This year, we are reaping the rewards of the focus on core city assets and the strategic rotation in the portfolio that we started with the introduction of the high street strategy. The positive results of the core city assets are increasing their impact on the total portfolio. For example, the 3.8% positive like-for-like gross rental growth of the core city assets resulted in a 1.1% positive like-for-like gross rental growth of the total portfolio.

Over the past few years we have expanded the core city assets portfolio and sharply improved the quality of the total portfolio by making targeted acquisitions and divestments. In the first half of 2017, we have once again been able to add two core city assets to our Paris portfolio. After balance sheet date, three adjacent core city assets in Antwerp were acquired.

In addition to acquisitions, we continue to focus on improving the quality of the portfolio by means of divestments. A major divestment in the fi rst half year of 2017 was the sale of our portfolio in Turkey. In spite of the high quality of these core city assets, this portfolio no longer contributed to the stable results that we strive for due to the political and economic developments in Turkey. Part of the proceeds of the Turkish divestments were used for a share buy-back, which was an attractive investment in view of the Vastned share price at that time and the limited availability of acquisition opportunities.

This limited availability and increasing demand for high-quality property are making attractive acquisition opportunities scarcer. Keeping in mind that we only pursue acquisitions that meet all our conditions, we will execute our strategy step by step in a disciplined way.

Our efforts in the first half year have led to a direct result of € 1.07 per share and we stick to our guidance of the 2017 direct result of between € 2.10 and € 2.20 per share that we gave early this year.

In addition, the quality improvement we have realised over the past years give us the confidence to distribute a higher ratio of the direct result as dividend than in 2016. This means that we expect to maintain a dividend of
€ 2.05 per share over the year 2017. In line with our dividend policy we will pay out an interim-dividend of € 0.64 per share, which is 60% of the direct result of the first six months of 2017.