Welcome to today's full year 2022 results for the Cromwell European REIT. My name is Simon Garing. Shane Hagan, CFO, is delighted to be here too today. If we can turn to the montage on slide two of the results presentation that you can find uploaded on either our website today or the SGX website. We'll run through this presentation then obviously have a Q&A at the end. As a reminder, the Cromwell European REIT, which we'll refer to as CREIT, is the largest SGX-listed REIT with a resilient EUR 2.5 billion, providing investors exposure to predominantly Western European logistics and office. We own a barbell of core assets through to value-add assets, taking advantage of our active asset management team track record in adding alpha to the portfolio and for unit holders.
Our pivot to logistics continues, now at almost a 50% weighting. Turning to slide four, a snapshot of the result. We are pleased that in CREIT's 5th year since listing, we have delivered an excellent set of results underpinned by higher net property income, especially in the light industrial logistics segment. 1.3% DPU growth year-on-year and the portfolio's record occupancy of 96% are the two key headline numbers that we are pleased to report today. Shane will discuss these results in more detail. Moving to slide five. The graph here shows the portfolio has seen a steady rise in occupancy with consistent positive rent reversions over the periods. It was a big year of leasing, with almost half a million square meters or 26% of the portfolio. We recorded an overall 5.7% portfolio rent reversion.
In particular, the leasing pace increased in the second half, with approximately 16% of the portfolio leased or renewed during the period at a 7.6% rent reversion. Turning to slide six. Even throughout the pandemic years, we have executed the transactions extremely well. Since the beginning of 2020, we have completed almost EUR 430 million worth of logistic acquisitions across Western Europe, notably in Germany, Italy and more recently Copenhagen on a 6.2% NOI blended yield. We've increased the light industrial and logistics allocation to 46% and reaffirm our strategy to continue to move to a majority weighting. However, given the current macro environment, we have put a pause on acquisitions for now until greater visibility on asset price transpires and CREIT's cost of capital improves.
We were successful in disposing of EUR 41 million of assets at a 20% premium to previous book value. Turning to slide seven, as part of our efforts to consistently de-risk the portfolio, no one industry trade sector makes up more than 14% of the portfolio. For our debt investors on the line today, we highlight that the top 10 tenants now account for less than 30% of the portfolio, helping to reduce that concentration risk that we know the rating agencies value. 92% of CREIT's income is backed by government linked and MNC or large domestic corporation tenants, providing income resilience and almost 100% cash collection, with no material change in debtors throughout the year. I wanna spend a little bit more time now on a new slide that we've presented today on page nine.
We wanted to give you more color on the investment strategy and how we think about funding our initiatives, while in this period the cost of capital remains higher than normal. 46% of the current portfolio is light industrial and logistics, including 8%, which are earmarked for development, such as our current Lovosice project in Czech Republic or Parc de Dock in Paris. 22% of the portfolio is considered core Grade A office, predominantly in the core Dutch markets. There is another 13% of older but well-located office assets that we are in various stages of major upgrades or redevelopments, such as Via Nervesa 21, currently underway in Milan.
We have identified and commenced disposing of around EUR 400 million or 19% of the portfolio to be staggered over the next two to three years to free up capital headroom to match the funding of the EUR 250 million redevelopment pipeline, while also keeping our gearing within our covenants and our board policy range of 35%-40%. The sales program is a continuation of our program to recycle assets that we commenced a number of years ago. The near-term earnings may be impacted, however, while we dispose of these yielding assets to fund the projects, which are obviously typically one to two years in length before the higher yield on costs and development profits contribute then to the bottom line. To be clear, we're not becoming a developer per se.
We will keep this program below the MAS development limits of 10%. We won't be out land banking. The sites are all existing assets of CREIT and won't need it to be acquired off the sponsor. Ultimately, we plan CREIT's long-term portfolio to be of enhanced quality, future-proofed and relevant for tenant space needs, landing on an asset class split roughly 60/40 ratio between logistics and Grade A office, all organically sourced. The number of assets should decline or the average size of each asset should increase, improving the operating efficiencies as well. Slide 11 now shows the approximate timeline of some of these major projects. Noting the substantial Parc de Dock Paris project is not included in the EUR 250 million pipeline and is still a couple of years away from receiving all of the required approvals.
Its size and scale is substantial in the middle of the new Paris Olympic precinct, which you can see on the bottom right-hand picture, and thus is a very high-profile project in Paris. In the meantime, we're enjoying very strong income returns from this asset, so we're not in a complete rush here. Turning to the next page, our efforts to integrate sustainability into all aspects of our business were recognized through the very meaningful upgrades in key ESG ratings that came through over the course of the year. We received a double notch upgrade in the MSCI ESG rating to AA, placing CREIT as only one of four Singapore REITs to attain such a high rating. More recently, Sustainalytics assigned CREIT as the lowest ESG risk rating of negligible risk.
In addition to ranking 1st in its Sustainalytics selected peer group, CREIT is also in the top 300 out of 15,000 ranked companies globally by the agency and in the top 20 out of the 450 REITs. Not bad for only being around for five years, here in Singapore. It's again, a testament to the very long track record of the European team on the ground. CREIT also maintained its green star status in the GRESB assessment for the third consecutive year, scoring a record 79 points overall, increased by 3 points year-on-year. We outperformed the global and European averages and also placed 2nd out of the European-listed peers. I'll now hand over to Shane. Thank you.
Thanks, Simon. Good morning. As Simon already stated, CREIT's results showed improvement on the prior corresponding period, mainly due to acquisitions as well as inflation indexations resulting in higher rental income. This was partially offset by lost income from developments and divestments. There were higher operating expenses, of which a considerable portion of these were recovered from tenants through service charge income. There is also an increase in the effective current tax rate from about 6%- 9%, which increased current tax expense considerably. DPU growth would have actually been closer to 10% if not for the divestments, the higher non-recoverable OpEx, and the higher effective tax rate. Once again, the pivot to logistics was vindicated with NPI from this sector, increasing almost 24% year-on-year.
In comparison, office NPI was 9.7% lower due to a weaker office performance in France, Poland, and Finland. CREIT's other sector outperformed this year due to an improved performance from the hotel and the one retail property in Italy. Interest expense, as expected, was approximately 13% higher due to, firstly, a higher debt balance year-on-year, higher Euribor rates, as well as a slightly higher margin on the new debt facilities recently established. Total return was impacted by the fair value loss on investment properties, which I'll talk more about later. As Simon mentioned, DPU 1.3% higher year-on-year after including a EUR 2.1 million payout of realized capital gains in lieu of the lost income from the redevelopment of the Milan property, Via Nervesa 21. Okay, talking about operating expenses.
Obviously, inflation has impacted on CREIT's operating costs in FY 2022, with service charge expenses and non-recoverable expenses increasing by almost 23% year-on-year. The main driver of this has been utilities, which increased by over EUR 9 million, and that was mainly due to higher electricity costs. It is pleasing to note that a significant proportion of these expenses are able to be passed on to tenants through higher service charge invoicing. Overall, there was a close to EUR 4 million increase in total non-recoverable expenses that negatively impact on DPU. This is due to a number of reasons. There is a small service charge leakage from temporary vacancies in two of our larger properties in Haagse Poort and Business Garden. Higher property taxes, repairs and maintenance, and letting fees year-on-year, also partly due to the acquisitions that have been completed. Now looking at NPI.
This chart shows the positive impact that the pivot to logistics has had on NPI growth. With that sector's contribution increasing to 47% of the portfolio NPI in the fourth quarter of 2022, and that's up from 34% two years ago when we started to embark on this strategy. On a like-for-like basis, the light industrial logistics NPI was 5% higher year-on-year, largely driven by broad-based rental growth and higher occupancy, particularly in the Netherlands. C-REIT's four Q net property income growth of 7% year-on-year was primarily led by the 21% growth in the light industrial logistics sector from the new acquisitions. A dividend or distribution of 8.494 cents has been declared for the second half of 2022. That's EUR cents, obviously. That distribution is 100% tax-exempt.
The distribution includes EUR 0.9 million of realized capital gains for the half year to offset the loss of income from Nervesa. We still have remaining over EUR 12 million of realized capital gains that have not been paid out yet. The ex-distribution date is 3rd of March, my birthday. Currency election notices need to be returned by the 20th of March. Distribution will be paid out to unit holders on Friday the 31st of March. Once again, this year, we have decided not to turn on the distribution reinvestment plan. Looking at valuations as at the 31st of December. We conducted valuations for 112 out of 113 properties. The 1 recently acquired property was accounted by direct valuation, which was its purchase price.
On a like-for-like basis, excluding acquisitions and CapEx and acquisition costs, CREIT's portfolio demonstrated its resilience with only a modest 1.6% fair value decline compared to the valuations recently done at 30th of June. The valuation decline was mostly driven by higher cap rates on the back of higher interest rates in Europe and especially in the U.K. CREIT's logistics portfolio recorded a small gain, driven largely by income growth and continued strong occupier fundamentals, more than offsetting the cap rate decompression. U.K. was impacted, higher interest rates and a weak exchange rate. The Netherlands was impacted by cap rate decompression and also some short-term vacancy and a shorter WALE. Office portfolio valuations declined on the back of increased vacancy and reduced WALE, particularly due to the weaker office sector trends we're seeing in Finland and Poland.
Overall, the portfolio is valued at a net initial yield of 5.7% and an improved reversionary yield of 6.9%. I just want to show a little bit more detail on net initial yields. This slide shows the net initial yield of the CREIT's portfolio sectors over the last four years, and we've compared it to interest rates, so we've taken the German five-year Bund. You can see there that the net initial yield has not moved significantly, even through the COVID period. Today's relatively high spread to interest rates provide some downside protection. As I mentioned, it's pleasing to see that in general, the valuer's expectations of ERV growth and asset enhancement initiatives in the CREIT portfolio have helped to offset the cap rate decompression due to the rising interest rates.
However, in the U.K., valuations have been most impacted due to the economic conditions there. Cap rates for prime low yield big box logistics have significantly decompressed in Europe, and CREIT has not been investing in these prime logistics assets. Turning to the balance sheet. CREIT's balance sheet has remained resilient, with EUR 35 million of cash and cash equivalent and only EUR 41 million drawn against the EUR 200 million RCF facility. Although current liabilities are slightly higher than current assets, mainly due to the EUR 50 million term loan facility which matures at the end of this year, we are confident of meeting near-term obligations as we have various sources of funding, including the revolving credit facility I mentioned, and also a new EUR 70 million term loan, which is expected to be signed very soon.
NAV was EUR 2.42, following payment of the first half distribution and the fair value decline investment properties in December. On the treasury front, I'm pleased to report the EUR 180 million refinancing that was done and also hedging transactions completed, which really have reduced significantly the risk. We are pleased to introduce OCBC, HSBC, QNB, and RHB as new lenders to CREIT for the four-year sustainability-linked facility that we signed in November. I also just mentioned about the imminent signing of a new EUR 70 million facility, which is also sustainability-linked and is with a consortium of existing bank lenders. The loan will repay the remaining 2023 expiry, with the rest to pay off against the RCF. We've already informed about our blend and extend of our interest rate cap book.
EUR 210 billion of notional interest rate caps at a 60 basis point strike result in over, in about 78% of the total debt being hedged and fixed to the end of 2024. This cap is currently having a fair value of over EUR 10 million at the end of the year. Key financial indicators are remaining resilient and really continue to support the investment grade rating of BBB- by Fitch. Aggregate leverage was a notch higher at 39.4% due to the fair value loss recorded. However, it remains well within loan covenants with about 14% headroom on the LTV covenant.
An interest coverage ratio remains high at above 6x , based on excluding debt establishment costs, and is well in excess of the covenants for the loans in the EMTN program. As at 31st of December, the weighted average term to maturity of the debt stood at 2.9 years, and the all-in interest rate increased to 2.38%. That's based on a Euribor, three-month Euribor of 2.123 at 31 December. As a scenario, if the three-month Euribor increases to 3%, then the all-in interest rate would increase marginally to 2.62%, and this would have approximately 2.5% impact on DPU. With that, I'll pass back to Simon.
Thanks, Shane. Let me now run you through some of our portfolio and asset management highlights for the back half of the year. The chart on the right-hand side shows the portfolio weighting by country. The four major markets are about 75% of the portfolio. That's obviously the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany, and collectively underpin the resilience and the core profile of the portfolio. The occupancy reached a new all-time high of 96%, one percent point increase compared to a year ago. The WALE for the overall portfolio remains unchanged at 4.6 years, and the strong 7.6% blended rent reversion in the second half was driven by these new leases and renewals across both asset classes, office and logistics, and particularly so in Paris.
In the second half of the year, 143 new leases and renewals comprising 340,000 square meters were secured, or around 18% of the portfolio's NLA. The tenant retention rate in the second half set, stood at 51%, slightly lower rates due to the impact of the slightly softer fourth quarter tenant retention, in part because of the Italian government termination of its lease in Rome, which is now being redeveloped and will be repositioned into a grade A office. That was a planned exit. Turning to the next page, in addition to the leasing of the 26% of the portfolio last year, the teams have also leased or renewed 61% of the leases that break or expire in the first half of this year.
That's again, putting us into a really good position coming into the new year. Zooming in on the logistics sector on page 24, occupancy has climbed to a record 98.1%, up even in the quarter, from 97.5% September. Occupancy in Parc de Dock has increased from 92% to 96%, with over 7,000 sq m of new leases signed, in the units, in the last quarter. This particular leasing success saw the valuation of that key asset, increase by 1.4%, notwithstanding, Shane's earlier comments about the overall portfolio taking a small decline.
The asset management team in Copenhagen has once again delivered several leasing successes, as you can see in the previous page, with a substantial pickup in occupancy in that portfolio, now sitting at over 93%, which also boosted the valuations of that portfolio and underpinned the confidence we had in our recent additional acquisition. Turning to the next page, not only do we have a very low vacancy rate in our logistics portfolio at 1.9%, this is in line with the average 2.4% market vacancy rate in the countries that we invest in. The average quarter-on-quarter market rent growth in the markets was around 4% in the last quarter based on the latest CBRE figures, again, supporting our rent reversion and valuations.
The ongoing structural trends in this sector support the growth accelerated by the geopolitical pressures for the nearshoring and now friendshoring production back into Europe. We will continue pivoting CREIT's portfolio to this sector and leverage the strength of the experienced on-the-ground teams to tap into this increasing demand. It also underpins some of our development opportunities, which I'll talk about in a minute. This slide just runs through a number of the leases which we can take more questions offline. We're just conscious of time skipping through to this page. This just highlights on slide 27, a major asset in Copenhagen, about 20,000 square meters in Priorparken, where we've successfully repositioned an older asset to attract a state-of-the-art technology and esports production studio, as well as other related industry tenants, obviously paying substantial rents.
It's great to see many Singapore Secretlab chairs stored here in, ahead of the BLAST games. We have made good progress in our EUR 15 million expansion project in Lovosice Park in the Czech Republic to refurbish 2,500 square meters of an existing building and develop five warehouse units with a lettable area of about 15,000 square meters. Pleasingly, on completion of the first building, a tenant has already moved in, and 2 out of the 5 new warehouse units have already been pre-let with a German 3PL, and we're in advanced negotiations for the remaining three warehouse units, covering around another 9,000 square meters. I should note that this project is also targeting a BREEAM very good certification, increasingly tenants in the logistics space now seeking this type of certification.
Parc de Dock in Paris continues to undergo several more phases of pre-construction planning and design. We are targeting building permits and commercial terms to be agreed with the local municipality and Paris City Hall around 2025, post the Paris Olympics, when we expect the construction costs to normalize. Again, in this photo, image, you can see again, the great position of where we see this asset being repositioned to. We're currently in what we've described as master planning phase III. We're currently in discussions around the size of the project in terms of the NLA, we plan to sign a memorandum of understanding later on this year that will then confirm the maximum lettable area.
Suffice to say it will be a significant repositioning. On to the next page, we'll go through now a quick snapshot of our office portfolio. Leasing activity picked up pace in the second half with almost 50,000 square meters, roughly about 70% of the total leases through the year. Importantly, 5.8% rent reversion, again, driven primarily by this demand for Grade-A office space, which we continue to see in our portfolio. Really notably, a major oil company, which we announced in November, as the latest addition to our roster of over 800 quality tenants, signed a 10-year lease agreement for approximately 4,000 square meters at a 36% rent reversion last year. More recently signed an additional 2,600 square meters on the same terms, again for 10 years.
This now leaves only 700 square meters of vacancy in our largest office asset. The occupancy stats will reflect this new lease from August 2023 when the new tenant takes occupation. We are also in positive discussions with the two largest tenants in the building on extensions to their 2025 expiries. We have exciting plans to also upgrade this asset's green credentials to match both ours and the large corporate tenant aspirations, which we haven't included in our EUR 250 million refurbishment pipeline. This will obviously be additive and accretive once we've secured the commitments. Overall, year-end occupancy at the office portfolio dips slightly to below 90%, excluding this new lease, I should say, at Hub Support.
As a side note, we are in advanced sales process for two Warsaw office assets to buyers with conversion to alternative use strategies, outside of our core strategy of office and logistics. For the office subsector, the WALE also increased to 4.1 years. On slide 31, taking you quickly through the major Grade-A cities that we invest in, both leasing activity and rent values continue to grow positively. Office take-up rates are heading back to pre-pandemic levels, have been increasing for the last seven periods. Office vacancy rate remains stable at 8.8% as an average of all grades. As you can see in the chart at the bottom, CREIT's core Grade-A office markets have substantially lower vacancy at 3.9%.
Office tenants increasingly seek modern quality assets in prime and core locations in Europe's gateway cities. The recent stats from Cushman show that while only 20% of Europe's office stock is BREEAM or equivalent certified, they attract 50% of the leases. As a reminder, close to 80% of our office assets are BREEAM certified. This is a big point of difference in quite an old market. We believe that this focus on prime and core space, coupled with the ongoing tight supply, will continue to drive rental growth in prime and core locations, with rents typically below replacement costs. The aspirations of these tenants means that we're seeing really good rent increases on the back of the refurbishment space.
In addition to the increase in rents, the municipalities are also providing bonus NLA for greening their city blocks, providing additional financial incentives and returns for us. We are confident in the returns from our rejuvenation projects for sustainable, accessible and quality office space in these major European cities. One of the enablers here is the Italian government, where four out of our nine Italian assets are leased to the government and had a right to break lease at the end of 2022. For three of these four assets, the government will continue to remain with a tacit renewal for six years. However, a reduction of 15% in headline rent was an automatic part of these renewals. In the largest asset in Rome, the tenant vacated the premise at the end of the year to consolidate various offices that it had throughout Rome.
This now enables us to complete the permitting process with the local council for a full refurbishment of the asset. The estimated EUR 45 million construction project is expected to commence this year. In the meantime, preliminary strip out works will start next month. Given the lack of modern space in Rome, we are already attracting very positive leasing momentum. The next page is again, just some schematics, but really importantly, on that map, you can see that our property, Maxima, is very well located to the historic center of Rome in walking distance to the Colosseum and opposite the major hospital, and shortly will be very well serviced from a new adjacent metro station.
Turning to slide 34 for our redevelopment of our Milan asset, Nervesa 21, construction works are progressing very well, planned delivery on time and within budget costs at the end of this year. A binding pre-letting agreement was secured for almost half the space last December with a global media company, a year ahead of our plans, vindicating our strategy. For the remaining space, there is strong leasing demand with little modern available stock in Milan, where Grade-A office vacancy is only 2.6%. The project aims at LEED Platinum and WELL Gold level certifications, again, a must in this new market. 95% of the strip out materials will also be recycled and have been recycled to date. Now turning to a very quick run around on the economic outlook.
As you can see on slide 36, the Eurozone GDP growth in the quarter was up 0.2%. The estimates, importantly for the Eurozone for FY 2023, continue to be upgraded, supported by strong labor market and fiscal support. Flash estimates on the Eurozone have also put unemployment, employment growth, I should say, at 0.4%. Particularly in France, the unemployment rate fell to 7.2% in the fourth quarter, the lowest unemployment rate in France since the GFC. Turning to slide 38, this chart essentially shows that the leasing volumes usually lag sentiment by two to three quarters. The continued improvement in employment expectations will support the leasing volumes. We could see that in our stronger second half of last year leasing.
Slide 39, Eurozone inflation has fallen, we continue to see that attributed to lower energy inflation. There is still higher food prices, the recent January flash numbers continue to show a moderation. As core inflation remains above the ECB targets, the financial markets are implying continued monetary policy tightening. It is expected, if you look at the implied curve, that the ECB will finalize interest rate hikes sometime this year on the back of the expectation of the falling inflation data, but also the falling gas prices and more moderate wages growth. Pleasingly, on slide 39, as this warmer winter draws to a close, volatility in the gas prices in Europe have moderated, with natural gas prices dropping below the pre-Ukrainian invasion levels.
The EU governments have also provided over EUR 700 billion worth of support to household and businesses to mitigate the increased gas costs, equaling the support that was provided during the COVID years. Further measures to encourage the switch to alternative energy sources are also underway. We can see that in our own portfolio, where again, we're about to embark on a reasonably large rollout of solar panels in part to provide green energy to our tenants. Turning to slide 40, investment activity for the year fell to 2014 levels, primarily due to limited supply as funding costs increased substantially, causing a very wide bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers. We'll be reasonably patient in our staggered divestment program while this price discovery continues.
In summary, the European economy has shown remarkable resilience despite the sort of the crises that were looming in expectations and sentiment last year. We've delivered an excellent set of results with good DPU growth, and as Shane highlighted, would have hit close to 10% had it not been for a couple of one-offs, while maintaining gearing below 40%. For FY 2023, economists have upgraded their Eurozone real GDP growth forecasts, and as I mentioned earlier, the energy crisis appears to be more contained and inflationary pressures are gradually falling. Market fundamentals in logistics and Grade A office sectors in Europe are supportive, continuing rising interest rates could cause further valuation declines.
On the one hand, we've got good income growth, but with the higher interest rates, we're seeing that not coming through in valuations. We've got this dichotomy of performance. At current pricing, the yield of C-REIT is 10.4% and is trading at a 30% discount to NAV. The income growth will be supported by the higher occupancy, rising market rents, and the indexation that's embedded in each lease that we have. Sustainable developments and asset enhancements will further improve the overall quality of the portfolio and provide growth in DPU and NAV over the medium term.
Approximately EUR 400 million in non-strategic asset divestments will be staggered over the next two to three years to fund the development program and our rejuvenation program and offset any potential pressure on LTVs in the near term with this slight decline or pressure on valuations with the impact from the higher rates. We do expect that we'll have slightly potential softer earnings in the short term before the benefits kick through in the medium term. We're confident that our efforts to responsibly manage financial flexibility and augment the quality of CREIT's portfolio will allow us to manage this risk amid the uncertain but improving macroeconomic environment. With that, I'll hand over to Chiara and take any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon. We will now begin the Q&A session. To ask a question, please select the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen to be placed in the virtual queue. Our first question comes from Terence Lee. Terence, please go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, good morning, Simon and Shane, to the presentation. EUR 400 million in divestments and EUR 250 million on developments. I have two questions. With the quantum of divestments higher, the pace of developments also being fairly long dated, and development use seemingly lower on higher construction costs, how do we convince investors that this reconstitution is a net accretive exercise for your DPU over the medium term, as you also had spoke about the DPU softness in the near term?
Terence, a couple of things.
Yeah.
Thank you for the question. Firstly, we didn't mention DPU, we only mentioned earnings. As we've highlighted in this year's results, the board has a policy to top up distributions for the loss of income during the development of those assets that were previously leased and will be vacant, obviously, during the refurbishment. As Shane mentioned, we have over EUR 12 million of realized profits still in reserves. That's the first point. The second is just with regards to construction costs, we're actually seeing pressures come down, not go up, vis-a-vis year on year. Secondly, rent growth is higher than where it was last year. Without giving exact guidance, the yield on costs that you refer is the same as the yield currently on the divestment program.
We'll get high quality assets with longer leases, with less CapEx in the future and a future-proof portfolio, without it being diluted. In fact, our expectation, clearly is it for it to be accretive. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Quite clear. I have a second question. I mean, as Simon, you also mentioned a wide bid-ask spread in the market. Should we still anticipate any gains to arise on top of the EUR 400 million that is earmarked for divestments going ahead? Thank you.
Yes l ook, we're in various stages of negotiations, you know, as this call is being recorded, you know, we're very confident in our price expectations that we're currently negotiating with. I don't really wanna jeopardize those negotiations by being too specific. What I would note is the assets that we are looking to dispose, many of them have gone through substantial asset management and AEI initiatives already. With longer leases in place, as we just showed in this year's results, the valuers and potential buyers would reprice that lower risk that our teams have implemented during the asset management plans. I think, you know, our track record of managing our disposal program over the last three years, where we've delivered above valuation. While I'm not gonna predict that this time around, I would point to that track record.
Got it. Thanks, Simon.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Amanda S. Amanda, please go ahead and ask your question.
Good morning, Amanda. You may be on mute.
Seems we're having problems from Amanda. We'll move along to Dale. Dale, please go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, Dale. Morning.
Dale also seems to be facing some audio issues. We may have Amanda back. Amanda, if you would like to try and ask your question again.
Okay.
Apologies. It seems both are facing audio issues at the moment. For the rest of the audience, just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please select the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We'll now take a question from Mervin Song. Mervin, please go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, Simon and Shane. Good to chat again. If we can ask a strategic question, big picture stuff. Obviously, everybody's trying to grapple with where interest rates settle at. Obviously work from home impact. In terms of how you want to reposition your portfolio in the medium term in terms of exposure to office assets, logistics? Is Poland too close to Ukraine? Yeah, just your thoughts on how you wanna position this portfolio over the medium term, given all these uncertainties.
Yeah, really good question. We did try and address that back on page eight, so maybe Operator or Elena, we can share the screen again. Hopefully this also addresses Terence's question. Yeah. What we've got here, Mervin, on the left-hand side is our current portfolio. This diagram is to scale. It's not a secret that the left-hand column is EUR 2.5 billion. That's our current asset portfolio. Shane didn't want us to put the projected valuation on the right-hand side, but it is to scale, so if you get your ruler out, you'd be able to measure it. Again, this is sort of the embedded development profits that we expect to provide even with the higher cap rates today than a year ago.
That hopefully helps position the sort of the bigger picture that, you know, will be towards 60% light industrial and logistics, and around 40% of Grade A quality assets, which would be predominantly in northern Italy and the Netherlands. The other markets in the other office areas, as you've mentioned, you could assume are in that 19% that are earmarked for divestments. What COVID and work from home has done is it's really created this bifurcation of Grade A well-located assets where tenants are moving into, again, trying to lure their own employees back into the office and create the cultural necessities of businesses.
It has accelerated the lack of demand for more stranded assets that if you don't spend money on or invest in, becomes harder to retain the tenants. Luckily for us, those type of assets that we have aren't highly valued within the portfolio. Valued pretty much at land value already, and therefore lend themselves to alternate uses. With the very strong housing market, student accommodation market, a number of these assets, as I mentioned, for example, ones we're about to sell in Warsaw, are to local developers, with alternate strategies. It's not just accommodation. Some of these buildings lend themselves to, say, education or life sciences.
A lot of local operators in either Helsinki or in Warsaw, as examples, see value in our assets that are greater than the potential value as an office purpose asset. We'll continue to look to sell these assets to the local developers where we don't have the expertise. Does that help answer the question? We'll have core grade A office assets to multinational MNC tenants, but a predominance of really strong light industrial and logistic assets.
This makes things a bit clearer. Sorry, apologies, I dug a bit late.
No, no, it's fine.
Is there like a time frame?
It's good to come back to this. It's good to come back to this chart because, you know, we get a lot of questions around, well, so how does the portfolio look like? You know, we're not a developer. We're not building these office buildings to then flip them. You know, A, that would create issues with MAS. That's not our. You know, this is still a REIT. This is still a low-risk, predominantly income-producing portfolio. You know, part of what we've said a number of years is there's value add opportunities. We'd much rather capture those value add opportunities within the REIT, where we have the expertise, particularly in the office and logistics sector, than selling them into the market and then down the later stage, when cost of capital improves, buying them back.
Is there a timeframe you want to achieve this by? I don't know whether you want to be pinned down on an exact timeframe.
I mean, we've said two to three years. I mean, we spent a lot of time in the presentation on the developments. I mean, we've been planning for this for some time, so you know, the closer we get to being able to start these projects, from a permitting perspective and commercial perspective, the more we're able to talk to the market and to our investors on. This, this page here, this slide here, again, continues to give more detail as we get closer to the start. So we're now halfway through the Milan project, and we're almost kicking off the strip out works for the Rome project.
The third asset on this top slide here in De Ruijterkade, this is around an 11,000 square meter office building located right next to the main brand-new Amsterdam Centraal. We're working towards a 25,000 square meter, quite a large floor plate property that a lot of the large Dutch tech companies are really looking for. We're really excited about this one, and as we get closer to planning approvals, we'll be able to reveal more. That property will be very accretive for the REIT. Very well located.
Thanks very much, Simon. Always forward-looking. Yeah, good luck on the projects.
Thanks, Mervin.
Thanks. We will next move across to Amanda Seah to see if her audio issues have worked out. Amanda?
Hi. Good morning.
Hi, Amanda.
Great. Right. I'm so sorry for the issue earlier. I just have one question regarding office. Could you give us more color on the weakness in the NPI margins for your office across all geographies, but maybe especially France, Poland and Finland? Is the weakness in the office market anything to do with the Ukraine War, or are you seeing a structural decline in occupier demand in those markets?
The French decline was because the previous year we had a lease surrender payment. The 2021 number was higher because a tenant prepaid their rent and vacated most of the space, although came back and signed for more space. Poland is an example of occupancy, and the same with Finland.
Sorry, Poland? Sorry, I didn't catch you back there.
Yeah. What we see on slide 46 is the decline in occupancy in Poland and Finland. As I mentioned in Poland, the two assets that we're looking to sell are to developers who actually want vacant possession. In part two of the assets, you know, we're not in active leasing as we're close to final sales to developers that want, like as I said, empty buildings. Finland, which is more the suburban office stock, you're absolutely right, and I tried to address that in Mervin's comments, that particular portfolio would fit into the suburban ring roads of Helsinki. Smaller tenant base. That's not gonna be a core part of our investment strategy, and really being accelerated by COVID and the work from home, and the demand for more grade A quality assets. You'll see us dispose of both Polish and Finnish assets as part of our program.
All right.
Maybe Amanda, maybe I should also just mention Italy and Nervesa, the development. Whilst that has no impact on occupancy because it's under development, so we've excluded it from the occupancy numbers, it also has no impact on DPU in a way as well, because as we've stated, we will, we have topped up for the lost income of about EUR 2 million from Nervesa. That does impact on the office sector NPI.
Right. Okay. Maybe just for myself to be clear, so does that mean that you will not ascribe any impact on your portfolio from the war in Ukraine?
No. From an income and occupancy perspective, the tenant demand that we're seeing is really the bifurcation of Grade A versus other. We're not seeing any impact from the Ukraine. In fact, I was in Warsaw a couple of weeks ago, and there's around 2 million educated and reasonably affluent refugees, in inverted commas, that are in Warsaw. We know that, for example, retail has actually been quite resilient at the moment because of the additional wallets and shoppers that are now in Warsaw. Housing prices, rents, et cetera, are actually rising in Warsaw as a result. It's an unfortunate issue that the borders of Ukraine have substantial issues with less well-off refugees, but those that can afford to move to the big cities and continue their businesses are doing so.
Right. Okay. Well, my last question, I just wanted to clarify. For the three office redevelopments in your pipeline, are these assets already vacated?
two are. Nervesa in Milan.
Yeah.
Via dell'Amba Aradam or Maxima in Rome. The third asset in Amsterdam, the government tenant lease expires in 2025.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question we'll take is from Dale Lai. Dale, please go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, Simon. Hi, Shane. Can you hear me this time?
Hi, Dale.
Oh, yeah, finally. Okay, hi. Just two quick questions from me. First one being the effective tax rate as increased to 9%. Should this be the effective tax rate that we are expecting going forward?
It's a very good question, Dale, it's one that I think we would say that it's not representative of necessarily going forward. Apart from the fact that overall, we are seeing in a lot of jurisdictions that governments are looking to increase their tax revenue. Just for this particular year-end, we have made some accruals for higher tax expenses and this is a conservative position that we've taken. It is an higher effective tax rate, but the jury is out on whether that's, you know, sustainable into the next year or so. It depends. There's a couple of. There's a conservative position, let's say.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. Oh, yeah, before I forget, happy birthday in advance.
Happy birthday.
Oh, happy birthday in advance. Yep. Okay. Moving on to valuations, just wondering, you know, how has valuation cap rates moved on a year-on-year basis? You know, just wondering if, you know, you think this is, you know, is mostly done in terms of cap rate expansion or do you think that there'll be more to come in the coming year?
What we've tried to in our pre-prepared remarks, try to highlight that initially the rise in interest rates has been absorbed by our portfolio's higher yield than the prime yields that you typically see in research houses, right? We didn't go out and buy 2.9% yielding Amazon sheds in Barcelona. That's not, that was not our investment strategy. Our average yield that we were purchasing through 2020 to more recently has been over 6%. We already have a cushion in our funding costs relative to our yield. We actually didn't see any substantial change in our initial yields. Again, you know, the biggest drop in value was Haagse Poort because some of the tenants handed back some space this time last year.
That was more the valuation for there was more about the vacancy factor than it was about cap rate. Although the cap rate in that particular property did increase. As we just highlighted, we've just secured that space back for a new tenant that will move in in August. We would expect that discount the value I've put on the vacant space to be removed now that that property has been leased post-balance date. Combination of higher rent growth and active asset management has provided that cushion to our valuation decline relative to the broader market.
Having said that, in our outlook piece, you know, if interest rates increase to where the market's implying, which is currently about 3.7%, on the curve from the current 2.6%, then, you know, our portfolio won't be immune, like everyone else's portfolio. You know, we're not saying that it's at the end of the valuation cycle. You know, while it's been a quick, sharp reaction and correction, I still think there's probably another six to 12 months of it flowing through into the various cities that we're exposed to. We're being cautious. Part of the reason for the asset sales is clearly to ensure that we can offset any potential weakness in valuations and maintain that 35%-40% board policy range.
We're trying to preempt any further issues that might come from the valuation market. What we've tried to say in this presentation is the income side is very strong with this portfolio. The cash collection is very strong. DPU growth, you know, still even in a rising interest rate environment, was still positive. Even with the increase in tax rate, our DPU was still positive. It's the valuation side and making sure that our LTV stays in that range, and that we can continue to fund the development pipeline and our investment strategy while our cost of equity is at these higher levels. You know, that's our plan, that's our target, that's our strategy.
It's been there for some time, and we're just, continuing to add layers on what we can reveal to the market given where we are in the various stages of our, pipeline. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah, that's very clear. Yeah, okay, that's all from me. Thank you.
Thanks, Dale. Thanks.
Thank you, Dale. To the rest of the audience, just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please select the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We are happy to continue with Q&A. Our next question comes from Vijay Natarajan. Please go ahead and ask your question, Vijay.
Hi, Vijay. I think you're on mute.
Yeah. Morning, Simon. Morning, team.
Morning.
I hope you can hear me right. Yeah.
Yes, we can.
Yeah. Congrats on the good set of numbers. I would say it's commendable numbers in a challenging period of time. A couple of quick questions. I think, firstly, on the rent reversions perspective, maybe can you just give us some sense of what's driving this strong positive rent reversions despite considering what's happening in the market? Is it the under-rented nature of your portfolio, or is it the quality of assets which is driving the tenants from cheaper location to a stronger building with the higher rents? Or is it your management team or the ground leasing team who is doing a great job in this kind of market? Maybe can you give a sense in terms of what we can look forward in terms of future from a rent reversion perspective? Can we still expect some sort of positive rent reversions?
What's your asking rents compared to that of the average rents in your portfolio at this point of time for the leases expiring?
Thanks. It's almost like you read our board paper, which clearly you didn't, for compliance purposes. You know, what we try and do in helping to answer that question, if we can turn to the valuation slide, I think we're the only REIT in Singapore that provides both the initial yield and the reversionary yield. Again, as a reminder to everyone, the reversionary yield is the valuer's expectation of where they expect the NPI to be in the medium term, say three to five years, relative to today's rent. What you want is you want a 5.7% initial yield and a 6.9% reversionary yield. That's the valuer's view of rent growth embedded in the portfolio based on their view of occupancy, market rent growth, inflation, and our asset management initiatives.
That's not our forecast. We wouldn't be able to give that to you, but it is the valuer's forecast, and so that takes into account all of the questions and issues you raised. I think that's the most simple way of answering your question is 5.7% initial yield and 6.9% reversionary yield.
Understood. Since your portfolio is already 96% occupancy, I would say this 20%+ is the under-rented nature based on the valuer's expectations of the reversionary yield of your portfolio.
Yeah, exactly. We would call this sort of full house, at 98% in logistics. It's pretty hard to go much higher than that. So another way of answering your question is really around the long leases of office in particular. You know, we just delivered a 36% rent increase on the new tenant moving into Haagse Poort relative to the previous tenant. 36% rent reversion for a 7,000 square meter new tenant. All right? How does that happen when people think, "Oh, office work from home, office is dead"? It's just not what's happening on the ground, right?
If you can provide quality portfolio, quality assets, that are well-located, good car parking, good electrical vehicle power points, not just one sticker box, but many for the thousands of tenants. If you can provide good cafeteria, again, good food offer within the office building is really important. In part, it's asset management initiatives that can drive the rent growth, but also the long-term leases. If you think about inflation in Europe, it's really only been in the last 12 months that we've had sort of inflation above 1% to 2%. If you've had a previous tenant that was on a 10-year lease, that was just after the GFC, right?
During the GFC, when the Dutch vacancy got to 18%, we're now benefiting from those leases expiring that were put in place in that more tough market. The rent growth has only been at inflation. Now you get to a point where the end of the 10 years, the new market rent is materially above where that rent was effectively 10 years ago, that had only been growing by inflation over the last nine years, and then up until this year with the big ratchet up in inflation. Combination of asset management and long-term lease nature of the office assets.
Okay. Yeah, understood. That's clear. Second question in terms of operating expenses, you mentioned that it is mainly driven by utility charges. Now that utility charges have come down somewhere closer to pre-war level, what do we expect for 2023? Can we expect operating margins to improve a bit, or would there be a bit of flow-through effect into this year?
I mentioned Vijay, about the makeup of the non-recoverable OpEx, and part of it was due to service charge leakage. A couple of big, couple of our bigger properties, had some vacancy, and that is being leased up. We would expect that issue to not be there, to such an extent, this year. I think generally utilities, energy costs, electricity, I think the outlook is better than what we've seen this year. Even though we had a large EUR 9 million increase in utilities, a lot of that was actually passed through to the tenants by way of service charge income. That aspect is not so bad.
I think from the other part, there was actually quite a lot of the non-recoverable expenses were due to the acquisitions as well. You know, with the less acquisitions happening, then I would expect the non-recoverable expenses not to grow the same way from acquisitions. Another part was to do with actually bad debts or provision for doubtful debts. In the prior year, we had a write-back of some bad debts, that had the impact of making the numbers look worse this year. Unfortunate for this year, it was obviously good for last year. Again, we won't expect to see that this year. There was also higher leasing fees that are non-recoverable, obviously. That's positive, right?
If we're paying leasing fees, then we're getting new tenants in. We would hope that that will continue to this year as well. Yeah, all in all, I think, not too bad a position for this year.
Okay. Okay, that looks good. Just last question in terms of macro picture. I mean, do you think that the sentiments has improved from what you have seen when you're talking to tenants in third quarter, fourth quarter, compared to when you talk to tenants, in line with what we have seen with some of the data coming out of Eurozone in terms of sentiments turning positive? If you had to name which would be your brightest spot, bright spots markets in your portfolio, and which you think is still seeing weakness at this point of time?
I think, you know, again, the fourth quarter leasing stats were very positive. Already corporates were making decisions late last year on the expectation that things weren't gonna be as bad as previously predicted halfway through the year. Again, the stat we tried to show here was that coming into the beginning of the year, we've already de-risked 61% of the leases expiring, which is the highest we've been, I think, since we began reporting this series. Again, we've got a lot of confidence going into 2023 from a vacancy or retaining tenant perspective. When you have very little vacancy in the market, tenants just don't have many options but to stay. That's also in our favor.
In terms of highlighting key assets, I mean, Parc de Dock, which is now valued at just under EUR 160 million, as a reminder, we bought it for about EUR 95 million a few years ago. The lease deal is now at EUR 160 a square meter. I remember saying this time last year, we were doing deals at EUR 145 a square meter. One of the benefits in this result was that a particular tenant, who argued about paying such high rents lost his position in court, as we had an independent tribunal, and he ended up owing us back rent as well. That was a significant win for us. Again, highlighting it wasn't just a one-off at that high rate.
The very large tenants could not use their size to try and get a discount. Large tenants, small tenants paying the same rent, which I think is a real positive for the Paris market. From an office perspective, being able to secure almost 50% in our new project in Milan one year before completion at rents higher than our budget was a phenomenal result. We're really t he Italian team, if they're on the line, should be really pleased with the way they've marketed the project, with the way the leasing team have gone about it and the type of tenant. When we can name that particular tenant, you'll understand exactly why that tenant has been attracted to this platinum building.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.
Thanks, Vijay.
Thank you. Our final question comes from James Morton. Please go ahead and ask your question.
James Morton, actually, but okay. Hi, Simon. Hi, Shane.
Hi, James.
Hi, James.
You know, really very happy, here with, what you've achieved in has been a terribly difficult period. Most of my questions have already been addressed by other shareholders. I'd like to ask you if you could help me understand, something on page three of your results overview, about the inflation, indexation-
Mm-hmm.
on portfolio. Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's a good.
Sorry.
Good, good point on the inflation. Maybe, Elena, if you can put the presentation up to page. What is it? To the 50. Page 50.
You talked about the higher income last year, and presumably that has potential to be even more of a factor this year.
Exactly. We're turning to a page shortly that will show in each country the typical market norm for how inflation feeds through on the leases. As you can imagine, this is a lagged process because you need to wait for the inflation number to be published before you can then go to the tenant and seek rent increases. In some markets, that might be a three-to-six-month process. In some markets, like Helsinki, it's typically at the beginning of every calendar year. When I was in Helsinki in -10 degrees in horizontal snow last month, we were actually invoicing our clients 8.6% increase in rents because of the 2022 inflation number now kicking through into 2023.
You're absolutely right that there is a lag. We got a good benefit of that in 2022. We'll continue to see that momentum going into 2023. There are, in some markets, caps on the inflation. Typically we won't get the headline inflation number, in some markets. Then in other markets like Italy, typically you only get 75% of the inflation number. It's good momentum. It's not quite the double-digit inflation numbers that have been printed. It's still very good growth.
I think we tried to make the point that the distribution growth would have been 10% had it not been for the increase in the tax, effective tax rate and an increase in some of the non-recoverable outgoings that Vijay previously asked. Yeah, it was a very good result, even with those one-off negatives.
Just to be clear, if you take your top four countries, which as you pointed out earlier, really are driving-
Mm.
-this. What would you expect to get from indexation for that part of the portfolio this year?
Yeah. Without telling you our exact budget numbers, because the Netherlands tend to have some caps and some staggering, and that's our largest portfolio, I don't know. Are we allowed to 3%, 35%? I mean, the NPI number that we delivered was sort of 5% this time around. I can't really give you guidance, James, other than just pointing out what happened last year and it's a reasonable guide for this year.
Last small point. The turnover rent received by Starhotels around Milan, is this a significant number? Because you profile it in your text, I wonder if it's important.
Yeah, it is actually. I mean, it is. You know, we do get. It's a good return for us if they exceed the turnover rent. You know, it's not EUR 1 million, but it's close to it, if I remember right.
Okay. That shows up on the numbers. I get it. Okay. Thank you.
The other one that shows up on the numbers is the substantial car park we have in Rotterdam, which is of a similar magnitude. As more people are returning to work and more people are returning to the commute, so they drive to the Rotterdam train station, park in our car park and then commute down to some of the other cities, which is typical in Netherlands, that also had a major benefit in 2022 versus 2021.
Fantastic. Well, I wish you very best for the year ahead. If, if you can deliver on all your goals, you'll have very happy shareholders this time next year.
Thanks, James. We appreciate the support.
Thank you.
Thank you. That now brings our Q&A session to an end. I will now hand back to Simon and Shane for closing remarks.
Thanks, Chiara. Look, it's been a very comprehensive presentation. I've really appreciated the questions and the interest of everyone to dial in and again, try and understand what happened last year, and more importantly, what we expect to happen over not just next year, or this year, but into the medium term. We wanted to be quite clear with our strategy. You know, we're not, we're not prone death to where our unit price is. That doesn't stop progress. In fact, it helps accelerate our strategy of divesting some of these other assets or some of these assets that are no longer strategic or the assets that we've maximized the alpha within the particular property through leasing or asset enhancements.
We wanted to highlight that there is a way forward. A lot of alpha to be generated and really strong DPU and NAV accretion from some of these projects that we're looking at while maintaining this very core portfolio of really strong logistic and light industrial assets that we expect income to continue to grow because of the structural tailwinds as well as this bifurcation now that we're clearly seeing for Grade A office relative to the very older office stock throughout Europe. We're at the forefront of that as well. Thank you very much for everyone's attention and support and investment. If there are any questions, then you know how to contact Elena and ourselves. Wish you all a good day. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining. That now brings our Cromwell results briefing to a close.