Good morning! Welcome to Capital Hub, the newly renovated home for CapitaLand Investment. I'm Grace Chen, head of Investor Relations for CLI. Very good to see all of you this morning. Lots of things happening this week. We're entering March, guys, this Friday. A number of companies reporting earnings results, but most important of all, Taylor Swift has arrived in Singapore.
We have our CEO, Retail Workspace over here, Chris Chong. He might have some tickets. Why? You know that we are managing the retail portion for the Singapore Sports Hub, right? Not free, 'cause we need to generate fee income. I f you stay to the end, who knows, right? Speak to Chris Chong. I've only got one job, actually. W ithout further ado, I'm just gonna invite Andrew Lim, our Group COO, for opening remarks. Please welcome Andrew.
Thanks, Grace. Good morning to everyone. Thank you for coming. I'll just make my preface, the meat of the presentation, which is, my pleasure to hand over to Paul these days, to take you through the nuts and bolts of our fiscal 2023.I n terms of our... If I look back, I had to remind myself that actually CLI, it's in its reporting, it's only its second full year of financial results.
As Chee Koon reminds us, we are in the midst of a journey that we started two and a half years ago. It does, I have to say, seem a lot longer than two years. Personally, and I think as an organization, we feel we have grown a lot in this relatively short period of time.
A lot has happened, more than we perhaps would have wished for last year, geopolitically, macroeconomically, environmentally, digitally. All the LYs that you can think of pretty much happened last year, and I think you see that reflected in our results. L et me just run through a few of the highlights and, and some of the challenges we faced, and, no doubt there are both. In terms of execution, and the management team, again, very committed to walking the talk that we set out for everyone and delivering on execution.
L et's start with the four verticals, okay? Our fee income verticals. I hope you're familiar with them by now. The REITs, core product challenge-challenging environment for REITs, as I'm sure you all know, with interest rates where they are.
We managed to raise SGD 1 billion of equity. The REITs had, I would say, executed themselves and discharged their duties credibly in a very difficult environment. The highlight I'd like to leave with you is, in terms of capital recycling and raising, we remain very disciplined, and I think that was a message that our unitholders, as well as our stakeholders, gave to us, right? "Don't raise capital unnecessarily for the sake of it." I'm not sure everyone on the street listened to that advice from their unitholders.
We certainly tried to do that, and we raised capital when we needed to demonstrate, an important acquisition that was useful and beneficial for unitholders, and we tried to sell well. I think across the REIT family, you can see evidence of that.
I think I would like to start with that and as an important touch point. On the PE side, Simon will tell you that the last year was incredibly challenging for capital raising. I think, Simon, the hardest you've seen in 30 years. Okay, yeah, that's a long time. A s a new capital, private equity player on the block, relatively new, these things are harder for us who are new, and despite this, I think we raised north of SGD 3.4 billion.
It was a 42% increase year-on-year in capital raised, which I think is again, credible in light of the circumstances. We are starting to be noticed on the street as a serious player. We didn't enter into this previously. We entered in this with purpose and a plan.
If you look at the products that are on the shelf now, I think both from a thematic perspective, where we are looking at wellness, we are looking at self-storage, we are looking at specialist logistics, we've done some DC. We're looking at other thematic products that our LPs are telling us are interesting for them, particularly in Asia.
The thematic shelf space is starting to be populated with products that we firmly believe in and we can invest into thematically and notwithstanding where the cycle is.T hen from a tactical standpoint, we've got our opportunistic products, and we are raising money for value add funds. I think from the way we are designing the private equity platform, it is with purpose, it is with design, it is with logic.
We just have to work through this difficult environment of capital raising, and I think the signs are starting to turn, and as I've mentioned, we are starting to become noticed and make a difference in this very, very competitive space. I will be the first to say that much more needs to be done, and I think you can see that again in our results.
Third vertical is lodging. Lodging had a great year. Coming from a very difficult time at COVID, lodging is now one of our star performers, right? We, I think, signed 14,000 keys last year, opened close to 10, delivered record fee income, and importantly, the margins are starting to resemble or show the benefits of scale, which we've talked about.
We hit 160,000 keys ahead of time, and through the form, we set ourselves an ambitious target in terms of doubling system revenue. Speaking of ambitious targets, I'm sure you have lots of questions on our latest one, which Chee Koon will be happy to run through in great detail.
Lodging, again, a key fee income driver for us, and I would say an important differentiator for CLI today. Very few other capital managers have what we have, and I think, I would hope that you agree that this deserves to be part of CLI, and the philosophy of fee income is consistent with our other parts of fund management business. T hen last, but certainly not least, is commercial management. In our core markets, this is an important enabler.
Chris has ridden the back of a healthy commercial retail workspace environment to deliver very strong leasing property management support. We are now venturing beyond the CL ecosystem to manage third-party assets for important customers, such as Sports Hub, such as— Have we announced the second one, Chris? The one... No, huh? Okay, so there's another one coming. Sorry, this is not choreographed. T he, the Sports Hub is an important indication of what we are prepared to do. We now wanna take the secret sauce outside the CLI ecosystem because we believe we can add value, and it's incredibly capital efficient, no equity.
I think when markets where we have competitive advantages, which are our core markets, Singapore, we have boots on the ground, China, we have boots on the ground, India, we have our boots on the ground, we can bring this secret sauce to our own products. You will see Paul talk to you about combined FRE FUM, which I think is something that we need to explain to you how we add value to our assets, and we have multiple bites of the same asset cherry.
I think this is an excellent idea, and I hope you embrace this.I n our core markets, we have the ability to bring secret sauce to our own assets, but in addition to that, take it outside the system. Th a ts a fantastic endorsement of
by third-party people who want us to manage their assets, because they believe we can bring value to their assets. I would think that's something to be proud of and something we want to continue to grow. T he four fee income verticals are doing what we set out to do, okay? Obviously, there are challenges in all of them, but I would say that if you look at the results from the FRB side of the business, we are executing, and we are on point.
Based on the results, I would like to leave with you a few conclusions. Number one, I think the operating PATMI is at a level which shows that there is a resilience to the recurring income that we can deliver to you.T his is what we set out to do, right?
We set out to set a, build a business that delivers a steady, resilient, recurring fee income base that you can rely on, and you can predict with visibility and reasonable amount of certainty. Despite the economic challenges, despite the financial difficulties, the operating level of PATMI, despite the high interest rates, the operating level of PATMI is more or less at a stable level, where we can confidently say we can get you SGD 0.12 of core.
That, that's an important, I think, landing point. Obviously, we cannot control for existential events. When you, when you saw during COVID, we took the decision to bring dividends down, but we gave it back to you the following year when conditions improved.
I think that's an important point for any business that wants to hang its head on the ability to provide shareholders with recurring, stable dividends. Number two is management's commitment to being disciplined. We've said many times, right? Chee Koon said many times, "We're not gonna grow for the sake of growing. We 're not going to buy for the sake of buying.
We will do so only when it is right and good for our shareholders, our unit holders, our LPs." And that is something that pervades the entire organization. W e can set targets, we can set SGD 100 billion, we can set SGD 200 billion, but if it's not right for us, we can set SGD 3 billion recycling, but if it's not right for us, we will not do it. W e will live with the consequences because we believe we are doing the right thing.
We will come out and explain to you, and you have every right to question us on it. Number three, I think the benefits of having a diversified business are plain for all to see. The fair value loss is nothing to sneeze at. It's close to SGD 600 million, but it's 2% of our, our investment property portfolio. It's offset by pockets of strength in Singapore and India, and it's something that is cyclical and existential.
As long as we can manage that well, but rely on the diversification of, of India, Singapore, at this point in time, and that cycle will turn. There will be times when one is up and the other is down, but this is where diversification does benefit the organization.
A gain, I go back to the ability to deliver strong operating cash flow and operating PATMI to support the dividend. Okay, so I think the importance of having a diversified platform in the presence of high uncertainty is strength. If you have full conviction in a certain sector or a certain type of product, then let's go all in on that. I n the absence of that conviction, it pays to be diversified and to spread the risk around.
We certainly believe that as an organization. I think these are the key takeaways I will leave with you before I turn it over to Paul. Obviously, there are lots of challenges that still remain, right? Interest rates eat into profit straight at the bottom line.
I don't think we have seen the end of it, but I think we are starting to see the peak of it... and that's a very important distinction. Once you see the peak of it, you can start to pick up your pens again and start to do your sums about underwriting, about refinancing, and about where you can capitally—and you can recycle capital.
Bringing me to our second point, which is capital recycling, right? We were down last year. Again, very disciplined. I think we sold at 13% premium to NAV, 16% premium to NAV, okay? If you wanted to hit a SGD 3 billion, easy to hit, no problem. There's a clearing price for all the assets. W e did not want to do that.
We're gonna be disciplined and sell when it's right to sell for our unit holders and our shareholders. I f you get the interest rates starting to settle down, then your marketplace for buying and selling starts to settle down as well. There's a ton of capital on the sideline waiting to deploy. They want the markets we are invested in, and we will find the right buyers for assets to hit our recycling targets.
I think we are cautiously optimistic that if rates settle down, that capital recycling momentum that you have come to rely on us and forms a, I will say, an important part of our return on equity to shareholders today, will come back, and we'll be able to get closer to our double-digit ROE target. Capital recycling is absolutely key, and will remain key for the organization going forward.
Okay, I think I've said enough, as a preface. Let me turn it over to Paul to walk you through the numbers in more detail. T hen, of course, Chee Koon will be there to reemphasize all of the key strategic priorities for us as a group and set the tone for the organization, and I'm sure you'll lots of questions for us. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Andrew. Andrew pretty much covered everything. I think I'm good. All right. Well, good morning, everyone, and everyone online. Thank you all for joining us. I 'm just gonna run through highlights for us over the last year and just give you a sense of how we did, and then pass it on to Chee Koon for Q&A.
Just a very high level, a lot of these things I won't touch on. Andrew did mention, tough economic environment. We think that will continue. Geopolitical conflicts, lots of elections, a lot of uncertainty this year, though so far, so good election-wise, been pretty stable. Interest rates, internal house estimates projections, or at least forecast, is that, we know we're not gonna see a turn really till second half, which means we are sort of planning accordingly.
Then global M&A activity slowed. T his one, you know, touch wood, it can't get any worse, but we hope this year we'll see a little bit, bit more pickup of activity, which will make a material difference for us, both in terms of investments, divestments, and potential opportunities for M&A. We do think that there is, the spread between buyers and sellers is closing, and expectations are getting closer together, which will make deals a little bit more possible, for the entire group. O ur key numbers. Cash PATMI, 781. This is down from last year's 831, but relatively stable, given the fact that interest rates were a huge impact on us.
Total PATMI, unfortunately, down quite a fair bit due to fair value losses, which, as Andrew has mentioned, we'll go through a little bit more on where exactly that came from. F ortunately, at least non-cash in nature, which allows us to maintain our SGD 0.12 dividend. Funds under management, we have a number here of SGD 100 billion. You know, we had a lot of internal discussion on whether to keep our previous format or not, but we got a lot of questions all the time trying to explain what on earth we mean by embedded FUM.
We got so tired of explaining this, we decided to go to the market norm, and we've reversed the order. W hat you see now is this, it's SGD 100 billion is where we're at, including SGD 10 billion of not yet deployed capital.
From our internal target perspective, what we had promised was we were gonna get to SGD 100 billion, on the old format. That is still the intent, but we are trying to align with market now because we know all of our peers do it this way, and, when I look at some of the analyst sell side reports, I realize that you guys mark us, similarly at the number. T hat's why we're reflecting the SGD 100 billion, but it doesn't change the fact that, including the embedded, we expect to get there, end of this year. T hen net debt to equity.
Obviously some impacts from fair value, the distribution of CLAS units last year, but still at a level where we have comfortably SGD 2 billion-SGD 3 billion, which we could easily deploy, without being worried about our gearing level. E nough room for us to do potential platform, individual asset, acquisitions, and grow as well. T hat's sort of the overall key numbers for us. T hen our three key focus areas for this year.
I'll just touch lightly upon them because we'll cover them a little bit in some of the slides, and, Chee Koon, I'm sure, is gonna cover them later on. The first for us is really on positioning ourselves for growth, and this is capital recycling, being active on our portfolio. As I mentioned, we have a strong balance sheet.
We still have SGD 8.6 billion worth of assets to divest. We are expecting to divest that over the next 3 years, and that will give us opportunities for growth, for future M&A, and obviously, our new target of SGD 200 billion, which deserves a slide on its own, so I'll get to it in a bit. We're focusing on building scale in our funds.
Obviously, the lodging business is doing well, commercial business doing well. From a funds business, a number of you have asked, you know, we have a lot of these smaller funds, healthcare and wellness, some of our Southeast Asia efforts, and the question was, you know, "When are you guys gonna get to scale?" So a lot of this for us is still early days.
For a lot of these funds, they're meant for us to build track record. T hat's why we don't mind starting small. It gives us something to go back to investors to say, "This is not the first fund in a series."
You start to see that with our lodging fund, which we announced earlier this year. CLARA II, our CapitaLand Ascott Residence Fund, this is the second in the series. It's targeting a close of SGD 800 million. We are hoping it can do more than that. See if Kevin is here. We would love to grow that as a fund series because we believe these areas have scalable opportunities for us. Similarly, for logistics. Most folks don't realize that logistics and lodging is actually half of our funds under management.
It's as big as retail and office for us, these two sectors. Y ou would have seen, we announced a Japan logistics fund earlier this year, a small one. It was really part of our capital recycling. We have a Southeast Asia logistics fund, we have two in India, and it is something that we believe we can scale together with self-storage as well.
We're trying to build scale in the middle sector, and we are counting on this year, our REITs continuing to grow as well. And then the last one is capturing some of the tailwinds we see. These days, everybody asks about India, right? And, Sanjeev is dialed in. We joke, that, you know, Sanjeev gets speaking opportunities everywhere. All of our investors now are always asking about that market.
India, Southeast Asia, there are a lot of tailwinds, and you've seen the progress from Patricia and the Southeast Asia team. We expect we'll see more growth from India this year as well. And those two, we are trying to ride on the fact that there is strong investor interest. China, still challenging, but obviously one of our strength markets for what we know.
T he focus for us will really be on renminbi for renminbi, so really local renminbi funds and really optimizing our portfolio, and lightening our balance sheet to become a little bit more capital efficient in how we approach and grow China. And then finally, we wanna widen our product offerings, and this is really our three other geographies, which we always talk about, so we really need to do more in Japan, Korea, and Australia.
You know, I know we've been saying this for a while, but suddenly the intent this year is that we'll be able to try and scale in some of these markets. Maybe just the last point on our strategy and our overall... I think as Andrew mentioned, I think from a management viewpoint, we feel that, you know, we've been disciplined on our deployment. We've actually done pretty well on fundraising. We are top ten this year, which is new for us at SGD 3.5 billion in a tough environment. But I wouldn't say we're satisfied with the rate of progress. We know we are not moving as fast as we would like or as the market would like.
While we are sticking to our strategy in some areas, we are trying to accelerate this year as well. So very quickly, our financial results for the year. Just to explain, for those of you who are a little bit less familiar with us, how we look at our business. We have two components to it. We have on top here what we have is our fee-related businesses, listed funds, private funds, lodging management, commercial management. This is our proportion of operating profits that it has been over the years, so it has become an increasing part of our business. This is the pivot for us. We are supposed to see that grow.
Admittedly, partly has grown because the base has shrunk, which wasn't quite as intended, but it also reflects the very recurring nature of these fees, which is why we like it, which is why we think this gets the higher multiple. Because this is the part that even in the economic downturn or the challenges last few years, continued to grow at 9%. So that's really the focus for us. The part at the bottom is our real estate investment business.
You know, for the analysts, we are, we are trying to make it a little bit clearer in the results, but as you have feedback to us, we are trying to make it easier to understand this part of the business. This is our sponsor stakes and our REITs, our GP stakes and funds, and what we have on balance sheet.T his part was the part that was really hit by interest rates. Interest rates and fair values was really this part of the business, which is why, over time, we believe as we pivot to that top section, our earnings will become more and more stable.
T otal PATMI for us, tied to that, on the left-hand side, you can see our total operating numbers. So unfortunately, down from SGD 8, on the overall, we are down SGD 609 to SGD 568. And the proportion, you can see, sorry, this is a little bit reversed, but the fee income is at the bottom, SGD 321 to SGD 318. That's the stable fee profit. And on top, the drop that you can see is from the real estate investment business.
That is really the impact of higher interest rates and lower contribution from China. As a group, interest rates last year pushed up our interest costs by about SGD 130 million. If you have seen the bank results, we know exactly where it went. We would like some of it back, hopefully. But we expect that we'll still feel impact from the interest rates this year. Nothing to the magnitude that we felt last year.
A s we refinance, if interest rates turn, that's great; otherwise, we'll still feel a little bit more impact this year. Portfolio gains, relatively stable from the divestments, slightly higher premium. Effective divestment's not that far off, so that was pretty good.
Then the big challenge for us, obviously, on the revaluation, 599 million in revaluation loss and 1 million in impairment. Total PATMI down because of that, unfortunately, down quite a fair bit, but at least on a cash basis, SGD 831 million to SGD 781 million, about 6% down, fairly stable for the year. We are hopeful that, the recurring component continues to hold us going forward.
On the specific fee verticals, just as Andrew mentioned, so I won't spend too much time. Generally, our fee businesses, which is the part that we are really trying to grow, still had decent growth, 9% overall. Crossed the total number of 1 billion for the first time for us, SGD 1.07 billion in total fees.
A s you can kind of see where it happened, maybe just to highlight the recurring components, which is the darker colors. Recurring went up for both listed and private funds, despite the environment. Unfortunately, just what came down was really the event-driven. Event-driven fees from fund management was 50% lower for us year on year. Our belief is, and on the overall, that 9% is more than doable. We would like to see double-digit growth, and that would be the goal for us as a team
The real estate investment business components. So on the left-hand side, you can see our EBITDA. As you can see, the swing below is the non-operating. We classify that fair value loss as the non-operating component.
You can see the income itself, before interest, was actually fairly stable. NPI, as you—those of you who follow most of our REITs, NPI was up in a lot of markets. Actually, generally, across all of our REITs did well from an NPI perspective. Unfortunately, interest cost was really what wiped that out.... On the breakdown by segment, something that we are just trying to improve our disclosures, you can see in the middle section what comes from the REITs, the private funds, and the balance sheet.
L ater on, when you see our carrying values, you can see how that correlates together. But as you can see, the listed REITs are very much a good indication for how our real estate investment business does. T hen on the right-hand side, you can see the geographic split.G eographic split's thrown off a little bit by the fact that we consolidate CLAS on our balance sheet. Y ou get this large non-Asia component, because of the lodging. Accounting-wise, quite challenging for us to split out at an EBITDA level. G enerally, you can see what changed was the proportion for China came down, because obviously China had a more challenging time. Singapore was down because of divestments.
We sold 79 Robinson, some of these assets, and that pulled our numbers down. Over time, we expect our real estate investment business to shrink, right? As we become more capital efficient, the balance sheet component should shrink. The private fund segment may grow a little bit, but this is not the part of the business that we're necessarily looking to grow as much.
Valuation, so the big swing, US multifamily, cap rate expansions across our assets, Ascendas for business parks and logistics held by CLAR, that was a big impact for us. The other big impact was really China. China was due to lower projections on growth, and expectations, for the future NPI of the property, and that brought down across all asset classes for us, for China.
Q uite a big swing there. Offset a little bit by the strength of the Singapore portfolio. You know, CICT, Tony is here, that helped. ION Orchard, those showed improvements for us. And then India, India continues to be a bright spot for us. India, we saw uplift, across pretty much all sectors. T hen the last finance slide, was really around our divestments, so that you can see.
We've included there, to give you a sense as well, how much was the effective divestments. We've always talked about a gross divestment target, because it's got a little bit complicated on assets to talk about divesting, you know, if we only own 50% or less of the asset. But you can see last year, we did not achieve the SGD 3 billion. We certainly hope to exceed that this year. On effective basis, which is the dotted box below, we are at.
We divested about SGD 1.5 billion, which helped offset. T hat helped give us a little bit more strength there, and that's why the portfolio gains were still sort of comparable year-on-year. 60% went into our REITs and funds. This is something that we love to see.
We love to see what we recycle off balance sheet go into our REITs and funds, but it's not critical for us, right? That has come down from the 80%-90%, the last two years preceding. We are happy, in some cases, to sell to third parties. I mean, we have some great assets which we feel should stay, A, within our REITs and funds, but it's not something that is, we are fixated on to have to do.
I f we can find the right divestment to the right folks at the right price, we certainly would. And then just at the bottom, you can see, a little bit on our balance sheet metrics. Maybe just to highlight two things.
1, interest cost, 3.9%, may creep up slightly this year, depending on how the market goes, but certainly not the magnitude of the movement that we got last year, which was from 3.1% to 3.9%. And then the other thing is the SGD 6.4 billion. This is cash, undrawn facilities.
For us, obviously, we are always trying to make sure we have enough space for this, but suddenly we expect to be able to take, and capture opportunities as they come. So that's our financial highlights. I will just touch a little bit on operations. We've mentioned a lot, along the way. So, maybe the first thing is just on our funds under management.
I know I'm not gonna do this justice because this is my first time doing this pitch. I'm gonna leave this to Chee Koon to talk about how we came out with about 200. Maybe just two things to highlight on this slide. T he first is on the left, this is including, as we mentioned at the top, includes the embedded capital. W hen you include the embedded capital, the listed funds are about SGD 61 billion, the private funds about SGD 39 billion.
W hen we look at the growth of these two sectors historically, we are very comfortable with the idea that our listed funds quite comfortably could grow 8%-10%, if not double-digit, depending on which REIT, if you look over their last history. The last two years were challenging and unusual.
We don't expect the future environment with slightly higher elevated interest rates will necessarily be the same growth. W hen we look over a five-year timeframe, we believe that listed portfolio, it's always been our crown jewel, will still see growth. On the private funds, private funds, much more challenging for two reasons. One is capital is recycled, right? As funds' life ends, we give the money back, we raise new funds. So it's much, it's a much harder treadmill for the private funds team to have to grow on, to run on, to get to.
W e still think, you know, even if you are conservative and you tag a 5% type growth rate, when you look at the overall, it gets us to a very credible number over five years. Where would the gaps come in?
We've always talked about doing M&A to fill some of our capability gaps, whether it's by geography or by asset class, and that is something that we think can help get us there. Five years is... I know a lot of you have been asking us for the last two years when we're gonna do a deal.
We've got five more years, thanks to the target. We just ask that you be patient, but we are, and we do believe we are looking at opportunities, and we believe that there will be opportunities over the next few years. On the right-hand side, the other thing just to highlight is really about the funds under management. So we've tried to give a split now to make it a little bit clearer where our funds are.
On the top right, you can see we are 42% Southeast Asia. This is obviously Singapore, but also Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, funds that cover this region. And this proportion for us has grown year-on-year. As we start launching more private funds in Southeast Asia, this component is growing. China, at 31%, is actually down slightly from the year before, but still, obviously, a significant portion.
We believe we can grow this through renminbi funds, but where we really wanna see growth as well is really on that top right, India, other Asia, which we think can scale up.... The other thing to highlight on this slide is the bottom right, which is the split by asset classes.
Everybody thinks of CapitaLand because we have our signage up on all the office and retail, that is really what we are, is our core. And it is a core part of us. But thanks, very much to the Ascendas merger and to Ascott, the really two other parts of our business, that if you look at the pie, actually makes up 50% almost of our funds under management. It's really lodging and logistics, and new economy assets.
W e believe, given the current environment, while we still believe our REITs in particular can grow, we do think that other portion is actually a skill set that we can leverage and scale on funds, as more people are looking at. The diversification has really helped, as Andrew mentioned this year. We don't always want to be diversified.
We'd love to be focused on the areas that do incredibly well, but you can't always get that right. We think we are very fortunate to have this split on expertise and skills, because as we see the market change, and volatility continue, we think there'll be opportunities, in different markets and sectors. On the rest on the SGD 200 billion, I will leave that to Chee Koon.
Then very lightly on the rest, obviously, our listed funds, we've put up a fair bit of detail, but our listed funds' credible performance last year, didn't necessarily grow in terms of AUM as much, even though there were some acquisitions, some fair value losses. But we think going forward, if interest rates start to level out and we see that coming down, we do expect growth from this segment.
Private funds, we are very happy with the fundraising, compared to the years before. It's actually very substantial growth year on year. Is it as fast as Simon would like? No, I'm sure it wasn't. But was it credible? Yes. For the first time, our fundraising is top 10 in Asia Pac for real estate. So I think the team did a commendable job on that. So the key for us now is leveraging on that and scaling faster as the environment improves.
Earlier this year, we did make a handful of announcements, so we had a good start to the year, in line exactly with our strategy. We divested Capital Square in Beijing. We own 5% of the asset, divested 95%. This is now renminbi for renminbi, much more capital efficient.
We did a small logistics Japan fund. These are local Japanese investors, and it got assets off our balance sheet, and it is an area that we think we have skill sets to develop to get good returns for our investors. T hen finally, the last one on lodging, the second in the series. As mentioned, this is something that we look—we think we can scale. And we've also announced about SGD 700 million of deployments as of year to date. So a good start to the year for us.
First half of the year, we think will still be tricky for a lot of these funds for fundraising and for deployment, but we're hopeful by second half of the year, we start to see a pickup in that. Lodging is doing incredibly well.
I think the big question, obviously, we get on lodging is everyone knows that we've had good growth, both in terms of revenue per available unit and units opened, where we start to see that fee income. The team continues to sign new units at a very good clip. I think going forward, suddenly the environment is gonna be a bit more challenging, will be a little bit tougher for our lodging team to get the same kind of growth in RevPAR from both occupancy and daily average rates.
W e believe that even if that tapers off a little bit, we will, it will, to a certain degree, be offset by the fact that the team is continuing to grow the number of units.
That part will still generate more fees for us as a group, and the fact that it is asset light, and these management contracts don't require us to put in any balance sheet money, just generally helps our returns as they grow, and improves margins for the business as well. Commercial management, as mentioned, you know, this is something that has always been a core part of our business, but it's not something that we've necessarily focused on as much. I would say we've looked at this, as something that we believe is complementary to the rest of what we do.
If we can scale and earn more fees from doing third-party contracts, and as our funds and REITs grow, doing more of our own, as both of those grow together, this part of the business should grow correspondingly as well. So those are our fee businesses, our four fee verticals, which have had a respectable run over the last 12 months. For our real estate and investment business, and perhaps this is my last 3 slides on the real estate investment business.
On the left-hand side, as you can see, what we've tried to highlight is a little bit more of where our capital is. So the top left, you can see that balance sheet number, SGD 10 billion, has down to SGD 8.6. This is what we talk about when we talk about divesting off our balance sheet.
The intent is that over the next 3 years, we would like to divest pretty much all of this. Would we still keep some assets on balance sheet? We will recycle the funds, right? We still would be happy to warehouse, seed portfolios, but that really shouldn't be more than SGD 2-3 billion for us. The bulk of that SGD 8.6 billion will be reinvested, seeding new funds, M&A, distributed as dividends or share buybacks.
That is the intent for us on the balance sheet. On the private fund side, we are becoming more capital efficient. The older funds, we held 30%-50%. All of the new funds launched, generally, it's about 20% on average. We would like, in fact, that to be 10% on average.
We expect the private funds component will grow, but not necessarily very quickly. As some of the older funds come off, we get that capital back, we try and be more capital efficient on the private funds component. And then on the listed fund side, this came down slightly. Obviously, we did the distribution in specie of Ascott Trust units last year, and that's why that number came down slightly from a carrying value perspective.
We would love to be more capital efficient on our REITs, and we think as our REITs grow, we should be. And if we can, hopefully, in the future, list new REITs, or merge platforms, we will start to see growth on this as well and become more efficient.
I would say the good thing, at least on our REITs, from a performance viewpoint, is we saw that NPI go up across the board, and certainly, that helped us, that segment perform as well. So this is just to give you a sense of our value in the stake. And on the right hand, you can see where that contribution, which is the same data that you saw on slide 13, earlier.
That just shows you where our capital is employed is, and where the investment returns are for the real estate investment business. The last two slides, I will leave a little bit for Q&A, for our country heads, if you have questions or want to talk a bit more. Let me just say simply, Singapore and India are doing well. We expect that growth will continue.
We still see positive reversions in the markets. We think that will continue, and we'll see an uplift in the economy for both. T hat will continue as per last year, though maybe at a potentially slower rate. China and our other markets. China still remains challenging. We're very pleased that we were able to recycle capital over the last couple of months. That is still the intent.
Our China team has seen a positive uplift in traffic and retail sales over Chinese New Year, so we are still hoping for some glimmers of hope on the trajectory of the market changing. But I think we are also being very tactical in how we look at this, to be more capital efficient and optimize our portfolio for China.
Then in the other markets, it's been a varied performance. Obviously, Korea office doing well, U.S. having challenges in the office market. A little bit of up and down, depending on sector, depending on country. I t hink overall, we are relatively positive that from an asset level, interest rates aside, most of our assets should still have a pretty decent forward 12 months. W ith that, I'm just gonna leave this to pass this over to Chee Koon to start talking about our future, and we'll start our Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Paul, for very good, I hope, pretty comprehensive presentation. As you can see, I'm slowly delegating a lot of the presentations to both Andrew and Paul. They actually captured all the issues, including how we can achieve the SGD 200 billion FUM target. Two things. Maybe I just before we start the Q&A, I just share two key messages. First and foremost, I want to categorically state that, I mean, as management, senior management, we are not happy with the performance of the share price.
All of us are pretty significant shareholders in CLI, so naturally, we want the share price to perform. Last year was definitely a challenging year for us in terms of whether it's fundraising, whether it's disposal, and whether it's in terms of looking for acquisitions.
We taught ourselves to continue to stay very, very disciplined in making sure that whatever that we do, it's to focus on building the long-term enterprise value for the company. So we continue to invest in our teams, whether it's a fundraising team and whether it's the teams in the various markets, to continue to talk to capital partners, build a long-term relationship, introduce ourself. Also building deep relationship with different vendors, owners of properties, portfolios, asset managers.
Because personally, I feel that the ability to find off-market deals, the ability to match it with capital when the opportunities are there, when the gaps are there, that's the key difference in terms of being able to find deals, being able to negotiate it at a price that can deliver returns to shareholder.
That's the most important thing that we want to do, and we want to do it in a very disciplined manner. W e continue to invest in capabilities across all the different markets. Okay, so that's something that we stay very, very disciplined to do. I'm hopeful to say that, I mean, we are starting to see interesting opportunities, emerging, interesting dialogues happening.
We hope, you know, because, I mean, given the strength of our balance sheet, given the kind of rapport that we have built up with the capital partners, we hope that we'll be able to execute pretty interesting deals that can build up our, funds under management business quite significantly this year. The second thing I want to, maybe just share is in terms of, the, fund under management, SGD 200 billion, target.
As a company, as a team, we do not set. We do not openly just declare target for the sake of declaring targets. I recall, you know, when I was first being appointed as the CEO of Ascott, 2013, I was asked to do an interview to set a target. Joan or Jennie was here. She was the person, you know, telling me that I need to set a target. I set a growth target of 80,000 units to more than double the units. In my mind, I have an idea how I wanted to do it. Of course, when we announced it, there was a lot of questions. I must say that the team, the entire Ascott team, rallied behind it, executed, delivered organic growth together with M&A.
We delivered more than 80,000 before even the stipulated target. Today, if you look at an Ascott business, at that point in time, many of you who had used to follow Ascott, it was asset heavy. We make a very strong determination to convert it into an asset-light business.
You look at the income stream that it is today, it's highly ROE accretive. It's a business, in terms of the fee income business, it's a business that I can tell you many people would, would hope to be able to own. I t takes time... to build the track record, to build the, the relationship, and to allow the incomes to flow through.
In the same vein, you will see that when we make a decision to, you know, when the team took over the CapitaLand business in 2018, CapitaLand, at that point in time, was very much known as a developer for residential, for mixed development, for retail in Singapore and China. W e look at the major trends, we look at where the world is heading, we say that it's going to be very difficult for a listed entity to be competitive.
W e make a decision that we want to become an asset manager. We needed to be multi-asset class, diversified. T hrough the Ascendas-Singbridge merger, we open ourselves to different asset classes, to different geography. D uring COVID, we make, I would say, a pretty bold decision to restructure.
If you look at the company today, I mean, in terms of the fee income, the quality of earning, it's a lot stronger. You look at the capital allocation across the different markets, a lot healthier, it's a lot more diversified. When I first took over CEO of Capita in 2018, our exposure to China was 51%. Today, I mean, it's still big, I mean, in relative terms, but the commitment to diversify, to build capability in different markets, was a dedicated focus, and we actually executed. And, you know, for a company with such a big asset base, it's not easy to move, because unlike publicly traded securities, you can move in and out easily.
To be able to recycle and to be disciplined about it in when building a diversified business, focusing on building the fee income, was something that we were razor-focused, and we will continue to be. I just want to reiterate the point, even though we set, I would say, a relatively ambitious target, sitting in, you know, today's environment, you look at geopolitical environment, everything is uncertain, interest rates are still elevated.
I think it's important that we set a target that is challenging, but I think still within the means of what we believe we could achieve through organic, and we need to couple it with, I would say, acquisition of good platforms that could... Not just any platform, but platforms that could complement our existing capabilities, to allow us to raise new capital, to offer new products to many different capital.
I mean, I spend a lot of time on the road together with Simon, you know, talking to different capital partners. I know where the interests are, I know where the appetite is, and I actually have a pretty strong confidence. I, I was a lot less confident towards in the second half of last year, because, I mean, you feel that you could work so hard, you put in so much energy, you just find that a lot of things just, just couldn't happen. You just find it so hard to execute.
You will find that if you want to just, just to achieve the SGD 3 billion target, you ask yourself: "You know, should we miss it, or should we, do the right thing?" We landed on making sure that we do the right thing and making sure—we were quite happy to land at SGD 2.1 billion. We know that the Street will be disappointed, but we feel that whatever that we do, it's in the long-term interests of the investors. We are prepared to engage, we are prepared to explain our actions, and being very disciplined in telling you what is our growth targets and how we intend to get there.
I want to say that, you know, we have many investors that are invested with us, whether it's in the REITs, the stock, or the private funds, and we have many vendors who work with us, and many employees around the world that depend on us. That's why it's extremely important for the management here, that whatever that we do, we think of the long-term interests for not just for the company, but for the investors that have believed in us through these years. With that, I just open up to Q&A.
Thank you, Chee Koon. I n addition to Chee Koon, Paul, and Andrew on stage, our senior management team is also we've got people putting up their hands already. Our senior management team is over here as well to take questions.
We've got Sanjeev and Tze Shyang online. J ust a word, we've got quite a number of people dialing in online to watch us. Please feel free to send us your questions through the Questions tab in front of yu as well.
Mervin, we'll book you for the next first question as well, for June, for June.
Okay. W ith that, we'll get the ball rolling. Fastest hands, one, two, three. I see Rachel's hand. Rachel will go first this time.
Hi, good morning. Good morning, Chee Koon, Andrew, and Paul. Thanks for the presentation. So maybe first question on me. Maybe we are all excited with your FUM SGD 200 billion target.I n your plans, where do you think the geographies would be able to help you to grow faster to that SGD 200 billion? A lso, would you be keen on infrastructure projects as well?
The focus in buying asset management capability, I want to, I want to stress, we need to build a business that's a lot more, diversified. W hen we look at asset management platforms, we are looking for platforms, first and foremost, that is, outside of, China, definitely. I think, it's very important that we diversify our capabilities in other markets that can... and other products that can allow us to grow more fee income.
In China, the team on its own, on the ground itself, they are well-established. I mean, if you look at Tze Siang and his team, he has raised, I think collectively more than RMB 50 billion in the last, few years. I think that trend will continue to grow because, I mean, there's just a lot of, insurance money and pension fund trying to deploy.
I think that on its own, I don't think we need further deepening of our capabilities in China. O utside China, capabilities, we are talking about Japan, we are talking about Australia, to some extent, Europe. U.S., I know many people is asking, you know, whether we want we are interested in the U.S. Truth be told, I mean, U.S. is a highly competitive market.
Unless you can find a platform that can allow you to build significant scale in the U.S. , we need to ask ourself, I mean, what are you gonna bring on the table to compete, whether it's in terms of product sourcing or in terms of the ability to raise money? You know that the top few players raise 60%-70% of the capital.
If you are among all the smaller asset managers, you have to fight for the remaining pools of capital. Is that the position that you want to be in, in the U.S. at the very beginning? Not that U.S. is not important, it's just that the points of entry, we just have to be disciplined, how to go in a big way, because we want to be able to tell you when we go into the market, we can be competitive. Or if we can't be competitive in the first day, we need to be able to demonstrate how we're gonna build that competitiveness. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Just one more question for me. Just on the flip side, on divestments, your SGD 3 billion targets now, looking at where the environment is, which market and asset class is actually looking at your portfolio, which asset class and market is there for you to divest this year? There's opportunities of divestments for this year.
There's a lot of demand for assets, actually, in Singapore, in Japan, and in India. Singapore, all of you are aware there's so much money coming to Singapore. M uch high-net-worth individuals in Singapore, all looking for high-quality assets. W e are definitely one of the most significant owners of, real estate in Singapore, whether it's through our balance sheet or through one of our vehicles.
C onversations become interesting, and that's also part of the way how you build new relationship with capital partners. Wanting to enter into Singapore, but also talking to them about other, ideas that we have. T hat's the way that you build relationship, about trust, about looking.. these are the few key things I would say, but I don't want to let the cat out of the bag exactly when things will happen, 'cause otherwise we will lose our negotiating leverage, which is not good for shareholders.
We have the next question. Yew Kiang? Yew Kiang, please, over here.
Hi, Yuken from CLSA. The AUM target, right, 200 billion, presumably much of it would come from M&A. Did you take a look at the deal that Keppel looked at? W ould that be the kind of multiple that would be willing to pay, to achieve that target?
Is Janine here? Janine?
She's busy working on your name.
Janine is not here. Janine, you want to-
She's hiding.
Yeah, why don't you say, why don't you say something?
I didn't expect myself to be speaking. Thanks, Yuken, for the question. Obviously, I think you would know that, and I think the management of Keppel also shared that that was a bilateral deal. For us, obviously, we are looking and turning every stone, universally, I would say, globally. We are looking for the right opportunity and platform for us. I think I'll stop there.
Generally, we do not like to participate in bidding process . I mportant to find deals that we think make sense, especially if you are going to do a bilateral-- you're gonna buy a platform, it's about people, it's about asset classes. Its important that you spend time, know the team. M any of this conversation, you know, started several years ago.
B uilding understanding the team, understanding the culture, understanding the minus one, and all these things takes time. When I give you an example, when you know, when I was running Ascendas, when I bought the first-- bought the Quest platform in Australia, knew the founder. We started off by taking a 20% stake, then I step it up to 60%.
I mean, when we first bought the 20% stake, it was totally off-market. I can't remember, I bought it at maybe 5-6x multiple, because of that trust, and then we step it up, control, we paid a bit more. I can't remember, maybe we paid something like over $200 million for the entire platform at the end of the day.
Today, the platform is delivering us $30-$40 million. It's not disclosed, eh? V ery good multiple income, from... I t's adding very nicely to the, to the bottom line. It's the biggest player today in Australia, in New Zealand, adding-- It's highly-- It's led by 90 people, and the whole team just grow the whole... We, we dominate the entire service apartment space.
In the same way, if you think about how we will be looking at buying platforms, you will see us. I mean, we have been. I personally have invested a lot of time talking to various people because I don't believe that, you know, you should participate in a bidding process because it doesn't give me chance to know the people, the founders, the team. Because buying, doing an M&A is not buying a portfolio of assets.
I buy a portfolio of assets, I mean, sorry, I mean, let's just use Ascendas-Singbridge. If we buy Ascendas-Singbridge, let's say the Ascendas-Singbridge team all decide to quit, actually, we can take over the entire assets and run. Not to say that Mano is still here. They have been a great help, and Uncertain has been a great addition to our talent pool.
B uying an asset management platform is buying a team of professionals. You need to find teams, you need to find people aligned in terms of culture, the value system. We need to make sure that that's aligned, and that's how we look at it.
We spend a lot of time investing, and, and I would just want to assure you that we will just not buy any platform that will just give us the AUM, but we want to make sure that when we put the two platforms together, it's something that will be very, very additive. Kevin can share. Why don't you share some of these M&A that you have done in Ascott?
Another forum. I'll just add to that. The I would say that the pace of inbound inquiries has picked up considerably, so it's gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market. I think that's a fair statement to make. Two years ago, pre-rate increases, if you participate in a process, you will, you set your you set an expectation where you're paying, you know, low-, mid-, high-20s multiples. And that was the price of entry at that point in time.
They wouldn't return your phone calls unless they'll tell you, "Are you willing to pay this? Otherwise, don't bother participating." W e were the ones making the inquiries. Now, I would say the majority of opportunities we look at are not us making the inquiries, but someone calling us and say, "Would you We would very much like to talk to you.
Are you saying that you will pay more than 20 times?
No. It's a buyer's market now. The pendulum has shifted, so it's not us making the phone calls, it's potential existing platforms who are concerned about what Chee Koon is talking about, bifurcation, where your Big Five are getting the bulk of the business, or you are hyper-specialized, and you're doing something, and you do something very well. If you're stuck in the middle, then you are in trouble. You can't attract capital.
T hese guys will see that and need to find the right partner, and this is where I think it gets interesting for us, because then we can set the price, and I don't want to participate in... Again, as Chee Koon says, we don't want to, we don't want to accept invitations to join bidding wars.
If you feel that we are the right partner for you, then the word on the street that we are very clear is, you reach out and talk to us personally, and we'll have a chat, and we'll take the time to get to know you, and we will pay you a fair price for what we both then conclude and believe is the right combination.
Otherwise, your assets are your people. The people will walk if they don't believe that this is the right combination. That is the key distinction between an asset purchase and a platform purchase.
Yeah. The important thing is the quality of the team. I always believe that you must pay a fair price for good quality and not a cheap price for a lousy business, because it doesn't help you. The idea is you need to buy a strong platform that can help you to create new products. If you... I mean, there are opportunities to buy things, and you can actually pay a cheap, but it doesn't help us. You end up inheriting a lot of issues that you need to manage. Yeah.
Yeah. Can I ask a second question? On your China divestments, right, is it a concerted strategy by the management to, like, over the medium to long term, to get out of China and reduce exposure there? W hen I look at the redeployment, right, it's into India, where arguably, I think you would have a patchy track record, especially on the mall side.
T hen you're going to focus in Southeast Asia, and I would think that, in terms of capital values, probably Singapore is going to be the key. T hen you'll be, like, ending up with reducing China and increasing exposure in Singapore. H ow does that gel with the diversification strategy right, over long term?
We, as a group, I mean, we made it very clear that we wanted to have a more diversified portfolio, and we wanted to make sure that we are asset lighter. I think in China, if we can continue to grow FUM using domestic capital that's willing to fund the growth and earn the fee income, I don't see why we should stop in terms of the FUM growth.
I think there are opportunities. I mean, we have built up a decent reputation, track record. I mean, over the years, whatever that we promised to build, we build. Whatever we promised to deliver, we deliver. T hat is also the reason why we have been able to attract domestic capital. I think that we'll continue to do.
Being, being asset-light is a discipline that we want to do because we want to convert our exposure to asset into fee income. That's the key thing that we want to do, rather than to just to have assets that earn, earn you anything between 5, 6, 7%. We think that the multiple from the fee income is more important.
W hether it is in China, whether it's in U.S., whether it's in Singapore, assets are still on our balance sheet, we want to, we want to have the discipline to recycle and to bring down our exposure. I mean, you, you talk about Singapore, Southeast Asia, I think there are interesting or India, there are interesting opportunities that we can do a lot more in, Japan.
I mean, if you look at what we have done, we brought in Hideto, who's joined us from-- We do a bit of research about him. He used to be from GPIF, decided to come join us, and he's a significant addition to our team in Japan.
Not only to demonstrate, you know, we really wanted to get somebody, not just a local, but I would say somebody who is very known in the industry and have, of course, understanding of the Japanese capital market. Not only can help us with our markets in Japan, but can open up a relationship dialogue of capital partners that can allow- help us in many of the markets outside of Japan. Australia is the other market that we will significantly look at.
I mean, I know CapitaLand, in its old days, exited Australia at that point in time, but I think it's a, it's a market that is highly interesting. Population grows every year, organically and through this immigration.
Our businesses, our operating platforms are all doing very well. I think the thing that we have not quite maximized is, when the Ascott team today is the biggest and the best operator in Australia, how— You know, the point I always put the pressure to Kevin is, you should be able to raise more funds to help to grow the lodging sector in Australia, and which is a big market and deep market, and it's an area where it's in dire need in terms of products. Yeah.
I just wanna add one point on India, I think you mentioned. India's always been tricky. For Singapore companies, you are right, India has always been tricky. I think we've been very fortunate with the merger with Ascendas. We have Mano, Sanjiv, Gauri, and we have 300 people on the ground who are probably the one Singapore real estate company who has a very good track record in India.
From a logistics viewpoint, we are a top three player. For logistics, we've got two funds running, which are gonna generate very good returns. We hope to see performance carry from that, and we think we can kick out a couple more funds, for that as well. So I think while India is still small for us overall, it's a market we wanna invest behind for the long run.
Because of those tailwinds, I think with the team we've got, I think we're fortunate that we've got this team, and that will help us grow, which I think is the difference from before for us.
Mano, you want to say something about India?
Yeah, I better show my value. M aybe just to put things in perspective, Ascendas and the forefront of Ascendas have been in India since 30 years. I t took us about 20 years to hit an AUM of Sing Dollar equivalent of SGD 1.5 billion. Of course, the rupee has depreciated, right? During this period, so it's Sing Dollar is SGD 1.5 billion. And in the last 10 years, we have grown more than threefold, so now we are about close to SGD 5 billion. Y ou can look at the pace of development in India has become much, much faster. I think it's also because we have we understood the market much better.
The tailwinds of India. India has become much more pro-business, and the asset classes that we have chosen—we started with business parks, then we moved into logistics, and three years ago, we moved into data centers. I've got lots of tailwinds. I think someone made the point that our track record for retail has been—what's the word used?
Challenging.
Oh, I think you said sketchy. Okay. I heard it there. In everything, there is a right time and a right place, right? S ometimes a combination of factors. W hile we are not doing retail today in, in India, but given the size that we are in, we will also look at those opportunities. We are not doing it now, but doesn't mean we won't look at it, because if we can even move to a position where we can do integrated developments, we'll be open to it.
I think, the other point that I want to mention is, the capital values in India are still very low. So a beautiful building in India today still costs only about $200 per sq ft, okay? I think there will come a time where probably there will be a change.
I hope while I'm still around, right? T he same thing happened in China about 15 years ago, where suddenly, you know, capital values went up. I think that time will also come. Z eyond that, actually, we have got a very strong pipeline. I mentioned that we have grown our AUM in India by more than threefold in the last 10 years, and I think we are very confident of at least doubling it, if not more, within the next 5 years, right? So of course, I think, Chee Koon's target is much more aggressive, but, we will be looking for more such opportunities.
T hat's the reason I think we are quite positive about India, and I think we are one of the only foreign developers, foreign real estate companies or real estate investment managers that has got end-to-end capabilities.
We've got over 300 people, and we can develop, manage, source for land, operate all these assets. So I think these are the reasons that gives us, that makes us confident about India. And I think our India business is also very capital efficient. That's why the capital that we have employed, because a lot of it is through our, listed, business trust, which is CLINT. So a lot of the developments go through the CLINT portfolio. Yep. Okay, thanks.
. Thank you, Mano. I'll come to you, Mervin. I'll have Jessie from Business Times first. Jessie, over here. Give Jessie a mic.
Mervin, what did you do to her?
I'll be last.
I don't want to show favoritism, you know?
Sorry, Mervin.
Jessie please.
I have a question, please. This is more about the valuations. I understand that they were falling for CapitaLand's overseas investment properties. Are there, like, specific reasons you can share, such as, like, maybe market sentiment, falling office rents in the U.S.?
Sure. Multi-family, the question?
No, like the falling-
Valuation.
Like valuations.
In the U.S.?
I guess, like, all of CapitaLand's.
Okay. You want to jump into this?
Okay. I mean, that's a very wide-ranging question. Let me jump in and tackle some of this, and, Paul, please feel free. L et me start with the U.S. or the-- let's say, the two pockets where we had the biggest drops. T he U.S., specifically multifamily and office. The combination of... I think the biggest single driver in the U.S. is rates. The U.S. has had the sharpest interest rate increase, and it has a correlation on caps, generally speaking. So you'll see a natural widening of cap rates based on interest-- just pure interest rate increases, cost of capital has gone up.
In terms of specific structural issues, I think we also see structurally in the office space, work from home, work from anywhere, as a secular trend is strongest in the U.S. and perhaps weakest in Asia. In most Asian markets, we are pretty much all back to the office, whether we like it or not. So, it's a much more pronounced move away from work from home. In the U.S., it is still, I would say, up for debate as to where it will land. And then, of course, in particular sectors, your tech, your healthcare, your bio, all of these guys are very resistant to coming back to the office.
Again, depending on your asset, where you're invested, this structural issue bleeds into rental reversions, occupancies, and so on and so forth, and the valuers take that into account. So I think this is where you see the impact on CLAR, and I'm sure William can share a lot more on that. For multifamily, a little bit of interest rates, less so. The secular trend remains strong. We still believe multifamily is a long runway because there is a long-term gap in demand versus supply.
A lot of people still are looking for a home to rent, but there has been a recent overbuild in certain cities. And so as a valuer, you go down into the pockets of cities where you are, where the asset is, and you look at the demand-supply situation.
This is, again, very, very typical of real estate, right? There's a big need. You get a rush of people coming in to build. You get an oversupply. That oversupply takes time to work itself out, and then the secular trend takes over again. So this is exactly what's happening in multifamily. You've got specific pockets in Austin and Nashville, where the sun shines—the sunshine states, where people are migrating towards and are looking for a home, has attracted a lot of attention.
We were there. We are there. A lot of other people have come in. There is a short-term glut in supply, and the valuers are taking that into account. But the secular trend, I think most of us agree that the secular trend is there. There is a gap in demand versus supply.
Same thing is happening in Australia. That's the States. In China, I will maybe perhaps ask Ervin to help me out here, but also again, I would see lack of sentiment. Rental reversions are weak. We are, as Ervin will tell you, focused very much on occupancy, but the fact of the matter is, with weak sentiment, you don't get that confidence in rental reversions.
I f you go to a tenant today, and you ask him to renew at a 10% increase in rent, that's a very tough conversation to have, simply because your tenant is also as uncertain as you as to where the economy is headed. So it's very much sentiment driven. It is also becomes an asset-specific situation.
The lack of capital recycling and transactions are also a factor because valuers use that as a triangulation data point to see where cap rates ought to be. And because there hasn't been a lot of cap, transaction activity, there is a lack of data to corroborate where cap rates—where the true cap rate is. You know, we sold Uncertain late last year, and that cap rate was in very tight. But it's a single data point, and it's not enough, I would say, to stem the tide about rental reversions and uncertainties about tenancies and so on and so forth.
I would think that's the biggest, I would say, principal driver on, on China, and where that has affected valuations for our portfolio. Paul, I don't know if you want to add anything or Irvin wants to supplement.
Hi, I'm Irvin. F or China, I think we are seeing a bit of trend. There's definitely a recovery, and now it's largely sentiment driven. During the reopening last year in 2023, in March, the sentiment was a little bit ahead of the ground reality because we see the sales and footfall data. They weren't that strong.
B y the turn of this year, this year's Yuandan, the thirty-first December to first January, that period sales was the strongest of the past three years on average sales and footfall basis. Because for the past three years in China, a little bit at odds with the government. In the retail business, you want to see footfall. For the past three years, China didn't want to see footfall, but it turned.
This year's December, Suzhou Center sold for RMB 600,000 on 31st December alone, a single mall. And the Chinese New Year period this year is the seven-day—well, it's an eight-day holiday, but we take on the average sales basis. Compared to the previous year, sales are up 10% overall. If you exclude supermarkets and cinemas, which are on a downtrend anyway, sales were up 15%, and footfall is also up. So you see the trending getting positive.
W hy reversions are not strong is also a factor of demand and supply. If you look overall in the market, a lot of the investment decisions were taken in 2018, 2019, 2020, and so because of various COVID reasons, it took time to get onto the market.
Alot of supply has come on board end of last year and early this year, which means you have—you know, while your demand is up, but you also have a lot of supply. T he converse is also true, in that in 2020 to 2023, there are not very many investments. So once this period of supply gets absorbed, there won't be a lot more coming up. If you compare to...
You look at CLCT's portfolio in Beijing, the performance of the realtor there is stronger, and that's because Beijing had a moratorium on new commercial developments within the Neihuan. T hat has translated into a more controlled supply of commercial office and retail into Beijing, which is why Beijing rents, Beijing sales are able to continue to stay.
In other cities across China, there's been a bit of oversupply, but that we see moderating, and Shanghai is now starting to take direction from Beijing's policies.
Thank you, Irvin.
Can I just add a small question?
Sure.
Okay. I know that rental reversions are positive and strong for Singapore's, like, office, the CICT's office, assets. A re you seeing office rents like, you know, falling or maintaining as they are, given there's going to be an influx of office supply this year in the CBD?
Chris, you want to read it?
Chris.
Or Tony, or Tony.
Yep. Pass it.
That lot, that lot first.
Okay, so maybe point one, just note that there, there's a difference between what people track as market rent. M arket rent is one data point where rent are transacted, and this is reported by all the agencies. There's another thing to take note, when we talk about rental reversion, it's really measuring, your sign-on rent against outgoing rent. So use that to, in context.
G enerally, from our portfolio, I think we are okay because our outgoing rent is, those expiring out are, I mean, still within a reasonable kind of buffer where market rent is. Where market rent is headed, hard to say. I think it's just the macro environment is, a big question mark.
One thing, generally in our Singapore market context, and I think to some extent, my colleague here has mentioned, is that the situation in Singapore is the supply control. I think supply control, as you probably know, Singapore is a pretty well-planned use of land, given the land resource. So I think that's one area that, from an asset owner perspective, we take a lot of comfort. So we are not gonna expect to see huge supply.
T here's an upcoming new supply, CBD, you've got at Central Boulevard. Currently, it's in the market. They are trying to lease it out. But historically, average out over the last five year, the total supply coming to market is below.
We think that the fundamental of Singapore is strong enough to absorb over time. But bear in mind, market rent move depends on sentiment, but rental reversion is another thing that you have to take into consideration. Yeah.
I think on Central Boulevard, if I'm not mistaken, Chris, that's about 60% leased to tenants, and they're holding rents-
Yeah.
They're holding asking at a very healthy level.
Yeah.
It tells us that, new builds coming on the market are not facing pressures to lower asking-
Yeah.
which is good for us in terms of, of CBD lending rents.
Maybe a little bit of colors. I don't know whether you attended my briefing. We have a very healthy occupancy. Today is, you know, 97%-98%, so we do not have a lot of space. Vis-a-vis the new supply coming to the market, the one big one, which is CBD, I mentioned, large floor plate. So there will be a bit of adjustment needed because the current demand for space and current supply coming to the market is a little bit of mismatch.
C ertainly, we see a company asking for a size of more like a 5-10,000 kind of sq ft, vis-a-vis, you know, entire floor plate, 20-30,000. It's a little bit more difficult to get that kind of big occupier in today's market.
Having said that, I mean, things may turn, right? Today, it's all about sentiment-driven. W e get inquiry, it's just that we do not have enough space to satisfy some of the demands. Yeah.
Yes.
Okay, maybe I just want to add also a bit more color, right? Because I guess what Tony and Andrew mentioned is really more from the statistics standpoint, what you can read about the supply and also demand. But underlying, in terms of what companies are now coming to us as well, is that what we shouldn't forget is, while we still pretty much focus on the core and flex strategy for office, where you have the core in the CBD and the flex supported by the need for, like, business park spaces, et cetera.
We also see that the demand by companies after COVID is that they need more spaces because the coming back to office is still quite good.
Today, we see that we are more than 7% in terms of return to the office, and increasingly more companies, given the current economic climate, is that they are looking at more spaces. So with the partnership, in terms of the co-working spaces, that in most of our, office buildings now we have, then we do see stronger commitment ahead in terms of the expiry. So I guess that also adds more favor to the fact that while we may see that more supply, like, you know, the midtown's coming up, but in advance, the leasing team have already been securing quite healthily, even for 2024. Yeah.
Okay, thank you, Chris. Just mindful of time, I just wanted to see a show of hands, who has questions so I can. Okay, thank you. We'll try to clear them, but I'm also mindful that we, our peer is doing their briefing at 10:30, and most of you have to go. We'll go to Mervin.
Ask the questions, then we try to back them on.
Yeah, Mervin from JP Morgan. Two quick questions.
Can you keep it to one?
Okay, one question. Okay, maybe I'll ask a more difficult one.
Yeah.
With our investor discussions, I mean, one of the reasons why perhaps the share price is weak is the timing of ROE. Like, we don't know when it's gonna hit double digit, or that's the concern. If you could share your thoughts in terms of shrinking the equity base, be that with a more aggressive buyback or perhaps even spinning off Kevin's lodging business, which trades a higher multiple than your current business at this point in time. I know if you double your AUM, you get close to that 10% anyway. But how can we accelerate that ROE improvement from here to get the share price higher?
Because if you're only trading at, say, 5%-6% ROE, it's a bit harder to you know, trade above book value, given your other peers trading at book, but 8%-9% ROE. So maybe some thoughts on how you can improve the ROE and share price.
I think this one is me, right? I have to say, from an ROE perspective, it's certainly something this year's performance was disappointing for us, right, over the last couple of years. So you're right, you know, a little bit with the fair value loss. Obviously, it's come down. Last year, we were about 5. On a cash basis, we're about 5 right now. I think there are a few drivers which we are trying to address. One is, as you mentioned, is the size of our equity base, or how much we have, right now. Obviously, we've got SGD 8.6 billion worth of assets to divest. That divestment is critical for us to get to our ROE target.
We need to divest that off because those assets are, you know, those are, say, 4%, 5% yield type assets, right? That's in our balance sheet in Singapore and China, or multifamily in the US. As we divest those assets, and we redeploy them into seeding new funds, the funds or Kevin's business generally generate rate for us closer to a 20% type ROE. So we need that recycling to happen.
That's why strategic thrust for us, number one, is really the divestments and capital management. That has to get off the balance sheet over the next 3 years. We can reinvest it into higher ROE opportunities, that's great. It is a fair chunk of money to reinvest.
The other two things that we can do is, besides, seeding new funds, for us, is really, one is around M&A opportunities. So obviously, the impact to ROE on us is dependent on what price we pay for those M&A opportunities, for that redeployment. But in theory, even if we were to pay a higher multiple, as that fund management platform grows, it should get us closer to a, the double-digit ROE target.
T hen the other component, and I will tie this to two other questions I've seen online, one is around our, our distributions, and the other is about our NAV as a company. So there was a question about, as a real estate company, you know, shouldn't our NAV and TA be growing? And a question about, you know, would we increase our dividend payout?
We wanna shrink our capital base. It's too large. For a real estate company, it's perfectly fine, but we're trying to be a fund manager. And with that pivot, we should actually be, we should actually have a smaller equity base, right? So the intent is, obviously, we've been doing share buybacks. We have kept dividend at SGD 0.12 this year, but it's a fairly high payout ratio. We're quite comfortable at this level. Could we increase?
Yes, but we would need profitability to go up, I think, before we're comfortable increasing that dividend. The share buybacks give us more flexibility. The reason we haven't announced a share buyback program is it ranks third in order of priority for us.
The first is seeding new funds and growth organically, the second is M&A, and the third we look at as our share buybacks and dividends. That, for us, is our priority three. So if we have more clarity that, for instance, this year, we managed to divest a lot more, then we would look to ramp up all three of these areas. So it ties together for us. The goal is still to get to a double-digit ROE over three years.
I know this has taken longer than the market expects. It's taken longer than we have expected. And that is that. I think there are a certain degree of execution we have to do faster on, but I think there is a certain degree of market that, honestly, we can't really help.
You know, some of our assets, ION Orchard, multifamily in the U.S., our China assets, over time, they will get divested. We just need better market conditions for some of those.
Okay, we've got about five minutes for three questions. We have Brandon, Xuan, and... I forgot your name. Don't know. Sure, sorry.
Mervin, not so bad.
Of course, I remember your name, but sorry, just Brandon first, please.
Yeah. Yeah, hi, morning, Chee Koon. Just two quick ones, again, make it quick. The first one is, I think, can you talk a bit more about this one CapitaLand ecosystem? I think it was first set up 3 years back when you birthed CLI. But so far, we haven't seen actually much activities or help from both CLD or even CLA to a certain aspects.
As you look to grow your Southeast Asia and particularly Singapore, how do you— what kind of help or assistance do you think we can see over the next 3 years? That's my first one. And the second would be your valuation decline for China. Is it sufficiently written down, given what we're seeing in China at the moment? Yeah, thanks.
On the second question first, hard to say. I mean, there are transactions that we have exited for the Borui building in Beijing at less than 2% cap rate. The one that we saw in another Beijing shopping mall at also around 2% cap rate. So I think there's a range. There's just not enough transaction that takes place. W hat we have done is that we look across our asset, we look at the rental, we look at the issue.
We just think that, you know, we talk to the valuers, and that's how we have written down. But I mean, in terms of the retail performance, Irvin had alluded to earlier, actually, the and that's the large part of our exposure.
Occupancy is still going up, even though the rents are weaker, I must say, but the interest rates are also coming off. So then—and there are interested parties that look to actually take a stake in some of the platform. So I don't think that the gap is so far at this point in time. I think it's too early for us to maybe answer that question. But I want to say that, you know, we are fiduciary.
We want to make sure that, you know, whatever that we have in the books reflect the values that, you know, that—what should reflect that market carrying value. Yeah. So that's the second question. The first question was... Remind me, what was the first question again?
CLD.
Okay. I mean, the two things that when we started out, I mean, the idea is for CLD to be a development partner for us. I mean, that's really the key. So in Singapore and Vietnam and in China, I mean, as you can see, over actually over the last X number of years, we haven't done a lot of new acquisitions in China on the development side. I mean, CLD, I mean, they have announced that they bought 3 residential sites.
Not something that we do, so there's not a lot of collaboration. On Singapore side, I think so far, the only thing that they have done is to acquire an asset from the REIT, and then they use it to redevelop into residential.
The conversations will continue to proceed. So we sometimes look at joint projects together, development sites where, you know, if there's a commercial element or even, let's say, you know, there's a site that has a service apartment, obviously, we will look at it. So it depends, I would say, more opportunistically, and that's the first right that we have. T he interesting thing that we have is, I mean, when we go across the different markets, we can also talk to other developers that can offer us interesting deals, and we can work with other development partners as well. And that's the flexibility that CLI has today.
We work with partners that can give us the opportunity, and we can grow development funds, and we won't restrict to just working with CLD, although they have the first right, you know, for us to choose to work with.
Okay, thank you. Can we have the mic to Donald and Xuan? P erhaps both of you can ask the questions, and we can just run through. Sorry, Donald, for forgetting.
No, no...
I don't know what happened, but I'll treat you breakfast later.
Okay, I have a forgettable face. Yeah, Donald from BOA. Very few very quick questions, a few of them. Just follow me on the China negative revals. At this level, do you think... what's the implied cap rate post the negative reval? I s this the clearing price now that you think buyers will bite in China? And would you be willing to sell below book? That's my first question.
Xuan, you wanna also-
Or maybe, maybe I'll go on to the second question as well.
Yes.
My, my second question is also simple. You were Chee Koon, you were talking about Australia and Japan for the growth in FUM. Which, which sectors—I know you're sector-agnostic, but which sectors are you looking at that's interesting? In Australia, will you be looking at things like BTR or office, things that are sectors that are unloved at this point? Thanks.
Xuan will ask her question as well, then we'll go to-
Go ahead, Xuan.
Xuan?
Just two questions. First is on ROE. By three years, the timeline is 2027, and are we looking at cash operating or headline PATMI? And second question is on EBITDA margin. Can you share the margin for lodging management? How has it trended year-on-year? And also, as we look at overall FRB EBITDA margin, right, as you build up capabilities, is there still room to improve in 2024?
Okay. Paul, I think if I may, I'll pass Xuan's questions to you, and I'll deal with Donald's. Donald, right? So Don, I think, good, very good questions. In China, does it represent a clearing price? Not that we design it that way, but I do think that this year is a very important year for China. And again, Irvin can shed a lot more color on this. I think if you look at the signs from the government and the policy directions, they recognize that the economy must take priority at this point in time.
T he buttons they are pressing are to encourage capital formation to take place, to encourage capital recycling to take place, and to bring confidence back into the sector, because they see that consumers, businesses are not spending.
Without this, there's no amount of infrastructure spend that will compensate for that. I think they recognize this.
If those things come to pass, our sense of it as a house is second half of the year, the ingredients will be in place for much more of this recycling to take place, for much more of this capital formation to take place.
T his is where our strategy kicks in, which is where we need to get capital recycled, importantly, swap US dollar for RMB, so that we can show the street, who are very concerned about exposure to China, for those investors who are concerned about exposure to China, that the exposure is a domestic exposure, and there is plenty of demand and supply, and the ability to formulate an ongoing ecosystem within China, for which we are good at doing, and we have the right resources in place, the right reputation, et cetera, et cetera.
I would say, let's see where we are come second quarter. If what we hope happens, happens, I think we will be much more optimistic about the ability to get back on track in terms of capital recycling and being able to get these assets into RMB product. To your specific question as to whether we would sell below book, I would say that's a very tactical decision taken at the time.
Our preference, as you can see from our capital recycling record, is we're not distressed. Why destroy value when we believe in the asset? And at the right time, the asset will deliver. But it is also tied into ROE and what Paul is very concerned about, right? Getting the capital base down.
Alot of factors will go into a specific decision as to whether we should sell an asset and at what price. All things being equal, absolutely not. But would I say never say never? I would not do that either. There may be a situation where we want to bite the bullet. There is no path to profitability, or let's say the path to profitability is beyond the ROE window, and we have to make a hard decision as to whether to do that.
I n fact, that actually is another strong message that we could potentially send, that we hear you, and we wanna deliver that capital base that gets us to double digit cash ROE. And in so doing, we need to bite the bullet in some cases.
I would say that's certainly a tactical possibility, Paul.
Yeah. j ust to add to that, I think with the fair value adjustments in the market, I think it makes it much easier for us to sell at or above book, so that would be the hope. So just taking Shen's questions. On the margin side, is there room for improvement on the overall? Yes, we believe so.
As we showed on the earlier chart, it's come down slightly year-on-year from 39% to 35%. That's partly driven by the fact that we didn't have a lot of performance and one-off fees for 2023 versus 2022. O n a run rate basis, we expect that will pick up. When we look across our four different segments, you know, our listed funds is pretty stable margins. That's not gonna change very much.
Private funds, we expect an improvement in margin as they scale. We think we have a lot of the team in place, and so as that private funds grows, our margin there should improve, we hope, quite significantly. For the lodging side, through COVID, it was much more challenging. For us, the lodging margins then were, you know, single digits to teens. It has since improved to 20% plus, getting to 30%.
We do think there's room for that improvement as well. As things scale, the benefit for lodging is, Kevin's team has a very strong IT backbone for a lot of the room bookings, and sort of thing, and that gets a huge uplift as you scale.
We are expecting margin improvement, particularly, I would say, from private funds, and lodging. For listed funds and commercials, I think we've quite improved. I don't see necessarily a lot of improvement there. And then on the ROE question, the ROE question for us, we, when we look at it from a three-year, we do think there will be some reval or portfolio gains that may help us get to a double-digit ROE.
It becomes a much smaller component, because if we stay on track, in three years, we don't have a lot to divest. So that divestment or the valuation uplift will be a much smaller component, but we are counting on that to help our ROE at this stage.
The thing that may change that is if we were to, and, you know, if we are to talk about inorganic opportunities. When we acquire platforms, it's a much higher cash generating and a little bit less on because of depreciation and amortization when you acquire platforms. So there's a little bit of impact. So that will actually help us from a cash ROE perspective, but a little bit less from a total PATMI perspective. So there's a little bit of interplay over the next three years, depending on what moves faster, divestments, acquisitions, and our growth. But the goal, ideally, in the longer run, would be a double-digit cash PATMI.
Okay, thank you. I know some of our viewers online have also sent in questions. I'm sorry, we don't have time today to get through them, but we'll reach out. And so we've come to the end of the briefing. Thank you all for taking time. If you're going to the concert this weekend, and have time for dinner, please come to Kallang Wave Mall, and take care for now and till then. Thank you.