This month Sirius shared a trading update with the market on our progress in the financial year ended 31 March 2023. It’s been a busy few months in the lead-up to this in which I haven’t shared an update in this forum, so I wanted to take the opportunity to dive into our trading update in some more detail and share our progress.

Headline figures

There are a few key figures that we highlighted in the trading update that we believe show our performance and resilience during the period.

Firstly, we achieved an 8.1% increase in our overall rent roll. This demonstrates how we’ve been able to capture rental growth in the current inflationary environment – more on this below – which has a positive impact on the corresponding values of the properties in which we’ve been able to secure rental uplifts.

This has been the case across our portfolio in Germany and the UK.

What’s more, this means we have achieved like for like rental roll increases in excess of 5% for the ninth consecutive year.

We’re able to achieve this through the hard work of our site, asset management and sales teams in identifying opportunities to provide tenants with the right kind of space, as well as through our flexible platform and model, which lets us seize these opportunities more quickly than traditional landlords.

Underpinning all of this is a strong cash collection rate, which has remained above 98.5% on a rolling 12-month basis.

Macroeconomic backdrop

It won’t have escaped anyone’s attention that inflationary pressures continue to be in place across Germany, the UK and the wider world. This presents our business and our tenants with a number of challenges, but we’re confident we have the right business model and approach in place to mitigate these.

For our tenants, we offer first and foremost a flexible and affordable proposition in terms of space. On top of this, we’re also a service provider, so when we come to have conversations with tenants about contract renewals, we’re speaking about the space alongside the range of options we offer to support tenants and their requirements.

In terms of managing inflation in our business, we work proactively with our suppliers to enable them to offer Sirius stable pricing, including national framework agreements and payment plans to assure suppliers of prompt payment in return for more favourable pricing.

In addition to this, Sirius is a national player in two different markets, which means we have some key advantages in terms of bulk purchasing power.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that as I write this, there are some signs of pressures easing in energy and building development costs in Germany.

All told, we’re confident in our ability to navigate inflationary headwinds and work with tenants to help them in this environment.

Closing thoughts

It’s been another busy period for our teams across Germany and the UK, and as always I’d like to extend my thanks to them for their continued hard work and dedication.

We’re looking forward to sharing our full year results update for the financial year ended 31 March 2023 on 5 June, which we expect to be in line with market expectations.