Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Shui On Land's 2023 Interim Results Analyst Briefing. Thank you very much for joining us online this evening. We are pleased to have five members of the senior management team with us today: Mr. Vincent Lo, our Chairman, Ms. Stephanie Lo, Executive Director of Shui On Land and Vice Chairman of Shui On Xintiandi, Mr. Douglas Sung, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Shui On Land, Ms. Jessica Wang, Chief Executive Officer of Shui On Land, and Mr. Allan Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Shui On Xintiandi.
We'll start with a presentation by the management, followed by Q&A. During the course of the webcast, you may submit your questions via the webcast portal, and they will be conveyed to our management during the Q&A session. Without further ado, may I invite Mr. Lo to start with some opening remarks. Mr. Lo, please.
Good evening. Thank you for joining our analyst briefing for the interim results of Shui On Land. The first half of this year has been extremely difficult, despite the lifting of the COVID restrictions, partly basically due to the geopolitical tensions, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and it's not easy to see an end to it, and then, of course, the Taiwan Strait tension.
Inflation has come down a little, but it's still high compared to the last decades, and then, of course, high interest rate. What's most challenging is actually the poor economic outlook, which is affecting consumer spending and buying interest.
Particularly, I think for the property sector, a lot of defaults on the loan or bonds, and then people are concerned what is going to be happening, and then also the liquidity crisis. It's very challenging in financing or refinancing of our projects. Of course, the Politburo has come up with policies to try and support and stabilize the market and to enhance buyers' interest, but it's not really seeing very positive result at this moment.
The government has now come up with policies on urban regeneration, particularly on urban village reconstruction, which I believe will offer a lot of opportunities for Shui On. Despite all these difficult operating environment, we have seen an increase in our profit. Our occupancy rate has remained steady, and then our balance sheet remained very, very stable. I'll hand over to my colleagues to give you more details.
Thank you, Chairman. With that, let me walk you all through our business review and our outlook for the first half of this year. We had resilient performance amidst a very challenging market environment. We are pleased to report solid results despite some of the challenges that the chairman addressed just now.
The group revenue increased 46% to RMB 6.4 billion in the first half, compared to the first half of 2022. Profit for the period increased by 17% year-on-year to RMB 913 million, while profit attributable to shareholders also rose 37% year-on-year to RMB 618 million. In terms of property sales and rental income, they have both shown growth.
Property sales in the first half increased by 90% to RMB 4.6 billion, mainly contributed by Panlong Tiandi in Shanghai. The opening of Shanghai Panlong Tiandi in April, and the reopening of Xintiandi Style II, also generated additional rental revenue for the group. The total rental and related income was RMB 1.5 billion, representing a growth of 3% year-on-year.
We have always maintained prudent capital management and a stable balance sheet. Our net gearing ratio increased slightly to 50% as of the 30th of June. Our cash and bank deposits totaled RMB 12.23 billion. We are committed to maintaining a very prudent approach in managing our balance sheet, with maintaining good liquidity as a very top priority.
We also had a very successful issuance of the largest-ever private green mortgage-backed onshore CMBS in April. This asset was backed by The Hub in Hongqiao CBD in Shanghai. It's the first CMBS in China, supported by a TOD, Transit-Oriented Development commercial complex, and it's listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with an issue size of RMB 4.4 billion, with a credit rating of AAA and a coupon rate of 3.9%.
In terms of interim dividend, having considered the group's financial performance during the period, the board has resolved to recommend the payment of the 2023 interim dividend of RMB 0.032 per share. In terms of the market environment, you know, the chairman mentioned just now, China property industry continues to face numerous challenges this year.
While business activities in China have resumed following the lifting of the COVID-19 restrictions, consumers remain extremely cautious, resulting in a weaker than expected recovery in the first half of this year. At the same time, liquidity remains very tight for most property developers.
We have seen very divergent sales performances, though. It's a very K-shaped market in that solid demand in top-tier cities and quality products, remain high, in high demand. Thanks to our focus on top-tier cities, and our focus on high quality developments, our recognized property sales for the first half amounted to RMB 34.7 billion.
Notably, in May, our residential project, Wuhan Tiandi La Riva, the third phase, was sold fully online on the day of its launch, achieving the highest record in the presale price in Wuhan across the city. Despite weaker than expected recovery of consumer spending, our commercial portfolio has consistently delivered very resilient recurring rental income for us.
The retail portfolio occupancy averaged 91% as of 30th of June, with rental reversions remaining positive. Following the relaxation of a lot of the pandemic-related restrictions, sales and shopper traffic in our portfolio for the first half, have recovered to 109% and 120% of the levels seen in the same period in 2021, not 2022.
Despite the pressure from the economic slowdown and the oversupply of offices in Shanghai, our office portfolio saw relatively stable performance, which bears testimony to our high service quality and the prime locations of our property. The occupancy rate across the entire portfolio remains stable at an average of 88%.
Also, if Shanghai in particular, Shanghai achieved an average occupancy of 92%. We also have a very long track record in urban regeneration projects in China. This year, Panlong Tiandi, which opened in April, is one of the most successful examples of the urban village development in Shanghai.
As some of you have noted, this is a new channel for urban regeneration going forward in the large mega cities in China. We can share a little bit more about that later. In the short term, I think our focus is very clear. We will maintain a very prudent but proactive capital management to maintain strong liquidity and explore additional onshore financing channels.
In the longer term, we're continue to be looking at expansion in Shanghai and other first-tier cities in the GBA. The urban regeneration in these large mega cities is gonna be ever more important, and so these, I think, will generate new channels for Landbank in the future. In terms of sustainable development, let me give you a brief update on the first half.
Our 1.5 degree science-based targets were approved officially by SBTi. In terms of our green pledge, we've made very good progress. Our green pledge coverage is 96% across our F&B tenants, 85% on our retail tenants, and 74% of all of our office tenants.
In terms of board diversity, we have modified our board diversity policy, and we have also announced a new appointment of another female INED to our board. We've also updated our climate change policy, stating that the group has established a 2050 net zero emissions target going forward.
Happy to announce that Xintiandi Plaza has received the ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence, Xintiandi Plaza in Shanghai. We've made very good progress so far. With that, I'll hand it over to Douglas.
Thanks, Stephanie. Let me just give the audience a quick summary of our first half results. On the next page, we see the key indicators. We're happy to say that all have shown very positive growth year-on-year compared to first half 2022. You can see revenue, profit, profit attributable to shareholders, all have seen a pretty strong growth compared to the same period last year.
In particular, our two main business units, property development, property sales, and also our rental business, have done reasonably well and also shown positive growth. This is a very quick snapshot. On the next page, you can see the two main businesses, property sales and the rental income, have found strong, pretty good performance in the first half.
On the property sales, you can see that the total sales is RMB 4.6 billion, of which Panlong Tiandi accounted for the majority of the sales in the first half, because we handed over quite a lot of the units to buyers in the first half.
The audience should know that in the last few years, we have been pursuing an asset-light strategy, where we have a lot of our new investment under JV and associate investments. If we account for all these sales, including JVs and associates, you can see in the lower table there, the total sales figure would have been RMB 34 billion.
This very high figure is partly because of the handing over of units in our Ruihong Xincheng, Rainbow City Lot seven, our joint venture with Costco, which most of the units were handed over in the first half. That accounted for about RMB 17 billion of property sales in the first half.
Even though on a consolidated figure, our property sales number is not particularly high, if we account for all the investments which the company has made, we actually have delivered quite a lot of sales in the first half of the year. On rental, you can see that on a consolidated basis, is a 3% increase year-over-year. In the next page, you can see the income statement.
I'll just go through a few key figures. We talked about revenue already at RMB 6.4 billion, up 46% year-on-year. If you look at gross profit, it's RMB 2.95 billion, up 5%. Gross profit margin is 46%, compared to the same period last year of 64%. The difference is the contribution of revenue.
In first half 2022, we have relatively low residential sales, profit booking, revenue booking. Rental accounted for a much larger proportion of rent, of revenue. In the first half of this year, we-- our property sales have increased quite a lot, as you can see, up 90% year-on-year. The gross margin in sales is always lower than rental, so that accounts for the difference.
46% growth for profit margin is in line with our historical average, somewhere around 40, mid-40 to upper 40% range. The rest of the income and expenses are all pretty straightforward. I'll talk about the fair value of our investment properties later on. Other gain and losses, you know, include some small impairment losses, some change in fair value of some of our forward contracts, et cetera.
The JV and associate income increased quite a bit from a year before, and that's mainly because of the handing over of the Rainbow City, Lot 7 , which I mentioned earlier. Our finance expense in total is just over RMB 1 billion, down 9% compared to a year ago. On the next page, you can see the remaining of the income statement.
Profit after tax is RMB 913 million, up 17%. Excluding minority interest, profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 618 million, up 37% year-on-year. The next page is our balance sheet and some of our liquidity positions. You can see it's still very, very stable. Total assets haven't changed that much.
It's about RMB 103 billion, and total cash on hand is just over RMB 12 billion. Our net debt increased slightly, as a result, our net gearing increased to 50%, compared to 45% a year ago. Sorry, 45% at the end of 2022.
On the next page, just for your reference, you can see, I mentioned that total assets have been quite stable, and currently, approximately 61% of our total asset is our investment properties, both for consolidated basis and also JV and associate projects.
This is a the largest component of our asset base, and it the high value of our IP portfolio clearly brings a lot of stability to our overall foundation of our balance sheet. On the next page, you can see the valuation of our IP. I won't go through all the projects one by one. You can see quite clearly that the valuation movement is quite minor on most of these properties, less than 1% up or down.
Overall, our on our SXTD portfolio, on a consolidated basis, the total carrying value is about RMB 53 billion, and our share of that value is about RMB 42.5 billion. If we include some of the JV projects and some investment properties under construction, the total, grand total, value of the portfolio is RMB 97 billion, almost RMB 100 billion, and our share of that value is RMB 63.5 billion.
This accounts for about 61% of the total asset base of SOL. Next page is gearing, and net debt, again, for your reference. We are still staying at a very healthy and low level of debt, with gearing at about 50%. On our overall financing, on the next page, you can see that we are increasing our onshore financing as a new additional funding base. The four in the last column, the RMB 4.28 billion, represents the Shanghai, The Hub CMBS, which we did earlier this year.
For this half, second half of 2023, obviously, the main repayment would be the $500 million US dollar bond in November, and then the rest would be just various bank loans, both onshore and offshore. Next page is the breakdown on the US dollar bond, the senior notes, the maturity profile for your reference. Finally, we have talked about this CMBS project that we did earlier this year.
This is the largest green financing CMBS onshore in China. Net as a gross profit of gross proceed of about RMB 4.4 billion, and at a very attractive cost. The coupon is 3.9%, so it helps lower our overall financing costs in the first half of this year. We are pursuing similar initiatives, and some are under discussion right now. So hopefully, we'll have more to announce in the coming weeks or months. With that, I'll hand over to Jessica to talk about the property sales business.
Thanks, Douglas. Next. With regards to the property sales and the development, I would like to begin with update on our property sales performance. In the first half of this year, our country sales are now amounted to RMB 4.56 billion. It comprised residential property sales of RMB 4.19 billion, and a commercial property sales of RMB 368 million.
By the end of June, our total subscriber sales of RMB 606 million was recorded, which will be converted to contract sales in the coming months. In addition, the total locked-in sales amount is RMB 7.43 billion, and these sales will be recognized in the group's financial results in the second half and beyond, once related properties delivered to the customer and the buyers.
As earlier mentioned, the property sales market in the first half is still facing pressure due to the challenging operating environment, ongoing correction in the industry, and a weak consumer confidence. However, our quality products in the city core area continued to perform well and show great resilience.
It is worth highlighting that La Riva III, as mentioned by Stephanie, which is the last latest phase of the residential in our Wuhan Tiandi, and was launched in May, and have received very positive feedback from the buyers. Total 120 units was fully sold on the day of its launch, making the highest presale price ever in Wuhan, with an average selling price of RMB 63,800 per square meter. It contributed RMB 2.6 billion in contract sales in the first half. Next.
In addition to property sales performance in the first half and highlight on our Wuhan Tiandi project, here, I'd like to share more on market observation and our property development, including residential business strategy going forward in current down market. Despite the challenge and a weak national market, it's observed that a K-shaped character continues with diverging to sales performance among cities and the projects.
The property sales in top-tier cities performed better than that of lower-tier cities. Furthermore, the high-end sector keeps the outperformed as well. If you look at Shanghai and Wuhan, primary high-end residential markets, as highlighted on this slide, we can find that high-end markets in these two cities are very strong, with 20% and 47% year-on-year growth, respectively, in the first half.
Most of the other top-tier cities present a similar characters based on our research, and this reflects the solid market fundamentals and the customer demands for better living standards and a quality life in this market. In view of such market condition, we will continue to solidify our brand strategy of being the Best-in-Class for the essential business to capture the structural growth opportunities, and further enhance our leading position in the luxury sector, especially in Shanghai and Wuhan.
On the right... Uh, sorry, just go back. On the right-hand side of this slide, we here have listed out some major residential pipeline projects in Shanghai and Wuhan. In our home market, Shanghai, the Lakeville VI commenced its construction work in March this year, and it is planned to sell in Q4 next year.
Yangpu Binjiang, a heritage preservation and a development project that involves the development of a high-end and low-density residential community, have entered the construction stage, and the pre-sale for this project is targeted to start around the middle of next year. In addition, we also have a potential project, Zhaojialou, which the company has announced in April, and would further update should there be any major progress in future.
In Wuhan, Changjiang Tiandi is another mega master planned community, with phase one residential under construction, and the first sales launch is to start in the second half of this year. All these major projects will continue to provide the company with high-quality sales resources in the near future, and generate a sustainable cash flow and a stable sales revenue. Next.
Taking into account the pace of market recovery, the group has planned for more launches in the second half of this year. There are approximately 211,900 square meter for residential GFA available for sale and pre-sale in the second half. A big portion is from Wuhan. Next. This slide has summarized our existing residential development land bank and the sellable resources in the future.
The total sellable amount is around RMB 72 billion as of June 30th this year, with attributable value at RMB 38.2 billion. RMB 24.2 billion sellable resources are in Shanghai, while the rest RMB 47.8 billion are in Wuhan and Chongqing. The total sellable residential GFA is more than one million square meter, of which 105,000 square meter are in Shanghai.
Next. Besides the residential development land bank, we also have a considerable commercial development portfolio in Shanghai and other high-growth cities, which will drive for further AUM rental growth and capital recycling in future. This slide shows the list of commercial properties under development and in the pipelines for future development.
The total size of our commercial property portfolio was 2,699,000 square meters, of which 59% were for office and 41% were for retail. We believe this balanced mix of office and the retail portfolio would enable the company to further enrich our product offerings with various of our community and the development, and enhance our asset management business. Next. Lastly, I would like to share a bit more on our business development focus with ongoing market correction.
Recently, we are excited to see the increasing importance and the policy supports on urban renewal. Since early this year and in July, both the central government and the Shanghai City government have announced various policy to promote, the urban village renovation, redevelopment, in super large and mega city, including Shanghai.
It's worth noting that the government also encouraged the participation of private investment, and plan to raise funds with more financial support through various channels for those development, in order to activate domestic demands and facilitate high-quality development. With our strong brand and a track record in urban regeneration developments, especially in Shanghai, we believe that the company is well-positioned for this trend and those opportunities that would, raised.
In addition, the recent success of Panlong Tiandi and the urban village renovation, develop, project, would further enhance our competitive advantage and brands in that one way. Panlong Tiandi is one of the first, urban village, redevelopment projects completed and unveiled in Shanghai, which has become a destination in the city since its opening in April.
Through our holistic capability as an urban solution provider, SOL has transformed the open urban village, the old urban village into a cultural landmark, combining culture, lifestyle in West Shanghai and the Great Yangtze River Delta. The project and the redevelopment has received great recognition from the government and the public. Allan would share more on the commercial operations later.
With our favorable position there, SOL would further explore and seize the emerging urban renewal opportunities in Shanghai and the top-tier cities, in particular, urban village development. To drive growth of the company while maintaining prudent financial position, we would implement this strategy for the right investment opportunities in a very selective way. That's all my part, that's all my part for today, now hand over to Allan, please.
Thank you, Jessica, and good evening, everyone. In this section, I will briefly introduce the performance of the commercial property sector. With the completion and opening of the latest two project, the Panlong Tiandi and the Hong Shou Fang, our portfolio in Shanghai actually increased quite a lot, and the total valuation of our commercial assets in Shanghai actually already reached RMB 83 billion.
Later on, I'm gonna focus more about the Shui On Xintiandi owned and managed portfolio. Because of the strategic and the central location, and also the good quality of the portfolio, and our performance actually record a very stable performance in the first half of this year. The total revenue reached RMB 1.45 billion.
I'm not going to go into the detail about the profit. On this slide, I would like to also mention that the net gearing ratio ratio actually was maintained at a very low level, which is 17.3%. Next slide is a bit more introduction about our performance by business segment. Overall, our revenue actually increased by 2% in first half of this year.
The biggest component came from the property investment property. Due to the lifting of the COVID restriction and also the reopen of our Xintiandi Style II, the overall revenue from this sector basically was maintained at very stable level. The biggest increase came from our real estate asset management.
Due to the scale of our AUM growth from RMB 26.5 billion to RMB 30.3 billion, our revenue from this sector basically increased by 10%. Well, next slide is a bit more introduction about our, our rental income by asset type. I think as, as Jessica already mentioned before, the company has been trying to maintain a very balanced office and retail portfolio.
For the retail sector, we have successfully maintained at a quite high average occupancy rate, which is 91%. Also, due to the very proactive leasing management and also promotion activities, our talent, sales and shopper traffic actually recovered to 109% and 120% respectively, comparing to 2021. Our office portfolio actually...
maintained at the average office rate of 88%. Among all of the office portfolio, our office properties in Shanghai maintained an occupancy rate of 92%. Well, next slide, it's the introduction about the rest two business segment, which is the property management and also the real estate asset management.
Due to the increase of the scale, our property management, actually, now in this sector, we manage a portfolio of overall more than 9.1 million square meter. The biggest increase comes from the asset management. As you can see from this slide, we have one new project added into this segment, which is the Shanghai Panlong Tiandi.
The total scale of the total valuation of the assets under management reached RMB 30.3 billion. The newly added project is Panlong Tiandi. I think Stephanie and Jessica already mentioned about this project before. Actually, this project was prepared mainly in the COVID impact period.
Unlike the traditional shopping, you know, position the property, this project at the very beginning, we kind of target this project at the growing demand from the urban citizen. They're looking for a very, you know, self-aware and also a place for relaxation and escape from the city center. A lot of these type of customer, they're looking for a very healthy and also a very experience-driven demand.
We, we kind of target this market segment and tried our best to added a lot of culture and art-related content, and also a lot of outdoor and wellness content into this sector. We are very happy to see that in the first week of the open, we kind of received more than one million visitors to this project, and a lot of media coverage.
Later on, we, we are trying to review the opening and trying to further improve the service and the quality of the content in this project. Hopefully, next half of this year, we will have better performances. The last slide is a bit about the short-term challenges. We, we are further, you know, focused on the three different priorities.
The first priority is, we will continue to adopt a very flexible leasing strategies, and also keep, providing proactive and good quality services to our tenant, in order to further increase our occupancy rate. At the same time, we were trying to look at the opportunity side to, go with our Great Xintiandi strategy to further improve our positioning.
Hopefully, in the long run, we will keep, improving the, performance of our portfolio to drive the, organic growth of our commercial properties. The second, business strategy is to further sharpen and strengthening our competitive advantage, especially in the community product sector, and also the culture and the experience content in all of our community products. Well, the last one is the Urban Retreat product line.
After the successful open of our Panlong Tiandi, we have been focused on reviewing the opening and also the product and the content and the services. We are kind of further improve the attractiveness of this product line and use the findings in the reviewing in our future pipelines for the Urban Retreats. This is all from my part.