It's an interesting year, and a lot of our team have gained a lot of experience over the last five years. We've only trained about half of them, and so half of them are performing. I'll rephrase that: 70% are performing and about 30% are pretty average. This weekend we've got a, well, it's just a fact, but they are a great team of people, and they absolutely want it to work. Actually, today we've got a few. We've got Elena runs our global accounts. Olga runs the operation in Japan. I don't know where Minami is. She was going to be here. Steve runs the thing called the Wombat, which is an unbelievable data system that we had written or actually developed in Japan by the same guy that developed our first system way back 25 years ago, maybe 30, probably, Ryoma, and he was Japanese.
He lived in Australia for a while, and he worked for us for a long time. Then he went back to Japan, but we've opened in Japan. I think we've been there 30 years, and Ryoma worked on the data system, which makes a massive difference to Servcorp and gives us a competitive edge, and because he's Japanese and all the developers were Japanese, they called it Wombat. So I had a look at it and thought, "Well, shit, there's no way we're going to call this thing Wombat. And we'll change the name when we roll it out." Of course, it's still called Wombat, and well, I'll run through the slides in a sec.
This is a pretty comfortable position for Servcorp to be in, not because this is a profit, which is a byproduct of the burden, but because years ago we were the first company to run coworking. Period. We just were. And it was called Company Headquarters, and we were 30 years, I guess, ahead of the pack. And I used to stupidly tell the other operators, "I don't know why you don't have Company Headquarters." We used to call it Company Headquarters. "Why you don't have Company Headquarters?" And then along came WeWork and, of course, spent $3 million a day. And so the name changed from Company Headquarters. Networking meant computers came, so we had coworking before computers. And then we called it Virtual. And of course, it's now morphed into coworking. But Servcorp's website is about 20 years old.
Everybody says it's a little old hat, but it is probably a better funnel than anybody else's in the business. So the base that we've built is not just a flash in the pan. It's taken 40 years, and it's always increased. If anybody's ever really closely followed Servcorp, I don't think we've ever made less than, I'm guessing now, than AUD 30 million in free cash. We built it pretty well organically. We're still holding over AUD 120 million in cash now. We're producing free cash at the same run rate as the first half. We're building new centers. We've built a few in Japan. We're building them in the Middle East. There's not a boom that people seem to make out in coworking. There are a lot of people that are going into what they call hybrid space.
But when we developed the Servcorp product, it was to help small business be able to compete, and I say it almost at every one of these meetings. We run about 10 people per 100 offices and for a floor plate where it takes 100 offices, which is about 2,500 square meters, whereas the industry average is less than two. Regus is at one point seven, and they'll be proud when they get it back to one, and we stopped one the other day, and there was a little sign on the desk. We just came in to talk to them, and it said, "Sorry, understaffed," and that was the sign on the desk. And it happens all the time right here. This just happened to be in North Sydney, so Servcorp's now a mature business with a lot of clients that have been around for a lot of years.
And so that if you take our EPS, I reckon that it'll comfortably hit AUD 0.60 this year. I don't think it's ever been. No, no, it's never been there. I think the last when we all of a sudden, our share price years ago, probably about 10 years ago, hit about AUD 7.50 or something. And I think the EPS was about AUD 0.40, so we're about 50% ahead of that. But it isn't that we're 50% ahead of it that impresses me. It's that I think that it is sustainable. And I don't think we're going to go into a massive boom where people are going to be banging on our door. There's a lot of competition out there.
They are still doing it the same way where they want to rent the space, use the space, and then cap it up the way they normally cap up rentals in traditional space, and that doesn't work because they've got their churn rate, which in the industry is about 70% to compete with. They've got small spaces. They've got clients. They're used to having big clients like Servcorp that they can treat like shit. They've got little clients that actually demand service, and they're on short-term leases, so they can work, and so I looked at the numbers from 2021 to now, and our underlying cash produced is up 50%. Our profits up about 110%. Our earnings per share's up 100%. Our dividend over the period's gone up about 50%. Something's wrong with this. It's all too good.
There's a lot of competition, but there's not too much competent competition, and there's not too much in competition where they have actually put together the IT solutions that takes into consideration putting a client up, taking a client down, the churn, and allowing you to work on subscription income. I mean, coffee and tea alone, I won't tell you we charge less than most people, but at least we can track it, is about AUD 1 million a month. Forget anything else. But that's what we do in Servcorp. There'll be a lot of coffee shops like there. Now, a lot of our people make the right margin. A lot of people make half the amount they should. But anyway.
As inventors of coworking and the team that's been around for longer than any other international operator, in fact, we're the first guys to do a floor outside their home country. We opened Singapore nearly, well, I guess, 45 years ago. Let's have a look at the numbers. You guys have read the numbers. Forget the disclaimer. We don't need an excuse. Record underlying free cash. I'm tired of seeing the word record. I have a dozen cursors. Keep going. Anybody not read this? Everybody's read it. Well, go on. Fly through it then. Next. Statutory. Oh, look at our stat. Well, they're a bit overstated. Didn't we bring back AUD 12 million or something?
14.
14 million. Oh, well, every couple of years it counts. That was because we had to take a hit on our statutory profits last year because we closed Hong Kong. We couldn't do a deal on the rents. And Servcorp has built a little like a fort so that it was just a standalone operation. We tried to do a deal with the landlord. Finally, we exited with no real rise what it is. But under the accounting standards and rules, we had to take a AUD 14 million hit. We bought that AUD 14 million back, but it didn't affect the other results. All our results are pretty tricky. Keep going. Oh, what's that? Global expansion. We're going to afoot in Australia. Improve global footprint. Okay. Next one. Well, office capacity has never been much over 6,000. We're pretty well back up there, and we're continuing to go. Growth.
Financial results. Oh, I mean, where could you get a better graph than that? Well, you couldn't. It looks like I drew it. I probably did. It's better than going the other way. I'm glad we didn't start at the top and come on down. Underlying debt for interest and tax. Keep going. Underlying revenue continues to increase. It's pretty slow. It's lower than I'd like, but offices, we still continue to build them. Coworking clients, we still continue to grow that portfolio. Keep going. You've got to remember that we've got 55, pretty well 54,000 coworkers. So we're not like an IT operation that sometimes has 400 million to 2 billion. But if you've got 50,000 and they spend an extra AUD 10 a week with you, that's AUD 2 million a month. Keep going. Free cash. Don't want that. Large cash reserves. Segment overview.
There wasn't a mature floor operation that didn't improve. I think that our training's just getting a little better. Keep going, and then sustainable income. None of these. There isn't a one-off in where we're going right now. Outlook and dividend. So your dividend is an all-time record. I don't think there's any way that we won't pay a second-half AUD 0.14 dividend. We're producing enough cash to be really comfortable with the dividend and comfortable with our growth because we want to be able to grow it and control it rather than just growing it and then having to close some of it five years later. Anything else? Business outlook. I gave you all that. Next one. Guidance confirmed. Oh, finished. Anybody got any questions? How good's that? What happened to that lady that always sends a question in for me?
There's one question online, Mr. Moufarrige. From Shanghai. Asked if there's any chance the IPO will be back on track, and what was the reason for not going ahead?
Look at the results. They tell the story. The multiple that we were going to get. So look, I might say that it is often problematic having a founder as your major shareholder. It looked like a good idea at the time. We'd spent, and we've written off close to AUD 4 million of that in the IPO, but we have put our corporate headquarters for that area in Saudi, which is great for Servcorp because you get a hell of a lot of benefits from that. I have no intention to kickstart it again, although I have spoken to some of the senior bankers in Saudi, and they would be keen to see Servcorp listed on the stock exchange there, which would give a greater return to the Servcorp current investors in Australia. Sure. One lump sum, so you might get a 60- or 70-cent dividend.
I personally think we're better to continue to make money in the Middle East and to pay our dividends in Australia, and AUD 0.28 for where we've come from in the last two years is pretty good, and that's our 50th dividend. Are we at 50 yet? Pretty close. We're striving pretty close to 50 dividends in a row.
52.
So we've paid back 280% on the initial list price, and we're still paying a dividend. So anyway, I know one shareholder's pretty happy. In fact, when I think about it, the majority of the shareholders are happy.
Were you close to, I mean, you annualize the first half? Obvious question. Annualize the first half, you look well and truly to beat the full years. Things in the second half, which are sort of slowing down, or just you just want to keep up? You think things can change quickly?
I think it'll be pretty even because even an analyst can multiply the numbers.
So for you, Anthony, I'm keeping it pretty simple. Take first half, multiply by two, you've got it.
Well, that's about anyway.
Sorry?
That's about the guidance.
Not that much.
Yeah. But you got to learn about this later in the case.
I'm a simple guy. I'm just a little arrogant like you. As your grandfather, I pointed him out last time. He's still there.
He's my great-grandfather. He's your grandfather.
He's your great-grandfather. Oh, shit. There you go.
I mean, I'm.
The trouble is, if you haven't aged very well, it's a problem. Anyway, I'm old, and I'm still running okay. This is very exciting year for us because it's not that we're in a boom. It's that we've got a stable corporate entity with subscription cash flow that continues to underwrite our business. I think something could go wrong. There's no reason for me to upgrade and put my own team on a treadmill. That may be a little difficult. I want my team to be comfortable so that I can grow it this year, and we upgraded last year, but we've upgraded. We've doubled our profits in less than four years. I just think that we should just try and keep doing what we're doing and not put ourselves in a position where we've got to stretch.
We've got cash if any opportunities come up, and we've got cash if there is any sort of disaster out there. I don't know. I don't think it's going to be a disaster. I mean, I think that AI plays into Servcorp's hands, and we're spending a lot of time on development in that area. Look, people forget that we spend about AUD 600,000 a month, and we write it off on our IT teams that are scattered around the world. So we spend seven or eight million a year. And no one has got the number of coworkers that Servcorp has on a per-square-meter basis, which makes a big difference. And sometimes we've squandered that advantage, but I think we're on the right track now.
Do you see many opportunities to deploy the cash over the next six to 12 months?
Sorry?
Do you see many opportunities to deploy cash over the next six to 12 months?
Yeah. We're deploying the cash that we're making on an ongoing basis, and we're maintaining the cash balance that we've got. So it's being run a bit like a little private company where you try to grow organically, where our own banker, where our own insurance company, and that makes a difference to our margins because you don't have any more than 5% of your assets in any one location. In fact, it's less than that. It's about pretty close to 3 now. It's about 3%. So you're better to, if you're going to write off 3%. I mean, years ago when we looked at insurance and it was heading for AUD 250,000 a month, we're coming in, Minami. You can come in. You see this little rocket ship. She runs a few of the centers in Japan, and she's had a great year.
And even though she only looks 25, she's been in Servcorp for over 20 years. And she runs Ebisu. We may even be drinking Yebisu beer tonight. And Ebisu, I've told all my team a thousand times, is great because the things made, I don't know how much, a couple hundred thousand, pretty close last month. And the town was named after the beer. And so we have a place called Ebisu Garden Place, and the people in the brewery downstairs make a great beer. And it's paid for by Minami Center. And she's a senior manager. She also runs a thing called Tri-Seven, where we got a whole heap of lousy write-ups when WeWork came because Tri-Seven opened seven floors across. I went into their coffee room, had a cup of coffee, and thought, "That was pretty shit." So I had a beer. That was pretty shit too.
So I came out the other end, and I thought, "God, these guys are going to kill us." But man, we lost 13 billion. And so Minami runs some of those very difficult locations in Japan, remembering that in Tokyo we've got 1,500 competitors, and it's still profitable. We'll just build it as we see it. And I doubt whether there'll be any rapid increase in the dividend. It'll just be like where we're going now. We'll have a look at our cash at the end of the period, look at our plans for expansion, and decide what we think we should give back to the shareholders and what we should keep. But we are growing in a more, we're in an organized fashion now so that we get critical mass in an area. We don't touch a location unless we absolutely believe.
We don't go into a location where they say, "Oh, yeah, well, we're either going to open our own or there'll be a competition to you," or, "You've got to bid for the floor because there's Regus, there's WeWork, there's blah, blah, blah." We just can't bother with that. We've got enough critical mass, and we've got a good basic business, so we don't get too flustered.
Another question online, Mr. Moufarrige. From Stella Wang, the lady you referred to earlier.
Oh, I wonder where she was. Yes.
As you get closer to wanting to retire, if you ever will (not that we want you to), would you be more likely to reconsider a Middle East listing before that, or is it unlikely?
No.
There you go. Still. And also, are there any new?
What was I saying?
That's the question. Are there any new countries you wish to expand to?
The problem's not cash or the Servcorp system. The problem is training the general management because I seriously don't think that we've got a competitor yet in the marketplace that has the underlying IT systems. There isn't even one that has a global database, which we've got, so that we can actually communicate with our clients. So it comes back to management, and I think that Japan, Middle East, Europe, and America is getting there very slowly, I must say. We've got management that can handle it, and it's a matter of getting your own team to believe how different your product is. And often, they don't. It's a training problem. Once again, look, your return on your capital invested, if you have a look at your balance sheet, if you have a look at our balance sheet, 50% of our balance sheet's in cash.
We've got about, call it, AUD 100 million invested in the profit-earning entities. That's after you take all your write-offs, right? The net position. We're going to churn in, if you multiply by two, we'll churn in 80. It's okay. I don't see any reason to change dramatically what we're going to do. As for retirement, the only reason I didn't water ski yesterday, and I started water skiing, is the fucking boat ran out of petrol. Other than that, I'm still okay. I had to try and paddle it back with a ski. That was a workout in itself. Then I swam across the harbor. I said, "Hey, sharks. There are lots of bull sharks in Sydney Harbor." I said, "I won't hurt the sharks. It's okay." It's okay. Come on. What's your problem?
Hello. Mr. Moufarrige, from Stella. The budget and expansion of offices in H2 is very strong. Which regions are they planned for, and are there any green shoots in China yet, for example, and thank you for taking her question.
There are no green shoots in China. There's a little bit in the Middle East. We're looking at a few more. We're looking at Japan. We're not looking at Australia because we don't get a return on capital invested yet. In fact, I'm going to Osaka in the next 10 days. I'm going to London. We're also looking in London, but we haven't found anything we like yet. Have you got three minutes?
Final question, I think, from Ronnie.
Here's the final question.
You sort of answered already, but why would we retain AUD 130 million of cash and only pay 50% as the earnings and dividends? She sort of explained before.
Who was that?
Ronnie Chng.
If everybody keeps complaining about the amount of cash we're keeping, we will seriously put a big boat out there, but we're not going to pay a higher dividend in the foreseeable future. We will if our profits continue to increase, but we will never let our bank balance drop below AUD 120 million because when it hits AUD 120 million, I get nervous if it's dropping rather than if it's going up. Come on. How can you ask for a better, how can you ask for a better result than this? Somebody should just, why nobody's asked, "How do we do it?
You wouldn't tell anyone.
No, I won't. But that's okay. Can we stop now?
Yeah.
No questions from you guys. Going, going. Meeting closed.