Villar: what AFFO misses about archive services and the group's real economics
The main article already showed that Villar looks steadier through the recurring real-estate lens. This continuation sharpens a different point: AFFO of NIS 132.2 million is not the whole economic picture, because it strips out both NIS 31.5 million of archive operating cash flow and a NIS 425 million layer of archive-use properties whose value runs through other comprehensive income.
The main article already argued that Villar held up reasonably well in 2025 on the recurring real-estate layer, even as 2026 became more crowded with integration, development, and financing work. This continuation isolates a different question: how much of the group’s real economics can actually be seen through AFFO.
For Villar, the answer is fairly sharp. The company reports AFFO of NIS 132.2 million, but in the same presentation it also shows AFFO plus archive operating cash flow of NIS 163.7 million. The gap, NIS 31.5 million, is not a side note. It is almost one quarter of AFFO. And that still excludes another layer, the properties used by the archive business, whose fair value reached NIS 425 million at year-end 2025 even though changes in that value do not pass through profit and loss.
That is the core point. AFFO is not a wrong metric here. It is just too narrow if it is used as the metric for the whole group. It is useful for understanding Villar’s rental machine. It is not enough for understanding what the archive business still contributes, and it does not capture the property-value layer that accumulates around that archive platform inside buildings the group owns.
AFFO Is Narrow Here By Design
Villar itself explains why. Management AFFO is calculated after excluding profits from secondary activities, and in practice that exclusion mainly includes after-tax profits from archive operations in Israel and Romania. For 2025, 2024, and 2023 those amounts were NIS 31.5 million, NIS 36.3 million, and NIS 33.3 million respectively. So anyone reading only AFFO is deliberately reading a measure that strips out part of the operating picture.
That makes AFFO a cleaner measure for the rental segment. But the same move also means it stops being a full-group economic measure. It matters that Villar itself does not rely on only one bridge. In the AFFO note, the company excludes NIS 31.5 million of after-tax archive profit in 2025. In the presentation, it shows AFFO plus archive cash flow of NIS 31.5 million as well. In 2025 the two bridges happen to meet on the same number, but they still answer two different questions: one is profit-based and the other is cash-based.
This produces a more precise reading of 2025. AFFO rose 4.8% to NIS 132.2 million. The broader lens, AFFO plus archive cash flow, rose only from NIS 162.4 million to NIS 163.7 million. In other words, the group-level picture did not accelerate nearly as much as the AFFO headline suggests. Rental AFFO improved, but the archive business itself had a softer year.
The First Layer AFFO Misses: Real Cash From Archive Services
To understand whether the archive business really adds economics or just benefits from internal support, one detail matters immediately. In the presentation, archive segment results are shown after paying rent to the buildings segment at market prices. In the annual report, Villar also says the external valuer found that the rents paid by the subsidiaries are market rents customary in the relevant industrial areas. That matters because it means archive cash flow is not being flattered by artificially cheap internal occupancy.
So the NIS 31.5 million of archive operating cash flow in 2025 is not a bookkeeping gift from another part of the group. It is cash that remains after the archive segment pays market-based internal rent into the property layer.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Archive segment revenue | NIS 94.8 million | NIS 92.2 million |
| Segment profit after market rent | NIS 28.4 million | NIS 22.8 million |
| Archive operating cash flow | NIS 36.3 million | NIS 31.5 million |
| Boxes managed in Israel | 4.171 million | 4.019 million |
| Boxes managed in Romania | 1.448 million | 1.536 million |
| Total boxes managed | 5.619 million | 5.555 million |
That table is the real texture of 2025. Archive was not a clean growth engine. Revenue slipped, the number of boxes in Israel fell from 4.171 million to 4.019 million, and segment profit after internal rent fell from NIS 28.4 million to NIS 22.8 million. Villar itself describes mild erosion in service prices and in the volume of boxes managed in Israel.
But that is also exactly why the remaining numbers matter. Even in a softer year, the business did not disappear. In Romania, boxes rose from 1.448 million to 1.536 million. Group-wide, Villar still managed 5.555 million boxes. Archive operating cash flow still came in at NIS 31.5 million, down from NIS 36.3 million in 2024 but still clearly material.
That is where the line between a good read and a superficial read really sits. Anyone focused only on AFFO gets a cleaner picture of the rental layer, but misses a services business that runs out of 68 thousand square meters of group-owned buildings, 51.7 thousand in Israel and 16.3 thousand in Romania, and still throws off meaningful cash even after market-based internal rent.
The Second Layer AFFO Does Not See: Archive-Use Properties Flow Through OCI
The story does not stop with operating cash. Villar applies the revaluation model to the fixed assets used by the archive segment. The accounting consequence is critical: when the value of those properties rises, the increase does not go through profit and loss, so it does not go through AFFO either. It increases equity through other comprehensive income.
In numbers, the fair value of the real-estate assets used by the archive segment reached NIS 425 million at year-end 2025, up from NIS 370 million at the end of 2024 and NIS 331 million at the end of 2023.
The more important point is not only the NIS 425 million value itself, but the route by which it is recognized. Villar says explicitly in the board report that increases in the value of the real-estate assets used by the archive segment do not affect profit or loss. In 2025, the updated valuations of those properties increased fixed assets by about NIS 29.3 million and increased group equity by about NIS 22.6 million net of tax through other comprehensive income.
That is a different economic layer from the NIS 31.5 million of archive cash flow. The cash-flow number is current operating cash. The NIS 22.6 million net increase in equity is a balance-sheet layer. It is real, but it is not cash in hand. For shareholders to see that value as cash, the company still needs to keep operating the platform, recycle the use of those assets, or eventually choose a path of monetization, external leasing, or another structural change. So it is real value, but not immediately accessible value.
This is also where archive services and real estate genuinely intersect. By the end of 2025 Villar delivered a new 5,500 square meter logistics building in Beersheva to the archive segment, as part of the move away from Barkan and Ariel West. The presentation frames that move as an efficiency step as well, because Beersheva is characterized by lower rents. So the archive property layer is not just passive stored value. It is also an operating tool that can change the segment’s cost base.
The Right Read Of Villar Is Wider Than AFFO, But Not Freer Than AFFO
To read Villar correctly, the picture needs to be split into three layers rather than compressed into one number:
| Layer | 2025 | Where it appears | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| AFFO | NIS 132.2 million | Management metric | A useful measure for the recurring rental layer after adjustments |
| Archive operating cash flow | NIS 31.5 million | Segment presentation | Current cash generation from the archive business after market-based internal rent |
| Archive-use properties | NIS 425 million fair value, of which NIS 22.6 million net was added to equity in 2025 | Fixed assets and OCI | A real property-value layer, but not immediately distributable cash |
The meaning of that table cuts both ways. On one side, anyone who looks only at AFFO misses real economics. NIS 31.5 million of archive cash flow is not a rounding difference, and a NIS 425 million property layer that adds equity through OCI is not accounting noise. On the other side, anyone who rushes to “add back” everything AFFO removes can also go too far. Not every shekel of value in owner-occupied archive properties is a shekel that can be paid out, and not every increase in equity through OCI is free cash.
That is why the right read of Villar in 2025 is not that AFFO is misleading. The right read is that AFFO is partial. It describes the income-producing real-estate layer well. It does not, on its own, describe the whole group, because the group also owns a meaningful archive platform that still generates cash, and a dedicated property base for that platform whose value accumulates outside profit and loss.
The bottom line of this continuation is straightforward: two truths have to be held at once. Archive activity was weaker in 2025, so there is no reason to overstate the picture. But even in a softer year it still generated NIS 31.5 million of cash after market-based internal rent, and it sat on a NIS 425 million property base that added another NIS 22.6 million net to equity through OCI in 2025. Anyone reading Villar only through AFFO misses that. Anyone treating all of that wider value as immediately accessible shareholder cash misses a different kind of discipline.
Disclosure: Deep TASE analyses are general informational, research, and commentary content only. They do not constitute investment advice, investment marketing, a recommendation, or an offer to buy, sell, or hold any security, and are not tailored to any reader's personal circumstances.
The author, site owner, or related parties may hold, buy, sell, or otherwise trade securities or financial instruments related to the companies discussed, before or after publication, without prior notice and without any obligation to update the analysis. Publication of an analysis should not be read as a statement that any position does or does not exist.
The analysis may contain errors, omissions, or information that changes after publication. Readers should review official filings and primary sources before making decisions.