Good morning, everyone. A very warm welcome to CapitaLand Investment's first half 2023 results briefing. I'm Grace Chen, Head of Investor Relations. TGIF, everyone, and happy belated National Day to Singaporeans here, as well as to those watching us virtually. Now, CLI has had quite a week, besides celebrating National Day. Our teams, who have been working very hard over the past few months, and even through National Day, finally got us through the finishing line of a few important fundraisers. I'm thrilled to share that year to date, we have fundraised SGD 3.2 billion of equity commitments. What that means is that we have actually exceeded what we achieved last year for the full year of 2022, where we had SGD 2.5 billion of equity commitments.
Colleagues, do you wanna put your hands together to just thank the hard work of our two teams? Thank you. Okay, just getting back into the agenda. In a short while, we will have our Group CEO, Mr. Lee Chee Koon, Group COO, Mr. Andrew Lim, and Group CFO, Mr. Paul Tham, to take us through the results as well as their outlook. I would also like to mention that we have members of our senior leadership council over here, and they'll be happy to take questions during the Q&A as well. Without further ado, I'll invite Andrew for opening remarks.
Thanks, Grace, good morning to everyone. Thanks for coming. I've got just a few remarks that I want to make before I hand things over to Paul, to take you through the numbers. We put down five points here that we hope will help to encapsulate what the numbers reveal. I think the first one is the issues that we've been grappling with for some time now as an ecosystem, still continue to persist. You can pick your poison, whether it's climate change, whether it's geopolitics, whether it's post-COVID. The one we think is most stubborn and gives us a lot of cause for concern is the stubborn inflation that persists throughout the global economy and what rates have done in order to combat that.
I think that you can all agree, has a direct impact on real estate, through higher interest rates in funding and also potentially through Cap rates in valuation. We are starting to see the effects of this, particularly in some economies where the rate rises have been very sharp. U.S., Europe, U.K., have all started to see these attendant effects. When we look across the spectrum of real estate companies who are reporting results, we start to see these interest rate impacts coming through. We are no different. No, we are not immune to that. I would like to think that our consistently conservative policy, high level of fixed rates, long WALEs, long terms, have insulated us on a relative basis, more so than some of our competitors.
The other thing that gives us, I think, some, case for optimism, is that if you look back over 30 years, around about the 5%-6.5% of Fed funds rate is where the economy starts to take notice and starts to slow down. If you go back over 30 years, this is where the rates start to peak, and then it comes back down, and tends to come back down very fast. If history is... we are students of history and we take history as a guide, I would like to think that we are close to peak. Which again, is potentially cause for cautious optimism, that recovery is around the corner and a stabilization is around the corner. Why is this important?
It is important because without a good visibility on where rates are headed, no one's gonna be doing deals, because we can't underwrite them with certainty unless you are very brave or you're very foolish. Which brings me to the second point about cautious deal making. I think Simon will tell you that this year, it's the lowest in five or six years in capital raised across the, the, the private equity space. I think that, again, is a function of folks who have put their pens down because they just can't get comfortable with the numbers. The models have all been thrown out. They've got to rewrite. They can't figure out where interest rates will land. Without interest rate certainty, unless you have 100% equity, which not many people do, then it's very difficult. You have to be brave and, and/or foolish.
This has led to a slowdown in deal making, right? Notwithstanding that, I think we had a pretty good first half. Our REITs raised over S$1 billion, being very disciplined about what they, what they are seeking to acquire or have acquired. Our private equity business, as you've read yesterday and today, have now crossed over S$3 billion in total equity raised. Again, in we believe, the right products. I think we are very being very disciplined about how we raise capital, or rather, we are still able to raise capital from partners, our unit holders, our third-party equity partners, who believe in the platform that we offer.
Our embedded FUM has now grown to about S$10 billion, which means that we've got that equity, we've got capital ready to go when we feel the time is right, in products like China Opportunistic, which is, I think, a very well-placed product for the right time, ready to be deployed for the right opportunities, working together with Jiang and his team on the ground. We also raised a new fund in India. India now is receiving unprecedented attention. Sanjeev is here, so please direct all your questions to him. We are long India. We are 30 years in India. We have boots on the ground. We have expertise in the right sectors and in the right cities, business parks, logistics, and now DCs. We launched a new fund yesterday with one partner, and we are confident that there's more to come.
India is exciting for us. It is still a small piece of the puzzle, but if you are talking about a globally diversified real estate company, then India is a core market, and it will play an increasing role in how we diversify our business. Let's look at two of our core markets. I think Singapore, we are all here, we know the story. It's remained incredibly resilient, and that's good for us as a Singapore company. Singapore is a destination for capital, it's a destination for talent, destination for tourism. All of these things play to our strengths. Our Singapore portfolio, which is now our largest market in total asset terms, is very resilient, right? By most metrics, we are past COVID numbers already, and I think the rest of the world understands this, which is why capital is coming.
We have no shortage of people asking us to help them deploy into Singapore. The problem is, we don't have enough to pass to them. The hunt is on for interesting assets, redevelopment opportunities, upsizing, upskilling, taking advantage of Singapore's growing place as a, as a center for business, tourism, talent, capital, what have you. On our other core market, it is better than it was, but that, I have to say, is not saying much, because last year was pretty bad. China is on the way to recovery. Most of the metrics that you see are higher, substantially higher. NPI, occupancy, tenant sales, they're all heading in the right direction. The problem is, it's not heading as quickly as we thought it would. Recovery, in our view, is gonna take longer.
If you talk to Tze Shyang, what he'll tell you is that it weighs on sentiment, and China is a very sentiment-driven market. I think what we have going for us is the government is recognizing this, and is pulling out all of its tools to kickstart the economy, right? Fiscal, monetary, now the tourists can travel around the world, right? They're, they're trying to send signals that they recognize the extent of the problem, and they need to fix it. I, I, I think that's a good sign that they are putting the economic recovery as a priority right now, and that will help us. Help turn sentiment to at least say that China is starting to become investable again. In the meantime, we are being smart about how we deploy capital, opportunistic.
Finding, assets that are underpriced for the right reasons, and that will ride a exponential wave of recovery when sentiment returns. That's what CCOP is designed to do. We raised another five, SGD 500 was it? SGD 500 on CCOP.
SGD 980.
986, sorry. It's a big number. We are cautiously optimistic on China, but it will take time. It will take longer than we hoped. It remains for me to talk about travel, and I think, again, this is something we were lucky to be good or good to be lucky, depending on how you look at it. When we reorganized CLI, we decided to put lodging in because we believed in its fee income model, we believed in its capital-light model, we believed we could turn it into a global platform. We had to ride out a couple of very difficult years with COVID, but the model proved resilient, more resilient than many other lodging platforms. That actually resulted in the Ascott brand rising in stature and preference among many third-party owners, because they said, "These guys can ride through the worst times.
I'm gonna rebrand." Kevin is past 160, and he's been forced to reset his targets into a revenue model, and I think that, again, resonates with our fee income model, right? We need to double revenue to SGD 500 million, which is, without question, in that situation, a bona fide fourth vertical of fee income for CLI. If there's any doubt, I think it should be clear now that this was the right decision to include lodging within CLI as a proper fee income platform for us. If you look at the numbers that Paul will take you through, you can see there's a stark difference, right? When operating PATMI demonstrates that as a recurring business, I think we are doing what we set out to do for all of our investors, all of our stakeholders.
We are building a business that delivers recurring income. Yes, there will be ups and downs on the fee event-driven side, that is a function of the business that we are in. Generally speaking, recurring income will be a resilient contributor to PATMI, and we are growing that recurring income base with capital that we are raising. The other piece is obviously capital recycling. Again, going back to sentiment about the resistance to do deals, we are, again, a part of that ecosystem, unfortunately, right? We are not distressed sellers, so we're not gonna sell for the sake of it, but we want to raise capital at the right time so that we can redeploy that more efficiently. In the process, if we can sell it at a good price, then that delivers an important component to cash PATMI.
In the meantime, you can see this difference between our-- in our first half results. Operating PATMI, resilient, portfolio gains will take a little bit more time. We are cautiously optimistic in the second half. Activity will pick up if these macroeconomic indicators start to come into line and people become more confident about their numbers and are able to take deals to their investment committees. Why don't I stop there and hand it over to Paul? Thank you very much, and we look forward to your questions.
Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. It's funny listening to Andrew. For those of you who don't know, Andrew is my predecessor. He used to be CFO, and he used to do the bulk of this presentation most of the time. When he was talking about interest rates, I thought for a moment there, he would forget and just keep going, and I wouldn't have to present. No such luck. Just very high level on our numbers. Overall for us, first half, I would say relatively resilient. Revenue numbers are flat, 1% down. Operating PATMI, flat, 1% down. Obviously, the big shift for us was in relation to total PATMI, and you can see there that we're down 19%, really driven by slower portfolio recycling.
That is something that while we've picked up a little bit of pace over the last couple of months, most of that happened after 30 of June, which is why when you see a capital recycling number there of SGD 839 million, middle bottom box, not all of that yet translates into portfolio gains. Some of that divestment number, since that is in as of August 10th number, some of that will only kick in in our full year results. I won't go through necessary and overall growth drivers. Andrew has covered a fair bit of that, and where we think of as where we can see growth going forward, right? A lot of these topics, we'll discuss later as well, when Chee Koon is on stage talking through, for our Q&A.
Really, you know, we see our listed funds, still recurring fees, investments a little bit slow, but growth on the recurring fee basis. Private funds, some very good news over the last couple of days. We seem to have done this for the first half as well, made a push right before results. I'm starting of thinking of having results every month so that the team has more announcements to come out. Then lodging has been great for us. These are, for us, good drivers. Geographically, a little bit more on the pressure, and we'll spend a little bit of time talking about besides Singapore and India, where else can we see some growth? Looking at our business segments and really starting with our fund management business, and this is really our main focus.
Going forward is really on the fund management component. You can see our numbers. There hasn't been as much growth as we would like, but you can see a bump up in what we consider embedded FUM. This is funds under management that we've either raised capital for, or that, intended for deployment from the REITs as, as well. As you can see, we are up to about SGD 99 billion, so we're very actually happy about that component. I think where we are being a little bit more disciplined is on the deployment of this capital. You know, it's a very tricky market environment right now. We wanna make sure that for our investors, whether in the private funds or in the REITs, that we are deploying capital for deals that will give them good returns.
We don't want to just deploy for the sake of deployment. You see a little bit of gap there. We've got a little bit more dry powder, which we are sitting on, waiting for the right opportunities. In terms of our fund management fees, one positive for us has really been around the recurring fees. On the left-hand side of your chart, you'll see full year 2022 versus the first 2 quarters for 2023. As you can see in Q2, 106 versus 106 last quarter, last year, 2nd quarter. The listed fees, and also from the private funds, you know, we've gotten some nice, stable income. Unfortunately, what is clearly missing is the event-driven fees, which you can see from the middle pair of middle column pair.
You can see that recurring component has gone up a nice 10%. Unfortunately, the event-driven's down by quite a fair bit. Some of that will pick up. Some of our REITs have made announcements recently on acquisitions. Obviously, with the new capital that we've raised for the private funds, we'll have a little bit deployment, but that pace certainly slower year-on-year. Hopefully, picks up a little bit in second half, but we think this year will still be challenging in terms of seeing really strong deal momentum. Related to that, on the right-hand side, you can see our FUM to FRE ratio has unfortunately come down. This really relates directly to the performance fees. Without the one-off carry from the private funds last year, and also with the lower acquisition and divestment fees, that number has come down.
We do expect that number to go back up, as a little bit more normal activity continues. When we talk about our funds management business, as most of you know, we have two main units: our listed funds unit, which is our REIT franchise. We have 6 REITs. Very happy to say, at least from an NPI basis, we've seen our REITs perform relatively well. We've seen, on an overall basis, positive rental reversions across the board. All of our REITs have seen that on an overall portfolio level. They've been relatively disciplined. We think over the last 6 months as well, in terms of reconstituting their portfolio, asset enhancements, and really trying to drive higher returns for investors. Good, steady growth there. Obviously, we've raised about SGD 1 billion worth from the REITs market.
We think, over the course of this year and next year, as interest rates hopefully turn, we'll see a little bit more activity and growth there, hopefully back to the numbers we used to see a couple of years ago. I think the one challenge our REITs are facing is just exactly that on the interest rates. On the right-hand side, you can see that higher interest rates has pulled down. We've had a few REITs who have managed to have enough NPI improvement to offset that higher interest costs. I would say generally across our portfolio, that interest cost has weighed down such that whether it's DPU or for our joint ventures, some of that cash coming up to the parent company, has come down a little bit because of the high interest costs.
You know, we continue to be very active on our capital management, trying to make sure that we are balanced enough, both in terms of being prudent, but also making sure that we capture dips in the market, to try and lock in some rates. Hopefully, over the next 6-12 months, we see a little bit of turn in this. On our private fund side, as Grace mentioned at the start, you know, we're very happy. We're up to S$3.2 billion capital raised this year. That is more than the S$2.5 billion, that was raised all of last year. While we are very pleased with the teams, as I'm sure Simon will tell you, that is not the target.
They are expected to continue to grow in the second half, and we still expect to be able to raise funds. I think one thing we're very pleased on with the announcement yesterday, was our new India Business Development, Business Park Development Fund. We are seeing an opportunity there for a more heightened investor interest in India. The team with Sanjeev and Gauri Magesh, who will speak a little bit later, will be able to share with you a little bit more on how the market is looking. It's certainly a market where we think future growth for us will be faster than it has been, in previous years. The other two things we've raised money for, our core open-ended fund and our China Special Situations Fund.
The Special Situations Fund has gone up to SGD 2.1 billion in equity now. At those numbers levels, we consider this arguably one of our flagship products. We think there are a lot of opportunities we can capture to try and pick up. Then, the one below that, even though it was a smaller raise, that core open-ended fund, which is a core plus focused fund, which is a private fund, we raised another SGD 150 million. That for us is good. It's a good sign. We believe this means, you know, we still see in- investor traction for investing in Asia Pacific, and then also in our sort of our core plus products, outside of our REITs. It's a great job by the team in getting these fundraisers in this environment.
We're continuing to look at our products. Obviously, we're continuing to focus on fundraising. We're also looking at our product suite for, you know, what are investors looking for in this higher interest rate environment? Obviously, last year, besides the special situations, we had our self-storage, we had our logistics for Southeast Asia. We are exploring areas such as credit, which we think will do well in markets that have higher interest rate and potentially also more value-add special situations type funds. Higher returns, given the interest rate environment. That is our private funds and our listed funds business. Moving to our lodging management component. Lodging is having a good year again, and we're very thankful that we've got the lodging business. Our RevPAU is up 35%.
This is our Revenue Per Available Unit. This is driven by higher occupancy, higher room rates. We've seen great numbers across the board, particularly Japan, Singapore, Europe, all seeing nice uplifts in numbers. Most of you, as you try and travel, are probably complaining about room rates. I do that all the time, too, actually, myself, except that when I see these numbers, I'm very, very thankful that these rates are going up. We do think this momentum will hold for a while. Obviously, yesterday, China relaxed some measures on group tours. We think this continued pick up on tourism will continue to help our lodging business. But just to calibrate a little, last year, second half, was also a very good half for us, lodging business.
While we expect growth, whether we can still get 35% up on a full year basis, may be a little bit more challenging, but we are still seeing that improve, and we are very positive about the outlook for this part of the business. We continue with signings and expansions on the properties. You know, the target for this year, I think we went out to say was 13,500. We've made pretty good progress as of August, 7,000 units signed, 4,500 new opened. We always get a little bit of churn as some units drop off, but the team is seeing nice growth as the brands expand.
For those who don't know, we have more than 800 properties under our various lodging brands, and our goal is to make this into an even more sizable pillar. On the right-hand side, you can see our fee revenue targets. We are a little over SGD 150 for the first half. Obviously, we expect this pace will continue for the rest of the year, but it puts us nicely on track for getting to our SGD 500 million target as well. That will increasingly become important for us as a group. I think this one vertical for us, while it's slightly different from the fund management component, where they share that similarity is really on that recurring income, asset light nature. So very positive around our lodging business.
Now moving to our real estate investment business. These are the assets or investments we hold on our balance sheet. These are our stakes in the REITs, our stakes in the funds, and also the approximately SGD 10 billion worth of assets that we're hoping to divest off our balance sheet into our fund vehicles. This just gives you a shape of the portfolio, we are still largely Singapore and China, but as you can see, those percentages have come down slightly, and that's really driven by some growth in acquisitions other markets, but also the growth of our lodging business, where we also do have assets in other markets. As entities such as Keppel and Ascott Trust grows overseas, we see a little bit of that shift as well.
Our overall mix, as you can see, is going in the direction we want. We're trying to increase our diversification by geography. We're also trying to increase our diversification by asset class, because moving forward, we think that helps us in terms of resilience. In terms of how is our real estate portfolio and how are our investments doing? Now, as I think I've mentioned before, if you follow our REITs and our trusts, you get the bulk of how our portfolio is doing, right? More than 60% odd of our real estate investment business comes from our ownership stake. If you see CICT's performance, Ascendas REIT, Keppel and China Trust, you get a feel of how our performance in these different markets are going.
To give you a little bit more color, we thought we'd get some of our leaders in the different regions to share with you, a little bit about how the different markets are going. We're gonna start with Singapore, and I invite our Southeast Asia investment head, Patricia, to share a little bit about the market.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Actually, for Singapore, I shouldn't be the only one standing here. It is a collective effort of maybe more than 1,000 colleagues in Singapore, ranging from doing operations as far as investment, and that's headed by Chris Chong, Tony and William Tay, being our CICT and CLAR REIT CEO. I won't go too much into the operation details because on our balance sheet, we only actually have 3 assets in Singapore. CICT and CLAR has already shared most of the operation results, and it's largely in line. I think 3 key things are good rental reversion, strong retention, and also rental growth. So maybe let me just talk a bit more on the investment landscape, which perhaps most of you will be keen to hear.
From the investor point of view, we are still getting interest in Singapore. They like Singapore because it's a safe country, our asset value is stable, and the rules of engagement is clear. Obviously, they have also signaled that the era of low interest rate and getting investment returns just by getting low interest costs and expecting Cap rate to compress is out. They are expecting to see managers work harder on their assets, and this is the reason why they are keen to engage with CapitaLand, because we do show the track record of being able to do asset repositioning, bringing up rental growth. We have wide network and connection with our tenants. In Singapore, we have a tenant base of more than 1,005 for corporate tenants and more than 1,007 for retail tenants, which we engage directly.
These are the things that they consistently communicate with us, that that's why they want to engage with us. Compared to half a year ago, there's also more interest in our assets now, coming from a few angles. One is the camp of people who believe that interest rates have close to peak. It is relatively easier to price deals right now, because compared to one or two years ago, you'll be trying to think about when is interest rate going to peak and how long do we need to make that assumption. We do see that there's more engagement with investors, like what Andrew has pointed out, engaging with us. We do need to see where are the assets that we can offer. On the investment landscape, you'll all see that deals are slow in Singapore. There's not much transaction.
Office-wise, we only see Robinson Point being transacted. The buyer is the end user, Yang Zi Jiang. There's 2 freehold office strata units being transacted as well. Shophouses are popular. CLAR is active. They have done Seagate in One-North, as well as Toa Payoh and also industrial property. So we are constantly in the lookout. And in terms of the investment market right now, we do see that it's an interesting time. We have sellers whereby there are funds and the fund lives are coming to an end, so there is a timing pressure that they need to exit. We have sellers who wants to manage their Gearing down. And we also have sellers who wants to redeploy or reallocate their real estate assets because of Denominator effect.
Because you have motivated sellers, that gives us good opportunity to do bilateral discussion and get good deals for CapitaLand. This is exactly what the ground team is doing now, consistently engaging with owners and agents as well. Because we have different pots of capital, the REITs will take the core asset investment, while the private funds will be active, looking out for value at opportunities, which we are in the process of negotiating for some of the deals. An example, a point to make is our self-storage mandate. We have funds to deploy, right now we are seeing prices coming to a level where we're able to underwrite double-digit returns for the fund. Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks, Patricia. I like that, getting, good deals. Now we're just gonna invite, Gauri, from India to share with us a little bit on how that market is looking.
Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Happy to talk to you today. Just a quick rundown on India at the macro level first. India is clocking... is expected to clock a GDP growth of just about less than 7%, comparable to last year. Inflation is below 5%, well below the Reserve Bank's target. In the first half of 2023, we had close to $3.7 billion of foreign FDI investment into the Indian real estate sector. That's almost about 75% of the total FDI that had come in, in the year 2022. As of today, we have close to 1,600 global capability centers, that have set up shop in India, and every year, that goes up by about 120-150 GCCs.
In terms of the employment, about 300,000 additional IT jobs were taken up in the last six months. The total employment in the sector is about 5.8 million people. And if you reflect that into real estate space, we calculated that at 100 sq ft for every employee, so that is like a 580 million requirement on the Grade A office space, IT office space. In terms of specifically with the business parks industry itself, the first half of this year, we clocked about 26 million sq ft of gross absorption. That is comparable to what it was in 2022. 2022 was in itself among the best years for IT office or business parks absorption.
2022 clocked about 56 million sq ft. 2023, 2022 had the benefit of low absorption in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. 2023, despite 2022 being a high year, is expected to compare well with 2022, we are expected to have a better net absorption than 2022 at about 36 million-39 million sq ft. In terms of our own portfolio, we are clocking about 91% occupancy. This is at least about 12%-13% higher than the industry average, which stands at about 78%-79%. In terms of actual footfall in our parks, we have, on an average, we have greater than 50% of actual employees showing up at work.
Most of our tenants have mandated their employees to work in the office at least three days a week, usually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The percentage of our tenants who sort of allow their employees to work from anywhere is in the single digits and going down. In fact, most of the mandates these days require s ome of the mandates these days require four-day workweeks or even five-day workweeks in the office. In terms of leasing, 26 million was the gross leasing for the industry. As compared to that, we have punched better than our weight. New leases, we have signed about 2.25 million sq ft in the last six months, and we have renewed about 1.57 million sq ft.
As already announced, we are all excited by the launch of the new India Development Fund. It's S$525 million, and we will be targeting both greenfield and brownfield developments through that fund. 2023 is expected to be an exciting second half, and we expect that to continue in 2024 and 2025 as well. Now back to you, Paul.
Thanks, Gauri. Thank you very much. Then lastly, just to share a little bit on how things are in China, pass this to our China CEO, Tze Shyan g.
Good morning, everyone. Paul has given us 1 minute to say our piece. This is harder than the fundraising. I'll try and do it in 2. Allow me just to give. I'm Tze Shyang from the China team. Just allow me to give some color of what we see on the ground in China. post-COVID, pent-up demand for domestic tourism, hospitality, retail services have indeed made solid contributions. Overall, while the recovery is in place, as we all know, it has unfortunately fallen short of expectation. As we move into 3Q, hopes of a V-shaped recovery has faded. I guess against the backdrop of weakening global demand, supply chain relocation, moderately low domestic consumption and private sector investments, and also household savings has increasingly put away.
We do see a lot of the companies adopting a fairly cautious a-approach to business expansion and investments. While overall growth is slowing and the, and the economy is working hard to fend off deflation, Beijing has signaled very strongly it will come up to do more to boost consumption and private sector investments. Admittedly, all the businesses are hoping for a far bigger stimulus package to rejuvenate the economy further. On our front, the house view is that we remain cautiously optimistic that further policy relaxations, supports, as well as trade and consumption-enhancing measures will be rolled out progressively for second half of 23. Against this tough operating environment, our own operating performances have been very, very resilient. On a total portfolio basis, our revenue and NPIs are up from last year.
Specifically, on a same basket basis, revenues and NPIs are 4% and 7%, respectively, up year-on-year. Looking at retail, our footfalls are up about 34% from last year. Sales on a per square meter basis are up 25%. Even on a total sales perspective, we are up 8.2% year-on-year. As Paul alluded to, the recovery is in place, but of course, we hope for a greater acceleration as the time goes on. For our retail and office occupancies, they have all crept up despite lower rents. Simply put, our strategy is to prioritize occupancy right now, i.e., cash flows. We successfully carry out a lot of good AEIs. All of them have given us double-digit ROIs.
For business parks, our occupancies have held very steady and even with a slight increase in rents. That's on the operating side. On the fundraising side, very happy to share and, and, and to reiterate what Andrew has said in the morning. We have continued to drive fundraising efforts, and we have closed up another S$870 million for our CCOP Special Situations Fund, where we will take on special sits in China, distressed opportunities, value add opportunities at the right pricing. We are also very active on the renminbi fundraising front. As you know, over the last 2 years, we have managed to raise close to S$40 billion in a third-party capital, domestic capital. This year, we remain confident that we should be able to add a couple more to our staple.
Also, finally, we are looking at this strategic opportunity to potentially sponsor or participate in the C-REIT market. This is really part of our China for China overall strategy. We, we really want to broaden our access to alternate additional funding sources. We have started with insurance companies and securities companies, trust companies, but increasingly, we want to target more, like mid, mid, midterm, long-term funds, pension funds, social security funds, and annuity funds, and the like. Such a platform will then give us, like, greater access to-... asset recycling in the future, and it will present credible exit options, which are very important to our PE investors, both domestic and foreign. Over to you, Paul Tham.
Thanks, Tze Shyang . I've been in this company for about a year and a half now, and I've come to really like this management team, but we really can't do 1-2 minutes around here. Not our skill set. Okay, so we talked about our three core markets. We actually do have teams on the ground in a lot of other markets who are working very hard, and we are actually seeing progress, whether it's Australia, South Korea, Japan, the U.S., and Europe. And we do think over time, these markets will also become increasingly important for us. That was to give you a sense of all the different parts of the business and how things are moving along. Very quickly, I'm just gonna run you through now how that translates into the numbers for us.
We've mentioned this multiple times for the course of the presentation. Total PATMI numbers on the right-hand side for us, down 19%, driven by that middle section, lower portfolio divestments, where you can see the stark drop off from 87 down to 7. We will see this number improve in the second half as a number of the divestments will post 30th of June. It is still an area of weakness that we think for this over the course of this year. I think the comfort for us is really on that operating PATMI. It's held up pretty well in the current environment, but particularly with the higher interest rates. We're hoping to keep the momentum on that front. On an overall EBITDA basis, here, the EBITDA may be slightly confusing.
Those of you who know, EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. For us, because of the way we're structured, we hold stakes in our REITs and funds. Some of that interest is actually accounted for at the investment JV associate level, before it floats up into our EBITDA number. Because of that, you don't see the full effect of the higher interest rates necessarily in this, taken out in this number. This number is partly down because of the higher interest impact that we are seeing, and you'd have seen this across a lot of our REITs as well. Maybe just two things to highlight on the slide. On the left-hand side, by business, as you can see, our fee-related business is now up to 30%, so it's improvement from the 26% last year.
This is the part which we wanna continue to see grow, as we generate higher recurring fees and that stability on that fee income. Then in the middle column, you can see China has rebounded for us, from a 12% contribution to an 18% contribution. That is encouraging for us. We expect next year, we will also see improvement in this number. We do expect it to contribute a larger part to the portfolio. As you can see, the other parts of the business, whether it's Singapore or the other developed markets, are helping make up for some of that. Fee-related earnings by unit. Listed funds, generally flat. While recurring was up, event-driven was down. Similar for private funds, the big swing was the event-driven fees.
The one-off of $31 million from last year for the performance fees for Vietnam and Singapore made that a little bit outsized. On a more normal run rate basis, you can see that recurring has actually inched up. On a total fee basis, thanks really to that star performance from lodging, you can see that we're up slightly year-on-year. On our real estate investment business, here you can see the revenue is up 9%, and this gives you a better indication. You know, generally, we are seeing positive rental reversions. We are seeing higher revenues at a number of our properties, but that's really a lot of that is being hit by the higher interest rates, which is what gets to our bottom line. Then capital recycling.
Last slide on the really on the business performance component of it. As you can see, recycling, we've put a number there of SGD 839 million. More than SGD 800 million of that came post 30th of June, we had a very busy couple of months. Team is working very hard. That's why it doesn't reflect. That's why you see a SGD 7 million profit number for divest for portfolio gains. Some of that will flow through. We have an annual target of SGD 3 billion. This is gonna be a challenging market for us on being able to get to that SGD 3 billion target.
Obviously, the team is still pressing and trying to get there. We do think that while we have the funds for deployment, and we have the assets we wanna divest, we also wanna make sure we're doing good deals. Because of that, and I think we're still gonna continue to take a prudent approach to transactions. We are still pushing on the divestment target, but certainly, it's a little bit of weakness this year. Finally, just on our balance sheet, two things to highlight here is you'll see our interest costs now at 3.8%. That's inched up slightly from Q1, where we were at 3.6%. For the bankers in the room, if you could help us bring that number down, we'd very much appreciate it.
As you can see, we still have a fair bit of healthy debt headroom. We're at 0.5. We're at 0.57 times. That number has creeped up because in the first half of the year, we paid dividends, and we did the special dividend in species of the CapitaLand Ascott Trust units. That has moved up. We still have very comfortably significant debt headroom if there are potential portfolios or platforms to acquire. Those are the two things we'd highlight off that. Sustainability, very quickly. We continue to track well towards our 2030 targets. Energy intensity, water intensity reductions, both of those we've already exceeded our 2030 targets. On the others, we are making steady progress.
If you have questions on this, I'm sure Vince would love to talk about it. Just so that we get to Q&A, in terms of our overall conclusion, some of our key takeaways, Andrew's covered a lot of this. I think just maybe the one thing to say before we go to Q&A is we do believe there are opportunities for growth. I don't think we are one of those players who are single vertical, single industry, where, you know, if that industry goes well or that sector goes well, you'll see great growth from us. We are diversified geographically and product-wise, because of that, growth for us, will come from multiple sources. Puts us in good stead in halves like this, where you see our earnings being resilient.
It also means growth for us will have to come from multiple avenues, for us to really get that scale. With that, let me end and move to Q&A, invite Chee Koon and Andrew on stage to take questions.
Thank you, Paul. In addition to Chee Koon, Andrew, and Paul, who will be on stage, I would like to make a few introductions as well. Of our panel who are sitting in the front row, we have Kevin Goh, CEO of Lodging. Simon Treacy, CEO of PERE, and Patrick Buerkle , CEO of PERA. Yep. Also to our viewers online, if you would like to join in the discussion, please feel free to leave a comment or a question by clicking the Pose Question tab on your screens. With that, maybe I'll get Chee Koon. Chee Koon, any remarks from you before we start?
Yeah. Hi, morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us in the results briefing. Andrew, thank you. Paul. They covered most of the key points that I wanted to do, so actually I can do it in less than 1 minute, contrary to what Paul has mentioned. Just want to highlight 1 point. I mean, When we restructured the business to split the development business and the asset management business, we are really positioning the company for growth. I mean, at this point in time, the big environment is one where we are dealing with all the rising interest rates, very difficult geopolitical environment. The key, the, the other dimension of the challenge is the uncertainty of where things will land and how things will land. I mean, I just want you to know that.
I mean, that's the environment that we are dealing in, dealing with. We're looking at many, many deals, debating on many deals. The only thing why we are not doing some of the deals is because we are just not happy in terms of the pricing that we are getting. Because we do believe that, you know, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we can deliver consistent, high quality earnings for our, whether it's our unit holders, whether it's our LPs in the various funds. I mean, that's the key, including the investors at CLI level. Pace will pick up if we find that the bid, ask price is closer to what we are looking for, because at the end of the day, if you can't deliver the returns, there's no point in pursuing growth for growth's sake.
That's something that we are very, very disciplined and something that I want to emphasize. The only other thing for me to highlight is, despite all this difficult environment, for us to be able to deliver this result here is really the hard work of many of the, the, the people that you don't see. I mean, you see all the CEOs speaking, the re-CEOs, the, the key senior leaders, people like Paul and Andrew. There are many people behind the scene, from Chris Chong to Alvin, who worked so hard to go and convince people to, you know, to set up shop in Singapore in our various business parks. Chris Chong, who, who does a great job in terms of repositioning all the assets.
For those of you who are in Singapore, if you visit the malls and the offices, you look at how the repositioning has been done, the courage, I mean, even from shopping malls like Funan to Raffles City, for those of you who have visited, you look at the comments from the tenants, the performances, all these are hard work and the courage done by the team. I just thought useful to, not to forget, behind all these numbers are really the good work done by the various people in the company. With that, we open to Q&A. Thanks.
Thanks, Chee Koon. Mervyn, as usual, always the fastest hand. Mervyn, please take over.
Hi, I'm Mervyn from JPMorgan . Congrats on the strong raising efforts, given the tough environment. Given potential peak interest rates, are you seeing a pickup in interest from your LPs, and which products are they most interested, interested in? Second question is, in terms of the SGD 10 billion in better FUM, how much of that realistically can be deployed in the second half? Finally, we've seen Sabana REIT remove or the Sabana REIT remove their REIT manager. Should we be worried? How are you thinking about defending your S-REIT business? Thanks.
Simon, do you want to answer the, the fundraising, part of the question?
Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for the question. In terms of capital raising, investors around the world are now starting to see probably the end game in interest rates, and making their 2024 plans based on what those more normalized operating environments look like in terms of higher for longer. I think over the next quarter, investors are definitely going to send papers to their boards and investment committees and look at their allocations in 2024 in real estate globally. Asia, for European and U.S. investors, definitely remain underweight, and that's good news. They see growth and diversification as being the key benefits looking into Asia. Again, as I've said in previous result, the briefings, the reception we're receiving globally is very attractive. It's very encouraging. It does take time.
It is a very competitive market, but as you can see by the results, we're starting to get some headlines. We're starting to get followed by our very thoughtful research that's online. Therefore, I think Q1 next year, we should really start to see the wallets being opened up. I think that will come from probably, the German market, and the pension funds in the U.S. That's our hope, that that will add additional levels of capital than what we've seen before with our existing investors who continue to support us.
In terms of due flow, we are seeing dues, we're just not happy with the pricing. At this point in time, in terms of balance sheet application, we are still using it, but we use it to do credit type use. We like the credit exposure because many of this, we are quite prepared I mean, we of course, we hope that the people that we lend money to, they will pay. Otherwise, we are quite happy to own the asset. That's not the intention, because we really want to grow the credit business. I mean, the big picture is this, right? We are seeing high interest rates, we are seeing banks essentially withdrawing in many of the developed markets, the ability to provide financing.
I think that provides a very interesting window for us to really build out the credit business and the credit platform. We have credit teams in Australia, in Hong Kong, in China, in India, I think looking to really build a Pan-Asian platform during the next few years. That's something that we really want to be able to do at this point in time. That will be the focus for the next few months. If there are good news, we are quite prepared to buy. I mean, to use balance sheet, we need to be able to deliver very high returns because the cost of capital is so high. Yeah.
Why don't I take the question on Sabana? Someone was gonna ask it, so I thought you'd probably wanna go first. A few general points to make, and then one about us as a sponsor, I think. The first point, if you look at other REIT markets, if most of us are students of other REIT markets, I think there's a general process of maturation that REIT markets undergo, and internalization is one option for REITs to pursue. We've seen this happen before. We've seen this happen in Australia, we've seen this happen in the U.S., and it's happened before in Singapore, actually. The Sabana is not the first. I think that's... We accept it. It's a, it's an option that REITs, unitholders, REIT managers may deploy.
A lot of reports, a lot of studies have been put out to ascertain as to whether the internal model is better than all the external models better, and I think it's safe to say there is no conclusive evidence either way. You can make an argument for both sides, which is probably why in most mature REIT markets, you have instances of internal managers, and you have instances of external managers that do well and that don't do well. Which probably leads me to the conclusion where it ultimately goes back to the performance of the REIT, the performance of the manager, and if there is a sponsor, what is the role of the sponsor in ensuring or determining or playing a key role in the success of the REIT performance?
That is, goes back to our position as sponsor, and it's a position we take incredibly seriously, right? If you look back, we alluded to this earlier, the track record of our REITs is something we are rightfully proud of, I think. We take every investment decision as incredibly seriously. I can share with you that there have been many instances where we have pulled back from doing deals with our REIT managers because we didn't feel it was the right thing or the right time to do, and this involves sponsor deals. To me, fundamentally, it will go back to the role that we see ourselves and the role that we can play for our REITs. We are happy to defend that.
If unitholders want to ask us about how do we see our role as sponsor, the responsibilities that we take seriously, I think we are very happy to defend that in front of it. I mean, we would look point to the track record of all of our REITs as testimony to that now. Good luck to Sabana. Sabana is specifically has interesting history as well, right? We all know that. It could also be down to a specific case of this particular REIT dealing with circumstances that are unique to itself. I hope that answers your question, Mervyn.
Just to add on to Andrew's point. I think, it goes back to what fundamentally is the vision and the responsibility for CLI. I mentioned about, you know, being able to deliver consistent, high-quality earnings, for unitholders, for investors, for the LPs. Being sponsors, for the various REITs, and I mean, we don't own 3%-5%, we generally own average 20% or more in the various REIT vehicles, so our fate is very much tied to the performance of the other unitholders. That's point number one.
You know, for major transactions, when we undertook the merger between then Ascott Residence Trust and Ascendas Hospitality Trust, we feel that it was important to put the two vehicle together, first and foremost, because there was a conflicting mandate, and we believe that that will strengthen the balance sheet. If we didn't do it during that time, I think, if just Ascendas Hospitality Trust on its own, during the COVID, will be very, very difficult for them. We did it, and we waived the fees. I mean, not just simply because we are doing it, just because we wanted to earn the fees. We waived, if I'm not wrong, if I don't remember wrongly, it's about 50% of the fees waived.
Subsequently, we did a merger between CCT and CMT to create an integrated commercial trust, which Tony is running. We did it during COVID, right? I mean, there was S$100 million worth of fees, which we totally waived. Why do we do that? Because we believe that at that point in time, retail was, you know, there was challenges in terms of e-commerce. Nobody knew exactly how things were, how things was going to unfold. Then office, and then suddenly office, there was a work from home fears. But when you put the two portfolio together, you look at the performance, the underlying resilience of CICT today, of the Singapore assets. We did that, we waived the fees. It's S$100 million worth of fees.
I mean, it's a big amount, but we did it because we believed it was in the best interest of the unitholders for both CCT and CMT. I think if we are prepared to be responsible sponsors and undertake action, and be prepared to put the money where our mouth is, I think that longevity in terms of relationship becomes important. It builds trust over, over time. Yeah.
Thanks for that. I think, I guess we'll soon find out, people's cost of debt if you don't have a very strong sponsor behind you.
Okay, thank you. Gauri, you go next.
Hi, thanks, thanks for the presentation. Okay, Chee Koon, I need to ask you this: With the restructuring of CLI, fee income is a very important part of it. If there is a conflict between CLI and your REITs, and REIT, the DPU growth, where is your interest?
I mean, CapitaLand has been a long-term sponsor of the REITs, for many, many years. I mean, today, if we need to do another merger, say, for the CCT and CMT on the same condition, I, I don't believe we would take a position that's going to be different. You know, if CLI in the old CapitaLand days, we had taken the same decision, because if that's what we believe is the right decision, that's something that we will do. I think it has to be on a case-by-case basis. Context is important, the market conditions are important, and what is ultimately the value that we can create to the unitholders becomes important. Yeah.
I mean, Gauri, the conflict is perceived. There actually shouldn't be a conflict. In the long term, there's no conflict. We own 20% in our REITs. DPU directly affects us directly. If we take a short-term view to earn an acquisition fee because we push an asset down, that is not healthy for the REITs. First of all, it is judged on independently. We have no say in the ability for the REIT to acquire that, right? We are putting ourselves up in a position where it's very vulnerable, and we would be seen to have acted negatively by independent unitholders, for which we have no control. I think one of...
Going back to Mervyn's question, one of the strengths of the S-REIT market and the ecosystem is the legislation that sits behind it and safeguards the interests of minority unitholders. I think this is something that actually, in a way, differentiates the S-REIT market from many other markets, right? Sponsors, perception of sponsors, disproportionate control or influence actually is mitigated to a great extent. Anything that happens between sponsor and REIT essentially happens without the direct influence of the sponsor. The unitholders, the independent unitholders, decide. If we do, you know, if we do something that is contrary to the benefit of the REIT, we may win in the short term, but lose in the long term. I think if you look at us and you judge us by our track record, that is not what we are about.
I don't actually see a conflict of interest.
The other thing to add is that, for some of you, I mean, the people who are doing the deals at the REIT level or at the funds level, when you negotiate with the banks, actually, the CapitaLand franchise does make a difference in terms of the pricing. I mean, you can talk to the banks. I mean, the being responsible sponsor, being sponsors that stand behind the vehicle does make a difference. Yeah.
The other question following from that is, I mean, you have pared down some of your stakes in some of the REITs recent, well, CLAS, and I think CICT last year. Would you, would you increase that stake to defend it in the event of something like this becoming more widespread in the case of?
We have publicly communicated that we will keep about 20%-25% stakes in our REITs. I don't think that's going to change, because we do believe that you do need a certain skin in the game to show that there is alignment. I think anything too low, it's not going to show the alignment. You know, investors will start to think, are you really I mean, if for the purpose of, let's say you want to drive super high ROE, the best thing to do is to make sure that there's no stake. You know, that you just collect 100% of the fees. Really, all the unitholders will be thinking, everything that you're doing, are you doing it in the best interest?
We do need to make sure that, you know, whatever that we are buying, from the perspective of the REITs, you know, in terms of DPU, the DPU accretion does make a difference to CLI, and we need to be able to account to the CLI investors as well. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. We'll have Brandon from CT, and I'll go over to this side after Brandon.
Hey, hi. morning, Chee Koon and team. just a few questions. The first one would be on China. I just want to get your thoughts on I think CLI's strategy here over the next couple of years. I mean, I think China is, is in a very different situation today, and I wanna understand what's, what's your strategy in your base case scenario and in your worst case scenario? that's my first question. The second question would be on India. I think you, you've talked quite a bit on, on this geography this time around. Is, is there a certain target AUM exposure that you're looking at? I think looking at the, the number of private equity funds that have been exiting, do you think this is the right time to further accelerate your position here? Thanks.
I must say that the questions that you ask are things that we discuss in our board room. In fact, it was, we had heavy discussions with our board members yesterday on exactly these two markets. Okay, China is a big country, so I mean, to be honest, when I read the deflationary numbers that China reported, it was, to be honest, a little bit alarming. But I think the important thing is to, to look at it, whether it is something that is gonna be ongoing, and whether it cuts across the whole China, because China is big.
If you take a step back, really CLI's investments into China really focus on the Tier 1 cities, the key provincial cities, where there's strong urbanization, strong student growth in terms of business activity, at least in the last 20 years. There are concerns around China, you know, whether what is the impact on FDI, demographics? All these are big questions. I probably don't have an answer for you today, I personally think that China, given its 1.4 billion population, if we stay focused on investing in the few key markets where we have a strong operating capability, strong execution capability, strong demand.
If you look at the, the shopping malls, that we have today, I mean, we are still able to creep up in terms of the occupancy. I must say that the rents, reversion is lower than our underwriting, because we had assumed that the recovery was much stronger. I do think that we can still have the ability to execute. It's just that going forward, we need to think through what does it mean in terms of the asset classes, in terms of the, where else should you be expanding in China? That's something that we are still thinking about. I don't have an answer yet. You can see that, from a few years ago, we started on the strategy of using a lot more Chinese capital for China.
We made the decision to raise a domestic renminbi in 2021. Today, we raised about CNY 40 billion renminbi. There's still quite a lot of traction that is ongoing. Of course, we are exploring C-REITs. I mean, it's something that we are still exploring. There are complications. You know, C-REIT itself is, is not so easy because first and foremost, you cannot be the fund manager. You don't, you don't have the public fund management license. That's point number one. The second thing that happens for C-REIT is for any asset that gets recycled into the C-REITs, 90% of the proceeds have to be reinvested, whether it's for development or for asset enhancement work. There are all these things that we need to think through, the implications.
Although, as what Tze Shyang mentioned earlier, C-REIT, even though it's starting out, I think it, it's an interesting vehicle for us to look at as potential, asset rec- recycling platform. I mean, if you can create, in my own view, domestic, Renminbi, whether it's on the private or on the C-REIT side, that can still buy, have a very competitive cost of capital, then I believe that, you know, for whatever value add type of strategies that we do with offshore investors, there are logical exits for many of these investors. Today, because we have been in China for so long, right?
When some of the other foreign players are starting to withdraw, you have people who feel comfortable, domestic capital, feeling comfortable to put capital with us because of our reputation, because we have been doing things in the proper manner, governance, financing, and we need to know how to play to that advantage. When people are all withdrawing, how do you play that to maximize that advantage and the capability? If you do it right, you can continue to manage a lot of assets, deliver returns, and still be able to collect fee income from domestic capital. That's how I would say about the China aspect. I mean, of course, unless we think that China is gonna go through a serious downturn, which I, at least in the planning scenario, we don't think so.
I mean, my own view is that, for every government, whether it's the Chinese government or any democratic government, economic progress is important for the legitimacy of every government, and I personally don't see why any government would want to do anything to, to run down the economy. That's my view. On India, I've been pressuring Sanjeev and his team in terms of driving a lot more growth in India. We have been there since 2004, business parks, logistics, more recently, data centers. I must say that we have been having a lot of requests from foreign investors about wanting to do more in India as a diversification play from China.
The thing about India is that, you know, we have a huge land bank, and in terms of square footage of buildings that we manage, but the rents are generally quite, quite low. It's a dollar, I mean, generally. Yeah, so you know that the capital value in India is low. So even though you can buy a lot of land and you do development, it does take time to, to play. So there are other things that we are looking at, we'll share with you when, when we are more ready. But India is definitely a key area of focus for, for growth for us. Yeah. Thanks.
Maybe just to add to what Chee Koon mentioned, just particularly on China, I, I think. Chee Koon covered. Really, you know, there are three things we are doing in both scenarios for us. The first is domestic for domestic. Whether the economy is up or down, we believe there is a play in China for us to raise renminbi for renminbi use. I think the second is, no matter what, there are foreign investors who are still interested in China, as evidenced from our China special situations and our China data center fund. It's just finding the right product, and we can still grow in those areas, making sure that our product fits what some investors are looking for.
The third thing, just to highlight, one of the other things for us at China is similar to other markets, but more so for China, is capital recycling for us. Historically, our stakes in a lot of China, joint ventures or efforts, has been more closer to the 50% range. I think no matter what, however the scenarios pan out, the intention for us is to reduce those stakes, similar to what we do in all the other markets, right? Where we come down to 10%-20%. For China, it will just become more meaningful, just given the size of our presence there. We may end up redeploying it into other funds in China, if that grows, but that component of recycling, our assets there will continue. Thanks so much.
Tze Shean , you have a question?
Hi, this is Tze Shean from Goldman. My first question is on ROE. Can you talk about ROE for this year, and also longer-term target and timeline taken to achieve that?
Yeah, I guess that one is me. You know, longer term, our ROE target has always been to get to a double-digit number. For us to get to a double-digit number, that requires 2 things. It requires us to lighten our balance sheet, and it requires us, at least over the next few years, to see more significant portfolio gains to get us to above that number. Over the last couple of years, we've been 8.6%, then we came down to 5.5% last year because it was more challenging. If you look at us on a sort of a rolling last 12 months, we're just north of 5%. We should see some pickup if we can see portfolio gains second half of the year.
To get to that double-digit will likely be at least a 2- to 3-year journey for us. It will require us to lighten up really the assets we have on balance sheet, and really see an improvement in terms of performance fees and growth on that fee business.
Thank you. Second question is, can you share your thoughts on Cascaden , opportunities within Cascaden ?
Cascaden is a entity that is owned by a separate consortium. I must say that as, CLI, we constantly look at all opportunities in the market. Whether there's a, any possible transaction or depends on whether deals, they are accretive, whether it makes sense, and whether we can get agreement between a buyer and a seller. That's all I can say at this point in time. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Yep. We'll pass the mic to you.
Hi, good morning. I'm Jessie from the Business Times. Congrats on your results, especially from the lodging business. I have two questions today. The first is about Ascendas REIT. How is the outlook like for our high-tech business parks? Are rents starting to soften as some tech companies reduce the space they are leasing? My second question, I have to ask this, but WeWork is like a major tenant for CICT, and I'm sure you guys are aware of the news. What is management's view on this, and do we know whether WeWork might be in arrears? Thank you so much.
Thank you. First question, can I invite William to answer? Then second question, Tony, since the two of you are here.
Can we get a mic to William?
Hi, good morning. I didn't know that I need to answer questions. Next time, I attend my briefing. The numbers that we have shown, has shown, positive rental reversion. Those are very strong numbers, and if you follow our results, we have actually improved our guidance from a low single, from mid-single digit to a high single digit positive rental reversion. For business park, as your second part of question talks about the tech, offices or tenants, we don't see a huge impact on us, given the fact that the leases, there's no pretermination rights. So if there's any requirements or their own, needs to do subleasing, they will do it on their own.
Just to recap, all this require our approval, including JTC's approval, and we don't see a huge impact on that, coming out from the tech tenants. Thanks, Jesse.
Tony?
I also never expect having to speak here. Next time, I attend my own briefing. I think the news in the WeWork is nothing new. It probably, if you track the news, flow, WeWork's issue has been well publicized and written in for quite a long period of time. I mean, as a very, active asset manager, we constantly make sure that we are in a position to ring-fence our risk. If need to, we just step in. To us, this is part and parcel of our day-to-day job. It's a BAU to us. Now, WeWork is the second largest, tenant in our portfolio.
... I think currently, WeWork came out to say that they are doing quite okay in Singapore. If you need to, we've done before, we just have to make sure that we activate our contingency plan we have in place, and we know how the market is functioning. Singapore, we, we know the tenants well. You can use Twitter as one example. For example, in Twitter, I think we solved that quite, quite nicely. To us, it's a BAU. I don't see any issue.
Maybe I give just some color around Singapore. I mean, in a world of great uncertainty, geopolitical environment, you know, there's a consensus around all the banking crisis in Europe. Singapore actually benefited from all this uncertainty around the world. During COVID, I mean, for those of you who remembered, you know, with the great work of our port authorities, Lei Hu used to be from our Maritime Port Authority, kept our ports open, make sure that we are critical node in the supply chain. That was a very important decision made by the Singapore government.
Today, you'll find that many of the high-tech manufacturers continue to want to look to put their supply chain on high-tech manufacturing in Singapore or near Singapore, because they are concerned about supply chain dislocation. Singapore plays a key node in keeping the global supply chain open. That's point number one. The point number two is, with all the uncertainty around the world, we see so many family offices coming to Singapore. I mean, the new family offices, I think we don't even know what is the number today. All those people working in the banks, you look at all the record profits, you just...
I mean, it's, it's good for the Singapore local banks, but, you know, you can just see the flows of the capital coming to Singapore, family offices, people looking for homes, people looking for offices, so the demand is there. Of course, you know, there's a lot of hard work by the team on the ground, Chris Chong and his team, continuously looking at, making sure that how you reposition the assets to continue to attract, tenants. I think that, that plays a big part. There's another element here. We do see, a number of, companies moving, you know, for Chinese companies that, well, they always wanted to expand overseas, whether to Europe or to US.
Of course, today, maybe a direct expansion into Europe and U.S. may be a bit more challenging, so some of them are looking to set up a base in Singapore, you know, to localize the, the business here, recruit locally, use local technology, you know, to build the local teams. That's why you start to see a lot of demand for, for office, for industrial spaces, even for retail products, coming to Singapore. Many of you started to see Luckin Coffee appearing. I mean, when they decide to come to Singapore, you walk almost every corner, you start to see Luckin Coffee. I just want to highlight that. I mean, Singapore is actually benefiting from, from some of these major trends.
I mean, that's why Patricia keeps getting phone calls from various people looking to, to acquire assets in Singapore. Just the big picture on the opportunity for, for Singapore.
Can we have Joy? Oh, come in.
Thank you. Joy from HSBC. I have a few questions. First, Chee Koon, just to follow up, you mentioned about credit. Is this using your own balance sheet to offer credit, or this is purely credit funds?
It's important that when we want to start something new, we are prepared to put the money where our mouth is. We put our balance sheet to work, build up the business, and we start to talk to investors. If investors are keen to come in, they come in, though we are quite happy with the returns. I think through building up their track record, we will be able to build up their credit funds because there are investors who are interested in the credit space, if you have not built up their track record, to be able to raise the funds, I mean, people will start to think, I mean, I mean, where, where is your track record? Yeah.
How quickly do you think you can scale this up and to start raising funds?
Patrick, you want to share? I, I better get them to answer so that they can own the outcome.
Thanks for the question. We are looking to scale up an Australian program this calendar year. We're actively speaking to investors. After that, these loans are fairly short duration, and we'll get the second program out in the market.
I think, Joy, the key is that we have a balance sheet, so it's an option, a strategic option for us, as it is for all products. If we need to seed, we can seed. Obviously, if we don't have to, then all the better.
I, I guess just to follow up on that, does that also mean all the deals that you're seeing in the market, from an equity perspective, is not attractive, and even for markets like China?
No, no, that's not, that's not true. I mean, it's just there is a credit opportunity, we will build it up. equity deals, unless we can see a interesting price that we are prepared to buy, then we just wouldn't, wouldn't proceed with the transaction. Yeah.
Just specifically on China deal makings, there are lots of portfolios being put on markets.
Mm.
I'm sure you've looked at it. Could you share a little bit, you know, more about?
Mm
Why you're walking away from some of them?
Tze Shyang , do you want to comment on this point?
Thanks, Zhiqun. Can you hear me? Yeah.
We can hear you.
Thanks, thanks for the question. Yes, we see a lot of portfolios put out in the market. As I'm going back to what Zhiqun said: We are very disciplined. We are not going to rush into any deals. Some of these portfolios come from companies who are currently in some form of distress, so it does take time to unwind or to isolate or ring-fence out this risk. At the end of the day, we will take the opportunities, and, yeah, we will try and match it with capital sources. Back to your question on credit. There are credit opportunities in China. There are also special situations in China. There will always be a certain product that a certain group of capital providers like. It's all about matching risk and the returns are.
China, yes, there will be opportunities. Yes, there are portfolios. Yes, we are all evaluating. Moving into the second half, I think we will do both credit deals as well as special situations.
Okay. Just one last question from me on lodging. I think this is the first half that lodging is the biggest contributor to EBITDA. Do you think that, you know, this business can grow to a size which it can potentially stand by itself?
Just to clarify, what do you mean by stand by itself? It's already standing by itself.
Yeah.
Just to clarify.
I think, you know, it can potentially become a, you know, sort of, separate entities, because it's, or it's currently a substantial part of.
just to clarify, your question is whether it should be, it should be what? separately listed?
Would you consider-
The big question is this, right? When you seek listing, I mean, the idea is you need to seek capital for its growth. If there is not capital constraint, we can get capital to fund its growth, through private funds. It's delivering strong income. If the value, the fee income from the lodging business gets reflected in the valuation of the listed entity, the question is whether we need to do that I wouldn't say no, but I think there are many questions that we need to think through, whether it makes sense. I mean, I, I'm not sure what I mentioned to you before.
I mean, many, many, many years ago, when I was running the Ascott business, the question is about, you know, the ROE was so low, why shouldn't CapitaLand sell the business? You know, to invest in a business, it takes time. I mean, to build the fee income, to reduce the balance sheet, and I mean, when I used to explain, you know, is that every time you sign a management contract, it's a 20 years management contract. The fee will flow through. It flows through very, very nicely. Actually, what happened during COVID, the last few years, and if you track what is being articulated by the major hospitality companies, many of them want to move seriously into the extended stay space. Why?
Because it's not easy to recruit people to work in the hotels and the F&B industry globally. The service apartment business, the business that Kevin is running, it's very efficient in terms of the manpower. Typically, even for its Ascott-branded service apartment, the staff-to-room ratio is about 0.3. That's at least based on my recollection, that used to be the numbers. Somerset is 0.2 something, and Citadines is lower, and lyf product, co-living, is even lower. That's why you can achieve very, very strong, healthy margins as compared to many of the hospitality products.
At least I know, in some markets where it's difficult to recruit, people to work in the major hotels to support the rooms that they need, housekeeping and the conference facilities, many of them have to shut down the rooms. They rather operate with fewer rooms, just simply because they cannot cope with that. Actually, the extended stay space that Kevin is in today is actually a nice niche. It's unique. It's the only, I would say, a global extended stay product. I mean, today, for anybody that wants to start this business, it's gonna take time to build it up to the scale where, where CapitaLand has built up today. Yeah. Kevin, you want to share a bit more color? I think you.
Very well.
Thank you.
Okay, we've got a member from the media. Terence, we'll come back to you after.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation. I'm Selina Wang from Bloomberg News. I just wanted to ask a few questions about China, based on what you guys shared just now. You said that foreign investors are still very interested. I'm curious, how concerned are they about, you know, the slower-than-expected recovery? What do they find most investable? Then in terms from your end, what are some areas of expansion that you're considering or looking into? Thank you.
I'll just highlight a few key points, and then Zixuan to do the elaboration. I think there are pockets of investors. I mean, some of the developed country investors, if you can say... If you have read in the papers, generally, there are people who are concerned around China for geopolitics and the slowing economy. There's also a group of investors that like the contrarian play. They like the fact that China is the second-largest economy. There are pockets of opportunities where people can deploy, invest. I think we need to make sure that the sectors that we invest in are in line with the broader policy, policy-supported sectors. I think that's roughly the, the key themes that we will look at. Maybe I get Tze Shyang to, to share more in terms of his responses. Tze Shyang ?
Thanks for the question. Yeah, from, from any investor's perspective, you know, not, not just those that look at China, you will look for profitability, right? If you feel that the outlook of the market gives you that opportunity to make money, you will be naturally interested. For China itself, many investors are worried over the shorter term issues. But they recognize that it's a large market, it is still urbanizing, so there are still a lot of opportunities. We see, investors who are not yet invested in China, they tend to adopt a wait-and-see. But those who are already invested in China, and some of them are also entrenched in China, there is this willingness to look further, so they are also long China. As, as Puah Tze Shyang said, the geopolitics will always be there.
Currently, I think the investors are just trying to stay out of sensitive sectors, which potentially could be a bit more problematic. In terms of real estate, which is not policy sensitive, I think there are a lot of opportunities, especially in the arena of special situations. The assets are fine, right? Just that the owners currently experience a bit of a cash flow difficulties or the need to monetize for other reasons. This space, the real estate space that we're in, we continue to see investors who are familiar with China wanting to deploy more, but naturally, they are a bit more cautious there. At the end of the day, it's all about exits.
One of the competitive advantages that we have, is that we are able to, to play with scenarios, which means that we can help foreign investors invest, and we will give them credible exit optionalities. I think that is very key. I think I'll stop there.
The point not to forget is, I mean, China's huge population. I mean, just look at the insurance sector. The number of insurance policies that they sell on a year-on-year basis, and the insurance companies needing to match the liabilities with assets. Sometimes the complex deals, for regulatory reasons, they are not able to do. If you are able to take over some of these assets, fix it, regularize it, drive up the occupancy, then you'll find a natural takeout vehicles. I mean, you will see some of these things being executed by, by the teams on the ground, and I will be happy to share when things are more, more ready. Yeah. I mean, just imagine the number of people...
I mean, people are getting older, there's a big middle class. People are buying insurance, and those pools of capital needs to be deployed.
Just one quick follow-up. Thanks for that. Any guidance on the outlook for how your China portfolio will perform in the second half? Thanks.
Tze Shyang ?
As I shared earlier during my presentation, I think on the operating side, we will certainly outperform last year. In terms of, I think numbers, we should trade up, and then we are going to try and match our pre-COVID numbers eventually there. That's on the operating side. On the fundraising side, again, we still have institutional investors with us. They are long China, so we have raised S$817 billion so far for CCOP, and I am quietly confident I'm going to continue to put on two or three more RMB funds. In terms of asset recycling, while activities have been low in the first half of the year, again, just watch out for this space.
We will be able to execute a few of our plans second half of the year. That should be in the pipeline as well. Thank you.
We'll reserve the last question for Terence.
Thanks. I have a question for Tze Shyang as well, back to China. It's related to the prior question. How negative is the China retail rental reversions in the first half? Could you also share, where retail sales are as a % of 2019 levels? Also, what kind of occupancy costs we are looking at, currently versus pre-COVID levels?
Retail sales right now, as, as I shared earlier, retail sales, we are basically back to 2019 levels. You know, while the footfall is about 20% lower than 2019 levels, which we typically refer to as pre-COVID, our retail sales on a per square meter basis has actually come up to 2019 levels. Roughly around RMB 1,500, you know, if you, if you're familiar with that. In terms of, occupancy cost, occupancy cost, we have seen during the COVID years, a trend that, rises up above, maybe between 30%. Yeah, that's typically where we are. But we have, this year, for first half, we have seen it come back down to normal levels.
I think that, that there's, also something that, has regularized. Yeah. I hope that answered your question.
The retail rental reversion that is negative?
Okay. rental reversions, given the last 3 years has been COVID, right? we were tracking, say, mid-teens negative, okay, for whole, I think, better part of last year and the early part of this year, but we have actually improved to high singles. high singles. given the 3 COVID years where we have been signing lower rents, moving forward, okay, the rental reversions that will come in the year 2024, 2025, are likely to become positive. that's our anticipation.
For China new economy, it's a mild positive rental reversion. Some of your peers, and I believe even CLCT, is looking at possible negative double-digits. Would this be a similar outlook for the portfolio?
No. For new economy assets, right, we're largely talking about business parks. That's our bigger portfolio. Business parks goes back to companies that are investing in China, and there is that confidence trap. Businesses are a bit more conservative. For us, we see more cautious business expansion plans, okay? Our rental reversions remain positive for our new economy asset. 'Cause our occupancies have not actually come down, it's actually held stable. Our outlook is that with more efforts by the government to do investment promotions, and we've seen so many delegations from China come to Singapore trying to attract promotions, right, investments, sorry, into China. When the FDI stabilizes and it starts to climb again, it will benefit our new economy asset classes.
We do not see the rental reversions going into the negative territory, at least from, from our projects now.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you, Terence. Before we end, maybe I'll invite Chee Koon, some key takeaways from you.
Well, just, thank you all for, for coming and for all the support as always. Just want to assure you that we are working extremely hard. Simon and his team is on the road a lot to, to continuously to raise money from investors as well. We'll continue to look for good deals and make sure that we do good for the CLI investors. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chee Koon, and thanks all of you for coming today. There are refreshments outside, please help yourself. Thanks, viewers online. We'll see you next time, actually, full year 2023 in February next year. Take care.