I welcome you to the Second Quarter 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 bottom labeled Raise Hand or use the chat.
Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded. The information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risk and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detailed note in the company's earnings release regarding forward-looking statements.
To start, I would like to summarize the main events of the period of the second quarter of 2023 and subsequent events. The company closes a very good quarter with strong financial and operational figures. Shopping malls kept growing in terms of sales, visitors, and margins, despite the December that was partially affected by the World Cup. January and February, we are seeing very, very good figures in our malls. The relevant event is that after the closing of the period, we reached occupancy in our office in our latest development, 200 Della Paolera, in Catalinas.
Remember that we opened that building in the middle of the pandemic. We sold approximately half of the building at very good prices. Now what we have is approximately 48% stake in the building is fully leased. The third rental segment, hotels, are booming. They are showing record occupancy and EBITDA. Mainly social, we have seen in the last quarter a very strong recovery on Buenos Aires hotels. That's the corporate events and the international influence of tourism is growing in Argentina.
The three segments are very good. Of course, in offices, we are showing a little lower results because of the assets sold during the last year. On the financial matter, after the closing years, I issued Series 15 and 16 notes for a total amount of $90 million to cancel short-term liabilities. The company redeemed Series II and IX and kept deleveraging, the company that today shows a Net Debt that is very, very low and very, very conservative capital structure and debt ratios. On November last year, November 2022, IRSA paying dividend of ARS 4.3 billion. This was the dividend yield of 4.5%.
Also, we've seen a share price recovery in the second quarter. We are optimistic on that. We think there is a lot of value to unlock at IRSA of shares. You know, we have good prospects for the next year in terms of share performance. Moving to the next page, we can see the operational figures for shopping malls. Stock increased slightly to 336,000 sq m of gross leaseable area, while occupancy reached almost 94%. We are still replacing the vacant surfaces that big tenants as Falabella and Garbarino left during the pandemic. This takes some time because we are replacing with small stores.
Sales keeps going up, as you can see on the right, 20.9% versus pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter 2023, and 12.4% comparing to the same quarter of last year. On the office portfolio, here you see figures are quite stable comparing to the previous quarter, but improving when you compare to the second quarter fiscal year 2022. After the sales of buildings and floors made in the last years, we currently manage an 82,000 sq m portfolio. Mainly premium office, mostly A plus and A buildings. Over the six, we have just two that are B category.
That when you see occupancy, the premium buildings are showing much more, much better occupancy. It's going up. We are in levels of 84%. Next quarter, we are gonna increase that figure when the impact of the fully occupancy of 200 Della Paolera reflects. In the B category, we have a building that is Suipacha that we have been showing in the downtown Buenos Aires that is empty. The other one is Philips Building in the north area of Buenos Aires City, that is half occupied. You see the impact of just 20% on that class.
Leases remains quite stable in levels of $25 per sq m our portfolio. It's a segment that remains quite stable, a little bit up in terms of occupancy in the premium class. Here you can see the lease agreements signed after the closing of the period at 200 Della Paolera building, where IRSA has its headquarters. We have leased five floors of with the remaining that we have vacant for almost 6,000 sq m, and we reach 100% occupancy. With this, we conclude a process that began on December 2020, when we opened the building in the middle of the pandemic with almost 75% occupancy.
In the middle, we have sold some floors that were occupied. This is why you see some reduction in occupancy if you choose the second quarter of 2022 and the quarter. Now with these five floors in the pro forma or in the forecast of the third quarter, we reach 100%. The building has around 30 floors. We have just 14 today owned. This is accounts for almost 17,000 sq m of gross leaseable area, almost 47% ownership. The average rents of the portfolio of the whole building, sorry, of our own floors, is $28 per sq m per month.
In hotels, well, here we can see a great evolution of the portfolio, reaching 71.4% occupancy at an average weight of $208 per room. This is record, historical records. Remember that this segment was very affected during the pandemic. Almost a year, the hotels closed. At the very beginning, we saw a strong recovery of the Llao Llao, our exclusive resort in the town of Argentina in Patagonia. Because of the, you know, the tourist, the domestic tourism and international tourism, that today Argentina is really attractive in terms of prices and also in terms of the hotel.
The Llao Llao is the best resort in Latin America, in South America for sure. In hotels are recovering, have been increased due to corporate events, segment recovery, and also international tourism. When you see the rates and levels of $135 per room, the hotels in Buenos Aires are almost $400 in Llao Llao. That increased its rates comparing to previous years. I will now turn to Matías Gaivironsky, our CFO, for financial results.
Thank you, Santi. Good morning, everybody. To understand our financial results during the semester, first, it's important to see what happened with inflation and devaluation. In the center of the graph, we can see that the inflation during the semester was 43% and devaluation was 41%. Means that the real effects evolution was an appreciation of the peso of 1%. During the last year, the inflation was 20% and the devaluation was 7%. That means that the real appreciation was 11%.
On the Blue Chip Swap and the Dólar MEP, the devaluation was 31%, so we have an appreciation of 8%, and during the last year was almost flat, 1%. Remember that our liability is expressed in dollars. If we have an appreciation of the pesos, generate gains and the assets that we have in dollar terms, if we have an appreciation, generate losses. That will explain part of the results of the semester. Going to next page, we can see what happened with our adjusted EBITDA. We have excellent results during the semester.
We can see shopping malls growing by 50%, hotels growing by 150%, and offices decreasing 14%, mainly because of the assets disposals that we did during the year. We are very happy with the performance. We can see part of the work that we did before or during the pandemic that is generating now results and is expressed in the increase in margins. You can see the shopping malls, with a much better margin than the last year, 78.6% and 70.7% last year. In the office, the same, 81.2% compared with 65.7%. The hotels, as well as 34.7% against 25.8% during the last year.
If we jump to the next page, the evolution of the operating income, excluding the effect in the fair value, was 53% increase. To analyze one of the main impacts on this semester, that is more accounting than real, is the fair value of our investment properties that we can see that during the last year, we generated a gain of ARS 43.7 billion, pesos, sorry. This year was ARS 29.5 billion loss. This is when we see the numbers in dollars, we see the valuation, the properties is exactly the same or more or less flat.
When we express this in real pesos, this generate losses because the appreciation of the peso in real terms during the semester. If we go to page 11, the net financial results during the semester generated a gain, smaller gain than last year, 26.8% below, but still a gain. It's important here, I think, to lines the interest, net interest that we can see a reduction of around 50% from ARS 4.4 billion against ARS 6.4 billion last year.
That is related to the deleverage of the company during the year, and also the net effects resulted last year generated a very important gain of ARS 11.7 billion, and this semester generated ARS 1.8 billion. This is related also to the appreciation of the peso. Finally, we are finishing this semester with a gain of ARS 15.4 billion, compared with a gain of ARS 49.7 billion last year. Going to page 12, we are proud of this graph and what we saw during the last quarters that increased in our EBITDA. After the pandemic, we are growing and growing, and the business is recovering.
Good levels of occupation and the sales of our tenants are very good. That has generated very good rental for us. We posted again, an EBITDA of $51 million during the last quarter. We can see that we are surpassing, in the last 12 months, the levels of 2019, pre-pandemic levels. We are, now $156 million EBITDA. Going to page 13, we can see the last issuance that we did, of bonds in the local market. Remember that in June last year, we did an exchange offer for our main liability, an international bond of $360 million.
At that time, 66% of the people accepted the exchange, and $121 million didn't accept it. We had the challenge to pay that debt, with the restrictions of the Central Bank. Remember that the Central Bank will only sell 40% of the dollars that expire and oblige the companies to refinance the rest. We have been working with the Central Bank and ask for permissions to do these new issuance in the local market. The issuance were very successful. We offer two classes of bonds, one in Dólar MEP and the other in Dólar CCL, the Blue Chip Swap.
Dollars abroad Argentina and the Dólar MEP is dollars in Argentina, real dollars. We received offers for $114 million. Finally, we decided to take $90 million in the two classes. One was at 8% interest rate, the other was at 7% interest rate, both with expiration in 2025. With these issuance, we reduced the cost of our financing in dollar terms and also solved the problem of the lack of dollars to pay our debt. After this, we decided to redeem the total amount of our Class II bonds, the remaining $121 million. We already paid 100% of that.
We also decided to call the other series that expire in March, the Series IX, for $80.7 million. We will pay it during the next week. After this, we solve all the issues with the debt, and we'll we fulfill all the regulation with the Central Bank. We are very happy the performance that we have and the support from our bondholders that keep investing in our bonds in the local market. After the issuance, we can see in page 14 what was the debt amortization schedule before the new issuance and after.
We can see that the remaining debt for the year is $100 million, but we have the cash to pay. The debt is divided in the next year. Probably there is no more liquidity risk because we will generate more or less the same cash each year. It's much tied to our cash generation now, the debt amortization scale. On page 15, this is impressive. This is the evolution of our leverage. We can see that after 2020, we started a process of deleveraging. Now the net debt is $285 million.
It's a reduction of 62.2%. In terms of the ratios, the debt, Net Debt to EBITDA today is 1.8 x. LTV, very low, 12%, and a coverage ratio of more than 8 x. Our debt structure today is very conservative. With this, we finish the formal presentation. Now we invite you to ask questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Well, now is the time for the Q and A session. If you have a question, please, use the chat or, raise hands. I remind you that questions will be taken in the order we receive them. Thank you.
The first question comes from Luciano Busso. If the $50 million quarterly EBITDA level is a sustainable one.
Thank you, Luciano. Well, this will depend in different variables. I think regarding the operation, we are seeing a good trend, good levels of sales from our tenants. Our budget is in line with the last quarter. The answer is yes, will depend also on the evolution of the effects, right? If there is the trend is similar than the recent events, I believe that won't affect the EBITDA in dollar terms. If we have a bigger devaluation, the immediate effect of that is a reduction in dollar terms, basically in the malls.
In the offices and in the hotels since the tariff is more related to dollars won't have an effect, but in the malls, yes. Our budget, I will say that is in line on the previous one.
Next questions come from Eliseo Conti of LarrainVial. Hi, in order to pay to holdouts, did you access to official FX markets?
Yes. All the cancellations that we did during the last years were all done at the official effects, fulfilling the regulation with the Central Bank. There is restrictions, you know, that the rule established that the companies has to refinance 60% of the principal amount and 40% we are allowed to pay. Last year when we did the negotiation with the Central Bank, in order to do the exchange in advance, we had access at that moment to pay only up to 30% of the principal amount, and the remaining we have to refinance.
At that moment, we created an structure to give two bonds, in one bonds the people receive cash, the other bonds just receive bonds, only bonds. That way we maximize the cash of the people that wanted cash. The good news is that after the last redemptions that we did, today we don't have any more or any restrictions with our debt. The principal amount that will expire in the hard dollar notes will expire in the next year. We hope that will be a different regime regarding the cancellations at that moment. For the near future, we don't have any more any restrictions to serve our debt.
Give more details on the sales and development during the quarter.
EBITDA from the quarter from sales on six months were just $11.1 billion. Together with a rental of $87.3, you reach an adjusted EBITDA. There were some losses from others that you get to almost $80 billion EBITDA. Comparing to last year, that was much higher because we had sales for almost $100 million or $95 million that we did more asset sales.
Next questions come from Ludovic Cassegrain. In our operating results in the first half of 2023 consolidated statements of income, there is an operating expense for legal matters for ARS 3.7 billion. Could you give us more details?
Yes. This is related to a claim that we have regarding our investment in Israel. There is a claim that we received a demand a couple of weeks ago in Argentina, claiming that it's a contingency for up to ILS 140 million. The company decided to create a provision of 50% of that, no matter our legal advisors will and all the legal work that we will present to defend ourself. We decided to make these provisions to be conservative.
Next questions come from Alina Archett e from Latin Securities. Can you provide an update on the company's plans for its office portfolio, including any future changes that are being considered? Could you give us an update on the current status of the Costa Urbana developments and when we can expect to hear more news on that front? I will introduce for this question, at least for the part of Costa Urbana, Jorge Cruces, our CIO. Jorge, can you give us more color on the Costa Urbana developments and when can we expect to hear more news on that front?
Good morning, everybody. First of all, regarding the office space, we have a great land next to our Dot Baires Shopping that we're still analyzing. There's gonna be a mixed use. There's gonna be residential, but there's gonna be office space there also. I can recall that we do have Seta in that building, right in near to the shopping mall, and we should have more square meters during the near future. Regarding Costa Urbana, First of all, we have an approval from the project, a preliminary design, and it's completed, as well as the company's facilitabilities and utilities that we're working with the engineers at the moment.
The only thing we don't have yet, we're working on it, is the electricity. The rest of the utilities, we have all the utilities, right, at the moment. Costa Urbana is as some may know, we have the legal situation going at the moment. There's been a persecution ruled in favor of the city of Buenos Aires, and that's our same position. That was in, that was on 8 February 2023, and we're waiting for the ruling from the court. That's, that's good news, and we continue working as usual.
Thank you, Jorge. I will give one minute more for any additional question that you may have. Okay, if there are no more questions, we conclude the presentation and the Q and A session. I will return back to Mr. Matías Gaivironsky, CFO, for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Santi. I see here one more question before the closing remarks regarding the short-term debt that is related to amortizations for $99 million. This is more short-term debt. You can see that the cash position of the company today is more than $160 million, and we have $99 million in short-term debt. This is more a liquidity management that for the cancellations. When we show this $99 million is on a pro forma of numbers on February. What we did is more a liquidity management, so using our draft to cancel instead of our own liquidity. But in the near future, that will be different.
We will cancel that $99 million, or most part of that. To finish the presentation, first thank you for the participation. We are very happy with the results. The company is generating good results in all the business lines. We clear during the last year, all the liquidity risk and the short-term debt was canceled, now we are very well prepared for a new cycle of more growing. We have plenty of projects to launch in the near future. The cash generation in all, in each of the business line is very good. We are ready to keep growing. We hope to see announcements in the short term. Thank you very much. Have a good day.