Welcome you to the V&A Waterfront and to the results presentation for Growthpoint Properties for the six months end of 31 December 2024. Before I start, just to single out one or two people, maybe special welcomes to welcome to our guests, teachers, and pupils from schools, three different schools in Riversdale, care of Melt Haman, one of our non-executive directors. Welcome, Melt, as well. Many shareholders and investors and colleagues, I think quite a few of the Waterfront Exco, David Green, CEO is here, and members of his executive team, and then some of the members of Growthpoint's executive team here as well. All are very welcome. Thank you very much. We are going to try and get this done in an hour. We do not normally succeed within very well, but that is the target, the KPI, and we will get straight into it.
I always like to start, I guess, with this slide just to give a little bit of perspective as we move through the results, just looking at the various parts of the business, trying to simplify the Growthpoint picture. At the top of the slide, you've got the South Africa and Waterfront. Essentially, South Africa and Waterfront make up about 60% of the assets of the group and contribute just on about 65-odd % of the distributable income for the business. The middle section deals with our offshore investments, Growthpoint Australia, Globalworth, Capital & Regional , which we sold during the period, and now we've got a remaining stake in NewRiver REIT and then Lango. We've moved Lango out of the third-party fund management business into offshore investments. I'll elaborate a little bit on that as I move through the presentation.
Collectively, those make up about 37%-38% of the assets of the group and contribute just over 30% of the income towards DIPS. At the bottom of the slide is Growthpoint Investment Partners, the third-party fund management business, which today comprises essentially the healthcare business and the student accommodation business. They contribute about 2% of total assets and 3.6% towards our distributable income per share. Some highlights for the—we can call them highlights again . We used to have highlights, and then we had a period where things were all negative and we changed it to salient features. Now we can maybe bring highlights back in. We did manage to show an increase in distributable income per share for the period of 3.9% to $0.74 per share. On a dividend per share basis, we've got a 3.7% increase to $0.61 a share.
Group LTV came down quite nicely, one and a half percent from 42.3% to 40.8%. The group consolidated assets did reduce by 11.2% to ZAR 155 billion, essentially through the effect of the sale of Capital & Regional and deconsolidation, obviously, of that entity, as well as some quite meaningful write-downs that we're still experiencing in the main Australian entity. That had a consequential impact then also on the NAV per share, which was down 2.6%. I forgot at the introduction that Lauren reminded me to just highlight the fact that we don't have the hard copy of the presentations here today. I do understand there are a couple of people that are disappointed by that, but in an effort, I guess, to not only just save costs, but also in line with our sort of strategies to minimize waste and be more green.
There are links, obviously, on the website, and the presentation is available on the website. Last point here is just our interest cover ratio for the period remained static at about 2.4 times. Touching on the strategy and the various elements to the strategy, still very much focused on optimizing the South African portfolio as well as the international optimization. Starting off with a balance sheet and the focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet, you'll see that across the South African business, the group LTV was down, as was the Australian entity's LTV to 38.5%, and then also the South African standalone LTV was marginally down from 35.4 to 35.3. The company remains very, very liquid, and we've got great access to the debt capital markets in South Africa.
We, in fact, I think, should we choose, which is not on the cards at the moment, but should we choose, I do believe the debt capital markets in Europe are available to us again as well for a period of time. I'd say those markets were closed, but it's definitely not a strategy of ours at this time to be targeting those markets. Domestically, there's significant appetite for Growthpoint debt. You'll notice from the slide that we did reduce our total, let's call it liquidity. In the prior comparable period, we had ZAR 6.2 billion worth of available unutilized committed debt facilities. We've reduced that to ZAR 5.2 billion. Obviously, having those facilities in reserve comes with a cost, and we took a view that we probably felt that the ZAR 6.2 billion at that level was a bit surplus.
We also, in engaging with a ratings agency, we do have circa ZAR 9 billion worth of debt that needs to be refinanced in FY2026. Not much more left for this financial year to FY to June 2025, about ZAR 1.3 billion. With a big chunk of ZAR 9 billion for next year, the ratings agencies were not that comfortable with us reducing these committed facilities too drastically. We did have ZAR 800 million of cash on balance sheet, and with our 82.5% payout ratio, which we have maintained, we retain ZAR 440 million of cash in the company. On the portfolio side, domestically, we sold 12 assets for about ZAR 589 million at a profit to book value.
We did spend and invest during the period as well, though, about ZAR 945 million, principally into existing assets and improving existing assets on balance sheet, and also new assets in the form of the new Hilton Canopy Hotel just up the road here in Long Street Studios. That ZAR 945 million is split almost equally between new investment and investment into existing assets and improving them, and what we call maintenance CapEx. The maintenance CapEx is not necessarily always yield accretive, but is obviously important to keep the portfolio in good shape. I think that number, it is in the annexures, I think there are like 65 or 67 annexures in the presentation, which gives a lot of the detail. You can see the detail there, about ZAR 945 million, sorry, ZAR 450-odd million spent on maintenance CapEx in the period.
This is an ongoing effort in terms of trying to improve the quality of the South African portfolio. Over the last 10 years, we have sold 173 buildings, over ZAR 13 billion worth of sales across the different sectors, over ZAR 5 billion in office, over ZAR 3 billion in retail, another ZAR 3 billion odd in industrial. On our trading and development side, in the trading and development business, we sold about ZAR 1.7 billion over the last 10-odd years. This is an ongoing effort. I mentioned at balance sheet date, I'll go back one here, ZAR 589 million at half year. For the year FY2025, we believe we will have sold in the order of ZAR 2.4 billion-ZAR 2.8 billion worth of assets as part of this ongoing process to reposition the portfolio domestically.
On the international side, I mean, just starting off, I guess the big item or moving part would have been the disposal of Capital & Regional. Capital & Regional, there's a slide on it later, but essentially, the view was that it was no longer a core investment for us, and we sold it to NewRiver REIT in exchange for 50% cash and 50% shares in NewRiver REIT. I'll elaborate on that a little bit later. The different components here, effectively in aggregate, we received in what we call rand equivalent foreign currency income, ZAR 769 million from the investments in the different offshore entities. That's slightly down from the prior period. Again, we'll get into the detail. In the recognizing the income statement was a dividend from NewRiver REIT.
We consolidated and included in FFO the results for Capital & Regional up until the date of sale, the 10th of December. The Globalworth dividends, Globalworth continues to pay a dividend, albeit in and offering a scrip dividend. The three largest shareholders we control collectively, I guess there is an entity called Zakiona with about 60%, ourselves with about 30. The three largest shareholders have all committed to take shares instead of cash for the dividend in the interim, whilst some of the key debt metrics are still challenged. When the company refinanced its bonds in April 2024, ICR with ICR covenants or the actual ICR sitting at below two, the bond documentation restricts the company from paying cash dividends for a period of time until we get the ICR back above two. I think that is more or less the story on the international side.
Long and short of it, I think GOS remains a very core investment for us. Capital & Regional, we did dispose. It's fair to say that NewRiver REIT and us holding 14% of NewRiver is not sort of in line with our strategy to own minority shares in other listed entities. Generally, where we have these investments, we like to have control or significant influence. The stake in NewRiver REIT is probably not something that we'll hold on forever. We'll find an opportune time to exit that stake. Globalworth, Globalworth is still we continue to work very closely with management as well as the other two large shareholders to find an optimal way to unlock value from that investment.
This slide really just tries to unpack the movement for the period compared to, so this would compare the ZAR 2.5 billion-odd rands worth of net income for the period compared to the prior comparable period, which was about ZAR 2.4 billion. There is a ZAR 103 million increase in distributable income comparing to the half year 2024. The biggest moving part here by far is the South African business where gross property income, both on the gross income line as well as on the expense line, we did well. Collectively, there is about a ZAR 166 million increase in net property income comparing the two periods. That was mainly due to improved contribution from all three sectors. There is detail again in the slides. In fact, retail, office, and industrial all contributed positively during the period.
We also included part of the drivers was lower negative reversions, reduced vacancies mainly in the industrial portfolio, and then improved expense efficiencies and recoveries. A lot was always the last couple of years have spoken about diesel, diesel expenses with load shedding. Obviously, there isn't much load shedding anymore. Diesel expenses have come right off, but equally with the recoveries. We were always recovering the bulk of any diesel expense. Not only have we lost the expense, but we've also lost the recovery. Net diesel isn't really a big moving part or feature of these numbers. Just looking then at the next line item, which talks to finance costs. Finance costs were still up for the period, ZAR 65 million. That's made up of about ZAR 46 million of higher interest expense due to effectively elevated and higher average debt levels during the period.
That is notwithstanding the fact or offset to a degree by the fact that we managed to bring down our average weighted average cost of debt from 9.6% to 9.2%. In that number as well is the fact that finance income was ZAR 19 million lower than the prior comparable period. Waterfront, strong positive contributor, continues to perform particularly well, ZAR 17 million up. We look forward, I guess, to continued positive contributions from the Waterfront going forward. Growthpoint Australia was down by ZAR 18 million, notwithstanding the fact that they paid a special dividend of AUD 0.021. You can see the bottom line contribution, ZAR 533 million compared to the prior comparable period of ZAR 551 million. This talks to Growthpoint Australia having actually declared or guided for lower dividend this year compared to prior year. Their distributable income impacted mainly by higher interest rates.
The special dividend was essentially paid by Growthpoint Australia to compensate for a very significant increase in the dividend withholding tax, which is linked to the sale of the industrial portfolio. I will elaborate on that when I talk to GOS. On a net basis, we got AUD 0.091. In the prior comparable basis, we got AUD 0.0965. Negative for GOS. Small increase for Capital & Regional and NewRiver compared to the prior comparable period, AUD 6 million up. Globalworth dividend down AUD 17 million. Again, if you look at the underlying actual dividend per share for Globalworth, that has come down principally off the back of higher interest rates. Once again, they refinanced a significant amount of their bonds in April 2024, where interest rates went from 3% to 6.25%. That is still playing out. We have seen the dividend steadily decrease.
That number's now not quite fully baked in yet. I think that the refi was done in April. For the next 12-month period, their financial year end is December. For December 2025, we foresee that there would still be negative pressure on the dividend from Globalworth. Lango, we're showing Lango there separately in the prior period. In the prior reporting, we included Lango with GIP, but we received a ZAR 11 million dividend from the management company. In the prior period, there was ZAR 9.8 million worth of dividend income, but that's in the GIP line on this particular slide. Growthpoint Investment Partners up 8 and l astly, ZAR 15 million increase in the contribution from the trading and development business. A lot of numbers on these slides. I'm not going to delve into them.
I just want to highlight that the, let's call it the slight skew that is coming through the numbers by the change in the way in which we're reflecting the trading and development numbers. At a high level here, you can see gross property income growing at 5.1%. You have the trading and development number in there, which is skewing it. If you exclude the trading and development from gross income, gross income grew at about 2.5%. The reason for this change is the accountants, the auditors have required us to, let's say, disaggregate. There is a note at the bottom of the slide here, the way in which we show trading and development. We used to just show net numbers. Now they're asking us to reflect the gross sales of any assets that were sold and the cost of those assets separately.
You'll see in the expense line, there's also ZAR 180 million expense there. That's influencing the property expense number, which doesn't look good at 11.6% up. If you eliminate T&D from that line, expenses are up about 3.5%. I just thought I'd point that out. Net property income is up at just under ZAR 5 billion, ZAR 4 billion, 997 million. That's 2.4% up on the prior period. The other operating expenses are up 3.2%, leaving us with net property income after other operating expenses up 2.3% at ZAR 4.4 billion. Net finance costs was up ZAR 61 million or 2.9%. The finance and other income, which includes the investment income from the Waterfront and the investment income from Globalworth and Lango, was up to ZAR 671 million, 2.1%. At the bottom, we eliminate the non-controlling interest and the effect of exchange losses and taxation.
We end up with what we refer to as distributable income of just over ZAR 2.5 billion compared to ZAR 2.4 billion in the prior period, or 4.3% up. If we now reconcile, I guess, this distributable income number of ZAR 2.517 billion down to the SA REIT FFO number, we eliminate a whole number of items there. We end up with an SA REIT FFO number, which is 2.9% down on a comparable period, ZAR 2 billion, 132 million. On a per share basis, that is 62.8 cents a share compared to 64.8 cents. The bottom line is our distributable income per share, 74 cents, and dividend payout ratio of 82.5%, giving us a dividend per share of 61 cents. Just a few little highlights on the balance sheet. Key moving parts between the financial year 2024. There would have been the June 2024 number and our December 2024 number.
South African assets, pretty stable. We saw slight increases in valuation across all three of the sectors. Growthpoint Investment Partners, pretty much driven the increase there, pretty much driven by assets being acquired by the Student Accommodation Fund. The big moves are essentially GOS, which is down from ZAR 54.7 billion to ZAR 49.5 billion. Combination there of the disposal of assets, some in the disposal of the DXI stake, as well as the six industrial assets into the partnership, let's say the fund management business. There were still some significant write-downs in asset values in Australia. Capital & Regional, you can see there ZAR 9 billion of assets that we used to consolidate that we no longer consolidate. On the investment side, I think the only notable two items there is the investment in the Lango Manco, ZAR 341 million. May as well elaborate on that here briefly.
What Lango did is it internalised its management during the period. There was a management company, and it elected to cancel that agreement and internalise management at a cost of approximately $60 million. We were a 37.5% shareholder of the management company, and we benefited to the extent of our 37.5% piece is worth $341 million. That is not a cash item, where all shareholders in the Manco were paid in the form of convertible pref shares, and those shares would convert on IPO. This has become, let's say, effectively it becomes an investment back into Lango. Those convertibles will convert into shares in Lango, the fund itself. That is the $341 million there. The other item that was not there in the comparable period is this co-investment that Growthpoint Australia has in the Growthpoint Australia Logistics Partnership.
Very simplistically, there's about $180 million worth of, well, $200 million worth of assets that were sold into a fund. New core international investor, TPG, Texas Pacific Group, TPG, Angelo Gordon came in for 80% of that fund, and Growthpoint Australia remained with a 20% stake. We'll be earning fees from that joint venture going forward. That co-investment is what's reflected there at the $315 million. The other notable one under the investments is that we now have the 14.2% investment in NewRiver. That's $1.168 billion t hat's on the balance sheet there. The debt number at the bottom, nominal borrowings decreased quite materially by over $7 billion. Again, effectively the deconsolidation of Capital & Regional being the biggest part of that.
Australia degeared with the sale of those assets, Australia degeared, and we can see the impact there, almost ZAR 3 billion equivalent lower gearing from GOS. Touching then very briefly on the international investments, Growthpoint Australia did see a decline in the FFO per share, and they did guide for this negative decrease or the 5.7% decrease in their dividend. That has played out, and it's likely that for the next six months, I think the total guidance from the company still talks to a AUD 0.091, I think, effective dividend for the second half. Our total distribution received ZAR 533 million versus ZAR 551 million in the prior period. The payout ratio, if you include the AUD 0.021 special dividend, their payout ratio was effectively 95.2%. If that were to be excluded, their payout ratio is 77.3%. Still has a very strong balance sheet.
Pro forma at this particular transaction with the sale of the six assets, three of the assets transferred on balance sheet date. The other three transferred just shortly after. So GOS, in disclosing its information, showed pro forma balance sheet with 38.8% gearing, and that's down from over 40.7% in the prior comparable period. It remains extremely liquid. I mean, it's had over $ 605 million worth of undrawn debt facilities. It's probably a bit elevated because of the cash that was received from the sale of the DXI stake as well as the sale of the industrial assets. We saw a 7% decline in NAV per share off the back of the decrease in valuations. And 92% of GOS's debt is fixed for a period of two and a half years at 2.8% excluding margin.
The weighted average debt maturity is 2.8 years, and the average cost of debt, including margin and amortization, of course, is 4.8%. The portfolio is we've got $4.1 billion of assets, pretty much split between office and industrial, 75-odd, I think, percent office, 25-odd percent industrial. It continues to be very well. Late cccupancies are between 94%-96%, depending whether you're looking at it from a rental value perspective or a GLA perspective. Weighted average cap rate 6%. The weighted average lease expiry six years. The market's pretty active. 113,000 sq m of leasing was executed during the period. The details of those asset sales are down below. On the fund management side, GOS, the assets under management reduced from $1.6 billion to $1.3 billion.
It did manage to boost the assets with the creation of the Australian Logistics Fund, as well as the establishment of a new office trust, the Growthpoint Canberra Office Trust, effectively a syndication, AUD 90 million syndication of an office asset in Canberra. Those two combined added about AUD 288 million to the assets under management. The biggest loss was an AUD 490 million Sydney mid-city centre asset where the management contract expired in November 2024. Management fee income for the period was AUD 5.9 million compared to AUD 4.1 million in the prior period. Capital & Regional disposal, effective 10 December 2024, we received GBP 62.5 per share for the shares that we owned. That was paid out as GBP 0.3125 in cash and GBP 0.3125 in NewRiver shares.
We picked up effectively 14.2% shareholding in NewRiver, and that is reflected as an investment on balance sheet at our half year. The cash proceeds of about ZAR 1.25 billion was utilised to settle debt. As I mentioned earlier, we did reflect, we did receive a dividend from NewRiver of $0.03, which translated after tax to about ZAR 38.8 million. For the period, we had the ZAR 57 million of FFO from Capital & Regional up to the date of disposal. Globalworth continues to, I guess the dividend continues to be under pressure, pretty much as a consequence or as a result of the higher interest rates. There is also, on a per share basis, another dynamic to be aware of is that with the script dividends that Globalworth has been offering, they have been offering it at a very deep discount to the actual share price.
The share price is trading at about a 50% discount to NAV. The actual price for the reinvestment on the dividend has been at a 20% discount to the share price. The issuing of shares at such a discount has resulted in more shares being issued and effectively resulted in a dilution of the actual dividend per share dynamic as well as earnings per share in numbers. Like for like, you might ask why that deep discount. Essentially, it is driven to, or it is designed to, I guess, ensure that all shareholders end up. It is a bit like a discounted rights offer where you are trying to entice all shareholders to take the shares as opposed to having some cash leakage. I think the company has come through the refinance of all of its debt. It is actually quite liquid.
You'll see here the balance sheet now, EUR 333 million worth of cash with another EUR 115 million of undrawn debt. Perhaps that practice of offering such a big discount could be reviewed. It's still fair to say, though, that the three large shareholders are going to continue to take script for the short to medium term. We did see some negative property revaluations in the six months, about EUR 51 million. Gearing has come down quite nicely to 38.1%. There was a period about a y ear and a half, two years ago where we were a bit worried and concerned about gearing. I think both valuations, you saw the valuation right on there, not too dramatic. That together with the sale of some assets and repayment of some debt has put the company in a pretty good space from a liquidity perspective.
On the developed disposal and development side, not much actually to report on during the period. There was disposal of the joint venture industrial portfolio. The company had 50%, owned a 50% stake in that portfolio. Very small moving parts on the disposals and developments. In total, there was a 5.4% portfolio decrease to EUR 2.6 billion of assets. That is a combination of the disposal of the industrial assets and the asset value write-downs. The company has 36 assets in Poland and 20 in Romania. Total revenue for the period was EUR 113 million. Vacancies have come down, currently sitting at about 13% odd. Very, let's say, different dynamics between what's happening in Bucharest, in the capital of Romania, where vacancies are 5% or below. Warsaw, capital of Poland, where vacancies are equally in the probably 5%-7% range.
The smaller regional cities in Poland is where we have vacancies in some of those up to 30%. Those smaller cities are still under pressure. Certainly the two major capitals of those two countries are performing pretty well. Lango, I touched on this briefly. We own 15.8% of Lango. Lango, in the period, acquired $200 million worth of assets from HighProp and Attacq. The Manco internalization was done effectively 31 December 2024. At the same time, the company also redomiciled from Mauritius to the U.K. It is now a U.K. domiciled company. That internalization, as I explained earlier, has given rise to a GBP 331 million investment, which will ultimately become additional shares in Lango.
Then from our reporting perspective, we've tried to, because we don't have a management company anymore, we don't own a share of the management company anymore, we don't show Lango as part of our funds management business or GIP anymore. We are now showing it effectively as an investment, international investment. I'll hand over now to Estienne to deal with the South African portfolio, and I'll come back to close later. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody. Yes, the South African business, what you see on this page is some salient features. I'm not quite sure we had highlights yet. I think what it reflects is some really hard work in a really tough market. If you go and look at some of the stats, we've done once again over 500,000 sq m of letting.
The like for like growth for the first time in some years is now positive at 6.8%. Vacancies have reduced compared to the comparable period from 9.2% to 8.3%. The one number that's been quite sticky has been the negative renewal growth rate now. Here, it still remains negative, but it's very close to flat now. The market remains competitive, and as such, certainly in certain parts of the different sectors, we're still experiencing negative reversions there. We have done a lot of work in the cost base, and as such, we've been able to bring the cost to income ratio down to 35.4%. Generally, the portfolio is really in good shape from a client arrears perspective. Finance cost on the South African balance sheet has gone up.
That is obviously a function of the significant increases in the interest rates we had seen over the past two years. Hopefully, as that reverses, what was a threat becomes the upside and the secret weapon of Growthpoint in that if interest rates come down, the margin just drops straight to the bottom line. Loan to value ratio is still very, very conservative. We have seen a marginal increase in our property values now, which is sort of hopefully indicating a bit of a turn. We continue to actively develop in our portfolio as well as maintain our properties and ensure that the product is fit for purpose and fit for the market. On the asset sales side, I think Norbert pretty much covered it, but the intention is, and hopefully we'll get to around about GBP 2.8 billion worth of disposals by the end of the year.
Just running through the three sectors, our logistics and industrial sector, we've trimmed that down to about 150 properties now, just under 1.9 million sq m of space. We have managed to bring vacancies down quite a bit with some strategic letting and sales. We've had one sticky vacancy at La Salle, which is literally on the way to the airport in Johannesburg. We've actually sold that property, but the tenant, or the acquirer of the property, has actually taken occupation of that property. As such, that vacancy has come off the book. At Growthpoint Business Park, which is also a property we're busy disposing of, we've also got a bit of a vacancy there that will come off the book shortly. In fact, that property is already transferred. We continue to develop quality logistics facilities.
I know that some of you have been on recent property tours with us, so you would have seen some of the properties we've developed in Cape Town and in Samrand and Johannesburg. Those properties have really let strongly. The product that we're bringing to the market is certainly appealing to the market, and we've been able to let those properties reasonably quickly and actually marginally above our initial feasibilities. The market remains strong there. If you exclude the vacancy on some of these new developments, that vacancy would be around about 3%. Renewals, still a pretty competitive market out there, albeit that sort of national vacancies are also very low. The reality is that given the dynamic we have seen that the negative reversions now on renewals has turned to positive.
In fact, pretty much most of our leases that we sign now are either flat or positive reversions when we renew them. Those are all positive factors. We've also seen a positive like-for-like growth on the total portfolio, and valuations went up by 1.5%. On the disposal side, we've been very active in selling non-core strategic assets. They're typically smaller industrial properties. There's very, very strong demand for these assets, often from the actual tenants that occupy them, and they don't really meet our strategic objectives anymore. We're trying to move into slightly newer, slightly better logistics facilities. As such, if you look at the portfolio today, more than half, pretty much half the portfolio today is quality logistics. Moving to retail. On the retail side, we've also trimmed the portfolio down to 34 properties.
I mean, I think prior year, I think we sold about 27 properties already in the retail space. So there's good demand for the smaller retail facilities that we deem to be non-strategic now. Vacancies have ticked up a little bit in some of the properties. If you strip out, let's say, offices and some of the assets under construction or redevelopment, it's a vacancy of about 4.4%. On the leasing dynamic side, what we have also seen is that the renewals have been pretty flat. More or less 56% of the leases are now positive, and the negative renewals are only on about 14% of the portfolio. It speaks of the market improving in the retail portfolio in terms of the trade. When looking at that trade, you can see that our annual trading densities have grown by 3.8%.
That's marginally better than the national average of about 3.4%. Generally, we've seen good growth in foot traffic in our retail portfolio. There are one or two centres that we have a couple of challenges with. We've got a couple of big box tenants that moved out of Brooklyn Mall and Alberton, and both those shopping centres are under review at the moment, potentially for either redevelopment or for disposal. At Bayside, we had the opening of a property that we have redeveloped. Actually, the performance has been quite spectacular. In the month, we saw trading densities increase significantly. Turnover in the shopping centre lifted by 50% and in fact is now higher than pre the redevelopment, so on a stabilised sort of like for like basis.
Definitely, these redevelopments are proving, and that is sort of the natural life cycle of a shopping centre that at some point you have to reinvest and bring the asset back to, I think my wife talks about, the shopping centre looks tired and old. You have to give it a bit of a re-look, and that's exactly what we have been doing on many of our shopping centres. We have also managed to dispose some of the smaller shopping centres. There we've sold GBP 304 million worth, and we've got another GBP 647 million in various stages of disposal. At Watercrest, we've expanded or we're putting in ShopRite into area and relocating Checkers. We spent GBP 117 million on solar installations at seven centres.
At Beacon Bay, we're busy with GBP 113 million extension for Builders Express of 2,500 sq m, as well as giving the old lady a bit of Botox and upgrade. I think hopefully that will certainly meet with the market's approval. Looking at office, I think this is probably the more remarkable recovery of the three sectors. This portfolio has really been, it's been a difficult five years for office. We have sold off some office. Clearly, the market for disposals in office is much more difficult. There is much less investors interested in acquiring offices. In fact, what we have also strategically been doing is not really selling assets to competitors, but rather to owner occupiers or to developers that would change the use. Ultimately here, you can see the market remains very, very tricky and difficult. We have lost some tenants since year-end.
Obviously, from the comparable period, vacancies have come down from 17.8% to 15.9%. I think that is one of the reasons why we've seen good like-for-like growth in this portfolio from the work that was done in the prior year. A lot of work has gone into the expenses in this portfolio specifically. What we are still seeing is that negative reversions make up roughly about 60% of the renewals. It is reflective of a pretty tough market. Interestingly enough, if you come to Cape Town and specifically in the Durban market, Umhlanga Ridge more specifically, these portfolios here are now what I would say normalized. In fact, Durban is full, and we're starting to see pretty decent rental growth there because there's a shortage of space in the Umhlanga Ridge area.
In Cape Town, there is still a little bit of vacancy, but generally the market is what I would deem to be normalised. Hopefully things will start turning and we'll start seeing negative reversions reduced quite significantly. Like-for-like growth has actually been up at 9.4% with the dynamics that I've just explained. On the disposal side, we have sold two properties, and we've got six other properties for just over ZAR 500,000,000 that we're looking to dispose off and hopefully we'll in the next half of the year. On the development side, we've just upped the drag here. We built a new 154-bed Hilton Canopy Hotel, which opened in January.
We have also got a zero carbon new office for refurbished new office for 91, and they should be moving in the latter part of the year. Very, very exciting. On the trading and development side, the predominant focus of this team is the Growthpoint Balance Sheet. Those skill sets work on our properties, improving them, making sure that they fit for market. They also have a mandate to do a bit of trading and development. Often what we do is use the team to realize difficult assets. There were two examples. I think some of you that went on the Johannesburg property tour would have gone to Riverwoods, which was the first conversion that we actually did of an office park. It was a woodland sort of office park that was perfect for residential conversion.
We have converted that and sold off the units. We have already transferred 52% of those units. We also are busy in Pinetown selling off an older industrial property in sectional title spaces. We have made some good money. This team contributed roughly about 25 net for the year. On the Waterfront, here we are. We can show you some quite spectacular numbers. Certainly, I think David and the team, well done. These statistics are certainly to be celebrated, not just locally, but internationally, to be honest. If you are seeing net property income growing at 15.5%, and we have seen the hospitality section, what we have done is we are increasingly taking on operating exposure. The Radisson Red over there, we actually own the hotel. We have the Radisson Group that manages the hotel for a fee. If the hotel does better, we make more money.
In recent times, we've also taken the Portswood and Commodore Hotel on and done a same arrangement. That operating income now makes up 17% of the total income of the V&A. On a like-for-like basis, net property income increased by 16.6%. That was driven by a 14% increase in turnover rental from generally most of the hotels and across the retail precinct, the Waterfront is full. As such, we're seeing strong rental dynamics in this market, and it still remains probably the most visited property on the continent. Internationally, we have seen also tourism pick up quite a bit and just under 10% growth in tourism numbers. The big constraint is actually airplanes coming into Cape Town. We have introduced funding into the V&A, funding a lot of the development that you see around us here.
Today, there is ZAR 2.5 billion worth of debt on balance sheet. We have also got undrawn facilities of ZAR 1.5 billion, which will continue to fund some of the future developments. The shareholders are not really required to put in any additional equity into this investment at this point. The average interest rate is around 9.4%. We have had the opportunity to also issue some green bonds into this entity. On the retail side, in December, we turned over ZAR 1.4 billion in trade, which I think is a record if I can check with the team there. Getting nods. Certainly a very, very strong December for the V&A. Trading densities are significantly higher than the market. Retail rental growth on renewals is growing at 6.4% given the strong trade.
Certainly in this period, some of the developments that we have completed have also opened. If you go to the Union Castle building, which is just outside here, it is totally redeveloped. There is a new Nike store and a Wedge Woods, one of the most beautiful sweet stores you will ever see. Kids go and visit it for sure. They also sell some sharp ice cream. There is a Tuly. We have H&M's head office in the middle and a beautiful new marble restaurant on the top story. That has been a spectacular opening. On the office side, certainly these statistics are to drool over if you come from the world we live in, up in Gauteng, where we are seeing strong positive renewals and very, very, very high rental levels. I think we have just recently signed a new transaction at over ZAR 360 a square metre, v ery strong rental dynamics for office. On the marine side, where the big ships pop in, we have had over 83 vessels that have come in in the season. What we have also done is, given the COVID period where we could not operate, we have negotiated with the ports to extend that lease by an additional two years, giving us the lease to 2037. On the yachting side, that has also remained strong. On the charter boat side, we made more than ZAR 21 million worth of income from turnovers. As mentioned earlier, hotels are pumping. Income is up by 37%. The hotels had an exceptional year, albeit that the occupancies were marginally down. The actual daily rates were up by 29% and commonly referred to as RevPAR. The average rate per room was up by 21%. Evident of a very, very strong market.
The Table Bay has been closed in February. We are spending, I think, just over ZAR 1 billion in refurbishing the Table Bay. That hotel will open in December and come back to trading. That will have a bit of a negative impact on the V&A's numbers for this period through to December this year. The residential has also shown very, very strong resilience. We have had very high occupancies with very strong escalations at 10%. Just looking at GIP very briefly, we have got the two funds. What they consist of today is the healthcare fund is nine properties worth ZAR 4.2 billion. We own 39% of this fund still. Our investment is ZAR 754 million.
The dividend that we are receiving from that fund is under a little bit of pressure given some of the negative reversions we've experienced with some of the leases we've renewed there. LTV is very, very conservative. This fund really does have capacity to acquire new assets, which hopefully will be accretive. On the student accommodation side, it was quite an active period in that they've brought on two new assets that were developed by the Growthpoint Development Team. Fountains View was transferred and Crescent Studios, as well as Alteria in Park Town, were two new assets that were added to this fund. The fund actually trades in the market under the Thrive Student Living brand. It has proven to really be very successful in the student market.
When you guys go and study one day, you can maybe go and stay in one of those resos. They're very, very nice. On the capital management side, we have maintained the debt levels in South Africa at about ZAR 40 million. It's actually been quite a, I want to say, nearly bizarre period in that the demand for Growthpoint paper, Growthpoint is one of the largest corporate issuers into the debt market of bonds. The pricing we have seen has been really attractive. In fact, even for terms. We have done 10-year deals at 183, which is probably the lowest margin that we've ever seen in our careers on that level of term debt. Generally, we have a very strong position from an unutilized debt facility point of view.
Obviously, that comes with a bit of a price tag, but it means that we have capacity if there's a nice opportunity that meets our investment criteria. We sit on ZAR 826 million of cash. The weighted average debt rate has come off to 9.2%. I think the one thing that's come through the numbers, albeit that the interest costs have gone up with higher interest rates, the impact has been marginally less than what we originally would have expected to have been. We remain very conservatively financed on the South African balance sheet. We have given quite granular detail here on some of the hedging for your benefit. I'm not going to go through the whole lot, but we remain quite highly hedged at just under 75%.
We are seeing that our interest rate swaps. We've successfully rolled in those, and our average cost there is roughly about 7.3%. Our euro debt also matured, and that matured at a rate of 0.6 and was rehedged at 2.1, which was also, to be honest, a little bit better rate than what we expected. We've given some detail hedging on the cross-currency swaps also for some of the hedging that we've been doing in the future. This is where we were quite concerned when we gave original guidance that this part of the income statement would be pretty punitive in this year. Here we have also seen that some of the deals that we've been able to do were actually quite a little bit better than what we'd hoped. In the Australian rates, you can see there that we've got rates floating from 4.8-4.1.
In fact, the most recent deal we have done at 1.4%, which we used in the money swap to hedge there. I think maybe I am going to curtail my discussion on this issue and pass to Norbert to cover the conclusion.
Thank you, Estienne. I see if we are doing all right for time. Just to conclude then, I think certainly post the elections in whenever it was April, May this year, there was a pretty, I think, good feeling. Everybody had a very positive feeling about the outlook for South Africa. Interest rates and the interest rate decreasing environment has obviously also helped towards sentiment. Certainly some of that, I think, is playing out. I am personally a little bit concerned that some of that positivity is sort of slowing down a little bit or waning a little bit.
We're seeing that the government of national unity isn't necessarily the answer to our economic growth. A couple of months ago, economic growth prospects of 3% were being spoken about. Now we're back down into the below twos and even in the mid ones. I think the recovery to me still feels quite sort of tepid, but it's definitely better. We're seeing that coming through in the performance of the three sectors in our portfolio. The disposal program continues, as you mentioned, that there's about ZAR 2.8 billion odd that we will be disposing of by the end of the financial year 2025. V&A continues to sort of project for growth. We are funding the bulk of the capital program, and it's quite an extensive capital program with debt at the moment. All those really spectacular numbers, I have to say, they are spectacular.
The growth in net property income and turnover rentals and things that the Waterfront received at a net bottom line distribution basis, if you look at that distributable, the contribution was up 4.5%. Interest is having an impact on the very bottom line of the distributions we're receiving from the Waterfront. For the next 12 months, there will be an impact from the Table Bay Hotel, which closed, and also the Luxury Luxe Mall wing, which is being redeveloped. That will have a negative impact on the net income for the Waterfront. Notwithstanding all of those challenges, we still foresee mid single digit growth from the Waterfront for our financial year 2025. GOS has already given its guidance. I'm not going to sort of update on GOS necessarily, but for the second half, they have forecast a 9.1% dividend.
Globalworth, mentioned before, the dividend continues to be under pressure from the impact of the higher interest rates. Operationally, Globalworth is doing fine. As a minority shareholder there, in the long term, it's not an ideal position for us to be in. We continue to look for an optimal way together with the controlling shareholders at the moment to unlock value from that investment. NewRiver, we are in 14.2%. It's not necessarily a core long-term hold for us. In time, we would seek to find the best possible opportunity. We are currently all restrained from selling that stake. Part of the transaction was a lock-in. For a period of time, we were unable to sell, certainly without the permission of the company. In the fullness of time, we'd look to exit that stake. We continue to look to maximize value from those international investments.
Asset Managers, Growthpoint Investment Partners continues to grow. We're trying to still aggressively grow the student accommodation fund. There's a lot of momentum there, but the fund needs equity. The fund sort of ran out of capacity in a way with LTVs pushing the 40-odd % level. It's got a very strong pipeline of opportunities. In order for it to deliver on some of those and pursue some of those, it's needing more equity. The team are very actively in the market with institutional investors looking to raise additional equity capital for that fund. The healthcare fund's growth, we're currently developing a new small day hospital in the Rosebank area. The rate of growth has probably been a little bit disappointing. We are looking at ways and means to increase, I guess, the rate of growth of that fund.
I think all things said, and in conclusion, I think the forecast for the financial year FY25, whereas we had previously guided for -2% to -5%, we are guiding for 1%-3% growth for FY25. That's a bit lower than the 3.9% that we've done for the half year. In the second half, we do see the impact coming through of some of the disposals, essentially. When we had originally guided, we had anticipated certain assets selling by a certain time. They've sold later. We have held on to those assets a bit longer. They are coming through, and certainly the disposals will have an impact for the full year. I think that concludes the formal part of the presentation, ladies and gents. Thanks very much. Spot on the hour, pretty much. I understand there are a couple of questions online. You are also welcome to ask questions. Maybe we'll deal with the questions online first, and then we'll come to the floor.
Okay, the first question is a question on the payout ratio and some greedy investor wants maybe more dividend.
That's what they do. You're on the floor. Did you send a message online while sitting in the audience? The question, just to repeat, is the payout ratio 82.5%. We adopted post-COVID, I think we moved to 80%. We then started feeling a little bit better about life. We moved to 82.5%. We currently have maintained that, and we continue as a board. We have not had any active deliberations about increasing that. The thinking behind a reduced payout ratio really just talks to the required capital or our capital needs, especially as it relates to what we call our maintenance CapEx.
We're running at a rate of ZAR 700 million-odd a year. The rule of thumb over the last 15 years has been approximately 1% of assets of your property portfolio is spent on what we call maintenance CapEx. With a ZAR 70 billion-odd portfolio, 1%, ZAR 700 million-odd a year is the capital needed to maintain the portfolio. In the absence of other sources of capital, if you're not issuing equity or taking more debt, we were particularly concerned about debt levels. Those have abated, I think, and we do feel that generally the market, we've topped out in terms of interest rates, we've bottomed out in terms of valuations. Combined with maintenance CapEx and development CapEx, we still have a program of CapEx of anywhere between ZAR 1 billion and ZAR 2 billion, maybe even ZAR 2.5 billion a year.
Now we're funding a big chunk of that with disposals, but our view is still as a board that we want to retain some earnings to self-fund, especially the maintenance CapEx element, which is not a when you're thinking of investment capital, you've got to go out and find money to fund the investment, whether that's new debt, new equity, or from churning the portfolio, selling assets. This is maintenance CapEx, and we feel that we want to fund that internally. That's the view at the moment on that. Right.
Next question. Great results. With the last two sets of results showing stronger operational metrics, has Growthpoint SA made any notable changes to the leasing teams or operational activities? Okay, I'll give that a bit of a crack. I think there's been multiple initiatives to get improved results. It's not just one specific thing.
I mean, we've put in a lot of work into our client experience, and that has certainly started proving to help the letting. We've become a little bit more flexible in terms of the types of leases we do. Through our disposals and maintenance programs and redevelopments, we've got better product effectively for the client. Ultimately, that's a more lettable product. Most of our teams are incentivized. Certainly, if you look at industrial and office, that's quite relevant where they're incentivized to do letting. A whole bunch of things, I think, play into that improved operational performance. There is a question on in exactly which month was the AUD 214 million of CCRS renewed? It was in end of July and end of September. That is still one more question here that's just popped up.
Okay, in fact, it was the answer. July 24, we did AUD 89 million, and in September, we did AUD 124 million. Thanks . I think that's all the questions.
Anybody in the audience here that want to ask a question? Hands up. Is there a roving mic? We've got one coming. Yes, just so that the people online can also hear the question.
Hi, can you hear me?
Sure.
Just on the, so I also picked up that the numbers didn't quite match the narrative in terms of the stripped income out of the Waterfront, and the balance sheet was also fairly flat there. If you can, a lot of that's because of expensive funding costs. What is the internal rate of return or the initial yield, rather, of your money being spent and the delay to actually that coming through the income statement? You effectively cash account for things there, right? Because you only take the dividends into account when it comes through.
Sure
If you can give a sense of timing, sense of how dilutive the transactions is on completion as well.
Yeah, I mean, if you look at that average cost of debt, they're 9.6-ish or whatever it is. I mean, in fact, the Waterfront borrows very cheaply. I think the average margin that we—let's not think margin. The Waterfront, I think, borrow in terms of a prime. So it's a prime minus 1.65. It's roughly the kind of borrowing cost that the Waterfront incurs. Prime has come down, but that 9.6 number is sort of the average cost of debt for the Waterfront at the moment.
There'll be very little that is approved at investment committee level or the property committee level with a yield of much lower than that. There might be the odd 8.5 or something like that. To your point, I think, Rosa, if you're building an office like the one we built for Investec, you can effectively achieve your yield day one. If the feasibility was 8.5% on cost and you come in on cost, you get your 8.5% literally from day one because the building's fully let. We haven't done much speculative development, but we're moving more towards operational type of investments, i.e., these hotels. We've got two big hotels coming up now with the Table Bay and the one next to the Table Bay. There are a number of these operational type investments where we're taking operating risk.
They take a little bit of time to ramp up. Day one, the sort of I'll give you the best example probably is Time Out Market. Time Out Market was come to the deal forum at an approval of about a 9, it was even more, just double digit, I think, yield. It takes a little bit of time to ramp up. It doesn't achieve that yield day one. There's your dilution that you're sort of asking about. I would say you might end up with on some of those, you could end up with a 7, which ramps up to a 10 over a year. You've got a bit of negative leverage there. If you're fully debt funding it at 9.6, you might have a negative 2% spread for a year or 18 months until it picks up.
Certainly, the long-term future ability to earn returns is a different play as opposed to just banking a 7% escalation on an 8.5% initial yield that you might get out of the Investec building. I'll give you the example of the Radisson Red, which was a 440-odd million investment. Looking at David, I think we're projecting close on 80, even 100 million NOI out of that hotel today. Had we just done a lease, it would have been a whole different story. I hope that gives you a little bit of color on that. Thanks. I think I'll take the dividend fight to our meeting on Monday. Thanks. I know we've got one-on-one meetings with all of you over the next week. Keep the difficult questions for then, if you will.
No, but thanks. Just on the healthcare fund, I know you had sort of renegotiated the leases not too long ago, and you bought a property. What's happened there? Is it one particular operator that's fallen in arrears?
Yeah
Is it the same one that you negotiated with last time?
No. No. Look, I think we renegotiated all the leases with Busamed, and I think Busamed's gone through a bit of a recap of its own. Fair to say that and those numbers obviously have come through. We renewed some of those. There were negative reversions on those leases. There are negative reversions on the Netcare lease as well. There's a new 20-year lease with Netcare. This particular, let's say, issue at the moment is actually related to the Pretoria Head and Neck Hospital, the [unclear] , where the guys have fallen into arrears.
A few operational, excuse the pun, operational issues with doctors taking leave and theater minutes coming under pressure. Yeah, a couple of operational sort of issues. Dealing with DOH as well, Department of Health's been an absolute nightmare. We've got a sixth theater, which was built from day one. The doctors are keen to open up the sixth theater, but you need DOH approval. That's taken a hell of a long time. We needed to change the mix of beds from, I forget the D, I'm not a doctor, so I'm going to get this all wrong, but from pediatric to surgical or whatever, whatever. That's taken probably 18 months to get that. We've now got that approval. DOH only deal with one approval at a time. You can't have two approvals in.
You can't say, "I want to change the bed mix and open the theater." You deal with one. We have now dealt with the beds. Now we can deal with the theater. That is the issue there with that particular operator. Sure.
Sorry. Can I just ask with regards to the asset disposals, right? I'm trying to figure the kind of yields that you guys are getting compared to the last five years. I mean, property values did come down. I am trying to understand whether how much that has impacted you guys and if that is either widening or slowing, like you said, with the views around the GNU and the growth coming into the market.
Yeah. It's a difficult one to answer because, I mean, every one of those deals is quite unique in the circumstances.
You might have a vacant building or a 50% vacant building, which on the face of it, we're selling at like a 5% yield because the income that you're losing is only 50% of what the building could deliver if it was fully let. It looks optically like, and it is actually, you effectively sort of, it looks like you're selling at a 5% yield. I would say on the counter to that, there are some assets where we might still be in an overlet situation. The rentals are probably 30-40%, in an extreme case, above market, and you're selling it at that level. Now you're selling it at a 17% yield, but it's with the knowledge the buyer has that on reset, it'll come down to a 12% yield.
It really does depend on each individual transaction, each individual disposal. On average, I'd say you're selling somewhere between 10% and 14%, perhaps, as a yield on a more normalized, fully let market-related rental kind of deal.
It is marginally dilutive.
Yeah, it definitely would be marginally dilutive. It is above, let's say, the rate at which we're settling debt. Any other questions? You look like you're burning to ask questions, but save it for later. Ladies and gents, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it. It's quarter past two. We thank you for your time and attendance. Look forward to seeing you again in six months time. Enjoy what the Waterfront has on offer here today. It's a splendid day in Cape Town. We look forward to seeing you again in six months' time. Thanks.