Good morning, everybody, and welcome. Thanks for joining us here this morning. Nice to see a good, healthy crowd. There's still some number of seats in the front. Anybody looking for a front row seat? They're going cheaply. Very welcome here this morning, and it's a pleasure for me to present to you this morning the group annual results for Growthpoint Properties for the year end of 30th June 2025. Just scrolling down the agenda, I'd like to quickly give you an overview of the portfolio and what that comprises of today. Touch on some of the highlights, review some of the strategy that we've been working on, a few very short highlights on the financials, talk a bit to you about the international investments. Estienne will come and do an overview of the South African portfolio. He's very excited for the first time in many years.
He's got some pretty good news, which is wonderful. He'll touch on growth and investment partners in the capital management side, and then I'll come back and just conclude in terms of our outlook for the next financial year. The business today essentially comprises the South African business, which is still the largest part of the business by quite a margin, 50% out of total assets, about R66 billion worth of assets across retail, office, industrial, and logistics throughout South Africa. The V&A Waterfront, the other major South African business, 10% of total assets, about R13.3 billion worth of assets. Obviously, that one we own 50% in partnership with the PIC . On the offshore side, we have Growthpoint Australia, which makes up about 23.2% of total assets, obviously separately listed in Australia on the Australian Stock Exchange. Our market value of that investment is about R13 billion.
We have Globalworth, 12.2% of total assets, just short of 30% stake in Globalworth, separately listed on the London Stock Exchange on the Alternative Investment Market. Capital & Regional, NewRiver, that's actually no more. I'll deal with that in some of the detail, but we have now exited that investment. We have Lango, which makes up about 1.7% of total assets. It's essentially a company that invests in property assets across Africa. We have our third-party funds management business, which used to include Lango, but since they internalized their management company, we now reflect it only as an investment. We have about R8.6 billion worth of assets in the two funds, the Growthpoint Healthcare Property Holdings and the Student Accommodation Holdings business, making up about 1.8% of total assets. We have brought back highlights.
For the last couple of years, it was just salient features, but we now have some highlights. We are very happy to be announcing some of those. Our distributable income per share this year is up 3%. We do see the year as a bit of a turnaround year. We started the year off, or this time last year, I guess, guiding for negative growth. At the half-year mark, we upgraded that to positive. We have actually exceeded the upper end of the range that we gave, albeit marginally, but 3.1% up on distributable income per share. The dividend per share is up 6.1%, and that is mainly attributable to the fact that we have decided as a board and a group to increase the dividend payout ratio, and I will elaborate on that a little bit later, from 82.5%- 85% for the year.
The Group LTV has come down quite nicely to just over 40% from 42.3%. Group property assets are down by 6% to R155 billion, principally due to the sale of domestic assets in South Africa, but the biggest moving part by far is the disposal of Capital & Regional. The net asset value per share is down by 1.6%. The Group interest cover ratio is improving from 2.4%- 2.5%. The South African interest cover ratio is improving to 2.9x. Now I am having a challenge with this clicker. It was working very nicely early on. There we go. Right, just touching on the strategy, I guess, and there have been obviously a few investor concerns over the last couple of years, and we have tried to address them systematically over the last two, three years. As we all know, it has been a bit tough.
On the equity side, we continue to look to simplify the equity story. One of the biggest changes there, I guess, was the disposal of Capital & Regional. We internalized the Lango Manco, so Lango is on a path, I guess, to IPO in the next year or two. We continue to look to diversify the South African portfolio. From a capital allocation perspective, we are looking at allocating more capital to growth nodes in South Africa. We have a targeted disposal program of about R3.5 billion for this year. Again, moving out of less desirable assets in South Africa, allocating capital into more, into better growth nodes, particularly in the Western Cape, and also in terms of sector rotation into logistics. Strategically, on the South African portfolio, we did particularly well this year, I think, with the disposal of about R2.5 billion worth of assets in total.
We are definitely feeling a bit more optimistic as well in terms of the international assets, Globalworth, and GOZ in terms of their financial position. Debt levels, we really have focused very heavily on fixing the balance sheet, and we've brought the LTVs right down, and the ICRs are improved, as you saw. We're sitting with a significant cash balance as well now at the year-end. All things considered, from a funding perspective, we're pretty confident that we've got lots of access to liquidity and that the targeted disposal program has assisted in that regard. I think there was a lot of question marks, I guess, also about future leadership. With my retirement at the end of next year, we did announce to the market, obviously, my successor, Estienne , who will take over on the 1st of July.
We also announced the fact that with Gerald retiring, that retirement date is the end of March next year. We have got José Snyders joining us. He's currently, or he's just resigned, I guess, as the CEO of Liberty Two Degrees, but he will be joining us as Group CFO at the beginning of January next year. Just continuing along this theme of looking forward as to how we see Growthpoint in the next couple of years. I'm not going to focus on that looking back section, but really just a bit more on the looking forward. What we see going forward is Growthpoint with a very high-quality South African portfolio. We see GOZ with pretty good growth prospects with a solid balance sheet and good growth prospects into the funds management business.
We hope to see a restructured Globalworth and the shareholder impulse, if you want, between ourselves and the other shareholders there being resolved. We see a very strong growing V&A Waterfront with significant development opportunities and growth opportunities. Growthpoint Investment Partners continues to have good growth prospects, especially with the broadening of the mandate of the healthcare fund to include aged care and doctors' consulting rooms, which are attached, let's say, to these hospitals. On Lango, we ultimately see, following the internalization of the management company and the re-domiciliation of Lango, we ultimately, you know, hope to see, you know, Lango IPO in a year or two's time. When looking at the South African portfolio and improving the South African portfolio, the emphasis continues to be very strongly focused on the balance sheet.
We have, I think, created for ourselves now, you know, quite a bit of capacity, opportunity, I guess, to be more on the front foot and look at opportunities. The South African LTV, or the Group LTV, at 40%, the GOZ just under 40% or 39.5%, and then the South African LTV at below 35%. We have R4.7 billion worth of liquidity in the form of unutilized committed facilities. That number is down from the R6.2 billion in prior years, but that's quite a deliberate strategy. We feel that in the past, you know, as we feel more confident, we don't believe that we have to continue to hold, you know, such excess liquidity, but it's also driven by our debt expiry profile and what we have to refinance in the next 12 months. As I said, R900,000 m illion of cash.
The confidence that I guess we've got now has allowed us to take a view on the payout ratio. We have decided as a board to increase the payout ratio to 87.5% from the 82.5%. That gives you for the year an average of 85%. We're still thereby retaining R744 million worth of cash in the business for principally our maintenance CapEx requirements. Maybe I'll just take a minute or two and talk to this decision on the increase in the payout ratio. I think as confidence has returned, and as we see, we no longer have to fund, let's say, the Capital & Regional's distribution, which we were receiving in shares. Even Globalworth, we see now is that in the final dividend they've just paid us now is coming cash.
All things considered, you know, if we look at the growth coming through in the South African portfolio, you know, we're feeling a lot more confident about the prospects going forward. There might be questions, are we ever going to go to 100% payout ratio again? I think the short answer there is no. Principally, what we, as a broad principle, what we've adopted as a board is to say that to be sustainable, we need to retain sufficient cash to cover our maintenance CapEx at least. That number runs at about R500 million, R600 million a year. The payout ratio at 87.5% will allow us to still retain R500 million, R600 million a year in future. Off the back of that, the board took a view to increase the payout ratio.
On disposing of the South African assets and improving the South African portfolio, we sold 25 properties in the period for R2.5 billion. We invested another R1.6 billion into various developments and CapEx. You can see from some of the items highlighted there, a focus on the Western Cape, Bayside Mall in Table View in Cape Town. That property has been completely refurbished. We are just about finishing now the redevelopment and refurbishment of the former Investor Care Office Building, 3600 Stradum 491, who will be moving in there before the end of the year. We completed the Hilton Canopy Hotel down in Cape Town. It's open and operating. Quite a big emphasis, as you can see there, on investing into the Western Cape. Over the last nine, ten odd years, nine odd years, we have sold 186 properties worth about R15 billion.
We've now reduced the number of properties we own from 471- 328 and reduced the total gross lettable area that we own by 18.9%. You can see from the two little charts or the two little graphics there that the portfolio composition has actually changed from 46% office in 2015, FY 2015, to 40% office. Retail has remained stable at 39% and logistics has increased from 15%- 20%. It is a big business. We started with 5.7 million square meters across the portfolio. To change these, the composition dramatically does take a bit of time, but I think it's important to see the outcome over time has been directionally where we want to head. Touching more on the international side, optimizing the international portfolio, 38% of our property assets now are effectively offshore, producing 28%- 29% of our distributable income per share.
The rand equivalent currency income from dividends, strip dividends, and cash alternatives, R1.4 billion in the year compared to R1.6 billion in the prior year. We have seen some lower dividends from Globalworth and GOZ, actually. Obviously, the impact here of Capital & Regional coming through. We did dispose of Capital & Regional and we ended up with 14.2% in NewRiver as part consideration for the sale of Capital & Regional. Subsequent to year-end, you know, we have now also sold that at a price of £0.75, which was at a premium to the market, almost a 5%-6% premium to the market at the time that we executed the trade. GOZ remains very core to us and Globalworth. We continue to be in active discussions with the management and the board and shareholders on trying to unlock value from that investment.
In terms of the two, in terms of Capital & Regional, we did earn about R140 million worth of income this year, partly consolidating Capital & Regional until the date of disposal on the 10th of December. We did receive a dividend from NewRiver for R86 million. In Globalworth, we reinvested the dividend, the June 2024 and December 2024 dividend. Collectively, there was about R301 million worth of reinvestment. The most recent dividend that we've just received now was R122 million, and that we received in cash. Moving through the financial results and just trying to give you a sense of what the major contributors were, I guess, to the results. The 3.1% growth in distributable income represents about R151 million. The major contributors there being South Africa, R236 million positive. It is the first time in a couple of years, I think, that South Africa has screened positively.
That's very encouraging. We saw net South African finance costs contribute R23 million positively to that movement. The V&A continues to perform well and contributed positive R35 million to the result. We unfortunately had a few negatives. The GOZ dividend was a little bit lower, quite heavily impacted by the dividend withholding tax charge as well that we picked up in GOZ. The NewRiver Capital & Regional sale resulted in a net R30 million negative move. The dividend from Globalworth was down R52 million, mainly due to a tax charge in Poland, that one-off tax charge in Poland, and the impact of the higher interest cost, full 12-month higher interest cost on the debt refinance that they incurred in Europe, on their Eurobonds. Small dividend from Lango, and then GIP and Trading and Development both contributing negatively, albeit quite small numbers, R14 million and R10 million respectively.
Very high-level look quickly at the income statement. We see gross property income growing to R13.9 billion, almost R14 billion, or sorry, not growing, but actually reducing by 4%. Again, the income statement and balance sheet are quite heavily impacted by Capital & Regional and the disposal of Capital & Regional. Property expenses were down 6.4% to R4.2 billion, leaving us with net property income down 2.9% at just short of R9.7 billion. Other operating expenses reduced by 6.4% to R1.55 billion, leaving us with net property income after operating expenses down 2.5% at R8.6 billion. I think I skipped one. Then we look at finance costs. Finance costs came down by 4.4% to R4.2 billion. Our finance and other income also just staying relatively flat at R1.329 billion.
After adjusting for the non-controlling interest, foreign exchange losses, and other items, we are left with distributable income of just short of R5 billion, R4.964 billion, and up 3.1%. This slide just tries to reconcile the distributable income to the FFO number. A number of company-specific adjustments get put through, and that results in an SA REIT FFO number, which is pretty flat on last year, R4.436 billion and R1.31 per share. The distributable income per share is R1.463, and the dividend per share, based on the payout ratio of 85%, is R1.243. On the balance sheet, just a couple of key features here. You can see total property assets down by about R14 billion or 10%. Again, very heavily impacted by the sale of Capital & Regional, but also negative revaluations still being experienced in GOZ in the office portfolio in Australia.
The equity accounted investments, about R18.3 billion, the two big ones there, the Waterfront and Globalworth. Looking down at the bottom, really focusing on the nominal borrowings, you'll see a significant reduction in total debt from R69 billion, almost R70 billion, down to R61 billion. That's almost a R9 billion reduction in debt. That leaves us with shareholder interest at 1.7% down to R67.7 billion of NAV. Moving on to the international investments very briefly then, GOZ. GOZ owns 50 properties in Australia, just short of a million square meters, valued at about R48.5 billion. Their FFO did decline by 2.5% on the prior comparable period, and the dividend decreased by 5.2% if you exclude the R0.021 special dividend that GOZ paid.
Net net for us, we received R1.11 billion distribution in rands effectively once we converted those dollars into rands, and that compares to R1.59 billion in the prior period. A reduction of about R47 million there. GOZ has a very strong balance sheet. They have disposed quite actively or aggressively during the year. They sold the stake in DXI. They also sold seven assets to the Growthpoint Australia Logistics Partnership, realizing about A$335 million in cash. That was used to effectively settle debt, bringing actually the LTV down to the 37% level, but that was prior to the revaluation of the assets, which was negative, taking the gearing back up to just under 40%. Liquidity in Australia for GOZ is good. They renegotiated A$645 million of bank debt. They converted A$320 million into a sustainability loan with average tenor of five years. Lots of undrawn facilities.
With the revaluation of assets downwards, we did see GOZ's NTA decrease 10% to A$3.09. 85% of their debt is fixed, the weighted average debt maturity of just short of four years, and the weighted average cost of debt of 5%. On the portfolio level, there's about A$4.1 billion of assets on balance sheet. Over 80% of income comes from government and from listed corporates. Higher level of occupancy, 94% by rental value. Weighted average cap rate 6.7%. Weighted average lease expiry 5.6 years. As I said earlier, good leasing and then six properties sold. Like-for-like property FFO is up 3.2%. Operationally, GOZ is doing well. We are seeing the end of the, let's say, negative cycle as it relates to office assets in particular. The one city that is still struggling a bit is Melbourne.
If you look at the downward asset, the write-downs in asset values in GOZ this period, it was almost exclusively attributable to assets in Melbourne. Melbourne office market is struggling a bit, but certainly Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, wherever else we have assets in Australia, office assets, they're doing well. Industrial portfolio continues to perform well in Australia. On the funds management side, we have A$1.4 billion of assets in, effectively, I think, a number of funds. I forget the exact number of funds that we have there. During the period, A$328 million of new assets under management was created by the team. The biggest one of that is the Growthpoint Australia Logistics Partnership, which is a, we created a logistics fund with TPG, Angelo Gordon, investing 80% of the capital into that fund and GOZ co-investing 20%. These were effectively assets that GOZ had on balance sheet.
We also had the separate establishment of a new Canberra Office Trust. It's a A$90 million syndication, effectively taking a significant office asset in the Canberra market and syndicating that with private investors. A$170 million in gross equity was raised. The increase in funds management fees revenues was 20%, and then over 45% of new investors in the funds management platform for the period. Capital & Regional, I'll skip through this very quickly. It is now effectively post year-end off our balance sheet. At balance sheet date, we were still reflecting the NewRiver stake. Following, I think, an internal review and a strategic decision was taken that the asset was not core and that we really weren't in a position to allocate more capital towards the entity to grow it, to make it relevant. Off the back of that, we ended up deciding to sell the asset.
Total, we realized about R2.5 billion of cash in two tranches, the R1.2 billion at the outset and then the R1.3 billion from the sale of the NewRiver stake. Globalworth owns 56 properties across Romania and Poland, just over a million square meters, and our share of that, 29.6%, valued at about R16 billion. The 33% decrease in the dividend from Globalworth, those were the two major factors there. As I mentioned earlier, was this big tax charge that we picked up. It is a one-off and we don't see that repeating itself. It talks to intercompany funding and withholding tax on interest that came from some of the Polish change in tax law and then the higher refinancing costs. The higher refinancing costs are now in the base, so Globalworth had about, it was over €800 million worth of bonds that had refinanced in May 2024.
For our 12-month period to June 2025, Globalworth does have a December year-end, so the periods don't coincide perfectly. In essence, for Globalworth, they've now had the higher interest rates for a full 12 months. We have shown the impact of that. It's in our numbers, and that certainly would see a stabilization of that interest charge going forward. At the net income, operating income level, operationally, things are performing pretty well, especially in Bucharest and in Romania. Warsaw in Poland continues to perform very well. Unfortunately, we do have a few challenges in some assets in regional Poland where vacancies have crept up in some instances to 30%. From a financial perspective, we see Globalworth having stabilized, liquidity is good, €325 million of cash on the balance sheet with €115 million of undrawn facilities. There were some revaluations, €50 million revaluation on the assets for the period.
They were successful in refinancing a €100 million debt facility. Gearing has come down very nicely, sitting at 38% on what I would say are realistic and conservative asset values. There is no real debt refinancing issue in the short term, €62 million facility in February 2027 being the earliest. On the property side of things, in Romania, there was a disposal, 50% share of an industrial asset was sold in July 2024. There was a small industrial asset delivered, 5,900 square meter development of a property in Romania. On the Polish side, we're still busy with a redevelopment of the Renoma asset. That's a 48,000 square meter mixed-use facility in one of the cities in Poland. There is still some land available in that Polish portfolio for future development. The portfolio metrics, I think, are pretty healthy.
As I said, from our perspective, we think that particular business has stabilized and we're looking forward to possibly, if nothing, at least stable dividend growth next year coming out of Globalworth. Lastly, Lango from my side, we own 15.7% of it. It did acquire $200 million worth of assets during the period from Hyperop and ATT&CK. That was settled partly with cash and partly with the issue of shares. Lango did the internalization of its management company during the period at a cost of $60 million. The Manco shareholders received those $60 million in proceeds in the form of a convertible instrument, which converts into Lango shares. Our share of that was again $331 million. It has re-domiciled December 2024, and it is now a U.K.-domiciled company.
From our perspective, we have excluded it from our Growthpoint Investment Partners numbers from 31st December 2024 and it is now shown as an investment. As I said, Lango is on a path to an IPO. It needs to raise a bit of equity. Many of these actions, including the internalization and re-domiciliation, was all preparatory work for and positioning it for this future IPO. All right. I'm going to hand over to Estienne.
Morning, everybody. Thank you, Norbert. All right. We're going to talk about a little bit of action closer to home. As Norbert pointed out, things have gone quite a bit better this year. In fact, significantly better than what we originally envisaged when we gave guidance to the market at the beginning of the year. You'll see there's quite a lot of moving parts. I think the team have had their head in the scrub, and we're starting to see some of the benefit of that hard work coming through in the numbers. When having a look at the newly named highlights, we renewed close to, well, just over a million square meters again this year. You can see from that a huge machine in terms of renewing multiple leases every year and clearly looking for new clients in a market which remains very, very competitive in all three sectors.
In the period, we grew like-for-like income. That's given all the sales, we stripped those out and all the new developments. The like-for-like growth is 5.9%, which is the highest it's been in some time. We had vacancies of 8.2% at the end of the year. The positive thing there is the trend is moving lower. When we look at the separate sectors, I'll comment on those vacancies along the way. Renewal growth still remains a little negative, but a marked improvement from the negative 6% in the prior year. Renewal success rate at 68% is probably a little bit lower than we'd like it to be, but it's indicative of the market that we're operating in, which remains very competitive. Many tenants, when renewals come up, use the opportunity to downsize or look at alternative accommodation for their requirements, which seem to be changing all the time.
The expense ratio improved to 36.1%. Our REERs, the book is pretty much back to pre-COVID levels. Just to give you a flashback, I think that REERs number went up to R 650 million in the eye of the storm. It was really pretty sticky for a couple of years. The 68 odd million is more or less, you know, what it was prior to COVID. I think we're pretty much back to those levels. Provisions as a result are slightly less. Our finance cost came down marginally, a combination of sales and a little bit of lower interest rates. As Norbert mentioned earlier, our balance sheet is very conservatively funded. If you think about sort of the mothership, we don't have recourse debt from offshore. For the bankers in the house, at 34.5%, that's a pretty conservative gearing ratio.
As Norbert pointed out, our interest cover ratio on the South African balance sheet is now at 2.9x . It has improved significantly. For the first time, we've seen quite a reasonable increase in valuations across all three sectors. That equates to about R1.4 billion, 2.2%. Hopefully, if the sort of momentum continues, our very conservative valuing fraternity will have a little bit more confidence in the underlying values as well. One would think that if you're maintaining or growing your income at roughly about 5.5%, you should see valuations increase more or less at that level. At the same time, if you see yields or interest rates coming down, that could be pretty positive for valuations going forward. The development pipeline and the sales sort of talk to each other. It reflects that we have not lost hope.
We continue to invest in our portfolio, and we are recycling capital quite significantly in this business, improving the quality of the portfolio and continuously investing in this business. Looking at logistics and industrial, of the three sectors, this has been the best performing over the past few years. You can see from the vacancy levels that the market is a little bit more favorable to the landlord in this environment. I think Norbert mentioned how we have changed the makeup of the portfolio mix between retail, office, and industrial. Also, within the portfolio, we've brought down the number of assets that we have and the types of assets too. There is much more logistics in the portfolio today, larger assets, better quality tenants, newer properties, and a lot of the development activity has really been in this space.
If you look at those vacancies there, many of them come from that development activity. What we have been able to do is relit quite actively in this portfolio. Renewals are at a very high level, and we continue to have a high escalation rate in the portfolio. That delivers a like-for-like growth at 5.5% and valuations increasing at 3.1%. We have sold 14 properties, close to R1 billion worth of assets, and we continue to look at selling out of specific nodes strategically and using that capital and developing quality new logistics facilities in areas where we control the node a little bit better and control the environment. Typically in parks or in controlled nodes where we're looking to invest.
On the retail side, the vacancy levels at 5.3% is, I would say, sort of a little bit overstated in that if you're in that portfolio, there is a bit of office, and it is a little bit lumpy. It works out to just, let's say, around about 56,000 square meters, but 11,000 of that is in one shopping center that we're busy working on a solution for at the moment. We're busy letting in Alberton City. We've done quite a bit of work on Brooklyn Mall as well. Shortly, we'll probably have to make a big decision whether we proceed on redeveloping or refurbishing that mall and repositioning it to fill some of these vacancies and repositioning the mall. I think the other positive thing in the numbers here is also on the renewal side. We're now getting much more positive renewals than negative.
If you look at the rate that the tenants are paying per square meter, certainly I'm reasonably confident that there is still upside there. Like-for-like growth at 5.3%. A lot of work has been done on the recovery side. In this portfolio is also the portfolio that's been mostly impacted by solar rollout. Just in the period, we rolled out 10 new shopping centers. We rolled out solar. You're going to start seeing the benefit of that coming into this coming year in terms of savings in electricity, and that will have a positive impact going forward. Valuations also increased by 2.2%, and we managed to dispose of five properties close to R1 billion. One of the big properties there was the Golden Acre, which transferred right at year-end. Some statistics on the retail side.
Average trading densities have increased by 4.8%, which is better than the rest of the market. If we use the CLEAR index, which is an index that most of the retail players are now submitting information to, you can see in the different sort of segments where the most growth has been. If we look at community centers and specifically the Western Cape, that has definitely shown better results. Our rent-to-turnover ratio, which I alluded to earlier, at 7.7%, I would say, I don't know, Gavin, I think we're confident that that is a reasonable level and that from there we should actually have a little bit of scope to squeeze retailers for a little bit more rental potentially in the future. That will have a positive impact on that negative renewal growth rate.
We are seeing growth in foot traffic, which is positive because actually post-COVID, the trend had been that actually you didn't see much growth across the board in foot traffic in many of these shopping centers. We are starting to see that come through now, which is very positive. On the office side, this portfolio was the dark horse that probably has come through stronger than what we have expected in terms of performance. Vacancies have come down quite nicely to 14.6%. There's still a bit of work there, a little bit of upside because if everything's full, there's no upside, right? Analysts like a bit of upside. There's still a bit of upside. The reality is that, you know, in Gauteng is where the challenge lies in the vacancy side. A lot of work is being done there.
If we look at the markets in KwaZulu-Natal, we've got an 89,000 square meter portfolio. It's full. In Cape Town, our vacancies are normalized and actually reasonably low. We're starting to see rental growth in those markets and coming off quite a low base. It'll speak to the like-for-like growth, which I'll touch on now. Those are some of the drivers of that like-for-like growth. The renewal side, it's still, as you can see, very, very competitive out there, very difficult to retain your tenants. We're effectively keeping two out of every three tenants still in this period. It is a difficult market. I think going forward, it'll still be a pretty bumpy ride into next year.
We have cautioned in the announcement that we know of a couple of rather lumpy leases coming into this year that will have a negative impact on the renewal rate, which improved materially in this year from 14.8% last year to 3.2% negative. It's quite a material move, but you know, there are big leases that will impact this first quarter. Generally, you can see that it's starting to move to an area where we're starting to see a couple of positive leases coming through. In fact, pretty much half of your leases now are either flat or positive, which is really a big improvement from prior periods. As you can see, the like-for-like growth there at 6.8% outperforms the other two sectors. A lot of work here has been done on recoveries and focusing on the expenses.
The nature of office, I think, is also changing, where increasingly we're going to have to become more of a service provider. Instead of a box provider, where tenants move in, a lot of quite innovative initiatives have been launched over the period, which certainly I think will help this portfolio going forward. We have managed to sell some assets. We're very careful when we dispose assets into the office market. We do not want to create competitors which can undercut us on assets we have disposed to them. A lot of the disposals have been pretty selective to either developers that are converting their use or owner-tenant sort of scenarios. We are actively looking at getting rid of the bottom end of that portfolio and continue to invest. We opened the Hilton in Cape Town on the back of good demand for hotel space in the Cape market.
We're busy with 91's building. They should be moving in in December. We're busy in Sandton for those that have suffered some of that traffic inconvenience. I do apologize, but there's going to be a lovely walking bridge across there, which we've been working on since 2007. It is reasonably momentous for us. It's not easy when you have to deal with the local councils in Johannesburg. On the development side, I think when looking at those numbers, you have to appreciate that as we ramp up activity within the portfolio, it's better for us to use our skill sets and capacity on that. You'll see a slight reduction in the fees being generated out of the trading and development team. In saying that, in this period, we did launch a residential scheme for disposal called the Olympus. It's just behind Discovery.
We've been very surprised, to be honest, on how successful we have been in selling units there. We're going to ground now on this side of the year with the earthworks, and we'll be commencing construction on that development early next year. The idea is to sell those units for profit. In two years' time, we should start bringing some of those profits to book. The other activities that this team has been busy with is developing for our funds. They've been every year developing one or two new student accommodation facilities. They're currently busy with a very large one at the gates of anybody who comes from Natal University. Anybody, nobody. At the gates in Glenwood, we're building a very large facility of 2,500 beds there called Ett Howard College.
We do have a few units that we are busy selling for profit, and those profits will come through the books in the future. On the ESG side, I think this is increasingly important in our business, and Growthpoint has focused on this area for over 15 years now. I think some of those benefits are certainly to be seen in the statistics. We have ramped up our investment into solar. Today, we've got 80 plants with 61 MW peak production. We also entered into a PPA agreement where we're going to be acquiring 195 GW hours of power. Ultimately, the idea is to get to close to 40% of our total electricity supply coming from green power.
On the back of that, what we have done is we are passing that through to some of our tenants as an incentive for them to stay with us or to come and move into one of our portfolios. We've created a very innovative product called the Eco2 product. The benefit for any of you that would go into a building that is being provided with the Eco2 product is that firstly, you'll be getting green power. On top of that, you will have access to the renewable energy certificates from your utilization, which you then can get on a blockchain system called FuelSwitch. You will have the opportunity to either dispose of those at a very nice profit or use them to reduce your carbon footprint. For very large tenants, this is a very, very attractive initiative, and it's the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint.
I think over time, it'll make our tenants stay in our buildings quite a bit longer. We're also focusing actively on water and waste, and we have added those into the management of our ESG and sustainability programs. On the people and community side, we've retained our BEE status, so Growthpoint remains a black company at level one. We have once again spent a significant amount of money on CSR, and we've seen a lot of beneficiaries in the year benefit from this. Most of you will be familiar with Property Point, which is our enterprise development program. In fact, it's probably become a program for the whole property industry now. We are, many of our partners in the industry are using Property Point.
An important focus for our company, it also really works pretty well within the business in terms of when we develop or run our shopping centers, et cetera. Some of these providers are actually becoming providers to Growthpoint. On the Waterfront, the statistics are eye-watering. I think in a global context, we haven't seen statistics like this on any asset. It's a really feel-good story for South Africa and shows you what can be done if you're operating in the right policy with the right strategic plan. From a highlights point of view, I don't think there's one low light in the whole presentation on all these slides. Net property income grew 10.4%, even though we're busy refurbishing the Lux Mall, and we took the Table Bay offline to refurbish it. Material increase in income there. At this stage, we've also been pivoting in the hotel sector.
We've been trying to convert as and when those opportunities arise, the hotel leases to operating agreements. Today, the operating income has increased to 16% of the total income for the group there. Like-for-like, net property income increased by 12.7%. That is a phenomenal statistic. There was 24% growth in turnover in rental due to increased tourism in the hotels themselves. Vacancies are non-existent. Visitors are over 24 million. The one driver has been the increase in tourism due to the Western Cape. Maybe not too many people know, but actually South Africa's tourism numbers are still lower than pre-COVID levels. The V&A and Cape Town is really bucking that trend. Overall, we are 15% roughly above pre-COVID levels at the V&A and in Cape Town. Really putting Cape Town on the map from a tourist perspective globally today. We also commissioned our desalination plant.
That plant will be providing close to 80% of the water requirement in the V&A. That really does help in terms of potentially making a good case for increasing the bulk rights that we have applied for in the city. We've successfully developed Five Dock Road. I think there's 98 units there, luxury units, of which they've already sold 92. Please get in there, Evan. You need to go and buy yourself. There's only six left, but they're flying off the shelf. It's a really nice spot. It looks out on the mountain. It's going to be spectacular. Get in there before they're all gone. On the funding side, the Waterfront is now being funded on balance sheet, which gives us quite a nice pipeline of capacity there for the partners being the GEPF and Growthpoint.
Ultimately, we're going to be getting to roughly about R5.4 billion of debt, given the refinances and the new finance applications that we have put in. Currently, there's roughly about R3.3 billion of debt. I'm not going to go into the gory detail of what's hedged and unhedged for this purpose. Running through the sort of sectors, retail sales have increased by 5.8%, even given the fact that we're busy working on the Lux Mall, which took 3,700 offline. The turnover in that shopping center is now over R10 billion. In December last year, turnover crept over R1 billion. The trading density is at R9,048. It's probably double that of any other shopping center of the same sort of size. The reality is that the renewals on the back of that are growing at 6%. It really reflects a very positive environment from a retail perspective in that market.
There are many things that are having a positive impact on that. The tourism side and what's happening in the marine side is also helping that story. The other little thing that was also added was we finally managed to open the Union Castle buildings. For those that don't know, that is a new or refurbished building with a Nike store, a Tully store, and one of the most beautiful stores I've ever seen, a Wedgewoods on the ground floor. We've got an office in the middle, and on the top, there's a brand new Marble Restaurant, which has the most incredible vistas of Cape Town. I do encourage you, when you do pop down there, to go and visit that as well.
On the office side, these statistics office people can only dream of, which is net property income increasing at 17%, like-for-like at 10%, vacancies non-existent, and renewal growth rates in positive territory, and basically retaining pretty much most of the tenants that come up for renewal. On the marine and industrial side, we've also seen a vast increase in the vessels that are coming around the Cape as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. The reality is, where that comes, quite a lot of tourists. We have had over 170,000 people hop off the canoes and drumming into the hotels and into the shopping centers, helping drive those statistics. On the casual berthing and tourist yacht and commissioning new vessels and charter boats, that has all remained very, very strong. We have seen on a 12-month rolling basis that increase by 15%.
One of the biggest drivers of the income in the V&A has been the performance of the hotel and leisure side. We have seen a 10% increase in income, even with the Table Bay coming out. Like-for-like at 27%. That has not come with additional bums in beds. It is actually mainly rack rate. As you can see, the V&A's rates have gone up by 23%. We have also, in this period, as I mentioned earlier, now got three hotels that are on operating contracts. The Table Bay will come back on stream in December this year in a phased basis. I think there are about 200 or 300 beds coming back in December. We are also busy building the luxury hotel on Key 7, which will open middle of the year, which will be very exciting.
On the residential side, vacancies are very, very low and success on renewal is very, very high. It speaks to a strong letting demand in the area. The newly refurbished Helistop is trading also up 30%. Really a good story. On Growthpoint Properties, I will just touch briefly on this. We have 20 properties in the healthcare fund today. We still effectively own 39% of this fund. We receive asset management fees and dividends from that fund. On the student accommodation side, we now have 15 properties. It is over 10,280 beds.
Probably, if not the largest, one of the largest student accommodation providers in the country today, trading under the Thrive Student Living brand and making a really positive impact on our campuses at the larger universities today. There is also quite a nice pipeline of opportunity that continuously will feed this fund in terms of opportunities going forward, which drives the bottom line and growth and distribution that you can see. Our distribution increased from $17 million- $29 million from this fund. On the capital management side, we have reduced the content here, so bankers do not fear. There are eight slides in the annexes, which you can crawl through, which gives you all the detail on which hedge was re-hedged and at what rate and all those wonderful things. For this presentation, we will kind of keep it high level. We have managed to reduce our debt.
Our LTV has come down to 34.5% on the South African balance sheet. The cost of debt has reduced from 9.6%- 8.9%. If you then blend in the CCRSs and foreign denominated debt, it brings it down to 6.9% from 7.2%. Our weighted average length of debt, so the term on those loans, is 3.8 years. For the bond holders, there's still a nice pool of unsecured assets there. Only 41.6% of our debt is secured. Good liquidity with R4.7 billion worth of available facilities and close to R900 million of cash on balance sheet. We've proactively been hedging interest rates. The 1.6 years is probably a little bit shorter than what you have been used to in prior years, but there is a strong feeling around the board that the interest rates will continue to come down, and we want to be positioned better for that.
Norbert, if you can come back for the conclusion. Thanks.
Thanks, Estienne. I'm just keeping an eye on the clock here. It's just gone on an hour, so I'll try and wrap it up quite quickly. I'm not going to read what's on the slide there, but just in summary, with the more positive outlook for the South African business across all three sectors, as Estienne has highlighted, with the positive outlook for the Waterfront, the Waterfront's looking at double-digit growth in each distribution to ourselves next year. It is principally driven by the profits on the residential development, Five Dock Road. Though, as Estienne said, most of those are sold out. We expect transfers to take place probably in the first couple of months of next year. It'll be in our second half of our financial year, which ends in June 2026.
We would be looking at distributing those residential profits. We will also have the Table Bay back online by then. As Estienne mentioned, the new Key 7 hotel is only probably going to be opening up towards the middle of the year, so unlikely to impact the Waterfront's results for our reporting period next year. On the SA front, if you consider the outlook for interest rates, we're still optimistic that there's going to be a few more interest rate cuts. If you move offshore, GOZ has put out its distribution guidance. It's slightly up, I think $0.184 compared to the $0.182 this year, excluding the special dividend. Globalworth being stable, as well as GIP and the contributions from GIP, both in terms of asset management fees and dividends from the underlying funds being relatively stable.
With that sort of level of positivity and optimism, the board has taken a view, and we're confident to project and forecast that distribution growth per share next year will be somewhere between 3% and 5%. If you overlay on top of that the higher payout ratio, which will apply for both distributions next year, the first half and second half distribution, you could look at this dividend per share growth of between 6% and 8%. I think that concludes. Just to add, there are in the order of 67 odd annexes in the document, in the IAS presentation, providing all the detail that you might want, you know, and provides a lot of better insight into some of the highlights that we have presented here today. I am aware that there are a number of questions online, and we'll take from, do you want to start with the floor?
All right. If you get preference, if you [audio distortion]
Thanks, I agree with that. We did drive all the way here. Just two main questions from me. I'm looking at the leadership, right? We all have our own ideas about what might happen, but with, you know, Estienne being promoted to Group CEO, I want to hear from you guys, will there be a new South Africa-based CEO that's going to be hired in the next year?
I think the short answer is, we are busy going through a process with the board on looking at the, call it the operating structure going forward under, you know, Estienne's leadership, together with bringing José on board. At this time, the view is that we're not going to replace the CEO, the SA CEO role, that role won't be part of the group structure going forward. Whatever the roles and responsibilities are, you know, that have been fulfilled by myself and Estienne over the years, will be shared, if you want, between Estienne and the new CEO and whatever the new group structure is that we end up concluding. There's a lot of work being done with the board on that at the moment, and as soon as we're able to share more details on that, I guess we will do so with the investor's help.
Okay, cool. Just with regards to the finance costs, I think things have changed since the pre-close. I'm interested to know what are the current margins that you're getting on new facilities right now?
Aasha, our Treasurer, is in the audience here. I'll give it a stab, and Asha, if I make a hash of it, please feel free to correct me. I think it's fair to say that we're still seeing significant excess to liquidity. We are being inundated with inbound inquiries, not only from investors into bonds, and term ranging anywhere from three to ten years. The best rate we got recently for ten-year money was $1.35 or something like that, $1.34.
For ten years, it was $1.83.
$1.83.
Yeah, $1.83.
$1.83?
Yeah, 183.
Ten years?
No, but it was three years. Post-year end. It is in the post-balance sheet events, but post-year end, we did a private placement. Three-year money, we did at JIBAR + 100 and five years at JIBAR + 120.
Okay.
That's in the bond market.
What is the difference between your bond market pricing and what you're getting from the banks?
We don't like because we like them to be competitive, so we don't disclose that, but it's a few basis points above that. It's still very, very competitive. I think you would see between 10 bps- 15 bps above bond pricing.
Okay. Lastly, with the subs being renewed, I assume that a lot of them are going to be in the money. Is that within the guidance as well? Is that assumed that there'll be some finance cost benefits?
There will be a little bit, but some of our finance, the swaps maturing, you'll see it in the slides at the back in the annexes. They're still at quite low rates in comparison to, I think this is the last year for the AUDs where the cheap AUDs roll off. ZAR, we're just about there now, I think, with the cheaper swaps rolling off and where we can refinance. I think with ZAR, we'll start seeing some benefit going forward.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Any other questions? Any other questions? Okay, if not, we'll take one from the iPad here. Hi team, mention was made of progress with regards to GWI future strategy with other shareholders. Can you provide more color on this or provide various options being considered?
I'll take that one. Unfortunately not. Globalworth is a separately listed entity on the London Stock Exchange, and it would be inappropriate for me to be providing any details here as to what strategies the board and management there might be considering to unlock value. I think what I can say, and I have been saying for the last couple of years, is that it's probably not an optimal situation for three large listed companies all to have a 30% share roughly equally in another listed company. Ultimately, I guess what we're looking for is a solution where each shareholder can be in control, I guess, of their own destiny with regards to their investment in Globalworth. I can't provide any other specifics or details, unfortunately.
Improved LTV and being on the front foot to take advantage of opportunities. Are these still primarily focused on offshore or will you look local too? If the former, which geographies tick the boxes for Growthpoint ?
I'll start with that. Just to sort of highlight again the fact, I think over the years, whilst we may have spoken a lot about offshore opportunities and in fact, you know, have allocated capital offshore, we've never ignored South Africa and had a complete investment strike, if you want, on South Africa. Every year, the number ranges between R1.5 billion and R2.5 billion, has been invested domestically. R600 million is basically what we call maintenance CapEx. Over and above that, you know, we've been investing quite heavily in logistics. You know, through our T&D team, we've been developing, buying land and developing logistics assets, both in Cape Town, KZN, and Gauteng. We bought some land recently, the Naka Park development that's out towards the airport, where we've got a joint venture with Fenstra, looking at some further industrial development. We're looking for land opportunities in the Western Cape.
We've got a few, but we'd be happy to take on more for industrial. There is probably a bit of a bias towards Western Cape. If you saw this particular results presentation, of the R1.6 billion that we spent on CapEx and development, a big chunk of that was spent in the Western Cape, not only on existing assets and refurbishing and repositioning existing assets, some of it a bit defensive, but definitely looking more actively at opportunities in South Africa than we probably have been over the last couple of years. It'll be definitely a mix, and clearly Waterfront, the extent of the investment in the Waterfront is very significant. There's probably at least R4.5 billion worth of projects on the go as we speak. We are in a process with the City of Cape Town to apply for additional rights.
If those come through, there's a 10-year future development pipeline within the Waterfront.
Right. The next question is in respect of Brooklyn. The request is how much CapEx will be spent, what are we considering, how low will the yield be, is it defensive CapEx, et cetera . Maybe I can't answer those questions and neither can Gavin because at this stage, you know, we've obviously got a concept. Just context, the Brooklyn is a very, very well-established regional mall. We've got a partner there in Attacq, for they own 25% of the mall. We work closely together with them. This mall is in Brooklyn, which is one of the more affluent suburbs of Pretoria on the east of Pretoria. As malls go, they do get a bit older and it has been opportune for some period for a refurbishment on that mall. It is something that we've been working on.
We have had Game that were moving out, then they weren't moving out, then they were moving out. We have been getting very high income from them and they have now finally moved out, which sort of triggers an opportunity to look at this redevelopment of the mall. As we get more details, we'll definitely provide it to the market.
We've seen wonderful architects, drawings, perspectives of a phenomenal redevelopment, which will make it a very new, bright, light, and exciting mall. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the numbers yet. We still got the costings, the costings are still getting there.
Exactly. ThWaterqqqat's the proof in the pudding, unfortunately. Right, then there's another question. What can be done to increase the value of Globalworth? Operational figures seem to develop positively. However, the stock price seems to be substantially undervalued, and the company, versus its acquisition cost. Would it be an option to list the company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange to address a growing base of investors versus AIM listing?
I would just maybe say no. I don't think it's certainly not been contemplated to list it separately. The reason the share price lags is 95% of the shares are held by shareholders. They've got a free float of 5%. Nobody buys it. There's zero liquidity in the stock, and you wouldn't be expecting anything else to my mind with a 5% free float. None of the major shareholders have traded a share in the last five years. I think that's the reason for the underperformance or where the share price is sitting relative to its NAV, significant discount to NAV. I think it's sitting at 50% odd discount to NAV. I think listing it on another stock exchange is not an option being considered.
Is it an option to buy out the partners?
Could be.
That was the next question.
Right. What strategies are in place to improve the offices in Hao Cheng? I think there's multiple strategies. I alluded to, for instance, the Eco2 product. We've also just recently launched quite an innovative incentive for clients, which is called SwiftFlight. It's a JV with SafeAir where we've got an online blockchain platform where part of the incentive for tenants can be provided to them in coupons for flights, which they can redeem with SafeAir. There are going to be more and more of these kinds of incentives. We've got all sorts of clever ideas that we're busy working on, and you can start seeing the benefits of that. We've brought down those vacancies materially in office. It doesn't fix the fact that the Hao Cheng economy is very, very difficult. On the back of that, you're not seeing really expansionary demand in office.
What we have seen is the occupation levels in offices have increased as more and more people move back to the office. It's only the asset managers and analysts still at home, really. The reality is that the other people are working, and we are seeing really improved demand as a result of that. You can't buck the trend in terms of the economy, but we are building all sorts of interesting incentives and products and services that over time will have a very positive impact on the office market. That's the last question. Anybody else got anything? Thank you very much.