CORESTATE Capital S A : positions itself to weather the crisis and reports first quarter of 2020

CORESTATE generated aggregated revenues of € 51.7 million (previous year: € 58.6 million), EBITDA of € 20.9 million (previous year: € 38.7 million) and adjusted net income of € 14.3 million (previous year: € 26.3 million) in the first quarter of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has been causing significant shifts in the transaction market with increasing momentum since the end of March, resulting in the temporary loss of revenues from warehousing, alignment capital and performance-based fees. Assets under management in the real estate core business rose organically by around 2.2% to € 24.8 billion in the first three months of the year; Corestate managed assets totaling € 28 billion at the end of March 2020.

• Aggregated revenues of € 51.7 million, EBITDA of € 20.9 million, adjusted Group earnings of € 14.3 million

• Postponement of transactions temporarily impacts revenues

• Assets under management at € 28 billion

• Focus on securing liquidity and a solid balance sheet

• Transaction market currently slowed down sharply, recovery expected in second half of 2020

Lars Schnidrig, CEO of Corestate: 'After getting off to a promising start to the year, the crisis hit us - like many other companies - unexpectedly hard. In a very short time, we shifted from an active growth course to consistently limiting entrepreneurial risks. The effects on the transaction market are already reflected in our earnings strength in the first quarter. At the same time, we have launched a comprehensive package of measures in recent weeks aimed at securing our liquidity, cutting costs and reducing warehousing. This puts us on solid and future-proof footing.'

Cash and cash equivalents amounted to around € 80 million at the end of the first quarter; moreover, the company has no significant refinancing requirements before the end of 2022. With € 45.4 million, the company generated in the first three months the majority of its revenues in its core business, real estate investment management. In the area of real estate debt (mezzanine), the fund volume was increased to over € 1.3 billion. Regular analyses show no critical findings at the project or the borrower level. In real estate management, the same applies to the residential, logistics and office segments, where there have been hardly any significant impairments to date. Conversely, the retail, hotel and micro-living segments are experiencing in some cases significant volatilities in occupancy rates or even rent defaults at fund level; a significant intensification of the company's own local property management activities has already been initiated here.

Nils Hübener, CIO of Corestate: 'Our clients keep telling us that they continue to have an increasing demand for exactly what we can offer them with our current pipeline of over € 4 billion: profitable and sustainable real estate investments. However, the current focus is due to the crisis shifting from value-add properties to the core and core+ segments, which is what we are currently focusing on. We expect the transaction and financing markets to return to normal in the fourth quarter. 'Even though we had to withdraw our financial outlook in view of the current high level of uncertainty, we will continue to be clearly profitable with our operating business this year. I am also very confident that catch-up effects from postponed transactions will have a clearly positive impact on our results after
the crisis comes to an end,' added Lars Schnidrig.

Corestate will publish an updated financial outlook for 2020 as soon as the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic can be reliably assessed and sound planning is possible. This will most likely be in the third quarter. The company believes that the key market drivers of the business model will remain intact in the medium term, so that, if the investment market returns to normal, earnings and profitability figures can be achieved again from 2021 on similar to the figures the company had been achieving before the crisis.