Good morning, everybody. We finished our third quarter of 2023. We are very happy with the results. We can see a strong financial and operational performance. We saw during the quarter an increase in the occupancy of our shopping centers and also a tenant sales improvement. Our office portfolio, the premium part of the office portfolio, has 100% occupancy. We reached 100% in the Della Paolera building during the quarter. Also, our hotels has a strong EBITDA now and a higher occupancy than the previous quarters. During the quarter, we saw also disposals of our building in 200 Della Paolera. We sold seven floors at very good prices.
During the quarter, we reevaluated the remaining surface in this building because the prices that we have been selling were higher than the book value on the last quarter. During the quarter, there was an important event regarding our leverage. We finished the process of the deleverage and the cancellation of all the remaining debt on the previous bonds that we have been dealing with the Central Bank regulation. We canceled the two bonds, and we issue a new bond, two new bonds to obtain the proceeds to cancel. We are happy with that. At the end of last week, we paid a dividend that was approved by our shareholders meeting in April. There was an important dividend and a dividend yield of 13% at the moment that we approved the dividend. We will go through the presentation. Now, I introduce Santiago Donato, our IRO, to continue the presentation.
Thank you, Matías. Well, here in this page, we can see the same shopping sales in real terms. We keep growing in the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, above almost 10% above the same quarter of fiscal year 2022. When we compare to the pre-pandemic levels to the third quarter of 2019, we are up 33%. It's this shows really good performance of our tenant sales in malls and in our revenues as well, and is explained by more visitors in the malls, the higher apparel inflation, and the strong recovery of entertainment and food courts in our malls. Here we can see the recovery of occupancy in our malls portfolio.
Remember that during the pandemic and before the pandemic, Walmart left Argentina. We had a vacant, a big, a vacant area in Dot Baires Shopping, and our occupancy went down from 99% to levels of 94%. It came the pandemic, where we went to a minimum, a historical minimum of 89%, mainly due to the exit of Falabella, the Chilean retailer that left three of our malls. They left Argentina. Now in the last eight quarters, we are increasing, occupying this vacant space from big surfaces. We are very happy with the performance of the last quarter that we increased occupancy like three points, and we reached almost 97%. That is historical average occupancy.
Moving to the office segment, here we can see after the sales of buildings and floors made in the last year, including 7 floors that we sold of the 200 Della Paolera, during the last quarter. We currently manage 74,000 square meters of GLA in our office portfolio, mostly premium, A+ and A Category. We can see that occupancy in these premium buildings increased to levels of 87% as of March 2023. While B category is suffering a little bit more, we have just two buildings there. We have one that is completely empty, that is Suipacha, still in the same situation, and Philips that has 60% vacancy.
Our target, that is the premium target that accounts for 85% of our revenues and our square meters, are 87%, a little bit above the occupancy of the sector in Buenos Aires of the industry. The average rents of the portfolio increased slightly to levels of 25%. $25 per, sorry, per square meter per month. Hotels operating figures, we can see here a great evolution of our portfolio, reaching 68.6% occupancy at an average rate per room of $231. We can see a very good recovery and strong recovery in Buenos Aires hotels that recover occupancy to levels of 63% and also increasing rates. This is mainly due to the increase of tourism and the recovery of corporate and corporate events in Buenos Aires.
The South Shore that we have seen very good performance in the last quarter, still growing, still fully booked. It's reached 83% occupancy in March, as of March, with rates growing as well in levels of $413 per room. We are very happy with the rental performance of our portfolio, reaching very, very good levels of EBITDA. I will turn now to Jorge Cruces , our Chief Investment Officer, for the real estate part.
Thanks, Santiago. Good morning. We are glad to announce that we acquired an office building through an auction from the city of Buenos Aires. That was in last December. This office building is in downtown, just a couple of meters away from La Casa Rosada, the national government headquarters. We paid $7.9 million. It comes out to be less than $600 per square meter. It has 13 office floors, 13,700 square meters, and it's mixed use. For now, it's office building. It's used by the city. It's gonna be used for the next 18 months, we should be signing the deed in the next month or so, in the next 45 days. Apart from acquiring the building, we bought 12 parking spaces from the building beside it.
The building that we bought has 18 parking spaces. We needed more parking spaces, and we bought another 12 parking spaces in the building beside it. During the quarter, we sold 7 floors of our building, 200 Della Paolera. It was a very important for an important amount of $81.2 million. This is $9,700 for each square meter. By this selling these meters we came out to be, we sold 76% of the building. We have in stock remaining 8,500 square meters, and these square meters are the top floors of the building. The fair value or the price of these floors are no less than $10,000 for each square meter.
Regarding our stock value, it should be at least $86 million. This comes out to be, I mean, our investment has been $112 million. That includes the land, $25 million, the construction, $87 million. As we gain already $134 million plus $86 million in stock, this comes out to be that we've had an investment profit of almost 100%. We're very proud of this investment. Now, Matías Gaivironsky is gonna continue. Thank you.
Thank you, Jorge. Going to the financial results. First of all, to understand how to read our financial statements, it's important to mention that we have two factors that really impact our numbers. There is inflation and devaluation. Basically, we have to value every quarter our investment properties at fair value, the volatility of the effects on inflation has a direct impact in our books. I separate always the operational performance that is very clear, than the other two factors that are the fair value of the investment properties and the financial part, the financial interest that has the impact of the inflation and the effects volatility. If you see in page 10, this is what happened during the nine-month period of inflation and devaluation.
On the top left, you have the official FX evolution that was a devaluation of 67%. On the right part, you have the evolution of the Dólar MEP, the blue chip swap, that has a devaluation of 59%. In the center, you have the inflation that was 74%. In real terms, there was an appreciation of the pesos of 4% against an appreciation last year of 17%. This has a direct impact in our, when we have to value our dollar-denominated debt in pesos that has a positive result because of this appreciation. In the bottom right, you have the real appreciation of the Dólar MEP.
That was 8% during this 9-month period, against 17% last year, that this has a direct impact when we value the offices and the land bank that we are using the blue chip swap and not the official FX. Going to the easiest part, page 11, this is the evolution of our EBITDA. We can see the adjusted EBITDA growing 20%. In malls, 41.8%. Offices decreasing 17.6%. Hotels increasing by 110%. The sales and development that during this quarter we sold, during this 9-month period, we sold a little less than the previous year. Altogether, the rental EBITDA grew by 38.7% in real terms. That is impressive, and we are very happy with that.
On the right part, we can see the evolution of the margins. Not only we are increasing in revenues, now has probably the results on all what we worked during the pandemic, that we're reducing a lot the cost of the company, and now we can see much better margins. Shopping malls increasing by 600 basis points. The office is 12%, 12.4 basis points. Hotels increasing from 27.6% to 34.6%, showing the improvement in all the business lines. When we go to page 12, so the operating income, including the fair value of the investment properties, increased by 33%. The investment properties, we are posting an important loss, ARS 34 billion or almost ARS 35 billion during the 9-month period.
This, when we analyze the numbers in dollar terms, are basically the same numbers, no appreciation, no devaluation, no impairment. Only we have an appreciation regarding the Della Paolera building that we changed the valuation and improving because of the disposals that we did. The rest remain stable. This is only the effect of converting the dollars into pesos and compare with inflation that has a negative result. In page 13, we can see the evolution of the net financial results that has again last year higher than this year. This is basically the result of the...
In the You have the table below the graph that in the first line, you have the net by FX results that last year we saw a gain of ARS 22 billion against a gain this year of ARS 5 billion. Is related to the appreciation of the official FX and the impact on our dollar-denominated debt. Also important to mention that the line of net interests are decreasing significantly because of the deleverage of the company. Also, it's important to mention during the nine-month period, a positive effect on the income tax. Remember that during December, we decided to recognize again that we have been marking as a loss. We reversed that loss into a positive result.
Also, as we mentioned last quarter, we also include a provision on our books regarding a potential liability in Israel of $20 million. With that, we finish this nine-month period with a gain of ARS 31.7 billion against a gain last year of ARS 23.5 billion. If we see the evolution of our rental EBITDA, this is without the disposals, we can see a positive trend. Now, we reach $162 million in the last 12 months, and this is much better than the pre-pandemic levels that in 2019 was $131 million. Regarding our refinancing process, we have been talking about this for a while. Fortunately, we finished all the process in March or in February this year.
We canceled all the remaining bonds, with some conditions with the Central Bank. We obtained approvals from the Central Bank, and we were able to cancel all the debt. During February, we canceled around $200 million of outstanding bonds, and we issue a new bond for $90 million. After that, the credit rating agency decided to increase our rating, reaching AA+ from AA previously. We are very happy with this upgrade and also with the evolution of our debt. We can see in the next page what is our current debt. The net debt as of March was $196 million.
After that, remember that we approved the dividend and pay a dividend, so on a pro forma basis today is around $300 million, the net debt. We can see that the concentration of amortization is in the coming years, so there is no pressure on the financial side. Page 17, we can see the evolution since 2018, and we can see an impressive deleverage from $755 million in 2020 to $300 million currently. Finally, after canceling the debt, we felt much more comfortable to be more aggressive in our dividend distribution, so we decided to approve a dividend for ARS 21.9 billion that was paid.
This is around ARS 27.3 per share or around ARS 273.13 per GDS. This is a dividend yield of 13%. On the peso side, we already paid last Friday. On the dollar side, we are working with Bank of New York, that is the trustee of our GDSs, to distribute the dividend as soon as possible. We hope, like last year, that to distribute in the coming days that amount, and we will maintain informed our investors as soon as we have more information to give. You know, more or less to calculate a dividend in dollars, that will be around $0.58 per GDS. That is the estimation on how much will be the amount in dollars.
We can see the last dividend payments that during the pandemic there was almost zero dividends. After the pandemic and after recover and solve all the refinancing risk, we are now more aggressive on the dividend payment. This fiscal year, we distributed $124 million of dividend. That is almost 70% of our EBITDA. With this, we finish the formal presentation. Now we open the line to receive your questions.
Thank you. Now it's time for the Q&A session. If you have a question, please click the bottom label raise hand. You can also use the chat. We are gonna take the questions in the order we receive them. Thank you. Here there is a question, I think Matías just answered it, of the dividend, when it will be paid and how much it will be in dollars. Okay, as I mentioned, the peso side, we already paid that. On the dollar side, we are working with Bank of New York, in order to be ready to pay in dollar terms overall. We hope to pay that in the coming days. Perfect. There is another question here, with the hand from Felipe Barragán, from BTG. Felipe, go ahead. Okay.
Good morning. Can you guys hear me? Hello? Good morning.
Yes. Yes, we can hear you, Felipe.
Okay, perfect.
Yes.
My question is on the office portfolio. Could you talk a little bit more about what strategy you guys are approaching the offices? I understand it's 15% of revenues for the office portion. What's your strategy there? You guys acquired the Paseo Colón property, and you guys had potential for converting it to mixed use. Just trying to understand what the strategy is here and what sort of occupancy levels you might be expecting for the coming year.
Okay. Thank you, Felipe. In Argentina, unfortunately, like, compared with other countries, you have to be much more involved in managing the portfolio. It's not just a play where you can rent forever. Typically years, in the past, what we did was to rotate the portfolio. Was trying to always have new buildings, selling the old buildings and reconvert into premium and the newest trend possible, no? This is what we did in the past. If you remember, we used to have more space available then. We sold some floor or some buildings and replaced those square meters with the two new buildings, one in Dot, the Zeta building, and one the Catalinas building, the 200 Della Paolera building.
Today, what we saw during the year, what we saw is a lot of people trying to dollarize or trying to protect the pesos against the volatility of Argentina. We received very good offers at very good prices in this building, and we decided to sell the newest building. When Jorge showed the performance, we invested $120 million and so far we've received proceeds for $245 million from the disposals. There was a very good business selling. Going forward, we have a lot of portfolio to some locations that are suitable to offices. As the rest of the portfolio today, we are more cautious on launching new projects because of the volatility of Argentina.
If you see what we did during the last three years, we haven't launched any new project. The two acquisitions that we did, the Beruti and the last one in Paseo Colón, were much more opportunistic. The price per square meter was very cheap, and we believe that we can reconvert that in something much more profitable. It's not defined yet. The final use is probably will have some component of offices, but could be other uses as well. We are not planning to launch any of these two projects in the coming year.
Remember that the contract that we signed, we give a like a free rent to the city for, in one case, for 18 months, and the other case for 30 months. We won't have the building ready during the next year. Probably we will work during this year to define what we're gonna do. As of today, we are not announcing any new project. We are ready. We have a lot of land available to launch different kinds of projects, but as of today, we haven't announced any launching.
Beautiful. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Thank you.
There is a question from Matías Castagnino from BCP. Similar to the other one. What is the strategy for the building acquired to the city after the 18 months free rent period? Rent it to the city, to private companies, selling it?
Well, It has a very good location. It has beautiful views to Puerto Madero. That part of the city is becoming residential. All the new developments there are residential for young people. We'll see. At first, it should be an acquisition for office space. Maybe invest to make an upgrade to the building to maybe to Triple A or something, to an A building. At first, we're thinking that it should be an office building, but it could be a reconversion.
We're gonna be thinking this next year and a half if we're gonna convert it to residential or if we're gonna keep it office space. If we convert it to residential, it's very possible for us to sell the units in the building. If we make it to office building, it's very possible that we're gonna rent it at first. I don't know, I don't know if that's okay. Any other questions?
Yeah, I have one more regarding Costa Urbana. If, Jorge, you can describe the legal status of the project of Santa María, Costa Urbana, if there is any update on the project timings or which are the plans?
Well, in March, we, the cadastral survey plan has been approved. That's very important for us. That means now we have the different plots throughout the landscape. Again, regarding the legal action that took place last year, as from March, the court issued the status of returned with no appeal. That means that ruling out the legal action as from March. Actually, the city made a national competition of ideas for the park that we are giving to the city.
Sorry, Jorge. That means that regarding the legal process, we have any limitation or everything was released and we are ready to start construct.
As from March, we're ready to start. There's no. Let's say that as it wasn't appealed by the claimant. As from now, they're the ruling out. It's a total ruling out of the legal action. As from March, we can do, we can start construction. As I said, in March, the city made a competition of ideas for the park that's gonna be there. It's a very big park. There was a winner, and West 8 was the winner with an Argentinian studio that's called PAR. We're talking with them. We're not. We don't have any...
We're not compromised to do things with them, but as they were winners, so we're talking to them to see if they're going to do the project of the park. In the next couple of months, we're going to start with the deeds, with the deeds of the park for the city and the 3 or 4 plots that we have to give the city. We're going to be doing that for the next couple of months. Everything is on track. We're even doing an Environmental Impact Assessment these next couple of months. Everything's okay. There's the only good news, especially the one of the legal action that was very important for us.
Well, yeah, I will give you some minutes more for any additional questions that you may have. Remember, you can use both the chat and the hand, raise a hand. If there are no more questions, I will turn back to Matías Gaivironsky, CFO, for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Santi. I think we covered in the presentation the most relevant part. We are happy with the performance, higher occupancy in the malls, good performance in the hotels, the disposals in the offices, the leverage of the company, the dividend payment, the approval of Costa Urbana. I think we have a very good year with very good news, and we are ready to keep capturing opportunities that can appear in the context of volatility of Argentina. The company, I think, is very well prepared for that. Thank you very much and see you in the next.