Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media, analysts, bankers, investors, and CDL colleagues. My name is Belinda, and I am the Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at CDL. On behalf of the CDL management, thank you so much for joining us today for CDL's briefing on our first half ended 30th of June 2025 financial results. The first half 2025 was a significant period for our group. I am so delighted to see everyone here in this room at the M Social Singapore, as well as the hundreds of you joining us virtually online this morning. For today's briefing, in line with CDL's commitment to environmental sustainability, we encourage you to please scan the QR code on the screen earlier, so that you can download the documents that were uploaded on SGXNet. Here is the QR code.
For those that are joining online, you can also similarly download those documents which are available on the SGX website as well as our CDL website. They include, firstly, a copy of the detailed financial statement. Secondly, a press release summarizing the key highlights of our first half 2025 performance. Thirdly, a presentation deck that the management team will be walking through very shortly. For all our guests joining us virtually, you would similarly be seeing these documents online. I would like to introduce you to the CDL management panel.
In the center, we have our Executive Chairman, Mr. Kwek Leng Beng, followed by ex co members, Mr. Sherman Kwek, our Group CEO on his right. Mr. Kwek Eik Sheng, our Group COO on his left, and then Mr. Chia Ngiang Hong , our Group General Manager, and Ms. Yiong Yim Ming, our Group Chief Financial Officer. The format of today's briefing will be in two parts. We will kick off with a presentation of some of the key highlights led by Sherman, then later followed by Yim Ming on the financial highlights. Then we will hit off with the Q&A for an opportunity for us to engage with the panelists. Without further ado, I would just like to invite Sherman to please come forward and then let's kick start the presentation. Thanks.
Morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to come attend our briefing for our first half results of 2025. Of course, a warm welcome to everyone online as well. I think today a lot of people are joining us online. So, great to see your interest. I will take us through our results along with Yim Ming. Subsequently, we will open it up for Q&A. As Bel has mentioned, I will present an overview and strategic initiatives. Yim Ming will present financial highlights. We are not presenting the operations review as always, and that's just for your leisure reading in the deck. Just an overview of our results for this year. We have done better than the first half last year. Obviously, could have been a lot better. But we were hampered by unrealized net exchange losses.
This is basically because of USD-denominated loans that we had made to our U.S. operations. You can see in that text there, right? If not for and last year, by the way, was a big gain as well. This year, the loss was SGD 63 million versus last year, the gain was SGD 51 million. If you net all that out, that is already a big swing. As we have put in that small yellow text box there, our PATMI would have gone up by 323% if you put aside these foreign exchange losses and gains. A little bit disappointed the exchange did not work out in our favor because the U.S. dollar depreciated. Otherwise, it was a good set of results. Our Singapore performance on the development side was strong. We also had some divestments.
We do not double count, so these divestments like we mentioned there, like this Ransomes Wharf site we sold in London, as well as the office component of HLCC in Suzhou. Because they completed in January, so it is counted in this year. In terms of our divestments, we count it as part of last year. Putting aside divestments, the core earnings were actually stronger this year. You can see that actually on PBT and PATMI, we did have a good show. We were helped obviously by an EC project that completed in the first half this year, which is Copen Grand. EC is a JV between us and MCL Land. As per accounting rules for so-called EC projects, you would recognize the full revenue and profit upon completion.
Some highlights of our NAV and our RNAV, which is actually more of the reflective number, which includes the fair value of IPs. Of course, we have also given you a snapshot of what it looks like if we also fair valued our hotels. You can see that we are still trading at a big discount and we do want to close the gap. NAV has gone down slightly. We put down the reasons there. We are doing a special interim dividend of SGD 0.03. Of course, this year we are expecting quite outsized divestments. Therefore, hopefully we will have a nice surprise for all of you at year-end. Share price performance, of course, until 30th June, it was SGD 519. Since then, it has continued to trend upwards. We are also grateful for the market momentum.
Key highlights for this year, as mentioned earlier, we had total sales revenue. The amount of the value of units that we sold this year has hit SGD 2.2 billion, which is a 90% increase over the first half of last year. We have sold 903 units, and this is obviously powered by The Orie in Toa Payoh, which is our joint venture project. Since then, we have also started to replenish sites. We have replenished actually three sites. One is Lakeside Drive in Jurong West. The other two sites are not awarded yet, but hopefully should be awarded soon. Those are the two EC sites that we recently garnered. One is at Senja Close, which is in Bukit Panjang, and the other is Woodlands Drive. Investment properties portfolio across our group remains stable.
As you can see, Singapore office retail has been strong. U.K., I think since last year, we've suffered some effects from the weaker market there. But overall, our three commercial properties still performing well. The living sector continues to be very resilient, and we are grateful for that. In terms of the hotel operations, it hasn't been that strong of a year for our hospitality side, notably in Singapore and the U.S. Against last year which was stronger years, we've seen a bit of a dip. But overall, I think the Hotel division still performed relatively well. Some of the new acquisitions that we have made have actually come in and provided strong contribution. Things like the Hilton in Paris, in the Opera District, that was acquired early last year. That has also come in and given a full half year of contribution.
In terms of capital recycling, I think that's something that since last year we've committed to our shareholders that we will accelerate that. So far this year we have achieved more than 1.5 billion in contracted divestments, meaning divestments that we contract this year. Again, this amount does not include Ransome's Wharf , Suzhou office and retail component and stuff like that. No double counting. We also sold a few other properties in Singapore, City Industrial Building. We are under contract for Piccadilly Galleria, which is the commercial component for our JV project, Piccadilly Grand in Farrer Park. The biggest one was South Beach, which we're selling our 50.1% stake to our joint venture partner.
In the U.S., we also have managed to get two sales, one completed and one contracted. This slide, we flash it up at every briefing, but hasn't changed much. The top line, the top row, represents basically at our book value. The more useful one is the bottom row, which is the fair value of our IPs and hotel assets. Same here, you can see Singapore still accounts for close to 50% of our total asset base. Obviously, the one on the right by business segment will vary. It depends on how much land, development land, that we replenish in Singapore at any one time. Between IP, which is investment properties, and DP, development properties, it will fluctuate somewhat. But it gives you a good snapshot of where we're at right now.
Okay. On to our GET strategy, which everyone's very familiar with, so I'm not going to elaborate on it. As mentioned earlier, I think we have been very disciplined in our land replenishment strategy, and we are very pleased that this year we've been able to replenish three sites because we are running somewhat low in terms of our land bank. We do have Newport Residences, which thankfully we don't have any pressing deadlines, so we're still holding there to see when would be optimal time to launch this luxury project at the Greater Southern Waterfront. Zyon Grand is our JV with Mitsui Fudosan Asia, and so that we're targeting for early Q4 launch. Hopefully, that will do well. I think all of you have seen the previous weekend, the one before this past weekend, where I think there were two new launches in that area. River Green and Promenade Peak, and both have done well. So hopefully that's a good sign in August as well for Zyon Grand.
The only launch we've done this year is The Orie, which we are 92% sold right now. We continue, I think, to do what we do best, which is Singapore land development. At the same time, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, we have committed to ensure that every year we are deploying funds for new GLS tenders in Singapore as well as for overseas land development as well as commercial assets. We have to ensure, I think, that we keep our gearing in check. Obviously, our gearing has ticked up a bit because we have done three GLS tenders in Singapore successfully. But with the contracted divestments that we've done this year, I think that will hold things in check. Plus, there's a pipeline of many more divestments to come.
Hopefully, I think shareholders will be very delighted with the news as we announce them over time. But this is what we have done this year. Just again, to give you a bit more insight into this, although I verbalized it in previous analyst briefings, just to say again, the numbers are a bit skewed because on the divestment side, we don't include residential unit sales. If I buy a piece of land in Singapore, it's included in my investment side. But when I sell those individual units, I don't include that in divestment. Divestment is really for pure divestment of assets or land that's undeveloped. This number is going to look a bit skewed.
Having said that, despite that we have SGD 1.2 billion of investments this year for the first half of this year, and the whole amount of that was for the three GLS sites in Singapore, we still have actually done divestments that's far greater than that amount. I think this will show you our discipline as we move forward. Now, doesn't mean that we won't make any more investments for the second half this year. I think, as you divest, we are trying to optimize our portfolio, and we're also going to seize on good opportunities that allow us to either grow our future land bank, be it locally or overseas, or have assets that are very complementary to our portfolio that are currently undervalued because certain markets are weaker or dislocated.
From time to time, we will still make investments, b ut I think we are trying to demonstrate our commitment to having an active divestment strategy, capital recycling strategy, as I call it, that will move forward and be a constant part of our business because we can't just keep buying. We also have to sell. This slide just showing you our so-called accolades and recognition that we've gained so far, especially on the sustainability side. As I've mentioned earlier, I think it's important part. We have to care about this planet that we live on as part of our social responsibility and so I think we continue to push forward on this front where, I would say we are one of the leading firms in Asia when it comes to CSR.
On to the last bit, which is on transformation. Just to give you a flavor of where we're at now. Why do we put the global living sector within transformation? I think two reasons for it. One, these are new asset classes to us. While it is real estate, these are all basically recurring income in nature, and they are for people to live in. Because we decided a couple of years ago that we are going to focus on building up scale here, we have been gradually working towards it, and it has not been easy to make good acquisitions to gain scale. For instance, you can see that in Japan now we have 40 operational multi-family assets or PRS, as we like to call them, private rented sector, a term we borrow from the U.K.
These are basically rental housing, and our portfolio is pretty newish in Japan. Average age probably around three years plus. New portfolio also is a good thing because you spend less on repair and maintenance, and they are up to the latest specs. It has not been easy for us to actually accumulate this whole portfolio. Therefore, we put it in transformation because, A, the living sector, over the last, I would say four or five years, has been a new angle for us. The other reason that we put it in transformation is because these assets can then go on to seed a lot of fund management platforms that we would like to do. Currently, we are warehousing a lot of this on our balance sheet. We have grown it to a total GDV, gross development value, or basically the market value of what it would be worth now of around SGD 4 billion.
This is a big portfolio. We have a total of 4,564 multi-family units and 2,368 student accommodation beds. I would say this has been something that we are very proud that we have grown, and it is going to make our business more resilient as well as diversify us across our traditional asset classes of residential and office and retail. In Singapore, of course, we did always have this service partner, Le Grove. Now, we have three developments, so-called, that are three projects that are under development. You can see that each project will also have a substantial, be it serviced, residence or co-living component. That is going to form a nice complement to our whole living sector portfolio. As mentioned, the other part of transformation is of course, the fund management. We will continue to push forward on this.
We were not successful in listing our U.K. commercial assets a couple of years ago. Markets were a bit choppy. Capital markets were not favorable then. At the right time, we will obviously try again. We believe that belongs better in a public format, which is a REIT. At the same time, we are also managers for two REITs, IREIT, which is our partnership with Tikehau, one of the bigger Europe fund managers. We are joint manager for IREIT Global. Of course, the very REIT that we listed and sponsored, which is CDL Hospitality Trust. We continue to actively work on both of these REITs to try to help them propel their growth. These are platforms that are great for us. I think we can demonstrate our management skills as well as in future, we could provide further asset sponsorship to both of these REITs.
And of course, we're looking at the private side as well. We've been working at it for a while, so hopefully in due course, we can share some good news, if we're able to do some private equity funds using what I mentioned before, some of our global living portfolio to, I think, to seed some of these funds. Again, I think the reason for going down the fund management route, of course, many of the other developers in Singapore have done a great job on this front, is because I think we want to have part of our business go more asset light. So we're really managing third-party money here rather than warehousing everything on our balance sheet.
The fees, the recurring income from the management fees and all the good stuff from fund management will really help, I think, to improve our recurring income and strengthen our return on equity too. Okay, my last slide before I hand it Yim Ming. These are our key priorities. We kind of flashed it up at the last analyst briefing. We condensed it a bit more, and so we're just putting it up again. I think we aim to have a resilient portfolio, which means that we do need to exercise strong investment discipline, be it locally or overseas. We want to achieve diversification across asset classes and geographies. I think this is important. If we had all of our assets concentrated in one sector or in one country, I think that's actually pretty risky.
I think we've over the last We started this diversification push, if you don't include the hotel, since 2010. I would say over the last 15 years, we've achieved, I would say, very decent results outcome when it comes to our diversification push. Capital management, as mentioned earlier, we'll continue to accelerate capital recycling. We aim to strengthen ROE as well as ensure that we are sustainable and hopefully growing dividends. Of course, we need to continue to future-proof our business. We harness innovation and AI in various aspects of our company as well as we have to ensure that we are responsible to our planet. So I think and to shareholders. So these are our key priorities, and I will field more questions during Q&A later. May I now pass it over to our CFO, Yim Ming. Thank you.
Thank you, Sherman. Morning, ladies and gentlemen. We'll move on to PBT by segment first. DP segment performed well, and PBT has jumped significantly. Contributors to first half of 2025 include Ransome's Wharf, the office block of Suzhou Hong Leong City Center, Singapore projects such as The Myst, Norwood, Union Square Residences, while the previous year contributor were largely from Shenzhen Tech Park as well as Ola Residences. While revenue for this segment increased 24%, PBT increased substantially due to JV projects. Copen Grand, which TOP in April 2025, CanningHill Piers, The Orie, and Tembusu. In life accounting standards for JV, these projects do not contribute to revenue but contribute to profits as their equity accounted for. Hence, you see a huge jump in profits for first half 2025 versus 2024. So just for information, these JV projects would have contributed SGD 1 billion in revenue on a like-for-like basis.
For hotel operations, revenue fell slightly despite a 0.5% increase in RevPAR. The next slide will have more color on RevPAR, but the lower hotel operations is due to foreign exchange impact, particularly for our U.S. hotel operations, which are translated at a lower rate with the depreciation of the USD as well as lower F&B revenues. The group adopts a natural hedging for all its operations geographically. USD had a sharp decline from April following the U.S. tariffs. The U.S. hotel revenues is about 28% of total hotel revenues, and the lower exchange resulted in a decline. However, as the U.S. operations is overall a marginal loss for first half 2025, the FX impact on the bottom line is not material. While the P&L FX is not significant, the unrealized FX arising from the balance sheet translation is material.
The hotel operations has a significant foreign exchange loss, which Sherman has mentioned, arising from intercompany loans that we have extended to our U.S. operations for hotel acquisitions and working capital in the past, especially during the COVID years. I just want to remind that this is unrealized FX. It does not affect cash flow and operations, and this position will reverse should the USD appreciates. This segment reports a loss of SGD 84 million for first half 2025 due to exchange losses, as mentioned, financing costs, and inflationary cost pressures. However, do also note that hotel operations are seasonal in nature. The first quarter is usually the poorest as we're geographically dispersed.
Overall, hotel reports are weaker EBITDA by 19%, hit by weaker performance in the key markets we operate in. In Singapore, RevPAR declined 13.6%, London decline of 2%, and for New York, while RevPAR increased marginally, New York was faced with challenges from various fronts, including the M Social Downtown New York, which had reduced room inventory as it was undergoing renovations, as well as inflationary pressures and F&B losses. Investment properties, fairly stable for revenue. The group has a geographical portfolio of properties. Decline in rentals from the U.K. commercial were offset by Republic Plaza and the renovated City Square Mall, as well as Jungceylon in Phuket and our living sector assets in U.K. and Japan.
As part of our active recycling, the group divested City Industrial Building, strata units in Fortune Center, the car park at The Venue, and of course, the retail mall at Hong Leong City Center. These divestments brought in gains of SGD 97 million, which is lower than last year, which comprised divestment in strata units in our other industrial portfolios. The lower PBT for this segment is due to lower divestment gains and higher net financing costs, again, due to exchange. Hence, looking at EBITDA is a better indicator. If you look at the IP segment, excluding divestment gains on a like-for-like basis, EBITDA will actually have increased 4%. Other segment revenue increased due to our facilities management arm and higher management fees that we charge our JV projects. Again, the loss is due to flux in FX.
Delving a little deeper into RevPAR by region. Do note that this is on constant currency, so it removes the effects of exchange, and these are translated at same rates. Singapore RevPAR dropped 13.6% due to fewer large-scale events such as the famous Taylor Swift concert and the biannual Singapore Airshow, which boosted the previous half year 2024. Decline in RevPAR is in line with mid-tier and high-tier companies' hotels across Singapore. However, our Singapore hotels was reliant on the shipping segment, which was hit by the global turmoil and affected occupancy for a few of our Singapore hotels. Rest of Asia RevPAR is boosted by M Social Phuket, which had full operations, and offset by our Beijing hotel, which saw lower demand.
Australasia RevPAR boosted by acquisition growth for Mayfair Christchurch. For New York, RevPAR increases is due to two hotels, which is Biltmore L.A., as well as M Social Downtown, which commanded much better rates for the renovated rooms. Over to London, decline is largely due to Gloucester and Knightsbridge due to rate pressures. Notably, The Mayfair performed very well with 8% increase in RevPAR. Rest of U.K., again, impacted by acquisition growth, which boosted 2025 performance. Overall RevPAR, hotel ops increased 0.5% with a slight decline in occupancy, but at 1.7% increase in rate. This is boosted largely by acquisition growth. Excluding the two acquisition growth, RevPAR will actually have marginally declined a little bit.
GOP margin decreased 2.1%, largely due to Singapore, rest of Asia, and U.S., contributed by lower revenues, compounded by higher costs. Next, we move on to revenue by segment. Overall revenue up 8%, largely due to the PD segment, boosted by Ransome's Wharf and HLCC, our Suzhou. The PD segment did well. Hotel operations marginal decline, I mentioned, due to FX and lower F&B. IP and the other segments are fairly resilient. Next, we move on to EBITDA by segment. Growth of 21%, largely due to the property development segment, which increased twofold. Hotel EBITDA is resilient at SGD 94 million. While it is challenging with the cost pressures and macroeconomic conditions, all regions are EBITDA positive except for U.S., which reported a marginal EBITDA loss.
EBITDA is also largely driven by divestment gains, which led the IP base to be much higher. The group looks at EBITDA very closely, and we always endeavor SGD 1 billion in EBITDA annually. Now let us move on to EBITA. PBT by segment d eclined by 10% to SGD 140 million. It is impacted by financing cost and depreciation. Sounds like broken record. We account for our properties at the cost model and depreciate them vis-à-vis the fair value model. Decline is largely due to hotel operations reporting a loss. I have mentioned earlier, the unfavorable exchange dealt a great blow to this segment. PBT has surged to SGD 152. I did not calibrate this with Sherman, but I think the emphasis of the results is that CDL is a real estate player across various core segments, across various geographies.
With our diversified portfolio, we are able to weather various challenges. On the balance sheet, we continue to have strong and robust fundamentals. Cash is SGD 1.8 billion, along with committed credit facilities, SGD 3.5 billion. You might have noticed that it has dropped from FY 2024 by SGD 1 billion, and that is because of the monies that have been expended to complete our [inaudible] acquisition. Gearing stands at 70%. It is a marginal increase from 69% in December 2024. Average borrowing costs lowered to 4%. We are heartened at the latest rate cut by Bank of England. We are waiting for at least one or two more. We will definitely close the year below 4%.
SG rates have declined gradually. The group took the chance to increase our fixed rate portfolio, and now it stands at 43%. We have a balanced debt expiry and debt currency. For remaining of 2025, we have already made arrangements for refinancing and repayments. We will also look at a window to issue more fixed rate bonds in the next 12 months. Lastly, for FX risk. We adopt a natural hedging and do not take speculative position. This slide shows the FX exposure in the key geographical, and you can probably see the U.S. natural hedge is only about 51%. But overall, we still have a strong natural hedge, about 77%. That's all I have. Thank you everyone. I hand over to Belinda.
Thank you very much, Sherman and Yim Ming, for the presentation. We are now moving into the second part of today's briefing, the Q&A. As they have mentioned, some of the key highlights, today's briefing is primarily on our first half 2025 performance. I already see a hand out there. Terence from JP Morgan, if you could just address your questions to the panelist, please.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Congratulations on the set of results. I'm Terence from J.P. Morgan. I just had two questions, maybe to start off with. Wanted to ask on opportunities for net divestments. Congratulations on the very strong sale of South Beach. I noticed that this year, the divestments are exceeding the pace of investments. So you're actually seeing positive net divestments. Wanted to understand whether management has a number in mind for net divestments this year. Also potentially, how would you look at addressing gearing? On my second question, I wanted to ask on potential, maybe further rewards for shareholders. I understand that you had a very strong special div for first half. Looking into second half, given that there are some divestment gains coming in from South Beach, how would you look to perhaps reward shareholders? Thank you.
Okay. Morning, Terence. Thank you for your kind and Hello? Okay. Morning, Terence. Thank you for your kind and encouraging comments. In terms of your first question, as I said, it was last year that I kind of errantly threw out this divestment target of SGD 1 billion. Of course, last year we didn't meet it. We achieved SGD 600 million. I do remember the AGM, someone had asked me, "So what's your divestment target for this year?" I was a little bit apprehensive then, but I said, "Okay, I hope to achieve at least the same level of divestments as last year." Obviously, now with what we've achieved, we far exceeded last year and this year. We hope to continue to make further divestments throughout the second half this year.
Some of the divestments may close in early 2026, but a majority that you have seen on the screen will close by 2025. Almost the bulk of it. Then we may contract a few more new divestments, but those may close in 2026. So it will be a delayed boost to our gearing then. In terms of net divestments, I am assuming you are saying divestments, but not factoring in, let us say, GLS investments in Singapore. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay. As presented earlier this year, you can see the full SGD 1.2 billion has actually been into the three local GLS tenders. If you do not include that, then this year really, the net divestment has been the full amount of the SGD 1,500,000,000 . As I mentioned earlier, it does not mean that we will not make any overseas acquisitions as well. I think we are seeing some good opportunities in overseas markets. We are very selective and very disciplined about how we do acquisitions, especially overseas when obviously the risk is a little bit higher when compared to on home ground. So we will approach this cautiously, but I still anticipate ending the year with a higher level of divestments than investments, even if you factored in the local GLS tenders. So, that is one piece of good news.
It will not always be easy to achieve this sort of parity or balance because as I mentioned, the investment amount includes the GLS tenders, which the proceeds I do not include in the divestment side. This year, certainly, I think divestments will be a higher bar than the divestment bar that you saw. Sorry, than the investment bar that you saw earlier. So that is one. In terms of rewards, also as I alluded to in my presentation earlier, typically I think for mid-year, we will give a special half-year dividend. Really, I think we want to see where the year ends and with a strong tally of divestments garnered for this year. I do anticipate that this year when we announce our full year results in February next year, we should be able to announce something that would be very well received by our shareholders. Thank you.
Oh, as Yim Ming has reminded me on gearing. Yim Ming, we ended last year at about 69%, right? 69%. Obviously, in the so-called short to medium term, we do endeavor to get gearing down to the low 60s or high 50s. This is similar to what I have mentioned at the AGM as well. It may take us a bit of time to get there only because it was very fortuitous that we managed to win these three land tenders in Singapore. One of which is awarded the two EC sites because it is just so recent, not yet. But likely to be awarded, I would say. Because of this, our gearing is going to go up. Again, as I mentioned, we have a slew of divestments planned for the second half of this year and going into 2026.
Hopefully that will help to offset any potential short-term increase in gearing. But definitely in the medium term, we are moving towards the low 60s, maybe even high 50s. But I think we do not want to reduce our gearing to an abnormally low level, also because it is very healthy to use an appropriate amount of debt in your operations and investments, right? That is a more efficient balance sheet. But yes, those are where our near-term targets are. Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I will take Brandon first, then I will take Joy. Okay? So Brandon, if you introduce yourself.
Hey, morning Sherman and team. Brandon here from Citi. Just two questions, starting with the hotel sector. I think recently we have seen you guys coming out to say that you intend to triple your hotel exposure globally. Could you sort of explain how we are going to get there? And that approach to going towards more management contracts, does it mean that we could see a faster acceleration in the divestment of your hotels? So that is the first question. The second question would be, would you be open to reviewing again the share buybacks that you sort of did a bit of it last year? Yep, thanks.
I will just answer your second question on the share buybacks. Hope I am allowed to share this info. Actually, our board has been very receptive, and obviously, when our share price dipped to a low, our board had approved a significant buyback. Subsequently, the share price started to run up. So there was not a lot of opportunity for us to get the buyback started. Absolutely, Brandon, I think we have heard feedback over the years from our shareholders and our investors, and I had another ear full of that at the AGM as well. So we do know that share buybacks are important, and it is a way, I think, to do some shareholder return as well alongside dividends. So it is something that we keep in mind.
As I said, the Board has approved the buyback program, but we are just waiting to see when we can start that buyback. Even now, our share price is still, I would say, hugely undervalued, compared to our NAV or RNAV or the second RNAV that I showed earlier. It is certainly something that we will keep in mind. As for the hotels, perhaps I can invite our chairman in exchange to share more on that.
I think it is certainly a personal ambition and dream of our chairman to be able to continue to grow our hotel portfolio and to strengthen, I think, the brands within our stable, be it Millennium or Copthorne or The Biltmore brands. Perhaps I should let the man himself tell you about some of his ambitions and dreams. Chairman, would you like to address this, about this 500 hotel target that you had mentioned during your interviews with the press?
Yes.
Yeah, it is on already.
It is on. I think for hotel, I have always believed that there are a lot of future, because hotel is something that you wait for the cash flow to service. At the end of the day, if you want to sell away your hotel, then you can have a lot of capital gain. I believe this is the right strategy, and if this is correct, then I aim to have 500 hotels. That is not too ambitious, I assure you, because that can be done easily.
Yeah.
Brandon had this question on the management contracts. Will that be one of the new ways that you will-
Maybe I can just add on. I think we have done obviously very well with the owner/operator model. What chairman has explained is that we continue to generate earnings from the hotel, and then of course, we reap capital gains as we have done before with Sofitel Hilton and others like South Beach. This model, of course, we will continue with this owner/operator model. Ways we can get to 500 hotels, of course, do include management contracts, franchise opportunities. For example, we in the Middle East, we currently do have 50 hotels under franchise. They also have pretty ambitious targets on where they want to grow that to. There are markets we're currently not in. I think when chairman is sharing about his ambition for 500 hotels, I think there are many ways we can get to that, and I think we will share more details as we develop this.
Okay, thank you. Okay, maybe I'll take Joy.
Hi. Good morning. Joy from HSBC. Two questions from me. First of all, on capital deployment, we've seen you doing a lot more land bank replenishment. Will we continue to see that? In terms of deployment, would you do more DP versus IP? Early on, I think Sherman you alluded to overseas investment. Could you just elaborate a little bit on the opportunities you are seeing overseas? That's the first question. The second question on finance costs. I noticed that rates has come down, but actually overall financing cost is still up year- on- year. Could you sort of guide for the full year, what are we seeing? Also, in terms of the refinancing coming up, what are the currencies that you're refinancing in? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take the first questions. Joy, good morning. I haven't seen you in a while. Yes. The last couple of years, aside from, we have continued to replenish, I think, our GLS sites. Last year, obviously, we acquired this site near Great World that is now going to be launched this year, which is Zyon Grand. We do this land replenishment every year. Obviously, this year we have been very lucky, as I said, to have garnered three sites year to date. Probably we will slow down a bit on the GLS for the rest of this year. I think we don't want to be overburdened with too much land bank as well in any particular location. As I mentioned earlier, I think it's about diversification across asset classes and geographies too.
Whether it's DP versus IP, obviously for Singapore especially, for us, it's always been a strong DP play for development properties, because most of the sites that we go for are usually either pure residential sites or even if they are mixed use, they're still majority residential in nature. Overseas, we continue to focus on our key overseas markets that we had shared earlier over the last couple of years, actually. It's always been the U.K., China, Japan, and Australia, and to a smaller extent, Vietnam. We continue to push forward on these overseas destinations. I think we made good ground. Depending on which country it is, I think we have a different asset class focus. In Japan, you will see that we did have a DP project there, which was a Shirokane site, which we managed to sell at a huge gain.
We bought it for JPY 30 billion, and we sold it at JPY 50 billion. Okay, so that was a nice so-called divestment opportunity, even though it was sad we didn't develop the site because it was a gorgeous site in central Tokyo. That site also gave us a lot of good insights, that DP is actually very difficult to do in Japan, especially when you're not Japanese. Therefore, you can see since then we've actually been only focused on investment properties in Japan. Basically recurring income nature, which is our whole living sector portfolio. As mentioned earlier, we have 40 multi-family assets in Japan that are operating very well. High occupancies and rents have been strengthening every year.
We also, of course, have two hotels in Japan, not including the ones at CDL Hospitality Trust, but we directly own two hotels, the one in Ginza in Tokyo, as well as the one in Osaka, the bespoke Osaka, Shinsaibashi . I think for Japan it is going to be more of an IP play. In the U.K., I think it is a mixture. We own office buildings in the U.K., and also we own development properties that we are developing, build to rent, which is really developing it into our future multi-family housing. We do both that there. In China right now, I would say it is really only more on the residential sector that we are focused on. China's market is still going through some turbulence. But end of last year, we announced, obviously, the acquisition of our big site in a joint venture with a Xiamen partner, Lianfa.
We acquired a huge site in Xintiandi area. That site is majority residential anyway. It is about 77% residential. So far, projects in central Shanghai have been doing amazingly well. So fairly strong and irrespective of what is happening in the broader market. I think we will continue to focus on residential DP in China. Investment properties, unfortunately, are quite oversupplied in China at the moment.
I think all of you have seen in the news, even some prominent developers and funds have sold office properties even in Shanghai, which is already the strongest and most promising city in China. Have sold them at big discounts to their acquisition cost. 40%, 50% discount. I would say the commercial side of things are pretty oversupplied at the moment, and there is no pricing power. Probably not so much for us. It is still going to be a residential play in China. Okay, maybe I will pass it over to Yim Ming to talk about the financing cost.
I think you are looking at net financing cost on the face of the P&L. Actually if you delve into the details, we have classified exchange inside net financing cost, which is why the cost of delta. It looks like net financing cost has actually increased. But actually if you look into the details, the financing cost, which is just gross interest expenses, here has actually gone down by 6%. Where do we look at full year? Probably in the same tandem, thereabout. We should be able to still achieve about 6% from previous year. Looking at where we are financing in terms of our loan portfolio. It is largely for three. One, of course, is Xintiandi. We are looking at the construction financing, and that is looking very good, I must say.
The support that we get from the Chinese banks way exceeded my expectations in terms of pricing. For Singapore portfolio, that will be the usual, for developments, we will be doing repayment. I am keen to issue some more fixed rate notes. Hopefully seven-year money at max of, say, 3%. That will help us in terms of will, help us in terms of our fixed rate portfolio, and bring down the average interest rate as well.
Our biggest exposure that is open, so to speak, is our GBP portfolio. So we have about 80% that is floating right now. There is not much of a window for hedging. I think we are able to do a wait and see. We also want to do that alongside. It is not a flat one-dimensional thing. We also want to look at, as we have divestments coming in, what asset base good to price. Definitely a window we are looking at. Not the right time for us to do hedging right now.
Okay. I am just going to take- Okay, I will take Rachel, and then I will come back to Dexter, and then John. Okay. All right.
Hi, morning. This is Rachel from [inaudible]. Maybe just two questions. Firstly, you spoke about the U.K. re-listing. I am just wondering whether you have any timeline, or is that something that you are looking for before you embark on the U.K. re-listing again? Like say, U.K. office market recovery or the Singapore I believe Singapore rates has also come down. There is more IPOs in Singapore. If you give us a sense what you are looking for. My second question is your dividend. This quarter we saw a special dividend. Is that an indication of moving forward? Secondly, if you talk about a lot more divestments coming through, would you have a policy on how you would want to share your gains from divestments in the future?
Okay. I will take both questions. For the U.K. re-listing, I realized that every time I mention that, the press and the media latches on that quite tightly. I think there is no fixed timeline for that because really it is contingent upon capital markets. Obviously, interest rates are a big determinant of how attractive and how successful a re-listing would be. I am very pleased to see that U.K. rates have been, interest rates have been trending down. With any luck, and with a couple of interest rate swaps, I think now we should be able to get our U.K. borrowing for new borrowings of sub 5%, I think going forward. Right, Yim Ming? I would say should be doable. This is compared to when rates were at its peak in the U.K. Developers were paying 6%, some maybe even more.
I think rates have come down quite a bit already in the U.K., and we hope that the Bank of England will continue to surprise us with good news going forward. That needs to straighten itself out first. It is very hard to do a new re-listing when the interest rate environment is not favorable. Obviously, investor appetite is something that is very critical as well. That is why I mentioned the capital markets conditions have to be favorable too. We would like to explore this again when situations permit, when the conditions permit. It has been a couple of years, I think, since we shelved the idea. Back then, of course, the idea was also different. Back then it was two of our assets combined with an asset owned by a third party. A very big asset owned by a third party.
Now obviously, since then we have acquired St. Katherine's Docks. This was two years ago now, right? St. Katherine's Docks, in March of 2023. Since then now we have a portfolio that is worth at least GBP 1 billion already. So we have the scale to be able to move forward to do a re-listing on our own. But it will be quite a substantial sizable listing. So you really do need conditions to be conducive for such listing. We are keeping it open. I would love to see it happen earlier than later. But let us see what happens. Again, as the U.K. office sector recovers, I do not have to adamantly stick to having to do a REIT for these properties. If someone comes along and makes me an irresistible offer I cannot refuse for one or more of the properties, it would be something we would consider.
Obviously, our first preference is to be able to seed our fund management ambitions so we can take this further. But yeah, we will always remain open and flexible to all potential opportunities on the table. As for dividends, yes, we did do a special half-year dividend. Again, as alluded to earlier, we want to see where the full year lands before we hopefully announce something that would reward our shareholders. I think we have had a track record where whenever we have had strong years, we have always tended to reward our shareholders handsomely. We even did a distribution in species, a DIS, for our CDL Hospitality Trust shares to shareholders back in 2022. Yim Ming? Yeah. That would have been a big boon.
These are free shares we distributed to our shareholders to allow them to enjoy the upside and the recovery in the hospitality sector, of which in 2023 and 2024, we saw strong recovery in hospitality. That is one of them. We hope to have more news to share. Was there any further question? Divestment policy, we have articulated it. It is not firmly ensconced in our policy per se, but we have articulated this every year. Divestment, we try to maintain 1/3 divestment policy.
Dividend policy.
Sorry?
Divestment.
Dividend policy.
Yeah.
Sorry. We have articulated this over the years. We try to maintain a one-third payout ratio for our dividend policy. Was there another question on divestment? Because you said divestment, which is what started
If you are going to have a slew of divestments, would you then have a dividend policy on how much you would share the gains of the divestments?
Okay. Thank you, Rachel. So it was linked, the two. We do not have a specific, as I said, policy that links also our divestments to our dividends. But yes, in times when we have a nice bonanza with big divestments, we will try to reward our shareholders more. But on the whole, every year, we try to stick to at least 1/3 payout ratio.
Okay. Thank you very much. I am going to move to the front now. Maybe I will start off with Dexter. Dexter, the mic is on here.
Hi. Morning. I wanted to ask you, comments on results. First, a few technical questions. On your Newport, obviously you still have a date yet. What is holding you back? And obviously the small market seems to be still doing quite well. But there were some SSD measures introduced recently. Are you guys concerned that more curbs could be potentially coming this year, next year? And also one more question on your privatization. Sorry, two more questions. One is you obviously did not succeed in your M&C privatization. Will you try again next year after the lock-up period ends? And Chairman previously mentioned about working on some U.K. deals with Sukanto. Is there any updates on that?
For Newport, I think we were holding off because we were right about to launch Newport Residences. Then, I think it was the week before we launched Newport Residences, they came out with a 60% ABSD on foreigners. We shelved the launch and basically said we will take a wait and see approach, especially since this is a legacy property of ours, right? The whole Newport project is being developed on the site of the former Fuji Xerox Towers. We do not have any time pressures here. We thought we would adopt a wait and see. Because this is a luxury project, we have really designed very nice units that will be fitted out to a very high standard and level at Newport. It is really for people who want to embrace that luxury living up high, where they are going to have magnificent views of this ocean.
We held back then because of this. I have to say that recent results in the market have also been quite encouraging. As I mentioned earlier when I was doing my presentation, we saw that the previous weekend there were two launches within town area around Great World. Typically, as you know, the core central region properties tend to rely on a heavy amount of foreigners who make up a large part of the buying activity. Whereas compared to, I think properties in other segments or in more suburban locations, those are predominantly almost all Singaporeans. You have less than 10% foreigners. Those two projects actually did well. One project sold 88%, the other sold 56%, at prices hovering around SGD 3,000 PSF there, around thereabouts or slightly more.
They did very well, and so that is some encouragement to us. It is something that we are factoring in to our decision when to launch Newport. Again, because there is no urgency, I think we just want to wait and see and make sure that the conditions are favorable. It is not a large amount of units. It is 246. I am not looking at the sheet right now. It is 246 units, so therefore it is not a large amount of units. These are so-called luxury units in a prime location. I think we just want to make sure that it is going to have a successful launch. It is always very tough when you are trying to catch the market, as in you launch, and you do not have a strong momentum behind you. Then it is always you are playing catch up after that.
I think it is very important to have that launch momentum. So, yeah. That is mainly it. Yim Ming, yes. I also do not want to hog the mic too much. Maybe I will let Mr. Chia also talk more about measures, be it SSD or other measures that we have seen in the local market. You can add your thoughts on Newport, Mr. Chia. If you disagree, let them know, too.
Thanks. I think you have summarized that well. Because it is a freehold project, and there is hardly any freehold project in the CBD, so we do not have timeline. I think we have to time it carefully to have a good launch. We are evaluating now. Anyway, we have spoken to many of the agents, and they are quite encouraged by the recent launches. It is a good sign that we evaluate and choose the right date to launch. The recent change in the SSD is not too serious. Actually, it was the same as some years ago, then they reduced it to three years at 4% per year. Then recently they see that the transaction volume of the sub-sales are quite high. That is why reinstate the old policy.
The impact is not much because many of the buyers nowadays are locals, and they are buying for long-term investment or own occupation. From the recent launches, you can see that the impacts are minimal. We are quite encouraged by that. On the other policies, the new minister seems to be quite friendly towards the suggestion to re-look at some of the policy. For example, he said looking at a ceiling for EC and HDB, which is a good sign, and also other things that the developers association brought up to him to consider, like TDSR and ABSD. No promise, but he says he will take a look. We are quite encouraged by the new minister come on board. Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I will also answer the question on the M&C New Zealand privatization, Dexter. We have privatized the whole M&C. This was in 2019, November already. This is the New Zealand-listed subsidiary, which owns the hotels in New Zealand as well as there is a land development division that is part of it. We had tried and we did not succeed, so a bit of a bummer. It is not the end of the world. I think we did have a favorable result come out from that. Yim Ming, I think we increased by 8%, is it? Or less? Sorry.
Yes, 8%.
Our stake in the listed entity increased. We are happy at this level. We put forward the privatization just because we thought it would be more efficient if the entire M&C was just a private subsidiary, rather than having a listed arm for the New Zealand portion. It is costly, as you know, to maintain a listed company as well. This portfolio is also aging in New Zealand, so would require a lot of capital. We just thought that it would be helpful if we privatized it and then we can really start to look at this holistically as part of the global hospitality portfolio and strategy. Didn't succeed, then didn't succeed. It is okay.
These things, it is up to shareholders, right? We are now up to. We increased by 8%. Thank you. My memory isn't completely failing me. We are now at 83%, is it? I mean, 81%? 85% or thereabout. We already own 85% of the company. It is okay. Sorry, Dexter, I'm not meaning to make light of that situation. It is what it is, and we may or may not try again. Hard to say. You had a third question, and it was relating to something about chairman, but I actually didn't hear it clearly. Could you repeat?
Sukanto.
Oh.
Yes.
Oh, because chairman had mentioned them previously. Do you want to make some comments? What was the question anyway, about?
I think they're asking if there was any progress with the talking to Sukanto o r investments overseas. I think chairman has, of course, been in close contact with Mr. Sukanto's group. We do not have anything to announce at this point in time. It is just a cordial relationship, and I think we are just looking for opportunities to work together.
Okay. Just one last follow-up for me. Obviously the feud happened in the last half, and you have sort of moved on from this, and this is probably aimed at the chairman. Could I ask, after everything that has happened, are you still confident in the succession planning for your company? Do you have a succession timeline and confident in the current succession plans that you have? Thanks.
Oh, Chairman, Dexter has directed that question at you. He is asking, are you still confident in the succession plan, and do you have a succession timeline? Is that correct, Dexter? Okay.
I think first half of 2025 marked a chapter for our group as we overcame internal challenges with tenacity and fortitude. We put past issue behind us, emerging stronger and more unified. The board and management are aligned and focused on effective execution and value creation. Our priority is to deliver on our commitments, strengthening our balance sheet, unlocking the potential of our portfolio, and redeployment capital into higher yield opportunity. We remain steadfast in building a resilient and future-ready organization, anchored in trust, performance, and sustainable growth.
Yeah. Dexter, aside from in chairman's personal biography, we usually in the past don't really talk much about succession plans. I think we haven't really talked much about that in the last 20 years. Nor have we ever given a timeline. These things are fluid and ultimately, will depend on the discussions at that point in time, will depend on how shareholders and board views things. So, yeah, it's always been the same. For us, it's business as usual as we move forward now, and I think as the chairman has mentioned, we've put the early part of the first half events behind us.
Maybe John. Do you have a question, John? Okay, John, then Goola, then I will have to take the final from Terence. Okay? Maybe John, why don't you-
Morning, everyone. Question for chairman. Chairman Kwek Leng Beng. Mr. Kwek Leng Beng. We've seen the share price recover from the April lows. I wonder what your view on that. Are you satisfied with the recovery? It's obviously been fueled by excitement in the market of potential divestments. What's your mindset in terms of divestments? Is there a sacred asset that you wouldn't want to let go? Or are you looking at more big-ticket items to sell in the coming months or years?
I think I always look at the bigger issues and have it done properly. As far as succession plan is concerned, the past has been over. We move forward to the future with strength, tenacity and doing so much or so little. I'm always looking forward, and this should be the case.
John, I know. Yep. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman, for telling it as it is. We do want to move forward, and we look forward. We don't look back. Maybe to address your question, John, although I know it was directed at Chairman, yes, we are very encouraged and grateful for the share price recovery. It's not just because of divestments. I think there are other reasons. Interest rates are one of them. As we see interest rates gradually tapering down, that's of big help to our group and to all developers. All developers are very interest rate sensitive, right? Because much of what we do is debt-funded. I would say the interest rate environment is one helpful thing.
Obviously, we have to ensure that we execute well on our strategy, be it developing our properties in Singapore or overseas, and ensuring that we balance our new investments with the appropriate amount of divestments and unlocking capital gains. We have continued to do that. I would say it's twofold now. One is the macro environment, and one is obviously our execution of our strategy and what we have committed to deliver to our shareholders. I would say that would be what's fueling the share price recovery. Obviously on top of that is the overall market sentiment and momentum. In terms of divestments, are there any sacred assets? Yeah, I would say there probably are. Off the top of my head, I would say Republic Plaza would be a very sacred asset.
That's an asset where our former chairman had accumulated the land sites, and then our current chairman had further developed Republic Plaza into the iconic building, the rocket that it is right now. It's a very important building to us. Valuation of the building would be easily in excess of SGD 2 billion. It's our flagship headquarters as well for the whole CDL. Yeah, I would say this asset is not something we would consider for divestment or even injection into a fund management platform. But aside from potentially this and a few other assets, I'm not sure. I would say we are not sentimental or emotional. I think we look at things as they come by, and at the end of the day, we want to do our best to unlock value for our shareholders. We will look at everything in an objective manner.
Okay, good. I know time is running out. I just have two more. Goola and then Terence, and then I'll just check back on the media one more last time. Okay.
Thanks. Okay, thanks. Belinda, thanks. Well, congratulations for the results, Chairman. They are better than I expected. Question on the divestments, because I think Chairman talks about deployment of capital into higher-yielding opportunities. I am just wondering, since Yim Ming said 80% of Sterling was floating, are you looking at divesting Teddington and Mortlake? There was a building in Shoreditch, but it is not in your presentation. Do you still own it? Are there any plans to divest those assets? What are the market values like versus, just generally, versus what you paid for about, is it 10 - 12 years ago?
If you could on that. The other question, I think Chairman sort of half answered it. I was asking, why did you not consider a REIT with Singapore commercial assets, of which one would have been Republic Plaza? The other one could have been South Beach. Then you have City House, and you have also got the City Square Mall. You could have injected Hong Leong Building into it, and you could have done an AEI. I am just thinking out loud over there.
I will take the second question, and then I will pass it to Yim Ming. You can talk about our divestments for U.K. development sites as well as Development House, which is the property you mentioned as Shoreditch. I think what is important when you are listing a REIT is not just what properties you are going to seed it with, or if you are the sponsor. More importantly, the pipeline for that. As you know, it is not that easy to get a strong pipeline of office properties in Singapore. We already have some very big REITs, and they have done very well and they have grown a lot in scale. I think for us to list, let us say a commercial REIT.
When we ourselves do not have enough office or retail properties on our portfolio, and as mentioned earlier, some may not be necessarily open for sale or injection. It will be very tough because we will have a tough time having a pipeline to follow up, and we will be forced to pay very aggressive prices, which results in low cap rates. Just to get further properties for the growth for that REIT. I would say that is part of our thinking.
Also, because we want to unlock value and to be able to recycle the capital, it was faster for us in the case of South Beach, I think to pursue a straight sale, and in this case, in the most tax-efficient manner to our joint venture partner than to work on doing a REIT, which will take me well into next year before I can get anything done. That is one of the reasons. Yim Ming, maybe you want to talk about our U.K. development properties?
The reason why the U.K. rates were floating was not exactly linked, so to speak. But yes, in terms of our development platform, we have about 10 projects. We have actually finished up five of them, the last one being Ransomes, where we sold as a land bank. I think you mentioned Teddington. Teddington is currently parts of it being leased. I guess can add on a little bit more, but I think the other question that you mentioned was the pricing to date vis-à-vis what we acquired for. Ignoring financing cost, which is a big element, I think, one of the projects for U.K. that has a valuation way exceeding what we have bought it for, would be Pavilion.
That will have a huge search. Shoreditch is actually quite small. We bought Shoreditch at about GBP 39 million. That is actually not the big ones, though. Our big one are the two land banks in Pavilion as well as in Stag. Chia, you got anything to add on?
On Stag, we recently got the appeal through for the planning permission. I think we have quite a lot of options at our table right now. We can, of course, look for joint venture partners, we could build it ourselves, and of course, we could also divest it. I think it really is something we are working on. Yeah.
Okay, Terence. Terence Khi, okay.
Thanks. Sorry, Terence again from JP Morgan. Just wanted to maybe follow on from Goola's question. On the five remaining U.K. land bank, could we get an estimate of what is the holding value on the balance sheet? Given that this probably is not really contributing, it is lower than the cost of financing. Would it be better to just divest it? If we could also get an update on two potential developments. On the Shanghai Xintiandi site, what is the sales strategy there? Could you give us an indication of potential pricing? Delfi Orchard redevelopment, any updates there? Thank you.
I will just do quickly on the U.K. before I hand over to Sherman. I think our current balance sheet value for the U.K. properties is in the range of about SGD 850 million. That is for the entire portfolio, yeah. Looking at after Stag having planning approval, yes, I think it is a good window for us. Pavilion is a very good site. No lack of suitors, but I think it is a good window for us to look at potential divestments.
Yeah. Terence, just to add on to Yim Ming. We do endeavor, I think, to get those U.K. sites sold, and that will unlock a huge chunk of capital for us. You are right, unfortunately, over the last few years especially, it was a lot of borrowing costs attached to this portfolio, but there was no income coming in. For Xintiandi site, we are still in the midst of applying for planning permits. Our design is more or less finalized, so we are just applying for the permits. That should happen pretty soon, in the next couple of months. Then we anticipate starting construction towards the later part of this year, towards the end of this year.
So far, if you go and you can independently verify how projects have been launched in Huangpu District, which is where Xintiandi is part of, or specifically in the Xintiandi area, has been very, very strong. Most projects have seen a full sell-out on day one. Right now, I would say the prices for, I will split it between the two types of residential that we have in our site.
One is high-rise residential apartments, the other is villa units, so landed properties. For high-rise, I would say right now we have seen the pricing trend to around RMB 200,000/ sq m or more. For villa units, we are seeing pricing in the market trend towards RMB 300,000/ sq m or more. When it is time for us to launch, and we are targeting launch hopefully in Q4 of next year. We hope that by then the pricing will be even better than what it is today. Of course, I do not have a crystal ball, but so far, very, very strong in the Xintiandi area and in the Huangpu District in general. Thank you.
Any plans with regards to Delfi Orchard redevelopment?
Mr. Chia, why don't you take this? I have spoken too much.
Okay. It's a very interesting project. This, we are combining the Delfi and Orchard. If at all, we go ahead, and so far, we have some preliminary discussion with authorities. They are very supportive. They want to more or less uplift the whole Orchard area, the upper part of Orchard area, where it's quite quiet now. But it's a long-term plan, and we don't have immediate plan right now, but we are looking at it. It's a very beautiful site, and our consultant are very excited. I think if we were to proceed, we'll probably enhance the whole area, including our St. Regis and other properties nearby. Thank you.
Okay. I recognize that the time is running out, but I see Cheryl's hand. I'm going to just let the media know that there is no door stop after this. All right? Because management team has another event to go to. Just want to highlight. I'll just pass the time to Cheryl, and Cheryl, if you just ask questions.
Thank you. Cheryl from Bloomberg here. Are there plans to add one more board member following Mr. Yeo's departure?
This is obviously a matter for the nominating and remuneration committee to discuss and to propose to the Board. So far, I've not heard anything, so I don't think so. I mean
Okay. Just quickly, if there's any other questions. Gurraj, you're good? Okay. All right. Just going around the boardroom again, any of the analysts in the room? Okay, great. We're almost into one and a half hours since our briefing, but it's been a great opportunity. I just want to ask the panelists if you have any final comments. No. Great. On behalf of the management, as you can see, the Board and management are aligned. We are focused on execution and delivering shareholder value. On this note, I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody for being here today, and we look forward to seeing you again. Refreshments are outside, and thank you for those that are joining us virtually as well. Thank you and have a good afternoon, everybody.