I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Glenn Willis, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning and welcome to this results presentation, a presentation of the group's first half results for this financial year. Thank you for joining this call today. We do appreciate your interest in the group. With me on the call this morning, I have my colleagues, my management committee colleagues, and indeed my colleagues and I look forward to answering any questions you may have at the end of this presentation. Before the call today, we'll be referring to the half year results presentation pack that we released to the ASX this morning. I'd like to commence by saying that I'm pleased with the progress we made over the last half. It was a half where we achieved a great deal, a great deal despite yet again confronting challenging market conditions in some of our investment sectors.
The COVID-19 related border closures impacted, in particular, a number of our hotel and real estate funds, retail real estate funds, and thereby impacted the group's co-investment income from these funds over the period. I'll elaborate more on this impact later in the presentation. As I've said, notwithstanding these impacts, I'm pleased with what we achieved over the half. I feel that we made significant progress, indeed a lot of progress, on our mission to be a leading real estate funds management group. Our mission is to be a leading, if not the leading real estate funds management group. When I say leading, we mean leading in the sense of being known for delivering exceptional investment performance for our fund investors, but also for making impactful social and environmental contributions to the communities in which we operate and more broadly.
We aim to be number one in investment performance in our space. We aim to be a leader in community contribution. Page 14 of this results pack, we're pleased to provide an overview to some of our sustainability accomplishments we achieved over the half. While we have very significant short and medium-term growth objectives for both funds under management and security holder value, we firmly believe that we will achieve strong growth in security holder value by continuing to be acutely focused on delivering both exceptional investment returns to our fund investors, but also by continuing to make impactful sustainability contributions to our communities. These objectives, in our view, are mutually dependent. These objectives indeed have underpinned the culture of Elanor since inception and well before Elanor was listed in 2014. If I can now direct you to page five of the presentation.
Once again, I'm pleased with the progress we made over the last half. We achieved close to a 20% growth in funds under management over the half to AUD 2.44 billion at the end of the last calendar year. We achieved a 35% increase in funds management income to over AUD 20 million in the half. The more than doubling of our earnings and distribution, despite significant COVID-19 related impacts, was also very pleasing. If I can now direct you to page 6 of our presentation. While I'm pleased with the growth we achieved over the last half, I'm more than pleased with how the group is positioned to deliver further strong growth in security holder value.
As I said, we have significant short and medium-term growth objectives for both funds under management and security holder value. Critically, we are confident that we have the funds management platform to support these objectives. Our current funds management platform, in our view, supports annual growth of over AUD 1 billion in funds under management. As we achieved new funds under management of over AUD 600 million in calendar year 2021, a year with some challenges, we're confident that this AUD 1 billion per annum objective is readily achievable. We also have significant balance sheet capacity to facilitate our growth objectives. We assume an average 10% co-investment in our new funds. We believe we can grow our funds under management to over AUD 4 billion with our current capital base.
Again, we firmly believe that we're well-positioned for further strong growth, strong growth in both funds under management and security holder value. I'll now hand over to Paul Siviour, Elanor's Chief Operating Officer, to take you through our results in some more detail.
Thank you, Glenn. I'll refer those on the call to page seven of our presentation released to the ASX this morning. As we set out, there are three key drivers to core earnings results for Elanor Investors Group. They are our funds management EBITDA, our co-investment income received on the co-investments we hold in our managed funds, and transactional income. In respect of our funds management EBITDA for the period, we recorded a result of AUD 7.6 million, which when one adjusts the comparable prior half period for JobKeeper, is a 38% increase period-on-period. That was driven by a 35% increase in our funds management income to AUD 20.2 million for the half. The EBITDA margin for the period is at 38%.
We expect both growth in our funds management income moving forward and also growth in our funds management EBITDA, and I'll make some further comments on the income side of that. In respect of management fees, we see strong growth in management fees as a result of both the full year impact of more recently added management funds management initiatives, but also, and I'm now referring to elements of page eight of the presentation, also the impact in the second half of the financial year 2022, as a result of the abatement of various COVID restrictions that have adversely impacted our results for the half. In respect of management fee income, that relates particularly to the hotel management fees that we receive in respect of the management of the 14 luxury and regional hotels in our hotel accommodation fund.
We expect that the management fees generated in the second half will show a material increase in respect of the management fees generated in total for the first half of AUD 12.4 million. In relation to acquisition and transaction fees of AUD 5.6 million for the half, that was a strong result, reflecting the significant increase in our funds under management during the period of AUD 400 million on a gross basis. Indeed, for the calendar year to the thirty-first of December, the group added AUD 600 million of gross new fund. We see acquisition fees continuing to make a strong contribution to group results as a result of the strong pipeline we have for new funds management initiatives. Leasing and development fees of AUD 2.2 million were generated in the half.
These fees flow directly from the repositioning and development projects that we complete across our managed funds. They particularly relate in respect of the current pipeline of opportunities to repositioning projects within the retail shopping center assets within our managed funds. AUD 2.2 million for the half we see increasing as we continue to execute on those development and repositioning opportunities, and indeed add further development pipeline to the overall project flow. There were no performance fees for the half, and they will contribute as we move forward as liquidity opportunities are provided to the investors within our managed funds.
Corporate costs increased during the half as a result of an investment in both our investment and capital origination capacity, and also in respect of building out our hotel management platform, an important initiative over the last 12 months. We see our annualized funds management EBITDA of AUD 15.2 million, 7.6 annualized, growing in the second half, and that compares to an FY 2021 funds management EBITDA number of 10.7. That number is not included on page seven, but I make reference to it in the context of the annualized result for this half. Co-investment income of AUD 3 million for the half relates to the AUD 200 million that Elanor has co-invested in our managed funds.
Now this number is a number that is materially impacted by COVID, and I'll now refer to page 8 of the presentation. We see material upside in respect of our co-investment earnings for the second half of FY 2022. This relates to a number of funds, but most particularly the Elanor Hotel Accommodation Fund. This is a fund that during the period we established a AUD 346 million fund across 14 hotels focused on the luxury and regional accommodation space. During the half to December, we raised AUD 73 million as part of the establishment of that fund, and we released AUD 25 million of growth capital for Elanor. The fund is very well positioned for strong earnings moving forward in a post-COVID environment.
We would refer you to the information memorandum released for the fund in August of last year, where we anticipated a forecast distribution yield of approximately 8% in a post-COVID environment. That's a number that we continue to have confidence in, and in that regard, in a post-COVID environment, that will translate to co-investment income for a half of approximately AUD 3.2 million, or for a full year of AUD 6.4 million based on our current co-investment of AUD 80 million. In respect of the half to December, there were no distributions in respect of the Elanor Hotel Accommodation Fund. Turning finally to transactional income, and I've mentioned the establishment of the Elanor Hotel Accommodation Fund during the period.
That transaction resulted in one of our funds acquiring the assets or the portfolio of another fund. The Elanor Metro and Prime Regional Hotel Fund acquired the Elanor Luxury Hotel Fund. As a result of that transaction, the group enjoyed a AUD 10.5 million gain on sale of the portfolio of those assets. That gain has translated into an AUD 8 million core earnings contribution on the basis that the group has retained AUD 2.5 million of that gain for future capital as part of our capital light approach. Turning to page nine to frame for you the expectation we have of ongoing contribution of transactional income and potentially performance fees, timing of which is difficult to forecast.
Our view is that we will sell down over the period to the end of December 2022 our co-investment in the Elanor Hotel Accommodation Fund to approximately 15% from the current level of investment of 43.6%. This reflects the capital light approach to the group, where we release growth capital from the sell down of our co-investments, which in turn is then invested as co-investments in new managed fund initiatives. As a result of that expected sell down during the balance of calendar year 2022, we would expect an AUD 4 million gain on sale in respect to our co-investment. That number reflects the current hotel valuations held for the group, so therefore does not anticipate any further increases in the value of those hotels, which may well be possible, indeed probable.
Secondly, as part of other recycling of our balance sheet, we expect to generate gains of up to AUD 2 million from transactions that we are targeting to complete by the end of calendar year 2022. I'll now hand back to Glenn.
Thank you, Paul. If I can now refer you back to page 12 of the presentation as I'd like to briefly talk about our real estate funds management business model. Elanor Investors Group is a multi-sector real estate funds management business. We have clear differentiated competitive advantages in each of our sectors of focus: retail real estate, office real estate, healthcare real estate, and the hospitality, hotels, tourism and leisure sector. Our differentiated sector capabilities and our differentiated investment approach, what we call our risk-first investment approach, in our view, are critical to enabling us to continue delivering outsized investment returns to our fund investors. Furthermore, our multi-sector funds management platform provides diversified growth opportunities for the group. We have, in our view, a market-leading real estate funds management platform that positions us for growth.
Before we take questions, I'd like now to refer you to page 27 of the pack to provide a brief outlook for the group. In regards to our outlook for the group, I'd like to summarize why we believe we're well-positioned to grow security holder value. Firstly, we continue to have a quality pipeline of new investment opportunities. New opportunities to grow funds under management across all of our investment sectors. Clearly, our pipeline in some sectors is stronger than others, but we're pleased with the pipeline across our sectors. We have significant balance sheet capacity to facilitate our near-term growth objectives. As I mentioned, we can grow our funds under management to over AUD 4 billion with our current capital base. We also have a strong pipeline of development opportunities across our sectors and funds, providing further funds management growth and earnings potential.
We see, as Paul said, and we see our current investment earnings normalizing, so to speak, as COVID-related border closures end, being positive for short-term earnings growth. In addition to the above, in addition to our pipeline, our balance sheet capacity, our pipeline of development opportunities and current investment earnings prospects, we also have several strategic opportunities in progress, both new sector opportunities and strategic acquisition opportunities. To conclude, again, we believe we're well-positioned for further strong growth in both funds under management and growth in security holder value. At this juncture, we'd be pleased to take 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 the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Ed Day from MA Financial. Please go ahead.
Good morning, afternoon, Glenn and team. Just a couple from me quickly. You've called out an FUM growth target of AUD 1 billion per annum. Could you just give a bit of color? I think you gave a net AUD 370 million during the half, plus I assume you got the Pyrmont asset ironed out. Does the pipeline you've got under review at the moment get you to the AUD 1 billion for FY 2022?
Ed, look, I wanted to get pretty specific in terms of guidance here. As I said, calendar year 2020 or last calendar year, we established AUD 600 million of new funds in a year that had some challenges. We've had a satisfactory first half. We feel positive about our work in progress in the office sector, in the hotel sector, and the retail sector, particularly. Suffice to say, across those sectors and more broadly, we are confident of strong growth this year. Key point was that we have a platform well and truly able to deliver AUD 1 billion of new fund on an annual basis, and that's what we're striving for this year.
Thank you. Just on the hotel fund, couple of points. Could you just give some insight into whether you're seeing a recovery in the operating performance, firstly? Secondly, I think you called out in the corporate costs, part of the increase was to do with hotel management. Could you also just sort of connect the dots between the increased expense there and how that ties in with 1834?
We'll answer the latter part of that question first, and then Marianne will be pleased to give you some color on the hotel operations.
Yes, Ed, we have established a comprehensive and fully integrated funds management platform in-house. 1834 Hospitality is an investment we continue to hold, but that is not the manager of our hotels. In respect of the Elanor Hotel Accommodation Fund, we've now established the entire capability of sales and marketing, yield management, personnel, executives to lead each of the hotels to manage that in-house, and Marianne can comment more. That provides a really, a very strong ability and capability to manage and extract the value of the operating performance of the hotels, and I'm sure Marianne will make some further comments on that regard.
Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Ed. Look, we've been really very pleased and excited with strong rate growth and occupancy growth across the portfolio. We believe the hotels have performed very strongly this half. We've seen a lot of activity, certainly over the last couple of weeks and commenced late December, going into January. We're really positive about the pickup activity and continue to see short lead times. However, activity is picking up, and lead times are actually increasing, being pushed out. That activity is across all segments, leisure, corporate events and other segments such as sporting groups, so across the board. We're excited about the activity going forward.
Just to follow up, round that out to Ed. As Paul said, our internal operating model for our hotels business positions us better than we believe any other investor is positioned to be able to drive returns from our hotel investments. We're very excited about the performance of the hotels now that the domestic borders in particular opened up. We're also very excited about growing our portfolio of hotels given the internal capability that we have.
That's great. Thanks for the detail.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. I will pause momentarily for questions. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Willis for closing remarks.
I think there may be one or two other questions.
Apologies. Your next question comes from Aidan Bradley from Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. How are you? Just got in time. Can you provide any sort of guide on what the occupancy of the hotels was? If you don't wanna give the exact percentage number, maybe relative to what was in the IM expectations. You know, probably down on that, I would imagine, obviously. You know, just in terms of getting an idea of that for the half that's just gone and where you think it's gonna sit in the second half versus, you know, what was obviously published in the IM.
Yeah, I'll take a swing, and Marianne can add there. Without wanting to get too specific, Aidan, but
No, 100%. I understand, yeah.
Look, rate is very strong. We're very, very pleased about the rate across the portfolio, as it has been across, even in the more difficult times. We're particularly excited about rate. As Marianne said, we're, you know, quite frankly, we're excited about that, even over the last two weeks as pretty much all the domestic borders open, so for the Australian one will open shortly, we trust. Yeah, we're pleased about the growth in demand for occupancy. Marianne, did you want to add any further color to that point as well?
Yes. For the first half, there was obviously disruption across all markets, varied across the markets. Coming into the second half, rates and occupancy well ahead of expectations, in the original budget is what we're expecting to see, certainly since the beginning of this month, going forward, for the rest of the financial year.
What we'll say is, though, we forecast an average occupancy for our portfolio, Marianne, for the portfolio over the year of about mid-70%.
Mm-hmm.
About 75%. As a manager, we don't run our hotel businesses and hotel assets for 100% occupancy. That's significant folly in running for 100%. There's a whole marginal revenue, marginal cost dynamic we can go with. Suffice to say, to optimize profitability, it most always is not at 100%. Having said that, our mid-seventies occupancy targets in our IM, we believe that they're well and truly achievable for the half.
Can I just add to that, of course, the information memorandum which I just referenced in some of my remarks had a distribution yield of 8% in year one, and a 10% distribution yield in year two. They are levels of distribution and performance that we're comfortable with in a non-COVID impacted environment. The challenge for second half is how quickly do we recover fully to that non-COVID environment? As Marianne mentioned, perhaps the lingering elements are the short lead times that people would book at the moment as they gain more confidence in a more stable situation with respect to borders staying open and restrictions not being reintroduced.
If I give summary guidance at all, we are very positive about the recovery of our hotels over the half. We're positive indeed.
Great. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Willis for closing remarks.
Thank you. In closing, I'd like to add that we're more than mindful of the risks that prevail at this time regarding COVID. We expect that we'll be operating in a form of new normal, as it's called, going forward. Indeed, we're experiencing the new normal across most of our investment sectors. Inflation and interest rates seem likely to rise further, but in our view, probably not substantially. Any further interest rate rises, presuming that there are no major developments to economic growth in the short to medium term, and there are obviously some risks to global growth around us at present. Having said this, I want to reiterate that we firmly believe we're well-positioned to grow Elanor Funds Management business.
In doing so, we firmly believe we're well-positioned to not only grow shareholder value, but to also continue making impactful sustainability contributions to our broader communities. Thank you for joining us on the call today, and thank you for your interest in and support of Elanor Investors Group. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my team across the group and at our investments. As we say within our business, we are indeed only just getting started. Thank you to the broader team. Have a good day, and we very much look forward to providing further updates on the progress of the group in due course. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.