MRPRF - MERLIN Properties SOCIMI S.A. (MRPRF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-05-17 18:09:08 ET
MERLIN Properties SOCIMI, S.A. (MRPRF)
Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call
May 17, 2024, 09:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Ines Arellano - Investor Relations
Ismael Clemente - Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Ignacio Domínguez - JB Capital
Stephanie Dossmann - Jefferies
Florent Laroche - Oddo
Ben Richford - Bernstein
Thomas Rothaeusler - Deutsche Bank
Fernando Abril - Alantra
Marc Mozzi - Bank of America
Presentation
Ines Arellano
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, and thank you for joining MERLIN's First Quarter 2024 Trading Update.
As we always do in Q1 and Q3, our CEO, Ismael Clemente, will briefly explain the main highlights of the quarter and will thereafter open the line for Q&A. If you want to raise questions, please press star, followed by number five.
With no further delay, I'll pass the floor to Ismael. Thank you.
Ismael Clemente
Thank you, Ines. Good afternoon. Welcome to MERLIN Properties' first quarter results.
As commented by Ines, I will briefly comment on the performance measures -- metrics of the company, but I will also add a little summary on the performance of the Mega Plan to-date and then we'll immediately open the floor for Q&A so that you can make the questions that you want.
The company is off to a very good start of the year as commented on the 31st of -- when analyzing the 31st of December results in February. The gross rents have grown like-for-like 3.8%, approximately two-thirds correspond to inflation and one-third to real rental growth. The FFO per share, however, is down 4.4%, owing basically to the drag created by the data center division, which is not yet performing at full steam in income, and however, it is already adding cost to the cost base of the company, and a little higher financial results -- I mean, a little higher financial expenses mainly.
The occupancy remains very stable, 95.8%. I mean, you might remember that first quarter in Spain is the quarter in which most renewals take place. So, we normally have a lower first quarter and then recover during the year, but this year has been pretty mild, the effect of the renewals. The activity of the company remains solid in divestments. In the quarter, we only did €3 million, but we have accepted deposits of more than €10 million for close to €80 million of disposals that will happen during the rest of the year. We are talking mainly about miscellaneous assets with no cash flow generation capacity. So, this is very important because what we are trying to do is basically get rid of anything which is not adding to our cash flow given the effort we are making in data centers....
MERLIN Properties SOCIMI, S.A. (MRPRF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript