Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Charter Hall Group 2022 half year results briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session, at which time, if you wish to queue for a question, you will need to press star followed by one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Friday, February 25, 2022. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. David Harrison, Managing Director and Group CEO. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Charter Hall Group half year FY 2022 results. My name's David Harrison, Managing Director and Group CEO of Charter Hall. Presenting with me today is Sean McMahon, our Group CIO, and Russell Proutt, our Group CFO. I'd like to commence today's presentation with an acknowledgment of country. Charter Hall is proud to work with our customers and communities to invest in and create places on lands across Australia. We pay our respects to the traditional owners, their elders, past and present, and value their care and custodianship of these lands. Turning now to slide five and the highlights for the half year. Slide five highlights the continuation of growth and resilience across our business. Operating earnings post-tax was AUD 264 million or AUD 0.566 per security, up 104% compared to prior corresponding period.
Our return on contributed equity was 24.4%, a leading return within both the AREIT sector and the ASX 100. The group's property investment portfolio grew to AUD 2.8 billion as we continued investing alongside our partners and within our funds. The group delivered a 25.5% property investment return, inclusive of an attractive 6% PI yield. Fund growth continues to be strong, with property FUM up 17.2% in the period or an additional AUD 9 billion of FUM. While we also entered into a new partnership with Paradice Investment Management that takes group FUM to AUD 79.5 billion. The growth is a result of our ongoing partnerships with tenant and investor customers, delivering positive outcomes for them, which ultimately translates into attractive returns for security holders.
That growth saw us undertake AUD 6.8 billion of gross transactions as we continued to actively curate our portfolios to drive performance via net acquisitions and a growing development work in progress. The group's balance sheet remains resilient and low gearing at a Baa1 credit rating, together with the 23% NTA growth, reflects the quality of our long lease investments, asset and sector selection, particularly industrial and triple net lease portfolios. Finally, the group's investment capacity of cash and undrawn debt stands at AUD 6.7 billion. We note that this doesn't include committed but uncalled equity commitments, which further increases this capacity, nor does it include partnerships where we match new transactions with additional equity commitments, such as the recently announced additional partnership with PSP Investments for a new office development in Brisbane.
Our focus remains on delivering sustainable growth for security holders, replenishing dry powder, strengthening resilience, and a vigilant focus on property fundamentals. Slide six outlines our strategy. We use our expertise in customer relationships to create value and generate superior returns for our investors. We allotted AUD 2.8 billion of gross equity during the six-month period. I note all of our equity sources delivered strong net inflows. Of the AUD 6.8 billion of gross transactions this period, we acquired AUD 5.4 billion and divested a further AUD 1.3 billion of assets as we actively curate our portfolios. Additionally, we invested AUD 1.1 billion in our development pipeline, providing our invested customers access to new investment product and enabling them to deploy capital into unique opportunities not available in the open market.
Our focus remains on ensuring we manage portfolios to preserve capital and drive resilient income returns, optimizing the earnings growth from the assets we manage. Finally, we continue to focus on investing alongside our capital partners, deploying an additional AUD 432 million during the 1/2. The CHC property investment or PI portfolio delivered a 25.5% return this half for our CHC security holders. Slide seven highlights the consistent growth in earnings and distributions Charter Hall has delivered for investors. Including our revised earnings guidance today and over a five-year period, this will have averaged 25.6% annual growth in post-tax earnings, while we continue to deliver sector-leading annual distribution growth. Turning to slide eight.
Our heritage of partnering with capital has assisted in delivering consistent OEPS growth, and this has translated into significant outperformance of our total shareholder return for shareholders compared with the AREIT index over all time periods. We're proud to have delivered our security holders outperformance over every time period since our listing in 2005, and we thank you for the ongoing support of Charter Hall. This outperformance has been delivered through a clear and consistent strategy of accessing capital, deployment via developed core strategies and selective acquisitions, while resourcing appropriately a high-quality team to manage Australia's largest property portfolio. Turning to slide 10, which depicts the fund growth over the last six months and split by sources of equity over the last five years. Portfolio curation is an important driver of fund performance.
We continue to be an active buyer and seller of assets, constantly looking to improve portfolios and deliver growth. Our development completions and the growing pipeline of captive development projects also provides a pathway to deploy our investment capacity, which we replenish regularly from new equity flows. Our focus on well-located modern assets leased to high-quality tenants on long leases with inbuilt rental growth is a simple formula. It is, however, becoming even more critical to modernize our office and logistics markets to cater for changing tenant appetite. Importantly, it translates into assets that provide ongoing capital growth, and this period was no exception, with net revaluation again contributing to fund growth of AUD 3.9 billion over the period. This period was also significant as we invested in the Paradice Investment Management listed equities business, which builds upon our core strategy of partnering with wholesale and retail investor customers.
The PIM fund of AUD 18.2 billion increases group fund to AUD 79.5 billion, extends our relationship with new institutional retail customers, but also provides the opportunity for Charter Hall to introduce customers to PIM. As indicated in the graph on the right-hand side of the slide, we're seeing a compound annual growth of 28.5% in property fund, funds under management since June 2017. The growth has been consistent across our equity sources, providing all equity investors access to our growth opportunities and diversity of investment opportunities with both sector-specific and diversified offerings. Turning now to slide 11, which summarizes the group FUM portfolio. From a group FUM perspective, we've significantly increased our exposure to listed equities, providing a useful diversification from our property sector exposures and providing a further avenue of deployment opportunities to present to our investor partners.
The diversity and breadth of the expanded investor base, combined with the property sector diversification, provides enhanced diversification and scale benefits. Turning to slide 12, where we summarize activity in the group's property funds management portfolio. We remain well diversified by equity source and by sector, where we've selected and curated portfolios which have captured the strong growth in logistics and triple net leased assets, while the sector-leading WALE of our national office portfolio has driven resilience and growth in asset valuations. The strength of our long WALE retail and convenience shopping center retail assets has also demonstrated the team's focus on relatively low occupancy cost retail assets and the benefits of cross-sector tenant relationships. The group's PFM WALE remains strong at eight point eight years, despite the passage of time, through lease extensions and new assets that have combined to drive growth in this key metric.
Weighted average cap rate across the platform from 4.47%, reflecting the quality of improvements in the portfolio and exposure to logistics and triple net sectors that have shown the greatest yield compression. Slide 13 outlines our tenant customers. We see our customers as investors and tenants, many of whom are also ownership partners or potential vendors of sale and leaseback assets. Our top 20 tenants make up almost 60% of platform net rental income. These tenant customers include high proportions within essential and non-discretionary retail industries. While the industry diversification across the platform provides us great insights into the broader economy. 24% of our platform's property leases are triple net, and cross-sector relationships continue to drive platform growth. 25% of the platform property net income is from CPI-linked leases, providing our investors good protection in a higher inflationary environment.
Importantly, 37% of platform rental income is generated from net effective leases, i.e., no incentive leases, delivering our investors an attractive income and capital growth profile. The resilience of our major tenant customers and our concentration towards essential industries underpins the defensive nature of our portfolios and their ongoing performance. Turning to slide 14 in transactional activity. Strong equity flows through us, active in deploying equity into developments, acquisitions, predominantly off-market or portfolios, while sale and leaseback transactions continue to grow. Notwithstanding the challenges presented by COVID-19, we're active across all of our sectors, and we're quick to seize on opportunities that presented themselves. Repeat customer transactions are a healthy sign of delivering on our customer-centric objectives, many of which reflect our capacity to deal with customers in multiple sectors across the property industry. Turning to slide 15 in our sale and leaseback activity.
Charter Hall continues to be a leader in partnering with corporate Australia to meet their property needs. We see ourselves as a capital provider and property specialist that can assist corporates and government tenants to achieve their strategies. Importantly, this provides our investors with investment opportunities that are difficult to access and that don't require competing in the open market to secure. For our tenant customers, it's an opportunity to unlock capital management opportunities while retaining control of critical infrastructure and property assets. For Charter Hall, it's an integral part of our business, central to our growth and a clear expression of our partnering with tenants and investors. That's why we've been successful in executing over AUD 11 billion of sale and leaseback transactions. Turning to slide 16 in our development book.
The group continues to progress various developments across its portfolio, creating investment grade properties and adding significant value through enhancing both income yield and total returns. The development book has grown strongly during the period and now stands at AUD 13.2 billion of committed and uncommitted pipeline. Industrial development continues to grow with the total industrial pipeline growing from AUD 3 billion to AUD 5.5 billion in the half, with a value of committed projects up from AUD 1.5 billion to AUD 2.2 billion, while restocking in our land banks has lifted uncommitted projects from AUD 1.5 billion to AUD 3.3 billion. Our office pipeline has also grown with the addition of our new Chifley South Tower, having received New South Wales Gateway determination approval to proceed, and as such, has been added to our uncommitted pipeline.
I also note that 30% of the office space is pre-leased on long-term leases. The forward pipeline of committed projects will generate high quality long leased assets for our funds and partnerships while providing attractive incremental fund growth for CHC and enhancing our credentials to attract capital. Importantly, our sector leading performance in our wholesale pooled funds have seen both CPOF and CPIF continue to drive very strong long-term returns that have been delivered through active develop to core strategies. Turning to slide 17 and our equity flows. Our strategy of accessing multiple sources of capital continues to deliver growth in all segments. Our pooled funds continue to generate strong investor interest, with CPOF currently undertaking an equity raise, which closed about AUD 700 million in the H1 prior to Christmas, demonstrating strong investor demand for continued investment in the office sector.
It's 16% rolling 12 months return, which clearly outperformed the office peer subsector as measured by MSCI by at least 25%, has assisted in continuing to bring capital into CPOF. Our wholesale partnerships have also been very active, with the highlight being Hostplus investment alongside CLW in the successful acquisition of the ALE Property Group. Meanwhile, our direct business continues to enjoy strong support from investors, with inflows having increased to approximately AUD 110 million a month during the H1 of FY 2022. In summary, we continue to enjoy the support of capital partners, given our ability to successfully deploy capital in attractive acquisitions and development opportunities, investing alongside them to cement strong alignment of interests and generate healthy returns for both partners and CHC shareholders. I'll now hand over to Sean McMahon, our Chief Investment Officer.
Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. As David has discussed, our property investment portfolio provides a strong alignment of interest with our investor customers, while also ensuring that security holders benefit from our property expertise. Our property investment portfolio value has increased to AUD 2.85 billion and occupancy is stable with the portfolio WALE remaining strong at eight point six years. Our weighted average rent review remains strong at 3.2% and benefits from the strong, significant exposure we have to CPI-linked rental increases. Our weighted average cap rate has firmed to 4.62%, reflecting the quality of the assets we have invested in. The portfolio remains well-diversified across sectors and by investment, with an over 80% weighting to the East Coast core markets.
We continue to allocate incremental group capital to investments in Long WALE retail, social infrastructure, and industrial logistics assets. The growth in the property investment portfolio reflects the group's desire to continue to invest alongside our investor customers and ensure a strong alignment of interest. Now turning to the property investment portfolio movement. During the period, our investment property portfolio grew to AUD 2.85 billion, with increased valuations and additional new investments. Our ability to recycle capital to support new initiatives and drive returns for security holders is an important part of the success of the group. The chart on the right-hand side shows the growth of our total property investment. Pleasingly, despite cap rate compression across the assets we invest in, our PI yield remains attractive at 6%. Let's move now to slide 22 and the resilience of our PI earnings.
As can be seen on this page, our property investment earnings are characterized by the high quality of the tenants that provide that income, the diversity of sectors which produce them, and the lack of concentration risk or single asset exposure in deriving them. 75% of PI income comes from the leases that grow at fixed annual increases of 3.3% a year, delivering annual income growth at a rate above the RBA's inflation target band. The remaining 24% of leases are CPI linked, ensuring good exposure to additional rental growth in an elevated inflationary environment. No single asset contributes more than 5% of property portfolio investments, and our tenants are heavily weighted towards non-discretionary industries. More broadly, across the platform, we enjoy strong tenant-customer relationships. These relationships often span asset sectors and multiple properties.
70% of our tenant customers lease more than one tenancy from us, and over a 1/3 of our tenants are customers across more than one asset class. This also feeds back into transactions with our significant sale and leaseback activity, providing off-market opportunities to also grow our funds. Let's now move to ESG on slide 22. As a business, we remain very focused on ESG as a strategic differentiator. We believe that delivering environmental and social value in partnership with our tenant and investor customers will support long-term sustainable growth and returns. During the period, we've completed AUD 1.3 billion in sustainable finance transactions, up from AUD 100 million at full year 2021 to total AUD 1.4 billion. This reflects our approach to using independent rating tools for our assets and portfolios and overall ESG progress. We continue our focus on renewables and climate action.
We remain committed to growing our investment in clean energy and net zero carbon in our operational roadmap. Year to date, we've added an additional 5 MW of on-site renewables, taking our platform-wide installed solar to 46 MW. Additionally, we've seen a 47% reduction in our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, supported by our entire office platform switching to grid-supplied renewables from July 1, 2021. Our entire business will be fully powered by 100% renewable electricity by 2025. Today, a total of 61% of operations are now powered by renewables. We remain committed to engaging with the communities in which we operate, a hallmark of our approach to sustainability at Charter Hall.
In addition to our two-year partnerships focused on employment opportunities for vulnerable youth in the communities in which we operate, we've used our 1% pledge to provide more than AUD 879,000 in community investment in partnership to address issues created by the pandemic. Our partnership with Foodbank, for example, provided crisis food hampers to Victorian and New South Wales families, the equivalent to feeding 7,500 families for a week. Additionally, we were proud to support UNICEF's Give the World a Shot program to provide 55,900 people in developing countries support to access vaccines for COVID-19. Transparency and disclosure are a continued focus. In the period, we released our second climate response, aligned with the TCFD and our second modern slavery statement.
With Australia's largest footprint of green building certified space, we will continue to adopt independent assessments and rating tools to support risk and opportunity assessment and measure our ESG progress. Finally, as we look forward, areas of continued focus must be on operating a net zero carbon business, driving tenant partnership to support clean energy and Scope 3 emission reductions, and implementing our recently endorsed Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan, as well as retaining talent and continuing to ensure leading levels of employee engagement. I will now hand over to Russell to provide details on the financial result.
Thank you, Sean, and good morning to everyone on the call. Starting on slide 24. Our property investment, development investment, and funds management segments all reported very strong financial performance for the half. The property investment segment reported growth in EBITDA of 18.5% over the prior comparable period. This earnings growth has resulted from the business continuing to generate strong earnings at a 6% yield across a more substantial investment portfolio. At the end of the half, the investment portfolio was more than AUD 800 million greater than it was at the end of the H1 of FY 2021. The development investment EBITDA of AUD 27 million was also significantly higher than the H1 of FY 2021.
The most significant contributor in the period came from the substantial progress at our AUD 450 million premium-grade office development at 60 King William in Adelaide. Also, during the half, the Western Sydney University anchored office development at six Hassell Street in Parramatta reached practical completion. All on-balance sheet development projects in delivery phase have been forward sold on a fund-through basis to Charter Hall managed funds or partnerships. At our FY 2021 earnings results, we indicate an expectation of EBITDA from this segment of between AUD 30 million and AUD 40 million, and we would expect this now to be at the upper end of this range for the year. The funds management segment reported AUD 256.5 million of EBITDA in the half and accounted for more than 70% of the group's EBITDA.
This represented a 164% increase over last year, and I'll go into greater detail regarding this segment on the next slide. Overall, the strong performance across all three segments has resulted in reported H1 operating earnings of AUD 263.9 million or AUD 0.566 per security. Consistent with our guidance, a AUD 0.197 per security distribution was announced for the half, representing growth of 6% per security over last year. Now turning to slide 25 and reviewing our funds management segment in greater detail. Investment management continues the engine of our growth. The base management fees increased 20.5% from the H1 of last year, reflecting the growth in fee-bearing capital between the periods.
Transaction performance fees were very strong, elevated by equity flows and available liquidity, supporting transaction activity with strong fund performance generating performance fees. EBITDA margin in the period was 78%, supported by the contribution to earnings of performance fees. Excluding transaction performance fees, EBITDA margin for the segment was approximately 53%. Regarding the increase in operating costs, there was a combination of factors, including the return to more normal operating environment. To provide some context, FY 2021 was actually 10% lower than the H1 of FY 2020. If we were to compare this half's operating costs to FY 2020, they would have been up only about 12%, which is considerably behind or less than the growth in FUM. As such, there's also a naturally increased expenditures required to support the continued FUM growth and operations.
This is typically reflecting additional headcount as well as we highlighted at the AGM, there was higher REM increases during the period across the business. With respect to corporate costs, the increase was approximately equal to the increase in LTIP, as well as the implementation of a retention and outperformance plan, which wasn't in existence last year at this time. While these costs are accrued in the current period and charged to operating earnings, they remain subject to achieving performance hurdles in the future. Now turning to slide 26 and our financial position. The balance sheet composition remains largely consistent with prior periods. It is worthy of note that the overall growth in total assets includes more than AUD 400 million increase in the investment portfolio from the end of last fiscal year.
As discussed, this growth has come from a combination of valuation gains and additional investments during the period. It is worth also noting that our recently announced investment in the Paradice Investment Management Partnership is included separately in other assets. At the holdco, there were no new debt facilities entered into in the half, and the business maintains AUD 200 million of undrawn lines. When combined with available cash on hand, investment capacity at the end of the half was AUD 429 million at holdco, resulting in relatively modest balance sheet gearing of 7.2%. As we have mentioned on prior calls, the return on capital metrics are fundamental to assessing our ability to employ capital effectively to generate earnings and earnings growth for our investors.
As shown in the table, all return metrics presented are very strong, and these are calculated on a trailing 12-month basis. These measures will continue to be a key focus of the business. Now finally, for me, on slide 27, a profile of our platform borrowings and liquidity are summarized. Our approach to capital management has four key pillars. One, we typically finance consistent with investment-grade metrics, whether formally rated or not. Two, we maintain liquidity to meet obligations and provide financial flexibility to pursue growth. Thirdly, we minimize risk by extending facilities and diversifying capital sources. Finally, we enhance our returns by using leverage at appropriate levels, acceptable cost, and structure.
In the H1 of FY 2022, we successfully met each of these aims by increasing our borrowing capacity to AUD 23.4 billion, maintaining liquidity at AUD 6.7 billion, and pursuing new channels for debt capital, including AUD 1.4 billion of green financing. We extended our maturities to four point seven years with an average cost of 2.3%, and we employed gearing levels which were appropriate for each fund and partnership with an overall weighted average gearing of 28%. No material change from the strategy is expected at this time. Thank you. I will now pass to David to provide an updated outlook and guidance for the FY 2022 period.
Thank you, Russell. Just turning to slide 23 and our outlook and earnings guidance. Based on no material adverse change in current market conditions, FY 2022 guidance has been upgraded to post-tax operating earnings per security of no less than AUD 1.12. FY 2022 distribution per security guidance is for 6% growth over FY 2021. That now ends the prepared remarks, and I now invite your questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. Our first question today will come from Sholto Maconochie with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, David, everyone. Just a couple quick ones. On the performance fee, can you break out what was accrued this period in the transaction performance fees?
Yeah, thanks, Sholto. Just before I hand over to Russell, I just wanted to mention that in addition to Russell, Sean, and myself, in the room available for questions, we've got our Office CEO, Carmel Hourigan, as well. I'm sure there might be some questions in regards to the office market. Russell, do you wanna answer Sholto's question?
Yeah, sure, absolutely. There was several funds that actually were measured and tested in the H1 , and there was some of the performance fees which would be measured and tested, in particular, Long WALE Hardware Partnership and CPIF, which were partially accrued in the H1 . They were not fully accrued, obviously, because they're still subject to testing in the H2 .
When you get going from the 13 December, will the performance fees unchanged between now and then for the NTA upgrade?
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that we had pretty good visibility on December valuations. As Russell said, we would accrue some of the performance fees for CPIF and LWHP. Just in case you ask any more questions, Sholto Maconochie, you know we do not give compositional analysis of the split between performance fees and transaction fees.
Yep. No, understood. It seems that the business had a quite strong result across all segments. Across the board, the upgrade was driven by obviously performance fees, but also stronger performance across the other segments, too?
I think it's the latter.
Okay. All right. That's very good. I see Carmel is on the phone. Just on office markets, there's a lot of you've got the attractive development at Chifley, 30% pre-commit. You sort of put a lot of supply with your competitors in Sydney or mooted supply. Can you talk about the tenant market, what you're seeing in office right now, in terms of demand for quality space, any changes you've seen post-COVID in terms of, you know, people wanting to have more space or less or any themes that emerge?
Look, detailed question. Lots in that. I'd say that we're getting really strong inquiry on Chifley is a great example. As David just mentioned, we do have a 30% pre-commitment on that tower. But it's in the early stages of DA approval. We don't think that will be quite slow from here, but got a lot of activity. I think the issue there, what it's actually showing to us is this, you've heard it before on many of these calls, the flight to quality is real. Now that has been happening for a long time. What we're seeing is tenants are looking at the flight to sort of experience.
It's all about the ESG. It's all about what we're doing in terms of flex and so on. I think on growth activity in the market, it's actually stronger than what you would think. If I look at what we've seen already this year up to last night, I had a look at it last night. We've already received 160,000 sq m nationally of RFIs, which is, you know, quite strong considering last year we ended up about 750. I think the interesting thing about that is the private sector is dominating those inquiries this year, and we've seen a particular increase in Sydney. When I look at inquiries, we're starting to see more inquiries over 3,000 sq m. That's from the private sector, which wasn't really there.
The large inquiries last year were being dominated by public sector, the feds and some of the states, which is, you know, I think really positive for the market. Look, you know, I think we're not really seeing, when all of those inquiries, most of them are sort of staying the same size or there are some slight increases. We're not really seeing any indication that they're taking less space. What we are seeing is they are demanding more flexibility in their lease structures, and that would include expansion floors, contraction floors, and so on. That's sort of more the conversation we're having. There's a lot going on in terms of substituting maybe expansion space for flex space, so owners providing flex space.
I'll just wrap up, Sholto. There is no doubt we're seeing a continued bifurcation of the office market where both corporate and government tenants want brand-new buildings or completely refurbished stock. If you look at the announcements we've made in the last 12 months with you know, virtually a whole building pre-commitment to Australia Post at Swan Street in Richmond. You know, 70% pre-commitment to government for 60 King William Street in Adelaide. There's a whole variety of announced and pending government inquiries for new buildings. You know, as you've seen with something like Chifley South, we still put it in the uncommitted bucket because it needs its final DA approval, even though we've got New South Wales Gateway determination. Once we get that final approval, that will move from uncommitted to committed.
I think our office portfolio is one of the youngest portfolios of the large office portfolios in the country. It's certainly got the longest WALE of any of the sort of large office portfolios, and we're gonna continue to do that. Hence that develop-to-core strategy, both in office and logistics, is going to pay dividends because we'll have a very young portfolio. We'll have very good quality government and corporate tenants that wanna be in new space. This is the bifurcation of the office market we've been talking about for a few years. You know, our view is that you know, the vacancy in those prime, particularly brand-new buildings is going to be much lower than you know, 30-year, 40-year-old buildings that are gonna struggle a bit.
That's a strategy we have been harnessing for some years, and I think we will continue to see that, which is why you've seen such a big increase in our total development pipeline from just under AUD 9 billion to AUD 13.5 billion.
Just one last one for me, if I may. Just on, you had a very strong transaction half with net growth around AUD 6.8 billion. What sort of assets are you looking at to expanding this half? Is there any sort of more triple net or can you give a bit of color on what you're sort of looking at or any alternative asset classes? Obviously you bought PIM. Are you looking at anything else that's outside of your current sort of expertise?
You know, look, this business is still the vast majority of property funds management business. There's been a lot of discussion and reaction in the market. You know, our investments forecast to deliver a 10% after-tax yield on our investment in PIM. You know, if you look at that on an annualized basis, it's a bit over AUD 20 million out of the AUD 540 odd million after tax that we've guided today. I think we'll continue to grow in the property space. There's no current plans to look at other asset classes. As you know, we've sort of looked at infrastructure in the past with Hastings and pulled out of that because we didn't like what we saw.
You know, as you've just pointed out, we're certainly not ex-growth in property in Australia. I think we'll continue to expand using the great partnerships we've got with Capital. You know, you're well aware that we're being granted exclusive due diligence on Irongate in a partnership with PGGM. You know, I would suggest to you that, you know, from a sector perspective in property, you'll see much of the same that you've seen for the last five years in terms of us focusing on high quality tenant covenants that are best of breed in each of their sectors. I pointed out that, you know, 37% of the total platform income is net effective.
We all know that we'd prefer to be, you know, doing deals in sectors with no incentives, and so that long life triple net thematic will permeate through all of the sectors. Obviously we're continuing to grow our strategies in social infrastructure. We think that's a particularly attractive growth corridor for us. You know, as you're seeing across all of our property sectors, we've got multiple pools of capital that are interested in, you know, all of those sectors. You know, we're proud of the outperformance we've delivered for our fund and partnership investors, and we don't intend changing that. We'll be focused on maximizing the IRRs for those investors, and ultimately that'll be of benefit to CHC shareholders.
Yeah. Irongate's not in guidance, is it?
No.
Thanks very much. That's it from me.
Our next question will come from James Druce with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, David, Russell, Sean, and Carmel. Sort of a little bit of detail on the Paradice, and I don't wanna go over it too much because we did sort of deal with it a little bit last year. Can you just talk a little bit more about how that fits into the evolution of Charter Hall's business model? You've noted that you previously looked at infrastructure. You also previously looked at debt. Are these dalliances with other sectors more opportunity led or are they part of just more of an evolving plan? Can we get some more color on that, please?
Yeah. I'm not prone to dalliances, James, so let me start at first principles. For a decade, this business has articulated to the market that its strategic pillars are to access capital, deploy through developer core strategies and selective acquisitions, manage a high quality portfolio, which can only happen with a high quality management team, which we think we have at Charter Hall. To align with our investment partners in funds and partnerships, we use our balance sheet to co-invest. If you start with those first principles and you look at 70-odd% of our total equity under management is in the wholesale space, we think it's strategic to offer both our wholesale partners and our partners in the retail high net worth space, multiple investment opportunities. The world is more and more focusing on scale.
You only have to look at the merger activity in Australian superannuation going on at the moment, and increasingly our global and domestic clients will get bigger, and they'll want investment choice. For me, it's absolutely on strategy for us to have made the investment in the Paradice business. The majority of that capital is institutional. However, we believe that we can work with the Paradice team to grow its retail book as well. As I said before, we're quite proud of the history that we've offered all of the segments of equity that we have partnered with, unlisted wholesale, unlisted retail, and through our listed REITs, multiple opportunities. Those opportunities will, in our opinion, give our clients choice.
It'll give us multiple opportunities to, you know, present and open doors to some of our institutional clients to the Paradice business. Equally, there's a lot of clients they have that are not currently invested with Charter Hall. That's the strategy. You know, we're well aware that, you know, the market was a little surprised about us moving into a different asset class. From our perspective, you know, it's a funds management business. We're a funds management business, and we think it is on strategy. Time will tell whether, you know, our strategy, which I think for the last 17 years has proven to be pretty successful when you look at the TSR performance we've delivered for our shareholders versus the index.
I wouldn't say and I wouldn't characterize it as a dalliance or an opportunistic-led investment.
No, I definitely agree. Your track record is very, very good. The other thing I was wondering about is just the sort of how we think about capital from the balance sheet. I mean, you're paying out, as you called, AUD 200 million in distribution. You're generating AUD 500 million sort of cash. This half you've put about AUD 160 into the direct portfolio. So if you annualize that, you're basically putting most of the capital back into the direct portfolio, your funds. So I'm just wondering how do we think about that going forward? I mean, obviously you've got some growth initiatives thinking about as well. Can you just comment on that please?
I think it's a dangerous assumption just to double the investment we made in the direct portfolio. If you track the history of this business, there's been negligible amounts of balance sheet capital invested in our direct business. The way we're able to support those funds is to provide equity investments that get repaid to us as inflows come in, at the election of the direct board. We particularly like the high government weighting of the PFA fund and DOF. If you look at the slides, you can see they've both been strong performers versus their relevant benchmarks. We wouldn't see it as something that we're going to increase our exposure.
We have been conscious of the fact that the vast majority of our balance sheet has been co-invested in our listed REITs and our unlisted wholesale funds and partnerships. We see it as a bit of a rebalancing, but I certainly think it's a dangerous assumption to think it's gonna double again.
Yeah. What I'm sort of getting at is there any opportunity? I mean, you guys are spitting out a lot of cash. Have you guys considered anything about a capital return to shareholders if you do have excess funds, or would you rather save that for warehousing growth initiatives?
I'll give you the same view and the answer that, you know, we should be giving to all investors across our REITs on this whole subject of buybacks. You know, you need to. I've never seen a buyback actually deliver any long-term benefit to shareholders in my 35 years. For Charter Hall, that clearly is a growth company, we certainly don't need to be buying back our stock. We think we can deliver a very strong return on invested capital. I think we've just reported, you know, a 12-month trailing return on contributed equity of about 25%, which, you know, most ASX 100 company CEOs would be proud of. I don't think there's a shortage of investment opportunities for us. I certainly don't.
I think you're alluding to, you don't think we've got a lazy balance sheet. We'll continue to retain earnings. We think we can reinvest them at attractive returns for our shareholders, and that's what we'll continue to do.
All right. Thank you.
Our next question will come from Lou Pirenc with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. A few questions. I assume the upgrade does reflect the Paradice accretion that you talked about in December.
Russell?
Yeah. Yes, it does. The pickup of earnings in the h2 only.
Right. Given that this is a new asset class, can you just talk a bit more about the, you know, fundamentals of the Paradice business in terms of FUM growth in the last 12 months? And also, are you planning to co-invest in the Paradice funds like you do in your property funds?
Lou, you know, this is a six-month result. There was no earnings from Paradice in the six months. It's very early for us to be providing any great color, and I don't intend to in the future. You know, like our funds management business, you've got to walk a fine line between annoying your wholesale investors and giving color to the listed world. All I'd say is it's early days. When we get to the full year result, we'll obviously report FUM numbers. As I said earlier, it's a relatively small contribution to our overall earnings. All I would say is that, you know, the investment style of the PIM team, I think will prosper, as it has for 20 years.
We think they'll continue to deliver strong performance for their investors. I'm not gonna give you any more color.
Russell, you talked about the corporate overhead inflation in the second half. Is that a good base to use going forward, or do you expect more cost inflation going forward?
No, that's probably a fair representation for the full year. There's still some non-cash kind of employee costs that are probably more weighted to the H2 as we were not as mobile obviously or active as we would be in a more natural environment in the H1 . As far as further significant step-ups in like REM or associate costs, I think the H1 's a good representation.
Thank you.
Our next question will come from Stuart McLean with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning and thank you. Just one for me on the strategy Paradice side of things. David, you said just before it's a relatively small part of the P&L. You also said wholesale partners want scale. Is there a need to increase your equity exposure over time from AUD 18 billion and double that, triple that? If it's scale trying to juggle the it's small, but investors want scale comments.
Well, I think in the context of Australian equity listed equities managers, PIM does have scale. It's obviously got a 1/3 of its funds invested in global listed equities, which, you know, as we all know, is a very big universe. All their strategies are available on their website, so I don't intend to go through it here. You know, no, we don't see to Lou's previous question, we don't see the need for us to be co-investing in their funds and partnerships. They have delivered alignment over many years to their investors through, you know, promote structure. You know, as we articulated in December, you know, we see this as an attractive additional investment for the business. I do, I'm not gonna give any fund targets.
I learned from a competing CEO about eight years ago that came out with fund targets and never got there, not to give fund targets. You know, all I would say is I expect, you know, their business to, you know, grow, as I expect Charter Hall's property funds management business to grow. There's a lot of cultural alignment with, you know, effectively a privately owned business. You know, as I said earlier, I think, you know, we're going to, you know, extract value both ways going forward.
Thanks. We should expect for any growth in income on the equity side to be more organic as opposed to acquisition of additional platforms. Is that fair?
That's a very good summary.
Okay. Thank you. Second question is just around equity flows for the real estate business, just in the higher interest rate environment that we're currently in at the moment. Just wondering how conversations are flowing with potential capital partners going forward.
Over 35 years I've seen plenty of disconnected cycles between unlisted capital and listed, and this is another one. We have not seen any slowdown in demand for real estate. I'd point you to the Irongate transaction as another example, and obviously we closed in the H1 the ALE Property Group transaction. In addition to that, we're continuing to see good flows, AUD 700 million or AUD 800 million in CPOF in the H1 , and that equity raising is continuing. We will also launch another raising for CPIF in this half. As announced in the last couple of days, we did another transaction where we attracted capital at the same time as securing an investment in Brisbane with, you know, our long-term great partner, PSP from Canada.
You'll just see that, continuing. As you can also see in the equity flow numbers, you know, the direct business continues to accelerate at its inflows. You know, I think one thing that the listed market sort of often misses when we have these sort of stock market corrections is that the volatility sends a lot of capital, mom and dad investors, through to, you know, the top end of town, towards low vol, unlisted investments. I've seen it in plenty of cycles. I've got no expectation for any slowdown in our rate of equity flows, or in fact, inbound demand from existing and new partners who want to partner with us in real estate.
Okay. Thank you. Just a final question on developments. It's normally hovered around about AUD 1 billion of completion. With the growth in that pipeline now sitting at AUD 13 billion , is there a way that we should be thinking about AUD 2 billion of completions a year or AUD 3 billion of completions a year? Is there a ramp up there?
I think there's no doubt there's a ramp up. You know, if you look at the. I'll split it between logistics and office. If you look at logistics, you know, we've got a significant increase in both committed and uncommitted projects. As you all know, the length of time to complete a logistics project is roughly a 1/3 of the time it takes to complete one of these major office projects. As I've just alluded to, you know, we secured four or five large sites that will deliver bigger estates in logistics, prior to 31 December.
That appetite to keep replenishing new land is significant because the absorption we've experienced and the market has experienced in logistics, you know, has been the strongest in both my career and Sean's career and he likes to say that he's done a few more industrial preleases than me, and he probably has. It's a very strong market. On office, you know, we've got some fantastic projects underway with the Amazon and Aware Super pre-committed project at 555 Collins Street in Melbourne. We've talked about Chifley because it takes a bit more time for planning to be finally secured there. Then another three-year building program, you know, that will be a feature of our committed pipeline for a few years.
I think I won't give you a number, but you can certainly do the math on how completions are gonna ramp up. They're always a bit lumpy, so you know, in the next six months or nine months, we'll finish the federal police 30-year government preleased office project at 140 Lonsdale Street. That'll be a you know a lumpy completion, whether it fits into this six months or the next six months. You know, obviously you've got some major other projects like the AUD 500 million King William Street project, which we'll complete next year. You know, the Australia Post project I mentioned, 555 Collins Street and you know, several others that are pending.
Yeah, I think it's fair to assume you're gonna have a pretty big step up in annual completions. We don't intend to change that momentum. We've got one of the biggest development platforms in both office and logistics in this country. At AUD 13.5 billion, there's not too many with a bigger, you know, pipeline than that. We'll continue to do that in our funds and partnerships where develop to core is a key strategy within those funds. We, you know, I won't give you a specific number, but I don't think you're on the wrong track with the sort of numbers that you're talking about.
Great. Thank you, Tom.
No problem.
Our next question will come from Suraj Nebhani with Citigroup. Please go.
Oh, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions have been answered already. I just wanted to check on the fund management yield calculation that I believe has been shown for the first time on slide five, the 11.4% number. I was just wondering, you know, what that represents and, you know, the reason for doing that calculation now.
Yeah. Suraj, I don't know if we'll call this for the first time or not, but it's a measure we use when we're considering the return that's generated in our funds management business on the capital we employ. What is the yield from our effectively our funds management platform? The definition's in incredibly small font on the bottom of the page in footnote 6. We do allocate about half the debt cost to the earnings to try and get a yield. Because when we're looking at investing our own capital, we're looking at not just the return and the property investment that we undertake, but also what's the associated fee generation and profitability.
We use this kind of as a measure together when we're looking at our total economic return when we invest capital.
It has been in our results before, which we've called a PFM yield. It's effectively the PI yield is the actual distribution we get, like everyone else, on our invested capital in the funds and partnerships. Then the funds management yield is the total funds management profit as a yield on invested capital. If you add those together, you're getting a total annual, if you like, income yield. Both of them exclude any sort of NTA growth. Hopefully that explains it.
Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Maybe another one, if you can make some cross comments that's fine, too. I know performance fees have been a feature of the business over the last few years, a pretty strong feature. Looking forward, you know, if performance fees are strong, are you able to give us a sense of, you know, any sort of buckets of performance fees that may be coming through over the near term or, you know, how large they may be?
I'll give you two answers to that, and the last one, no, I won't give you any quantum forecast. The first one is, for years we have identified the dates of each fund and partnership that will generate or could generate a performance fee. It's 41, I think. You know, clearly we've made it you know, clear at both the full year and this announcement that we're expecting both CPIF and LWHP to generate a performance fee in FY 2022. CLP, which is another large logistics portfolio, is due to be tested in FY 2023. There's a number of other you know, funds and partnerships we've identified there, just in case someone picks it up.
Over time, you'll see additional partnerships come onto this list as we create partnerships or form a view that there's a potential for them to generate a performance fee down the track. You know, that's all I'll say in terms of giving you guidance as to when performance fees may be generating revenue over subsequent years. What I'd also say is a business like ours has both, you know, long-term co-mingled or pooled funds like CPIF, for example, where, you know, it's taken us 15 years to grow what's close to a, and growing towards a AUD 10 billion logistics portfolio with a 10-year WALE.
One of the highest quality portfolios in the country and, you know, that has a three-year rolling performance calculation, so it'll be tested this financial year and again in FY 2025. Then a number of the partnerships have ongoing performance fees on different periods of testing as outlined on that slide.
Thanks. Thanks for that.
No problem.
Our next question will come from Richard Jones with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Just on that comment, sorry, Dave, just the two main funds contributing, you've called out the Long WALE Hardware Partnership and CPIF. You're saying, I think Russell said that you've accrued part of the fee in the H1 and the full fee is in the H2 . Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, that's correct.
That's right. Okay. Just in terms of the development segment, it's generated obviously good profit in the H1 , just based on accounts, it looks like it's mainly from profit, not fees, so it's a balance sheet development. I know you did call out the AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million for the full year, so thanks for that. But just interested what the, I guess, outlook is for this segment earnings beyond 2022. I'm not asking for a dollar number, but just interested. If I look at the balance sheet, it looks like you've only got about AUD 90 million of segment assets in development. So what is the thinking around either restocking that or does this just become more of a development management segment moving forward?
No, Richard, I'll give you some color on how this is different to pure development management fees in which we're paid to do the development management for the funds and the partnerships, which is obviously in the PFM revenue line. This development investment earnings segment represents almost three buckets of balance sheet development. I use that word balance sheet very carefully because in many cases we have no balance sheet capital invested in it. The first bucket was what we inherited from the Folkestone business, which was, you know, a number of development inventory opportunities, you know, a big resi land subdivision in Gisborne and Melbourne that has been very successful and has, I guess, accelerated our expectations.
Another example, apart from what was the old Folkestone business is, there's been a number of opportunities in both logistics and office where Charter Hall Group was able to warehouse an opportunity, get the planning, get the pre-leasing, and then we have sold the project to our funds. 60 King William Street is an example of that, where prior to land settlement, we'd worked for a year and a half, optioned up the land, got a planning approval, got the pre-commitment from the government, and then on land settlement, the funds actually settle it. The dollars invested in something like that is zero, and the earnings come as we deliver the project and lease up, you know, if there's a residual.
In that case, it was originally 70% leased to the government, and then we got Telstra to do a lease for half the remaining space for 10 years. In all cases, virtually there is no risk because any rent guarantees we provide are less than the forecast profit. You'll see over time this being a regular contribution in terms of earnings. As you alluded to, it will have very little invested capital. Most of the invested capital that is, you're still seeing on the balance sheet is residual from the Folkestone business, but that tails off pretty quickly. There's always gonna be opportunities where we, you know, these opportunities are generated and then we can provide a de-risked opportunity to our core funds. I think it'll continue.
Do I think it's gonna absorb an increasing amount of our balance sheet capacity? I don't. As I said earlier, as that capital diminishes to zero, we might replenish a little bit of it, but I certainly wouldn't be thinking there's any more than what you're currently seeing on our balance sheet invested in that segment. You can do the math. It's providing us a very high return on invested capital.
Great, David. That's very helpful. Thanks.
Our next question will come from Grant McCasker with UBS. Please go ahead.
Just some very quick ones, one, David. Firstly, or more a question for Russell. Just can you remind us or outline the hedging levels 12 months and 24 months forward across the funds platform?
Oh, I'll get that for you. Across the funds platform, generally we're anywhere between 55%-65%, depending on the fund. I think at the half we were about 62% or 56% and 62% last year. That typically is up to about 24 months out on average to 30 months. At the headstock, we typically remain unhedged until 'cause we have a high degree of cash on hand.
Sure. Yep. Secondly, it's only a very small sliver, but listed equities are part of the property investment earnings and allocation. Just what exactly is that?
Well, that would relate to the property securities funds that are managed by Maxim. We characterize those in the property section.
Okay.
None of the Paradice funds are.
Was that a reclassification? 'Cause it wasn't there six months ago.
It was actually always in there, but it's just a. Sorry, Phil's trying to speak to me, but it's. What's the answer, Phil?
It was in the social infrastructure slash other.
It was in it, sorry. That's right. Sorry, Grant. It was in social infrastructure slash slash other because it was relatively minor. However, this year, this reporting period, obviously with the addition of the Paradice investment, listed equities had a significant amount, so we called it out separately within the property mix.
Great. Thanks.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question will come from Alex Prineas with Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Just in terms of... Sorry to ask about some sort of Paradice-related question again, but I was interested in Paradice having investment people offshore and investing offshore. Is that something that we might expect for the property side of the business in terms of having investment stuff offshore or property investments or property partnerships in offshore assets?
I think I've been pretty clear over many years, not on my watch.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Mr. Harrison for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you, everyone. In particular, thank you to, you know, the Charter Hall team. A lot of hard work and, I think, you know, the result speaks volumes of the commitment, you know, our people have made to driving returns for our investors. I'm sure we'll get an opportunity to speak further if you require a one-on-one. Thanks for your attention this morning.