All right. Good afternoon, everybody, thank you very much for attending. Welcome to the Growthpoint Interim Results presentation for the six months ended December 2022. Welcome to this magnificent venue, and we hope that you'll find whatever we have to say here today interesting. Just, I think as in the past, if I just quickly scroll down the agenda, we're gonna touch on some of our strategic initiatives that we're busy with. We'll review the salient features of the results. We would touch on the international investments in the South African portfolio, Growthpoint Investment Partners. Talk to you some of our balance sheet management, capital management, and then try and reach some sort of a conclusion at the end of all of that.
Before I start actually on the strategy, I just want to give a bit of a shout-out to David Green and his team who are here today. Many of the Waterfront employees are in our midst here today. David's the CEO of the Waterfront, and in all the press, TV, and radio interviews yesterday, we made a big song and dance about the fact that the Waterfront helped us through this particular period, you know, you know, and assisted us in eking out at least some growth. Without the Waterfront, we would have been challenged. Some muted growth as Estienne points out. Anyway, I'm under time pressure.
Estienne also told me that I never leave him enough time at the end of the day to talk to the South African business and all the other aspects. I am gonna try and move forward quite rapidly. Given the backdrop internationally and locally with rising interest rates and capital-constrained environments, bond markets that aren't really functioning, we remain very focused on the balance sheet and our liquidity. That's been another feature, I guess, of this particular set of results. Our group LTV is pretty stable at about 38.8%. We do have ZAR 10.3 billion worth of liquidity on balance sheet, or did have at 31 December, and another ZAR 1.6 billion of cash. Now that seems excessive, but it is pretty much in place.
The bulk of it is in place to deal with the pending upcoming bond refinance, which is in May 2023. I forget the exact date, 23rd of May or something. That is a $425 million U.S. dollar-E uro bond. Every indication to us at the moment in any event is that we will be repaying that as opposed to refinancing it in the bond market. Even more so given what's happened in the last couple of days with international bond markets. On the liquidity side, we also did sell some assets. There's slides on that later, about ZAR 757 odd million worth of South African asset sales. We also sold down some of our holding in the Growthpoint Healthcare entity, ZAR 500 million sale.
Then we maintaining a conservative dividend payout ratio of 82.5%, thereby retaining about ZAR 465 million of cash on the balance sheet for the half year. On the international side, we still have a bias, I guess, to increasing our offshore assets and our offshore exposure. We do, however, you know, we are focusing on our current investments instead of running around fishing for any new opportunities. I think it's fair to say that given the capital constraints that we have, given the global outlook, you know, it's fair to say that we're not rushing around the world looking for new offshore investments at the moment, but we're focusing more on our current investments and trying to maximize and optimize them.
43.7% of our assets by book value are now located offshore, and 31% of our EBIT is earned from offshore. We invested the dividend that we received, the half year dividend out of Capital & Regional. We reinvested that. There was about ZAR 40 million worth. We made a further incremental investment into Lango, $30 million, towards the end of December last year. Hard currency dividend income is approximately ZAR 763 million. That's up just over 10% compared to the prior comparable period. In those, in that number is ZAR 50 million from Cap Reg that we will reinvest, as well as ZAR 166 million from Globalworth that we intend reinvesting.
Globalworth have also offered a scrip dividend. The major shareholders of Globalworth have all undertaken to reinvest the cash. Optimizing the South African portfolio. Ongoing focus there, selling non-core assets also trying to position the assets with a great focus on sectors that produce or are likely to produce higher growth, as well as regions that are performing better than others. We sold 19 properties at ZAR 756 million, s mall profit to book. At December, we had two properties valued at ZAR 113 million that was held for sale.
In aggregate, if you think of this sort of repositioning, we refer back to FY 2017 when we sort of started with this, and we've sold over ZAR 10.5 billion worth of assets, over 132 properties. Growing revenue streams. New revenue streams from Growthpoint Investment Partners and our trading and development activities. The assets under management grew by ZAR 1.1 billion, 7 odd percent to ZAR 16.7 billion across the three funds. We do have a publicly stated target there of ZAR 30 billion of assets under management by FY 2027. The fees that we earned for the half year is ZAR 48 million. That is more than double what we had in the prior comparable period.
Due in the main to growth in the student accommodation fees, where the prior comparable period only had one month's worth of fees. This is a six-month number. Then also, Lango producing ZAR 8.6 million of fees compared to zero in the comparable period. The co-investment strategy leaves us with, you know, equity invested in these funds. There we earned ZAR 79 million of dividend income, ZAR 66 million from the healthcare fund, ZAR 9 million from the student accommodation fund, and ZAR 3.2 million from Lango. We'll talk about Lango later. In trading and development, total fees there about ZAR 77 odd million made up of trading profits, development fees, as well as net property income on some of the assets that are held and earning rental. Salient features for the period under review.
The dividend per share is up 4.6% to ZAR 0.643. Compared to the distributable income per share, which is up 1.3% to ZAR 0.779. The play there, I guess, why the one is higher than the other is the income or the actual payout ratio. The payout ratio for the six months to December 2021 was 80%. The payout ratio for this period is 82.5%, giving you the difference. Spoke about the growth in assets under management, 7% growth. Total property assets up at 2% at ZAR 174 billion.
Group LTV remains conservative, NAV was down 2.2%, with the share price currently trading at about I think it was a bit below ZAR 13. I mean, that represents a discount of somewhere between 38%-40% to NAV. I know that there's some investors in the room who potentially see some value in that, so that's good news. Just on the financials, this slide tries to give you just a feel for what the various moving parts of the business did in the six months compared to the prior comparable six month period. Total distributable income was up ZAR 39 million or 1.5%. South Africa down ZAR 31 million.
There's obviously tremendous amount of moving parts in that number, anything from asset sales, as you can see here, you know, the increases in property expenses. A big chunk of that is also linked to the diesel costs that we've incurred in running generators throughout the portfolio, which was in the order of ZAR 48 million worth of expenses. A large number of moving parts in the South African portfolio. On balance, I'd say the South African business is still, whilst the retail and industrial environment have improved immeasurably, the office environment does remain constrained. I would also add that, from a geographical perspective, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KZN performing substantially better than Gauteng. Gauteng is the problem child as a region.
On the finance costs, ZAR 79 million negative movement there compared to the prior comparable period. In the main, linked to slightly higher gearing, but also obviously the interest rates having moved up considerably between obviously the six month period, December 2021 versus December 2022. Thank goodness, I guess, for our hedging strategies and our hedging policies. With 85% of our debt hedged, you know, it has provided obviously a pretty big buffer. We did some very high level back of the cigarette box calculations. If we were completely unhedged, with a recent move in interest rates, we probably would have lost ZAR 1 billion or would have incurred an extra ZAR 1 billion in interest. We are very thankful for the hedging policy.
This is where the Waterfront, I guess, the next item is the Waterfront. ZAR 68 million improved contribution from the Waterfront. 23% increase in net property income at the Waterfront. By all accounts, the Waterfront is back to or it's in fact exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Certainly in terms of absolute levels of trade and turnovers. Down at the EBIT level, it's still a little bit behind, mainly due to some elevated costs, including once again, the old diesel story. Distribution from GOZ up ZAR 7 million. I'll talk to the details of GOZ on the slides that come later. Globalworth up ZAR 17 million, Capital & Regional up ZAR 50 million.
The reason for Cap Reg's big move in positive contribution is the fact that there was no dividend paid in the private, sorry, in the prior comparable period. Smaller movements there on the dividends from the co-investment stakes that we have. Growthpoint Investment Partners, as I pointed out earlier, ZAR 22 million higher than the prior comparable period. Trading and development pretty flat. ZAR 77 million this period, ZAR 76 million in the prior period. Looking at a little bit more detail on the income statement. Total gross property revenues or gross property income grew 9.2% from ZAR 6.4 billion to ZAR 7 billion, just over ZAR 7 billion. A very big chunk of that growth did come from GOZ.
The GOZ number, again, I'll talk to it a little bit later, is a little bit skewed based on some significant lease surrender payments that were paid by one of the tenants that vacated a building in Sydney. Total revenue's up 9.2%. Property expense is up 12.2%. Again, GOZ featuring, you know, pretty big in that, as well as, What was the other number I was looking for? No, largely sort of GOZ, I think, on that expense line. That leaves us with net property income up 8%, just over ZAR 5 billion. Our other operating expenses grew at 13.9%. Once again, GOZ featuring there.
That's essentially the addition of the Fortius Funds Management business, the acquisition of that business, and bringing in the I think about 35 odd people, the cost associated with that business into the other operating expense line for GOZ. Net property income after all of those operating expenses at the bottom of the page, up 7.5% to ZAR 4.6 billion. On to the next page, just dealing with our finance costs. Finance costs were up 10.9% to ZAR 1.8 billion. Key feature there, I guess is, you know, obviously the slightly higher gearing in GOZ and the fact that GOZ's interest expense, their hedging policy is not quite as aggressive as ours.
They were only 66% hedged, their weighted average cost of debt went up from 2.9% to 4.2%. They're incurring a bit more interest expense on their debt. We then have total finance and other income of ZAR 628 million. That was up 22%. After adjusting at the bottom of the page there for the non-controlling interest, foreign exchange profits and losses, antecedent divestiture and taxation, we end up with distributable income of ZAR 2.6 billion, 1.5% ahead of the prior comparable period. This slide just does a reconciliation from what we as a company determine as distributable income to the SA REIT FFO number.
The SA REIT FFO coming in at ZAR 2.696 billion, slightly higher, and reflecting 2.3% growth. On a per share level, slightly lower at 2.1% growth in FFO per share. The reason for that, we didn't actually issue any new shares, but we, the number of treasury shares that we had has reduced, and therefore, the effective number of shares that we use for this calc was slightly higher. The distributable income per share then ZAR 0.779, payout ratio of 82.5%, giving you the dividend of ZAR 0.643. Few key features of the balance sheet. Property portfolio, South Africa is about ZAR 70 billion, pretty stable.
I guess, the bulk of the growth in the South African portfolio is mainly through the funds coming through, you know, the fact that we consolidate the healthcare fund and the student accommodation fund. GOZ also up slightly, mainly through the acquisition. Whilst there was a devaluation in GOZ, there was also a acquisition of one pretty substantial property towards the end of their financial year. Capital & Regional coming down from ZAR 8.4 billion to ZAR 7.2 billion, mainly linked to property valuation write-downs in the U.K. On the equity accounted investment side, we got ZAR 14.8 billion worth of assets there. Our investment in the Waterfront, ZAR 5.9 billion.
That's 50% of the Waterfront. Looking at that number in isolation gives you a bit of a skewed picture. You need to also look at the line just below that box, which is the loans granted. That amount there of ZAR 3.3 billion. ZAR 3 billion of that is the shareholder development loan to the Waterfront. Our investment in the Waterfront is valued at just over ZAR 9.1 odd billion. The other big investment there is our investment in Globalworth at NAV at ZAR 8.9 billion. We've got the loans granted number, listed investments, which is actually 15% in an entity called the Dexus Industrial Fund that GOZ holds. That's worth ZAR 1.6 billion.
Our stake in Lango after the additional equity invested there is valued at ZAR 1.28 billion, and the small amount of unlisted investments. Debt, we have about ZAR 66.5 billion worth of debt, ZAR 39 billion in South Africa. Growthpoint Australia's got ZAR 23 billion and Capital & Regional, ZAR 3.7 billion. Total shareholder interest or NAV, ZAR 72.4 billion. How am I doing? Okay, I'll try and get through the rest in the next 5 minutes. GOZ. GOZ, you know, the numbers for GOZ for this particular period probably flatter, you know, the performance a little bit. We own 62.7% of GOZ. The at cost, that investment is it was ZAR 9.6 billion. Current market value is about ZAR 16.6 billion.
FFO grew at 12.5%, and the FFO per share grew from ZAR 15.3 to ZAR 13.6. That growth is in large part driven by the fact that we had one particular tenant in a building in Sydney who vacated and paid the full lease termination amount, and we're forced to reflect all of that income in this particular accounting period. There was probably about $20 million. Of the $40 million increase in revenues, or NPI at GOZ, about $20 million is due to that particular lease cancellation. Distribution growth for GOZ was 2.9%, ZAR 0.107 dividend versus ZAR 0.104.
On that basis, the payout ratio was just below 70% compared to 76% in the prior comparable period. Guidance from GOZ at 82% for the full year. GOZ clearly remains a very important part of our business and a core investment for us, and we continue to support that entity and management with their strategic initiatives. It has a very strong balance sheet. Gearing has gone up from low 30s to just below 35. It's still below the, let's say, the target gearing range of 35-45. The company has great access to liquidity, ZAR 357 million of undrawn debt. On a like for like basis, we have seen negative values now in the U.K., mainly in the office portfolio.
The industrial portfolio still was pretty flat. The bulk of that devaluation came from the office portfolio. NAV per share as a consequence of that decreased by 6.8% to AUD 4.25. Share price trading today at about AUD 3.15 odd, also trading at about a 25%-26% discount to NAV. 66% of the total debt is fixed. Average duration 3.3 years at 3% all-in cost. The portfolio comprises about AUD 5 billion range worth of office and industrial assets, probably split roughly 70/30 between office and industrial. We did acquire one asset in Dandenong with a very long WALE, predominantly led to government, 9.4 years average lease and at AUD 165 million.
The office portfolio was valued downwards by ZAR 165 million or 5%, and the industrial portfolio was pretty flat. 95% of GOZ's portfolio is leased to government, listed entities or large organizations in Australia. Portfolio vacancy is only 6%, 94% let and 96%, 96.7% by GLA. 5.2% weighted average cap rate, 6.3 WALE, and in the period, we let 89,000 square meters. I mean, those sort of KPIs and the key measures for GOZ look pretty good and pretty healthy, certainly when you compare it to the South African portfolio and even the other portfolios that we're invested in. We did successfully integrate the Fortius acquisition.
Sorry, that was about a AUD 45 million investment. There have been some disposals of the assets in the funds, AUD 55 million worth. In total, that entity has about AUD 1.9 billion of assets under management. Moving to Globalworth. Globalworth has got 71 properties, about 1.4 million square meters of space and valuation of the assets at 29.4% is at AUD 16.5 billion. The cost of our investment is AUD 8.9 billion. At the current share price, the market value is AUD 4.9 billion. The company did declare a dividend of AUD 0.15 compared to the prior comparable period of AUD 0.13.
Probably a little bit flattering as well because the AUD 0.13 in the prior comparable period was negatively impacted by one-off expenses associated with the offer that was made for to all shareholders and the bid defense by the company. That depressed the AUD 0.13. The AUD 0.15, you know, representing some good growth but off a technically lower base in FY 2022. Globalworth continues to show resilient performance despite the fact that I think fundamentals in that market are currently weakening. I'll talk to that a little bit more when I close on the prospect side. On the balance sheet, there's EUR 163 million of cash, EUR 300 million of undrawn debt facilities. The balance sheet remains pretty robust.
Property valuations in that market have also started coming off, EUR 89 million negative re-valuations, mainly on the office portfolio. Once again, the industrial doing well. Gearing's at 42.7%. There's not much maturity in the next 12 months. The company did repay EUR 323 million corporate bond in June 2022 with cash that it had on balance sheet at the time. More than EUR 625 million worth of new financing has been secured in the 2022 calendar year. Bearing in mind, Globalworth has got a December year-end as opposed to, obviously, Growthpoint, which is June. There's no material debt maturities before March 2025 for Globalworth. On the acquisition and development front, the bulk of activity took place in Romania.
We acquired a small logistics facility. There's a fair bit of development underway in the industrial space, 104,000 square meters of additional, six new facilities. There are another three that are currently under construction for another 30,000 square meters. In Poland, we pretty much complete now with the refurbishment of two mixed-use properties, which are about 74,800 square meters in total. On the portfolio side, 37 assets in Poland, 34 in Romania, roughly split, EUR 1.6 billion in each of those two markets. 206,000 square meters of space was let in 2022, with 99, just short of 100,000 square meters let in the second half of the year. Vacancy has ticked up to 14.4%.
Some of that is self-inflicted in as much as the 104,000 square meters of industrial facilities that were built were done on spec and are only 50% let as we speak. One of the other big movers on that vacancy number is one particular property in the CBD of Warsaw, which is called Warta Tower, which essentially is now vacant. On a like-for-like basis, vacancy is about 11.6, and if you strip out that Warta asset, which we are trying to sell, vacancies will be just under 10%. Total revenue for the six months was EUR 122.7 million. Capital & Regional, briefly, five properties, 185,000 squares, ZAR 7.2 billion of valuation. That's 100%.
We own 61% of CapReg. Our cost, ZAR 3.9 billion, and the market value at the moment is ZAR 1.3 billion. Share price trading about GBP 0.58 odd. NAV is about GBP 1.09, there or thereabout. Also trading at a 60%+ or 60% odd discount to NAV. Final dividend declared, also December year-end, GBP 0.0275. That translates to about ZAR 50 million for us. As mentioned before, we're gonna reinvest that. We still very much believe in the value of that platform. You know, Lawrence Hutchings and Stuart, the finance director, their strategy around needs-based retailing, we still firmly believe is a good strategy.
We actually see that there are potentially good opportunities to grow that fund based on that strategy. Having said that, obviously, access to capital, in particular debt capital at the moment is very, very tough, equally, equity capital, though. Balance sheet, valuations did decline. I think last time I spoke, I mentioned that we were confident that values had probably bottomed out. Unfortunately, there was another 5% down in the period. In many respects, I think again, the U.K. had a couple of own goals with the political shenanigans of Liz Truss being in office for two weeks or something like that. That certainly also spooked the capital markets considerably.
I still feel that we are very, very close to the bottom of that cycle in terms of downward valuations. Net LTV, 41%. Debt maturity is 4.5 years, with an average cost of 3.6% and 98% fixed. We sold the land at Walthamstow, which to a developer who's building 495 apartments there. That should support the shopping center. We also sold the Blackburn asset for GBP 40 million in August 2022. The focus, management focus, continues to be on the needs-based retailing. Operationally, pretty robust performance, 54 leases signed and at a 34% premium to previous passing rentals. Average rent per square foot's very cheap at GBP 14. Occupancy is 94%.
Footfall grew by seven. Rental collections, 98%. There is a solid pipeline of good accretive repositioning projects within the portfolio. I know that management are equally looking at some outside potential opportunities. I didn't do particularly well. I still managed to go for an half an hour, but yes, it's better than last time, I think.
Yeah, it is.
Thanks.
I'll hand over to Estienne to just take us through the South African business and the funds management business and some of the debt slides. Thanks.
Sweet. Very. Thanks, Norbert. Well, we're gonna come back home. Welcome, everybody. Nice day in Cape Town, and it's nice being in South Africa. Things are starting to look up a little bit. It's been busy. It's been a busy six months. In this time, Growthpoint let over 720,000 sq meters. I think that's about, just about all the office space in Cape Town. Right. Our vacancies has marginally come down to single digit levels at 9.9%. Unfortunately, that did come at renewal growth rate price, which is reduced by 16%, which is probably the worst we've ever printed, but I'll give you a bit of insight into that. Renewal success rate has also reduced marginally.
I'll also give you a bit of insight into that in the different sectors. Total expense ratio has ticked up marginally to 35.2%. Our arrears has started to come down post-COVID, down to about ZAR 179 million odd. Bad debts have also reduced to ZAR 12 million, and our provision as a result has reduced to ZAR 105 million. In the time, this time is probably the first time in a while that we've started seeing some valuation improvements. That equated for 1.4% to about ZAR 1 billion. We have sold in this time ZAR 756 million worth of assets and acquired ZAR 244 million worth of strategic acquisitions.
We're quite active on the development side, and we spent just short of ZAR 900 million there, and we've got another further commitment of ZAR 541 million. The South African balance sheet, so unconsolidated, if you'd like, is geared at 31.7%. You can see it's quite conservatively geared at this stage. We'll run through each one of the sectors. Industrial has slendered down to 175 properties now. That's about 2 million square meters of space with about ZAR 12.2 billion. We've seen vacancies reduce significantly in this time, down to 4.3%. The market is the demand is reasonably good. Specifically in the coastal areas, so the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, we've seen vacancies come down to 2 odd percent.
Gauteng still lagging, somewhat, you know, the market there is also reasonably firm with vacancies at 5.6%. The renewal growth, or the renewal success rate was impacted by one transaction that we did where we let the client out of the specific property and we sold the property. That obviously in the six month period, had a impact given that it was 22,000 square meters. Done a lot of letting, over 200,000 square meters of letting, you know, we've certainly seen the market is very active. As a result of a couple of transactions where the they were over-rented on renewal, we saw the renewal growth rate print to 13.7%.
I would have expected and in fact indicated that we were hoping to see a better number in this year. I think as we go forward, I'm still reasonably confident that certainly should play out going forward, given the fundamental dynamics. Escalations are also increasing in terms of the negotiations we're having with tenants, and arrears are coming down. As a result of those repeated negative reversions, obviously the like for like is pretty flat. What we have been doing is we've been taking advantage of this strong demand for industrial space to sell off non-strategic smaller assets specifically to owner tenants, tenanted sort of scenarios and investors looking for assets.
You know, we moved ZAR 286 million worth of industrial property there. We've got another 113 that's pretty much held for sale and another 180 that is in quite advanced stages of negotiation. Valuations have gone up by 2%, which is sort of indicating that the market, the view by valuers is that the market is sort of firming up. Look at the retail side. The vacancies did increase marginally. Our core vacancy is still reasonably stable at 3 odd percent. The 6% number includes Bayside Mall and office space in Golden Acre, which went vacant, where we had a tenant move to another building, and as such, it increased the vacancies there somewhat.
We are seeing increased letting from national retailers that have, through this period, acquired different formats and are looking to roll them out. We're also seeing, you know, certainly some of the banks and some of the big box tenants have been giving up space or reducing space. Renewals over the period also lagged and, you know, once again, I think the percentage was probably a little bit worse than I would have hoped to have seen. We had, you know, Ster-Kinekor in this period and one or two other specific transactions that had quite an impact on that. As the year rolls out, we're hoping to see improvements. Many of these transactions were done a year ago, a year and a half ago, and they only sort of kicked in now.
I think that is sort of still playing out. Escalations, pretty similar to prior. Arrears is continuing to come down, which is a good thing. On the like-for-like growth rate, I mean, the negative reversions are still pulling back the like-for-like growth. What is encouraging is that our trading density is growing at 8.5%. That is your trade per square meter in the shopping centers and across the board now, most of those, most of that trade is actually exceeding the prior COVID period. That's certainly moving into the right direction, and ultimately, this forms the base on which you negotiate rentals ultimately. Valuations as a result have firmed.
We had about ZAR 475 million worth of additional value on the portfolio. We do have half a billion ZAR worth of transactions in process on the disposal side. Also slimming down and repositioning that portfolio. On the office side, the portfolio has also slimmed down to 154 properties, which is 1.65 million square meters worth ZAR 26 billion. Vacancies have seemed to have stabilized. It is a pretty tough market out there in the office space, specifically in Gauteng. Ironically, the Western Cape has reduced, you know, from sort of like for like period already, significantly to just below 12%, and KwaZulu-Natal is at 5%.
Definitely Gauteng is where our biggest focus is in terms of the vacancy challenges. There are some sort of green shoots in that we've started seeing some of the smaller tenants coming back into the market. In fact, I think load shedding is assisting us in that people can't run their generator for 12 hours at home just to keep their Wi-Fi on, so they can do work. It's much better to come back to the office, run on the company's expense, and, you know, even the tea and your colleagues are there, so it's much more fun. I think, you know, the sort of theme that office is dead is a myth, and we're certainly seeing, you know, that demand is slowly but surely coming back.
real asset managers that can afford to stay at home and run off their inverters and solar power and, you know, all those kind of things. Right. If we move on to the renewal side, I mean, there it's a pretty difficult market as I've mentioned. We're keeping roughly two clients out of every three. We did have one specific client that really of 16,000 that gave back space. That certainly skewed the number in this six months and also skewed the renewal rate, which went -20%, which is probably the biggest it's been. There was one 20,000 square meter client that impacted that. And without that client, the rate would have been around about 12.4. Things are sort of improving.
That same client also paid us late, our arrears went up marginally, but we have recovered that. I think even the arrears are coming down, and we are getting better escalations over the period of time. Like for like growth remains under pressure, and we have been successful in selling five offices for ZAR 130 million, and we've got a further ZAR 300 million worth of transactions pending at this stage. The idea is to ultimately reduce Gauteng exposure and try and increase our exposure in the coastal regions. Valuations for the first time have sort of stabilized and remained flat. You know, those valuations in certain areas, you know, Sandton area on average, valuations have been written down by over the years by close to 40%.
You know, it's quite significant write-downs. Load shedding, I think we did put some media out, so some of this might be familiar to you. You know, we've spent about ZAR 47 million in the six months, and I think probably if we look at the volume of load shedding in this period, it'll probably be marginally more. In mitigation, we have, sort of, as regulations have lifted, we've planned a significant rollout of solar. We've got an additional 13.9 megawatts of solar that we'll be rolling out in the period. You know, for most of our office properties today, there's full backup power. If you're in a Growthpoint property, you can continue to work. The lights are on. It's all very, very good.
That certainly will hopefully serve us well when we trying to let those properties. As time moves on, the idea is to bring more and more solar on to our various properties where it is feasible. Ultimately, the end of the day that, you know, this situation, I think, is regulatorily induced, as I've mentioned earlier. I do think is, as the regulations reduce and the private sector can step in, then the electricity situation will also improve quite a bit. On the Waterfront, here's where the really good news starts. You know, here it's a different world, it's a different country that David and the team live in. We're very jovially celebrating with them.
Net property income is up 23 odd %. If you compare that to sort of the what we refer to as prior normal. In December 2019, it's up above that at 2% above. The V&A has also seen, you know, with all the events coming back into the Cape Town area, retail sales have come back very strong. Hospitality has come back very strong. I mean, December this year, they've had a record year with sales over ZAR 1 billion, 28% up on December 2019. Vacancies, good demand. Everybody wants to be here. That's come down to 7.7%. It's pretty practically full. Collections are very strong.
Visitor numbers are up significantly, and increased by 34%. Still only 79% of prior to COVID levels. Given the international tourists are pretty back, pretty much full back, you know, we've seen strong sale numbers come through the V&A. All the restaurants that, you know, suffered or closed down through the COVID period are back open. We've got some new restaurants we would suggest you frequent. They pretty spectacular, and I'm sure you'll all enjoy them. The one decision that the V&A have made is that all the diesel costs that we are spending here to make sure that everybody can trade continuously, we're picking up the bill for that.
On the retail side, 52% increase in retail sales for the six months, that's a 23% increase on last normal. Vacancies are minuscule. Demand for space is very strong. Trading densities are significantly above the peers in this space. We've opened 29 stores with a GLA of 3,500 square meters during six months. On the marine side, we've seen a 45% increase there on industrial and marine for the six months. We've had the cruise season open with a bang. 18 big vessels come through already, we handled 42,000 passengers. Every passenger that comes through, we levy a fee for handling the baggage and processing those passengers. It is an income generating venture in itself.
We're expecting another 52 vessels to come through in the next six months. Then obviously the casual berthing in the marina has also performed exceptionally well. On the office side, the offices are full here. Demand is very, very strong. All the major tenants are actively increasing their occupancies, which is very different to what we're seeing in Gauteng. Certainly here, the negative reversions are really minuscule and come off the back of very high escalations. Investec, the development we're just doing behind us here, they've decided to take the full building. I think when they called everybody back to the office, it was my understanding that there were quite a few more staff living in Cape Town now than who used to live in Johannesburg, apparently.
They needed the extra space, but we're very, very glad, and they'll be occupying towards the end of the year. The hotel side of things, you know, RevPARs are up 18% on last normal levels. The reality is that the average daily rate and occupancies at the V&A are up 14% and 3% respectively compared to pre-COVID levels. The market is definitely back. Occupancies are at 84%. Certainly, you can see that the tourists and the hotels, I mean, the other day, literally you couldn't find a hotel room in Cape Town when the Grand Prix was on here.
The residential vacancies have also come down quite significantly from 18 odd % to 5%. If we look at the investments into the various funds. The Growthpoint Healthcare Property Holdings Fund has eight properties today, worth about ZAR 3.6 billion. That fund has raised capital of ZAR 2.5 billion, and Growthpoint is around about ZAR 800 million of that. In the period, we've raised another ZAR 500 million from the GIPF Namibia, and that money came through two Growthpoint. They subscribed for shares in the fund and they reduced our convertible loan, and that took us down to effective holding of 39%.
The Healthcare Fund also acquired its first warehousing and distribution property, the Adcock Ingram head office and a warehouse facility of 22,000 square meters. They've acquired a 50% share. The other 50% is held by Bidvest, the controlling shareholder of Adcock. That has a very, very long lease of over eight years. After the acquisition, they've got capacity of ZAR 340 million on the debt provided by the IFC, and that will be used in a development of a 50-bed, 2-theater extension to the Busamed Hillcrest Hospital, as well as a health campus in Cornubia in Durban. The growth in distribution has also been very strong for this fund.
I think last year, [audio distortion]Spica was about 7.5%, and the year before that was about 11.8%. This year, it's at 7%. 15% of the Manco has been sold to Kagiso for ZAR 41.6 million. The total debt on that fund, the gearing's a mere 12.3%. On the student accommodation side of things, that capital raise there was ZAR 1.7 billion. We hold 14% of the fund. The GIPF also put ZAR 250 million into that fund in October. They're currently on the road, raising capital for that fund of ZAR 2.5 billion. There's a very, very long pipeline of opportunities, acquisitions and developments.
One of the developments has recently been acquired right next to UJ, the University of Johannesburg, in Auckland Park. There's also a development in the entrance to right opposite the Pretoria station, which will service TUT, called Capital Gate. Ultimately, post that acquisition, it'll take the total number of beds to 8,700 odd, which makes us the largest student accommodation provider in the country. The Growthpoint student accommodation also declared a dividend of ZAR 0.374. It is marginally smaller than the prior period. The reality is that the compare period there has a skew to the start of the academic year, and that's why it's marginally higher.
They are targeting ultimately to have assets of about ZAR 12 billion in that fund and to list it in the next 7 odd years. As everybody would have seen with the student riots recently, NSFAS has decided to reduce or cap the rental per annum per student to ZAR 45,000 odd. That has got a negative impact specifically on our Pretoria portfolio. We are currently in negotiations through the Association of Student Accommodation Providers with the various government bodies to see whether there's some solution to the problem. Ultimately, the debt in the specific fund currently is at 23.5%. Lango, the African Focused Fund, currently has 11 properties worth about $612 million. We own 18 odd % of it at a cost of ZAR 1.2 billion.
We did invest ZAR 30 billion, which is included in that 1.2 in December in the fund, after a successful capital raise for the fund of $125 million. The fund owns properties in Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia, with three pieces of land in Angola. The fund is considering taking the capital that it's raised. It has a pipeline of acquisitions in Nairobi. It also is reducing its debt marginally to the 40 odd percent level. The Circle Mall, which was a mall in Nigeria, which was damaged in October 2020, has also been fixed up, redeveloped, and started trading in November 2022.
Continuous challenges with the liquidity in Naira still poses a level of difficulty for this specific company in terms of paying distributions. On the capital management side, we do have ZAR 39.6 billion worth of debt. As earlier mentioned, that's about 31.7% LTV. It was a very interesting six months in that we've raised long-dated debt for the first time in quite a while. It hasn't really been that freely available, but we secured unsecured privately placed bond with IFC for 10 years in slugs of 10 years and seven years. On the back of that, we had reverse inquiries, and we placed another ZAR 1.2 billion with institutions on 9.2 years and 10 years.
That really, in a funny kind of a way, seems to be gonging out the interest rate cycle, or increase cycle, potentially. Certainly we do benefit from that long-dated debt. We do have about ZAR 950 million worth of bonds maturing in this period, but we do have sufficient capital to cover that. The weighted average length of the debt book is reasonably impacted by the ZAR 7 odd billion worth of, it's close to ZAR 8 billion now, worth of foreign dollar bond that we have to refinance in May. We will be terming that out. The intention is to do that before the maturity of that debt.
We do have facilities in place, as Norbert mentioned, you've got ZAR 5.6 billion facilities, plus another EUR 206 million to cover our debt responsibilities there. Our fixes are still fixed at 85%. The marginal rate has increased to 8.9% now. If you blend that with international CCRS, it brings it down to 6.4%. Our FX is pretty conservative, GOZ is funded with CCRS, Globalworth and Lango is funded with U.S. bonds and CCRSs. Right. Norbert, maybe if you just wanna conclude for us, you still got five minutes. Whoopi.
All right. Thanks, Estienne. I'm gonna whip through the last couple of slides quite quickly, so I think we can leave some additional time for questions. I mean, we've spoken at length, I think, about GOZ. It has performed particularly well in the six months. I think the second six-month period is not gonna be as good given the skew with the, you know, with the lease cancellation fees that were recorded in this particular six-month period. Notwithstanding that, Australia's is performing well as an economy, is performing well as a country. Unemployment is sort of 3%-4%. GDP growth is relatively low, but there is still growth at the moment. The company, all its key financial metrics and key metrics, operating metrics are very positive.
We continue to remain pretty positive and upbeat about the prospect for GOZ. The company has provided its own guidance of distribution of AUD 0.214. We did half of that now at AUD 0.107. They have given guidance of FFO as a range of AUD 0.255-AUD 0.265. Globalworth, things are, you know, pretty stable, but it's fair to say that the markets there have become a little bit more challenged. The outlook for growth for 2023 would be for a bit slower than what was experienced in the past. I think the particular countries and the markets within those countries all have different dynamics happening.
I think in Poland, Warsaw is pretty strong and there's a pretty positive outlook on the property and office accommodation outlook in Warsaw. The regional cities, the smaller regional cities are experiencing a few more challenges. There's a bit of overdevelopment. During just prior to COVID, a number of developments were commenced. Those have all now materialized and have resulted in a bit of an oversupply in those markets. We've also seen that the major multinationals, your Googles, your Facebooks, your Microsofts, Wipros, these were the guys driving the demand in those markets, in those secondary towns. They have slowed down in their employment, as I think has been widely published.
They are from committing to 10,000 and 20,000 square meters for 10-year leases, which was the trend up until, let's say, and into COVID. There is now a situation where the guys are handing back space. The smaller cities being impacted more than the major city centers. In Romania, Bucharest office market seeing a similar trend with regards to those big major multinationals. Vacancies are increasing there. Having said that, at least in Bucharest, there's very little new supply. Whilst there continues to be growth in the overall economy, you know, that obviously, you know, will be positive and could. There's enough capacity, I guess, there, you know, for the growth, but no new capacity being delivered.
I think, once again, you know, we are continuously looking at all of our options, maximizing our, you know, the value that we have in that investment. The new CEO, Dennis Selinas, is performing well. We certainly have had some pretty positive engagements with Dennis Selinas in recent months. Capital & Regional, I think has stabilized. Operationally, we showed you some statistics which talks to, you know, sort of resilient underlying operating performance. Dividends were reinstated. They are accelerating their community strategy. The dividend per share, I think, resulted of GBP 0.0275 for the final dividend, resulted in GBP 0.0525 for the full year.
The dividend policy is to pay 90% of EPRA earnings. That is in line with U.K. REIT legislation. The company is considering one or two opportunistic opportunities, acquisitions, very much linked to debt, access to debt and debt funding. Invariably, let's call it new debt for retail acquisitions isn't, doesn't exist. What you are seeing, though, is a number of the banks that have taken ownership of some of these assets, in as much as the value of their debt has exceeded, let's say, the value of the assets. They've taken those assets on book, and they're now trying to get rid of some of those assets and are prepared to staple some debt against that asset as they get rid of it.
I think that does pose an opportunity. Lawrence and his team have detailed a sort of a roadmap where they believe they can grow their adjusted profits by 20% in the, in the medium term. South Africa continues to... I think the macro continues to be challenging. GDP growth anywhere between 1.2%-0% predicted for 2023. As Estienne mentioned, some of the fundamentals are starting to improve. You know, the industrial and retail sector is looking better, but office remains constrained. Balance sheet is in good, in good nick. The growth prospects remain constrained due to the local and global environment being pretty volatile. Geopolitical tensions are adding uncertainty to the macroeconomic backdrop.
Rising interest rates and inflation are impacting the consumer and valuations. We do have a pretty solid trading and development pipeline, and we continue to look to dispose of assets, optimizing the South African portfolio. Growthpoint Investment Partners, it is one of the few in the domestic environment, anyway, the sort of the growth target, or it's one of the areas of the business we're actively looking to grow. We've targeted 6, 30 billion of assets under management. That's pretty much a doubling from where we are today over the next five years, three-five years. There is a solid pipeline there of opportunities for the existing funds. We are also considering different asset classes.
I think the focus here is more on alternative asset classes, impact investment, social investment, targeting third-party capital for co-investment into those themes, and not to necessarily create funds which compete with our current balance sheet assets in the form of retail, office, and industrial. We are seeing some good interest from institutional investors. We have employed dedicated resource to target these institutional investors and the asset consultants and ultimately getting into the to see to present to the trustees of the investment committees of these pension funds. We hope that that will bear fruit in the near term. V&A Waterfront continues from strength to strength.
There's nothing to suggest that, from what we can see, that, you know, things will not continue to improve. There's definitely, you know, good demand across all the segments, whether it be residential, retail, office, industrial, shipping, mooring. It doesn't matter what here at the Waterfront, it's looking good. The city seems to be doing all the right things by committing to events such as the, you know, the Formula E and various other events which attract tourists to the city, and the spin-off to the Waterfront, in that regard, whether it's mining in Durban, whether it's Art Fair, it doesn't really matter. These things have all got a very positive spin-off here at the Waterfront.
We do expect earnings before interest and tax, or like-for-like revenues are in excess of what we had pre-COVID, but there obviously have been a few additional operational costs. EBIT is expected to be at about 90% of pre-COVID levels. Just then to conclude, nothing new here really compared to where we were at the end of last year. I forgot actually at the outset when I started my introduction to mention the fact that I would say other than the six month period to December 2020, when we were in the midst of or in the eye of the storm of COVID, having been through level five lockdowns, we did our equity raise in that period, shoring up the balance sheet.
Other than that particular period, operationally, I would say that this six-month period has been the toughest that we've experienced, certainly in the 20-odd years that I've been involved with the business. Whilst we think, you know, whilst we've produced modest growth, we think considering the backdrop, you know, it's a reasonable performance. We continue to be concerned about the, some of the macro challenges that, you know, both globally and locally. As a consequence, we are still predicting that we will eke out some growth, albeit modest or as we use the word muted dips growth for the year through to June 2023. I think that concludes the formal presentation. Thank you all very much for attending and for your time and interest. We are available, I'm happy to...
I see Estienne's indicating there might be a couple of questions, coming from the online audience. We welcome questions. We would be happy to take some from the floor, but equally, we are here as a management team, to, you know, for at least another hour or so afterwards, if you wanna stick around, enjoy something to eat or drink and ask as many questions as you want. Right, Estienne.
Okay. We've got six questions today.
Okay.
I'll give you the difficult ones. I'll take the easy ones.
Right. the first one-
All right, nothing's changed.
The first one is: Can you provide us with some color indicative pricing on the maturing Euro bond? What is the most likely refinancing outcome in terms of mix of cash, ZAR debt, Euro, RCF and other Euro facilities? What are you expecting the terms on diesel spend? That's the second question. It's all in the same. Maybe I can give quick light just given the treasury.
Yep.
I think the first thing that we intend doing is sort of breaking up that debt and spreading it over three, four, and five years. Maybe let's call it an average maturity about four years. We are basically talking to all the local financial institutions to obtain euro debt, as well as one international financial institution. We hope to have those facilities. I'm looking at Aasha here, and I'd like to introduce Aasha.
Where is she sitting?
Aasha has joined us from the beginning of the month. She is our new group treasurer, and we're very delighted to have her. We just maybe also take the opportunity to thank Dirkje Bouma, who's been with us for what's it? Eight, nine years already. Wish her all the well, all the best in the Netherlands. I think that deals with that question.
As we sit today, we've got EUR 260 million of pre-approved facilities in place that we intend drawing on to settle effectively. Bearing in mind, the $425 is swapped into euros, we essentially will use the EUR 260 million to settle the bulk of that debt. The rest will draw on some ZAR facilities. Many of these facilities that we have in place are relatively short term. We put in place two year facilities put in place about a year ago, so they've got about a year to 18 months left, we are well advanced in trying to term those out so that pre-30 June, we're hoping to get some of those termed out. Ultimately looking to lengthen.
You'll have seen our average term of debt is 2.7 years. It's too short. We've got KPIs in terms of our management KPIs, which suggest we need to be longer than three. We're gonna be targeting certainly to get longer than three. Estienne spoke earlier about the very... This is quite anomalous actually, if you consider where we are in South Africa and the South African backdrop. We've tapped, what? ZAR 1 billion worth of 10-year money from the IFC. Okay, it's a mix of 10-year and seven year money from the IFC. Margin for the 10-year money is 210 basis points. I guess there are not many real estate companies out there in the world today who are seeing 10-year money being offered.
Off the back of that, IFC inquiry or placement, we've got reverse inquiries from domestic institutional investors. We did another ZAR 1.2 billion. 10 years and 9.2 years at the same margin, 200 basis points-210 basis points. We've got a properly functioning bond market. These were privately placed, but they're listed bonds. Whereas internationally, the bond markets are, you know, very, very inefficient and the pricing's pretty ugly.
With rest to the international side, the next question. What type of opportunities would you consider offshore? Would this be taking advantage of mispricing in the public market or private market opportunities? What are the key investment criteria for going offshore?
I'll answer that by just saying, we're not actively looking at anything offshore at the moment other than our existing investment. I think we fully appreciate the fact that we are relatively capital constrained and the only available capital at the moment would be more debt capital. We don't wanna be pushing our 38% LTV anywhere further north of where it's at. We target to stay below 40%. You know, whilst we've always been pretty opportunistic and we're happy to keep an open mind, you know, if there were to be potentially some M&A deals where you're looking at, you know, discount to NAV, swapping shares for another discount to NAV, on balance, we think our discount is smaller than the other discount.
You know, those kinds of opportunities we've always kept an open mind to, but there's, we're not considering anything actively in that regard at the moment.
Okay. Thank you. How did we get to the 82.5% payout ratio? Is there a formula that we can apply? How did we get the liquidity?
No, look, I think we spoke about this, I think, at the year-end results six months ago. At that time, you know, we had paid 80% for the first half. We felt a bit more confident on our liquidity outlook. You know, we were feeling a bit exposed given the bond, the massive, ZAR 7 billion-plus bond refinance that we had to deal with. We had put facilities in place to cover all of that. We felt a bit more confident and, you know, took a view that, you know, we could, you know, increase the payout ratio marginally from the 80% to 82.5%. The 85%, the second half of last year was 85%, but that was to average it out at 82.5%.
We'd like to think we're gonna stick with the 82.5 odd number. We, when thinking about the payout ratio, and there's no magic formula, but just to provide a bit of insight, the Growthpoint board and management are thinking very carefully on how the business can, let's call it, self-fund without taking on more debt or without taking on, or have the need to issue more equity. We look holistically at the cash flows coming in from our rentals. We look at the dividend that we're paying. We look at the level of asset sales that we're able to achieve.
We look at the level of investment that we're making, whether that be through the, through the taking scrip dividends on the international investments or whether we're doing new developments in the industrial space or new investment into the funds. We look at holistically at all of that with a view to, as well as the cash retained from the dividend, to find a position where we're not needing to go out and borrow another ZAR 2 billion or ZAR 3 billion or ZAR 4 billion. If we have to borrow, you know, hopefully it's smallish amounts. Potentially, if we do well on asset sales, perhaps we can net, bring our debt, on a net basis, bring our debt levels down. We're looking to be more self-funding, you know, for want of a better description.
The dividend payout ratio debate is informed by, you know, by that whole discussion.
Next question is, what's the discount or premium on the Paul Smith and the Bultfontein transaction? The value of the sale was about ZAR 50 million, and the loss we took was ZAR 1.3 million, so it makes it 2.6%, I think. Complicated question, but ultimately speaks to the Australian dividend tax on foreign shareholders is 30%. If no franking, with no franking credits, can we expect the 14% dividend withholding tax on GOZ dividend to increase to 50% over time? Toby, there's a special tax dispensation for Managed Investment Trusts out of Australia, and our historic average has been in and around about 10% withholding tax.
This specific period, because of those early settlements, which pushed the revenue up, the withholding tax percentage applied to revenue is 15%, so it wouldn't typically exceed 15%. Then on interest is 10%. The blended on this specific, and they calculate it every six months for every dividend. We expect it to probably return to around about the 10% level. It is a little bit more complicated. I'm happy to chat to anybody in more detail on how that tax works.
We don't see it going to 30%, that's for sure.
No, definitely not going to 30%. It, it shouldn't exceed 15%.
15%, yeah.
That should be the sort of top end.
Max, yeah.
The only time that it'll marginally exceed that is if you hit the 15% level and they're on the retained component in the company, which we haven't received. We also pay tax on our proportional piece. That might push it to, I think, the highest we've paid is about 16.5%. This was quite anomalous because of these early terminations that pushed the revenue up. 'Cause you do have, they pass through allowances that cover the dividend to some extent.
Okay. That's online.
That's it. Yeah. Any other questions locally here on the floor?
That's it.
Good. Yeah.
Just wanted to know whether there are any relief possible, maybe through solar installations,
No, I don't think it's on.
I think it's mainly for the online guys.
It's not for here necessarily, yeah.
Obviously the DRIP option. Why are you preferring to pay ZAR 200 million of tax rather than offer a small DRIP to retain a similar level of income?
Okay, fine. Maybe just repeat the question, 'cause I don't know if the online people got it.
All right. I think for those online who perhaps didn't hear that, I think the question is around the tax, the leakage of tax in South Africa. I think for this particular period, probably about ZAR 107 million. For a full year, we think it's probably about double that. There's the tax leakage from retaining ZAR 1 billion odd of cash from paying out 82.5%, not 100%. The second part of that question talks to the, you potentially offering the, a DRIP on the South African share. I think, nobody likes to pay tax, it's fair to say.
I think the, you know, the consequence, I guess, of our actions of wishing to retain circa ZAR 1 billion of cash is that we have to pay that tax. There are definitely some allowances that we'll be able to claim in relation to the solar rollout. I'm not Davy, Davy's over here, he's more of a tax expert than I am. We can look to reduce the effective tax rate, I think, on that, but I'm not sure that with the level of investment we're making, I think, you know, we're doubling our solar capacity from 14 megs to 27, 28 odd megs.
That's probably a investment of ZAR 200 odd million. It's, it will provide a buffer but not, you know, but not reduce the liability entirely. In relation to DRIP, I think, you know, our view is just that at the moment, you know, given the level of share price relative to NAV, the dilutionary impact of issuing shares, you know, at these levels, would, you know, wouldn't justify, you know, the, you know, wouldn't justify trying to save that amount of tax. Obviously, we are still sensitive, I guess, to the discount and the equity raise that we did in 2020, and many of the investors are still in the room here, which are very unhappy with that.
You know, as a rule, we're not looking to be issuing any new shares at these sorts of levels of share price.
One more quick one.
Sure.
The Waterfront. I think it is up 25% there, but revenue's up a hell of a lot more. I think your cost up 67%. I think you mentioned you tried to pass on most diesel costs, but you don't here.
Not yet.
What would that 25% have been if it wasn't for diesel cost, if you only had to pay Eskom exorbitant electricity prices?
The diesel cost was ZAR 22 million, right?
ZAR 21 million, yeah.
For the six-month period, yeah.
On top of that, wouldn't have made a material difference, I don't think.
Yeah.
It's not material.
I think we were just, again, you know, whilst, David's not gonna like me for saying this, but he did acknowledge that when I spoke to him about it earlier. The number is flattering. You know, the Waterfront number is very flattering, but you've got to put it in perspective that the six months to December 2021 was obviously still very heavily impacted by COVID. Your base was fairly low, for that particular period. We obviously, 23% growth is a wonderful number, I think David and his team are gonna take every bit of credit for that, so should they. Just bear in mind that the base, you know, in the comparable period was heavily impacted by COVID. We are back to pre-COVID levels. I mean, some of the...
Just the pure turnover numbers, well in excess of pre-COVID. Certainly, the operating costs have increased considerably. There's been some staff cost increases. Clearly, there's a diesel impact.
Rates.
We're almost permanently in court with the city on rates and taxes. We fortunately won our last appeal. Notwithstanding that the effect of increase is still well in excess of inflation. The Waterfront as an operating precinct is an expensive place to run. You're getting the premium rentals, you're getting the demand. I think the Waterfront has positioned itself as being able to operate every aspect of the Waterfront operate when there's load shedding. People now understand that. They're happy to come to the Waterfront for a meal, for a movie, for whatever activity they can do when there's load shedding.
That is coming. You're seeing it in the turnovers, there is obviously a cost associated with that as well.
That it, Francois? Anybody else? Chris.
[Audio distortion]. There was a recovery coming.
It looks like you were right, but it's been a lot tougher with all these damn events.
You name it. Do you ever see a strong recovery? I mean
Clairvoyant.
Yeah.
You can look into the future. Right.
I don't know. There's Estienne and me are sometimes on different pages in terms of our level of optimism or pessimism. Estienne's a bit more of a bull. You know, the bulls have lost 8 out of the last 10, eh?
You don't have to get nasty now. No reason to get nasty. Jeez, l ow blow.
My personal view is, you know, I think the recovery will be moderate. I just looked at all the. This week, in fact, yesterday, when you're sitting there waiting to be interviewed on the radio, you're listening to some of the other news items. Manufacturing output is down. Mining output is down. Business confidence is all-time low. In fact, company liquidations, 1,920. I read some article from somebody at one of the legal firms that put out an article. It's tough. It's really, really hard there. I don't know. You know, we got politics, we got, you know, overriding things. I don't think the. I don't want to make political statements, but I don't think anybody's jumping for joy based on, you know, the recent cabinet reshuffle.
We've got an election coming next year. It is, I think it's gonna remain tough globally. You know, obviously, things are also still challenged. Then you have these other shocks, which we've just recently seen now with that, you know, the Silicon Valley Bank. I guess at best, we're optimistic, but for a recovery. Personally, I can't see a strong recovery.
Thanks. Well done getting all your thoughts.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Any other questions?
Over there. Murray?
Norbert, I think you spoke a couple of times about GWI and the fact that the situation with three shareholders, each holding about a third is not something that can happen forever. Maybe you can just give us an update.
Yeah. Look, I don't unfortunately don't have much of an update. All I can say is that the new CEO is in place, Dennis Selinas. He's not coming out, eh? No. There is a tour to-
We are co-hosting a tour to Eastern Europe in May, end of May. There will be an opportunity for any of the investors who wanna, you know, participate in that to obviously go and view some of the assets, give an update on the market, but also meet the new CEO. I'm I've got a good feeling with Dennis. I think he's very astute. He knows the market. He's also been operating in Bucharest for the last 10-odd years. From that perspective, I'm, you know, comfortable that, with Yiannis having left, with Dimitris having left, we've got a good pair of hands, you know, with Dennis. Having said that, you know, he's coming to a much more challenging environment, you know, both in Poland and Romania.
You know, he's certainly, you know, gonna have his work cut out for him. At the shareholder level, if anything, you know, we are probably more. I wouldn't say we're more aligned per se, but certainly there's no animosity. You know, it's just we've got different agendas. Everybody's got their own challenges, you know? I'd say we've got a lot of challenges, but I'd argue so they might even have greater challenges. CPI's, think, got a lot of debt in the, in the debt capital markets that need to be refinanced. They're trading at. Okay, they don't trade. So their share price is irrelevant. Around town, on the other hand, there's a share price of EUR 2.20.
I haven't looked at their NAV recently, but I think their NAV is closer to 8 or north of 8. Anton's nodding his head. You know, so they've got, you know, probably bigger challenges than what we even have. It's very immaterial to them. It's quite material to us. I think, you know, there's no urgent need to do anything at the moment. A solution, to my mind, will require new, fresh cash. Okay? The question is: who is gonna be buying at NAV when you can buy the entire global real estate market at a 40% discount to NAV?
Are any of the investors that desperate to sell at the moment at a massive discount to NAV where, you know, new investors might wanna come in, at a 40% discount to NAV or a 50% discount to NAV? I think the short answer there is no. I think you're gonna be in a bit of a holding period. We're gonna continue to look to find a solution. There is nothing, you know, pressing or urgent or glaringly obvious at the moment that we could put forward as a possible solution.
Any other questions? Okay. I think we've exhausted all the questions.
Yeah. Ladies and gents, thanks very much once again for your time and attendance. Yeah, we really appreciate it. Always good to see. Thank goodness that we're back in a world where we can meet in person and not having to do everything virtually. Since COVID, we've actually decided that, you know, we do the half year results in Cape Town, the year end results in Joburg. We'll continue to sort of evaluate that. We used to do. You know, we used to come and present twice. I think it, this works fairly efficiently from what I can tell. If it doesn't work for you, then let us know, and we can always reevaluate. We hope to see you in person again 12 months time. Unless you wanna come to Joburg, you can come see us then. Thanks.