Remon Vos says CTP is ready to tackle the 10 million sqm challenge
CTP has expanded hugely in recent years, both in terms of the size of the portfolio and geographically. Which country is next for you?_x000D_
We have doubled since 2014 in volume and value, in rental income and also in terms of square meters. But headcount-wise, we have almost tripled since then. We used to be around 150 employees and now we are almost 400. So if you're asking if we could do another country, yes we could, but for the past 18 months or more the focus has been on getting the right teams in place locally. We entered Romania with one person, so we had to set up a team. Now it's 80 employees and it's a stable team, but it took a few years to get there. For Hungary it was similar. It was fine at the beginning but now it's performed beyond all expectations. We're very positive about Hungary and Budapest because we've been able to acquire some very good land sites, to start construction and to buy income producing properties. With all these changes at CTP we also had to adjust the team in Prague, with Richard Wilkinson joining as CFO, Bert Hesselink as development director and also Eugen Sonnleithner to head our legal team._x000D_
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To undertake that kind of overhaul, you must have realized changes was needed. What was the realization for you?_x000D_
First of all, it's the growth. From being a smaller company we became quite a bit bigger. But also when Eddy Maas [CTP co-founder] passed away in 2016, this had a huge impact on the organization and the team. It changes things. There were mostly Czech people in the previous management team and they had more of a Czech focus. If you change your business model and you're working in multiple countries, you have to have a different set-up. Today with 400 people, I think we could do more than we do today. Our teams are now ready to take on more growth and larger portfolios. We have 5 million sqm portfolio but I think with a similar amount of people we could run a 6 million sqm portfolio. In terms of overhead, the amount we spend on 5 million square meters isn't going to increase a lot if we do 6 million or 6.5 million sqm. We've also invested a significant amount of time and money into our IT system. The vision is to build a portfolio of 10 million square meters and I think the infrastructure is now in place to achieve that. You need to spend and invest first before you see the results. That said, the 2018 results were the best-ever in terms of volume._x000D_
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Entrepreneurs are generally aggressive, pro-active, and overinvolved in their companies. They also have a tendency to win deals first and then figure out how to complete them later. How did you educate yourself or adapt the way you approach running the business as it grew?_x000D_
This is very difficult. It's something that comes with growth. You need to trust people and delegate, which I do. And then sometimes things turn out positively. At the moment I'm super positive about the team but it took a while to get there. I've seen people come and go. I might think some projects could have turned out better if I'd done them myself, but you need to understand that you can't be involved in everything. I'm involved in the startups in new countries. Right now, that means in Serbia but in the past it was Romania and Hungary. I used to spend three days per week in Romania. That was full commitment to support the local team before they took over. We are a very flat organization. We like to have strong, entrepreneurial leaders and they get a lot of freedom to run the businesses. They have budgets and guidelines, but they run their teams on their own. Those are the types of people we like to employ. Most of the management people around me now have a different education background and they have experience working with larger corporations. They bring a lot of knowledge because they know how to run these types of structures and how to work in them. When I started together with Eddy, we learned by doing. I had no experience working in a big development company._x000D_
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Is it more important to set goals first and then work out the structures later or to analyze what the company has and what it can achieve?_x000D_
We've been growing by around 20 percent annually thanks to acquisitions, but this isn't sustainable. I think we should be around 10-15 percent growth in terms of sqm, in part to utilize the land bank. We have around €270m in land, which is massive, so we need to develop it. It's often land plots within existing business parks, but it still takes time to develop. More important is keeping occupancy up, which has to do with building quality, the location, keeping the buildings up to date, and being aware how the industries develop._x000D_
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What have you seen changing more recently, either within CTP or in your markets?_x000D_
It's important to understand what the auto industry is going to do, what's going to happen, whether will people buy fewer cars because of car sharing, or different concepts. I also think we need to be alert in terms of interest rates. For the moment they're low but the question is what's going to happen in the long-term. We need to be very alert and because of the size of the company, because we have a lot of responsibility to the communities where we operate and to the people we work with. There's a growing awareness within CTP, also thanks to the new people joining, that we are part of a community. So we don't just do charity now but we try to be part of the community and support it long-term by building infrastructure and getting involved in job creation and training as well as cooperation with local universities. We're a more serious company now -- a € 5bn company. If we grow the portfolio to 10m sqm we'd be around an € 8bn company._x000D_
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You set, and met, your 5 million square meter goal. Is 10 million square meters the next stopping point?_x000D_
Yes. The question is when we're going to hit that.