And instructions will follow at that time. If you wish to dial in using the phone line, please go to NEPI Rockcastle website to register. Alternatively, participants can submit written questions using the Ask a Question button on the webcast page. I would like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Rüdiger Dany, CEO of NEPI Rockcastle. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the result presentation of NEPI Rockcastle for the first half of this year. We're really pleased to have you all with us. Let me start maybe in giving a little bit of an overview before we come to all the figures of the portfolio as such. 59 assets, which are located actually in nine different jurisdictions within the Central Eastern Europe region, and you see that is obviously a heavyweight that we have here in Romania, with 36%, in Poland, 27%. When we look at actually this region and compare it a little bit to the rest of Europe, and we did this year versus the EU-27 states, I think you all see that we are at the right spot.
GDP growth, foreseen by the IMF for 2023, as well for 2024, is actually outperforming the rest of the EU-27 states. Let's get into the numbers. We are delivering obviously on our strategy this year, and we are very pleased, obviously, to announce that on the growth side, we can present you a 24.9, so almost 25% growth on distributable earnings per share. What are the drivers here? Obviously, the operational results were excellent for the first half year, with an increase of more than 16% on the sales of our tenants, driven, obviously, by a very high demand by our customers. 23% higher NOI. What were the drivers here? Obviously, we have been invoicing the inflationary component, let's say, that we saw last year.
On top of this, we also had the possibility to decrease actually our utility costs, and therefore, the overall result in the NOI has been growing. A part of this, obviously, are the two acquisitions that we did in the end of last year. EUR 18 million out of this are coming from our new acquisitions in Gdańsk and Copernicus in Toruń. Nevertheless, on a like-for-like basis, on a comparable basis, the NOI of the portfolio has been growing by 15%, still a high double-digit number. Not only, and we will go more obviously into the details of operations, with my colleague, Marek, let me talk about another driver of the growth, especially of the future.
Our development pipeline has been increasing slightly to EUR 722 million, which we want to deliver in the course of the next coming years, up to the first quarter of 2026. We will open actually our next shopping center in Craiova in this year, in October. The total pipeline consists of 231,000 square meters to be delivered. At the same time, we have been delivering on our acquisition pipeline, and you've seen this with the two acquisitions we did, which are actually even better performing than the rest of the portfolio. We always said, the moment we want to acquire existing assets, they need to be at least at the level, if not better, than the average of our very excellent portfolio.
You see that here, the growth in turnovers in the first half of 2023 were even above the level of the average portfolio, with 23.3%. Two additional pillars that are important for us is obviously our financial stability, and we have a big focus on our ESG improvements. Fair valuation by half year went up by almost EUR 104 million, which actually is a result of our excellent operational results, less driven, actually by cap rates that have been expanding. That, together with, the uptake of scrip dividend by 85% of our shareholders in the beginning of the year, leads to a decrease in LTV down to 33.4%, and there are no debt maturities actually coming up until the end of this year.
On the ESG side, we have been talking about it in the past, we're not only talking, we are also executing. We have this investment of EUR 37 million into renewable energy, especially in Romania, on our 30 assets, which is ongoing, and we have already concluded quite a lot out of them. Until the end of the year, we are expecting that we'll have all 30 assets producing energy and producing additional income. 100 of the assets of NEPI Rockcastle are meanwhile rated at very good BREEAM certification. We have been extending actually our efforts, and we have been signing up for the SBTi, so the Science Based Targets initiative, where we will double-check one more time on a science base, our targets, our ESG targets for the future. Now, what does it mean?
In numbers, as said, our distributable earnings will go up to EUR 0.2852 per share, which, as I said, is an uplift of 25%. We have a dividend yield, I think, which is a little bit exceptional within the region of retail real estate of 9.9%. NOI, as said, driven not only by inflation, also by cost savings, up by 23% to EUR 241 million. Occupancy, 97.2%. What we see is a strong demand by retailers. We're very happy to see that not only the ones that are already existing within the region, but that we also have new retailers coming to the market of Central Eastern Europe, because this is where they see growth for their business.
Obviously, as we are the biggest player in the region, we are profiting from this, and helps us to bring down our vacancy. You will hear a bit more about this when we come later on with Marek to our project in Craiova, which is going to be opened in the beginning of October. We're very proud that we are the first shopping center, actually, where a brand like Inditex is coming with a new concept, which is called Lefties, which they take first time out of their home market in Spain into our region. A 4,000 square meter fashion concept. Now, collection rate, very stable, 97%, even though, of course, invoicing was a bit different than in the past years as we saw the increase here are due to inflation.
At the same time also, obviously, utility costs in total nominal have been increasing. There has been, definitely more pressure on that side. Nevertheless, we are very stable with our 97% collection rate. I would like to put this in context, actually, with the burden ratio, so the OCR for our tenants, which at the same time, even though their costs went up, the OCR went down. We are now at close to 13%, so even a little bit, little bit lower than at the end of the last year. In overall, of course, this leads to a higher productivity per square meter, which is up by almost 15%.
When we look on the balance sheet side, and my colleague, Eliza, will tell you more details about it later on, but you see that with a EUR 6.8 billion of property value, that is a nice increase of 3%. The EPRA NAV per share at EUR 6.92, also up 1.2%. Unencumbered assets went down by 7 basis points. Its mainly reason here is that we did the refinancing of the acquisitions that we did end of last year, where we actually did a secured loan on two assets, Mega Mall and Sibiu, which of course, then are encumbered, and that's why we have a slight decrease here on unencumbered assets. Our debt maturity, 3.9 years. We will talk about this a little bit later.
Obviously, we have no maturities upcoming in 2023, but in 2024, that's what the management team is working on, to replace actually our bond that needs to be refinanced at the end of next year. Still some time to go. loan to value, I've already said, down to 33.4%. I think also for this refinancing, the company is very well positioned, at the moment, also looking at the overall liquidity that we're provided with. With this, I would like to hand over to my dear colleague, Marek, who will take you more into the details of operations. Thank you so far.
Thank you, Rudy. Good morning, everyone. Results delivered by customer. There was an event which collided with our plans, what we hope to actually catch up with you in February. Our tenants were H1 of 2023, which was indeed a very good year for our tenants. We all are aware of the fact that the success of the company and the success of our investors is purely function of how well our tenants are doing, and they are indeed doing very, very good. Just looking at the H1 2022, we can see a proper growth of 16.3%. Clearly, really there is a difference between the growth. Are we okay with the sound? Sorry, it's technical problems, but at least you know we are broadcasting live. Should I start from the beginning or?
Okay, okay. I always believe in old school, good mics. I prefer that way. Anyways, we're talking about turnovers. There, we are, we are 16.3% ahead of the H1 2022. Of course, Q1, which was much better compared to Q1 2020. For obvious reasons, we all still remember, although I'll try to not remember anymore, but in January and February of 2022, we were still in sort of lockdowns or limited operations of cinemas, et cetera, which of course, translated into poorer number of clients, which then translated into poorer turnovers. April 2022 was the first month where the all the shopping centers were 100% fully operational, cinemas, footfalls, et cetera.
We no wonder that to 2023 was slower compared to Q2, Q2 2023 was slower compared to Q2 2022. Yet on average, 16.3, given that H2 2022 already set quite high benchmark is a amazing result. Now, when we look at footfall, we are actually very happy to report that compared to 2022, the footfall for H1 2023 increased as much as 10%, and that is accompanied by the increase in basket size of 8%, which is rather remarkable. Am I good now? I hear we have some issues with the technical. Give us a second, if you can hear me. I'm presenting again because the numbers are good.
Because you haven't heard me, I will start from the very beginning, but that is not a problem at all. I hope that all the, all the technology will not, will not make any tricks now. Again, I'm happy and again, welcome everyone. Thank you, Rudy. Let me take you quick through the extremely good operational results of NEPI Rockcastle operations in H1 2023.
It all starts with turnovers because we all know that our success is function of success of our tenants, turnovers are one of the key metrics, and looking at those, we can only be happy because our tenants managed to deliver increase of turnovers compared to H1 2022, as much as 16.3%, which is remarkable number given that the increase in 2022 over 2021 was already very high. The base was very high. That's a very encouraging sign for us. No wonder Q1 was much faster in terms of rebuilding turnovers, because we all remember, although we try not to remember anymore, but in January and February of 2022, we still experienced some limited operations. Cinemas were closed here and there.
In other words, the footfalls and turnovers were not there yet. It was April 2022, where for the first full month, all the shopping centers in NEPI portfolio were fully operational and welcomed our clients. Q1 2023 is much stronger compared to Q1 2022, even then, Q2 2023 compared to Q2 2022 was very strong. On average, 16.3% is very, very, very solid number, we are very happy to deliver those numbers, to present those numbers to our investors. Looking at the footfall, we are very happy to actually report almost 10% increase compared to 2022.
We liked to compare to 2029. I know the questions were asked. We are now very close to levels of 2029. There are some properties which actually exceeded the, the footfall of 2029, 19, which is very, very positive. Again, Q1, the delta compared to 2022 was higher than in Q2. Again, all the numbers are positive. Now looking at the numbers of July and August, we have all the reasons to be optimistic about the evolution of footfall if on our shopping centers. Not only has the footfall increased, but we have more clients. Not only more clients, but they spend more money, which has translated into basket size of +8%.
Of course, some of that is contributed to higher inflation, but we see that the pressure from inflation is easing, and yet the basket is still increasing. I believe that those numbers set us very positively towards the second half of the year. Now, remembering now the turnover increase for the group of about 16% and increase of footfall of about 10%, we wanted to actually showcase the 3 additions to our portfolio, namely Forum Gdańsk in Poland, Copernicus in Poland, and Ploiești in Romania. You would notice that all of them, in terms of turnovers, delivered more than average of portfolio, respectively 27%, 21%, and 18%. When it comes to footfall, they are closer to where the rest of portfolio was, with exception for Toruń, but the reason for that is very, very simple.
In Toruń, we don't have cinema, unlike in Ploiești and Gdańsk, therefore, Copernicus didn't lose the footfall generated by cinemas when they were locked, locked, didn't really suffer of the loss of customers. Being able to deliver +21% turnover of only 2% increase of footfall is still remarkable. We always state that one of our investment criteria is whenever we add to our portfolio new property, it has to add the quality and the performance, you can see all three of them after half year of operations, deliver better than the average of portfolio. It is important to say that we are not done yet with the teams. There is still a lot of value to be unlocked. So stay tuned with us.
We, we, we are hoping to surprise you as the time comes. Another important metrics when we try to look at this performance per segment, again, very, very positive numbers. All the segments are increasing, and we are in particular, happy to actually see entertainment growing compared to last year, as much as 29%. In entertainment, most of that is represented by the cinemas. You would remember us talking in February, that cinemas were the last to actually recover. Now we can see that slowly but surely, cinemas are back in the business. There are much more movies from Hollywood and local productions, and we can immediately see that in number of auditions.
Those numbers, interestingly, they do not capture yet the phenomena of Barbenheimer, which we will see in the Q3 results. I have seen Oppenheimer, not really Barbie yet, but this is just great example of what we used to like, saying that cinemas give you the experience that nothing else can give you in digital world. We are very happy to actually see this materializing now as we speak. Nobody has really expected, including the cinemas themselves, that Barbenheimer can be so successful. Not only it is successful, but the footfalls increased, carries on in July, August. It's not one weekend effect, so to say. Which proves that cinemas really are essential part of our business and our everyday life.
Now good results of our tenants, of course, translate into the leasing activity. We have been able to achieve more and better, and I think the most important, well, interesting statistic here is base rental uplift. We did manage to achieve on the blended manner about 7.5% over the indexation. This is important to remember, and for those of you who may not remember, I would like to discuss what is like-for-like BRU and asset management initiative related. Like-for-like BRU is the same unit with no physical change, so same walls, different tenant or the same tenant. We did manage to get 7.3% on top of indexation.
Whenever we see an opportunity to change size of the unit, merge it, divide it, do whatever, with CapEx related initiatives, we always, always do it for good reason. Meaning that the expected return will be higher than just leasing unit as is. There you can see it. There we are 2% higher than on like-for-like 9.3 over the indexation. Overall, blended 7.5 over indexation, which I, I, I think is very good, good result. Talking about vacancy evolution, Rudy already mentioned we did manage to, to lease some more space. Looking at EPRA statistics, we are at the same level, more or less, where we were at the end of last year, which is 2.5%.
We have signed agreements, but the units haven't been opened yet, so the EPRA statistics doesn't capture it yet. Should we look at GLA only, the vacancy is closer to 2%, and there is more to be signed to the end of the year. I think that this statistic will improve even further as we approach end of the year. Of course, better turnovers translate into better performance and overall statistics. You can see that for H1, as Rudy mentioned, 12.9% is the OCR for the group, which again, I think we are on the safe side of the equation. It puts us well for the second half of the year. The composition of our top 10 tenants hasn't really changed. They represent about 25% of our annual rental.
Should we extend the list to top 30, you would see all the top-notch, A-graded tenants. None of our tenants or none of our segments would have any operational issues that we should be afraid of. Our portfolio is healthy and doing well, and, and tenants are very active in, in, in our geographical exposure. Expiry profile. The, the, the graph is more or less the same. You would notice that 2024, 2025 and 2026 are quite busy because respectively we have 19%, 18%, and 15% of expiry measured by the rentals to, to expire. The same statistics for 2024, when reported in February, was over 20%, so there has already been some work done.
Teams are busy extending the agreements expiring next year. I think this is a great opportunity for us to actually extract more value from the existing portfolio. The rest of slide hasn't really changed in our presentation, which is good because the rents are still still paid in euro. They are triple net. They are, they are indexed. In other words, they are bankable, investable. Nothing really has changed in the way we sign agreements with our tenants. Next two slides showcase our efforts to actually attract not only new tenants to the market. We are very focused on moving same tenants between the countries. It's actually international cooperation of leasing teams to open the tenants where we see there is opportunity for them.
NEPI, with 59 properties, became number one operator for any newcomer in the market. Hence the deal, the transaction with Primark, hence the transaction with Lefties, and more to come. We are still looking forward to experience very good opening in the second half of the year to report them in our annual presentation. I'm very happy to report that existing tenants are very actively looking to right-size their portfolio, and they are moving between the countries. More importantly, we have new tenants knocking the door, and the team is very active looking for space to accommodate them to make our portfolio even more attractive for our customers. With that being said, and with hopefully no more technical issues, I would like to hand over to Eliza. Thank you.
Thank you, Marek. Sound check. Is it working properly? Thank you, Marek, and congratulations on the great news in the area of the operations. Moving on the finance side, I kept the recurrent topic of my sections, all of them with positive messages and good news. Therefore, today I will talk to you about distributable earnings, funding, and valuation. Let me go through the first point, and most probably the most awaited news of the day, which is in the area of distributable earnings. As you may see on the slide, we generated in the first part of the year, EUR 241 million in NOI, out of which 75% translated directly into distributable earnings.
There is a split in between the like-for-like NOI, which is the NOI derived from the existing properties, and the NOI coming from the acquisitions. The reason for this split is to highlight that from the acquisitions done in the second part of 2022, six months in the process, we have already generated EUR 18 million, which is a significant upside to our NOI. Looking at the NOI from the operations, this one increased by 15%, as Rüdiger mentioned in his section, this is partly attributable to the indexation. It's partly attributable to the better recovery of the operating expenses, also attributable to our capacity of extracting more value from our properties via asset management initiatives. Therefore, looking at the gray side of things, which is not actually gray, we are a big international, listed, European-based business.
As a result, we also have costs. The most important of our costs relates to taxation, which is not optional, to the administrative expenses, and to the finance cost. Actually, the finance expenses represents almost 50% of the entire cost that we, we generate, and you are going to see in the funding side of my presentation that we are still at a very low cost of funding, which is competitive in the market. The key message of this slide is that actually, the distributable earnings, which is, let's say, elementary KPI for our business, is rooted in our operations. It's driven by our key activity, which means that this is a healthy and sustainable result in the long term, being backed up by the cash flow from our operations.
Moving forward, connected to the distributable earnings, now that I presented the results, I will also make you aware of how you can benefit of these results. Therefore, here I will cover the dividend payout, I will explain also an important and not necessarily new thing in relation to the settlement options ahead of you. I trust that this will lend as a good news to you, that we decided to award 90% of our distributable earnings in cash, and that we decided to go for a 95% election of scrip option, also providing to you a 3% discount on the share price. In the end, the scrip options is going to cater for approximately 98% of the overall distributable earnings.
You have an option, therefore, to elect for a minimum 90% cash dividend or for a maximum of 98% scrip election. I will also want to highlight you that this dividend payout is a significant upside of NEPI Rockcastle relative to the public announcement of the average European peers, which is in the range of 70%. The second part of the slide, as I mentioned to you, it's not something new, it's actually something recurrent, but it's important to understand the tax implications of the elections that you are going to make. Therefore, the repayment of capital and the scrip option are exempted from withholding tax in Netherlands, which is our country of incorporation, and they are treated as return of capital in South Africa.
The distribution out of profit is subject to withholding tax in Netherlands and is treated as dividend in South Africa. As a wrap-up on this slide, you have 2 options to get the dividend in cash or as a scrip issue. I, I strongly believe that both of them are great returns to, to our shareholders. A circular is going to be put out in the next week, providing for the timeline in which you are going to make the election, so that to provide for the settlement at the beginning of October. Now that I unpacked the business as is, I will move, let's say, to the future. Here I prepared the slide for you with an overview on the debt maturity.
In short, in 2023, as also Rüdiger mentioned, we don't have any kind of maturities upcoming other than the regular installments. We have a maturity to manage in 2024. This is our priority as management and as board. We have actually viable options that we also highlighted here. We offer for the last distribution also the scrip issue, and this is how we preserved EUR 150 million cash in the business. I want to thank you for those of you electing scrip issue, because this gives us the comfort over the liquidity that we have. We are offering the scrip issue also now, and it's actually the, the, the preferred option on our side, because it based on your decision, how much we are going to finance from this 2024 maturity.
The third option relates to the bilateral negotiation in the area of the secured and unsecured funding. I will remind you also here that we have EUR 620 million revolving credit facilities that can be used as a buffer liquidity and as a temporary liquidity to manage the maturity in 2024. As fourth option that we didn't necessarily put here is that we have also the freedom to dispose some of the tail assets. The issue is that we don't have that many tail assets, because this set of results doesn't come with too many tail assets. We will have, as I said, options, and I'm confident that we are going to manage very well and properly this maturity, because as you are already used with us at NEPI Rockcastle, we are always delivering.
Moving to the second part of the slide, I highlighted the pillars of the finance strategy, which are the investment grade, the liquidity, and the LTV. On the investment grade rating, as you know, we are rated by S&P, a triple B flat. Last year, we got from Fitch, a triple B plus, which is actually the highest rating that we can achieve, considering the geographies in which we are in. We, as management, we are doing our best to preserve this rating going forward. In terms of liquidity, I think that EUR 1 billion in liquidity provides for a safe business, while an LTV at 33.4% in the current real estate and retail environment provides for a prudent and safe gearing.
The key, the key message, here is that, we are in a green zone. We have options, and there is nothing to worry about. To the opposite, we... There is something to give comfort on how the, the funding strategy is going to go forward. The last but not least is the portfolio valuation overview. The good news here is that we continued the upward valuation trend, coming with approximately EUR 104 million in fair value gain. Last year, we also generated EUR 143 million, so in total, in the range of EUR 250 million in the last 2 year in valuation, in a context in which the valuation yields are widening.
Actually, I depicted here how this valuation came across, which is a negative impact from the valuation yields widening, but a strong positive impact from our property performance, which overcompensated for the widening in the valuation yield. As you know, one of the principles here is that retail is detail, and it's not by coincidence that here is a picture with Mega Mall, because Mega Mall is responsible for approximately 8% of this valuation uplift, but as a result of the good asset management initiatives that we implemented. I left valuation at the end of my finance section because I wanted to end it on a positive note.
As a wrap-up, actually, I had 3 message in this section: That we award up to 98% distribution from our distributable earnings, and we encourage you to take the scrip, the scrip offer. This is the reason for which we have an incentive and a discount provided to that. My second message in the funding area is that you are in good hands with us. We have a maturity upcoming that we are taking care of as management and as a board. The last one is that in the area of valuation, we have a strong portfolio. The valuation is going up. The LTV is prudent and safe, helping us in our funding negotiation and shaping the prospects of our future investments.
I wanted to keep the, the finance section crisp and clear, but I'm available for all the details of the information that I provided here. I'm moving also to the second part of my intervention, which is ESG. As we announced from the beginning of our mandate, we have, we are strongly committed to ESG, and our efforts have been externally recognized. Therefore, we have a lot of rating and prizes obtained. We got EPRA Awards for practices in financial and sustainability reporting. It's less than 1 week ago that Sustainalytics rated us as a business with a negligible ESG risk. Up until now, we have been rated as a low-risk ESG, but now we have been upgraded. We also have, according to MSCI, a AAA ESG rating, and we are a leader in our industry.
Speaking about the commitments which are in progress, as you know, we embarked on an effort to install solar panels, an investment of EUR 37 million in Romania. This is also beneficial from an ESG perspective, but it's also a profitable business. We have the commitment to implement science-based targets, which means that a selected ESG KPIs are going to be determined based on a scientific approach, and this is going to provide full transparency into our business. We are also focused on aligning ourselves to the European ESG standards, which are ongoing and developing. This translates into a lot of internal projects, but actually the benefit is that we have a more sustainable funding, and we also have stronger operations. With those being said, I covered my part, and I will pass it over to Rüdiger. Thank you very much for your attention.
Well done. Thank you, Eliza. Yeah, back here with, with a little bit of information, obviously, on our development pipeline. Actually, the pipeline has increased from end of last year up to EUR 722 million, that we're looking at to be delivered over the next coming years. Of course, the big projects that we have been shown in the past are still in process. As I said, our newcomer, Craiova, which will actually be the number 60 within the portfolio, will be delivered by the beginning of October. You will see later on on how we have been performing here, especially our leasing team has been performing here. That's well underway, and I have no doubt that we will deliver the asset in time, but more important, we will also deliver it in budget.
On top of this, actually, as a newcomer to this list here, which you know already, is Ploiești. You've seen the operational numbers of first half year, which have Marek has been presenting with strong double-digit growth on, on, on turnovers. We have acquired the 50% here of Carrefour last year, one of our acquisitions. The reason behind it is that we also see here the possibility of an extension of the asset by 7,400 square meters. The topic here is that the, the, the traffic in this asset is so high that we simply not can provide with enough parking, so we'll add some additional parking. We'll have less discussions with the police station on people parking all over the place.
That is good news for us that we found here a solution with Carrefour and that we finally have the possibility to create actually the value out of the location that we can do. Promenada Plovdiv, close to the building permit, still, we need to go for the final decision on when we want to start the project, but it's a 60,000 square meter scheme in the second biggest city of Bulgaria. You see how strong our Bulgarian assets, especially Paradise, are performing at the moment. This is definitely one of the markets that will grow over time, and that's why we believe that Bulgaria is the right place for us to expand our business. Galați Retail Park , there we've acquired the plot. We're planning there a 33,000 square meter retail park.
Reason here is that we are already the dominating, let's say, shopping center, operator in the city, in the north side, and the retail park will be in the south side, and with this, we are kind of completing the city. When we look at Promenada Craiova, I, I said, this is going to be delivered, and it's the shopping center itself is 53,000, almost 54,000 square meters, and our leasing team was able to lease it at up to 99%. We have three small units where the team is still working on. They still have three weeks, three, four weeks to do so. Fully let, and we're very happy that we have been achieving actually very good rent levels.
We are here also from a income side, absolutely on budget, what we have been looking at when we started the project. On the retail park, which is next door, we started here a little bit later, but still, we have already covered 85% of the GLA. That is already let, and I think we will also get very close to the 100 until the opening date, which is another 10,000 square meters. Due to the high demand actually there that we saw, an outcome was that we decided to go for an additional retail park. On top of this, we also now have considered to put there a drive-in of McDonald's and a drive-in of Burger King.
This will be delivered a little bit later, a few weeks later, after the opening of the big scheme. You see, this is, I think, a location and a city where retailers really want it to be, and we will have a very nice, very modern and very ESG-driven shopping center, because this is the shopping center where we also have the photovoltaics, not only on the rooftop, but across the whole parking. Yeah. We come to the ones that are in progress still and not so close to be delivered, which is Promenada Bucharest. You know that we are heading here for quite an extensive extension of the retail part, plus offices slash hotel on top of it.
Here we will have an extension, bringing the GLA close to 100,000 square meters, the terms agreed here with tenants already, and you know that the opening is only planned for beginning of 2026 somewhere. We have already agreed terms and signed contracts with retailers of 54%. Why is this important? Because in this case, we need to relocate the Inditex brands. We need to relocate the Peek & Cloppenburg out of their current locations into new locations. We've already also agreed terms with a cinema, because a cinema so far is missing in the asset. The, let me say, the, the anchor tenants are already solved, which gives us, of course, the confidence for the future to do the rest during the construction period.
Bonarka City Center, I mean, a flagship of NEPI Rockcastle, the progress is amazing. We spent there over EUR 70 million in this refurbishment, the most of it, big part is done, still phase 7 and 8, where we increase actually the GLA, where we extend and modernize the food court, is still ongoing, that will be delivered in Q2 2025. Not to forget here that we do this while the center is operating, all construction works can only be done in the nighttime. Vulcan Residence, that's delivered. It's completed. The construction is completed. Out of the 254 units, we have sold already 155 units, 51 units, another more or less 100 to go.
We are quite confident here also, seeing over the last quarter, the sales results with more than 30 units. We feel quite confident that we will sell the rest of the apartments as well. The result of this is not shown yet in the in our cash flows, simply because these are reservations, and we only after the handover of those units, the final price will be paid. They're all contractually already agreed, these 151 units that are sold. Galeria Wołomin is a small example. It's a small investment. It's only EUR 4 million, but it is what we daily do in order...
We take care not only of big assets, but also these ones here, which is a retail park in Poland, close to Warsaw, where we're investing EUR 4 million because we have pre-let it already with 100% with 2 units. One of them is actually in the existing building. We will relocate it in order to get additional rent there on, on this unit as well. It's a small one, but it's in progress. What is the way forward for NEPI Rockcastle? I said I think the underlying economical KPIs for our region are actually quite positive. It's not only the, the numbers that are driving this, the, the GDP growth, the, the, the low unemployment rates.
It's also, I think, the confidence that the customers have within our region, and a different way of getting along with crisis, inflation, as maybe our customers do in Western Europe. This is. Also, the sentiment is, is helping us here. We will leverage, obviously, on this resilient growth in Central Eastern Europe. We will leverage more and more on the size on our dominance as a retail real estate company in Central Eastern Europe, especially on the leasing side. Growing NOI through the mixed-use developments, we still have possibilities to do more within the section of, but slowly within the section of, of mixed use.
A prudent management on the balance sheet, and I think that Eliza has been providing you there with the evidence that we are still quite prudent when it comes to our LTV, when it comes to how we manage our, actually our cash. I think that will stay as is, and we have still a strong commitment to ESG, which is a must-have in the future, especially when we look also at, on the financing, on the funding side. This all, of course, the results of the first half year have been outstanding, not to the level as we expected. It has obviously been above, and that led to the fact that together with the Board, we are revising now our distribution of earnings until the year end to 12% growth relative to 2022.
That means 5% growth relative to the nominal, the EPS. I think this is good news. We could argue, and we would understand that with these set of numbers, you would maybe look for a higher guidance, but there are reasons which we really like to explain if you have questions to this. It's mainly driven, obviously, that we had a very strong first half of 2023, which is also related to a 2022 half year, which still had some impact, negative impact in the first quarter. On top of this, it's also related to the fact that with the increase in our assumptions on scrip take-up, the earnings per share are obviously affected here. These are the main drivers maybe here, just as an explanation.
In total, as said, we believe that for the rest of this year, we are well positioned. Retailers' demand is high. Our consumers are not scared of inflation within our region. We have good reasons to believe that we will deliver on this guidance over the next six months. With this, I would like to say thank you. Thank you also for your patience when we had a little bit of a technical difficulties here. With this, I invite you, and we're happy for questions that you have regarding our half-year results.
Thank you. We will now begin conference line questions. As a reminder, participants can submit written questions using the Ask a Question button on the webcast page. To ask a question on the phone line, please press star one. We will pause a moment to assemble the queue. There appear to be no questions on the phone at this time. I will hand it back to the room for written questions.
Hello. We have a first question on the guidance. NEPI Rockcastle now guides for 5% nominal growth in distribution per share, which implies that the second half, in terms of distribution, will be lower than the first half. Can you explain where you expect the reduction would come from in the second half of 2023?
We will mention here that, as Rüdiger indicated in the presentation, that we had an assumption in relation to the scrip take-up for October. Therefore, the distributable earnings in nominal terms are expecting to be at least at the same level as for the first half, but the per share result is going to be impacted by the assumptions that we made in the scrip take-up. Rüdiger, if you want to give more color, I think that.
Well, obviously, I mean, this is more math driven, because simply we will distribute already by the scrip that our investors have been deciding for in March, which was 85%. Of course, this puts more shares in the market. The distribution per share simply is restricted to that factor. We've been offering actually here, again, a scrip dividend with a bonus for the distribution now in October, and that will have an additional impact. Please, when you look at our, when you look at our guidance, take this into consideration. That is one of the drivers.
Another driver. Please don't forget what I said that in the second half of last year, look at the growth rates we had there, 16.5% in the third quarter. Again, double digits in the second quarter. When we talk about growth, we talk about growth on a pretty high base. That's also, I think, where we should be not too prudent, but we should not overexpect actually that the situation that we have been seeing now in the first half would just simply go on like that in the second half.
A question for Eliza: Should we expect the scrip dividend policy to be the norm going forward to raise cash and reduce debt?
This is a decision that we, as a board, are making, at any distribution moment. Therefore, up until now, in the last distribution and this one, we allowed for all three options. We are going to revisit this assessment every time when a distribution should occur. Do not expect anything. Let's take it step by step. Thank you.
Keeping Eliza on the spot again, what is the anticipated timing to refine, refinance the 2024 bonds? Is this something you want to do this year, or are you comfortable-
Uh-
to wait until closer to maturity? Somehow relating to that-
Mm-hmm
another question.
Yes, please.
Can you give us a sense of the marginal cost of debt on the finance?
Okay. Thank you. Speaking about the plans to manage the maturity coming in 2024, this is to be done the latest by the moment of publication of the annual report, which means Q1 2024. The sooner, the better. On the other hand, we have the responsibility of optimizing the cost of liquidity. The second question was, oh, how was... Yeah, here we, we cannot publicly disclose the margins because we are in negotiations with various funding partners, and this is going to be detrimental to our to our negotiations.
Yeah, maybe let me add here. It's not the question whether we are able to refinance the bond of, at the end of 2024, looking at our rock-solid balance sheet, and the discussions we have. I think this is, and I think we can all agree on this, this is not the topic. The topic here is simply the timing and therefore, very much the pricing. That's where we are very sensitive, obviously.
Okay, and one question for Marek this time. You are giving excellent pre-leasing figures on extension to sites, but a lot of these successes seem to be from anchor tenants moving from existing sites to extension. Please, can you give us some color on how the overall vacancy will develop, given the space they will leave behind?
Whenever we undertake any asset management initiatives that includes relocating anchor to other location, to extension, there are some conditions to be met, and 1 of them is pre-let of or plan to be executed for the vacated plan, for the vacated unit. We would never move a tenant to extension, not having, not having a plan for a, existing unit. I would go even further. We wouldn't start any extension should we not be 100% comfortable that the existing GLA supports the market needs. We would only do extension if we knew we can lease, and that actually there is at least 1 tenant more for the GLA, that we have the GLA. We don't take risks here. We never develop on speculative basis.
It's also shown in our, I think in our numbers. The, the occupancy numbers that we present are obviously an overall number, so it would also incorporate a unit where you have relocated an anchor tenant and you have not relet it, so that would immediately show up in the numbers.
Thank you. One question again for Eliza. Would the cash flow from the sale of residential units be considered as distributable income?
We are still assessing whether to, let's say, have a distributable income or not from this gain. It's not mandatory under the SARB guidance to be distributable, and at the time when it's going to impact fully the cash flow, we are going to make the right decision.
I think that the results speak for themselves because we have no further questions at this point.
Wow! We are happy to see, hopefully a lot of you within our upcoming one-to-one meetings, to go a little bit more deeper into actually the business of the first half year, and a pleasure to see you there. Promised, we will come next time to Johannesburg and also to Cape Town, which wasn't possible because of the BRICS Summit. To be very frank and open, it was simply because the hotel operator and event operator just told us before we were supposed to go there, they canceled our, our, our booking, so because of the event, so we simply had no chance to come. Therefore, thank you for bearing with us online and not physically present within the wonderful country of South Africa. Next time, we're gonna be there. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.