It’s been an extremely exciting year for us at Sirius with one of the key highlights being our inclusion in the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Index in March. Our growing relationship with the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) has led to a platinum sponsorship of this year’s EPRA Conference, which included attending and hosting events over the past week, in Berlin. And what a great week it was!

We started with a tour of our Berlin-Mahlsdorf business park, leading a group around the flexible, multi-use location on the edge of the city. Then myself and Sirius CFO, Alistair Marks, participated in a panel for investors’ day, speed-pitching to the investor audience. We both hugely enjoyed the discussion and bringing the Sirius Real Estate investment case to life.

At events like this, investors are really looking to get under the skin of our business and to understand what makes our people tick. We hope that our recent financial performance speaks for itself, but for those investors who are newer to the Sirius story, the EPRA conference gave us an opportunity to set out the fundamentals. In the compressed timeframe of the speed-pitch format this means rapidly articulating our business and the investment opportunity.

Broadly, we were guided by the five key questions investors likely have on their minds:

1. What’s the market context?

We can’t understand our business without understanding the market, and Sirius operates exclusively in the German market. The German economy is the largest in Europe and characterised by strong GDP growth, low unemployment and high levels of investment and consumer spending, with 99% of German companies being SMEs, the core customer of Sirius Real Estate.

2. What’s the business model?

Then we get into the meat of our pitch. Our business model has four key steps: we acquire, transform, manage and recycle. We acquire assets at attractive yields and at capital values well below replacement cost and we seek to buy assets with opportunity for value creation – generally through filling vacancy and converting use. We have proven capability in asset transformation through our capex investment programmes which deliver returns in excess of 40% and drive income and capital value growth.

We maximise the value of our assets through active and ongoing asset management with the most of these responsibilities being performed internally. In addition, we recycle by selling off mature and non-core assets and using the proceeds to purchase core assets with higher value-add opportunity. And so the cycle starts again.

3. How do you differentiate from the competition?

Next, I go into the core competencies of Sirius which sets the company apart from competitors. This is a great hook for investors as it gives them a relatable and significant benchmark to judge the company against others they’ll inevitably hear from throughout the day. The key point to make here is that unlike its competitors, Sirius has a fully integrated operating platform that allows us to lower risk and increase returns. We actively manage our assets and unusually for a property company we have a highly-developed in-house marketing and sales capability that targets prospective tenants directly using online and offline techniques. In turn, this reduces the overall cost of acquiring customers and minimises dependency on third party agents. Additionally, our dedicated service charge team delivers best in class cost recovery by utilising advanced measurement and cost allocation techniques.

4. Why do our customers choose Sirius?

We have a well-diversified tenant base (the top 50 tenants generate 45% of annual income) to go along with our diverse and flexible product offerings. From workshops to office space to storage, companies can come to Sirius regardless of their size and evolve as they grow. We have a substantial portfolio of sites around the “big seven” German markets and it’s our locations, typically edge-of-town sites that offer our customers greater value – and huge amounts of flexibility – versus town centre space.

5. Why should I invest?

In a nutshell we believe that Sirius represents a unique opportunity for investors to gain exposure to the attractive high yielding German light industrial and office real estate sector through a market leading owner and operator specialising in active management and value creation. Oh, and we’ve delivered a total shareholder accounting return in excess of 15% over the last three years…

Is there anything I’ve missed? What would be your top investor question?

If you’d like to find out more about our business model, the market in which we operate, our financial performance or our investment case or any other aspects of our story, please visit our website at www.sirius-real-estate.com.