong increase in occupancy, up 170 basis points year-on-year. This shows the ramp-up of the strategy we've been deploying for 2 years now, furnished and serviced apartments as well as co-living solutions alongside our traditional family units. A good example of the way we capture strong rental uplift is the proactive rollout of our fully managed offices. We offer a plug-and-play product, one point of contact, one invoice and flexibility, and the market is ready to pay for that. It now represents more than 16,000 square meters across 16 buildings. In Central Paris, where this offering is most relevant. Based on market trends for traditional leases, we achieved rents 30% to 40% above market values after deducting our costs, including CapEx. Basically, we achieved rents similar to redeveloped assets without entirely vacating the building for 18 or 24 months. This is particularly relevant for typical small-sized traditional Parisian office assets. We have already targeted 40 assets, and we expect to double this portfolio by the end of 2028. We are also working hard on customer satisfaction to retain our tenants for longer. This enhanced our visibility on occupancy higher for longer and strengthened portfolio resilience overall. Thanks to proactive renewals and renegotiations, our tenant retention rate was 10 points higher this year than the 3-year average. This reflects a broader market trend, one that was probably reinforced recently and that helps explain the apparent subdued take-up since tenant retention doesn't fully show up in market data in France. This translates into our capacity to grow revenues. Our rental income grew by 2% on a like-for-like basis, outperforming indexation by 100 basis points in a context where inflation has been slowing down until recently, which is no surprise. It's even been up 7.6% on our housing portfolio, thanks to a solid catch-up in occupancy and growing rents per square meter. On a current basis, the contribution from our different growth drivers, organic growth, the immediate accretive acquisition we made last year in Paris as well as recent pipeline deliveries offset the disposal of mature residential assets as well as asset repositioning and potential conversions. Going from the top line to the bottom line, we continue to optimize our property costs to generate a solid increase in rental margin, up 160 basis points year-on-year. Zooming out to the broader cost base, H1 confirms a significant decrease in our EPRA cost ratio from 21% in 2021 to 14% now. Same focus on financial costs, which remain well contained, thanks to our strong hedging policy and disciplined financing strategy. All in all, earnings continue to grow, and we confirm our guidance for 2026. Recurring net income expected to be between EUR 6.70 and EUR 6.75 per share. We delivered this growth while improving our fundamentals from portfolio quality to tenant base to robustness of our financing platform. We have obviously worked on improving the quality of our portfolio. In the context where more than 4% of office stock was converted in housing or hotels in Paris' most sought-after locations, we have been firmly anchoring our portfolio in the prime side of the market and where prime rents continue to grow in real terms after incentives and above inflation. This is a long-term effort, and it requires consistency over time. Thanks to proactive disposals even in subdued investment markets, acquisitions and redevelopments, Paris and Neuilly share of our rents has already grown by 7 points since 2021. Those 7 points will become 20 points by 2031, all else equal, representing a doubling of our Paris and Neuilly office rents in 10 years. At the same time, we have made our portfolio more prime. 65% of our office portfolio has been restructured over the past 10 years, and we have identified 40 assets to further deploy Yourplace, a fully managed office offering to be more appealing against our competition. On this journey, we have also reinforced the quality of our tenant base, and we take pride in hosting more blue-chip names you see on this slide, French or global leaders alike in our portfolio, the last one being Mondelez Group in Boulogne last month. Values are holding firm, broadly stable like-for-like. Central location values, in particular, are up 0.3% in an investment market where Paris now concentrates 75% of transaction volumes, in line with what we observed in 2024 and 2025. This isn't a surprise. The investment market generally tracks the leasing market and tenants favor centrality and quality. One important news behind the figures, we have also renewed our independent appraisals and all assets have been assessed by a new appraiser this semester. One of the key fundamentals we pay great attention to, as you know, is our financing structure. Summarizing H1 in a nutshell, our credibility was confirmed again with both rating agencies reiterating our best-in-class credit profile for the eighth consecutive year. The bond we issued in May, EUR 500 million over 5 years at a very competitive spread of 68 bps is a further proof of our competitive advantage against our peers on the bond market. In this context, we continuously maintain visibility with stable leverage, all future growth already funded for this year. I'll come back to this, strong liquidity with new credit lines and bonds and efficiency of our financing platform with strong hedging and contained cost of debt at 1.6%. [indiscernible] debt then as our model funds its own future revenue and value growth. In 6 months, we closed EUR 250 million of disposals of mature assets at a rent loss rate of 3.1% to fund the CapEx of the redevelopment pipeline launched end of 2024. Another EUR 80 million was secured in July at a rental loss on average of 2.4%. This year's financing need for development is EUR 265 million. The return on CapEx invested in Paris and redevelopment is 10.6%. This is how we approach capital allocation tools on an agnostic basis, always with the aim to combine improving portfolio quality to drive future long-term rental growth, keeping leverage at a safe medium, long-term level in support of our rating and selecting the most cash flow accretive investment for shareholders and adjusting at any time for the best option. Signature in Paris CBD is a good illustration of this approach. It's a destination asset for corporate headquarters and already a leasing and value creation success just 12 months after acquisition. Our leasing progress is 15% above our initial underwriting. EUR 150 million of value has been already created in 12 months. And through this transaction, we have reinforced the portfolio quality with more prime central value. The CBD share of our portfolio grew by 4%. We funded the acquisition and refurbishments without impacting leverage by selling a mature student housing portfolio, yielding below 4% and value creation is already there with an updated yield on cost of 7% on actual rents. Let me now turn to how we are building tomorrow's value creation. When we look at the market, it's important to stress that Paris stands out as one of the few global cities offering such a diversity of tenant base. It's the leading financial hub in Continental Europe and a corporate and industrial's powerhouse hosting 88% of CAC 40 headquarters. Additionally, in a centralized country like France, it's also home to most national and global public institutions. And it's less known, but Paris is also becoming Continental Europe's leading hub for AI and tech. Several reasons explain this, the depth of the talent pool in Paris, scientists, engineers, data specialists, the existing ecosystem of hundreds of start-ups and AI leaders and capital velocity with strong public and private investment now reaching EUR 109 billion after Choose France. And it already shows up in the figures, the real estate figures. Tech companies take-up has doubled between 2023 and 2025, concentrated in prime submarkets with major transactions from Datadog, Mistral AI, and ChapsVision. Same story on Gecina's Rental, tech, fintech and healthtech rents have doubled across our office portfolio between 2021 and today, and tech now represents 17% of our total office rents. Zooming out a bit. In the last weeks, we have interviews together with Ifop 500 French CEOs regarding AI and 2/3 say they have already an AI strategy deployed or working on one. Interestingly, 9 in 10 of those business leaders surveyed think that artificial intelligence will impact the office, not to replace it, but to make it more strategic and collaborative. And among 72% of leaders who expect their real estate strategy to evolve in the coming years, the main move expected is flight to quality, favoring central offices, best connected to public transport, flexible and collaborative workspaces and amenitizing serviced office buildings to attract and retain the best talent. The destination assets we are designing are aligned with these trends. They are modular by design to adapt to evolving needs. This thinking on the product is key, in my view, to meet the market with the right offering and deliver the expected annual rents of EUR 80 million to EUR 90 million once delivered and fully let. The first signs are encouraging. Signature now is 60% secured. We have advanced discussions on 3/4 of arches, a healthy pipeline of visits and discussion across all projects, including a first fully managed office in quarter project. In May, we also launched works on Shape, the new name of the T1 Tower in La Défense. We bring the codes of hospitality, modern services and curated design to transform the experience of this tower. This 18-month refurbishment will reposition the tower on the strong side of the market, where you have seen that vacancy has been down recently, and we already have interest, though it's still early for prospects to commit. Looking forward, and we have already confirmed guidance for 2026, the next cycle of growth is progressively taking shape. 2027 will be likely a transition year with much depending on the pace of pre-leasing of the Paris and Neuilly pipeline. From 2028 in a normalized inflation environment, rent contribution from the redeveloped assets will sustain rental and earnings growth together with the progressive re-leasing of Shape. As you can see, we are working hard on the short term to deliver growth today while also preparing tomorrow's value creation, always with the same discipline on capital allocation to extract more value. Thank you all for listening, and we are now happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Florent Laroche-Joubert from ODDO BHF.

I would have 2 questions. The first one on the asset value. So I understand that you have new appraisers. And so could you maybe give us maybe more color about the comments on the valuations for your central [areas] and also maybe a comment on what has happened in La Défense, I think there's a one-off effect maybe on T1 and B. And maybe after that, I can ask you my second question.

Yes. Listen, the trends in Paris Central locations are the same regarding rents. We had a positive cash flow effect on our Parisian assets. And appraisals are based on the current situation, expanded a bit the yields on the prime portfolio. So that's why growth has been a bit more limited than the previous semester with no major changes regarding appraisals. On La Défense, yes, there is a small impact on La Défense on the T1 and B towers, and that explains most of it.

Okay. And so maybe my second question would be on the leasing side. So I think this is the first time that you report the square meters signed on term sheets. So I understand that when you sign on term sheets, so the rents are quite secured, let's say, at 99% or something like that. How can we compare this volume of 50,000 square meters signed on the term sheet compared to previous period? Is it above same or below that what you were able to sign in the past?

I would say that the situation in France is a bit in a wait-and-see mode. So that's why we gave a bit that indication. So conversations are longer than before. So that's why we have more volumes in term sheet before going to Signature than what we had before. And as it was a sizable amount against what we signed during H1, we thought it was interesting to guide you a bit on what were the current discussions with tenants.

The next question comes from Ebrahim Homani from CIC.

I have 2, if I may. The first one is about the rental margin, is there room for further improvement in H2? And my second question is about your dividend distribution policy. What payout ratio to expect in 2026, given the recurring rental improvement?

Ebrahim, can you just repeat the question, please? We just got interrupted in the call, can you repeat your question.

It was about the rental margin in H2, is there room for further improvement? And my second question is about your dividend distribution policy. What level of dividend could we expect in 2026 given the...

Yes. Regarding rental margin, we worked a lot on that during the first half, like we did on the previous years. I think we should be a bit in line in H2 against what we did in H1. Really, it's a series of super small amounts, very detailed work by the teams on both resi and -- resi teams and office teams, which is paying off now. So it should be rather similar during H2. Regarding dividend policy, I think we gave somehow a view that the dividend that we pay today based on the current distribution rate is rather fine and that we can sustain that dividend for the medium term and progressively increase it alongside with leasing. So that's what the message we conveyed in February during our annual earnings call is still in line with what we have in mind now.

The next question comes from Benjamin Legrand from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just 2 questions from my side. The first question would be on the guidance and what you expect over the second part of the year, considering where you are at the moment? I mean, I see it as a bit shy. So I was just wondering what you expect? And then the second question would be in La Défense regarding IDEMIA, if you have any news coming from them if they could be staying or not in their tower.

Yes. We had in mind to have different semesters between H1 and H2. It's a lot of small elements, but we are still in line with what we are planning to deliver for year-end. So that's why, in fact, we have kept the guidance like it was. Leasing is progressing according to plan. So that's why we are capable to confirm the guidance even during this complex situation. Regarding La Défense, obviously, I will not be able to comment precisely on one tenant discussion. But regarding B Tower, which is for everyone, the building which is next to T1 Tower, where ENGIE has a sublease, which is called IDEMIA. And we are progressing well on being capable to keep occupancy on that building. But sorry, we are still working on it and negotiating. So I will not be able to comment precisely on the specific IDEMIA yet.

The next question comes from Jonathan Kownator from GS.

So how do you see the investment market? Obviously, the valuations are down slightly, values you've changed. Do you have appetite? And do you have -- do you think there's liquidity for additional disposals in the market today? And at the same time, can you please also highlight opportunities of reinvestments and how you compare to the investment opportunities, do you see any in the market versus potential share buybacks?

Thank you, Jonathan. I think we all saw the stats regarding investment market in Paris region, which are really shy. So liquidity is pretty limited. Still some in Paris and our cities, but still pretty shy. So the investment market following inflation and the rise in interest rates have been declining in terms of volumes. That's probably why appraisals have thought that it was a slight decompression of our yields. And therefore, no major moves to be expected in my view on the Paris investment market...

Sorry, just follow up very quickly. Candido for instance, was highlighting that insurance companies have been collected capital, they have been trying to reinvest in some areas, I mean they were highlighting actually foreign investments. What are you seeing from that type of investors currently?

A bit, but no massive move. I agree with you, they have collected a series of amounts of money, especially in assurance-vie, so the life insurance business. But so far, we have not seen them really active on our market. It might change, but so far, I see the market pretty muted. What is left there is probably family office. You saw that there was some rumor regarding Pontegadea trying to buy Capital 8. It might be executed in the next days, but we are not in the deal. Outside of family and pension fund money, not much to say.

Okay. What are you seeing in terms of reinvestment opportunities in the market? And is that something that you would consider currently?

Obviously, our -- and I think it's in line with the question regarding share buyback. Our hurdle for capital -- cost of capital is pretty high. So we are obviously very careful and demanding on the returns regarding acquisitions. So -- and as the market has been a bit frozen in the next months, I don't see so many opportunities in the market for acquisitions. But again, it might change. The situation is pretty volatile. So...

And generally speaking, I mean, can you help us understand, I mean, obviously, I understand why liquidity currently is low in the market. But what's your appetite to continue disposals? Obviously, you've been doing some disposals in H1 that are funding your pipeline. What is your appetite in principle to test the market if you find some pockets of liquidity in there?

Our appetite is always the same one. We disposed like EUR 3 billion in the last 4 years. So we try to find as much liquidity as possible on our portfolio and then to have the means to reinvest in the best cash flow accretive opportunities. So we are very pragmatic on the situation. And like you saw, we have secured almost EUR 300 million disposal this year, which is after what we did last year and the year before and the year before, a proof that we are very dedicated, in fact, to rotate capital as fast as possible to generate shareholder return.

The next question comes from Aaron Guy from Citi.

Can I just ask a little bit more -- for a bit more color on the Paris occupier market? So in particular, the supply-demand imbalance you've got rising tech demand that's pretty dynamic at the moment, traditional businesses fighting to retain talent and also hiring to apply sort of AI. Is there enough supply response? Is there new opportunities in that market? When you look at tenant affordability, should we expect that prime rents continue to rise sort of going forward?

It's the million-dollar question. The last leases that we signed in Signature were the highest of Gecina's history. So obviously, when we deliver prime, flexible, large floor plate, amenitized buildings next to the best transportation hub in Europe, obviously, we can capture even higher rents than before. So that's still working pretty well. And obviously, that neighborhood concentrates a lot of different occupiers, which are looking for more square meters and more space or better space. You saw that JLL took some stuff. We had consulting firms. We have seen also tech firms taking square meters in the neighborhood. So on the best spots and the best assets, we still see great appetite and growing rents for the most prime assets. And at the same time, because the situation is uncertain, and that you saw on our Q1 and H1 results, we see a growing clientele for flex office business. Co-working occupancies are pretty high, and we have seen great appetite for our service office business. So that's another way to capture a growing clientele in more general terms, the market is more wait-and-see. So that's why to grow our company, we are trying to build the products and the services, in fact, to capture those growing clientele.

And just on investment markets, I mean aside from the specific sort of asset sort of differences and issues. When you look at the investment market more broadly, you mentioned that since the Middle East conflict, there's been a bit of a tempering of demand. If that was to resolve, would you expect some of that demand to come back? Are there any other issues that you think are holding the investment market back?

The Middle East situation has been quite frustrating to be fair because when we saw what was occurring in autumn, clearly, we were seeing greater investment appetite. Blackstone bought a big asset. And we saw a series of large transactions at pretty tight yields and high value per square meter. And obviously, the Middle East situation has frozen a bit of the situation. So that shows that before that situation and rising interest rates following inflation, there was clearly an appetite for prime Parisian assets on the investment market because of, again, that balance between scarcity of qualitative products and pretty decent occupier appetite. So the situation is still a bit the same. So hopefully, the situation will bounce back if the Middle East situation and interest rate situation clarifies a bit.

Yes. And just one quick technical one, if I can. Just on the EPS guidance, are there any sort of key up or downside risks that you see within your range?

Not, really. That's why we kept -- we had a quite precise view on 2026 when we gave our guidance because most of the time in our business, the volatility of our earnings 12 months ahead is linked to pre-leasing of pipeline. So we had a good view on renewals and relettings on our existing portfolio. So that's why we gave a tight range in which we are still there. We still have some leasing to do to achieve the higher range of the guidance. So that's why we gave that. But that's -- the rationale is because limited pipeline delivery in '26 gave us a pretty precise view on where we might land for 2026. And we are basically in line with the plan for the last months. On the bottom line, as we're 100% hedged, therefore, that gives you the indication on the earnings.

The next question comes from Ana Escalante from Morgan Stanley.

Just one quick question on maintenance CapEx. I believe that in full year presentation, you said that you were expecting a run rate just below EUR 100 million per annum. But it looks like this half, you've already spent EUR 75 million in maintenance CapEx. That run rate was more maybe medium-term guidance for '27, '28 onwards and those -- this first half is more of a one-off? Or has this changed at all and you now expect to spend a little bit more in maintenance CapEx?

Yes. Thank you, Ana, for your question. You're right in what you say. It's rather a one-off that might last 1 or 2 years. What I gave as an indication is we are more catch-up CapEx on our housing portfolio, some facade to change, some balconies to repair that takes some time. But once that period about catch-up CapEx on the resi, we should reenter into a significantly lower maintenance CapEx average.

All right. We are having written questions, and I'm going to take the one by [ Suzanne van from Kempen ], which is the first one. Who is the buyer of the resi disposals? Could they do more? Or do you see more appetite? The second question is, it seems the committed CapEx for 2026 is now covered. So is it fair to say that any additional disposals would be recycled? Or would you prefer more headroom on leverage metrics?

Regarding resi disposals during H1 and the new one, it's a combination between core funds looking for resi assets overall, bed and shed is quite a popular investment thesis these days and public entities or state-owned entities buying in those assets. And the last is we have unit-by-unit disposal program on some assets. So we have sold probably EUR 25 million of housing assets unit by unit to individuals. So it's rather diversified. And we have -- as I said to Jonathan earlier, we try to find the best buyers and try to find all the pockets potentially available for us for disposals. And very pragmatically, as we always do, we try one to fund the company. So that's why funding the pipeline was priority #1. And the next one then will be -- and we will see how the situation evolves during the year, what we do with the additional proceeds, if any. And again, the investment market is not buoyant these days. So if any, we will see if we further improve our balance sheet through deleveraging or we find cash flow accretive reinvestments of any type. So really, we will look at the situation in the next month very pragmatically, depending on how much we can sell and what is the best option for the long-term prospects of the company.

The next question comes from Kanad Mitra from Barclays.

I kind of was already wondering about touching on your last point, given that the investment market is in a little bit of -- the liquidity is lower and your business plan kind of at this point is recycling assets into development pipeline. How confident are you to carry out that plan without raising leverage? And another question, again, can you shed some light on the kind of deals that you are seeing in the occupier market, which are like AI-led tenants? Just a little bit of deal -- just a little bit of color would be nice.

Yes. Liquidity on the investment market is limited, but it's hopefully temporary. So we will -- we have quite a seasoned and proactive investment team looking at opportunities. So we'll obviously, over the next months, be super proactive, engaging with as many investors as possible to find the best options. So we'll try really to continue as we do on the leasing side, in fact, to be as proactive as possible on any type of deal. And regarding leverage and reinvestment, again, we will observe the situation and find the best options, hopefully. Regarding the occupier market, on the large deals, and it will not surprise you, you know that we have quite a diverse tenant base, like I mentioned during the presentation in Paris. So when you look at the large deals which are on the market these days, we have energy companies. We still have some luxury names, which are looking for square meters. We signed a lease earlier on this year with a very well-known luxury company, including service office, by the way, with them. We have also tech names, which are pure AI, but also the famous large tech U.S. names. There was French and there is French AI companies in the market. So Mistral signed a large lease in Paris last year. But there is -- there are 2 or 3 pretty large transactions that might occur. Not sure in our buildings, but let's say, they are active on the market. We have seen also banks expanding again their footprint. So it's quite diverse in fact, the leasing market, even if it's quite slow, but there are deals in the market.

All right. We are having another question on the chat. So from Sheetal Jaimalani from Deutsche Bank. Portfolio -- so 2 questions here. Portfolio values were down 0.5% like-for-like with a yield effect partly offset by a rental effect. Do you expect further yield pressure in [ non-central ] markets in H2? That's the first question. The second question is you completed the EUR 250 million of disposal in H1 and secured another EUR 80 million in July. Is the disposal program largely complete for 2026? Or should we expect further asset sales and any target for 2026?

Portfolio values, yields and rents, I think it's too early. We just got the H1 appraisals right now. So we will have to observe the market after summer and to see the way it goes. So it's really too early to answer the question, at least we know what was in H1. And like I said, we rotated all our appraisers also to give you as much confidence in the strength of the way we operate and provide the value of our portfolio in our balance sheet. And on the second question, I think we don't have really a disposal program in place. It's really being proactive on capital allocation like we have always been with those 3 views, trying to through disposal improve the average quality of what we have, keep the leverage and find the more accretive investment opportunities. So we are still in that line. And we start the year with 0, and we try to do as much as we can.

I think we're done with the questions. If there are not any more questions in the room. And if it's not the case, then we can give the floor to Benat for concluding words.

Again, thank you all for listening and for your questions. And we are very happy to meet you very soon after the H1 earnings call. Thank you all. Bye-bye.