Good day and welcome to the review of VGP's financial results over full year 2023. My name is Kevin, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call your lines will be listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and this can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand the call over to Jan Van Geet, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our webcast in which we will give you some more details on our full year 2023 financial results. Before I start, I wanted to say, when it comes to real estate, location is everything. And real estate, you have to remember that real estate development is, in many ways, very equal to the job of my ancestors: you first have to sow before you can harvest, and that is what we did in 2023. I'll first take you to the 2023 highlights. Let me just move on with the presentation. You see a building in Erfurt, which we are now going to transfer into our new JV, joint venture from Deka.
The highlights of 2023: first of all, we had a very strong operational performance, which was supported by a very dynamic leasing activity with a significant share of light industrial segment. While we delivered many buildings in the logistic activity last year, 57% of our new leases are related to light industrial activity, and I will give some more detail later in the call. We report a profit before tax of EUR 112.7 million, which results in a net profit of EUR 87.3 million despite some devaluations in our portfolio, and that's a EUR 3.20 per share profit. We have a nice evolution in our JV joint venture strategy with two new joint venture partners, which we're very happy with. And that resulted in a strong net cash recycling, the activities which we did, over the last year, of EUR 676 million, which is an absolute record.
We never recycled more than last year. We acquired 1.93 million m² of land, of which many iconic land plots, also one in the vicinity of Paris and Frankfurt, which we bought from Stellantis, for a total of EUR 212.4 million. As of today, actually, we now have the money in our account. We sold our stake, our 50% stake in the logistics park Moerdijk for EUR 170 million, where we own 50% of 700,000 m² of development land which was ready to be developed. We are sure that we have a solid balance sheet with over EUR 400 million of underwritten credit facilities available. We have a EUR 150 million new 10-year financing facility, which we just closed with the European Investment Bank.
We expect at least EUR 525 million to be recycled in 2024 out of the joint venture closings, which are all planned at fixed pricing and which should happen this year once the buildings are finished and delivered. We also have a nice recognition for our ESG efforts, which includes a four-star GRESB developer rating, the second highest among peers in the European logistics segment. For myself, I think we are number one because the one who is now in place number one, you have to look for it, is somebody who never actually developed a building. They just bought it from developers. So, yeah, no more comments. I will go on to the summary of the financial results. We report a steady growth of our total portfolio value. We have now EUR 7.2 billion of assets under management.
We continue to have a very strong growth in committed annualized rental income. It grew almost 16% year-on-year to EUR 350.8 million at the year end. We had a very good start this year so far, a flying start, and we signed already many new leases. Our EBITDA increased significantly due to property development gains, and, of course, the income growth, which is ever more important, the rental income growth, the renewable income growth, but also the growth out of our asset management fees, which is obviously growing very quick with the steady growth of our portfolio value and the new joint ventures which we are creating.
Therefore, we have the intention to propose to our general shareholders meeting a distribution of a gross dividend of EUR 3.70 per share, which is including an extraordinary dividend of EUR 0.50 per share, EUR 0.50.
EUR 0.75, yeah.
Of EUR 0.75, which is on the back of the closings which we did last year. We recycled EUR 626 million of cash, out of the closings in the GAVs. I will go first maybe to a small market update, how we experience the market. There is a lot of demand drivers in the market now which are different than the years before. But they are creating a lot of opportunity. We signed last year more than EUR 69 million of new and renewed lease agreements, which is equivalent to more than 900,000 m² of lettable area. And that is mainly thanks to safeguarding strategy against supply chain disruption which we see. We see many people rethink their logistics chains. We have a lot of new manufacturing.
We now see we signed with a very big producer, for example, a new lease agreement just after the year-end, to build a battery factory, a big one. We see many new factories coming on board, also onshoring. There is an upgrade through new built and retrofitted stock, mainly driven by ESG features, people who want to go into more energy-efficient and more new standards of buildings. The e-commerce, which was completely away in this year, we only signed 1% of our new lease agreements equate to e-commerce. We have the feeling that it's going to start to return. We see more and more demands, more and more conversations with them, and we have the feeling that e-commerce expansion will return soon. We expect no later than 2025 to see a pickup again in our rental activity.
When we go to the space under construction across Europe, they're speaking about a market now, we see a very big slowdown in speculative developments, which elevates the build-to-suit over the pre-let share. We have last year, in comparison to the market in 2022 and in the beginning of 2023, I have chosen to stop completely speculative development because of the fierce inflation which we encountered on the market. Meanwhile, now, we see a very sharp decline in construction prices, and we still have very nice rental prices. VGP has decided that it's going to be a little bit more aggressive in the market. The total market is, there is a lot of developments which have happened in this highest price category. When we are now coming with new buildings, we can be very competitive and very aggressive and still have very nice development yields.
Hence, we are at the moment at six months after we started up, which is the measure we measure, how much we have pre-let, and we are at almost 85%. Taking into account what we have signed in the first two months, we are over 85% of pre-let. It's officially 77% at the end of the year. You see the speculative construction declines in the market, and 42% in the market, in the total market in Europe at this moment is vacant, in comparison to us where we are at now, I think, over 85%. The vacancies are growing in most of the countries, but they're still very low. We are below 5% still. The higher vacancy rates put non-prime space at a disadvantage, of course. We are 99% let.
I said it in the beginning: real estate, and especially also industrial real estate, it's all about location, location, and location. It's the name of our magazine. Prime space will always float above all the others, I think. The suitable space remains very limited. I think that the market is still going strong, but I think there will still be an increase in vacancies going further. No harm for us. I feel very comfortable about VGP going forward in all of its markets. On the operational performance side, and I go to the leasing activities, I always run a little bit ahead in my presentation. I already said too much. For the full year 2023, our committed rental income, including the joint ventures at 100%, increased by 16% year-over-year.
So we signed and renewed leases in the amount of EUR 69.5 million in the full year. We have 529 tenant contracts with 370 tenants. That's also a reflection of the fact that many tenants have multiple buildings over multiple jurisdictions with us, so they really like to follow us. We have the committed annualized leases now amount to EUR 351 million, out of which, if we look at a look-through basis, I will go to it in detail later on, EUR 240 million is, is, to us. The occupancy rate of our completed portfolio is 99%, and what is vacant is really in transition. We never have anything which is long-term vacant. And then, my brother likes to make bridges, from how we come from, from one place to another.
So you can see the committed annualized leases in the beginning of the year, we're standing at EUR 303.2 million. We signed EUR 44.4 million of new leases. We indexed EUR 10.3 million, and there were terminations of EUR 7.2 million, which were of course replaced by replacement leases. The committed annualized leases at the end of the year stand at EUR 350.8 million. If we go to the majority of new contracts signed within, they are all, as I already said to you, they are all in most of them are in the light industrial segment, 57%. E-commerce, as you can see, only 1%, and logistics is 40%. I have some examples. In Brașov, we are constructing for Inter Cars. It's a very large, stock exchange quoted company out of Poland. We have Apollo Tyres, Metro, for example.
I'm sure there are some names which you know, Dachser, and of course also Opel, from which we bought their site in Rüsselsheim and which signed with us partly long-term lease and partly a sale and lease back, which allows us in the meantime to get the necessary permits. They do the sale and lease back for three years, which generates a lot of income, and we can in the meantime get our permits ready to redevelop the site. If you look to the portfolio itself, I think it's important to take a look at it. The weighted average lease term stands at 7.9 years, which remains still very high. The risk is also very well spread over the years. In this year, we have already looked at a profile of lease agreements which come to maturity, which should renew.
We have virtually 99% of all of the lease agreements already agreed that they are going to renew. Our top tenant, our top 10 tenants, represent 32% of committed leases, and they have a combined WALT of 10.3 years. As you see, it's a nice spread by industry segments, e-commerce, light industrial, logistics. They are well balanced, and I think the e-commerce will start growing again from next year on. We're really blue-chip tenants, and we're very happy to have them and to be able to work together with them. They have learned us a lot over the years. Another bridge. So, we try to also look at our effective rental income.
Now we are in the first place a development company, but as you know, underneath, it's also an ever-growing REIT, if you want to call it that way, which is structured to various joint ventures and our own assets on our own balance sheet. So we started the year with EUR 238.2 million of activated rental income, meaning we handed over the building and the people are effectively paying rent. We activated new leases during the full year of EUR 66.1 million, meaning we handed over the building and the people started paying rent. It's of course not, it's proportional to when it was handed over. So that takes it up to EUR 304.3 million, out of which EUR 80.8 million sits in our own portfolio and EUR 223.5 million sits in the joint venture.
And then we signed also leases which are still under construction and which will be delivered this year, which are EUR 46.5 million. They are all due to be delivered this year, or the majority, the big majority. So, we at the moment, as soon as they will be delivered, that equates to EUR 350.8 million of rental income, out of which EUR 240 million on a proportional basis, comes to VGP. And so if you look at, our share of 50% in the joint ventures plus what we have on our own balance sheet, that is EUR 240 million on a proportional basis. Growing fast. The net rental and renewable energy income at share has grown also thanks to that, year-on-year, with 45%. And we expect, so to EUR 155 million of net rental and renewable energy income.
We expect continuous growth as a result of the deliveries in 2023 and 2024 going forward. That's what we look at. Our portfolio is virtually let on a long-term basis. So if you look at the joint ventures, they're standing at 7.3 years. Our own portfolio stands at 8.9 years. We signed many lease agreements also in the industrial side with people who invest long-term in our buildings, a lot of money, and they are able to sign long-term leases. That's what compensates also the time going forward. And combined, we are at 7.9 years until the WALT, yeah, and the first until first break, it's 7.5 years. And if you look at the top 10 customers, when we signed KraussMaffei in 2019, they were 22.5% of our total portfolio. Meanwhile, we've grown so fast that KraussMaffei still is the same rent. It's indexed, but all the others also.
It's now only 7.95%. With the business plan which we have in front of us, it will decrease even quicker going down, I think. They are all of them have multiple buildings inside of our group. KraussMaffei is on three sites in eigth buildings. Amazon is five or six buildings. Zalando is three buildings. Ahold Delhaize is on three sites with us. Opel is in many buildings on the site. Dräxlmaier is four different buildings. BMW sits in various buildings in Munich. We have Siemens in. MediaMarkt is the only one, which is one building which we have in Göttingen. All the others are spread across. So even if it is the 10 biggest customers, they still are spread across many buildings. On the delivery side, we delivered last year 24 buildings, 641,000 m² , and they were fully let. Everything was let.
They are all rated BREEAM Very Good. Actually, the biggest part of it is BREEAM Excellent, meanwhile. We also have one platinum building now, which in Germany, which for which we are the first developer which has a platinum building and still own it. The other two are industrial companies which are from the three which there are, which did it for themselves. You can see Germany is the biggest part of deliveries in 2023. But being a very good European, I'm a very big believer in the European market, and we it's spread all over the geographic geographies which we are active in. You will also see it in our land bank. It's very well spread.
The pictures which you see, the right, the one in the middle, it's our VGP Park Gießen am Alten Flughafen, where in the front you see the building of Rhenus and UPS, and in the back you see the huge building of Zalando, in which they invested a lot of money in intralogistics, and they will they are gradually taking into operation now. On the left, you see the main headquarters of both DPD and DHL in Portugal, in Loures, right next to the airport of Lisbon, which is a very nice development which we did last year and delivered successfully. The largest share of new developments delivered, as I already told before, was in logistics. I have some examples. You can see the tenant segmentation.
The buildings on the bottom you see, it's the first year where Eastern European countries have done better in leasing activity than the Western European countries, 2023, also thanks to a lot of shift to industrial activity, of course. But you see our park, our big park in Brașov, where we're currently constructing for Inter Cars. And you see our park in Bratislava, which is really right behind. It's a top location, right next to the highway, where we are now building for Apollo Tyres, a very big car tire manufacturer. Our portfolio at share has grown originally at an annual compounded growth rate of 26.2%, and we aim to continue that trend. We want to really have big growth plans.
So yeah, that's. I don't think there is any. So now it is EUR 4.8 million of EUR 4.8 billion of total investment property, which is accumulated aggregated growth over the last eight years of 26.2%. Geographically well diversified and predominantly income generating. That's maybe important to say. So, out of the EUR 7.2 billion which we have in the investment portfolio in total, it's which is up 12% year-on-year. 53% equates to Germany. And Western Europe represents 75% of the total portfolio in value as of December 2023. The completed assets is form EUR 5.5 billion out of that. Under construction is EUR 711 million at the end of the year. And we had development land of EUR 759 million, which was 13%.
But as you know, I already said it, we sold our 50% stake in LPM Moerdijk for EUR 172 million, which actually is a nice profit, but you have to deduct it from the development land at our balance sheet. On the development side, just going to list through my on the development side, the current portfolio under construction represents EUR 52 million of new leases once fully let. So at the year-end, 26 buildings were under construction. We're going to start up quite a lot of buildings this year. Many of them are pre-let, but we're not afraid to start a little bit more also speculatively because of the very good construction prices which we have. The portfolio under construction was 77.3% let at the year-end.
And when you look at longer than six months, because when we start up speculatively, it takes a while before you have the construction standing, etc., then it's 84.3% at year-end. Western Europe represents 55.2% inside of that. We're very confident on our development pipeline going forward. We have really top locations, and we have a lot of demand. We register a lot of demand in the market. So yeah, we will see. And as I said, I'm a good European. Our, it's very well spread over our geographical footprint, and we see a lot of activity also in countries like Spain, Romania, in Slovakia, we have new demands. Italy is now going to sign, or today, a very big lease, 50,000 m² , I hope.
And then Luxembourg, Austria, Wien—it's right next to Vienna, which you see on the right side, which is already virtually it's 66% pre-let, and we are negotiating with the rest. It's really very well spread all over our overall countries. If you look at the land bank, so the land bank expanded quite significantly, and I think that last year we've really invested. In 2022, I couldn't make any number work. There were so many people buying out land for crazy prices. In 2023, we were suddenly the only ones left on the market, or one of the very few. Some of my colleagues have also done some deals. But we bought really very nice new land plots. We acquired 1.9 million m² , which is we, and after the year-end, we still acquired some new land plots also.
I will go a little bit through the details afterwards. And if we again look at the bridge, which Piet made, then we see that at the beginning of the year, we had 8 million of land owned. We deployed 1.3 million m² . We acquired 1.9 million m² , of which a big chunk is income generating. It's brownfield, income generating, so it autofinances itself partly. And then we have committed land for which we wait until we get the permits of 795,000 m² , and we, we sold 720,000 m² . Many of you will ask me, "Why did you sell LPM?" Well, I want to tell it once more. We bought last year 1.9 m² for EUR 212 million, and I just sold 50% in a 70 ha, so 720,000 m² stake for EUR 171.4 million. So I think mathematically, it's already explained with this.
We just think there is more opportunity going forward in other things, which we still believe very much in the Dutch market, but this was just for us the opportunity to recycle it and go into things which we think are quicker to develop and have a higher margin. So we always look very pragmatic at our portfolio going forward. There is almost 4 million m² of development potential embedded in the total land bank, and we are on the lookout for new opportunities in the market. The land bank is also geographically very well diversified across countries. France is starting to become an important player now. It's already 7%. That was at the year-end because we bought Mulhouse at the year-end, which is another 20 ha in France.
You can see and also Denmark, where we did our first land acquisitions, is now present. It sits in the others here. But we're going to sign our first pre-let very soon. Now we are in final negotiations with a good customer. So, we think that on our land bank, we think it's really prime located, and we think we can offer really attractive propositions to our customers. I have some examples. Our VGP Park in Vejle. This is Denmark, where we last year bought the big buildings which you can see, the three in the middle and the two on the right side. And this year we bought the small part in the front where now there are designed office buildings on it, but obviously we are not an office building developer. There was the former idea.
We are now going to also develop it as light industrial and last-mile activity inside of Vejle. We have Leipzig am Flughafen, which is a very big development, 40 ha of land for 50 ha of land on surface, for which we did the B plan, and then we bought it last year. We are going to start developing it now. It lies right adjacent to the airport, so that's why it says Flughafen. It's really a top location, and we have quite some interest for it. We already developed one building there. We bought, of course, the Rüsselsheim part of the Opel facility, which is there since 1860. Opel is, again, a company which is doing very well. We are redeveloping.
We are taking a look at it, and it's a big part of this total site which you see, which has excellent connection to the highway. And it's literally 10 min. away. You can actually see underneath of the VGP logo, you can see the airport of Frankfurt. So it's really the connection is fantastic. The labor force availability is fantastic. We have our own access by train. There is a train station in the middle of the land plot, so employees, but also goods are easily to get there. And we have our own harbor on the Main River, which can also be used. It's trimodal. It's fantastic located. We have a lot of energy. So also for data center development, it's a fantastic location. We're really looking forward to develop this, quickly and efficiently in the next years to come.
We also bought in Vélizy, which is, it's 14 km away from the Eiffel Tower. I don't think you can get a lot closer to the real center of Paris. It's right next to the military airport in Vélizy. We have a lot of interest already. We are starting the demolition now. You can see our plan on the top, in which there is you can't see it like this, but there is a couple of buildings in two levels which we are going to construct now also. You see it's very close to Airport Paris Orly, but it's also, as I said, only 14 km away from the city center of Paris, so it's ideal for a business park. And for the parking lot, which is now a huge parking lot on which we can't construct also, that's the green area.
We can rent that very easily out now for charging facilities because it's so well connected, and I'm sure our VGP Renewable Energy will do something with it going forward. On the renewable side, I come to the end of my story for a while. I'm going to hand over to Martijn, who is going to talk you through our renewable ESG achievements. Here. Martijn?
Yes. So first, on the renewables, we have generated over the last year EUR 4.4 million of gross revenues, which is compared to last year down. But what you have to take into account is that the energy price has come down significantly.
The energy price at which we've sold our energy last year is in line with broader markets at around EUR 94 per MWh, while in 2022, which was an anomaly in that respect, due to the geopolitical events in Ukraine at EUR 230, actually what has allowed us to stay at 4.4 is the fact that we've increased our overall production from 26 GWh in 2022 to 44 GWh in 2023. And if you look at where we are today in terms of our overall startup of operational solar capacity, we're already at 1.1 GW, and there's more being delivered. If you look at the December 2023 production, we would already be able to achieve an 85 GWh production over the course of 2024. So you see that the growth rate that we've had over the last two years, we are we are currently still maintaining.
There’s 69 MWp under construction. Now we say here that during the first , four months, you know, approximately half of that is expected to go into the grid. The connection to grid is always, you know, subject to the cooperation of the grid managers. And hence that's, yeah, that's something where our fate is a little bit in the hand of those grid operators. But this proportion is coming up really quickly. And then further on, there's another 100 MW p that we're currently designing, and that's under review. So, with that, you see that the photovoltaic production is coming up very strongly. I'll come back later on the fact that we are actually producing more renewable energy than our electricity consumption of our tenants, combined, which is in the ESG update. But first, back to Jan on the joint ventures.
Yes.
On the joint ventures, there is a lot of news to bring to you. So we have a year of transactions, which led to EUR 676 million of net cash recycled. You have to understand, we are not a REIT. We are always transferring assets from our balance sheet into the joint ventures, which has an influence on a lot of metrics. But this year, the net cash proceeds were EUR 676 million. And as you can see, over all the years where we did it, that's an absolute record. And it allows us to be a little bit less dependent on the very volatile at the moment capital markets because we can still autofinance ourselves through these transactions. And also for this year, we are expecting more than EUR 800 million of cash, which we will partly finance and recycle.
So it's, if you look at the year-end, we recycled over EUR 1 billion of net cash since 2022, since the start of 2022. So for us, this model really works very well, and we want to stick to it and continue to expand it. We also added some new joint venture partners, and I welcome them very much, which enhance the solidity of the cash recycling model. They're not the smallest names. We really are very proud to be able to announce, or we were very proud when we announced it already in the past, our partnership with Deka. Together with them, we have now five strategically located parks in Germany. That's Gießen, the Zalando, which you saw before, Laatzen, where we have the Platinum building, which we developed, and together with two other buildings.
That's Göttingen Zwei, where we have two buildings, which is the very big one for MediaMarkt. That's one of them. Then we have Magdeburg, which is a combination of a lot of buildings, where among others, it's actually you see it on the left side of the picture. That's Magdeburg, where we have many big operations, among others, CATL, the battery producer. We also have the Bundeswehr there, and many other tenants. And then we have Berlin Oberkrämer, where also Amazon is one of the tenants and Rieck Logistics is one of the tenants. It's a total portfolio of 20 buildings. We already did the first closing on the August 31st, and there are two more closings to come this year.
One will be soon, now in the beginning of the second quarter, and one will be after we deliver the last building in Magdeburg. And that's foreseen for the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of this year. And they are at prefixed prices. We agreed on the price, for the full joint venture portfolio. That's on Deka. And then, we also have a new partnership with Areim. And Areim is a new one, which we just signed before New Year. We are currently working on our first closing, and the target assets are earmarked in Germany, Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, and Hungary. So it's a little bit a follow-up of what we had with Allianz in our first joint venture or what we have with Allianz in our first joint venture. But it's enlarged with France.
This joint venture targets initially a EUR 1.5 billion gross asset value with an LTV of 35%. It's got a complete similar structure to the Allianz JVs and also, in fact, to the Deka JV. The seed portfolio transaction is set to transition in the first half. We think, April is, it is due. And it comprised of developed properties in Germany, Czech Republic, and Slovakia in the first seed closing, for which the price is also agreed. The total gross add value, asset value will be over EUR 400 million, and it should result in gross cash proceeds of around EUR 275, more than EUR 275 million . And both partners have expressed a lot of, appetite to do more. So this is an ongoing process, and we're very happy to work together with them so far. We switch all the time.
So I give back the word to Martijn b ut before I do so, I want to explain something on the picture. VGP is not only just about developing buildings and business. It's also very much about creating value for the future generations. We not only have our foundation, through which we have invested a lot of money over the past years in social projects, in nature preservation projects, and also in historical things which are linked to our history, European history. But we also do inside of VGP a lot of biodiversity activity itself around our projects.
The picture you are seeing is part of a 24 ha biotope, which we created in Munich, next to our park, which you can visit if you want to, if you go to the real estate event in October, where you can walk through and which is completely documented with what life you can find there, both fauna and flora. We're very proud of it. So that's one of the pictures. And I'll give you, after this small intermezzo, back to Martijn.
Last time when we discussed the ESG update, there was an introduction of the new strategy that we introduced as part of the annual report 2022. This time, there's just a number of key updates that we will also expand on in the publication of our 2023 annual report. Here are just some of the highlights.
I think one of the key points is, also building on what Jan said earlier around the joint ventures, is that in addition to the cash recycling benefit from the joint ventures, I think one thing that is underappreciated of this model is that we're also continuously required to be up to date on the latest requirements in respect of what ESG standards our buildings need to comply with. That goes way above and beyond, just simply photovoltaic. It's, you know, the fact that we've switched to our air heat pumps. It's the fact that we are completely managing our CRREM, not just on the portfolio level, but also on the asset level, that we have a pathway for our portfolio and individual buildings to get to CRREM compliance.
You know, these are an integral part of the ESG due diligence that is being done as part of the acquisitions and as part of the asset management that we do together with our joint venture partners. And it, yeah, it helps us to continuously flex the muscles and make sure that we are up to date with the latest. And, yeah, Jan mentioned earlier the fact that we are a truly European company. And with that, we also want to be early adopters of the EU Taxonomy. We have the first, four buildings that have been approved for compliance, which is around 4% of our gross asset value. There's another 15 that are currently being reviewed. If you look at the green bonds allocation, you see in the bottom of the middle of the page, in total, we have EUR 1.6 billion of green bonds outstanding.
We have invested now over EUR 100 million in photovoltaic projects. In addition, there's around EUR 50 million that has been invested in other efficiency measures in our buildings. Combined with buildings that are BREEAM Excellent, DGNB, and DGNB Gold, or better, we're able to fully allocate our bonds. So we don't actually need the BREEAM Very Good buildings that we have also, which is the typical market standard in the industry is to use BREEAM Very Good as the minimum. But we've actually this year been able to up the ante, if you will, to BREEAM Excellent. Then on the social aspect within the group, we've launched last year the VGP Academy. That's above and beyond just ESG. It's also to help with, you know, broader education around technical standards, around, you know, commercial aspects.
We have our next training, actually, within the group, tomorrow. So, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of various initiatives. For a broad review, I would refer to the, to the annual report, which we'll, which we will publish, in, in May. For now, yeah, if there's further questions, we'll, we'll come back on that later. But I'd like to hand it over to Pete for the financial performance.
Thank you, Martijn. As always, I've prepared a set of slides that will walk you through our P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and our an overview of our debts. No financial breaches in my presentation, as they have all been included already in the one from Jan.
But if I start maybe with the P&L, I'm of course, as already reported, very happy to share that we have a EUR 87.3 million net profit, which is EUR 210 million higher than what we had last year. Of course, as you will have heard in the first part of the presentation, a lot has transpired in 2023, which obviously has an effect on our P&L on many lines. So I'm going to walk you through, going from the top to bottom, and share some additional information, across these numbers. But let me start with the net rental and renewable energy income, that increased from EUR 43 million to EUR 63.5 million. And obviously, exists out of the two components are gross rental income, which went up 43%, and our renewable energy income, which Martijn already explained to Variance in.
I think what I can maybe share a bit on the rental income is we have a total EUR 350.8 million contracted, annualized rental income. From that, EUR 125 million is fully owned, 100%, by VGP. From that EUR 125 million, EUR 80.8 million is active, meaning the space has been handed over to the tenant and it's cash generative. Another EUR 40 million, a good EUR 40 million, is due to become active in the next years, of which the majority is, in fact, in the next 12 months. As we have now EUR 64.6 million that compares to the EUR 80.8 million I've just mentioned. So you see that we are still catching up on our on our rental income, on our annualized rental income, because we also obviously have deliveries throughout the year. But it will continuously increase in the next year with the new deliveries.
But, of course, we will also offload a significant amount of rental income to the joint ventures on the closings on which we have already agreed upon. And that will be over EUR 40 million of rental income. So I think on the own portfolio, we expect somewhat above around EUR 40 million of this income to be activated. But we will also offload, obviously, to the joint venture in the next 12 months. I think on the renewable energy income, the second component, in this net rental and renewable energy income, Martijn already explained, that our revenue was EUR 5.9 million in the last year.
And it's now EUR 4.4 million as a result of higher production on the one hand, let's say a volume effect, but a price effect due to a lower energy price of EUR 94 per megawatt-peak versus EUR 230 million in the year before. If I go one line further down in our P&L, we come to the joint venture management fee income. As Jan has said before, this is a recurring income which is continuously increasing because it contains two elements. One is a recurring asset management fee. As we do all of the work for the joint ventures in managing the assets, the property management, the facility management, we charge a fee for this. As the joint ventures have grown, this fee has grown. It has grown from EUR 18 million with EUR 4.5 million to EUR 22.5 million.
The second part of the joint venture management fee income is that we also obtain a fee to execute certain development works inside of the joint ventures on request of tenants who want a nicer office or whatsoever, or an additional office space or whatever. That has increased with EUR 900,000 to EUR 4.4 million. Again, we expect this to increase further because you will have the annualized effect of all of the transitions we have done in 2023, in 2024. Plus, we will do new offloadings or closings with the joint ventures in 2024, which will also increase our asset management fee again. The next line is the net valuation gains on our investment properties. As you see, this is a substantial reversal of what we've had in 2022, where we had a loss of EUR 97 million.
And now we have a gain of EUR 87.9 million. This is also, again, composed out of numerous elements. One is we have an unrealized gain of EUR 29 million, and we have a realized gain of EUR 59 million. The unrealized gain of EUR 29 million, in fact, is composed of a negative revaluation of our own portfolio on a like-for-like basis end of 2022 to end of 2023, but is overcompensated by our development margin. As such, we come to a net unrealized gain of EUR 29 million. I think what is particularly important to mention is the realized gain of EUR 59 million. We have done, in fact, three effective transactions during the year. We have agreed, with Areim on a new closing for 2024. One of those three, with Deka, had a closing in 2023, with also, other closings in 2024.
In all of those, the pricing has been agreed in 2023. In all of those, we have been able to, dispose our assets, or we will dispose our assets, at the premium versus the fair value in our books at the end of 2022. T hat means and has resulted in a realized gain of EUR 59 million . And it counts for all transactions individually, that we have done over the year. The weighted average yield of our own portfolio now, including those assets that are destined to go to the joint ventures, Deka and Areim, in 2024, is valued at an average yield of 6.22%, which is up of 5.29%, of course. There are also mixed effects playing here, as we also have a bit more Eastern European assets on our own balance sheet. I come to the next slide.
And I've split it here in two. I've taken a part of the P&L on the top right. And I've made some detail on the line of the share of net profits of the joint ventures on the bottom right. But let me start first with the administration expenses, which went up from EUR 34 million to EUR 48.9 million. Again, there are some peculiar effects playing here. As you are aware, we have a long-term incentive plan for our employees in VGP, which had a reversal in 2022, because it is linked to the net asset value growth of VGP. And it had a reversal of EUR 4 million in 2022. But it had an expense, as we also had a net asset value growth in 2023, of EUR 5.5 million.
So that makes a delta of EUR 9.5 million of the total EUR 14.9 increase in the administration expenses. Other effects that are playing here is we had more depreciation. So we have our renewable energy assets, they are at cost on our balance sheet and are depreciated. So that's a EUR 1.5 million. I think other effects are some increases in general expenses, as well as a less activation of development fees in comparison to previous year, EUR 5.5 million. We also have EUR 17.5 million less FTEs than what we had in last year. So we ended the year with a total FTE of EUR 368 million. That brings me to the next point.
For that, I've tried to make a small detail to give some more context on this one line in our P&L, which is the share of net profit from joint ventures and associates, which was a loss of EUR 45.9 million in 2022 and is now a EUR 10.7 million loss. So it improved with EUR 35.2 million. But you can see on the bottom the proportional P&L income of all of our joint ventures, meaning this is the P&L of the joint ventures at share. Yeah, and what you can see is that the joint ventures, in fact, have a very good operational result. Before revaluation in 2022, it was EUR 62.8 million. And it's now EUR 89.7 million. So it increased with 43%. The total weighted average yield of our JV portfolios is now 5% versus 4.68%.
And, as you will see, the net valuation gains indeed contain a loss for this year. It's lower than what it was last year. I think the main effects that we have seen in the like-for-like revaluation, and on that I mean assets which were already in the joint ventures at the end of 2022 and which are still in the joint ventures at the end of 2023, we have seen a like-for-like revaluation of -3%. And I think mainly the countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria were here most outspoken. That brings me to the next line in our P&L: the other expenses, they are zero, whereas there was EUR 3 million expense last year. That was a donation to the UNHCR, which we did to support the refugee crisis as a result of the Ukrainian conflict.
And then we come to our net financial result, which improved from EUR 27 million to EUR 6 million expense, so EUR 21 million improvement. This is very easily explained. We repaid EUR 375 million euros of bonds in 2023. So we had less interest expense. On the other hand, we had, throughout the year, cash on account on which we receive an interest. That amounted to EUR 6 million. And we received more interest income from JVs, because we have more assets in JVs, higher shareholder loans towards JVs. And that created also an additional financial income. So that brings, actually, bottom line, our result to EUR 87.3 million after taxes.
And it's maybe also noteworthy to mention that the holding company of VGP, so the VGP NV, the Belgian legal entity, had a net profit of EUR 274.8 million and now has an equity, even taking into account the dividend of EUR 101 million, euros, as explained before, an equity of EUR 1.5 billion. I think that's it for the P&L. I'm happy to share now also some insights on the balance sheet. So our balance sheet total is now EUR 4.4 billion. What you obviously can see is the big movements are on the investment properties. We went from EUR 2.4 billion to EUR 1.5 billion. It's not that we did not do any CapEx or growth.
But, of course, we offloaded quite some assets, already into joint ventures or moved them to the disposal group held for sale, which you can see increased from EUR 300 million to EUR 892.6 million. Our total completed portfolio, including what is booked under the, held for sale, amounts to EUR 1.1 billion. Under construction is EUR 0.5 billion, EUR 544 million, and development land EUR 687 million. We had a total CapEx, including our held for sale, of EUR 715 million euros. This is the growth of the acquisition value. The assets that are recognized as held for sale have been valued here on our balance sheet on the agreed transfer price between us and the joint ventures, in fact, the Deka joint venture and Areim joint venture. The next line, I think, is the property plant and equipment that went up.
T hat's mainly as a result of our investments in the renewable energy of EUR 32.9 million. It includes now EUR 64.3 million of completed installations in the renewable energy and another EUR 31.3 million of assets under construction. That's the main movement here. Investments in joint ventures and associates went significantly up, from EUR 891 million to EUR 1.037 million. That is because we did quite some transactions with joint ventures. So we have the increase as a result of our equity stake in those joint ventures, which amounts to EUR 165 million . But we also had equity repayments from the first joint venture, Rheingold, and our development joint venture of Grecon, owing total of EUR 6.00 million and EUR 3.5 million.
And then the last remaining difference is, of course, the share in the result of the joint ventures of EUR 10.2 million, as I explained on the—or EUR 10.7 million, as I explained on the previous slide. As a consequence, also, our other non-current receivables went significantly up, from EUR 360 million to EUR 566 million. That is, in first place, because we have now the Deka joint venture in place, where we have now shareholder loans towards the Deka joint venture of EUR 172.5 million. The LPM joint venture, which has a total receivable of EUR 134 million at year-end, has been sold in the meantime, in February, as explained before. But there, we invested in 2023 still EUR 62 million. So that was also quite a big growth of this receivable.
And then, I think, all the other joint ventures, the Rheingold, Aurora, and Ymer, they had a net increase of EUR 28 million, which is a mix of the transactions that we did with the first and second joint venture with Rheingold and Aurora in the first half of the year, and repayments that we received as deductions of share of shareholder loans towards the joint ventures, basically profit distributions. I will come back on that also in the cash flow statement. I think, on trade and other receivables, we've seen a bit of a decline. But that is mainly related to VAT claims or disposals to the joint ventures, where these receivables move to the joint ventures.
We end the year with a cash position of EUR 210 million, euros, which can be noted that we did not tap any of our revolving credit facilities of EUR 400 million, and which we always have immediately available. That's it for the assets. If we have a look on the shareholders' equity and liability side of the balance sheet: on the equity side, it's. We did not do any equity raise. We also did not raise any new debt. We concluded a new credit facility, but we did not raise any new debt. That means the shareholders' equity is more or less stable, as we paid out a dividend of EUR 75 million and we have a net profit of EUR 87.3 million. In terms of the non-current and current financial debt: we repaid EUR 375 million of bonds.
These were booked on current financial debt at the end of 2022. On the other hand, we moved from non-current financial debt to current financial debt, now the EUR 75 million bond, which we need to repay in July. By repayment of the EUR 375 million of the bonds, our average cost of debt also lowered to 2.1%, as the higher interest bonds we are now first repaying and the lower interest bonds are more on the long term. We concluded a new credit facility with the European Investment Bank to refinance our and finance our renewable energy activities, EUR 150 million. We have drawn this facility for EUR 135 million in February. That is at a fixed interest rate of 4.15% over a 10-year period.
So that leads up to the fact that now our consolidated gearing from the balance sheet is 40.3% and that we have a pro forma proportionality here of 47.3%, taking into account, of course, the offloadings that we will do with our JV Deka and also the new credit facility of the EIB and the divestment of LPM. I'll come back on it on the next slide. So, the average cost of debt: I think I mainly said this. You can see that we went from over to, I think, 2.44% at the end of last year, now at 2.1%. We have EUR 400 million unutilized credit facility, a new one of EUR 150 million drawn for EUR 135 million, and only one bond of EUR 75 million coming to maturity in 2024.
Cash flow-wise: that's always interesting to see or summarize the year. We started the year with almost EUR 700 million of cash. Net cash generated from operating activities is EUR 27.3 million negative. It's actually very easy to reconcile this amount. You start with the net renewable energy income of EUR 63.5 million, the joint venture income of EUR 27 million, the admin expenses, excluding the depreciation part of it, is EUR 41 million. And then your change in working capital and your interest expense is together EUR 75 million. That brings you down to EUR 27.3 million. So you can easily derive this from the balance sheet and the P&L. We had a net cash used in investing activities of EUR 8.1 million. It's not that we didn't spend any CapEx. The effective CapEx spent, so meaning really paid, was EUR 667 million euros.
But it was overcompensated with the proceeds that we had from our disposals to the joint ventures, and which were three transactions: Rheingold 10, Aurora 4, and the Deka 1 in August. That amounted to EUR 676.2 million which is a record ever, in comparison to our whole track record with the joint ventures. Finally, we have also given loans to joint ventures of about EUR 99 million. I already touched upon that, among others. This is the LPM, EUR 62 million that we loaned there. I think there was also EUR 12 million that went to our park in Munich, and the rest went to other joint ventures to facilitate ongoing construction works that were ongoing there. And then distributions by the joint ventures were EUR 82 million, up from EUR 60 million in last year.
These include: that's a mixture of equity repayments, shareholder repayments, interest income that we have. But we all consider this as a sort of profit distribution that comes out of the joint ventures. It includes a repayment to shareholders in VGP Park München of EUR 43 million so EUR 43 million to both shareholders, to Allianz and us, as we refinanced that entity in 2023, or we drew down in a credit facility in 2023 of EUR 85 million, and we paid it out to the shareholders, or we refinanced the shareholder loans. I think, in the net cash used in financing activities, that's very easy to summarize: we paid a dividend of EUR 75 million and we repaid bonds of EUR 375 million.
That leads up to a cash flow of the period of EUR 485 million as spent, and that lowers our cash to EUR 210 million at year-end. This shows, once more, the maturity profile of our debts outstanding at the end of 2023, where you see we have bonds in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Then we have a dual-trench bond, which we issued in January 2022 at 1.6% and 2.2%, which was a dual-trench on five and eight years. And, therefore, it's in 2027 and 2030 that we repaid. And then our first green bond that we issued, the EUR 600 million, comes to maturity, and is at 1.5%, comes to maturity at 2029. In terms of our covenants, I would say we are all, very safe. So the gearing ratio is 40.9%, according to the full calculation of the bond documentation.
Interest cover ratio is 13.4%. Also, debt service cover ratio is above the 1.2%. If you ask why it's a bit lower than last year, that is because we repay fully the bonds of EUR 375 million, but it's still well above its covenant. If you ask me what would be the LTV, so I think you need to always make the distinction that the balance sheet of VGP, in essence, also contains large development activities inside, growth activities, disposals to JVs. Whereas, in the JVs, we have stabilized assets with a certain LTV. If you look at those, joint ventures alone, there we have an LTV on an average basis of 34.4%. Whereas, the JV 1 and JV 2 have debts that are amortizing and had an initial higher LTV target, than what we, for instance, conclude with Deka, which is now at 22.8%.
But there, the debt is not yet fully drawn, because we still need to do some transactions in 2024. But it targets an LTV of 30%. And it's not amortizing, but it's a bullet. So, for the entire group, we consider, or the pro forma proportional, so meaning VGP as 100% and the joint ventures add their share, altogether we have a pro forma LTV of 47.3%, as I already explained before. I think this was my last slide. So, I will give back the word to Jan to summarize everything.
Thank you, Piet. So, the summary, before we go to the questions: we are always. VGP lives from it stands on many legs. One is the rental income, which is growing every year exponentially. One is the asset management fees, which are growing exponentially. You expect more than EUR 30 million this year. But our main driver is, of course, our development going forward. And for that, you need a prime land bank.
We have a prime land bank, and we acquired really very nice—we did very nice acquisitions, as we believe—which formed the foundation of very nice profits going forward, because it's always about you buying it more than how you sell it. We expect to activate another EUR 41.3 million of annualized rental income, at least. That's what we know already today, which supports further substantial growth in the net rental income. We ensured a lot of continuous cash recycling with the new joint ventures going forward, a minimum of EUR 525 million of gross cash proceeds. That's the ones which are already agreed today, which we are going to do. That's based on commitments, on firm commitments, from our new joint venture partners in the fifth and sixth joint venture, for which we also have now the financing part in place.
We will repay one bond of EUR 75 million that comes to maturity in 2024. We have more than enough available cash. We agreed a EUR 170 million divestment of our LPM joint venture in February 2024. I explained the rationale behind it before. It generated one-off gain and a significant amount of cash. It was not included in the year-end numbers, because we didn't know at the year-end whether this transaction—that the transaction would take place. It's gone very fast. You will see it in the 36 numbers. It was not included in the year-end closing. The minimum expected gross cash proceeds, excluding recurrent income for 2024, stand, therefore, at EUR 830 million. That covers all of our planned CapExes and our dividends and our repayment of the bond without a problem. We should have around EUR 400 million cash at the year-end.
That's including the EUR 135 million drawdown of the new credit facility of the European Investment Bank. As I said, this covers all of our outstanding commitments in our property and renewable energy developments, in the land acquisition which we plan, in debt repayments, and in the dividend for 2024. All in all, we are very confident. We've put solid foundations in place. We have a good model, we think. We have good partners, which we are very happy for. Our team is extremely motivated. They handed in a KPI plan for this year, which may cause a little bit dizzy, but it's okay. I'm speaking to them because there are many of them also on the, thank you for your trust in our company. We're going to make, together, 2024 again a good year, I'm sure of it. I guess it's time for questions and a nswers. Martijn?
Yes. For the analysts on the landline: as you raise your hand to ask questions, please just be reminded that we would like to limit it to one question per analyst, to give you all a chance to ask a question, and also in the interest of time. But handing it over to the operator to manage.
Thank you. And, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. And, again, we ask that you limit yourselves to one question before rejoining the queue to allow all participants the opportunity to ask a question. And the first question today comes from Frédéric Renard of Kepler Cheuvreux.
Hi, good morning. So, yeah, I had a few questions, but I will limit myself to one then. You mentioned a flying start in the start of the year.
Can you give more color on that? How much do you think you can start construction this year?
Hello, Frédéric. Yeah, I will answer the question. So, we are due to sign a very large lease agreement today. It's not signed yet, but we are all very under big tension to see it happen. But already, two of the three people signed, so there's a third one. That would bring the CARA this year already to almost EUR 16 million already now. And we have many leads in the portfolio. So, it's really had a very good flying start. We are only in the second month. We are planning (the target is a wee bit more ambitious than what I'm going to say) but we are confident that we will start up at least 600,000 m² .
We hope we will do quite a bit more this year in new developments. We want to keep our pre-let ratio in a reasonable amount, and we will monitor very much the market where it goes to. From what we get back as feedback and from all the discussions we are together in, we think that we really have some very big lease agreements in which we are very far, which are new leases which we need to start up. So, we believe that we're going to have, operationally-wise, in the development part, we stand in front of a very dynamic year. Thank you.
The next question comes from Inna Maslova of Degroof Petercam.
Hi, good morning. Thank you very much for the presentation. Just a question regarding the joint venture: how do you see the future evolution of the joint venture development? I appreciate the fact that you mentioned that both Areim and Metro are very keen partners to continue extending the existing joint ventures. But I'm more interested in your strategy on whether you would be looking at potentially adding new joint venture parties. And also, in relation to the VGP Park in Rüsselsheim, if you would prefer to consider existing joint venture partners or potentially looking for somebody outside of that. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are very loyal people. So, in the first place, we would like to work with the people we already know. It makes it easier, also. We plan to hire another 40 new people inside of our organization this year. And that's also a lot because of all the transactions which we are planning to do, and for which we need extra manpower. It's always easier if you do that with people who you already know and you know what to expect from, hence, going forward. They have both expressed a very big interest in doing more together with VGP. I can say that confidentially. I'm sure they are looking at this also, but we have had discussions with both of them, which were going in the future, expressing a lot of interest to do more together with us.
This being said, we are thinking of many variants on the sort. We won't change our business model. We think it works very well, so it's our preferred route. We have shown, I think, in the past that we can be very flexible in adapting ourselves to market conditions if they would change. But, as far as the market conditions don't change, from what we know today, I think we, and I speak now for myself, but I think we feel comfortable to continue with our three joint venture partners, because Allianz is also still doing, we are planning a new building in Munich in our thing, we are planning a new closing in the Aurora. So, we're still active also there. So, with our three new venture partners, we feel confident that we can continue going on, and we will adapt if necessary. Thank you for the question.
The next question comes from Pieter Runneboom of Van Lanschot Kempen.
Hi, team. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Thinking about the German industrial production, which, again, posts negative numbers, is this something that worries you, or that's visible in your leasing numbers?
That's a good question. I think, in Europe, we really need to think about what we are going to do and whether industry is still welcome, yes or no. That's a good thing to think about. But, for us, we think it's an opportunity. If we look at today's market, we see there are some iconic land plots which come available. And we need to be aware that green land is the longer the lesser. And I am a very big believer in our European capacity of coming back. So, we see, in the first place, the opportunities it creates by people who really have to think about their footprint and the effectivity of their operations, and whether they can keep on operating as they did until today. I mean, my colleague bought Vallourec in the Ruhrgebiet. If you looked at that plant, it's so old. It's incredible.
So, it's, I think, a necessity that it gets rejuvenated and that there is new activity coming inside. And the same goes partly for the Opel site in Rüsselsheim, where we are effectively also speaking to Opel to do something new for them, something really completely passive buildings and things which are good for the future. So, they are not only just divesting and streamlining their operations, they're also working on their future and to make it better, to make it more effective. And that's exactly the reflection we need. So, we see, of course, it's a concern, but we see, for the time being, more opportunities than worries coming out of this for us.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Marios Pastou of Société Générale.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question.
I appreciate you've mentioned quite a few times now that you've pre-agreed the pricing on the remaining property set to transfer into the Deka JV this year, plus with appetite to do more within that JV, maybe with some future agreements. Just thinking, given Deka's fund outflows in the fourth quarter of last year, do they remain fully committed to the remaining transactions under the initial JV agreement to come this year? And are you foreseeing any potential risk there that these might fall away? Thank you. I'm 100% convinced that we will close these things. We speak to each other every day. These are contractual commitments. Also, the price is a contractual commitment.
I don't see why, how they would get out, and notwithstanding the fact that the cooperation goes extremely well. So, no, there is no single hair on my head that doubts that there is a problem coming on that. Thank you.
The next question comes from Pierre-Emmanuel Clouard of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Pierre-Emmanuel, perhaps your line is muted. We'll move on to Gerardo Ibañez Herrero of ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. My question is more related on development margins. So, maybe could you perhaps provide some color on development margins going forward? And maybe if you can give us your expectations for the blended yield on cost development to be delivered in 2024. And, in this line, do you expect an uplift on development margins as you start delivering more assets with less concentration in Germany? Thank you for your question.
First of all, I'm a very strong believer in Germany still, so I don't think it would make any difference in our margin where we develop it. We always go very pragmatic from site to site, and we take into account the difference between yields, what the market says it's worth, and what our initial cost inputs and rental prices are. So, we try to have a very homogeneous margin through all the countries where we are working in. That's the first thing. Secondly, the construction price is coming down tremendously. We are everywhere where we are active today, with very few exceptions. We are constructing all of our buildings ourselves, so we have a good control over what we are doing and how we are developing it. We have a very big focus on it.
We are also trying to go more and more into new materials, wooden constructions, etc.. And we see that we can make a nice return on our investments again, which was impossible in 2022. If you would just go and build speculatively, you would have to count with very high rental prices, which I have always said, in my opinion, is not sustainable. The rental prices evaluation which we have seen was just crazy, like also the inflation which we have seen throughout the construction costs. So, with what we are coming today on the market with our new buildings, we have agreed fair prices, and we have agreed we are going to make a very nice return on our costs. And we think that our margin is going to go back to the normal levels which we had before. So, we're very confident on that. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Paul May of Barclays.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the time. Just a very quick one on the disposals to the new JVs. I doubt you'll give some yields that have been agreed on those disposals. So, to ask another question, the profit that you got on disposals to JVs that you highlighted, is that because values at year-end 2022 were valued as a development, and you've obviously sold those as investment properties? So, it's more development profit that you've generated rather than value increases just from a life-to-life basis? Is that fair to say? Thanks.
Our properties, whether it's land under development or completed assets, they are always valued at a fair value at every single time. And the EUR 59 million where you're referring to is, indeed, mainly the difference between what it was valued at the end of 2022 and what it was transacted for in 2023 to the JVs.
And that is all the time we have for questions. I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Van Geet for any additional or closing remarks.
Well, those who stayed on their hunger and would like to ask some more questions, we are always available for a follow-up call later today or tomorrow. I want to thank you all for being present here. I think you can see it from my face that we are confident, all three of us. We have a very good team in place. It's all about people always doing business. We have fought for some very nice new opportunities.
We feel confident that the European market, despite everything you read in the newspapers, is going to rebound and is doing a good job, actually. There are a lot of people who also want to invest in the long term, and we are helping them with that. Looking forward, we're very ambitious. We are in a comfortable position today, financially-wise. We know that we're going to get in, that we already recycled EUR 300 million now in the first two months. We already received EUR 300 million cash in from the European Investment Bank and from the divestment of LPM. We are in a very good liquidity position, also, to react on new transactions.
I just want to remind you one time, because there are a lot of things written about it which we don't mind too much about, but I want to remind you and to our investors—I'm speaking—when we did the capital raise in 2022, we wrote in our prospectus what we were going to use the money for. And I know many analysts have written a lot of things about it, but look what we have done. I think we have exactly executed. We said we saw new opportunities in the market which we were going to do. We said we had new joint venture partners which we were going to close with. And we all delivered in 2023, all of that. We bought Rüsselsheim, we bought Vélizy, we bought Mulhouse, we bought Weiler, we bought other things. And we have signed EUR 69 million of new rental income.
It's 900,000 m² of new square meters which we are now constructing. We have new joint venture partners which we are very happy with and which have declared interest in doing a lot more with us. So, I think that, so far, we are going to plan, and our plan is to continue to do this in the future. We're confident that we have all the ingredients now aligned: people, money, propositions to make for our customers, our customers, to do that. That's, I think, the summary of 2023 and the outlook for 2024. Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
That does conclude the review of VGP's financial results over the full year 2023. We thank you all for your participation, and you may now disconnect.