Welcome everybody to Emira's nine-month results presentation to the 31st of March 2023. Joining me are my colleagues, Ulana van Biljon, our Chief Operating Officer, and Greg Booyens, our Chief Financial Officer. The agenda for today will be, I will share the overview, I'll then take you through the key metrics, and then we'll take you through the distribution statement on a business unit approach. I'll end off with the outlook going forward. Kicking off with the overview. I think it's very important that we talk about the comparison here. The JSE require us to compare a financial year against a financial year. Our last financial year was 12 months. This financial year we changed our year end, it is now for a nine months, nine-month period.
Be very cautious in terms of that comparison, and I'll talk to you a bit more about the metrics a little bit later on. If you do look at the metrics and you do the simple math, you'll understand why we believe this has been a strong performance. I think it's also very important just to share with everybody what we see coming in the usual Emira way of trying to be transparent. Really what we see is the effects of higher interest rates are still to be felt inside the economy and in terms of corporates such as ourselves. There's also the effects of load shedding. There's also the potential effects of having a dilutionary strategic proposal. There's also an expectation of no further accrual of income under Inani.
In the interest of transparency, we point you to our integrated annual report that will be released that refers to the executive KPI target for distributable income per share being ZAR 1.1849 per share for the 12-month period to the 31st of March 2024. We believe in diversification, it's very important to us, and certainly more so in this environment than ever before. There will certainly be more focus on diversification. It's one of your tools to limit your risks so that no one asset or one sector or one economy can hurt you too much.
In order to be able to do this, important to increase your liquidity that you have available so that you've got a sufficient buffer to make sure that you can protect and defend yourself, and at the same time to be able to take advantage of diversification opportunities. Let's move on then to the key metrics. You will see that our distributable income per share is ZAR 1.0676 per share for the nine-month period. That's 17.2% down in comparison to the previous twelve-month period. 17.2% down means that you're 83% of the last year number. If you apply a straight 75%, being nine twelfths, on the previous number, you're comparing 83% against 75%. Not totally accurate because of seasonal effects, but I think the message is clear.
The three-month distributable income per share is sitting at ZAR 0.3431, and our net asset value per share has increased to ZAR 16.96. That's up by ZAR 0.67 in comparison to where we were nine months ago. Important that you add on the two dividends that have been paid out in this nine-month period of ZAR 0.63 and ZAR 0.66. That gives you a total return of just over ZAR 2, for shareholders in the last nine-month period. We've spoken at our last results presentation just three months ago in terms of our consolidation, us taking control and consolidation of Transcend Residential Property Fund, and then there is the planned disposal of Enyuka, which I'll refer to a little bit later. A very important number here is our level of collections.
You'll see that we increased our level of collections to 101.6%, which compares even better against the 100.2% that we were sitting with in June of last year. Vacancies improved to 4.7%. Tenant retention, 77%, a strong number. Let's look at our covenant ratios. Our interest cover ratio improved actually to 2.9x from the 2.8x level, shows you how strong our operational cash flows are in comparison to interest servicing. There's our loan-to-value ratio, which has increased to the 44%. We'll unpack that in a little bit more detail later. All of that has meant that our dividend per share for the nine-month period is ZAR 0.9678. The same comparison needs to be applied. It's 19% down.
That's 81% in comparison to an equivalent 75% number. Ultimately, meaning that for this three-month period, we are declaring a dividend and paying a dividend of ZAR 0.3035 per share.
Okay, before we get into the detail, let's just quickly orient ourselves around the different business units that we manage the fund on. This is a simplified distribution statement where we've aggregated similar items into the following six business units. Firstly, we've got the commercial portfolio, which is the retail, office, and industrial properties. Next up, the residential portfolio, which is Emira's The Bolton, together with the 22 Transcend properties. We've got our investment in Enyuka, followed by our investments in the U.S. There's the corporate pillar, which is our fund-level admin items. There's the items relating to our debt funding. Now, as Geoff mentioned, we've delivered a full year dividend of ZAR 0.9678 per share, made up of the interim dividend that was paid for the six months ended December.
We've got the final dividend now for the three months ended March 2023 of ZAR 0.3035. Again, just to reiterate what Geoff said, this is a shortened nine-month financial year, so comparing the current year to the prior year, it's not quite comparable, so we won't focus too much on those variances. Okay. Let's jump into the details. Firstly, on the commercial portfolio, it's delivered net property income of ZAR 615.6 million, proportionally better than what we had budgeted for the year. Revenues improved due to letting. Ulana will touch on the vacancies shortly. We've managed to contain property expenses. We had flagged at our interims that our maintenance costs would be lower.
We accelerated a lot of spend planned for FY 2023 into the previous financial year to try get our properties into the best possible letting shape. We see the benefit coming through of our various solar projects, which is reducing or having a positive impact, albeit fairly small, on the rising municipal costs that we see year-on-year. Just one item to flag, diesel costs have increased significantly as a result of the unprecedented load shedding. Given our recovery rate on that is still strong, the bottom line impact has been manageable.
Let's look at the commercial property or our portfolio. Firstly, importantly, we've got 71 directly owned properties diversified across the country. We did sell two of our buildings. The first one was Gallagher Landing in Pretoria and then also Morgan Creek in Durban, both properties in the industrial sector. When we calculate our portfolio by value, the urban retail sector is still the biggest at 51%. I do think importantly, before I go and share with you our portfolio results, I need to highlight the following. Firstly, over the reporting period, the macroeconomic pressures continued and the operating environment and the conditions just remained extremely uncertain and challenging. Now, unfortunately, over and above that, we also had increased interruption of electricity and water supply.
Now, that is really worrying for both our business owners but also for consumers. Now, those factors, and I know there are many more factors, but we can see that it impacts business confidence, and we actually found over the past few months that decision-making is getting slower. As you probably know, the Emira team, all these challenges made us stronger, and with the support of our Broll and Feenstra Property Management teams, we delivered strong results over the past nine months. Our vacancies dropped from 5.3% down to 4.7%, and the reduction was driven by our office vacancies. Also, again, reduced from 15% down to 12.5%, outperforming the SAPOA average of 15.8% at the end of March.
Now, I did share these main contributors with you as well in February, but just to remind you, the reason for the drop in vacancies in the offices, firstly, Newlands Terraces down in Cape Town, we did a very good let with CCI of over 4,300 sq m. And then here in Illovo, it's in the Hyde Park node, we concluded three leases of just over 2,100 sq m. There is unfortunately a but. The office sector remains under pressure, and as we've mentioned numerous times, the recovery is dependent on good economic growth. Therefore, for FY 2024, we do think that office vacancies will still be under pressure. Also some good news. 26 of our 34 industrial properties fully let at the end of March, dropping down to 2.1%.
Our tenant retention slightly down, but still a very good result of 77% calculated by gross rental. We did unfortunately lose a few bigger tenants. Firstly, I did give this info to you in February. WSP here at Knightsbridge gave back some space, 2,300, but very pleased that we let that immediately to Southern Mapping Company. Then the other one, Switches at Hamilton in Cape Town. Both these tenants vacated due to consolidation. Our largest renewals concluded in the period is on the slide, just to highlight The Beverage Company of 12,250. Now, again, let me look forward into financial year 2024.
With all the information we've got at the moment and the negotiations with the 10 major leases that expired, everyone has indicated that they will renew their leases, which is very promising. Now, the weighted average rent reversions, a significant improvement from June 2022 when it was a -15.2%. Now the result a -8.4%. Escalation's very similar at 6.6%, and the same with the WALE, also similar at 2.6 years. We're still very satisfied with the spread of our lease expiry profile, as you can see on the slide. On trading densities, although there was an increase of 4.5%, which is a good increase, year-on-year, we are concerned about our consumer. Consumers are under pressure, and our retail is experiencing tough trading conditions.
Once again, many factors are the reasons, but I think that the two biggest one is the increase in interest rates and then, of course, the increase of load shedding. These factors are extremely worrying for both consumers and retailers. Now talking about load shedding, unfortunately, since the start of 2023, load shedding stages have been more intense and have unfortunately led to more being in the dark, and the impact even more severe than before, not only on our personal lives but also on the operating environment. Now, I've also shared in the past that Emira provides backup power. We've got generators at most of our sites. Only four of our properties don't have any backup power. But it comes at a high cost.
The diesel cost and as well as the last three months of our financial year, stages five and six, was nearly there every week. That also increased the cost of doing business for our our tenants, and it's very worrying. Our diesel costs for the nine months, the financial year, ZAR 27 million, as Greg said, a very big increase compared to previous financial year of only ZAR 4.9 million. The recovery on the commercial portfolio a good result of 84%. Let me also share with you our environmental initiatives. We've got 9 PV farms over 26,600 panels. From an environmental side, the most important is that we removed 8,200 tons of carbon dioxide.
Water efficiency is still a very big focus point for the team, and with our water harvesting, groundwater and rainwater, over the period equals to 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Then on biodiversity, our beehive project just continues to be such a success. In March, the honey that we harvest produced 85 kilograms on the five sites. What we did, we also shared the honey with not only our staff and our board members, but also with our service providers and our tenants on these sites, because it is important that we continue and tell people that there must be awareness of preserving biodiversity.
Okay. What does that all mean in terms of the balance sheet? It's a value of ZAR 9.8 billion for the commercial portfolio. That's a 2.1% increase from June last year. If you factor in the CapEx and the disposals during the period, it's about a 0.5% increase. We had the entire portfolio independently valued by third parties, and if you take a look at the sum of the valuation inputs and metrics here, you'll see the valuers maintained similar cap rates, discount rates, a bit of movement there in respect of certain properties where they felt necessary. All other inputs were updated for current market conditions.
Ultimately, we look at the valuation rate per square meter to get comfort, and certainly the levels show there for March 2023, we're comfortable that those are realistic values.
If I can just add to that, Greg, as you shared, fully externally valued for the first time now in March and compares very well in terms of where we were in terms of our valuations, even though external valuers sometimes do use slightly different metrics. I think the other important part is the disposal side that really makes reference to how well valued our assets ar, that if you can look at our history where we consistently have disposed of assets on average at a premium to book value. There is the acquisition that we spoke about three months ago in terms of the Rietfontein Park industrial land of ZAR 8.4 million. That is for strategic purposes, and we'll use that in due course.
There is the Morgan Creek and Gallagher Landing transaction, those two that Ulana referred to, that we transferred at ZAR 78.9 million, which was a premium to book on average of close to 10%. Our held for sale includes two commercial properties, the residential units at the Bolton and some units within the Transcend portfolio. You'll see that recycling continuing.
Okay, moving on to the residential portfolio, which has contributed net property income of just over ZAR 100 million. Now, proportionally, that's a significant increase, but it all relates to Transcend. Our sharing in Transcend increased from 40% up to 68% during the nine months, and that was a result of the general offer that we made through to the Transcend minorities. As a result, we triggered control from an accounting perspective, so we now consolidate Transcend fully into the group.
As Greg mentioned earlier, our residential portfolio consists of The Bolton, the only owned property by Emira, and 22 of Transcend. Of the 4,315 units, a very good vacancy result of 2.6%, again, outperforming TPN of 6.8%. The average rent per unit, just over ZAR 6,100.
Again, on the balance sheet, that translates into a value of just under ZAR 2.4 billion. Like the commercial portfolio, all the properties in the residential portfolio were independently valued by third parties. You will see a little bit of a drop off from the value that we shared in December, but that's due to the ongoing disposal program within Transcend. They managed to transfer the further 46 units in January, February, and March this year.
Important, we have spoken about this, but important just to assess, from Transcend's side and where Emira is. There is a new board in place. As we've spoken about before, the 68.15% ownership. The sectional title unit sales are continuing to increase. The LTV is a very solid 37.1% and is expected to reduce. Ultimately, from our perspective, we're looking to drive a total return for all shareholders. There is the Bolton, which was our other residential investment, and that's a bit of a success story all by itself. We converted that from offices through to residential together with the Feenstra Group back in 2018-2019, and we reached pretty much full maturity from our side.
We began to commence sectional title unit sales in that we felt that the best use of that capital could be deployed elsewhere, but important to recycle that. Can confirm that 98 of the 282 units that we own at the Bolton transferred in early May. That realized ZAR 103.6 million. There's a further 106 units of the remaining 184 that are committed to sales as well. Importantly, this was at a premium to book value.
Okay, moving on to our investment in Enyuka. Still performing well and for the nine months contributed ZAR 64.5 million, very much in line with what our expectations were.
The 24 properties of Enyuka focus on the lower LSM, mostly in the rural portfolio or rural areas. Vacancy did increase slightly to 3.3%. Very good tenant retention result of 88%, and the weighted average rental reversion is now positive of 2.1%.
On the balance sheet, there was a bit of valuation growth on the underlying Enyuka portfolio, but given our pending disposal, we're still holding the value at the agreed disposal value of ZAR 638.6 million.
Let's just talk about the planned disposal of Enyuka. It was a transaction that we committed to quite a while ago, 15 months or so ago. It is, as Greg mentioned, ZAR 638.6 million worth of equity value that we're looking to realize. Importantly, Competition Commission gave their approval very recently, and what this should mean is that we take out a net ZAR 518 million in cash, with ZAR 120 million of that payment being deferred for a period of five years with interest serviced and to be secured by additional assets. There is still a final term that needs to be settled in this planned disposal, but hopefully, that will turn out positive in the near-term future.
Okay, moving on to our investments in the U.S. We received cash dividends of just over $154 million for the nine-month period from our U.S. investments. Proportionally, a significant increase, but just bear in mind, the prior year dividends were subdued due to some COVID impacts. We've also got the acquisition of Summit Woods, which took place late in last financial year. We only had one month of income from Summit Woods last year versus a full nine months in this current period. Just to highlight as well, we haven't received any dividends over the nine-month period or this current nine-month period from 32 East and Belden Park. But we are making progress on that, and we're expecting dividends to resume on those two investments in the next few months.
Our 12 properties in the U.S., grocery, open-air, anchored shopping centers, very good result on the vacancy, reduced to 2.6%, and it was mainly due to a very good let at Belden with Urban Air of nearly 55,000 sq ft. Tenant retention, also a solid result of 88% with a weighted average rental reversion of nearly 8%. WALE, very good, 5.3 years.
Okay. From a balance sheet perspective, the U.S. investments have increased by 11.5% up to $2.7 billion. Now, like the commercial and residential portfolios, we had all 12 investments independently valued by third parties. In dollar terms, after taking into account CapEx, the value growth across the 12 assets has been marginal. The increase you see here on our rand balance sheet is all due to the rand/dollar exchange rate. The rand closed at 17.79 against the dollar on March 31, which was about 1.50 rand weaker than it was in June. So this movement is all currency related. Just to flag, 50% of our dollar exposure is hedged through cross-currency interest rate swaps.
On a net basis on the balance sheet, we receive about 50% of this currency benefit. Likewise, if it moves the other way and moves negative, we would receive approximately 50% of that downside.
The Rainier- Emira Alliance certainly remains strong. We are well aligned. We are still looking for acquisitions. There is a longer-term pipeline, but we also got to acknowledge that it is certainly a more difficult environment with the higher interest rates and the levels of debt uncertainty that is there in the commercial market. However, we remain very particular in any and each investment that we make, requiring all parts to work. Our partners shared with us that they felt that this has been one of the strongest leasing markets that they've seen in the last 15 years in our best corner retail. If you've got the dominant open air grocer anchored value offering, you're gonna do well. What's important here is that this ties into our diversification.
We have exposure to an underlying much stronger economy, and as Greg shared in terms of the FX gains, which we received as well.
Okay. Moving now on to our corporate pillar. This is our fund level items, consists mainly of admin expenses and our staff costs. The ZAR 85.3 million for the nine months does seem high, but just bear in mind, we've now consolidated in the Transcend admin costs. The B-BBEE scheme is a trust adjustment, so just a function of the underlying dividend for the year. Moving on to our funding. On the distribution statement, our net finance costs, ZAR 372 million for the nine-month period. Proportionally, that is high. Again, we've had to consolidate in the Transcend finance costs. But in an Emira level, debt levels have been higher due to net capital outflows. We've then also seen the sharp rise in interest rates, which has obviously had an impact on the unhedged portion of our debt.
Now, moving on to the balance sheet. Debt has increased to just below ZAR 6.9 billion. Again, Transcend's having an impact there. They reported their results about a week ago and reported a 37% LTV that has been trending down due to their disposal program. Emira's LTV increased to 44%. The change of our year-end and the impact on the dividend cycle has had an impact on that. Let me just unpack the key moves on the LTV increase. This is an LTV bridge. We start here with the LTV that we reported in June last year of 40.5%. There's a 3.5% increase up to the 44%. The key moves are, firstly, there was acquisition of Transcend and the consolidation thereof. That added about 3%.
We had a bit of positive movement coming through on the property valuations. There's the FX impact on the U.S. investments, but you can see there the swing on the cross-currency interest rate swaps, which counters that somewhat. I spoke about the change of year-end and the impact on the dividend cycle. We paid out from a cash flow perspective, 12 months of dividends for the year. That's for the six months ended June 2022 and the six months ended December 2022 in this nine-month period. We've only collected in nine months of operating cash flows. That will correct itself in the new year. We'll have nine months worth of dividend outflows and 12 months worth of operating cash inflows. That was about a 0.7% negative impact to the LTV this year. Moving on to our debt expiry profile.
Average duration to expiry has reduced to 1.6 years. It is on the short end, but post year-end, we've refinanced ZAR 650 million of debt now in May. We've got credit approval for another ZAR 740 million, and we're working on about another ZAR 900 million, which we hope to conclude by mid to late July. Looking at our interest rate hedging, we've got 69.5% of our interest rate exposure that is fixed for an average duration of 1.6 years. Transcend's got about 74% of their interest rate exposure fixed, much shorter duration, but they are on their disposal program and would anticipate debt reducing from current levels. Just to highlight one other item on the balance sheet, that's the loans receivable.
Now, the majority of this is made up of the loan advanced through to Inani. From a distribution statement perspective, we continue to exclude the interest that we charge through to Inani for distribution calculation purposes. On a balance sheet side, we've increased the credit loss provision on the Inani loan such that the carrying value is now sitting at ZAR 259 million.
If I can just add to that, Greg, this is certainly of concern for us in terms of the exposure under Inani, which you'll all recall was a highly levered office commercial deal. We are working together with the senior debt funders to try and arrive at some more sustainable solution. I think that is also why we've shared with you that we don't expect to accrue for any further income coming out of our Inani investment for the near-term future.
Okay then, just to wrap it up on the financials and pull it all together, specifically the movements on the balance sheet. This is a net asset value per share slide. It's bridging the movement between our NAV in June last year of ZAR 16.29 up to the current NAV of ZAR 16.96. That was a 4.2% increase. The key positive moves, as we've spoken about already, firstly, a bit of gain on the value of our investment properties. Then we've got Transcend, where we acquired additional shares at a substantial discount to net asset value. There's the FX impact that's come through on the U.S. investments.
On the negative side, you see that same FX impact on the cross-currency interest rate swaps pulling down NAV, and then you've got the additional credit loss provision that we've raised on the Inani loan.
Right. Just to end off with the outlook. I think the comparison, it certainly can be confusing, but hopefully we've shared what we can with you under that, recognizing that this is a nine-month period that we're comparing against a 12-month period. Our earlier comparison in terms of being 83% of a number versus 75% is very, very applicable. You can imagine where we're going to be in 12 months' time, where we are sharing a comparison against a nine-month time, and so the headline will certainly be much stronger. Again, I'm sure that you'll do the maths. You've seen in terms of our operational metrics, you've seen in terms of our income, distributable income statement. It's certainly a strong past period performance.
That ultimately culminated in a ZAR 0.67 per share NAV uplift and a ZAR 0.3035 dividend per share for this three-month period. We've also wanted to share with you what we see as what's coming. Certainly, the effects of higher interest rates on the economy, on our tenants, and certainly on us. There's the effects of load shedding, those costs on tenants, the economy, and ourselves, and ultimately an economy that is slowing and is not growing at any sort of rate that we can be proud of. There's also the potential disposal of Enyuka that will have a dilutionary impact. There's the anticipated non-accrual of further income under Inani.
There's the pointing you to our integrated annual report from a transparency side that just says that the target that was set by our board for the executives on our distributable income per share for the 12 months to the 31st of March 2024 is 118.49 cents per share. Diversification, very important for us. There will certainly be a greater focus on diversification. There will also be a greater focus on increasing the available liquidity that we have available to us to take advantage of opportunities and to also provide a defensive buffer. But ultimately, we'll continue and remain on our path to endure for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. That concludes our presentation. Thank you very much. We will then make questions available, which I hope you've all completed.
Let's kick off then with the first question. The first question is: "Hi, team. Can you provide reason for higher admin costs, excluding Transcend? The run rate for twelve months on ZAR 84.6 million implies versus the ZAR 93.6 million com-com." In fact, I'm not quite sure on this one, but Greg, do you want to just unpack the reason for the higher admin costs? The question is there a one-off number in the FY 2023 number?
No. I mean, Geoff, there's not a one-off number, but appreciate that certain of those costs, where they would have typically been spread over a 12-month period, they're now condensed into a nine-month period, for example, an audit fee. In total, across the group, we've got about ZAR 6 million worth of audit fees if you include the U.S. and locally. Previously, that would have been spread over 12 months, where now that's condensed into nine months.
Okay, thanks. Could you explain how is it possible for collections to be above 100%, Ulana?
Oh.
It's the opening balance together with the.
The arrears.
essentially the arrears that you're collecting.
Correct.
that allows you to recover the opening balance, the arrears.
Right
... together with the what you've then invoiced, together with sometimes tenants actually pay in advance as well.
Correct.
That also fits into it.
Absolutely correct.
Yeah. Next question is, what are the catalysts to acquire the remaining Transcend stake? I think it's important, and we have shared this, that we don't think that it's viable for a small cap to be listed in this sort of environment. We do have 68.15% ownership of the Transcend, and we continually look at that to work out what the right opportunity is for us, because we just don't see it being a viable non-listed or a small cap listed small REIT. The next question was, can you provide a rolling 12-month like for like net property income for the commercial portfolio? So you can see.
Uh
Ulana and myself look at each other.
Yeah.
We can work on this, and we can engage with the person that specifically asked for that. We can talk about that in a bit more detail.
Yes.
The next question was, and let me read it out to you. "Emira Property Fund has received a favorable ESG rating from Risk Insights. Can you provide an overview of the strategies Emira Property Fund has implemented to acquire green bonds and meet environmental standards for their properties?
Well, I think on the green bond, there were specific goals that we had to meet with regards to clean energy as well as water harvesting, and we made both everything that was said to us by the end of March.
The next question was: "What is the average value of the Bolton units?" Our 282 units, you'll see that we disposed of 98 at a value of ZAR 103 million. That gives you a good idea in terms of what that average is. It's close to a million rand a unit certainly varying from studios to one bed, one bath, two beds, one bath, two beds, two baths, and penthouse units. The next question was: "What will Enyuka's LTV and ICR be post-transaction? Is there risk to interest income given ICR risks from rising rates in Enyuka?" Greg, you wanna try and
This is post-transaction in the U.K. after
After we sell
the acquisition.
Yeah.
Nazeem, we don't have all the information at this stage with regards to their final capital structure, so can't comment in detail on that at this stage.
The last question that we have, and we're certainly happy to take more questions if anyone wants to share anything, comments or questions. The comment was, "It seems strange that in the U.S. for both FY 2023 and FY 2022, around $21 million was retained in the USA, despite it being a three months shorter period. Can you explain why this was the case?" So, Greg, I guess they're referring there to the income that is retained at Belden Park and 32 East.
Yeah. I mean, to some extent it's got to do with the exchange rates, which might be skewing that number. There was also a large CapEx project that was done at UTC in terms of their roof repairs. There was some income retained from in that respect. I think that probably normalizes that number in terms of your 21. And also the prior year distributions were subdued on a lot of the properties. I think I'm happy to unpack that further separately.
The next question has to do with the U.S. in terms of, can you chat through the stronger leasing deals coming through from Rainier, and is duration on leases going up in addition to the ERV uplift? Let's just talk about on the leasing side, you saw the positive reversions of close to 7%. The comment also from our partners in terms of this being one of the stronger leasing markets that they've seen in the past 15 years in our type of, grocery-anchored, dominant retail. The deals that we've seen, a lot of the tenants in the U.S. there, they have the option to extend their leases.
Every time you get close to that leasing expiry date, we've seen that the tenants are exercising their options that are all at fixed escalations from the previous lease, and sometimes we also know that that's below market. From our side, it certainly you can see that positive momentum that's coming through, and which for our side just sets us well because there is a degree of under rent if you compare to where the market is on our portfolio. The next question was, "Is the duration on the leases going up?" You can certainly see that in terms of us having maintained and actually slightly extended the duration of our overall leases. Anything else you want to add under that, Ulana?
No, no.
Okay.
Agree.
All right. Then the last question was from Afrifocus Securities saying, "Regarding the U.S. valuations, what was the percentage increase in dollar terms?" Now, Greg, at the asset level that we had externally valued by CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield, the overall increase was a 1.3% increase in the underlying value of the portfolio. I'll share with you too that we did see discount and cap rates both increasing by close to 30 basis points. I think you'll also know that the other ingredient there is the level of rental that's there, which has then meant that really from our side, that property, those values have maintained themselves.
The CapEx, Geoff. I don't think your 1.6% factors in the CapEx that was spent. Valuation growth was marginal.
Then the last question was, "Will you be re-releasing some sort of some part of the previously retained income in the following years as perhaps a special dividend or a smoothing figure?" We're not there under that. I think our balance sheet is sufficient for our purposes. To the extent that we have surplus and there is additional income, that is certainly something that we would take into account. There's no specific anticipation at this point in time. If there are no other questions, I wanna thank everybody for participating in this webcast. I appreciate the confusion that we have had comparing a nine-month and twelve-month period.
Also wanna thank the Emira team and all of our service providers, because without this whole team all pulling together, you wouldn't see numbers like you've got here, which is a strong performance, notwithstanding that there are some challenges ahead. Thank you, everybody. Look after yourselves. Stay well.