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LondonMetric Full Year Results for the Year Ended 31 March 2014 Page | 1 Ref 2698699 3 June 2014
Company: LondonMetric Conference Title: Full Year Results for the Year Ended 31st March 2014 Moderator: Andrew Jones Date: Tuesday 3rd June 2014 Patrick Vaughan: Good morning everybody, thank you very much for coming. A year ago I came to you and presented to you the case for our merger with a slightly complicated set of figures resulting from part year consolidations and we set out a number of objectives which were ambitious but needed to be achieved during our first year in the new business. I’m here to tell you that I’m delighted that we’re back a year later to say these objectives have been achieved. We have moved to new premises so the business is under one roof and that was achieved without a loss
- f momentum. There is a tremendous sense of can-do pervading the office and without a doubt
the merger is working. I said to everybody last night that they’d done a fantastic job of working the year with a huge volume of sales and acquisitions that we’ve made and I said you’re going to have to do better this year. We have achieved the cost savings we promised and at the beginning of the year we set out an ambitious programme to reorganise the portfolio along very clear strategic lines in line with our customer strength and as you see in the coming presentation an enormous amount of work has been done to that end with nearly £1 billion of purchases and sales concluded. The average lease length has been extended despite the passing of a year; vacancies have fallen usefully; and yields have stood their ground despite the hardening in the market. We said we would look at a run rate of repetitive income that would cover our dividend and as we reached our year end we have achieved that target. We are not fixated on that target because we consider opportunity for purchase and disposals are made for the right reasons, but having achieved it, it is also our
- bjective in the coming year to improve on the overall position and to move forward. I would
like to thank my executive team that has worked so hard during the year and I will now hand
- ver to our Chief Executive Andrew Jones and his team who will take you through our
- presentation. Thank you.