Full Year 2021 Empiric Student Property PLC Earnings Call London Sep 7, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Empiric Student Property PLC earnings conference call or presentation Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 8:30:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Duncan Garrood Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director * Lynne Fennah Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director ================================================================================ Conference Call Participants ================================================================================ * Julian Ashley Livingston-Booth RBC Capital Markets, Research Division - Analyst * Kieran Adrian Lee Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division - Analyst ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning and welcome to the Empiric Student Property plc Full Year Results 2021. My name is Katie and I'll be coordinating your call today. (Operator Instructions) I'll now hand over to your host, Duncan Garrood, Chief Executive, to begin. Duncan, Please go ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'm here with our CFO, Lynne Fennah. And our agenda today shown on Slide 3 is as follows. I'll give a short introduction, Lynne will take you through the financial performance and our progress on ESG. After that, I'll talk in more detail about the business and then we'll open up for questions. So let me start with the headlines on Slide 4. As you know, we started 2021 in challenging conditions due to the pandemic with revenue occupancy averaging 65% during academic year '20-'21. However, market conditions improved during the year and academic year '21-'22 has reached occupancy of 84%, at the upper end of our guidance. It was a busy year with a lot of activity on the portfolio. In particular, we made a total of 9 noncore asset disposals for GBP 44.6 million, above book value in aggregate. The disposal of 5 of these assets completed after the year-end. This has allowed us to recycle capital and we recently announced our first acquisition since 2018. In addition, we have 2 developments under construction and successfully completed 2 pilot refurbishments, which are delivering target returns. We've also agreed clear metrics for our ESG program, including setting a target to achieve net 0 in our own operations by 2035. Most importantly, we have reduced dividend payments and committed to a fully covered progressive dividend policy with a minimum payment of 2.5p for 2022. I showed the chart on Slide 5 at the half year and you can see how occupancy has developed during 2021. We believe the most transparent way to measure occupancy is to show the percentage of gross annual revenue. In other words, the total rental potential of the business for the year rather than the number of rooms occupied. Other PBSA companies may use different measures, which can make direct comparisons difficult. We ended 2021 with occupancy at 84%, just 10 percentage points below our best performance in 2019 pre-COVID. This gives us confidence that we're now on the road to market recovery. We also believe the transformation work we've done both before and during the pandemic puts us in a strong position as the world starts to open up again. I'd now like to hand over to Lynne to take us through the financial performance. As you know, until recently, Lynne was also our COO. But now that our insourcing is complete and we have a full leadership team in place, she has relinquished that role and taken over responsibility for ESG as our Chief Sustainability Officer. Over to you, Lynne. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynne Fennah, Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Duncan, and Good morning, everyone. Let's start with the 2021 headlines on Slide 7. Despite occupancy revenues being lower than pre-COVID levels, the business continued to generate cash and we're reporting revenue today of GBP 56 million with a gross margin of 59% and administration costs of GBP 10.5 million below our GBP 11 million guidance. Adjusted earnings decreased to GBP 10 million, which translated into adjusted basic earnings per share of 1.7p. On a like-for-like basis, investment property valuation increased by 3.3%. EPRA net tangible asset value per share was up 2.2% to 107.4p. And total accounting returns, the sum of income and capital growth, has increased to 4.6% mainly due to the higher fair value of investment property. Turning now to the income statement on Slide 8. Revenue decreased 6% to GBP 56 million as occupancy for the first 8 months of academic year '20-'21 was 65% compared to 84% for the same period in 2020. We started the academic year '21-'22 at 81% occupancy and this has increased to 84% since then. As we told you at the half year, like-for-like rental growth for the academic year '20-'21 was 1.3% as we prioritized occupancy levels over rental growth. Property expenses were up 2% mainly driven by having to pay council tax on empty rooms as a result of lower occupancy levels. Gross margin decreased from 62% to 59% due to a GBP 3.5 million fall in revenue. During the period, we sold 4 assets with a net gain on disposal of GBP 1.7 million. Since the year-end, we have announced a further 5 disposals of assets also above book value. The net profit from a change in the fair value of investment properties was GBP 17.6 million compared to a GBP 37.6 million loss the previous year and I will talk through this in detail on the valuation slide. Net finance expense was GBP 12.4 million, 7% less than the prior year due to maintaining the RCF at a lower level and continued low interest rates. Taking all of this together, we are reporting a profit of GBP 29.2 million with basic earnings per share of 4.84p. Slide 9 shows a breakdown of the movement in our portfolio valuation. During 2021, we sold 4 assets for GBP 18.1 million above the book value shown here of GBP 16.3 million. After that disposal, the portfolio was valued at GBP 988.8 million. At the interims, we indicated we would spend GBP 30 million on health and safety work over the next 5 years. CBRE's assumption is that GBP 17.2 million of this cost should now be reflected in the valuation in relation to work on external wall systems and fire stopping. The value of developments has fallen by GBP 2.5 million due to a delay on obtaining planning consent on Canterbury. At the end of December '20, we reported a COVID related reduction in our portfolio valuation of GBP 21.4 million mainly due to CBRE's assumption of 50% occupancy for the balance of the academic year '20-'21. We are now reporting GBP 15.2 million move in our favor as CBRE reduced their COVID deduction to GBP 6.2 million. This deduction relates to the '21-'22 academic year only with no deduction proposed for the academic year '22-'23. During the year, we spent GBP 8 million on capital expenditure and GBP 7.4 million on development mainly on St. Mary's Bristol. Our operational assets increased in value by GBP 21.3 million driven by improved yield on our super prime assets, partially offset by revenue reduction in secondary assets. Our commercial portfolio, which comprises convenience stores and restaurants within our sites, went up by GBP 800,000. The valuation at the end of December, before adjusting for assets that we have sold following the year-end, was GBP 1.0218 billion. Over the year, net initial yield has improved from 5.6% to 5.3%. And as I mentioned, since the year-end we have made further disposals as well as an acquisition, which Duncan will talk about later, and we have GBP 25.9 million of assets classified as held for sale at the year-end. Turning now to look at the balance sheet on Slide 10. As you would have seen, the portfolio is valued at GBP 995.9 million. The cash holding was GBP 37 million compared to GBP 34 million in the prior year. Debt now stands at GBP 371 million after deducting labor agent fees down from GBP 385 million. And the net asset value of the group was GBP 648 million compared to GBP 633 million. Looking at our debt position in more detail on Slide 11. At the end of December before deduction of loan arrangement fees, the group had committed net debt facilities of GBP 420 million, of which GBP 375 million were drawn down. GBP 277 million of this debt is fixed and GBP 98 million is floating. The aggregate cost of debt was 3% with a weighted average term of 4.9 years. And the loan-to-value for the group was 33.1%, below our 35% long-term target. As of January 31, we had GBP 81.2 million of undrawn investment facilities and cash and we currently have around GBP 44 million of unencumbered assets. We have recently signed a 3-year extension on similar terms of a GBP 90 million Lloyds Bank RCF, which was due to expire in November. In an environment of rising interest rate, it is important that 3/4 of our drawn debt is fixed. I'd like to move on now to talk about progress on our continuous improvement initiatives on Slide 12. The final work of our new revenue management system concluded in October when we brought the process of the collection of receivables in-house. This is now a centralized function within the finance team. The system gives us direct control of our revenue management enabling us to make price changes more efficiently and swiftly. It allows us to manage the relationship with our customers directly end-to-end, it makes debt collection easier and importantly, we're delivering annualized cost savings of GBP 1.5 million, which started in September. As we told you in August, we have turned our focus to sustainability now that we have direct control of all our assets. In 2021, our ESG Committee undertook our first formal materiality assessment using an independent third-party consultant. This review process included listening to over 1,700 students to better understand their expectations, undertaking a range of surveys and focus groups with our colleagues as well as one-to-one interviews with other stakeholders such as investors, banks, professional advisers and analysts. The output of this work is the materiality matrix presented on Slide 13. At the interim, we advised we would focus on 4 key themes, all shown on the top right-hand side: energy efficiency, sustainable buildings, health and safety and mental health and well-being. The ESG Committee have further reviewed the materiality matrix and decided to combine energy efficiency and sustainable buildings under one heading. So we've added a fourth area, which is providing opportunities for all through all of our business activities. I'll talk about each focus area in turn on Slide 14. Since starting becoming a sustainable business, we intended to become net 0 in all our operations, property portfolio and energy consumption, by 2035. As part of our ambition to achieve net 0, we've appointed CBRE to help define meaningful KPIs. Also our utilities adviser is building an asset-by-asset road map of green initiatives to reduce energy usage. In December '21, we undertook our first pilot green initiative on 3 assets in Manchester costing GBP 100,000. We installed smart panel heat network systems, which adopts a heating ability based on environmental factors within rooms thereby minimizing the use of energy. The payback on these projects is expected to be less than 2 years. During '21, we also replaced all of our site vans with electric vehicles and we have also signed up the task force on climate related financial disclosure and this is our first year of making disclosure in line with TCDF recommendations. Moving on to health and safety. At our interim results, we announced we've begun to take work to ensure that our buildings are compliant with future health and safety legislation. We undertook fire stopping work on 21 buildings during the year. We also conducted external wall surveys on 19 buildings, including those over 18 meters tall and ones we categorize as higher risk. Our proxy team are currently working through the actions arising. In addition, we undertook training at every level in the organization, updated our health and safety policy and recruited a full-time in-house health and safety expert who joined us this month. Turning to mental health and wellbeing. During the year, we delivered mental health training throughout the organization so that we are better equipped to support both colleagues and students and we continue to provide customers with a limited access to 24/7 mental health and counseling service. Our new category is providing opportunities for all. We believe that being inclusive improves opportunities for students, employees and people living in the communities we operate in. On January 1, '21 we became a Living Wage Employer as we strongly believe that our people should be fairly rewarded and we have introduced 2 new people KPIs, one to track mandatory training levels and the other to track internal promotions. You can see our 2022 priorities in all 4 areas on the slide. I'd like to move on now to give you more detail on capital expenditure. Last August we gave a high level indication of our plans over the next 5 years. Starting with our estimated GBP 44 million refurbishment band, we spent GBP 1.5 million on 2 pilot refurbishments in Bristol and Leeds. We plan to spend a further GBP 4.4 million on refurbishment projects in 2022 with a more significant program planned for '23. Managing our assets in a sustainable way is now a key focus and having spent GBP 100,000 on the pilot project in Manchester I just mentioned, we are planning investment of GBP 0.5 million in '22 on water smart panel, heat network systems and also to apartments. We previously advised we plan to spend GBP 30 million on fire safety works in our buildings. We are uncertain on how much we will recover from developers so we have increased this to GBP 37 million. Last year we spent GBP 2.5 million on fire stopping work and GBP 800,000 on external wall surveys. In 2022 we plan to spend a further GBP 3 million of fire stopping work and GBP 12.6 million on the first work for external wall system rectification. Annual maintenance CapEx in '21 was GBP 3.1 million and we estimate GBP 4 million for '22. Turning now to the outlook on Slide 16. Trading conditions are starting to improve and current revenue occupancy for the '21-'22 academic year is 84%, at the upper end of our guidance. Occupancy for the next academic year '22-'23 is currently at 36%, broadly in line with March '20 before the pandemic. With greater confidence to market conditions normalizing, we expect occupancy for the academic year '22-'23 to be in the range of 85% to 95% and we are targeting the upper end of that range assuming no further disruption. We expect administration costs to be around GBP 12 million, taking into account higher inflation and our investment in the business for growth. Our cost forecast includes an inflationary outlook to salaries this year for those in more junior positions and a smaller uplift for more senior roles. We are benefiting from having hedged our electricity and gas cost from Q1 '20 up to Q3 '24. And of course 3/4 of our drawn debt is fixed, which gives us a significant protection from rising interest rates. Our expectation for capital expenditure in 2022 is GBP 24.5 million in total taking into account the expenditure I detailed earlier and a further GBP 13 million on development. On the dividend, we are pleased to have reinstated payment in Q4 '21 with a payment of 2.5p to cover 2019 and 2020. In 2022, we plan to pay a minimum of 2.5p per annum and have just announced our first quarterly payment. Thank you very much. I'll now hand back to Duncan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Lynne. Slide 18 shows the full academic year '21-'22 applications data from UCAS. Acceptances were a little lower than applications due to COVID, but the continued growth of applications show the underlying demand for U.K. higher education. Total undergraduate applications grew 3%. But within this, domestic applications were up 5%, non-EU international applications decreased 13% and EU applications declined 40% post Brexit. The increase in sponsored study visas issued to international students is encouraging as they surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 55%. Now that we have our own in-house marketing and booking platforms, we're targeting customers with much greater flexibility. In academic year '21-'22, nearly half our customers are from the U.K., up from pre-pandemic levels of 1/3. The other half is split equally between Chinese and other international students. Whilst British students tend to prefer the lower tariff rooms at a 44-week rental commitment, we have not discounted our rents though we have shown some flexibility on rental lengths. For academic year '22-'23, we will again flex our marketing targets depending on the behavior of particular groups. Our focus remains on returning undergraduates and postgraduates both from the U.K. and abroad. We're encouraged that so far Chinese and other Asian markets are again at the forefront of international inquiries. So let me turn now to Slide 19, which shows the 5 key priorities for the business that I set out last year. We've made progress on each of these priorities so I'll talk about them in turn. Starting with our portfolio, which we are managing actively to enhance returns. Slide 20 shows the portfolio segmentation we presented last March and the current percentage by value of each segment updated for disposals, acquisitions, changes in categorization and fair market value. Clearly these segments were fluctuate in size and value as we continue to optimize our portfolio. Segment A comprises properties yielding our best results. We've grown this segment by 7 percentage points through the addition of an acquisition and an asset that's been upgraded from Segment B as well as valuation uplifts. Segment B consists of sites which fundamentally meet the Hello Student criteria, but need investment to command and improve rental yield. Our aim is to upgrade these sites to Segment A. One asset has already been moved as I just mentioned. Segment C are not core Hello Student assets, but have good commercial characteristics. Originally this included a small number of sites bound by nomination agreements that were pleasingly suitable for U.K. freshers. We've decided to eliminate this group and as a result, 4 sites have moved from Segment C to Segment D. So Segment C now solely covers sites ideal for mature graduates or postgraduates. We aim to grow and sub-brand this category subject to successful pilots. Segment D comprises assets that are no longer core and are on a disposal program. So far we sold 9 assets in total, which reduced it to 6% of the portfolio by value. However, as I just mentioned, we also recategorized 4 properties from Segment C to D, which brought it back up to 8%. So let me give you more detail on Slide 21. Since March last year, we've sold 9 assets in Segment D for GBP 44.6 billion located in Durham, Exeter, Leicester and Portsmouth. Most of the accommodation in these assets consisted of apartments with shared facilities, which is not in line with our core brand offer. We're at various stages of discussions on the remaining assets in Segment D and expect further progress in 2022. These disposals are enabling us to recycle capital as you will see on Slide 22. We've recently announced our first acquisition since 2018, Market Quarter Studios in Bristol for a cost of GBP 19 million with an expected unlevered IRR of 8% to 9%. Market Quarter adds 92 high quality beds in a site close to the University, the City Center and to our 2 existing operational assets. In terms of quality, this asset sits comfortably towards the top of Segment A and is currently fully occupied. Within days of ownership, we made significant changes. Long-running plumbing issues were fixed immediately, the reception is now manned 24/7 and a series of social events in the building has been announced for the very first time. As a result, in our first week of ownership, 30 students told us that they were going to rebook. Bookings for academic year '22-'23 are encouraging with an average uplifted rent of 18%, which together with letting the vacant retail unit will raise the net initial yield well above 5%. Our strategy is to increase site and bed density in Russell Group and other top quality university cities, which are in high demand and have a growing number of students. So we're also completing the development of St. Mary's in Bristol, which has a further 153 top quality beds. This means that within the year, we will have increased our cluster in Bristol from 2 sites with 159 beds to 4 sites with 404 beds, all within 10 minutes walk of each other and with the same management team. In this way we could retain the small site homely boutique proposition, reduce our costs and improve our margin. We're also recycling capital into 2 developments, which you can see on Slide 23. The first is St. Mary's Bristol, which we expect to complete for the start of the new academic year at a cost of GBP 28.5 million. As a result of COVID, our original yield on cost has moved slightly from a planned 6.5% to 6.3%. The unlevered IRR is 10% to 11%. We've already sold 50% of the rooms at St. Mary's at some of the highest rents in our portfolio. The second development in Edinburgh, South Bridge, which will provide accommodation for 59 students ready for academic year '22-'23 at a cost of GBP 12 million. This is a pilot site for a new sub-brand for postgraduates as we believe there is a significant opportunity for a tailor-made proposition for these customers that make up nearly 25% of all U.K. university students. We expect South Bridge to deliver a yield on cost of 6.1% and unlevered development IRR of 12% to 13%. We've also successfully completed 2 refurbishments during the year in Bristol and Leeds as you can see on Slide 24. As a result, the site in Bristol has been moved to the Segment A. We have upgraded between 20% and 25% of the rooms at these sites. All the refurbished rooms were occupied in academic year '21-'22 and gross annual revenue for academic year '22-'23 reflects an average expected refurbishment uplift of 15%. Both refurbishments were delivered within budget deploying GBP 1.5 million of CapEx and will achieve a target IRR of 9% to 11%. We don't plan to upgrade all the rooms at any one site as we want to offer a choice of room range and prices to our customers to have broad appeal to a wide group. We have a 5-year refurbishment program to eliminate Segment B. The work will be phased in line with cash generated from disposals. As Lynne said earlier, in 2022 we plan to spend GBP 4.4 million on at least 4 further refurbishments to be completed this summer. One of these covers the common areas of the Pennine House, Leeds site where we have just completed the refurbishment of bedrooms. This asset will then move into Segment A. Other sites include Birmingham, Leeds and Leicester. They will all be subject to our 9% to 11% IRR threshold. Slide 25 shows our current portfolio. We had 8,775 operating beds in the portfolio last August and now have 8,391 beds following the disposals from Segment D and the addition of our acquisition in Bristol. We expect this number to increase to 8,603 beds at the start of academic year '22-'23 once the development of St. Mary's Bristol and Edinburgh South Bridge are complete. 76% of our portfolio currently serve our partner universities. Now once Segment D is eliminated, we expect this to rise to well above 80%. In other cities where we are the dominant provider of space and have a strong commercial performance, for example Falmouth, we intend to maintain our position. I'll move on now to our brand on Slide 26. Our Hello Student brand already has strong awareness and a good reputation, but we are refreshing our proposition through further researching customer insight. This identified 4 key principles that are essential for our brand proposition to deliver what students expect. Our refreshed brand proposition will be used to redesign our website, revise our approach to social media and for a thorough overhaul of our customers' digital journey being a student. This will give us strong differentiation in the market and will also increase conversion and retention rates. With in-house revenue management fully operational, Slide 27 shows how we are combining the rigor of algorithmic analysis with human judgment. We've hired experienced data analysts to give us detailed understanding of pricing, conversion rates and the effectiveness of our marketing. The operating teams review their output on a weekly basis and apply experience and judgment to make the right adjustments so that we can optimize room pricing and marketing spend in relation to occupancy rates and competition. As an example, in one of our sites we had fast growing demand in the early part of the booking season in December. Instead of leaving price aesthetic and filling up right at the start of the season, our algorithms suggested price increases for some rooms of up to 10%. This has delivered an uplift in the overall site average rent of 3% to date. Since then, demand has continued but at a moderated rate so it's clear that we made the adjustment at just the right time and we expect to be full for academic year '22-'23. We're also using data to completely overhaul our room categorization. In total, we have over 70 room categories and we plan to simplify this significantly to deliver easier booking post process and better conversion. Slide 28 shows the academic year '22-'23 bookings are well ahead of the previous year. You can see a flatter earning trajectory as we use dynamic pricing to take pricing opportunities as I just described. As the student mix gets closer to pre-pandemic levels and with continual quality improvement, we expect our higher tariff rooms to sell well. As you heard from Lynne, we're giving cautious guidance on occupancy for academic year '22-'23 of 85% to 95% and are aiming for the upper end of that range assuming there's further disruption. Let's turn now to customer service on Slide 29. With the new Director of Operations in place, we're reviewing all our processes so that we could deliver high quality customer service consistently across all our sites and drive higher Net Promoter Scores. For example we could do some things such as ID checking, which is a specific requirement, more effectively online before a resident arrives. This would free up time to welcome new residents with a guided tour instead of checking paperwork. We know that a friendly personal experience leads to a greater propensity to recommend and stronger retention. It also underpins our ability to charge premium rates. Another way we plan to improve service is by launching a customer app later this year, which will enable our students to communicate with us easily and quickly. Moving on now to our people on Slide 30. We've continued to invest in our people as a successful service organization must do. So let me give a few examples. Now that our leadership team is complete, we've employed a high quality performance coach to develop individuals at the team. We're putting 25 of our middle managers through a development scheme and using the apprenticeship levy to improve skills in our customer service teams. In the case of maintenance teams, this means we can do more jobs in-house and reduce costs. Last year our colleague engagement of 81% compared very favorably to the national average of 68%. We've also joined the Best Company scheme, the previous Sunday Times Best Employers group and in our first survey, we were at the top end of the one to watch. At a time when hiring is very competitive, there is a strong rationale for focusing on employee retention and development. So in summary on Slide 31. Our plans are focused on delivering improved sustainable shareholder returns. The number of students in academic year '22-'23 is set for continued growth and we're cautiously optimistic that revenue occupancy would normalize with guidance of 85% to 95%. We're actively managing the portfolio to recycle capital with good progress on disposals and developments. We've also made our first new acquisition since 2018. We've initiated a refurbishment program that's generating good returns. Our ESG road map now has metrics, which include achieving net 0 on our own operations by 2035. We're pleased to have reinstated dividend payments and expect to pay a minimum of 2.5p this year fully covered with a view to increasing the dividend progressively as revenue grows. Finally, we're targeting gross margin above 70% and a total return of 7% to 9% as occupancy returns to normal. Thank you very much. And we're happy to take your questions now. ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) We have a question from the webcast from Tom Musson. One question from me, please. To help with our modeling, how should we think about average bed numbers in 2022 versus 2021 given potentially more capital recycling in the year ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So thanks for the question, Tom. Clearly in managing the portfolio, we are going to reduce the number of beds in Segment D and as you've seen through both development and through acquisition of standing assets, increase them in category A and to come probably in category C too. Whilst we're not able to give individual details of sites that we intend to dispose of and therefore we can't directly give you a correlation between beds, we will keep the market posted as we make disposals and acquisitions. So as we move through that process, we will always make an announcement of the changes in number of beds. I hope that answers your question. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have a question on the telephone line from Kieran Lee from Berenberg. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kieran Adrian Lee, Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division - Analyst [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually a few from me if that's okay. Would you be able to give us a little bit more color on how occupancy rates and pricing compared for category A versus category B or even D buildings in the current academic year? The second question was you mentioned even after the target Segment D sales, you'd still be only 80% exposed to those sort of core markets. Should we be reading into sort of further future disposals or recategorizations? And then lastly, was actually on the dividend. You flagged a minimum payment of 2.5p, but what would it take to increase this perhaps over into sort of Q4? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kieran, I'll answer the first 2 of those and then I'll hand over to Lynne to answer the question on dividend. In terms of occupancy rates, clearly one of the attractions for us in investing in Segment B is to upgrade the quality of the asset to Segment A, which by the very nature of that process will uplift rental yields. And as I mentioned in the presentation, those investments are giving an average IRR of 9% to 11%. So indeed, we command better rents in Segment A than we do in Segment B, hence the investments that we intend to make. In terms of physical occupancy though, there is no correlation because clearly rents are set to the quality of the asset and the competition for every single site. So there is no disparity in percentage revenue occupancy across the portfolio. Then to your second question on core markets. You're quite right in saying that we believe after our current disposals of Segment D that we will be over 80% in our core target markets. It is not to say that the other 20% or so are not attractive markets for us, but the 80% are those markets where we aim for further growth. So for example in Bristol, which is one of those core markets where we have increased our footprint, we will intend to continue to look for more bed stock in those 80%. But the remaining sites are not located in areas that we would dispose of. They perform with us very well indeed. It's just that they may not quite have the growth and cluster density potential that the core sites have. Lynne, do you want to take the... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynne Fennah, Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, absolutely. So with dividend, obviously we said a minimum of 2.5p for this year. You'll all appreciate that because our academic year doesn't line up with our financial reporting calendar for the first 8 months of this year, we already know our revenue was quite a bizarre situation in the business actually around 84% now for that first 8 months. I think being able to increase the dividend this year is largely going to be dependent on what the occupancy is come September for the next academic year. We would hope to be able to make some increase this year if we are at the upper end of our guidance, but the real price will come when we are for a full financial year back to the mid to high 90%s level of occupancy. As you've seen over the last few years I hope, we've done a great job so costs are under control and it's really going to come back from revenue. I hope that helps. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have some more questions from the webcast. So we have a question from Andrew Gill from Jefferies saying could you add some color on the potential increase in gross profit margins from more the doubling the numbers of closed cluster beds in Bristol? And do you intend having a second brand in parallel to Hello Student? And could you provide any color around potential investment requirements? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Certainly I'll cover those. So in terms of the gross margin, Andrew, the nature of leverage is that as our occupancy gets up towards the target of the high middle 90%s, we certainly believe that we will be driving our gross margin up towards the 70% mark as we have declared. Now clearly 2022 is a blended year in the sense that 3/4 of the year is governed by the academic year '21-'22 where our occupancy is at 84% and therefore, we'll be at a lower than target gross margin. But what we are aiming for is that '22-'23 academic year we reach the target that we are shooting for in the middle 90%s, then we will return to gross margins that are over 70%. As a result of which, the outlook, if you like, for 2023 financial year will be at those higher gross margins. Clearly, part of that drive on gross margins is because of change in portfolio. We typically have higher gross margins in our Segment A properties than we do in our Segment D. And therefore, the more that we upgrade the quality of our portfolio, the higher we are able to drive our overall blended gross margin. In terms of the branding, you are quite correct in saying that over time we anticipate we will have more than one brand. At Hello Student, we will have a second brand that is focused on postgraduates and I'm hoping that the interim announcements in August we'll be able to give more color and detail around that. And in terms of investment in that, we haven't determined it yet. I don't anticipate this being a costly exercise. It is more around rebranding and focusing our proposition on requirements of a particular market of post graduates as opposed to undergraduates. But of course we will be able to exploit a different branding and targeted communication for them, which we believe will be able to drive better growth. And that is what Segment C will become. Hope that gives you an answer to those 3 questions, Andrew. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [9] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have a question from Matthew Saperia from Peel Hunt. You mentioned weaker pricing in some secondary locations, can you elaborate on that? And can you also discuss pricing more generally as we look to '22-'23? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [10] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In terms of the pricing, there is no difference from that which has been existing in our previous years in terms of the spread of pricing. As you might imagine, we tend to find higher pricing in the more competitive attractive markets to students and as you move to secondary cities, the pricing gets cheaper as it does for many other commodity items too. We haven't seen any further polarization of that as we're coming out of COVID or even during COVID, but it continues that same differentiation between the markets as you would normally expect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [11] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next question comes from Michael Prew from Jefferies. They say how do you see the further condensing of the portfolio and how do nomination agreements feature in the decision to sell, retain, process, please? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [12] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are quite right that we certainly see a focusing of our portfolio. And as we started this process, we were active in 29 cities in the U.K. and as we go through the consolidation of our portfolio around our target cities, that number will decrease. As you will have seen in the presentation, we have already exited one city, which was Durham where we had a single site that we couldn't see the opportunity to expand [Grayton]. So you should expect to see as we go through our disposal program a further consolidation and that will be around the target university cities of high quality that I mentioned before. Now for reasons that I hope are obvious, we're not able to list what those cities are. They are currently still attracting new customers and therefore, we don't wish to jeopardize that process. However, what we can say is that where we have assets in high quality university at Russell Group cities, those are the ones that we will be expanding on and we will be disposing in those that we can't grow. In terms of nomination agreements, typically it is not particularly around the nomination agreement that we've taken a decision to exit that group. It's really around the configuration of the type of asset. As you know, we have a majority and a focus in our business on studio on-suite departments for our customers and the assets that we're looking to dispose of mostly don't conform to that. They have shared facilities usually and tend to attract U.K. fresher students, which is not our core market. So it's not particularly a comment on nomination agreements per se, it's more that the nature of the asset isn't consistent with the focus that we have within Hello Student, which is on second year of returning undergraduate and postgrads. So I hope I answered that one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [13] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) We have a question on the phone line from Julian Livingston-Booth from RBC. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Julian Ashley Livingston-Booth, RBC Capital Markets, Research Division - Analyst [14] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just one question from me. I wonder if you could give a little bit of color on the number of acquisition opportunities that you're sort of currently seeing and maybe something on your confidence in terms of being successful on those. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [15] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would say that we are currently in a happy position of having more opportunities than we have at the moment the wherewithal to take up, which is a very encouraging situation for us to be in. In terms of the type of acquisition that we are looking for, the Market Quarter acquisition in Bristol is a very good example of exactly the type of acquisition of a standing asset that we would want to make, increasing cluster density in target cities conforming to the sort of more boutique nature that a student brings yet bringing a greater degree of operational efficiency by being clustered close to our existing assets. We have seen quite a few of those opportunities in our target cities, more than we would be able at the moment to digest. And therefore, we are in the position that we are able to focus in on the ones that are really most attractive to us. And our very good and upgraded property team are very active in the marketplace looking for those opportunities and passing them through our funnel so that we pick the very best ones that are out there in the market. And I would hope over the course of the next year that we shall see more of that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [16] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have a webcast question from Matthew Phillips. They say the shares of Empiric have consistently traded at a discount to asset value. At the same time, other companies in the sector such as Unite and previously GCP have enjoyed healthy premiums. Does the Board believe there is a material reason for the valuation differences between our company and others in the sector and how do you propose to address this? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynne Fennah, Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director [17] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I'll take that one. So obviously the group had some challenges in 2017, 2016 as it started to change the leadership team in the business. The poor performance at that time really dragged down the share price of the business. In January '20 quite frustratingly for me after all that transformation work, we were only 5p of [rating adjustment]. We needed to do the transformation work to reduce our cost base, generate revenue better and also improve the business model. Because we operate in a different segment, we obviously get compared to Unite because they're the unlisted player now. GCP was more comparable to us, but no longer the leader to market. And I think we're starting to improve that business model. We operate in a different niche for not long agreement. We're not targeting first year. It's the second, third year and post grads that are let and it's a different business model. We can still achieve operational efficiency by clustering assets, which you can see that we're starting to do more. So I think it's been that the history of Empiric and as I say, we were quite close in January '20, but then we all heard of something called COVID, which has set us back in terms of returns for this period because of the impact on revenue. But during that period, we've continued our transformation work in earnest. So I would hope that we start. Obviously we have issues globally with conflict, but we are hoping that we do start now to come back to closer to NAV and above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [18] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And Matthew, if I can just add. I think there's one other element too that perhaps when I came into the business was said to me and that is because the business had never undertaken a transaction of any of its assets, there was a question mark over whether the NAV was a fair valuation of what the assets would fetch in the market. But I think what we've seen in the last year with the sale of 9 of our disposal properties at the lower end of the quality spectrum at above book value that now has been evidenced by market prices. And I think that gives confidence that the NAV valuation is very genuine, very real and potentially has some upside in it that we believe should be reflected in the share price as we go forward. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynne Fennah, Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director [19] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope that helps, Matthew. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [20] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) We have no further questions. So I will hand back to Duncan and Lynne for any final remarks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Garrood, Empiric Student Property plc - CEO & Director [21] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can I say very many thanks to all of you for joining us today? I know for those based in London, it has been a trauma to travel and so we do thank you for giving your time this morning. And as ever, we're always happy to take questions from anybody outside of this presentation and we look forward to speaking to many of you later on in that regard. So thank you very much indeed and we wish you a very good day. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynne Fennah, Empiric Student Property plc - Chief Financial & Operating Officer and Executive Director [22] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, everybody.