Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, both in our office here and on the live webcast. Welcome to the analyst presentation for the FY 2021 interim results announcement that was made earlier today for both Hang Lung Properties, 101.HK, and Hang Lung Group, 10.HK. My name is Joyce Kwock, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations here. The speakers from our Senior Management today include Mr. Ronnie Chan, our Chair, Mr. Adriel Chan, our Vice-Chair, Mr. Weber Lo, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. H.C. Ho, our Chief Financial Officer. Our CEO, Weber, will kick off the presentation with some highlights on the results. After that, we'll open the floor for questions from the analysts here and over the webcast. Weber, the floor is now yours, please.
Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, also to all the audience on the webcast, maybe also good morning, good evening, some of them. Thank you for coming. I would like to quickly go through some of our result highlights. Next page. First of all, we declare dividend increase in interim. I would say this is really quite a long time, since 2010. The last time we raised interim dividend was in 2010. Hopefully from an analyst, from investor perspective, it shows our confidence of our outlook as well as our happiness of our business performance in the first half. The first half in Hang Lung Properties, I would say maybe I'll just focus on Hang Lung Properties here, is that our operating profit up by 19%.
Of course, with the Wuhan Heartland 66 open, because some of the interest expenses could not be capitalized anymore, and that affect a little bit in terms of the interest expenses. Nonetheless, if you look at the underlying EPS, it increased by 11%. Therefore, we declare HKD 0.01 more in terms of dividend in the interim for Hang Lung Properties. For Hang Lung Group, we declare HKD 0.02 for the interim for the DPS for Hang Lung Group. Also, I think we would like to also emphasize in the group that whenever we receive the dividend from the properties, we would like to distribute all incremental back to the shareholders in the group. Therefore, because the group own 58% of the properties, and therefore it work out to be about HKD 0.02 of that. I think I just want to emphasize on that. Next one.
We are very pleased to declare that we have a record interim rental revenue. Out of that, two-thirds come from Mainland China. I think it's a very strong momentum. I remember we met in January, last time. A lot of us discuss and talk about will this momentum continue. The numbers show the momentum continues. Actually, it's rising at even at a higher level. The 67% of Mainland, if you look at the luxury mall and the sub-luxury mall, overall, actually, they all increase in terms of revenue. Of course, the sub-luxury mall, they have a mild single-digit growth, but the luxury mall has a very, very strong growth.
I would say this first half, I always want to be fair by telling you that because the base of last year first half, if you remember the V shape, when the COVID start is by the end of January, then in China, the V shape actually quickly rebound for luxury mall in April. Therefore, if you recall, the first half of 2020, it indeed actually performed already better than the 2019 because of that reshape. The sub-luxury mall, actually the recovery is slower. If you recall last year, the recovery only happened until the third quarter of last year. I think these numbers also shows to you that it continue to get at a higher level, and we actually very pleased to see this number is strong.
Also, if you look at the office sector, we discussed because at that time, we all worry about the oversupply. If you look at our result out of all our office sector in mainland, we grew by 12%. If you take out the new supply from Kunming, from Heartland, and also from Wuxi, even Shanghai, the existing organic growth, we are resulting at 3%. Overall, the office demand, especially in Shanghai, actually come back strong in second quarter this year. In second-tier city, even though the vacancy is very high, our strategy works, and therefore, you can see that the occupancy, the revenue actually is growing up nicely. Hong Kong, we don't believe is the end, but hopefully that the sign showing us that it stabilized.
-12% is still not good compared to the old days. We believe that the numbers at least stabilize at this level. If you look at the first half of this year compared to the second half of last year, it mildly reduced by 3% only. That actually gave us some encouragement that Hong Kong, we almost hit at the bottom, and hopefully the sign of the stabilization and also a bit of, maybe early to say, the recovery will come soon in the second half. Now Hong Kong account for 34% of our total rental revenue. Going into the details in mainland. The seven luxury malls. Right now we have 10 altogether operating. Out of that, we have seven luxury malls. In terms of sales, the number is amazing. Actually more than double. Year-on-year, 113% tenant sales growth.
Even compared to the first half of 2019, 125% growth. These numbers are amazingly strong and also we believe that at least when you look at month-on-month, it continue to be like that. The luxury content, the leadership position, and our CRM program, actually, I would say all combined to drove the strength and also, I'm sure, later you ask, when the border open, will that affect you and all that. I would say, I will elaborate more later, but the key is we look at our luxury anchor leasing strategy. Each of those opening require almost two and a half years negotiation. If we did not do all the hard work two and a half years later, even though right now with the tailwind coming, we may not be able to maximize the benefit. I think I can elaborate more if you are interested.
Our luxury content continue to increase. Our number of luxury store, in terms of C1 to C3, increase in the last three years by over 66%. If you look at the Big Six we call the most important one, we increased by three times. With the increase of luxury numbers of store, and also with our continuous driving on the customer relationship with the customers, especially those customers we newly acquired in the last two years, that help us to deliver the result. Very happy to declare now the Olympia 66 will be classified as a luxury mall this year, because a lot of the luxury brands has been open and then more will come in the second half. The good news also is the three sub-luxury mall, Palace 66, Riverside 66, as well as our Parc 66, they have amount increase, the sales also increase.
However, the impact will be still lagging because their footfall still were impacted by the COVID. If you look at our malls in general, car traffic actually has increased a lot. The foot traffic actually decreased because of the COVID still affecting some of the behavior of our customers. Occupancy rates also moving into the right direction for Palace and Parc in the last six months. A little bit of the details here, but I think I want to give you a bit of the details. Spring City, in two years time, no matter you look at the sales and revenue, is already our second-best mall performance outside Shanghai, just behind Wuxi.
Within two years' time, with this kind of genetics, means the size, the brands, the way how we open, and also the commit opening rate, we actually break even at the fifth month of the opening. What does that mean is, in Spring City, in five months' time, our operating revenue in that particular month already higher than the operating expenses. That actually is very meaningful because when we open something, it will be a drag because you need to take time to absorb all the fixed costs and all that. In five months, we can turn that into positive, and therefore, the margin for Spring City right now, after one and a half years, actually is very decent. Look at Heartland. We open just for three and a half months. We get that break-even point in three months.
That means our revenue ability as well as the way how we manage the expenses, actually we can meet this break-even point in the third month. This is, I would say, very encouraging. That means we truly believe and also we are confident that the Heartland will be a repeat of success like Spring City or even better, because of their size and also of the pace of the luxury brands coming in and also because of the size of the market. I think this page, we very confident that the Heartland 66 will repeat the success of Spring City or even better than the Spring City in years to come. Hong Kong. We will never forget Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of our very important location and also the opportunities. As I mentioned, 12% down.
If you look at half year versus half year, we recover from -9% to -3%. We see the sign of stabilization and we are confident that hopefully in the second half we will see some mild growth. I'm sure we discussed a lot. This rental revenue including the rent relief amortization impact. Therefore, we gave more last year that will accumulate. Therefore, the accumulation actually has been more and more in the second half of last year. Now you see that we are already coming out from the trough. This curve can show you that hopefully we will be able to revert the trend and hopefully in the second half it will be better. On occupancy, I think we defend quite well. In terms of retail, we are at 97%, which is very difficult, especially in those districts like Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.
They are tourist-centric. Today the border is still closed, not many tourists coming. Therefore we have to adjust our trade mix and hopefully to meet the local need, but at the same time to protect some of our tenants that we believe they will have a long-term future with us. I think the serviced apartment and residential, mainly because of the Kornhill, because a lot of our occupancy in the past is those people traveling from outside and have a short stay with us. With the border is closed, it's affected quite significantly. That's what I want to walk you through first. Of course, I welcome any questions from all of you. Thank you.
Thank you, Weber. We now start the Q&A session. Please feel free to raise your hand for questions or by typing your questions in the box on the live webcast page. Raymond Liu from HSBC first.
Hi, management. First of all, very great to see you in person again. Congratulations for the good results. I have three questions. The first question is about the tenant sales performance in mainland China. Very impressive growth on the year-over-year growth. It's almost doubled. Definitely, management has spent a lot of effort to upgrade your luxury malls and there's also structural change repatriations in mainland China. Of course, what Weber just mentioned is about the base effect. We would like to gauge more about the tenant sales performance in the second half. If you look at the first half, on a half-over-half basis, the tenant sales improved by 10%. What would be the expectation about tenant sales improvement on the half-over-half basis in the second half? That would be the first question.
Let me answer first. You're right. The sales number compared to the second half show a very good double-digit growth. We believe that the absolute number will continue. As a percentage growth, it may not be as high as last year, first half. The reason why is that first half last year, you have the V-shape. You have the very low February, you have a very low March, it rebound very sharply in April. If you recall, last year, since April, the number climb up also every single month. That means we have a very high base in second half of last year. We believe we will still show growth because our numbers showing to us that first of all, the sales continue to be strong. Second, if you look at the number of luxury store as well as our portfolio mix now.
I think I just want to give an example. If you recall, we didn't drive our number of store opening in luxury and also the number of mall from maybe three years ago, we can only say we may have only Forum 66 and Plaza 66 or Center 66 are luxury. From three, now we have seven. Therefore, if we didn't do that, we will worry about a little bit of the repatriation of purchase when the border is open. However, in terms of our own effort from Hang Lung, we increase a lot more store. As I mentioned, the Big Six almost three times, and the luxury store from C1 to C3 increased by 66%.
That means even though there will be some volatility from one or two, the continuous opening of the new store in different time will pay us quite well because a lot of stores, they just opened in the last one year. They don't even enjoy the full year effect yet. Therefore, not to mention those opening in Dalian this year and Heartland in Wuhan this year. We believe that our total sales will continue to grow and the absolute numbers continue to be strong. There's no reason why for us to worry about suddenly it will drop significantly because whatever customer we acquire through CRM, we will treasure their experience, we will take care of them. Therefore, we know that exactly what they like.
We can tailor make products working with the brands, and hopefully the brand can source more stock, hopefully from Paris, from London, from anywhere in the world and sell more in China. Therefore, we are very confident that the luxury mall will continue. When the border opens, when the people start to travel, will that change structurally? I still will believe that structural change has been happening. The product will be available locally. If the price is not that big difference and I don't need to queue up in Paris, I can basically get to the RM in that particular store and then they will reserve that product for me. Why I need to bother by traveling around, traveling this and that.
Of course, number will tell later in the near future, but we believe that structurally, with the effort that we are building the luxury leasing strategy, and also the way how we serve the customers, we believe the number will continue.
Raymond, do you have a second and third question? Thank you.
Thank you, Weber . Very quickly on the last two questions. The second question is actually about the upcoming tenants. Based on all the contracts that you have already signed, can you give us more guidance about the percentage of luxury retailers that will be coming to your shopping malls in to get rough ideas? The last question is about thank you management for rewarding the shareholders for more dividends. Can you remind us the future dividend policy? Thank you.
Maybe I answer your last question first. Our dividend policy never change. Hopefully we walk the talk. This time we do well. We do it and walk the talk. I don't think we have ever changed our way. Maybe you can argue that this time we do it in the interim, which is the first time in 11 years. Hopefully subtly to tell you that we are a bit bullish. I think that I can say. The second point, go back to the brand. As I mentioned already, the luxury brands, the power is that they maybe only account for your LFA by 14%, but their sales is over 50% and their rent is over 50%. If you can get the Big Six, the Big Six can influence the rest, and the rest can make your mall even better.
I think we are not saying that this is like magic, but what we know is that the way how we look at the differentiation of our mall versus e-commerce, versus the mass mall, that is the differentiation why the people have to come into the physical mall to do. I'm sure chairman in the past always said human being is social animal, and now the middle class is rising in China, and then they love to enjoy their weekend, and they look up to their lifestyle, and hopefully they can have a group of friends together somewhere. We hope our mall will be somewhere that, as our strategy said, it's a unique place to give them unique experience. We give them the best customer experience, and therefore, hopefully the trade mix, the product, and also the segment that we own will serve us well.
Any more remarks from the Chair, maybe? Okay, thank you. Maybe the next question. Ken Yeung from Citi. Thank you.
Hi. Yes. Thanks, Ronnie , Weber , Adriel, H.C. for delivering such rental growth. I haven't seen such strong rental growth for a long time. This is something that I would say your investment in luxury starts to pay off. I think what I look at the revenue, probably such a strong growth is somewhat driven by tenant sales. I think a couple of the clients are quite interested. First of all, if you firstly refractor our tenant sales growth, what is left on the rental reversion side? Another side to ask on this question, for example, a couple of the key mall, after refracting this revenue growth, what kind of occupancy costs already achieved on this level versus what will be that you can fully refract it on the occupancy cost? This is the first question.
Secondly is, I also would like to see, given that a couple of the project you have already start to turn to luxury, can we see our future? You said that it's part. Can we see what kind of additional things that can be done on the mall side for adding even more luxury content, making it one of the unique in the cities? For either on the existing malls or in the later mall, on the sub-luxury to turn everything or basically even adding more on the luxury mall. Yes. Thanks.
Thank you, Ken. First, we never disclose except occupancy cost per mall. I can tell you that now all the tenants are quite comfortable at a very low level. Doesn't mean that we give too much to them. I would say some of our established mall, they have to pay. Some of the baby, they are starting to do well. I want to give opportunities for every one of us to do well together. Therefore, definitely the rental reversion opportunities is immense. If you look at Center 66, we just turn into a better luxury. We used to have luxury, but now we consolidate the whole market and now everyone coming into our mall and every one of them has to pay.
Therefore, with those top brands come, you will expect the C2 has to pay more because you want to be together with those big guys. Therefore, I think the rental reversion is something we really look into and hopefully we will not give up any opportunities. At the same time, it's a partnership. We want both of us enjoy together, but of course, we have to have a fair share. I think this is the first one I would like to answer. The second one is, of course, maybe after that, Ronnie and H.C., you can talk about it as well. Yes, AEI serve us well. If you recall, Ken, 2015, 2016, we refurbished our Plaza 66. If you look at the actual now, our revenue double in five years in Plaza 66. The compound growth is quite decent in the last five years.
Of course, all the expenses we put into this AEI pay off in a very short period of time. In Grand Gateway, we opened the atrium, if you still recall, in 2019 December to catch the Christmas. Now, some of the brands, I will not be able to disclose, except they want to expand. They want to even have more space with us, and therefore, we look for another opportunities the years to come. They deliver 25% this first half, and last year we have a double-digit growth as well. The AEI is one of, I would say, our secret formula. On one hand, we would like to listen to the customers, the today customer behavior, what we can do to make them even more attractive, to be the place, to be so-called the social place, to be seen, they will come.
Of course, we have to upgrade the trade mix, restaurant and everything to really make them feel home when they come in the weekend. However, we will look at also, I would say the trade mix enhancement. Not only the luxury. Luxury is the leading part. Once you have the luxury, what F&B you need to put in? What kind of affordable brands you need to put in? What kind of brand you have to put in in the L2, L3, and L4? Should we mix the F&B? Used to be, we always put at the top of the shopping mall. Now you have to mix it because to make the walking journey even more enjoyable. There is a lot of things we are working together with the brands, working with getting their feedback and even bring some of the best brands from the world to China.
Hopefully then to make the customers, more enjoyable, the journey, much more happy. This is something actually. China is a very tough place. The customers' demand is very high, therefore we have to continue to use our CRM program to learn from them. We have focus group. We look at their numbers. We even look at how many of the customer from Plaza 66, they will spend money in Grand Gateway, also they will spend money in Wuxi. What kind of brands are they doing? That actually give us some hints to fine-tune our trade mix, therefore we can make our leasing strategy even more complete. This is something I think we are very proud of. Now we embark our journey into Parc 66.
We just start our AEI in June in Parc, hopefully, in a very short period of time, we can declare to all of you that Parc 66 will be upgraded from a sub-luxury to the luxury. That we are quite confident. Of course, the CRM program, the customer data, we now need to really treat this as a goldmine to understand them. Therefore we know exactly what to do, what marketing program we have to do, and what kind of enhancement we have to work on. I think the Net Promoter Score we always promote is something we want to learn from the customer on an everyday basis, and therefore they will feed back to us what they want, what they need, and therefore we can fine-tune. Any supplement?
Yeah. I love talking about the topic about occupancy cost. It's a bit unusual because we've had such a good growth within just a year, or even this half. I remember last time we met, there's always somebody who asks, "Is your occupancy cost too high? Can your tenants not bear it? Oh, you're above 25%. "Or, "Oh, you're getting close to 30%." Suddenly it's turned around because our sales have gone up so much. Suddenly the occupancy costs, oh, now are they still too low? Should they be higher? In some ways, like, which one is it? Do you want it to be higher? Do you want it to be low? I've always come back to the point that I think they should be, in our malls, higher than they should be in any other mall. That's my goal.
I think Weber is very kind and obviously we want our partners to do well. We want them to make money. If they don't make money, then we won't make money, at least not sustainably. It has to be at a reasonable rate. That being said, all things being equal, I would prefer for our occupancy costs to be on the high side. The hope there is that we can continue to raise rents to reflect the growth in their sales. I think that that's something that we'll be pushing our tenants to do at a sustainable level. Obviously, some of the malls are still very young, as Weber said, and so we have to be flexible and understanding there. When they come to the maturity, the hope is that we can squeeze that as much as possible in a sustainable way.
Thank you. Ronnie?
Sorry.
Sure.
Perhaps there's two points I would like to echo on and expand upon it. Firstly, I think some years ago, our growth driver was very much concentrated on two malls in Shanghai. Right? As Weber mentioned earlier on, within our so-called the luxury mall segment, altogether we have seven. Even among these seven, the five outside Shanghai, for example, some of the luxury brand tenants move into Wuxi. They have not yet been there for more than 12 months. With the annualizations of their presence there, they will be a source of growth. For Kunming, again, a relatively new mall and with a phenomenal sales growth, okay, almost two times compared to the last year. Again, many of the top tenants there have not yet been there for the full year. Okay. The next one is, the one in Dalian.
Many of those will be opening in the fourth quarter of this year. That will be another source of growth to us. Wuhan is only for three months, and with many luxury brands that will be opening soon. All this now, that means that our base of future revenue growth will be a lot more balanced compared to before. The other aspect is with the launch of our CRM program, we now discover the stickiness of our customers is really beyond our expectations. Many of the repeat businesses are actually coming from the members of our CRM program, HOUSE 66. Do you want to disclose the latest membership number? It's over million. Now, we launched that program, what, less than two years ago? Okay. Over 50% of the sales are actually generated by these CRM members, HOUSE 66 members.
It's not simply based on one single number, the so-called occupancy cost. It's various factors that become the impetus of our future growth from now on, more than just Shanghai.
Okay, can I pick up a question from online? There's a question on, since there's been much discussion on your China retail business, can we discuss a little bit about the China office business because it's been strong? Also, can you shed some light on your hotel businesses since some big hotel names have been mentioned in your announcement? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question. Back to the mainland office segment. As I mentioned, we have pleasantly surprised to look into the demand. Actually came back strong in the second quarter of this year, especially in Shanghai. Therefore, if you look at Shanghai, our business with the Plaza 66 two towers, we actually show a very decent 3%-4% growth. Which I think this is a mild rental reversion positive from the existing tenants. Because the occupancy is already very high, that shows to you the strength of that particular market. However, in Tier 2 city, as I always mention, the fact of the matter is the vacancy level is very high across the city. Why we could do well, because we have launched different, I would say, product offerings to the customer. This is not creative, but you just need to understand the customer.
For example, in a very tough post-COVID time, a lot of the company, they would not like to spend money on the CapEx. Therefore, even though they love to move into your place, but they could not spend that huge amount of money to do the renovation. Therefore, we launch our modular office. Our modular office, basically, we will provide basic amenities, desk, and all the basic renovation. However, when you come in, you can choose your size. But you have to pay premium to the unit price. For those company to pay a little bit more, they don't have any problem. They just don't want to spend a lump sum to do the renovation. Therefore, in a Tier 2 city, this offer really help us to speed up the leasing pace for the Spring City as well as for our Heartland 66.
Think about it, in a 350-meter tall office. In old days, if we just do our traditional leasing, it takes about four years to fill it up. Now, I'm happy to tell you that Spring City, within a short period of time, we are already achieving 50%. The breakeven, as I mentioned earlier, we actually achieve our breakeven point in the office in 19 months in Spring City. Heartland, we believe that we can even achieve this breakeven point earlier. The fundamental change of us getting the second-tier city click, is to really meet the customer need. In the Wuxi, we launch our HANGOUT, which is the WeWork-like but is our own brand. Also, we charge almost like 60% premium to sell a desk. There is a demand. Some customers, they want to downsize. They don't want to commit a big space.
They want to come into the HANGOUT. I think the comprehensive office leasing strategy together with, of course, our team's strong capability, really can capture the growth of this segment. Therefore, if you exclude the new build, we are delivering 3%, 4% growth, organic growth. With the new build, we are actually delivering 12% growth in terms of revenue.
I think that I add one point. What we have been able to achieve in the office may not be achievable with many other office towers. It's not magic. It is location, it's branding, it is quality of construction, quality of management that attracts sufficient, permanent, other type of regular tenants. You add on top of it these innovations that my colleagues have initiated, be it hangout or be it the modular, then it works. If you don't have the base, I doubt if it will work. If the whole building is a ghost town. Overall, let's face it, all over mainland China, the supply of office space in all the good cities are humongous.
The natural vacancy rate is very high. Anyway, Shenyang, we are already at what, 97%? I said to them, I said, "Hey, are we going to do a hangout?" They said, "No, don't ask because there's no room." It's full. Right. Hey, if somebody move out, we may yet do it because it got higher rent. Right. It really depends on a lot of the fundamentals of your project, including location, quality of construction, quality of design management. Right. That kind of stuff.
One more point I want to add is, used to be, if we only have two tower in Shanghai, in HLP, but we have one more tower in Grand Gateway in HLG.
The portfolio effect is limited because you could not sell or have a sales pitch to the same tenant by having multiple location. Now you have Kunming, you have Wuhan, you have Wuxi, and therefore we actually successfully bring some of our existing Kunming client to Wuhan client to Wuxi, and Shanghai client to the second tier city. Now with more portfolio, the team can serve the same customer more. For example, some banks, some insurance company, they have multiple office with us. Therefore, we talk to one leasing director in that particular bank, we can actually successfully lease a few space in different cities.
In every city, our property is the best so far, is are the best.
Thank you. I would let Praveen Choudhary from Morgan Stanley to raise the question first. Thank you.
Hey, thank you. Thanks for great presentation and also congratulations for great numbers. Most of the questions are answered. I have a few small ones. The first one is on margin. I've seen that both Hong Kong and China have seen margin improvement year-over-year. Hong Kong is minor. I wanted to understand what's the driver. In China, let's assume you're running at 68% or so, but in general, Shanghai or Hong Kong can go as high as 80%-85%. I'm trying to understand what's the path of the 68% towards 85%. What do you need to get to? How would you reach there? How many years, so to say? That's the first question. The second question was about the gearing, which is reaching to a level which is different from last five, seven years when you was net cash.
Tomorrow, if you have a land available in a great place, would you go ahead and extend this one because the opportunity arise or that's good? The third one was dividend, which is totally understandable. First of all, it was a pleasant surprise, so thank you, in interim to raise it. The quantum is different. EPS is up 11%, dividend is up 6%. I think you're thinking from cent perspective rather than a percentage perspective. For the full year, assuming that earnings is up a certain number, are we saying that dividend can be similarly growing at the same rate? Thank you.
First of all, I'll talk about the dividend first. Because the interim and the final dividend is not asymmetric. You could not look at, oh, this time it's six. If I deliver 10%, are you assuming the annual also 10? I don't want to get into this game first. We want to send a message. We want to show to the analyst and to the investor that actually we are confident. I think that is the message we want to deliver. Our policy never change. Also, I remember we have different conversation, Praveen. We also need to look at our payout ratio, right? Therefore, of course, we earn more. We are happy to do more. I just don't want to do more than our means. Therefore, we could not do something else, when opportunity arise.
I think this is your first question your last question.
Margin.
Margin. This is really hard work, I have to say. There's no magic. If your revenue go up, definitely it will improve. I always tell our team that which we really know. If you are a sub-luxury mall, even though you are doing really well, the margin will have a ceiling because you don't have that kind of strong sales to carry you over, right? To maintain all this basic service delivery work, it requires human being, it requires works, it require a lot of time, right? That has a base. We all know that per square foot how to manage in different cities, right? In order to get yourself into 70+, you have to have luxury. No matter how you look at it in mainland.
In Mainland, once you get there, you will see every top line will go down into the bottom line, right? It's as simple as that, right? If you are sub-luxury, you will be competing with all the giant like Alibaba, WeChat, sorry, Alipay and all that kind of Taobao and all that kind of e-commerce. If you get yourself into different positioning, and you will get extra reward because of that. I think if you look at our Group Properties' overall margin, we maintain. Actually we have to increase a lot for both side in order to maintain, because think about it. Last time when we present, Hong Kong still represent 46%. And China is 55%. At that time, Hong Kong is 85% margin, and China at that time is 60-something percent. If you have a 60%, 50% and 80%, 50%, then your average is 68%.
This time, our China is 66%. We have to increase our China by 3.5%, even though Hong Kong maintained, in order to maintain the same for that, and also to carry some of the new property that we just brought in. Think about it. If you take our Wuhan, all the new properties, our margin will be even more impressive. To come back to your question, it's about hard work, it's about the daily management, about how we spend money, how we can make ourselves more efficient by having a central procurement across all portfolio. How to standardize things, how to outsource some of those work that we believe we cannot add more value, and therefore we can outsource to someone that they can do really well for us. I think it's a combination of all the hard work together.
I remember two years ago, we talk about operating leverage. I always want to deliver the top revenue faster than the cost expense growth, and therefore we can deliver the profit more, right? Which we've shown. Our EBIT growth faster than our revenue because of our expense growth is lower than our revenue growth. This is our aim. Of course, we cannot do every single month, because sometimes we have marketing program, we have some one-time program, this and that. In general, we would like to continue to make ourselves more efficient, to make ourselves much more easy to replicate, and therefore our cost base could be controlled, and therefore all the top line can come into the bottom line. Sorry, I missed your middle question.
I answered.
Oh, you answered already.
Yeah, we're fine. We're fine.
Sorry.
There's an interesting question from online, so I'll get back to John and Cusson later. The question online says, "Okay, I'm an investment fund with ESG mandate, so I'll be interested in knowing more about the new initiatives on your ESG side. Separately, you've mentioned in your announcement on the sustainable expenditures and sustainable financing. Would you like to explain more about that?" Thank you.
Sure. Thanks. I'll let H.C. take the sustainable finance side, but I think we've done a lot on that as well. Internally, we have a lot of programs in terms of ESG. We have a new head of sustainability, or at least relatively new, which has really allowed us to get into the details a lot more. We have all sorts of programs. The two big buckets where we're spending, one is on reducing our carbon footprint, and the other one is on wellness and wellbeing. Down to specific projects, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we have a lot on energy efficiency. This is both in our new builds and in our existing buildings. Almost no property is being untouched here. We're looking at how we can improve our efficiency. All of that starts with measurement and management.
Carbon reduction. Back onto the wellness side, we're spending a lot for employees, but also for customers and tenants and other stakeholders. That includes things like topping up on insurance or employee workplace wellness environment, both physical and also our policies. All of these things are contributing to our, what I think is a pretty substantial ESG spend. These are the priorities that we've identified. We have our 2030 goals. I think these are very aggressive, and we're very serious about doing what we can to meet them. I encourage those of you who are interested to look at our sustainability report, because we have quite a lot of that in quite a lot of detail. Of course, if there's any specific questions, we're happy to take those as well. I'll pass that on to H.C.
On the sustainable finance, which is part and parcel of our sustainability focus. Last December, sustainable finance accounted for about 13% of our total borrowing portfolio. At the end of June this year, it rose to 24%, and we have plans to increase that further. Okay. Now, within our portfolio of sustainable finance, which comprises of green loans, green bonds, sustainability-linked loans, green loan, that kind of products, okay. It's not just the name of it. Within each one of those, there are certain parameters that we have to meet in order to lower the borrowing cost of those type of sustainable finance, and which we work closely together with our sustainable department, the colleagues that responsible for those. It's all well articulated within the company. As I say, we hope to increase that further.
That form the entire component of our overall sustainability program within this company.
I just want to add one point, is that if you look at our borrowing costs, just versus the second half of last year. We bring down from 4.1, 4.2% now to 3.6%. Partly because we pay our first MTN seven years ago, in April. The sustainability finance drive is something we will continue to drive to, hopefully, we can drive down our borrowing costs, which 0.5% in a six months drop is quite a big drop. We will continue to do that, hopefully we can not only meet the ESG requirement, but also we can lower the finance cost, hopefully that we will provide even more dry powder for us in the future.
Just a side story. Many of you know that I chaired the Asia Society globally until recently. I initiated a program there about 12, 15 years ago to bring a group of thought leaders in Asia. That group is really a very impressive and very high-power group. Young people, mostly in their 30s. Without my knowing it, each one of those guys are all leaders in their field, right? Without my knowing it, Adriel hired one of those guys who became an Asia 21 Fellow, as we call it at the Asia Society, in sustainability. Canadian or American?
Canadian.
Canadian, right, who was chosen as a young leader for Asia Pacific in sustainability. Without my knowing it, my colleague hired him, and now he has been heading that team for a few years. You can tell that we're really at the forefront of thinking.
Okay. In view of time, we can take two last batches of questions from the floor, maybe John first and then followed by Cusson. John, please. From UBS.
Thank you, management. Also, congratulations on the results. I want to ask one question regarding on the land market. I also agree with that luxury market is a very great market, especially for the next five years. Looking at the pipeline for the company, we have Hangzhou for the next pipeline. I'm not sure Do you see that there's a lack of good land being supplied or the market for the new shopping mall for the company acquire? Also, given that we have a very distressed liquidity for some of the Chinese developers, will you also consider to acquire some of the project to convert to the shopping mall? Thank you.
I'll start, my colleagues can add on. I just spent four months in the Mainland, and besides the cities in which we have existing properties, I also visited about 10 other cities. You can tell that there's a lot to look at. I would say in our sector, which is the top end of luxury, and we have very high requirements for our land, there's never been a huge supply. That being said, there's also no shortage. It's kind of somewhere in between. I think that the way things are in the market right now, there could definitely be more opportunity, and we're keeping a very close ear on the potential for new supply, both greenfield and also potentially from other distressed developers. That's something that we've always been doing. It's not that we're doing something new now.
It's just that there may be some more supply coming. We're always looking at that, and we hope that we can continue to develop our pipeline. That being said, actually, we still have a lot of construction to do. Obviously, with Heartland Residences, that's our first Mainland residential service apartment project, but we have three more in the pipeline. We have Wuxi, Shenyang, and Kunming. Sorry, Wuxi, Kunming, and then Shenyang. Between these four projects, we have about five million sq ft to sell. We have an average selling price in these cities going anywhere between RMB 30,000-RMB 50,000 per sq m, that is. Keep in mind, I'm changing here. That's a potential, yes, RMB. There's actually a lot for us to do in the next few years.
Not to mention Shenyang, which we've restarted construction on the site immediately next to ours, which is adjacent to our existing mall. There's still a lot to be done, and I think that we have plenty to keep us busy. Notwithstanding, of course, our continuous search for new projects.
As far as buying from distressed real estate companies, sure. Anything that is good is fine. Hopefully, it's really distressed in price, but not distressed in location, which cannot be changed. As far as converting them, if I understood you correctly, the chances are very slim. When we tear it down, we just buy the land and tear it down. If it makes economic sense, why not? Because I don't think that too many people know. Certainly, those guys who are in economic distress today, I really doubt if they know how to design it properly. We'll look. Convert, maybe not. If you have some good land, let me know. Can you let me know? Thank you. Any one of us.
Thank you. Last question from Cusson Leung of J.P. Morgan, please.
I just also want to focus on, you talk about interest in land banking in China. Just want to understand a little bit more how you think about the whole capital allocation. Would there actually be a redeployment of the Hong Kong asset, the capital into China? Would possibility of packaging the Hong Kong asset and spinning off, recycle the capital into new land in China, one of the options? Will you actually be just continue to use debt or equity to fund the expansion in China?
I'm open to any idea, if they are good idea. We are open. I'm not saying that we have a so-called ceiling. Today, yes, we are at net 24 point something percent gearing. Still, I would say it's still a very acceptable level, especially with our strong recurring, not developing property revenue.
Revenue prediction should be easy for us to predict and also to know what kind of cash flow we will be able to bring in. I will not worry about whether we will be able to raise fund. I'm sure H.C. can talk about, we have a lot of line available for us to do different things. I'm just open to any ideas because we look into distress, of course, we look into every single things, but our standard is high. At the same time, on the other hand, we have a lot on our hand in order to, hopefully, to prioritize ourselves. As Adriel mentioned, we all together in Hang Lung Properties, we have 58 million sq ft land bank anyway. Out of that, we only have complete 46. Right? We still have a lot to do.
I would say, I remember a few years ago, some of you asked, "Hey, you have too many things to do. Don't buy more." Now some of you now ask, "Buy more." Right? We just need to optimize it. We are not reacting to your question. We have our own pace. We know how much we can afford. At the same time, if the opportunity comes, of course, we will do it, even though we need to borrow a little bit more. We are confident that we will be able to pay back. This is really a strategy that I always said to people that, "Come, if you have any good idea, we are open.
On the allocation side, obviously, something that we've repeated many times in our Hong Kong properties, especially the non-core properties, we're always open to selling some of those off. Our stated use of those funds have always been in the past is, we see more opportunity generally in the Mainland. We'd be happy to do that if the opportunities arise.
One more thing I want to add, especially you are analysts, you will know what does that mean. We talk about 5 million sq ft of service apartment for sale in China. I remember we talk about the range of 30,000-50,000 sq m per sq m. You can quickly do the math. That is 15 billion-16 billion renminbi. Right? If we successfully can sell it, let's say in the next 10 years. Okay? That is quite a big sum. At the same time, we have three redevelopment properties in Hong Kong. Name it AIC, name it our Electric Road, and also our Shouson Hill. Right? I just roughly say HKD 10 billion there. Right?
If we start off with the AIC this year, and also our service apartment sale in Wuhan early next year, we are back to a leasing only, back to with some development sales. Then you calculate HKD 15 billion plus HKD 10 billion, let's say divided into 10 years. You know the capability of recycling of capital for us. Therefore, when times is right, when opportunity comes, we will be able to do something. Of course, we want to kickstart. Action is more important than talk. How we can really walk the talk by selling our AIC well in Hong Kong, how we can really define our positioning of Hang Lung Residences in mainland in early next year to define the work brand well.
Once in Wuhan, if we can sell well, we will be more confident to tell you in Wuxi we will sell well, we will be more confident to tell you in Kunming, because we are working with Grand Hyatt. We now actually will brand as a Grand Hyatt Residences Kunming. Hopefully by then, our Shenyang will sell well too. Hopefully this will also be another catalyst for something in the last few years you have not seen, but now we come back strong. At the same time, Blue Pool Road, we just sold one in June, and we will actually book that revenue early first quarter next year. Hong Kong market looks like the high-end market continue to be strong. Hopefully, we can continue to sell down some of our inventory in Blue Pool Road. That will give us some support as well.
I think altogether, I do not worry about our dry powder. I worry more about whether there is good opportunity comes along. When there's good opportunities, management is responsible and be accountable to pick them. Hopefully, we will pick the right one.
Maybe I'll just wrap up a couple of points. Hangzhou is really I'm very happy about the land in Hangzhou that we bought. Perhaps I'm a little bit more careful than Adriel. I think that maybe we may have to run over to the first quarter of 2025 to finish the mall, and a few office towers. The reason is because the city delayed their giving us the land, handing over the land by nine months, eight months, whatever. It's really because of the city's problem. Nonetheless, I think I'm really excited because the experience of Spring City in Kunming and Heartland in Wuhan, and then also Center 66 in Wuxi, in all cases, we took over the number one position from somebody else, and we migrated all those top brands into our shopping centers.
I personally think that the chance of us doing that in Hangzhou is very good. Anyway, enough said. If we sell anything in Hong Kong, it would not be because we need the capital for mainland China. As Adriel says, we are always looking to sell. In fact, pardon the Cantonese, we were selling some and we could have sold another building, which we didn't. This is about year and a half years ago. We did sell some, as you can tell. It happened to be owned by Hang Lung Group, and so we gave a special dividend last year. Hong Kong, our portfolio is aging, so we don't mind refreshing our overall portfolio. My view about Hong Kong's economy is I'm a little cautious. Consider this.
Not only is the economic situation not that favorable, in my opinion, there's a lot of office supply coming up also. Right here in Central, within three blocks from right here. I just haven't seen that much office supply in downtown Hong Kong in a long, long, long, long time. Why bother? If we can find good land in mainland China, yeah, we'll be very happy to do that. I think that, I believe that in the coming one, three, five years.