A very good morning to you all. Welcome to Jardine Cycle & Carriage half year 2024 results presentation. I am Amy Hsu, JC&C’s Group Finance Director, and I will take you through today’s presentation. Before I take you through our first half of performance, for those of you who already have questions in mind, I would like to invite you to type in your questions in the Q&A box, and we will address them at the end of the session. I will first start with some key highlights for the first half of 2024. The group reported an underlying profit of SGD 500 million, 14% down compared to the first half of last year. This is due to lower earnings across our businesses, but much more so because of translation impact from weaker exchange rates against USD across the region, including Indonesia rupiah, Vietnamese dong, as well as Singapore dollars.
Excluding this translation impact, our underlying profit would be 4% down instead. Our interim dividend, however, will remain at SGD 0.28 per share, same amount as last year. Our holding company debt has also reduced from SGD 1.3 billion to SGD 1.1 billion. In recent years, we have shared with you that we will actively manage our portfolio and rebalance our portfolio by releasing capital for balance sheet flexibility and will reinvest in new growth opportunities. We have continued to do so in the first half of the year. By the end of July, we have completed the sale and leaseback of two properties in Malaysia, which generated SGD 25 million. It is a smaller transaction as compared to the Singapore sale and leaseback, but nonetheless, an important one to improve return on capital, and it is a good discipline to have.
The impact of this will be reflected in the second half results. We continue to look at opportunities to monetize non-core assets within our portfolio, and we have an active pipeline of projects that we are currently working on. On the other hand, we continue to allocate capital to our future market leaders. Last month, we submitted an application for a public tender offer of REE in Vietnam, one of our key investments. Many of you may be aware that over the last few years, we have been steadily increasing our stake through market purchases of REE, and our shareholding currently stands at 34.9%. To further increase our shareholding past the 35% mark, it will require a public tender offer according to the Vietnamese Law on Securities.
We see REE as JC&C’s future champion, and that will provide us with very high growth opportunities, particularly in the renewable energy business. It is therefore our intention to allocate more capital to this growth business when suitable opportunities arise. A key role for JC&C is to enable business growth through business, people, and leadership. We are also delighted to share with you that REE has recently appointed a new CEO, started last month. He comes with 30 years of experience in construction, infrastructure, and project development in Vietnam. And earlier this year, in March, REE has also appointed a new CFO, which is a finance talent from Jardine. These are all very exciting developments for us. Besides Vietnam, Astra in Indonesia has also allocated more capital in the renewable energy space by increasing its effective interest in a geothermal asset in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Finally, we would like to share another update with you. We recently conducted a review of our portfolio, and we structured it to better represent where our strategic focuses are. Let me take you through more details in the next slide. This slide shows our new portfolio structure. This new business segment reporting provides greater clarity and emphasis to our Indonesian and Vietnamese markets. A third pillar of regional interest is introduced to detail the investments around the region beyond these two key markets. Our first pillar is Indonesia. The performance of Astra and Tunas Ridean will be reported under this pillar. The second pillar, Vietnam, we have THACO, REE, and Vinamilk. For the third pillar, regional interests would include our dealership business under the Cycle & Carriage banner, which has operations in Singapore, Malaysia, and Myanmar.
We also have Siam City Cement and Toyota Motor Corporation in this segment. For Toyota Motor, we have held this investment since 2018, but have not previously included it in any of our segment reporting. For completeness and to improve disclosure, we are now capturing all the investments that we hold in this new segment reporting. Moving on to the first half financial highlights. For the first half of 2024, our underlying profit was SGD 500 million. Indonesia contributes SGD 513 million, down 9% from the prior year, and Vietnam contributed SGD 31 million, down 12%. We will have more details in the subsequent slides. Corporate costs totaled SGD 68 million, and the increase is largely due to higher FX losses from the translation of Jardine Cycle & Carriage's USD loans.
Turning on to our balance sheet. Shareholders' funds remain strong at SGD 8 billion. Jardine Cycle & Carriage's consolidated net debt position, excluding the net borrowing from Astra Financial's services businesses, was SGD 543 million. This is compared to SGD 1.1 billion from the previous year-end due to strong operating cash flow in the first half. Gearing has fell from 6%- 3%. As mentioned earlier, Jardine Cycle & Carriage corporate net debt was further reduced from SGD 1.3 billion- SGD 1.1 billion, with the enhanced dividends received from Astra. I will now take you through each of our business pillars in detail, starting with Indonesia.
In the first half, our portfolio companies in Indonesia, which includes Astra and Tunas Ridean, contributed a total of SGD 513 million, 9% down from the prior year. Astra's contribution was SGD 497 million, 8% lower. It reported weaker performances from its automotive, heavy equipment, and mining operations. This resulted from softer consumer demand for the auto business and lower commodity prices. I'll go through the details in the next slide. There was also a translation impact on the underlying profit contribution. Had the foreign exchange rate been equivalent to last year, Astra's contribution would be just 2% lower. Tunas Ridean also faced similar challenges of a softer automotive market as Astra.
Let me take you through the segmental details of Astra. For automotive, the net income was down 3% to SGD 345 million. The four-wheel wholesale market was down by 19% due to cautious consumer sentiments in an election year. Astra's four-wheel sales decreased by only 17%, which resulted in an increased market share from 55%- 57%. Indonesia's xEV market is 9% of the total four-wheel market in the first half, of which about 70% are hybrids, and [inaudible] has a commanding market share. In the first half of 2024, Astra grew its hybrid sales by 33% to 15,000 units. On motorcycles, the two-wheel wholesale market was slightly down. Astra's two-wheel sales declined by 4%, with its market share stood at 77%. For financial services, the net income increased by 8% to SGD 257 million. This is due to a larger loan portfolio compared to last year.
On heavy equipment, mining, construction, and energy, the net income decreased by 15% to SGD 365 million. This was due to lower coal selling prices compared to the previous high, as well as lower Komatsu sales. However, the overburden removal remains strong, with a growth of 13% on the back of a still elevated coal prices. For agribusiness, the net income was 36% higher at SGD 25 million. This was due to both higher sales volume and selling prices. Lastly, Astra's Infrastructure segment reported a 24% increase in the net income to SGD 39 million. The toll road business continued to see promising results. Traffic volume was up by 5% compared to last year. We see consistent growth in this business, and we are excited about its prospects.
Turning now to our Vietnam portfolio. Jardine Cycle & Carriage's businesses in Vietnam contributed a total of SGD 31 million to our underlying profit, down 12%. THACO contributed SGD 15 million. The Vietnam auto market was flat in the first half of this year, and THACO's unit sales was up by 10% year-on-year, which improved its market share from 21% to 23%. THACO's Agriculture and Property businesses continue to largely break even. We look forward to them contributing profits meaningfully in the near future. Moving on to REE. We captured only its first quarter of profits in this round of reporting. Its contribution to Jardine Cycle & Carriage reduced from SGD 11 million to SGD 7 million, and this was due to lower hydropower demand in the country.
The power business in REE is REE's largest business. There are positive developments in the pipeline, including acquisition of three new greenfield operating projects this year, and in the Hydro and in the Wind segments. Wrapping up our investments in Vietnam for Vinamilk, we recorded a dividend income of $8 million. Finally, moving on to the performance of our regional interests. The Cycle & Carriage business contributed SGD 9 million to Jardine Cycle & Carriage's underlying profit. This is 46% down from the same period of last year. In Singapore, the contribution to Jardine Cycle & Carriage was down due to higher rental expenses after the sale and leaseback transaction and lower contributions from the used car operations. New car sales were actually higher by 16% at 3,174 units. Margins, of course, our brand portfolio remains healthy, supported by stable COE prices.
We are also pleased to share that ORA, a new EV brand that we brought into Singapore in the second half of last year, is seeing growth in customer acceptance of this brand. In April this year, we soft launched smart, which is a premium EV brand by Mercedes-Benz and Geely. A dedicated smart showroom will open in August. For those of you that are based in Singapore, I welcome you to experience this venture in the Mercedes-Benz brand center. We are also delighted to become the exclusive distributor of Gogoro electric scooters in Singapore. We are partnering Shell to roll out battery swapping in some of Shell's petrol stations. In Malaysia, the profitability of the operations was slower as the business transitioned to the agency model since the start of 2024.
In regards to our presence in the country, yesterday, we announced that we are partnering Stellantis, and we will first start as a dealer of Peugeot in Malaysia. This partnership extends to the other brands under the house of Stellantis as well. We are excited to be able to offer and expand the range of products to the customers in Malaysia. Next, on Siam City Cement, it contributed $12 million, up from $9 million of last year. This was due to lower energy costs with the decline in coal prices, as well as improved production efficiencies. Lastly, we received a dividend income of $4 million from Toyota Motor Corporation for the first half of the year. Overall, we are satisfied with the first half performance, considering some of the challenging market conditions. The performance is well within our expectations.
Looking ahead, we expect the second half to improve as political environment stabilizes and consumer sentiments gradually recovers. We are confident that the performance of our businesses will be resilient for the rest of the year. Nevertheless, there will also be headwinds on foreign exchange rates and commodity prices. Finally, we will continue to actively manage our portfolio to deliver long-term growth and returns to our shareholders. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I will now close today's presentation then. Have a good day.