Now, I will hand across to the CEO of the Manager of the Cromwell European REIT, Simon Garing. Simon, over to you.
Thanks, Kiara, and good afternoon to everyone today, and thank you very much for joining us as our F inancial Year 2023 Results were published on the SGXNET this morning. As a short introduction, CEREIT today remains the largest SGX-listed REIT, which owns a 100% European commercial real estate portfolio. With 110 predominantly freehold properties across 10 countries, valued at EUR 2.3 billion, our investors can benefit from high yields and two major secular trends in Europe, namely continued growth in logistics, driven by the favorable supply-demand dynamics, and a flight to quality in the office space as tenants become more discerning of their workspace environment and energy efficiency demands.
As a result of our investment strategy at the end of 2019, our portfolio is now more balanced towards these trends, with a 53% weighting to logistics and 45% weighting to office, totaling around 1.8 million sqm across these 10 countries. If I can move to slide 4, 2023 was a reasonably successful year in a tough operating environment, as we maintained a disciplined approach to capital management and progressed on balancing the portfolio to protect unit holders' long-term interests. We're really pleased to announce the full year distribution per unit is EUR 15.693, and that's based on a 100% payout ratio of operating earnings.
This year, we're not providing a capital top-up, so adjusting for the capital top-up we made in 2022, the distribution this year is down only 4.1% on a like-for-like basis. Sequentially, the second half distribution, which will be paid at the end of March this year, is slightly higher than the first half that we paid in September last year. Full-year net property income is up 4.1% on a like-for-like basis, supported by very high 94.3% occupancy and a 5.7% rent reversion. Our redevelopment projects in Milan, in the Czech Republic, and Slovakia were delivered on time and on budget, completing with 50%-70% pre-leasing levels, and we expect to be fully leased by the beginning of the European summer.
We're also ahead of our target for asset sales, with EUR 197 million divested during last year at a 14% premium to valuation. We remain disciplined with CEREIT's capital metrics, retaining our Fitch investment-grade credit rating. Net gearing remains within our board policy range at 38%, and we have a very high interest rate cover of 3.8x . We finished the year with EUR 250 million of cash and undrawn credit lines, so we're in very comfortable shape. One of the key factors that underpins the resilience of CEREIT is our size and diversified nature of our tenant base. Our top 10 tenants account for only 23% of the total headline rent, with no one tenant exceeding 5% of the total rent.
This is particularly notable, as four years ago, our top 10 tenant customers made up over 40% of the total headline rent. Bond investors, in particular, take note of this diversification, given the less reliance on any one particular tenant. The other note here with our tenants is they're either global MNCs or government agencies, again, providing very high credit ratings. No single industry sector represents more than 17% of the portfolio. CEREIT's largest exposure in any one industry type now is transportation through logistics, which is a reflection of our pivot to this sector. And we'll discuss the lease expiry profile in more detail, but for now, note the long weighted average lease to expiry of just under five years.
Turning to slide six, in 2023, the portfolio occupancy remained high at 94.3% after we re-leased or took on new leases of over 270,000 sqm or over 15% of the portfolio, including 61,000 sqm in the fourth quarter. And from an office perspective, that's over 20% of our office space was either renewed or re-leased. The 5.7% positive rent reversion was slightly above CPI and continues to reflect the low vacancies and good market rent growth in both the office and logistics markets that we generally operate in. A highlight, in particular, was the office portfolio's positive 9.4% rent reversion, leading to a lift in occupancy to over 90%. Andreas here will explain in more detail.
But generally, this should be considered a really good result given the weak economic background. And again, you'll see in this presentation that the grade A office markets that CEREIT invests in, in these gateway cities in Europe, the average vacancy is only 3.2%. These gateway cities in Europe are vastly different to other key cities in other, on other continents. So again, very different market, and we're getting the benefit of that through our European portfolio. Turning to the next page, a lot of the success is actually driven by our pivot five or six years ago to recognize that ESG performance certification is very important to attract office tenants into our portfolio. We're ahead of our medium-term ESG targets, such as our GRESB score and our proportion of green leases.
We're now ranked in the top three of our peer group throughout Europe. While these metrics are important for tenants and investors, almost half of CEREIT's debt now have the sustainability linked KPIs. So again, as we achieve these KPIs, that benefits you, the equity investor, through slightly lower interest rates. And we are particularly pleased with our continued double A MSCI ESG rating, which has become the most used ESG benchmark by global investors. This is akin to credit rating through the credit rating agents, but a lot of bond and equity investors now look at the MSCI ESG score, and we're really pleased that the Cromwell European REIT is one of only three Singapore REITs to be awarded such a high status.
With that, I'll turn over to Shane Hagan, our CFO, to go through the financial performance of the year. Thank you, Shane.
Thanks, Simon, and good afternoon. FY 2023 gross revenue NPI were lower year-on-year, mostly due to asset sales and the absence of income of about EUR 3.8 million from Maxima in Italy, which is undergoing strip out works. But this was partially offset by a one-off dilapidation income received of EUR 1.3 million from the previous tenant. There was also a lower contribution from eight Demanio assets due to a 15% reduction in overpaid rent claimed by Demanio. The larger sales were Piazza Affari, which occurred in June, and Bari Europa in October. As Simon mentioned, the FY 2023 NPI, net property income, was 4.1% higher than the prior corresponding period on a like-for-like basis, excluding acquisitions, divestments, and developments.
This was led by the logistics sector, which was up by 5.6%, and even the office sector, up by 4.2%. Distributable income of EUR 88.3 million and the DPU of EUR 15.69 was 8.7% lower than the PCP, mainly due to the lower NPI I mentioned, as well as, 1, higher interest expense, mostly resulting from the higher three-month Euribor and €STR, where the average interest rate for FY 2023 was 2.59% versus 1.84% in the prior period. There were also higher margins from the new loans drawn and higher borrowings drawn in the first half of the year to fund development and capital expenditure.
There was an absence of capital top-up, so EUR 2.05 million was paid out relating to Nervesa 21 in FY 2022, and there was no such payment in this year. These amounts were partially offset by additional income from annual inflation indexation across the portfolio, and we had a one-off tax credit due to a reversal of a Dutch tax accrual of EUR 2.3 million that was no longer required. So as Simon mentioned, like-for-like DPU only 4% lower than the prior period, excluding the impact of Nervesa and Maxima. So to explain this graphically, the waterfall charts, these are quite useful to explain the key result drivers. As we mentioned last year, we paid a capital top-up, capital gain top-up, to offset the absence of income from the Nervesa development.
The relevant DPU number for last year is SGD 16.8. As I mentioned, two key drivers are the negative impact of divestments, about SGD 0.65, and the absence of income from Maxima in Italy, about SGD 0.68. Higher interest rates and borrowing margins have had a negative impact of SGD 1.5 on the DPU, as interest costs were 32% higher year-on-year. Interestingly, providing a significant offset to the higher finance costs, was an increase in like-for-like NPI, which provided almost SGD 0.1 benefit to DPU, and that's driven by the higher indexation, rent reversion, and leasing up of space. The current tax expense was EUR 3 million lower, primarily to the benefit of the, due to the benefit of the EUR 2.3 million reversal from the prior period.
Now, turning to the sequential half-year comparison, it's pleasing to note that the second half DPU was actually higher than the first half, and this was partly due to two one-off items, being the tax expense reversal and the dilapidation income received from Maxima. Note that the portfolio NPI was only marginally up, as the indexation is a little bit seasonal, and the higher expectation, higher indexation, is expected in the earlier part of the year. Two negative items impacting the sequential comparison were the impact of the divestments and also the one-off Domaniio rent reduction. And it's pleasing to note that interest costs were flat sequentially based on our hedging strategy. So this slide here, shows the five-year, or the six-year DPU. You can see, CEREIT has recorded relatively stable distributions as the like-for-like numbers in the blue boxes show.
Again, we would like to note that this is fairly positive outcome in light of COVID, interest rates rising, valuation declines, and high inflation in the past few years. Most of the decline in the current is the headline DPU is the effect of higher interest rates on the current headline DPU. Turning now to the distribution timetable. Pleasing to note that the second half distribution will be 83% tax-exempt. We've decided to leave the distribution reinvestment plan turned off, given the discount that exists between the unit price and the net asset value. Importantly, the distribution payment date will be the twenty-eighth of March. Now turning to the balance sheet. The balance sheet has really remained resilient, with cash growing to EUR 74 million and zero drawn against the EUR 200 million committed revolving credit facility.
Also, there are no debt expiries until the end of next year. Asset sales of almost EUR 200 million have provided funding for developments and CapEx, while also reducing the net debt by 12%. NAV was lower due to the fair value loss on investment properties, which I will cover on the next slide. Note that net equity includes EUR 31.1 million of realized capital gains, which includes a EUR 3.1 million profit that we made on the EUR 50 million bond buyback that was completed in December. Now turning to valuations. The headwinds of high interest rates has affected asset valuations across the whole REIT market.
However, due to some early strategic rebalancing of CEREIT's portfolio, which we actually embarked on a couple of years ago, we were able to partially mitigate this headwind with only a moderate 1.5% portfolio valuation decline in the past 6 months, and 3.5% decline over the last 18 months, despite a more than 100% basis point, 100% basis point yield expansion over the period. Note, this is before taking into account capital and development expenditure. Grouped by asset type, logistics performed well, recording an almost 5% valuation increase over the last 18 months, really validating our strategy to rebalance our portfolio towards this sector. This was driven by higher passing rents and inflation indexation.
Office performed less well over this period, with an 11.6% valuation decline, basically due to widening of the terminal cap rates and a more negative view of secondary office locations, in particular Poland and Finland. Meanwhile, our other asset category, all in Italy, recorded an 8.7% valuation decline due to the widening of terminal cap rates, partially offset by the increase in rent. While CEREIT's headline aggregate leverage is just a tick over 40% at the end of the year, the net gearing fell to 38.4% due to debt being repaid. The current leverage is well inside the loan covenants and MAS limits of 50%.
Given the higher interest rates at the end of the year, plus the margins on the new loans entered into, the all-in interest rate at the end of the year was 3.19%. We continue to remain very focused on our liquidity and will defer speculative developments and non-essential CapEx if we need to. We remain committed to maintaining CEREIT's investment-grade credit rating of at least BBB- with stable outlook. 2023 has been a busy year for us in capital management, focusing on our liquidity and extension of debt facilities. During the year, we've completed almost EUR 500 million of treasury transactions, with good support from existing and new lenders. We were pleased with the outcome of the EUR 50 million bond buyback in December, and we will continue to focus on this liability management initiatives during this year.
CEREIT now has no debt maturing until November 2025, which we will look to manage by the end of this year. With recent hedging, we're now 88% hedged until the end of 2025, and over 40% for the year after that. This should coincide with opportunities to hedge at lower rates at that time. And with that, I'll now pass to Andreas to talk about portfolio and asset management.
Thanks, Shane. I want to come back to CEREIT's operational performance and specifically the performance of CEREIT's light industrial logistics portfolio. Consistent with the broader market, occupancy in our light industrial logistics portfolio is slightly down to 95.6%, despite the 159,400 sq m of leasing done during 2023. The occupancy drop in Czech Republic and Slovakia are due to the additional partly vacant area from completed developments, which are expected to be leased in the first half of 2024. The Danish occupancy rate dropped by 4 percentage points, mainly due to a rental guarantee coming to an end in Sonnevej and two leases expiring in Herskind, which we expect to re-lease in the next six months. Light industrial logistics sector's rent reversion was 3.7% for the full year.
For the second half of the year, rent reversion for the sector was only 2.3%, as two key German tenants exercised their 5-year option at the same rent. Otherwise, the rent reversion would have been higher. These renewals for bigger units of 10,000 sqm plus had minimal rent reversions in Germany and Czech Republic, while new leases in units smaller than 1,000 sqm attracted higher double-digit rent reversion in France and Germany. Sector wide remained unchanged at 5.1 years versus the period quarter. Average vacancy for the logistics sector in our European investment countries was slightly in the second half of the year to 2.9%, with take-up moderating during the same period. Although the current vacancy rate nudged slightly, it remains far below the average rate seen prior to the pandemic.
With new supply pipeline peaking mid-year and occupier demand expected to return, this is likely to put downward pressure on the vacancy rates. Rental growth in the sector has slowed in the last few quarters from a peak of around 12% in the second quarter, 2022, but remains positive. Turning now to the office portfolio. It's pleasing to note the overall occupancy in office has increased 120 basis points over the fourth quarter to finish the year at 90.3%. Our BREEAM-rated French office asset, Cap Mermoz, has attracted good leasing momentum, with a 10-year lease being signed by Cypro for 1,600 square meter, taking asset occupancy up to 95.3%.
In the Netherlands, we are in advanced discussions with our largest tenant, Nationale Nederlanden, at Haagse Poort, and in The Hague for a long-term lease renewal from 2025 onwards, which will also see an exciting partnership with them for a major energy efficiency asset enhancement project. Occupancy fell slightly in Italy and Finland, explained by peripheral location and building age, attracting less demand. The increase in occupancy in Poland is due to removing the vacant asset, Grójecka 5 , from the occupancy stats since it has been emptied as a condition for a sale to a developer. We are also close to award exclusivity to a buyer for another partly vacant Polish office asset, which will positively impact CEREIT's occupancy rate once the asset is sold. Leasing activity in CEREIT's office sector in 2023 totaled 170,600 sqm.
New leases and renewals in the second half of 2023 were signed at a positive 9.4% rental reversion rate. This was driven primarily by demand from our Grade A office, offices in the Netherlands. Tenant customer retention rate for offices was at 62.5% in 2023, while improved slightly to 4.1 years by the year end, up from 4.0 years in the previous quarter. Market data for the office sector in Zurich's key cities shows that take-up slightly improved in the second half, but vacancy rate still went to 9.3% due to the impact of occupiers recalibrating their requirements to take lesser but higher quality space. We see that polarization between prime and secondary is accelerating, resulting in higher levels of pre-commitments to new developments and rental growth for prime locations.
The bottom left-hand chart shows that Grade A office vacancy in our key gateway cities is at low 3.2%, supporting our rent growth and tenant retention negotiations. Vacancy in Finland and Poland rose to further 14.9% as oversupply meets reduced demand, in particular in secondary cities and non-central locations. A good example for the performance premium of better quality space is the Amsterdam prime office market, where prime rents have increased from EUR 350 per sqm to EUR 600 per sqm as of now, with an accelerated growth in the last three years. Our Ruyterkade asset in Amsterdam is 300-meter walking distance from Amsterdam's main train station and earmarked for redevelopment, which would unlock the significant rent increase potential.
Please take note of Grade A vacancies of between 1% and 3% only in Milan, Rome, and The Hague. We have centrally located office assets earmarked for hard refurbishment and redevelopments. Amenities such as rooftop terraces, gyms, restaurants, or cafes, have a growing importance in office assets to attract and retain talent, according to recent studies conducted by CBRE and Knight Frank. As a proof of concept, two rooftop terraces are a feature of our Nevesa 21 office redevelopment and have been one of the reasons why Universal Music signed up for Nevesa 21. In 2023 and up to early 2024, we completed 3 development projects worth a total of around EUR 50 million on time and largely on budget. Our Nevesa 21 project in Milan, Italy, was completed in January 2024.
7% of the space is leased and has been handed over to three leading firms, with Universal Music Group being the anchor tenant. With efficient floor plates and premium sub amenities, as I mentioned, we expect the finished floors to lease up well and ahead of our original rents. In Lovosice, Czech Republic, we completed a EUR 15 million project comprising the refurbishment of 2,600 sqm of existing building and developed five new warehouses with a total area of 14,677 sqm. This asset is now 7% let, with advanced discussions underway for the rest of the space. In Nové Mesto, Slovakia, we completed development of two new warehouses, totaling around 16,000 sqm, with a total project value of EUR 30 million.
The first warehouse has been fully pre-let, with the other around 50% pre-let. Looking forward, we have more than EUR 200 million of development pipeline opportunity, which are expected to be accretive on their completion. We are mindful to stake out the development program to manage the overall risk, and we'll keep the quantum development value well below the regulatory limit of 10% of deposited property. This slide shows the likely order of these projects, while noting that the substantial Parc des Docks in Paris is still a few years away from changing the master plan and receiving all the required approvals. In the meantime, we are showing very strong income returns on this asset. Now I'm handing back to Simon to talk you through market commentary and management outlook.
Thanks, Andreas. So as you can see on this chart, inflation has fallen markedly throughout 2023. Oxford Economics is forecasting average Eurozone inflation down to around 2%, in 2024, and in line with ECB targets in the medium term. The the Cromwell House view is for slightly higher inflation and a slight delay when the ECB will move to cut rates. Nevertheless, sometime around the summer, European summer this year. So we do continue to plan to remain conservative in our approach during the first half of 2024, before we expect that stabilization and switch to the uptick in the real estate cycle in the second half. The ECB refinancing rates are believed to have peaked at around 4.5%.
Leading indicators point to soft business and consumer demand in the short term, which support the inverted yield curve on the next page, with the German 10-year bonds now trading at a low 2.4%, so 200 basis points lower than U.S. Treasuries, and over 200 basis points lower than the ECB rates. This is a net positive for real estate over the coming years. The right-hand chart shows Euro GDP growth is also at cyclical lows. The GDP is projected to grow by a nominal 0.6% this year, slightly above the 0.5% last year, although the performance of individual countries varies widely. And you can see that again in our valuation results, with markets such as Denmark being up over the last 18 months in anticipation of that stronger economic growth.
So when we look at CBRE's recent total return forecast from a real estate perspective, which was published a couple of weeks ago, CBRE are now forecasting close to a 10% annualized total return for both office and logistic assets in Europe over the next five years. Indeed, these represent the strongest forecast returns for a decade as we come out of the cyclical lows, and having just come out of that massive rise in cap rates that is largely now behind us. The bulk of the returns from real estate still expected to come from maintaining the relatively high income yields, some rental growth, and capital gains as the cap rates converge in response to the expected lower rates over the next few years.
For office sector, CBRE forecasts the Netherlands to have a total return expectation of just over 11%, the strongest in their forecast range. That's very relevant for CEREIT, because Netherlands is our largest office portfolio. For logistics, analyzed total return for key markets, which CEREIT has logistics presence in, is expected to average just under 10% over the next five years, with France expected to post the strongest growth. Again, CEREIT's largest logistics portfolio is in Paris, so should benefit from that expected recovery. So look, in conclusion, we think this is a very pleasing set of results, underpinned by some very positive market fundamentals in both office and logistics, where you see in Grade A office gateway city vacancies to be 3.2%, and across logistics, 2.9%.
So very much the underlying fundamentals of our portfolio and the markets we operate generally are in very good condition. This should provide confidence to investors to help close the wide pricing gap to our NAV of SGD 2.12, and the high 10%+ dividend yield that CEREIT currently offers. Managing for the tail end of this higher interest rate environment still remains a key priority for us. We anticipate fundamentals to be supportive for net property income growth, although there may still be DPU headwinds from the transition back to the normal borrowing costs, as well as from the asset sale program that we're undertaking. Although, as Shane mentioned, we're at 88% hedging, so one of the higher hedged of the REITs in the sector.
So the three key priority areas ahead of us are, firstly, our local Cromwell asset management teams that are on the ground continue their excellent asset management programs. We are working diligently to keeping the portfolio occupancy high, while fully capturing the rent reversion opportunities and inflation indexation that almost all of our leases in Europe have. We are progressing with the various green initiatives to enhance the sustainability qualities of our assets. That's good for our tenants, it's also good for our investors. We continue to invest judiciously in redevelopments and AEIs to further future-proof the portfolio. Our second priority remains to continue our asset recycling program. Executing further EUR 200 million of divestments is still a priority, notwithstanding the comments that we may be getting close to the bottom.
This frees up capital to fund our asset programs and our refinancing programs without having to raise expensive equity, and also maintaining that high payout ratio, which is again, different to many other REITs, and that enables us to reduce our weighting to smaller and less liquid markets, and improve the quality of the portfolio. And thirdly, we'll continue our disciplined capital management approach. While we believe that most of the interest rate increases are behind us, we remain vigilant to the headwinds and continue to identify opportunities to offset the related financial and valuation risks brought about by the tighter credit conditions and softening Eurozone economy. So overall, we are cautiously optimistic that the cycle will turn in 2024, and that CEREIT, the CEREIT, Cromwell European REIT, is well-placed to capture the opportunities ahead of us. So thank you all for your investment and support.
Kiara, we can now open the call for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon. We'll now begin the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please select the Raise Hand button to be placed in the virtual queue. For those who have dialed in, please select star nine to raise your hand and star six to mute or unmute. Alternatively, you can submit text questions via the Q&A feature. Both of these options can be found at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Our first question comes from Rajiv, and he submitted this via the text questions. Could you please elaborate on the nature of the reduced tax expenses, which resulted in a multimillion-dollar benefit, and any such possibility in the future?
Rajiv, I'll answer the first part of the question, then hand over Shane for the comments around the future. But it's really important for investors to understand that our distribution per unit of SGD 15,693 is after we pay in Europe, the withholding tax and the income taxes that we're required to. So again, unlike other markets, other countries, investors in the REIT do not have to fill out any forms, and we've already paid the relevant taxes in Europe, and that's already taken into account when you look at our even very high distribution yield of SGD 15.693. Shane, on the future?
Yeah, well, maybe just a point. Thanks, Rajiv, for the question. So just to inform you about this, last year, we did make an accrual of EUR 2.3 million, and it was a conservative approach. We weren't sure what the outcome was gonna be, but we were pleased that we did receive the confirmation from the Netherlands Tax Authority, which enabled us to reverse the accrual. So it was really just a conservative approach taken in FY 2022. So whether there will be more of these in the future, I would say this is probably a larger amount, as you say, multimillion. Unlikely that there will be other significant provisions made that would could end up in a reversal of an accrual later.
However, there will be smaller items now and then, possibly some in Singapore from positive tax rulings to come this year as well.
In Poland, I think there's also some positive tax rulings to come as well.
Yes.
But the point is, the point is we pay taxes in Europe. We make provisions, obviously, on the delayed approach, and we take very good tax advice from the likes of PwC, as well as our own in-house tax counsels. Thank you.
Thanks. We do have a follow-up question from Rajiv. What is the projected all-in interest rate at the end of this passing year, say, December 2024, please?
Yeah. So right now, as I mentioned, we don't have any debt expiring this year. And if we look at the outlook for the short-term interest rates, where we do have an exposure, we are actually expecting lower rates this year. However, should we decide to refinance the bond, which expires in November 2025, then based on today's rates, there would be an increase. The math is quite easy. So basically, the bond represents almost half of our total debt. The current cost we have for that is around 2%. Where we see on the screen today for repricing that debt would be somewhere around 5%. So we would see an increase in our all-in interest costs increasing by about 1%.
We do have one final question from Rajiv. Can you please update the projected redevelopment of the Paris asset and any co-developer talks going on, please?
Yeah, as we said, Parc des Loges is for us a long, long-term redevelopment plan. We have made good progress in the discussion with the public stakeholders on the change of the master plan, which would then allow for a mixed-use scheme with a significant increase in the net land space, and with the majority of logistics light industrial on the site. We have had preliminary discussions with the interested party; they would like to work with us. However, from our perspective, it's too early to run into potential JV discussions. So we would like to create most of the value ourselves by making more progress on the master plan and potentially then apply for the building permits. Thanks.
Thank you. That also answered a question submitted by David. Next up, we have a question from Tan: Do you see REIT have any assets in the EU/NATO and Ukraine, sorry, the Ukraine-UK war theater, and is it affected by the spillover, for example, refugees moving into Poland?
So we have approximately 10% exposure to Poland and Finland, and a couple of % with Slovakia as well. So from a border perspective, there is obviously an exposure from a border perspective, but in terms of the economic impact, if you have a look at our data pack, you'll see that GDP forecast for Poland is actually higher than most of Western Europe for the next couple of years. Indeed, if you go to places like Warsaw, the refugees, so-called in Warsaw, actually have their own financial means. And so we've actually seen higher inflation in Poland than we have in the rest of Europe as a result of more people coming into the economy.
We've also seen in Grade A office in Warsaw, a slight tick down in office vacancy, again, as more Ukrainian businesses relocate into Warsaw. So from that perspective, we're actually quite bullish on the overall market environment, notwithstanding the dread of war. However, we still remain net sellers of our office assets in Poland, in part because they're not all Grade A in well-located regions. They're still very high-yielding assets, but from a long-term future proofing, we consider other opportunities in the rest of Europe, rather than being specifically in Helsinki, and in some of the second-tier office markets in Poland.
So, long answer to the question, still okay, reasonable growth, but our office mix within Helsinki and the second-tier Polish assets, probably not where we want to be over the next 3-5 years, so you will see us continuing to sell down there.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Photon. What would be the impact on property valuations in 2024 from interest rate cuts? Said differently, what would, what would cap rates compress quickly considering the low transaction volumes in the market?
Yeah, so I think that's why our pre-prepared remarks were sort of a two-half story. So the first half is still dealing with, I guess, the past legacy of the lower liquidity, higher interest rates. Certainly our own portfolio has seen 100 basis points in cap rate increases over the last 18 months. Having said that, our valuations held up remarkably well. So it's not just about cap rates. You know, our logistics portfolio is up 4.8%. Our logistics portfolio is up 4.8%. Cap rates went up, but we also had much higher rent growth and higher occupancy and longer leases.
So that inflation benefit on the income side and the tailwind of tenants, you know, looking for space, I mean, with the average vacancy at 2.9%, we've re-leased so much of our portfolio that that reduces the risk profile, provides the higher rent growth, which offsets the cap rates. So cap rates is just one part of the story. In terms of the direction of cap rates, the second half of the year could actually benefit from lower interest rates from the ECB, better lending margins from the banks. And as you may have seen the recent Savills research, that shows there's EUR 900 billion of private equity real estate capital looking to deploy into European commercial assets. So we think we're getting pretty close to the bottom.
Certainly the second half, we're pretty more confident on than the first half, but certainly this should be the year of getting close to that stabilization. Now, equity markets preempt that, and so again, our recent rally in the CEREIT price, albeit off very low depressed levels, is in part the investors looking forward and saying, "Yeah, we're pretty close to the bottom. Now we can start to see good daylight at the end of the tunnel." And so from our perspective, that's why we're cautiously optimistic, still looking to sell some assets to provide liquidity, and avoid having to do some of those other measures that other REITs in other markets have had to undertake. So our gearing's at 38%, interest cover is high, no major debt refinance for the next 18 months.
We're in really good shape to take advantage of what is still in Europe, positive fundamentals for an income perspective. Thank you, Karen.
And just following along from that, we have a question from Michael: Do you think valuations will continue to see a decline in FY 2024? And do you think that the cap rate will continue to increase in FY 2024, please?
Yeah, I think I just answered that one. I don't know, Andreas, if you wanted to add anything? No valuations. No. Okay, good.
All right. No problem. Next up, we have a question from Nathan: To what percentage completion stage would you say the execution of capital recycling or transition to lighter logistics, divestment of non-core Grade A office assets?
Yeah, thanks, Nathan. And when we started this a few years ago, remember we said we wanted to pivot to the majority weighting to the logistics. We were 32% weighted at the time, we're now at 53%. We've got a soft target to get to at least 60%, so a material shift in the portfolio. And that's come through acquisitions of logistics, but also through the disposal of office and other non-core assets. So now we're about EUR 240 million of the way through our previously stated, excuse me, EUR 400 million euro sale program. So I would say we're more than halfway through that, and we would expect to get through the large part of our sales program over the next 12 to 18 months.
There is a balance between selling everything up front, because as you saw from Shane, you know, de-leveraging does have a negative impact on DPU in the short term. So again, we're very mindful about not selling everything. And then the second aspect to that is, we're not a forced seller. There's no bank that's taking control. We, our independent directors are fully in control of the REIT, and so we don't have to sell at any price. So we're very selective. You know, if someone tries to bottom feed, we can politely tell them, "No, thank you very much." So again, you look at our track record of disposing of EUR 240 million of assets at a 14% premium to valuation, again, we want to be ahead of the curve.
We want to be selling assets when we're in control, and not when the banks are in control. But many of our peers have fallen into that. So we are two three steps away from that. You would've seen very high levels of cash and liquidity, and from a MAS and loan covenant perspective, we're probably EUR 500 million, 20% plus of further valuation declines that would be needed to even get us anywhere near that realm of conversation. So again, very conservative management, very disciplined management, ahead of the curve, in our asset sale program, not having to sell everything, not having to accept any bid that comes through.
So again, trying to give investors the confidence, given that we've been trading at this big discount to NAV, like many of our peers, to differentiate that, one, the underlying property fundamentals are different where we participate, and two, our balance sheet is in much stronger position than those peers. Thanks, Kara.
Next up, we have a question from Satinder. Can you please give us a sense of, firstly, the tenant incentives, and secondly, the rent-free periods for our offices and LI/LL assets, and how have they moved since pre-COVID?
I'll let Andreas take that one.
Yeah, as you have seen, especially during COVID, there has been a large increase in demand and high takeover in the logistic light industrial space, driven by supply constraints. And that had not only an impact on market rents, which have grown quite significantly, just to give you an example, in Prague or in Czech Republic, from EUR 5 to EUR 8, but obviously it also had an impact on tenant incentives. So tenant incentives have gone down close to zero, and we have had evidence, for instance, our Parc des Docks asset, where rents have also now increased to EUR 170, coming from EUR 90, at the point of time when we bought the asset, and we get close to zero tenant incentives.
If we lease out the space, usually the tenant also takes the space as is. We don't have to invest into a reinstatement or regular refurbishment. Most of the investments that are done are done by the tenant, so that's a quite good situation. Obviously, there are also less well-located assets in the logistic line industrial sector. Here, you may have to give incentives. However, this is by exception with respect to our portfolio, because the majority of assets are really well-located. Now, office is a different picture. As we have pointed out, there is a polarization or bifurcation between the really good well-located Grade A, ESG credited office space, where market rent growth has increased significantly.
We have shown one slide here, the Amsterdam market coming from EUR 300 per sqm, growing to EUR 600 or EUR 350-EUR 600 . Again, you would give a very low incentive for this type of assets, whereas in the other part, the decentralized out of town business parks, non-certified and aged office assets, incentives have increased. Just to give you example, it could easily be in the area of 20%-25% of incentives to be given for a three or five years lease renewal. And this in particular applies also to our Polish office assets, where this still has been market standard. We have seen that incentives come a little bit down the Polish market. Also, vacancy rates have come down slowly.
Simon mentioned the macroeconomic drivers and the special effects or impact of relocation from Ukrainian tenants into Warsaw office. So you see this as a quite polarized picture.
Thanks, Kara.
Thank you. Next up, we have a question from Thomas: Can you please comment on your average cap rate for logistics and office portfolios respectively?
Okay, maybe I'll take that. So, we tend to focus on two numbers, not necessarily called cap rates, but we talk about an initial yield, which is based off the current occupancy and rental structure of the existing leases, as well as a reversionary yield, which is sort of a market rental view with a bit of a look forward. And if we break those down between on initial yield for both light industrial, logistics and office, actually the initial yield is roughly the same at between 6%-6.5%, because in relation to office, we have a combination of you know, Grade A prime, lower yielding assets, as well as the sort of secondary located less prime assets in Finland and Poland.
So it just turns out that the initial yields are roughly the same, while the reversionary yield is higher in both cases, around about 7% for the light industrial logistics sector, showing that there is expected market rental growth to come through, and then the reversionary yield for the office at around 8.3%. So again, market rental growth, as well as occupancy, take-up to come through, and that's based off the valuer's expectation.
Next up, we have a question from Michael, who firstly wanted to congratulate you on your strong results.
Thanks, Michael.
Your financial results have outperformed your peers. However, your share price is trading at such a high TTM dividend yield versus your peers. What do you think the reason is for this disparity in valuation that, the market accorded you, and what would you be doing to address this undervaluation, please?
Yeah, thanks, Michael. So this is really the crux of this, the investment strategy and the processes and the steps that we've been undertaking in the last two years, to ensure that investors can take the confidence that unlike our peers, one, we're in good markets generally, two, we're actually delivering a good set of results with the distributions that even in spite of rising interest rates, we're still able to deliver a 4% decline only in our DPU. And that our board is confident of our liquidity and asset values to continue with a 100% payout ratio. So we've noticed that really since the fifteenth of October last year, post the publication of our first half results, that we have seen a rebound in the unit price.
We have started to outperform, not just the foreign REITs listed here in Singapore, but also, generally across the REITs here. So, going forward, again, we want to retain our conservatism, we want to retain our discipline, and we think that investors ultimately will reward us for that, as indeed, that's been happening in the last three or four months as that big point of difference between, you know, our, our portfolio, our income, our dividends, is able to offset, the headwinds of the rise in interest rates and any impact on valuations. So again, I think the next 12 months, we'll continue to see our, closing the gap as we continue to deliver on, on what we say we're gonna do. But we're all ears.
So, you know, we're a board, majority of independent directors with a lot of experience. This management team, a lot of experience. Personally, I've been in the listed REIT space as an investor and an advisor and an operator since 1993. We have seen cycles before. We know that at this point in the equity cycle, investors are chasing AI and tech stocks. But we continue to try and deliver the alpha within our sector. We continue to try and outperform our peer group, but we're all ears, so any suggestions, more than happy for you to share them with Elena and our investor relations program. And if there's any other suggestions that you'd like to provide offline, again, we're happy to do that as well.
You know, we think we've got the right steps, the right action items, to continue to close that gap.
Next up, we have a question from Wei San. Could you please share more on the fair value losses of EUR 149 million in light of the slide on the drop of 3% of the valuation in 2023, which is lower?
Yes, thanks for the question, Mr. Wei. So, yeah, if we look at the fair value, the total loss is around EUR 149 million, because this includes the both capital expenditure and development expenditure that have been incurred throughout the year. When we talk about the on this valuation slide, we talk about the change in value. It's just a like for like valuation change only, and it doesn't take into account capital expenditure, as we've noted in the footnote. So, on a all-in basis, you'll see in the fair value losses is as per the P&L, as you've noted. Thanks, Kara.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael: How do you intend to refinance the EUR 450 million debt due in November 2025?
So we've got lots of plans, lots of options. So the good news is that with the bond buyback that we commenced and finalized in December, the bond is now EUR 450 million, and is now trading very close to par value. So the obvious, you know, an obvious option for us is just to roll the existing bond with the existing investors out for another term, five or seven years. Secondly, as you would expect, we'd also be commencing at some point this year conversations with our banks to provide some sort of backstop facility or some sort of refinancing facility or even a bridge facility ahead of that expiry.
So that's certainly Shane's key focus, my key focus for this year. In part, we can pay that bond down, so in terms of the refinancing, it may not be the full EUR 450. So again, if Andreas and I, and the local transaction teams on the ground are able to get ahead of our sales program, as indeed they're already ahead of our sales program, by the time we get to next year, that may not be as much of a bond outstanding. But I think they're the sort of the two key principles. We're ahead of the game, we'll be selling assets, and we'll be very conservative with the number of options at our disposal.
That investment grade rating that we keep talking about, at triple B minus with a stable outlook, that's really important. And secondly, the MSCI ESG rating of double A, again, is very important when we think about, you know, the $25 trillion worth of investment opportunities out there, for investors looking for green and sustainability-linked investments. And so being part of that top 10 percentile is really important for attracting both bank and equity financing. But at this stage, we don't need to go down the equity path like, again, some of the other peers. That's certainly not in our planning. Hopefully that helps you.
Our next question comes from Satinder. Can you—Sorry, we have a significant development pipeline of EUR 200 million lined up. What is the period over which we plan to execute this, and what's the potential IRR and accretive impact on the DPU based on our understanding at this point in time?
So it's a really good question, and it really brings home a key part of our strategy. So because of our position in Europe, where most of our assets are freehold, and with many of our office assets in particular, in really good locations, like this photograph in Amsterdam. That's the Grand Canal of Amsterdam. Only 300 meters to the left of the photo is the Grand Central Station, which connects the Euro rail. So that's a, it's an absolute prime location. We're able to take advantage of some of these redevelopments within the REIT. So our sponsor is helping us with the development of these assets within our own balance sheet. So we're not having to go into the market and buy prime assets located in this district.
We're able to deliver these assets to you, the investor. Nevesa 21 is that proof of concept that's just completing now. You know, we'll be able to generally 20% plus development profits, so we're able to provide a higher yield on cost during this refurbishment and redevelopment phase than if we were to go into the market and buy independently of the REIT. As you know, or may know, that within the Singapore REIT rules, despite the benefits of doing developments, clearly they come with risk, and we have to cap the amount of development to 10% of the total balance sheet. Now, our board has a more conservative approach, and at the moment, our policy is to cap the proportion of development at only 5% of the total asset value.
So it's accretive for investors, comes with some risk, but we've mitigated that risk through, firstly, making sure that we have a total constraint on the amount of risk that we can undertake. Two, some of these assets we're looking for pre-leasing. So in Maxima, for example, which is a very well located, only 6 or 7 blocks, or 7- 10 minute walk from the Colosseum, with a brand new metro station opening up literally 100 meters from the door here, that's the sort of building that we would look for in this current market, a pre-lease to help reduce the construction risk.
On the first major project, which Andreas talked about, Haagse Poort, this is the first time we've shown investors this particular opportunity, because we're very close to being able to secure the major commitment from the sitting anchor tenant to this building, to undertake the major program. And so we look forward to being able to announce that in the coming months. So to answer to the question around total returns, again, it depends on the risk profile of the building. So clearly, if we have a pre-lease, then we're not taking on as much income risk, and therefore, the total returns don't have to be as high.
If we undertake a speculative development, which at this current point in the cycle, we're unlikely to do, particularly in office, more likely to do it in logistics, we would expect to have a higher total return. So at pre-lease, we may be looking for sort of 15%-20% development opportunity, and a speculative development, we may be looking for as much as 30% development profits. But if you translate that into NAV growth, that's where the rubber hits the road. That's where investors will really see the benefit of doing these projects, because of the significant valuation uptick from the cost to complete the project to what that new building would be worth in the market.
I look forward to be able to share that with you in August, when we have Nevesa revalued post completion and being fully leased. And again, that will be a really good case study to demonstrate the value add that we, in this REIT, is providing to investors. So other REITs, happy not to take that development risk and happy to go and buy a fully developed building on market and pay the full freight, pay the full value. Whereas us, we're looking to actually, in some places, provide that value add to you as the investor.
That also obviously helps from an energy efficiency perspective as we look to ensure that we don't knock down buildings and then go and buy a new one, that we look to retrofit and really improve on the embedded carbon that's sitting inside these buildings. So something like Nevesa, I think, Andreas, we recycled 93%-94% of the building materials, as well as keeping the steel and concrete that's already embedded in that 30-year-old frame and structure. So it's really from a carbon perspective, it's really important that we maintain as much, as an industry, as much of our embedded carbon in the existing steel and infrastructure, than knocking it down completely and rebuilding.
That's also one of the reasons we've got such a high rating in GRESB and such a high rating in MSCI, is because of our focus on ESG and our GHG emissions. Thanks, Kara.
Thanks, Simon. Just a quick note to our attendees to say thank you for submitting all of your questions. This call will run over time, as we still have many questions that have been submitted by our audience. Our next question comes from Arthur: What is the cause of the significant decline in the valuation of the U.K. asset, especially in the context of there being relatively recent acquisitions?
... Yes, good question, Arthur. Thank you for that. So, yeah, the U.K. portfolio has been hit both by the extent of the interest rate increases, as well as from a currency perspective. So there has been a valuation hit because of the weak currency. So, yeah, in some respects, you know, everybody is aware of the political situation at the time. So we had acquired these assets, and shortly after that, there was what, five different prime ministers within the space of, I think, 40 days or something. So interest rates are significantly higher in the U.K. than they are in the Eurozone. Maybe about, well, at the peak, I think about 2.5% higher in the U.K. than in the Eurozone.
Luckily, that has come back. That spread has reduced to around, I think, 1.5%-2%. But, yeah, we have really been affected by higher interest rates and a weaker exchange rate.
Our next question comes from Ashish: What is the actual average weekly physical occupancy in CEREIT's offices? What's your view on the work from home trend in Europe, and is it somewhat different from what we are seeing in the U.S.?
Yeah, thanks for the question. I'll answer the first part. So firstly, we don't have people counters in most of our office buildings, but the research across all of Europe office seems to be about a 20%-30% higher return to the office than the U.S. Not quite as high as here in Singapore generally, but certainly at least halfway between the U.S. and Singapore. What we can tell you is that in some of our office buildings, we have public car parks. So unlike U.S. office buildings, we don't have that many car parks, and so, you know, one of the volatile parts of the income during a recession or during COVID or during work from home, is just the lack of income that those car parks could generate.
However, having said that, our largest car park, which is in Central Plaza in Rotterdam, if we look at our results in the last 12 months, our income there is now higher than what it was pre-COVID. So in other words, we're at record income levels out of our car park. So that should give you some comfort that many of the Dutch, in particular, are well and truly back commuting into the office.
Our next question comes from Alex: Considering the undervalued share price, would you, would management consider share buybacks with, a couple of S-REITs, which a couple of S-REITs are doing?
Yeah, thanks, Alex. We consider it almost at every board meeting, and we obviously put the capital tools to unit holders at every AGM, and last April was no difference, where, again, close to 100% of our investors supported a unit buyback. Our advice and our recommendation to the board, which they have agreed with, is that while we are in an asset sale mode, largely in part it's designed to ensure that we have the ample liquidity and headroom to do both our developments, where we expect to make quite substantial increases in our NAV, and secondly, to assist in the refinancing of our bond.
Now, our bond is half our debt stack, and so while it doesn't expire till the end of next year, as you could hear from some of the earlier questions, there's a lot of, sort of questions in the market about, well, what's the interest rate impact of refinancing that bond? So our thought process and our strategy has, to date, been to, refinance our debt, ensure that investors have the confidence on the balance sheet, and then if there's any excess or surplus, proceeds from asset sales relative to that capital management, then, a unit bond- a unit, buyback really makes sense. So we, we agree with the strategy. It's just a question of having, the surplus assets from the asset sales to fund it.
What we don't want to do, and what many of our investors don't want us to do, is to increase our leverage to borrow money to buy stock back. That ultimately is creating an issue not just for our REIT, but for all corporates. I know it could be tempting for some companies to do that, but in this day and age, we just don't think it's the right thing to do to borrow to buy stock back. We'd certainly prefer our investors, of which the management team here are substantial investors as well, that we continue to drive the value and support the long-term proposition of the REIT rather than moving some of our short-term liquidity into a share buyback.
Thank you. That also helps to answer some questions submitted by Michael. Our next question comes from Arthur: Your estimate of a 5% cost of debt may be correct for a bond, but the cost of bank debt, especially secured debt in the current environment, is likely to be much lower.
Yes.
To what extent would you consider secured debt to be a refinancing option?
So I'll answer the first part, and then I'll let Shane answer the more technical part, given where our loan covenants are at. But, you know, the 5% was an indication from where things are today, as in a response to the question. That doesn't mean we're going to refinance at that rate. It was provided by Shane as a response to the question about what could it be if it was refinanced today. Clearly, with interest rates coming down in the second half of the year, we would hope to do better than that. In terms of secured debt versus unsecured, I'll pass that on to Shane, because we do have some restrictions in what we can do, given that most of our debt, either bank debt or bond debt, is unsecured.
So, Shane, over to you.
Yeah. So just, just to go back on how we've brought about this change. You know, when we, when CEREIT first IPO, about 93% of the debt was secured, and we proceeded to bring that to 93% unsecured over the next five years, and that really drives the credit, investment-grade credit rating. So yes, we would like to consider secured debt, but we need to keep it in mind, the investment-grade credit rating, because we really get a benefit from having a large proportion unsecured. Also, as Simon mentioned, in relation to the covenants, we have two covenants that we follow closely. One is priority debt, that's the amount of secured debt, and also an unencumbered ratio, which is the ratio of properties that are not provided for security. So we watch these two closely.
So yes, we do have some capacity for secured debt moving on, but we wouldn't be able to secure all of the EUR 450 in relation to the bond.
As a listed REIT, Kara, if I can just add, the dangers of having all of your debt secured in first mortgages to banks really comes down from a cash management perspective. When the banks have mortgages over individual assets, they get to take control of the cash. And it's again, all debt facilities, doesn't matter if it's secured or unsecured, tend to have cross events of default, and we're seeing a number of issues with some of the other REITs that have a higher proportion of secured mortgage, where one particular bank may not want to refinance that particular loan. And then that creates a cascading risk event.
And so we and others, it's not just us, but many other REITs around the world enjoy predominantly unsecured, which means that the banks generally rank equally across all of the debt structure. And therefore, that's to the betterment of equity investors that generally obviously rank below the banks, but importantly, they don't get to control our cash accounts. So that's a really important point. When things get tough, it's not... From an equity perspective, we don't think it's preferable in a down cycle to have that secured loan with the banks taking virtually full control of individual assets. Very hard for them to do that in an unsecured platform. Thanks, Kara.
Quick comment from Michael before our last question. So Michael just says he agrees with your approach on the share buyback and wants you to focus on making sure you're able to reduce the $450 million bond due in late 2025. So thank you for your comment, Michael. And our last question comes from Satinder, which is a bit of a long one, so please bear with me. Can you please share your sense of how the market has moved in terms of asset sales, transactions for the markets that we are focused on for asset disposition? And can you also comment on the asset disposition engine that is running exceedingly well, which is also a possibility of supporting a multi-class, multi-geography portfolio construct?
Given this unique position, and given the distressed assets might come off the market in the near future, has the manager evaluated the possibility of proactively driving the gearing down to 35%, so as to position ourselves to the avail of such opportunities as they arise?
Okay. Thank you very much for the multiple questions. Let's see if we can deal with them. So we didn't talk about the slide, but you'll see it on the SGX Net, where we show that transactions in the real estate market in Europe are roughly down 45% on the prior year. And that's as a result, obviously, of the high borrowing costs and lack of liquidity in the market. You touched on a really important point, which is our average asset size is roughly EUR 25 million. So while we have three or four buildings above EUR 100 million, we are diverse across asset type, across markets, across cities, across countries, across tenant base. And the most liquid part of the market today, as in any downturn, is at the smaller end of town.
-So the EUR 10 to 30- 40 million asset size tends to be a lot more liquid than being able to find a buyer that needs a lot of debt to be able to acquire multiple hundreds of dollars worth or euros worth of assets. You're absolutely right. When we were buying assets, we weren't going out and paying portfolio premiums, so we were able to buy through our, what we call our truffle hunters, our transaction managers sitting throughout Europe. You know, one of them was able to identify a really affordable asset, say, in Copenhagen, that we thought had a lot of upside.
At the same time, we were able to buy an asset in Milan that enabled us to add value immediately from a lease reset, while we're also able to buy a life science building in Germany. So in a month period, we were able to build our own portfolio at a time when many of the much larger peers were out there paying premiums to get their hands on larger portfolios. Conversely, we're no longer having to therefore dispose of large portfolios, which again, requires more debt potentially for the buyer. So again, our sales program is very targeted to mostly individual assets.
Occasionally, someone will come to us and say, "I'd like to buy a portfolio," and we might look at that, but generally, our sales program is at the individual asset level throughout the countries. So as you would expect, while we have a target to sell EUR 170 - EUR 200 million, you wouldn't expect us only to talk to potential buyers on only that EUR 170 -EUR 200 million of assets, because obviously, every asset, there's a risk that for whatever reason, the buyer might fall over during their due diligence or negotiating process. Why could that be? Well, again, in a down market where there's a bid-ask spread between what the buyer wants to pay and what we're willing to sell it at, we're not a distressed seller.
So we haven't made any really outrageous targets to you as the investor, that potential buyers around the world could then turn around and say, "Ah, that company's desperate to sell, therefore we'll pay or offer a lower price." Again, we wanna come. You remember, we've said this for the last couple of years, we wanna be ahead of the curve. We wanna be in a position where we're negotiating with the buyer from a strong position. We're negotiating from a position that we don't have to sell if they don't want to pay the price that we're willing to sell it at.
That's not to say sometimes we won't negotiate, but our track record has been that we've sold over 20 assets, generally at sort of 10%-15% premiums to our valuations, rather than at big discounts that others have been forced to sell. Again, back to some of the earlier questions, getting ahead of the curve, selling our assets before we have to, so that we're in a better position of both protecting unitholder value, but also giving us the pathway or the runway to when we actually need the cash to do the developments or to fund our debt refinancing program. And that brings me to your last part of your question, which is: why don't you just sell everything and try and get down to 35%?
Well, our modeling suggests that if we sold everything that we wanted to sell immediately, and just leave the gearing lower, we don't then protect the dividend, on the upside. So the downside when you sell assets to de-gear, is you lose the benefit of the spread between the income of the asset to the debt that you're paying. So you lose the income that's generally higher than the debt you would be repaying. And if we go back to the waterfall chart, you can see that one of the key reasons our distribution per unit fell 4% was actually through the disposal program, not because the properties had any problems. In fact, we delivered 4% positive, like-for-like NPI growth.
So we're trying to weigh up this matrix of protecting the balance sheet, ensuring investors have the confidence that we're able to refinance ahead of when we need to, versus the immediate impact from the asset sale. So as we commence our development program, as we did last year, while it might be a EUR 50 million program in 2023, we don't need the funding for the full EUR 50 million at the beginning of the period. So it's a gradual match between the asset sales and when we need the funds. But we're, you know, again, we continue to model this out.
We continue to look at what would the market do if we were at a 35% or 30% gearing level, what that means to dividend relative to when we need the cash for the developments, when we need the cash to repay the bond. So if we go to our 6-year DPU track record, one of the reasons we inserted this chart in today's presentation is to show what we're trying to achieve is relatively moderate volatility in our DPU. So, we don't want to get into this game where, you know, one year you're down 30%, another year you're up 30%, that other REITs have been doing. We want to retain a consistency of dividend.
We recognize with 5,000 investors, we'll have some investors that want to see a lot of development activity, a lot of capital growth, and then we've got a bunch of investors that live off the income, but wanna make sure that the dividend is relatively secure. And that's borne out by the SGX's own data, that since the REITs commenced trading twenty-one years ago, that over 70% of the total return of the REIT industry has been from the dividend, not from the capital growth. So it's this fine line, 35%-40% is our policy range. We'll try and play within that, while also trying to maintain that stability and ultimately longer term dividend growth once the interest rate environment stabilizes.
So a long answer to a long question, and if there's any other further follow-ups, please, contact Investor Relations and Elena, who's just off screen here.
Thank you, Simon. That brings our call to an end. I'll hand it back to you for any closing remarks.
Well, firstly, I'd like to thank everyone for their attendance for the last hour and a half. You know, we appreciate that it's a busy time for everyone, particularly at this time of the year, everyone coming back to business after the CNY break. So again, we really appreciate your support. I hope, in particular, the pre-prepared remarks, the presentation pack, all of our information that we disclose, as well as hopefully the responses to the many questions that we've delightfully received today, that provides you with that confidence that we have exposure to some, actually some really good property and some really good markets, where we've got vacancy levels at 2.9% for logistics, 3.2% for great office.
When you've got such low vacancies, even in a soft economic environment, we're able to deliver the market rent growth, deliver the rent reversion, deliver the inflation growth through on the property level. And at the same time, we're preparing and have completed, and preparing for more developments to continue to either future-proof the portfolio, bring some of these older assets up to new assets, where we're able to take advantage of the much higher, rents that will deliver the development profits. It's being funded, not through expensive capital raisings that will dilute you, the investor, it's through the responsible disposal of many of our assets, that over the long term, we, again, don't think will be as strategic relative to either investing in our, bond maturity profile, program, or indeed, through the redevelopment or asset enhancement initiatives.
All in all, we're very thankful for your support, and we wish you a good afternoon, and happy investing over the next 12 months. Thank you very much.