Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Joyce Kwok and I'm the General Manager of Investor Relations at Hang Lung. Welcome to the Analyst presentation for FY 2025 interim results announcement that were made earlier today for both Hang Lung Properties 101. HK and Hang Lung Group 10. HK. We welcome the audience who are at our Hong Kong headquarter and also the audience who are at our live webcast right now. Please scan the QR code for our presentation pack in support of our minimal paper policy. There are English version and simplified Chinese version here for you to choose. Today, our senior management team is all here to join the presentation. They include Mr. Adriel Chan, our Chair, Mr. Weber Wai Pak Lo, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Kenneth Ka Kui Chiu, our Chief Financial Officer.
Our Chair Adriel will start with some remarks and our CEO Weber will walk through our results and some of our developments using the slides. Our CFO Kenneth will also walk through our property sales and financial management. After that, we will address the questions from the audience from both the floor and the webcast. Adriel, it's our turn now.
Thanks, Joyce. I wasn't aware I was making remarks, but first of all, I want to draw your attention to the little logo in the bottom right corner of our presentation, the 65. This is our 65th year, and it's not diamond or whatever jubilee, but it's a milestone. Ronnie just retired, just taken over. It's been an interesting year since the takeover. Let's just say not only has it been like drinking from a fire hose, but there have been all sorts of really fun, interesting things which have kept the three of us very engaged and so somewhat challenging 65th year.
That being said, I think if you look at the results and if you look at the market's reaction to our results, I think this is a solid set of numbers. I think the team has executed very, very well on our strategies, but also really taken advantage of our strengths. We'll dive into some of the details of what we're doing, which is especially interesting this year when we go through the package. Overall, I think that we feel the stability coming and hoping for even a little bit of uplift if the trajectory of the last couple of months can hold. All in all, I think management are feeling very cautiously optimistic. Not cautiously very optimistic, but very cautiously optimistic. I think that what we have here will help tell that story. Without further ado, maybe I'll pass it on to Weber.
Afternoon. Very nice to see you all. Also, just say hello to those on the webcast. I will not repeat all the numbers here, but just want to highlight a few here. First, our core business rental business still down 3%, but I would say kind of expected when we start off the year and also when we start the year in January, we talk about it. First half will still be tough and hopefully second half will be better. I can show you later on some of the pages that we see sequentially the improvement. Of course, we are not very happy only seeing this. We want to back to positive. I think there's still a way to go. I think at least we see the trend overall because of the less property sales and also the hotel business and sales business account for 3% and 3%, total 6%.
Our core business is still our rental business which is 94% of our business. We declare same dividend both HLP and HLG. Revenue contribution by segment at the backdrop of 1.4% depreciation of Renminbi actually was also sequential improvement, but it was down by almost 2%-3% in the first quarter but actually gradually improved but still average down by 1.4%. We managed to get our Mainland China rental revenue in Renminbi terms down by 1%. Because of the Renminbi depreciation down by 2% in Hong Kong dollars, Hong Kong down 4%. As I mentioned, this account for 94% of our business. Others because of less property sales and also the China hotels because now we put under PP&E, they are 3% and 3% of our business. I think this is really the main part.
If we look at the rental revenue in Mainland, - 1% in first half from a - 4% in 2024. On the right hand side, if you look at the box, retail was flat compared to -3% in first half of 2024. Office remain to be really tough. -4% and -5% continues to be tough. Service apartment because we move the Grand Gateway service apartment into hotel and then they are under renovation. Therefore the number is not really significant. Overall we are - 1% in first half of 2025, improved from - 3% in 2024. Retail business actually improved from the overall is flat to first half of 2024. A lot of you will ask, oh, why you manage for flat? Because the base rent is increasing. I remember last time you asked and questioned us could you manage to increase base rent?
Yes, we did increase the base rent that offset the drop of the sales rent. Overall we managed to get the retail revenue flat to 2024 first half. If you look across, I would say out of 10 projects, seven are plus, three are minus. Of course, you would drill why they are minus, but they are minus for the reason because of the competition or the repositioning or the conversion from the positioning from one to the others. They are in transition. Overall, I would say the crown jewel in Shanghai, those performing outside Shanghai are delivering positive revenue growth in the first half of 2025. I think this part really showed the optimism that we see. Of course, we still need to be cautious, but if you look at the numbers, we are -12%, -14%, and -18% last year.
Sequential deceleration, I would say last year, but since the third quarter of 2024, the sales improved from -18% to -11%, from -11% to -7% in the first quarter, and second quarter -1%, only almost flat. Therefore, the sales in the first half is -4% on average, but actually is improving from -7% to -1% in the second quarter. On the right-hand side, they are across different malls, and just want to highlight Heartland -31%. Yes, it's a big drop, but I just want to say the launch of the other mall in Wuhan was in July last year. When you compare these sales compared to the first half of last year, that mall had not opened yet. Therefore, that is an impact of the dilution of one mall competitor in the market in Wuhan. Otherwise, Forum is in transition.
Riverside and all the others are basically plus or minus, which is not significant. Also, Plaza 66 also seeing a -8% only compared to a double-digit down in the last few reports. When you compare the numbers from the luxury brands that they report, I think this number actually is better than what you see from most of the other brands. Why Adriel just mentioned is exciting, interesting, but quite tiring because the retail landscape has changed, and it changed so much that we could not use the old way of looking at it. I can say that some of the Athleisure brands, their performance is even better than some of the luxury brands. Some of the experiential brands, for example, Pockmark and all that, they are really creating some of the new experience to our customers.
In terms of evolving retail landscape in Mainland China, I think we just need to continue to upgrade our offering across the portfolio through events, tenant management, as well as the CRM. Right on the 65th anniversary we would like to launch national program to be more efficient on one hand, but at the same time to create first in the market kind of news to some of the second-tier cities which generate good footfall, good result from sales, but also actually leverage on our portfolio to get some efficiency. At the same time, yes, even though you see we run so much program, our expenses don't jump much because we redeploy our expenses from more operational into marketing and hopefully we can generate more sales from a customer perspective.
If you look at this number, I think it tells a lot of effort from the team in the first half. New letting, I think this is really something I look at especially in a tough market. 36% increase, right? Even though if you want to discount the price in order to get the customers, you still need to attract the tenant to open the store with you. I think 36% is a new deal, it's a new letting. It's not continuation or renewal, it's a new letting. I think this is something we need to focus on. Also, I think First-in-town brands, 57% more compared to first half of 2024. Again, we are not only focusing on quantity, but we need to focus on the quality as well. Because now if your mall does not have differentiation, people will just stop coming.
You just need to bring news, bring new ideas first into the market and therefore they will come and continue to visit your shopping center. Prioritizing occupancy without the sentiment, improvement of the environment is very difficult. If you see across the board our occupancy continue to improve or maintain at a very high level. Even for some of the tougher one, you see we managed to increase the occupancy, let's say Wuhan, we increased the occupancy from last year 83%- 88%. We are slowly, slowly getting our pace and get back to. Hopefully, we can go for full occupancy. On the right hand side, I think just highlight a few in terms of LFA luxury, more or less the same. We did not add or we did not reduce.
However, we add more personal care and beauty, we add more food and beverages, we add more others which including athleisure, other pop up and all that kind of stuff and try to really create newness into the market and therefore to attract customers. Overall, both renewal and new lease increased by 12%. That shows the case that in a very tough market we can still make deals. The number of first-in-town, which I just mentioned already, also according to the customer demographic change, as you recall, we did quite well at the Top, the Emerald and the Sapphire is doing quite well. If you just rely on the top 10% of the customers, you are not good enough because you just need a lot more people to come.
That's why we introduce one tier above Crystal, try to engage more lower tier customers and making sure that those customers will come to us more. Those customers called AG are $10,000 spending or more, right? We are now doing both end, right? Not only at the top that we want to treasure them, even those more than one coffee, but spend $10,000 with us. We want to give them more reward, more engagement, more car park benefit, and more reason for them to come back. I think this actually make us a lot more active base and also can introduce a lot more valid customers and active customers in our base. Tax refund is something very important in which we are taking the lead. Tax refund, now almost all our malls are now providing tax refund service, especially since April this year when government tried to push this.
We now have 222 stores plus 78% increase versus end of 2024. This will only go up, right? When customer find out, especially even for all of you, if you come to China now, you can get 9% tax refund. With the Renminbi still weak, actually you can buy cheaper than Hong Kong, right? There is no other reason why you don't go to China to shop, right? I think there's a lot of things going on. We will continue to push. We will continue to lead this arena. House 66, again I don't want to repeat all this. You can look at it. We work with partners, we work with banks. We try to offer valet parking, VIP hand free service. As I mentioned, we don't want to go for discount only kind of business promotion, right? We want to give money cannot buy exclusivity to build a relationship.
At the same time, differentiate us from those department store and those others. They always run promotion. Hong Kong exactly the same thing. Of course the scale will not be as high as China. You can see our CRM program especially on the left hand side. House 66, as I mentioned, we introduced AG. Valid member increased by 25%, right? New member increased by 6%. Member sales although down by 2%. If you remember our overflow, down by 4%. Our members still perform better than the overall base and sales penetration improve. That means more customers engaged and they actually spend more with us. These core customers continue to drive loyalty and also to be our core base for our success. In Hong Kong, we optimize our offer.
For example, some of the offers that we normally subsidize, supermarket and all that, we tighten it up because we don't think if you go to your neighborhood mall to buy something in supermarket, why we need to reward you as the same as before. Therefore, we tighten it up. We still increase the valid member, but the penetration come down because people find it a little bit more difficult to spend and use our points in our supermarket because this is our intention to tighten it up. Unlike one operator in Hong Kong that even canceled their CRM program, we will not. We will continue to do that, but we will tighten it up. Office, as I mentioned, continue to be very tight, continue to be very challenging. We are from -6% to -5% if you look at across the board.
I think mostly Shanghai is under pressure in media discussion early on. I just mentioned in a second-tier city, when you have absolute leadership in the city, you have a better bargaining power. When the tenant used to come to our top quality office, they were very difficult to move back down to the grade B. However, in Shanghai, everyone provides grade A and the supply is huge. Therefore, there is some impact into our business. The good thing is we retain most of our existing tenants. I think that is the key. Hopefully, we continue to deploy this strategy and hopefully we can retain the most quality tenants and therefore we can continue to build up our occupancy. In Hong Kong, I will draw your attention on the right-hand side of the box first. If you look at the retail, they are -7%, -7% both first half.
Seems like there is not much improvement. If you remember our big deal in Causeway Bay we knew last year in April, end of March, there is some impact of that particular deal. That deal impact will go away in the second half. Hopefully, this -7% will improve. Office with significant improve from -8% to -1% and also residential, service apartment. I'm sure you all know when you read newspaper now rental are going up and we also reap the same benefit. We see +11% growth in our residential and service apartment rental, and therefore we managed to improve from -8% to -4% in Hong Kong in the first half of 2025. You asked me, okay, from -9%, you improved to -4%. Will that continue to improve? My answer to you is that Hong Kong is still very, I would say, complicated.
On one hand, offices still have plenty of supply. At the same time, street level and shopping mall are trying to retain customers as much as we can. Therefore, in the weekend if they go to the north, hopefully at least from Monday to Friday they stay with us and spend more with us. We are still working hard to find the optimal point. You can see that our sales in Hong Kong are down by only 2% compared to the market down by 4%. I will pass to Kenneth to talk about this viewpage, and then I will come back to talk about ESG.
Thank you, Weber. I would like to share with you on our property sales segment. In the first half this year, we have recorded 19 units of Aperture sold and completed this first half and one unit in Wuhan Residence. Last year for the same period, there were 120 units of Aperture sold and also one Purple Row house transacted. That's why we have a decline in the property sales in Hong Kong. For Mainland, we have one unit in Wuhan sold in the first half, but in the coming two months, we are going to launch the Residence in Wuxi. Overall, I think based on the latest response from the team, actually we think that we may generate a decent sales from these projects. We will share with you guys on the sales performance in the coming two months.
For financial management, I think the key highlight is that the net gearing of HLP stood at 33.5%, only 0.1% growth compared to December last year. I think we previously shared with all of you that we are at the peak of our CapEx cycles, and after the completion of Westlake 66, the CapEx will go down going forward. Overall, the finance cost, gross finance cost before capitalization, actually dropped by 7%. There are various factors, but mainly because of lower borrowing costs, which I will share later on, but because the capitalization rate declined from 57% first half last year to 50% this first half. The net finance cost increased, but if you look at the average borrowing cost for first half, actually it was 3.9%, around 40 basis points decline from full year last year. If you compare with second half last year, it was a 50 basis points decline.
I think the $10 billion syndicated loan that we arranged earlier this year can help us to further lengthen the debt maturity profile. Basically, more than 70% of our debt are due more than two years. If you look at the debt portfolio, you look at the left-hand side, we have increased our exposures on Renminbi-denominated loan. If you look at the bar, you add up the top two segments, actually Renminbi loans, both onshore and offshore, altogether accounted for 43% of our loans. It can help us to manage our finance costs, because Renminbi borrowing is quite cheap right now. It also can help us to manage the natural hedge on the balance sheet. Next part, I pass it to Weber. Thank you.
Just don't bore with all the information, just key highlight. Now we have 80% of our project in Mainland China powered by renewable energy from a 50% that I think which is something we are very proud of because not many developers can claim this, that, that now we are moving from two project to five, five project to eight. Hopefully two more to go and then we can complete this journey. I think this is huge. Not only we now tick the box by saying this is powered by renewable energy, but we also save cost. We find that actually the renewable energy sometimes not only giving us a support on the sustainability but also actually help us to save costs. Diversity, inclusion.
I don't want to bore you with these numbers and also I think one thing I think very important first of the kind that our journey to net zero we issued this paper and then we are committed and hopefully even though right now geopolitically this might not be as fashionable as two years ago, we still believe that this is the right thing to do and then we will continue this journey. All right, the pipeline for the next few years, Westlake, we just got the op on July 4th. We will hand over the first four towers of the office in the second half of this year and then the tallest tower we will hand over in the first half of next year.
Center 66 Phase II as we mentioned we will start to do pre sale in the next two months and hopefully we can report good results because this essay is a little bit different from the others because they come on longer lease as well as we have schooling and all that kind of support. Hopefully we can sell a lot more units through here. Pavilion is on track, is on time. We would like to launch in the middle of 2026. Kimpton according to the schedule will be 2027. One more new thing which we I'm sure you guys read but we did not go out and publicize it because tomorrow is the shareholder voting for our partners. Hopefully after tomorrow we can talk a little bit more about this deal. This deal, I think we will cover it on the next page.
The green color is the site that we own, right? The orange dotted line is the one that we just announced. We will lease for 20 years right. If you have a chance to go to Hangzhou on the left hand side, you see yes, we have the fantastic location but the yellow dotted line own the best and most prominent and the visibility of this corner of Wuling Guangzhou. The objective of this, not only we operate differently, but we can extend our leadership at this place by working with them, and therefore we can extend our facade from 90 m- 290 m, so from the white dotted line at the bottom to the yellow and the L shape. This is really a visibility, at the same time accessibility.
If you have a chance to go to Hangzhou, that street is the busiest street in Hangzhou, and that will give us connection of MTL connection on the other side as well as the walk traffic from the highest traffic street. At the same time, also this one will increase our scale. If you have a chance to look at the right hand side, we have 105,900 sq m in our original retail design, but with the new expansion we will increase by 40%, so the size will be just a bit bigger than our competitor next door. With this extension, therefore, we will have scale, we will have visibility, and we will have accessibility. This definitely, because this is not our own property, that will improve yield because our CapEx will not be significant, right?
Most of the M and E will be done by the landlord, and then we are only responsible for the fit out, so the fit out will not be a significant amount. We don't need to pay rent, and therefore the rental income minus the head lease cost minus the operating cost will be the net profit, so therefore the yield will be significantly improved for the existing project. Combining the two, we have scale, we have accessibility, we have visibility, and also we have yield enhancing. That's why we are doing it, we come up with new terms. I don't want to use asset light because we don't do asset light everywhere. This is asset-right. We do the right thing because we can extend our leadership next door by increasing our and increasing our leadership position in this project.
I think we can talk a little bit more about the project, and then even though at some point we would like to invite all of you to come, we will build a bridge between our mall and this building, and therefore it will be seamless. Also, the MTL station today on the north, they will have one tunnel going into the expansion and one tunnel coming into the Westlake that will improve also our traffic from the north. At the east side, we will have a much better connection from the highest traffic location. Therefore, hopefully this project will give us all that I just mentioned. As we mentioned, offices, because we got the OP already, BCDE we will hand over in the second half. Tower A, the tallest building, we will hand over in the first half next year. As of today, BCDE we already released 22%.
As you may know, office is different from retail, and you need to get the OP, you need to get the fitting before the customer commits to you, right? Tower Yi we already fully leased, and the end customer will come in in September and November. BCDE we are working on it, and we are making good progress. Tower A, because of the best, you can see from our page. Sorry about that.
Oops. Why I cannot go back. Okay, the Tower A, look at the Tower A and the top zone. You can see the whole Westlake. We want to make sure that we will give the best view to our best tenant or even turn some of the floor into a restaurant. Therefore, people can enjoy the Westlake view. We are working on it. For retail, last time we talked to you, maybe we were at 71%. Now we improved to 77%. As of today, we are already at 81% pre-lease for retail. These are the tenant mix expected. We already have a game plan, including the extension, what kind of tenant mix we will put there. Therefore, they will be complementary to each other. For Mandarin Oriental, it will be second half of next year. Other project, as I mentioned, Wuxi, this is really something we're looking forward to.
There will be a hotel, Curio from Hilton, and also Pavilion extension. They are on time. We already topping out in June, will be ready to be open in the hopefully middle of next year. Service apartment, center, residence, we will pre-sell in the next two months. Heartland and Grand Hyatt, market is quiet. We will not rush to sell at cheap. Hopefully, when market improves, we really can sell good quality at the right price. Hong Kong residents, as Kenneth Ka Kui Chiu mentioned, we still have seven unsold houses in Bloopur Road out of 18. We now have two projects, Wilson Road as well as Salsa Hill. We are working on the project for the Salsa Hill. We are waiting for the premium appeal. Hopefully, we can increase the plot ratio from 0.5- 0.75. Therefore, we can build more square footage over there.
Aperture, we have 153 unsold. We will sell at the right price. Investment properties, Summit and Burnside, we just completed the renovation of Summit. We sold one of them and we are working with some pipelines and hopefully we have more good news to announce. I will stop here.
Thank you. Thank you. Adriel, Weber, Kenneth, we now start the Q& A session. Please feel free to raise your questions by raising your hand here in our office or type in the questions in the box on the webcast page. Raymond from HSBC on the floor. Thank you.
Good afternoon, this is Raven from HSBC. I got two questions. I'm not going to ask the detail about the Hangzhou project but actually want to understand better about this thinking. For example, going forward, should we think of Hang Lung Properties using more of this type of models to expand your retail business for those cities that you already have presence, for example, like Shanghai and Wuxi, that you have done very well and it's not easy to acquire the land nearby. This is the first question. The second question is actually something you mentioned about the very nice slide, which is the sequential deceleration of tenant sales in Mainland China. We'd love to have your crystal ball. How do you see the tenant sales trend in the second half or sometimes even in the next 12 months? Thank you.
As I mentioned, asset-right, you have to be right. You have to be in the right location and also the right reason to do that. I think you are spot on. We will only do when we see there is a demand. We will only do when there is a synergy and holistic impact advantage to our project. This will be a win-win. I can argue two years ago without this slowdown, you would never get this kind of deal. Now there's an opportunity for us to have a hybrid model just on one hand by buying it. It takes time, seven years to build. At the same time, once you build it together with something, you can get the best good location and then decorate the facade a little bit to make it become a holistic project.
I think that will not only increase your scale but also increase your return. I think we will continue to look for opportunities and hopefully there will be some others to be announced soon. I don't have a crystal ball, but second half I do see opportunities to grow from a - 7% to - 1%. Hopefully third quarter we will see mild growth and fourth quarter also our guideline will be more or less the same. If everything according to our plan, maybe we can see a little bit of growth for the full year. I don't know, you know, in today's market, two months can change a lot of different things. We can see that now really. Last year the bottom was in the third quarter. Yes, third quarter people will still travel. Summer people are going away, there will be still issue and concern.
Looks like when we see July, it's not as bad as last year. We hope, we hope there will be mild growth in second half.
I'll take one more question from the floor before I move on to the webcast. Karl from JP Morgan.
Thank you very much. I think it's very encouraging that we saw a pretty solid improvement in the second quarter of this year. Right. I'm just curious, why do you think in the second quarter we saw such an improvement? Because supposedly it's the time when the trade war concern started to emerge, right? From your perspective, why do you think this happened? The improvement, especially if we look into Grand Gateway, right, in the second quarter it was up 10% year-on-year. Definitely it's better than expected. Why is that? Just now, Weber, you mentioned that for July it is not as bad as last year. Can you elaborate more about what you mean by that? Are we seeing a positive growth in July already or is it like a mild decline for July? Maybe a bit more color on the July retail sales so far.
My second question is on dividend. Just curious, for the full year, would you still be guiding like a flat dividend for full year? One more question, sorry. One peer recently issued the convertible bond, right. So p eople might wonder whether some other companies may do it. Just curious, what's your thoughts on potentially issuing a convertible bond? Thank you.
I will answer some. Maybe you guys supplement. First of all, I would like to give effort to ourselves. Occupancy improve, traffic improve, and that provide the foundation. At the same time, if you look at external factors, stock market improve, both A share and H share sentiment on very gloomy property sector somehow stabilized. I think this is really one very important point which I want to highlight. Is Japan business down in Q2 by 28%. There are a few things happening. Less people traveling to Japan because yen appreciate. People feel a little bit more comfortable because paper money improve, stock improve, everything stabilized. Seems like even though trade war is ongoing kind of conversation, people in Mainland China, if they can still earn good money, good salary, and then if they believe that this is the right way to spend, they will spend it.
I can only conclude this way. I would say if you look at our different mall have different dynamics. Not only Grand Gateway, I would say Bushi improved, Kunming improved, Olympia in Dalian improved, so I think there's not one single reason why. That's why I would say it's not really a so-called magic. You just need to put all stars and line them up and therefore hopefully that will improve and hopefully the momentum continues. I was told today Russia have an earthquake and because of that tsunami will hit Japan and might hit this part of the world as well. I don't know, so travel hopefully will be normalized.
I'm not saying that less normalized people will not find extraordinary cheap when you travel and also I think there will be something happening also when April they promote the tax refund, people from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, from Thailand, they all go to China and shop, so all this add together. I think this is one second dividend if everything unchanged and this is what according to our plan we don't want to cut as simple as that. Last year was the reset and I don't want to do reset all the time. Of course, never say never, but this is really our intention. Third, I forgot CB, oh maybe you.
I think a lot of bankers came to me, you know, no matter they really have a very good plan or they rush to ask me because their boss asked them why you couldn't get a deal and you get out, you know, with all the major developers. There are a few points I would like to share as a CFO. First of all, I'm very mindful on any dilutive instruments even though the face coupon looks to be cheap. Right. There's always an option value that you need to think about in the case that the other developers, they issue convertible bonds. I think one of the key points we need to note is that their major shareholders hold a lot of shares, right? 74%. They have plenty of room to do things right. For us, we are okay right now.
Hang Lung Group owns 64% something of Hang Lung Properties , but I think our share price is still quite cheap. If you look at the book value, 0.3, right. I keep monitoring, but this is not something that I would consider at the moment.
Thank you. I'll pick a question from the webcast. Shenyang Forum 66 and Wuhan Heartland are under transition. Can you share more about how this is progressing and when do you expect this transition process to bear fruit?
Wow, this is a long answer. First of all, at least we manage our occupancy improvement from 83% 88% in Heartland. I don't want to go back to why it's difficult because when someone runs a promotion but you just have one more credible player and the market is declining, therefore everyone dilutes each other. I think this is really something happening in Wuhan. The good thing is we are working back to basics. We're getting the supermarket back, we're getting the F&B back, we are getting some products that used to be not our strength compared to next door. We are getting those categories back to at least a competitive kind of trade mix. There's still a lot of things we need to do, but as we look at both traffic as well as the sales, why do you see the number is negative so much?
Because the other mall launched in July last year. When you compare the first half, we are comparing with only two malls in Wuhan, but from July onwards there will be three significant malls. That is something we need to work very hard on. How long does it take for us to get back to normal? I would say at least two years. I think we need to work very hard to get the basics right, get the traffic, bring the good quality F&B, bring all trade mix into attracting customers. We don't need to repeat what the other competitor does by just replicating what they have. We have to differentiate ourselves from the others. I think this is what Heartland Forum is about, more a transition from in the past.
We had a few strong luxury brands, now they left and then we need to reposition the whole mall into lifestyle and more suitable for office tenants, nearby tenants and all that. That actually takes a little bit of time for us to do that. Now you see occupancy also maintained at the high level and also going up and now the traffic is getting better and hopefully it also takes maybe two years for us to get back to the place where the Palace, the Riverside that we enjoy. I think yes, it's our weak point, I have to say. We are having laser focus on this and hopefully we can crack that. I can't promise we can get it done in six months because it takes time. I think the team are very committed.
We even actually put more resources in these two projects and making sure that we give the best support to this project to make this happen.
I would just add also that there's not many developers who have a track record of being able to revive a mall or at least turn around fortunes. We've done it with Center, we've done it with Olympia, we've done it with Palace, and we've done it with Riverside, so I think we have a proven track record.
Cindy from Citi, and I will go back to the webcast. Thank you.
Thank you. I have three questions. First is also on dividend. Just want to check on your latest thinking for potential returning to a pure cash dividend, maybe sometime next year after the Hangzhou project. How's your thinking? Second question is on your, say, luxury malls, as you have disregarded the differences between luxury and non-luxury. Just wondering what's the rationale behind, and should we worry on the retention for luxury tenants? What will be the key reasons behind their stickiness with us? The third question is actually on your positive reversion. You mentioned we are still in negative retail sales, and turnover rent obviously at decline. What other drivers for tenants willing to pay a higher base rent, given obviously the market is just very competitive?
If we are able to see, like, tenant sales turning around somewhere second half this year, will we be more optimistic on a more positive reversion, maybe?
Maybe I comment on the question about the scrip data management you mentioned. I think we previously indicated that this is an interim measure and we may stop it after Westlake 66 starts operations. We target to open Westlake 66 for the retail mall in the first half of next year. Subject to the board discussion, there's still a chance for us to do a scrip for the coming final dividend. After that, we may stop it.
Yeah. For the classification that you talk about, luxury and non-luxury, you can see we declassify it this time not because we worry about luxury. I just go back to the basic, the rationale why we don't want to only so binary to talk about luxury and sub-luxury. Over the last few years, I always talk to Adriel that I feel a little bit bad for those not belonging to luxury. Why do we call them sub? They should have a name, right? Because they contribute a lot. They contribute almost 85% of our space, maybe the sales 50%. Why do we call them something? The reason why, go back to our strategy: customer centricity, people behavior change. I asked the team to give me the top 10 tenants in each of the malls. Even though they don't have luxury or sub-luxury, you will be surprised.
A lot of athletic, a lot of gold, a lot of other trade are top 10, not the usual luxury. Maybe one or two luxury are truly luxury, but some others are not. In order to give a real description or something that really ties to what customer behavior is, I think this is something we might be too binary to look at only this dimension. I just give you an example. We have not decided yet, but we are just thinking about experiential retail, general retail. Even in the general retail, you have different categories. Let's say, for example, I'm sure maybe you will ask, one of the tenants put a ship in Shanghai, is it a retail? No, because only 20% of the space is for retail. Most of them are for exhibition and F&B. If that is F&B, is it F&B? No, this is a luxury F&B.
Some ANTA Athleisure brands, are they sports, are they lifestyle, or are they luxury? Laopu Gold, are they luxury or are they jewelry and watches? Now the tenants move into an arena that actually is even so blurred, we do not even know how to categorize them. We believe that it's fair to not only look at two dimensions. We believe that even though we look at all our competitors, all our peers, they don't call themselves something and something. Therefore, we decided with the board, together with some study, we believe that maybe to be fair to all the malls, we should not give them a label. Let's say the downside. Of course, maybe you guys may come or maybe you worry about it. No, on the other hand, when we take out this, maybe those people believe that we are too high end, they may come, right?
Because in the past, we call this a luxury mall. If I don't buy luxury, I don't come. I think there would be a lot of advantage. I would say maybe next time when we see you guys again, maybe we will have a better description going forward. We are not trying to hide anything. I can tell you that luxury sales, even in the -4% , they're down by 12%. Long luxury sales, they are going up by 8%. This is the fact that we have to tell because all the luxury brands we report the announcement, we can't hide. The key is, I'm not saying that we try to deemphasize luxury. We want to give a little bit more color of the customer behavior. Therefore, maybe in the future we classify them exponential.
This and that we don't know yet because we are still monitoring the behavior of the customers. I can tell you that Mainland China is very different from Hong Kong and they change so fast. Therefore, we would like to be a little bit fair to every single category. Hopefully we will have a better description on that. Otherwise, we are still doing premium more. We are still doing the high end, the best service one. We do not want to bind ourselves only to luxury and sub luxury. The last one, sorry, ever positive reversion. I will have 10 more. Seven of them positive reversion. Three of them, which you know which three, are negative. It really depends on your leadership position in that city. It really depends on your bargaining power and really depends on your business momentum.
As I mentioned last time, we showed to you that in the last six years we managed the base rent increase. We continue to do that although it is coming down because the reality, the fact that it's coming down, but that offsets the sales rent decrease. If the sales come back, then maybe we are in a better place. The mix between sales rent and the turnover rent is more or less, there's not much movement. However, we see if the trough really reaches and then you see the sales pick up again. Hopefully that will give us a little bit more confidence in the future.
Maybe I'll just make a quick addition to the first comment on the scrip and versus cash dividend. You know, the past several results announcements we talked about in Chinese Bobon Bo Meng, so really protecting the core. We didn't mention that this time except in this context of referring to last time. I think that's because things feel like they're stabilizing, and since things feel like they're stabilizing, I think everybody feels a little bit more comfortable with a so-called return to normalcy. In any case, it was never intended as necessarily a long-term move. I think it was really with the view of our gearing in mind that we did a series of changes last year.
The hindsight is good for our gearing is good for HLG to acquire at a low cost. Overall, I think this is a temporary measure as Adriel Chan mentioned, but we would like to and hopefully we get back to normal environment and hopefully that special measure did not need to be there. I think we just focus, as we all be very frank to you. We just focus on fundamental, some disadvantage measures. That measures are only for short term and hopefully if every fundamental get back. I think our business is so easy to understand and basically everything is about traffic, about sales, about occupancy. Hopefully also macroeconomic environment improve. Things we can't control and therefore we need measures hopefully to control the impact to our company.
In view of time, I'll pick up the last question from webcast and then one more question from Mark. I'll start with the one on the webcast. Can you update us with the overall CapEx guidance and specifically the expansion at Westlake 66, would that increase the CapEx, the upcoming CapEx significantly? This is a question from webcast.
Okay, maybe I share with you for the CapEx projections. I think this year our overall CapEx would be around HKD 4.9 billion and next year's would come down to I think around HKD 3 billion and then keep going down if we don't take any new major acquisitions for those asset-right projects. Actually, the CapEx is not that significant because as what Weber mentioned, the owners, you know, they need to pay most of the CapEx and for us we just mainly do the valuation but it's a case by case. Okay, so this is the key figures I can share.
I mean it's really in line with everything like the cash dividend versus scrip with the cut in dividend or the reset, sorry, in dividend last year. I mean all of these things tie in. We knew that this would be the peak in CapEx. Actually, we kind of told the market many years ago that the peak would be around now. In a way, it shouldn't have come as a surprise to the market that we did what we did last year. Of course, many investors are very short term and they don't remember what we said previously. Now we're coming to the end of that big cycle, CapEx cycle, and it's natural that we would try to move back towards what we think of as a more normal.
I think we're on very, very sound footing and I feel very good about where we are and what we've set up for the next couple of years.
Last question from Mark from UBS. Thank you.
Thank you, management, and congratulations for the good result. I have two questions. I think the first question is also regarding Hangzhou and Wuhan. If we research Wuhan, the whole project, how are you going? What would you like to change or modify for the upcoming Hangzhou opening plan and more? Drill Insight is definitely excited to have the phase two expansion. Just from an intention perspective, do you think that we are so confident on the project that we don't have enough space to give our tenants, or we want to improve the project connectivity and the scale to enhance the competitive advantages? Maybe that's my first question. Thank you.
I think you basically know exactly where we are coming from. If you have a chance to go to Wuhan, one of our weakest links is the accessibility, right? The MTR station is far away. We only have a monorail. This Hangzhou expansion, we solve all the problem. I don't think this is the only one. Nowadays, with the evolving retail landscape, you can't just do what Plaza 66 does. You have to offer everything. With our site constraint in the past, we only have 105,000 sq m, right? Therefore, this is an excellent opportunity for us to increase our retail space by 40%. I think facade is really one of the key. I was in Hangzhou Saturday and Sunday last weekend. I looked at different angles and took pictures.
With this, I can be sure that Hangzhou, our next door, can see us very clearly with the much better facade. I think overall we are keep learning. I'm not saying that we did not learn when we launched Wuhan. I would say Wuhan, when we launched, the tenant mix was even better than Spring City in Kunming, but because of the traffic, because next door suffocated us by not allowing any tenant to come to us. Their tactics somehow suffocated a little bit of us, and then suddenly with the next big competitor coming in by discounting everyone by 20%, that caught everyone by surprise for the whole market. I would say Hangzhou, I'm a little bit more confident because of the dynamic of the city.
My team just sent to me South China Morning Post today, just have a report saying that Hangzhou is the number one city in terms of energy and vitality, which it was rated by EIU. I think I was there in Hangzhou last weekend. It's so amazing. I was in one of our competitors. I could not believe how many people there. They are young and they are willing to spend. I think overall the market is right for us. We have the right location. We now even make it bigger by having even a better retail space on top and above with the best office location and the best hotel offering. I think now make it even more confident for us to have a better result for this project.
I think that the short answer is both. It's not either or, it's both. We're confident and we need more space, and also we want to improve everything from the connectivity to the facade.
My second question will be on the asset disposal or maybe we just call it Summit. I think just want to check with management, do we think that our net gearing—first of all, how comfortable are we at the current net gearing level? Are we very keen to bring it down in a short period of time? After that, my question is, are we keen to dispose the Summit at what kind of pace? Do we want to dispose fast or do we want to prioritize margin? Thank you.
I think in terms of gearing, I previously talked to you guys that for a company like us with substantial income from rental income, rather than relying on DP, we can afford to have a slightly higher gearing, say near 40%, something like that. To me, I would try to keep it below 35%. Right now it's 33.5%, and I do have the confidence that we should be able to keep it below 35%. I think, Mark, you raise a very good question. It all depends on not only our core business, the rental business performance, but also the capital recycling through our DP and maybe certain investment property disposal. In terms of Summit, it is still classified under as IP. We have just one unison. I will only sell it at the right price, and I don't think, yes, you may generate more sales by cutting the price, but this is not our plan.
Okay, so this wraps up the analyst presentation for our FY 2025 interim results. Thank you very much for your participation. We will see you next time.