Hi, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Shui On Land Limited 2020 annual results analyst webcast meeting. Thank you very much for joining this evening. With us this evening are our four leaders in the company, Mr. Vincent Lo, Chairman of the group, Ms. Stephanie Lo, Executive Director of Shui On Land. In Shanghai, joining us are Mr. Douglas Sung, Managing Director, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of Shui On Land, as well as Ms. Jessica Wang, Managing Director of Shui On Management Limited. Welcome, four leaders. Thank you very much for being here. Mr. Lo, can I ask you to kick start the presentation this evening.
Thank you, Sandra. Thank you for joining our results announcement. Well, last year, basically it is very contrasting two halves. In the first half of the year, I think we were all very much impacted by COVID-19, our health and our nervousness, and also our business. But in the second half, I think with the very stringent measures introduced by the government inside the mainland, things improved very fast. Then we were seeing a major improvement in all our operations and everything. So, in the first half, we have reported a net loss of CNY 1.62 billion. But in the second half, I think we are starting to see some significant improvement. So the loss attributable to shareholders for the whole year, it is CNY 740 million. As I have said, the second half, I think we see a very significant improvement in the retail side.
Actually, in December, the overall sales reached 110% of the 2019 level. Our total rental and related income recorded CNY 2.528 billion, only 2% decline from 2019. Then we had very robust residential sales, CNY 21.2 billion, representing a 69% increase year-on-year. We have maintained a very strong financial position. Our net gearing ratio is 45%, which is seven percentage point down from December 31st, 2019. Our cash and bank balances is CNY 15.79 billion. We continue to take a prudent approach in all our new investment because we believe COVID-19 is not over yet. Also, I think we believe that the geopolitical situation and Sino-U.S. relations are all going to be impacting the economy.
In 2020, we have developed a new 10-year sustainable development strategy to be rolled out this year, and later on, Ms. Stephanie Lo will share with you what we're doing in those areas. Let me now share with you our market and strategic outlook. As I've said, we believe COVID-19 is not over yet. Of course, the vaccines are going to help. But the economic structure and a lot of problems have been faced by a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises haven't been dealt with. I also have friends who are still suffering despite the fact that things are slowly getting back to normal. Of course, I think China is on track to achieve a very substantial growth this year. Also the 14th Five-Year Plan, I think is very encouraging. It's emphasizing on indigenous innovation and industrial upgrade during the 14th Five-Year Plan.
The residential market has shown very strong resilience last year with growth in areas sold and also revenue. But in the 14th Five-Year Plan, I think the government will continue to manage the property sector, especially the residential side, because it's very clear that they are concerned that prices might shoot through the roof and beyond the affordability of the people. So I think government will continue to have very strong administration on pricing and everything. But we are very encouraged with the city cluster development strategy, and basically, it's always a regional economy that we have to look at, because that is going to be the focal point of China's economic development strategy going forward. So the regional hub cities will be very much beneficial, and we are very bullish on the Yangtze Delta unification and also the Greater Bay Area.
Office market is going to be going through a difficult adjustment period because of the supply overhang, and I think it's going to be challenging this year because the occupier demand is dampened by the cautious business sentiment after the COVID-19 and also the macroeconomic situation. But China is going to continue to grow, and it should surpass the U.S. economy in the not too distant future. And we believe that Shanghai will be positioned as the international finance center, like New York and London, playing a very leading role in Asia. Because if you look around, there's no really the likes of New York/London in Asia. And with the growing influence of Asia, I think Shanghai will be playing a very major role there. And office demand in Shanghai will likely increase in line with the city's growing economic and financial importance.
Prime commercial retail vacancies in Shanghai has jumped from 8.6% in 2019 to 11% in 2020. Also the retail rents have also dropped 2.4%. But JLL's projection is that retail rent is bottoming up and they're expecting a slight uptick this year. Overall, we remain bullish on the China property market, as the push for domestic consumption will create a lot of opportunities for the retail sector. Residential demand have been and will continue to be robust, driven by the desire to improve and upgrade on their living environment, particularly in the key cities. Office sector will be more challenging for the average player, but for ourselves, we believe we have a bit of vision and we are very heavy emphasis on quality.
I think this period may present very good investment opportunities for us, because we believe we can be at the right place and at the right time. Let me stop there. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Chairman. Can I ask Douglas now to please take us through the financial highlights?
Thank you, Sandra. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just give a quick highlight first before I go into the detailed figures. Some of these points, I think the Chairman also mentioned earlier. If you look at 2020, our group's revenue was about CNY 4.6 billion. It was down obviously quite a bit from 2019. There were two main reasons. One was we took about a 4% downward revaluation on our investment properties and other property assets, primarily because of the impact of COVID-19. I will walk you through the breakdowns later on. The second reason, also COVID-19 related, was the impact on some of our construction in the first half of the year. Some of our residential projects, which were due for completion and revenue recognition in 2020, was affected by COVID-19 in the first half, and they had to stop construction.
A couple of these projects were not able to make up the lost time, so there were some delays in the proper recognition from 2020 to 2021, and this has also impacted the overall revenue as well. If you look at total rental income, Chairman mentioned earlier, if we include the JVs and associate projects, it was only down 2% year-on-year. The overall impact from COVID-19 actually was relatively modest. Again, pretty much all our operations, our business lines have recovered in the second half of the year. If we look at just only the second half, the group would have reported a net profit of about CNY 882 million. Again, it is just a sign that there is a big contrast between first half and second half.
I want to highlight the last point here is, obviously, the loss in 2020 was primarily driven by the revaluation losses in our property assets. We believe these are really one-off, primarily because of the impact on COVID-19. Based on the current operation of our business lines and also the market conditions, we are quite hopeful that the revaluation losses will be limited to only to 2020 and we don't need to see another markdown in the value of our assets in 2021. So if I go into the detailed figures on the P&L, sorry, here in this first table. We highlighted the contrast between first half and second half. So you can see quite clearly, pretty much all the financial KPIs in terms of revenue, gross profit.
In terms for the full year, the bottom line, there is a very, very big improvement between second half and first half. In particular, I want to highlight the last row in the table, the core earnings. So this is excluding the impact on property revaluation. You can see that if we look at core earnings, both first half and second half, the group would have reported net profits. So I think it's just a way to show you that the net losses in 2020 was really primarily a one-off and a non-cash effect from the impact from COVID-19. On the P&L, on the next page, I'll just highlight a few figures.
We can see the decline in revenue of about 56% is, in particular, driven by a larger decline in property sales, which I mentioned was because of the delays in some of our residential projects, that the handover and revenue recognition was pushed from 2020 to 2021. The rental income down 7% year-on-year. This is on a consolidated level, so if we include the JV and associate projects, the decline will be 2%, which I will show you the figures later. Gross profit, CNY 2.35 billion, and the margin was relatively stable at 51%, same as 2019. Other income was primarily interest income from our cash on hand. The slight increase in selling and marketing expenses was just a function of our residential presales, because we had a pretty big presale year last year, so the expenses related to that also increased a bit as well.
On the decrease in the fair value of investment properties, CNY 1.78 billion. I will give you the breakdown later on. Other gains and losses also include some write-down on some of our other land bank. So if you look at the two together, it's about CNY 2.2 billion of decrease in fair value of our real estate assets. Other than that, our finance costs, and if you look at the breakdown, you will see that because of the rebound in CNY second half last year, we recorded a net gain in the FX of about CNY 863 million. The overall net interest cost is down 17% from the prior year to just over CNY 1 billion. On the next page, on tax, you will see a positive tax credit.
This is really just a function of us reporting a net loss last year, and also on the decline in fair value in the investment property. Accordingly, there is deferred tax assets being recorded. If we take into consideration the non-controlling shareholders of the listed company and the owners of the perpetual securities, the net loss attributable to shareholders is CNY 740 million, and on a per share basis, it is CNY 0.092. Because of the net loss, the board has recommended that we do not declare and do not pay a final dividend for 2020. On property sales, I already mentioned that it was relatively low in 2020. The main new projects that were completed and handed over to buyers was Foshan Lingnan Tiandi Lot 13A, which contributed about CNY 1 billion in sales.
If you look at the lower half of the table, we actually had a lot of sales in the associate and JV level, particularly coming from Rui Hong Xin Cheng Lot 1, a joint venture with COFCO Group. That accounts for CNY 8.7 billion of sales, which is not reflected on the top line. Altogether, the total property sale was about CNY 10 billion, which is only slightly off from 2019's level. Rental impact, I already mentioned that on the consolidated level is 7% down. If we include the JV projects, particularly Corporate Avenue 5, which we purchased together with Manulife and China Life Insurance Company in 2019, the overall rental income was only down 2% year-on-year. If you look at across the portfolio, basically you can see pretty much all the properties have slight decline in rental, mainly in the first half because of COVID-19.
I want to point out in particular the second property, Xintiandi Style 2, where you see a larger decline and also lower occupancy rates at the end of 2020. That is because we will be going through a major renovation and AEI for Xintiandi Style 2. In the second half last year, we actually proactively terminated some of the leases in that property in preparation for the AEI. That is why you have seen a higher vacancy in that property. Next page. On the revaluation of the IP, you can see the total write-down is about CNY 1.8 billion. If you look at the breakdown, the first five properties on the list are the Shanghai investment properties. Each of them have some increase and decrease in their value. Overall, the Shanghai portfolio is pretty much flat from the year before.
Clearly, the write-down on valuation has been on non-Shanghai properties, particularly in Wuhan Tiandi, in Chongqing, and also some of the to-be-developed sites in Foshan. These were the ones that we have actually taken a larger downward revaluation as compared to the overall portfolio. The overall decline is about 3.6%. In percentage term, it is actually not that much. Because of the total carrying value of our properties is above CNY 50 billion, that 3.6% actually translates to a relatively large figure in the P&L. Next page is our financial position. These are pretty straightforward. We have increased our cash holding. We have further reduced our net debt. At the end of the year, net gearing is 45% compared to 52% the year before.
You can note that the footnotes, if we exclude financing fees and bank fees, the actual interest cost last year is 4.8% compared to 5.4%. We have seen actually very attractive cost of funding in the market in 2020. This is just graphically showing you the net gearing net debt. On the next page, debt profile, on the table, you will see the maturity profile. One year basically means 2021, one to two years, 2022. So out of the CNY 13.2 billion maturity this year, as of last week, we already paid down roughly half, about CNY 6.5 billion. So for the remaining nine months of this year, it's about CNY 6.5 billion left of maturity. The next senior note due is in November of this year. Looking into 2022, we also do not have a lot of maturity.
We feel that our liquidity position is relatively healthy at this stage. We are certainly not in any stress for refinancing in the short term. Our next page is just showing you the maturity table. I would point out that, starting from second half this year, we have actually a pretty well spread out maturity profile. So you can see that basically we have one main senior note due each of the next four years. I mentioned in November, we have one note maturing, about $350 million. Next year, we have the perpetual, which the first call date is in June of next year. From 2023, 2024, 2025, we basically have one senior note due for repayment. So on average it's about $500 million per year, not a significant amount.
I think we have a fairly healthy refinancing profile looking into the next few years and also give us a bit more flexibility if we decided to either leverage more for investment or to further manage our capital structure. Lastly, on just the total asset is about CNY 115 billion, which has been fairly stable in the last four or five years. You can see on the right-hand side, roughly about 55% or more of our assets are now related to commercial real estate. I will stop there and I will turn over to Stephanie.
Thanks, Douglas. Let me give everyone a quick overview of our commercial property portfolio. The group currently manages a total of 1.7 million sq m of retail and office space in Shanghai, which 52% of the GFA is already rental income producing, and the remainder is under development. Our existing office and retail portfolio is amongst one of the largest privately held ones in Shanghai already. There are three PUD projects to note. Shanghai Taipingqiao has Lot 123, 124, and 132, which is a JV with CPIC. We hold 25% of this project, and we expect that the site will complete between 2022 to 2023. It's three Grade A office towers of 192,000 sq m and an open mall retail underneath that is 84,000 sq m GFA. This has a large glass roof, so it's a galleria-like structure.
This will be really special and something that we're really looking forward to and in the planning. The second project will be Shanghai Ruihong Xincheng's Ruihong Tiandi Lot 10, Hall of the Sun. We completed relocation on this site in 2017, and we're opening part of the retail mall at the end of this year. This project comprises of two grade A office towers called Ruihong Corporate Avenue. That is 147,000 sq m of GFA and a large shopping mall called Hall of the Sun, and that is 183,000 sq m. We are currently over 50% leased already. This is given the very challenging retail environment in the first half of last year. A lot of the retail tenants have been quite conservative, even though there's been quite good recovery. I think our leasing progress is still very stable and going well.
The last site I'd like to highlight is Shanghai Hong Shou Fang. This is a commercial site that's in Putuo District in Shanghai. It's mainly an office site, GFA of 48,000 sq m of office and 14,000 sq m of retail. Part of the retail actually incorporates cultural heritage, which plays to our strength. The construction work commenced in the second half of 2020, and it's planned for completion in 2022. We hold 100% effective interest in this site. In terms of asset value, the total asset value of our Shanghai portfolio is approximately CNY 77 billion. Attributable value to the group is approximately CNY 45 billion, representing effective interest of 58% in the portfolio. In the next slide, you'll see that, as Douglas mentioned, our rental income declined moderately due to COVID-19. It really was a year of two halves, as mentioned.
The first half impacted our rental income, but as a whole, our rental income of the group decreased by 7% to close to CNY 2 billion. In 2020, sorry, and in 2019 it was CNY 2.2 billion. This was mainly due to a lot of rental concessions and reliefs that we offered to our retail tenants and the natural impact of COVID-19 on the operations and traffic across our portfolio. If you actually include the JV and associates, our total rental income actually only declined by 2%. Of this portfolio, 77% of our rental income is attributable to Shanghai. I'd like to make a note here, that in the second half, actually, we saw a big rebound and recovery from our retail properties. Starting from the third quarter, there was a very marked recovery.
In December 2020, our overall sales versus 2019 levels has reached over 110%. In the next slide, we reopened Xintiandi Style One, which is actually what we had previously been calling the South Block of Xintiandi. It's the small mall located at the end, and the reason why we named it Xintiandi Style One is because we wanted to fully integrate it with the larger shopping mall towards the back that we've always called Xintiandi Style. The positioning of this is really about capturing a newer, younger luxury clientele. The Gen Zs within China who have a very large spending power, who are into newer luxury concepts where it's more about showing their own style, their individuality, and having a much more personalized approach to luxury rather than the traditional luxury brands. We're very excited about this location.
So far, the traffic and the take-up has been quite positive. Part of which, you can see a new concept that we launched called Foodie Social on the next page. Foodie Social's positioning is really about offering our customers a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, promoting this in conjunction with our sustainability concept and plan that I can share more with you later. Foodie Social, it's a location in Xintiandi that has a lot of both different types of food concepts, street concepts included, where we have food labs and pop-up restaurants. We've brought in different Michelin chefs to do pop-up restaurants with us to great rave reviews. We have what's called a foodie lab, where you can test different food products, a food theater where you can do different types of food events and lectures and such.
The idea here is to build a different type of lifestyle, and a new experience offering outside of the traditional restaurant offer. Next, actually, one more point to highlight is at Foodie Social, as an example of our healthy lifestyle, 95% of the tenants there now have committed to not use MSG in any of their cooking. Secondly, before the end of the year, we hope to allow our consumers to have the choice to say, "I hope to reduce the amount of sugar," or "Reduce the amount of oil" that's being used in the food that they're eating. I think this is a growing trend in terms of leading a more well and healthy lifestyle going forward. So continuing with our first in China and first in the city flagship leasing strategy.
As part of the south block opening, we brought in new concepts and stores. Tom Dixon's first flagship store in China, United Tokyo from Japan, Lenôtre, which is a pastry shop from Paris, Cai Lan, which is a dim sum shop that's done very well. I.T. completely renovated their whole store and is a brand-new flagship store concept that has been doing very good sales so far. In Xintiandi, we've always prided ourselves on building a cultural and social destination, and this year is no exception. We've continued, despite COVID-19, with a lot of our IP events, whether it's the music festival, the performing arts festival in the summer, our lighting festivals through Christmas and Chinese New Year, Shanghai Fashion Week and such. A lot of this has drawn a lot more customer flow that's reached more than 1 million last year.
We gained a media value of over CNY 1.6 billion based on a lot of the events and the promotions that we've done there. iXintiandi, our online consumer loyalty platform, has also seen very steady uptake and in helping us create a more sticky ecosystem for our consumers going forward. I'll hand over the development aspect to Jessica.
Thanks, Stephanie. Next page. Overall speaking, we had very strong residential sales in 2020. We are pleased our performance was much better than expected. Our contract sales increased by 59% year-on-year to CNY 21.18 billion, ahead of our target. All our projects launched are very popular in the market. They were sold out in one or two days. Next, please. By the end of last year, the total subscribed sales of CNY 4.9 billion were recorded, among which CNY 2.84 billion were from Shanghai Panlong Tiandi and CNY 925 million from Taipingqiao Lakeville 5. These sales will be converted to contract sales in 2021 and beyond. Next. Here I would like to highlight Panlong Tiandi. It contributed over CNY 5.8 billion contracts in subscribed sales last year.
As you may recall, we acquired the Panlong sites in 2019, and it has started to contribute to our sales in 2020, just a year since acquisition. The project is in the core area of Greater Hongqiao. It is one of the most successful urban village renewal projects in Shanghai. Our expertise in urban regeneration and cultural heritage preservation will continuously support the transformation and upgrading goals of Greater Hongqiao area. People are confident that we will create Panlong Tiandi as a world-class urban sustainable landmark community in the western Shanghai. When we launched the first batch of 948 units in October last year, with almost 3,800 subscriptions received, it is the highest participation rate in lottery process in Shanghai, and almost all the units were sold out on the first day.
The average selling price was at CNY 61,500 per sq m , and it is the highest among peers nearby. All these reflect Shui On's strong brand value and reputation. We also did some analysis of buyers, which shows us some insights on the latest trends. In terms of the geography, 41% of the buyers are from the core city area of Shanghai. Only 19% are from Qingpu area. We believe the buyers from the core city area are attracted much by the quality in our brand. 75% of the buyers are aged 40 or below, which shows our property is appealing to the younger generation. In terms of the purchase purpose, 88% are for self-use, with reasons including marriage, improvement of living conditions. Next, please. Looking forward, we have a strong pipeline for 2021.
There is a total of 562,000 sq m residential available for sale with about 61% GFA from Shanghai projects. Our attributable GFA is 303,500 sq m . In 2021, our residential sales target is CNY 24 billion. Next page, please. Here shows the renderings of Ruihong Xincheng Lot 1, 6, 7, 8. Nearly 300 units will be launched in the second half of this year. Next, please. Here are some photos of another landmark project, Lakeville 5 Phase II at Taipingqiao. The rest of 112 units are ready for sale in this year. Next. In short, we have strong residential development sellable resources in the future. We can see based on the current valuation of our land bank, the total amount was CNY 64.2 billion with SOL attributable value at CNY 14.9 billion. Within these sellable resources, CNY 48.7 billion were in Shanghai. Next, please.
For commercial development, we also have a strong portfolio in Shanghai and other cities, which will drive for future rental growth and capital recycling. This slide shows the list of commercial properties under development and for future development. In Shanghai, we own and manage 835,000 sq m of commercial properties for other cities, which include Wuhan, Chongqing and Foshan. The total GFA of our commercial properties was 2,297,000 sq m. The total size of our commercial property portfolio was 3,132,000 sq m, in which 61% were for office and 39% for retail. That concludes that part. Now I would like to hand off to Stephanie for the ESG part. Please.
Thanks, Jessica. I'm really happy to share with everyone today that we, at the board level, have approved our 10-year sustainability development strategy, and it consists of what we have coined internally as our 5 Cs. Firstly, our clean community, culture, care, and corporate governance. All of this is in the desire to actually better align the sustainability plan together with our business. Our business vision is to become a pioneer of sustainable and premium urban communities. This business strategy, as I hope you can see, can actually play to our strengths. For instance, if we highlight the culture aspects, we've been very known for urban regeneration, as Jessica mentioned, and in preserving a lot of cultural heritage within our sites of development.
We feel that this strength should also be part of our sustainability strategy, and we should be celebrating it and enhancing it to create a greater competitive advantage while doing good. Secondly, from the community standpoint, we hope that our built communities can better engage in a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. We will be thinking about how we can impact this across our tenant network as well as our supply chain. Clean is in alignment with a lot of the world goals right now to bring down our carbon emissions and work towards the carbon neutrality, and mitigate the risks of climate change. In the next page, you'll see what we've achieved in sustainable development in 2020. Apart from actually launching our 5C development strategy for 2030, we've actually decreased Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions intensity from 2019 by 15%.
If we use the 2011 baseline, we've decreased it by 41%. We've actually decreased our water intensity by 30%, 24% decrease in construction waste sent to the landfill. We actually issued our first green bond last year, and we issued our first green bond report as a result. Last year, we also got included into the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index, and the MSCI ESG Leaders Index series. The rest, I won't go into too much detail. I think you can see. I'd like to highlight several major signature initiatives that we will be launching this year. In terms of our clean targets, the company commits to setting carbon emissions reduction goals towards 2030 using the science-based targets.
We have agreed and committed to reducing our global warming limit to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and we will further use our best endeavors to set goals that limit warming to 1.5 degrees in the future. Secondly, from a community standpoint, as a first step this year, we will start to engage a lot of F&B tenants and consumers in how we can promote a healthy and low carbon lifestyle. Firstly, by rolling out a more plant-based food initiative initiated by Foodie Social. As I mentioned just now, Foodie Social's positioning is really about promoting a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. By electing to eat plant-based, say even once a week, this actually helps to reduce our carbon footprint by quite a significant amount.
Green Monday is not a new concept to most, and we want to see how we can better allow our consumers to have the option to go green when they come to Xintiandi. Secondly, we are also going to further work with different partners to see how we can actually measure the impact of this initiative in the coming years. This is just one example of an initiative that we will be rolling out through our community initiatives this year. Lastly, in terms of culture, because this is actually the 20th anniversary of Xintiandi, we will be launching what we call the Creators 100 campaign to showcase local Chinese creative talent. We have always believed in respecting the local culture, and we believe that the local culture should be celebrated and respected in any location that we develop in.
What we are doing here is an awards-based program where we can work with different creators within each creative pillar, such as fashion design, architecture, product design and such to showcase their work, and to find different ways to spotlight them, and to work with them across our portfolio. Lastly, because this is actually the Shui On Group's 50th anniversary, we also have launched an internal campaign called Pay It Forward. Given a lot of the backdrop of the world right now and the volatility in the global environment due to COVID, we thought it would be more apt if we could actually have a more socially focused campaign to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the group. Without our people, we wouldn't be where we are today.
We thought what better way to celebrate our 50th anniversary than to harness the power and the collective power of our staff and our colleagues. What Pay It Forward is about is for everyone to take a pledge to live a more sustainable lifestyle, and to implement a lower carbon commitment in our work and our life. I might stop there.