Unibail-Rodamco Stock

Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Half Year Results 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Vincent Rouget, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, and a warm welcome to URW's H1 2026 webcast. Thank you for taking the time to follow our presentation on a busy reporting day. I'm pleased to take you through a short overview of our results and business highlights before Fabrice looks at our financials in more detail.

We will then open the line for Q&A. Our H1 performance is once again driven by our powerful platform for growth. At the core of this platform is our ecosystem of performance built on our unparalleled network of flagship destinations, our operating expertise, advanced data and AI capabilities and the strength of the Westfield brand. All combined under one roof, this creates a clear competitive advantage. Our ecosystem helps retailers and brands grow by driving traffic conversion, visibility and sales.

It also provides URW with multiple growth levers through leasing, new revenues, data and capital-light opportunities, translating into attractive business performance. Our strong H1 2026 results are a testament to the power of this growth platform and our ability to turn scale into performance and performance into sustainable growth.

Moving now to the detail of our first half results, where we continue to deliver our key platform for growth business plan priorities. Strong retail operating performance was supported by sustained leasing momentum, increasing MGR uplifts and record occupancy. This is real NRI growth, not just indexation. Very strong footfall and tenant sales translate into leasing tension and occupancy gains, which allows us to be highly proactive when it comes to asset management. Westfield Rise kept on delivering growth at 7% year-on-year in a slightly muted brand activations market. With a EUR 2.2 billion disposal plan now complete, we are very happy to transition to value-accretive capital recycling, including in the U.S. already from H1.

We are capturing attractive opportunities to improve portfolio quality and drive future growth while staying disciplined. We also saw another positive portfolio revaluation, up just under 1% in the first half, which contributed to a 90 basis points improvement in our LTV ratio, and we executed well on over EUR 2 billion in financing. All these elements supported Moody's upgrade of our outlook to positive during the period.

Fabrice will cover the financials in detail, but this snapshot shows how we are consistently delivering in line with our business plan. Continued top-line growth with like-for-like EBITDA growth above 5%, increasing profitability with improving EBITDA margin, demonstrating the operating leverage of our platform and our ability to translate growth into earnings, disciplined cost and financial expense management even in a higher rate environment, reflecting a proactive refinancing work and strong access to debt markets. And controlled investments with net CapEx aligned with the annual envelope in our business plan.

This is a business with good operating momentum, careful capital deployment and a financial profile that supports our growth ambitions. Of course, headline numbers are still impacted by the EUR 2.2 billion of disposals executed since January 2025. I'm happy to say we are getting towards the end of this phase from an accounting point of view with the completion of our disposal plan.

Let's take a closer look at shopping center performance. Tenant sales and footfall once again showed healthy year-on-year growth across Europe and the U.S. This is really key for us. Group vacancy is down 80 basis points versus H1 2025 to just over 4%, the lowest level since 2017.

Leasing activity was strong with EUR 200 million of MGR signed in H1 and an accelerating MGR uplift at plus 14% on long-term leases. If you recall, leasing, leasing, leasing is our #1 priority for 2026. So it's very encouraging to see this progress in H1 and the overall leasing trend across our portfolio. This is exactly the dynamic we want to create as part of our business plan, higher footfall and sales intensity, leasing tension, stronger MGR, market share gains and occupancy improvements. Let's have a quick look at the two flagship examples in Europe that show how active asset management is driving tangible out-performance, Westfield London and Westfield Centro in Germany.

Both have delivered double-digit year-on-year tenant sales growth in H1. At Westfield London, occupancy has improved by more than 800 basis points since 2021. Here, we have meaningfully rebuilt leasing tension, achieving lower vacancy and higher NGR uplift at one of Europe's leading retail destinations.

We have also rapidly scaled our Westfield Rise offer to reach Westfield London's massive 27 million audience with further upside expected. At Westfield Centro, we have invested meaningful leasing capital over the last 3 years, resulting in increased footfall, sales intensity and reduced OCRs. We have opened 14 flagship stores in the last 18 months, including the largest in-mall Zara store in Europe, while also upgrading this asset's leisure offer to increase its destination appeal. Tenant sales growth reached double digits, which shows our teams have conducted a very successful repositioning in a muted German consumption environment.

These are two strong examples of the value creation effect our active flagship asset management can deliver even in markets with a soft macroeconomic context. A key achievement in H1 was also the signing of a conditional purchase agreement to take full ownership of one of our many trophy assets. This is the largest M&A transaction for the group since COVID with attractive pricing, no LTV impact and AREPs accretive towards the end of the plan. Westfield UTC in San Diego is a 116,000 square meter open-air shopping center with annual footfall of 14 million and $765 million in tenant sales.

The center has one of the highest sales intensities in the U.S. and San Diego is one of the strongest metropolitan economies in the country, affluent, fast-growing and innovation-led. The asset has limited CapEx needs following a major upgrade over the last 10 years and the recently completed luxury extension, which has attractive brands such as Chanel, Hermes and Loro Piana. We see a clear and durable upside at this fantastic asset through higher rents, re-tenanting, parking revenues, Westfield Rise and over the long term, opportunities for additional mixed-use densification.

Increasing our ownership will thus contribute to lifting a solid medium-term organic growth profile. In addition to UTC, we've been very active in unlocking opportunities within our U.S. portfolio. Macro fundamentals across our eight markets are very supportive and favor our dominant flagship assets, which benefit from attractive occupancy cost ratios, clear leasing tension and repeatable rental growth. Our H1 U.S. portfolio activity combines leverage-neutral acquisitions, smart capital recycling and capital-light development projects.

All these activities are improving the quality and the concentration of our U.S. portfolio within our business plan trajectory. This investment activity was carried out at attractive conditions. In early July, we disposed of Plaza Bonita, a regional assets in Southern California at a premium to our book value, and we reinvested those proceeds to take 100% ownership of Southcenter in Seattle, an A-rated mall where we expect to generate over 10% un-levered IRR. This capital recycling results in a net $7 million cash out for the group and the takeover of 45% of a 2030 mortgage loan at low interest.

In addition, CapEx light co-development of Garden State Plaza is a great example of the densification opportunities we have. Here, we are transforming 13 acres of underused parking into a walkable town center anchored with attractive multifamily residential, with no impact on the group net debt.

As we enter a new phase after the completion of our disposal program, it is a good moment to focus on our capital allocation framework. In platform for growth, we committed to CapEx of EUR 600 million per year, net of capital recycling funded through organic cash flow generation and with clear principles. As you know, this figure for 2026 is around EUR 700 million, reflecting an underspent in 2025. We are now actively recycling out of lower growth non-core positions into higher quality assets with greater long-term potential.

Our strategic criteria remains the same from our Investor Day, Westfield quality assets, neutral or positive impact on both LTV and AREPs and an unlevered IRR of at least 9%. As demonstrated with the Westfield UTC announcement, we can opportunistically expand our framework to include selective high-quality acquisitions when our strict parameters are met. This means we can seize opportunities when they make strategic sense, focus on quality and not compromise our 2028 leverage targets of 40% LTV and 8x net debt to EBITDA.

Under those stringent parameters, we expect such incremental capital decisions to deliver attractive long-term shareholder value. Before I hand over to Fabrice, here is a quick look at where we stand versus the 2026 priorities I shared at the full year results. Our leasing momentum reflects strong execution by our teams, active management and a continued focus on bringing the right retailers and brands to the right destinations. These efforts directly support the business plan target of like-for-like NRI growth substantially above indexation.

The second priority is innovation. We are scaling our data and AI capabilities, continuing the rollout of our Westfield Rise technology in Europe and launching a pilot in the U.S. We have also initiated a pilot phase around our data offer with 18 key retail partners, and we are building new use cases and analyzing the many success stories these new insights create.

And in terms of simplification, we completed a de-stapling and have successfully reduced group legal entities by 20%. We are benefiting from the organization and regionalization changes we implemented over the last 2 years, and we are using AI-driven automation in leasing to improve speed, quality and productivity.

Finally, we have announced that we will move our corporate headquarters to Westfield CNIT in Paris La Defense in late 2028. This will bring our corporate teams closer to the heart of our business as we bring to life an evolved company culture that fosters collaboration, curiosity and excellence focus on impact. With that, let me hand over to Fabrice, who will take you through the financial review.

Thank you, Vincent, and good morning, everyone. In H1 2026, we once again saw a strong operating dynamic with tenant sales up 5.2%, robust leasing activity and the lowest vacancy level since 2017. We completed the EUR 2.2 billion disposal program announced at the Investor Day. And as a result, IFRS net debt, including hybrid is down to EUR 20.1 billion, a EUR 0.2 billion reduction versus December 2025.

This net debt reduction, together with an increase in valuations and like-for-like EBITDA growth led to a further improvement of the group's credit metrics. And with our disposal program now complete, any additional disposals can be allocated to capital recycling. Let's look at our H1 2026 figures in more detail.

Our AREPS stands at EUR 4.84 per share, reflecting the EUR 2.2 billion in disposals across both retail and offices in 2025 and H1 2026. AREPS was also affected by FX and the expected increase in financial expenses, and I will come back to our financing activity later on. The performance of our shopping centers and our convention exhibition business resulted in strong organic growth with EBITDA up 5.3% on a like-for-like basis.

Here, we provide a detailed bridge showing the AREPS evolution year-on-year. Disposals net of acquisitions had a minus EUR 0.36 impact on H1 2026 AREPS versus last year. As a reminder, it was minus EUR 0.26 in H1 '25. FX also had a negative impact of minus EUR 0.17 on the group's results due to the weakening of both the U.S. dollar and sterling against the euro and positive FX hedges contribution in 2025.

Retail NRI growth contributed plus EUR 0.35, thanks to our positive like-for-like performance and recent deliveries. C&E activity contributed plus EUR 0.10 at 100%, reflecting strong operating performance. Financial expenses and hybrid had an overall negative contribution of minus EUR 0.15 due to a slight increase in the cost of debt and lower interest capitalization, which represented half of this increase.

The other category of minus EUR 0.05 mainly comes from the increased number of shares and higher minority interest from strong retail and C&E performance. Let's look more closely at URW shopping center performance on a like-for-like basis. NRI was up 4.5%, made up of plus 3.9% for Europe and plus 6.7% for U.S. flagship assets.

This corresponds to a plus 3.8% increase on top of indexation above the guidance shared at the Investor Day. Indexation accounted for just plus 0.7% at group level, reflecting a plus 0.9% increase in Europe, in line with expectations and the low inflation registered in 2025. Leasing and sales-based rents contributed plus 2.1% and plus 0.9%, respectively, on top of indexation, thanks to strong leasing activity, a vacancy reduction, higher tenant sales and positive SBR settlements.

For U.S. flagships, leasing activity and sales-based rents represented growth of plus 6.2% and plus 1.4%, respectively. The other category contributed plus 0.7%, thanks to an increase in commercial partnerships and parking, partly offset by higher common area maintenance expenses in the U.S. Let's look at the operating performance driving the group's organic growth. Leasing activity was strong once again with EUR 197 million of MGR signed in H1 2026.

Total rental uplift was plus 10.6% on top of indexation, made up of plus 7.7% in Europe and plus 17.1% in the U.S. This is above the 7.1% achieved in H1 2025. This performance was supported by a plus 14% uplift on long-term deals. Thanks to this strong leasing activity, the vacancy reduced to 4.1%, a 50 basis point improvement compared to December 2025 and 80 basis points compared to June last year.

Vacancy in Europe was 3% compared to 3.3% in December 2025 with a noticeable reduction in Southern Europe. U.S. flagship vacancy was 5.2%, a major improvement from the 6.3% as at December 2025, reflecting the appeal of URW's high-performing assets. Overall, occupancy cost ratio remained stable at 15.7% in Europe and 12.2% for U.S. flagship assets.

Convention Exhibition next. Net operating income stood at EUR 105 million, a 16.4% increase compared to last year, reflecting the strong operating performance as well as the usual seasonality between even and odd years. Compared to H1 2024, NOI was plus 18.2% on a like-for-like basis. Bookings and pre-bookings stand at 99% of the expected rental revenues planned for 2026, demonstrating the appeal of URW's convention exhibition venues. And as an illustration, Porte de Versailles is currently hosting the Esports World Cup after the event was relocated from Saudi Arabia at short notice.

The successful hosting of the Paris Olympics was a key decision driver as the organizers needed a proven venue that could accommodate events watched by millions worldwide. Moving next to the evolution of our GMV and EPRA NRV, which both grew during the period. The group's GMV at June 2026 amounted to EUR 49.5 billion, a 1.2% increase compared to year-end 2025.

This is mainly due to a plus 0.9% positive revaluation of the portfolio. This 6-month increase compares favorably with the 1% annual growth we referred to at our Investor Day. This GMV increase was also supported by CapEx invested and positive FX evolution, which more than offset the minus EUR 0.4 billion impact of disposals achieved in H1. As a consequence, the EPRA net reinstatement value stood at EUR 146.80 per share, up 2.1%, reflecting a contribution of circa EUR 2.60 per share from the positive asset revaluation, a positive FX impact of EUR 0.80 as well as a EUR 4.50 distribution paid to shareholders in May.

Looking more closely at shopping center valuation. Like-for-like retail valuation was up 1.6% in H1 2026, driven by a positive rent impact of plus 2.3%, partly offset by a minus 0.7% yield impact. This positive rent impact reflects the strong operating performance achieved in H1 2026. This includes a 2.2% increase of the NRI next 12 months and a conservative 3.4% CAGR of the NRI over 10 years assumed by appraisers.

Overall, yield impact was slightly negative with a 20 basis point increase in the discount rates in Europe. Like-for-like valuations were up 1.4% in Europe with a stable net initial yield at 5.3%. They were up 2.2% in the U.S., including plus 2.4% for flagships, exclusively coming from a rent effect. This implies a 5.1% net initial yield and a 5.7% stabilized yield based on NRI estimated by appraisers in year three.

This stabilized yield is in line with December 2025 and shows the NRI growth embedded in our U.S. flagship assets. Moving now to development. The total investment cost of our committed pipeline decreased from EUR 1.2 billion in December to EUR 1 billion as at June 2026. This reflected the delivery of Westfield Hamburg offices currently 87% let, which reduced the group development pipeline by EUR 0.4 billion in H1.

In parallel, the group added EUR 0.2 billion of committed projects relating to CNIT office, where the group will have its headquarters and which is now 45% pre-let as well as two new projects in the U.S. at GSP and Roseville, currently 86% pre-let. The control pipeline now amounts to EUR 0.7 billion at 100%, taking into account the transfer of projects to the committed category.

And as a reminder, any decision to launch control pipeline projects will be fully consistent with the capital allocation policy and CapEx limit presented at our Investor Day. IFRS net debt, including hybrid has further reduced in H1 2026 from EUR 20.3 billion to EUR 20.1 billion. This results from the EUR 0.6 billion proceeds of the disposals completed over the period, which had a positive impact of 90 basis points on the LTV.

The EUR 0.7 billion in cash flow generated in H1 were partly offset by EUR 0.3 billion in CapEx spent over the period, generating a net positive impact of 90 basis points. Net debt level also reflects the EUR 0.7 billion distribution paid in H1, which had a negative impact of 140 basis points on the LTV.

Finally, portfolio valuation had a positive impact of 50 basis points on the LTV, while FX led to a net debt increase of EUR 0.1 billion and no major impact on LTV. In total, IFRS LTV, including hybrid stood at 41.9%, down from 42.8% at year-end 2025, a 90 basis points decrease despite the full payment in H1 of the yearly distribution.

We are, therefore, ahead of the LTV trajectory presented at our Investor Day to reach an IFRS LTV target of 40%, including hybrid in 2021 -- in 2028, sorry. The group's other credit metrics also continued to improve in H1 2026. The IFRS net debt over EBITDA ratio, including hybrid, stood at 9.1x, below the 9.2x in H1 2025. This level is supported by a 5.3% increase in EBITDA on a like-for-like basis and is consistent with the 9x level anticipated for the full year.

The interest coverage ratio improved to 4.7x as a result of this strong EBITDA performance and contained increase in financial expenses and cost of debt. Cost of debt for H1 2026 amounted to 2.3%, slightly above the 2.1% in full year 2025, which benefited from positive FX hedges contribution.

This figure is in line with the 20 to 30 basis points increase per year presented at the Investor Day coming from the maturity of historical debt at low coupons, lower cash amount and decreasing cash remuneration, partly offset by the group hedges in place. And the improvement in operating and financial ratios as well as the completion of our disposal program led Moody's in H1 2026 to change the outlook of the group's Baa2 rating from stable to positive.

Before I hand back to Vincent, I wanted to share some detail on our 2026 refinancings. The group has successfully executed a number of major financings in H1, illustrating its access to funding at attractive conditions. In April, we issued a EUR 750 million green bond with a 7-year maturity and 3.78% coupon corresponding to a spread of 105 basis points.

This was the tightest spread achieved by the group since May 2021. The group also refinanced the GBP 750 million debt secured by Westfield Stratford City through a new bond at yield plus 90 basis points and a 5.1% coupon. This transaction has the largest order book ever achieved by a risk debt issuer in this market, leading to the second tighter spread over the last 5 years.

Thanks to this activity, our average debt maturity stood at 6.7 years as at June, taking into account EUR 8.7 billion of undrawn credit facilities. And finally, we further optimized our capital structure with the repayment in April of the remaining EUR 333 million of our hybrid with a non-call date in 2026. And as a result, the group's hybrid portfolio has reduced from EUR 1.83 billion as of December 2025 to EUR 1.5 billion today. With that, let me hand back to Vincent for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Fabrice. I want to take a quick opportunity to congratulate you on being recognized as the top property sector CFO in the Extel 2026 survey. It's a fantastic and well-deserved recognition for you and your team, reflecting your very strong commitment to engage with our investor community.

Before I wrap up, let's now look at our guidance update for 2026. We confirm that we expect our 2026 AREPS to be within the guidance of EUR 9.15 to EUR 9.30 we gave at our full year results. This guidance is supported by the strong H1 operating performance presented today, which we see continuing in H2. It also reflects the full year impact of the group's disposals and recent refinancings.

We also confirm that we will propose a EUR 5.50 per share distribution for fiscal year 2026 as announced in February, which represents a 22% increase from the EUR 4.50 paid for fiscal year 2025. This guidance assumes no major change in the macroeconomic nor geopolitical environment.

So to sum up, in H1, we will continue to deliver against our key business plan priorities, driving organic rental growth from a dominant retail portfolio, growing new revenues, including Westfield Rise and disciplined capital allocation. A big thanks to all our teams who have delivered a very strong semester. Let's now start the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Frederic Renard, Kepler Cheuvreux.

First question would be, to what extent did the World Cup drive the figures of growth in the U.S.? And do you expect retailers to leave some of your malls after the World Cup? So have you already noticed some departure? And on Westfield Rise, is the trajectory still on track versus what you presented last year? And maybe just a final one on the licensing fee business, any impact from the current conflict in the Middle East?

Frederic, thank you for your questions. World Cup impact in the U.S., marginal on our business and performance in H1. So obviously, we had some benefits. It happens that actually across the portfolio in Europe and in the U.S. flagship destinations have been anchors and magnet for fans to join. We broadcasted some of the games.

You have plenty of examples like in Century City, in Los Angeles, in Parque Sur, in Madrid, for instance, as one of the place to be to celebrate the World Cup. We have very healthy traffic figures, but we see above anything, I would say, a continuing trend month after month, we're on par or it slightly accelerate versus the Q1 disclosure we've made.

And so it's really broad-based across the board, and we don't see a meaningful impact or one-off effect from the World Cup, in our U.S. performance. Actually, the U.S. footfall has been increasing less than in Europe. Interestingly, However, the tenant sales are growing the fastest over there. So it should provide you some context on the very strong fundamentals we see in this market or at least across eight main markets in the U.S.

With regards to Westfield Rise, we printed or we communicated a plus 7% growth. The growth trend continues. I mentioned in my part of the presentation that we're seeing a more muted brand activation market. And so you have to dissociate the two lines -- main line of activities of Westfield Rise. The retail media side, so the screens are performing well with strong growth, which is more or less on track with our overall baseline by 2028.

It's growing more than double digits. And so the business is well oriented over there. On the brand activation side of the activity, which is the mall activation, launch of new products, I think the environment has more impact where we are not delivering the growth that we foresaw and we saw market conditions, which have been more adverse than what we anticipated in 2025. So we are tracking behind on that line of business.

We believe that it's going to catch up over the next few years. So it doesn't necessarily mean that we will not be at our objective by 2028 and the end of the plan on this line of business. However, today, factually, we are tracking slightly behind the baseline we have. When we look at the overall business, it's an important growth engine of our business plan.

It's a great value-add service we offer tenant partners. We believe a lot in the potential of the Rise business. Even if we track slightly behind and we don't hit absolutely our number, the reality is that we have other areas, as you can see in our portfolio, which are firing and performing very well. And so in the end, there will be some pluses, some minus.

But as a management team and a management Board, we feel comfortable and very comfortable with the fact that we can deliver our guidance within the range that we had shared during the Investor Day. Last point on Rise, there's a bit of a one-off effect as well on the growth trend you see on a net income basis because the expense basis of the business is -- has seen some recalibration of some costs coming online that were not last year. And so we -- 2026 is the year where we reach, I would say, recurring margin.

And so there's a bit of a one-off effect. The actual rental income and the revenues of the line of activity is north of 10%, including brand activation. So that's it for Rise. Last question on licensing and fee business. We are not seeing adverse impact on the activities of our partner and our first rebranded mall in Westfield Dammam, in Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't affect our strategic approach towards this new promising market. What we see on the ground is the strong performance of the assets, the strong local consumption, the strong tenant sales performance. And I see -- we see as well the evidence of the value we bring to our partner through the positive feedbacks we have on their business on the ground on this asset that have been repositioned. So no change from that perspective, and we are on track with our expectations, projections and trajectory for this new line of business.

Next question is from Jonathan Kownator, Goldman Sachs.

Two questions, if I may. One on capital allocation. You highlighted that your LTV coming down a bit faster than you expected, which is good. Can you talk about the flexibility of the balance sheet to do additional investments? Are you contemplating perhaps more disposals? I noticed that one was, I think, pulled in La Defense. But how are you seeing that flexibility and capital opportunities? And would there be more in the U.S. or Europe? That's the first question. And on the Westfield Rise, I was wondering, you had alluded to data in your presentation and pilots. Can you expand a bit on that? And can you let us know if you're trying to find an alternative way of growth in that business given the brand activation is perhaps a bit behind?

Thank you, Jonathan. On the capital allocation, do you want to take it, Fabrice, on the balance sheet flexibility, maybe and I can follow on disposals.

So on the capital allocation, there are two important points. First is that, as we said during the Investor Day, first, we need to sell before we start reinvesting. And I think as illustrated by Vincent presented during the presentation, what we've done on Plaza Bonita and Southcenter is a good illustration of this, meaning that effectively, we have sold first Plaza Bonita, and then this put us in a position to reinvest in Southcenter, which is a center with a higher potential going forward and which is a center of higher category and better quality than Plaza Bonita. So, that's the first element.

The second one is that all in all, what really matters to us is to follow the trajectory that we have mentioned during the Investor Day of a 40% loan-to-value target by 2028. And so any decision on capital allocation will be reallocating the proceeds of disposals to potential acquisitions. And again, Plaza Bonita is a good illustration of that.

Yes. And with regards to the disposals, I think we have completed the disposal program, and we're very happy about that. I think we're very happy to see the opportunities and find great opportunities to initiate this capital recycling cycle and strategy on the first half of 2026.

I think our teams -- we have no obligation we regularly and constantly appraise our portfolio. We still have a number of non-core assets that we could dispose at the right conditions. And now it's really a game of kind of aligning those disposal opportunities together with reinvestment opportunities we see in the market, whether across the portfolio or on the open market to some extent.

And we see a pickup generally of transaction activity on the retail sector, which is encouraging. We see the appetite. It feels the sector is the darling of investors now when I listen to the comments we receive more and more regularly. So it's interesting how things change. The fundamentals are there.

And -- but we -- our business plan doesn't rely on that. So this is where it's a very comfortable position. We don't need to do anything. So we'll take only the right opportunities when they fit their baseline or trajectory. And I think we intend to be and to remain disciplined from that perspective. Capital opportunities, it happens that those U.S. transactions materialize now. We see a strong growth. You can see it in the numbers. So it's an attractive market. We are open to opportunities in Europe as well, and it's a question of comparing them.

Those transactions have been in discussions for a year, 1.5 years for some of them. So I think it's the good outlook we have as well on the stock price now that allows to unlock some of these. So it happens to come at one go, but we do the work on the portfolio across our various geographies. And lastly, the data on Rise. I'm sorry, I didn't catch the full extent of your question, Jonathan. Do we see some impact, scope to revise the guidance with that?

Not necessarily that much, but just trying to -- do you have a tentative delay of growth in these areas given the valuation is perhaps a bit slower? And just also to get a bit more context about what you're highlighting in terms of new initiatives and pilots around data.

Okay. We see -- I refer to the many success stories we see across the portfolio. And so this, we see it clearly. Are we able to pin down the very strong leasing performance of H1 to part of this ongoing initiative and efforts? We cannot make the direct link.

I would like to tell you, yes, but it's too soon. That's why we made it one of our priorities for 2026, and we hope to be able to share more with you by the full year results at the latest on that front. What's certain is that we see it as beneficial to our overall business. And to some extent, if we go a bit deeper into Rise, I think in our overall trajectory, we have an assumption of developing new services and new lines of revenues as well based on the data in the EUR 180 million net revenues we guided towards.

We have not settled at this stage, given the many benefits we see on the data solution, whether we want to develop a new stream of extra revenues or whether this is part of the package because it helps us increasing our rental uplift across the board, across the portfolio. And I'd say from that perspective, it's still early stage, but seeing the long-term rental uplift growing from 11% in the last 3 years to 14% this semester is a good omen, and we hope and we intend with the team to keep on this strong momentum in the future.

And if the data without being charged separately for it allows us to get back to 20%, 25% per annum, I think we'll be very happy without having a new lineup with you. So we're really in the middle of it in a nutshell.

Next question is from Pierre-Emmanuel Clouard, Jefferies.

So maybe to come back on the UTC transaction, it would be nice to remind us the terms attached to this transaction and maybe also the share price and the U.S. dollar price, the assumptions where you could exercise the option, looking at where we stand today.

A bit of color on that would be useful. And then my second question is on the guidance. So as you mentioned, the H1 operational performance is quite decent and very strong. What are the key assumptions that prevented you to increase the guidance at this stage and especially given the euro-dollar price move since the beginning of the year?

Okay. Regarding the UTC transaction, as you have noticed, we didn't share the details on the pricing so that which the transaction could unlock. What I can say is that we are not that far. So let's say, it's a matter of a few percent in the end, but it's a combination of USD -- euro-USD exchange rate and stock price. And so we monitor. We have -- we entered into this conditional agreement that lasts until the end of the year, which gives us a lot of leeway to hit those thresholds.

We can also dispose of assets beyond the EUR 2.2 billion disposal plan that we've completed and reuse the cash proceeds from those disposals to fund the transaction full cash, which means less dilution, probably slightly more accretion to the AREPS without impacting to the LTV.

And that's the reason why we structured carefully this transaction to afford the maximum flexibility in an environment that can remain volatile in the next few months. So that's the element. I believe we've shared in the past some color on the broad ZIP code of net initial yields, and we remain on the same levels that have been commented around June. There's no change to that. Fabrice, on the guidance?

So to come back to the guidance. First, we confirm this guidance. And just maybe to put a bit of perspective. So the AREPS in H1 is down minus 5.2%. And if you take as an illustration, the upper case of the guidance, it would be minus 3%.

So basically, you see that there's I would say, an overall improvement in the evolution of the AREPS. Still, what might impact H2 is mainly twofold or even threefold. One is the impact of potential additional disposals and the time lag between the time when we sell assets and the time when we redeploy the capital, which is one topic.

The second is connected to the potential financing that we may do in H2, which could be very good in terms of conditions, in particular, as you've seen, the spread that we've been able to achieve were very attractive. They were the best ones in the last 5 years.

Still the rates are somewhat higher, and therefore, there's a cost of carry associated to that. And the third element is that all in all, still the variable activity account for around 15% of our NRI, so including parking, including commercial partnerships, including sales-based rent.

And just to -- we mentioned Rise before. So the net income of Rise is 2/3 in H2. So basically, depending on that, and so this has an impact just on H2. So all in all, very strong H1 performance on the operating side and confirmed guidance.

Next question is from Charles Boissier, UBS.

Two questions from my side. The first one is you've outlined the acquisition targets. And you mentioned enhancing overall portfolio quality and densification across your existing footprint. And in an answer to one of the previous questions, you mentioned that you're looking at both the U.S. and Europe. So it sounds geographically quite flexible.

But if I look at your acquisition so far, it's been very tilted to the U.S. So should we view this strategy as more geographically agnostic across Europe and the U.S.? Or do you see currently the U.S. as offering more attractive opportunities for deployment and add-on acquisition?

Okay. That's your first question. No? Okay. I think generally speaking, yes, indeed, as I mentioned, those U.S. transactions have been kind of under negotiation for quite a long time, and they kind of -- it happens, they unlocked at this moment.

Obviously, it was important for us to complete the EUR 2.2 billion disposal program as well. So things have lined up pretty well. We look at opportunities across the market. Being pretty basic, we like the tenant sales dynamic we see in the U.S., the trend in the business. We see substantial potential for long-term growth in our U.S. footprint.

And so as a result, we like this geography probably better than others or more than others to some extent, when we look at the macroeconomic environment and the facts on the ground. So as you say, probably there could be a slight tilt towards the U.S., but it's not an objective in itself.

We have many assets in JVs as well with partners who wish to find liquidity or wish to find liquidity for some time. So I think that's one of the elements where the U.S. has an importance.

We -- overall, probably the trend as a management Board, we feel comfortable trending towards a 25% weight towards the U.S. in our assets where we're slightly below 22% today. So I would say it's incremental, marginal and so on. But directionally, we would feel comfortable there if we find the right opportunities.

On long-term leases, that have been a key feature of the recovery since COVID. Their contribution has risen. And I think in H1 '26, however, the long-term deals, they move slightly backward.

I don't want to overread into it. I think it's 300 basis points lower than at full year '25. So I just was wondering if there is any specific reason behind the recent increase in short-term deals and if this is driven by retailer demand, leasing strategy or specific market or asset mix? And then looking forward, where do you see the long-term versus short-term mix stabilizing?

As you said in your question, you should not over interpret it. So basically, it was 80% last year, it's 79% this year. So I would say it's very limited. And usually -- and even pre-COVID, we had this same type of level of 80-20, which is usually the flexibility that we want to have between two tenants to find the possibility to fill in the spaces before having a new tenant coming in or when you do some restructuring, filling in some space.

So I would say, the way we run the business usually is quite tactical. And all in all, the proportion of long-term deals is aligned with what we've seen before and what is the target of the group long term.

And I would add that indeed, it's not always a negative or a sign of lack of tension, because it can be strategic for a certain period of time, a few months, eventually a year on larger operations.

And that's why we wanted to share a bit of insights on what we've done in Westfield London and Westfield Centro in Germany on one of the slides because that's typically the type of active asset management work that you do where you're going to mobilize a bit of short-term lease for you -- for us to find the time to align all the tenants because you have subsequent operations that are related to one to the other.

And in the meantime, we want to maintain as well an activity presence versus being vacant even if we have signed a deal. So there's an element of strategic approach as well to some of the short term.

Next question is from Paul May, Barclays.

Just a couple from me, just one by one. Sorry to labor on the expansion phase and acquisitions. I just wondered, have you considered larger corporate deals either in Europe or in the U.S. Just given where you trade on an implied cap rate basis, they should, in most instances, be accretive on that way of thinking.

I just wondered if you thought larger and bigger, you're not averse to issuing equity when taking out JV partners, but just wondered, have you thought about that on a whole corporate level?

Not really. I think we're primarily focused on deal-by-deal type of opportunities across our portfolio to that effect, and the disciplined disposal as well frees up a few hundred million here and there that we could redeploy. I think larger scale M&A would require probably more massive disposals in order to be considered. And it's not like there are many targets out there that would fit the quality criteria we have as well and on which we are pretty disciplined.

So this is -- as we have always mentioned, we track all opportunities in the market anyway because we want to be very close to the market. But this could be really an exception, I think, and it's not a target or a goal in itself for us.

Okay. And then simply, you mentioned, I think, the LTV target. Just wondered, given that figure is relatively easy manipulated and a lot of marginal investors tend to focus on net debt to EBITDA as opposed to LTV.

Just wonder if you can be more clear on targeting net debt-to-EBITDA reduction, probably bringing more into line with retail peers because it is somewhere where you do still stand out as some investors views being over-levered on that basis. Just wonder if that is a target for you to bring that down.

Thanks, Paul, for this question. I mean, two comments on my side. First, I'm not sure that I would qualify the LTV the way you do it being easily manipulable because, again, those valuations are done by external appraisers.

And by the way, they tend to be confirmed at a time when we sell assets because we sell assets in line with the appraised value. And by the way, as you would see that we even generated positive results on disposals on the dispose that we've achieved in H1. So that's the first element.

Still, as we've always said and as we've indicated during the Investor Day, we have two targets when it comes to credit metrics. One is LTV, so at 40% in 2028. The second one is net debt over EBITDA ratio. And you've seen that this is obviously an indicator that we track very closely.

And by the way, as mentioned, you've seen there was an improvement in H1 of the net debt over EBITDA ratio from 9.2x in H1 '25 to 9.1x in H1 2026. And by the way, this is consistent with the 9x level that we announced and we mentioned during the Investor Day with a target in 2028 to reach 8x net debt over EBITDA.

Next question is from Florent Laroche-Joubert, ODDO.

So two questions, if I may. So the first question would be on your vacancy rate. So we have been able to see that you have been able to improve it. And so at this level, so can we consider that we have reached a target? Or do you think that you can still improve your vacancy rate?

That would be my first question. And my second question would be more on the credit side. So we have been able to see the update of Moody's regarding your credit rating. But do you have any update also from S&P regarding, I don't know, maybe a potential upgrade?

With regard -- thank you, Florent. With regards to the vacancy, we can always improve. So we have a number of assets where we can improve the vacancy still, and we are putting the work to achieve that. This is why the Centro -- Westfield Centro example is encouraging. Same for Westfield London and so on.

When you do the right asset management, you bring in the right concepts, we invest through leasing capital to upside those stores. It drives activity, it drives traffic, attractivity, and it allows us to solidify further the rental and the occupancy of the asset around.

Interestingly, even in fully leased assets, you always tour some assets where you have slightly softer areas than the prime pitch. Even if when you reach a certain low vacancy, it's better retention, better uplift for sure. But at the same time, we can keep on working and enriching the quality of those assets in some of those areas as well.

And so across the portfolio, we believe that we still have some room to go to some extent on the vacancy reduction. And the interesting part is that once you reach that, it means that usually you see the rental uplift increasing as well.

And so the tightest or the lowest vacancy areas or, let's say, markets in our portfolio are the ones where we see the highest uplift. If I leave aside the U.S., which is slightly specific and outlier from that perspective because it has still a high vacancy when you compare to other markets in our portfolio, but the highest leasing spreads and uplift as well because of the very strong trend on the ground.

And so to come back to your question on rating. First, we are very happy that Moody's recognized the improvement that we've made in terms of de-leveraging and in terms of improvement of operating performance.

By the way, this change in outlook took place before the release of the H1 results, where you see further improvement on those sides, be it valuation, be it net debt reduction, be it NRI like-for-like growth and EBITDA growth on a like-for-like basis. So basically, we'll continue discussing with the rating agencies, both Moody's and S&P on those topics to explain to them where we stand and to show them the progress that we keep making semester after semester.

Still, I think there's one point of context to mention is that you have one rating -- you have one notch of difference between S&P and Moody's. And so that's why Moody's came up with this positive outlook because of the progress that we've made and also this difference. But again, we'll keep discussing with the rating agencies, the progress that we make on our credit metrics, which we have highlighted during this presentation.

Maybe last -- one last point that I wanted to make. Despite the situation, we've been able to raise debt at a very strong -- I mean, the best spread over the last 5 years, in particular, on the bond side, which is also a sign that even without this improvement, in the ratings, finding the right market windows.

And so the bond that we issued was 6.8x oversubscribed helps us also reduce our cost of debt, reduce the spread. And this is -- and I wanted to thank in this respect, Meriem and her team, the treasury team for the great work that they've been doing on these transactions that I've just mentioned, the EUR 2.1 billion that we've raised at attractive conditions in H1.

Next question is from Neil Green, JPMorgan.

Just following up on some of the questions around guidance, but perhaps looking more at the 2028 AREPS number. You made a number of references today about how things are going better than how you laid out at the CMD, the spread to indexation. Indexation itself perhaps a bit better, and we're seeing forecast for a stronger dollar over the coming year.

How does that all square, please, with the 2028 AREPS guidance of up to EUR 10.10. Could you say that we are more likely perhaps to be at the high end of that now than where we were 12 months ago, please?

We have -- I think, generally speaking, the geopolitical environment as well, the level of indexation have moved or didn't perform as anticipated since early 2025. So it's very strong operating fundamentals on the ground.

Some of the macro parameters are a bit up as well. So it can compensate some of the effects, but I'll leave Fabrice commenting further on that beyond the fact that we're anchored within our guidance from the Investor Day.

Thanks, Neil, for this question. In fact, when you look at it, there are maybe three topics that we can discuss. First, you mentioned the FX. And you're right, there was a recent improvement and the strengthening of the dollar. Still at the time when we made or gave our guidance during the Investor Day, the euro-dollar assumption was [ 1.14 ].

And so basically, that's the spot -- more or less the spot today, but that's still below the forward, which is more in the [ 1.16, 1.17 ]. So basically, there's still some uncertainty on that front, even though we tried to improve the situation by hedging and improving our hedging position on that one. The second relates to inflation and indexation.

And as you see, by the way, in 2026 and in H1 2026, the inflation was more muted than the assumption that was given during the Investor Day. We assumed 1.2%, and you see that we are at more 0.7% in H1. So we'll see how this evolves over time, but there's still a level of uncertainty.

And the third level and the third question is obviously the level of variable income, including Westfield Rise that we've mentioned. So all in all, we are comfortable with the guidance that we gave and this trajectory, the range that we gave during the Investor Day. But today, it's too early to mention where we would stand in terms of position within this guidance for 2028.

And maybe to remind the growth -- the organic growth profile built in the guidance is from the Investor Day is between 5.8% and 6.6% annual EBITDA growth over the plan. So this is an ambitious guidance. This is a strong growth, compelling and attractive growth. given the yields at which we operate on the basis of which we deliver, we believe, compelling value. So this is already an attractive trajectory.

Yes. And maybe as we're talking about guidance and to plus up on what Vincent has said, so talking about 2027 because Vincent gave the overall level of growth for 2028. still in 2027, we see growth in terms of AREPS but we expect it to be below the average growth over this period, in particular, on the back of three main elements.

One is in 2027, you still have the residual effect of the disposals completed in 2026. That's the first element. The second is that you will have also the seasonality of the C&E activity between even and odd years. And so next year will not be such a good year in terms of Convention and Exhibition contribution.

And ultimately, on the cost of debt and financing, we have 10% of our debt that matures between February and May 2027, which has a coupon below 0.9%. So basically, this will have an impact on our financial expenses for 2027. So which we still saw some growth, but below the average to get to 2028 levels.

Okay. Brilliant. And then just another quick one. So you flagged in the presentation that both UTC and Southcenter transactions will be done kind of below book value. Do you think valuers will read into this at any point of the next valuation event? Or are there specific conditions they like with the big JV partners as to why they maybe will look through that, please?

We would not anticipate it. I'd say, I mean, obviously, the valuation, you have access to the valuation movement on the U.S. portfolio as of H1. UTC transaction had been announced already before the closing of the H1 because we announced it in June.

So this was in public domain. I think those transactions are, to some extent, specific as well because of the JV nature of the relationship, the rights of the various parties. And so typically, these are not necessarily seen as comparable evidence as some of the other deals that have been in the market where you have the disposal of full control of a flagship asset and so on. We generally saw we communicated on that following the full year.

However, that you start seeing a body of evidence in terms of transaction activity on the flagship in the U.S. which we see supportive of the valuation for our assets. I think the valuers' assumptions are different from ours. But overall, we see much higher growth to some extent that what they build in their own DCFs. But we see a trend of improving valuations across the board in the U.S. market.

Next question is from Veronique Meertens, Kempen.

First on Unibail Germany. I saw that CPPIB exercised its put option. Wondering if that was at the same terms agreed on in 2024 and also your overall view towards Germany, the strategic view, how you like your exposure there at the moment since the country seems to be lagging other regions in Europe at the moment?

Yes, correct. The parameters had been set with CPPIB a few years ago. And so we executed upon the original agreement with them. So there's no change from that perspective. It's -- we extended a bit beyond because it allowed us to dispose some of the assets.

As you recall, we have disposed of Hofe am Bruhl in Leipzig early in the first semester, in the first half of 2026. And we still have a few assets as well. So that's on the back of those evolutions. We have almost completed, I think, the portfolio evolution in Germany. The vast majority, almost entirety of our exposure is now focused on three flagships, Westfield Centro together with CPPIB in the JV, Westfield Hamburg-Uberseequartier, which is performing well since it's happening slightly more than a year ago.

And as well as Westfield Ruhrpark on which we see a very positive operational performance ongoing. And so as we often say, we're not a country player. We are more like a market player. And we see this important difference as well in the evolution of our traffic of our tenant sales because we're really able to do the work on those flagships and capture market share basically even in a soft overall market. We'll continue disposing non-core regional assets over there. We have two of them in our portfolio.

And to come back to your question, I mean, they are the same terms. But as you would recall, the terms that we had managed to secure with CPPIB on this transaction implied a significant discount to the valuation of the assets, which were part of the URW Germany portfolio.

And in the meantime, we have sold a number of them, including, by the way, the mfi Management fur Immobilien Germany, so the third-party management company. So we are now left with only one asset. And so when we sold these assets before, it was done at a price that was, I would say, higher than the implied price of the transaction.

So basically, all in all, this was a very strong transaction. And in the end, what is left is in URW Germany is mainly cash plus one asset. And as Vincent, the purpose is to continue, I would say, selling those types of more secondary and more regional assets in Germany.

Okay. That's clear. And then my second question is around OCRs. I thought there was a very small uplift, I think, mainly driven by non-flagship U.S. and Southern Europe. But more in general, what's your view towards your OCRs? Obviously, you're signing a significant MGR uplift while there is some uncertainty in the market. So curious to hear your view if you're comfortable with your current OCR levels.

So I mean, on the OCR, overall, in Europe, they are stable at 15.7% with pluses and minuses depending on the regions. And as you've seen, for instance, in Northern Europe, we saw a reduction on the back of a very strong tenant sales, plus 7.7% in tenant sales, which explained the decrease in the OCR in Northern Europe, while you had a slight increase in Southern Europe, in particular, on the back of the performance of weaker tenants, a number of them, by the way, being fully provisioned in terms of rent.

So no impact on our net rental income. To come back to the U.S., overall, there was, as you said, an increase, which was mainly driven by regional and CBD assets because when you look at the OCR for the flagship assets, they stand at 12.2%, so basically unchanged compared to December 2025.

And so this gives us confidence in our ongoing capacity to increase the rents because as you've seen in the U.S., we've increased the rents by 17%. And despite that, the OCR remains stable.

And to plus you up on that front, we shared some perspective as part of the notes in the MD&A around OCR that will answer your question. We do feel comfortable with those levels. We try to broaden a bit the scope and the perspective by comparing those occupancy cost ratios in retail and in our portfolio to the kind of fee take that other platforms, including digital platforms, manage to charge their clients and customers.

And when you take this perspective, you feel that 15% is extremely attractive for the kind of service and quality of experience we offer in the marketplace. I can cite the OTAs in the hospitality industry that are going to take between 20% and 25%. I can -- we could cite the Apple Store or the App Store of the Apple Store.

I mean you have many Uber, Deliveroo, and so on, and you see that the levels of fees for technological platforms without physical footprint is substantially higher than the one we offer to our tenant partners. And we do believe that's one of the reasons why we've been so successful at driving business, driving up sales in the post-COVID environment as well. And this is recognized even though by definition, no tenant likes the rent it pays to any landlord, whatever the industry.

Next question is from Aaron Guy, Citi.

Just on the dividend, obviously, coming to the end of the disposal sort of program, looking to acquisitions and not looking for sort of specific dividend guidance because I know you revisit that each year.

But just how do you think about increasing the dividend back to historic payout levels in that sort of stack of options for capital, given the share price sort of increase that would probably trigger and therefore, potentially make some acquisitions easier going forward. So just more a question around how do you think about the dividend increase back to historic levels in that sort of capital stack allocation sort of going forward?

Yes. On the -- thanks, Guy. So basically, I think when it comes to the distribution, we've given a path of normalization of this distribution during the Investor Day. So we've announced that already for 2026, for fiscal year 2026, we're going to pay EUR 5.50 per share, which corresponds to a payout of 60%.

And by the way, the fact that we have given in advance the level of distribution for fiscal year 2026 at the time when we are just halfway through is a sign of the confidence that we have in this business. Now what we said going forward is that we intend to increase this payout from 60% in 2026 -- or fiscal year 2026 to 60% to 70% going forward.

And so that's the way we look at it. So basically, it will be progressing as the AREPS continues to progress. We have also given a guidance when it comes to the overall distribution to be paid over the period. And so this is something that we will obviously take into account.

With the overall idea being that all in all, the cash flow that is generated by the company will help finance both the investment and the distribution. So that in the end, the distribution does not imply any addition on the debt side and that the disposals will allow us to acquire new assets and to proceed with the capital recycling.

I guess, Fabrice, as one of the tools at our disposal, if we wish to increase distributions, we would do it more opportunistically through share buyback at that moment rather than evolving the range of distribution payout that we shared.

Yes. This will be, as you said, pretty opportunistic. And it's true that what we've given as a guidance, again, is the 60% to 70% payout, which is again consistent with the principle and the objective that we have to have both the dividend and the CapEx being covered by the cash flow generated by the company, excluding any disposals.

So potentially beyond the plan as well, to be clear. We believe it's the right level to ensure that we gradually de-lever to increase the strategic flexibility of the group at the right moment.

Yes.

Next question is from Tom Berry, Green Street.

Just a quick comment. You delevered and the vacancy has fallen quite significantly, but noting that the EPRA cost ratio, including vacancies is up about 200 bps in the half versus same time last year. Could you just give a bit of color on how that's working directionally?

Sorry, can you?

The vacancy is going down, but the EPRA cost ratio is increasing by 200 bps versus first half last year. And so Tom was asking a bit more color about this.

In fact, what is included in that is the slight increase that we've seen in general expenses. You see that general expenses have increased by EUR 3.9 million. So that's one of the explanations. And this is mainly coming from three main factors.

The first one is less capitalization of our costs in the U.K. as the development pipeline goes down. The second reason is due to less recharge to our JV partners and projects in Spain with the disposal of Bonaire in 2025 and the JV partners that we have with Charneros, where we can recharge less.

And the second explanation to this evolution is the fact that all in all, the CAM expenses have increased in the U.S. And this is why, by the way, you see that in the like-for-like performance in the U.S., you have a negative contribution of minus 0.9% which is mainly coming from the CAM expenses and in particular, the increase in energy costs because you cannot hedge and you cannot buy in advance your energy cost in a number of states in the U.S. So that's why when energy costs increase, this fits through the CAM and the CAM expenses.

And then just one more, if I can. You acquired the freehold interest, the Whitgift Centre in Croydon. I was just wondering where the discussions are on the optionality for that site. Is that bringing that forward any sooner than planned?

No, it's a way to increase flexibility, operational flexibility and optionality for us on the footprint. Our strategy around the Croydon state has not changed nor evolved. We intend to bring this site with potential through the master planning phase as an urban land developer, and we have not changed the strategic approach towards that position.

I think maybe it's an opportunity for me to remind as well that in any case, we look at any new projects, large-scale, small scale through the lens of the EUR 600 million net CapEx we committed to every year. So whatever the potential of those projects we'll bring in partner if we wish to continue development, diluting our interest becoming a small minority partner if it need be.

But we do not intend to deviate from such a baseline or the projects would have to be so compelling that we would be ready to issue equity to fund those, which is probably quite low probability.

[Operator Instructions ] Mr. Rouget, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you very much for your thorough questions, and we're looking forward to exchanging with you and good holidays for those of you who may be close to this moment. Speak soon.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

All right. Good morning, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, in my capacity as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I'd like to welcome you here to this 2026 AGM of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. This is the first time we're holding it at our own headquarters. So -- well, we are telling participants that there is simultaneous translation. You have headsets, should you require a headset, English translation, please ask our grand staff now.

All right. So I have with me Mr. Vincent Rouget, who is Chairman of the Executive of the Executive Board and the Mrs. Zetu who's Council of our company. I'd like to welcome the other members of the Supervisory Board, the other members of the Management Board and members of the Executive Committee. And they are in the room, and they will be there as well to take questions if you have any questions for them.

I would like to welcome Vincent Rouget, who has been the Chairman of the Management Board since the beginning of the year, and I would like to attribute to his predecessor [indiscernible], who revived the group's growth in particularly challenging environment. And together with the Supervisory Board, I'd like to congratulate the company on the strong operational performance last year, in all its businesses, and this goes to show the robustness, the resilience of its business lines and its portfolio at large. And this reflects the first combined positive effects of the group's transformation and its road map for 2025, 2028, entitled platform for growth that was presented back in May of last year and the ecosystem of the group's performance and it's the strengthening of its balance sheet because we increase the valuation of the portfolio. But there were also disposals to the tune of EUR 2.2 billion, and that certainly will contribute to strengthening our position in a volatile environment and challenging context.

And so in this context, we've decided to propose this year a dividend of EUR 4.5 per share for the year 2025. So that's almost 30% up compared to last year. And I'm also happy to note that the group is opening a a new chapter and it's moving confidently with its new Platform for Growth Road Map in what you know is a complex and volatile environment -- on the strength of its business model, the quality of its implementation and the resilience of its operation platform, we have good medium-term visibility. And that momentum enabled us to commit as early as February of this year for a projected payout or distribution in 2027 for the year 2026, a 22% increase to EUR 5.5 per share and Vincent Rouget, who chairs the Management Board will provide details on the performance of the group, but also the challenges.

Now in keeping with the regulations, I will now officially call to order the AGM of the company as convened by the Board and propose to appoint the following. The scrutiny will be performed by Rock Investment, represented here by Mr. Anthony Mark and the URW Fund represented here by [indiscernible]. And for those of you attending the AGM annually, you recognize Mr. David Zeitoun, who will be the Secretary of the AGM.

And I would like to tell you about the presence of the statutory auditors, represented here by Mrs. [indiscernible], Mr. [indiscernible] will present the conclusions of their reports. So to have real-time accounting of the votes on the resolutions. We'll have electronic voting. Mr. David Zeitoun will review the terms of the notice for the meeting and the availability of the documents.

All right. So the notices were issued in line with applicable rules and regulations. The Board of Directors has not received any request to add to the agenda. All the information and documents required by were made available to the website, in line again with legal rules and provisions. Regarding the agenda, you can take a look at the notice, which was made available at the entrance of the room, it was also available on their website and then the 2025 universal registration document was also available online and in paper. You have on the desk, the documents there that will certify the validity, not just the notice, but the actual deliberations. And you will find on the website under the AGM section the presentation of this meeting as is being displayed on screen. Litan, AGM is being broadcast on live, but you will also be able to find it on the website again, subject to the conditions, legal provisions applicable to such replay.

And then Rafael Peru, Judicial Officer, will be appointed for the regularity of the meeting and the rules and regulations for the meeting are also posted at the entrance of the room. There was a special electronic mailbox that you could use to sent questions in writing. We have received such for such questions. The formats [indiscernible] because of the general or technical nature of the questions, shareholders are requested to look at the Q&A on the company's website dedicated to the 2026 AGM.

Regarding the quorum, we have 144, 141 shares for the -- this is the first call of the AGM. So the quorum we need is 1/5 of voting shares. So that's 28,843,229 shares. So that includes the mail votes. And then the quorum required for the extraordinary AGM, that's 1/4 of the voting shares, 36,54,036 shares. And all told, we have 79.2% of the voting shares at this point.

All right. Well, thank you, David, for these clarifications. As indicated in the notice of this meeting, it will no longer be possible to sign the attendance sheet after 10:45 a.m. and shareholders arriving after that time will not be able to take part in the vote.

And now I'll give the floor to Vincent Rouget, who is Chairman of the Management Board, and he'll tell you about the performance for 2026.

Thank you, Jacques. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, before we go through all the details of the year 2025 and sharing with you our strategy for the year, our strategic priorities in my capacity as Chairman of the Management Board, I would like to thank all the teams of our group throughout the regions where we operate throughout the year. And thanks to their hard work, we had excellent performance in 2025, but also very promising trajectory for the first quarter. And this performance enables us to be confident for the 2025-2028 road map. And this is why we decided to look forward to a significant increase in the payout to EUR 5.5 per share. So this was a very successful year for URW. There were a number of achievements and of course, the execution of our road map platform for growth. 2 exceeds EUR 8 per share. And we're delivering good performance along with the organic growth and significant deing.ksalance of shopping centers with an increase in footfall and sales, the strength of our leasing activity and vacancy which is the 2 rental pressure through our portfolio. And we've also made strategic strides to prepare for the future, which will not have much impact on the balance sheet. franchise business, and that's in the shopping center business and also of a 25% stake in Starter, iconic business from Edinburgh.

And this shows the significant growth potential of Westfield, which is, of course, reflects our competitive edge and our operational capabilities.

We've also delivered a significant project. The retail spare that Hamburg [indiscernible] and the expansion of [indiscernible] in the Czech Republic. And finally, in terms of debt, we had EUR 2.2 billion in divestment of either completed or secured since the beginning of 2025 and reduced the debt ratio, the LTV going to value issue. We've met our commitments regarding earnings and distribution for 2025, thanks to these. But also refinancing operations and hedging operations.

Finally, our platform for growth road map aims to generate sound and sustainable growth through our unique portfolio of urban investment property, as shown by our '25 results and with the completion of our -- well, because of the disposal of nonstrategic assets, we now have a very diversified homogenous portfolios centered on high-level shopping malls that are exclusively focused on flagship properties and our balance sheet has strengthened because the debt-to-equity ratio is at its lowest since 2019, and we will certainly achieve the ratio to [ 40% ] by 2028. So this positive momentum gives us more flexibility to unlock our growth potential in keeping with our road map.

Now if we focus more specifically on the operational performance of shopping centers in 2025, we've seen a continuous improvement of our key indicators across all the regions. These key indicators are in green, particularly tenant sales and that outperform national indices as well as correlation and you'll have the numbers for Q1 in 2026. These are already up 5%.

Vacancy rates were down 20 basis points to reach a historic low, and this is because of strong leasing activity, which continued in Q1 of this year, and we signed as many upwards of EUR 400 million in guaranteed minimum rents with average uplift of 11%, above the index rents for the long-term leases, and that is in line with the lines with the levels of 2024. And we will certainly continue this momentum in '26, leasing up our space is, of course, our priority. And we're pleased to see that the strategy has been successful in.

Again here, and I'd like to thank our leasing teams since the beginning of 2026 in spite of a very volatile environment. And so with our platform, our Road Map Platform for Growth, we have a simple, clear plan based on our performance ecosystem where we have a clear opportunity to increase footfall in our properties, but also to continue to boost the sales of our retail partners, but also intensify rental pressure, reduce vacancies and consolidate market shares and gain market share through our competitiveness, and this will enable us to have a growth on a constant basis and develop low capital-intensive opportunities for the group.

Now how can one increase the footfall of our investment properties and how can we boost retail tenant sales? Well, this of course, is based on attracting the most desirable concept for our flagship properties because we are a profitable growth platform for these brands. You may remember that the flagship stores are a key driver of customer acquisition for these retailers, and these stores are located in city centers on major road such as the [indiscernible]. And today, these flagship stores are more and more present in the Westfield Centers and they're a key pillar of our [indiscernible] proposition. So we offer premium locations with outstanding footfall and, of course, profitable growth. And so in 2025, we presented a very concrete example.

The [indiscernible] deal in Paris compared to the [indiscernible] in Paris, now footfall is more or less identical 65 million people per year. And the sales per square meter is also maybe even higher at the [indiscernible], but the rents at [indiscernible] is significantly lower and more competitive than that of the [indiscernible] as you can see on the slide. And this mechanically translates into better profitability for the brands present in the flagship stores in the [indiscernible].

Now you say [indiscernible] have a different value proposition, so you cannot exactly compare the two. But if you pay twice as much rent, this is because you have a flagship store in a very prestigious place for the brands. That's what is known as media value, but at the very least, in the retail business, this exclusive -- or near exclusive positioning of the group in flagship assets puts it in a very desirable enviable market segment, making it different from all other shopping areas. And -- but of course, on these flagship stores, the sales to rent ratio is not the only criteria here, there's additional value that is, in fact, reinforced by the fact that the -- we are the single owners because many lease operators have a joint property.

And so this, we can have a better customer experience and a more visibility on footfall. And we have a belief that Unibail-Rodamco Westfield flagship retail is the future of e-commerce. In this respect, we are also at the forefront of data and artificial intelligence, and we discussed this in last year's AGM. And this is a result of 4 years' investment in technology as well as the group's structural position and the size of our flagship portfolio. And we had a specialized start-up called DJEs, which converts video feeds from our shopping store in segmented data, so we can better analyze and understand customer journeys and footfall in the flagship assets in anonymized fashion in line with the DP regulations.

And that enabled us to monitor these, the performance both leasing but also asset management. And so we can measure such things as balance rate or footfall for each store almost in real time, which is very valuable. So these indicators of course, strengthen our exchanges with retailers. And we can improve decision-making based on the data and informed decisions. And on the right-hand side, you can see some anonymous data, which illustrates these indicators for a fashion retailer for several of these items, you can see the sort of questions raised by such data. Some of them are highlighted on the slide.

But we're looking at a huge volume of data that needs to be processed basically in real time. And that's, of course, the major role of artificial intelligence to take the full potential of this technology, not just for decision-making, but also for improving performance of our retailer partners and the use of this technology with this data enables us better to manage our assets and our competitive vision. That is our second priority for the year 2026 after leasing, of course.

Regarding sustainable development now, URW has made significant headway in 2025 and is recognized amongst the 100 most sustainable companies in the world as recognized by Corporate Knights and Time magazine. And we also have a -- one of the highlights was the cultural partnership [indiscernible]. We bring reproductions of iconic works on the [indiscernible] shopping malls in France. And so we facilitate access to culture and strengthen the link with our communities.

URW is on track to achieve its objectives for the road map known as better places, but you'll find more detail -- much more detail on 2025 performance in the Universal registration document which was published back in March. I'd like to add that better basis is a central strategic pillar for the group, indeed, a key pillar of our long-term competitive edge.

And then with a portfolio of EUR 45 billion worth of assets and tenants up with 9 million visits per year. We have good visibility and a possibility to have an effect on our local communities. We can also play a role in today's society, especially at a time when digitalization has strong effects on social ties. And we're in a position on our own scale to reinvent living together community life in our own way and in line with our mission statement.

But over and beyond the leasing of our spaces, innovation, data, the third strategic pillar is simplifying the structure of the group. And we've already made, again, significant headway in 2025 because we have now 4 regions instead of 11 countries. We disposed of nonstrategic businesses, and we also delisted Australian CDIs. And indeed, to this spending to your approval, the destapling of URW stable shares that will generate costs and efficiency gains. But it is tax neutral and this preserves, of course, the economic rights of the shareholders.

But we're also reducing the number of subsidiaries. In 2026, we are focused on keeping our costs under control. I mean we have the pleasure of holding this AGM at our own headquarters, but that's the case in point for savings. They're also a wage restrain, as you can see, at Management Board level. And we are committed to developing simplicity, agility throughout the group for all our teams and all business lines. This is essential if we are to free up our own resources so that we can focus our time and energy on generating growth on developing our competitive edge and indeed on developing artificial intelligence and creating more impact.

Before we move on to the dividends and the outlook for 2026, I'm delighted to welcome on the Management Board, Kathleen Veles as Chief Investment Officer. She joins -- and Sofie, Fabric, Sylvain, myself, of course, we're excited to lead the group in this new direction. This established on the road map. And her appointment was welcomed by the markets.

We have 3 clear priorities for 2026. You have them up on the slide, and we covered this before. In 2025, we delivered attractive growth on the like-for-like basis, keeping our costs under control and managing our investment properties, and we propose to continue this strategy in 2026 and through out -- through to 2028.

Let's look at the dividend for 2025. So we secured EUR 2.2 billion in divestments, as announced in the 2025 Investment Day -- Investor Day, rather, because of the strong financial performance, we offer a cash dividend of EUR 4.5 per share for the year 2025. This is almost 30% up compared to 2024. And this is a payout -- distribution ratio of 47%.

Let's look at the outlook for 2026 now. During Investor Day, we announced an AREPS figure of at least EUR 9.5 per share then in 2026 to reflect the effects of our divestments of our disposals. We raised the forecast now to anywhere between EUR 9.5 and EUR 9.3 per share. And so there would be an operational growth of 5%, supported by strong operational performance in the retail business and that we do not foresee any degradation of the macroeconomic geopolitical environment, however.

And finally, in line with our commitment to deliver attractive returns to shareholders, we propose to have a dividend of EUR 5.5 per share for the year 2026. So this would be paid in 2027, that reflects our confidence in the group's outlook. As we said earlier, this would be a distribution ratio of about 60%, and that will be 22% up compared to the 2025 and in line with the trajectory that we announced on Investor Day.

The distribution ratio in '27, '28, should be anywhere between 60% and 70%, and that, of course, increases -- I mean, ensures an increase in the distribution per share of by 2028, but this is also in line with our LTV reduction trajectory. And finally, instead of being a dividend, this will be a reimbursement of capital contribution, and we will continue this until such time as we can completely reduce our debt. Now it's about EUR 2.5 billion at end 2025.

A few words now about the reasons why I'm really excited to be at the head of this company and very confident in the fact that we can deliver long-term sustainable growth. Our assets, our know-how, our brand are an ecosystem of performance. It's a powerful competitive advantage. We have a sound, profitable and cash-generating business model model. And more specifically, I'd like to refer to the strategic position of our plan, our EBITDA margin of 63%. EBITDA per employee stands at more than EUR 1 million. We have attractive sustainable growth. And the cash flow conversion conversion stands at about 75% of EBITDA based on our trajectory looking to 2028.

And beyond the Property business, you'll find few companies or indeed industries with that kind of numbers, whether in the S&P 500 or the major European stocking indices. And to that end, my colleagues on the Board and I are committed to unlocking the potential of our company through platform for growth and become leaders in the industry. This will enable us to generate attractive growth and returns for our shareholders. to continue to expand our addressable market, especially with the low capital businesses and create value for all stakeholders.

Thank you for your presence, and thank you for your attention.

Well, thank you, Vincent, for this presentation, and I would like to welcome our new member, David. Thank you also would just tell us how governance operates in the company?

Well, yes, Vincent Rouget told you about the membership of the Management Board subject to the renewal of Fabrice Mouchel, the appointment of Kathleen [indiscernible]. We have -- we'll have 9 new members at the end of this AGM, if you agree, we'll have 44% women, 56% men from the 4 nationalities, the independence ratio about at 76%. We have various profile with different horizons.

The Management Board has 2 Specialized Committee, a Supervisory Committee, a Governance Committee, an Appointment and Compensation committee with an independence ratio of 67%. Okay. We will continue with the appointments -- compensation, yes, we decided to keep these compensation under control and index it on long-term performance. Vincent Rouget was -- is 25% below that of his predecessor. And the variable long-term bonus is upwards of our policy at 180% of the fixed revenue. And 25% is based on performance of our platform for growth EBITDA on net debt to EBITDA and the total amount of return to shareholders between [ '25 and '28 ], inclusive [indiscernible] condition were treated in keeping with the strict abidance to the [indiscernible] compensation. Because of the circumstances of his departure, we're looking at bonus upwards of the [indiscernible] code for 2025, 2026. All these details are in the universal registration document.

Well, thank you, David, for these details. And now I'll give the floor to [indiscernible], who represents the auditors and he gave us a summary of the group's performance.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the auditors, I would like to show the reports established for the ordinary and extraordinary part of this Annual General Meeting. All the reports were made available by our -- by the company, and you will find them regarding the related party agreements in the universal registration document. This is available on the company's website, in line with the customers of this AGM.

I'll go through the highlights of this report. The fundamental purpose of our mission is to arrive at reasonable resolutions on the fairness and actuality of the numbers with no significant anomalies. We, of course, assessed the amount through sampling both in the annual and the consolidated financial statements. There was also some internal auditing.

We looked at the estimates that were used by the company the presentation of the accounts in general, and our reports on the accounts also include a specific part describing the key items of the audit, any risk of significant anomalies, which based to our own judgment are the most significant. Anyway, regarding the annual financial statements and that needs to be voted on in the first resolution. Our report is to be found on Page 44 of the universal registration document. And we have no reservations on these accounts.

In the third part, the key items of the audits are assessing the redeemable shares and receivables, consolidation of the financial debt and derivatives. In financial instruments, we also went through the specific checks as provided by rules and regulations, especially on the Supervisory Board and corporate governance.

Regarding the consolidated financial statements, and that's Resolution #2. Our report is to be found on Page 438 of the universal registration document. And we have an opinion without reservations on the consolidated accounts and the Annex is for the accounts for 2025. And in the third part of this report, remind the key items of the audits that produced are opinioned.

We identified the following key items; valuation of the investment property portfolio, including investment properties under construction, either held directly or within joint ventures. Secondly, the recoverable amounts of intangible assets within indefinite useful life and goodwill related to the acquisition of Westfield. And we also, in our report, we said that we went through the specific checks as provided by rules of regulations on financial accounts.

Then we'll have a summary on the special report on related party agreements. You'll find the full version on Page 449 of the universal registration document, which is Resolution #5. In the first part of that report, we tell you that we were told that there were no new such convention, such agreement for the year 2025 or regarding 2026, and we were told of one existing related party agreement that had been approved in the previous AGM and whose performance continued for the year 2025.

Now regarding our the report on Resolutions 21 to 23 of the AGM. There are no specific observations for all these resolutions, we will produce additional reports if necessary, as these authorizations are used by the Management Board. Thank you for your attention.

All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Gemini. Now then I suggest we have a Q&A session that will enable shareholders to make comments or raise ask questions.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm an individual shareholder. I only attend AGM. So I didn't get the information elsewhere, but what's the connection with Mr. Rouget and Unibail and where was he before he became CEO and Chairman of the management Board and well, what is his seniority and what is background?

It's true. We could have gone through Vincent's resume. I mean he joined us a few years back, but he can introduce himself.

Yes, I joined URW exactly 3 years ago. That was June 1, 2023, after the 2023 AGM. Before that, I spent 16 years with Leon Bressler, the former CEO of Unibail, who was CEO of Unibail, working with him in a Property Investment Fund, and European Fund. I was working with him and looked at all investment and asset management of the portfolio in Western Europe, not including England, Ireland or Scandinavian countries.

We were managing about EUR 10 billion in equity over 15 years in Europe.

Right then, he is now mature, and he is well familiar with the property business.

Good morning, and congratulations, and many things. I'm also an individual shareholder we told that the dividend would not be a dividend as such, but rather reimbursement of equity. What does it mean in tax terms. It's a fair question. I can answer in simple terms. But if you need any clarifications. I'll give the floor to Fabrice Mouchel, our Chief Financial Officer.

This means that when you receive that dividend, it is not taxable -- because we are reimbursing the money you provided the company. So your -- the tax base and the entry ticket will be lower. So -- but they it means that when if you sell back your shares, you may have a capital day against tax, but as a dividend, you will not be paying income tax to the French. At least under the French tax system.

I come here from [indiscernible]. I live next to [indiscernible]. Can you tell us about the stores there, and when will work begin?

What work are you referring to in [indiscernible] is one of the finest properties on the parking lots -- on the parking lots, we are looking at a few months' worth of renovation and consolidation of parking areas on that site, but there are other development projects. We are restructuring the wings and we're extending the concept. I mean, there will be a Zara flagship store. And so the mall will certainly develop over the next few years. We are working hard on this.

This is one asset where we've been working hard to attract the right concepts, the right flagship stores with a view to consolidate or indeed reinforce our footfall. It's a very competitive side in the Paris area. So we need to keep this asset at its best. And we expect book to be completed by end 2026.

Good morning, sir. My name is Jean Richard. I'm also an individual shareholder. I'd like to know, I heard, I was told and not often, but once or twice I was told that Unibail was a stakeholder in the triangles, [indiscernible] Is that true?

And the answer is yes.

And what's your stake in this? And what will they be in this 2 or 3 -- we were not told.

Yes, go ahead.

This is true, and we are proud to be shareholders in this project, we have 30% of that project alongside with AXA, our institutional partner, they have 70%. The tower is being built as we speak. We've working -- well, on the -- well, we've achieved the topping yard. So the structure, the the skin has been completed, and the teams working on the site are now finishing the inside work and architecture. This is a joint project.

You have 90,000 square meters of commercial space, about 70,000 square meters office space and 20,000 square meters for other users. So there will be a hotel with more than 100 rooms. There will be an event area, panoramic space with an American partner who has a venue at One Vanderbilt. And so this is very successful in New York, but we certainly expect lots of footfall, lots of interest because it has got -- well, there will be an amazing view from that side.

Anyway, we have leasing or rather pre-leasing of the office space. Many brands have shown an interest. Many prospects have been visiting, so we are very confident as to the future of this project and our ability to lease the space. We are historically at [indiscernible]. We were very successful there. Latest that was delivered during the COVID period in 2021 with the Trinity Tower that had not been -- was not least when we delivered it. But now in a matter of 2 years, it was fully leased after completion at a much higher rental values than the average at [indiscernible] because of the unequaled qualities of this place.

And we'll have equal quality, indeed, outstanding quality at the [indiscernible] and of course, it has its unique architecture and no 2 levels are identical. And so on the first floor, you have spaces of all of one piece, 400,000 square meters. And then at the top, you have smaller spaces, about 1,000 square meters with breathtaking views on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And so we will have various offers in what has been a rather challenging market, the office space business.

Yes, sir, to the left, to my right.

Good morning I was a historic shareholder. I was a shareholder of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. I was witnessed to the merger with Westfield. But as a shareholder, I didn't look into the details of all that, but you can see that you're refocusing your business on shopping centers and giving up on other businesses. And the question I had, it seemed to me that Unibail was looking at services, what well, we do have an office space in significant office space business in our portfolio. We're one of the big players in the Paris area. We have EUR 2 billion worth of assets.

Now well, the total balance sheet is EUR 49 billion. So indeed, the vast majority is on retail space, not just in Europe but also in the United States, but we do have significant exposure in the office space building, [indiscernible] we have 50%, and that is, of course, significant in the Paris area and certainly carries the economic development of the Paris area. We're very proud to be involved in that.

And we've been investing indeed, we are renovating in the restructuring for Phase 2 of the [indiscernible]. You can see it from the Beltway. And so we will be investing there. Now the office space portfolio used to be -- well, was a significant source of deleveraging, we've been disposing of these sites over the past few years. But that was part of our policy to focus to new, more profitable assets develop the profitable assets and deliver outstanding goods. But then when we -- the fruition, we divest and then invest in new projects.

So we're still committed to the Office Space business. We have our own recognized know-how, but capital allocation will rotate in such a way as to recoup our investments in these businesses. The -- I mean, this is still significant, but it is now a minority business. Outside the Paris area and outside France, you have multi use, especially in the United States.

Yes, that's a good point. in Hamburg, for instance, you have different uses, multiuse. You have not just retail. I mean you have 100,000 square meters in retail, and this has been very successful ever since the opening in April 2025. We have about 100,000 square meters also Office Space and we are completing that. 45,000 square meters in hotels, lots of residential property was sold to third-party developers. But you can see, you have multi users. And this is essential if you want to have these locations that draw lots of footfall and with, of course, retail offshoots, which is, of course, important for us as operators in this business.

And the person at the back of the room.

I'm also an individual shareholder. And I also have a question about one specific project because there's very little information is Unibail involved in constructing [indiscernible] that's where the sporting complex, [indiscernible] is located. You also have shops. We don't have much information about that at all.

Good morning, and thank you for this question. I can confirm that we are minority shareholder in that Aqua Bulva project and in the renovation of that site.

So can you give us some details?

Well, the project is underway. We've got all the permits and alongside with our partner, we are finalizing the concept. We are now talking to companies that might join and deciding on the best time to launch what is a beautiful multiuse project.

You have a significant portion of office space, but also residential property and then ground level retail space and then there's a leisure business and a beautiful movie theater. So if I properly understood your explanations about the services sector, you champion projects you take part in the construction building, and then you dispose them to reposition yourself and other assets that are similar or different. So if I got this right, you first champion, the Trinity project and you sold it. And as for the [indiscernible] high-rise, you said you had a 25% stake with AXA.

Besides the lady has just asked a question about the Ballard reconstruction project. It shows that you partially are involved in this operation. I'd like to understand what the point is of being involved in a project with a 25% stake? Is it because it's too heavy for the company's shoulders? Or am I wrong in thinking this and it's not a perfectly logical financial setup because we have indeed seen that a lot of players in the services sectors are playing musical chairs. I'm calling this the service -- the musical chairs and the services sectors.

Mr. Rouget.

We do indeed own 30% of the Triangle project. And I think it's an outstanding example of the model that we want to implement going forward. I mean by that, that originally launched projects, we have teams that can harness this expertise that can produce highly attractive products that can think of and design very attractive projects. We have had a new partner in the very start of the project in 2021. Just as the permission was about to expire the permission to launch the construction works. The project was launched. It could not be launched at the time for the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield balance sheet because of our project to deleverage the group and to cut our debt further.

Despite that, the group found or created the right conditions with the support of our partner to launch this beautiful project and complete it. In our approach in our strategic road map, a platform for growth, this is what we mean when we say a disciplined capital allocation going forward. Because if we were to launch all these developments at 100%, well, the reality is that today, they are 100% financed with debt. Our objective is, however, to deleverage in order to be, again, strategically flexible at group level in order to to acquire targets in the best -- at the best time when market contents are right.

So it's part of our strategy. We want to find the right partners. For example, the [indiscernible] project, the disposal of the 15% took place when there was no permission for these projects. It was a legacy project and our partner bought a 49% stake, secure the permission and got from authorities, a change of destination, change of purpose for this part of the neighborhood. It's been designated as a hybrid use.

Yes. And many financial partners see the expertise we have to put together a project. And we charge fees, we keep track of the development. As I was saying in my short presentation, this activity requires less capital, but generates more growth at group level, and this helps us generate sustainable organic growth.

Mr. [indiscernible]. In your presentation, you mentioned the [indiscernible] Project. Maybe you can give our listeners a reminder of the fact that we do take initiative.

Mr. Rouget.

Yes, we have the opportunity to take a 25% stake in the share capital of SynJames quarter, which is the iconic asset in the historical center of Edinburgh. It was delivered and developed in the midst of COVID on the basis of very attractive investments. In this project, we partner up with our existing partners on other assets in England. APG, a Dutch fund, that approached us because they are familiar with the group's expertise. They know that we can generate value with these assets.

So we're going to reposition this asset under the Westfield brand sometime in 2026. It's really part of our performance ecosystem that we referred to with [indiscernible]. It's really our ability to secure sustainable organic growth. It also contributes to the global prestige of the brand -- the Westfield brand.

Then are there any other questions? At the back of the [indiscernible]. I can see the gentleman there on the right.

Good morning. My name is Kip Ko. I'm an individual shareholder. I have 3 short questions. The share price is in the region of EUR 100. A few years back, it was above EUR 200. What is our reassessed net asset? And what is the turnover of buildings? That's my first question. Then you are proposing the appointment of a new director, [indiscernible]? The sum of Mr. [indiscernible], could you maybe give us more details?

He's 26. He graduated when he was 23.

I'd like to know more about this phenomenon. He seems to have achieved a lot over 3 years. Third question, you are appointing yet another man in the Board. You have appointed women, is that to offset the appointment of the gentleman? Or is it really about acquiring new competencies?

Would you like to start, Jack?

Well, I'll start with the last question, if I may, Jacques Richier. We have a new director who's right there. She's attending the meeting. We are delighted that Carol has joined us. As mentioned in relation to governance, what's really important for us is to have diverse profiles that will give a different perspective on the different issues. Carol developed a great brand. I don't know if we can promote it or advertisers here. [indiscernible]

Usually, we have the perspective of what we call retailers. So this is what this lady gives us. This brand is now present in France, but also in the United States, [indiscernible] and it's interesting for us. As this is the perspective of one potential partner for Unibail in our shopping centers. And Carol joined us for these very reasons because we were trying to strengthen our knowledge at the level of the Supervisory Board. Our knowledge in the retail industry, which is evolving extremely fast. It's quite Schumpeterian some brands go on to other brands are created.

So you need to be in contact with people who experienced this on a daily basis. As regards [indiscernible] is here. So you can meet the at first hand, this phenomenon, as you said, in just a few moments. As you've said, Jule has broad experience and call it, I would also say natural experience. You mentioned his family background. So he was really immersed in an entrepreneurial context. It does have international experience in operations, but also as an executive. He is accustomed to Board meetings, but also has had a number of responsibilities for a number of topics. He has worked in many different areas, a lot in technology, also a lot in innovation. We also wanted to increase our expertise in this.

Earlier on, Vincent said that we work a lot on data-related issues on how to use it, but also on AI -- we also wanted to beef up this expertise. Besides, we haven't mentioned it yet, but I suppose we can, I suppose, Vincent give a reminder to answer, but you need to bear in mind this figure, 32%, 32% of our, let's call them, consumers are customers of the GenZ customers.

Well, I suppose you can easily understand that I'm not one of them. When you look at the membership of the Supervisory Board, it's quite important to understand this. Just like Carol brings with her this knowledge of retail. It's important to have someone who represents this generation. 32% today, is the generation that will determine the way we will evolve our shopping centers and our offer. With [indiscernible], we have the expertise I've just mentioned, especially in relation to technology and innovation, but also the perspective of that specific generation and their expectations and how we can meet them. So that's my attempt to answer your question about our 2 directors.

Now Vincent Rouget.

About the reassessed net asset. The standards have changed, especially under EPRA, the European Association of listed companies. That brings together institutional investors and companies in this industry. So that's the net tangible assets, the NTA, which is in the region of EUR 113, EUR 113 which is almost a liquidation asset that does not take into account the the group's valuation. It's quite interesting because we've signed a first franchise agreement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's a new activity, as we announced during our Investor Day, we believe that we could generate between EUR 30 million and EUR 50 million in EBITDA per annum between [indiscernible]. So this really yields a lot of value potentially for the group.

So we see this as a net liquidation asset that can over -- maybe undervalues the number of assets, excluding tax aspects. There are 2 other metrics, EUR 113 million and EUR 143 million. If I'm correct, which are based on going concern approaches, which are not liquidity assets. Where -- when you buy a group share, you don't pay a registration fee. So there's no reason to deduct them from the asset valuation. So -- the brand is valued. Also, there are unrealized assets.

For example, the highly competitive financing cost that the group can benefit from with very interesting rates, 2.1% to 3%. It's very much more interesting than the market currently. It can also be factored in the net reassessed assets, lease approaches. So just to give you a ballpark figure. Of course, it remains lower than the historical high. But our feeling as a management team is that the share price could be potentially reassessing that. So we are not currently fully valued correctly. So we believe that this will improve over time as we improve our distributions, our payouts and as we gradually deleverage.

Thank you, Jacques Richier, thank you, Vincent Rouget. Well, you asked 3 questions in one. So I suggest we now I suppose just we now end the Q&A session. I would like to thank our shareholders for their questions and for the interest they have expressed and shown for that company.

Over to David Zeitoun is going to inform the general meeting of the number of shareholders participating in the vote prior to the vote on the resolutions.

As the signing of the attendance sheet is now over, I can inform you that 4,074 shareholders are present or represented to have voted by post. They hold a total of -- A total of 114, 064,933 shares, that is 79.72% shares of the voting rights. The chrome has, therefore, been met, and the meeting may value to deliberate. Dear members of the board, you will be invited to certify the accuracy of the attendance sheet prepared by OPTEVA or register.

Jacques Richier.

Right. Well, under our provision, we shall now proceed to the vote on resolutions. As is customary, the title of the resolutions will be projected on the screen to being French. Maybe a quick reminder on how to use the electronic voting devices. Of course, -- before we begin the voting process, please ensure that your device is turned on and that the number of shares you hold is correctly displayed on the screen. Once voting opens for each resolution, simply press the button corresponding to your choice. The green key 1, to what to vote in favor. The yellow key 2 to abstain, the red key 3 to vote against. You may change your selection as long as the hour glass icon appears on the screen for approximately 10 seconds.

For the duration of the road, please turn off your mobile phones for connection issues. Finally kindly return your device to the host as you exit.

Very well. I now propose that we begin the voting on the resolutions. First resolution, approval of the statutory financial statements for the year ended on December 31, 2025. The vote is now open.

[Voting]

The resolution is approved. Second resolution, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2025. The vote is now open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Third resolution, allocation of net income for the year ended on December 31, 2025. The vote is now open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Fourth resolution, distribution of an amount deducted from the additional paid-in capital account. The vote is now open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Fifth resolution, approval of the statutory special report on related party agreements governed by Articles L225-88 of the French Commercial Code. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Sixth resolution, approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind paid during the financial year ended on December 31 2025, or granted in respect of the same financial year to Mr. Jean-Marie Tritant as Chairman of the Management Board. Vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. Seventh resolution, approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind during the financial year ended on December 31, 2025. all granted in respect of the same financial year to Mr. Fabrice Mouchel as member of the Management Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. Eighth resolution. The approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind bet during the financial year ended on December 31, 2025, or granted in respect of the same financial year to Mr. Vincent Rouget, as member of the Management Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Ninth resolution, approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind [indiscernible] during the financial year ended on December 31, 2025, or grant in respect of the same financial year to Mrs. Anne-Sophie Sancerre as member of the Management Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. Tenth resolution, approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind are during the financial year ended on December 31, 2025, or grant in respect of the same financial year to Mr. Sylvain Montcouquiol as member of the Management Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 11th resolution, approval of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind during the financial year ended on December 31, 2025 or granted in respect of the same financial year to Mr. Jacques Richier as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 12th resolution, approval of the information relating to the remuneration of the corporate office as mentioned in Article L22/10/9 of the French Commercial Code for the year ended on December 31, 2025. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 13th resolution, approval of the remuneration policy for the Chairman of the Management Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 14th resolution, approve all of the remuneration policy for the members of the Management Board other than the Chairman. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 15th resolution, approval of the remuneration policy for the members of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 16th resolution, renewal of the term of office of Mr. Jacques Richier as member of the Supervisory Board. the vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 17th resolution, renewal of the term of office of Mr. Roderick Munsters as member of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 18th resolution, ratification of the cooptation of Mr. Ju Niel as member of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 19th resolution appointed Ms. Carol Benari as member of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 20th resolution, authorization granted to the Management Board to enable the company to purchase its shares in accordance with article L22/10/62 of the French Commercial Code. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 21st resolution, authorization granted to the Management Board to reduce the share capital by cancellation of shares bought by the company in accordance with Article L22/10/62 of the French Commercial Code. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed and the resolution is approved. Resolution 22nd resolution. Delegation of authority granted to the Management Board to decide on the issuance of ordinary shares and/or securities giving access to the share capital of the company or one of the subsidiaries and/or debt securities, without preemptive subscription rights for the benefit of one or more specifically designated persons suspended during a public tender offer. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 23rd resolution, delegation of authority granted to the Management Board to increase the share capital by issuing ordinary shares and/or securities giving access to share capital of the company reserved for participants in the company's savings plan, the [indiscernible] without preemptive subscription rights in accordance with Articles L333/[indiscernible] of the French labor code. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. 24th resolution, amendments to articles 12 and 18 of the Articles of Association to comply with changes introduced under France's Attractiveness Act and the Cree #2026, The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 25th resolution, amendments to the Articles of Association in order to terminate the stapled share principles as a consequence of the streamlining of URW Group's legal structure through an internal reorganization. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is approved. 26th resolution, adoption of the text of the new Articles of Association of the company following the termination of the stapled share principle. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is approved. The last resolution, 27th resolution, powers for formalities. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. Well, you caught me off guard. It was a bit long and tedious, but it's over.

Thank you, David. Thank you for managing the different votes and resolutions. Now dear shareholders, I'd like to thank you for your participation in this vote. Again, I'd like to thank you on behalf of Carol, Carol Benari for her election. Also on behalf of Roderick Munsters and also my personal capacity for renewing your trust in us. And to conclude this meeting, I would like to once again express my gratitude to our shareholders for their continued support over all these years. And throughout this redeployment of gave us the necessary trust. They supported us when things were more challenging, and we're also delighted to share the better times with them.

Also, I'd like to congratulate Jean-Marie Tritant for his work, the party played in the transition that occurred smoothly and the transition at the end of 2025 with Vincent Rouget. Also on behalf of all the shareholders, but on behalf of the Supervisory Board as well, that is present here. I would like to congratulate Vincent Rouget for his new position for the work is done and also other members of the Management Board who are attending as well as all of the group's employees for the outstanding work in 2025 and which is the result of that constant commitment and total dedication, which has enabled us to present these 2025 results and the outlook for 2026.

I personally believe that an effective well-performing company is also about a great team, which is what we are fortunate enough to have. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for attending this general meeting. Thank you for your trust. Have a lovely day.

Thank you.

Good morning, and a warm welcome to URW's Full Year 2025 results, my first as CEO. I'm going to take you through some key highlights and share some insights on our key priorities. Fabrice will cover our financials, and then we will both be available for questions. 2025 was another big year for URW with many achievements and a good start to our Platform for Growth business plan, including a 2025 AREPS guidance at EUR 9.58 per share. We are reporting a strong performance across our business plan priorities, attractive growth -- organic growth, disciplined capital allocation and substantial deleveraging.

First, the key foundation is our strong retail operational performance. Footfall and tenant sales are up, leasing activity is strong and vacancy is down to a record low. We also made very important strategic inroads in preparing for a bright future through 2 capital-light initiatives, a new franchising business, an industry first in flagship retail globally and the acquisition of a 25% stake in St. James Quarter in Edinburgh. This demonstrates the significant growth potential of the Westfield ecosystem of performance with top mall owners.

We also had successful deliveries with Westfield Hamburg-Uberseequartier and Westfield Cerny Most in Czech Republic. Second, on the capital allocation side, valuations are up and our LTV has significantly improved, helped by EUR 2.2 billion of disposals completed or secured since the start of 2025. We have delivered on our earnings and distribution commitments for 2025, thanks to all these great achievements and to the successful financing and hedging activity delivered by Fabrice and his teams.

One more point. We will present in a few slides how we are preparing the future as a top innovator, thanks to the exciting possibilities data and AI offer us and our retail partners. I'm sincerely grateful to all our teams for their outstanding performance across our 4 regions in 2025, and I'm very excited to lead this great company. Our Platform for Growth business plan focuses on delivering growth from a dominant network of retail-anchored urban infrastructure assets. And you can see that clearly in our 2025 results. For me, they clearly reinforce our strong underlying fundamentals and showcase the strength and attractiveness of our unique business.

Our EBITDA margin stands at 63%, a level very few businesses enjoy. And post disposals, we now have an attractive cash flow conversion rate in excess of 70%. With the completion of our noncore disposals program, our business now comprises a portfolio of irreplaceable destinations. The strengthening of our balance sheet with an LTV at its lowest level since 2017 means we are well on track to achieve our 40% 2028 LTV target. All this is great news as it gives us the strategic flexibility to unlock URW's embedded growth potential in line with our business plan.

As I shared at the start, our business has once again demonstrated its attractivity and consistent compounding growth. We saw continued improvement in key operating metrics across all regions within our retail portfolio.

Tenant sales continue to outperform sales indices and core inflation and vacancy is down a further 20 basis points to record low, driven by dynamic leasing activity. Zooming in on our key leasing metrics, we signed over EUR 400 million of MGR with an 11% uplift on long-term deals, consistent with 2024 activity. We made good progress in 2025, and we want to go even further with leasing being our #1 priority for me and our teams.

In the Platform for Growth, we have a simple plan, which will drive growth through our established ecosystem of performance that combines unique assets, best-in-class retail operations expertise and the powerful Westfield brand. As a result, we see a clear opportunity to increase traffic, to keep driving tenant sales up with our partners, further enhance rental tension and retail tension and reduce vacancy and solidify our competitive advantage and capture market share. This is the key work that will drive like-for-like growth and unlock capital-light opportunities for our group.

Now I want to spend a couple of minutes on why we outperformed our sector. It's pretty simple, and this is at the core of our competitive advantage. Flagship stores are an essential part of a retailer's brand expression and customer acquisition strategy. Traditionally, these stores were located in premium city center or high streets with high footfall. And today, they are increasingly a key component of the Westfield value proposition. We offer brands premium locations, incredible footfall and most importantly, a profitable growth platform. Our value proposition combines brand awareness with earned media value equal to 20% to 25% of annual occupancy costs at our centers and a cost-efficient customer acquisition channel, 80% lower than digital.

For these reasons, our stores are big business for many tenants. Our top 20 fastest-growing brands achieved a plus 40% sales increase across our portfolio over only the 2 past years and generate an average of EUR 16 million of annual sales from each store. Here is another data point. Our 10 largest brands are grossing between EUR 100 million and EUR 900 million in annual sales volume across our portfolio. This is huge, and we're super excited to see which one will first reach the EUR 1 billion sales with us.

Finally, I would add that this success also reflects the benefits of our highly curated destinations for customers. These are safe, secure, comfortable locations that offer a superior experience in real-life human connection. This being said, here is a thought-provoking comparison. We have taken key leasing data from Forum des Halles in Paris and compared it to our city's leading high streets, Avenue des Champs-Elysees.

We are talking about roughly the same annual footfall levels around EUR 65 million, yet Forum des Halles has materially lower rents. Given our similar to higher sales densities, this means higher profits for retailers at our Westfield destination. You'll also notice that average store sizes are 4x larger on Champs-Elysees. Usually, in retail, the larger the store, the lower the rent per square meter. Interestingly here, the opposite is true with Champs-Elysees.

And this is clearly the beauty and power of operating in the flagship locations business, where retailers are ready to pay a premium for brand awareness and visibility. OCR is much less part of the conversation. Obviously, you could argue that Champs-Elysees represents a different proposition for major brands. And I'm not saying that we will soon match these rental levels. However, we clearly offer a compelling value proposition that provides comparable traffic levels and attractive demographics while also delivering profitability for retailers. And it certainly gives us confidence about the true value of our offer and the upside potential we see on the very best flagship assets.

And beyond this sales performance, as a single landlord compared to Forum des Halles multiple ownership, this means that we are in full control of tenant mix, customer journeys and visit store data. And this is where we can be a top innovator in the flagship retail segment.

In 2025, we continue to see a strong lineup of new flagship openings. Bringing in new flagship concepts that are in demand by our customers is key to increasing the level of commercial tension at our locations. The U.S. offers, in particular, a deep reservoir of great brands like Skims, Vuori and others that are very open to the flagship opportunity we offer and look to Westfield as a natural partner to expand into Europe. A great example is premium activewear brand, Alo, which has 7 stores in our U.S. portfolio and just opened its first shopping center location at Westfield London. Early data is extremely positive, outperforming the brand's gross revenue targets by 80%. We also hear it is frequently outperforming their other flagship stores.

In Europe, our newest flagship asset, Westfield Hamburg-Uberseequartier is also proving to be a major draw for big brand flagships such as Aesop, LEGO, [ Polo Ralph Lauren ] or Dyson. We have a huge opportunity in front of us, and I'm confident we can do more to attract exciting new concepts by better demonstrating our value proposition and its potential to brands, hence, our leasing, leasing, leasing priority for 2026.

In the end, it's fairly simple. The higher the attractivity, the higher the demand, which results in more leasing tension and occupancy, which delivers a higher rental growth profile. We are also leading the way in data intelligence, thanks to years of investment in technology as well as our scale and the quality and size of our assets. We see it as another way to unlock the full potential of Westfield through AI.

We partnered with digeiz to develop mapping algorithms to convert video footage into GDPR-compliant segmented data, harnessing the power of AI to analyze real customer visits and traffic patterns. We have now rolled out this technology across 21 Westfield shopping centers in Europe. And what is truly exciting is its massive potential as a performance tool in areas like asset management and leasing. We are unlocking new KPIs and data sets like capture rates, conversion rates or bounce rates today received or estimated in almost real time, i.e., not a month later, like tenant sales. These KPIs are making a real difference in decision-making and providing insights that were not possible with traditional metrics like rent per square meter and sales intensity.

And this powerful data can allow a deeper evidence-based conversation with tenants to drive their performance at a shopping center and a portfolio level with URW. This understanding provides valuable insights and data intelligence that can unlock higher long-term growth, but also allows us to provide additional value-add services like Westfield Rise packages.

On this slide, we have shared some anonymized data showing these new KPIs for a medium-sized fashion tenant with stores at multiple locations. By comparing store performance at such a granular level, you start seeing how much richer conversations with retail partners can be. How can we help you improve capture rates at a given store? Do you know why this store has significant higher bounce rate than your others? Why is the conversion rate so low at store X versus usual standards? This is obviously a ton of new data to digest for our teams. And this is where AI technology will be of great support to start unlocking this full potential.

To further illustrate this, we selected 3 other concrete examples of how data is already enabling active asset management and driving operating performance at URW. First, leasing. Thanks to new passing by and demographic data, we were able to demonstrate the true potential of an area that had been perceived as soft and a specific unit that had been vacant or only short-term let for several years at Westfield Forum des Halles. Traffic data helped us convince an existing tenant to upsize and relocate into the space and unlock the second opportunity within the same asset, i.e., allowing another tenant to expand as well into the free space to create a flagship store, which it had been looking for, for quite some time.

Second, the retailer performance. We can now measure the real impact of introducing new concepts, not just on traffic in the immediate area, but also on visits to adjacent stores or brands in the same category. This gives us tangible evidence for rental discussions and powerful insights, leasing strategy in opportunity zones across the mall. And third, retail media. Data enables more precise audience targeting and far more effective brand campaigns. Across 11 recent Westfield Rise campaigns in our portfolio, we were able to measure a 16% increase in store visits for advertising retailers with an estimated 17% sales growth over the campaign months.

Looking ahead, AI will allow us to go even further, generating smarter, automated campaign recommendations based on our custom data sets. Using this data, we will also be able to create digital simulations of our assets to further optimize our tenant mix and customer journey. And I can tell you, you simply don't get this on the best high streets. We are excited by the potential and one of our key priorities for 2026 is to scale use cases and turn them into a driver of shared performance with retailers. With this, data and AI-led physical retail truly becomes the future of commerce.

Moving now to disposals, which have been key to streamlining and simplifying our business and the continued strengthening of our balance sheet. Despite tough market conditions, we were very active in 2025 and have now completed or secured EUR 2.2 billion of disposals. I remember vividly the many questions received at our Investor Day last year about the feasibility of a disposal plan, well within and at pricing levels in line with book values. This now means a strategic shift to a capital recycling mode to fund any additional investment and development activities going forward that can contribute to our organic growth profile in a disciplined way.

Speaking of capital-light growth, it will be an important tool for creating long-term value for our group. We established very important foundations in 2025. First, our acquisition of a 25% stake in St. James Quarter, an 81,000 square meter flagship shopping center in Edinburgh and 1 of only 4 A++ assets in the U.K. As you could guess, Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City are 2 of the other 3. This transaction demonstrates our ability to strengthen our presence in an existing market and expand the Westfield platform in a way that is consistent with our capital-light strategy.

Our ecosystem of performance, including the Westfield brand was key to majority owner APG, actively seeking us out, creating an opportunity to improve the future performance of the asset and generate management fees for the group.

Second, a new franchising business is generating fees as well, while allowing us to reach new markets and customers with no capital deployment. This is a first in the world in flagship retail, and we are very proud of this achievement. In December, a 58,000 square meter mall in Saudi Arabia's third largest city became Westfield Dammam and the first asset to be rebranded. Based on early feedback, the rebranding has already driven stronger-than-expected footfall and increased commercial tension. In the coming year, 2 new flagship centers in Riyadh and Jeddah will open under the Westfield brand.

A key focus for URW this year will be to demonstrate the substantial added value we can bring to owners of flagship assets in new markets.

Let's now spend a few minutes on our developments. We delivered projects that totaled EUR 1.8 billion of total investment cost, including 3 key retail projects, all at high leasing levels. In November, Westfield Cerny Most became the 41st Westfield branded asset in our portfolio, and we opened its extension, bringing in 32 new shops and dining concepts. Westfield Hamburg-Uberseequartier has now crossed 10 million visits and as mentioned earlier, has proven to be the new destination for flagship retail for major brands and retailers in Hamburg.

With completion of the IBIS hotel and remaining office works, our committed development pipeline drops to EUR 0.7 billion over H1 2026, down from EUR 3 billion a year ago. This significant progress means our development focus can now shift to disciplined capital allocation and capital-light growth outlined in our Platform for Growth business plan.

Moving to sustainability next and a Better Places road map, which is a core strategic driver for the group and a key to our long-term competitive advantage. In 2025, URW achieved significant progress and was recognized again among the top 100 most sustainable companies worldwide by Corporate Knights and Time Magazine. Other highlights include our Le Louvre au Centre partnership, bringing iconic Louvre artwork reproductions into 6 mold -- 6 French molds to expand cultural access and reconnect communities with a shared heritage. URW is fully on track to achieve its Better Places targets, and we will publish more information on our 2025 performance in our URD in March.

At the end of the day, with a portfolio of EUR 49 billion and an annual footfall in excess of EUR 900 million, we have a substantial impact in our communities and an increasingly meaningful role to play in today's society. We are in a position to deliver at scale and on our purpose to reinvent being together. In addition to leasing and innovation, our third core priority for 2026 is the continued simplification of our business. We've already made significant progress in 2025, including our organizational shift to 4 regions, the disposals of noncore businesses and 21 noncore assets and administrative changes like delisting Australian CDIs. In addition, we are preparing to destaple URW shares. This would be tax neutral and have no change to economic exposure, and we plan to propose this to shareholders at this year's AGM.

We will continue to reduce the number of group subsidiaries, and Fabrice will cover the further decrease in our net admin expenses in 2025. In 2026, we will remain very focused on driving down costs while developing a culture of simplicity and agility for all teams at all levels in all regions and for everything we do. This is key to freeing up internal resources so that we can allocate a valuable time to generate growth, push our advantage in data and AI and drive impact.

Before I hand over to Fabrice, I am happy to welcome Kathleen Verelst, who joined our Management Board as Chief Investment Officer at the start of the year. She brings a deep real estate experience and relationships and will lead a disciplined capital allocation approach. Kathleen joins Anne-Sophie, Fabrice, Sylvain and I, and we are altogether tremendously excited to lead the group in this next chapter.

In May, we presented our Platform for Growth business plan, which was well received by the market. The whole Management Board is focused on delivering the plan and achieving those targets. We've already made significant progress with LTV down 355 basis points on a pro forma basis and generated underlying average growth of more than 5%. And we have very clear priorities for 2026, leasing, leasing and once again leasing. Innovation, including leveraging the Westfield brand and our data and AI capabilities and continued simplification and development of an agile and entrepreneurial culture.

I want to thank once again our teams across our business and regions for their significant commitment and focus. We have achieved attractive growth with lower cost, less CapEx and more innovation, and we are well positioned to continue this strong momentum in 2026. I will now hand over to Fabrice to share more detail on our results, and I will then return to cover 2026 guidance and answer questions.

Thank you, Vincent, and good morning, everyone. In 2025, we once again saw a strong operating dynamic. Tenant sales increased plus 3.9% compared to 2024, supported by a footfall increase of plus 1.9%. Leasing activity was robust and vacancy fell further to 4.6%, the lowest level since 2017. We completed or secured EUR 2.2 billion of disposals in 2025 and in the year-to-date. And as a result, IFRS net debt, including hybrid is down to EUR 19.7 billion pro forma for secured disposals. This net debt reduction, together with the increase in valuations and in like-for-like EBITDA led to a further improvement of the group rate metrics.

Let's look at our 2025 figures. AREPS stands at EUR 9.58 per share, down minus 2.7% on 2024, mainly as a result of the disposals completed in 2024 and 2025. Our AREPS figure also reflects the 3.25 million URW shares issued to CPPIB in December 2024 in exchange for an additional 39% stake in URW Germany. 2025 AREPS is consistent with guidance, taking into account the timing of disposals, strong underlying growth and lower financial costs. EBITDA growth was plus 3.6% on a like-for-like basis, mainly from higher shopping center NRI. Office NRI was down minus 34.7% due to disposals, partly offset by the full letting of Lightwell and the full delivery of the Coppermaker Square residential project.

2025 earnings growth also benefited from the reduction in both financial expenses and the hybrid coupon, which I will comment on later. Here, we provide a detailed bridge showing the AREPS evolution year-on-year. Disposals net of acquisitions had a minus EUR 0.57 impact on 2025 AREPS. 2025 AREPS was also down minus EUR 0.19 year-on-year due to the contribution of the Paris Olympics to C&E activity in 2024. Rebates for disposals, net of savings in financial expenses, the Olympics and the impact of the CPPIB deal. We have delivered underlying AREPS growth of 5.4%. And this is in line with the underlying growth rate of at least 5% in our guidance for 2025. Retail NRI growth contributed plus EUR 0.51, thanks to our positive operating performance and recent deliveries. This performance was partly offset by minus EUR 0.07 from offices as well as the usual C&E seasonality effect between even and odd years.

Financial expenses had a positive contribution of EUR 0.04, thanks to proactive refinancing and FX hedging. And we also saw a positive impact of plus EUR 0.13 from the hybrid liability management exercises completed in April and September. The other category reflects the negative FX impact on EBITDA before hedging as well as minority interest. So let's look more closely at URW's retail performance on a like-for-like basis. NRI was up 3.8% like-for-like, made up of plus 3.5% for Europe and plus 5% for U.S. flagship assets. Indexation made a plus 1.4% contribution at group level, reflecting a plus 1.7% increase in Europe. Leasing activity and sales base rents in Europe made a total contribution of plus 1.2% on top of indexation.

Our U.S. flagship NRI growth was supported by leasing activity and higher sales days rents, representing growth of plus 5.4%. And the other category contributed plus 0.4%, thanks to variable income, including Westfield Rise and parking as well as lower service charges in Central Europe. It was slightly down in the U.S. due to a few bankruptcies.

Moving to vacancy now, which stands at 4.6% at group level. This corresponds to a minus 20 basis points decrease from last year, thanks to strong leasing activity. In particular, vacancy decreased in Q4 with EUR 125 million in MGR signed, corresponding to around 30% of total leasing activity for the year. Vacancy in Europe was 3.3% compared to 3.6% in December 2024, thanks to a noticeable reduction in Northern Europe, which dropped from 5.5% to 4.8% with a further decrease in U.K. vacancy. Vacancy remained low in Southern Europe and Central Europe at 3.1% and 2.2%, respectively. U.S. Flagships vacancy was 6.3%, in line with December 2024, up slightly, reflecting the impact of bankruptcies in Q3. And despite this, U.S. flagship delivered like-for-like growth of 5% in 2025.

Leasing activity remains strong in 2025 with EUR 423 million of MGR signed. Total MGR is slightly down on last year due to lower vacancy and lower bankruptcies to address as well as the FX impact. Rental uplift continued to be healthy, standing at plus 6.7% on top of indexation, combining a 5.4% uplift in Europe and a plus 9.4% uplift in the U.S., and this is in line with the 6.5% uplift that we achieved in 2024. 2025 performance was supported by an 11.3% uplift on long-term deals, including plus 6.6% in Europe and plus 23.8% in the U.S. It also benefited from a higher proportion of long-term deals at 82%. And the uplift in the U.S. was driven by the introduction of new food, luxury, automotive and fashion brands replacing nonperforming tenants. Rents per square meter signed in 2025 stood at EUR 659 per square meter in Europe and $80 per square foot in the U.S. This was an increase of 17.8% and 17.4%, respectively, compared to rents signed in 2024.

Moving now to occupancy cost ratio, which stands at 15.7% in Europe, slightly above its 2024 level of 15.6%. In the U.S., OCR for flagship assets decreased from 12.6% in 2024 to 12.2% as at December 2025. And as we have demonstrated previously, the volume of activity generated by omnichannel retailers through in-store initiatives as well as brand and marketing value as highlighted by Vincent, goes well beyond the sales figure used to compute the OCR. NOI for our C&A activities stood at EUR 160 million, a 27% decrease compared to last year, reflecting the positive effect of the Paris Olympics on 2024 and the usual seasonality between even and odd years.

On a like-for-like basis, i.e., excluding triennial shows, the Olympics and scope changes, NOI was minus 0.9% compared to 2024 and plus 31% above 2023, the last comparable year. This was thanks to lower energy costs and the full recovery of this activity. Bookings and prebookings stand at 93% of the expected rental revenues planned for 2026, demonstrating the appeal of URW's convention and exhibition venues. Our 2025 performance was also supported by a minus 4.6% decrease in our general expenses as part of wider cost-saving initiatives.

And this is on top of the minus 10% decrease achieved in full year 2024. General expenses as a percentage of NRI have now decreased from 10.1% in 2022 to 8% in 2025, reflecting both the improvement in our operating performance and the efficiency gains that we've achieved on top of the effect of disposals. These gains include the positive effect of the simplification of the organization into 4 regions as well as stringent procurement and ongoing process automation.

Moving now to the evolution of our gross market value. The group GMV at December 2025 amounted to EUR 48.9 billion, a minus 1.6% decrease compared to last year. This is mainly due to the EUR 1.5 billion in disposals achieved in 2025, partly compensated by CapEx of EUR 1.1 billion spent over the period. GMV was also impacted by a minus EUR 1.2 billion FX impact from the weakening of the U.S. dollar and sterling versus euro. Net of investment, disposals and FX, portfolio valuations were up EUR 836 million, corresponding to a plus 1.7% increase. This is the first positive revaluation of the portfolio, excluding FX, investment and disposals since 2018, and it is above the 1% annual growth we referred to at our Investor Day.

Net reinstatement value stood at EUR 143.8 per share at the end of 2025, in line with year-end 2024. This includes an AREPS contribution of EUR 9.58 per share and the EUR 3.50 distribution paid in May. NAV saw a positive asset revaluation contribution of plus EUR 3.85 per share at group share. This was partly offset by a negative FX impact of minus EUR 5.18 from U.S. and U.K. assets, net of liabilities and minus EUR 1.49 on the mark-to-market of debt, hybrid and financial instruments. It also takes into account an increase in the fully diluted number of shares.

Moving to shopping center portfolio valuations next. Like-for-like retail valuation was up 1.9% in 2025, driven by a positive rent impact of plus 1.6% and plus 0.4% from yield impact. This positive rent impact reflects the strong operating performance achieved in both Europe and in the U.S. in 2025.

Overall, a yield impact, which had been negative in previous years was slightly positive in 2025, thanks to Europe. And this comes from an overall minus 10 basis points reduction on the discount rate, while exit cap rates remain unchanged. Like-for-like valuations were up plus 2.3% in Europe, slightly above the 2024 revaluation at plus 1.6%. Valuations were up in the U.S. for the first time since the Westfield acquisition at plus 0.7% and the GMV increase for U.S. Flagship assets was plus 1.6%, fully coming from a rent impact.

The net initial yield for European assets as at December 2025 stands at 5.3%, i.e., 10 basis points below 2024 level, while potential yield was stable at 5.7%. The NRI growth assumed by appraisers for the European portfolio stands at 3.5%, including a plus 1.8% assumption on indexation. The net initial yield for U.S. flagship assets stands at 5.2%, plus 10 basis points above its 2024 level and 40 basis points above its 2023 level.

The stabilized yield for U.S. Flagship assets based on assumed rental increase in year 3 stands unchanged at 5.7%. And these yields are consistent with recent transaction on A++ assets in the U.S. like NorthPark Center in Dallas sold at 5.3%. These yields also reflect the potential growth embedded in our U.S. assets. And the NRI growth assumed by appraisers for the U.S. Flagship assets stands at 3.8%, and this is based on cash flow growth, including the contractual rents and CAM escalation of 3% on average. This means that more than 3/4 of the growth assumed by appraisers comes from current leases in place, assuming the extension with no capture of rental uplift nor vacancy reduction.

Moving now to development. The key event in 2025 was the successful delivery of the retail component of Westfield Hamburg as well as the handover of the first office to Shell. Following these deliveries, the total investment cost of our committed pipeline decreased from EUR 3 billion to EUR 1.2 billion between 2024 and 2025. Works on the IBIS Hotel and the remaining offices in Hamburg are due to be completed in H1 2026. And when handed over to tenants, this will reduce the total investment cost of our pipeline by a further EUR 0.5 billion, leaving just EUR 0.7 billion in committed projects.

The controlled pipeline amounts to EUR 1 billion at 100%, in line with last year. And any decision to launch controlled pipeline projects will be fully consistent with the capital allocation policy presented at our Investor Day. Net debt has further reduced in 2025 from EUR 21.9 billion to EUR 20.3 billion on an IFRS basis, including hybrid. This results from the EUR 1.6 billion disposals completed in 2025, which has a positive impact of over 200 basis points on the LTV.

The retained profit, net of distribution and others also contributed to the LTV reduction for a net impact of circa 120 basis points, and this was partly offset by the EUR 1 billion of investment spend in 2025. Net debt decreased by EUR 0.4 billion as a result of the weakening of the sterling and the U.S. dollar, which also impacted the GMV as we saw earlier, leading to an overall negative impact of circa minus 20 basis points from FX on the LTV.

And last, portfolio valuation had a positive impact of circa 90 basis points on our LTV. In total, IFRS LTV, including hybrid, stood at 42.8%, down from 44 -- from 45.5% at year-end 2024, a 270 basis points decrease. The group has also secured an additional EUR 0.5 billion of disposals. And taking into account these disposals, the IFRS net debt, including hybrid would stand at EUR 19.7 billion on a pro forma basis. And as a consequence, the LTV would decrease further to 42%. The IFRS net debt over EBITDA ratio, including hybrid, further improved to 9.1x in 2025, down from 9.5x in 2024.

This is consistent with the trajectory presented at our Investor Day and the 9x level anticipated in 2026. This results from the net debt reduction of EUR 1.6 billion achieved in 2025. It also reflects an EBITDA decrease of minus 2.9% due to disposals and the 2024 Olympics impact and a plus 3.6% EBITDA increase on a like-for-like basis. This ratio does not take into account the further EUR 0.5 billion of disposals secured or the full year NRI impact from projects delivered in 2025 and to be delivered in 2026. The cost of debt for 2025 amounted to 2.1%, slightly above the 2% in full year 2024.

This includes the benefit of refinancings completed in particular in the U.S. and the hedges put in place in 2025 to cover rates and FX. This was partly mitigated by the maturity of low coupon debt in 2025, a lower cash amount and decreasing cash remuneration. Going forward, the cost of debt is expected to be aligned with the trajectory presented during the Investor Day of a 20 to 30 basis points increase per year.

So let's look at those refinancings in more detail. The group has successfully executed major financing transactions in 2025, illustrating its access to funding at attractive conditions and its ability to seize market opportunities. We fully refinanced our hybrid stack in April and September 2025.

The new hybrids issued have an average coupon of 4.8%, while the group reimbursed its 2028 hybrid with a coupon of 7.25%. Through these transactions, the group has generated savings of around 55 basis points on its hybrid coupon, representing a positive contribution of plus EUR 18.6 million to its 2025 AREPS. The group's hybrid portfolio stands at EUR 1.8 billion at the end of 2025 and will decrease to EUR 1.5 billion by April 2026 with the repayment of the remaining EUR 226 million hybrid.

We also refinanced $1.2 billion of commercial mortgage-backed securities, managing to both extend the maturity and secure improved conditions with an average coupon of 5.3%. This corresponds to a saving of around 190 basis points compared to conditions previously in place. And this included the refinancing of $925 million for Century City, which was the tightest spread for a AAA tranche over the 2020, 2025 period and the tightest CMBS coupon for a single asset in the past 5 years.

And last, the group renewed and extended its credit facilities. And thanks to this activity, our average debt maturity was unchanged at 7 years. Finally, the group's IFRS cash position decreased from EUR 5.3 billion to EUR 2.7 billion during 2025. This results from the use of available cash to repay EUR 3 billion of maturing debt. This also included proactive repayment of EUR 600 million of bonds at a 2.5% coupon maturing in June 2026 and EUR 150 million loans at 4.2% maturing in 2027.

We also proceeded with the discounted repayment of Wheaton and the debt on Wheaton, generating a $30 million net debt reduction. And this is consistent with the group's approach to reducing its cash position as remuneration conditions deteriorated with a decrease in central bank's rates and as we made a significant progress in our deleveraging program. And as the group's cash position decreased, we reaccessed the commercial paper markets in Europe and in the U.S. to benefit from decreasing short rates.

And these programs are backed by undrawn credit facilities standing at EUR 8.7 billion at the end of the year. And the group's strong liquidity position gives us the full flexibility to access debt markets as and when we see fit. In total, we have secured the EUR 2.2 billion of disposals announced during the Investor Day. We have shown a strong operating performance in 2025. Our credit metrics improved on the back of the group's net debt reduction, like-for-like EBITDA growth and a 1.7% increase in asset values. We have also demonstrated our strong access to funding through the CMBS and hybrid issuances completed in 2025.

In view of these achievements and as already disclosed, we intend to propose a distribution of EUR 4.50 per share for fiscal year 2025. This corresponds to an increase of circa 30% compared to 2024 and a payout ratio of 47%, which we intend to increase to 60% for fiscal year 2026. And as in 2024, this distribution will be paid out of premium.

With that, let me hand back to Vincent for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Fabrice. Solid performance. Let's now look at our guidance for 2026. At our Investor Day, we provided AREPS guidance of at least EUR 9.15, reflecting the mechanical effect of disposals. We are now increasing the range of full year 2026 AREPS guidance to between EUR 9.15 and EUR 9.30. This represents another year of underlying growth of at least 5%, supported by our solid retail operating performance. No major deterioration of the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment is built into this guidance. Finally, in line with our commitment to increase shareholder distributions, we intend to propose a payout of EUR 5.50 per share for fiscal year 2026 to be paid '27, consistent with our confidence in the group's outlook. This represents a payout ratio of circa 60% and a 22% increase versus 2025.

Before we move to Q&A, I would like to share why I'm excited to lead this amazing business and confident we will deliver sustainable long-term growth. We have an unmatched and irreplaceable flagship portfolio located in the best cities and catchment areas in the U.S. and Europe, powered by our retail operations expertise and the iconic Westfield brand. Our assets, our expertise and our brand are an ecosystem of performance and a powerful competitive advantage. Looking more broadly beyond the real estate industry, we also have a sound, highly profitable and cash-generative business and are fully focused on unlocking our full potential through a platform for growth business plan and being the leading innovator in our industry. This will generate compelling shareholder returns and create value for all our stakeholders.

With the depth of talent in this group and the plan we have in place, I have absolute confidence in our ability to deliver something truly incredible. And with that, let's start the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Valerie Jacob of Bernstein.

Congratulations on your results. So my first question is on capital allocation. You've now completed your disposal program. You've also sold some lands, which perhaps reflect less upside on development. So I just wanted to ask you what are now your key priorities in terms of capital allocation? And how shall we think about it?

Thank you, Valerie. We're very happy to be at a point where we can now move towards capital recycling. That's another avenue of organic growth to some extent at a similar debt level that keeps on going down, that will fuel potential additional growth. This is a tool through the further disposal on the land bank part as we had shared during the Investor Day that we'll keep on working over the next few years. And that will be the main driver of our capital allocation strategy in a disciplined way.

And as we expressed it and shared it during the Investor Day, we have a net CapEx investments, annual investments on average over '26, '27 and '28 that is set at EUR 600 million, and that will be the key yardstick for us for any future capital allocation decisions and new investments, which will be funded by disposals on the resource side.

So -- and maybe the last point I will add is that we share the criteria upon which we will appreciate and analyze any new investments in the future as part of our Investor Day as well, and they remain fully in place in any new situations we may be looking at.

And just in terms of geographies, are you completely agnostic or do you have some priorities?

I think our teams are monitoring every opportunity that fits our overall highly qualitative positioning across the portfolio in our existing markets. So I think we remain alert to every opportunity in the market across different locations and geographies. And I would say -- beyond countries, I would say, urban areas to some extent because, as you know, we are more a city player than a country player, generally speaking, across our 24 markets. So this is where we like to build scale and to generate further competitive advantage in our positioning as well.

And my second question is on your vacancy rate. I mean you've made some good progress over the past few years. Do you think you can improve the occupancy further? Or have we reached a floor and you're happy with what the portfolio is?

I think before I hand over to Fabrice, maybe to comment on the vacancy, it's really at the core of our leasing, leasing, leasing #1 priority. So we intend to keep driving up occupancy across the portfolio and continue to increase the retail tension across the board. So that's definitely part of the plan. And it's really through this virtuous cycle of efforts of bringing in and attracting the very best concepts, which are sometimes not in shopping centers yet that will increase gradually the expansion that will reinforce our desirability vis-a-vis tenant partners and will drive upward as well the tenant sales, which is the long-term yardstick we are pursuing to ensure that we have durable and consistent long-term organic growth.

Thank you, Valerie. So to come back to your question. First, we've been able to reduce significantly the vacancy in Q4. And as you would recall, the vacancy stood at 5.3% at the end of Q3. And we've been able to decrease it to 4.6%. And this was in particular on the back of strong leasing activity with EUR 125 million of MGR signed. So 30% of the total full-year leasing activity and with a higher focus on the letting of vacant units. Hence, as Vincent said the importance on the leasing, leasing side.

Now to your question, there are still some areas where we see some improvement potential. One is the U.K. And even though there was an improvement in the vacancy rate in the U.K. from 5.8% to 5% at the end of 2025, we still see some possibility to reduce further the vacancy rate in the U.K. And the other one is obviously the U.S. at 6.3%. So historically, the structural vacancy in the U.S. was somewhat higher than in Europe but we feel that there's some room for improvement to reduce further the vacancy on our U.S. Flagship assets.

Next question is from Jonathan Kownator, Goldman Sachs.

The first question is going to be on brand media. I think you described a slightly shrinking market. You described weakness in luxury demand. Obviously, you have a lot more statistics also to offer to retailers at this stage. How are they seeing the market? Are you able to convince them that it's not just out-of-home market and that there is more potential, i.e., do you see any, I would say, a question on the growth path for that business, please?

Yes, correct. We see a lot of potential in this activity. As you know, Jonathan, we expressed it during the Investor Day, and we see this business line as higher growing trend inside the overall portfolio. We see some -- there are several levers across this activity. Beyond the market situation and the market environment generally, we believe that we can increase the occupancy rates across our screens, generally speaking.

And we believe that we have some substantial leeway as well on the rate card and the way we -- what we pay and charge -- what we charge for those screens. So we are still at the beginning of this activity, we believe and where we see some interesting potential as well is making the link with our core business further in the next few years. And that's really our second priority around data and AI because of the investments we've made to expand and to develop retail media franchise with Westfield Rise.

Now we can use those substantial investments to improve on our core business. And it's really the link and the full connection of those various approaches and value-add services towards retailers to some extent that will crystallize the upside. The advertising market is softer right now that -- what we foresaw maybe a year ago. We still see some growth in our business and we fully believe in the upside we shared with investors during last year's Investor Day and the substantial growth trajectory we see on this line of business.

Just to continue on the -- so these luxury tenants, are they unhappy with the results of their campaigns? Or is it just broadly they reduce advertising? Or are they shifting it online? I mean, online is obviously 60% of the market, right? And so what are you seeing there?

Look, I think luxury tenants are very happy with us because they've been generating a positive performance in sales, in footfall, generally speaking, across year 2025. It's one of the best-performing branches when we look at our overall portfolio with tenant sales, which are above what we reported at the group level of 3.9%.

So from that standpoint, I think the business for luxury retailers with us is doing well. On the advertising market, again, we are seeing an increase in occupancy across our screens between '25 and '24 when we correct for the positive effect of the Olympic games in Paris. And so we don't have anything to report specifically around the luxury market and the lack of appetite for this new media.

Okay. Just one quick question, sorry, on your FX assumption for 2026. You said that you have a negative FX impact. Are you able to elaborate what assumptions you've taken for FX and at the same time, have you put hedges in place similar to what you had in 2025?

So that's a very important topic and which effectively has a strong impact on the 2026 results compared to 2025. And just to give you some perspective, so basically, a, of course, we are hedged in 2026 to the same extent as we are hedged in 2025, but we are hedged at levels that are much higher in 2026 than they were in 2025 as a result of the evolution of the currency, in particular, the ongoing weakening of the dollar that we saw over the period.

So all in all, we are fully hedged but the level at which we are hedged is closer to the current market levels that you see with an FX of around 1.8 between euro and dollar, whereas in 2025, we've been able to hedge ourselves at a level closer to 1.03. That was the level of FX that was prevailing at the beginning of 2025. So basically, in 2025, we had a positive impact from FX compared to 2024 when the FX rate was on average at 1.06. But in 2026, we'll see a negative impact on the FX coming from this evolution and the weakening of the U.S. dollar that we've seen over the period.

Let me commend very strong performance of Fabrice and his treasury teams this year. Again, I think it's a well-known fact in the market, generally speaking, but obviously, the track record is very impressive and better than the trajectory we shared last year in terms of anticipation. So hats off.

Next question is from Pierre-Emmanuel Clouard, Jefferies.

Yes. Coming back on your capital allocation, what do you mean when you say that the objective in 2026 to capture market share in 2026. Is it -- are you willing to be a net buyer or net seller in 2026? And would you say that the convention and exhibition activities core business for you from a medium-term perspective?

Yes. Pierre-Emmanuel, very simply by mentioning capturing market share. This is what we've been doing over the last few years and somewhat when you look at the evolution of a tenant sales versus national indices, we've been operating at a healthy spread over the years. And it's true that, I would say, leasing, leasing, leasing priority that will predominantly capture this. Obviously, when we co-invest in a capital-light way on the 25% stake in St. James Quarter in Edinburgh. It allows us to expand our portfolio as well in a very disciplined way on the balance sheet side and the net debt levels that we want to keep on reducing over time. So this is what we mean about capturing market share, generally speaking.

It's not about acquisitions, substantial M&A or things like that. And I think we're very happy to have achieved a EUR 2.2 billion disposal program in advance to what we foresaw and announced to the market during our Investor Days or slightly in advance, I would say, because we had targeted early 2026. And it allows us to look with full flexibility at capital recycling opportunities if the attractive ones materialize for us, and it will need to be to the service of the growth profile of AREPS and obviously, it doesn't -- without affecting LTV reducing trend. So I think these are the core parameters for us in terms of capital allocation.

I don't have an answer for you on the net buyer or net seller from that standpoint because we have completed a disposal program. So it will be managing the timings in case we were pursuing capital recycling because the opportunities are there. Lastly, on the convention and exhibition. This is a core activity. This is historic activity for the URW Group, we see some growth potential with the delivery of major infrastructure in the northern side of Paris for [indiscernible] site. And so -- and the activity is performing very well. You could see obviously, the great performance with the Olympic games last year. And we are on the right trend on this business. So there's no disposal plan whatsoever on this activity.

Okay. Understood. And a quick follow-up on your capital allocation strategy. The [ Balkany family ] Is selling a big Spanish portfolio, including La Vaguada, in Spain, and it has been reported by the press, you could have a look at this portfolio? So are you evaluating this process? And if so, would you angle be selective [indiscernible] stakes or full ownership?

We as -- I mean, first, we never comment on specific situation, as you well know. So thank you for your question. And more generally, we are monitoring all situations across the market and across our different markets, as I mentioned previously. So we track them. We want to know where assets trade, whether the portfolio quality fits our ambition and our overall quality in the portfolio, and we do that with this opportunity as with others. I think in the end, the bottom line is we have a very clear trajectory. We intend to deliver on that. And it sets some parameters, which are pretty stringent in terms of capital allocation. So even though we look at everything to know the market and know our markets, I think the odds of something happening are pretty disciplined, I would say.

Okay. Understood. And a final question on your pipeline. So it would be interesting to have an update on your pipeline, specifically about the residential scheme next to Westfield White City in London and also Westfield Milan, is there any news here? And maybe a quick follow-up about the pre-letting ratio on offices in Hamburg that will be delivered this year.

Yes. On the pre-leasing ratio, we stand at 82% on the overall office product across the Hamburg state in the Westfield, Hamburg-Uberseequartier, a state which is a very high rate and reflects the high quality and great location, this office product offers prospective tenants, and we keep on having positive discussions with prospects.

With regards to your questions on the various developments, I think on all the examples you shared or you cited. We are investing in pre-devCapEx and expenses across our portfolio to bring our land investments to maturity. And this is what we apply across the board on our controlled pipeline and noncontrolled pipeline. And again, it will -- any decision to commit further capital to new developments and new densifications will have to fit within a baseline, the baseline we shared during the Investor Day of EUR 600 million net CapEx, so net of capital recycling.

So that's the approach we're pursuing. We are working on a slightly marginal rezoning of the Westfield London residential quarter to improve the product and improve overall the project.

Next question is from Paul May, Barclays.

Just a couple of quick questions for me. I wonder if you could give some color on the average yield on the EUR 2.2 billion of disposals, not obviously specific assets, but just so we can get a sense for modeling, particularly the remaining outstanding yield would be great. And then given all the activity, if you could provide a proportionately consolidated closing annualized rental income as at the year-end, that would be really helpful moving forward and say proportionately consolidated would be great. I think you gave the nonconsolidated version. And then do you want the second question now or should I ask that afterwards?

So to your first question, Paul, on average, the yield at which we sold or secured the EUR 2.2 billion was between 6% and 7%. and I will be even more helpful than your question. So basically, just to give you an insight of the impact of disposals -- of the 2025 disposals on the 2026 AREPS. So basically, it's higher than the EUR 82 million of negative impact that we saw in 2025 for the 2024 and 2025 disposals. And out of the EUR 82 million, you had less than EUR 40 million that was coming from the 2025 disposals. So basically, based on that, you see what could be the total impact on the NRI side of the disposals secured or completed, the EUR 2.2 billion. What was the impact on 2025 and therefore, what would be the impact on the 2026 AREPs. Hope it helps. And if not, you can still call me.

Perfect. Just following up with the second question is following on a previous question around the ramp-up of development, which I think you talked about in the medium-term outlook. I think various development schemes, especially your experience at Hamburg and recent retail experience would imply that retail development isn't really going to work in the current rate environment or the current return environment. And then if you look at offices, you've got obviously the structural issues and possible AI impact seemingly impacting offices at the moment. So that doesn't seem like a viable sort of decision to ramp up development there.

So I was just wondering what is the thought process with that? Does it not make more sense to reduce your land exposure, try to sell what you can and rotate that into income-producing assets? Just thinking on that sort of capital allocation, what the thought process is?

Yes, sure. I would say both on the offices side as well as on retail, but I'm sure it applies to other asset classes. It all starts with the product. And I think on offices, there's a lot of talk about the impact of AI. And at the same time, I read headlines everywhere that New York office market -- prime office market has been booming for 3 years now and has never been as good as it is right now. So it's really the quality of products. What we've shown very substantially and meaningfully on La Defense market, which has not been an easy market for a number of years and where we managed to deliver Trinity and fully leased Trinity after delivery, starting from 0% pre-letting at record rents and a massive premium versus every other restructured product delivered over the same period in La Defense.

So it really starts with the product. It's the same for us in our view and strong conviction with [indiscernible] project, which is -- where construction is ongoing. And so it's really a question of location, market, but as well ability to create the right product. It also applies to retail. I leave aside the capital allocation side of Hamburg, but we see that Hamburg product is a tremendous success from a retail perspective. The retail partners are very happy about the performance. We already passed in less than a year, 10 million footfall. And so you see that when you create a great product, it creates its own attractivity.

That being said, I think a lot of -- obviously, we're working on the land portfolio, as you suggest. And as we expressed it during the Investor Day, we shared, I believe, a figure of roughly EUR 1 billion on our balance sheet of land values back then. And we shared that we intended to sell or dispose around EUR 400 million over the duration of the plan. So between last year and the end of 2028 this objective remains true.

And so that's what will enable us to keep investing in development or selling assets and more through a mixed-use angle and adding and densifying around our existing footprints, I would say, as a general trend. And then for the rest, it will be a matter of bringing in partners alongside us as well on the right product and projects in which we have strong conviction to enable the launch and the development of those. So I would say, in a disciplined capital allocation way in the end as we committed to early 2025.

Yes, I do. I get that. It's just, as you said, putting aside the capital return point, which, obviously, for shareholders, we can't put aside the capital return point. So Hamburg is a great success in terms of it looks pretty and it's got lots of footfall, but I think yield on cost was in the 3s, and also you've lost a lot of money on that.

So that would be, I suppose, a concern of shareholders is that real estate companies focus on the shiny final asset and not on the capital return point. I think we just want to get comfort that you're not going to just go off and develop a lot of trophy assets and not generate returns for shareholders. I think that's the concern people have. .

Paul, you can have every comfort you wish to have on this, and that's the exact reason why we ascribe ourselves to a very stringent net CapEx spend of EUR 600 million per annum. I use this opportunity -- as we shared during the Investor Day, roughly EUR 300 million, give or take, is going to leasing -- ongoing leasing, maintenance and better places CapEx overall, which leaves EUR 300 million net of extra spending to go for developments or densification around our existing assets. So this is a very stringent trajectory from that standpoint. And I didn't mean the capital allocation side in that form for Hamburg. It's a real trauma, and this is an experience we learned from.

And it was also at the source of the decision we made with GMV to drive a platform for growth business plan last year with such a disciplined capital allocation approach. We shared during this some pretty specific criteria in terms of the targets we will aim at in terms of underwriting of new projects as part of the Investor Day, and we absolutely stick to them. And that's exactly the approach we are pursuing.

And lastly, when I look at our business overall across real estate asset classes, the EUR 600 million net CapEx accounts for roughly 25% to 30% of the EBITDA we generate on an annual basis of our NRI. This is one of the most compelling metric across asset class in the industry -- in the real estate industry. And that shows that it doesn't leave a ton of space to launch, as you call, new crown jewel developments in terms of development forward.

The next question is from Florent Laroche-Joubert, ODDO BHF.

So 2 questions for me, if I may. So my first questions would be on the guidance for 2026. So we have been able to see in your presentations that you are working on improving your G&A expenses. In which way have you been able to -- have you taken into account some improvement today in your guidance for 2026?

So thank you, Florent. So basically, this is incorporated, but this is not the main driver for the evolution and the AREPS in 2026. So basically, our guidance. First, we've discussed the 2 mechanical effects with Jonathan and Paul, which are, a, the disposal, which, as you see, as I've mentioned, will be significant and even above in terms of NRI loss compared to 2025. The second is the FX impact. But all in all, this is also driven by a positive evolution and particularly on the rents on a like-for-like basis even though the indexation would be lower in 2026 than it was in 2025.

So -- but despite that, we expect to deliver strong like-for-like growth in line with what we've done last year, in line with the guidance that we gave during the Investor Day. And on top of that, we'll benefit from the ramp-up of the projects. And ultimately, there will be also the positive impact of the seasonality of the C&E activity with the even year that would also benefit from the 2026 year.

So this is part of the growth that we expect or the evolution of the NRI of the AREPS that we expect in 2026 but that's not the main driver. The main driver continues to be the strong like-for-like growth, which is the priority that we have laid out during the Investor Day and the platform for growth.

Yes. That's very interesting. And maybe my second question would be on your cash on hand that you have now at EUR 2.7 billion, so it's much more or less than 1 year ago. And also we have been able to see that you have been able to re-access to short-term debt. So what would be -- what can we expect now for you for 2026? And after maybe -- do you think that you would be able to have maybe a lower cost of debt than the ones you presented at the Capital Market Day? What -- how do you want to manage that now?

So. So basically, first, in 2025, we've been able to achieve a cost debt of 2.1% which was only a 10 basis points increase compared to 2024. So below the 20 to 30 basis points increase in the cost of debt that we have mentioned during the Investor Day. And the main reason for that, again, is the FX hedging that we have put in place and that have been -- that we have -- that has allowed us to reduce our cost of debt for 2025.

So basically, going forward, as we said, we stick to the guidance that we gave of an increase between 20 and 30 basis points in the cost of debt. And this already incorporates, by the way, the use of the commercial paper market. And it also incorporates some lower remuneration on the cash and the cash has reduced, and this was done on purpose. We've reduced it from 5.3% to 2.7%. So part of the cash was used to repay debt, maturing debt, but also proactively repaying debt maturing in '26 and '27, which had coupons above the cost -- the remuneration conditions of the cash.

But all in all, the marginal conditions are higher than the average cost of debt. And therefore, there should be a 20% to 30% basis points increase year-on-year, even though as usual, we try to optimize it and the use of the CP market is one of the ways to achieve that. But it only makes sense to the extent that your cash position reduces enough. Otherwise, you would raise cash on the CP market, but you would have to replace it at conditions that would be slightly worse than the ones at which you would have raised this cash.

The next question is from Veronique Meertens, Kempen.

For me, 2 questions around Asian disposals. So I was wondering, so you've now completed your disposal program, pro forma LTV of 42% and you reiterated your guidance of 40%. I was just wondering versus the plan that you presented in May last year, are you ahead or on track after the completion of the disposal program to reset 42% -- 40%?

And then in line with that, how actively are you still pursuing disposals at the moment? Are there ongoing discussions at the moment? And how do you see that investment market at the moment?

I would say on the fact that we reached EUR 2.2 billion disposals, we had planned to reach it slightly later. So from that standpoint, we are slightly ahead of the objective and what we foresaw last year, and we received a lot of questions during the Investor Day last year on -- to what extent we were confident we would be able to execute such a volume and quantum in a difficult market. So we're slightly ahead there.

On the rest of the criteria, and I will leave -- I will let Fabrice elaborate on those. We are well into the plan. We are on track with the plan we disclosed and we shared with the market in May 2025, and we see a solid momentum in our business. And so I would say that's the general assessment and perception we have around our strong operations.

So to come back to your question, I think the one point on which we are ahead compared to the assumption that we have given during the Investor Day is the evolution in valuation. So as you would recall, we said that the trajectory towards 40%, a, assumed that we would complete the EUR 2.2 billion of disposals, and this has been done. But it also assumed a 1% increase in values per year between '25 and '28, and we have achieved 1.7% in 2025, which is above the 1% level that we had referred to during the Investor Day.

So this is where we are ahead of the plan compared to the LTV evolution, and this is already incorporated into the 42% of LTV level, which, as you would recall, compares to 41.7%, which was the level without any increase in values at the end of -- at the end of 2028.

It' a good sign, and I will finish on also insisting on the fact that, that's the key reason why organic growth is our primary focus and the leasing, leasing, leasing priority there because with the ability to drive our business plan and to generate the kind of organic growth we shared during the Investor Day market, we see that rates have kind of landed now or reached a high on the cap rates. And to some extent, we start seeing the benefit with such an attractive organic growth on the valuation levels.

So that gives us a lot of confidence. And this is really at the center of everything we do, driving this like-for-like performance for our own assets, but it's also the key that unlocks and makes extremely attractive to partner with us either through rebranding and management or co-investment in our existing markets, but also on the franchising business to expand into new markets where we are not present today. So this is really the core of the ecosystem of performance we set up in order to deliver a very attractive platform for growth.

Okay. That's clear. And one follow-up on that because during the Investor Day, you had several ideas on future capital allocation and obviously, on a disciplined manner. But one of the things that you did mention was also share buybacks as one of the potential ways. When you're looking at -- if you say that now you're ahead on that sort of like 40% target, what is necessary to potentially trigger a share buyback? Or is it really just focusing now on interesting opportunities in the market?

So share buyback is definitely part of our toolbox. Now there are a number of conditions that needs to be met before we use this tool. The first one is, as we said, that we need to sell more than the EUR 2.2 billion of assets. So basically, any use of capital would be only done to the extent that we sell more than the EUR 2.2 billion. So now we've reached EUR 2.2 billion. So we'll have to see what are the additional proceeds that we can generate from disposals.

And the second topic is that out of the use of these proceeds coming from additional disposals on top of the EUR 2.2 billion, we have a variety of options to reallocate this capital, one being acquisitions. And as we have done, for instance, in Edinburgh with the acquisition of this 25% stake, which is on a prime asset, as Vincent has mentioned, with very attractive conditions with capacity also to develop the brand, capacity to generate some fees. And so basically, out of the various options that will be available to us, we will look into what can be done in terms of acquisition, what can be done in terms of share buyback. And again, looking at both the returns of each option and as well its impact on the financial ratios and the LTV and the net debt over EBITDA, the share buyback being, of course, more negative than acquisitions when it comes to the financial ratios.

The next question is from Neil Green, JPMorgan.

Just one, please. It's a bit of a follow-up from Jonathan's earlier on FX. If you go back to the Capital Markets Day, I think you used a euro-dollar FX assumption of 1.14 in the medium-term guidance. So just wondering if there's any change to that assumption, please, and whether the reiteration of the medium-term targets today could potentially be seen as an upgrade given what we've seen in the movement in the FX rate over the last 12 months or so, please?

Coming back to effectively the FX, the FX evolution as of now had a negative impact on 2028 AREPS in as far as -- as mentioned, today, the spot rate is more in the [ 118, 119 ] whereas what we had assumed during the Investor Day was more closer to [ 114 ]. So basically, what we've been doing is securing a level of FX above which we won't go, and therefore, we have limited our risk on the downside. We can still benefit from the upside.

But all in all, the level at which we have hedged ourselves is above the 1.14 in terms of FX, meaning that there will be a negative impact on the FX compared to the 2028 guidance that was given. By the way, there would be another mechanical effect, a negative effect, which is the one that I've already mentioned for 2026, which is the lower level of indexation. And just to give you an insight, so we were at 1.4% indexation contribution for 2025, and we expect to be closer to 1% in 2026.

So these are the 2 elements that might impact 2028. But all in all, we expect the trajectory that we have presented in terms of recurring results to be still aligned with the Platform for Growth targets. And in particular, this is consistent with the priorities that Vincent has reminded in terms of leasing, leasing, leasing because in the end, this growth will be coming from the leasing activity, the like-for-like growth that we will be able to generate out of our assets.

And the last question is from Rahul Kaushal, Green Street.

My first question is on the investment market. How much appetite do you see across various investment markets? And more specifically, what -- I guess, were the differences you see across various markets? And maybe if you can specifically touch on Germany there. And what is the spread in terms of cap rates between your ask and what you're seeing from interest from investors?

Thanks, Rahul. To answer your question on the spread, I mean, we are transacting. So we are transacting at values we are comfortable transacting to in line with our valuation. So in the end, we don't see so much of a spread. As we often mentioned in the past, some noncore assets we are disposing are core assets for other acquirers given the very high quality of our portfolio. And this is one of the reasons why despite, I would say, an overall difficult investment market, we managed to progress on disposals at pace and at scale because we've been one of the most active player in the market on the disposal market over the last year-end change.

So I would say in terms of investor velocity, obviously, the Spanish market is showing quite substantial liquidity and the diversity of investors and buyers. So this is one of the strong markets, investment markets in Europe. We see some transactions in the U.K. market as well where you see some liquidity. We've transacted in Germany. So it's quite widespread overall. And interestingly, Fabrice mentioned it as well as part of his presentation, we are seeing some real mark of interest on the premium end of the mall sector in the U.S. The financing markets are wide open over there for senior credit, which is pricing at tight spreads.

There's a lot of appetite and demand from debt investors from that perspective. It feeds into the retail market and the quality mall market as well or for some large-scale mixed-use type of properties with a very substantial quality retail component, which have been trading, let's say, in the 5% to 6% cap rate area over 2025. So we see encouraging signs of a strong return of investment market in the U.S. as well.

Okay. I believe we do not have any more questions. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for this presentation and the Q&A session, and we're looking forward to speaking with you very soon.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.