Okay. Shall we start?
Sure.
Okay. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the analyst presentation for the FY 2022 annual results announcement that were made earlier today for both Hang Lung Properties 00101.HK and Hang Lung Group 00010.HK. My name is Joyce Kwok, and I'm the General Manager of Investor Relations at Hang Lung Properties. May I take this chance to welcome the audience in our Hong Kong office here and everyone who's on our live webcast now. To wish all of you a very prosperous years of 2023 and Year of the Rabbit, you and your families, every health and happiness. Today, our senior management is present in our Hong Kong office to join the presentation. They include Mr. Adriel Chan, our Vice Chair, Mr. Weber Lo, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Kenneth Chiu, our Chief Financial Officer.
Our Chair, Ronnie Chan, has to excuse himself from this briefing as he's been called away by the Financial Secretary for meeting, given that Ronnie is an advisor to the government. Nevertheless, we'll be happy to collect any questions that you might address to Ronnie. Our CEO, Weber, will shed some highlights on our FY 2022 annual results. Our Vice Chair, Adriel, may want to talk about the key milestone on ESG later as well. After that, we will address the questions from the audience, from both the floor and the webcast. Weber, the floor is now yours, please.
You control for me, right?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you. I don't have the remote, so I don't know how to control that. Thank you, good afternoon, everyone, and also good afternoon to those on the webcast. We announced our result just now, I think a few hours ago. Just to recap and highlight, our revenue flat to 2021. 2021, just as a backdrop, was our historical high in terms of revenue. We kept that revenue. The underlying profit down by 4% in HLP and flat in HLG. I think the major difference only because in HLG, we have one booking of the Citygate, which is the one of revenue gain for that. Basically the revenue is flat.
The revenue actually came from different projects, some from a higher margin, some from a lower margin, and therefore there will be some impact into the underlying profit. Also, the overall borrowing costs as an aggregate also increased because of the gearing ratio also increased, and therefore there will be some impact to the underlying profit. We also declare dividend flat to last year, both the HLP and the HLG, which is really the recap of this page. I want to go into the revenue contribution. I think this is the chart that we present in the last few years. I would like to highlight the green bracket, which I think is a major variance this year.
If you look at the renminbi depreciation in 2022, overall full year is 3%. However, in the first half, if you still recall, this is +1%, but the second half was -7%. That have a huge bearing to our revenue when we translate into Hong Kong dollar. Therefore, you can see that even though our total rental revenue was up by 1% in Hong Kong dollar terms, but actually in renminbi denominated in mainland, actually ups a lot more. Because they all dilute by the 7% depreciation of renminbi. If you look at the mainland rental, +1% year-on-year growth, again, from a very high base of last year, historical high, and also translating to Hong Kong dollar is net negative 3%.
But the year-on-year, actually the half-on-half increased by 8% in renminbi terms, which account for 67% of our business. Hong Kong, I would say, we talk about it, whether it bottoms out or not. Now, I think the numbers shows that we down by 3%, but the second half actually performed 3% better than the first half of the year, which shows the sign of recovery. Hong Kong represent 33% of our total revenue. We zoom in a little bit in the mainland. This is the total China revenue. As I mentioned, it's 1% year-on-year growth. In second half, we managed to get to flat to last year, record high second half.
Even though you may not see the growth, but actually, later on, I will explain a little bit more how severe, the challenge that we face in second half of 2022, especially during the early July and August, and after that, from November to December, basically the whole country got infected, nobody really go out and shops. That actually has a huge impact, into our business as well as into our revenue. Next page. Retail, as I mentioned, which one I talk about, increase 8% half-on-half and -1% both year-on-year and second half year-on-year. Again, this is combination of a few things. First, the Shanghai lockdown in April and May.
There are some partial lockdown in Shenyang and Tianjin. They have a huge infection rates zooming up in December that actually make this kind of number really difficult to beat the last year. Overall, it's still performing 8% half-on-half in second half versus first half. Next page. Office continued to be one of our bright spots. We report double-digit growth. I recall if the first half is also double-digit. The full year we perform 11% double-digit growth on the revenue. Half-on-half increased by 3%. Also year-on-year in second half increased by 7%. Hong Kong, we're back to Hong Kong.
We are down by 3% year-on-year full year, if you look at the second half, it's slowing down, and then the gap is closing to -2%. The second half versus first half improved by 3%. This is really a one page about our financial management at a glance. We managed to maintain or actually come down a little bit on our borrowing costs in 2022, which I'm sure you all know is quite difficult, right? Especially in a rising rate environment. We managed to get our borrowing costs on average at 3.5%, which is 0.2% down from 2021.
Gearing ratio were up, which is kind of expected because we continue to fulfill some of our CapEx requirement both in Mainland and Hong Kong. Average debt maturity is about 3.2, which is on average is about three years. If you look at our sustainable finance as a percentage, also increased from 30% to 46%, which is, I would say, is one of the huge achievement that we believe not only talking sustainability, but walking the talk as well. In terms of the split, we try to really manage, making sure that those in green and blue are those basically, either they are fixed or the rates coming down.
Those are the floating in yellow are the one we are actively manage because the HIBOR was at highest 5% in November. One month I'm talking about. Now actually it was at least music to our ears now come back down to 2.7% today. I think the floating one is something we work very hard to manage, but the renminbi in terms of LPR rate is coming down. The fixed rate is also really maintained at a good ratio. Next page. I would like to pass to Adriel to talk about some sustainability achievement that we have achieved.
Thanks, Weber. I think we're especially proud this year of some of our sustainability achievements. We announced in October a collaboration, first of its kind globally, I think, as far as I'm aware, partnership with LVMH. Those of you who know have been paying attention to their latest results, they've also had a fantastic 2022. I think that, you know, in a case like this, it shows that their commitment, not just to Mainland China, but also to us, by signing a partnership like this. This is a three-year commitment to sustainability, which covers all of their shops in our malls in Mainland China and all of our malls with their shops in Mainland China. It's really a cross-portfolio, cross-brand, and a significant commitment towards sustainability.
That was something that I'm very proud of. On top of just doing the signing for this agreement, we actually held a two-day forum across Hong Kong, Paris, and Shanghai, which is bringing together all of our stakeholders to talk about what they can and should be doing in order to further sustainability in our two groups. That was a very interesting and a very engaging and a very involved process that took us probably well over a year to bring to this level. I think that it's a particular bright spot this year for us. In addition to that, we are proud to announce the Future Women Leaders Program.
This is a program in which we mentor and inspire young women in Mainland China by bringing together the vast network of very strong mentors that we can reach out to. And then of course, in Jinan, as some of you might have seen the press release, we are now 100% powered by renewable energy. This is the second mall in our portfolio after Kunming. Kunming we did the year before. This past year, we did Parc 66 in Jinan, and that now makes up 25% of our total GFA in Mainland China, being powered by renewable energy. So well on our way, hopefully to meeting our 2030 and eventually 2050 net-zero targets. I'll pass it back to Weber or Joyce.
Sure.
Thank you. Thank you, Weber and Adriel. We now start the Q&A session. Please feel free to raise your questions by raising your hand here in the office or by typing the questions on the webcast page. You may click to the tab with a question mark on the webcast page, where you should be able to see a box where you can type and submit the questions. Thank you. Praveen from Morgan Stanley, please.
Happy New Year, thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. One is on dividend. We just wanna understand what will drive the upward trajectory whenever that happens within next year or otherwise. Is it the IP growth coming back?
You know, better level or is it the DP sales that'll happen in China? The second question is, pleasantly surprised with the cost of debt 3.5%. Just wanna understand, how is that possible when your floating rate is high and HIBOR has been up and first half was around 0.2%? I think throughout second half it was at least 3%, if not higher. If you can break down first half and second half just so that we understand the what percentage up and down depending on we can do the modeling for 2023. Thank you.
Yep. Just to answer your first question. I think our board design mostly our core business as a proxy for the dividend, basically the IP, right? Because IP is our core business in Hang Lung. Yes, some of you may notice that our payer ratio was up from 80%-84% this time, because we believe that the impact of COVID hopefully will be over soon. We see a quite a nice pick-up in January, both Hong Kong and Mainland. Which I think is quite encouraging to see in January from January until 28th of January, because we are still not closing the month yet. The numbers in terms of footfall, in terms of sales compared to last year January, is still growing quite substantially.
Last year January was a record high for us and therefore we see the momentum is coming back. Of course, we don't want to be too happy too early because we want to understand the impact of the early Chinese New Year this year. Also the pent up demand because of basically the whole December was closed, right? I think we want to see longer period, including maybe February or even March to see whether this recovery is sustainable. At least we see even the sub-luxury mall actually pick up in terms of footfall significantly and sales as well.
I hope that from the mind of Chinese customers, the COVID is finally over and therefore they have no fear to come out, they have no fear to gather together, and therefore they were suppressed almost over three years in Mainland on coming out doing social activities or coming out for shopping. I think that give confidence to us to maintain the dividend. Even we have slight decrease in terms of underlying profit, but the revenue actually is still intact, right? We are still maintained at a high level at about HKD 10.34 billion. I think this is really a combination of renminbi depreciation as well as a severe COVID impact that we experienced in second half. I just want to give you a numbers, which actually is quite stunning. If you look at the second half.
Now of course, the first half dominate by Shanghai lockdown and Shenyang lockdown, and the Wuxi lockdown and Riverside lockdown for a certain period of time. In second half, not many cities locked down except Dalian and Wuhan and Tianjin. We have a lot other restriction, like low dine-in, no more recreationals, no more marketings, no more events. So in the interruption, I would say the disruption, is about 40% of the time in the second half and across the board. It's not only Shanghai, right? Also I think the finale, I always use the word finale in December came after the announcement of December 7th, when they said all the measure will be gone and then you can go anywhere, no more tests.
I think in one week time, you all know that the infection rate went up significantly. By December 23rd, I think 70%, 80%, basically even some shop cannot open for business. The good news is, the peak actually passed after Christmas and people start to recover and by January 15th, everyone fully recover and they can come out to shop. I think the long answer to answer you, we believe that we will be able to improve our dividend, of course subject to the board, by having the IP business continue to grow. Hopefully this year we will not face again the depreciation of renminbi and COVID and all the others unforeseeable circumstances. I think that is one of the answer I would like to talk about.
Your second question is about.
Cost of-
Cost of borrowing. Maybe I ask Kenneth to talk about that.
But before-
Okay.
Before we pass it to Kenneth, I'll just say our board, historically, has not been averse to necessarily giving out special dividends. It's something that we've done in the past. You know, those are generally gonna be based more along the lines of the DP. You know, the dividend is primarily based on our core earnings, which is IP based. You know, there may be room from time to time, depending on the overall outlook, to make one-offs. Sorry. Kenneth.
Okay. Maybe I share with you on the effective borrowing cost. It came down to 3.5%. There are a couple of reasons. First of all, actually, when we did a refinancing through our MTN program early last years it was low. If you remember, we have repaid a USD 10-year bond. For that bond was repaid in June. That bond yield at 4.8%. Basically, we've refinanced this long-term debt by cheaper financing. Secondly is the renminbi borrowing. The 5-year LPR actually dropped 35 basis points last year to 4.3%. These are the two major reasons why we benefit from, you know. We can manage our effective borrowing costs, you know, down to 3.5%.
Yeah.
I think just elaborate a little bit. Even though our US dollar bond was expired in June, but we refinanced them actually nine months beforehand-
Yeah
...by issuing Hong Kong dollar MTN. At that time, 2.something% only. Therefore, we financed that amount early enough, and once we have cash, we can repay some of the revolving.
Mm-hmm.
When the bond expired in June, then the HIBOR start to rise, but we already cover most of the refinancing already. Of course, there will be increase next year, full-year impact of the rate increase. Again, at the same time that we are hopefully already past the peak of the HIBOR rise, because we have to do refinancing in November last year, that was the worst time, right? We passed that out. We did not do anything at that time, then now we can issue a lot more, and hopefully, we can maintain our borrowing wage at a very reasonable level.
Mark from UBS.
Yeah. Thank you, management, for your reply. Actually, I have a small follow-up on the renminbi debts borrowing. I think now it's accounting like 30% of our total debt portfolio. With the LPR is coming down and maybe still further down this year, so are we planning to further increase our renminbi debts exposure? I think that's the first question. Second question is, would you mind to give us the, I think it's about the tenant sales breakdown for first half and second half in last year. Going forward, Do we have any projected tenant sales outlook in 2023? Thank you.
Okay. We do not disclose sales data in details, but I can say the board and the management are very confident about 2023. Part of it is because we were impacted by COVID so much, which I spent 25 days in Mainland in November before all the drama unfold. I can understand they have to do PCR every day, even before and after visiting government and all that. If you go into the office, you have to be having 24 valid PCR in green, otherwise you can't go anywhere, right? I think the whole country, a lot of citizens, in Chinese term, we always call ) . They feel so suppressed for so long, right? Therefore, I think although no one expect in December the way how it end like that, right?
The good thing is no short-term pain, no long-term gain, right? Hopefully, this is a short-term pain, but a long-term gain. It's so timely because we don't have Christmas and Chinese New Year in Chinese so-called culture, right? Therefore, we got all the infection and hopefully everything has been done. Now January, the numbers looks good. Hopefully it will continue. I think this one we really believe that the sales number across both sub-luxury and the luxury will grow. The surprisingly in January, we look at our numbers, sub-luxury actually rebound even more than the luxury because I think they are very traffic sensitive the sub-luxury. When the customers actually have no more fear to come out, the first one benefit will be the sub-luxury.
I think even the sub-luxury now we see a growth, strong growth of sales. We truly believe that there will be a good momentum going forward. Why don't I pass on to you for the next question?
On your questions about our loans in renminbi, they are mainly onshore loans. As you may know, for onshore loans are mostly for constructions, you know. When we draw down the loans, the process we'll use, you know, mainly for constructions. Currently we have five projects under constructions in the mainland. I would expect that the amount of renminbi onshore will increase. This is the trend. For offshore, I understand, some of our peers may borrow offshore CNH market. You know, given, I think, more than a decade, we hardly see CNH, the interest rate is even lower than the U.S. and the US interest rate or HKD.
Because, we have received quite a lot of dividend, you know, from offshore to onshore, we still see quite a lot of cash in CNH accounts. At this moment, we don't plan to borrow CNH, but we will observe it from time to time.
Okay. Thank you.
Hi. Thank you management for the presentation. Simon from Jefferies. I have two questions, if I may. I remember last time, Ronnie shared with us the rental reversion trends for most of the China assets, which was, I think, double-digit yield-
Mm-hmm
at that time.
Is it possible for you to share with us, you know, what's the latest rental reversion trend and what's the outlook for next year? I mean, for 2023. The second question is, obviously CNY depreciation play a very important role in this year's, you know, earnings performance, right? What are the thinking in managing the FX risk going forward?
Why don't you start.
Okay.
with the second one.
For the FX risk, actually, because we adopt hedge accounting, we cannot do, you know. There are certain limitations, you know, to manage the FX risk if you adopt a hedge accounting. In short, how to mitigate the risk is that we will try to maximize, you know, the RMB loans, you know, as much as possible. There are quite a lot of constraint depends on, you know, your construction progress and the capital structures of each project. And for, because right now I think we have more than RMB 100 billion of asset in China. In terms of hedging, this is impossible to do balance sheet hedging. Okay. Because settlement risk is always the number one priority.
I think the borrowing in RMB terms would be the best way to mitigate part of the exchange rate risk.
On the rental reversion, why don't I answer you that way? Because I don't want to, you know, generalize it. Out of our 10 malls in mainland, we have eight of them having positive rental reversion. We have three, they are either flat or negative, but the negative is only -1% or -2%, so the worst one is -2%, but the best one is +73%. Like this is again, during the COVID time. I think I just give you a range to give you a sense. All the other positives are all in double-digit. I think this is really a mainland. Of course, Hong Kong, they are still in negative because the rolling impact of the last few years still there.
Hopefully when the sales pick up, the business pick up and the impact will be less. Right. I think overall, I still believe the rental reversion is on the right trend. Especially if the sales and footfall pick up, the number will pick up and therefore the way how you improve your trade mix by having better tenant. Hopefully because of that you have a better rental reversion.
Before I pick up more questions from the floor, there's quite some questions lined up on the webcast. One question for the management is, can you shed more colors on how the recovery in January and CNY, Chinese New Year's been going in our mainland retail portfolio?
about it already. Overall, every single project have an increase on sales. Every single one, including Hong Kong. The magnitude, most of them are in double digit in terms of sales. Of course, there will be a date difference because this year the Lunar New Year was in 20th, right? 20th of January, but last year was in 30th. Therefore, we have less date of full sales, right? Because mostly you all know that in Chinese culture, in the first three days, people may not come out shop that often. Still we achieve a double digit growth in terms of sales. I think the footfall increased even more. This is really a good sign.
I think all of you, maybe you in Hong Kong, you understand even the Chinese restaurant suffer so much in the last three years. You can't even book over the Lunar New Year. I think, I hope this is a good sign of full recovery. Of course, we all know that the new normal may not be exactly the same. Even though we always talk about the cinema may need to relook into their model. The last two weeks, the cinema box break all the record again. I just want to really wait and see and see more datas before we make a final call. Now I think there's a lot of suppressed pending, pent-up demand in mainland, which is a great thing for us to see how they unleash.
Of course, everyone, I'm sure you will ask me, "Oh, when the border is open, they will travel. Will that affect your luxury sales?" So far, we have not seen any impact yet, but we'll see, right? Have more months when everything get normal, when the visa and everything limitation has all been over, I hope we can show you the data, therefore we don't need to argue again anymore, and then we don't need to answer this question anymore, right? The good news, which I'm sure Adriel will share one of our tenant.
This is in response to the question of will suddenly we lose a lot of mainland China luxury sales because the borders are open and mainland Chinese are traveling to Europe or to Southeast Asia or to Japan or wherever. What we were with one of our very important tenants a few weeks ago, and they used the anecdote of Seoul or of Korea, which might as well just be Seoul. They said that when the borders were open, they were curious to see how the sales locally, domestically in Seoul would do. Their observation is that Korean customers overall grew by 20%.
However, locally, domestic in Korea remained at 100%. That means it was incremental 20% international sales. This is sort of an anecdote, and maybe it helps us give an idea what we might be able to expect from Mainland China after the borders are fully open and more and more Mainland Chinese start to travel. I think, you know, based on what Weber just said, it's probably safe to say that it's been an encouraging start to 2023. I think we couldn't ask for a better way to start the year off. That being said, there are still a lot of uncertainties and so we still have to.
Yeah.
see how the year unfolds.
Another reason which we always talk about, I would like to remind everyone here, is that since we launched our HOUSE 66, our CRM program, and also the Hello Program in Hong Kong, last year, the sales was tough. We're down by 9% as a total, right, in mainland. Our member sales up by 7%. Right? That means once you have a loyalty base, they will spend more with you to offset the traffic drop. With the border open, I believe the high-ending customer may spend a little bit less, but you get a lot more customers.
For example, in January, our customer base, active CRM customer base increased by 16% in one month because of Chinese New Year promotion, because of everything open, we open again, so customers are more happy to sign up CRM program with you and all that. I think in the future, maybe in the past, you rely on 20% of your members to give you 80% sales. Going forward, you may rely 40% of your customer to give you that. You still have a lot of customers to work with. I think that's why we are confident, even though if the border is open, the traffic come back, the sub-luxury sector will grow. The luxury sector will grow with the new customers. That's why this is our forecast.
This is what we see in January so far. We want more data to validate that. Hopefully by interim in July, we can show you the actual data and actual information.
Thank you. May I pick up one more question from the webcast? On apartment sales in Wuhan, could you please comment on the progress, in particular, the prime residential situation in Wuhan after the real estate troubles?
I would say it's not a trouble, but just the whole market cool down dramatically in the second half of last year. When we would like to start our sales plan, we need to be very, very cautious about how they look into us as a commercial properties, whether the financing will be more difficult or not. We basically put our sales on hold. Our plan is to restart it again after Lunar New Year, after maybe hopefully in Q2. Now at least you hear from the news that government, no matter district government, city government, they are more supportive to real estate sector, and they want to support the real estate sectors to complete and also to sell their properties. Therefore, hopefully we have more support from the government.
We postpone it and then hopefully we can restart in Q2. Also subject to the market sentiment by then.
Ken from Citi. Thank you.
Hi, friends. It's Ken. I still recall last time Ronnie was here.
Mm-hmm.
He was quite bearish with the overall outlook and especially on acquisitions. You think this is one of the most toughest times that he has faced. Good that Adriel and Ronnie, we have a talk in November.
Mm-hmm.
Basically, he become quite positive at that time, which shown that he is leading in the leading indicator of everything. Because of this very big change, are we seeing a change of our investment style? Given that last round, it seems he still talk about quite cautious on acquisition in next one or two years' time. Are we now seeing a good opportunity now, given that even the chairman, I would say, is upbeat? I'm very rare to see you saying the term upbeat, so this is something should we look for acquisition this year? If yes, what are those that we are targeting? Yes.
I think if you, if you have a deeper conversation with the Chair, who actually would like to be here today but just cannot because of the FS calling, you know, I think that fundamentally he's still quite cautious. In fact, I think we're all still quite cautious. There's still a lot of uncertainties, but we are given some hope by the turnaround in December and in January. I think, you know, at least in the short term, things are looking like they may be more positive or may not be as bearish as we feared. That being said, you know, our investment thesis is still basically the same. I think, what the Chair said in mid interim, still holds.
We still look at everything with a very critical eye. We've always been very disciplined, but I think we are continuing to be even more disciplined in our investment decisions. That being said, that doesn't mean we're not investing. We're still looking in Hong Kong, we're still looking in the Mainland, both for IP and DP. It doesn't change fundamentally. That being said, you know, we would like to make acquisitions where possible. I think, you know, if you look at the market in Hong Kong and the market in the Mainland as well, they're still at a reasonably low point. I think that if one were to make acquisitions at this time, it probably long-term would not be a bad time.
The right product has to come around at the right price, and that's not always easy to come by.
I think in terms of uncertainty, I think, yes, COVID seems like the bubble getting smaller, the cloud getting clear, but you still have other things. The geopolitical issues, the Ukraine and Russia conflicts. I think we are very cautious still. Especially also, we are not saying that we are high in gearing, but at this level we want to be cautious. We just do not want to over, you know, leverage ourself. I think, yes, if opportunity come by, we will find whatever means to get it through. If the normal one, which everyone talk about some of those opportunities, we are not interested, because we look for quality.
We really do not want to buy because it sounds like it's cheaper than yesterday, but we want to make sure that this is a long-term investment. All our property, if we buy the land and construct and finish it takes seven years almost. The first lease cycle, another three years is about a decade. I don't want to react because of a sudden correction. We want to make sure that this is the right piece, then we will go. For example, I would say we continue to invest. Like, for example, Citygate in the group. We increase our stake by close to 7%. That is a good investment. We bought at the right time, and they are doing really well. The performance of that particular project doing really well.
I think in different form, we are still looking on different opportunities.
Just a quick follow-up. How are those opportunities now? Is it still quite a lot, looking... finding you, saying they want to sell the projects to you, versus maybe six months ago?
In the Mainland, there's still a fair bit of opportunity. I think the dust has not yet settled in the Mainland. You know, we've been looking at tons of projects coming our way from distressed developers or others. Of course, everything has to be measured against our benchmark. One thing that you'll see when Ronnie Chan's chairman's letter to shareholders comes out is he uses the phrase, "barring unforeseen circumstances," which, you know, we all have to do, right? I think one way to put it is, barring unforeseen circumstances, I think we're quite encouraged by January so far. The thing is, these unforeseen circumstances, the possibility of those coming true may be bigger than before.
In this case, you know, it's sort of the backdrop, we're still cautious. At least, barring unforeseen circumstances, we are optimistic.
From the webcast, there's a few questions about the gearing. The first question is what would be the optimal gearing ratio in the management's opinion? Following that, what's the CapEx breakdown between Hong Kong and China in 2022, and what's that gonna be for 2023 as a guidance?
Maybe I try to answer on the gearing questions first. I think we don't set a fixed numbers on what is the maximum gearing that we can achieve. I think in general, I think for a company like us, with mostly all the rental income come from rental business, I think 30 something % is okay. Still, we are quite prudent, and I think in previous analyst meeting, we expect that, you know, if we don't add on new acquisitions or business, our gearing ratio should peak out in two years' time.
We still have quite a lot of CapEx to be incur mainly in Mainland, particularly for our huge investment in Hangzhou, okay? In terms of the breakdown between Mainland and Hong Kong, I would say mostly in Mainland last years. Because for Hong Kong, the major CapEx actually came from two projects. One is 228 Electric Road, which is a office building in Fortress Hill. The other one is our residential development projects of Apertures. I think maybe I will pass to Kenneth on the specific, but Hang Lung Group last year, not only paying the dividend, we took opportunities to spend HKD 840 million to buy Hang Lung Properties to increase our stake.
That is a good investment, as of today when we look at the price that we bought as well as the price today. Also, we increased the stake of Citygate.
By 7% also spend another HKD 700 million-HKD 800 million. I think overall, for the group, if we see market dislocation, both on the equity market or the property market, we can add on it. Therefore, we do not 100% need to be follow what HLP do. At the same time, you can be reassured that management will be mindful on how to deploy some of those resources and capital to have a better use to get a better return for the company.
Maybe I have a few points to add on. For last years, actually, we have deployed HKD 864 million to increase 1.4% stake in HLP. For Citygate, we have deployed HKD 879 million to increase 6.67% in the joint ventures that we have with others partners. Altogether, the total investment was more than HKD 1.7 billion. I would say at the G level, even though, you know, most of the business right now in our group are under HLP, particularly the rental business. At G level, we still have, I would say, quite a lot of opportunities for us to invest when the market is fair.
On top of that, we may still need to preserve some capital for residential development projects, which is JV projects with other developers. I cannot disclose too much at this level, but there are a very active discussions on joint ventures, you know, that we are working on at the group level. We still need to preserve some dry powder for it.
Thank you. Avery from JPMorgan.
A quick question. Understand that, we can't really gauge how much people that will go out to spend.
Mm.
Just curious, if I were a consumer, the biggest price difference will be definitely something from LVMH or maybe Kering.
Mm.
Do you mind sharing a little bit about not particularly these two brands, but in terms of luxury spending, how do these contribute as percentage of rental within your portfolio? That's question number one. Question number two is that I see a lot of your peers are buying land in Shanghai particularly. Just wonder, as we have a agreement with LVMH for three years, just want to get your thoughts on after three years, will they be a competition to us, and how will we navigate within this competition? Thank you.
I am afraid I will not disclose how much we earn from these two groups. Just a intellectual thought or discussion, right? If you need to travel to buy your watch, but when you travel to overseas, that company may not be your preferred or the store that you always visit. Do you think you can get those model? Luxury is like that. It's not something, whatever the brand name's there, I pick up, right? That is more for Hainan and those, right? Those are the low-ticket item. For the high-ticket item are those like couture, like tailormade, like specific model, the Hermès brand with certain bags. I don't think you can walk in and buy, right? That is one thing I believe.
If you have a good customer base and you can prove to those brands that I have those customer waiting for you, they will have to provide those products to them. Okay, you again talk about the difference of the VAT. Okay, 15% or whatever, right? If they believe that those are so rare, do you think they care about that 15%? I think this is one thesis. The other thesis is, I don't know whether you have traveled to mainland before or not, right? Recently, in the last three years. The customs, do you think they check your bag? Every single bag they check. If your flight is from New York. No, not New York. From Paris, from Italy, wherever, from Hong Kong, they check every single bag.
Okay, maybe you are lucky to pass one time, but you still need to pay the tax, right? Therefore, why bother? I believe that as we discuss the last three years, right? No, wait. six months later, I will tell you the actual numbers. I can't convince you if in the last three years, I have to wait until the next six months to convince you. I believe that there will be some, definitely. People will travel, they will buy something. They are not their core, right? They will still spend 80%, 90% of their main core locally because they can get those products. When they travel, they see something good, they buy, no problem, right? It's important for us to continue to recruit new members.
The good news is, in mainland, there are a lot of new members. There are a lot of people can afford to buy those brands they are aspire to, right? As long as the economy doing well, the salary increase is still there, the GDP growth, now the recent announcement say 5. whatever%. As long as this number put all together, I think we still have a good chance to continue to grow. I think this is the first one. The second one, I forgot.
Okay. A lot of peers are, you know, buying land in Shanghai, I'm just wondering, you know, our agreement with LVMH is probably three years. For them having a new building, will they go approach LVMH and say, "Hey, I'm gonna build a mall, you know, with your space?
No, I don't believe it. If you buy the land now, you take six, seven years to complete it. For our business, it's not like you shove it and next year you are there, right? You need to build. I believe that in Shanghai and in some big cities, there will be more competition for sure, right? Doesn't mean that they will eat our lunch because the lunchbox is bigger and bigger. I think this is exactly how the brand and how we see it. The market can be able to accommodate more players. The good news is when the tourists come back, they will welcome their own tourists as well. I think we see at least in January, Kunming, finally we see tourists in the last three years. The domestic tourist is important.
I think when China really open up, when the domestic customer traveling around city by city and also outside visiting China, the dynamics will be different. I hope I can answer you that yes, there will be more competition, but doesn't mean that if we will do badly because the competition come. That will push us to do even more. Hopefully whatever relationship we have with the brand, we'll continue to step it up and hopefully we can fulfill and satisfy their customers.
Thank you.
Please note that this is a group wide initiative. It's not just a particular city or particular project.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think, if there's no more questions from the floor, and then, I think most of our management has addressed most of the questions being raised by the webcast already. If there's no more questions, we would like to conclude this analyst briefing. Thank you very much for coming.
Thanks, Joyce.
Thank you very much.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you very much.