Hello, and welcome to today's webcast with Nyfosa, where CEO Stina Lindh Hök will present the year-end report for 2023. With that said, I hand over the word to you, Stina.
Thank you, and hello, and welcome to the year-end committee presentation of Nyfosa 2023. My name is Stina, and I'm a CEO of the company. So, let's begin. In this slide, you can see a selection of our properties under management, which include retail stores, industrial properties, you can see schools, logistic properties, and offices. For us, it's important to express that a logistics property, for example, is not necessarily better than a retail property. It all depends on the circumstances. We have over the years built a diversified portfolio of properties, where the uniqueness of each property is what is interesting for us. We are constantly developing our portfolio, both through project work, but also by being active in the transaction market. When we see an opportunity to do...
If we see an opportunity to good business and create value, we should do it. This is something we do all the time with the aim of creating stronger cash flows. We are constant presence on the transactions market, which is really an important parameter for our business. Constant being present creates opportunities. 2023 was characterized by rapid interest rate hikes, which had a negative effect on our earnings. On the other hand, the underlying property management income streams and net operating income developed well. During the year, we both sold and bought properties, and for the first time, sold more properties than we bought. This is because selling low-yielding properties has been profitable and allowed us this time to pay off expensive debt. Nyfosa has a history of strong growth.
However, this slowed down somewhat when the market condition changed, but our main mission is still increase cash flow and result per share over time. So turning to a specific numbers, the revenues increased by 13% during the year, and net operating income increased by 17%. This corresponds to net operating income of 12.8 per share. Profit from property management decreased by 19% as a result of the interest rate hikes, and landed at 6.15 per share. Due to this, sharp interest rate hikes during the year, and to ensure Nyfosa's financial strength and latitude on the market in 2024, the board of directors proposes that no dividend be paid for 2023. However, Nyfosa remains as a cash flow-driven company, and the dividend policy remains in place.
On this slide, we can see the year's result in context of previous years. Net operating income per share has increased steadily since we started. Profit from property management, though, has decreased over the latest year, but the net asset value has remained relatively stable. This is because the increase of net operating income has compensated for the yield adjustments, which have risen from 5.8 to 6.8 since the interest rate hikes began. An interesting observation is that as net operating income has increased, this means that if the interest rate retreats to two again, it corresponds to roughly the same profit for the property management as when the interest rate was at zero. As previously communicated, we have developed a new financing strategy, whereby we systematically fix interest rate to avoid the effects of similar rapid fluctuations in the future. Nyfosa Finland becomes Kielo.
This slide provides an overview of our operations in Finland, where since 2021, Nyfosa has built up a portfolio, property portfolio, that today consists of offices. So we have warehouses, light industry, and discount retail, primarily located in university towns. To provide better insight into the Finnish portfolio, now worth SEK 8.1 billion, we have decided to start reporting it as its own segment. Moreover, from 2024 onwards, Nyfosa Finland will operate under a name Kielo. This is a brand we acquired in the portfolio in 2021. It's well-established in Finland and provides a good platform to develop further. We can here see the earning capacity, and it has increased by 15% since the last quarter, and it's now 6.27 per share.
The increase is partly due to the increased earnings from the joint venture, but mainly due to the fact that the interest rate increases have stalled and net operating income has increased. We recently took the decision to issue a profit forecast going forward. This is because we want to provide greater transparency and clarity. It's important to bear in mind that the forecast will be based on the portfolio currently owned, and free from assumption regarding potential acquisitions and sales, and simply on the basis that we will own the same property portfolio throughout the year. The forecast profit is expected to amount to SEK 1,200 million, and this will be updated quarterly. And a few words about the property management. This is an overview what our portfolio looks like today.
The largest part in Sweden, SEK 38 billion, including Söderport, and we have, as I said, eight point one billion in Kielo, Finland, and SEK 0.8 billion in Samfosa, Norway. This provides us with some detail of the properties that we own. It's a well-diversified property portfolio, but since we own properties across a large geographical area, it is a bit difficult to illustrate the locations in a simple way. However, here we have tried to divide the portfolio between different parts to provide a more general picture of where the properties are located. As you can see, it's a portfolio mostly located in growing regions and cities. Also worth mention is that we have a pretty low average rent, about 1,300 per square meter.
It's been coming up a bit with inflation the latest two years, but still it's a pretty low figure, and we have an average value per square meter in the portfolio of SEK 13,400. We have about 4,200 tenants in the portfolio, and the 10 largest or the 10 largest tenants accounts for 11.5% of the total rental value, which mean that we are not dependent on any major tenant. The proportion of tax-funded tenants is 27%. We ended the quarter with a net leasing of SEK 10 million, positive net leasing of SEK 10 million, and the full year ended up to -SEK 8 million, slightly down due to the bankruptcies on SEK 21 million. It was +SEK 16 million in Sweden, and it was -SEK 6 million in Finland.
Here you can also follow the net leasing trend over the years, and as you see, it's pretty flat. I'm glad to see that the last quarter we saw a strong demand for our premises and that we could end up positive over the quarter. Sustainability, we continue to work forward with the different sustainability parts. Much focus on the energy efficiency and lowering emissions, and you can see further on the text here, different actions that we have made over the year. We have sold properties for SEK 1.5 billion over the year and bought properties for around SEK 1 billion, and we sold mostly low-yielding properties and bought more high-yielding properties. Worth mentioning is also that in the latest quarter we bought for about SEK 1...
We, we sold for about SEK 1 billion, and that was 6% above booked value. This slide shows our main financing, and since the bond was repaid during the quarter, the share of bonds has decreased further and now accounts to only 6% of the financing. The 94% is bank financing. The net loan-to-value ratio has remained relatively constant over the years, and it can be noted that despite the fact that the value of the properties has fallen a bit over the two past years, it has been compensated to a large extent by paying back the principal of loans on loans. We have no loan maturities in 2024.
The interest coverage ratio was two for 2023, and to provide a better understanding on where we expect it to be in 2024, we have made a forecast based on today's market interest rate curve. It is based on the fact that the policy rate will be 3.75 in October, when the last adjustment is made for a year. We expect the ratio to be 2.1 for the coming year. As you may be well aware of, we have adopted a slightly revised financial policy in 2023, where we will aim for a more flat capital and fixed interest periods. We will gradually work our way into a structure whereby 75% will be interest rate hedged over a four to five year period. Net debt to EBITDA decreased to a multiple of 9.4.
Regarding the valuations, the trend of rising direct yield requirement continues, which lower valuations. However, this is compensated by rising net operating income and projects. If we start to see a falling interest curve during the year, we believe that the decline in value should level off, with the result that the sellers and buyers should find it easier to make transaction the coming year. In summary, it has been a cautious year for Nyfosa. Market conditions have made finding good opportunities a bit tricky. The market conditions for the coming year look set to improve in a variety of ways, with hopefully lower interest rate, return of the more functioning capital, capital market, which already had happened, and a fair amount of capital in the market. It though remains to see how hard the economic downturns continues to affect us.
But on the whole, I view 2024 with optimism. We will continue to be active in the transaction market, on both buy and sell sides, always with the aim of increasing cash flow per share in the long term. Nyfosa will constantly develop as a company. We will never stand still, and we always look to the future. We are still a young company, and only the beginning of our journey. There is plenty to do, and I'm really looking forward to 2024. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the presentation, Stina, and I think we should right ahead, go right ahead to the questions. So if you're calling in and want to ask a question, please press star nine to raise your hand, and I will hand over the word to you. So just a quick repeat. If you want to ask a question, please raise your hand by pressing star nine on your phone, and then I will give you the word. Okay, it seems like we doesn't have any questions here, so thank you, Stina, for the presentation, and good luck going forward, and thank you all for tuning in.
Thank you.