On behalf of the management of Citycon, I'd like to welcome you and thank you for coming to the Annual General Meeting. It's great to have you here. It's great to meet you. Hopefully, after the meeting, I get a chance to meet more of you face-to-face and have a chance to chat. As has been mentioned, and most of you know, I have recently started as the CEO for Citycon as of the January 1st of the year. I was asked to say a few words about my background.
I started my career, as you can tell from the white hair, many years ago. About 30 years ago, I joined a company called The Rouse Company. It was a publicly traded REIT in the United States. I started as a Shopping Center Manager, and over a period of years, worked my way through the ranks. After Rouse, I did a variety of things. I was, at one point, the CEO for a private developer in Los Angeles, California. I was also the Head of Retail for a pension fund based in Canada.
I worked briefly for a private equity firm that owned a retail chain of 3,000 stores, 1,000 of which were in Europe. I spent a fair amount of time in Europe during that period of my career. I helped co-found Starwood Retail Partners, which was a retail platform that was developed by Starwood Capital and some of its key investors. We started with no assets, no people. When I left, we had about 30 assets that we had acquired and redeveloped, about $6 billion worth of assets, and a team of about 350 people. Most recently, I have been an Advisor, or prior to joining Citycon, was an Advisor for a private equity investor in real estate in New York. My other clients included a private developer and a couple of retail clients as well. Thrilled to be here at Citycon.
More importantly, we also have a new Chief Operating Officer, Henrica Ginström. Henrica, can you stand up? Henrica has been with the company for about eight years. She worked in the Investor Relations group, and then before her recent promotion, she was a Commercial Director for us in Norway. She has great experience within the company, both on the finance side as well as the operating side, and then also from the standpoint of having worked in the corporate office as well as out in the field. Very well-rounded and bringing tremendous energy to this position.
As a side note, Henrica and I were chatting before the meeting, and she actually grew up very close to Iso Omena. In fact, when she was a child, this was a forest, I guess. She would play in the forest. She told me some other stuff that I'm not going to share with you because she asked me not to. Anyway. This is a homecoming for Henrica. I will tell you, she has been amazing in her first 60 days here. I was also asked to say a bit about my first impressions of the company. I mentioned Henrica already. We also happen to have a CFO extraordinaire in Eero, whom most of you already know.
Eero has been an amazing partner for me, really helped bring somebody who is new to the market and new to the company, and really embraced me and really helped bring me up to speed because I have a lot to learn. He's been a great teacher so far. I should mention, in addition to Eero and Henrica, my first impressions of the company were that we have an amazing bench of talent within this organization. Some of whom have already been elevated and promoted, and I'll get to that in a minute and some of the changes that we've made in the organization already. I was really taken aback, and it's very heartwarming to know that we have so much talent sitting in this company.
Other first impressions were that we have a really strong core of properties from which to build upon in this company. Within those properties, we have lots of opportunity of growth that's embedded within those shopping centers themselves. We can get tremendous growth out of this company even if we don't go acquire another shopping center. I think there's real opportunity within this platform. I think also that the focus of the company is spot on in today's challenging retail environment, and that focus being that we want to own these large, dominant shopping centers in major metro areas that are very densely populated, that have some connection to transportation, and as I mentioned just a minute ago, have some opportunity for growth.
My last observation of the company was that I think there is real opportunity for us to begin to take advantage of this pan-Nordic scale that's been built. Move away from a company that's probably been operated as individual countries and really start to become more central in terms of how we manage and operate the company.
What have we been doing in the first 60 days? We've got two months under our belt. I promise you, it's not just been sitting there and learning. We've actually been hitting the ground running, as we like to say internally here. I'm told that's an American thing, but anyway, that's what we say inside the shop. We have developed and begun to implement a whole new organization within the company, starting even at the property level, where we have collapsed roles and created specific P&L responsibility for the shopping center managers who are operating those shopping centers. Working up through the ranks, all the way to kind of the senior team, where we have, as I mentioned before, begun to put in place the positions and the people to really take advantage of the scale of the company.
As an example, we have a new Head of Leasing for the company. That was a position that did not exist. It was by property level before.
The idea being that if you have a single Head of Leasing, that person can have conversations with retailers across the entire portfolio, and hopefully at that point, you begin to get a little more leverage when you're talking to those tenants. Jussi is our Head of Leasing. I should have mentioned that. By the way, Jussi's a Finn, Henrica's a Finn, Eero's a Finn. The Finns are very well represented on our management team.
We also have created a new position, which is that of the Head of Specialty Leasing. Specialty leasing are the carts and kiosks in the common area of the shopping centre, the walkways, if you will, of the shopping centres, as well as the temporary tenants and digital signage and things like that.
These are revenue-producing opportunities for us in the portfolio that we have done a little bit of, but there's clearly a lot more opportunity for us. We have created a new position that will report directly to Henrica. We promoted somebody internally out of our office in Oslo, Kathrine. There's a big opportunity for us there as a company. We've also centralized our property management function so that we have a Senior Head of Property Management, Magnus, who reports to Henrica as well. The commercial directors report to him. That's a change. It used to be that the commercial directors reported to the COO, but our goal was to really put Henrica in a position where she could be out in the field working the assets. That's where the real opportunity for us is in these assets. It's not sitting in the office in Helsinki or in Stockholm.
Last but not least, we've also created a Vice President of Operations who will be responsible for all of the kind of things that happen across the portfolio, whether it be security, sustainability, also purchasing. Purchasing was another opportunity for us to take advantage of our scale. Again, those purchases previously would have occurred at the property level or maybe at the country cluster level. Our thought is really if we have a kind of central purchasing function that's buying across this entire platform, that we should gain significant efficiencies. I think we'll see that in the results.
Let's jump into 2018. I'm going to talk about each of these in a minute, and Eero will actually talk about the Eurobond in a minute, I'm going to jump right in here.
As mentioned, I think Mr. Katzman's remarks, the EPS, the earnings per share for the company in 2018 was EUR 0.164 when you exclude the one-time charge for the management change. If you include that, it's EUR 0.161. Clearly, it was a solid year for us. Like-for-like for the company was up 1%. Up 1% in a very challenging retail environment, I would say. Occupancy stayed strong at over 96%. We actually began to see some improvement in our rent spreads, our leasing spreads. They're starting to get better than what they were.
I think the company has continued on its path that you guys have seen before of transforming the portfolio. If you look at where we are today versus where we were in 2011, we have almost half as many properties. The average size is almost four times what it was. I think this speaks to the idea that we are very focused and are actually delivering on this concept of we are going to own dominant shopping centers in these large metro areas that have some connection to transportation that are densely populated, and that there is some opportunity for further growth.
Just to reinforce this point, if you look at the top five assets in the company today, they comprise 40% of the value of the company. If you take that a step further, if you look at the top seven assets, it makes up 50% of the value of the company. Again, this is just continuing to reinforce the message of what we are trying to accomplish as a company. I should also note, you will see the footfall numbers in there for each of the properties.
It is pretty impressive when you think about the fact that as a company, we had 170 million visitors in our properties last year. That is an amazing number. I learned very early on in my career that 90% of the battle in retail is getting customers to come to your shopping center. We have won that 90% battle. Our challenge now is how do we take those shoppers and convert more of them into buyers? Again, this is just a quick map to show you the markets where we are focused and continue to focus. Again, one of the reasons being, if you look at the population growth that is projected for these cities, it is obviously very attractive for us as investors and really generates opportunities for us.
A quick update on some development projects. We opened the Mölndal Galleria in Gothenburg last fall. Been very successful. We had a terrific opening. The project looks fantastic. It sits right in the heart of Gothenburg. It is an unbelievable location. I am going to keep repeating this because I do not want to bore you, but it has all of those criteria that I have outlined a couple of times already. It is a perfect fit for our company.
Next up, we have Lippulaiva, which I know has been in the press a bit here lately. Let me address that briefly. We had an issue with the contractor last year where we decided to part company. We have, in fact, secured a contractor who will begin the foundation work for us, and we are in the process of interviewing general contractors. We have some very large companies who are very interested in taking this project on our behalf. We are committed to it. We are focused on it, and we will execute on it.
If you look at what we have underneath that, these are, again, I mentioned earlier, we have these projects where we can get growth out of the existing projects themselves. Kista, which is a suburb of Stockholm, we have an opportunity there to add more residential. We are doing some other things, which I will talk about in a minute, in the interim, while we wait for the permitting on that.
In Bergen, there is an opportunity for us where we have acquired an adjacent office building. There is an opportunity for us to do significant redevelopment there. Liljeholmen, which is also outside of Stockholm, we have done a redevelopment of the project, but the next phase of that is really to begin to add residential and to start to do more with that asset. Last but not least is Trekanten outside of Oslo, where again, there is an opportunity for us to add residential.
An example of what some of these finished products we hope will look like is the one that we're all sitting in. This has been a tremendous success by any measure. If you look at the footfall, it's pretty astounding. The fact that we've gone from a little over 11 million to 20 million visitors. It's mind-boggling. It speaks to a little bit of what I mentioned previously about the fact that we created this new specialty leasing position.
If you have 20 million people walking through the middle of the shopping center, our most valuable real estate is the middle of the shopping center, and that's where we should really be looking to try to maximize our income opportunity. What also is eye-opening about this slide, or should make us feel really good is the fact that while footfall grew 74%, our sales only grew 17%. That tells me that there's more upside for us in terms of increased sales. Obviously, with increased sales comes the ability to increase rents.
I mentioned Mölndal Galleria before. Here's a picture. Again, sits exactly where we want to be located. I will tell you, the build-out of this shopping center is fantastic. It's actually a very beautiful shopping center. Kista, I mentioned earlier that we have the opportunity for redevelopment to add resi. In the interim, one of the things we're doing, we have in process right now, we're in the middle of, we took a vacant department store, and we are subdividing it. We are including two grocery stores in this newly subdivided space.
We took the upper level and created a space for an H&M concept called Afound, which is a discount version of H&M, but selling other brands. I think this speaks to a bit of where the focus is for us, not just in terms of where we're investing and how we're redeveloping, but also how we're operating and leasing these shopping centers. Again, no secret to anybody in this room. Retail is not necessarily in favor right now. Some of the noise around that relates to the internet and whether the internet is stealing sales away from bricks and mortar stores. I would tell you a couple of things. One, bricks and mortar is not dead. Bricks and mortar is still the dominant way people shop.
I will tell you in the U.S., where the online sales has progressed a little further. It really, online sales hasn't moved beyond 10%. It's kind of stayed at that level. What has happened and what has impacted retailers is that the ability for people to shop now on their phone or their computers provides complete transparency to the consumer about pricing. No longer can retailers charge whatever they want to charge. They are really now, they're competing not just with the store next door, they're competing with every store who might sell that same piece of product. They have to compete on price. What that has done, is put pressure on retailers on their margins.
As a result of that, because there's this pressure on the margins, any stores that might have been marginal before in the past now become stores that they don't need to continue to operate anymore, because they can probably service that customer in a different way. It's caused a lot of retailers to rationalize or right-size their fleet of stores to make sure that they're operating as efficiently as possible. What it means is, they're going to close some of the secondary markets and secondary stores, but that makes the stores that they keep even more valuable and more important, and they're in the must-have locations. Again, speaks to the idea that we want to own these shopping centers that fit that criteria because we want to be that must-have location for those retailers.
Beyond retail and beyond apparel, clearly we have been focused and will continue to focus on taking advantage of the fact that we own this great real estate. Even in a tough retail environment, there's still opportunity for us to maximize value, even if it's by doing less retail and doing other things such as shown here on the screen, schools, libraries, medical facilities, offices, mentioned residential before. What's interesting about, particularly when you start to think about the municipal services and healthcare, these guys pay real rent. Municipal services, not only do you get real rent, you're also getting pretty strong credit. You're getting the credit of the local government behind that tenant. It's doubly attractive for you. This slide just is meant to show you a bit about where we're at today.
Today, and we call this online resilient. It's basically groceries, services, the things we've talked about, as well as food and beverage, and entertainment. Today, we're at 55%. I think if we look at Iso Omena, as example of where we're headed, I think today we're well above 60% in Iso Omena in terms of that online resiliency. Our leasing people, when they're looking at these shopping centers and they're trying to come up with their merchandising plans, they're looking at opportunities that are outside of retail. We're thinking a bit more creatively. Some examples of what I just talked about. I guess I got ahead of myself on my remarks.
In addition to that, the company as one of its core values, has been really focused on sustainability. This chart, I think, shows you the strides that have been made within the company. The fact that our carbon footprint is almost half. I think what really kind of jumps off the screen at you is the fact that our share of renewable electricity today is at 100%, which is amazing. A good example of that is the roof of this very building. As you can see from the picture, we have solar panels up there and producing 6,700 MW of electricity up there.
Where are we focused for in 2019? As I mentioned previously, we have already begun the work around how we are structured in the organization. I think in today's challenging retail environment, it's no longer going to be okay just to open your doors and you'll be successful because you've happened to open your shopping center. The winners are going to be those who are really minding the store, if you will, and really paying attention to all of the details of what's happening inside their shopping centers. It's really going to require some intense focus on asset management. The changes in the organization that I mentioned earlier that Henrica has really kind of grabbed and run with and put a, we call it the dream team, if you will, of people who are leading that charge for the company, that's going to be our focus continuing to move forward.
We are very focused on being good stewards of capital. We are going to be very deliberate about where we invest our capital. Capital is at a premium today. I think it's incumbent upon us as a management team to make sure we're not trying to be all things to all shopping centers, that we have to pick those shopping centers where we really are going to make an investment and get the biggest return for that investment. Coinciding with that and going alongside of that is the fact that we also need to continue to focus on strengthening our balance sheet.
As you know, we have sold some assets in an attempt to raise cash, I'm pleased to tell you that that will continue. We have another couple properties that we hope to announce soon, That will continue to be our focus as we look at our disposal strategy going forward. With that, I'm going to turn it over to my friend, Eero.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we'll hear the review of the Chief Financial Officer and the review of financial statements for 2018. Thank you. Also I'd like to welcome you on my behalf to the Annual General Meeting of Citycon this year. I want to briefly go through the financial statements, the results, and present to you the main findings. Let us start with the share price first.
As of the beginning of this year, looking at the financial period when we've had the new management in the company, the share price development, although this is a very short period, nevertheless has been very positive, approximately 80% increase. Very much also the average or even a bit above the average comparing to our peers. That has been the share development.
As to the earnings for the period, I'll go also each part a bit more in detail through, as was mentioned already by the previous speakers, the net rental income was approximately EUR 215 million for last year. Regarding this figure as also some other figures, we can see a bit of decline as we sold off some of the non-core assets. Especially at the end of 2017, we divested five property portfolio with approximately EUR 200 million worth of value, which was totally according to our strategy. Now we've improved the mid quality of our portfolio, done exactly what we've stated, That is also one of the reasons for it, I'll shed a light on that a bit more later.
As to the total sales of our tenants, they have increased in every country nearly, excluding Norway, even comparable tenant sales have remained quite stable, which is of course very positive, a good achievement in this retail environment, as was just mentioned by Scott. The operating environment is not extremely easy at the moment indeed. Naturally, the impact of Iso Omena has been very big and positive, as well as also regarding the development of footfall. Therefore, both tenant sales and footfall have been very stable and the development has been also very positive at a good level.
Looking at something which is really important for property companies, that is the like-for-like net rental income and its growth. If we take into account Iso Omena during the comparable period, therefore the figure is even a bit positive, the total of - 0.5%. If we calculate it officially as we've done so, we are slightly negative in terms of the like-for-like net rental income development, and that in today's tough retail environment is a fairly good achievement. I'd like to point out at this moment that we've also seen a positive development and that continues, the same figure previous year was a bit more modest. Therefore, the like-for-like net rental income has improved and is continuing to improve as well.
I already promised to give you more details on the changes of net rental income and reasons for that. Earlier, we had agreed on certain acquisitions, in particular the Mölndal shopping center and then the other shopping center in Denmark. The development projects that we brought to an end, which also has impacted our net rental income by approximately EUR 5 million. Further divestments, which had a negative impact approximately of EUR 16 million. That was the biggest single factor.
Although Norway and Sweden are quite strong in terms of their economies, however, their currency saw a decline last year and therefore also they have an impact on our net rental income because the Norwegian krone and the Swedish krona had an impact of approximately EUR 5 million. This means approximately per share a EUR 0.005 impact.
When we look at then the net rental income breakdown per country, we can see that Finland is still the biggest country where we operate, and Estonia is included into the figure, but that doesn't change very much the results. Finland is still the biggest country in our operations in many respects and by many indicators, but it is important to note that both in Norway and in Sweden, we are very important actors and players too, and not very far from the level of Finland either.
Our business is extremely stable. I've been now working in the company for 13 years, and I think the lowest occupancy rate that I've seen during these 13 years is 95.5%. Currently, it is at 96.4 at the beginning of the year, and the highest I've seen is approximately 97%. This business has been extremely stable. This so-called leasing spread has been quite stable as well, and its development also has been positive recently. This leasing spread has been better this year than the previous year. Therefore, regarding leases, contrary to what is being discussed, the development of leases, at least for our company, has not been negative at all.
If we look at the actual earnings and our position, I'd like to remind you that those companies who are also part of the IFRS system have no exceptional items. Regarding the income statement, we have something here which is a bit exceptional. That is the fair value, either losses or profit. We have opted for this fair value model. Therefore, our properties will be valued at market level a couple of times a year by an external evaluator. Therefore, these losses or gains will be evaluated here, and that figure last year was EUR 72.5 million, slightly higher than the previous year. The fact that our net gains or losses on sale of investment property are quite close to break even, that of course describes that our fair values for our properties in our financial position, our balance sheet, are very well placed.
Financing costs were slightly higher than previous year due to a one-off item. That is that we repurchased the bond, or refinanced the bond, which will be maturing in 2020, which has its own cost. Which is also quite reasonable, as we were able to then issue a new bond, which was cheaper for us for the duration of eight years with a 2.375% interest rate. I'll come back to that a bit later too.
The company still has made cost savings, these programs still continue. They have been quite successful last year, we were able to adjust the EPRA cost ratio, which is something that all listed similar companies calculate similarly. This indicator that takes into account administrative costs as well as also costs of operations, then puts that into relation to gross rental income, then is a figure that we managed to take down even last year, and we are very well-ranked also amongst our international peers.
Briefly on the fair value change of the asset portfolio per country. As we can see in Finland, that was most negative, which also reflects the situation of our real estate property environment and competition, both in the capital city area in Finland and elsewhere in the country. The average yield requirement has remained the same, we might not notice from this slide that we've also divested those who have a slightly higher average yield requirement. Therefore, the average yield requirement for the current comparable properties also has slightly increased.
The financial position, that is also actually quite simple. We have in the assets our investment property, slightly over EUR 4 billion, that then is divided into the ordinary assets and then those held for sale. At the end of the year, we had classified the EUR 8 million of our assets to be held for sale. Therefore, we are expecting to hear some news quite soon. Further, there are certain liabilities as we do, also cash and cash equivalents. Therefore, also in our financial position, we have a very simple, understandable situation.
We do have our own equity, which is about EUR 2.1 billion, and then approximately EUR 2.34 billion credit. That makes the total of EUR 4.1 billion, approximately. The net asset value per share was EUR 2.59 at the end of the year, and that is then put into relation of our share price, which currently is approximately EUR 1.76. We are able to calculate that we have reached approximately the 30% level below the net asset value.
As to the occupancy rate and how that develops, as I said, it has been quite stable, improving at the end of last year. If we take a look at the annual figure, we are now at the best level after 2015. The situation is not very negative at all, the contrary. As our main tenants, they are big actors, mainly grocery stores and alike, and there are a couple of bigger Nordic companies selling clothes. We have the wholesalers such as Kesko and other groups represented there, also in other Nordic countries.
A few words about financing, as that has become even more important for companies like ourselves and otherwise too. In all of our targets in relation to financing, we have achieved them and the average maturity was over five years. Over 90% of hedging is actually so that we have fixed rates and we won't suffer if interest rates start going up. Although currently they are quite low still, but we have prepared for the situation not continuing forever. We still hold an investment grade credit rating. Our financing still is mainly non-collateralized. Our liquidity reserve is important, over EUR 550 million, so our liquidity position is relatively good.
The fact where we are slightly below our targets is the loan-to-value, which mainly is due to the fact that the divestments of our non-core assets have been realized a bit more slowly as we would have wished for. If we take a look at the interest coverage ratio and its development, as that is something regarding our loans where we have committed ourselves to have at least a twofold interest coverage ratio in relation to our EBITDA. Therefore, we have plenty of room in the covenant and the situation is quite stable. We are still remaining at the level of 3.8x, which has also existed since 2015.
On the contrary, with our active operations, for instance, the repurchase of the earlier bond, we've been able to lower the average interest rate. Currently, it is at 3.3%. If you see companies that have even a lower average interest rate, I'd have to remind you that we also operate in Norway, where the interest rate is approximately 1% higher in euro terms, which also has an impact on our operations.
We've also decided to opt for a very conservative fixed-rate policy. We do have a 9% rate on the fixed. When we have 95% of credit with a fixed rate interest rate. We can see for the year 2020 that there is a loan maturing, and you might remember that we had a figure of EUR 400 million, and we've now repurchased for approximately EUR 300 million worth of bonds, and therefore we're able to diminish the maturity risk and the financial risk. Therefore, the loan portfolio has a very good maturity profile, and before June next year, there is no important loan maturing profile at all.
As for future outlook, we have given guidance that our direct operating profit will be within the range of EUR 188 million-EUR 206 million, meaning that we expect it to be slightly better than last year. Regarding the EPRA earnings, our guidance is that it would be between EUR 138 million-EUR 156 million. The average would be slightly above last year, and that is all based on the current property portfolio and the current exchange rates. They are more or less comparable. The same applies to our EPRA earnings per share. We preempt it to be between EUR 0.155-EUR 0.175 with the current asset portfolio.
We'll get back to this point later on, but briefly, I'd like to mention that the comparable dividend to be proposed would be EUR 0.13 per share. When at the later item we'll handle this, we'll speak about the reverse share split that will technically transform it, but otherwise doesn't change anything. Currently, the dividend yield, when we put that into relation with our share price, is approximately 7.6%. Therefore, the company is a very lucrative company in terms of dividend yield. We didn't have any new flaggings during the year, these are the biggest shareholders. Gazit-Globe owns 48.5%, CPPIBEH 15%, Ilmarinen 7%. The fourth major shareholder is Alecta from Sweden with shares approximately 5%. Thank you. That was my review.