Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Swire Pacific 2022 Interim Results Analyst Briefing. May I introduce our speakers today. Mr. Guy Bradley, Chairman of Swire Pacific, Mr. Martin Murray, Finance Director of Swire Pacific, and Ms. Karen So, Managing Director of Swire Coca-Cola. Today's briefing will be interpreted into English. Before we begin, may I remind all of you to switch your electronic devices into silent mode. Thank you. Following the presentation by our management, there will be a Q&A session. Before I hand over to Guy, we would like to introduce a short video showcasing Swire Pacific's highlights for the first half of the year. Hope you enjoy the video. Hope you all enjoyed the video. May I now invite Guy, Martin, and Karen to take us through a detailed look of our results, please.
Good evening, and thank you for joining us. Let me start with the financial highlights. Well, we had a very resilient 1st half performance, I would say, under some very challenging conditions. Our focus was very clear. We're focused on the Greater China and Southeast Asia geography, and where the company seeks to focus and grow its three core divisions and make new investments in the growth areas that we've discussed, like healthcare. Some highlights of the first six months, I would just like to single out, on the property side, we managed to get the Taikoo Li Xi'an deal done and over the line, which should be very exciting as a new Taikoo Li.
On the beverage side, we'll come onto this in more detail, but we were able to acquire the franchise territories in Vietnam and Cambodia for the sum of just over $1 billion, and we're very excited about that opportunity. On the aviation side, we started to see in the 2nd quarter some increased capacity and improved performance, and at the airline level, you saw Cathay Pacific becoming cash positive. Some early signals in Q2 there of the positive nature which was very pleasing. That resilience that I talked about translated into improved performance in terms of both underlying profit and recurring underlying profit versus the prior year. The resilience was shown across our three core divisions.
You can see on the right-hand side of the chart that the big impacts and the big improvement there has clearly been in the aviation numbers. We remain in a strong financial position, and we've increased dividends by 15%. We also announced today a share buyback program, and Martin will now go into much more detail on the financial numbers, probably including the buyback. Martin, thank you.
Thank you.
This first slide, the recurring underlying profit of HKD 1.2 billion, and then we adjust for nonrecurring items to get to the underlying profit, HKD 1.7 billion. The statutory profit that principally adjusts for the net valuation of investment properties and the deferred tax relating to those. In terms of our revenue, our revenue is down 5%. That mainly a reduction in property trading and also the reduction of charter hire from the closure of our marine division. The cash generation from operations is down 42%, partly because the operating profit was down slightly once we adjusted for the revaluation of the property. Our accounts receivable are up, and also the reduction in proceeds from property trading impacted that line, too.
This shows here our return on equity. Clearly the left-hand side shows the difficulty the group's faced since the outbreak of the pandemic, and clearly the returns aren't yet where we want them to be. On the right-hand side, it shows you the makeup of that. The recurring profit, again, good results, stable results from Swire Properties, up in Swire Coca-Cola, the impact that COVID's had on the aviation business. Then the other big pieces is the translation differences of HKD 3.2 billion and the dividends that we pay out to get the movement in our equity. Here we just again show the recurring underlying profit, as the chairman said, in the property side. Very solid performance on that piece. We really look at the quarters here.
Property and beverages really were impacted in the 2nd quarter because of the size of the portfolio in mainland China, and particularly the impact of the lockdowns in there. In terms of aviation, stronger results from Cathay Pacific, 34% improvement in their losses, 70% at an airline level. They've been very impacted by what's happening in their associates, on that front too. The good news on Cathay Pacific very much related to the 1st quarter, and particularly in the quarantine procedures that were implemented at the very start of the year. With the adjustments to quarantine, it's good to see Cathay Pacific back being cash positive since May, and the 2nd half outlook looking much stronger.
Here we show the adjustments in terms of the non-recurring items. Again, lower gains from the disposal of Taikoo Shing Car Parks. In terms of impairments, we have an impairment in the absence of the impairments of Cathay Pacific, and we took an impairment on the bakery. We got a remeasurement gain on the disposal of SPO when we completed that transaction, and again, some ad hoc gains on disposals. In terms of the improvement in the underlying profit, the actual, the non-recurring items year-on-year weighed themselves out. Really the movement in underlying profit is the same movement as the recurring profit.
Again, as we said, the impact, particularly in the 2nd quarter in properties and beverages, the 1st quarter in aviation, but a stronger 1st half, and then again at the end, or year-on-year, the nonrecurring items are pretty much the same. In terms of the balance sheet, very strong net debt levels of HKD 43 billion, which means we've got a very low gearing at 13.6%. Our interest cover is 6.6%. Average cost of debt is 3%, and in this environment, we've got 72% of our interest rate on a fixed basis. In terms of our liquidity, strong liquidity. Swire Properties had built up a lot of liquidity in the sale of Cityplaza back in 2021.
with their investments, that's come down slightly. As you can see, we've got our strong undrawn facilities and a good maturity profile in terms of our debt profile. With that, pass back to the chairman.
Thanks, Martin. Moving on to the business review. I will take the first one, which is the property business. As you heard in the previous session, and apologies if there's a little bit of an overlap here, but the property business had a very solid performance, driven in particular by the Chinese mainland performing strongly in the 1st quarter. Some highlights again in the chart. 269 Queens Road East was successfully acquired about two months ago. It's an important part of our push to use our very strong residential brand a bit more. We're very pleased to have won that under a government land sale.
Which we finalized the acquisition of the Zung Fu Industrial Building, which is part of our stated strategy of reinvesting in our, you know, two main clusters, this one being Taikoo Place. That continues to be a great story for the Swire Properties brand. Again, I mentioned Xi'an, which you know is just gonna be tremendously exciting, being able to put a retail-led mixed-use development alongside a UNESCO site of that sort of status. We're really pleased about that. Finally, on the hotel front, some good news. We've got two wonderful brands in the hotel sector, The House Collective and East. We're very happy to announce in the 1st half that on the House Collective side, we've been able to secure hotel management agreements in Shenzhen and in Tokyo.
Tokyo being the first agreement for a House hotel outside of China. Some excellent work being done on that side. This is a repeat of the basically underlying profit figure, which was fairly flat. The only difference being a slightly reduced level of divestments year- on- year, explaining the larger drop in the underlying profit versus recurring. I won't dwell on that. That strong performance from the Chinese mainland in the 1st quarter translated into figures that I've got here. Notably now you can see that the Chinese mainland, in terms of gross rental income, accounts for 39% of our total, and that's the 1st half figure. Making it the second-largest rental contributor after Hong Kong office.
You're starting to see some really significant growth and numbers, and I think success driven by the Taikoo Li and Taikoo Hui brands in China. Some pictures here to show that we're scaling up the Chinese mainland development. We've got a policy of not just adding to our existing assets, which in the case of Xi'an, but also reinforcing existing assets. Here you can see several examples of that. The INDIGO phase II in the bottom left is a four million square feet addition, primarily office, which will really set up that part of Beijing as a decentralized office location of some strength. That's about an HKD 8 billion attributable investment on Swire Properties' behalf. Xi'an, we've talked about. Some.
There's a really exciting location across the road from HKRI Taikoo Hui in Shanghai called Zhangyuan, and that's the picture in the top, right-hand box. Where we get to work with the district government, and to revitalize those heritage protected buildings, built in the old Shanghai style. What we'll be doing in there will be a real combination of retail, cultural and arts and some very exciting uses. That's a fantastic deal. Then finally, one that we've mentioned for a year now, we've added to Sanlitun, putting another sort of 250,000 sq ft of retail in the busiest corner of that development. Had a really good opening last year of Taikoo Li Qiantan, down in Shanghai. Lots going on in the Chinese mainland.
Lots going on in Hong Kong. You know, we continue. I mentioned Zung Fu, which is a continuation of the wonderful story going on down in Taikoo Place of decentralizing and creating a global business district on the office side. We continue to reinvest in our other main office cluster in Pacific Place. You can see in the second picture there's a new grade A office tower there, which will add to the portfolio in Pacific Place with a very new and technology-friendly building. Not to mention Hong Kong, the residential trading side of the business continues to go from strength to strength. We now have three residential trading developments in Hong Kong.
Wong Chuk Hang, stage 4, where we have a 25% stake, the Chai Wan residential development, I mentioned 269 Queens Road East. Maybe further down the track, we'll probably end up with a project down on Quarry Bay in Pan Hoi Street. There's quite a lot going on on the residential side, which we're very excited about. Just quickly touching on Southeast Asia. Savyavasa in Jakarta has started the sales down there. There'll be a wonderful product. It's about 400 units in a very affluent part of South Jakarta. It's well-located, so we're watching those sales very carefully. We've had two minority investments in Ho Chi Minh, which the sales of which have gone really well.
I'll now pass over to Karen, who will give you a little bit more detail on the excitement going on in the beverage business.
Thank you, Guy. I will brief you about the result in beverages division. 2022 is the year of exciting expansion for Swire Coca-Cola. Thank you. Recently, we've announced the plan to expand our franchise territory in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is our first investment in Southeast Asia. With the robust urbanization, young population demographic, high GDP growth pre-COVID-19 time, and also the relatively lower per capita consumption dominated by sparkling drink, this presents to Swire Coca-Cola a phenomenal, tremendous growth opportunity in Southeast Asia. Upon the completion of this acquisition, we're going to increase 15% of our franchise population to 876 million people in our Swire franchise territory.
This also presents significant opportunity for synergies with our legacy market through commercial capability, supply chain, procurement, and digitization. Over to the Chinese mainland side, we've also announced the acquisition of our still manufacturing facility. Upon completion of the acquisition, we're going to have acquired six manufacturing sites, a total of 21 still aseptic production lines into our management. This allows us to rationalize our production facilities. We think we're able to produce our still beverages much closer to our market with a lot of savings in logistics, head office costs, and also synergy with our existing manufacturing facilities. The 1st half of 2022 give us a mixed result, mainly impacted by the COVID-19 control in Chinese mainland and also our input cost pressure. Over to the U.S. side, the U.S. has continued to deliver very, very strong revenue growth and also profit growth.
The U.S. profit increased by 34% and revenue increased by 14%, reflecting our price increases and also strengthening of our execution capability. Chinese mainland, in the 1st half of the year, was impacted by COVID-19-related travel and social restriction. At the same time, our input costs also increased. As a result, profit decreased by 41%. Despite the challenging environment, our team continued to focus on executing our long-term strategy. We're particularly focusing on revenue growth initiative, which has allowed us to continue to deliver strong revenue growth per case in both of our Chinese mainland market and U.S. market. Diversity of our franchise market give us protection. As you can see here, despite our Chinese mainland results being impacted by COVID-19 restriction, our U.S. market did continue to deliver strong profit growth.
We have a good portfolio of our product from sparkling juice, energy drink, water, tea, and other still beverages. Mainland China contribute 53% of our total revenue and followed by USA contributing 40%. As you can see from the table on the bottom right-hand corner, our revenue growth has a slight increase of 0.5%. However, EBITDA margin was slightly squeezed due to our cost increase from raw material. On the revenue delivery, the Chinese mainland revenue was adversely affected by COVID as I mentioned just now. However, with our continuous focus in executing our long-term strategy, which has served us very well after the COVID restriction being eased, and we have seen significant improvement in the end of the 1st quarter and also beginning of the 2nd half of the year.
We are confident that with the external environment continue to improve, our business is going to have a strong improvement in the second half of the year. With that, I'm going to hand over to Guy, continue on aviation.
Thank you. As an overview on the financial figures, which touch a little bit on some numbers Martin gave you. You can see it on the right-hand side. The Cathay Pacific Group improved its losses by 34% at the group level. At the airline level, losses improved by 70%. That really reflects what was going on in the second quarter here for Cathay Pacific. The bigger number here is not an improvement, and that's the 90% worsening of the situation from Cathay's associates. If we look at this chart, I think you may have seen this one before. It really just serves to demonstrate exactly what happened due to the pandemic.
You can just see the complete drop-off of passenger volumes back in February and March and April 2020. It's been pretty much like that ever since. We're really hopeful that those trends are going to start to pick up again and those figures will help to improve towards the end of the year. In terms of outlook, you know, we're confident that Cathay Pacific and its subsidiaries will see a stronger 2nd half than the 1st half performance. As I've just noted, the results of the associates will remain challenging.
As you heard the Cathay Pacific chair say yesterday, it is vital that the quarantine restrictions on Cathay's crew, as well as the passengers, are removed, in order for Cathay Pacific to ramp up its capacity to levels that we're gonna need to serve the demand. Meanwhile, though, the team at Cathay are doing everything they can to prepare for that recovery. Aircraft are being brought back from overseas. Cathay is recruiting more than 4,000 frontline employees to meet the operational needs over the next 18 months to 24 months. Several thousand staff will need to be added into the Cathay subs that do a lot of the servicing of the business.
Just looking at HAECO, you know, the profit figure there has worsened versus prior year, and that's mainly because of the absence of subsidies from the U.S. government. However, if we disregard that, the profit increased slightly, reflecting a small recovery in demand for the engine overhaul business and more airframe based maintenance. Unfortunately, line maintenance in Hong Kong remains weak, as you'd expect with very little aircraft up in the air and needing maintenance. On the healthcare side, you know, we've begun our program of investing the HKD 20 billion target. Healthcare investments were adversely affected by COVID in the 1st half. That notwithstanding, we were very excited.
We had a small minority investment in a hospital in Shenzhen called the Shenzhen New Frontier United Family Hospital, and we managed to get that open in May 2022. That's now up and running, and it's pretty much state-of-the-art. Just touching on an important subject of ESG and sustainability, I just wanna give you some progress points here. On the property side, we continue to do a great job in green finance. We've secured three more sustainability linked loan facilities totaling HKD 3.5 billion. Beverages, meanwhile, they've now got to an exciting level of 25% of their power needs being sourced from renewable energy sources in the Chinese mainland. Swire Properties are doing the same thing.
It's certainly what we're all gonna be needing to do if we're to achieve some of the rather strict SBTi targets that we've committed to. This is really good news, and Beverages have done a great job doing that. On the D&I side, I'm also very pleased to report that we've now, at the Swire Pacific board level, increased the percentage of women on the board to 27% with the appointment of two female independent non-executive directors in the 1st half. I think this is a very good trend, and 27% by peer group standards, I think is a very good number. Just finishing up on outlook.
You know, I think we're probably all aware that the short-term challenges of the pandemic remain, but we are very optimistic about our medium and long-term prospects in the businesses and markets that we're operating in. The two brands in Swire Properties, Taikoo Hui and Taikoo Li, are very well established and very much sought after in the Chinese mainland. Down in Hong Kong, Taikoo Place continues to strengthen its position as a global business district. Swire Coca-Cola's expansion into Southeast Asia bodes well for future growth, as you've heard. I would say lastly on the aviation side, that any further adjustments to COVID-19 related travel and quarantine restrictions should only be beneficial. With that, I'll stop, and we'll be very happy to take questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Guy, Martin, and Karen. We will now proceed to the Q&A session. Analysts are welcome to provide questions in English. Please wait for the microphone, state your name and organization, and try to keep it to no more than two questions at a time. That gentleman on the third row, please.
Hi, I'm Karl Choi from Bank of America. A couple of questions. First of all, thank you for the share buyback program. Is there any target between the A shares and B shares, or is it gonna be opportunistic? Obviously, the B shares are cheaper, but liquidity-wise is not as strong. Second is for the beverage division. The pricing has been, you know, quite strong for some time now. Can you talk more about what you have, you've been doing of late, even in the 1st half despite COVID, and what's this prospect in the 2nd half, with the U.S. slowing down?
Martin, do you wanna take this?
Yes, thank you. In terms of the share buyback, it is across both the A and B shares. As you mentioned, the B shares trade at slightly bigger discount, but has less liquidity. I mean, they both went up about the same percentage, and that's what we'd hope to see in terms of the whole buyback program.
Thank you for the question. For Swire Coca-Cola, we have been always focusing in margin management and a margin improvement plan. We have margin improvement plan specifically for each of our region. Underpinning those plan, particularly we have put a strong focus in revenue increase initiative through our packaging, pricing, and portfolio management in order to drive a higher margin. Also our improvement in our route to market and execution and utilization of our digitization, all of this add together to help us to improve the margin of our product. We're going to continue this strategy for the long term. What we are seeing for the 2nd half or for the future, we will make our strong focus continue to improve our margin.
Thank you, Martin and Karen. Any more questions from the floor, please? That gentleman on the third row, please. Yeah. No, on the third row. Yeah.
Hi, management. Jeffrey from Morgan Stanley. I have a question on the dividend. It's good to see that your interim dividend is up 15%, while your underlying profit is up almost 40%, 40%. Just wanna see how should we think about the full year dividend? Thank you.
Well, again, I think the outlook is positive compared to the 1st half, for all three businesses. I think with the adjustments to quarantine, and the opportunities that we have are quite bullish in terms of the 2nd half performance, particularly compared to the 1st half. We have mentioned in the past that we're trying to target, we wanna get back to a dividend of about HKD 3, which I think it should be. We've got a strong balance sheet to do all our investments, to do the share buyback, and to have growth in our dividend policy, which we want to get back to having sustainable growth in it.
Thank you, Martin. Any more questions? Yes.
Thank you. Simon from Goldman Sachs. I have two questions. One, going to the beverage business. Wanted to get a sense, you know, about the earnings contributions from your recent acquisitions. And if you can also share the margins and your expectation of the earnings. Going forward, you know, given now you're starting the branching out to ASEAN markets, maybe would there be any other opportunity for further acquisitions on the beverage business? That's the first one. The second one, appreciate that you gave us the ROE calculations on the group level. Seeing that is still quite depressed, I remember a couple years back you've been talking about some sort of, you know, ROE targets, normalizing ROE targets. You know, whether you have any, you know, insight or how you're thinking of medium-term target on ROE? Thank you.
I will take that first question. Thank you for the question. First of all, we are very excited about acquisition of the bottling business in Vietnam and Cambodia. As I mentioned just now, this market present to us a tremendous growth opportunity due to the high GDP growth of this country, young population, and relatively lower per capita consumption. This market is very dominated on sparkling drinks. We're expecting a good return from the profit contribution from this market.
Yeah, in terms of our ROE, you can see since the last three years it's been really impacted by the pandemic, particularly through the aviation side. I said I'm very bullish in terms of all three divisions in terms of growth, and we wanna get back to the pre-pandemic levels and beyond.
Thank you, Karen and Martin. Do we have any more questions from the floor, please? Perhaps we could take one more last question since we've got three questions already. Yes, that man on the fourth row, please.
Hi there, I'm George Choi from Citigroup. Another question on the beverages and the recent acquisition. Obviously in the announcement back in July, profit figures from the target companies were disclosed there, but they are only numbers from the, you know, 2020, 2021 being COVID affected years. Would you happen to have perhaps like 2019 profit figures so that we can get a better sense on the valuation implied by the consideration? Thank you.
Sorry, can I clarify? Your question is about 2019.
Profits for the target companies that you're acquiring.
The price multiple that we pay for this market, what we see, is commensurate with the revenue and the profit growth prospect of this market. This is what we can share with that.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Karen. Do we have one last question from the floor? Okay, thank you for everyone. That concludes our analyst briefing. Thank you very much for joining us today. Hope you have a good day.