Good morning, everyone. I'm Santiago Donato, Investor Relations Officer of IRSA, and I welcome you to the fiscal year 2023 results conference call. First of all, I would like to remind you that both audio and slideshow may be accessed through company's investor relations website at www.irsa.com.ar by clicking on the banner webcast link. The following presentation and the earnings release are also available for download on the company website. After management remarks, there will be a question and answer session for analysts and investors. If you want to make a question, please click the button labeled Raise Hand or use the chat. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded and that information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.
Please refer to the detailed note in the company's earnings release regarding forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Eduardo Elsztain, CEO, for his opening remarks.
Thank you very much, Santi. Welcome to our annual year 2023 results conference call. I am very glad to be closing another great year for IRSA, one of the historic one. The rental business had a great performance, mainly in shopping malls and the hotels. Both increased sales. In terms of assets, we sold office assets at very good prices in terms in pesos and in dollars. We made progress to launch our most ambitious project, Costa Urbana, which is a project that we have in the portfolio for more than two decades and a half. We achieved permits after long patience. We successfully concluded a debt refinancing process which positions us favorably for a new phase of growth in the coming years.
I would say that the level of reducing debt has been one of the most impressive in three years and a half that we are running the company. In terms of revenues, we increased revenues and occupancy in the three rental segments, in the malls, in the office, and in the hotels. We have been also very active in the real estate transactions. We acquire assets. We acquired a building in an auction in Paseo Colón property for $7.8 million at a price which is really liquidation price. We have been selling more than $161 million, including nine floors of the tower of the building we did in Catalinas.
After the fiscal year finished, we sold the first building we bought in IRSA, Suipacha building, to the Universidad del CEMA, and we sold 50% shares of Quality, which is owner of the warehouses in San Martín plot. As I mentioned before, we have been very active in the financial front as well. What we did is conclude all the refinancing debt process, including the exchange of the Series II Notes for $360 million, and reduce our net debt by 67% since 2020. Today, net debt is $247 million, and that will be explained in more detail by Mati later.
We also lowered our average financing cost of all the bonds, this has been incredible, you know, because not only reduce, but, you know, we also got an upgrade in the credit agents. The other thing is we could show a value to our shareholders, distributing dividends twice this fiscal year for a total amount of $124 million. We repurchased our own shares and approximately we bought 1.7 of the capital stock in the buyback programs. In the last meeting, in the last board meeting, we called for a shareholder meeting in order to distribute a new dividend for the sum of up to ARS 65 thousand million, and distribute the treasury shares that we bought back in the program.
I would say after mentioning all the main highlights that I want to emphasize that IRSA has a team of management which has been long-term in an environment of inflationary and a printing money economy. I repeat always what I say, real estate, farms is the best way to defend when you have the economy printing and printing and printing. We have shown the real value of the assets in a period like this, where we could do the both things, growing operational, growing in sales, keeping value, and leverage the company as we never did before. I hope you keep supporting the company in the future as you did until today. I want you to now continue with the team, the rest of the team, which is Mati, Santi, and Jorge, to see the details of all the annual results.
Thank you, Eduardo. Moving to the rental segment and our operations. We can see here the evolution of tenant sales in real terms for shopping centers, our main line of business. That represents approximately 70% of our EBITDA. This grew 16% in the year in real terms, so it's a great performance, explained by more visitors, higher apparel inflation. Apparel represents like 50% of our tenant mix. The strong recovery also of entertainment and food court sales. When we compare to the pre-pandemic levels, we are above 27% in real terms. Our business is very, very healthy, and we hope we can keep these levels of sales, visitors, and occupancy as well in our shopping malls portfolio. Here we can see the evolution of occupancy.
Remember that, well, with all the pandemic and the exit of Walmart first and then Falabella from Argentina, our minimum occupancy in those times were approximately 89%. We have recovered a lot. During the last year particularly, we grew like four points occupancy in our malls. We have almost all the portfolio full. We expect to keep growing in the future. This is a very, very good level of occupancy, similar to the ones pre-pandemic and historical levels of IRSA. On the office market, as Eduardo mentioned, we have been selling more during the year. We sold eight floors of the 200 Della Paolera building, our latest development here in Buenos Aires. After the end of the quarter, we sod hi Cpata and 1 additional floor of the 200 Della Paolera.
Today we have a total stock of around 72,000 sq m post those sales. Consolidating a premium portfolio after the sale of Chpata, that was a B class category. Now we have only one B class building, the Philips Building. In the picture there of occupancy and rents, we have just the A class and A buildings that represents 90% or 95% of our total portfolio. It's showing good levels of occupancy even above than the market in Buenos Aires. We are 87 with a vacancy of 17 points. We have just 13. We have also good levels of rent, stable compared to last year in levels of $26 per square meter per month. Hotels was record during this year.
A new good year for hotels after many years of operations closed the whole 2020 and big part, and the recovery was very gradual and in this segment was very affected during the pandemic. Now we are in very good levels of occupancy, 60 almost 5% average the three hotels. Remember that we own 50% of Llao Llao in the city of Bariloche, one of the most exclusive resorts in the region, in LATAM. We also own two hotels, Libertador and InterContinental in Buenos Aires. Both of them recovered strongly during this year, and are showing very good figures in terms of rates per room and occupancy. Regarding ESG progress, we have been making a lot of progress in our commitments assumes in the three fronts: environmental, social, and governance.
Our recent news is that we certified LEED 200 Della Paolera building. Now, 200 Della Paolera and uncertain , the two most modern and latest developments of in offices, in premium offices of the company are certified LEED. This is 74% of our portfolio of premium offices in Buenos Aires, it's great news. Also we were very active on the social part directly and through Fundación IRSA. We have made more than 200 social actions, benefiting more than 100,000 people and investing even much more than last year, 21% above in real terms for our social investment. On the government front, I could say that we celebrate the 75th anniversary of BYMA.
IRSA one of was one of the first companies and of course in the real estate segment, listed on the local stock exchange. And we have a long-term relationship with BYMA, and we hope we can keep with very good relationship with them. We integrated its sustainability index as well. This is great for IRSA. We are one of the 20 companies with the best performance on ESG, together with other 20 in the country. On the digitalization front, well, regarding this is our investment in APA. APA is our loyalty app that enhances the shopping experience of our visitors, offering benefits and discounts linked to their preferences, events, actions. It's keeps growing. It's doing well. It's growing in terms of users, of accumulated transactions. They surpassed 3.5 million accumulated transactions.
Users are 1.8 million in the last month. This is 39% growth year-over-year. We are happy with this. We think that these kinds of technology and digitalization, we need to keep complementing physical retail with digitalization in order to offer all the solutions to our visitors in the mall through this app. That is the app for the retail and for the malls in Argentina. I will now give the word to Jorge Cruces for the real estate transactions and the business of sales and development.
Thank you, Santiago. Good morning, everybody. Well, regarding real estate acquisitions, we bought a building in an auction. It's a block and a half away from Casa Rosada, the national government headquarters. We bought it at a great price, less than $600 for each sq m. It has a beautiful view to the park and to Puerto Madero. Actually, it's walking distance to Puerto Madero. This part of the city is changing. It's changing fast because there's a highway nearby, and now that highway is an underground highway. There's even a construction, two constructions actually, of two premium residential developments nowadays in the area. If we review the investment in 200 Della Paolera, we have continued to sell 200 Della Paolera. We invested a total amount of $112 million.
Our revenue from sales has been $259 million. A valuation of remaining stock of $88 million. That's $235 million of profit. 210%. Of course, we're really proud of this investment. Regarding sales, we have sold the Maple Building. The Maple Building was vacant, and that was an opportunity for us to sell it in block. It wouldn't be easy to sell it one floor at a time. It's a beautiful building, but in a downtown location that hasn't recovered after COVID, and may not recover for some time. Our first office building acquisition, you get a kind of emotional about it, but business is business, and it's going to turn out being the main building of one of the most important universities in Argentina.
We're happy for all of us. We also sold our stake in Quality. It's, as Eduardo said, it's a big plot of land with warehouses. We're gonna focus in developing and other kind of developments. Marketing, positioning, project funding, mainly better gain margins like Costa Urbana, we're gonna talk later, made us decide selling Quality. We sold it at $20.9 million and with a $21.5 million up front. These are hard dollars. Regarding Costa Urbana, on March, the cadastral authorities filed the approval of the cadastral survey plan. Also in March, the court issued the ruling out of the collective legal action.
On April, the first drafts of the notarial deeds for transferring ownership to the city of the plot of land for the 37.9h of public park and the 3 lots were handed to the government's clerk's office. This is the second step in the process of creating the land registrations in the cadastral database of the city for issuing the titles of ownership and enable the user to sell and transfer the plots. We are working on the Environmental Impact Assessment that has been submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, and we will be holding a public hearing for its approval by the beginning of December. We are finishing the architectural and engineering documents of the infrastructure and public space project to be submitted to the city authorities by the beginning of October.
We continue with the residential swaps this fiscal year, close to 3,900 sq m. Today's total amount of square meters to be received is close to 8,900 sq m. Mati, our CFO, is gonna continue with our financial results.
Thank you, Jorge. Good morning, everybody. If we jump to page 16, first, I would like to mention what happened with the macro economy in Argentina in order to understand our figures. You can see in the center of the graph that the inflation accelerated from the previous year to reaching levels of 116% compared with 64%. On the FX side, on the official exchange rate, we have a devaluation of 100%. That means that in real terms, we have an appreciation of the pesos of 5% compared with 20% of the last year. That is important to understand what happened with prices of our investment properties when we value the investment properties in our books, and also to restate our dollar-denominated debt in pesos.
On the blue chip swap side, on the MEP effects evolution, there was a devaluation of 93%. That means that 10% in real terms of, compared with 8% in the previous year. We're gonna see later some effects related to that. About our adjusted EBITDA, we can see a decline of 40% from the previous year, from ARS 59 billion to ARS 36 billion. This is related to three different things. The first one is the sales and development segment that another segment that this year decreased from ARS 25.1 billion to a loss of ARS 6.5 billion. The last year we sold more than this year, the last year was an extraordinary year in terms of sales.
Remember that we sold the entire Edificio Repulica and we posted an important gain related to that. During this year, we have two one-shot effects. One is related to salaries and board member fees, and the other is related to a claim that we received from our investment in Israel that we discussed it in December. We decided to make a provision of around $20 million. We increased in this quarter to $23 million. That is posted in the other segment. If we leave aside those effects, the more recurrent part, that is our rental EBITDA increased by 25%, reaching ARS 42.5 billion in this fiscal year. Margins are increasing. The shopping malls increased from 70%, almost 71% to 74.5%.
In the office segment, here we have the impact of all the disposals. The fixed part now is a little higher than before in terms of margins. The offices went to 75% compared with 80 last year, and hotels remain stable at 25%. Related to those effects, we can see that operating income, leaving aside the effect of the fair value of investment properties effect, is a reduction of 15% from ARS 26.9 billion to ARS 23 billion. If we analyze the fair value of our investment properties here, we have a major effect with a loss of ARS 49 billion compared with, again, last year of ARS 29 billion. To understand here what happened, we have to see the evolution of the macro economy of Argentina.
Here we are recognizing results in pesos terms, in real pesos. If we analyze what happened with the valuation of our investment properties in dollar terms is stable in the three segments. In malls, in offices, and land bank, we have probably almost the same numbers in dollar terms. When we translate those dollars into pesos, and because that the valuation was lower than the inflation, and here we are adjusting pesos by inflation, that is the main reason or the only reason why we are recognizing this kind of loss during the year. We have two other significant effects on the before the net income. One is related to the net financial results. We can see a decline. Both are gains, both are gains. The previous year was ARS 25.5 billion.
This year is ARS 15.5 billion. The main difference is related to the table below the graph. The first line, the net effects results that during the last year since the appreciation of the peso was much higher than this year. Last year we posted a gain of ARS 31 billion compared with ARS 6.7 billion this year. We also reduced significantly our debt. The combination of the major appreciation plus a decline of the debt explains that difference. Related to the net interest, we are reducing our interest payments. We can see there was a reduction from ARS 16.6 billion to ARS 11 billion. Finally, the last line, that is the fair value of financial assets. This is related to the evolution of different securities that we have to manage our liquidity.
That generated an important gain this year of ARS 7.4 billion. The final effect is related to the income tax. We discussed that in the previous quarter or two quarters ago. That was a positive effect that was generated related to some decision of the Supreme Court related to other company that allow the companies to adjust by inflation the tax grade and also recognize a positive results on the adjustment of the tax balance sheet with inflation. That generated an important gain for us of ARS 66 billion. We decided to recognize the gain after we receive or we saw the rule of the Supreme Court allowing the companies to do what we have been doing on the tax basis, but not on the accounting basis. Now we recognize it, that gain.
Finally, with the net result, we posted a net result of ARS 58 billion during this fiscal year. Analyzing what happened with our rental EBITDA, we are very happy with this evolution. We now have a last twelve months EBITDA that is $167 million compared with $131 million of pre-pandemic in 2019. About our debt. Today we have our debt that is distributed in the coming years. It's not concentrated anymore in a single year. This is much more tied to our own cash generation. The net debt went to levels of $247 million. We can see here the evolution.
It was a significant reduction from $755 million in the middle of the pandemic, with all our malls closed, to levels of $248 million currently. This is an LTV of 10% and net debt to EBITDA of 1.5x with a coverage ratio that is very, very high. We feel that this capital structure is very conservative and will allow us to keep growing. Remember that this is as of June 30, after this we sold Quality and we sold Maple, the liquidity is still improving and our net debt will go down only with these two effects. As Eduardo mentioned, there is the call for our shareholders meeting to approve a new dividend.
Related to that, we have the liquidity to pay the dividends of this in terms of net debt will increase a little because of that, because of the dividend, but it's still very, very conservative. As I just mentioned, the evolution of the dividend payments, we can see on the graph that we decided during the pandemic and during the tough years to reduce our dividend to almost zero. Last year after refinancing all our debt and canceling most part of our debt, we decided to be more aggressive on the dividend. We paid an important dividend of $124 million during the fiscal year. For the new fiscal year, that is 2024, we just called the shareholders meeting to approve a dividend that will be important.
Again, is in terms of dividend yield, is around 15% dividend yield, so this is an extraordinary and a very significant dividend again. Also, we were very active on buying back shares. We did one program that we finished during the fiscal year. That was the first program of ARS 1,001 billion. We approve a new program of ARS 5 billion. From that program, we already invested almost ARS 2 billion, and we just announced that we increased the maximum price that we can pay for our shares to levels of ARS 720 per share or $9 per ADR. We will continue to acquire shares as part of this program.
Also, one of the points in the agenda of the next shareholders meeting is the approval of distributing our own shares to our shareholders. We will distribute all the shares that are on treasury. That is around 1.7% of our stock. With this, we finish the formal presentation. Now we open the line to receive your questions. Thank you. Okay, we start with the Q&A session. If you have a question, please click the bottom label, Raise Hands or use the chat. A reminder that questions will be taken in the order we receive them, as we always do. Okay. First question here comes from Mauro De Jesus.
We ask you for in the case the country goes through a dollarization of the currency, if you think that is likely to occur and how that would work in the country? I would prefer to answer the question. On the business side, I don't know if that will work for the country or not. I leave that for the politicians. For the company, we will have to adjust the agreements. At the end of the day, real estate in Argentina, we're always quote in dollars. People think in dollars, the transactions are in dollars, and prices were always fixed in dollar terms. I don't see that as a major change. In terms of our revenues, both offices and hotels are agreements that are in dollars.
At the end of the day, they pay at the official exchange rate, so if are in dollars, we will receive the dollars. Related to our main cash generation, that is most our agreements are in ARS today, tied to inflation. It's a combination between a fixed amount and a percentage of tenant sales. If there is a change in the currency, I assume that inflation probably won't be a major issue anymore. Our agreements should increase in terms of the tenant sales that will increase by the evolution of the economy. We don't anticipate a major disruption if we have a change in the regime, in the monetary regime. It's not clear yet what could happen and when could happen that so, it's not a major concern for us today.
Next question. Can you give a little bit more color on the extraordinary compensation for the board, this fiscal year?
Yes. This is a one-shot effect that is not related with just this fiscal year. This was a three years cycle where the company were very active in many transactions. We sold more than $500 million of assets. We simplified our corporate structure with the merge of IRSA and IRSA Propiedades Comerciales, generating a huge synergy in terms of costs, payments, taxes, everything. There was also an extraordinary work related to the renegotiation and refinancing of our debt. We canceled debt, generating a lot of value and at the same time selling assets that help us to add a lot of value on those transactions.
There was a extraordinary work in our own capital structure, acquiring shares and paying dividends for more than $150 million. There was a cycle of three years. The increase in fees are related to that cycle. It's one shot effect related to that.
Here there is a question related to the rationale of, well, the split. It is not on split of shares and when that is expected to take place.
Well, the split is more a technical issue. I would say that will take place in the coming days. We are waiting for the approval of the CNV, a final approval that probably will happen in the next days. At the end of the day, this won't have any impact for our shareholders. Will be a change in the way that our shares trade, but won't have an impact on the, on the, an economy impact. We did this in order to be ready or to pay more dividends. That was an smart way to have a technical issue that we have on our own, on the dividend distribution and because of that, we are changing that way that our shares trade. Won't have any impact for our shareholders.
Here there is a question I think you answered part fairly on the financing of the proposed on the funding of the proposed dividend. Just want to understand the pro forma figures in terms of leverage after the dividend.
Well, if we go just directly, the dividend will be ARS 64 million. It's not clear yet if we're gonna pay in only one installment or in different installments. We will decide that between now or our shareholders' meeting will decide that in the next month. If we consider that the ARS 64 million in real dollars, around $85 million, we have disposals after the fiscal year for $24 million-$25 million. That means that we still have to use other sources for $60 million. The company today has more liquidity than that. We can use our own cash to pay the dividend, or we can use another sources, but we are defining that since now until the shareholders meeting.
What is your current assessment of NAV per share per GDS?
Well, this figure we show it always expressed at the official efforts. You're gonna see it in our presentations. As of fiscal year 2023, this is $2.1 billion. This is around $25-$26 per GDS. This is all at official, so you have the problem here with the gaps and the dollars. It's a figure just to have in an idea or in mind. I think the rest of the questions were answered in some way. If you have any additional questions, we get some minutes for additional questions.
The Argentine macro situation and looking forward to next year in 2024, how it will impact the business.
It's a little uncertain what could happen in Argentina next year. You know, we have elections in the coming month. It seems that we will have a change in the regime. What we are happy is to see the discussions behind the candidates and it seems that Argentina should enter in a new trend and a more normal situation, where we have a lot of imbalances that should be corrected. We see probably a first trend to accommodate all the relative prices that could impact on the economy. Probably we will see a slowdown on the economy at the beginning, because there are many, many things that should be corrected that will have an impact in consumption in some way. We are analyzing that.
The rest, I believe that the company is very well prepared in terms of our current capital structure to face all the changes that could happen in the economy. We don't know today what will be the currency. We don't know what will be the proposals. I think having the company with the lowest level of leverage ever, I would say, is a good way to face what could happen in the future. Also the company is very well prepared for future expansion. We haven't launched projects, big projects in the last years, we working more in our capital structure, but the company is ready to grow. We have plenty of projects to launch, we hope to see a normal economy.
If we have a normal economy, the cost of capital for the companies will be lower, and we can speed up the process of new development.
Some additional questions regarding the dividend level, if this is recurring or there is an element on the tax decision from the Supreme Court that is boosting this dividend level. Is the tax gain a one-off?
Well, Alvaro is. I won't say that this kind of dividend is recurrent. No. I'll say that if we analyze the history of IRSA Propiedades Comerciales, IRSA, every time that we can pay dividends, we pay. We don't want to say or to fix the dividend to a policy because of the volatility of Argentina. This year when we analyze the next year CapEx plus the current debt, plus the current levels of liquidity, we feel comfortable to maximize the dividend to our shareholders. In the future is the decision will be taken analyzing all those drivers. Related to the tax decision, it's not related to the Supreme Court, nothing. We have the results, we can pay. It's not related to that. No.
Another one from Alvaro from BTG. Why are you distributing repurchased shares and not canceling them?
Well, this is something Alvaro, I don't think that this is technical. No. At the end of the day, the consequences of the two is the same. We can cancel or we can distribute. At the end of the day, it's the same. I think we used to distribute all what we acquire. It's something that we did in the past and we are repeating, but it's not, I think it's more like something that we have been doing than something that one alternative is better than the other. We, we prefer to leave it to this.
The last one regarding the net debt after the disposals and the dividends, which level it will be or the target related to the leverage of the company?
I would say that the current level of debt is lower than the optimal point. As I said, we have to pay a dividend that is around $85 million. We sold properties after the end of the quarter for around $25 million. Let's say that from the number that you are seeing there, we will increase debt for around $60 million. That is without counting the cash generation. All the rest of the cash generation that today we are generating around $10 million per month. With this, I think we cover all the questions. We conclude the Q&A session and the presentation.
We thank you very much for participating, and I will turn back now to Matias for his closing remarks. Thank you, Santi. Thank you, everybody, for your participation and your support. We are very happy with all the performance in the last years. We believe that. We are very happy with the tremendous execution and everything that we did in terms of real estate on the financial side and on the operational side. We hope to see a normal economy going forward and see your side growing again in new projects. Thank you very much, and have a good day. Bye.