Today, we are pleased to have our CEO, Mr. George Hongchoy, and our CFO, Mr. Ng Kok Siong, to give us an update on the interim results and also strategy in the future. Now, I will turn over to George, our CEO. George, please.
Thank you, Sylvia. Also thank you, everyone for joining today. With social distancing restrictions further easing, we're glad that some of you are here in person to this hybrid result briefing. I'm pleased to have KS with me as well. I'll start with a market outlook, and then KS will go through our operational update across the portfolio and some key areas of our financial position, and then I'll finish with strategy and priorities. I would like to start just giving you our view of what we see as a very uncertain world. Here in Asia Pacific, we're looking at ongoing geopolitics, interest rate hikes, inflation pressures.
Looking at the geopolitics, w ith Russia-Ukraine war, it has led to sustained disruption to global supply chain and volatility in energy and commodity prices, and particularly natural gas and oil. As a result, we have watched energy prices soar, and along with it food prices, manufacturing costs, further supply chain disruption, and even disruption to consumption to some extent. Closer to home, we are witnessing the technological, if not economic decoupling between the U.S. and China, potentially destabilizing the region. Central banks across the world, led by the U.S. Federal Reserve, have been raising interest rates this year and reducing liquidity in an attempt to rein in inflation. The ongoing global unpredictability continues to drive up both operating and non-operating costs, such as utilities, materials, and cost of borrowing.
The recovery from the pandemic mismatch between talent demand and available supply is emerging and adding to inflation concerns. We look ahead. Following the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we think critical elements of stability for China are in place. There's a clear emphasis on committing to high-quality economic growth. Central government and the Hong Kong SAR government have reiterated Hong Kong's continuing positioning as an international financial center.
The Hong Kong SAR government is in a solid position, we think, with sufficient reserves to support the various policy initiatives to contribute to the overall economic recovery. While we expect ongoing interest rate hikes, the U.S. Federal Reserve has signaled that further rate hikes may be less steep. Meanwhile, in mainland China, interest rates remain controlled and favorable to support growth momentum. Despite economic challenges China currently faces, we are optimistic about its long-term growth potential.
With all that, we have put together a number of mitigating measures to lessen the impact. We believe that, and we're confident in the Asia Pacific region and its ongoing growth potential. We'll continue to explore opportunities for diversification across APAC and at various asset classes, and we'll do so with added caution. Interest rates continue to rise, and we have committed to maintaining a healthy balance sheet and stable cash flow. Fixing interest rates of 50%-70% of our existing debt and our Distribution Reinvestment Scheme provides additional funding feasibility, and we are diversifying our capital source by creating synergy with reputable capital partners to expand together in APAC. Lastly, on inflation pressures, Link portfolio composition of non-discretionary retail and logistics should be a natural hedge against inflation, as both are tied to consumption.
We'll prioritize enhancing organic productivity, focusing on creating, capturing further value by enhancing operating margins through placemaking and sustainability initiatives. In summary, we'll continue to do what we have always done best as we ride out the current wave of uncertainty. Go into a bit more detail with what I've gone through. Let me pass on to KS.
Thank you, George. Our resilient portfolio continues to deliver consistent growth for the first half, albeit with economic headwinds. With contribution from newly acquired Australian assets, revenue, and NPI recorded an increase of 4.6% and 4.5% year-over-year. Rising interest rates pose challenges to all of us in the real estate sector, excluding the HKD 0.07 discretionary distribution in first half 2021/2022 and dampened by rising financing costs. Distribution for the period grew about 2%, amounting to HKD 1.55 per unit. NAV per unit rose by about 5% to HKD 80.86, which I will elaborate further. Retail sentiment in Hong Kong improved in the first half as we saw the pandemic impact largely behind us. Our resilient portfolio delivered solid operational performance.
Total revenue of our Hong Kong retail portfolio increased by 1.2% year-on-year. Our retail strategy encourages a brand mix balancing local and regional offerings, which enriches customer experiences. The occupancy rate was close to a record high of 97.5%, and the average monthly unit rent edged up to HKD 63.20 per sq ft. Rental reversion rate has continued to improve in the last 1.5 years, and we achieved 8.5% for this first half year. Despite continuing quarantine measures during the period, leasing sentiment remained buoyant in our malls. We continue to see upside with chain stores migrating into neighborhood shopping centers, such as famous F&B chains from Japan and Taiwan, supplementing our traditional operators. During the reporting period, our leasing team signed over 400 new leases, demonstrating our malls' attractiveness.
Our Hong Kong tenant sales have largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Overall tenant raw sales growth continued to outperform the overall market and increased by about 4% with the support of the government's Consumption Voucher Scheme and our marketing initiatives. Occupancy cost of the overall portfolio returned to a healthy level of 12.6%, with improvements in F&B and general retail segments. Gradual relaxation of COVID restrictions and a potential increase in minimum wage in 2023 are positive factors for our portfolio. We have been actively managing our portfolio to enhance its productivity and resilience. During the period, we completed three fresh market AEIs in Hong Kong with satisfactory returns financially and strategically. In particular, we invested in Tak Tin Market as it's the first AE for the mall.
Currently, we have five projects underway in Hong Kong, totaling more than HKD 260 million, and an estimated CapEx of more than HKD 590 million under plan and approvals. Total car park and related business continued its organic growth. Revenue recorded a year-on-year increase of 12.7% due to encouraging improvement in monthly ticket sales and full year period contributions from two car service centers. Hourly car park rental revenue has already surpassed pre-COVID levels. With the secured leaseback arrangements, as well as the embedded annual rental escalations, the newly acquired assets will provide steadily growing income. Income per space per month increased 3% year-on-year to slightly over HKD 3,100 as hourly parking continued to record steady growth, as well as monthly parking tariffs increases.
Average valuation per parking space increased strongly by 15.3% to HKD 700,000 per space compared to March this year from both higher income and cap rate adjustments. In August, we won the tender of a parcel of commercial use land off Anderson Road, Kwun Tong, at about 9% discount to appraised value. This demonstrates our long-term commitment to Hong Kong and supporting local daily needs. We expect to spend a total of HKD 1.6 billion to turn this site into a community commercial facility with convenient retail, F&B, a fresh market, and car park by 2027. Upon completion, our asset will be well connected to populous estates and our clusters of shopping malls nearby and will bring synergy to our other assets in the Sau Mau Ping district. Pandemic waves in first Q impacted our mainland portfolio.
Despite the headwinds in relation to COVID, we managed to achieve a rental reversion of 8.4%. Average occupancy was 92.1%. Concessions and waivers totaling HKD 24 million were granted to our tenants to alleviate their short-term pressures. While we expect it'll take some time for market confidence to restore, maintaining occupancy will be our immediate priority. In September, we commenced the first phase of the AEI of Happy Valley in Guangzhou.
We are investing HKD 200 million for phase one, aiming to refresh the mall image and turning into a community hub. We'll work on all floors, including repartitioning the area previously occupied by a department store, injecting kids' entertainment and new elements to attract a more diverse set of shoppers. To remain relevant in the flight to quality trend, we upgraded our office facilities in two phases for Link Square in Shanghai.
The asset continued to achieve a healthy occupancy rate of 96%, attributed to successful lease renewal with our anchor tenant. Our logistics operation is resilient and generates income with steady growth. All our assets are located at proven transportation hubs and 100% fully let with embedded rental escalations. On top of our two properties in the Greater Bay Area, we agreed to acquire three more in Yangtze River Delta in May this year.
We completed acquisition of one of them, Jiaxing Property, in June, which is immediately accretive. Mainland China logistics continue to offer good entry yield and rental growth potential, and we believe this sector is robust. The acquisition of three retail landmarks at the heart of Sydney CBD was completed in July. Occupied by leading local international tenants, these assets provided three months rental contribution in the first half.
Alongside with reopening last June and our leasing efforts, our Australian retail portfolio was about 96% occupancy. Retail sales in overall Australian market in September recorded an increase of 26.3% compared with pre-COVID in February 2020. This platform is expected to benefit from the recovery with solid consumer spending. The acquisition of our Australian prime office portfolio was completed in June. Occupancy rate was 92%, and WALE is long at more than six years.
The gradual recovery in back to office rate and the prevailing flight to quality trend. We remain positive on best-in-class office buildings with green specs and defensive attributes. Our office portfolio with excellent tenant profile should continue to deliver a stable income stream and fits our diversification strategy. With tightened credit environment in sight, we continue to adhere to a prudent financial management approach to fund our operational and strategic needs.
After taking into account the announced acquisitions and coming interim distribution, our gearing will go up to 24.5%. Liquidity remains high at HKD 15 billion, and debt maturities are well staggered. Our average borrowing cost was 2.5% for the first half of this financial year, and we expect borrowing costs to continue to creep up in this environment.
Our debt profile is well diversified across types, maturity, and currencies, among which 56% of total debts was at fixed rate, which is within our policy range of 50%-70%. Rating agencies acknowledge our defensive financial fundamentals, and our credit ratings are affirmed at A levels with a stable outlook. Up until our interim blackout period, we utilized HKD 408 million, largely from last round of DRS retention, to return to unit holders' capital by repurchasing 6.7 million units.
Amid Forex volatility, we have fully hedged our British pound, Australian dollar assets with respective currencies, and all our non-Hong Kong dollar incomes are hedged annually. Valuation of our investment properties increased by 5% compared to the end of March 2022. Higher valuation of Hong Kong retail was due to a slight increase in overall NPI and market rent, as well as the acquisition of a land parcel at Anderson Road. The increase in car park tariff and ticket sales contributed positively to the value of our Hong Kong car parks. Excluding the translation difference and acquisition of Jiaxing Property, the value of our mainland properties remain unchanged in RMB terms.
New assets in Australia drove up the value of the overseas portfolio. A few of our assets experienced cap rate adjustments. Hong Kong car park experienced a compression of 50 basis points to reflect the liquidity in the current market. Hong Kong office cap rate. U.K. office cap rates expanded 22 basis points, which is in line with the yield expansion shown in the market. I'll now pass to George to present our strategic updates. Thank you.
Thank you, KS. Including the acquisition of the land parcel in Anderson Road, the total value of our asset portfolio has reached HKD 234 billion. Our assets are now diversified across regions and sectors, and with a resilient Hong Kong portfolio remaining as our core at 78% of the total, mainland at 15% and overseas at 6% by valuation. If you look at this, the organic growth that we have managed to produce, we've been very, I think quite impressive against a rather challenging market. What you have seen is Hong Kong last year obviously was very challenged, and then China was doing well, and then with the start of this financial year, China with the lockdown have been difficult.
After the fifth wave in Hong Kong, with all the reopening, Hong Kong have done well. This is exactly what diversification is supposed to do. With this mix, we hope that it will be able to provide us a steady flow as we grow. When China reopen, it'll give us another pop in our NPI. To deliver sustainable return to unitholder through this diversification, strategically finding growth opportunities to replenish our portfolio with prime quality assets has been the strategy that we have executed over the last few years. In the first half, we have completed acquisitions in China for logistics asset, commercial land for development in Hong Kong. 50% of a prime office portfolio and retail portfolio in Australia.
Obviously, though, those acquisitions have only started contributing to our portfolio because they just completed about two-three months ago. This will continue to add new income to our unit holders. Our Australian exposure, both the asset and the income, are fully hedged, so we, together with our U.K. asset, so we're not too concerned about the currency risk there. We'll continue to look for strategic opportunities to reduce the concentration risk of any one location.
We'll expand our portfolio across Asia Pacific with discipline and heightened caution. On top of our home market in Hong Kong, we're looking at expanding our investable universe across high-tier cities in China, Australia and Singapore. We are selective, and we'll focus on jurisdiction with sound investment qualities. Hong Kong will continue to be our core market, which has performed well. As we can see, post-pandemic upside. We'll look at selective cities in the mainland China, as we believe the long-term outlook remains promising.
The sound economic fundamentals for Australia and Singapore give us confidence in these markets as well. Deals are being repriced with rate hikes to allow us to find a more attractive transactions. Going forward, we'll continue to look for opportunities in Hong Kong, remain prudent and selective in screening these investments to provide a buffer against volatility, resilient cash flow to deliver sustainable return. We are aware that the financial and scalability limitation of our, up till now, wholly owned and managed approach in the current economic environment. We have embraced growth through co-ownership and partial stake investments since 2020, 2021.
For any new investments, we will also consider where appropriate capital partnerships strategically instead of necessarily using 100% of our own capital. We may plan the use of our balance sheet and also external capital as we go to look at investments, and also in the cases of capital recycling. This hybrid of direct management operating partnership will support profitability and also adding to a fee income stream over time.
These capital partnerships enhance our diversification efforts with access to new investment opportunities, pool resources to further grow ourselves in new avenues and sharing risks. Capitalizing on our expertise and prior successes, we wish to optimize our portfolio with an enhanced growth pipeline and diversify to reduce volatility. As our portfolio has expanded geographically and into new sectors, our innovation and creativity initiatives have kept pace.
We remain ahead of the curve at both strategic and operational level. We have installed EV chargers in 21 sites in Hong Kong and target to install 3,000 EV charging stations in over 100 properties by 2024-2025. We started to have our tenants signing green leases, about 5% across Hong Kong and mainland China so far as we started this year. HKD 18 million is committed to Link Together Initiatives to contribute to the communities that we serve. To boost operational efficiency, we leverage artificial intelligence and achieve 3%-5% energy savings among pilot sites that we have started trial in 2022. Commitment does start at the top.
ESG specific KPIs have been incorporated into the balanced scorecard of all senior executives, encouraging individual ownership to this shared responsibility. We have also enhanced our talent core competencies in several ways to support our growth and diversification strategy. We have strengthened our management bandwidth with several senior executive hires. A one-year tailor-made learning program is offered to newly promoted, arming these managers with the needed skills for their new roles. Staff-led clubs and volunteer committees are in place to run a new wide array of activities throughout the year to improve engagement, especially after the relaxation of a lot of the COVID restrictions.
To summarize, we're focused on achieving high occupancy, providing a quality offering to our customers, continue asset upgrades, providing shopper experience that will create value, to continue to be very prudent and selective in how we deploy our capital. Leaning on our core competencies in asset management, portfolio management, and capital management, we'll continue to optimize our portfolio to bring sustainable return to our stakeholders. Here, listed, the dates for the payment of interim dividends and also scrip elections for your information. We now open the floor for questions.
Thank you, management, for the presentation. We now move on to the Q&A session. Please raise your hand to signal for the microphone. Before asking your question, please identify your name and the organization you represent. Investors may also submit your questions online. Karl Chan from JP Morgan.
Hi. Thank you. Several questions. For the first one, we noticed that in your PowerPoint presentation this year or this interim results, there hasn't been any mention of Vision 2025. Has there been any change to that target? Number two, given the stock currently is yielding about 6% right now, as compared to the potential asset yield that you're going to acquire for whatever asset, wouldn't the stock purchase be more attractive, instead of doing acquisition? Number three, we noticed from your slide that you mentioned about capital partner, potentially for new acquisition and also for existing portfolio. Does it mean that Link is also prepared for your capital partner to take a stake in your existing portfolio? Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. For Vision 2025. Sorry, I didn't see that we missed talking about it. Sorry, we should add it back. We haven't abandoned it. Why do we miss it? Anyway. The target is still there. It's a long-term target. I think what I should say is the direction of travel, we wanna get there. The incentive to the team is never about AUM growth anyway. We wanna do the right deals. We're still looking at doing those deals. We don't want to just do acquisitions because we have to. We believe that repricing is happening right now.
With some of the deals that we have looked at in the last, perhaps six months, maybe even the last three months, we continue to see widening price expectation between the seller and the buyer. Especially for seller, there's still a reluctance. They're still reluctant in reducing price. Whereas I think most buyers, most bidders in any transactions are looking at reducing the price that they offer. The price gap become wider, which makes it much harder to bring the two together to agree a deal. You see very few deals happening across all the geographies that we have looked at. We are interested. We think deals still need to be looked at opportunistically. Without repricing, it's very hard to get it done. There is a desire to achieve those targets.
That's the direction we're going. We need some of the sellers to be more realistic about their pricing. Whether we can achieve exactly that target. If you look back the last six months until the end of September, we have done quite a few deals. The market has obviously changed since the end of September, and the gap has indeed widened a lot more than we have expected. Let's see. I'm still hopeful, but it's hard to say. I mean, it depends on a lot of the sellers in all geographies that we've looked at. As to capital partners, yes, we will. I think there are several ways of looking at it.
We've already have some where we have partners, not necessarily capital partners, but certainly partners in deals like those in Australia. We will look at investing in transactions together with our partners, not necessarily using 100% of our capital, but sharing with them. Because we believe that that's allow us to do more deals, have access to more transactions, and also using our balance sheet with higher leverage, in not just debt but also with their capital. With our existing portfolio, maybe some asset rather than selling 100%, if we believe that there are investors who would rather have us managing it, rather than selling it to some other manager to manage it, we might just stay on with a stake and continue to manage it.
Still a capital recycling process of releasing some capital out of our existing assets. That's something that we are certainly considering. That doesn't rule out selling 100%. We're looking at both. As to share buyback, it is attractive in terms of yield today. At the same time, though, once the capital is used to do share buyback, while it helps DPU, NAV per share, et cetera. There's no more growth from it, right? The growth is obviously from our own, the remaining portfolio. It's always a difficult choice between investing in some asset versus investing in ourselves, as in buyback. We'll continue to look at that. You've seen that we've done some.
We will continue to do so at the right point in the market. If there is opportunity where we see higher growth from investment, then we'll do so as well. Return on capital, if we can't find investments, is something that we will definitely consider. It is on our list. It really depends on opportunities and comparing it as one of the opportunities as you point out.
Mark Leung from UBS.
Yeah. Thank you, management. I have a few questions. I think the first one is related to the China retail. So I look at the announcement and I think the cash rental collection ratio has dropped to 90% in this first half. Just want to check, do you think we need to do any impairments for the remaining 10%? I think that's the first question. Second question is on the rental relief. Do we have a budget guidance on the second half for the China retail? Lastly is on the renminbi debt versus the AUM.
I think now the renminbi debts are counting 9% of the total debt profile, where our mainland are counting 14%-15% of the AUM. Given the renminbi interest cost is trending down, are we seeing you are going to increase the renminbi debt portfolio? Yeah. Thank you.
Maybe I'll answer both questions. I think you are right. I think China retail went through pretty difficult times. We have announced first half HKD 24 million in a way we call Tenant Support Scheme. Clearly, if you think about the occupancy, you think about the receivables, they are going through a pretty difficult time. The team is having dialogue in order to make sure we keep occupancy as our first priority. Clearly, these receivables have been tested against those who owe us more than 90 days. We don't think there's future. We'll take back the SD, and we have already cleaned up as part of the first half accounting. So this 90% and the 10% is difficult because there's sort of Tenant Support Scheme negotiations going on.
If you take my money, yeah, you're supposed to stay till the end of the lease. If you take my money for marketing, you're supposed to pair up with me to do certain things in the atrium. Sometimes they will take, sometimes they will not take. It's not like it's just money on the table, you take, and you just don't have a commitment to us. As for second half, we keep our fingers crossed to hope that there's not a lot more Tenant Support Scheme, neither should we announce it and then every tenant will start asking. I think we continue to monitor the occupancy, continue to check in with what we think are the ones that's worth supporting.
I think given what you have seen from September to now, Guangzhou clearly they have been going through a tough period. China retail, the question is uncertain. We do not know when and how, but we are just trying to make sure that we put our best foot forward to help the tenants, keep the teams encouraged, and make sure our AEI does not go into a delay where we get into more issues with our IRR. On the RMB debt, you are right. I think Aussie dollar is hedged, pound is hedged. RMB historically, we could only do onshore. Offshore was very expensive. Currently there is a window for us to raise more CNH, and we are looking at it, but it's not a very big pool.
It's not like a dollar bond you can go out and do $1.6 billion. You go out CNH, it's CNH 150 million-200 million. Even public tranche to do CNH 1 billion is a lot for this. Hong Kong is really the deepest CNH market outside. I think you are right. We have the option to bring financing costs down and yet provide a hedge on our RMB exposure. I think the market is not as deep. We are doing some. It's not going to get us to that RMB 18 billion to be fully hedged out.
When you look at the recent refinancing, the credit margin have been very stable. Obviously, interest rate might have trend up, the base rate, but credit margin liquidity so far is no issue, at least for us. We feel pretty confident that our debt profile is very healthy, so it should be not, it's not a concern at all.
Kenneth Leung from Citi.
Hi, friends. Mike, I have two questions, two different parts. One is on your Hong Kong retail tenant sales. There's some mixed signals on Hong Kong opening up international border, people going outside spending. How is your view on that? Of course, I want to get your view on your outlook on your reversion, especially second half of the year. The second question is on your strategy, because I noticed that your strategy manager explicitly saying that you're not pursuing any major acquisition. Can I confirm that you are not proceeding the Singapore deal? Following up on that, you mentioned you're looking for distressed repriced asset. How cheap. Will you be interested versus your previous hurdle rate?
Well, the opening up is important for Hong Kong because there is sort of little effect for our property, but it's not a direct effect because we are non-discretionary retail people still come. If you look at the numbers, our car park tickets have already gone past 2018 peak. With that, we can see people are already back shopping. Those are numbers, not just contribution to our car park income, but also is a good number to tell our tenants that people are already back, and to support our discussion in reversion. Reversion rate actually, we've been pretty good. You've seen the trend. It's 88% this first half. We see, well, we hope to be even stronger.
The other number, which is sort of a perverse way of looking at how things have turned around. The number of new shops, new leases that we have signed have dropped compared to last year. Why that is a good sign is that new leases are. W e have very high occupancy. We only have a lot of new leases if there is a lot of new, a lot of people leaving or closing down. The number of people closing down have come down, so our new leases doesn't have to be that many. If I compare last year, we have like 300 odd new ones. This year, 200 odd.
About half of those are new tenant, which are also very encouraging because there are a lot of tenants, as KS mentioned, who have not operated in community neighborhood shopping centers, that they are coming from the Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui, type areas. These new tenants, our leasing team is always very focused on don't let them open just one shop. Once they open one, let's open the five, the fifth one, the sixth one. We have a new pool of tenants who are coming, so that's encouraging as well. With that, it hopefully push up the reversion rate.
On transactions, I didn't say distress. I just said your, hopefully, seller will start to adjust their price expectation. You can't be selling based on last year's year-end valuation. You have to start adjusting it. Hopefully the price gap will narrow. We are not in any active discussion in Singapore, so I think that's enough said. Yeah.
Raymond from HSBC.
Thank you, management. I got two questions. Number one is regarding the tenants that you mentioned. So they are like, as you mentioned, there are a lot of tenants coming into your portfolios. How should we think of the resiliencies of your portfolios during the latest economic downturn in Hong Kong compared to the previous like downturn like, AFC? This is first question.
The second question is about the cap rate of the portfolio. So, if you look at the presentation slide earlier, so we can see that like the cap rate of the car park is now like below 3%, sort of below the risk-free rate. How should we think of the, like, the trend of the cap rate going forward, or how should we think of the book value of the company going forward? Thank you.
New tenants, they. Sorry, I missed that.
If you look at the new tenant pools that we are bringing in from the centralized areas, clearly they used to enjoy good sales, but also very high rent in centralized shopping districts. When they come in, clearly we don't charge them the kind of rent that they have to pay in Percival Street. In terms of occupancy costs, we have been able to match, and that's why you start to see our occupancy costs coming down. To me, if you want to benchmark resilience, I think if you look through other than supermarket that has come up slightly because everybody has switched to F&B, and it could be F&B that we never had in our estates, like Jollibee, Sushiro, and we think that that adds resilience.
If you think about experience in other Asian cities, including Singapore, its Orchard Road is less relevant for 85% of Singaporeans. We don't need to go Orchard Road, they just stay in, at housing estates and they consume. I think it'll create another layer of resilience through crisis. AFC, we were not really born yet. It was still under housing authority.
It's not really a good comparison, but I think if you look back the last three years and you overlay social unrest, plus COVID wave 1, 2 to 5, right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. If you look at our cash flow beta, actually it's very low, right? Plus, car park has proven another layer of resilience plus growth. I think there was a lot of surprise when people say, "Hey, your car park NPI actually gone up a lot the last three years.
When Hong Kong has the Rental Enforcement Moratorium, there were tenants who took advantage of that and deferred their rental payment. The accrual seems to have gone up because of that. As soon as that moratorium ended, our court action numbers have gone back up to normal because the court has also reopened. There was a period of time when the court were closed. The rental collection rate has gone back up. Arrears have gone down, back to close to normal. I guess that's another proof of the resilience of the tenants that we have. As we always have three months deposit from most of our tenants, and we will watch that very carefully.
I mean, if accruals get to a month, a month and a half, then we start chasing and taking actions to make sure that we don't use up the deposit. What is interesting, I think in the last few years, we can package it as sustainability, but a lot of tenants are quite willing to take over fitting out of the previous tenants, so we don't have to necessarily force people to go back to bare shell and then rebuild it again and then there's rent-free periods, et cetera. All those things are help. You know, not across the board, but I think that those flexibility does certainly help us. Our cap rate, there's no adjustment to cap rate to retail portfolio, except those properties that we have completed as an enhancement.
We have proven that to the valuers that we can actually achieve improved NPI. For car park, the car park income actually have continued to grow, gone past our previous peak. I think the valuer looked at, and we had a lot of discussion about this particular point. While they did their valuation, we did see this number. In this sort of environment we'll question whether it's worth going up. You look at the per car parks, per space valuation, it's still HKD 700,000, roughly.
Yeah.
We're not selling them individually or we're not selling those car parks, but we will. I think the average price in the market has been a lot higher than that. We take comfort that the adjustment that they have done are not necessarily excessive, given that we have continued to be able to grow our car park income, even in this environment as people come back. The number of car park spaces in Hong Kong still haven't really trended up. The government continued to restrict the number of car park being built, while number of cars kept continue to increase. I think that trend has not changed.
The number you quoted, 2.6%, actually pertains to only TQS, the office car park, which of course clearly is the highest monthly rent of our portfolio. Otherwise, across the board, like George said, you average out, you're looking about HKD 700,000 per lot, just above 4% cap rate.
We have received some questions online. This is about the acquisition. How does the company balance between diversification drive and rising interest rate and also FX risk? Would the company narrow its acquisition focus near term in terms of geography or asset type given this risk? How advanced is the discussion with the capital partners? Management, please.
Yeah, it is a balance. That's exactly what we're working on every day how to work on diversification ex-currency, interest rate going up, our hurdle rate for transaction obviously should trend up. If there is the right asset, then the question is whether we should buy it now, do we have the holding power, even if the valuation might or the acquisitions that we do might go down a little bit or we just wait. Sometimes some assets, good assets, will be unlocked in these uncertain times. I don't, It is a very opportunistic case every time.
We want to do deals that are immediately accretive, but then if our underwriting shows that there could be a year or two of more challenging returns, but then it will bounce back because of our asset management plan we're not worried about doing those, and we've done those deals before. We are actively looking at whether we should do capital recycling to shore up the balance sheet further, but it's a process that we need to go through. Clearly aware of the risks that we are dealing with in this market. There is no rush to do what announce a deal a month. That's never our game plan.
For the right assets, we have always been not necessarily aggressive, but certainly hardworking in trying to find the right price for it. We'll continue to do that. In the last few months, we walked away from quite a lot of deals in different geographies. I think we have to. That's a discipline we have to maintain as a good manager. We 'll rather stay with discipline than do deals that will hurt us in the near term. W e'll do it prudently.
Since time is running short, this will be the last question from online. This is about the capital management. What are the key credit metrics, for example, gearing, interest coverage ratio, debt maturity, et cetera, you need to maintain in order to keep your credit rating? And what is your target gearing? And also, when you do acquisition, what are the key considerations in terms of financing? Management, please.
I think we have been doing pretty much what you have been asking. If you say credit metrics, clearly there's the bond market that looks at credit ratings, and credit ratings generally drive towards LTV, debt over EBITDA. Our guess is when you look at where the credit ratings exchange with us is that as we cross past the 30% LTV, they generally get a bit more edgy about our current ratings. If you look at banks tend to just say, "Oh, as soon as your LTV is within SFC, we are fine." You need to make sure your ICR is above two. If you go to asset level, usually it's about 1.7 coverage.
I think when we look at how to manage a balance sheet is that you can put all these parameters, but again, we need to stress test it through crisis. What if valuation starts to weaken? What if interest rates continue to go up to five, six, or seven? We do have our parameters on how to look at it. If you ask me today, we are very comfortable. ICR is about 6 based on today's numbers.
Even extrapolate, we are going to be high 4s. LTV-wise, if we look at capital partnership, most likely we can do a bit with capital partnership and keep LTV below 30% for the right reasons. Target gearing, like you said, we are not looking at any big deals at the moment. We are happy to keep between 25% ±.
Coupled with DRIP, like George mentioned in the beginning, there's a good chance that by second half, this number goes even lower. If we can still bring valuation up, which we think we can in certain cash flow in terms of rental, then again, it's valuation. I think plus, minus, be keeping ourselves below 30%, conservatively sitting still about 25%. It's a comfortable position. If you think through interest rate having come up so fast, and if you look at a sudden awakening the last few weeks that everybody say, "Oh, a lot of the REITs cannot fund their financing cost if you are across 35%." Right? Whether you are SOFR-based, whether you are HIBOR-based. Of course, Australian was the fastest, BBSY reacted share price.
I think when you put all this together, capital management then needs to be a lot more dynamic managing all this. The last one we do look at is average maturity. Looking at our size, balance sheet of HKD 230 billion, and how do we stagger out a debt book of HKD 60 billion-HKD 70 billion such that over time, there's nothing that is going to shock the credit market or shock ourselves.
Right. If you look at our average maturity, we are looking at about HKD 12 billion-HKD 15 billion a year, which is pretty much one club loan, right, of our size. It means if you just get one club loan, you can get it done. You wanna be sexier, you do a bit of bonds, you do a bit of CNH to make sure that you diversify. We're still pretty comfortable in that sense. Quite a few of these things put together. All the numbers you see there in the slide 19 is basically all the metrics that we monitor quite closely.
KS answered this question after doing rounds and rounds of stress testing in the last few months. I think we've tested interest rate going up a lot, EBITDA dropping, valuation drop, and we might still do some deals and stretch the balance sheet even more. Of all these different tests, we're fine across every measure. We have enough buffer. Obviously we're all hopeful that the world doesn't get to that stage yet. T hrough all the stress tests that we've done, we are in a good position which allow us to be quite robust in continuing to look for opportunities.
When it comes to debt funding, very simple , to the extent that it is in a foreign country, then try to raise local currency debt, trying to balance between long-term versus short-term funding, keeping the fixed rate around between the 50%-70% target, and discipline about liability maturity profile, and then all the cash flow measures. The team's been very disciplined as we look at all those. To the extent that we have partners working with us, then obviously, we need to work with them about their ratios as well, to make sure that we can satisfy all the different stakeholders. I think we'll. Is there another question from the floor before we end?
Okay. This brings us to the end of today's analyst briefing. Thank you very much for joining us today. Wish you have a good evening.
Thank you very much.