Newriver REIT (LSE:NRR) — Full Year Results

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the NEWRIVER REIT PLC Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform.

0:31 Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from NEWRIVER REIT PLC. Alan, good morning, sir. Good Morning, Anne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for listening in to our full year results presentation for our financial year ending the 03/31/2025. Last financial year was a busy and highly successful year for NEWRIVER. The key highlights of which was the acquisition of Capital Regional PLC, which we completed that transaction on the December 10. The acquisition of Capital Regional increases our scale with gross assets up 65% and is highly earnings accretive, already delivering a 25 increase in our underlying funds from operations, which is our cash profit measure with further earnings growth to come through in f y twenty six and f y twenty seven.

1:34 The acquisition was paid for in NEWRIVER shares and cash, which also involved a highly successful equity raise in September last year, reflecting its compelling strategic benefits and the confidence in both NEWRIVER and also our marketplace. Importantly, our m and a activity last year did not detract from our operational performance, which has been excellent. Our portfolio significantly outperformed the market in terms of year on year consumer spend growth, and that is supporting the success of our occupiers in our portfolio. Earnings growth in our opinion will be the main driver of shareholder returns over the years ahead.

2:22 And we're confident that with a portfolio that is performing well, a growing capital partnership business and the realization of the significant benefits that flow from our completed m and a activities, our shareholders are set to benefit from materially higher dividend covered dividend.

2:44 The acquisition of, Capital Regional is an excellent strategic fit that is already delivering significant operational and financial benefits that we expected. The extensive pre acquisition diligence that we undertook demonstrated that their six community shopping centers are complementary with our own portfolio in terms of customer and tenant profile. The transaction increases the combined portfolio by 65% to just under £900,000,000 in value with a high weighting to London and the Southeast Of England, which we view as a positive. The transaction also presents a unique opportunity to unlock material cost savings of £6,200,000 and deliver mid to high teens earnings per share accretion.

3:38 It enhances our equity market profile, our share liquidity, financial flexibility and debt maturity profiles, all whilst maintaining our robust capital, structure. Price paid is critically important in determining future returns and we believe we acquired Capital Regional at an attractive level. At acquisition, their assets were valued at £350,000,000 resulting in a net asset value of a £175,000,000 which compares favorably to the price that we paid of a £151,000,000, a discount of 14%. We're really pleased with how well the integration process has gone that reflects the detailed planning that we put in place prior to the completion on the December 10.

4:34 One of the key benefits of the transaction is the opportunity to unlock the significant cost savings. And in that regard, we are on track to deliver the £6,200,000 of cost savings identified by the end of f y twenty six on an annualized basis. Already duplicative corporate costs have been removed and all people synergies, agreed and implemented. And finally, their office space has been sublet. The capital regional assets have already been fully onboarded onto the NEWRIVER REIT platform, and we have been pleased with the leasing performance in terms of pricing ahead of values ERVs and rent collection, occupancy, and tenant retention rates all remaining high.

5:23 In addition, we now also own Snow Zone, The UK's largest indoor ski operator with locations in Milton Keynes, Yorkshire, and Madrid, providing a positive and growing contribution to our underlying funds from operations. The extensive pre acquisition diligence and preparation that we undertook has served us well and gives us great confidence in the future performance of this strategically important acquisition.

5:57 Our acquisition of Capital Regional was well timed given it is our view that our marketplace is in its strongest position for a decade. We believe this for four key reasons. Firstly, The UK consumers balance sheet remains strong with elevated savings, stable house prices, low levels of unemployment, and wages have have been exceeding inflation since June 2023. This has support this has supported retail and supermarket spending, which based on Lloyds Bank data has delivered continued year on year sales growth of 1.5% for the twelve months to March 2025 despite the increase in consumer essential spending such on such as on mortgages and council tax.

6:48 Secondly, much of the corporate restructuring has already taken place in the occupational markets with the weaker retailers removed from the market and with that taking out the excess competition. Thirdly, most national retailers have focused for a number of years on operational efficiency and margin growth and that's leading to improved financial results. Finally, pure play online retail is going through its own period of disruption with a line between in store and online sales increasingly blurred. And omnichannel retailers have been gaining market share. And this is positive for our sector as the physical store is at the center of omnichannel retailing.

7:37 As a result, vacancy is falling driven by increased occupational demand. And with that, rental growth is emerging for assets in the right locations. Collectively, these improving market dynamics have not gone unnoticed by investors with shopping center and retail park investment volumes up over 70% in 2024 versus 2023, attracted by the strength of the occupational market, rebased values, availability of credit, and high income returns. Now before I hand over to Will, we also announced the off market sale of our shopping center in Belfast at book value for £58,800,000 following the successful completion of our asset management strategy and the extraction of maximum value presented from this asset.

8:34 The proceeds of that sale will be reinvested into opportunities that will deliver superior income and capital growth in due course. Now I'll hand over to Will. Thanks, Alan, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be taking you through the results of what's been a transformational year for us. Although the Capital and Regional transaction only completed in December, we're already more profitable on a per share basis with further growth to come through looking forward. We also have more scale in our p and l and on our balance sheet, and we've achieved this while maintaining financial discipline and balance sheet strength. And that's where I'll start today with our key balance sheet and debt metrics.

9:23 This slide shows how our position changed during FY '25 as the capital and regional acquisition progressed, with the September column including the impact of the significantly oversubscribed equity raise to part fund the transaction and the March 25 column reflecting the impact of the completion of the acquisition. In summary, we've increased the scale of our business with the size of the portfolio increased just under £900,000,000 by acquiring a portfolio of complementary assets with a well diversified tenant base as an attractive entry point. Cash is tracked back down towards more normalized levels from a £185,000,000 back in September to 62,000,000 in March.

10:10 Onto gross debt, where we now have a more diversified maturity profile with enhanced financial flexibility and increased scale for future financing. And we've achieved this while maintaining or remaining predominantly unsecured and maintaining our investment grade credit ratings. Lastly, on the balance sheet, NTA per share, which reduced by 9p during the first half of the year, just under 6p of which was due to the equity raise in September, and 2p was due to a landy where the value of the asset management platform acquired is excluded from the EPRA NTA calculation. We guided at the half year that we expected NTA to reduce slightly in the second half to around 102p, principally due to CNR completion, including remaining transaction costs.

11:00 And you can see we've ended the year in line with that guidance. Onto our overall debt metric position across net debt to EBITDA, interest cover, and loan to value, which remained very strong post transaction and has improved post year end with the sale of the Abbey Centre in Belfast, meaning on a pro form a basis, our LTV reduced within guidance within six months of CNR completion. As you can see on this slide, which starts with the LTV movement during the first half, showing a modest initial reduction due to h one operational activity before a significant reduction in September following the equity raise to end the half at 22%.

11:49 The slide then shows the year end position of 42%, which incorporates deployment into the capital and regional acquisition and is in line with the transaction pro form a communicated at the half year, which is well below our policy of less than 50% and only marginally higher than our guidance of less than 40%. At the time of our half year results, we explained that we remained committed to our guidance and that we were confident we could return to the 40% level through a realistically achievable level of around £30,000,000 of asset disposals. And that even at an LTV level modestly above guidance, we were very comfortable with the strength of our financial position post acquisition, especially considering LTV alongside our net debt to EBITDA and interest cover ratios.

12:39 I'm pleased to report that following the post year end disposal of the Abbey Centre in Belfast in line with March 25 and March 24 book values for net proceeds of just under £60,000,000, on a pro form a basis, our LTV has reduced to 38%, back within guidance. So to conclude, the strength of our financial position is measured not just with reference to LTV, but also net debt to EBITDA and interest cover. We've demonstrated financial discipline by returning LTV to within guidance within six months of completion. And we're currently progressing some more modest disposals, which we expect to complete in the coming weeks, again, in line with latest valuation. So we have modest capacity to redeploy right now and expect to have more shortly, and we're currently evaluating some very interesting deployment opportunities.

13:36 Next, debt structure. Starting with activity during the year and then covering priorities looking ahead over the next twelve months. As we flagged at the half year, immediately post completion, we repaid the three smaller, generally shorter dated and more expensive capital and regional facilities, which totaled £59,000,000 of its £199,000,000 of gross debt with a blended cost of over 6%. Meaning we retained the MAL facility, which was the largest of the Capital and Regional facilities at £140,000,000 and also the lowest cost at 3.5% with no porting costs and a maturity in January 27. This means that post acquisition, our cost of debt remains at 3.5% compared to a portfolio net initial yield of 7.1% or equivalent yield of 8.4%.

14:34 And that our debt structure remains predominantly unsecured with a more diversified debt maturity profile, enhanced financial flexibility, and increased scale for future financing. Features that were recognized by Fitch in September when they reaffirmed New River's investment grade credit ratings following our successful equity raise at BBB with a stable outlook and BBB plus on the bond itself. Looking ahead, we recognize that right now we're very well positioned with a low cost of debt and no immediate refinancing requirement. We're confident in our ability to refinance when needed. And in addition, we currently have around a £120,000,000 of cash pro form a for the disposal of the Abbey Centre and two extensions remaining on our undrawn 100,000,000 revolver.

15:27 So our total refi requirement is significantly less than the £440,000,000 of drawn debt we currently have, and we have some flexibility on timing. Clearly, the interest rate environment now is different to when we raised the bond in 2018. We want to make sure we extract maximum benefit from our current position, which we're aware has inherent value. But we're not complacent. We plan to be active in the debt market in the next twelve months, and our preference is to remain an unsecured borrower. On to UFFO, which has increased from 7.8p last year to 8.1p this year on a per share basis, including a 19% increase in h two versus h one following deployment and representing a 9% increase versus the pre CNR baseline of 7.4.

16:26 I'll focus on the key drivers of the pounds million movement from 24,400,000 last year to 30,500,000 this year, which is shown in the bridge on the left hand side of the slide. Net property income has increased by £4,800,000 in the year, principally due to the contribution from acquisitions. With the six capital and regional shopping centers included in core and Elandis net contribution to capital partnerships included in AM fees. Net of disposals, mainly from the workout portfolio, which now accounts for just 3% of our total portfolio. Moving on to other UFFO line items. Admin costs have increased slightly predominantly due to inflation as the majority of admin costs are payroll related, the effect of which we've mitigated through ongoing cost saving initiatives and due to the fact that we now have a slightly increased cost base following the acquisition of C and R.

17:28 Importantly, we've made good progress in unlocking the £6,200,000 of annual cost synergies identified during the acquisition And we're on track to have unlocked the full benefit on a look forward basis by the end of FY twenty twenty six. Next, Snowzone acquired as part of the CNR transaction, which is an independently run business with a high quality leadership team operating three indoor ski slopes in The UK and Spain. The EBITDA on the slide of £3,700,000 exceeds Snowzone's annual trading output because our initial period of ownership encompassed Snowzone's peak trading season without its period of controlled loss, which typically runs from May to September, Meaning, there will be seasonality in our earnings going forward with h two benefiting from peak trading and h one impacted by the controlled loss period.

18:27 Other income in the prior year related to our final COVID insurance settlement. And lastly, net finance costs have increased because we retained the MAO facility, which as previously mentioned, was the largest and also the lowest cost of the capital and regional facilities.

18:46 Next, on to our dividend. As you all know, we pay dividends twice per annum, announced within our half and full year results and based on 80% of the UFFO reported for the most recently completed six month period, which means that as our UFFO has grown in the second half following deployment, so too has our dividend to 3.5p per share from 3p per share in the first half, which takes our total FY twenty five dividend to 6.5p per share, comfortably a 125% covered by UFFO per share of 8.1p and representing a dividend yield of over 8% and an earnings yield of over 10%.

19:34 And I'd like to finish by expanding on the key areas we expect to generate UFFO growth from here. On the left hand side of the slide, we start with 7.4p per share, which is the simple annualization of the 3.7p of UFFO per share we reported in the first half of the year back in December. Before adding in, shown as number one on the slide, the accretion we saw in H2, net of transaction funding. This gets us to the 8.1p of UFFO per share we reported with our full year results. Looking forward, we then add in number two, the remaining C and R profit contribution, including synergies identified as part of the acquisition, which we're on track to unlock on an annualized basis by the end of FY twenty six.

20:27 Number three shows the impact of the post balance sheet disposal of the Abbey Center, which reduced LTV from 42% to circa 38%, as well as future deployment to 40% LTV in line with guidance. Number four shows the impact of refinancing the MAO facility, where we're currently benefiting from a cost of 3.5%, which will reset to the market rate prior to its maturity in January 27. Lastly, number five, which highlights the further growth drivers available to build earnings above and beyond the C and R acquisition. And to reiterate, through our dividend policy, the benefit of the FFO per share growth flows through to our shareholders as dividend.

21:16 Thank you for listening. I'll now hand you back to Alan. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Will. For several years now, we have consistently expressed confidence in our portfolio and that is very much endorsed by our operating metrics, which you can see on this slide. It is not surprising to us that given the underlying trading outperformance of our tenants in our portfolio, our tenant retention rate when it comes to lease expiry or break remained high at 90% and occupancy also remained high at 96.1%. And those two metrics are really underpinned by low and highly affordable average rents across our portfolio.

22:06 We were really pleased with our leasing performance in the year with long term leasing rents agreed at 17.5% above the previous rents and 8.8% above value as ERBs. An operating metric that we monitor closely is new leasing rent versus previous rent over what time period the rent has changed, which is why we track the compound annual growth rate of our leasing transactions. Now what is worth noting is that over the last three years combined, our compound annual growth rate has moved into a positive position at plus 0.7%, which is a significant achievement given the extent of disruption that we have seen in the retail markets over the last ten years.

23:00 We also, continue to maintain low tenant concentration in our rental cash flows with no single tenant accounting for more than 4% of our total contracted rent. Now we're strong believers that access to high quality data allows us to make better decisions whether that relates to capital deployment, leasing, tenant mix, marketing or overall risk assessment of assets. The most important data in our opinion is live consumer spending data, which provides an insight into the millions of customers that visit our assets. This is why we have started to work with Lloyds Bank to combine high quality consumer spending data with our retail market expertise.

23:53 And we now have access to spending data on 85% of our portfolio by value. This data provides us with a detailed insight into the health and activity of both our consumer base and the performance of our retailers. It includes store by store sales turnover, the online contribution from that store, where else consumers are spending, a customer demographic profile, and interestingly, where customers tend to make their first purchase, their second purchase and so on. What is really pleasing is that our assets are significantly outperforming The UK market by three forty basis points with year on year growth of 4.9%, which we believe is reflective of our portfolio positioning focused on local essential led retail with 72% of our shoppers traveling less than five miles and a shopping journey which is characterized by a low value basket size but high frequency.

25:02 Now given our focus on sustainable rental cash flows, our portfolio is reassuringly underpinned by a low occupational cost ratio of only 8.3% and we deem this to be highly affordable for our tenants and provides capacity for growing rents in the future.

25:24 Now moving now to our valuation performance where we have delivered capital growth over the full year period driven by ERV growth of plus 1.1% and stability in our yields. Pleasingly, our core shopping centers and retail parks delivered capital returns of plus 0.23.5% respectively. And given our portfolio repositioning over the past few years, this means that our core shopping centers and retail parks now account for 94% of our total portfolio by value. Now these two segments have the values have been broadly stable with positive capital growth in three out of the last four financial years with stable or growing ERBs over this period.

26:15 And this reinforces our belief that we own the right assets in the right locations catering to occupiers for whom a physical store is absolutely essential.

26:30 Our core shopping centers and retail parks have continued to deliver attractive and reliable cash flows underpinned by active occupational demand and tight supply and this is leading to strong leasing performance. A couple of our key highlights in the year included the long term renewal to Marks and Spencer's in our shopping center in Newton Mens in Glasgow, which also included a high spec store refurbishment by Marks and Spencer's. And also a new long term letting to Sainsbury's at our retail park in Dumfries where the new rent was 60% higher than the previous rent paid by Homebase. Our core portfolio centered on essential goods and services continues to demonstrate strong operational metrics and the sustained demand for both new lettings and renewals provides the foundation for consistent rental growth going forward.

27:35 Capital partnerships are an important component of our strategy to deliver earnings growth in a capital light way. And over the last five years, we have delivered a compound annual growth rate of 19% in fee income net of costs. Last July, we were pleased to have acquired the asset and development management business, company called Elandi, which is very much aligned with our strategy to expand our capital partnership business over the long term. We already manage assets on behalf of 14 different partners. And today, our capital partnership business and platform has genuine scale.

28:20 We now own and manage total assets under management of 2,400,000,000 across a portfolio of 48 shopping centers and 30 retail parks collecting £225,000,000 of annual rent from three and a half thousand tenants and were active in most regions in The UK. Investment partners are increasingly recognizing the importance of track record and specialism in this highly operational asset class. And we are partnering with and providing a

28:55 range of services to both new and existing owners across the key physical store channels of convenience and destination shopping centers, retail parks and regeneration assets, particularly with local authorities. The scale that we have together with the access to extensive data and insights is unrivaled in The UK retail real estate market and we are well placed to continue to grow our capital partnership activities. Now for those of you that have an interest in ESG, we have had another year of making good progress on our long term ESG objectives. Five years on from our original net zero target baseline year of FY '20, we are 93% of the way to achieving our SBTI target to reduce our absolute scope one and two emissions by 42%

29:58 in, by 2030 having achieved a total reduction of 39% at the end of FY twenty five. Over the last twelve months, we have delivered a reduction of 1312% in absolute scope one and scope two emissions respectively. This year, we improved our GRESP score from 72 to 80 out of a 100, and we retained our b rating from CDP. For a fourth consecutive year, we also retained our gold award from EPRA in recognition of high transparency and comparability of our ESG performance disclosures. We became an accredited real living wage employer and we were proud to have retained our recognition as one of the Sunday Times best places to work.

30:50 So our achievements across people, place, partnership, environment and governance testify to how our ESG commitment is embedded throughout our business and contributing to our success as a responsible real estate investment.

31:11 So the benefits of the decisive actions that we implemented several years ago to position NEWRIVER for growth are now being realized, particularly with the acquisition of Capital Regional. The benefits of which are starting to flow through and will be further realized in FY '26 and FY '27 as the cost synergies are fully unlocked. Our aim is to deliver consistent sector leading earnings growth beyond just the benefits of the Capital Regional acquisition. Our key earnings growth drivers are net rental income growth, the signs for which are positive and should lead to valuation growth allowing us to access some of our untapped liquidity.

32:02 Continuing revenue growth from capital partnerships for which our five year track record of growth is supported of. And then finally, our capital recycling into higher opportunities in the future will be another key growth driver. So our portfolio is performing well supported by a highly experienced and motivated team underpinned by a strong balance sheet. And whilst the macro environment has been volatile, we definitely have a clear pathway to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders. So that is the end of our presentation and we're now going to go to questions. So I can see there's a couple of questions from Tim, who is a large shareholder of NEWRIVER.

32:53 Tim's first question is that post the Capital Regional transaction, the LTV rose quite considerably to around 40%, which Tim feels is a little bit uncomfortable with reflecting the sort of current forward looking swap rates. So Tim has asked us, do we intend to reduce LTV over time towards the level it was before the CAF and regional deal? Do you want to pick up that question? Yeah. Sure. Can you Lucy, can you turn to page 32, please, in the slides? I think that might just be helpful. Yeah. Hi, Tim. Thank you for your question. So this slide, think, is quite helpful. Slide 32 in the appendices. This pack is available on our website.

33:39 And what this does is this puts our financial position across all of the key measures that we look at when considering the strength of our financial position, being net debt to EBITDA, interest cover, and LTV. So and what it shows is we are the kind of turquoise bar. Our peers are the navy bar, and you can see that our policy and our guidance is shown as the dotted green line going across. So putting our net debt to EBITDA, for example, into context, you can see that we have the lowest net debt to EBITDA in the peer group. We have significant headroom to our policy. Our policy is to be less than 10 times. We're about 5.4 times. Interest cover, which is in the middle of the slide.

34:24 You can see we have one of the highest interest cover levels in versus our peers. We're at six times. Our policies to be more than two times. And then looking at loan to value, you can see that our policy is to be less than 50%. Our guidance is to be less than 40%. And you remember from our from our presentation that at the year end, we were at 42%. Now 42% is in line with the guidance that we gave out at the time of the transaction. Our guidance is to be below 40%. And as we mentioned, we completed a disposal post year end to reduce our loan to value to below that guidance level at 38% on a pro form a basis. Now, you know, in our opinion, we are happier with a slightly higher level of loan to value than than some of our peers because of the strength, the actual cash cover ratios that we present here on the slide. So, you know, very strong net debt to EBITDA, very strong interest cover, and actually a very comfortable level of loan to value, which is now within our guidance of less than 40%.

35:31 It's what also worth adding, you know, these are this loan to value is off rebased valuation. So our valuations have reduced over a period of time and actually saw growth during f y twenty five. So, you know, that that would be my answer to Tim's question there. Tim Tim's asked another question actually, which is approximately what percentage of earnings do you expect to come from asset management going forward? Well, Tim, today, when you look at our asset management fee income net of costs, today on a looking on an annualized basis, looking forward for the for this financial year, it's it's now just over 4,000,000. Now the market consensus for NEWRIVER in terms of our, underlying funds from operation in FY '26 around 40,000,000.

36:20 So effectively today, it's around 10%, Tim. Now we see no reason whatsoever why we can't continue to grow our net fee income from our capital partnership activities over the years ahead. We've already had a track record over the last five years delivering 19% compound annual growth rate in net income, net of costs. So we're really confident about the potential of growth within our capital partnership business. So the next question is from George. On the Capital Regional acquisition. Can you discuss the mix of tenants post acquisition and how that affects the risk profile and income resilience of the portfolio?

37:05 Are there any additional synergies emerging post acquisition that were not originally identified? Well, maybe if I pick up the income profile and Will, can you cover off the synergies? Yeah. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, maybe if you go to slide three, Lucy. We did a huge amount of diligence on the Capital Regional acquisition and and what that what that diligence was showing was that there was a highly compatible profile with the six shopping centers open owned by Capital Regional, with the NEWRIVER portfolio both in terms of customer profile but also tenant profile. And you can see that 87% of the tenants were very much sort of the central led type retailers, very similar to our own portfolio.

37:58 And actually their income security again scores very highly and on a par with with NEWRIVER. So very low probability of tenant failure, you know, across that portfolio. We were able to also run the Lloyds Bank customer spending data as part of that diligence exercise. So we could see that the capital regional assets were outperforming in The UK average as very similar to to to New River. So, we're really pleased with, how their assets are performing now. They've been onboarded onto our platform. You know, sometimes when you're moving assets from one platform to another platform, it can give rise to disruption, but we've had no disruption. We've maintained really good rent collection. The leasing performance has been, positive, and occupancy and tenant retention rates have also been, you know, really pleased. So we're really, really happy with the way those assets have been performing post completion of the transaction.

38:55 Do you want to pick up the point around synergies? Yeah. So I mean, the synergies that we identified during the transaction, £6,200,000 of annual synergies were focused on admin costs. So effectively head office costs, PLC costs, and it was effectively, you know, removing any duplication in those costs. And as we've said, we're on track with our expectations and by the end of FY twenty six on a look forward basis, we expect to fully unlock those synergies. In terms of additional synergies, you know, we focused our effort on that admin cost line. Now, you know, there are, you know, there are obviously other costs in the p and l including sort of property level costs, asset level costs, And, you know, we will be doing further work over the next twelve months to see if there are any further costs that we can reduce at a property level. For example, by looking at service charge budgets, etcetera. So at the moment, we're on track with the level of synergies we identified, but, you know, I say we'll be looking very closely at the property level costs in the next twelve months or so.

40:01 Okay. We've now got a further question from Vivek. At what level of assets under management rent roll does the capital partnership business become larger than the incumbent real estate, the REIT business? Is the company looking to change its REIT status and become a normal trading company? What would the impact be from a tax and dividend perspective should such a change take place? Well, I think we sort of partly answered that, Vivek, in that our asset management fee income today from our capital partnership activities is around 10% of what the market is expecting us to deliver in terms of consensus, UFFO in FY twenty six of around 40,000,000. So we have a lot of capacity, you know, to be able to grow our capital partnership business that comes nowhere close to breaching any of our sort of REIT status or our tax benefits that we enjoy being a REIT.

41:01 So a lot of capacity. Hopefully that answers the question and then I think we just got one more question from Nick. Can Snowzone offer other activities during summer? Well, Will, do you wanna pick that up? Yeah. I mean, it's a very good question. I I think, you know, on Snowzone specifically, Nick, we were very clear during the transaction that actually what we wanted to do with that business was get under the bonnet bonnet of it in the first period of ownership and just understand more about it. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, you've identified the seasonality that we talked about during the presentation and how we can reduce that seasonality and indeed grow the income from that business is going to be something that we're focusing on, you know, in the next sort of six months or so.

41:48 For example, you know, we have a capital partnership part of the business on the retail side of our activities. We have a fantastic platform, operating platform at Snow Zone. What can we do to in a capital light way to leverage the strength of that platform? Can that platform be used to to manage, you know, other indoor ski centers in The UK and indeed in Europe? So, you know, I think seasonality that you've picked up on is a really good point. I think other other other ways that we can grow the revenue or the income from from Snow Zone, these are the kind of things that, you know, that we're focused on at the moment. Okay. Think that's all the questions. So let me just sort of wrap up and just say that, look, I think, you know, from our perspective, we think NEWRIVER offers shareholders a truly compelling return prospect.

42:40 I mean, Will talked about in one of his earlier slides around how the earnings per share is going to materially sort of increase in FY '26 and FY '27. Just to sort of remind you on that pre the capital regional transaction on an annualized basis, that was 7.4 p. That's now moved to 8.1 p as of the end of March. And you'll recall on Will's slide 12, you know, that's projected to go to 8.7 p as those benefits of the capital regional transaction are fully unlocked. And what we'd like to think about that is that that should result in a rerating of the value of the the business, which implies that the share price should go up, thereby delivering a very attractive capital return for shareholders on top of the really attractive, like, income return through the dividends that shareholders are going to receive. So when you wrap all that up together, we think the total return prospects for this business for shareholders are really very compelling.

43:43 So I think that's the end of the presentation. That's the end of the questions. Just wanted to say thank you to everybody for taking the time to listen in. Thank you. That's goodbye from you. Goodbye from you. Yeah? Perfect. Alan, Will, if I may just jump back in there. And thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of NEWRIVER REIT PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.