THE UNITE GROUP PLC (UTG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today for our half-year results. Today, in addition to our updates on performance, today's presentation will start with a deeper focus on strategy, and we will update you on our key initiatives, which are enhancing our position as the home for students at the UK's strongest universities, and how that's really then driving and impacting our financial performance. Karim will then take you through our operations including what we've been doing to drive income ahead of the year and occupancy at Hello Students and Mike will present the finance and property review explaining how our portfolio and capital allocation decisions are contributing to our future earnings growth. So before talking about the past six months I just wanted to explain our vision at Unite. Our business model is to provide modern accommodation to students at the very best universities across the UK. For these universities demand from students significantly exceeds the supply of places and at these universities are at the heart of our major cities where land is scarce, most new development is not viable, supply is tight and it's probably getting tighter and we'll explain how we're sharpening our focus on these top universities through our disposal and investment programs and how our leading operating platform enables us to deliver our higher occupancy at a lower cost than other providers. So looking forward our focus is growth both organically through rental growth across the portfolio and externally through partnerships and winning share from the HMO market. It's been a busy first half and it's an exciting transition. We're improving the operational performance, we're delivering the portfolio of the future and we're fully focused on making this happen and we'll update you on our progress that we've been making today. So let me start on that focus of being the home for students at the UK's strongest universities. These universities continue to excel. We've seen a 7% applications growth to high tariff university which is the fastest growth for over 10 years. We see more than twice the number of applicants for each place at these universities and that's because they have the best outcomes and also the highest demand for accommodation and that's why we're increasing our share and our alignment to these universities with our ambitious disposal program through the completion of our committed pipeline and providing more homes to returning students. The middle box shows we're being disciplined with our capital focusing on completing our pipeline and using surplus capital to buy back shares and it's great to see that our platform is driving positive leasing momentum. Reservations are up and this is down to our insight, our marketing campaigns, our targeted pricing in a few cities and empowering and incentivising our local teams to drive sales and I really want to thank them for their hard work and focus because without it it wouldn't be possible. And reservations are up at Unite Students and we have transformed the Hello Student sales cycle from a slow start. We're now nine points ahead of the same point than last year. We've got the best operating platform for student accommodation. We're 11 points ahead of the market. I'll come back to explain that. And we're cost-efficient across our operations, and we're showing this through our progress on Empiric Synergies. The next few weeks are critical for sales, so we're not getting ahead of ourselves. But we're pleased with the progress across both Unite and Hello, and we're well set to deliver into the critical clearing market. it. It's clear that the stronger universities are performing better. Bifurcation across the sector is accelerating and we expect this to continue. High tariff universities now receive twice as many applications as low tariff and that's reversing the position from 20 years ago. Universities are facing into their financial pressures and they are getting more efficient. They're competing for students and the strongest are winning share. UK universities are actually quite small on a global basis, but they are getting bigger. The majority of that is through organic growth, but we're also starting to see some consolidation as well. And young people still see the value in university. Applications are up 5% from 18-year-olds this year. Students want to go to university and they want to go to the stronger universities. They are more focused on outcomes and they're more focused on the experience. And as more head to stronger universities, they're more likely to travel and need accommodation and this is why we are increasing our alignment the strongest universities performing and growing to meet student demand and enhance their financial strength so we've looked hard again at which universities to build our business around and as you can see from the boxes on the top of the slide we are using a combination of factors the league tables are important but there's no single league table that tells its own story so qs global top 200 times top 50 and the tariff groups all feed into our analysis we look where there is the strongest demand and that demand exceeds places we look where the best student outcomes are delivering across employment earnings and value add and where students are more likely to live away from home and we will work with the most financially robust universities these These universities are the ones which will continue to grow and are best placed to withstand future challenges. The market has changed and will continue to evolve so we are upping our game on how we use data to stay ahead of these changes and the data and analysis is more important now than it ever has been. We know that these universities want to work with us and we can help them to deliver a fundamental part of their offer, the accommodation. We're seeing how, when we get it right, they will trust us to go deeper, giving us more opportunities for nominations and joint ventures. Whilst university's strength and demand sits at the heart of our portfolio selection, where we position our portfolio also takes into account wider factors. Supply and constrained comply clearly plays into that across university stock, purpose-built, HMOs and built-to-rent. We also want to focus where we have the best relationships and the highest potential for joint ventures and nominations and ensuring we have the prime locations for our target universities, which means that we will often be reducing our exposure in cities to more peripheral assets. We are making an ambitious statement to realign to these universities that will have enduring performance and demand. And we will focus our portfolio on 55,000 to 60,000 beds across 20 cities. We will work with fewer, stronger universities. And we expect demand growth to outpace supply in these locations, supporting our 95% to 97% occupancy, CPI plus rental growth and higher margins. We will also serve customers for longer. By extending the customer lifecycle, we will use the Hello Student brand to retain customers after living with us for the first year, and Mike will provide more colour on the portfolio direction and how this will evolve. This is the portfolio of the future. These are great institutions and we are proud to be working alongside them, providing homes for their students whilst they spend their time at university. So disposals and investments are working in tandem to reshape the portfolio for the long run. We will sell 15,000 to 20,000 beds to make sure we are aligned to those strongest universities and our pipeline will see us deliver 6,000 new beds in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle. We've sold 130 million of assets in the first half and there's 500 million of assets which are currently being marketed across 12 different processes and we have just over 100 million under offer today. We've kicked off a wider portfolio disposal process and we are exploring all options to ensure that we can deliver the portfolio of the future as quickly as we can. We are speaking to investors now and we are making progress and this will see us delivering our portfolio of the future over the next 12 to 24 months. The market is softer than it was at the start of the year as I'm sure you know due to sustained higher funding costs and macro uncertainties both at home and abroad and real estate transactions take time and we're not sellers at any price but we will continue to operate at pace and evaluate offers based on forward returns from the assets and the alternative uses of that capital such as share buybacks. So we remain focused on allocating capital to high quality accommodation to say we're investing in two areas, first development, high quality, high income returning schemes such as the Hawthorne House scheme opening this summer which is now fully let. We're also on site with over 4,000 university beds and we continue to see a meaningful opportunity to add further joint ventures. We've completed 165 million of share buybacks in H1 and we still see Unite shares as the best way for us to invest in high quality student accommodation today. We will continue to evaluate further buybacks as we complete on disposals and our platform is a sustainable competitive advantage for Unite in both revenues and costs and we see the benefits of this in our operations every day and that's why we're ahead of the market. If you look at the chart on the bottom left, Stu Rents now produce a monthly market report which covers around two-thirds of the direct let beds. At the end of June, the direct let sales across the sector are at 59% reserved. On our direct let beds, we were 11 points ahead at Unite and 10 points ahead at Hello and this is showing the great progress that we've been making on our sales and Karin will talk in more detail about the precise actions that we've undertaken to drive that. We also see it in our lower costs because of our scale and our efficiency. We're on targets to capture 18 million of empiric synergies ahead of target, having closed their head office and taken out the cost of city teams while improving performance. And we're working on further improvements to manage costs across our portfolio. There's more to come from our new IT infrastructure. We're embracing the benefits of AI. We're focusing on both improving margin and investing alongside and into student welfare and our building quality. We know that we've got work to do but we've been busy and we've been effective in the first half and it's good to see momentum building. So I'll now hand over to Karen to provide more detail on the great work the operations team has been delivering.

Thanks Joe. So overall, we are pleased by how teams across the business have responded to the changing market dynamics and grown share for both brands. On the Unite portfolio, across nominations and direct let, we are now 89% reserve versus 87% last year. Strong growth in the undergraduate applications at UK's strongest universities has underpinned this performance. In addition, direct-led bookings have increased, with returners up almost a third. Pricing has been pragmatic, but disciplined. At the outset, we took a decision not to offer high incentives. Instead, our simple, transparent pricing with tenancy lengths that work for the undergraduate market have helped us win more customers. Some prices have been adjusted to drive overall income. Nottingham is a good example of this, where we will be fully occupied this year versus 70% last year, with income up 20%. Overall, we are on track to achieve occupancy and rental growth in line with our guidance, with focus very much on maximising income. Clearing is a critical period, and we have an important few weeks ahead of us. We are taking decisive action to make sure we capitalise on every opportunity and we will share a sales update in mid-September. One of the strengths of our platform is that we have great long-term inflation-linked nominations and a commercial engine that can drive direct-led bookings. Nominations continue to be critical for the UK's strongest universities as their offer of guaranteed accommodation for first-year and international students is a core part of their value proposition. This has enabled us to improve the overall quality of our nominations. 94% are now either with high tariff or medium tariff universities who continue to drive a great residential experience. We also have a strong pipeline of future nominations with early renewal requests from several leading universities. We have 3,500 rooms and advanced stage negotiations on long-term agreements ahead of previous cycles. That said, as we have seen this year, universities are being more cautious and some lower-tariff universities have taken fewer beds with us. Where we have seen nominations reduce, we have successfully sold these directly. We have sold nearly a third more rooms through our direct-led channels this year. In addition to our pricing strategy, two initiatives that have contributed to the success are worth calling out. First, our city teams have done brilliantly to retain more of our current customers. On-site sales are up 80% year-on-year. And as you can see from this visual, this was our mobile advertising van in Leeds that went around campus on open day, generating hundreds of leads for the team. We have been more local and more creative with our marketing efforts. Second, we have optimized our website and refined our marketing programs, which has helped drive nearly 30% more online bookings. Overall, DirectLets still command a 10% premium to our nomination beds, and we will continue to invest in our platform capabilities. This ability to sell both to universities and direct to students is a great example of why I believe Unite has the best operating platform in the UK and why we have consistently beaten the market. So, what happens next? Here is the typical sales cycle. We are now starting its last leg. The international booking window is very much open and our sales teams are exceptionally busy helping students make the right choice. That said, this market is still tough to predict, especially postgraduate demand from markets like China. On the home front, in three weeks, UK students will find out how they've done in their A-levels and where they are going. Clearing is always massive for the undergraduate segments. Around 77,000 students use clearing either to find a course, switch their university or do both. We expect stronger universities to go hard for UK domestic students to compensate for any international postgraduate uncertainty and some of our existing partners have already approached us to see if we could hold some rooms. We have a critical few weeks to go and but we are well prepared and well positioned. We are talking to our nomination and university partners weekly which will soon become daily. We have stress tested all our sales channels including our websites and our teams are trained and ready to go. Let me shift gears and talk Hello Student and how we have driven value by making it part of our best-in-class operating platform. At the time of the Hello acquisition in February there were questions about our ability to sell a proposition and operating model that differed from Unite's traditional offer. While we still have work to do, I am really proud of how our teams have seized this opportunity. They have made great progress and we are confident we can unlock the full potential of the Hello brand as part of the Unite platform. At the headline level, we are 77% occupied. That's up 9% on last year. And as Joe shared earlier, Hello is now 10 points ahead of the market. A key part of the success has been the introduction of a dedicated international sales team who are all native mandarin speakers they have adopted the same sales tools and processes that we use on the unite portfolio and have driven nearly 22 million in sales in just six months we have also enhanced their marketing programs and brought the same sales focus that we have at unite properties to the hello frontline as well as a result we have increased the weekly sale weekly rate of sale by 50% since they joined the group. We now expect occupancy in the 88% to 90% range, which is well supported by the current weekly sales trajectory. Rental growth will also be broadly in line with the Unite portfolio. Again, we are targeting overall income growth rather than purely occupancy or rental growth. On the integration side, we are ahead of plan as well. City teams are now operating as one. Above property teams have been streamlined. finance platforms have been migrated and central roles and contracts have been rationalized. As a result I'm pleased to say that we have increased the annualized run rate savings to 18 million and have already secured 9 million of that in 26. Final bit for me, Unite has built a market leading position in first-year accommodation with nearly 60% of our residents in this segment and we will grow our share here through our on-campus joint ventures. However first year students represent only about a quarter of the total student accommodation market. The biggest segment is students who are returning undergraduates. We have a great opportunity to grow our share through this segment which accounts for over for around half of the market but represents only a quarter of our customer base today. The majority of the students are currently being poorly served by the by an HMO sector in decline with variable levels of quality and increasing regulation. Hello strengthens our proposition for this segment, enabling us to retain more students and capture a greater share of this attractive market. I'm personally really excited that over the next few years we can further differentiate our brands and provide students with a place they can call home throughout the university journey. And on that note, let me hand over to Mike.

Thanks, Karen. Good morning, everyone. I'm now going to take us through a review of finance and property for the first half. I'll start with the run-through of our H1 numbers, I'll then build on what Joe said earlier and dig a bit deeper into how we're delivering our strategy to grow our alignment to the UK's strongest universities. First, turning to our H1 performance, which is in line with our expectations. We're pleased with the operational performance delivered in what's been a challenging trading environment. We've also taken proactive steps to reduce costs in response to reduced earnings. This has come as valuations adjust to a new operating environment. We've delivered a good operating performance in the first half. Rental income increased by 1.5% on a life-for-life basis, as rental growth more than offset lower occupancy. This includes additional income secured since the start of the year through short-term lettings of unsold rooms, which has added half a percentage point to occupancy. We completed our empiric acquisition in late January, and H1 includes five months' contribution from the transaction. We've been proactive in reviewing our cost base, taking action to deliver savings in staffing and central costs. This has held underlying costs broadly stable and will continue to drive efficiencies now that we've integrated the Hello Student platform. Our target is first to stabilise then grow our margins as we transition to our future portfolio. Earnings and EPS in the first half were in line with our expectations. Adjusted EPS reduced 8% to 27.1p, reflecting higher interest costs and the impact of the Hello! Student Acquisition ahead of full realisation of the cost synergies to come. Our interim dividend is unchanged at 12.8p. As Joe said, the investment market for student accommodation is in a period of adjustment, with investors seeking higher returns to reflect increased funding costs and less certain occupancy. There's still significant capital targeting the sector, but transaction activity has slowed as buyers show pricing discipline and take time to work through due diligence particularly around fire safety we've seen this sentiment reflected in our first half valuations property yields increased by 29 basis points in the half to an average of five and a half percent yields have increased in all markets but valuations have been less impacted for properties benefiting from multi-year nomination agreements with the universities we're seeing value-added investors remain the most active they're attracted by the opportunity to acquire housing at substantial discounts to replacement cost turning to the balance sheet epra net tangible assets per share reduced by nine percent in h1 to 865p this reflects a minus 6.4 percent movement in property values mainly driven by that increase in property yields rental values have reduced slightly reflecting those properties where we've made targeted price adjustments to drive higher income development properties were also impacted by lower assumed values on completion. We bought back £165 million of shares in H1, representing 6% of our equity. This added 828p to NTA due to the discount at which we acquired the shares. We've continued to deliver our programme of fire safety enhancements in the first half and expect to recognise further remediation costs in our year-end valuations. This will be partly offset by further success in recovering costs from contractors. I'll now move on to discuss our priorities for capital allocation and how we're delivering the strategy set out by Joe earlier. Our approach to capital allocation is based on growing our alignment to the UK's strongest universities. This is the same plan we set out at our investor event in November, what's changed is the pace at which we're delivering it. We and our teams are fully committed to delivering this plan, with a clear focus on the value this delivers for investors. Over the first half we've significantly increased our disposal activity and the majority of properties identified for sale and now on the market or set to be launched this puts us on track for three to four hundred million pounds of disposals this year and significant further asset sales in 2027 the capital we release from disposals will be used in three ways firstly to maintain our strong balance sheet secondly to fund the investment into our committed development university partnerships and where we have surplus capital it will be invested where it delivers the strongest risk-adjusted returns for shareholders. This next slide expands on how we'll reposition our portfolio for the future with a clear focus on the UK's strongest universities. The column in grey shows where we stand today. 72,000 beds in 29 markets across Unite and Hello Student. This is already a high quality portfolio but performance has become more variable between cities and properties over the past two years. Based on our detail analysis of market and our universities we've identified 15 to 20 000 beds for disposal this will see us exit a number of markets and increase the focus of our portfolio in the strongest locations within these cities these disposals are priced at very affordable rents but generate lower occupancy and rental growth and operate at lower margins these properties are not part of our future portfolio but other investors see the potential to drive healthy returns through higher occupancy underpinned by valuations at significant discounts to replacement cost. Our planned disposals account for around a quarter of our operational beds but closer to 15% by value of the portfolio due to their lower price points. These disposals provide the capital for us to reinvest in our high quality pipeline of developments and university partnerships shown in yellow. Income for this pipeline is underpinned by nomination agreements on our university joint ventures where we're building new beds in the strongest on-campus locations. The column in blue shows our goal, a more focused and higher quality future portfolio which delivers stronger operating performance through income underpinned by a foundation of nomination agreements. Here we illustrate the operational strength of that future portfolio. The chart on the left shows how occupancy has significantly outperformed our planned disposals in recent years. This reflects stronger demand and tighter supply conditions. We also see greater opportunities for nomination agreements in these markets, where our university partners are most in need of new beds. London is a great example of this, where we have most demand for new long-term nomination agreements and healthy tension from a strong direct let market. There's a strong relationship between our occupancy and rental growth, and the greater demand for our future portfolio supports higher rental growth. This outperformance has been borne out in recent sales cycles, and we expect it to continue. This slide shows how supply is tightening in our markets. It is really tough to develop new student accommodation today due to high costs and longer development programs. Valuations are now significantly below the cost of new build in most markets and this has led to fewer planning applications for student housing and a significant slowdown in new construction starts. The wider supply picture is also getting tighter with obsolescence in university owned stock and further contraction in the private rented sector. The net effect is that growth in housing demand is expected to exceed new supply in the next two to three years. And as the largest donor of operational student housing, we stand to benefit through stronger prospects for rental growth. Our development pipeline supports our strategy to grow with the UK's strongest universities, and will see us deliver 6,000 new beds over the next four years. We'll soon open Hawthorne House in Stratford, where we've delivered 700 student beds and a new academy school. We're fully let on opening with half the beds let to the University of the Arts London on a long-term nomination agreement. UAL is ranked number two globally for art and design so it's elite in its field. You won't see it at the top of overall league tables because it's too specialised but it has surplus demands similar to the UK's elite universities and it's a great example of one of those strongest universities we'll partner with in the future. University joint ventures remain a significant opportunity for us to grow in the future due to our partner's need for more high quality beds at affordable rents building on the success of our joint ventures with newcastle and manchester metropolitan we have a handful of live opportunities for new joint ventures with high quality universities these take time to deliver and we'll consider them alongside other uses of capital such as share buybacks to ensure we invest where we deliver the strongest risk adjusted returns we have a strong balance sheet and our future capital allocation decisions will ensure we maintain this foundation our net debt ebit dar increased seven and a half times on a pro-forma basis at June following the Hello Student Acquisition. We expect this to reduce back to our six to seven times target over the next 12 months as we make progress with disposals. The flexibility of our balance sheet is one of our key strengths and our funds and joint ventures give us access to different forms of capital. The benefits of our structure were demonstrated in the first half through the disposal of St Pancras Way to USAF. We will continue to use third-party capital to access opportunities we couldn't otherwise reach like university partnerships and there's also the opportunity to generate new management fee income where other investors recognize the value of our operating platform our debt book is well hedged but as we flagged before higher marginal borrowing costs in our cost of debt will increase over time as we refinance I'll now finish with our earnings guidance for 2026 which remains unchanged this reflects our performance in H1 and good progress on sales the next academic year on the slide we step through the key updates underpinning our guidance. Starting with rental income, H1 was slightly ahead of our expectations thanks to additional income from short-term leasing. This is offset by a one-off reduction in income linked to the introduction of the Renters' Rights Act. All new PBSA tenancies will be exempt under the Act, but in the initial transition period students had the ability to exercise early leave requests. The result is a 0.6p impact to earnings in H2, which is greater than our initial assumptions. Costs are tracking in line with our expectations, but H2 will see a reduction in management fees linked to lower valuations. And the extension of our share buyback programme from 100 to 165 million is accretive to earnings. And finally, for Hello Student, the strong progress we've made on integration has led to us increasing our occupancy target. Taken together, these factors support a reiteration of our earnings guidance for 41.5p to 43p for the year. And with that, I'll hand you back to Joe.

Thank you, Mike. Before we move on to Q&A, let me just summarise the key points from this morning's discussion. Unite is the home for the UK's strongest universities, and we're excited about the strategy that we've set out today, and we're really focused on delivering it. The strongest universities are performing, and will continue to do so, and we are serious about aligning to these institutions. We will be disciplined with our capital, and our best-in-class platform is delivering higher occupancy at lower costs. We have an important few weeks to go of the sales cycle, and we have an ambitious disposal programme, but we are in a good place at this stage of the year.

So taken together, the work that we are doing is improving our business and positioning us for a return to growth so let's take some questions so if we've got any questions in the room let's let's start there we've got a microphone at the back thanks Caroline just regarding your disposal program just wondering if you give us a timeline there and maybe unexpected NOI impact in the average yield that you're expecting to dispose of those assets at and then maybe just from your discussions with investors for those assets how are potential investors

thinking about pricing just given some of the valuation declines that you've seen in the first half sure hopefully you've kind of kind of understood the reason why we are embarking on this disposal program from what we talked about and you know the need for us to get to a place where we have more consistent occupancy and and stickier rental growth as we stated the overall plan is to deliver 15 to 20,000 beds of disposals representing 20-25% by beds and 15% by value as Mike talked about and we've got a target of delivering three to four hundred million this year. We are restating that today given the progress that we are making. 130 million of that has been delivered so far and there's a further 500 million which is on the market through around a dozen processes and we've got 100 million of that which is currently under offer. beyond that we've started a process to look at the remainder of those disposals and we talked about this back in April and we are looking at all options around how we go about delivering those sales and doing that with the pace that we want to want to deliver it yeah it's not a straightforward market to be selling into and I think for all the reasons that we've been seeing but we've seen you know good good appetite and in investor interest into the various processes that we're running and as Mike said these are good assets they're high yielding their price well below replacement costs and the people that we're talking to see opportunities to drive NOI improvement from them and deliver the returns that they they need to you know ultimately the market will determine what the price of these assets will be and our job is then to determine you know on what we think we can generate from the returns on those assets how that compares to the alternative uses of our capital. And the thing that we've hopefully reiterated over the last six months is that focus on capital allocation, capital discipline, to make those right choices when we are faced with bids on these different types of assets. So, you know, we are working at pace. You know, we are set out a target for this year.

And we believe that within 12 to 24 months, we will deliver the portfolio of the future that we think will then drive the long-term sustainable business and growth that we can take from there. and just another one on nomination agreements we've seen quite I guess solid student application numbers how your discussions with universities going post those numbers and then perhaps into next year if application volumes remain robust would you see I guess universities come back with those nomination agreements or is it more of a structural trend where universities are managing their finances differently yeah I think as we've we've talked about on

various trading updates we have been a bit surprised by the fact that universities have not renewed nominations agreements at the level they have done in the past and that doesn't quite fit with what we've seen around applications and I think that reflects as Karin talked about a slight increase in caution particularly among some of the lower tariff universities wanting to really wait until they see what their final numbers will be and we are seeing that through conversations with universities you know I think they will go hard in clearing but clearing will be competitive so there probably is greater levels of uncertainty around where those final numbers will turn up but we're talking to them regularly I think the the option for us to pick up a few more nominations beds is relatively high over the remainder of the sales cycle but what is encouraging is as we have those conversations we look forward to the nominations agreements for 27 28 and even 28 29 and actually with those stronger universities that we're aligning to we're seeing you know actually really encouraging signs about the demand for longer term agreements which are sort of more akin to you know 7 10 15 years with CPI underpins as well and we will obviously update as we as we make progress on those those agreements but I think this shift kind of plays into and feeds into the strategy that we've set out today that we think those nominations at the strongest universities are where we will continue to uh will continue to

win and will be important part of our overall lettings program morning it's zachary gage from ubs a couple of questions first one on valuation um you were minus 6.4 percent on the portfolio but if I take the weighted valuation change based on the USAF-ELSAF valuations, you'd have been at minus 4.7. Could you just touch on why there was quite a material difference between the Unite portfolio revaluation versus where USAF and ELSAF would have implied, and is any of that related to the valuers having some early sight on where the disposals will go through at? And then the second question is on your occupancy guide for 26-27. Perhaps I'm being a little bit simplistic here, but if you're running 2% ahead of where you were last year, and last year was 95%, why would you not expect your outcome to be slightly stronger than 94% to 96%?

So I'll take the first one, Mike, and then you carry on on the second. Yeah, on occupancy, I think we are ahead, and I think your simplistic analysis is fair. We know that it will be a competitive clearing process. we're seeing you know we're trading ahead of where the market is so we know that a number of our competitors are clearly behind where we are so as we've seen in previous cycles that has led to some sort of quite strong incentivization and discounting from our competitors so you know we're probably being you know suitably cautious we were surprised through last year's clearing that we didn't see the demand coming from international post graduates in the second half of September so I think at this stage we're saying there is enough uncertainty for us to maintain our overall position on 94 to 96 just given that sort of environment it is still a changing market and you know we are we will play all the cards as current sets out we're having those conversations we're ready for it hopefully we can beat it but we're sticking with that guidance at 94 to 96.

And then Zach to your question on valuations yeah there's always some differences between valuation movements between funds, so Holio, Nilsav and USAF, fundamentally the trends are the same. We've seen valuers move up yields in pretty much all markets. And I think if you stand back, as you might expect, we've seen the valuation movement on disposals be slightly higher than the valuation movement on the portfolio as an average.

Good morning, it's Tom Musson at Berenberg.

Just a question, just given the valuation decline, LTV now 36%, debt to EBITDA seven and a half times, how do you see best capital allocation right now with any surplus capital you might have just between buying back more shares investing in the pipeline or deleveraging Tom I think as we set out in our capital allocation framework you know it starts with having a strong balance sheet as a foundation so we'd expect that leverage to come down over time as we make progress on disposals as you say we're slightly above the six to seven times net EBITDA range today but we expect that to reduce over the next 12 months then as we release you know excess capital from disposals there's two real uses one is clearly to

fund the development pipeline you know we have costs that will continue to go into delivering that over the next three to four years but we also expect there to be surplus capital which we can reinvest in the first half some of that's gone to share buybacks in the future we'll consider whether that's share buybacks or maybe university partnerships you maybe second one just on hello student as you mentioned before lease up is going well and ahead of last year you're guiding to 88 to 90 percent occupancy if the hello student occupancy ends up effectively full or you know or at least in line with your target for the unite student portfolio how meaningful could that be to earnings yeah a percent of occupancy told me hello student is

worth just under a million pounds in income so you know we are of the view that 88 to 90 is you know where we'll end up now you know clearly we'll have more visibility as we move through the rest of the sales cycle but that gives you a sense of where we could be were we to be any better just a quick one just about these risk adjusted returns and when you're kind of weighing up one one project versus another are you thinking more about cash back returns there or total returns when we're thinking about investment next one was just really about the most active pools of capital in the pbsa market at the moment you said it was a bit more difficult but i was curious about who the strongest bidders are and the final one oh yeah it was just about HMOs have we seen the next acceleration in exits from the HMO market I don't know if there's any kind of current data you can provide us with there I'll take the second two Mike and I'll throw back to you on the first one go for it so in terms of pools of capital the you know as I say we've got a dozen processes which are running that ranges from non-student assets including the school at Hawthorne House to our build-to-rent asset down in Stratford.

We've got some land and we've got some lower growth assets. So we've actually got quite a wide range of different buyers who are exploring those options. If we look at the PBSA assets, because that's probably more relevant, for those assets, they are at the lower growth end. They are the assets which we highlighted back in November as hadn't performed as strongly last year. So that is value-add capital. And I say we've seen a very strong level of interest in terms of the number of parties who enter the data in the side NDAs and have expressed interest in bidding on those assets and that is value add capital. That is clearly those investors who happen to roll up their sleeves, make the assets work, probably bring a different operating model and try and drive the NOI. I think as we shift into that next round of disposals which are probably more in a wider range of assets, we have got some in some really strong universities but we feel may be in in the locations which weren't performing strongly we're sort of moving up i'd say the sort of towards core core plus capital and actually seeing those types of you know international core core plus some private equity some institutional but it is a wide range and i think you know the the interesting about the residential market and also pbsa it does attract quite a wide range of capital pools and we're seeing that you know i think they are they're active they're looking and I guess like all of us trying to figure out what the appropriate kind of returns and and elements that they need to deliver on these these types of acquisitions. On the HMO market yeah it's quite an interesting time for that market I think the Renters Rights Act is coming into play for the first time this year. Two impacts that will have on those HMO landlords one is that they will not be able to enter into a formal tenancy until more than six months ahead of the start of the academic year and secondly those students who live there will be able to effectively give two months notice to leave early. Now it's probably a bit too early to see what that impact will be but intuitively when we've seen changes like this before in HMO that has led to a reduction in the numbers of landlords. Over the last four years we've seen about a nine percent reduction in HMO licensed houses in the UK and I think that comes with some of the changes we've seen around regulation, environmental compliance and the tax treatment for those landlords. So kind of the sense is that there is more pressure on that space, the fact that we've outperformed on our UK return of sales so far in this sales cycle again is positive in that some of the actions we've taken that students are starting to look at that potentially it's a squeezed supply so it feeds into that sort of broader feeling that those houses are coming you know increasingly under pressure and we would expect to see a decline in that and it's probably not going to meet it but over the next three years we would expect to see a decline.

And then coming back to your question Chris on risk adjusted returns what do we mean by risk adjusted returns so we think about it in total return terms so income and capital but clearly there is more importance on on income as an underpin there so income today matters more than income tomorrow you know we think about the the risk of delivering returns from different opportunities we think about the time it takes to to get there you know i talked about development development taking longer and this means it's harder to underwrite development now than it would have been in the past which is why when we're thinking about allocating capital you know things like share buybacks become relevant because we generate income today we're essentially reinvesting in a portfolio which we think is high quality delivers good growth and is aligned to those strongest universities so again we always bring it back to the impact this will have from shareholders and we're very conscious of the risk involved in different forms of investment great looks like we've got no one in the room mike is there any on the uh on the webcast yeah we've got a few on the webcast so i'll start with andrew's tomb from green street how do you see the impact of disposals on achieving future earnings growth given that these are higher yielding assets and then what do you consider as the minimum hurdle when thinking about the balance of disposals and new investments versus buybacks happy to take that one so yeah we are repositioning the business you know as joe said you know our focus is very much on accelerating that transition to the strongest universities and that will mean a significant volume of disposals over the next two years you know we've set out where we are in earnings this year you know we will be in a transition still during 2027 but that's all about us being able to deliver earnings growth from 2028 and onwards and i think you can already see the foundations of that in the way those stronger future assets are performing you know they're delivering higher occupancy better rental growth at higher margins in the point in terms of the balance of new investments versus buybacks it kind of goes to the question we just talked about on risk adjusted it returns you know we will always consider what the best use of capital is when we have it available you know it has been buybacks in the first half of the year historically it's been developments in university partnerships you know as and when we have that capital available we'll make the best decision in the interest of shareholders on where we put it next question then comes from Paul May you highlight the ability to switch beds between nomination agreements and direct let's at higher ends can you explain that in more detail um you also note increased marketing can you give a sense of whether this will impact your opex and operating margins yeah i'm happy to take that so our direct lead beds

on average have a 10 premium to what we get from nominations and nominations do benefit from income security and as a result uh universities do get a bit of a discount but when we go back and price them on the open market we're able to get a little bit more the last few years has been really strong for the direct lead market which is further sort of enhance the direct lead returns. For any property that is coming back from nominations to direct lead, we are able to take that to our, depending on the channel that we want to go through, so if it's a property that we feel has got real potential for international students, we have a great network of over 20 agents that we work with across China, India, the Middle East, the US, so they will be given an opportunity to sell that at competitive rates or we will take it directly through our own channels be it the website we have a pretty significant virtual sales team as well and then our on-property teams do a phenomenal job as I mentioned earlier and have driven you know almost sort of double what they had done last year as well so whenever we get anything back we look at all of the channels available to us and we have sort of built up these channels further and further over the last sort of few years.

I think just to build on what Karan said in terms of the impact on margin marketing costs were fairly flat in the first half of the year we will make investments where we think it drives income and value you know as we said we need to manage our cost base for the income we're generating and fundamentally and our target is on how we stabilize the margin and then grow it in the future if it's right to invest more in marketing we'll have to find savings elsewhere to enable us to to achieve where we want to go on the margin we've then got a couple of questions from a Kangsha Anand at Citigroup sorry average can you give a sense of average yields in and outside London and what's driving that so in terms of average valuation yields what we've seen is the London market is trending towards around just under five percent the best regional cities now at around five and a half to five and three quarters and what you're then seeing is that regional markets and some of the assets we're selling are probably in the range of six to seven and a half percent. So there's a range across the country depending on sort of supply and demand dynamics and what we're seeing in the investment market. Second question from Akanksha is in recent renewals and deliveries for university partnerships what is the average uplift achieved versus indexation on those agreements?

So on university renewals that we're currently doing we are still sort of looking at growing rents and indexing them by CPI. We, again, look at where the market is, a lot of the relationship that we have of long-term, and they understand the value of the service that we provide. It's never really just a price discussion with universities. It is a combination of what are the additional services that you provide, how are you going to integrate your welfare services with our student support services. So on that whole basis, we're still able to command a pretty good rent on those properties. what we also do is look at what the alternative to that particular business is going to be nominations for us is a great tool but it is one of the two channels if we feel that we can get a better return and a better rent from that property onto the direct lead we will take that back onto the direct lead which we have done over the last couple of years with a few properties then got a question from vency ilia of astolat capital uh could you explain why you see buybacks is a good use of capital do you see this as eps accretive net of the disposals to offset the impact in leverage understanding that they do add a benefit to nta yeah so again i'll sort of bring

it back to the disposal program and where we're taking the portfolio so we want to reposition the business those strongest universities and we will be selling a meaningful chunk of assets over the next one to two years to do that that will release surplus capital you know it is true that we will generally be selling slightly high yielding assets but we think that is exactly the right thing to do in terms of the quality of the portfolio and the future growth prospects of the business. Where we have that surplus capital we reinvest it. Clearly the kind of returns we can derive from a share buyback depend on a number of factors including the share price. We think share buybacks substantially offset the impact of some of those disposals we'll be making but as I said there will still be a transition as we move from where we are today to that stronger future portfolio and that transition will take place over the next one to two years and then that's that's it great well thank you for questions both in the room and on the webcast and thank you all for for joining us as well today clearly there is plenty for us to do but we are pleased with the lettings momentum across unite and hello and we're well set for

clearing. Hopefully you picked up our excitement about the opportunity and our commitment to deliver on this over the coming months. So thank you all for joining us and look forward to seeing you soon.