Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to Sembcorp Industries' first-half 2023 results presentation. A warm welcome, too, to viewers tuning in via the webcast. I'm Xin Jin from Group Investor Relations and Media Communications. Before we begin, we would like to request for all mobile phones to be switched to the silent mode, please. If you feel unwell, do approach our staff for assistance. Thank you. The members of the panel for today's presentation are Group President and CEO, Mr. Wong Kim Yin, and Group CFO, Mr. Eugene Cheng. There will be a question and answer session after the presentation. For viewers of the webcast, please key in your questions in the Q&A box by clicking on the Raise Hand icon on the webcast page. Without further delay, I will now hand over the time to Kim Yin to begin the presentation. Kim Yin, please.
Thank you, Jin. Good morning, and welcome to Sembcorp Industries. For us to deliver this first-half 2023 results. On this first slide, for the first half of 2023, the group delivered a strong set of results. Turnover was SGD 3.7 billion, 6% lower year-on-year, while EBITDA was SGD 993 million, and this is 59% higher than the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA was SGD 1.1 billion, an increase of 50%. Net profit before exceptional items increased 55% to SGD 602 million, while net profit was SGD 608 million, 56% higher year-on-year. Earnings per share, EPS, before EI was SGD 0.337, and EPS was SGD 0.341. Annualized group ROE before EI was 26.6%, and group ROE was 26.7%.
With this set of results, the Board has announced an interim dividend of SGD 0.05 per ordinary share, which will be paid on August 2second, 2023. Eugene will give you more details on the financials later. In the meantime, let me go through the key highlights of our business segments. Under renewables, we continue to make good progress and maintain momentum in growing our portfolio. We added 2.1 GW in the first half of the year, mainly through organic growth, increasing our gross renewables capacity to 11.9 GW. Renewables now account for 61% of our group energy portfolio. During the period, we completed three acquisitions that we announced last November.
This includes the 583 MW Vector Green portfolio in India, the 795 MW portfolio through 49% owned Beijing Energy Sembcorp, and the 892 MW portfolio through 45% owned Xingling New Energy. Our partnerships in China have enabled us to successfully scale up our renewables footprint organically. Since the acquisition of SDIC New Energy, we have added a further 1.7 GW to the portfolio, including a 750 MW concentrated solar power project. Our joint venture with SDIC subsidiary, Xingling New Energy, also commissioned its first 100 MW, 200 MW hour energy storage project in China. This is testament of our ability to leverage our partnerships, which are pro- platforms for us to grow ourselves further. In March this year, we were awarded our first greenfield renewables project in Oman.
This is a 500 MW build, own, operate solar plant, which complements our existing capabilities and track record in the power and water desalination sector in the region. The plant will be operational by 2025 and will be backed by a 20-year power purchase agreement. Just a little bit more details on our expanding portfolio in China. As mentioned earlier, we are developing new projects with our partners. Two notable projects to highlight. This was secured in first half 2023. The first one is a 750 MW concentrated solar power project. This is in Gansu Province. Right. The second one is the 100 MW battery energy storage system in Hunan. The concentrated solar project in Gansu, you know, they call it CSP, is a project that we are developing in our JV platform with SDIC.
It consists of 640 MW of solar PV and 110 MW of concentrated solar power, or CSP again. The CSP plant serves as an energy storage component of an integrated solar project. In a CSP plant, the sunlight is reflected by mirrors and focused on a fluid-filled receiver. The heated fluid is pumped to a heat exchanger, where the fluid transfers its heat to water, turning it into steam. This steam is then used to generate electricity through a steam turbine generator. This project is expected to complete in 2024. The energy storage system in Hunan is our first organic growth project through our joint venture, Xingling New Energy. Hunan is located in central China. It's one of the country's power demand centers.
The bundling of utility-scale solar or wind projects with battery energy storage systems, either through self-development or leasing of BESS, has become a requirement in Hunan for grid stabilizations as renewables grow. Our project successfully achieved full capacity connection to the grid in June, and its entire leasing capacity will be allocated to renewable projects owned by our partner, Wuling Power. We expect to sign a 20-year capacity leasing contract from 2024 onwards. These batteries will also provide ancillary services to State Grid. These two projects highlight our ability to expand with our partners. We continue to explore other potential projects as energy storage becomes a requirement to make the local grid more resilient. We move on to integrated urban solutions. In the first half of 2023, we achieved higher urban land sales at 85 hectares compared to 42 hectares in the first half of 2022.
Land sales in Indonesia have increased, mainly driven by higher manufacturing activity after the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions. Land sales in Vietnam was lower due to pending approvals from local authorities. In China, the property market continued to be challenging. Net order book remained healthy at 292 hectares compared to 288 hectares in first half 2022. Earnings contribution from the waste business in Singapore was lower due to the cessation of one of our public cleaning contracts in the second half, or rather, the second quarter of 2023. We move on to conventional energy.
Under conventional energy, we secured two notable long-term power purchase agreements in Singapore, an 18-year PPA with Micron Semiconductor to supply up to 450 MW, as well as a 10-year PPA with Singtel, with an estimated annual contract value of SGD 180 million. These contracts have allowed us to improve the earnings visibility of our assets moving forward, particularly for the Singapore market, which was more merchant in nature. Compared to the previous year, our gas portfolio, which is contracted for more than five years, has increased to 48% from 39%. Including the Micron and Singtel PPAs, 96% of our gas portfolio capacity is contracted, providing earnings visibility for the segment going forward. We also augmented our existing natural gas supply with a SGD 1.9 billion gas sales agreement in June to import natural gas from Indonesia.
Delivery is expected to commence from 2024 for a tenure of four years. Separately, as part of our asset renewal plan, we are developing a new multi-utility center and a 600 MW hydrogen-ready combined cycle power plant on Jurong Island. Powered by a new advanced combined cycle gas turbine, this facility will be among Singapore's most efficient cogeneration plants, capable of blending hydrogen at up to 30% of total fuel feedstock when operational by 2026. As at the first half of 2023, this is where we stand against our 2025 targets that we announced in 2021. Sustainable solutions, comprising the renewables and integrated urban solution segments, remain at 27% of group net profit, similar to end 2022, this is due to the strong earnings contribution from conventional energy segment.
Net profit from the sustainable solutions increased 20% year-on-year, with renewables net profit increasing by 54%. In terms of our renewables target, we have achieved 8.6 GW of gross in-stock capacity and a further 3.3 GW of gross in-stock capacity under our portfolio. That takes our total to 11.9 GW expected to be achieved well before 2025. We will continue to look for opportunities to grow this portfolio moving forward. Urban land sales in first half 2023 were at 85 hectares, as mentioned just now. We expect land sales, particularly in Vietnam, to pick up in the second half of the year. But as mentioned, it's still contingent upon obtaining local authorities' regulatory approvals. We continue to focus on growing our land bank to ensure a steady launch pipeline under urbans.
With the divestment of Sembcorp Energy India Limited, SEIL, we have met our 2025 carbon emissions intensity target ahead of time. Excluding emissions from SEIL, which has been removed from our Scope 1 and Scope 2. First half, 2022 emissions intensity continued to reduce to 0.29 from 0.31 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per megawatt hours in 2022. With that, let me ask CFO Eugene to take you through the group financial review. Thank you.
Thank you, Kim Yin. It gives me pleasure to take you through highlights of the details of our performance in first half 2023 this year, compared to first half 2022 of last year. In terms of headline key financials, our turnover declined slightly by 6% from about SGD 3.9 billion last year to SGD 3.7 billion this year. As Kim Yin highlighted earlier on, the key reason for that is a reduction in terms of gas revenues out of Singapore, of which I will, you know, elaborate on later. Now, in terms of EBITDA share of results of associates of JVs, net of tax, summing up to adjusted EBITDA.
Our adjusted EBITDA has increased by 50% from SGD 759 million last year to SGD 1.1 billion this year. This increase in the EBITDA, it's largely driven by a strong performance in our conventional energy segment, as well as contribution from new acquisitions that came through in the first half of 2023 this year, as well as a full half contribution by a couple of acquisitions that were completed in the first half of 2022 last year. Those elements contributed to our net profit before exceptional items, increasing by 55% from SGD 389 million to SGD 602 million in the first half of 2023.
Now, taking into account our discontinued operations, which is related to SEIL, our India coal business, of which the divestment took place in January of this year. In first half of 2022, the coal business contributed SGD 101 million in net profit. In relation to the divestment of SEIL, you would have recalled that I've guided at the end of December 2022 results announcement, that, you know, we would be likely realizing a loss on disposal as a result of the flushing out of our foreign currency translation reserve in relation to SEIL. That, you know, has come through, and that has resulted in a - SGD 78 million. Net profit for the period, taking into account discontinued operations, is SGD 530 million compared to SGD 490 million.
If we look at our EPS before extraordinary items, we turned in SGD 0.337 for the first half of 2023, versus SGD 0.218 for the first half of 2022. Our annualized return on equity before exceptional items is 26.6% for the first half of 2023, compared to 18.3% for the same period last year. When we look at the group turnover, when we look at across the different segments, the renewables turnover increased by 71%, largely as a result of full half contribution by the HYNE portfolio that was completed in May of last year, as well as the completion of the acquisition of Vector Green, which took place in the earlier part of January this year.
We also saw the contribution from the Singapore BESS, the energy storage system, which came online at the beginning of this year. That has contributed to the strong turnover increase for renewables. For the integrated urban solutions, turnover has declined slightly by 5%, and this lower turnover is largely a result of a cessation of a public cleaning contract in our sandways business, essentially the Central South District, which we have already highlighted last year. In terms of our conventional energy business, turnover dropped by 13%, from SGD 3.3 billion to SGD 2.9 billion. The key reason is because, you know, we have a decline in our gas sales for those that are indexed to HSFO.
You have seen that the average HSFO has declined from SGD 610 or so in the first half of last year to SGD 420 this half. But in spite of the decline in revenues, the margins in relation to the gas sales is still preserved because, you know, our gas costs against these gas sales are not fixed, obviously, right? Else it wouldn't be hedged. Hence, you know, we still realize the margins, the same expected level of margins from the gas sales. Moving to the next slide, where we look at the group net profit. Our renewables net profit, as, you know, highlighted earlier, up to this point, has increased to 54% from SGD 76 million to SGD 117 million.
Largely, you know, as a result of the completion of all the acquisitions and the new projects coming online, as well as, you know, the Singapore battery project coming online. You may ask, why did the net profit for renewables increase slightly lower than revenues? The answer to that is really because of non-cash intangible amortization that came through as a result of the acquisitions. The non-cash intangible amortization was about SGD 13 million for the period. For the integrated urban solution segment, net profit has declined by about 23%, from SGD 62 million to SGD 48 million. The key contributory factors was in the urban business itself.
We saw certain weaknesses in the China property market, and in terms of the Vietnam business, we expect the regulatory approvals to come through in the second half. We do expect, you know, the earnings, particularly in related, in relation to the Vietnam urban business, to be a little more backended through this year, and that will come through in the second half. Of course, that is mitigated by higher land sales that was recognized in Indonesia. In addition to those elements that impacted the urban business, we also saw lower contributions in our same waste business. As mentioned earlier on, it is largely due to the loss of a public cleaning contract in Central South.
For the conventional energy business, we saw our group net profit before EI increase from SGD 296 million to SGD 435 million, an increase of 47%. This is really driven by, you know, the strong power prices that is achieved through ensuring our assets are optimized. Our gas cost portfolios are optimized to be able to capture, you know, the strong power prices, particularly in the pool market. Of course, going forward, you know, our Singapore portfolio would be a lot more contracted, but I will elaborate it, you know, in a subsequent slide. In terms of corporate costs, we did see an increase, a significant increase in corporate costs.
This is mainly due to increase in corporate level interest costs of about SGD 60 million, of which slightly less than half of that is for the purpose of funding the acquisitions that closed in the first half of this year, as well, and we also saw some base rate increases as a result of the, you know, the 29% floating rate portion that was exposed. In addition to that, we also saw, you know, a corporate level cost increase, you know, in relation to, you know, the completion of a certain strategic initiatives, as well as, you know, certain costs in relation to the execution of, you know, certain M&A transactions.
All in all, I forgot to mention about the DPN income. Of course, this is the first half where we recognize the deferred payment, no income, that is coming through from the SEIL sale. What we have recognized in the first half of this year is SGD 122 million, which comprises of two portions. SGD 84 million that is coming from the interest income, and about SGD 38 million, which is a result of, you know, a positive forex gains due to a positive movement of the rupee against the Sing dollars. All in all, we have that that accounts from a segmental perspective, our net profit before exceptional items of SGD 602 million, a 55% increase from SGD 389 million.
Now this slide, basically, you know, I wouldn't touch too much on this. Essentially, pictorially, you know, explains, you know, the narrative that I have provided earlier on, in terms of, you know, how our net profit has progressed from SGD 389 million to SGD 602 million, for the reasons that we have discussed. If we move to the next slide. Now, I just want to touch a little bit about, you know, our conventional energy, you know, portfolio. As you have heard, Kim Yin mentioned earlier on, where we stand, as of 30th June, this year, right?
48% of our conventional gas portfolio, you know, capacity is contracted for more than five years. And y ou know, 48% of that is between, you know, zero to five years, and only about 4% of that is exposed to spot. Specifically for the Singapore, you know, capacity for the first half of this year, right? What we are seeing is that, between January to July of this year, our level of, of, you know, contracted positions was a little lower for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, we had, you know, a, a take down of one of the GTs. You know, this is in view of, you know, the long-term PPAs that is expected to be signed, and, you know, coming in from the second half of this year.
Naturally, you know, because of that, particularly in the second quarter of this year, we were able to take, you know, having the assets up, we were able to capture, you know, a meaningful amount of pool gains. Going into the second half, as you can see, which is the darker green portion of the shaded area chart, our expected the contracted capacity would, you know, increase markedly again, and we, and we expect to see, you know, slightly over 2/3 of our capacity contracted. Underpinned by the long-term PPAs, as well as the, you know, the one to three years retail contract.
We expect this, you know, contracted position, to persist, not just through the second half of this year, but, you know, essentially, the philosophy would to, to carry through, you know, into 2024 and beyond as well. What, what does that mean for us is that we do expect our conventional earnings to be a lot more stable. In a addition to that, there were concerns about how the potential PPC may affect us. As we go look ahead, you know, in terms of the level of contractedness of our portfolio and, the length in which, we expect it to be increasingly contracted, we do expect, the impact of PPC, on our Singapore conventional earnings to be much muted.
If you look at the next slide, we talk about our group capital expenditure. Total capital expenditure and investment for the first half of 2023, it's SGD 875 million, of which, you know, the bulk of it is really invested in renewables, almost 94% of that. In the renewables segment, it, the CapEx is really, you know, largely related to wind and solar projects in India and Singapore, as well as for battery storage in the U.K. Now, the equity investment portion for the renewables pertains largely to the acquisitions of the renewable portfolios in China as well as India.
When we look at the next slide, which highlights our group free cash flow position, we are quite pleased to see that, you know, our cash flow generation ability has increased in the first half of 2023 as well. Essentially, our cash flow from, net cash flow from operating activities is SGD 742 million at a significant increase from SGD 566 million the year before. Now, if we take into account what we consider as a stay in business or maintenance CapEx, free cash flow is SGD 791 million for the first half of 2023, compared to SGD 593 million the year before.
When we look at our group borrowings and the capital position, as of 30th June, we have gross debt of SGD 7.5 billion, an increase of approximately SGD 400 million compared to 31st of December, the year before. Of course, the increase in the gross debt largely is to fund the completion of the acquisitions that took place in the first half of this year. Total equity increased from SGD 4.2 billion to roughly SGD 4.8 billion, resulting in total capital increasing from SGD 11.2 billion to SGD 12.2 billion. In terms of our cash position, we saw our cash reducing from about SGD 1.3 billion to SGD 882 million.
The reason for that is because we were freeing up, you know, a lot of the excess cash within the countries, you know, to part fund the, you know, the investments that we are making into the renewable segment. The balance of that, you know, will help us, you know, manage a negative carry in terms of drawing down too much debt for funding the acquisitions. All in all, we are quite pleased to see that our leverage ratios have improved markedly. On an annualized basis, our gross debt to adjusted EBITDA improved from 4.5x to 3.3x. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA improved from 3.7x to 2.9x.
Our coverage ratios, essentially EBITDA to interest, improved from 4.2x to 4.8x , and adjusted EBITDA to interest, 5.0x to 5.6x . When we look at our group debt and maturity profile, essentially, it has, you know, significantly been lengthened compared to two years ago. From a weighted average, debt maturity standpoint, where we stand right now is 4.five years, which is commensurate with where things stood as of 31st of December. You would see that within one year, we have about SGD 1.4 billion of debt that is coming due.
Approximately SGD 260 million of debt is, you know, self-amortizing, you know, project finance payments, that ultimately will be backed by a cash flows at the project level. From a corporate debt refinancing standpoint, we have about SGD 1.2 billion. Essentially, all of those debt that is coming due are in the process of being refinanced, and we have absolutely no issues with access to capital.
In any case, you know, in terms of our available liquidity, we have SGD 818 million of cash on balance sheet, plus a free on-demand working capital of SGD 1.6 billion, you know, debt totaling to SGD 2.5 billion of on-demand available liquidity that will be more than sufficient to cover that. In any case, we do not expect to use any of those resources, because where we stand right now, we expect the SGD 1.2 billion to be refinanced, and all the discussions with our banks and our, and the financing partners is already underway.
In terms of weighted average cost of debt, compared to where we stood in 31st of December, it increased from 4.1% to 4.7%. As explained at the full year earnings announcement, 4.1% represented the average weighted average cost of debt for the whole year of 2022. By the fourth quarter of December of 2022, our weighted average cost of debt as a result of a rising base rates, was at 4.4%. Essentially, from 4.4% to a 4.77%, roughly 30 basis points of increase. It's, you know, some continued base rate increase in the, you know, 29% of floating portion.
But, uh, in addition to that, also, uh, we did, uh, consolidate some, uh, higher, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, cost, uh, debt as a result of the completion of the Vector Green, uh, acquisitions. We do see opportunities, uh, particularly in the second half, for us to, uh, put, uh, uh, uh, lower our, uh, average, uh, cost of debt from, uh, from four point seven percent to something lower, uh, through a continued refinancing efforts, particularly, uh, uh, in India and also in China. Now, when we look at our group liquidity, I've touched on that. Uh, you know, cash and cash equivalents as of the 30th of June, we have SGD 818 million. Uh, as of 30th June, we have unutilized committed facilities of a SGD 2.5 billion.
But as of August of 2023, the committed unutilized credit facilities has fallen slightly to SGD 1.6 billion. The reason for that is that we have one committed RCF facility that was still benchmarked on the older SOR regime. As we all know, you know, term loans that are, you know, benchmarked against the SOR, right, is expected to be transited to SORA. Given that this particular RCF would have matured in August of this year, right, we have decided not to transit that RCF from SOR to SORA. We've kind of, you know, allowed that facility to lapse, but we are in the process of redocumenting the SGD 850 million.
We do expect to maintain our committed RCF facilities. If you go to the next slide, to talk about the outlook that we expect to see in the second half. You know, essentially, our strong performance in the first half of 2023 is driven by the conventional energy segment. We saw higher power prices and also increased operational capacity in the renewable segment, as a result of the, you know, the commissioning of new projects as well as acquisitions that we have made. Moving into the second half, we do expect an increase in our contract positions, particularly with longer tenure PPAs.
We will expect our conventional energy segment to provide a stable earnings profile into the second half of the year. For the renewables segment, we expect that to increase for the full year, right? Especially with the contributions that has come through from the completed acquisitions. As you all know, when you look at the, you know, the seasonality of our historical earnings, second half of the year for the renewables segment is traditionally seasonally lower than the first half. Particularly for the urban business, you know, we expect, you know, the full year performance to be dependent on the pace of the regulatory approvals that will come through for Vietnam in the second half.
Possibly, you know, property market recovery in our countries of operations, particularly China. We are confident to say, barring unforeseen circumstances, our full year underlying earnings for the group will be higher than 2022. We do expect our second half, you know, earnings to be better than the second half of last year as well. But of course, notwithstanding, you know, the strong performance and, you know, the positive outlook, you know, we do recognize that global growth is still, you know, is projected to slow down amidst, you know, high inflation. Their monetary policies remain tight, particularly out of the U.S.
As a result of that, resulting in rising interest rates, and there still remain a potential geopolitical tensions. Of course, these macro factors could weigh down on the global economy and ultimately impact business performance. Nevertheless, as we have always emphasized, we will continue to focus on the execution of our strategy and leverage on our energy and urban capabilities, to continue to seize opportunities to grow in the energy transition. A couple of developments to note. We do have planned maintenance for our Phu My 3 Power Plant, approximately three weeks in the second half of this year. That same plant will reach the end of its term of operations, you know, at the end of February in 2024.
That has, you know, that development has been highlighted to the market earlier this year as well. With that, I end.
Oh, okay. Thanks for that, Eugene. I think, many people have been waiting for this date. You know, I just wanna ask, you know, analysts and as well as, you know, our investors to save the date. We will be conducting our Investor Day on the 6th of November, 2023. That's on a Monday. You have a, you know, good chance to rest over the weekend, psych yourself up for it, you know, and and, you know, update your reports very quickly, after, after, after, that Investor Day.
We do hope to make it, you know, an, you know, an engaging, you know, a session for you to help us understand what we envisage as, you know, targets for the next, the next phase of growth. With that, I end my presentation, and, you know, we are happy to take questions.
Thank you, Kim Yin and Eugene. We have now come to our Q&A session. Please raise your hand if you have a question, and a microphone will be brought over to you. Please state your name and organization that you represent. For viewers of the webcast, you can key in your questions in the Q&A box by clicking on the Raise Hand icon on the webcast page, and we will address them during the session as well. First question, please, from Rahul in the front row.
Thank you. Hi, Rahul Bhatia from HSBC. Three questions from my side. First, a quick check. The page 14 slide, the split between contracted and uncontracted capacity in Singapore. Can you confirm, you said 2/3 capacity will be contracted from July onwards?
Yes, for the, for the Singapore, capacity. Yes, that's correct.
How much was it in 2022?
In 2022, it was approximately about 2/3 as well. Going into second half, it will be slightly above 2/3.
Okay.
Yeah.
Second, you mentioned about Investor Day on 6th November. Could I request you to share with us three or four key topics that the management wants to address at Investor Day?
I think we, i n Investor Day 2021, we came out and laid out our five-year targets. Well, actually, it was only four years, it was 2025. Then we say, "You know, this is our growth plans. This is how we're going to fund it. This is why we think we believe we have a good chance of succeeding." Now that quite a number of those targets have been achieved, then it is quite natural for us to say, "Look, then it's time to revise a five-year target." We will be coming out to tell you, you know, five-year target. The date, the date that we have in mind is 2028, right?
Within the five years, where do we see Sembcorp ending up particularly with regard to our renewable strategy, our Brown to Green strategy, particularly with regard to how are we going to fund it, right? That's a question that that's always out there. We would also be sharing with you some of the the why and the how, which is, you know, some capabilities to the extent, if there is time, and to the extent it is interesting to you. Those will be the the main theme. Basically, recasting a five-year target, laying out the growth plan, how we're going to fund it. And again, you know, if there's time, what are the key elements to success.
In the meantime, leading up to 6th November, if you have any feedback, if there are areas in which you think we should cover, please do give us that feedback so that then we can consider putting it into, into our presentation. If I'm not wrong, I think Jin has really reached out to some of you to get that feedback. Please do that. Very keen to hear from you. Including also format. If you want to do site visits, if you want it to be a three-day event, I shall oblige, and make sure that we fit everybody. So far, what we're getting back as feedback is that folks, you guys are busy people, and you want it, like, you know, give me the answer right now.
You know, it can be done in five minutes, all the better. We'll, we'll calibrate, and we'll try to balance that. We, we also timed it such that, it is actually right after our Board strategy sessions, right? That then we will what we will tell you, we'll get the full endorsement and support as an institution, coming into the date. That's why it is a little bit later than we had earlier, you know, indicated, either September, October, but then we, we, we put it on, on, on, in, in November. You know, to Eugene's point, we say instead of a Friday, we put it on a Monday also. It'll be kinder on people's schedule over the weekend. I hope I dealt with that. Yeah.
My third question is on Myanmar operations. Could you update us how it is going on? I recall there were some provisions taken in second half of 2022. Was similar kind of test done as part of first half results as well?
Okay. For Myanmar, we have performed the same ECL review, you know, in the, at the end of the second half. The conclusion that we stand is that, you know, from a risk profile standpoint, it hasn't really changed or deteriorated, so there was no additional, you know, provisions in relation to that. The plant is still operating well, right? The, the, the positive thing is that, you know, we are still generating, right? You know, we are still receiving payments, amazingly ahead of due date. You know, those are- that's the situation that we are, we are, we're seeing in Myanmar. Of course, we monitor the broad sanctions situation very closely as well.
We did note that there was some sanction activity. I mean, it's public knowledge, you know, where the, you know, a couple of, you know, local banks, right, were sanctioned. We also saw, you know, I think one of our local banks, you know, did a close, you know, bank accounts in relation to Myanmar Airlines. You know, I think when we examine the underlying of that, you know, we are quite confident that at this point in time, it doesn't express any deterioration of credit in relation to EPG, our counterparty. In relation to that, you know, there's no deterioration in risk profile. Yeah.
Next question, please.
I thought Siew Khee put up her hand just now. Was it? Yeah.
Okay, Siew Khee first.
Hi, just following up on Rahul questions earlier. The 2/3 contracted in first, it was in first half that 2/3 contracted, right? The sites that you put up, 48, 484, the one that you showed.
Uh-huh.
Is that the same capacity that we saw in first half?
No. Let me put it up for you, okay? Thanks, Siew Khee, for the question. It simply means I did a bad job by explaining this slide, okay, I'll, I'll try again. Okay?
Maybe I was just I wasn't listening properly. It's my fault, my fault.
Okay, the pie chart on the left, that talks about the contracted capacity for all our conventional assets, like Singapore and, you know, the overseas IPP as well. This is to give you a flavor that, you know, our conventional earnings is actually, you know, increasingly a lot more contracted, particularly towards the more than five years. Almost, you know, 50% of our capacity will be contracted for more than five years. The chart on the right-hand side is specifically in relation to our Singapore capacity, right? Historically, we are roughly 2/3, you know, contracted through 2022.
What I was trying to highlight here is that for the first half of 2023, you can see in terms of the dark green shaded area, the contract levels drop down a bit. Why did that drop down, right? Firstly, we did have a turbine take down for planned maintenance. We did highlight that, you know, at the year-end earnings. The second thing also is that we were, you know, in the process of putting in place, you know, the large PPAs, right? Which were, you know, 450 MW announced for Micron, as well as the Singtel one. Those will come in to, you know, contribute from July onwards.
We all know that one is 15 years, one is 10 years. We do expect the second half a level of contract, contractedness to go back to similar levels of 2022 and slightly more. That's why it's gonna be slightly over 2/3. Because the contracted position now in the second half of 2023 onwards, is gonna be underpinned more by these long-term PPAs. We are quite confident that our level of, you know, contractedness of the portfolio will be maintained beyond 2023 into 2024. You also have heard us mention that in the current climate, there are more and more significant consumers of electricity, being keen to, you know, assign in a long-term PPAs.
You know, you would also imagine that, you know, we would be looking to, you know, contract more of our capacity of such nature, as opposed to, you know, shorter term, one to three-year, retail contracts. Yeah.
Thank you. The reason why I ask is because you actually expect CE to be stable, even though your contracting portion will actually go up in second half?
That's correct. Contracting go up, the CE earnings will become more stable.
More stable, okay.
Yeah.
Just on DPN in India.
Yeah.
I mean, the operating profit has been very strong, stronger than I think before we sold them. Just wanted to hear your, you know, just some channel check, what's happening there, and what is the receivable that is left as well?
I think, you know, post the sale, clearly, from an operational standpoint, that is, you know, really left to the management team under the guidance of the new owners, right?
Mm-hmm.
We do not have operational control, so clearly, we do not, you know, drive, or have anything, anything, in relation to, you know, driving operations, of the asset. Of course, you know, in our position as a DPN lender, we do monitor their operations, you know, on a monthly basis, right? We do get operational reports. You know, what is happening on the ground, you know, we do still see, you know, earnings, stable because they are contracted, with PPAs. In terms of the receivables, you know, the EMI receivables are still, you know, are being paid down, right? Quite quickly. You know, every single monthly installment has been met without any delay.
You know, we are quite pleased to see, you know, the receivable situation for SEIL, you know, at the ground level, continue to improve and be met. So far, you know, of course, with every period, and we are also expected to review, you know, the cash flow as well as, you know, the collectibility of the, of the, of the, you know, expected repayments of the DPN. You know, as of the 30th of June, we have reviewed those cash flows as well, and the conclusion is that, you know, the DPN is still expected to be repaid within its, its life.
So, as a result, there is no, you know, fair value change in relation to that.
Can I check how much is left in the receivables? You know, the one that they used to have, the SGD 700 million, where we slowly.
It has, it has, it has come down, significantly, right? You know, I think, because we do not have any operational control, you know, we.
Got it.
You know, I'm not, you know, privy to talk about the details in SEIL.
Thanks. Just one last question in terms of the supply and demand situation in Singapore. I know that you already have little bit of exposed to spot, but I just want to draw reference to what's happening in the Singapore power market, where we actually had half in terms of the USEP prices in July. It's a matter of all genkos not needing to shut down, or. I know it's a both, but just want to hear your view on what's happening on the ground now. Like, why USEP came down half? Is it a knee-jerk reaction from TPC, which usually we say no, but why is it, and where are we heading towards second half?
Probably not the expert in this, but the chart that you have in front of you, you can see, to your point, it's quite volatile, the USEP, right? Going up and down. We do expect that volatility to continue because demand, according to EMA, a long-term demand growth could be as high as 4% for the next 10-15 years, right? If that is indeed the case, there will be shortage with especially some of the older plants in the fleet, in the Singapore fleet retiring. That's the, that's the expectation. Of course, a very big uncertainty is imports from neighboring countries coming into Singapore. If those things come earlier, of course, then the gap will be filled.
Conversely, if they are delayed, then there will be extend, there could be extended period of shortage. We, I can't, for immediate future, we cannot really comment too much. The longer term future, you can see, the plans that EMA has laid out, really is to want to secure reliability and supply for Singapore, right? That part of it, you can see that. Near term, if it is going to be volatile like this, and I am not answering your question, asking why this has happened. Really, it is, you know, because the demand and supply is actually on the margin already, right?
When it's on the margin, slight changes, on the demand side or the supply side, a plant shuts down, false outage, spike up in demand, hot weather, can actually move prices quite a lot. It is much tighter compared to, of course, 10 years ago or even five years ago. That part of it, I'm not telling you anything you do not already know. Surprised to say, I don't want to say we actually predicted all of this, but there was that, that knowledge that we have gained from other markets, that we know that, you know, we don't want to be exposed to this.
That's why we started, you know, if you look in through the market in terms of the player side, dare say, we were the first who were going out there wanting to contract long, leveraging on our existing gas and electricity market position to contract long. What we are very comfortable saying is that, you know, now with this type of contracted position, you know, we somewhat insulate ourselves, or somewhat is the wrong term. It's actually largely insulate ourselves from the fluctuations coming in, in the next, certainly, if you look at the, the chart, for the next five years, right? For the next five years, I'm, I'm almost, you know, for the entire portfolio, very highly contracted now, right?
That is a deliberate strategy, and I think that has given us the confidence to come out and say, short unforeseen circumstances, we feel confident that our earnings stability contributing from CE, conventional energy, is much more stable and internally, when we do budgets and projections, is much more predictable. That's not answering your question, Siew Khee, but, you know, the market is tighter, right? In the long run, really big uncertainty is import coming in and also new capacity addition. EMA is going out there to say, "Look, let's build," right? That, that's really what's happening. In the near term, because of the price volatility, they are saying, "Let's put in a temporary price cap." Right? Then why do you call it temporary?
Because they're putting in open cycle peaking plants, right? When the open cycle plants are up, then the temporary price cap will be lifted, right? Now, having said that, if you think about it, the TPC is set at a level whereby it is in the few hundred dollar per megawatt hour sort of level. And within that, most generators would still be able to get a decent spread. Yeah. Even if the TPC were to come in for the part that is exposed to the spot market, we think, you know, it is at a place whereby we can still make money, given our cost structure, right? Maybe that's an additional comment beyond what you asked.
I, you know, I think that, that's as far as we, we should, comfortably talk about. In the meantime, you know, our official statement is that we continue to support Singapore's energy demand. You know, we, as a Singaporean player, homegrown, we will be there. It's good business for us.
Next question from Mayank.
Yeah, next one.
Sorry, on the right-hand side. I think it's Janice.
Sorry. Yeah.
Hello. Yeah, Janice, from The Business Times. I just want to ask, Sembcorp had open talks for the sale of its potential sale of its waste business and the plant, right? What are factors for the failed talks? Like, you know, if you all could elaborate on why the sale didn't go through. Thank you.
You want to take that?
Yes, indeed. We're actually always looking at the portfolio, right? Sembcorp, you know, we own a lot of things now. I don't know whether you know, we actually own The Singapore Mint. I have said that before, some of you might have heard me. We're always looking at the portfolio. Are there opportunities for us to improve, optimize, maximize shareholder value, right? There were some talks. We actually hired an advisor, started a process to look into it. Then, you know, usually we would come out and announce, and you know our style. When something becomes more concrete, then we'll come and tell you, right? Otherwise, actually, at any one point in time, there are things that are going on. We talk to people all the time.
That particular situation, there was a leak, and given the rules, our hands are compelled, we are tied, and we had to come out and say something. That people got excited over it, which is fine. I, I thought unnecessary, but, you know, prematurely, you know, it was leaked out there that we were talking to people, and prematurely, you know, the outcome of those talks didn't meet our expectations, right? If it's not gonna be good enough, we're not gonna do it. I think, if I twist it the other way around, it's, I would, I would say that it's actually an example of us not doing things indiscriminately or, or, or, or we are actually watchful of shareholder value.
If it is, if we're not gonna you know, we will not do it just because we have announced it or, or, or it has leaked out, right? There's been so many leaks, you know. People say we're looking at this thing in India, looking at that thing in over there. Different companies have different style, and what I want to take the opportunity to explain is that we will come out and say something, obviously in accordance to the rules, but then within the, the, the flexibility of the rules, we, we take the position that if it is something that is meaningful and is ready, we will come out and tell you enough about it, right? In that particular situation, I'm glad, you know, there's an opportunity for us to explain.
You know, we were forced to come out and say something because there was a leak and it was premature. Sure enough, the thing didn't turn out. We walked away from it because it doesn't do our shareholders any good if we follow through. I hope I dealt with that. Thanks. It's Mayank, I think.
Mayank?
Yeah.
Yeah. A few questions from my side. First and foremost, I think, can we get a bit of a details around UKPR of how because it's a peaking plant, but, like, in terms of operationally, how things have been and how have been the contribution in the first half compared to what was going on in the last? Because last year was a great year, I suppose, for UKPR, but how have things normalized there?
From a contribution perspective, for UKPR, in the first half of the year, you know, obviously, you know, from an earnings standpoint, it was slightly lower compared to last year, right? Given that, you know, from the first half of the year, we did see, from a weather pattern standpoint, we didn't see as much wind, right? And, you know, with a less wind contribution into the grid. The need to, you know, call on peaking plants and also, you know, the demand ultimately for, you know, fast response, would be a bit lower.
You know, nevertheless, we did see that from a, from a peaking plant standpoint, that was a phenomenon of, of the weather that we see in the first half of this year. You know, in the longer term, you know, from a fundamental standpoint, we do still expect the renewables penetration in U.K. to grow, right? You know, we do expect, you know, the fundamentals for, you know, peakers to remain intact for U.K. Of course, you would imagine from quarter to quarter, half to half, period to period, it really depends on a, on a, on a, on a, you know, weather patterns as well.
What we have seen in the first half was a, you know, a little bit of a low wind for the national grid. As a result, you know, a demand for the, you know, peaking type services, you know, did fall off a little bit relative to the first half of last year. Yeah.
If it comes in, take it as an upside. We're lucky in the sense that the entire portfolio, you know, it's a. We've got strong performance in some of the more, the bigger contributors, right? UK, if it comes in, especially the UKPR peaking portfolio, take it as an upside, so.
I think, the second question was more in terms of receivables in China and India on the renewables side. How have things improved there? Like, can you just talk about that, and how has that impacted your working capital this first half?
Okay. For receivables in China, I think it is public knowledge. There is a subsidy audit that is ongoing. A subsidy audit has been completed. You know, what I've been what we understand that's happening on the ground is that, I think the central government is a little overwhelmed, you know, trying to complete the audit results and getting that out, right? For us, you know, naturally, you know, across our entire portfolio, the SOEs as well as our own control portfolio, different projects have, you know, went through the audit.
You know, different projects, or rather what we call the project companies, are getting cleared through the audit at, you know, you know, within the central government schedule. I think, right now, we have not seen any of the, you know, projects, being drop off the, you know, the subsidy list. We are confident because, you know, naturally, we have done our own assessment and work as well. We are confident that, we, you know, we, we really do not expect any of the, you know, project companies to fall off, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the subsidy list.
Naturally, you know, until the subsidy audits is, you know, completed, the collection of the subsidy receivables will be a little slow. Of course, when we look at the payment patterns that come up from the REDF Fund historically, what tends to happen is once, you know, they clear, they are comfortable, then payments tend to come in a, in a, in a chunky bit. We see that we, we saw that take place in some of our SOE portfolios. I think what we would say right now is that we're confident that, you know, our projects will not fall off the subsidy list. From a subsidy receivable standpoint, you know, the timing would be as such.
You know, historical patterns is such that, you know, it tends to be paid out, you know, in, in chunks. Yeah.
India. India.
You want to talk about India?
Your question was specifically, subsidy, receivables in China?
India as well.
For India, it's the good thing is that, you know, we do have the EMI scheme that has been, you know, signed up between. For the ones with SECI, that's fine, right? There are absolutely no, no, no concerns. You know, for the ones that are signed with DISCOMs, we have the EMI schemes. You know, as mentioned earlier on, you know, they are dutifully paying down the EMI receivables as well. You know, we do not see any particular issues for the India receivables.
So really, China is building up as the audit results are delayed, right? In the meantime, you know, we feel like all the necessary documentation and the conditions to fit into the subsidy scheme we have met. We're waiting for them to complete it, and in the meantime, it's building up. It's not a happy situation, but, you know, this is the Chinese government, right? India is actually, I would say stable.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say stable. No, at this stage, no reason for concerns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The two projects that you have been got in China now, like, can you talk a bit about of how the structure is in terms of PPA pricing, the timelines, CapEx? Anything around that, can you talk about on those two projects?
Well, the, I don't know. The man is here. My China CEO here, do you mind?
Can you, can you pass him the mic? Can somebody pass him the mic?
Yeah. Mayank, you guys are fortunate because.
No, no, no, behind you. Behind you.
We have our SLC members here, so, yeah, China CEO, Alex.
Mayank, hi. Let me just try to address your question. Typically, the PPAs in China, they range between one to five years. The PPAs that we sign and locked up usually last between three to five. That's considered long-term. Then, once it expires, we renew them. Historically, that's been the case.
The prices, generally, the PPA prices, they're reference prices, right? They refer to. It depends on the grid that they're in, provincial grid. You're the expert, like, you're gonna ask this. The province, for the benefit of others, the grids, typically, the marginal plants or the cost-setting plants, the price-setting plants are the coal plants, yeah. To the extent, if the project that we have, which is a renewable project, wind or solar, has a favorable cost structure relative to the marginal, price-setting coal plants in their system. Generally, you know, the tariff that we get, will give us the margins that we need, for the project to be viable.
It is very different than a case where I, I can tell you, I signed a 20-year PPA in Vietnam. That's fixed price, right? Doesn't matter, you know, what is their hydro plant cost or their nuclear plant cost. In the case of China, you know, every provincial grid, they have their reference prices. It is I would call it a regulated price. It's not a merchant price, but it is a regulated tariff that we receive, right? Every time when we go into a project, we always say: Hey, look, where does this project's cost sit with their, the, this particular grid's marginal cost? Of course, also taking into consideration, they could also build transmission lines that have in, have input from other grids, right?
Generally, you know, China's a big place. There are still pockets of, you can still work out what is the, what is the cost to the grid. I don't know whether I answered your question? Contract term, five years rolling, prices, depending on the, on the location, and, and it gets reviewed, you know, every now and then. So far, in fact, our, if I have to extend ourselves a bit further, Alex, don't, don't blame me. Our China portfolio so far has really delivered the, what we expect, and then some. A little bit higher than what we expected, in terms of, returns, right? We've been a bit lucky. We've got good partners.
There is good growth, there's organic growth, and then there is also the entire portfolio overall delivering what it was supposed to deliver. Your earlier question was good in the sense that, you know, in terms of the subsidy, that's the one thing that's building up the VCU. That's the one thing that, if we had to hold at something that so far we're not happy with, that's the one thing, right? Like I say, we have done everything that we need to do to make sure that our projects qualify for those subsidies. It's just waiting for them to finish their audit, and if they have a backlog, we can go and politely ask, but not gonna chase them very hard.
I think, Mayank, the additional point, and, we have talked about this before, is to again stress that one of the advantages is really the, you know, benchmarking the renewable tariff against the grid coal. Because, you know, that gets reset on an annual basis, right? We know that on the longer term, you know, secular trend, that it allows for, to a certain level of inflation that is reflected in commodities to be, priced into, the renewables as well.
I think, it's important that, you know, from our perspective, while it's, it sounds like it's an annual tariff, but, actually from a longer term perspective, right, that in itself, gives a certain, you know, a level of inflation protection into the tariff.
What would be the CapEx for these two projects, the new ones?
From a CapEx perspective for these two projects, we have not, we have not disclosed it, so, you know, probably not convenient for us to to share it.
I think the last question was more in terms of the interest cost that you earlier highlighted. What was the impact of the acquisitions, especially Vector Green, in terms of the cost of going from that nearly 30 basis points for year, first half versus last year?
The 30 basis points was a couple of things, right? You will recall that I did a bond, you know, a fixed-rate bond, right, in April of this year. In the fixed-rate bond itself, we have already seen, you know, seven-year pricings, even for green bonds, you know, step up to about the 4.6% range already, right? We did see, you know, interest rates coming up already. Naturally, as we fix some of those rates at the, you know, at the marginal, you know, stack up of my interest cost of the portfolio, that is starting to tick it up a little bit.
Now, of course, you know, when we acquire, you know, some of the, some of these assets, for example, Vector Green, it's kind of like averaging, you know, my cost of debt, into a more expensive, local, India debt, right? Then, you know, from a project finance standpoint, there's still a persist you would imagine. You know, it's probably pushing towards the high nines and, and, you know, the kind that, the kind of level of an interest cost. Naturally, that will also contribute in the uptick a little bit.
Of course, the positive thing is that, you know, all this, together, in China as well, in the HYNE portfolio, right, where the average interest cost in there, right, in renminbi terms is, you know, it's in excess of 5%. These are all opportunities for us to refinance down, you know, for us to, you know, ultimately bring our weighted average cost of debt down as well. Yeah.
Thank you.
Maybe Peggy first, right in front, second row, please.
Thanks. Sorry, pardon my ignorance. Just referring to this slide over here. When you say contracted capacity, what terms are in the contracts? Do you state the selling price, or do you give yourself a stated margin? The contract between, like, one Micron and Singtel, are they similar, or are there variation in between different customers?
Okay. It's a differentiation between merchant and contract. This is what we're trying to differentiate here. When we say merchant, that means, you know that in Singapore, there's a wholesale electricity market. Every half hour, the exchange, the power exchange, will match demand and supply, and a price is set. Generators must bid their generating capacity into it. They say, "Oh, I have 100 MW, and I want to price it at SGD 50/MWh. " I will bid for the next half hour, you know, SGD 50/MWh for 100 MW. Now, if the clearing price is for that particular half an hour, ended up at SGD 75/MWh , then my 100 MW will be consumed, if you had to look at it that way, right?
In that sense, every half hour or day ahead, you know, you don't know how much volume you can sell. You don't know how much price you will receive. That is price and volume risk. It's called merchant risk. What people try to do is that either you are very confident, that doesn't matter who is setting price, I bid zero, right? I will sure get. It's a bit like COE. You bid zero, you sure get. Whatever is the current price, SGD 120,000 for one COE, you win, you collect it, and then you pay SGD 120,000. If you bid SGD 121, you won't get it, and then you don't dispatch or you don't run.
When we say when we say contracted capacity, we are differentiated, differentiating the part of our fleet. Let's say I've got 1,200 MW of power plants in Singapore, right? Of the 1,200 MW, am I taking the entire 1,200 MW and bidding into the system, as I described to you just now? If I have a contract, I go to Micron, I sign an 18-year contract. The 18-year contract will have a certain volume in it. We, we announce 450 MW, and we also say that this 450 MW will be at this price. That price would be, could be fixed, could be indexed to my gas price, could be indexed to even the USEP price.
We both agree that come hell or high water, 450 MW you will take, and then there will be this pricing that we are both comfortable with. By doing that, we are no longer having the uncertainty of volume as well as price. That's what we mean by when we come up with a chart and we say a contracted position, we are differentiating that with the position in which it is spot, the part in the light green. That's the part that we are going into the market every half hour and, you know, seeing whether or not we can make good money. If you look back into history, this chart again. In between April and July, the system price went with the dark blue line, there was a spike.
To the extent I am in the light blue area, which means I'm not contracted, then I go and I'm able to get dispatched in that, during that time, then I make that high price in the market, right? So one has to decide, do I bet on the market having these spikes and then be not contracted and go in there to capture this? Or do I sign up the contract, which is the, the dark, darker green part, and then I get a certainty on volume and price, right? So that's, that's the trade-off. And what we are saying by coming out with this chart, we are telling everyone that look, moving forward, given the uncertainty, given the regulatory changes that can be expected to come in, we are taking the position that we rather, you know, have certainty than to take our chances in the market.
That's really the message that we're sending out there. From this chart, you can see, you know, we are getting a, we're increasing over time, the, our, our, our contracted portfolio versus the spot portfolio, right? Over time, we're also making those announcements about our contract with Micron, our contract with Singtel, and so on and so forth. There are many, many smaller contracts that we sign up as part of the portfolio. That's why then you go to the left-hand side, you see this pie chart. Some of it, the contract is greater than five years, some of it is between zero and five years. It depends on the customer. If the customer is, have the appetite to only sign two years contract, then we sign two years with them, right?
If it is someone like Micron who wants a long-term certainty, we lock in 18 years, right? That's. Suffice to say, if you look at this chart, what we are saying is that at least half the portfolio is greater than five years contracted, right? Almost half the portfolio is greater than five years, and then the other half, we are contracted to zero to five . I hope I, I answered your question.
Just as a follow-up, and obviously, your margin has improved a lot from conventional energy. Probably the same for the other players as well, all the other YTLs are telling the same, us the same thing. Is, is the authority worried.
That's why they are putting in a temporary price cap. That's why they are building.
Oh.
New open cycle plants. I actually cannot answer your question, whether or not they are worried. You have to ask them. I'm worried about Sembcorp, and I worry about Sembcorp being exposed to merchant risk, right? I worry about Sembcorp shareholders not getting, you know, the value, you know, from the share price. I was looking at the share price when we were talking. You know, when we started this, media conference, we, we were at SGD 5.60, and now, you know, we are at SGD 5.58. There's something wrong I did, in the last two hours.
It doesn't work.
I'm trying to make the point, I'm sorry, being a bit, sorry, I should be more serious. That really I think Our job here is to look after Sembcorp and Sembcorp's portfolio, and what we do is that then we, we're telling ourselves, "Let's not be exposed to the merchant market, taking price and volume risk when we have all our stakeholders riding on it, including our employees." You can imagine the guy sitting in the Jurong Island operating the power plant, one day on, one day off, you know. Then, in the meantime, equipment also taking a little bit of a higher stress if you are turning it on and off all the time, right?
What we're saying is that we, our equipment, our crew, our stakeholders, our customers, our shareholders, I think everybody wants more stability than otherwise. You listen to the question that was asked just now about Singapore market. Folks are worried about volatility, right? What we're doing is that we're going in there, taking the opportunity of the market to, when it makes sense to lock in this contract so that we have stability of earnings moving forward and more predictable, then we can then focus on executing our Brown to Green strategy. We take the brown cash flow, put into the green earnings, put into the green investments, so that's really what we're doing. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's Zhiwei.
Okay. Zhiwei, please.
Hi, I'm Zhiwei from Macquarie. I have two questions. First one's on conventional energy, the second one is on interest costs. Conventional energy. You had this nice net margin improvement from about 10% in second half to 15% in first half. Right. I'm curious to understand what was driving the 5 percentage points increase. As I understand it, from, since second half, there was more of the contracted position that was coming in, in touch, driving up that 10% margin. But at the same time, your, your higher pool gains in first half 2023, so I imagine it would drive a little bit of uplift in the margins. Right. What is this, h ow much of the increase of the 5% came from your contracted position versus your pool gains?
Okay, so your question is that, the margin improvement, right? I would say that, you know, as you can see from this, this slide in itself, in the first half of 2023, our contracted positions, they come down, right? Yet, at the same time, you saw that the margins go up. I think, i f you look at the chart, you did see, in the second half, particularly Q2, where USEP prices were high. You know, clearly, the margin improvement that you would see would largely be attributed in us, you know, having the assets in place to capture the upside that we saw, you know, in the USEP prices, particularly in Q2.
I know, I must not answer the question for you, Zhiwei. You're saying, "How, what am I gonna think about, how I gonna think about this going in the second half, second half, right?" Second half, we are largely contracted. One way to think about it, and, you know, one way I would think about it, looking at, you know, the public information, right? I'll ask myself: "Okay, what happens if a TPC is in place in the first half, and it shaves off those peaks, right?'
You know, naturally, you know, I, I would have done that work, and, I would, be quite comfortable to tell you that, you know, if we are to shave off peaks, in the, in the, in the, in the first half of, you know, the year for us, potentially, you know, the net income impact would be about SGD 60 million. Okay? What that would mean is that going into the second half, right, assuming that, with the contracted position and that peaks, are shaved off, that would probably give you an indication of what, you know, the, the, the sustainable, earnings would look like. Okay?
You're giving me that, so I know you're asking certain questions, so I must all just answer that for you because I won't be able to tell you what the swap spreads are. I must all just guide you on how to think about this in relation to to what goes into the second half. Yeah.
Thanks, Eugene. Second question, interest costs.
Yes.
How many basis points do you think your bankers will give you to lower your weighted average cost of debt?
How many basis points? Hey, bankers. No, no, no, I'm just, I'm just kidding. I think, you know, in lowering the cost of financing, it is not so much just going to them and say, "Hey, I want the lowest spread." It doesn't work that way. Now, what you would have heard me talk about, right now, what I'm focused on, particularly in the China HYNE portfolio, right? As well as, you know, what's coming through to Vector Green, is that it's still pretty much, you know, non-recourse, project financing type, you know, financing structures in there that is pushing up the interest costs.
So, you know, for the control assets in Hainan and Vector Green, in this case, we are quite comfortable, you know, extending the group credit, right, to a, to a, to a, you know, going to a corporate style financing. The benefits obviously will be a marked improvement in terms of margins, right? And that's not because of, you know, my treasury hit Michael beating up my friends there. Now, you know, we're still friends, by the way. It's more from the perspective of changing, you know, the debt structure.
The other benefit, you have heard me talk about, you know, moving to more corporate style financing, is that it will also remove, you know, you know, DS, DSCR type, you know, covenants, which tend to restrict, you know, fungibility of cash flows, and also the need to maintain debt service and reserve accounts, right? Using a more corporate style financing will allow us to free of that, and then so we are able to free up a lot of these historically trapped cash, right, for deploying into, into, into investments.
Actually, to where you have seen that we had quite successfully done that, we pushed to free up, you know, refinance a lot of the traditional project financing structures in the, you know, renewables side of things with this corporate self-financing. Because of that, you would see that we have been, o f the SGD 875 million of CapEx, right? We are able to fund almost SGD 400 million+ of that with our own cash. Cash, the excess cash is sitting on the balance sheet. Which is why, you have seen that, you know, we were able to bring cash down from about SGD 1.3 billion, right, down to about SGD 880 million.
My net debt draw is only, you know, about SGD 400 million, right? You know, that is the advantage of doing that. Overall, you know, apart from bringing a weighted average cost of debt down, right, it also reduces a negative carry for me, so a more efficient use of cash. Yeah.
And if I may just add, Eugene, this you can see that this is a deliberate attempt to manage the debt portfolio, right? Such that then, you know, for instance, between fixed and floating, we have chosen to go 70% fixed, and in so doing, insulate ourselves, from further checkups. Do we talk about, you know, 1%?
Well, okay. I'll just help, give me answer the question. Well, roughly, you know, 100 basis points, because we have reduced our, you know, floating rate exposure. Now, roughly, you know, 100 basis points change, in interest costs, which you probably wouldn't see, but, if you do see it, you know, the impact on a pre-tax basis is about SGD 20 million-SGD 22 million, right?
For full year?
Yeah, for full year.
Because we hedge it out, right? Now, if we didn't hedge it, if all the wisdom that is circulating in the market, saying that next year is going to come down, you know, maybe we would benefit from that if we, if we didn't do that, but we have chosen again to take a safer route, right? That then it's all predictable. When we go into long-term projects, we know our cost of funding, and we know where we need to price our projects, our investments, so that then we can make a margin in between. This really, is a coming back to point, really, is a deliberate attempt to manage this.
The, and the, you know, we, we, we consciously decide to live with the, a little bit of the carry for a while. Yeah. Thank you.
Okay, we have some questions from the web. I think the first is if, with regards to urban development. The urban development land sales have been short of target. What is the plan for achieving our 2025 target? Should we expect the target to be reduced? What's the strategic rationale for continuing to invest capital into this business?
Let me do this in the reverse order. We actually much of our urban portfolio is actually under JVs, so we actually didn't have to put money into it. And even in our projections to grow it into the 500 hectares per annum, there wasn't a whole lot of capital from group having to fresh capital to be invested. They're recycling capital at the JV level. Yeah, so that's the first thing. In terms of the last question, yes, indeed, it wasn't as it didn't grow as we wanted it to grow, right? So part of it, as we mentioned just now, is due to partly COVID recovery not within our expectation. Another part of it is also, of course, in the case of Vietnam, regulatory approvals was not forthcoming.
Now, having said that, there is always this pent-up nation, nature to the, to the demand, right? When they, they hold it back, then, but then the demand is hanging out there. Maybe there's a hockey stick, quick catch up, right? That, that is something that is always on the cards. That's number one. Number two is, of course, internally, we have to make adjustments, right? That's exactly why we say: Look, now is a good time for us to come out by November to tell you, what are we going to do about our, our portfolio, and what would new targets be? The last bit is that, should we expect the target to be reduced? No. I don't reduce targets.
You don't make it, you reduce it, and then, you know, that's, that means not making it. Don't make it. I mean, for me, don't, don't make it, say, "Don't make it." Don't reduce the target, and then say, "We make it." Right? I will not reduce the target and then claim that I made the target. If you are asking me whether or not we'll reduce the 2025 target in order for us to, to make it? No. Moving forward, are we, how do we think about urban as a business?
I'm saying, in terms of the new targets and, and, and whatever we told you that in November, we'll come and tell you what we're gonna do about it, right? I think I've also explained a little bit, in terms of the, of some of the external factors. Those are not excuses, but those are, those are real conditions on the ground that has slowed things down, beyond what was expected. The land is there. You saw that the land bank is, is being built up. The, the, the parks are there. We continue to receive, strong demand from the various provinces and the central government in Vietnam. You saw that in a place like Indonesia, where we've got KIK, the land sales is just phenomenal, right? Much higher than we expected because the country is, is doing well, right.
If you ask me, do I expect that to continue into 2025? Next year, they have an election, we, we wait and see, right? There's a portfolio. We've got Indonesia, we've got Vietnam, we've got some China. China property side, slow, as many of you would have expected. Vietnam, like I say, it is the regulatory approvals. In terms of actual land sales, allowing you to, you know, even after having developed, having signed up with the provincial government and the customer waiting, you know, it takes time for them to actually check the box and allow you to go out the door with the land sales. Those things are taking longer than we expected, but there's some pent-up demand there. In the case of Indonesia, it is booming, right?
We wish we had more parks, but we only got one. Notwithstanding that, notwithstanding that, the, the, the numbers this first half has reflected a strong advance in the land sales in KIK, right. That's what I can tell you, and please be a little bit patient. We'll talk to you more about targets in November.
Two questions that are finance related. The first is with the SGD 5 billion EMTN program that is established, does this indicate that future acquisitions will focus on Europe? The person is asking if there is any dividend policy set moving forward?
Okay, let me answer the EMTN first. Well, the purpose of this EMTN, it's allowing us to tap diversified sources of a capital. You know, I would suggest to this person to read too much into it on whether it suggests that I'm going to be investing in Euro assets, okay? I think, you know, we are quite clear that strategically, our, you know, markets of operations are, you know, India, China, Southeast Asia, Singapore, right, and U.K. for our batteries and, and, some, and, and some in the Middle East as well. No, please do not think that just because I established a EUR 5 billion EMTN, you know, we were thinking of investing in Europe.
The question is that why, why, what, what's different about this EMTN? Now, this EMTN, it's premise on English law, okay? Our traditional Singapore MTN, is based on Singapore law. It still allows me to tap a multicurrency. That means a U.S. dollar or euro as well. Because it is Singapore law, the pockets of liquidity that could potentially invest in my bonds are a lot more limited. Typically, you know, you'll be limited to U.S. dollar or euro liquidity for funds that are more in Singapore/Southeast Asia, right? The broader pools of U.S. dollar and euro liquidity from funds, even, even in Hong Kong or out of Europe, will tend to prefer English law, which is a more acceptable international law.
Construction, not very different from Singapore, to be honest, but, you know, just because of that, it makes it easier to tap those liquidity. I think that's the reason why we are establishing, you know, reestablishing the EMTN in this format. It simply means that, you know, I'm now prepared to tap and go wider in terms of where, you know, I want to look for pools of, you know, green or sustainability-linked liquidity. Then, the question then, you know, oh, you know, if you raise U.S. dollars and euros, does that mean that you're gonna make that kind of investments, right? I think, not necessarily so.
You know, having the, you know, the ability to, you know, tap these different pools of capital, it simply means that I will be able to access in, you know, in those, you know, natural currencies, probably lower, or cheaper, interest costs on a like-for-like basis, right? In the US dollar or euro currency. Of course, I will always look at it from the perspective of a cross-currency swap back into Sing dollars to make sure that, you know, I do have that, that, that, that, that, you know, interest cost advantage in doing so.
You know, in general, it being done in that format simply allows me to access deeper pools of capital, but, you know, it is no indication of where I'm going to invest. Yeah. Next question is, if there's a dividend policy set moving forward. I think in relation to how we approach dividend, it is still pretty much what we have always said to our shareholders. Ultimately, we have a balanced and sustainable dividend approach to dividends, which we expect it to be a sustainable and growing, right?
You know, recognizing that there could be variations in our net income as a result of market conditions, what we tend to do, right, is to, you know, focus at a very sustainable level of ordinary dividends, and we tend to use a special dividends to, to, to reward our shareholders over and above the ordinary dividend. Now, you will see that, you know, historically, you know, I've tend to target it around a 25% payout ratio. Nothing suggests that, that, that, that, that is going to change at this point in time from a full year basis. You know, you know, we still retain, you know, that, you know, approach to dividends.
Of course, some people may ask, you know, comparable, in comparison to other, you know, listcos , right? You know, where does 25% of payout ratio stand? I think, you know, from our standpoint, right, we are very, very focused, right, in driving growth in our, our, our, our, our portfolio, and, you know, ultimately our earnings through a transition from Brown to Green. If you will recall back in 2021, we have highlighted that that will need very, very astute capital management, right?
I think, you know, we look at it, we will always look at it from the perspective of when there is, you know, excess cash, is it better to continue to drive, you know, a growth into renewables and transition, energy transition activities, or to distribute back to our shareholders. At this point in time, looking at the secular trends and the growth opportunities presented to us in that space, in the markets that we are in, clearly, a growth would still, in my view, be the better option. You know, where we stand right now, probably the benchmark of dividend payout still stand at around 25%.
Okay. Any other questions from the floor? Okay, if not, we've now come to the end of today's briefing. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us.
Thank you.
Thanks. Still watching the share price.
Lunch is served at the foyer, so if you can, we'll be very happy for you to join us outside. Thank you.
If I may, please, appeal to you to mark the date 6th of November, to the extent, if you could be there, very much appreciated. You know, we, we release the opportunity to engage you, to talk about our new plans. Thanks.