Good afternoon, all of the guests. Welcome all of you to attend the 2023 annual results investors briefing of CITIC Limited. In order to ensure the quality of the meeting, please turn your mobile phone to silent mode. The briefing will be in Mandarin with the simultaneous interpreting in English and Cantonese. English is on channel two, and Cantonese is on channel one. I would like to introduce you the leaders who are attending the briefing. They are Mr. Xi Guohua, Chairman of CITIC Limited. Mr. Zhang Wenwu, Vice Chairman and President. Mr. Liu Zhengjun, Executive Director and Vice President. Executive Director and Vice President, Mr. Wang Guoquan. Mr. Xu Zuo, Vice President. Mr. Fang Heying, Vice President.
The General Manager of Financial Management Department, Mr. Zhang Xujun. First of all, I will give the floor to Mr. Zhang Xujun to brief you on the annual results of CITIC Limited, and after that, we will take all of your questions. Our leaders will answer your questions after the briefing.
Dear investors, analysts, good afternoon. Thank you very much to attend the 2023 annual results of CITIC Limited. Now, I would like to give you a report on the result of CITIC in 2023. My presentation will be divided into the following. The first one is about the results of our performance, and the second is about performance of different business sectors. So for the overall performance, I would like to give you some keywords of overcoming headwinds to achieve resilient business performance. And first, please have a look of the results. In 2023, amid weak global economic recovery and intensifying geographical conflicts, economic growth of China was 5.2%.
We also faced with a lot of overcapacity in some industries, weak public sentiment, and many lingering risks and hidden dangers. Facing a complex and challenging international and domestic environment, we delivered a solid performance. We see that we recorded revenue of RMB 680.8 billion, increase of 2.6% year-on-year growth. We also actively furthered business development strengths and the scientific development innovation, and opened up overseas market. Despite all those challenges and difficulties, we also achieved a sustainable development in operating income. The recorded net profit is around RMB 105.3 billion and RMB 57.6 billion in profit attributed to ordinary shareholders.
After excluding a one-year revaluation gain of RMB 10.3 billion from the consolidation of CITIC Securities in the prior year, the net profit and net attributive, attributable to ordinary shareholders is around 10% and 5.4% respectively. There is also a brief overview of all of the business that we have done in the past. There are five factors, and the growth of different sectors compared to that of last year. If you're looking at the financial service, joined forces to serve the real economy, and we providing financial support for major strategies, key areas and weak links. The operating income and profit attributable to ordinary shareholders increased by 0.5% and 5.1% respectively year-on-year.
And, we also have operating income and profit attributable to ordinary shareholders of non-financial segments increased by 4% and 5% respectively. Among them, the advanced intelligent manufacturing segment accelerated its global capacity expansion, and we also have acquired Tianjin Pipe and Nanjing Iron and Steel. Those added up to our overall income and profit. We have in-depth integration with the Belt and Road initiatives and regional development strategies. However, due to the impact of new energy vehicles and the downward impact of the real estate industry, the operating income decreased by 3% and 13% respectively year-on-year. Yet, profit contribution of those segments increased year-on-year. We attach great importance to shareholder returns. Both the share price and payout ratio increased.
We can see that the share price of CITIC Limited increased by 2% in 2023, and continued to outperform the Hong Kong Index. The market value of listed equity interest increased by 10% over the year, among which the share prices of CITIC Press, CITIC Metal, and CITIC Bank increased by 46, 17% and 14% respectively. We can also see that the share price also have some increase. It was 0.515% in 2023, and the payout ratio increased to 26%.... Then let's have a look of business segment. First part is about comprehensive financial services.
In 2023, the comprehensive financial services segment achieved a revenue of RMB 268 billion, and a profit of RMB 50.5 billion, up by 0.5% and 5.1% respectively. We tried our very best to increase, continue to optimize the revenue structure, and optimize the market segmentation, and strengthen Fintech to provide tailored comprehensive financial solutions to increase our comprehensive financial services. For our first subsidiary under CITIC Limited is CITIC Bank. Withstanding the pressure of narrowing NIM, operating performance outperformed the market, achieving operating income of RMB 205.6 billion, down by 2.6% year-on-year, and profit was RMB 67 billion, up by 7.9% year-on-year. With the continued optimization of funding cost, NIM narrowed less than the market, averaged by 3%.
Deepening the strategy of retail first, the revenue contribution of retail banking increased 2%, to 42%. We also strengthened our risk resilience. CITIC Bank recorded a decline in both NLP balance and NLP ratio for three consecutive years, and NLP ratio decreased by 0.09% to 1.18%, and NLP balance declined by 0.6% to RMB 64.8 billion compared to the end of 2022. You see, that are the achievements we have made, and we also improved the quality and efficiency of services to the real economy. We also maintained a double-digit growth in green finance strategy, the emerging industries, medium long-term manufacturing, inclusive finance, and agricultural related sector.
For CITIC Securities, affected by fluctuation of the capital market, we still maintain rank the first place in the industry, and its income reached RMB 83.7 billion, down by 2.6% year-on-year, and profit was RMB 19.7 billion, down by 7.5%. I'd like to say that that is because the competitiveness of the market is strengthened, and that's why our profitability is declined, but still we are ranking the first in the industry. For the third subsidiary or subordinate of CITIC Limited is CITIC Trust. We would like to say that accelerated business transformation and achieved operating income of RMB 5 billion and profit of RMB 2.6 billion, down by 23% and 13% respectively. We continuously optimize the trust business structure.
CITIC Trust rigorously developed its own risk trust service business with the scale of trust AUM reaching a record high of RMB 2.1 trillion, an increase of 34% over the year. We also maintained the leading positions in the industry. CITIC Trust successfully won bids for risk mitigation trust services from several large institutions with existing business scale, ranking first in the industry. Next is about CITIC Prudential Life, and gross premium income was RMB 31.6 billion, up by 1% year-on-year. In complying with the new regulatory requirement of C-ROSS Phase II and integrated written premium transformation, the impact value and total assets reached RMB 38 billion and RMB 236.3 billion, respectively, growing by 4% and 13% from the beginning of 2023.
That's why we were saying that we promoted the transition towards high-value products, and the capital strength strengthened the further development of CITIC Prudential Life. With all of the efforts we have made, that the shareholding structure remains unchanged, and our performance has been strengthened at the same time. Now, let's have a look of the other sector with the name of Advanced Intelligent Manufacturing. In 2023, the Advanced Intelligent Manufacturing segment achieved a revenue of RMB 54.4 billion and profit of RMB 830 million, down by 2.3% and up by 56% respectively. We have key technologies, and the competitiveness of our products has been increased and upgraded to in a large extent, in a large degree.
For Advanced Intelligent Manufacturing, please have a look of CITIC Dicastal first. Sales of aluminum wheels increased by 10% year-on-year, and sales of casting increased by 20% year-on-year, both reaching record high, with overseas sales accounting for nearly 50%. We improved the overseas production network. Mexico aluminum wheel project operated at full capacity, and Morocco lightweight automotive aluminum casting factory reached the designed capacity. And second, we strengthened product technology and research as well as development. CITIC Dicastal independently developed a complete solution of integrated Dicastal for automotive components, which helped to reshape the traditional manufacturing process of automotive vehicles, promote green transformation, and build product life cycle carbon emission management platform. And third is equity financing in progress.
The company is currently filing a listing plan for Shanghai Stock Exchange, which will further enhance its capital strength.
... the next sector is about the CITIC Heavy Industries. It is driven by the sustained and steady growth of its heavy equipment business. Operating income and profit increased by 8% and 164% respectively. We tried our best to strive to break through core technologies. The proportion of R&D investment continued to maintain at above 7%, providing key advanced equipment components for the, for China. Many heavy equipment, such as large ball mills and hydraulic heavy-duty mechanical arms, for the world as well. We also actively pursued greater internationalization as well, to boost the business of the CITIC Heavy Industries. The next sector is about advanced materials. The advanced materials sector achieved revenue of RMB 267 billion in 2023, up by 10% year-on-year.
Here we continue to encourage in the development of overseas copper and iron core resources. In this part, we could see we acquired the Tianjin Pipe and also Nanjing Iron & Steel, pushing the annual production capacity to 30 million tons and improving the product range of bars and also the wires and tubes and plates. Here we could see that the revenue that increased by 16%. We need to consider about the total market scenario. Here we could see there are three parts. The first one, that is the sales that increased against the trend. That is CITIC Pacific Special Steel successfully consolidated the Tianjin Pipe. Here we could see for this part, the seamless steel tons that reached 5 million tons, that leading the scale in the world.
We seized all development opportunities in wind power and new energy vehicles and also other industries. Volume of the steel in energy and automobiles increased by 56% and 20%, a record high. We also undertook 89 provincial level projects. Here, we also undertook 29 projects about the provincial level, participate in the revision and release of 21 standards. We also have one of the Lighthouse Factory. This is the first world-class factory Lighthouse that in special steel industry, and that is the second Lighthouse Factory of the CITIC Group. The next one, that is the Sino Iron, and we could see the profit was $540 million, with a year-on-year growth by 14%. The production operation remains stable.
So the output of the iron ore concentrate has exceeded 20 million wet tons for the 5 consecutive years. That is 90% of them actually sold to China. And so here we could see. We also, the land restrictions to constrain production capacity, but still, we could see that the output that reduced to 14 million tons in 2024. And another one, that is the CITIC Metal, that it has become the first group-listed company under the A-share registration-based system that in April last year. So here we could see that the revenue was RMB 125 billion, up by 4.9% year-on-year. Profit, RMB 2.1 billion, up by 7.1%, 7.1%. But here we could see we have overseas projects.
The KK Copper Mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has constantly surpassed the production records, and also Las Bambas Copper Mine in Peru achieved a great success. Also Ivanhoe Mines completed a private placement to raise about $430 million. So here we could see for the non-ferrous trade business developed rapidly, the market of the niobium products continued to maintain over 80%. So you could see the non-ferrous metal increased by 74% year-on-year. The next company, CITIC Pacific Energy, that the profit was RMB 1.05 billion, up by 11% year-on-year. We continue to promote the transformation of the new energy. Actually, we have a power, wind power capacity of 1,000 megawatts being successfully connected to the grid.
Here we could see that for the installed capacity of the new energy increased by 15.14%. The next one, new consumption. The revenue was RMB 51.4 billion, down by 3%, and the profit was RMB 1 billion, up 94%. So here we can see that 5G users in Macau, the book publishing and domestic RMB currency market share all increased, and their market actually kept a leading position. And so the motor business focus on accelerating its new energy transformation and pursuing overseas opportunities. And the CITIC Telecom International, we can see the revenue was HKD 10 billion, so decrease of 1.2%. Profit, HKD 1.2 billion, up by 3.4%. So we can see this company made significant contributions to the digital Macau.
So the number of the 5G users in Macau actually surpassed 500,000, ranked number 1 in the market share, approximately 75% of the market share. And we also steadily advanced our business expansion. So CITIC Telecom expanded its data center business and also secure a major customer for its internet services and also high-grade data center in Hong Kong. So enhance its cloud services and also become the first managed service provider in Hong Kong. And the next one, CITIC Press. And so affected by the weak consumption in the book market, so here we could see the sales was down 4.7%, and the amount was RMB 1.7 billion. Profit declined by 7.7%. And down to RMB 120 million.
So here we can see, CITIC Press still actually continue to lead mass production markets, even though the sales and the profit, they actually decreased a little bit. And so here we could see, we ranked number one in terms of the business, psychology, self-help and biography and biographies. And we also ranked number two in the market position in terms of children's books and natural science books. So, the CITIC Press also actively embraced the tide of scientific and technology revolution, and therefore, it has applied the AIGC in key production process that will have the better platform. And also, Dah Chong Hong, and so here we could see for this one, the because of the narrowing of the gross profit of those combustion vehicles.
Here, the revenue was RMB 40.9 billion, profit RMB 140 million, were down 4.4% and 74% respectively. But here we could see, we continues to actively promote the market development of the motor business and also strengthen the construction of the sales channels of the food business. So we actually acquired the Tsit Wing International, and so the largest coffee and tea suppliers in Hong Kong. And so we have acquired 21% equity stake. The next subsidiary company, CITIC Agriculture. So here we could see that we have increased the sales volume and price of the rice and corn seeds. And so here we can see, we've consolidated the leading position in the seed industry. Longping High-Tech achieved financial consolidation by the Longping AgriScience, greatly enhanced the industrial status and brand.
So here, the hybrid rice and corn seeds increased by 3% and 2.6% to 18% and 9%. It continues to improve the operating performance significantly. So here we could see, there was the growth of the operating income by 4%. The next segment, new type urbanization. So, and here we could see the revenue was RMB 43.4 billion, down by 13%. Profit was RMB 2.2 billion, up 17%. So the overall sales of the real estate projects actually went well, and the construction business made efforts to promote the market development. But the prudent provisions made to strengthen the asset quality, so excluding the impact of the provisions, the operating profit was RMB 6.7 billion, down 12%.
Here we could see for the property development, operation, and management, with a revenue of RMB 10.4 billion, a slight drop of 4.4%. We have very good projects, and for example, that we have the Jade Mansion in Wuxi, and also the Harbor City in Wuhan. These projects actually ranked quite top in terms of the signed contracts. It also continued to advance risk resolutions through the collaborations. The five risk resolution projects, including the Yalong in Shanghai, and also CITIC Nanling in Shenzhen, were implemented. Sales contract of the Hongshu Bay project acquired from the Kaisa Group reached 85%, and the Dajiaotou project has finalized a land exchange and allocation plan. Here we could see the construction and urban operation, that the revenue decreased by 13%.
The revenue was RMB 34.5 billion, and operating profit dropped by 45%. So we still make efforts to promote a market development. Even though the market is difficult, but we still achieved a newly signed contract with a value of RMB 21.3 billion. We also involved some highlight projects. For example, Yuliang and Linqing Expressway projects have commenced, and also, we also have the Futian Water Purification Plant in Asia. So that's all my presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now let's get started the Q&A section. Please put your hands up to raise question, and please identify yourself and your company. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm from Huatai Securities. My name is Shen Juan.
So my question is for the chairman, where I have two questions. The first question, that is, and congratulations for the achievements that even against the very difficult macro environment last year. But at the very same time, we could see. So actually, we have, we are facing some uncertainties. So, how do you think about the future development? And the second question is about your team and also the mechanism, and because in this year, that actually that CITIC Limited has hired the key top management team, and then with a very profound background from the major state-owned banks. So, why there is such a human resources and, or the organization change? And how do you see about the future development of the company? And how will you build up the team to cope with the market changes?
Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. Last year, last December, I took office as the Chairman of CITIC Limited. I feel the responsibility, and I would like to thank you for your long-term care and support. I hope that you will continue to care about the reform and development of CITIC Limited. In the past few years, that, CITIC Limited has unceasingly deepened reform and development, and we implemented the strategy of a five-five-three in a steady and orderly manner. So it's a great result. And for the next part, that we are going to further promote high-quality development to build ourselves as the world-class enterprises. And so we have stable development, which laid a solid foundation for us for future progress.
In 2023, that, CITIC Limited has been selected as the top 500 companies in the world, and so we've fulfilled our key targets. And so we, we have the RMB 10 billion net profit, and we also received high scores in terms of the Ministry of Finance assessment. So when we review the history of our company, of our group, we could see that actually, CITIC Group is always focused on the reform. So we will continue to carry the reform spirit and to make innovations, and to continuously to explore the pathway, which is a fit for CITIC Limited. We are seeking new models and new growth points and joining forces. So we will stick, we will stick to our blueprint.
So, on the basis of the five-five-three strategy, we have proposed that the overall reform and development principle of the reform and opening up, so that we will deeply implement five-five-three strategy. Our target is to build ourselves as the world-class enterprises, so we will improve our core competitiveness and functions, and therefore, we will make adjustments of our development direction and focus of the five segments. We will further clarify the main business of the five segments. We will continuously to improve the level of the management and operation. We will continue to deepen the business integration, and we will enhance our moves that in terms of the mergers and acquisitions. We will strengthen the internal and external collaboration. We will have innovative business models and service models that to give a full play of our advantages.
So we will actively to focus on the forward-looking strategy, emerging industries. And then three, three pushes. That is to push our financial industries that should be better and stronger, to further promote transformation and upgrading, and also to promote effective risk mitigation. And in terms of the financial side, we will continue to improve the effectiveness of our financial resources. So we will focus on about the five parts of the finance, and therefore, the CITIC Holdings, that will find a way that is a fit for Chinese characteristics.
To security management platforms, to strengthen and fasten the speed of becoming world-class investment bank. For real economy, we will try our best to keep our pace with the revolution of technology and transformation of industry, so that we can have the second round of the growth curve. Last month, we released the integrated solution for press and cast, casting and die solution for automobiles, and this is more like a CITIC solution to make breakthroughs for automobile industry. We would also try our best to control risks and prevent risks from happening.
We will deepen the establishment of a comprehensive risk control system, and try our best to get rid of the risks at the early stage, and have mechanisms to correct all of the mistakes or malfunction, and fasten the speed of the modernization and intelligentization for risk control as well. For the five breakthroughs, they are referring to new breakthroughs in restructuring the organization system, strengthening team building, improving the incentive mechanism, deepening scientific and technological innovation, and coordinating overseas development. Therefore, restructuring of organizational system, we will try our best to effectively taking a leading role at the commanding center to allocate all of the resources and have effective evaluation system, and to make good work on risk control. We also like to try our best to encourage all of the subsidiaries to have differentiated development paths.
For team building, we will pay attention to all of the leaders or cadres to make the best of their advantages, and have a whole chain to select and train the best leaders who can do, who can excel in management. Two, we also will try our best to complete the incentive mechanism. Well, we will compare all of the results of our performance within ourselves and the overall contribution of different business sectors, and also try to compare our results with that of the whole industry. With all of the evaluations and comparison, we will have a very close link between the KPI or the working performance with their salary. And the total salary, and we'll have a close relationship with the contribution of their working results or performances.
When we're talking about the strength in scientific and technological innovation, we would like to give a floor to all of the teams who are doing innovation, and we will establish a scientific innovation commission and scientific technological commission, digitalization commission. Those commissions will have a coordination mechanism to push forward the industrial innovation and the birth of high-tech technologies, high-end technologies, so that we can make breakthroughs and create a triangle which with technology, finance, and industry. This year marks the 45th anniversary of CITIC Limited. We will try our best to implement all of the working spirits and the contents of the working meetings of the 20th National Congress, the financial working meeting from the central government, and economic working meeting from the central government.
We will try our best to increase our revenues and net profit. At the same time, we will try our best to outperform the market and try to increase the ROE and to maintain the ROE at a reasonable range. We will also try our best to enhance the application of technology and the cost of human resources. For stabilization, I mean, for us, we will try our best to reduce the total amount of NPL debt and the debt ratio. We will also make the debt ratio of assets at a stable level. Right now, the economic recovery of China is quite stable and growing up.
I think that background information will not be changed, and that's why I would like to say we have such a trust and a belief that we will always make our best and maintain a beneficial growth trend and create better value for our shareholders and investors. As you see that we have another two leaders. We have Mr. Zhang Wenwu and Madame Zeng Qi, which are reflecting the great concern from the central government and the great support of the leadership of CITIC Limited. Today, Mr. Zhang Wenwu is with us on the stage, and he will also take your questions. Madame Zeng Qi has other business to do. It's such a pity she is not able to be present in today's briefing.
But still, we know that comprehensive financial service is our basis, and it accounts for 40% of our benefits, and accounts for 80% of our revenue. For Mr. Zhang Wenwu, he is coming from the financial accounting major, and he's also accumulated a lot of experience. And Madame Zeng Qi, she is majoring in management and operation. She is also quite very experienced. She has sensitive, have a very sharp, sense of the market, and they used to work for state-owned banks. I would like to say that they are quite excellent managers and leaders and accumulated long-term experience of financial industry. For CITIC Limited, is home to working staff from all across China, and also a platform for all of us to start business.
I strongly believe with their support, our work even can be better and better, and they can make great contribution to the development of our business. Also strongly believe that they can bring their excellent working experience to CITIC Limited and improve our management level even to a higher grade. Human resources are the foundation of success, and so it is to CITIC. For CITIC Limited, we attach great importance to teams' establishment and the development of working staff. We will always try our best to foster and cultivate all of the talents who are working for us. For our next step, we will focus on five breakthroughs. Among the five breakthroughs, there are two targeting at cultivating of talents.
With the new times, new challenge, and new opportunities, we need to implement the training of the management leaders and complement the talent pool. We also need to have routine training for all those talents and the managers, and expand the pool of talents. We try our best to cultivate and welcome all of the talents from all across the world, and we also like to pass the spirit of CITIC to generation and generation. Within CITIC Limited, we already have public voting to select those talents within our group and different subsidiaries. They can try their best to compete with each other to take a specific working position. We try our best to be brave, to select those post-nineties who are quite good in doing management.
We also tried our best to improve the evaluation of their performance. The performance or evaluation of their KPI is differentiated to protect the scientific fairness of the evaluation of their working performance. At the same time, we also would like to streamline and simplify all of the evaluation processes for all of the working staff, so that we can encourage all of the initiatives, all of working staff, they can take their own initiative to work. On the other hand, we also try our best to improve and complete the salary system, and try our best to increase their salary and improve the working efficiency of our working staff, and try to do the evaluation based on their working performance and contribution.
We would like to mobilize the limited resources to maximize. Recently, I think you already noticed that, CITIC already released a voluntary share purchase information, and that initiative is more like one of the exploration we made to encourage the working staff's motivation to work. And it's also an initiative to face with all of the challenges and instabilities of the environment worldwide. In order to establish a world-level enterprise, we try our best to guarantee the talent, organization, and mechanism of the incentives. Thank you very much. That is my answer to your question. Next question, please.
Thank you very much for your giving this opportunity. I come from Citibank. My name is George Choi. And my question is about the market value of state-owned enterprises.
As you know, that there are more, there are a lot of contacts between you and the capital enterprises, and I also heard that you will have a voluntary share purchase initiative. I would like to know your dividend mechanism, and if there are any new measures for evaluation of the performances of your working staff? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. Just now, you're talking about the payout ratio or dividend. I think there are two points I'd like to answer you. Point number one, we always maintain a stable and sustainable payout ratio and mechanism. From 2019 to 2022, and that percentage is 25%, and in 2023, it increased it to 26%. That surely showcase that we have our own commitment to our shareholders and investors.
At the same time, we also try to maximize the payout ratio and dividend mechanism. As you know, CITIC and CSRC tried their best to enhance the ROI of the investors. Against such a background, we also did some study and research. Combined with our own development situation, as well as a different background environment, and the own reform we're taking within CITIC, we would like to make a scientific payout strategy for all of the investors and the shareholders.
You've asked about the market value management. It's very important. It's one of the key task for us. It enjoys very high priority in our work. I would like to share with you three keywords. The first one, that is the strategy planning. We have strategy planning. So since 2021, that we actually developed 1.0 version of the reform in terms of the market management and market value management. So we actually raised many reforming actions in terms of the market valued category, the value added category, and also the organizational category. And so we have founded the Market Value Management Committee, and with the Chairman Xi, as the leader of this committee.
And recently, you can see the top management team and also the market value management team that actually have a frequent and sufficient communications with the capital market. And the chairman himself actually went to the overseas markets, such as the Middle East and also Singapore. So we listened to the opinions from the expats and also investors that are in the capital city. So their inputs are inspirational. And so in the past two years, that we've already rolled out the market value management, the simulated assessment for CITIC Bank, CITIC Securities. And so now we're going to expand such a market value assessment scope. So from the perspective of CITIC Bank, it's a pressure, but of course, also a motivation. And so when we look at the results, the share price of CITIC Bank continues to grow and also outperformed the market.
And so here, for the CITIC Bank actually is having the number one position among the market players. And the second keywords that is supportive. So externally, we could see that Chinese economy development has very obvious systematic, institutional, and market advantage, and also we have advantages in supply chain and also talents. And so we will make with the macro policies portfolio. And so since this year, we could see we've already witnessed a very stable development of the Chinese economy. And so we will continue to focus on the resilience. And so internally, we could see there are three values of the China CITIC from the CITIC Limited.
Here we could see that in 22 March this year, we could see the National Standing Committee actually released a very positive signal to support the development of real estate. In some of the key areas, for example, how to lower the risk of the local debts. These are some of our key concerns, and many of these that actually have made improvements. Last year, when I communicated with the analysts, they were concerned about the risks. I think those risks actually will have the impact on the revenue of our bank. So that's the situation last year. But we secured the baseline. We didn't let the systematic risk take place. How about in real estate segment? I think there are some warm signals.
These are macro environment that will give favorable factors for the development of the CITIC Limited. For CITIC Limited, we have a diversified majors of business, and our performance is stable, and the dividend is high. So we can see, actually, our dividend rate ranged 8.3%-8.4%. So we maintained a good stability in such a changing and fluctuating market. So internally, we could see that these kind of advantages is supporting the growth of the market value of the CITIC Limited. And therefore. And so here we could see that with such a stable performance, that we are able to have the price, have the share continues to increase. And for example, the last year, the Hang Seng index dropped by 13.82%.
But for CITIC Limited, our share still increased. It's quite positive. We believe it's highly relevant to our business, and so now we reviewed our 1.0 version of the market value management, and we are now preparing the 2.0 version of the market value management. So the core content, that is to build an incentive mechanism and also to clarify the dividend expectations. And so we also see we will have the market value management assessment. And for example, we could see there is a report that was released by the securities market. And so here we can see. And then we promise that the dividend will not be less than RMB 100 million. So I believe that it also will boost the further level of the high-quality development.
Last but not least, now we will focus on about the one principle, three pushes, and five breakthroughs. So we will continue to increase our market value and also increase the earnings to shareholders. So I believe that there is the internal laws of the capital market and the price of our Limited, the share price is unlimited. We believe that there will be improvement in the future. Next question.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. My name is Xu Kang. I'm from Huachuang Securities, and so our new added president, Mr. Zhang, when also he attended our briefing.
So I have two questions, and actually, first of all, that is on the Central Financial Work Conference, and it mentioned that the financial institutions should work on the five segments, the fintech, green, financial, inclusive financial, and also pension finance, and also digital finance. So what actions or strategy that will be played by CITIC, especially CITIC Financial Holdings?
Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for the introduction of the chairman. I have been worked in ICBC for many years. ICBC is also a listed company, and so I often came to Hong Kong for the roadshows and also the annual result announcements. So thank you very much for your attention to myself. So back to CITIC. So, CITIC Limited has comprehensive advantages. It enjoys very good brand reputation and influence.
So I'm very honored to take this position, and I would like to work with everyone together to boost the development of the CITIC Limited and CITIC Group. So first, that is the CITIC Financial Holdings, and it consistently implements the requirements that released by the Central Financial Work Conference, that to work on the five parts of the finance sector. So we will improve our functionality and profitability to create more value for the shareholders. In the fintech, I would like to share with you from three aspects. The first one, that is equity. So CITIC, that has very good advantage in terms of the equity, and therefore, we actually, we could see we have nearly 20 equity investment institutions, and we work as an alliance that build up the list, and also to share our daily monitoring, and also to create more value.
So in the past six months, there were over RMB 20 billion funds that were established, and with the total, the assets under management exceeded RMB 300 billion. Secondly, we also would like to continue to finance for those science and technology enterprises, and especially to have the earlier stage investment. Currently, and actually, we've already financed over RMB 400 billion in terms of those high-tech enterprises, with a growth rate of 21%. Thirdly, that is, provide funds for that's, specialized in the professional enterprises. And so that investment has been already exceeded 2% of the coverage rate, and so improved by 12.4%. We are able to provide the services with a full license, a full cycle, and full scenario.
In terms of green finance, that we work with the CITIC subsidiaries have jointly created a service system, and that to provide the financing, wealth management, leasing, et cetera. So this is the green finance sector. So CITIC Bank also support the industry of clean energy, energy conservation, carbon reduction, and also focus on about wind power, photovoltaic, new energy vehicles, and also the power cells, energy storage, et cetera. So these are the areas that focused by the CITIC Bank. And so in 2023, the green finance fund raised over RMB 459 billion, with a growth rate of 37%. And the CITIC Securities and CITIC and China Securities also ranked number one in terms of the green bonds. In terms of inclusive finance, that CITIC Bank that has provided long-term mechanism and inclusive the finance.
For the inclusive loans that in last year exceeded RMB 540 billion. RMB 540 billion last year. We focus on the innovative scenario-based loans, online loans, and special loans, etc. For example, we have the supply chain finance, and so that means the bank rating credit will be extended to the suppliers that are upstream and also downstream. There are also some special funds for the special industries, such as the e-loans and also small and micro enterprises. The whole process only takes a few minutes for those enterprises to apply for and get the money. Of course, this needs to be supported by the technologies.
For example, CITIC Bank provided a total RMB 1.5 trillion in supply chain finance for over 38,000 enterprises. That means the number of the count of the serviced enterprises that actually increased by nearly 3.4 times. In terms of the pension finance, we also built out a full license and full lifetime services. So we will give support to the first, second and third pillars, and to increase the scale of the pension. So that the asset under management already surpassed a large number, that is, surpassed RMB 1 trillion. Therefore, in terms of the pension finance, CITIC Limited is going to build out the ecosystem for these pension finance to support those elderly to have a better life in the future.
In terms of the digital finance, that we have built out the customized AI-based financial services. So in infrastructure, we have the AI foundation model, wealth management. We also have the data share platform. And for this data share platform, we also build up the standards for data sharing, and also to connect with the fundamental layers of those, the data centers. And so we use the app, management app, that to explore the application for digital and AI, and applications.
To launch this digital wealth platform, with registered user base of 12.5 million, and a monthly active user base of 1.32 billion, we are the first to provide customers with a panoramic wealth management service, with one point of access and comprehensive, comprehensive access. Right now, we developed a Tian Yuan Treasury Intelligent Management System, with a total of 1,314 large and medium-sized enterprises online. We would like to say that we are ranking ahead in comparable industries with a total of 27 projects, have won awards in the industry.
In the next step, CITIC Financial Holdings will continue to rely on its comprehensive financial service advantages, improve its plans of the five major sectors, and effectively play a role in serving the real economy and maintaining financial stability, so that we can maintain a good balance between risk control and capital management. In terms of risk management, we achieve joint prevention and control of risk through collaborative management, establish a risk management committee and expert working group mechanism for governance and management, and negotiate with the parent company and the subsidiaries to form a clear structure, clear division of labor, and effective operation of the financial management control system. We are following the working principle of One CITIC, One Customer to increase risk control efforts in key areas such as real estate and government financing platforms, so that we can effectively prevent risks from happening.
We will try to optimize the risk warning mechanism to identify, warn, expose, and dispose of risks in early stage, play a leading role in risk preference, adhere to problem-oriented and result-oriented approaches, so that we can enhance our risk management capabilities, especially in major risk projects. And through the integration of finance and industry, we can effectively promote the process of major project insurance, achieve win-win outcomes for all parties. We will also try our best to integrate all kinds of data from different industries, so that we can improve their digital risk control capabilities of our partners. In 2023, the main risk indicators continued to improve, and the non-performing assets and non-performing ratios achieved a double reduction. The risk of real estate has also been disposed by us.
Throughout the year, we disposed risk, risky projects by RMB 34.39 billion through collaborative guarantee, reduced the non-performing assets by RMB 20.8 billion, reduced the non-performing loan ratio by 0.29 percentage points. At the same time, we also tried our best to narrow increase rate spreads and tied capital balance, and tried our best to coordinate, supervise, and indicate detailed and detail their measures to manage the risks and spread our management philosophy to our subsidiaries. At the same time, we tried our best to allocate all of the assets and tried our best to boost the beneficial assets storage in our subsidiaries.
We tried our best to have differentiated management platforms and establish platforms for our subsidiaries to operate and solve those key and crucial issues with the joint efforts. We tried to reduce the assets, which is very capital consuming. Last year, we saved RMB 21.3 billion on of capital. We tried our best to have a sufficient supply of capital with such an efforts, and those are the efforts we have done to maintain comprehensive growth of our business last year.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I come from CITIC Securities. My name is Yuan Fei, and I am very happy to see the results against on such a lot of uncertainties and challenges last year. I have several questions.
The first question is that as we know, that last year, the total sales of real estate is quite low, and right now, we are facing with downward pressure. Under such circumstances, I would like to know that what CITIC Limited will do for real estate, and against and for the future, what are your planning of real estate sector? And at the December last year, that's President Xi Jinping pointed out we need to push forward new high New Quality Productive Force. I would like to know, as we know, CITIC is a comprehensive company with different business sectors. I would like to know how CITIC will have your own planning on new productive New Quality Productive Force. Thank you very much.
For real estate, it's facing a lot of pressure right now, and commercial housing sales have continued to be under pressure. But there have been signs of stabilization under the background of frequent policy. In terms of the industrial policies, we can see there are some important changes in real estate regulation and control policies in the second half of last year. As we know, there are three areas, that is, to promote financial institutions to use credit financing, bond financing, and equity financing. Those tools are used to support housing enterprises. Those are the measures to solve the issue of real estate. So for the urbanization of China, is still at the spinning stage of deepening development. Real estate development still has a relatively solid foundation.
As we know that, the total sales, it is still quite low. It is going down, but still, the percentage of going down is narrowed down. And, the total sales of second-hand housing is around RMB 17.84 trillion. But with those, policies have been released at the second half of last year, we can see that the sales of real estate is going up at the beginning, and, maintained stable, and then going down at the end of last year. And as for the statistics, up to March of this year, for first and second-tier cities, is quite active. I mean, the transaction is quite active. From the national level, we still have room to do adjustment on the policies. At the same time, we see that urbanization is also under development.
We can see that real estate still has a solid foundation. For the business of real estate of CITIC, we would like to say that our own developed real estate is quite stable. We have two. One is CITIC Pacific Real Estate. We always adhere to the working principle of detailed and special. What does that mean? That means we will always try our best to optimize the investment planning, and grasp the market opportunity, and enhance the establishment of our brand. We have a lot of high-quality projects have been delivered to all of the users. The total sales of our real estate outperformed the market. Even with such a low market situation, we still maintain the resilience in development. That means we still have 80% of the growth.
For CITIC, Urbanization Development Company Limited, we also changed our focus of our work. We tried our best to do management of operation and to combine industry and real estate at the same time, so that we can try our best to deliver all of the residential houses to the buyers and to get rid of the storage of real estate products. And at the same time, we tried our best to control all of the risks of real estate from financial point of view. We would like to reduce the balance of real estate at the very beginning, and manage all of the risks step by step. And at the end of 2023, we tried our best to develop, and the total percentage of decrease is managed at 2.25%.
We have our own competitiveness. We have our own advantages in terms of real estate management. We also tried our best to use the economic cycle and use CITIC Trust and our own advantage to solve the issue and input more capital, input more measures to manage all of the risks, to mitigate all of the risks of disposal of those real estate assets. In 2023, against such difficulties, we also mitigated problems for over 20 projects, and delivered residential projects around 50,000 in different cities. It is not only a great achievement have been made by CITIC, but also a great contribution to local government on delivering all of the residential products to ensure the livelihood and social stability.
Next step, we will try our best to maintain stable development of real estate industry and prudent management. Second, we will further enhance the risk management of our subsidiaries in terms of finance. And third, we will try our best to solve all of the issues by taking advantage of our profession. And fourth, is that we will apply a coordination mechanism to combine real estate and financial mechanism. And those are the advantage and the core capability that we can contribute to real estate industry. Thank you very much. So next question, we would like to... I would like to ask Mr. Wang Guoquan. For the New Quality Productive Forces, I'd like to give you four keywords.
During the working report of the central government this year, we see that we need to enhance the development of new industries, new mode, and a new driving force of development. For CITIC, I think those keywords are quite important to our company, and our management level attaches great importance to these keywords. Second, we will have a clear goal and objective. For CITIC, when they are planning the 14th Five-Year Plan, we want to strive to be a leading domestic and a world-class group. We have two talents, one advantage, and one driving force to achieve our goal. This year, we also tried our best to enhance the development of the five sectors we mentioned previously.
We also have a higher and better requirement, a higher and more demanding requirements to the development of a New Quality Productive Force.
... We have practices, we have results. Especially in terms of the scientific and technology investment and achievements. Last year, that, the scientific R&D that grew by 26%. And the intensity of this, the scientific R&D, that's 3.34%. That means a growth rate, a growth rate of 0.62%. That's actually a considerable amount of the investment. And we also received awards of the 31 provincial ministerial level, and we also have the 1,784 new patents that are registered, among which 629 are patents of the innovation. And so we can see the valid patents reached 9,972, with a growth rate of 21.65%.
In terms of green development, that we also carry out the carbon reduction researches in the CITIC steel companies. And so in terms of the high end, we also build out the Lighthouse Factories for the aluminum wheel products and also the special steel segments. So what is the Lighthouse Factory? These two Lighthouse Factory represent the highest level in the field of the digital and intelligent manufacturing. And also on the 27th of February, that we've actually organized one of the press conference of the integrated Dicastal projects. And so, for the CITIC Dicastal and also the CITIC Heavy Industries, that we've already built up the high-level Dicastal up to 7,500 tons. And so we've already disclosed 20 indicators of this project. So it will strongly promote the overall manufacturing process of automobiles.
I would say it's a reshape of the manufacturing process. In terms of the emerging sector, we have made progress in terms of the biological breeding, digital technology, and we also have the earlier stage investment strategy platform. And so we've launched some of the new projects, especially in the digital transformation. And so this year, that we will continue to improve about the cloud application. And so, and I think, people now are very interested in the AI large-scale foundation model. So for CITIC, we will continue to embrace this new technology and also to make planning, and so we will get involved into it. So how to do that? We've already built out a special working force and task group, and that to work on the intelligent computing power and also generate the foundation model establishment.
In addition, for CITIC Limited, we have a diversified industrial application scenarios, and which will be, highly connected with the AI. And therefore, we will give a full play of our key five segment business, that to combine them with the AI. And another keyword, that is, the future value. So in the future, CITIC will continue to give a full play of our advantages and to foster the development of the new and high quality productive forces. And I also would like to invite investors and also analysts, that to, visit CITIC subsidiaries, and so that you will get more understanding about our progress in terms of the scientific innovation. And so you will get the first-hand information that's more intuitive. And you could see that we actually are connecting the science, technology, and finance.
So this is a very important and golden triangle cycle. And so you come and visit us, you will see more values that cannot be only shown by the financial statements. Okay, next question?
And thank you very much. My name is Han Pu, I'm from the CICC, and thank you for the opportunity for raising questions, and congratulations for such a great result against this environment. And I have two companies, and first one, that is CITIC Bank. And CITIC Bank has done a very good job in terms of the business performance. And so how do you see about the development and also performance of the CITIC Bank? And so how you see the futures of the market value management? And the second question is about CITIC Securities.
Because the CSRC has released a series of policies, what actions will we take to build out a world-class investment bank? Thank you.
Thank you for your question, actually. For the banking industry that are now facing the severest competition and also the declining revenue, we can see there are increasing pressure on risks, and therefore the macro environment creates challenges for the market value management of the commercial banks. In such a context, we could see that the CITIC Bank has a strong resilience in terms of the market value and operation. You just said we have excellent performance. I would say it's not excellent, but it's a good performance.
I'm gonna show you the specific data right now, but I think, why CITIC Bank had such a good performance in terms of the market value. So what's the reason behind that? First of all, that our operation business performance continues to improve. And so here we can see for the CITIC Bank, that actually continues to increase its ranking among the joint stock banks. And over the past three years that we have seen the potential, for example, that the net profit growth rate that is quite, promising, and also about the debt cost and also the operating profits. So it's a portfolio. And for the non-interest income also growth very fast with the CAGR of 12.1%. So compared with the average market level, that we actually outperformed the market by 9%.
We also have intermediate business revenue increased by 30.3%, and so that means a 7.6% growth rate compared to three years ago. We also have the NPL. The NPL balance and NPL ratio that continues to be improved. We are now getting a better and better internal and external rating. These are the data you could see from our financial statements. But what I would like to share with you is why there is a growing momentum for CITIC Bank. We need to look behind the growth. We need to look about the logics. The analysts always ask me that, and that CITIC Bank continues to grow against such a downward economic pressure. I would say, we need to see that we are determined to control the cost of debt.
So in terms of the debt management, we—in this part, the debt management, that is quite, it's quite good. And so from 2020 to 2023, that the interest margins outperformed our peers by 12%. So how to reduce the cost of debt? So first of all, we strengthened our vertical management of the pricing. Secondly, that we focus on the right business strategy. And so in 2019, we raised the concept of the transaction bank. And then in 2021, we have a target to increase the total balance of deposits, of deposits. And then 2023, that we have clarified our direction of our directions, that is to have the customer settlement. So over the few years, that we are building our capabilities in terms of the debt management. How about the asset?
We have a very good balance of the quality and also the value. So we continue to increase the earnings, and we will not only focus on the quantity, and we will not compromise our pricing by increasing the scale. So this is the logic of our growth. So we try to improve the net income. And so here, in the past few years, about the handling fee and revenue that outperformed our market peers by 6.7%. And the non-interest revenue, CAGR, was 25%, higher than our peers by 10.8%. And so in the first five years, CITIC Bank actually has a provision that more than $370 billion. And so we are able to deal with these risks vigorously because we have sufficient reserve.
I believe that, in terms of the risk management, that we are actually moved ahead before the market, so we actually are fully prepared for these kind of risks. The second principle, that is, we focus on the value that to increase the, earnings for investors. Last year, our net profit grew by 7.9%, and so here we could see that the cash dividend, cash incentive, that improved from RMB 16.1 billion in 2022 to RMB 17.43 billion in 2023. So that's the best level ever for CITIC. And therefore, from 2020 to 2023, the total cash dividends that grew by 12.4-14.7, and then to RMB 16.1 billion. And by 2023, that dividend was, seventeen point four billion.
Here we could see for the dividend, for the H share, averagely 5%-6%. For H share, averagely 8%-9%. Therefore, CITIC Bank presents and also proves itself, its value for investing. The third reason, that is, we balance about our core business. We have a systematic matrix for all of these, business. We have a systematic matrix, and we believe that a systematic development is important. It's much more important than the faster development. If we don't have a systematic development, I would rather to keep the pace slow. We reshaped our competitiveness, and then we also mentioned about the retail bank strategy. We also comprehensively control the risks, and we also improved the investment on science and technology.
And so when we reviewed our business in the past few years, we could see that our management teams pay great attention to the systematic capabilities establishment. And so this kind of the capability reassessment is has been proved that effectively. That's why in the past three years, we are able to have the positive growth. And so this laid a solid foundation for our future development. Over the years, I know that the market and also the analysts actually raised some doubts about our risks, especially about the loans to the real estate sector.
Last year, I told you that we will always try our best to get rid of the historic burdens. There are some basic definitions for it, and I do not want to repeat what I answered you last year. But still, I think the understanding of the market towards arts has been improved with time passing by. But still, if real estate bring risk to our shoulder, what we can do? But actually, we can show you some statistics of the risks imposed by real estate. I would like to say that in at the beginning of 2019, and from 2016 to the beginning of 2019, we reduced the loan for real estate. And we want to control the risk from the early stage, including the allocation of loans for housing industry.
Currently, for public real estate loan is not accounting a huge percentage of our own assets. You can compare that with the data we provide you, and you can also compare to that our LTV. Even it is a little bit high, but still, it is maintained at 51%. Those are the description at the surface level. I also would like to give them description on higher level. Last year, the NPL is around 1.8%, which is around 4% decrease. The percentage is around the 36%, and that is the best performance we reached in the past last 10 years. Currently, we can also witness that the pressure and the challenge brought by real estate is still quite huge.
We are also seeing those different influential factors, including of, the pandemic, as well as the, unexpected, or the economic recovery is not reaching our expectation. Those are the influential factors that we need to taking into account. For the assets of retail is also facing a lot of pressure. And for real estate, we are also trying our best to get rid of those pressures with different measures. But for CITIC... Without the support of shareholders and the investors, and the support of CITIC Financial Holdings, we cannot achieve such great results.
For CITIC Group, for CITIC Financial Holdings and CITIC Limited, we tried our best to mitigate all of the risks and give full play to our advantages, and that's why we can mobilize all of the resources to get across all those uncertainties and challenges. I think we still have a great room to do improvement. I'm still very confident on that. Only have confidence is useless. I would like to say we will try our best to forge ahead so that we can maintain a better result in the year of 2024. It's more like we can do a better job compared to others. If they cannot maintain a good result, we will try our best to mitigate all of the losses. So those are our goals.
We will also try our best to enhance our communications and interactions with the investors so that we can have a sustainable and ongoing development and growth in the year of 2024. Thank you very much. I also would like to give you some answers on CITIC Securities. For CSRC proposed some of the philosophies of management in securities industry, and also proposed the requirements on our industry. For those new requirements and policies, we will try our best to follow them and comply with all of the requirements and regulations to ensure our service supply, and make our own contribution to high quality development of capital market.
For establishing a world-class securities and banking system, I think we have our own foundation to be one of the best investment bank of China. With the several years of development, the investment bank of CITIC have achieved good results. First, we have our own advantages, which is quite obvious. We have CITIC Securities, and they, they are one of the top, those are the top players in the market. And we are also try our best to make the financial funding. The total amount is around RMB 4 trillion, and we also tried our best to do the equity and underwriting, equity and underwriting loans. The two securities brokers has already tried their best to maintain diversified growth under the circumstances of the environment.
And for the outcome of CITIC Securities is around RMB 60 billion, and the net profit is above twenty billion RMB. For the ROE of CITIC Securities continued to take leading role in the market. And you see that the synergy impact between the two security brokers under CITIC are quite good, and they also provide very good synergy resources for development of CITIC Limited as a group company. And they also provide special value and diversified opportunity for business for CITIC. But still, if we take the requirements of CSRC as the benchmark, we still have there is a gap right here. We will try our best to achieve the goal as a world-class investment bank and try our best to mitigate all of the risks and risk control and prevention.
We've also tried our best to make set a role model in this industry. We will try our best to strengthen China from financial development. With the security brokers under CITIC, we will try our best to adjust our philosophy, and put our service in the center, and pay attention to our relation with the customers, and always adhere to the principle of strengthen China through financial development. There is three sectors at work. First is financial development, second is green development, and third is customers' supply. We will try to have the M&A finance fund raising of different listed companies, so that we can enable high quality development for all of the listed companies or those companies who are approaching IPO.
We will also try our best to optimize our working process and establish projects with different judgment on the situation of the companies who are approaching IPO, so that we can be the door, the guy who are working at the doorstep of IPO for all of the enterprises. We also would like to provide innovative financial solutions and services for different customers with different needs, and to support the Chinese people of achieving their goal of having a better life. We need to play a good role in securities. As a securities broker, we need to set up a clear boundary and have transparent supervision and good professional ethics, and improve all of the working efficiency.
Second is that we would like to maintain our two security brokers, to maintain good management of themselves, instead of have a blind management or have loans or security services for the customers. We will try our best to establish brands which totally complies with local requirements and regulations. At the same time, we would like to give a quick response to all of the query from the shareholders and the investors, and take care of all their needs. Third is to have a international outlook. We would like to have open business towards the world and increase our world influence and the percentage of overseas business.
We would like to complete our business across the world with Hong Kong as a standing point, and expand our business in Asia Pacific region, and then expand our business in North America and European markets. Second, we would like to improve our world-class efficiency to provide a service and provide, improve our service capability of cross-industries, cross-border, and cross-markets. We will always provide professional services like financial consulting and M&A around the world. We will also try our best to boost the two securities brokers to train all of the talents, select the best talents who are suiting for the job. We will try our best to enhance the training of talents and the vitality of different teams.
The two brokers need to make do a better job in M&A and complicated transactions in terms of risk control and risk analysis, so that we can provide high-quality services for all of the customers. We will also try our best to regulate all of the working ethics for all of our working staff. They need to always adhere to the principle of professional ethics and try to discipline themselves. For CITIC Limited, we're taking Mr. Rong Yiren as our founding father, and we will always expand the business on his shoulder, and be a company in China and the world, which is honest, sincere, innovative, and perpetuate compliance to all of the local codes, and follow the Chinese culture, and establish a new style of enterprise culture.
We will also try our best to give guidance to the enterprise culture of the two securities brokers. We will always discipline ourself within, and, provide the best services outside, so that, we can have a better development with time passing by. To be a world-class investment bank cannot be achieved in one day. With the financial working commission have a meeting at the beginning of this year. They also imposed new goal and aim on our shoulder. I think we're facing with new opportunities and chances, and we need to forge ahead to be a world-class investment banking system, banking, bank around the world. And we will also boost the development of the two securities brokers and make a contribution to the development of finance industry in China, and will share our contribution will be made accordingly. Since time is very limited, we will have the last question.
Good afternoon. I come from Minsheng Securities, and I see that you already acquired Tianjin Pipe Corporation and Nanjing Iron & Steel. I would like to ask you that, how does CITIC view these two mergers and acquisitions? What is the expected impact on CITIC Pacific Special Steel?
Thank you very much for your concern of the two M&As. The two M&As are major events within CITIC, and that is quite a good piece of news. Those two M&As totally comply with national strategy. These two acquisitions are not only milestones in the history of us, but also great events for CITIC Limited. It will expand our advantage of development and boost CITIC Pacific Special Steel to be a world-class player in the world.
What you made pay attention to, that is for the CITIC Pacific Special Steel, that is made of science and technology for these two M&A that we've achieved 30 million tons of the steels, and therefore, the CITIC Pacific Special Steel is now the super large-scale business. The next one, that is, for that the CITIC Pacific Special Steel that acquired, that acquired many companies that to build ourselves, to have the 3,000 tons aircraft carrier levels size in the steel sector. I believe the success of this acquire and this acquisition is based on our brand power. So we bringed. We inject new blood to Tianjin Pipe, and so we also create very good future for the people in Tianjin.
As we all know, we have the first Lighthouse Factories in steel, and therefore, we have been able to improve our capabilities in terms of the bars, steel bars, steel wires, steel pipes, and steel plates. These four segments have earned their leading position in the market. We believe that with these M&A projects, we are able to create more benefits for the whole steel sector and also for our clients. Therefore, I would like to invite analysts and investors to visit our factory, so that you could feel the power of science and technology, and also management. That's the end of today's annual results investor briefing. Thank you very much for your participation. If you have further questions, please contact our colleague. Thank you.