Land Securities Group Plc (LON:LAND) - Interim results 2010 Transcript Extract
First of all, what's your assessment of the results you're announcing today?
Francis Salway, CEO - Well, I think the results show there's a real momentum in the business, and it's the actions we're taking which are driving value creation. In very simple terms, our NAV was up 6.7 per cent at 737p per share. That was founded on an increase in our investment portfolio valuation of 3.4 per cent. But for me, the stand-out figure is, at a time when we're putting a lot of capital into development projects, the assets in our development programme were up 9.6 per cent in the six months. And, Martin, what about income?
Martin Greenslade, CFO - We had a good performance on income. Our underlying pre-tax profit, or revenue profit, was up 5.8 per cent to £135.9m. And our adjusted, diluted earnings per share were 18.49p, and that was up 9.5 per cent on the same period last year.
And so are rental values up in all areas? Or are some still lagging?
FS - Well, across the whole of our portfolio, rental values were up 1.1 per cent in the six months. That's the first time they've been positive for many months, indeed years. So I think it's an important turning point. And as we expected, London offices are at the forefront, up 2.7 per cent in the six months. And Retail rental values are bottoming out, so fractionally up, very fractionally in our Shopping Centre assets. And on Retail Warehousing, just slightly negative. But what we are seeing in our Retail assets is rent-free periods are beginning to shorten.
And will we see that continue in the second half....
