Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to connect to Parque Arauco's first quarter 2023 results earnings call. I'm Lauren Brown, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Francisco Moyano, CFO, and Eduardo Pérez, CEO of Parque Arauco. I would like to mention a few things before we get started. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note that this call is being recorded, and the recording will be used for internal purposes. To start off today's conversation, I'm gonna pass the call over to Francisco Moyano.
Thanks, Lauren, and hello, everybody. Well, the first quarter this year is a very good quarter for the company. If our results are in line with inflation, our sales are growing 5.6% against the first quarter of 2022, but our revenues are increasing 10.7%, again, in line with inflation that we are seeing in Chile, Peru, and Colombia. Our EBITDA is also growing in line with inflation with an increase of 11%. The FFO is growing 2.2%, and the occupation reached 95.5% growing from the figures that we had last year. All in all, it was a very good quarter.
Our figures are normalized and the occupation and traffic in our malls is very strong. We are also highlighting the issuance of a new bond in Parque Arauco for a total of $130 million. We were very pleased with this transaction. The demand was strong and that confirmed our reputation with the market and the confidence that the market has in our company. It was a 21-year bond with 10 years with no amortization, so it's a long-term bond with low rates in line with our current financial cost. It was issued at 3.15% in UF, which is a low interest cost for our company and also strengthen our cost of capital for new projects.
Our leverage is stable. It's within our range, the range that we have as an optimum for the company, between 5x-5.5x. It's in this quarter closing at 5.3x. We feel very comfortable in this range, because we have access to this long-term debt as it is, this bond, this 21-year bond. We have long-term debt with high financial expenses coverage of about 3x, and also that drives a high return to shareholders. We're also highlighting that we published our 2022 annual report. We invite everybody to review this document that you can find in our webpage. This is an integrated report.
We have information of our financial results, our strategy, from our chairman and CEO, information about our strategy in ESG and risk management. It's a very complete document that we invite you to review in our webpage. We also have news regarding ESG. For the third consecutive year, we are part of the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook, and also we inaugurated the largest public electric vehicle charging center in Latin America. That is, those are some of our the many initiatives that we are following in our company that Lauren afterwards will discuss. Finally, we keep investing in retail and residential real estate. We are continuing with our project in Parque Arauco Kennedy.
We also announced two additional new multi-family assets for our portfolio, reaching to have to six multi-family projects currently in the company. With that, I would like to pass to page six to talk about our sales. Tenant sales are growing 5.6%, and we make the breakdown by country, you can see that Chile is growing 1.8% year-over-year. Peru is growing 7.3%, and Colombia 24%. It's important to say that these figures does not consider any exchange rate differences. We are using the same exchange rate for both periods to calculate this growth. Chile is. When we see Chile is flat against last year, but we have two different scenarios.
In one part, we have department stores, home improvement stores, and supermarkets that are decreasing sales. This is a trend that we saw in the last quarter, and it's continuing this quarter. But at the same time, we have a very positive results in sales in the rest of the malls, in the other categories as food and restaurants, apparel, health and beauty, and with growth of double digits in sales. So that is why in Chile we have this flat results. Peru, with a growth of 7.3%. It's also showing very good results in categories such as apparel and food and restaurant, which is also more important than in Colombia, where the growth as a total is 24%.
With that also, the same area sales, you can see that in Chile it's 0.6%. In Peru, it's 4.5%, and in Colombia, 14%, which is in the same line as the sales as a total. From this result, we can see that the diversification of our portfolio is very relevant for the business. We have diversification by country, but also by format. Along with the quality of our portfolio, we think that that is an important strength of our company. In revenues, in the next page. Our revenues are growing 10.7% in the quarter. The breakdown by country is Chile is growing 15.7%. Peru is growing 6.5%. Colombia is decreasing 1.3%.
It's important to highlight the exchange rate situations. Because when we compare the first quarter of 2023 against the first quarter of 2022, the difference in exchange rate is flat for Peru, but it's very important for Colombia. If we calculate the revenues in local currency in Colombia, instead of decreasing 1.3%, is increasing 18.7%. The difference in results between Chile and Colombia is only because it's more because of the exchange rate than the actual results in local currencies. In the same area, rent figures, you can see this situation. Because you can see that Chile is growing 7.3%, Peru 9%, and Colombia 9.8%, which are mainly in line with inflation.
I also want to highlight that the variable part of our rents reached 11%, in part because of the decrease in some categories of the sales figures, but also because the fixed part is very strong. The minimum rent is giving the stability to our business and our revenues, which is growing with inflation in all three countries. Passing to page nine. The figures for the EBITDA, the EBITDA as a whole is growing 11%. Chile growing 14.5%, Peru 16.2%, and Colombia decreasing 9.1%. In the Colombian figure, it's also the effect of the exchange rate situation that I explained before. In local currency, Colombia, instead of decreasing 9.1%, is increasing 10.6%.
The business is also similar in all three countries regarding EBITDA, revenues, and rent costs as well. If we see the composition of our EBITDA, revenues then is growing 10.7%. Cost of sale is growing 5.4%, which includes the salaries that are increasing in line with inflation. We have some savings in other lines that help us to have a less than inflation increase in the year. The administrative expenses are growing 18.6%, mainly because again, the inflation that if we consider all three countries is somewhere above 10%. But then also it's increasing the cost of insurance policies and product protectors. The next page.
In the non-operating results, I wanted to highlight the financial income that is growing 36%. We have high returns of our financial investments. The financial expense is growing 30%. In some part, this is. When we break down this financial expense by country, we see that Chile is mainly flat. It's important to consider that in Chile we mainly have debt in USD, but it is indexed for assets and liabilities. This increase of financial expense is driven more from the debt that we have in Peru and Colombia, that is linked, increasing by inflation and then also because of a higher amount of debt.
The other line that is important to consider then is the income from indexation of assets and liabilities. As I said, it is the result of the change in the UF or inflation in Chile, which this year is lower than the previous year. It's around half of what it was in 2022, the change in inflation. The markets are expecting that this trend of decreasing inflation will continue in Chile. With that, we are also expecting this line to continue this trend of a less important result than the previous year. Considering everything, the net profit of the company was CLP 18.4 billion, increasing 76% against the first quarter of 2022.
Now passing to page 13. I just wanted to highlight the NOI of the company is growing 13.6% and the FFO 2.2%, which is lower than inflation in some part because of this increase in financial expenses, but also the associated accounted FFO that is mainly the results of Marina that were also impacted by inflation. I also wanted to give the information that we added some more details about the associated accounted FFO in the spreadsheet that we share in our webpage with a breakdown of this FFO by Marina and Desarrollo Panamericano. To end my presentation, I wanted to highlight in page 15 the trade accounts receivable and other receivables.
In the lower part of the table, you can see that it's decreasing from CLP 40 billion to CLP 36 billion. We have seen a sound behavior of our accounts receivable. The bad debt provision is decreasing from CLP 12 billion to CLP 11.2 billion. As we have shared with the market, we are following a very conservative policy regarding the provision of bad debt expense, and we want to continue in that same line. With that, I will pass the call again to Lauren as I will continue with the presentation.
Thank you, Francisco. Now I would like to highlight some of our asset level results. In Chile, Parque Arauco Kennedy and Arauco Maipú revenues grew 20% compared to the first quarter of 2022. In Antofagasta, Puerto Nuevo increased its occupancy by 13%, resulting in an increase of sales by 85.7%, driven by the incorporation of new stores, including the opening of the very first Ashley store in the Antofagasta region. In Peru, Larcomar has increased its sales by 19% and revenues by 14% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of the previous year. Revenues in Parque Lambramani have increased by 30.8% in the last year due to parking revenues and the arrival of stores, including Dollar City and a better performance in the entertainment sector.
In Colombia, the occupancy of Parque Alegra has increased from 75.9% to now 79.5%. Alegra is now celebrating one year of being open, and we are getting ready to open additional stores of major international brands at this mall. The premium outlet Sopó revenue grew by 32.6% due to the arrival of brands including Desigual and Hugo Boss. I'll be speaking a little bit more about outlets at the end of this presentation. Something important to note is that Arboleda experienced a drop in revenues compared to the first quarter of the previous year when you look at our mall-by-mall page.
However, if we exclude some of the revenues that should have been accounted for in 2021, but were instead included in the first quarter of 2022, then we would actually see a more normalized base, and we would not see this drop. For example, the revenues of Arboleda grew 23% in Q1 2023 compared to Q1 2019. I wanted to explain what that difference was. It is very important to note that our revenues in most of our important assets, including Parque Arauco Kennedy, Maipú, Larcomar, and La Colina, in addition to others, have been beating inflation. Now I would like to continue to speak about development. As a result of our normalization of EBITDA and our leverage throughout this year and last, we've been able to return to higher levels of CapEx.
We continue to invest a significant percentage of our total CapEx into the expansion of shopping centers, including the multi-phase expansion of our iconic Parque Arauco Kennedy in Santiago, and additional expansions that are taking place throughout malls in Chile. As you can see in the graph, retail real estate remains our focus and largest investment this year and will continue to be in the future. Also, in this table, we have added a new column so that you can see the remaining CapEx for each project. As Francisco mentioned, we were very excited that in collaboration with Enel X Way, we launched Green Park, which is the largest charging center for electric vehicles in Latin America. This project includes 170 charging stations, which are fully powered by renewable energy sources.
These stations are located on the -1 and -2 parking floors of Parque Arauco Kennedy, located in the Rosario entrance area. This initiative aims to promote the use of electromobility in the country, and it's a significant part of Parque Arauco's regional sustainability strategy and our environmental pillar, which is very important to us. This alliance also was relevant with Kia Chile and with Inversiones Security, in addition to Uber, who will also be using the charging stations at night. You can read the full press release on our website to hear more details about this project. Finally, this quarter, we did a case study about outlets. Many people have asked, how are outlets doing? The knowledge about this asset class has not been very well-known. I would like to explain a little bit about this.
What has been making our outlets successful are three main features. One of them is that they're located near main cities. They have a wide variety of premium name brands, and then their discounted rates attract a lot of visitors. Additionally, they have higher percentages of apparel and footwear categories, which boast good performance during the quarters and also less presence of department stores. Well, actually zero presence of department stores and fewer presence of services and other type of stores. Additionally, the inventory factor has been positively affecting the outlets because the excess of inventory has been benefiting this format, which encourages the sales of discounted prices. In the graph, you can see that the EBITDA in outlets has been increasing over the years. I encourage you to look at this case study in our earnings report.
I would now like to move to our question and answer part of our call. If you are joining our call using the link, you can ask a question by clicking the button to ask a voice question or by submitting a written question. If you are joining by phone, you can ask a question by pressing star two. When you are invited to speak, I will unmute you so you can ask your question. To start off today's discussion, I'm going to pass the call over to Eduardo. Please feel free to raise your hand if you have a question.
Good morning, everybody. One of the questions we got by email is the evolution of our occupancy costs, considering that the revenues are increasing much more than sales. So I would like to explain further here and give you a little bit more color. It's important to mention that the occupancy cost is still below the levels we had before the start of the pandemic. More specifically, during the first quarter of 2019, the occupancy cost was 11.3% in Chile. Now it's 11.1%, so 20 basis points below. In the case of Peru, it was 8.3% during the first quarter of 2019. Now it's 8.2%, 10 basis points below. In Colombia, it was 13.9% in the first quarter of 2019.
Now it's 11.8%, 210 basis points below. It's important to mention that we're still below pre-pandemic levels and normalizing that ratio gradually.
Does anyone else have any additional questions? You can submit them via typing or also raise your hand, and I will open the line for you to speak.
Just to clarify for callers that joined via the telephone, please press star two on your keypad. That's star two on the keypad for any voice questions. Alternatively, you might ask a voice or a text question via the web.
Well, it seems like everyone is quiet on this Friday morning. Please feel free to reach out to me directly via phone or via email if you have any additional questions about our first quarter earnings release. Thank you very much for joining the call today. Again, you can find all of these resources on our website, including our earnings release, including our 2022 annual report, in addition to various press releases that I mentioned during the presentation. Everyone, have a great day and a good weekend, and thank you very much for joining us today.