The Coronavirus pandemic has created disturbance to global civilisation and the economy. However, Vivion believes that its resilient capital structure together with the geographic, asset and tenant diversification within its real estate portfolio places it in a strong position to manage this currently challenging market environment.
The Group’s portfolio has not seen any material deviation in top line performance across both the UK and Germany: all rents have been received for the UK portfolio up until and including June 2020 and only a small portion of tenants in Germany have requested rent deferrals, for which short-term solutions will be sought together with the tenant.
In the UK, a number of hotel operators have secured significant revenue generating opportunities with the UK authorities to enhance their income and cash flow. We are in close contact with our tenants, the hotel operators, that continue to stay up to date with new guidance and packages introduced by the UK government. Furthermore, the hotel operators are minimizing operational expenses at this time, including furloughing employees to access government funding under the COVID-19 Job Retention scheme, thus minimizing payroll costs.
From a funding perspective, the Group has a sufficient liquidity position to cover all expected cash outflows for the foreseeable future, even if the current situation of the shutdowns will be prolonged. The shareholder group remains committed to providing adequate liquidity to Vivion, as demonstrated by its equity injection in January 2020 and the capital raise at Golden Capital Partners completed in March 2020, creating a total influx of cash of EUR €520m. The Group has no material debt expiring in the foreseeing future (2020-2022). The Company’s conservative LTV and unencumbered asset ratio provide several financing options should further access to capital markets be required in the near future.
The Group is continuously monitoring the portfolio for all developments regarding Covid-19 and is following all guidance. The Group has also implemented a programme to actively reduce operating expenses, postpone non-essential capital expenditure where realistically possible and make use of any relevant facilities or arrangements provided by the various national authorities to assist companies through the crisis. The Group is already prepared to increase the scope of these measures if the crisis were to persist for an extended period.