Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Shui On Land's 2021 interim results analyst briefing. Thank you very much for joining us online this evening. Today, we are very pleased to have four members of the senior management team with us, Mr. Vincent Lo, Chairman of the Group, Ms. Stephanie Lo, Executive Director of the Group, Mr. Douglas Sung, Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of the Group, and Ms. Jessica Wang, Managing Director of Shui On Management Limited. We will start with the 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 the management during the Q&A session. Without further ado, may I invite Mr. Lo to kickstart our presentation. Mr. Lo, please.
Thank you, Luna. I am pleased to report that for the first half of this year, profit attributable to shareholders totaled CNY 1,082 million. This is a very sharp recovery versus the first half of last year when we were reporting a net loss due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This strong performance was underpinned by robust residential sales and strong growth in our rental income. Property sales increased by 62x` to CNY 10,214 million, due to the contribution from Lakeville V and Wuhan Tiandi La Riva II. There is a very strong recovery also in the commercial portfolio. Total rental and related income was CNY 1,570 million, representing a robust growth of 32% year-on-year. The overall sales have also significantly recovered since the third quarter of last year, and in June of 2021, overall sales reached 149% of the 2020 level.
For the office portfolio, our average occupancy rate is 90%. We have continued to maintain a very strong balance sheet. The net gearing ratio is 45%, similar to the end of last year, and cash and bank deposits total CNY 14,367 million. We will expect to maintain this prudent approach in managing our balance sheet. The board has recommended interim dividend of HKD 0.036 per share for our interim dividend. The government has actually introduced very stringent purchases, restriction, and also the three red lines on the leverage of the developers. That has not really curbed our sales and our property sales for the first half, which increased by 95% to CNY 12,115 million, compared to CNY 6,200 million for the same period in 2020.
Our commercial portfolio has also been performing very strong, increased by 32% year-on-year, the rental and associated income to CNY 1,570 million in the first half of this year. Footfall and revenue have also recovered, and I will not go into detail because my colleagues will give you details. In the first half of this year, we made two purchases in joint venture with partners. The first one is the purchase of the Nanjing IFC in Nanjing CBD through a 50/50 joint venture with Grosvenor Asia Pacific. In June of this year, we signed an agreement with Shanghai Yongye Enterprise (Group) Co., Ltd., which is an enterprise under the Huangpu District in Shanghai to develop Lot 122 of the Taipingqiao project. This is a mixed-use development comprising of residential, commercial, and ancillary facilities with a gross floor area to be close to 100,000 sq m.
Maybe I'll just stop there and let my colleagues take you through the details.
Thank you, Chairman. Let me take up the financials. I'm just going to give the audience a high-level summary of financial. You can find the detail in our interim result announcement, which is already posted on our website. To highlight a few key points, as the Chairman mentioned, revenue increased by seven times to almost CNY 12 billion in the first half, driven mainly by strong property sales recognition. We handled all the units in the Taipingqiao, Lakeville Phase 5, and also in Wuhan, the La Riva II. This contributed to the strong property sales recognition. On the investment property income, we have rental and related income up 26% year-on-year to about CNY 1.24 billion. This, of course, compared to a low base of first half 2020 because of the impact from COVID-19 last year.
In particular, we want to highlight rental income at Shanghai Xintiandi, our flagship property, including the Style 2 renovation which we completed last year. In Shanghai Xintiandi, during the first half of this year, rental income increased by almost 90%. This is quite a remarkable achievement, given the fact that this year marks the 20th anniversary of Shanghai Xintiandi. After managing this property for 20 years, we are still seeing very strong growth, and we are very happy to see the strong results during the first half. On our balance sheet and our capital management, our net debt for the period was 45%, so basically the same as of end of last year. Our net debt was about CNY 21 billion, so also at the same level as of December 2020. If I just give a few highlights on the financials, the P&L.
First of all, on revenue, you can see that for the first half period, it's about CNY 11.9 billion, comprised of primarily property sales of over CNY 10 billion, and then rental income of about CNY 1.25 billion. Gross profit was almost CNY 5 billion, so quite a sharp increase from last year. The gross profit margin at 41%, you can see that it was a bit lower from first half 2020. But last year's figure was somewhat distorted by the fact that most of the revenue came from rental income, which traditionally has a higher margin compared to property sales. Our first half, our 41% gross profit margin, was actually quite in line with our historical average. So far we have not seen any significant compression in margin in our business. Other income is primarily interest income from our cash on hand, and then a slight increase in selling, marketing expenses.
This is directly correlated to increase in property sales activities during the past year. Administrative expenses, more or less the same from same period last year. I will talk a little bit more about the revaluation of our investment properties, but you can see the figure there, which is basically flat from the end of the year. We have held the value of our investment properties fairly stable during the first half. Other gains and losses include mainly costs associated to hedging our Forex exposure, which is classified as other gain and losses. On the share of associate and JVs income, CNY 200 million comprised majority from our joint venture with COFCO in Rainbow City, Ruihong Xincheng, Lot 1 and 7, which we handed over units of Lot 1 during first half, hence the revenue, the income recognition.
On the finance cost, you can see that it's approximately CNY 500 million in the first half of this year, compared to CNY 800 million same period last year. The difference is mainly on net exchange gain and loss. You can see that we had a slight gain of CNY 74 million because of the strength of the CNY in the first half, compared to a loss of CNY 275 million same period last year. This accounts for most of the differences in the total finance cost during the two periods. On the next page, you can see before-tax profit was about CNY 4 billion for the interim period, and then the taxation of slightly over CNY 2.7 billion. This is obviously quite a large figure, and a large portion of that comprise of LAT from the two residential projects we handed over in Taipingqiao Lakeville Phase 5 and also in Wuhan.
If you take out the tax, after tax profit is CNY 1.38 billion, and then attributable to our share, this is CNY 1.08 billion, translates to per share earnings of CNY 0.135. As the chairman mentioned, our board recommend to pay interim dividend of HKD 3.6 cents per share, which is the same amount for interim dividend for 2019. On the next page, on the revenue breakdown, this is for your reference. You can see clearly that most of the property sales revenue came from Taipingqiao and Wuhan. The lower table, the associate revenue on property sales, it came mainly from the COFCO joint venture of Ruihong Xincheng Lot 1, which we handed over some of the units to buyer. On the next page is the investment property income. You can see that on a consolidated level, it's up 26% to CNY 1.24 billion.
Including our JVs and associates, the increase was 32% year-on-year. So a very strong rental growth. In particular, you can see that in the last couple of years, we have added investments at the JV level, so in 5 Corporate Avenue and earlier this year, Nanjing IFC. All these have contributed to the total income. You can also see in the table that pretty much across the board, we have seen double-digit rental growth, with the exception of Shenzhen East Tower 2, which actually will be undergoing AEI renovation starting in October. Starting from late last year, we have been gradually vacating tenants to make room for the AEI. That's why you have seen a drop in the overall rental income. On the IP valuation on the next page, I mentioned that we held it flat in the first half of this year.
You can see that across all the properties, the movement was very, very little. On average, less than half a percent movement from the end of last year. The overall valuation on 100% basis currently is slightly over CNY 50 billion. The attributable to the group is CNY 44.6 billion. Financial position, I have already covered some of these figures. We have cash and bank deposit of about CNY 14.3 billion, slightly down from the end of last year. Similarly, the total debt at CNY 35.6 billion, also slightly down from the end of last year. We can see that the net impact is, net gearing is basically the same as of the end of last year at 45%. Of note is that our cost of debt has continued to fall to an average of 4.5%, excluding bank fees and arrangement fees.
We have been enjoying pretty good cost of financing in the past year, and also it is a reflection of the strength in our balance sheet, where we have been able to continue to reduce our overall costs of financing. On the next page, this is just for reference, the movement in our net gearing over the past few years. You can see that last four or five years, we have been basically holding at about 45%-50% net gearing level. On the next page, our debt profile for the coming one year, second half of this year and first half next year, you can see that we do not have a lot of debt maturity. It is probably about CNY 4 billion of each of the next half year.
The next senior notes due would be at the end of November, so it is about $350 million outstanding balance left in that note, which is equivalent about CNY 2.3 billion. With about CNY 14 billion of cash on hand, we feel reasonably comfortable about our liquidity in the foreseeable future. Next page would be the, just for your reference, the senior note maturity profile. Again, you can see from the table that we have pretty well spread out maturity over the next three, four years. Basically, we have about one senior note maturing per year in the next four years. I think this is a very good and even profile, and does not put a lot of pressure on the group to have midterm refinancing. The next page, I want to highlight our effort in green financing.
We have been doing more in the last couple of years. As the chairman mentioned, in June, we issued our first sustainability-linked bond, SLB, and we are pleased to say that Shui On Land was the first China-based corporation to issue an SLB. We think this is a good achievement. We have very good demand from investor base, particularly investors focusing on ESG. Approximately one third of the allocation went into the hands of ESG-focused investors. We think this is a good balance. Also, the book was 3.75 times oversubscribed. Again, a good indication of the demand for this bond. I think of particular interest is, one of the key feature of the bond would be the sustainability performance target, which is tied into our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission in our portfolio by additional 25% by 2024.
This will be the main effort that our group and our colleagues will be focusing on in the next three years, to further reduce the carbon emission within our portfolio. The last page is just, again, for your reference, the balance sheet and total asset base of the group. You can see, again, it has been fairly steady and stable in the last few years. Our total asset base have been stabilized at around CNY 110 billion level, of which about 46% is completed investment properties, and then about 10% is commercial properties under development. On that, I'll turn over to Stephanie to talk about the commercial business.
Thanks, Douglas. Here, let me give you all an update on our commercial portfolio. We have a leading commercial portfolio in Shanghai. We're one of the largest commercial portfolios in Shanghai right now, in terms of scale. The asset value of this portfolio is CNY 79 billion. In the next chart, you will see that the asset value attributable to the group from that CNY 79 billion is CNY 46 billion. About 60% of these assets are already completed and generating rental income. On an attributable basis, our attributable interest is about 58%. Our rental and related Income actually did very well this first half. It increased by 32% to CNY 1.6 billion. Some of the key drivers for that, as Douglas mentioned, is the AEI that was completed and reopened last November at Shanghai Xintiandi.
Our rental income increased 89% year-on-year, and we are really encouraged by this, and we will continue to embark on an AEI for Style 2 coming this year. The idea here is to actually enlarge the portfolio of Shanghai Xintiandi. The total asset will be about 80,000 sq m of total GFA from north and south block plus Style 2, and this is actually a very sizable portfolio in a city center directly linked to the subway, in a very iconic location that we continue to develop and upgrade. From our office portfolio point of view, 2020, due to COVID, was a very challenging year. But we see in the first half, very strong pickup in terms of our occupancy. Our office portfolio has an average occupancy now of 90%, but actually to date in Shanghai, our office portfolio is over 95% leased.
I think we've seen a strong pickup in terms of demand and shows the resilience of these core locations that we have within our office portfolio, especially in Shanghai. Including JB and Associates, our rental income has increased by 32% in total to CNY 1.5 billion, and 73% of the rental income actually comes from our Shanghai portfolio. From a retail basis, actually, our portfolio has seen strong growth relative to even 2019 in terms of rent and sales. We continue to push our first-in-China, first-in-city flagship strategy. We're happy to report that we've signed on a couple of new tenants. Valentino Beauty is opening their global first store in Shanghai Xintiandi, and we have a number of new additions to the Xintiandi family, including Creed, Tom Dixon, 3CE, Maison Kitsuné, and Lululemon's new flagship store.
All of these were increased in our portfolio, and we have seen very strong improvement on our sales as a result. Xintiandi, as we always think of it as a cultural and social destination, we continue to actively program the properties to stimulate the vitality of our destinations. We continue to run all of our IP portfolio events. As part of our portfolio, the software, we have a CRM program called iXintiandi, it is an app. Our total member take-up has increased significantly. In terms of member sales generated from these members of iXintiandi, it increased 141% year-on-year, reaching about CNY 1 billion in sales this year. As part of the 20th anniversary of Xintiandi, we have launched a campaign this year that is multiple events and programs that spread throughout the year.
As part of the first part of this campaign in the first half, we launched a creative Shanghai Future City Forum in conjunction with Bloomberg. This was very well received and the forum's focus was on the future of cities and the challenges that they will face. As the second part of our campaign, we also launched what we call the CREATORS 100, and the focus here is to promote local Chinese designers and creative talent. So in five key areas of focus of fashion, design, architecture, art, and social impact. These creators will be awarded with a special prize, and we hope that we can continue to spotlight these creative talents and give them more room to grow within our portfolio and within the China market. In the next page you will see we have a major opening of our mall, Hall of the Sun.
This project is situated in Shanghai, within the inner ring. It is part of our Ruihong Xincheng project. It started construction in 2017, and we are really happy and excited for the opening on September 19th. The mall, which is opening, having its soft opening, is 180,000 square meters. There are two office buildings that are also part of that site that are 147,000 square meters of premium grade A office. The name of that is Corporate Avenue Ruihong Xintiandi. We have some new tenants coming to the site, including Muji's new supermarket concept that was launched, and this is the China first flagship store that will be launched here in Hall of the Sun. We also have a new kids floor called Kids Social, and this is the largest one-stop kids location in Shanghai. The total area is 25,000 square meters.
It includes Hamleys first shop in Shanghai, a massive toy store, as part of this anchor location as well as Meland. We have a number of new concepts coming in. Sports Social is also a new concept that will be on the sixth to seventh floor of this mall. It includes trampolining, indoor skiing equestrian activities, et cetera. There are these new sports and activity lifestyle centers that will be created. Pets is a new trend, or it is very much part of the lifestyle of these younger high-spending consumers. We actually created a zone called Pet Social that will bring in new pet services. It has a special zone where it has Mr. Zoo as one of the anchor tenants, and it is almost a petting zoo concept.
This will actually drive, we hope, a lot of family spend and a lot more interest-based spending to our site. I might pause there and I will hand it over to Jessica to share more about our development projects.
Okay. Thanks, Stephanie. Next. As Chairman mentioned before, we had very strong residential sales in the first half of this year. Our contract sales increased by 95% to CNY 12.1 billion on year-on-year basis. Our projects launched are very popular in the market, especially we had very strong sales performance in Shanghai Ruihong Xincheng, Ocean One and Shanghai Panlong Tiandi. Next. As of June 30, 2021, total subscribed sales of CNY 1.8 billion were recorded, which will be converted to contract sales in the second half of this year. Next. Here I would like to highlight Ruihong Xincheng, Ocean One. It contributed CNY 5.6 billion contract and subscribed sales in the first half. As we all know, Ruihong Xincheng is located within the inner ring of Shanghai in Luwan area. It is an integrated community comprising office, shopping center, culture, entertainment spaces and a residential property.
With convenient transportation, rich commercial facilities and our premium brand, it received overwhelming market response. We launched the two batches in January and July with 450 units in total, and all the units were sold on the first day of launch. The average selling price was at CNY 115,000 per square meter. We did an analysis on our buyers in terms of the geography, we can see 97% of our buyers are from Shanghai. Only 3% are from other cities and provinces. In terms of the age, 41% of the buyers are aged between 36 and 45. This shows that our property is appealing to the people who are middle class elites with high income and high house purchasing scores. 92% of our buyers are for self-use, with reasons including marriage, improvement of living conditions. Next.
Looking forward, we have a strong pipeline for the second half of this year. We expect to launch more residential property developments for sales in the second half. We have a total of 387,300 square meter residential GFA available for sales. About 73% of GFA are from Shanghai projects. Our attributable GFA is 220,000 square meter. Next. Here are some renderings and photos of Ruihong Xincheng Lot 167A, which will be newly launched in the second half of this year. This lot is just located under Metro Line 10. We will provide lots of small units to the market. Next. These are some photos for another landmark piece project, Lakeville Five, phase 2 at Taipingqiao, which will have 36,800 square meter of GFA ready for sale.
These projects have received a lot of purchase intentions, and we are very confident to have a good sales performance in the second half. Next. In short, we have strong residential development sellable resources in the future. The total amount was CNY 54 billion with attributable value at CNY 34.9 billion. It was based on our current valuation of our land bank. More than CNY 40 billion sellable resources were in Shanghai. Next. For commercial development, we also have a strong portfolio in Shanghai and other cities. It will drive for rental growth and capital recycling in the future. The slide shows the list of commercial properties under development and for future development. In Shanghai, we own and manage 640,000 sq m of commercial properties, 75% are GFA for office use and 25% are for retail.
For other cities, which including Wuhan, Chongqing and Foshan, the total GFA of commercial properties was 2,275,000 sq m. The total size our commercial property portfolios were 2,915,000 sq m, of which 65% were for office and 35% were for retail. This concludes my part. I would like to hand over to Stephanie for the next part.
Thanks, Jessica. I will share briefly here a summary about our key achievements in terms of sustainable development and ESG in the first half of this year. Our 5C sustainable development strategy targets as a summary is at the back, and if you are interested, it is the last page of our presentation. Our key achievements in the first half of this year, we are the first China-based developer and company in the real estate sector to commit to the Science Based Targets initiative. We set our emissions reduction to reduce well below 2 degrees, in terms of global warming, in alliance with the Paris Accord. In June, we successfully launched our first sustainability- linked bodn, as Douglas mentioned, reducing our carbon emission intensity by 25% by 2024, on a 2019 basis. We are happy to report that we have secured 100% renewable energy for our Wuhan commercial assets.
This actually totals amount of 10% of our total SOL electricity usage, so this is a big step towards our carbon neutrality goals in the long term. We continue to find new sources of green energy to help reinforce this goal. We have entered into a strategic partnership with Green Common, earlier in the year, to launch green menus. This is part of our 5C signature initiative because we hope that through these partnerships, we can actually launch green menus across all of our restaurants in our portfolio, so that any consumer coming into Xintiandi or any of our malls can actually have the choice to eat green. As we know, this is actually a big step towards carbon reduction in the long term. So giving consumers that choice is actually a strong luxury.
We also mentioned just now, launched our CREATORS 100 program, spotlighting Chinese creative talent, and this is part of our 20th anniversary campaign. In terms of sustainable awards and development, we are happy to report that Wuhan Tiandi Site A has won the ULI Asia Pacific Award for Excellence. The Hub has also won the ULI Global Award for Excellence. As part of our ongoing sustainability efforts, we continue to upgrade the performance of a lot of our existing buildings. So KIC, which is actually an over 10-year-old project, we have achieved the WELL Health-Safety Rating certification, even for a relatively mature project such as KIC. So I will stop here.