Welcome to the Far East Consortium International Limited 2022 annual results presentation. Before we begin, let me introduce the management representatives. They are Executive Director and Managing Director, Mr. Cheong Thard Hoong. Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary, Mr. Wai Hung Boswell Cheung. Head of Corporate Development and M&A, Mr. Alexis Adamczyk. Now, may I invite Mr. Cheong Thard Hoong to start the presentation. Mr. Cheong Thard Hoong, please.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have a copy of the presentation in front of you. Otherwise, it's on the screen that we'll be playing, or you can access a copy of it from our website. We announced our results just about 12 hours ago, and we would like to spend the next session just to talk about our highlights of our results and after that, open to Q&A. First of all, I'd like to just say that this is the 50-year anniversary of our listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
We are very proud of the achievements that we have made in these 50 years, especially in the last 10–15 years. We have transformed a lot in terms of our business. We have transformed ourselves from a local operation to one that delivers large-scale regional projects. We have built a very strong foundation with our development teams now in place in multiple jurisdictions. I think one of the key achievement that I like to highlight to you is our ability to steer through a crisis, as demonstrated in front of you, the results. We've been through, actually in the last 50 years, a lot of ups and downs, including the Asian financial crisis, as well as more recently, the COVID-19 crisis.
Despite that, you know, we are able to still record a strong profitability, demonstrating, I think, the fact that we have a good balance sheet and also deep-rooted regional teams that help us diversify across different geographies. We now have four core businesses with approximately HKD 74 billion in total assets, spanning real estate development and hotels and car parks. I think one of the key attribute to our strength is our diversification, which leads to our resilience. In fact, that is also the theme of our presentation for this financial year. Actually before we started this presentation, I actually went to search for the results of other hospitality group listed in Hong Kong.
I'm very pleased to say that we are one that still record actually pretty strong earnings compared to our competitors who you know in some cases recorded two consecutive years of losses. Just a quick recap of our milestone. You know we were listed in 1972. Initially we were focused in some residential development in Hong Kong. We also had some entertainment business some warehouse business. We really started actually our international expansion phase in term of repositioning the group refocusing our effort in property development.
We adopted the China Wallet strategy about 10 years ago, and that has helped us basically grow our business aggressively regionally, in particular, the hotel space and the residential development space. We are now in 9 countries in terms of operation with four core businesses. 31 owned hotels in operation with approximately 8,200 rooms, and also 12 hotels now under construction. It's quite remarkable to actually see the journey in the last 10 years.
We are very proud of this achievement, and we have shifted to. I think a number of years ago, I mentioned about the Asian Wallet strategy which has helped us actually position ourselves with the wider group of customers. I think looking forward, we will continue to deepen our regional operations, increasing the quantity of larger size projects with greater economies of scale, and while maintaining a very prudent capital structure. If I may just quickly turn to the key highlights of our 2022 results. I think if you turn to page 7 of the presentation, that really can be summarized in six points. The first point being sustainable growth of our core businesses.
If you look at the results that we published in property development, we have accumulated pre-sales. This represent a sales number that have been contracted but unbooked as of the thirty-first of March. The figure was HKD 16.7 billion, which is also a record for us. If you look at the actual revenue that was recognized during the full year for property development, adjusting for the sale of 21 Anderson Road, which was booked as the sale of subsidiary, we actually recorded a growth of about 8.3% in that segment. Hotel is actually the bright spot.
I think despite the COVID-19, we adjusted very early on our business model, which resulted in very strong growth. We're doing a lot of quarantine stay at the moment, and with the restrictions on traveling gradually relaxing across the different regions. We're seeing, you know, last year, 58% increase in revenue compared to the year before. Likewise, with the reopening, car park business also recovered strongly, and gaming revenue rebounded over 160%, year-on-year after the reopening of TWC casinos in May 2021. The second point that I'd like to highlight is that we started actually a program of actively reviewing and recycling our non-core assets.
That resulted in basically the signing of about contracts which is worth about HKD 5.7 billion in terms of asset sales, which included Kai Tak development for an office block, Dorsett City, and also some affordable housing in the UK. We also sold some smaller car parks and as well as retail units as well in Australia. We will continue with this asset recycling program in this current year. I'll talk a bit more about that later on. In terms of the hotel business, right? If I may say that we are actually at an inflection point.
I think this is the financial year 2022 that it shows that it is at an inflection point with actually the strong recovery flowing through directly to the bottom line as well. We are very proud of the achievement that the team has made, especially in the very early stage of the COVID-19. We adjusted our business model very early on. Currently, we have 12 hotels under construction, I mentioned just now, with one we recently opened and one opening very soon in the current financial year plan. This will add to, I think, the growth momentum in the hotel business.
In terms of replenishing a land bank, as you can see from our announcement, in the last few months, right? We managed to replenish a number of very large size land bank at very attractive pricing. In particular, be able to take advantage of some of the weaknesses that the mainland Chinese developer are facing. We managed to secure some very important land bank replenishment at very attractive pricing. The next point I'd like to make is about the BC. BC is a mortgage financing platform. For those who are not familiar with it is a lending platform that focuses on mortgage businesses.
That is supported by financial institutions, sovereign wealth fund, as well as banks in term of funding. Then we'll on-lend that funding to end customers. We now have an AUM of about HKD 3.8 billion as of 31st March. The operation is growing very strongly. With the recent acquisition of Mortgageport, that helps us to diversify our ability to originate new mortgage loans as well. The next point I'd like to make is about our balance sheet management. We are very actively reviewing our balance sheet to see how we can lengthen the maturity of our debt.
I think the balance sheet also reflects that we have a number of very large scale projects which are at the tail end of its development. We have I think before the talk about the inflation as well as the rate hike, we managed to also issue some additional bond doing a re-tap of our 2024 note. Moving on to the next page 8, it kind of summarizes, I think, the key numbers for our results. I think the key theme again is diversification yields resilience. In terms of the top line on a statutory account basis, this was HKD 5.9 billion, which was basically flat from last year.
If you adjust for the disposal of 21 Anderson Road, which is a project that we have in Singapore, a completed property, we sold it as a subsidiary. It was then recorded as such. The adjusted revenue was seven point one billion, which is up about 20% compared to the year before. Our gross margin improved from 31% to 34%, primarily driven by the strong recovery of the recurring cash flow business. I think one highlight is the cash profit figure. This is adjusting for depreciation, all the non-cash expense, and also deducting the revaluation surplus.
We managed to actually record an adjusted cash profit of HKD 1.4 billion, which is up about 126% compared to last year. EPS figure was HKD 0.54, which is up about 136% compared to last year. The board yesterday had discussions on the proposed dividend, and we are recommending that for final dividend we increased it to HKD 0.16, taking the total dividend for the year to HKD 0.20. In addition, in order to celebrate our 50th listing, we also are proposing to issue one for every 10 shares held in bonus shares.
This is what we are proposing, which will be voted in the AGM. As far as cumulative presales, I mentioned just now we recorded presales, these are unbooked sales, as of 31st of March, of about HKD 16.7 billion. The NAV, adjusting for the hotel revaluation surplus was HKD 33.4 billion, which is equivalent to about 13.8 HKD per share. Moving on to page nine. I think the column I would like you guys to focus on is the gross profit line before depreciation. You will see that across all the recurring cash flow businesses, hotel, car park, gaming, we recorded actually a very strong growth.
In particular on the hotel side, you can see that the gross profit before depreciation almost double compared to last year. Likewise, I think car park demonstrated actually very even stronger momentum as well as our TWC operations. If you turn to page 10 of the presentation, it give you a summary of our NAV per share for the last 10 years. We are a company that specialize in property development. As you are aware, if we don't sell the assets, those assets are recorded at cost on our balance sheet. This figure here, we adjust for only hotel revaluation surplus every year.
Every year we have an independent valuer to value the hotel assets. You will see that actually, consistently, we are able to create an increase in NAV per share. That's something which we will seek to achieve in the next 10 years or so. If you look at the dividend figure, that has also demonstrated an uptrend. You know, with the business expanding, we're hopeful that actually, the uptrend can be continued as well. In terms of our balance sheet analysis, if you turn to page 11, our total net debt was about HKD 21 billion, which was up from last year.
Particularly reflecting, I think a number of our big projects coming to kind of a the tail end of the development and supported by construction loans. A lot of those pre-development have been presold as well. I'm not too worried about, you know, a slight increase in the net debt position. In particular, if you look at our net leverage ratio, measured on the basis of net debt to total adjusted assets, it stood at about 28.9% as of 31 March 2022. Especially when you compare to, I think, some listed REITs in Asia. This compares very favorably to the other listed REITs in Asia.
If you zoom into the liquidity position of the Group on page 12, you'll see that in fact we have actually especially under this market conditions maintained a very high level of liquidity. We have total available liquidity of about HKD 18 billion. This include cash position as well as our treasury position and some undrawn facility that far exceeds the HKD 3.5 billion of CapEx required for the coming years. Importantly, I think is to understand, right? The pre-sales of HKD 16.7 billion, a lot of these pre-sales, the cash is not on our balance sheet yet. So when we complete our development, these pre-sales, the cash will come back onto our balance sheet.
That gives us very strong visibility on future cash flow stream. In addition to these pre-sales as well as our liquidity position, we also have a portfolio of assets which are completely unencumbered. Hotel assets, which there are five of them which are unencumbered, and also residential inventory of about HKD 6.6 billion, which are completely unencumbered. These are all flexibility that we have on our balance sheet.
If you turn to page 13, especially for those fixed income investors as well as our banks, you'll see that you get a lot of comfort by looking at page 13 that shows actually improvement across the different various benchmarks, including current ratio, which stood at about 1.8 times. Our adjusted cash profit figure, this is net of interest as well as tax, continue to actually moved up. We reach HKD 1.4 billion in the last financial year. EBITDA to interest coverage ratio stood at about 7.9 times, compared to 6.7 last year. There's a lot of, I guess, cushion.
I think the thing that, you know, the management team is very focused on is to look at the way interest rate is moving. We, you know, are very vigilant about this to try to see how we can manage the situation. One thing I must say is that the return on our development is very good and far exceeds, I think, and far offsets, I guess, the increased interest rate. Turning to page 14, I mentioned just now about our active recycling of non-core assets, and this page gives you a summary of what we did last year.
The key for us for this year will be to look at some of the non-Dorsett branded hotels such as the Sheraton Grand Hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, and also the TWC hotels. These are all potential targets. Should there be a good bid for these assets, we think these are non-core to us. We'll be happy to entertain any offers there. I think on the car park assets as well, the smaller one that we don't feel is quite mature and non-core, we will also consider disposing those as well. The program of active recycling of non-core assets will continue this year.
The next page is about really, you know, reestablishing growth momentum. I think we've been through, you know, two years of COVID-19 situation, and we did manage to come out of that, I think, pretty strongly. I think in the coming year, we have a number of major completions coming up, including Westside Place, Tower 3 and 4, Hornsey Town Hall in London, New Cross Central in Manchester. The Star Residences, which are already completed and being handed over as we speak. The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne is also completing. More importantly, I think the casino in Queen's Wharf, we are now targeting the opening to be in around June of 2023.
Page 16 is just to show you the pipeline in the next few years of our major completions. I think it gives some guidance as to what sort of booking we can make and also what additional recurring cash flow stream we are able to enjoy following the completion of these assets. Turning to page 18, I think. Just to give you some highlight in terms of this page, I think the message there is that there are HKD 66 billion of sellable residential inventory, of which we have locked in about HKD 16.7 billion already.
If you look at this, I think it shows that, look, we have enough pipeline for at least seven or eight years. We are very comfortable so far as our pipeline is concerned. The pre-sales give us very good visibility on the cash flow in the coming few years as well. The large scale projects that we added to our pipeline, turning to page 19. Last year we added, you know, a number of parcels of land in Manchester, in Kai Tak. That project we are doing with New World on a 50/50 joint venture basis. It's a big project with GDV of about HKD 13.2 billion.
We just have the plan revised to offer about 1,400 apartments on the runway in Kai Tak. Lam Tei, Tuen Mun, that's a new acquisition that we made last year. We again bought at a very good price, especially immediately after we managed to increase the plot ratio, doubling, I think, the GFA as well. Vauxhall Square is another one that we acquired recently. That's a very important and significant development in Zone 1 of London. We are very happy that we are able to secure that deal at a very reasonable price.
I think the next few pages is about details of some of our projects, which I won't go through in detail. I think the highlight there is probably on page 21, which is a project that we launched in March and pre-launch in March and then official real launch in April. The sales have gone very well. It's quite a big project with 819 apartments with our attributable GDV of about HKD 2.5 billion. So total GDV, because we own 50% of this, right? The total GDV is actually HKD 5 billion. The response for this project has been phenomenal.
We are now, I think, close to 85% sold already on this project, even though I think the completion is not until 2024-2025. MeadowSide, you know, these are some of the photos of a project that we completed. I won't go through every single projects here. The other sort of page I maybe spend a minute to talk about is on page 25. This is our Westside Place Tower 3 and 4. It's another major completion that we're expecting in the current financial year. We topped the building already. It's, and in this development, there's also gonna be a Dorsett hotel.
We're expecting handover of the first batch of apartments, maybe towards September or October of this calendar year. Page 26 is the Star Residence Tower 1 . That project we have already completed, so we are handing it over now. Again, I won't go through every single picture given the time constraint. If I may, turn to page 30 to talk about hotel. On page 30, right? You'll see that actually, across the board, across different geographies, the RevPAR has improved a lot. Despite that, right, in fact, the occupancy rate for the full year was only at about 62%.
What it's saying is basically there's scope for still ability for capacity to take on more customers. I think what is interesting to note there is that with the new sort of strategy that we adopt and with also, I think, government in different regions reopening, we are also seeing room rate actually increase quite substantially as well across geography, right? Not just Hong Kong, but across the different geography. This is, I guess, I think the positive side, right? I think the growth in the coming year will be, in my view, coming from higher occupancy, higher room rate, as well as room additions for those hotels that we are completing.
I do expect that this business will continue to improve in this current financial year. Turning to page 31, you'll have some pictures of Dorsett Gold Coast, which was opened in December. This is a joint venture project with 313 rooms. Very high quality project and doing very well actually. In fact, it's recording above budget at the moment. In terms of the pipeline, the 12 hotels is summarized on page 32. I think it's primarily in Hong Kong, the Kai Tak project with 400- rooms, which currently we are building. I think topping the building in maybe next month.
UK, we are adding in Canary Wharf one new hotel as well as the Hornsey Town Hall resi project. We have just launched a new brand called Dao by Dorsett, which is a service apartment type hospitality. Sorry, it's a apart hotel type of offering. It's doing well. Also in Australia, we are adding a number of hotels including the Queen's Wharf number of hotels there as well as in Melbourne. Dao by Dorsett, page 33, I think for those who are planning to be in London this summer, I would encourage you to try out this hotel. It's slightly bigger in size in term of room.
I guess because of the nature of current traveling pattern, people typically like to stay a little longer in any particular location, and this product is actually very good. It's an extension of our Dorsett Shepherd's Bush hotel. This one has got a small, I guess, kitchenette. The feedback I got is that it's very well-received by customers. The other sort of big hotel addition that is going to be finished this year is the Ritz-Carlton in Melbourne, 257 rooms. We think that this will be completed, I think, towards the end of the calendar year or early next year. This will be.
This is 100% owned hotel. The Kai Tak hotel on page 35, you see basically some CGI images there. It's gonna be our flagship Hong Kong hotel. This one is with 400 room right across from the office block that we sold to China Light & Power to serve as their headquarters. This project, if you go to Kai Tak now, you'll see that the building has been topped. We think this one should be completed in the financial year 2024. Moving on to the next page, talking about car park operations. You see that our revenue for car park operations increased about 32%.
The total number of bays that we are managing now is about 120,000. It shows consistent growth across the years. We are very pleased to see that this momentum is continuing, especially in the UK where we entered the market a couple of years ago. We've been getting a lot of inquiries for us to manage for third parties. This business will organically continue to grow. Turning to page 39, Queen's Wharf, I think these are some of the photos of Queen's Wharf. I think the plan there is that we will open the casino floors first, probably towards the summer of next year.
We will gradually open the hotels as well. The retail component has been leased to DFS, which is a part of, I think, the big luxury group company. DFS has leased out all the retail space, so they are gonna be bringing in a lot of luxury brands into the retail there. We don't have to worry about leasing out the retail component. To summarize, right? We do have a 99-year lease on this casino with 25-year of exclusivity. Palasino, this is the new brand that we launched. We rebranded all the casinos in the Czech Republic.
You know, after the reopening in May 2021, revenue actually jumped significantly, and the momentum seems to be continuing. We have recently actually applied for a Malta online gaming license to try to service more customers who are unable to come to our casino. We expect that this license should be granted to us in the next couple of months or so. This hopefully will bring in more revenue for us. Our partnership with Star, I think there are a lot of negative news about Star in recent months. I must say that I think it is towards the tail end now. I think we are encouraging the board to actually replace the managing.
Well, a few senior management team members have resigned with the new CEO being appointed. I think an announcement actually came out today. We think that he's the right person to lead The Star. There are a lot of synergies that we see to continue to work with The Star group, including the joint venture that we have in Brisbane as well as in Gold Coast. We look forward to actually building a strong partnership with Star as the issues are being ironed out. Last but not least is our mortgage business. If I may turn to page 43.
I think you'll see from the chart below that the AUM is demonstrating a very strong growth year after year. After all, we only operated this business for four year plus, right? Now it is demonstrating very strong growth momentum. We also have more financial institutions supporting us. We've done four securitization issues now, and every time we see our investor base expanding and continue to gain a lot of support from the sovereign wealth fund in Asia. Also, you know, credit fund, pension fund, as well as insurance money. At the moment we are seeing, you know, growth of about HKD 200 million every month in AUM.
A very positive momentum that is demonstrating in the business. I think the idea there is that I think when the business become more mature, we should be looking to spin it off separately, given that the business nature itself, right, is not exactly the same as what FEC is doing. There's a very strong synergy providing our customers with, you know, financing is actually a very strong synergy to our current real estate development business. That's the comment I'd like to make there. Moving on to, I guess, the last sections. Just to summarize and to provide the outlook of the business.
For property development, I think, as I mentioned just now, we have very strong unbooked pre-sales figure. The pipeline of about HKD 66 billion actually provides the company with very strong future revenue stream. We will actively continue to sell down the inventory. In fact, the recent performance has been pretty good, and we hope that this momentum can continue. On the hotel sector, I think this especially for this year, right, we are seeing continued recovery in this segment. With the new hotel that will be added to the pipeline, it will just add to the revenue stream of this business. The car park operations, I think the key growth driver will come from more new management contracts.
Gaming operations, I think the key there is the opening of Queens Wharf, and that would add a new revenue stream to the business. Also the online Palasino operation. Hopefully, that can provide a bit of growth momentum there as well to the operations. Finally, BC, it is a very promising new business, and we just recently expanded into asset management with the launch of a new fund that targets retail and high net worth. Yesterday we got a rating for that fund and I think we got a 3.75- star rating, which is a very good start for a young fund. So very happy to see that the team is doing well there.
In terms of ESG efforts, if I may just say a few things. We have formulated or still, you know, implementing, I think, a number of strategic directions for the team to work on. More importantly, I think the net- zero roadmap, right, is something which we are keen to actually develop. We are exploring various emissions reduction strategies to achieve that goal. In terms of the financing framework, we have also recently established a financing framework with S&P Global Ratings providing us with an opinion from them. The last page I want to talk about is about, I think, the awards that we have won on page 48.
As you can see, and thank you all for giving us the support. We have won a lot of awards in the past months. The one that I'm very proud of is the Asia Overall Best Managed Company and Best Managed Listed Company in Hong Kong by FinanceAsia. Thank you all for your support there, and we will continue to work hard to provide the transparency that the investors expect from us and continue to deliver, hopefully, a strong return and to our shareholders as well. With that, I conclude my presentation, and thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Hoong. Please, we will now come to the Q&A section. Should you have any questions, please type it in the Q&A box. We will read it out one by one.
Yeah. The first question that we have is an update on the UK exposure. In such a case, is there any way to hedge the FX risk?
Yeah. I think the way we hedge our forex risk is by borrowing locally. I think I mentioned this a few times, right? We always look to get domestic source of financing. We don't hedge the equity, but we do hedge partly by using local currency debt. We do, for example, you know, the projects that we have in U.K. are often funded by U.K. sterling loan, right? That is a way we can hedge in part. Profit, unfortunately, is very expensive to hedge. I think long term you'll find that, sometimes it is in your favor, sometimes it's not in your favor. Now, you know, probably not in our favor, but there were moments in time when it was very much in our favor.
We just take the view that we don't. You know, we hedge in terms of in part using loan, but the equity or the profit part we don't hedge.
Well, the property development margin in Australia and UK are relatively low. How do we expect going onward?
Well, actually, I think the margin that we have is pretty stable. I wouldn't say it's low. I think historically, I think China, our projects in China, because the cost base was very low, we have a very high margin for our projects in Shanghai and Guangzhou. That's at the tail end of the development now. I think the margin that we can expect going forward are more the normalized margin. I think the U.K. and Australia are, you know, what we have experienced are actually normalized margin.
Yeah. One point I wanna add is that, actually in Australia, well, in U.K., most of the project are very stable in terms of the profit margin. Last year, last financial year, 2021, when we hand over the stage one, tower one and two, West Side Place, that was most of them actually on a lower floor. Honestly, this is a lower margin. This is the main cause as well. Upcoming, the second phase, third phase, talking about the mid-floor, high floor, of course, the profit margin are same. Yeah. I mean, is higher.
If you have any questions, please type it in the Q&A box. Okay, this comes to the end of our investor presentation. Thank you again for joining us.