Nexus Select Trust (BSE: 543913) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Jul. 30, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Pratik Dantara — Chief Investor Relations Officer
Rajesh Deo — Chief Financial Officer
Dalip Sehgal — Executive director & Chief Executive Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Puneet Gulat — Analyst
Praveen Choudhary — Analyst
Parvez Akhtar Qazi — Analyst
Ashish Mendhekar — Analyst
Tushar — Analyst
Chatham — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
It. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to earnings Conference Call of Nexus select trust for Q1FY26. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the lesson only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pratik Gantara, Chief Investor Relations Officer and Head Strategy from Nexus Select Trust. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Pratik Dantara — Chief Investor Relations Officer
Thank you. Good evening everyone and thank you for joining the earnings conference call of Nexus Select Trust for the quarter ended June 2025. Before we proceed, I’d like to highlight that the management may make certain comments that may constitute forward looking statements. Please be advised that our actual results may differ materially from these statements. Nexus Select Trust does not guarantee these statements or results and is not obliged to update them at any point of time. Specifically, financial guidance and pro forma information that we will provide on this call are management estimates based on certain assumptions and have not been subjected to any audit review examination procedures.
You are cautioned to not place undue reliance on such information and there can be no assurance that we will be able to achieve them. Joining me today on the call are Dalit Sehgal, Executive Director and CEO, our CFO Rajesh Jain Naik. We will start off with brief remarks on our business and financial performance and then open the floor for questions. Over to you.
Rajesh Deo — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Prateek. Good evening everyone. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the earnings update call for the first quarter of Financial 26 for Nexus Select Trust, India’s first retail REIT. Before we delve into our quarterly performance, I would like to take a moment to highlight some of the key macro trends shaping the broader environment. India’s macroeconomic background remains very supportive. Retail inflation is at a six year low. GDP growth is projected to grow at a healthy 6.5 for financial year 26 and the repo rate has been reduced by 100 basis points over the last five months now standing at 5.5%.
Retail real estate fundamentals remain robust across our core markets underpinned by favorable demand supply dynamics and growing consumer confidence. Now Turning to our quarter one financial year 26 performance, we are very pleased to report a strong operational and financial quarter. With NOI growing 12% year on year. That’s 6% on a like to like basis. On the back of this robust performance, we are delighted to declare a distribution of INR 338 crores translating to per unit for the quarter at 2.23 rupees, marking our eighth consecutive quarter of 100% distribution payout. With this we have now cumulatively distributed INR 26.7 billion and per unit it works out to rupees 17.655 seventeen rupees six hundred and fifty five.
Now let me share a few updates on our recently acquired assets. As you know, we acquired Nexus Vega City in February 25. It has already delivered an impressive turnaround with both NOI and tenant sales growing upwards of 12%. What makes it especially noteworthy is that the asset was witnessing a decline in the 12 months prior to the acquisition, so achieving double digit growth within just four months is a testament to the exceptional work done by the team. The second one is Nexus MBD Neopolis Complex in Ludhiana, which was acquired in May of 25, has already demonstrated strong early traction with tenant sales of 5% despite being in the very early stages of integration.
These results underscore the strength of our asset onboarding playbook, enabling us to unlock value from day one through focused operational enhancements and targeted marketing interventions. The strong initial performance of both these acquired assets highlights the effectiveness of our post acquisition strategy driven by rapid rebranding under the Nexis umbrella, targeted upgrades to core mall services, curated category level initiatives and enhanced marketing efforts. These focused interventions enable us to unlock very swiftly and seamlessly. Building on this momentum, our inorganic growth strategy remains firmly on track supported by a strong pipeline of opportunities and a highly experienced team.
We expect to complete the Hyderabad acquisition shortly and are actively advancing multiple other strategic transactions ahead including greenfield development. Now coming to consumption, we witnessed, like I said earlier, 11% year on year growth which is 5% like for like. Despite temporary disruptions in our North India portfolio due to geopolitical reasons that all of us are aware of, as a result of which some of them also shut for some time. Our like for like consumption growth this quarter was nearly twice that of the previous quarter, clearly signaling a sequential improvement in the consumption trend. With early signs of recovery across categories, we remain optimistic that this momentum will strengthen further in the coming quarters.
Now let me share some category wise consumption trends that we are witnessing and I’m sure you would be interested in knowing this. Categories such as jewelry, watches, beauty and personal care and family entertainment centers recorded strong growth during the quarter and continue to demonstrate robust performance. In response, we have been proactively allocating additional space to these high performing segments, again trend we intend to sustain going forward as previously communicated on our Analyst Day in May 25, one of our strategic priorities has been to increase the contribution of the jewelry category within our portfolio. I’m pleased to share that in line with this vision, we launched seven new jewelry stores across the mall this quarter.
With this momentum, we remain on track to double this category sales overall to our sales in the year to come. Fashion category, which is our largest category, continues to recover with sales driven by clearance of older stock and the launch of new summer collections. This upward movement was supported by our targeted marketing campaigns like Vacation Nation, Denim Fest, Sneaker Fest, which helped augment footfall. Now let me walk you through our leasing and marketing campaign. First Leasing we continue to witness very strong tenant demand with leasing occupancy now at 97.2%. During the quarter, we re leased almost 0.27 million square feet at healthy spread, underscoring the sustained appetite for high quality grade A retail space.
Looking ahead, we have approximately 1 million square feet coming up for renewal annually every year over the next five years, representing nearly 50% of our total rental base. We remain confident in our ability to capture 20% plus re leasing strengths in our portfolio. In parallel, we will continue to proactively churn and resize underperforming categories and rents to enhance overall productivity and mix. Now coming to our marketing performance, a Pan India scale enables us to design and execute large format thematic campaigns across the country. This quarter we focused on summer activations such as Jungle Tales, Army Boot Camp, Sunken Kingdom and Neon park, all of which attracted high footfalls, particularly among young families.
One of the standout campaigns this quarter was the Pan India Pokemon Fiesta. A fully immersive experiential event, it generated significant buzz and delivered memorable high engagement moments for the shoppers through a series of Pokemon themed activities. Our Nexus One app that we have spoken about earlier as well now has a user base of over 7 lakhs continues to rank among the top performing shopping malls mall apps in India. The app has witnessed a 2x year on year increase in both tenant sales, uploads and downloads, reflecting its growing relevance in deepening consumer engagement and driving digital enabled retail experiences.
Coming to our robust balance sheet, I’m pleased to share that our average cost of Debt declined by 40 basis points to 7.5% this quarter, benefiting from the recent depo rate cut by the rpi with the full benefit expected to reflect in the coming quarters. Additionally, we have successfully refinanced INR 350 crores at a competitive rate of 6.67% achieving a tight spread of just 37 basis points over the 10 year GSEC yield, a noteworthy accomplishment by our finance team. Our current gross debt is evenly balanced with 49% in fixed rate instruments and 51% in floating rate, positioning us well to benefit from any further reduction in the repo rate.
Coming to sustainability, your company continues to lead the retail sector on ESG benchmarks. We remain the only mall platform in India to receive a prestige 5 star rating from GSB. During the quarter, we successfully commissioned a 13 megawatt plant in Pav Gada in Karnakhstad which is expected to generate approximately 19 million units of clean energy annually. Nearly 15,000 tons of CO2 emissions. With this addition, our total renewable energy capacity has increased to 60 megawatts enabling us to meet 55% of our portfolio’s total energy requirements through renewable sources. Now, just to at the end summarize our quarters for performance A.
We witnessed sequential growth in consumption this quarter and expect this momentum to sustain. Number two newly acquired malls delivered a strong NOI and consumption. Validating our acquisition strategy, NOI grew 12% in the quarter. We remain on track to achieve our full year guidance. We declared eight consecutive distribution total payouts since listing now is in terms of total returns over 55% returns to existing. We remain on track to achieve the full year NDCF guidance of 9.1 per unit. And lastly we crossed another milestone. 50,000 unit holders this quarter which is twice the number that we had at the time of listing. This is a testament to to your continued trust and support. Let’s now move on to the Q and A.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchdown telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and do. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Puneet from hsbc. Please go ahead.
Puneet Gulat
Yeah, thank you so much and congratulations on good performance. My first question is with respect to the consumption growth. So you would like to like consumption. Growth for more like 4.6 to but. If I look at your top malls. Select Citywalk, Elante, Ahmedabad, Nexus, Seawood itself. Better that’s below 4.6. So can you highlight which were the. Stronger performing ones and what’s happening in those?
Dalip Sehgal
Yeah, I think Fair question. First of all, as you know in the month of May we had a disruption because of Operation Sindur as a result of which the malls in the north, including the one in Delhi got impacted because malls were not allowed to operate for some time in Amritsar and in Elante Chandigarh also. Even when they were operating they were shutting early and there were lower number of footfalls, etc. So I think the north to a very large extent got impacted with what happened during those five or six days.
So that’s the reason as far as Ahmedabad is concerned. I think Ahmedabad is back on track. As you know, we had a competitive entry in that market with Phoenix coming in. But very happy to say that in less than a year’s time we are actually now positive in terms of sales and of course in terms of Inoue as well. And you will see even better results as we go forward. So that’s Ahmedabad. Seawoods I think has been good. I don’t think there’s any great issue.
Puneet Gulat
There but any other standout mall that.
Dalip Sehgal
You want to highlight? So Backdoor, I think south has performed extremely well. Yeah, south has performed extremely well. I think the three existing malls plus the fourth that we acquired, if you look at the entire total, I think our growth was a strong double digit growth in Bangalore way ahead of competition as well. So Bangalore is one where I think our numbers are stacking up brilliantly. In some of the tier 2 markets also we’ve done very well. Bhubaneswar grew almost double digits, so did FISA in Mangalore and Mysore. Udaipur was one of our fastest growing markets.
I think we were at 17 odd percent in terms of consumption. So overall if you look at it, I think tier 2 has performed overall. Tier 2 also has done well and Bangalore specifically. Now that we have synergies of scale with four malls and our ability to advertise across the city, I think that’s also helping us to grow. Chennai did well as well.
So overall if you look at it, apart from the disruption that we faced in the north and to some extent even in Ahmedabad where there were some blackouts that happened in the evening, malls were asked to close at a very early time in the day. I think even Ahmedabad to some extent got impacted. And our sense is that we’ve probably lost about 1%. So overall if we are, let’s say around 4.5%, like for like growth, it could have been 100 bits higher. So we could have been at five and a half, 6%. Understood.
Puneet Gulat
And in the NDCs, if you can talk a bit about what’s driving this. Strong positive contribution from the working capital side.
Rajesh Deo
I think the organic ndcs is reflecting the growth that we have hired in the NOI. If you look at like, for like malls, the NOI grew by 6% and that’s what is reflecting in the NDCF.
Dalip Sehgal
So this is 53 crore of working capital. Positive number. Just some color on that part.
Rajesh Deo
We have had some tax refunds amounting to I think 4, 5 crores and the collection has driven the working capital up. We have ensured the debtors have come down to about 3.2 days and security deposit collection has been on a record high.
Dalip Sehgal
So just to reiterate, I think the great work done by the finance team, our debtors are now at three and a half days which is probably the lowest that we’ve ever had in these eight years of the company. And that has of course led to freeing of cash as well. That’s why you see the working capital actually comes down overall.
Puneet Gulat
That’s very interesting. Thank you. And lastly on select, occupancy is down. A tad bit, 95%. Anything specific you’re doing there, that’s a churn that happens. So we’re getting in a couple of international brands and for that period then you need to shut the store before you get in the new brand. So it’s only to do with that, nothing else.
Rajesh Deo
Just to add to what Dalip sir was saying, these stores are under fit out and you will see some new first in country stores as well launched at select in the next few months. So these stores are under fit out just now and that’s what has led. To the drop in trading occupancy.
Dalip Sehgal
Yeah. And just to add to that, I think some of those first in country stores that have already got launched, maybe Nirza, you can speak about that.
Rajesh Deo
We’ve launched almost 7 to 8 first in country stores already with Prada Beauty, Nespresso, Fuji Beauty, kind of footlocker, Foot Locker as well. And you’ll see some more, you know. In a different. Zone getting launched very soon as well.
Dalip Sehgal
And Puneet, they’re targeting to open these stores before the festive season. So opening next quarter we should be open.
Puneet Gulat
Excellent. Thank you so much and all the best.
Rajesh Deo
Thank you.
Dalip Sehgal
Thank you for your question. Thanks.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask questions may press star in one at this time to ask a question. Please press chart and one now. The next question is from the line of Praveen Choudhary from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Praveen Choudhary
Hi, thanks so much for taking my question and congrats. Very strong NOI growth My question was. Related to dividend growth. Is it correct that I am seeing 4% growth in DPU despite very strong NOI growth. So just wanted to understand, despite good refinancing and accretive deal that we have done in these two malls, why are we seeing our dividend growth to be. Slightly lower and is it that it. Will improve in the next couple of quarters as the new malls mature? Thank you.
Pratik Dantara
Hi, Tarim Pratik here. We reported while the reported NOI growth was 12%, the like for like growth was about 6%. And the new malls that we acquired are in the process of being integrated like Khalid mentioned. So DPU growth was 4% on the back of NOI growth being 6%. And we expect this to only improve in the quarters ahead. We maintained the full year guidance that we’ve given last quarter and we are very hopeful that we should kind of get to that guidance on a full year basis as we’re seeing gradual recovery in consumption and the trends are looking positive.
Praveen Choudhary
Okay, thank you.
Pratik Dantara
On the repo rate, I think this quarter saw partial benefit. On account of that reset, the full quarter benefit should actually start flowing in from the next quarter.
Praveen Choudhary
Understood. Okay, thank you.
operator
Thank you.
Pratik Dantara
Thank you.
operator
The next question is from the line of Parvez Kazi from Navama Group. Please go ahead.
Parvez Akhtar Qazi
Hi, good evening. Two questions from my side. First, wanted to get your views on our acquisition pipeline. And second, what would have been the footfall growth? Basically. Thank you.
Dalip Sehgal
Hi, Parish Sathik. So the acquisition pipeline remains pretty strong. We’ve got around 10 plus assets in the pipeline. We’re looking at assets across India. Very strong conversations going on both on the asset acquisition side as well as a couple of conversations on the Greenfield side. So hopefully we are hopeful that once the Hyderabad acquisition closes, we’re able to close a few more in this year. So it looks healthy. On the footfall growth, I think on a reported basis we’ve got about 3%, 4% footfall growth and that includes the acquired while on the like for like basis that number would be flat.
Parvez Akhtar Qazi
Sure, thanks. And all the rest of you.
Dalip Sehgal
Thank you.
operator
The next question is from the line of Ashish Mendekar from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Ashish Mendhekar
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have your questions. So first one is what is the leverage ceiling you have like the shareholder approval leverage you have. And the second one is can you help with the consumption growth outlook for the portfolio at large? And if I can ask one more. So you mentioned about the repo rate benefit. Can you just quantify how much benefit we can accrue during the year. Yeah. Thank you.
Rajesh Deo
Yeah. So like we’ve given in us in this presentation or landing rate cost of debt has reduced from 7.9 to 7.5 reflecting a 40bps reduction. And some repo rates will be effective only on the reset date of those term loans. Like Pratik said, those benefits would start accruing in terms of getting passed on to the unitholders starting quarter two.
Rajesh Deo
So in terms of consumption growth, what are the trends looking like? I think they’re certainly better than what they were in the first half of last year. As you would have seen, we have including the acquisitions grown at around 11 odd percent. My sense is that it will only get better from here. Early trends in July are positive and we do believe that with a good monsoon overall demand will pick up. There are also other tailwinds that will help the whole thing that the finance minister announced there will be a lot of cash flowing into the economy and with inflation under control, my sense is that this will only improve in the quarters to come.
Dalip Sehgal
I think Ajish, to answer your first question on how much headroom on debt we have, etc. I think there we have about a billion dollars of headroom on debt and that takes us to an LTV of about 28, 30% over a period of five years. From a shareholder approval standpoint, I think we have an approval up to 35%. So that approval is already in place. We took that last year.
Ashish Mendhekar
Okay, so 35%. Yeah, yeah, that, that, that is looking for. Yeah. Thank you.
operator
Thank you.
Dalip Sehgal
Thanks.
operator
Before we take the next question, we would like to remind participants that you may press charn1 to ask a question. The next question from the line of Tushar, an individual investor, please go ahead.
Tushar
Hi sir. Am I audible? Hello? Yeah, so. So just a bookkeeping. So that’s a bookkeeping question. So in the results which you published and in the presentation there’s a difference in Ebida and the revenue from operations and the notes in footnote they will mention that the intercommet eliminating intercom transition. So I just wanted to understand why. What kind of transaction are these that are eliminated that cause the difference?
Rajesh Deo
These are basically your cross charge fee. Normally the manager charges 4% of revenue from operations from the SPV. So these get eliminated. There’s another one which is your renewable, renewable power that we supply from a solar entity called MSPL Mamdabur Solar to a Bangalore mall. These are another set of transaction that gets eliminated. Okay, so I just wanted to make sure the results we post on Nexus. So are those from the sp, are those from the Nexus and the presentation also from Nexus Provide. Sorry, we lost you. Repeat your question please.
Tushar
No, sir, I just took. I understood. Thank you.
operator
Thank you.
Rajesh Deo
Thank you.
operator
The next question is from the line of Chathan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Chatham
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to get some more color on your green fee strategy. You did mention that there are a couple of conversations that you’re having. What’s the concept here? Are you looking for a partnership model or you know, go on your own? Any particular markets that you know, you’re focusing on where more penetration is less? That would be really helpful.
Rajesh Deo
Okay, so to begin with, I think you’re absolutely right. We are looking at a partnership model where we partner strong developer and see our basic core strength is running them also and probably designing them in a particular way. So we would work with developers who are strong and are able to deliver on time. That is what we would do. In terms of which all cities. I think we are looking at all the cities where we are. Currently we are in 15 cities and I think there is an opportunity across the board even in tier two cities, tier one metros, because the metros have also expanded a lot.
So it depends on where you want to be. Bombay is not really one. MMR is a huge area. NCR is a huge area. Bangalore is expanding rapidly. So we’re looking at all the options that financially and from a consumer perspective would make sense.
Chatham
Thank you so much. That is really helpful.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask Questions may press star N1 at this time. To ask the question, please press charN1. Now the next question is from the line of antique stockbroking. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Good evening everyone. So my question is in the greenfield acquisition, what kind of structure would you have? Is it like you after the delivery of the mall, you would be owning 100% of the mall and whose responsibility is it to lease? Would you lease after the developer deliver it to you or deliver or typical like, you know, forward contract how. What kind of greenfield acquisition are you looking at?
Pratik Dantara
Hi. Like Dalit mentioned, our strength is on the leasing ops and marketing side. So our kind of roles will come in primarily to start with the leasing piece. I think on the developer side, the role would be to get the approvals and the structures up. And once you get the structure completed, we step in to do the leasing. So that’s the structure that we’re looking at or the construct that we’re looking at. For greenfield, if that answers your question.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. So the developer identifies the land, show it to you, you give the green signal and then they give you the cost and whatever is and once is delivered, you buy that at that price and then you visit. Right. You don’t pay for them land or. Right. I mean they equals a land. Right.
Rajesh Deo
They acquire the land and, and there will be a construct wherein you kind of get into a partnership by committing yourself to buying it in the future.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. 100%. Then once, once they deliver to you, you own the asset hundred percent and you visit. Right?
Rajesh Deo
Yes. Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay, thanks.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind participants that you may press chart and one to ask the question. The next question is from the line of Ashish Mehdikar from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Ashish Mendhekar
Yeah, just to follow up, are you looking at any new geography outside of the cities where we are present in for the green field?
Pratik Dantara
Ashish Hyderatik yes, we’re definitely looking at markets outside because not all markets in India have ready made structures to acquire in terms of grade A assets. Right. So wherever we believe it’s a strong market, strong market in terms of consumption and there is no asset available in that micro market to acquire, we kind of looking at greenfield options.
Dalip Sehgal
Yeah. And like I said, you know today. Mumbai is not, you know what it was, Mumbai is now. So if you look at Seawoods, it’s in Navi Mumbai, which 10 years ago wasn’t really a flourishing market, but today it’s hugely delivering very, very good results. So I think we are looking at where we are in those cities and also if there is an opportunity where let’s say those markets are being under serviced, we would look at that as well.
Ashish Mendhekar
Okay, understood. Thank you.
Pratik Dantara
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. That was the last question of our question and answer session. As there are no further questions. On behalf of Nexus Select Trust, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.
Pratik Dantara
Thank you. Thank you so much.