Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Mallplaza's Third Quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press Star one one on your telephone. You will hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw the question, press Star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mallplaza's Chief Financial Officer, Derek Tang.
Greetings and Welcome to Mallplaza earnings conference call. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm here today with Fernando de Peña, our CEO and the only Latin American member of the Board of Trustees of the ICSC. Also with us is the investor relations team represented by Ramón Artuza , Sebastián Maciarello, and Matías Guerra. We're pleased to introduce the company's earnings results for the third quarter of 2023. First, we'll begin with a brief overview of the company's quarterly results. Second, we will highlight some strategic remarks regarding the quarter. As usual, we'll end with a Q&A session. Starting on page three, the third quarter of this year continued with solid operational results as observed during the first half of 2023. Footfall to our 25 urban centers continued to increase, reaching 70 million visitors during this quarter, a 5% increase compared to the third quarter of 2022.
This growth was driven mainly due to the solid commercial offering of our 25 urban centers. In addition to relevant openings that occurred during this third quarter, such as the opening of the first IKEA store in Colombia in Mallplaza NQS and three H&M stores at the regional level, among others. Despite the challenging macro environment and the lower consumption levels in the region, our tenant sales continued to show resilience, with an increase of 0.2% during this third quarter compared to the same period of last year, outperforming, for example, overall retail sales of the metropolitan region of Chile by 8 percentage points. Lower sales of department stores and home improvement were offset by a higher performance of our retailtainment proposal, such as F&B and entertainment.
In terms of occupancy cost, it continued the trend of the first half of the year, reaching levels of 11.5% during the third quarter, explained mainly because of the flat level of sales of tenants during the quarter and higher condominium expenses associated with inflation. All in all, revenues reached CLP 110.4 billion during the quarter, increasing 17% year-over-year, mainly due to readjustment of lease contracts, increase in leasable square meters, and an increase in occupancy rate to 95.3% in the third quarter of 2023, an increase of 30 basis points year-over-year. In the same line, same-store rent posted a nominal growth of 8% for the quarter and 11% year to date, mainly due to the indexation of lease contracts and inflation.
Moving on to page four, cost of sales increased 8% year-over-year, reaching CLP 13.7 billion, mainly due to higher expenses and contributions associated with the higher property taxes in 2023. Administrative expenses increased 20% compared to the third quarter of 2022, reaching CLP 9.5 billion. This was mainly explained by higher bad debt provisions associated with the financial reorganization of specific tenants in Chile. On the other hand, there was lower spending and remunerations in line with the organizational structure simplification that the company carried out. All in all, EBITDA increased 18% year-over-year, reaching CLP 87.6 billion during the third quarter. It's important to notice that our EBITDA margin reached 79.4% during the quarter, in line with the efficiency that the company presented pre-pandemic.
Turning to page five, the net income reached CLP 59.3 billion during the quarter, increasing 111% year-over-year, mainly explained by lower readjustment units due to the variation of the U.S. dollar, lower debt, and higher revenues associated with the readjustment of lease contracts and an increase in leasable square meters. Lastly, the adjusted FFO reached CLP 69.7 billion during the quarter, increasing 17% year-over-year, mainly due to a better performance of the operation and less minority interest adjustment because of the purchase of the minority stake of the subsidiary Nuevos Desarrollos, executed in the second quarter. The adjusted FFO margin reached 62% during the quarter. Now, I turn the table to Fernando, who will share quarter strategic remarks.
Thank you, Derek. The excellent results of this quarter are not by chance. These numbers are the result of our successful commercial strategy of our premium portfolio of 25 assets, of which 10 are Tier A, which represent 64% of the company's EBITDA. There isn't any other company in the region which has a portfolio with the same number of Tier A urban centers, which are big dominant assets that have a leadership position in its respective market, with a high potential of growth in sales and footfall and a continuous demand of spaces from solid tenants. That's how this year we have continued the sustained opening pace from 2022.
If last year we opened 600 new proposals in our urban centers, this year we are aiming to equal this amount in line with the strategic alliances that we have developed in this last year with huge brands such as IKEA, H&M, Decathlon, and Dollar City, among others. This third quarter, we totalized 153 new openings in the three countries we operate. In Colombia, we opened the first IKEA in this country in Mallplaza NQS, with a store of approximately 26,000 sq m, which, together with the opening of H&M store, Arturo Calle, and Catronics, are performing with great operational numbers. Just as an example, during October, footfall increased 50% year to year, and F&B sales had an increase of 78% compared to October of last year.
In Peru, we opened an 850 sq m Dollar City store in Mallplaza Trujillo, in addition to Iber Asia and Home Asia in Mallplaza Trujillo and Mallplaza Comas, respectively. Finally, in Chile, we had the opening of two H&M stores in Mallplaza Calama and Mallplaza Alameda, in addition to expansion and integration of 3,000 sq m of Autop laza in Mallplaza Vespucio a proposal that includes 40 different brands of vehicles that allow the consolidation of the greatest offer of the area and one of the most powerful of the country. Growth continues to be part of our company's DNA. Our current greenfield project in Colombia, Mallplaza Cali, has continued to develop at an excellent pace.
Our fifth urban center in Colombia, which is projected to open during the first semester of 2024, will have 67,000 sq m that includes a solid retail offer with brands such as IKEA, H&M, Decathlon, and a full proposal of Inditex brands with Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius, Pull&Bear , among others. This, in addition to the solid entertainment offer and an F&B proposal that will arrive under the Mercado format, a rollout of our proposition that has had huge success in different urban centers and markets. Brand field growth will continue to be protagonist. Mallplaza Vespucio our 174,000 sq m flagship urban center, will continue to undergo its full renewed transformation with the lifestyle project to become the following step to consolidate its position as leader in the city of Santiago.
This new expansion is focused on boosting the Tier A proposal of Vespucio which seeks to deliver a new design to the exterior area with a powerful incorporation of an additional 22,000 sq m of new proposals that includes the incorporation of a powerful mix of fast fashion with a flagship format, improved look and feel of open-air commerce, and the inclusion of convenience services for the large footfalls that generate the two metro stations. Just to finish, I want to highlight the huge potential growth that we can continue to deliver in the next years.
If you only look at our land bank, just in Chile as an example, we have more than 137,000 sq m of land bank concentrated mostly in our Tier A assets, where 280,000 sq m of new developments can be built, more than doubling the potential area for development or leasable sq m of our current land to foster either expansions or new formats. This is without considering the construction capacity that our current urban centers do maintain, which represents a total of almost 5 million sq m of Tier A, and we have only used 37% of it. We are now ready for questions and will start the Q&A session.
Thank you. All right, we'll move into the Q&A portion of the call. To ask a question, press Star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw the question, press Star one one again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. All right. Star one one if you have a question. I would like to turn the call back to Derek Tang for any final comments.
Thank you all for participating in our call. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to the company and to our IR team. I would also just like to highlight once again the additional disclosure that was provided this quarter with regards to our land bank and growth potential for the company. There is more detail provided in our earnings release, and we are happy to follow up if there are any questions with that regards. Thank you, everyone, and have a great day.
Thank you all for joining our call. You may now disconnect.