Evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Shui On Land's 2022 annual results earnings 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 D irector of Shui On Land and Vice C hairman of Shui On Xintiandi, Mr. Douglas Sung, CFO and CIO of Shui On Land, Ms. Jessica Wang, CEO of Shui On Land, and Mr. Allan Zhang, CEO of Shui On Xintiandi. We will first start with a presentation by the management, then followed by Q&A. During the course of the webcast, you may submit your questions via the webcast portal. 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, please. Mr. Lo, please.
Good evening, everybody. I'll just maybe talk a little bit about the big picture, the macro conditions last year. It was a very difficult year, as we all know. The world was hit by a perfect storm, you know, with the geopolitical tensions, Russia-Ukraine war, not seeing an end to it, inflation, and then interest rate hike, which it's something that a lot of people are not used to, right? After almost 20 years of low interest rate, and then of course, COVID-19 outbreak, particularly affecting the Chinese mainland with all the lockdowns and everything. In this difficult operating environment, my colleagues will share with you the details, but the market sentiment is still relatively weak because of the overall economy and then particularly in the real estate sector.
I think a lot of people are still concerned about the troubled real estate developers. How is it gonna end? What will happen next? Challenges in financing, refinancing, as I was mentioning, the correction in the property market, has it reached bottom? Maybe later on, my colleagues and I will share more with you. Maybe I'll just stop there.
Hi, everyone. Let me just give a quick business review and outlook for this coming year. In 2022, it was an unprecedented operating environment in terms of COVID-19 lockdowns and the real estate liquidity crisis. Despite these challenging operating environments, our profit was satisfactory. Our profit was of CNY about 1.5 billion, and profit attributable to shareholders totaled CNY 906 million. Our property sales remained strong despite delays in construction and handover, and our contracted sales hit CNY 27.2 billion. Our total rental income decreased a little bit by about 4%, reflecting the tenant support and the market conditions. Our fundamentals and balance sheet remained strong and stable. Our net gearing ratio stayed at a healthy level of 45%.
We also redeemed a senior perpetual of about $600 million with internal resources. This is what resulted in our gearing increasing by 13%. Our cash and bank deposits stood at CNY 13.4 billion. We are declaring a final dividend of the year of HKD 6.4 cents per share. Together with an interim dividend of HKD 3.6 cents per share, the full year dividend for 2022 amounted to HKD 10 cents per share. We also had a share buyback plan that was approved by the board of up to HKD 500 million. A total of 35 million shares was already bought back during the last year. Just a quick recap of the market conditions last year.
We take a very cautious outlook, and seeing a gradual recovery already. Last year, GDP at, in China dropped to 3%. What we're seeing now is that the lifting of the zero COVID-19 policy and border reopening, we're seeing a moderate recovery and a rebound. In terms of the residential market, this is obviously the deepest downturn since the start of the housing reform in 1998. Property market control policies have been eased in multiple cities. Home purchase restrictions have been relaxed, and mortgage rates have been cut in most cities. First-tier cities have remained stable, and therefore mortgage cuts have been less, relaxation of the policies have been less. Generally speaking, there is still a crisis of confidence at the moment.
Buyers remain generally cautious, therefore we are cautious about the market operating environment this year. In terms of the retail sector, because of the lockdown specifically in Shanghai retail sales suffered a very deep contraction of 9.1%, prime retail rental projected to remain flat this year. We do see bright spots because post relaxation of the COVID-19 policies, we are seeing consumer spending recovering. Allan can share a little bit more about that later. In terms of the office sector, it is a bit of a perfect storm as well. Because of the downturn in the economy, in terms of COVID-19 policies, as well as oversupply, the general office take-up rate and vacancy rate has increased.
Therefore, we do think that the office market will continue to face some challenges for some time to come. A little bit about what we're focusing on this year in terms of our strategy. Quick observations. In terms of market recovery, the recovery is very K-shaped in terms of both consumer spending and the real estate recovery. The first tier and strong second tier city remain very robust with stable demand, especially in the luxury residential market, namely in Shanghai, we see very strong demand. You'll see that through our sell-through rates that Jessica will share more about later. In terms of the quality retail facilities, it's much more of a winner takes all market, and so these luxury retail facilities are taking up much more market share than before.
In terms of demand for Grade-A premium office, we do think that in core locations, in Grade-A premium buildings with sustainable office space and quality asset management services, the demand for these offices remain extremely resilient and strong. Therefore, we're thinking about our year ahead, being very prudent in terms of our capital management, maintaining strong liquidity. We will continue to utilize our brand and our track record in the market to capture upper to mid high-end spending and also utilize our strong brand and track record to look at new land acquisitions, namely in first-tier cities. Also, we will continue to expand and deliver our best-in-class service and products. You'll see some of our new land acquisitions will start to reflect that.
In terms of sustainability, let me just briefly share what we've achieved in 2022. In terms of scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions, we achieved a 27.5% decrease in terms of carbon emissions intensity. We achieved a 12.2% decrease in energy intensity and a 25% decrease in water intensity compared to 2021. We also submitted our 1.5 degree aligned SBTI targets and waiting for approval. In terms of our green pledges that we've signed with our tenants, our coverage has increased significantly last year. Our green pledges have covered 96% of our F&B tenants, 77% of our retail tenants, and 48% of our office tenants.
These pledges are an agreement that we have with the tenants to reduce energy consumption, water consumption, and operate in a more sustainable manner. We're also very happy to announce that we signed the industry's first deep green lease in the office space with the U.S. Green Building Council, who was our tenant. This includes financial incentives to actually incentivize tenants to reduce their energy consumption and create a win-win solution. Lastly, in terms of our sustainability certifications, 95% of our commercial properties have now at least a minimum of one green rating. We continue to focus a lot on delivering the most sustainable and high-quality products in the market. With that, I'll hand it over to Douglas.
Run through high-level financial results for the audience. Let's go to page 12. These are some of the key financial results from last year. We recorded revenue of CNY 15.5 billion, property sales of CNY 11.7 billion, net profit CNY 1.47 billion, and profit attribute to show just about CNY 906 million. Rental income, excluding the share of JV and associates, is slightly over CNY 2 billion. As Stephanie mentioned, the board recommend a final dividend of HKD 0.064 per share, which brings the full year dividend to HKD 0.10 per share. Obviously, we have recorded some year-on-year decline on the results, partly due to the impact of COVID-19 outbreak in China, particularly in Shanghai in 2022.
Particularly our rental income has more direct impact because of the rental concession we've made with some of the tenants. On the next page is the property sales breakdown. You can see the CNY 11.7 billion of property sales came primarily from two Shanghai projects, Taipingqiao, Lakeville Phase Five, and the Panlong Tiandi project, which together accounted for over CNY 10 billion of property sales last year. On the rental side, you can see on the right-hand side, excluding the JV and associate income, we recorded an 8% decline year-on-year, including our share of the JVs, the overall decline was only 4% to about CNY 2.8 billion total rental income. The portfolio remains very resilient.
Allan can share with you more about the performances. Next page. On the P&L, I'll just highlight a few key figures. We've already talked about the revenue side. After cost of sales, gross profit was CNY 6.65 billion, down about 7% year-on-year. The GP margin remains very stable at 43%. This is in line with our historical GP margin. Other income, primarily interest income, are from our cash on hand. We have some, you know, regular operating expenses and sales, selling expenses, et cetera. I will talk a little bit more about the fair value of our investment properties later on. Other gains and losses are really just some miscellaneous costs and expenses.
It's a relatively small item. On the finance side, the financing cost in total, in the P&L is CNY 2.1 billion, comprising an exchange loss of almost CNY 500 million, because of the weakness of the CNY last year. The net interest cost excluding the change in FX was about CNY 1.6 billion, compared to CNY 1.1 billion. The increase here is not only because we have rising interest rate in 2022, but also is a result of we have now more JV and associate companies, which is not consolidated in our balance sheet. Therefore, some of the group level interest costs are also not pushed down, not capitalized in the JV projects.
The capitalized interest amount was less in 2022 compared to 2021. That also accounts for some of the difference as well. Profit before tax, CNY 2.4 billion. After tax, the profit was CNY 1.47 billion. Excluding the minority interest which equitable to show this is CNY 968. This is the key financial P&L figures. On the balance sheet side, you can see that cash on hand at the end of last year is about CNY 13.3 billion with total debt of about CNY 23 billion. We have a net debt position of about CNY 20 billion and a net gearing ratio of 45%.
You may remember that we repaid the $600 million perpetual notes in June last year. Because the perpetual was accounted as an equity in our balance sheet. This repayment by cash resulted in a 13% increase in our net gearing ratio. The increase in 2022 was largely because of this repayment of the perpetual. On the next page, on the total asset side, has been quite stable the last five, six years, somewhere around CNY 105 billion-RMB 110 billion in total assets, of which about 60% now is investment properties, including JV and associate investments. Our investment property portfolio has continued to grow in the last few years.
Next page is the valuation of the IP. It was fairly stable valuation in 2022. First part of the table, you can see the completed income producing IP portfolio under SD6-D. You can see that the year-on-year change is basically flat at 0.2% last year. The lower part is some of the JV projects are not included in SD6-D, and also some project under construction, commercial property project under construction. We have made some slight provision on some of the PUD. These are primarily office-related property under construction because of the some decline in office rents in the past year. When the valuer calculate the terminal value of these properties, there is some negative impact on the valuation.
Overall, you can see the grand total value of CNY 96 billion on a 100% basis, and attributable to us is about CNY 63 billion, and the change was only minus 0.6%. Overall, it's still a very resilient, stable portfolio. Next page is the gearing ratio. You can look at the trend last few years. As of 2022, our leverage at 45% remains fairly low and healthy. Next page is the maturity profile of our debt. We have about CNY 5.9 billion maturity in the first half of this year. It's all bank financing, bank loans. In the second half this year, we have another CNY 5.6 billion maturity.
Out of the first half maturity, we have already repaid or refinanced about $2.3 billion. We have about $2.5 billion of maturity left in the first half that we are working on right now, some of which we intend to repay by cash. We don't envisage any major issue on the retiring these debts in the next few months. Next page is just for your information, the maturity of our U.S. dollar notes. Finally, some of the financing activities we are working on right now are on the next page. Of course, we are very focused on sustainability for the whole group. Financing is a big part of it. We have continued to sign sustainability-linked loan and green loans in 2022.
Also sign a number of ESG related MOUs with banks. We are also looking at various onshore financing initiatives, some of which we are proceeding at various stage. Some of these involve regulators' approval. It's not at a stage where we can share with the audience today. The direction, of course, from our perspective, is to try to increase onshore financing and reduce the reliance of offshore financing going forward. We will certainly continue to do more onshore where possible. I'll stop here and pass over to Jessica on the development business.
Okay. Thanks, Douglas. Yeah. With regards to the property sales and development, firstly, I would like to highlight on our growth strategy and strategical focus in current changing market. In terms of the property market, here comes some of our key observation. The economic downturn and ongoing property sector correction did pose many challenges to the developers. We can see divergent sales performance among cities, companies and projects. The market of Tier 1 and the leading Tier 2 cities, and the quality products outperformed in this challenging environment. This reflects the solid demand of better living standards and quality life in key top-tier cities. We are glad to see the government has implemented various measures to restore market confidence, and the market momentum is gradually recovering. It's observed that better run private-owned developers and SOE developers benefit more from easing of control policy.
It's worth to mention that property financing is still challenging, and more and more developers are starting to monetize project or assets for cash and market consolidation in property sector is accelerating. In the meantime, the pace of urban regeneration has been accelerated in top-tier cities, especially in Shanghai. This has brought more development opportunities to developers. In response to the changing market, Shui On Land will focus on selective market cities for future growth and strive for a leading position in these markets. Our business development focus are as follows. In terms of the market selection, we will keep replenishing our land bank in Shanghai, Tier 1 cities and other leading Tier 2 cities in Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area. We focus more on resilient markets with relatively strong fundamentals.
Regarding the project sourcing, our investment focus is to capture the arising opportunities of urban regeneration in Shanghai with quicker turnover and cash payback. We will also closely monitor market window and actively explore M&A opportunities from the market correction. Finally, we will continue to implement our SLI strategy and keep expanding our partnerships with various business partners, including financial investors and selected developers such as some SOEs with shared vision and values. Next. In addition to the business development, here I'd like to further share a bit more on our residential product and the branding strategy. Going forward, we would keep solidifying our branding of being the best-in-class for residential business and further enhance our leading position in luxury sector where we are in, especially in Shanghai. There are several key considerations for this strategy.
First of all, if you look at the Shanghai primary high-end residential market, as highlighted on the slide, obviously the market fundamental is very strong, with a CAGR of 20% since 2017, even though there were up and downs in economic growth and the property market. Secondly, based on a survey to SOL residential buyers and the target clientele group in middle of 2022, the market has a deep understanding and the strongest desire on quality products in well-planned, mixed-use community, with heavier environment and human-centric service in the post-COVID new time. There are right SOL strengths in development. Thirdly, with Shanghai announced to accelerate its urban regeneration, especially in urban village development in 2022, there would be more opportunities from the urban regeneration runway for SOL to develop and offer high-quality products.
The acquisition of Yangpu Binjiang project in 2022 is a typical example. Next. For the property sales performance in 2022, our sales performance will, despite the impact and the downward pressure in market from COVID-19 outbreaks, which demonstrates buyers' confidence in our projects. For the year, our total contract property sales amount to CNY 27.2 billion, exceeding our sales target, CNY 25 billion. It comprised residential property sales of CNY 25.8 billion and commercial property sales of CNY 1.4 billion. By the end of 2022, total subscribed sales of CNY 1.4 billion were recorded, and these sales will be converted to contract sales in the coming months. For the pre-sale in 2022, the first project I'd like to highlight is Rui Hong Xin Cheng Lots 167 & 168.
It is the last residential project within our Rui Hong Xin Cheng master plan. The estimated residential GFA is around 86,000 square meters. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown, the sales launch was deferred to June 8th from March. It is the first residential project in downtown area and the second one in Shanghai city that were permitted to launch sales after lockdown. Buyers segment remains very strong. The project is significantly oversubscribed. It has 609 units in total and received a deposit from 1,940 potential buyers. All units were sold on the launch day. The average selling price is 119,800 per square meter. It contributed CNY 10.3 billion contract and subscriber sales in the first half.
The second project is Panlong Tiandi, which is strategically located in the Hongqiao core area. It is one of the first batch of urban village regeneration projects in Shanghai. Leveraging our experience in urban regeneration and culture preservation, we revitalized the urban village into a world-class sustainable urban community. Upholding the philosophy of culture, nature, future, our master plan concept and quality development has received great recognition from the public and the government. The third phase of Panlong Tiandi was launched in July. The newly developed low-rise residential projects also received a overwhelming market response. We received over 2,000 subscription for the 571 units to be launched. 3.5 x oversubscription reflected the strong demand of our project with an entry score at 91.22, which is the record high in Shanghai.
The project contributed CNY 5.1 billion contract sales for the company. Next. Wuhan Tiandi D12 launched 65 units with total GFA of 70,000 sq m in November. Without a sales office or showroom, all the units have been subscribed on the day of launch through online. Over CNY 1 billion property sales were achieved. The average selling price keep the highest in Wuhan market, which is around CNY 58,000 per sq m. Next. The group's competitive advantages and the long track record in urban regeneration has helped us to acquire new sites as our trusted partners. The latest example is the site at Yangpu in Shanghai, as I mentioned earlier, where we have recently won the right to develop in partnership with Shanghai Yangshupu City Development Co Limited.
The project is a heritage preservation and development project that involves the development of high-end, low-density residential community. Situated in the Yangpu riverside zone, which is positioned as the pilot area for internet industry development. The development will appeal to high-net-worth individuals, and the demand for the high-end residential development is expected to be on the rise. Next. The group has approximated 291,100 sq m of residential GFA spanning 6 projects available for sale and presale in 2023. A big portion is coming from Wuhan. Next. This slide has summarized our residential development landbank and the sellable resources in the future. The total sellable amount is CNY 75.3 billion by the end of last year, with attributable value at CNY 41.3 billion.
CNY 22.5 billion sellable resources are in Shanghai and the rest, CNY 15.8 billion are in Wuhan and Chongqing, of which, CNY 14.1 billion come from Wuhan Changjiang Tiandi. This project provides a strong residential sales pipeline for the company in the Wuhan market in the coming years. The total sellable residential GFA is around 1.15 million square meters. Next. Besides the residential development landbank, we also have a strong commercial development portfolio in Shanghai and other high-growth cities. It will drive for future rental growth and capital recycling in the future. This slide shows the list of commercial properties already under development and in the pipeline.
The total size of our commercial property portfolio was 2.73 million square meter, of which 59% were for office and 41% for retail. This is all my part, and I'd now will hand over to Alan, please.
Thank you, Jessica. Good evening. In this section, I will briefly introduce the performance of Shui On Xintiandi. As you can see on next slides, our total management commercial assets went up to CNY 82 billion. Most of the project were located in prime locations in Shanghai. Though some of the properties were a little bit affected by the COVID-19 impact, this year, we will have three new projects entry market. Two retail project, including the Panlong Tiandi and Hong Shou Fang, which will open for business in mid this year. We have the first office tower in our CPIC Xintiandi commercial center will be handed over to our buyers in mid this year. The total portfolio went up a little bit comparing to last year. The next slide is a bit more introduction about our business segments.
Among the three big segments, our biggest revenue contributor was the property investment, meaning the investment and ownership and operation of commercial properties. Right now, we have more than 75% of our revenue were from this, you know, property investment sector. The number two is the property management sector, which is 19%. The smallest one, also the fastest-growing one is the real estate asset management sector, which I will introduce a bit more later on. Despite the heavy and this very serious impact from the COVID last year, next slides, we shared a bit more about our resilient portfolio and the stable performance.
The total revenue was CNY 2.7 billion, the profit, including the gross profit, operating profit and underlying profit were CNY 1.9 billion, CNY 1.4 billion and CNY 575 million respectively. Our net assets went up to CNY 34 billion. As Douglas mentioned before, our gear ratio has been maintained at a very low and very healthy, you know, figure, which is only 11.5% last year. Next slides, we will share a bit more about our business segment. Due to the COVID impact, our retail revenue dropped a little bit, which is actually 8%. Comparing to the retail, our office and the other sectors remain at a quite stable growth rate.
Our office revenue went up by 2%, and the real estate asset management went up by 40%. Our fee income from this sector actually already achieved CNY 130 million, and the total management AUM already reached CNY 30.3 billion. Next slides, we introduce a bit more about the rental income. Right now we have two major rental income source, which is the retail and the office. As you can see, the portfolio actually has been maintained at a quite balanced percentage. Retail basically contribute around 60% of our rental income. As mentioned before, due to the COVID impact, the rental from the retail dropped by 9%, but the office has been maintained at a very stable performance.
The rental income went up by 4% last year. As for the geographic distribution, more than 70% of our revenue came from our portfolios in Shanghai. The second biggest city for us is the Wuhan. We have been strategically growing the portfolio in Wuhan in the past 5 years. Right now, we have more than 14% of our revenue was from Wuhan. Next slides is a bit more introduction about the recovery. As we all know that, in 2020, due to the serious impact from COVID, our average occupancy rate actually dropped a little bit to 89% as of December last year.
Starting from last year until now, we have been adopt a lot of very supportive, innovative marketing event and also very flexible rental and others, other measures to help our tenants to recover the business. We are very happy to see that in first 2 months of this year, our tenant sales and shopper traffic already recovered to over 90%. Especially in February this year, our overall traffic actually increased to a full recovery, which is 102%. Our non-Shanghai project already recovered to 110%.
Office, actually the average occupancy rate dropped a little bit to 89% as of end of last year, and we're happy to see that it's already went up to more than 90%. Next slide is a bit more about our operation, especially from the occupancy rate numbers. As you can see from this chart, most of our portfolios were maintained at a quite high occupancy rate, mostly above 90%. There are only two special projects in this list. We have one project under renovation, under AEI process now, and which is the XINTIANDI Style II. As you can see, the occupancy rate was only 60% at the end of last year. We have already soft-opened this project.
Right now the opening rate already went up to more than 87%. The other property under AEI process, it's the Nanjing IFC. You can see from this list, our occupancy rate was 73 last year. Most of the rest of the properties had a very stable occupancy rate. Well, last slides a bit more about our property management business sector and also our asset management sector. For the property management sector, we have a total portfolio under management slightly above 9 million square meter.
I think it's around 500,000 sq m more than last year. For the real estate asset management, as mentioned before, the total management area already went up to HKD 30.3 billion, with a total GFA above 186,000 sq m . As you can see from the pictures, for most of the strategic projects, we have formed a very healthy and the long-term relationship with the big insurance company, including Manulife, China Life, CPIC, and Grosvenor. The last slides I will introduce a bit more about our sustainable growth for next year.
Well, the first strategy will be, we will keep, continue focusing on the premium clientele and unleash our brand as a lifestyle brand, the value to help our talents to achieve greater, higher sales. The second one will be continue to build our customer-centric and also thriving communities. Number three is to leverage on the good relationship we are continued to, you know, help our tenants to capture the opportunities from the business recovery post the COVID-19. Well, the last one is to leverage our competitive advantage in asset management to leverage also the asset light model to unlock the long-term investment potential, and keep growing our asset management business in the long run. Thank you. This is all from me.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lo, and the management for the presentation. We'll now take some questions from the audience. The first questions is regarding the sales target, so I may invite Jessica to answer the question. The first questions is related, what is the contracted sales target for financial year 2023? Can you share a bit on the schedule of the presale of the launch of Taipingqiao Lot 122, please. Please, Jessica.
Okay. Our sales target for this year is CNY 13 billion because although we have 291,000 sq m of residential GFA available for sales and presales this year, 80% are from Wuhan. The total sales volume will have a decrease. For the lot Taipingqiao Lot 122 and just Taipingqiao Lot 122, there's a presales plan.
Yes. That was the question.
Right.
Yes.
Yes. The Taipingqiao Lot 122 project is started construction just in this month. According to the latest presale permit policies, we plan to launch the project by the end of next year. Yeah.
Thank you, Jessica. Next questions may be of interest of a lot of the investors and analysts regarding refinancing. I'll have to invite Douglas to answer, please. What are your plans to refinance the U.S. dollar senior notes due in second half of 2023? Will you look to issue offshore U.S. dollar bonds for refinancing? Will you be focusing more on onshore issuance? Also, what is the company's target leverage ratio and the target LTV for investment properties? Thank you, Douglas.
Thank you. I... Maybe I'll just answer by, from a high level first. The strategy for us, moving forward is to focus more on onshore financing and reduce the amount on offshore financing for obvious reasons. Cost onshore is cheaper, and liquidity is obviously much better than the offshore market. We will continue to work to rebalance our financing to gear more towards onshore financing versus offshore. This rebalancing of course will take time. We can't just switch everything overnight. That's the direction. On the refinancing of the bond coming to this end of this year or other offshore maturity, we are working on, with various banks, on new financing, and new financing packages.
I think as of now it's unlikely, we issue a new US dollar bond given the cost is so high. It's really just not feasible to try to issue a new bond. I think unless the debt market improves significantly from here, I would not envisage that we will go out to the market to do a US dollar bond anytime soon. That's the overall direction that the company is moving.
Thank you, Douglas. One more question for you maybe. There is a question about the JV partners. We're working with a lot of JV partners, is there any off-balance sheet liability that we need to be aware?
All our JV partners are substantial companies. A majority of them, if not all of them, are state-owned enterprises, SOEs. They have very, very good credit. We do not have any liability issues on any of our joint venture projects.
Thank you, Douglas. The next question, maybe I have to invite Mr. Lo to answer. A few days ago, Mr. Lo, you have met with the Shanghai government mayor. The mayor said, would like Shui On to continue to investing in Shanghai. Are there any particular projects that investors should expect that we will be investing in Shanghai? Please, Mr. Lo.
Yes. I went with Jessica to meet with the mayor. We had a very good meeting. The mayor was very forthcoming in his plans on future development of Shanghai. We are confident in Shanghai. We believe that there's a lot of opportunities for us in Shanghai because of the city re-regeneration and also the urban village. The Panlong Tiandi was a particular one that even the mayor mentioned to me. He visited the site himself and was pleased with what we are doing there. I think there's actually a lot of opportunities for us in Shanghai. We will continue to focus on Shanghai because the market is strong there. Also, we have a very strong presence and reputation in Shanghai.
Thank you, Mr. Lo. Next question on the expansion plan. Is there any M&A or land banking opportunities in the pipeline? May I invite Jessica, please?
Actually, we are all still very cautious to see the opportunities for M&A arising from the market correction. As Mr. Lo mentioned, we will still leverage our advantages in urban regeneration experience in the city development in Shanghai. Also we will look into the opportunities in Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area. Now, we don't have a very actual pipeline here, but we will look into all the opportunities that is suitable for the future development. Yeah.
Maybe let me supplement on what Jessica said. Quite a few questions are asking us whether we'll be looking at buying assets or distressed assets from the troubled developers. We have been monitoring, but we don't believe that the market has bottomed in that area. We want to continue to look at the market changes because it's still unclear how these developers are gonna get out of their own trouble. You know, there's no way the government can bail them out. We believe that there will be distressed assets for sale in the hopefully not too distant future. We will be preparing ourselves to make acquisitions when the right opportunities arises.
Right now, we don't need to rush because the cities that we're in, the government are very keen for us to make more acquisitions from the government direct, and they are more flexible in the payment terms and conditions right now. We believe we will just continue to monitor the market, because I don't believe the market has bottomed out. A lot will depend on the bigger picture, the macro conditions, and also the troubled developers. How would that situation play out? I don't think anyone can really see clearly. We don't have that clear picture at this stage, but we believe that there will be good opportunities for us, and we will continue to manage our balance sheet cautiously for the time being.
Thank you, Mr. Lo. Next question, I may have to invite Douglas again. For your outstanding near-term bank borrowings, how much do you expect that can be rolled over? What is the latest discussion with the banks? Please.
Okay. I would say overall, the risk appetite of the offshore banks are still quite low. It is, I think their sentiment has improved a little bit compared to the end of last year. I think particularly with some of the figures from developers' property sales year-to-date picking up a bit. I think the lenders generally feel slightly more optimistic compared to maybe three months ago. Nonetheless, the tone is still cautious. I think the rollover or refinancing of the offshore loans are still gonna be not easy. We are still hoping that we can do a lot of refinancing, but I would also expect that we need to draw down some cash to repay some of the maturity as well.
Overall, I think right now we continue to move forward with a discussion with offshore banks. As I mentioned earlier, we also have increased our review with onshore lenders on what they can offer us.
Thank you, Douglas. Next question is on the Wuhan market. Can the management share some of the, you know, insights on how the Wuhan property market is performing? Can you also share a bit on how is the progress of the Wuhan shipyard project? Maybe I have to invite Jessica again.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. For the Wuhan property market, we are very happy to see the housing transaction area in the first 2 months of 2023 increased by 28.6% year-on-year. The real estate market has shown signs of a gradual recovery, and the demand for the high-end residential markets continues to be stable. As I mentioned, our Wuhan Tiandi project just sold out all the units in 1 second almost. We are thinking the Wuhan residential market is going on the way for recovery. For the Wuhan shipyard, we actually started construction and hopefully we can launch the first project of first residential project in this year.
This is the first time. Sorry, in this year. I think it's the first time for the market to see the project for the Wuhan shipyard.
Thank you, Jessica. Next question is regarding the Shui On Xintiandi IPO. Would the management please share some of the progress or how's, what's the status of the IPO, please? May I invite Stephanie?
Thanks for the questions. There are a number of you who've asked about the IPO status. In short, I think right now the IPO is on pause due to market conditions. We are not in a rush to list Shui On Xintiandi because we do feel that our balance sheet is strong enough, and therefore we want to find the right market window in order to do so that will create the most value for our shareholders. That being said, for now, the IPO is a bit delayed.
Okay. Thank you, Stephanie. Due to the time constraint, I think we'll come to the last question of the meeting. The last question is relating to the market overview. How does management view the current market and policy opportunities? What business actions and management goals can you share with us for 2023? Maybe I invite Mr. Lo, please.
As I mentioned just now, we're still not completely sure of how the market is going to go from here. I think it's bottomed out almost. Still, just now I was saying that the macro conditions will affect the market, and also how the troubled developers will play out. We believe the government will not be able to bail out all the troubled developers, so some will go under. Do they have suitable projects for us to pick up? So these are all issues that we're considering. Definitely, I think this correction, it's gonna be a very deep one, and it will have to force the developers to come up with a new business model, and we are working on that. I think we're getting very close to it.
We have, you know, basically, laid out our own plans on the longer term development for the company. It's a matter of timing for property. That's gonna be a key. We have to really make sure that we move in at the right time. That's a million-dollar question that we all have to search for the right answer. On the whole, we believe the market will not crash, but it will still have to go through some big ripples. We're waiting for that to happen, and then we will be definitely looking to acquire good assets at bargain prices.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lo. Thank you, the management for answering all the tough questions. There are still a lot left unanswered, but definitely we'll, the IR team will tackle them one by one and we'll be contacting the questions that are asked by the investors. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Should you have any more questions on top of those that you sent in, please do feel free to contact our IR team. Thank you once again for joining, and have a great evening.