Hello, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Link Annual Report, Annual Results Presentation. I'm Christy, Director of Investor Relations. Let me introduce what we have on the stage today. We have our Group CEO, George Hongchoy; our CFO, Kok Siong Ng; our COO, Greg Chubb; and our CCDO, Ronald Tham. Here are our agendas today. If you want to download our presentation or our announcement, you can scan the QR code here. I'll give you a few seconds if you want to. Okay, when you're ready, let's start. Let me hand the floor to George. Thank you.
All right, thank you, Christy. Let me start with this slide, which gives you a highlight of the presentation that we'll be giving today. Amidst a very challenging macroeconomic environment and serious business challenges in Hong Kong and mainland China, I'm happy to report that Link managed to deliver a very solid set of results, which I credit to the whole Link team. We have seen valuations come under pressure, and we expect the environment to continue to be very challenging in the year ahead. Given this, we have initiated a number of efforts aimed at reinforcing our resilience and to protect our DPU. Central to this is a long-term diversification strategy, which has helped us to protect our earnings in recent years, and we'll continue to move forward with this.
As mentioned at the start, Link REIT's results for the financial year are solid, and that reinforces our resilience in the face of this uncertain macro condition and intensifies the challenges for our business. While we are pleased to be able to deliver another year of growth in distributable income to our unitholder, with an increase of 4.6% year-on-year, we should stress that some of the positive contributions are one-off items. We achieved a DPU growth of 3.7% year-on-year. However, the NAV per unit declined 9.6% year-on-year, largely on decreasing asset valuation from cap rate expansion in most markets. We retain a strong financial position, with net gearing at a healthy 21.2%. This, in addition to robust credit ratings and competitive financing costs, provides a solid foundation to navigate the challenges ahead and enables us to capitalize on potential opportunities. We move into business and strategy.
Link has evolved over the past 20 years with active management and asset recycling to drive growth. Since 2015, we expanded into mainland China, Australia, and Singapore, reinforcing our diversification strategy and solidifying our position as one of Asia's leading property investors and managers. A lot has been achieved in these 20 years, but it's only the beginning. We are at an important and exciting pivotal point in Link's development under Link 3.0. You can see from here how the Link REIT portfolio has undergone significant transformation over the years. From the IPO time, our portfolio consisted of 81% retail and 19% car parks, only in Hong Kong. Throughout all these years, we have now transformed into a more diversified portfolio across different geographies and property types.
We have consistently shown that we are able to unlock value for our unit holders even during challenging periods such as the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and social unrest in Hong Kong. Since 2005, we have delivered annualized total returns of 10.9%, which outperform the Hang Seng Index and the Hang Seng Property Index. Our portfolio value has also grown more than fivefold since IPO. The chart shows how the diversification we initiated 10 years ago has enabled us to continue to grow these past few years and become an increasingly sizable portion of our NPI. Looking forward, we will continue to pursue further portfolio optimization through Link 3.0 strategy, and we will be updating on this in the presentation. Our commitment to value creation is reflected across all aspects of our business, including our asset management capabilities, supported by operational efficiency, community engagement, and innovation.
Our proven exit track record and diversified Link REIT portfolio are key drivers for our success. For further detail, we'll refer to the annual report where we'll disclose further. During the year, we undertook several key strategic initiatives to enhance our resilience, and let me highlight a few of these. It was another busy year of portfolio optimization, and we continue to improve operational efficiency. Greg will provide more details in his section. As for the investment management business, we put in place a pan-regional team and infrastructure. The foundations are now fully set for the business. Lastly, through the nomination committee, our appointments to the board were made, including the chair and INEDs. Let me first pass to KS to share with us the financial updates.
Thank you, George. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for coming. We have seen steady growth across our portfolio during the last financial year. In Hong Kong, we achieved total growth in revenue and NPI. This was driven by relatively better retail sales and savings in utility expenses. In mainland China, both total revenue and NPI are also up. This was mainly boosted by the full-year contribution of Link Plaza Qibao. On the overseas front, our retail assets in Singapore and Australia recorded nearly full occupancies and positive rental reversions. Our low gearing helped us to keep borrowing costs competitive and weather the storm of valuation declines. I'll come back with more details on capital management and valuation in a while. In this slide, we are showing a simplified version of our P&L.
Despite our G&A going up 19.5% year-on-year, a large part was due to LTI scheme adjustment, legal and consultant fees, and uncapitalized expenses from exploring M&A deals. Excluding these items, G&A would have been up 6.9%. Another item to take note would be the net finance cost. The increase was due to the acquisition of Link Plaza Qibao. Excluding such costs, net finance costs decreased by 1.4% due to effective interest rate hedging. Back to valuation, total portfolio value as of 31st March 2025 declined by 4.7%, half and half, mainly due to, firstly, cap rate expansion in Hong Kong and mainland China, and FX depreciation against Hong Kong dollar for the overseas. Our robust FX hedging strategy effectively mitigated the extent of the decline in the total value of investment properties in Hong Kong dollar terms. Lastly, capital management.
Our robust financial position is well supported by a healthy balance sheet, as shown by the key metrics here. As of 31st March 2025, net gearing remained low, while the average borrowing cost remained competitive. Fixed debt ratio is in the upper range of 50%-70%, and we'll continue to closely monitor the movement of interest rates. Our financial stability is reinforced through FX risk management, which includes extensive hedging of non-Hong Kong dollar distributable income and overseas assets. Over the financial year, we have been repaying our debt. Debt balance as of 31st March 2025 is reduced to HKD 54 billion from HKD 60 billion a year ago. Our A ratings from all three credit agencies enable us to secure favorable terms for future funding needs, and we have achieved a lower overall margin in refinancing this year.
Furthermore, we remain well below the key governance thresholds set by the rating agencies. This gives us headroom to capture acquisitions and other opportunities when needed. Let me pass over to Greg for operational highlights. Thank you.
Thanks, KS, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with our Hong Kong retail segment performance first. Where retail businesses in Hong Kong continue to face market-wide challenges amid intensifying competition, rising costs, and cross-border travel, this has seen total Hong Kong retail sales decline 7% over the period. Portfolio sales for us at Link have declined at a lower rate over the same period at -3%, and this has given our focus on food and non-discretionary trades. Leasing reversions over the period have turned slightly negative for the full year at -2.2%, with ongoing pressures in particular in supermarket and Chinese restaurant categories. Occupancy across our portfolio has remained stable and has been preserved at a very solid 97.8%, and this ensures a stable and predictable income stream.
All of this has seen revenue growth of 1.5% year-on-year, and such results demonstrate the ongoing relevance and resilience of our portfolio, with the primary purpose of servicing Hong Kong people for their essential daily needs. In response to the evolving market and landscape, we continue our leasing efforts to service emerging demand and continue to optimize our tenancy mix. For the financial year, we successfully signed over 600 new leases, including the introduction of over 200 new businesses to our portfolio, whilst maintaining a healthy 80% retention rate on leases that expired over the period. Additionally, we continue to focus on emerging trends, particularly across fast food and food and beverage categories, as well as family entertainment and traditional Chinese medicine clinics, to enrich our offerings and continue to drive improved footfall.
By strategically managing our deep tenant-customer relationships with brands across Hong Kong, mainland China, and our international portfolios, we aim to enhance the attractiveness of our retail assets and stay relevant with consumer preferences. Now turning to our Hong Kong car park and related businesses, where we achieved 1.7% year-on-year revenue increases, mainly due to higher tariffs. During the year, we introduced a new car park management system designed to enhance our operational efficiencies and also maximize utilization. This AI-powered system enables us to pilot systems such as dynamic pricing schemes, as well as the introduction of new products and services. One of those new products is the one Link Pass, which offers a flat monthly rate and allows pass holders to park at hourly bays in designated car parks across Hong Kong. This product has proven to be very popular amongst customers since its recent launch.
We'll continue to develop innovative products to enhance revenue, utilization, and increase car parking traffic. Now we'll move to mainland China retail. Over the year, we've seen that Chinese consumer spending has remained relatively subdued, with portfolio performance differing between north and south. Our southern assets continue to deliver strong results, while assets in the north faced headwinds amid a softer market environment. Occupancy, however, remains solid at just under 96%, and rental reversion improved from -3.2% at the half to 0.7% for the full year. If we excluded Link Plaza Songdo Zhongguanc un in Beijing, where we're undertaking significant refurbishment and asset enhancement works, rental reversion across the balance of our shopping centres in mainland China is strong at 7.6%.
In February last year, as you all know, we acquired the remaining 50% interest in Link Plaza Qibao in Shanghai, and I'm pleased to confirm that we've successfully integrated the assets and the very experienced center-based team to Link. We continue to enhance our mainland portfolio's performance through active asset management and significant strategic enhancements across our portfolio. Now we'll move on to our international retail portfolio. We're in Singapore. The 99.6% high occupancy rate shows that there is robust leasing demand from tenants, including new-to-market overseas retailers, in particular F&B operators. Overall, sustained demand for suburban Singapore retail, in addition to the dominant strategic location of our malls, has delivered strong 17.8% reversion over the period.
In Australia, our retail centers there have also sustained near full occupancy at 99%, and productivity was driven by the ongoing introduction of new brands to optimize our trade mix, as well as higher overall footfall and general positive activity in the Sydney CBD, where our three properties are located. As a result, tenant sales grew at 7.7% year-on-year, whilst we achieved solid reversion rate on expiring leases at 4.3%. I'll point out, in addition to these positive trends in Australia, it's important to note the income growth is underpinned by the annual increases contracted in our leases there, and this sees us at a weighted average of 4.7% per annum on those leases. Now we'll move on to our international office portfolio, where we have a relatively long whale of 4.4 years, which underpins the resilience of that portfolio.
Speculative fit-outs continue to be well received by small to mid-size office tenants in the Australian office market to help speed up the leasing process and reduce friction, which supports leasing outcomes and portfolio occupancy. Favorable supply and demand dynamics in the Sydney office market in particular are also expected to be supportive of leasing activities and further positive net absorption there. This is given limited new supply of floor space in the short to medium term. As for mainland China logistics, thanks to the efforts of our leasing team, the portfolio continued to maintain a high occupancy of 97.4%, with three of our five assets there nearly fully let. I will point out, however, that demand for new space remains relatively mixed. Our project pipelines sit in Hong Kong at HKD 2.3 billion for retail projects and HKD 180 million in mainland China for retail projects there.
We're always looking to proactively unlock asset value through these programs, and currently, our asset enhancement projects are predominantly tenant-led and are well supported by tenants and are smaller in scale. This year, we also hit a major milestone, now with over 3,000 public EV charging points across Hong Kong and now 58 solar power systems across Hong Kong. This makes Link the city's largest private provider of public EV charging points and the leading private solar power operator. We're planning to continue to expand our reach and network with further EV locations and solar PV arrays across Hong Kong in the near term. Our active approach to sustainability ensures all initiatives align closely with our business priorities and deliver operational efficiencies.
On decarbonization, our ongoing investment in energy-saving initiatives has reduced carbon intensity by 21% compared to our 2018-2019 baseline, and this has also delivered some HKD 8.8 million in energy savings this year alone. On climate resilience, we went beyond protecting our assets to create financial value. Proactively communicating our flood protection efforts to insurers resulted in an 11.7% reduction in Hong Kong's property all-risk premiums. With this renewal, we also became the first real estate company in APAC to have sustainability-linked insurance. Next, I'll pass on to George for outlook. Thanks, George.
Thank you, Greg. Here are some of the macro factors from both global and local contexts that impact our business. We expect conditions in Hong Kong and mainland China where reversions turn negative this year to be challenging. Nonetheless, I would like to emphasize that there are still some positive developments in our key markets. For instance, the automatic land lease extension in Hong Kong removes uncertainty for landowners, while the mega events in Hong Kong and Singapore are expected to boost tourism and foot traffic. In mainland China, the central government has introduced a series of measures to stabilize financial markets and stimulate consumption, aiming to support economic outlooks. These favorable developments provide some cause for optimism amidst the complex macro outlook. In response to these challenges, we are focused on what is within our control.
In order to protect unit holders' return, management has implemented several countermeasures, including operational efficiency and cost reduction efforts. At the same time, we are keeping a broad vision to identify opportunities for diversification into new assets and geographies. In the longer term, we are cautiously executing our strategy to set the foundation for longer-term growth, and we'll continue to invest with caution into future growth drivers, in particular portfolio optimization and the real estate investment business. Let's revisit our Link 3.0 strategy with a brief update. We previously mentioned that through Link 3.0, we aim to offer a REIT-plus investment case to be achieved through portfolio optimization and real estate investment management business growth. These two key drivers under Link 3.0, firstly, to actively manage and diversify our portfolio. We've been proactively looking at recycling and acquisition opportunities in our focus markets of Australia, Singapore, and Japan.
At the same time, we continue to exercise prudence. Secondly, we continue to expand the real estate investment management capability under Link Asset Management Limited to work with and provide services to different capital sources. We are delighted to have officially launched our fund business, Link Real Estate Partners. We will continue to explore a variety of other ways to diversify our source of income and to collaborate with different capital partners, including reviewing opportunities to accelerate the expansion of the real estate investment management business through both organic and inorganic initiatives. I want to touch on remuneration. During the year led by the Remuneration Committee, we've engaged an independent consultant to review our remuneration strategy, and the central emphasis has been to support Link's strategy and further increase the alignment between executive compensation and unit holder interests.
Through this process, the Chair and the committee consulted several long-term unit holders, some in this room with us. We are grateful for the constructive feedback, and we are committed to enhancing the transparency of our remuneration scheme. You will see further disclosure taking effect of this new plan from 2025-2026 in our annual report. Let me pass to Ronald for the distribution calendar.
Thanks, George. Moving on to our distribution calendar. Last day of cum final dividend is 17th June. Record day is 25th of June. The final date for Scrip Election is 18th July, and the distribution date is 4th of August. As a reminder, we will be moving to providing quarterly operational updates, which will be uploaded to the stock exchange website. The next update is expected to be in August. Now, we'll open the floor for Q&A. For those attending in person, please raise your hand if you would like to ask a question. For those attending via webcast, you may submit your question using the Q&A function. Please state the name and the company you represent, and may I have the first question? I think I can see the first one here, Carl. Yeah.
Hi, management. Thank you very much for the Q&A opportunity. I am Karl Chan from JPMorgan. I have two questions. The first question is more on Hong Kong retail. Just curious, in terms of tenant sales, I think last year it was down by around 3% for the full year, right? If we just compare the fourth quarter and the third quarter, how was the trend? Is it better, or is it a weakening, or similar? That is on the quarterly tenant sales trend. In terms of rental reversion for the full year, last year it was down by around 2.2%. Because we recall that in the first half, it was up a bit, it implies that in the second half, it might be down by around 4%-5%.
Just curious, for the next financial year, what's our expectation on the rental reversion? If it's negative, would the magnitude be slightly better than 4% or 5%, or would it be similar? That's my first question on Hong Kong retail sales. The second question is more for Mr. George Hongchoy. You have been with the company for around 15 years, right? Obviously, under your leadership, the company has grown a lot. Just curious, what's your plan in the next few years within the company? How do you foresee your role in the company? Thank you.
Right. We'll get Greg to answer the first question. Give me time to think about how to answer your second question. Yeah, thanks for being the first off the mark on publishing the report on our results early today.
Karl, just on tenant sales first. We have seen an improvement from the third quarter and the fourth quarter. The worst was last year, and it has progressively improved over the year. I will say that there is a lag in terms of what then happens with leasing outcomes. The leasing for us has got progressively worse over the year with regards to the reversion. I think in the current environment with Hong Kong retail sales declining by 7%, for us to deliver negative 2% or thereabouts on reversions is a pretty credible outcome. If you dig a bit deeper, for our shops, the negative reversion was about 1%. For our markets, it was negative 9.5%, thereabouts. Quite a bit of pressure in the fresh markets.
Probably the most pleasing thing in all of that, and the strategy that Gary and Emmanuel, who run our leasing and asset management teams who are in the room today, is preserving occupancy. We have been able to preserve our occupancy at around 98%, which is very, very good and an absolute sharp focus for us as a management team. It feels like retail sales are starting to improve, albeit we are comping very poor timing last year. We have to put it into perspective. In terms of retail reversion, I do not have my crystal ball with me, but I think it just comes back to the purpose of our portfolio, and that remains unchanged here in Hong Kong.
Focusing on food and beverage service and trades that Hong Kongs rely on for their daily needs puts us in a pretty enviable position in the strategic locations of our assets. It is the same thing. I am not avoiding your question, but I would suggest that reversions will not turn positive this year. They will be negative this year. I would suggest they would be low to mid-single digits negative. That would be my best assessment at this point in time. We have started off the year reasonably well, albeit it is still very early days. The focus for us is retaining tenants. That retention rate that we delivered last year of 80% is a focus. Preserving portfolio occupancy is a focus. If that comes with some negative reversion, we are prepared for that.
I hope Christy has prepared my answers already, so. Time flies when you're having fun. I think that's the quickest answer that I can give to you. In terms of good corporate governance, any CEO on the board should be planning succession from the day the CEO has been appointed. We have been talking about succession every year. The board has a practice of annually doing a CEO mapping. We just completed one recently. That is something that we want to make sure that we understand who are the candidates available externally whenever something happens. We used to say, since we're in Hong Kong, rather than sitting on the bus, what if the preferred tram runs over me and I could not come to work? That is something that we do on a regular basis.
Having said that, I think the other part, which is actually very important for part of this discussion, regardless of whether it is me or not, at the end of the day, it's teamwork. What you have seen is an upgrade in the management team that we have done over the last few years. I used to be, and we talked about this when we met, I used to be CEO, CIO, COO, and CXO. Now you have a COO sitting here, you have a CIO sitting on the floor. Not literally on the floor, but we have an expanded team. I think that alone provides a lot of options for the board. When the time comes, it's not a decision by any one party. It's a board, myself, my family, all of that. They might come.
The key issue is in terms of governance, this is a business-as-usual event that we do every year. We just completed it recently and reported to the nomination committee. We will do that as a matter of course anyway. So far, having a lot of fun.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question. To be fair, I want to take one from the right, Cindy.
Thank you for the opportunity. This is Cindy from Citi. Three questions from me, if I may. The first question is on future distribution sustainability. I think at the presentation, you mentioned trying all measures to protect future distribution of challenges and negative reversion. Just trying to get more color on exactly what measures we are taking for, say, full year 2026 and 2027 next two years, given all the challenges you have mentioned. Will you be more actively looking for organic measures? I remember last time you mentioned looking for non-rental income. Or will you be more actively looking for, say, inorganic growth? This is the first question. Second question is on tenant remixing. Just trying to wonder if there is further room to optimize tenant mix in order to cushion the reversion pressure. I think last year, education was actually posting a positive reversion.
Is there any consideration to maybe downsize some underperforming trades and improve some outperforming ones and introduce more, say, overseas brands into the portfolio? This is the second question. The third question is on your 20 years anniversary. Just trying to think about if there's more of a long-term new strategic thinking after 20 years of operations. Also, will you consider any celebration that shares the joy with your unit holders? Thank you.
Greg, for?
I've got the first two. Yeah, I can talk to just some of the operational efficiency measures that we're talking to. Pleasingly, for the period that we've just spoken to today in Hong Kong, we've seen our NPI margin improve from 75.3% to 76.3%. That has come with a combination, I should say, of factors to try and enhance our operational efficiency. We're very fortunate to have a business with significant scale here in Hong Kong. We're continuing with a number of things that I won't talk about today to try and enhance that operating margin. That is a real focus for us. In terms of tenant remixing, what we're finding is that, one, we're retaining about 80% of the tenants that have expiring leases. That gives us an opportunity to introduce new retailers to our portfolio.
We have spoken about the 600 new leases that we have written over the period, and 200 of them are tenants that have not had shops with us before. I think that is a pretty good ratio. I will say, however, that leasing to new tenants comes at a bigger negative reversion than it does from us retaining tenants. What we are seeing is that quite clearly in Hong Kong, when we retain tenants, we get a better outcome on balance than when we are having to lease to new tenants. That does not mean that we will not take steps to continue to evolve our tenancy mix and offering. I think with the 200-odd new leases that we have been able to bring in, it allows us to do that. Your other question around overseas retailers, we are seeing a reasonable introduction of new overseas businesses to our portfolio.
Most of them are from mainland China. I will say in other markets like Singapore, for example, we're seeing a significant number of mainland retailers entering Singapore, and we're benefiting from that. I do not know if there is anything else you want to add on the distribution piece, George, but probably the most important thing that we're really focused on are those operational efficiencies. I think a big step for us over the last 12 months is enhancing the operating margin here in Hong Kong.
On slide seven, a lot of history, a lot of things that we've done over 20 years, from 1.0 to 2.0 to what we talk about 3.0. This particular description is not really the matter that I think one should focus on, but we've dealt with a lot of cycles. I think we've built a business where the corporate culture, the resilience of the business, the team have been able to deal with a lot of these cycles. Every time when we go through each of these, in the middle of it, we are faced with immense uncertainty. We didn't know when we got out of the protests. We don't know when we got out of GFC or COVID. Again, now we're facing a time where people are saying that there's a lot of uncertainty because of politics and other reasons.
I think one of the good things that Link have done over the years is built a very resilient set of assets, very strong balance sheet that can withstand some degree of financial stress. Obviously, if there's a significant market crash, we also need to handle that. We have done a lot of stress tests and scenario planning. Looking ahead on slide 30, we talk about as part of Link 3.0 how we optimize the current portfolio further. Recycling in Hong Kong may be a little bit challenging, but in mainland China and elsewhere, we will continue to do that. Actively managing it to try and improve the productivity of the balance sheet. At the same time, growing the real estate investment business. That is something that we can talk about in a bit more detail later on. Yeah, we will celebrate.
It is on November 25th when we were listed 20 years ago. We managed to find a venue that is free, luckily. In the mode of cost-cutting, that is quite important. Mark your calendar, afternoon of 25th of November, come and have a drink. It is free for you to come and drink. We will pay for the drink. The venue, luckily, is free. We hope to really celebrate the past success. The past is not less important, except as a reference for us to really think about how we are going to manage the next cycle. In the midst of that, there is a lot of things that we have already talked about. Operating efficiency, cost control, and all those are extremely important for us to deal with this. We are in a high-margin business. When revenue comes down, there is only so much we can do.
There needs to be a discipline in terms of controlling costs so that when we rebound, we are a strong business. We need to make sure that the team is in place for us to handle when this new opportunity comes. How can we, at the same time, do that? Build a team that takes care of new opportunities and at the same time be efficient and be resilient through this cycle. The team's focus on quite a lot of those ideas. We're happy to discuss more later.
Okay. Mark? John, sorry. Yeah, Mark, yeah.
Thank you, Management. This is Mark Leung from UBS. I got about, I think, three questions. I think the first one will be more like a housekeeping one. I think, Management, you mentioned in this year we got certain one-off items. Just not sure if you could elaborate what kind of key one-off items and amounts we should be aware. I think that's the first questions. The second question is regarding on the recent logo changes. Could you walk us through what was the rationale for the company logo changes? Definitely, we recently launched the Link Real Estate Partner. In the long run, how should we think about on the corporate structure? Because I think there's some, I think, news reporting that we may do some spin-off maybe in Singapore. Would like to hear your thoughts.
Last but not least, I think George also mentioned about the cost control. From which areas will you mostly pay attention to in terms of cost cutting? Thank you.
One-off items? I think if you think about it in our business across domain geography and the, I guess, the complexity that we are in now, we do have quite a fair bit of one-off items year to year. Specifically to last year, I think what we have mentioned publicly is that we have been going through some, I guess, tax clarification in mainland. We ended up in, I guess, a favorable tax resolution this year. On top of those, one-off items included will be things like deal expenses as we look at deals throughout the year. As an accounting practice, if you consummate the deal, it gets capitalized in the balance sheet. If not, the deal gets aborted, then the expenses need to be expensed out into the P&L.
Put together, I mean, we wanted to highlight that this year, if anything, when you put all the numbers together, plus and minuses, it is a significant number that we want to mention to you guys. It is probably in the range of about HKD 100 million this year. Perhaps just a little bit more, elaborating a little bit more of that. The G&A costs, which includes some of the staff costs, each year, if we do well in unit price, then staff cost goes up because the LTI accrual actually goes up. It is a good thing. While that goes up, our investor is actually making more money. There is that alignment. This year, our unit price has gone up 20-odd % year to date. That has reflected in the staff cost increase as well.
Let's hope that will keep going up, partly because we do want unit price to go up. We have looked at a number of inorganic transactions. We have not done any. Otherwise, we would have announced them. By not doing them, we have to write off the costs. That is what KS was mentioning, the consultancy and the legal costs relating to certain M&A transactions that have not materialized. I want to just expand on that because some of you have asked about the G&A cost going up again on staff costs and the staff costs relating to the number of people that we have hired under Link Real Estate Partners. There is this choice of building organically where the staff cost will go up as you build the team in order to come up with the revenue from the fund business.
We do an inorganic transaction where the staff cost will not be seen so much because it will actually be capitalized as goodwill when we buy a platform. Right? Obviously, afterwards, we will have the staff cost, but we will have a much higher income. Now, by growing it from scratch, we'll probably have a bigger J- curve for a period of time in order to deliver that business. There is always this strategic discussion whether we do it organically, where there is a higher hit on the P&L and deliver that business, or do it inorganic where you have a goodwill hit but not a P&L hit to deliver that.
A reason why I want to mention that is in order for our unit holder to protect our bottom line, while we have this hit to our P&L with the increased staff cost for the Link Real Estate Partners staff, we also want to look at efficiency that we can gain by rationalizing the team, improving processes and delayering, etc., and those things to save staff costs from the organic business so that we can actually fund partly, if not wholly, the building up of the fund management team. Those are some of the trade-offs that we're looking at. I think so far, that's something that we will continue to need to do as we build this business in the coming years. The local change actually, firstly, I think it's worth saying that it's almost cost us nothing. We've done most of it in-house.
We did not pay $5 million to change the name back to the same alphabet. That is important. The key is we actually really have not changed. For 20 years, we are employees of Link Asset Management Limited. We put a logo, Link REIT, which is the REIT that we manage. We are actually employees of Link Asset Management Limited. What we would like to do is to tell people that we are employees of Link Asset Management Limited. This is the part of the business, part of the functions that we perform. We manage Link REIT for 20 years. We will go in the future through Link Real Estate Partners, which is a 100% subsidiary of Link Asset Management Limited, to manage other funds.
We will have multiple vehicles to attract different capital sources to manage and to deliver fee income, deliver different investment opportunities to our unit holders. It is a slight shift of focus. At the end of the day, hopefully, that shift allows people to, when they read our report, when they try to understand us, realize that we are as much a fund manager as much as a REIT since we are stable together, unlike some of our peers in this part of the world. You mentioned spin-offs and all that. We study all sorts of options: C- REITs, S- REITs, A- REITs, buying some platforms, selling assets in portfolio, individual. As we responded in the past, until the deal was done, there is really not much we can talk about because there are so many variations of timing and opportunity. Not much to share.
I know you've read an article in Singapore, but there's one author coming up with one idea. The rationalization that we're doing hopefully will help us to mitigate some of the challenges in terms of cost increase as well and make us a little bit more efficient as we move into the next phase. The focus continues for the portfolio to invest in Asia Pacific. Hopefully, the market return for some of the location for us to do more diversification and recycling. Thanks.
Thank you, Management. This is Raymond from HSBC. I got also three questions. The first question is regarding to the Link 3.0 strategy. Can Management provide us the latest update? For example, what should we expect the AUM scale of your fund management business in the next 12 months or sometimes say by 2030 so we can have more sense about the scale going forward? The second question is about financing cost. The company did a very good job in managing financing costs. Should we expect further optimization improvement in financing costs in the next 12 months' time given the easing or global environment here? The third question is about the asset value. We did see some changes in the asset value recently.
Can Management comment about the changes or trend of the cap rate, or will there be any further compression in value of your asset? Thank you.
I'll talk about the financing costs. I think we have done well the last financial year. I think it's part process, part the market driving the C&H cross-currency swap that gave us a premium. And the fact that we were not fully hedged on RMB was a lever that we could play with. As of today, we are broadly and largely hedged across all our overseas assets. That said, I guess the last two, three weeks was a surprise for all of us, considering most of you are working in the banks, how fast the highball has plunged. It all started from, I guess, the US tariff liberation day. Everybody started focusing on U.S. fiscal positions, trade deficits. Suddenly, the capital started flowing into Hong Kong. Also because there was a CATL IPO that everybody was watching.
The flow suddenly has picked up very quickly and HIBOR has dipped to 0.5 and is bouncing back up to 0.6 for one month. That is it, clearly, in the short term. I echo HKMA's warning that it is going to be temporary, that HIBOR will be so low, and swap offer rate is still hanging at about 2.8, 2.9 for three years. We will benefit because one third of our HKD 55 billion debt is actually floating. Largely, the floating is pegged to one-month HIBOR. I think we have an opportunity, as far as I can see now, that given the structural geopolitics, potentially HIBOR will continue to stay low, but not as low as today. I think that gives Hong Kong itself a great chance. If you look at some of the peers who are highly geared, clearly, the stress level is not so high.
That also has given a boost to the capital markets, equity markets, and equity options start to be opening up again. I think overall, it's going to be a year that, as of now, hopefully, we can continue to manage risk on the financing. As for the credit margin, I think what we do clearly is run a tight process as usual. We have continued to see credit margin tightening between a good credit and an average credit and a not-so-good credit borrower. We are probably on the, I guess, good to better credit borrower. We have seen credit margins continue to be very competitive for us. That said, there's only so much it can compress. We are probably at the marginal end of that credit margin compression. On devaluation and cap rates, Greg, you can supplement.
I think what we are seeing is across the office and logistics portfolio, rentals are not expected to be going up. If anything, we are still managing a negative rental reversion. On an NPI rental basis determining valuation, I think we will continue to see stress or cap rate expansion for office and logistics. For retail, for Singapore, Australia, we expect things to be flattish. I think things are doing okay. Singapore rental reversion, as we have seen, it's almost 18%. Australia is coming to mid-single digits. I think that's okay. Hong Kong, a bit of stress, I think, from the cash flow basis. Again, Greg has articulated that rents continue to be slightly on the negative side. If you look at cap rates, I think Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, possibly we are not expecting interest rates to be jumping that fast.
That then supports the cap rate from not expanding and hopefully, if there is a chance, a compression.
The fund management business, I think we will say partners up and running. I think that's one point that we can say. There's a lot of legal restriction for us to say a lot more. Let us underpromise and overdeliver. What I can say is compared to past meetings that we have, we have completed totally all the infrastructure setup, from documents to fund accounting systems to reporting, setting up the FM board, having the investment committee constituted. Everything's done. We are ready. It is in progress. I do not think we can say a lot more than that. I think we continue on that theme of manage your expectation and underpromise, overdeliver. We will not give you an AUM target yet. Sorry, you cannot model it yet.
I think once we get to a point where if we are successful in launching the first fund and you see the momentum, the type of investor who come with us and the confidence that we will then be able to display to you rather than just talk about it without a concrete result, I think you'll be a lot more confident in the path that we are going. I mean, for today, I would rather reserve sharing with you too much detail.
Okay. Any more questions? Percy?
Hi, Management. This is Percy from DBS. Thank you for taking my question. I have three questions, if I may. First one is mainly on operational in China. Understand that the China rental reversion is still under a bit pressure, mainly driven by Leng Zhongguanc un. Just wondering, when are we expecting the end of the drag for this property in particular? In general, for the rental reversion for other properties in terms of the outlook? Secondly, is on Reconnect. We saw that the CSRC, they recently reiterated Reconnect again. Just wondering if Management can share any colors or insights regarding the timeline or implementation details for us? Thirdly, it's regarding the share buyback. We've seen that Link has done some share buyback, and those shares have been put in as treasury shares.
Just want to know what Management feel regarding how would you manage these shares in the longer term, or if you would even consider to sell out these shares? Thank you.
I'll talk to the mainland question first, Percy. So it's Zhongguanc un. We're a fair way through the repositioning of that asset, and it's predominantly leasing activity. We've seen a new competitor right next door open up its first stage in the last few weeks. Pleasingly, and again, it's very early days, but the impact that we're anticipating from that has been less than we first thought, given the first stage of this project is predominantly food and beverage. We've perversely seen an increase in our footfall since the property opened next door. The team there is making good progress. I'm hopeful over the course of this year, we will have been able to work through all of the strategies that we've anticipated there at Zhongguanc un. I will also say that Beijing, as a market, is very challenging.
Of all the markets that we operate in, it is very, very challenging at a consumer level. Shanghai is pretty stable. Certainly, in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, we are seeing much better outlook. Probably the most pleasing thing for me more broadly is ongoing tenant demand in mainland China remains strong from local brands, particularly for leisure sports brands are growing like crazy in mainland China. We are getting our fair share of that, which is pleasing. I will just close off by saying, again, as we said during the prepared remarks, if we exclude Zhongguanc un, we printed positive reversions through the shopping center portfolio for this year. The same strategy that we are embarking on here in Hong Kong about preserving occupancy remains consistent for us in mainland China as well.
I think Zhongguanc un, when we first invested in it, was extremely attractive. It's a district with footfall that doesn't grow old, right? Very unlike any other shopping mall that we have, partly because it's all universities, students, young people, tech companies all around that area. Since then, you have tech company laid off. You have New Orient being attacked by the government. They shrunk the business. They are very close to our mall. We have a competitor next door that didn't perform at all and now renovating and upgrading. The good thing is there is no new supply. The government is not allowing new supply within the five-ring road, and this is within that area. There is really no new supply except that the mall next door, which was fully run, is now being upgraded. That gives the competition that Greg mentioned.
I think there is some stabilization in the tech sector. People are hiring will come back. That is where a lot of the software companies are. The university continued to, the attendance has not really dropped. Maybe helped by politics that maybe there will be more students at Chinese universities. I think the market has changed since we invested. Hopefully, we can manage through this cycle and see it rebound. Reconnect-wise, it has been talked about for a long time. We have no insight when the timing is. I think what we are encouraged by, the comment by CSRC is that they started to talk about it for the longest time. It is SFC, Stock Exchange, Hong Kong Stock Exchange talking about it. China has remained silent. Then recently, even the head of CSRC talking about it. I think the timing is sooner.
I think that will increase liquidity to our stock because I think we trade relatively better than a lot of the C-REITs. I think we are an attractive proposition. As a result, the IR team has actually done a lot of roadshow in China. We will actually, after this round of result announcement, go into China as well. We hope that when it eventually comes, we will be benefiting from it. Share buyback?
Yep. On the share buyback, I think as a background, the last financial year, we bought back about 17 million shares at about $33 per unit. That amounts to about $550 million-$570 million. According to the new stock exchange rules, you have the ability to either leave it in treasury or you can cancel it, which was what was a past. Clearly, leaving it in treasury by accounting is eliminated anyway. That gives us the opportunity to hold that in future if we want. Say, for example, today, there is an acquisition and we want to have a mix of equity option. That clearly can be taken out because there is actually a gain. I think it is a good thing. It is not new. I think many exchanges have this toolkit for issuers. Hong Kong is probably a bit late into this.
Having this does give us the flexibility. Clearly, we'll leave it there for now. It's not a big number considering the overall scheme of things. It does give a bit of flexibility for us.
Okay. Thanks. Shall we take just last two questions? Carl here in front here. Yeah.
Hi. Karl Choi from Bank of America. Two questions. First, can you give a little bit more color on the new executive management plan? You mentioned there's going to be a new plan to be implemented. Any major changes compared to the old plan? Second, going back to the cost optimization program, just want to ask if there is any quantitative target that you would like to share, whether it's the cost savings sort of amount or whether it's in terms of holding the cost increase to a certain %. Thanks.
As I mentioned, the review that's done, which we've done on a regular basis, I think the last major review was done almost 10 years ago with some minor changes during the last 10 years. We just completed a more comprehensive review recently led by the remuneration committee with external consultants, a number of meetings with unit holders. I think I want to report probably not fair to just highlight a few key points and miss out others at this forum. You can see a lot more detail in the annual report. I urge you to just wait and look at that in more detail. Suffice to say, there are a few key points and the key principle listed here. One is that we want to ensure that there is a clear alignment of interests between the executive team and our unit holder.
We want to increase the disclosure so that that alignment is clear. I do not think that it was not aligned properly in the past, but I think disclosure has distorted the picture. I think the disclosure that you will see this year will help you to understand the alignment a lot better. That hopefully is an improvement. Some of the targets have changed. Some of the KPIs have changed. The change is really to make sure that they are indeed more aligned. The long-term incentive plan, we will actually disclose the exact KPIs. They are absolute total unit return and relative total unit return and carbon intensity reduction. Adding a sustainability target is important for us as a business because obviously, we have always been a leader in this area. We have a carbon reduction target that we announced many years ago.
We continue to be on that path. On the short-term incentive, again, various measurable targets from both financial results and the non-financial result based on, say, reversion occupancies and all that. Obviously, we have a target to launch a fund despite not talking too much about it. That is also one of the targets that we need to achieve. You will see more details in there and a lot more disclosure. The disclosure that we also have added includes both the numbers relating to grant and numbers relating to the final award at vesting. The confusion in the past is we focus a lot more on the grant. It is a little bit difficult for you to find the number at the final vesting, although it is somewhere in the report.
We just want to make it easier for you by putting it all in two pages rather than all over the report. Hopefully, that will create a little bit more transparency, which we thought we had. It is a little bit difficult to find. We want to make it easier for our reader. That is something that you will see. Look at the report first. If there is any question and feedback, do come back to us. It is something that the remuneration committee—and you will see in the report that they have met over 10 times over the last year—a lot of work in order to achieve this result. Hopefully, also with the consultation of some of our unit holders, it will allow us to have a scheme that will be acceptable to the market. We will talk more after you have read it.
Okay. I think we have run out of time. Unless there's a really burning question. Otherwise, thank you for all your questions. Thank you for coming.
Thank you very much.