Charter Hall's Managing Director and Group CEO David Harrison, said “FY24 has seen us focus on the ongoing curation of the portfolios we manage, selective development, partnering with our tenant and investor customers to meet their needs and closely managing our cost base. This has seen us deliver a good result set against a tough real estate environment.”

Key financial and operational highlights for the period are:

Financial Highlights:

• Operating earnings of $358.7 million, reflects operating earnings per security (OEPS) post-tax of 75.8 cents per security (cps)
• Statutory earnings of ($222.1) million
• Distributions of 45.1cps

Operating Highlights:

• Access: $1.6 billion of gross equity allotted
• Deploy: $4.1 billion of gross transactions
• Manage: $80.9 billion of FUM, including $65.5 billion of Property FUM
• Invest: Property Investments of $2.8 billion

Funds Management:

Group FUM reduced $6.5 billion to $80.9 billion, consisting of $65.5 billion of Property FUM and $15.4 billion of Paradice Investment Management (PIM) FUM.
Property FUM contracted by $6.3 billion, driven by devaluations of $6.1 billion and divestments of $2.4 billion offset by acquisitions of $1.7 billion and capex and development spend of $0.5 billion.

Property Investment:

At the end of the period, the Property Investment portfolio value was $2.8 billion or 4.3% of the Group’s property platform of $65.5 billion.

Development Activity and Pipeline:

Development activity continues to drive modern asset creation, enhancing returns which continues to attract new capital to our funds and deliver on strategies. Development completions totalled $1.3 billion in the last 12 months. Notwithstanding completions, the pipeline continues to be re-stocked and is currently $12.5 billion with $4.9 billion in committed developments, with 69% of committed office developments pre-leased and 90% of committed industrial and logistics developments pre-leased.

Capital Management:

During the period, the Group completed $10.7 billion in new and refinanced debt facilities across the Platform. Platform facility limits exceed $30.0 billion, with $6.6 billion of available liquidity and further additional committed and uncalled equity. The Group balance sheet held $383 million of cash as at 30 June 2024 and low balance sheet gearing of 3.0%.

ESG Leadership:

Sustainability remains integral to Charter Hall’s operations and management. We remain on track to meet our commitment to Net Zero carbon emissions1 by 2025, with a more than 70% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 absolute emissions compared to our FY17 baseline. Across the platform we now have 80MW of solar installed. More than 80% of power is coming from renewable energy for assets under our operational control. We also increased our sustainable financing by $3.0 billion during the period and now have $6.4 billion of sustainable finance facilities or approximately 21% of total platform finance facilities.

Outlook: 

Charter Hall’s Managing Director and Group CEO, David Harrison said: “With evidence emerging of a slowing economy and inflation trends moderating, we consider ourselves well positioned to take advantage of a lower interest rate environment as it emerges. We see current market pricing as offering attractive long-term returns for stabilised core real estate products and value-add development and opportunistic strategies and it’s our expectation that capital deployment will increase to take advantage of market conditions.

“We also remain close to our tenant customers. Our sale and leaseback capabilities combined with our development experience make us uniquely positioned to partner with our tenants and help them meet their property needs. We look forward to working with both our investor and tenant customers in the year ahead as partnership remains central to our ongoing success and the growth of the business.”

Based on no material change in current market conditions, FY25 earnings guidance is for post-tax operating earnings per security of approximately 79 cents per security.

FY25 distribution per security guidance is for 6% growth over FY

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