Thank you. Well, just a quick snapshot and video, and welcome everybody to our analyst briefing today. We welcome analysts, investors, our shareholders, as well as our creditors today here. The first time physical meeting after COVID, and welcome to our new office here at The Park. We have an honor to have our Founder and Chairman, Mr. William Heinecke, and our Group CEO, Dillip, here to present you with the visions, strategies, and address any concern and question you might have. I will hand the floor to both Khun Bill and Dillip at the moment. Welcome.
Gathered today. We are incredibly excited about, can you hear me now? Okay. We are incredibly excited about today's presentation on the results of last year, and also as we look forward to this coming year. We are extremely excited and we wanted to share this moment with you. We are also very mindful of external factors which are always cropping up. We have seen them with what has happened in the Middle East. We have seen it, what has happened with Russia and Ukraine. But we are fully focused on seizing the opportunities that we see right in front of us right now. Today's presentation showcases how Minor is on a rather remarkable journey. We will highlight our achievements, strategic priorities, and the exciting path forward.
Here is a little bit of the agenda that we are going to cover today, with our successes, Minor Hotels, Minor Food, a little bit looking forward, and some of our financial highlights.
First, let us talk about our successes. We had a record-breaking year in 2024. We achieved a reported profit of THB 7.8 billion, a 43% increase, and core profit of THB 8.4 billion, growing at 18%. All this on about a 10% sales growth. Expanding our footprint, we successfully added 30 new hotels. We are bringing in over 3,000 rooms along the way and 80 new restaurants in this year. We have a stronger balance sheet. We reduced our net interest-bearing debt by an equity, interest-bearing net debt to equity from 1.01x in 2023 to 0.8x by the end of 2024. That is an almost THB 20 billion reduction in our long-term liabilities and debt, which demonstrates our commitments to financial discipline. A little bit now on our targets as we go forward in 2025. We are aiming higher with our ambitious growth plans for 2025 and beyond.
We will accelerate our portfolio expansion and financial performance, especially with the reduction of interest costs and over the next three years, and over 60 hotels and 200 restaurants expected this year. That is an incredible, that is probably the fastest and highest growth we have ever achieved. We will expand with 280 + hotels and 1,500 restaurants over the next three years. Over 50% of our rooms and restaurants that are coming in right now will be asset light, giving greater scalability, profitability, and financial returns to our shareholders. Bear in mind that we have strong brands. In the case of many of our brands, we can now franchise. We are franchising GAGA, we are franchising Dairy Queen, we are franchising so many of our brands, and also franchising hotels, especially NH. This is happening globally.
Revenue is expected to grow again, by a very high single digit, probably 9% is my target. While profit is designed to grow by at least 15%-20%. This will be on an already very strong base that we achieved in 2024. We will further bring down our average ratios, targeting a net interest-bearing debt to 0.75x. This is the lowest we have ever had. Net interest-bearing debt to a bit of under 4%, or 4x through debt reduction, asset rotation, and a REIT that we hope to deliver to our shareholders by 2025, which will further reduce our debt by a significant amount. Our return on invested capital is set to exceed 12% this year. Again, an all-time high, reflecting our focus on high average return investments and disciplined capital allocations. The strategy positions us for sustainable long-term value creation while maintaining financial flexibility.
We also have almost THB 50 billion in cash and credit lines, so we are ready for any opportunities that present themselves for high growth for our shareholders. Turning a little bit to our global footprint, and expansion. Minor is strengthening its presence in key strategic markets, as you saw with some of the hotels that are opening. We are unlocking high growth opportunities worldwide. As one of the largest hospitality and dining operators in the region, and for that matter in the world, we continue to expand our global footprint and we have some exciting plans ahead. Much of it through premiumization. When you look at our company at Minor, we are known for our premiumization, and that is what is happening right now. People are being much more selective.
So whether you look at the Anantara Hotel, it is today seen as one of the premium hotel brands in the world.
If you look at Bonchon, our main competitor is KFC, and we believe Bonchon is a much more premium brand. If we look at the burgers, we have McDonald's and Burger King, and Burger King is a much more premium brand. If we look at the bubble tea brands, we have GAGA. If we look at steak brands, we have Sizzler. We have added another one called Steak & More. So we are focusing very much. The Coffee Club is a premium dining experience with coffee, even more so than Starbucks. These are delivering incredible results. We saw them in 2024. If we turn to some of the other areas that we are growing, we are focused on a number of markets. Right now, we are building a hotel in Singapore with our partners, Kajima.
We are also building hotels in Japan, and these are really destinations for inbound international tourists, and they are targets for outbound domestic market for Thailand. Beyond hotels, we are elevating all these luxury experiences, with the cruise you saw that we have added to Laos, our luxury train in Vietnam, and we are looking at more cruises and more train travel. We see this as an exciting opportunity for us and keep your eyes focused because you will expect to hear some pretty exciting news about international cruises that will be coming your way this year. We also hope to launch another international overnight train journey. Turning to one of my favorite topics is The White Lotus. The White Lotus Season 3 is starting tonight. I hope you all tune into it. It has put Thailand on the map as a premium destination.
I was there for the premiere on Friday night, and it's absolutely incredible. You'll see the Anantara Bophut, the Anantara Lawana, Anantara Mai Khao, as well as the Four Seasons. What's really interesting is the fact that it's five hotels that are being featured in this incredible series, and they're all ours. They all belong to MINT, whether it be Four Seasons or the Anantara. You have to expect the one hotel group that's going to get the biggest lift from The White Lotus is going to be Minor. This is probably the most exciting news for me, and we've already seen the increases in ADR as much as 40% in Samui. Samui is fully booked right now for this first quarter. If you want to go, you better make your reservations very early. The impact is really clear what The White Lotus is doing for us.
The global exposure further solidifies Minor's position in this luxury market. Our premiumization in hotels and food is going to pay off very extensively this year, so stay tuned. I can tell you that I'm absolutely confident of this. Take a look at who the shareholders are and who's buying our shares. You'll see it's management. You'll see there's strong demand, and I personally will add to my portfolio today now that we are out of our blackout for purchasing of shares. Watch how much I buy today. Let's see what happens to the share price. We've been undervalued for so long that I'm tired. With all of that, when we do the REIT, I don't know what investments we may choose to recycle our cash in, but perhaps, the most exciting it might be to buy our own shares.
Watch out, get in now, because we're on a ride for 2025. Good. Thank you. Dillip?
Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here today to announce our full-year results and also have our Chairman and Founder who's been very passionate about the business, as we all know, and also helping us to drive, which has been reflected in the 2024 numbers and 2025. Of course, 2024 was a concern to most of the hotel companies, as we all know, because of the geopolitical issues we've had and some of the COVID overspills. Minor, in its true fashion, has been able to way surpass industry average and also industry numbers today, both in Europe and also in Asia, especially in Asia, driving growth in spite of the softness we've experienced externally.
What I will do is, I'm just going to because I know in the past, because we have fairly complex business units, I'm going to try and make it easy today so that it will be easier for the analysts and also our shareholders and our investors to really understand the core or the essence of the Minor business and how we're planning to grow in this year and also in the coming years. Looking at the targets we set, I just want to touch base that we've always said that we will grow up to 15%-20% CAGR growth every year in terms of net profit. This year, as we all know, we've delivered at 18% growth in terms of our net profit, which was incredible in spite of what was happening in the external market.
We've also targeted that our net interest-bearing debt to equity at 0.8x , and also our interest-bearing debt to EBITDA at 4.3 x by year end of 2024, which was achieved. We managed to reduce our debt. We've also managed to reduce our debt to EBITDA also to 4.3 x. In the coming years, I think we're quite excited to see this further reducing in the next two to three years. The third one is ROIC or what we call return on invested capital, where we invest our own capital. We again, here the target was 10.5%. We've managed to meet the target or exceed the target, and going forward, the target will get, our ROIC will get better.
Number four is in terms of foreign exchange volatility, which we've experienced in the third quarter, where there was a gap between our reported profits and our core profits. We managed to tighten the gap in Q4, which is reducing the Forex volatility and also mitigating and also supporting what we call predictable cash flow generation as well. As you can see in the Q4 numbers or the full-year numbers, our reported profit and our core profit has been tightened up. We've also been able to maximize the high margin fee income by reducing capital intensity, as we move more towards asset light. In my future presentations, you will see how we are planning to execute that. Europe has seen a very strong RevPAR growth of 9% year-on-year. Asia-Pacific, including Thailand, has seen a 17% year-on-year growth last year in 2024.
We believe, and we are quite confident that this year will also surpass 2024 numbers, which we are seeing today in terms of the trends for 2025. As you can see, the results which has been delivered has been a record high for MINT and way surpassing 2019, prior to COVID. We don't talk about COVID anymore because we surpassed COVID in 2021 and 2022. Now 2023, 2024, we managed to further surpass with record results as well. Moving on to hotel performance. The next slide is to talk about the hotel segment, which has delivered outstanding results in all key markets and pretty much fueled by strong demands. Also the strategies we implemented in the post-COVID, which has been working quite well for us in terms of our pricing and in terms of our commercial strategies as well.
In Europe and Americas, we saw RevPAR grew significantly by 9% year-on-year, and 35% up on 2019. We surpassed 2019 quite significantly. It's pretty much the business demand has come pretty much in Spain, Central Europe, Benelux, and Italy, as you know, where we have most of our hotels in these countries. We're able to take advantage of that. In Asia, of course, Thailand being our home country, the RevPAR surge with a return on international tourists, which we have seen. Particularly, we've seen the surge in terms of tourism from the U.S., mainly the U.S. currency being strong. We've seen much more tourists now coming into Asia. We've also seen demand being driven from Europe.
We've seen demand driven from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, where we've seen a significant growth in terms of our guests coming into Thailand, post the Saudi-Thailand relations, being amended. Also the regional travels in Asia, which is Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and others. These results actually translate to about a 9% revenue growth and a 16% profit growth in 2024. The next one is to look at the booking platform. This is what we've done, and this is in progress. Basically, post-acquisition of NH Hotels, we managed to integrate the two platforms, and now we've taken it one step further where we are bringing all our brands together. This year, or last year in September, we launched Minor One platform, where now guests can actually book our hotels in one website.
In the past, we had a website for Anantara, we had a website for Tivoli, we had a website for Avani, NH and everything else. We managed to consolidate, and we now offer one solution, one website where all our hotels are bookable, which means we will capture these guests much. The capture rate will be much higher than having individual siloed brands. We also have been introducing what we call the Minor DISCOVERY, which is our loyalty program, with now over 30 million members, where we can start to strengthen personalizing guests. Also we can increase our repeated guest stays within our portfolio as well. The digital transformation is driving our direct bookings, which is our brand.com. In 2019, it was 11% contribution from brand.com. In 2024, we managed to increase that to 17% with a higher sales number.
This year we're targeting to make it up to 20%. In the next three years it will get up to 25%. That is our target in terms of really growing our brand.com, which is the least cost channel, but not just least cost channel, where we are able to maintain and move the guests around, compared to Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, and all the others as well. Moving on to Minor Food. Again, Minor Food has had an exciting year as well, in spite of some of the softness we've experienced in outside Thailand, especially China. Minor Food, through its franchising and innovation, the revenues grew by 4% year-on-year, and the net profit grew by 21% year-on-year, in spite of some of the challenges we faced in terms of cost of goods, cost of labor and everything else.
Minor Food has had a fantastic year as well. Thailand has been a major contributor to our revenue and the profit for Minor Food. Thailand actually contributes 60% of our Minor Food revenues. 60% comes from Thailand, which is quite significant. We have achieved a strong same-store positive growth. Also we see that trend moving upwards. Internationally, whilst some of the same-store decline by 5.1%, predominantly the challenges we are facing in China, which is starting to ease, and we see improvements coming through. With major markets like Thailand and Singapore performing very strong, the revenue grew by 4% year-on-year, and the net profit surged by 21%, with also improving our margins from 6.6% to 7.7%. The food net profit margins have improved to 7.7%. Our target is to get this up to about 10%, which will be above industry norms.
That is what we are targeting in the coming years. The next slide is to talk a little bit about product innovation and market expansion. As you have seen in the video, in terms of Minor Food, for us, innovation drives growth. It is important to keep the food brands fresh. It is important to keep changing the concepts, and it is important for us to offer what the customer really wants. Minor Food, the Thailand dine-in and delivery, the sales grew by 7% and 4% year-on-year, in 2024. That is quite a big increase coming post-COVID because post-COVID, Minor Food was the first to rebound, and now we see a further increase from that rebound as well. The Pizza Company has launched BiTE, which is our new concept, which is a single-serve delight, which is perfect for single or solo diners, we call it, and a small group.
Also the delivery, it also helps with the friendly delivery channel as well. Bonchon this year or last year introduced Ramyun, a bold, quick and easy meal. Again, offering for everyday lifestyle, along with the revamp of the fried chicken recipes we have tailored for local preferences as well. It is all about flavor innovations and also new product lineup as well. Expanding in Thailand, we have 76 stores across all brands. We have expanded 22 in Dairy Queen, 17 new stores in GAGA, 17 stores in Swensen's and also 10 new stores in The Pizza Company. We have also started to accelerate our growth in Indonesia. As you know, we have entered into Indonesia with 28 stores, driven by a strong traction from Dairy Queen and GAGA. Including Indonesia, we are now operating in 24 countries. With Benihana making its debut into Paris, last year.
We have opened another Benihana in Paris. The food group remains committed in expanding our footprint and also increasing the market share both on the asset-light side as well. The next one is we talk about key growth drivers. We see, in spite of what is happening globally and in spite of what is happening in the geopolitical environment, the global travel industry has been witnessing a record high arrivals. Thailand has been a big beneficiary of that. Europe has been a big beneficiary of that, where we have most of our assets there. With global tourism actually expanding to reach about $10 trillion by 2025. That is a big spend coming from global travel. The other big segment, which we have also launched in, and we are expanding quite fast, is the wellness and the tourism segment.
This is projected at $1 trillion U.S. in 2025 which will present significant opportunities for us, and we are riding on this, increasing our top line, in our hospitality and our mixed-use business as well. A strategic expansion into high growth markets and a balanced footprint across the new emerging destinations will ensure that the hotel group and the food group will ensure that we will have long-term profitability as well. Our asset-light model for scalable growth and profitability, and a higher proportion of the fee income will be driven by margin expansion and also improved returns as well. Moving to hotel industry forecast. As you can see, what we have highlighted is the key markets where we are in today. We are in Europe, we are in Thailand, we are in Asia-Pacific, and we are in Middle East.
As you can see, the growth or the tourist arrivals is showing a positive trend in all the markets, and also you can see the estimated spending also growing in all our key markets as well. Global travel is booming, and we see a significant growth projected in both overnight tourist arrivals and inbound spending across all regions. We see an overnight tourism growth from 2024 to 2032. Europe remains our large market, with 833 million arrivals in 2025, and that is growing at 4.5% CAGR. Thailand leads with a 7.6% CAGR growth, and we should be reaching over 41 million tourist arrivals this year in 2025. Asia-Pacific follows closely with a 7.89% CAGR, attracting about 379 million travelers. Middle East sees the fastest growth at 8.61%, and inbound spending also is growing from 2024 to 2032.
In terms of Europe absolute value, we see an $852 billion spending, which is growing at 7% CAGR. Thailand stands out with an impressive 13.69% CAGR, and 8.95 as well. The key takeaways on this slide is that Asia-Pacific and Middle East are emerging as high growth regions, offering what we call expansion opportunities for us. At the same time, Europe remains a dominant market in terms of total travelers and spending. In Thailand, we have also seen the growth in Asia market coming quite strong, especially from India, the Middle East, the Saudi, and the U.A.E., as I mentioned before. The next one is we talk about strong travel demand and the growth in 2025. As to why we at Minor are confident and comfortable that we will see a continuous growth in terms of arrivals, and also in terms of profit growth as well.
The strong momentum, both in leisure and the business travel, with a record tourism arrivals in Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Colombia, in South America, will drive demands in the key markets. The post-integration, as I explained to you before, with Minor Hotels and our team in Europe and LatAm or Latin America, is now well positioned for us to expand our luxury offerings in the key markets. As we know, Anantara is now expanded quite strong into Europe, and LatAm as well. Tivoli is expanding quite strongly as well. Also, NH is expanding here in Asia and Middle East also. In Asia-Pacific, the new debut of NH and NH Collection brands are again capturing premium travel, and it is a high growth market for us.
Long-haul demand for Asia continues to rise, as I said before, fueled mainly by the U.S., U.K., Germany, Russia, India, and alongside inter-regional travel, and Middle East as well. We are experiencing and expanding our footprint in Indonesia. We have opened another hotel in Indonesia in Bali. We opened our new hotel in India last year. Japan, as Bill mentioned, we are in construction there, and Singapore. We are targeting major economic hubs and also tourism hubs to drive future economy growth, and that is how we show our pipeline growing from the hotels we have today to what we will have in the next three to five years. We are also accelerating our hotel pipeline in Saudi Arabia, which aligns with the Saudi vision for 2030, and tapping into what we call a rapidly growing luxury and business travel market there.
The new luxury launches in Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah will also cater for premium travel as well. Our restaurants are also growing in these key markets as well, including some of our high-end restaurants, which is The Wolseley and the Benihana as well. In 2020, the next one is I just want to highlight some of the upcoming openings in 2025. Again, in 2024, we opened 30 hotels with about 3,000 keys. In 2025, we will be opening about 54 new hotels across all the key strategic markets. Some of them, like, say, for example, we have the Tivoli Kopke in Porto, in Portugal. We have the nhow in Rome. We have the new NH Collection, The Maldives in Reethi Resort. The Anantara Kafue River in Zambia, which is a tented camp, which again taps into the Africa's high-end tourism market there.
The Avani+ Barbarons Seychelles , a new hotel which is being completely rebuilt, will open this year, which will help us to tap into our Indian Ocean portfolio as well. Again, this will add. If I may add, most of these hotels are managed, HMAs. As I said, we are trying to go more asset-light because we built our equity brands and now we want to really leverage our equity brands going forward. The next one is just to touch base on mixed use. Again, on mixed use, we have some really exciting news coming. We are introducing what we call luxury ocean and river cruises. Again, this will help us with the new trend, which is called the slow travel today. The luxury cruises are Anantara-branded cruises, which should be operational by 2027.
Again, these are very high-end luxury cruises, which will be launched on a yearly basis under the Anantara brand with no investment from Minor, just to make it clear. Our wellness is combining with innovation and tradition. Again, Anantara, the Layan Life, and also the Anantara at the Riverside will merge what we call the advanced wellness technology and traditional practices, which are actually staged for international expansion. So we are showcasing Thailand as a true wellness hub and really spearheading the innovation on wellness so that we can compete with our wellness partners in Europe and in other places where people can come here and enjoy a better facility in terms of wellness in a very fantastic environment within the Anantara brand as well. This will help us to capitalize on the growing $1 trillion wellness spend in the tourism market, as I said before.
We are also capitalizing on what we call the increase, the demand for branded residences. Anantara, as an ultra-luxury brand, has established itself today where we are a magnet for branded residences as well, which we are launching. We have launched, and we have been very successful, as you know, in Thailand. The current project we have is at Anantara Layan in Phuket. We are in Indonesia. We just opened a hotel in Bali with residences as well, which will be for sale this year. Malaysia, at the Anantara Desaru, we already have Anantara residences there, which are being sold. U.A.E., Oman, and Tanzania, where Anantara brand is truly gaining traction. These residences outside Thailand and other countries are, again, where we will be getting branded residential fees, which will again add to our bottom line.
Minor's focus on mixed-use development will also strengthen and diversify our revenue streams, and also reinforce our luxury positioning and growth in the global demand as we see. The next one is to talk quickly about the Minor Hotels strategy. The Minor Hotels strategy, as I said before, we are shifting more towards an asset-light model. We are focusing on what we call high-margin revenue streams, which is management fees and franchise fees, and also on recurring income from these asset-light strategies. Over 90% of our future pipeline will be managed or franchised, which will be reducing the capital deployment whilst we further enhance our profitability and our return. Hence the reason we have set a target in terms of net profit growth of 15%-20% on a CAGR growth every year.
Our management fee income today contributes about 25%-30% of Minor Hotels' EBITDA today. We are suggesting that this contribution will move up to above 50% in the coming years. That's moving more towards asset-light and moving more towards what we call high-margin business as well. Today, we are growing from 81,000 room nights in 2024. Our target is to grow to about 128,000 room nights by 2027. More than half of our rooms will be coming from managed, franchise, and management letting rights business, which is predominantly in Australia. The Europe, the share will reduce from 58% to 43%, because we are also growing in other markets as well. Asia will continue to grow from 14% to 22%, and Middle East and Africa will grow from 8% to 16%, so it will double in the coming years.
We are also looking at Oceania and North America as well, where we see potential for our brands to start to expand as well, because that is one region where, especially North America, we only have one hotel there, and we're hoping to have more of a presence in that country as well. The next one is to talk a little bit about Minor Hotels' asset-light model. The new managed openings in Riyadh, in Jeddah, which is the two cities in Saudi, in Oman, in Portugal, Brazil, will further strengthen our asset-light portfolio. We're also leveraging local partnership and joint ventures, such as we just announced a joint venture in Japan. Again, with Royal Holdings, Japan is a market where we feel that we have to have presence. The market is very strong, as we all know.
And again, there, we signed a joint venture last week to again increase our pipeline there in that market as well. Our management fee will again generate a stable high-margin income as well. We will also get cost-sharing benefits, where we can increase our operational efficiency and profitability through our own booking platforms as well. The asset-light model will continue to reduce our capital requirement, which will help us to drive more profitability and also reduce debt, increase our ROIC, and also it will be scalable with managing or minimizing our risk as well. The next one is, just want to talk about industry forecasts on the food side. Again, the global economy is projected to grow about 3.2%, both in terms of real GDP and also private consumption.
Thailand continues with a steady growth of 2.8% GDP and 2.9% on private consumption, with the CAGR signaling a continuous resilient on domestic market compared to some other countries. Singapore forecast to reflect a mature and a stable market. Australia, in spite of the cost of living increases, but the market has very strong potential for not just The Coffee Club, we are also planning to introduce other brands as well. China, the GDP growth is projecting faster than the others, and hopefully we will see a recovery this year in China, which we are already seeing with Minor Food as well there. The next one is to talk about franchise-driven growth on the food side. Our franchise outlets to increase from 48% in 2024 to 56% in 2027.
That is growing from today, we have almost 1,300 outlets. That is growing to 2,300 outlets. It is almost 1,000 outlets increase in franchise outlets. The franchise income already contributes 25% to 30% of Minor Food's profit. We expect this with a higher contribution coming from the franchise operations as well. Thailand remains a core market for us and CLMV, Indonesia and India, which is a rising high growth franchise market, where we see new brand penetration. We are actively seeking India, where we should be announcing something soon. Indonesia, we have already executed Indonesia, and we are looking at other countries as well. Next is to talk a little bit more about Minor Food, the asset-light strategy. Bonchon and GAGA, as Bill mentioned, are two highly sought-after brands that we recently introduced in the domestic franchise opportunities in Thailand.
In Thailand, we have now started to convert some of our own equity stores into franchise stores for Bonchon and GAGA. Many of our franchises operate multiple food brands, such as The Pizza Company, Swensen's, Dairy Queen, highlighting our strong ecosystem and synergies as well. Our existing franchises have shown strong interest to expand Bonchon and GAGA, so where we can see more restaurants roll out this year in Thailand. In Indonesia, Dairy Queen and GAGA expanding rapidly to meet the rising consumer demand. We see the two brands performing really well, and the demand is quite strong. The average ticket size is good. Also, our return on payback is also quite low there. India also, again, as I said, we are tapping into the high growth potential market.
Sanook Kitchen is bringing authentic Thai flavors to the rapidly growing market with strong demands from India and expanding middle class we have seen as well. The strong franchise driven by strong consumer demand, innovation, Minor Food aims to further penetrate the market and retain its position as the regional leader in food and beverage industry. We then look at ROIC, return on invested capital, some of the financial highlights. Again, as I said, our target is to maximize return on invested capital, to ensure that we have a sustainable and long-term value add for our shareholders. We will be looking at two key components here, which is net profit after tax and also invested capital. And how are we going to do this?
Our target is to get a sales growth of top line growth of 6%-8%, or getting up to 10% revenue growth, and the profit growth of 15%-20% on a CAGR basis, to drive higher returns moving forward. As I said, last year we achieved 18%, and this year, we are on track to achieve our target as well. We are also looking at to leverage our operating efficiencies through economies of scale, through cost optimization, as well as back-office transformation and consolidation, which we have done last year, and we continue to implement those things this year. We have implemented AI, we have implemented cost rationalization between the Minor Food and Minor Hotels. We have tightened our supply chain, in other hubs as well. And therefore, we see further improvement in our margins moving forward.
We are lowering the financial costs through debt repayment and also, try to get lower interest rate where we will show a strong profit and cash flow in the future. As we continue to do asset rotation, as we continue to launch REIT, the target is to launch it by end of this year. And then, we will be able to roll out. And that will really help us to not just only reduce our debt, but also help us to use capital to further expand, both Minor Hotels and Minor Food in the key regions as well. We are optimizing what we call our invested capital. We have accelerated our debt repayment and also reduced our invested capital as well. We have successfully completed some asset rotations last year.
Just before Christmas, we managed to take out Anantara Vacation Club, the debt we were carrying on our balance sheet, about THB 130 million, which has been now refinanced. We have also successfully completed the sale of one of our hotels, the Anantara Vilamoura in Portugal, where we achieved a record high sale price of about EUR 75 million, and that will help us to further reduce our debt. We continue to prioritize CapEx, where we are now looking at CapEx in terms of quick payback, and high impact investments where we limit unnecessary outlays, just to ensure that we maximize our returns over the next few years. As I said before, we are also executing what we call proactive capital recycling, through asset rotation and REIT. The REIT is going to be quite a big action for us this year.
As we announced before, we were hoping to raise about $1.5 billion, and about $700 million of that new cash will go to reduce debt and also help us to further expand in the future. With these strategies we have, we will be able to enhance our ROIC, which is 10.5% today to over 12% by 2027. The next one is just to talk a little bit about performance recap. We have seen a strong growth across the board. The revenues reach THB 166 billion, an 8% increase driven by strong Minor Hotels performance, including Minor Hotels Europe & Americas, and Minor Food strong performance as well. 81% of the revenue contribution came from hotels and 19% from food. Core net profits surged to 18% growth year-on-year to THB 8.39 billion, with Minor Hotels contributing 70% and Minor Food contributing 30%.
Our reported profit rose by 43% year-on-year, reflecting both operational strength and much better management of non-core Forex impacts, as I said before. We managed to reduce and mitigate the impact on Forex in Q4, which gave us a rise of 43% in reported profits as well. The next one is on CapEx. Just to touch base on CapEx and as I explained before, we are having strong CapEx discipline where we are projected to normalize our CapEx to THB 10 billion-THB 12 billion a year. These are on new assets, making sure some of our existing assets are producing more revenues. Most of the CapEx are measured against payback and also increasing our return on invested capital as well. A majority of the CapEx will be allocated to asset upgrades, which will help us to continue to increase our ADR.
On the food side, to make sure that we continue to increase our traffic as well, which will carry a lower risk on that side. Branded residences will be another investment, which will be offering a payback of nearly half of the traditional hotels and making it an attractive growth opportunity as well. Again, branded residences is one of our core businesses, which we have always said that we will continue to grow. Now with the strong brands we have, we are able to also offer branded residences to third-party owners, where they're happy to brand their hotel and the residences together in order to achieve a premium selling price as well. The next one is on capital structure. On capital structure, our target is to reduce financial costs through active debt management.
Despite our high interest rate environment in 2024, our interest expenses increased slightly by only 4%. Our strong deleveraging efforts resulted in a significant reduction in our leverage ratio, with our debt to interest-bearing debt to equity has reduced to 0.8x. The net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA is about 4.3 x. Our target is to bring the EBITDA to below four. That's our target, by continuing to recycle and reduce debt. Also to reduce our IBD or net interest-bearing debt to equity from 0.8x to about 0.7% in the coming years as well. Minor Hotels Europe and LatAm is actively working on a refinancing exercise at the moment. For our EUR 400 million bond which is due to mature next year. What we are doing is we are utilizing our existing cash flows and the proceeds from asset rotations to reduce.
Instead of raising EUR 400 million, we will repay the bond next year and that will be reduced by half. Again, next year, we see a reduction of about EUR 200 million just on the bond in Europe as well, which will help us to reduce our debt. It will help us to reduce our interest costs going forward. These initiatives will further reduce our leverage and help us to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our financial flexibility as well. As we all know, 55% of our debt remains floating, and we are actively managing the exposure to optimize interest rates as well. The next one is on growth ambitions. Here, as Bill mentioned, I think from where we were to where we are in 2024, as you can see, our growth targets are, in 2024, we have 562 hotels with about 2,700 restaurants.
Based on our pipeline and based on the growth ambitions we have, 2027, we should be at about 850 hotels with about 4,000 restaurants. By 2029, we will be able to get to 1,000 hotels with 4,500 restaurants. Most of these, as I explained to you before, most of these will come through asset-light. The investment from MINT, the capital investment will be much, much lower. We are trying to move more asset-light. The target by 2027, as I said, the vision is clear. These are our three plans and our growth ambitions for the next three years. Moving on, just to close. I think, just to recapture, our focus in 2025 and beyond to achieve our targets in 2027 and 2029 is to make sure that we continue to deliver the financial performance with what we call disciplined execution strategies.
We continue to expand our premium travel and ensure that there is sustainable growth. A balanced portfolio strategy through asset-light, scalable, and high-margin expansion. The last one is the commitment to stay strong on ROIC, high yield cash flow, and the generation of sustainable shareholder returns. On that, I would like to thank everyone else and close my presentation, which I hope gave you a pretty good idea in terms of our growth ambitions, our vision for the next three years, and also our strong belief, including our Chairman, in terms of our shareholder returns and the share price moving forward. Thank you all for that.
Now we will open the floor to Q and A questions. We will have a microphone here. Anyone have questions, raise your hands, and we will bring the mic to you.
[Chatrinakapta] from KKPS. Just one question regarding The White Lotus series that will be released tonight here in Thailand. Is it possible that we can have some type of an official affiliation with the series themselves, getting Mike White, who is the producer, writer of the series, to actually somehow include Anantara brand into their global marketing campaign? That would be a very good way to expose the brand, especially to U.S. consumers.
About The White Lotus, whether it is possible.
There is no question that The White Lotus thing has used a number of hotels. In Sicily, they used two hotels, the Four Seasons and a beach hotel. In Hawaii, they only used one. Here in Thailand, they have now gone expanded to where they are using five hotels. They all happen to be owned by us, both the Four Seasons and the Anantaras. Anantaras are very well known already as being the scene of where most of the films of The White Lotus are being shot. We are already seeing huge requests for bookings, same as what we saw in Hawaii and same as what they saw in Sicily. We are getting tremendous publicity. Whenever you see an Anantara ad, you will often see us that we also welcome The White Lotus series three, just as Four Seasons does.
But so far, the coverage that we have been getting is as much as our friends at Four Seasons. We are very happy. And do not forget, we own the Four Seasons. That is owned by Minor. The real improvement in our earnings this year will come not only from the Anantaras, but even from Four Seasons. Very few people realize that all of the hotels in that film were primarily owned by Minor. And so Minor is going to benefit hugely by that. But you will see it continuously. White Lotus announced to me that after each filming, their social media will be telling consumers where it was filmed. So was it filmed at Anantara Bophut, Four Seasons Samui, Anantara Mai Khao? Although the setting is Samui, they are filming even in Phuket at the Anantara Mai Khao.
We have requests now from travel agents globally that ask to stay in the same room or eat in the same restaurant, even the same table that the actors and actresses have dined in. Keep watching it. This is the biggest promotion for Thailand luxury that Thailand will have ever seen, bigger than anything that TAT has done before. It will be viewed by hundreds of millions of people. The last film that we had was Mother of the Bride, which contributed to our fourth quarter earnings last year very strongly. That had 100 million viewers, and that was featuring the Anantara Mai Khao and the Anantara Layan. We are very much behind the soft power, as you might say, in driving our earnings, and much of our earnings growth this year will come from that soft power.
Where we have had a huge benefit is like The White Lotus is promoting as The White Lotus is the home for Thailand, which means Thailand will benefit in a big way. Our hotels have been featured and every single announcement from The White Lotus actually has our hotels there. We are getting the exposure. We can see in our social media and also the bookings as well. As Bill mentioned, we are seeing a 40% increase in room rates in Samui this year already, in addition to what we saw last year. It is great to see Thailand being focused on a luxury destination as opposed to a backpacker or a cheap destination. Thailand is benefiting in a big way by The White Lotus. We are getting a very high free share of publicity from The White Lotus.
I might add that we are doing this at no cost. There are no expenses to us to The White Lotus promotion. They paid us millions of dollars to use those hotels. They required us to lock them down and exclusively allow them to film, but they paid for those hotels. There was no dip in earnings last year. They spent nine months filming in Thailand, but our earnings went to a record high in spite of that. This year, we are going to see even more benefits from that. Do not underestimate the effect of The White Lotus. Check what was the impact in Sicily once The White Lotus was aired. That was a huge indication, and Thailand is expected to be even bigger. The audience has grown for The White Lotus, the followers.
Thank you. [So krey] from UBS. I have a couple of strategy question and taking a step back. The past two years, and especially this presentation today, has been a lot about de-leveraging and maximizing return, right? Pre-COVID Minor's aim generally has been about expansion, global presence, and a lot of asset-heavy investment, right? I wanted to get a sense from both of you what has changed at the management level or even at the board level for you to move on towards asset light more. Is it the financing environment? Is it the industry environment? Or just appeal confidence in the brand? Or just doing what shareholders are asking for is also an option. Just, yeah, wanted to get that point. Thank you.
We have always maintained a policy of what we call asset right. Some of our greatest profits have come from some of our assets in the Maldives. The NH acquisition, which added THB 3 billion of debt to us, was one of the biggest assets that we ever made. Today, we are seeing huge benefits from that. Plus the fact that we have all of these brands that belong to us, NH, Avani, Tivoli, Oaks, Anantara. Now we have the strength, which we did not have before, to actually franchise and go asset light. We do not have to build every hotel. We built some of our first hotels, the Avani on the Riverside, the Anantara in Phuket, and the Anantaras in Samui. Today, we do not have to build. We have people coming to us requesting, can they use our brand? They will pay us a branding fee.
They will pay us royalties. They will pay us management fees in order to use our brand. The same thing is happening in food. You have to have a certain scale. I think it is safe to say that Minor has reached that scale. Now we will see the returns for our shareholders, with higher returns on invested capital. So, we are able to reduce debt. You have to remember that what we looked at and what everyone pointed out to us is that we paid more money to the banks than we made in profits. Even though our profits were very strong, last year at THB 7 billion, we paid nearly THB 8 billion to the banks. So all we have to do to grow a big profit for our shareholders is reduce that interest payments that we paid to the banks. We can dramatically increase it.
If you couple that with growth, growing in some of these markets that we are growing in, that will just add even further returns to it, especially when we do not have to build every hotel or every restaurant. So we have that strength. One of the things that very few people really value highly is the value today of Anantara. Standard International, which is a very small hotel group, recently sold to Hyatt for, I do not know, $350 million or $400 million. It is a very small brand. Tiny. It is no comparison to Anantara. No comparison even to Avani or NH. So we have huge assets, that are looked on enviously by people because of our brands. People like Banyan Tree and others have had to link in with people like Accor in order to get the brand strength. We have it.
The launch of Minor Hotels is so powerful. Just imagine, up to now, whenever you wanted to find a hotel from Minor, you had to look at Anantara, you had to look at NH, you had to look at Avani. You could never go to one place. In the case of Marriott, you go to one website, and you get all the Marriotts in the world. In the case of Accor, the French company, you go to one website, and you can access Mercure or Sofitel or anything. Today, you go to one website, Minor, and you can access all our hotels. So we have created Minor as our parent brand, much like Starwood did before. The Starwood brand before. Much like Marriott has done today, much like Accor or Hyatt. So we now have one brand name globally.
This one is another major impact, probably even bigger than The White Lotus in terms of what it will do for our company over the course of this year. When you get a chance, go on the internet, look up Minor Hotels, and now you will see how you can book anywhere in the world in any brand.
Just to add, I think, yes, the equity brands are so strong where we are able to leverage the brand power to get more management contracts and franchises, same as what we are doing on the food side. Food, we have been very successful rolling out franchises as well. The other thing is on the accounting side, we have had the changes, right? When we bought NH, we took on a lot of leases. All those leases came and sat as debt on the balance sheet, as a liability on our balance sheet. Of course, prior to acquiring NH, I think Minor's balance sheet was seen as a lazy balance sheet because we hardly have any debt. Post acquiring NH, we had to take on the leases on the balance sheet under the new accounting regulation. Also we had to take on the perps as well.
The perp also came into our balance sheet. That is the reason the debt ballooned. Our focus always, we have been always very conservative in terms of cash flow and managing cash flow and debt. Our focus is now to make sure that the interest-bearing debt to equity, including Perps and including leases, we will continue to reduce them below what we call our targeted threshold. That will then help to further enhance our cash flow and also return on invested capital as well.
Thank you. Just to follow up to that is, so I understand that the brand has become much stronger than it was in the past, right? In newer markets where we have not really expanded to, do we still feel the need that we need to go in with an asset-heavy investment first? Or is our brand strong enough right off the bat to go into any new market at this point in time? The second follow-up to that is that if we still need to do these asset-heavy investment, how low can our net debt to EBITDA go? Could it be as comparable to global peer one day? Or do we think that this 4 x level is the right level for Minor? Thank you.
Our target is the brands are quite strong, even in new markets. Say, for example, when we took NH to the Middle East, to Dubai. Today, the performance has been record-breaking. We have achieved profits more than double. Our owners are so happy where they are now giving us more hotels as well. We have opened Anantara in new destinations. We have opened Anantaras in Europe. We have 10 Anantaras in Europe. No one knew the brand in Europe. But today, they are one of the highest ADR brands in Europe. For example, when we had the NH Collection in the Amalfi Coast, the ADR they were getting was about less than EUR 1,000. By rebranding to Anantara and spending some money on CapEx, we managed to get the ADR to about EUR 3,000.
This is the power of the brand, and we believe that the Anantara brand is strong enough, or all the brands are strong enough, including NH. NH is the fourth largest hotel brand in Europe today. It is bigger than Marriott's, it is bigger than others, because Marriott is predominantly a U.S. brand. 67% or 70% is U.S. Hyatt is the same. But NH is one of the largest brands in Europe. And with the brand strength, we have taken NH to Phuket, we have taken NH to Maldives, we have taken it to the Middle East, and we are looking at other destinations. We just signed Anantara in Singapore. Singapore, we are looking at it. We are looking at Japan with the new joint venture again. But this is all coming through asset-light.
Let me just add to that. Take NH. We acquired that brand 2018. Today, we have three NHs in Thailand. All of them just franchised operations, management operations. We only manage them. NH, we have not had to invest a penny. We have such a huge investment globally in NH that we now can reap the benefits of being able to take on hotel management contracts or even franchises. And this is really the strength of the brands again. And it is happening globally for us. All the brands are resonating right now.
We do not have a weak brand. Tivoli has been moving very rapidly. We have got Tivoli hotels in China. We have got Tivoli hotels, and these are all hotel management. All the Middle East is hotel management. We have no investment in the Middle East. We have no investment in China. These are all management contracts. It is really going to accelerate rather rapidly this year. You will see it in the numbers, and starting with the first quarter this year compared to the first quarter last year, because we have so much bigger base now.
I am [Kasim] from CTS International. I have some questions on your targets. Regarding 6%-8% revenue growth, can you please give us some more colors on how much is on the hotel side and on food side? On the hotel side, what would be the growth coming from new opportunities or from increasing prices or occupancy?
If I have to break down, on the food side, the revenue growth will be about 5%-6%, which we will see this year, with China starting to rebound. On the hotel side, we hope to see a slightly higher revenue growth, mainly coming from ADR, increase in rates, and also occupancies as well. Some of the markets now starting to perform as well, like China, for example, on the hotel side, is starting to perform. Therefore, with the new hotels, we are adding 50 + hotels. We are coming from a very high base. We are now projecting 6%-8% on the high base on a CAGR basis. We are projecting 15%-20% high base on the profit. The profit is mainly driven by management fees and franchise fees, which will come straight to our profit line.
Let me give you an example which I look at very simply. We bought NH Hotel Group very recently. I think anybody will tell you that in 2018, we had the best bargain in the hotel industry by buying NH Hotel Group for, I do not know, 9x EBITDA . We bought NH Hotel Group for 9x EBITDA . Today, we own NH Hotel Group and we own everything else. Minor International is selling on the Thai stock market for less than 4x EBITDA . That is our market cap, 4x . Normally, we buy companies or buy hotels at 9x , and we sell them at 20 x. The hotels that we sold in the Maldives prior to COVID, we sold for 20 x EBITDA . We have a habit of buying.
So when we look around today and we try to see what should we be investing in, I got to tell you that one thing I tell everyone, let's just buy Minor shares. It's 4x . Maybe by next week, we'll be 5x . But this is cheap, for Christ sakes. Maybe we should be private. Honestly, it's really embarrassing for me because I sold the hotels at 20 x and we bought them at 10 x. I'm not embarrassed to buy a hotel at 10 x EBITDA because with growth, that's a very good bargain. But here's Minor selling at four and 5x EBITDA today. That's the value of Minor. I don't accept it. With the brands that we have, like Anantara and what's going on, and with the brands that we have in the food group, Sizzler.
The joint venture with Royal Holdings, which owns about 60, 70 hotels in Japan, they're the Sizzler franchisee. They pay us royalties for using the Sizzler brand in their 14 restaurants in Japan. Now they really want to get going with NH Hotels and with Anantara and grow in Japan. So we have tremendous worldwide links now and connections. Our partners in Phuket are Kajima, and now there are partners in the Singapore new hotel that we're building, the Avani. So, we will still have to invest capital, but it's going to be at a much lower rate than we had to do before to get into these super prime cities like Singapore and Japan. But honestly, the value right now that we have within Minor, that's why I'm buying the share.
I don't understand it, but that's why I'm here today too, to sort of find out, maybe you know something that I don't know. But I also see the change of President of the U.S. Trump is going to solve the Ukraine-Russian war. When that happens, you're going to see growth in Europe again. It's stagnating right now. The rebuilding of Ukraine will be a huge thing. We've seen the Middle East now settle down. So we could be on the verge of some very exciting growth in Europe now, which has been really dragging everybody down because it's been slowing. But I'm very optimistic right now of what's going on. Not to mention The White Lotus story, which is really incredible. I had a chance to see Lisa on Friday night and trust me, she gives a good performance.
She's going to really help put Thailand on the map so.
And just to give you some data point. The last asset disposal or rotation we did, as I mentioned before, the Anantara Vilamoura in Portugal. It was generating an EBITDA of EUR 3 million. We just sold it for EUR 75 million. So you can see the multiples we are getting in terms of some of the recycles. We are just making sure that the recycles are mature assets, and some of them we keep it, some of them we sell. So we are able to better capitalize on the structure. So that is how, like Bill was saying, it has been done.
I have a couple of questions on the cost side. You mentioned about the transformations. What is your long-term target for your, say, SG&A to revenues?
I think, as I said before, on the food side, we are hoping to get to a net profit margin of about 10%. So that will come through efficiencies, margin efficiencies, and also franchising as well. Today we are hovering around 7%-8%, so we hope to move that to about 10%.
On your FX exposure, on the debt side, you mentioned that you have about three-quarters of your debt in euro and about one-quarter in Thai baht. What would be your net exposure after hedging?
What would what?
Your exposure after hedging.
After hedging. What we are doing is in Europe, it is matched. We are reducing our debt there. As I said, we are paying down the EUR 400 million bond, and we will only raise about EUR 200 million in terms of debt. We are using EUR 200 million to repay. Most of the countries where we are hedging the debt on a matching basis, we do not have too much exposure.
I think I would add to that the fact is that. Sorry. The fact is that we have tremendous opportunities within these markets here. If you look at what NH has done with their debt. NH has now increased their rating. I think they just got a new improved rating by Moody's in Europe. What was the rating improved to? Our rating improved here in Thailand to a stable rating. So all of the analysts that are looking at it, the credit analysts are seeing us with a very much stronger credit rating now than we had a year ago. Because of the reduction. The fact that we were able to reduce debt while boosting earnings this year, reducing by almost THB 20 billion our liabilities. Most of that bank liabilities. But some of it is lease liabilities, which have always We didn't have much lease liabilities before.
Yes, just to add on Moody's upgraded our NH, MHA rating, from B1 to Ba3 last year in October. For TRIS, for us here, MINT, we have a rating with positive outlook now. So we are going to have a meeting with TRIS this year in upcoming months, and we hopefully will see some positive movement there. Right there. Yeah.
Thank you. Piyanan from The Rohatyn Group. I have a few questions on European operation. You have mentioned a bit about the implication of the Ukraine peace talk to the business. I am also curious to know about other macro uncertainties. For example, the Tariff and the retaliation, if happen, what would be the implication to your business? On the Ukraine rebuilding, can we also expect some cost deflation to the business as well? That is the first question. The second question, could you give some guidance of how should we think about the OpEx trend of Minor Hotels in 2025, mainly staff costs and the lease costs? My last question is about the average daily rate of the hotel in Europe. In the past, a few key drivers to ADR growth is the replacement costs, which have been rising very fast in Europe. Also, lack of supply growth.
Lastly, your hotel upgrade as well. What do you think of those driver? What are they trending in this year? What would be your view? Thank you so much, ka.
Maybe I will take one of the questions and let Dillip help me on a couple. First of all, I think one of the interesting things we have seen is that the growth in the China market has come back so quickly, and this is not only just mass tourism, but we have a lot of high-end Chinese tourists. India has become a huge market for us. People are worried that once Russia and Ukraine we have peace, will that affect the Russian tourism? I think it is going to make it even greater because of what has already happened. You are also going to see improvements and further increases in what is coming from India, just because of the flight movements.
There are so many more flights now, and costs are beginning to come down for the first time. In 2022 and 2023, and even in early 2024, we saw prices of airlines going up.
Now they are coming down and being very competitive. Low-cost airlines are once again becoming very competitive, and they are opening up new markets for not only for Thailand, but for the rest of the world. I think in terms of cost pressures within the hotel or food group, we see it very much under control, where we do not see high inflation in most of our markets. We are not under a lot of pressure. Because we have premium brands, whether it be in soft serve or Burger King or it is in hotels, we have ability to price up. As a result of that, you have not seen our margins under pressure. Our margins have been increasing. Our costs have been stable or dropping. Our ADR, as Dillip has said, has really increased dramatically.
We are very focused on getting higher ADRs because that goes straight to the bottom line. And our costs do not go up because of the raising of prices. Those are my top line. I do not know if Dillip you want to add.
Yeah. Just to add on the macro uncertainties in terms of U.S. tariffs. I know U.S., well, they have been looking at tariffs to be imposed on the imports. But I think when we looked at the supply chain, the good thing is, some of the items which we are buying from the U.S., because when you impose tariffs on the imports into the U.S., the cost of the production goes up because they will then charge it to the customer. In our case, most of the items or all the items we buy from the U.S. is actually the raw materials are produced in the U.S. So there will be no cost implications for us because they are not buying anything from other countries where they will face the tariff increase.
Therefore, we feel that the U.S. tariffs will not have any impact on our supply chain and also on our costs as well. In terms of ADR, Europe last year continued to enjoy a 9% year-on-year growth, and this is coming from a higher growth on the previous year. We continue to see that this year as well, ADR growth. Do not forget, post-COVID, we had a lot of challenges. The cost of gas, the energy went up quite significantly in Europe. The cost of labor went up. The cost of raw materials went up. In spite of all that, if you look at our margins in the last three years, we continue to increase our margins, mainly because of the cost management, the cost efficiencies we have done, and also the ability to increase the ADR to reduce the impact on the cost.
Therefore, in terms of OpEx, like the staff cost and the lease cost, it has already been factored in in our projections and in our numbers. Based on that, we still believe that we can still show a 15%-20% growth on net profit every year.
Now I hope you will all watch The White Lotus tonight. I think you will find that as exciting as I did. Good luck on that one. Let us all hopefully reap the benefits.
We still welcome questions afterwards after this meeting. If you have anything else, please send us questions or we are happy to do a separate call with any one of you afterwards. Contact our IR team. You have comprehensive presentation over here with all the appendix included, with all the detail numbers, backup data that Khun Bill and Dillip mentioned earlier. We have detailed data in the appendix as a backup as well. Thank you very much for your participation, and I hope that we will show you and demonstrate our strong growth profile as well as our commitment that we have been delivering as promised all along. Thank you very much.