Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to the annual regular general meeting of Baltic Horizon Fund. My name is Tarmo Karotam. I'm a fund manager, and I'm here to first give you an update on the. It's maybe a little bit repetitive to the webinar that we had a couple of weeks ago, but I think I have some small updates about the portfolio and maybe some new pictures as well about our fund's portfolio properties. Then we will also as a second point on the agenda, we will talk a little bit about our current listing in Stockholm and the issues that we have had there and the solutions that we have found.
As a third thing on the agenda, we will then talk about the buyback program of the fund over the next three years. I will kick this off with the latest results. We do have annual results out, which you probably have already seen, but also Q1 results and also some new information about the 2nd quarter as well. Overall, portfolio performance remains quite good. Our office buildings over the COVID period and also now during the Ukrainian crisis period have remained fully leased out.
What we see is that there's definitely some stability in the office segment as well in regards to the question that are offices going to survive and are all, you know, companies reducing space. We haven't seen that. I think companies are reorganizing their work processes, but many of the companies still prefer people in the offices and as we have large tenants, municipal companies and governmental organizations as our tenants, then I think there is more stability and more requirements of people, you know, coming back to the office. It's not only about requirements.
I think we have discussed this, I think, probably also in the previous discussions, but many people do prefer to go back into the offices. Even though, you know, if there is one or two days possibility to work remotely, companies have continued to keep their premises that they've had, at least based on our portfolio. It's very important to also note that due to the lockdowns, our large shopping centers were closed last year. It is true that now this year, our properties have been recovering, especially after the first of April when all restrictions were lifted, including masks, in our shopping centers. We do see continuous recovery happening also in our retail properties.
More info will be also in later slides. This also is, I think, a good slide to show that many of our properties their net operating income has been increasing. I think the bigger change in that is that we have sold G4S property last year, but we have reinvested the money into our newest Meraki office building in Vilnius. That property is now being finished in June and first tenants moving in over the summer. We are in the process of looking for the anchor tenant in the building. The income, I think, will also be start to be generated from this property later on this year.
In regards to the NAV over the past years, yes, there has been some influence on the valuations because of the COVID lockdowns and uncertainty. Over the past quarters, the NAV has been quite stable. Overall, I think our portfolio has been quite resilient to the COVID crisis, which actually impacted a couple of our properties quite heavily. That's because of the diversification we have to the office segment and also to the supermarkets which did very well, you know, during the COVID years. What do we expect now in the mid-year valuations? It's maybe a bit difficult, too early to say. They have been started.
On one hand, the supply crisis and the cost of construction prices might influence the valuations. On the other hand, inflation forecasts and indexation possibilities might also influence the valuations. We do hope, expect valuations overall for the portfolio to remain relatively stable. P&L very quickly once again. There has been some increase compared to last year, and that's without G4S headquarters. The plan is to recover lost rental income last year, half of it this year and the remaining half next year. Overall, I think we've been also quite efficient on the administrative expenses side over the COVID years. Try to find economies, economizations wherever we've been able to find it.
Overall, for the 1st quarter, close to EUR 2 million profit, mainly basically from operations. Quick peek on the balance sheet. We have sufficient cash currently to continue with our investments into our own properties. I will see that these are the best investments today we can make in the market. That's one of the reasons why we also haven't acquired anything new. Market for new properties, it's not easy to find good quality properties at reasonable prices. We do believe that our investments, especially in a city center, what I call community centers that we have in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, will pay off definitely on a long-term basis. Quick review of major events.
We have invested now in Europa in Vilnius and have opened a new food hall there. It's been widely popular. I have later some pictures as well, if you haven't seen that. I think it was very well planned with our Finnish interior designers, Bolder and also well executed despite of the supply crisis and difficulty to get the right materials at the right time. The final investments to the new vertical escalators and a new amphitheater will be made as we speak, and the opening is planned now end of June. We're really happy to see that these investments are already paying off with the success of the food hall.
Standard & Poor's has been rating since 2018, and despite the COVID restrictions and some impact, we have retained the same rating also this year. Last but not least, we have the next sort of major thing to do is to continue refinancing our loans. I'll talk more about that also later. For this agenda, we have the buyback program in place because we do believe that the market price today on stock exchanges is way below the fair valuations and our view of the portfolio value on long term.
This is I think a very interesting slide, and I keep showing this, and I will keep showing this also in the coming quarters. And that shows the footfall and turnover of our shopping center portfolio since basically the COVID crisis started. It is clearly, you know, visible here that the lockdowns have impacted the footfall drastically. Here you can also see the waves of when the new lockdowns again were present. But also it's absolutely visible here that when shopping centers are open again and our centrally located community centers then the footfall and turnovers have recovered very quickly, and they have continued to recover also this year.
I think it is highly improbable that in the Baltics, lockdowns of shopping centers will happen again. There's been already actually some court rulings, at least in Estonia, that these restrictions can be considered unlawful. We'll see how that sort of goes forward. I think also the society is ready to manage these the COVID type of virus in a different way. We do see, you know, continuous recovery and I think we will get to 100% also when tourists are back. That is also, you know, the visitors that come to our centrally located centers, especially in Tallinn and Riga.
No major changes in the tenant mix, and I think our allocation to Latvia is quite sufficient today. If you ask where we are looking for new investment opportunities, they are definitely in Estonia and Lithuania to balance more the diversification geographically. As well, we do see retail allocation for income probably increasing over the next months due to recovery of the NOI. Few more words about our you know investments into the properties. On the right you can see the newest office building that we have, BREEAM excellent certified and sort of this is a replacement of G4S older property that we sold.
In Vilnius, it's next to our other asset, Domus Pro , and the opening will be this year. What we also see in Europa is today I can say that now when the reconstructions are finished, opening is in June, July, then we already have lease agreements in place to increase the occupancy of Europa to 90% by approximately September when all the new tenants will be moving in. Very happy about that. Also we have other investment plans in Galerija Centrs in Riga and in Postimaja, especially in Galerija Centrs, I think we will focus on that next.
also a new food hall and also with the replacement of some tenants and reorganization of the tenants on the fourth and third floor, because the food court will be on the 4th floor. We also see that the occupancy of Galerija Centrs is going to be around 90% by the fall, given that everything, no major shocks again externally are happening. Coca-Cola Plaza Postimaja project, we have started the extension of Reval Cafe that will be opened in August. The next topic is the refurbishment and replanning of the cinema 1st floor. The major development probably will be pushed to next year when we have new anchor tenants in place. It all happens in sequence, one project after the other.
We also don't want to do too many development project at one time. We don't have a term as a fund, so we want to do these investments at the best possible moment, also considering the fund's strategy not to do too many development in one time. As I promised, some new pictures of food hall . I think one can see that the food court has been very well welcomed since January, food hall you know from the local people. If you have visited it, then hopefully you have been also satisfied customers. There are about 10 outlets there, ranging from woks to Ukrainian food to pizzas and to good burgers.
It has definitely increased the footfall. What's also funny to see that the chess players have found this location as their new hangout place. Done it for several times, but that is very good news for us that socially we have made an attractive venue and people are visiting the venue also for other reasons. On the other side, Huracan Coffee will be open now next week or even end of this week. On the right side, you can see also at the end there, new escalators and new amphitheater being constructed.
New flooring, new shop fronts and just to make a more cozy feel of the center that we have in the middle of the business district in Vilnius. A few pictures about the Galerija Centrs Food Hall on the 4th floor that we aim to execute. We have the interior designers, we have even the name. It's not gonna be Dialogai, but it's gonna be something else. We have even the construction company ready to go. We want to execute this in the second half of the year and with the terrace there overlooking the old town. Update on the financial debt structure. I've been asked that how does potential Euribor increase affect our portfolio?
I can say that there is no direct impact because many of our loans have been hedged. They have been fixed and almost 78%. What's happening for us is that we are renewing now our loans that are due end of next year, early end of this year, early next year. You can see these from the list, and many of those loans are office loans. I think we're quite happy that we were able to prolong our shopping center loans this year, and it's probably easier to prolong the office loans at good conditions. We are working on the bond refinancing, which is due eighth of May next year.
We want to find a solution also in the second half of this year. Currently, markets, of course, are not favorable at all for bond prolongations and then that's why I'm happy that we don't need to prolong it today where the, you know, the war shock is still in the capital markets and lots of uncertainty. Let's see in the second half of this year. Our alternative is also to replace the bond with cheaper bank financing and then find a solution with the amortization. Anyway, quite volatile times in the interest rate market. Some argue that interest rates could rise to, you know, 2%-3% like they did in U.S.
There are also arguments that interest rates may not increase as high as that theory, but I mean because of the upcoming recession in Europe. It is currently quite unpredictable what will happen. We will monitor the markets closely and our aim is to find the best possible solution with refinancing starting from August this year. We still have some time, which is good, and we continue to monitor the markets. A few words about our dividends. We've continued to pay out dividends also during the COVID years. Yes, because of the lockdowns, we have had to give discounts on rents, and last year we gave discounts close to EUR 5 million.
Our operating income from portfolio was EUR 17 million. Of the EUR 5 million, we hope to recover half this year and half next year. During the lockdowns and during the sort of the war shock period, we have been relatively still cautious. You know, there's one crisis after the other. There's been many questions of when do we start paying out the reserve that we have from the pandemic period that we have covered or kept to boost the liquidity and of the fund. Have to be, you know, very diligent in that regard.
Trust me when I say this, that this is a priority for us and to pay out as much as we can after the liquidity needs are sort of addressed, and we have enough also capital for our refurbishment projects. The strategy is to continue to pay out at least 80% of the quarterly net cash flow generated by the fund. That we have no plans of stopping the dividends and continue hopefully to increase the dividends as what we are also doing is, of course, trying to index our rents as much as possible. Okay, this was a quick recap of the fund's results.
There's another topic on the agenda to be discussed, and this is the topic that we had when we got listed in Tallinn in 2016. We decided also to go for listing in Stockholm because of our large Swedish investor base. Since we were basically the only one or the first one to establish such a dual listing, we were able to negotiate a deal with Euroclear, which is the depository, the only depository in Sweden and Nordea Finland to provide the link, electronic link between the Estonian depository and the Swedish depository.
Due to strategic decisions at Nordea Finland, because probably also we were the only client, they have decided to strategically focus on something else. As a result, we have to find another solution because for us it is also strategically important to keep our activities in Stockholm and keep ourselves listed in Nasdaq Stockholm. After some legal research and talking to market players for almost six months now, we have found a solution, which is the local Swedish depository receipts.
It's a very technical thing, but still quite a regular solution for foreign companies who want to be listed in Stockholm. What I would like to update on is that we are in discussions with potential local partners for the service. And we want to give hopefully some news about the solutions and if there's any changes that investors need to do by this month. So hopefully we can arrive into an agreement. It's highly technical, the sub-custody link. And it has taken a bit of time for us to establish it.
I hope we have more information in the coming weeks, so we'll keep you updated and there will be definitely a Nasdaq announcement if we have something more direct to say about the agreements. Before we go into the resolution on the buyback, I'm just checking if there's any questions so far on the first agenda points. As well, if we have any questions here, then happy to answer them. Otherwise, I'm going forward to the third agenda point. I think we have something here. No questions. Okay. All right. We have a question from Kaido. Do we have projections if interest rates go to 5%, I mean, Euribor?
We do have such projections and in that case, of course, what happens is that the generated cash flow, some of that will be paid as interest. We still remain cash flow positive, but it definitely impacts then the dividends, which is then the case. Hopefully we can. If something like this happens, then of course it's full crisis mode. I think that will. A lot of things will happen then on the market. But direct impact will be then, of course, not immediate again because we have hedging for our close to 80%.
That means that, you know, our interest rates are fixed, but at some point, if we need to refinance, that will start to impact our portfolio then with every loan that we refinance. That's why also for us it's important to refinance our loans that are upcoming as soon as possible. About the buyback program. As I mentioned, we want to establish this program for the management as a tool to be able to buy back units from the market over the next 3 years if we deem this necessary. And that if it would, you know, strengthen the capital structure, then the details of the buyback program are on the screen.
Unfortunately, I have to note that for today's meeting in order to make a decision, two-thirds of the investors need to vote, which is currently not the case. We need to have a second meeting of the investors in order to decide this, where we don't have this strict quorum of two-thirds of investors being present. After this meeting, that means that for the buyback program today, we cannot adopt a decision because the quorum is not in place.
There will be a new investors meeting, the follow-up meeting happening in a few weeks time, most likely on the 21st of June in Stockholm, where we expect as well some Swedish investors, larger investors present. Then hopefully we can adopt the resolution here with simple majority. In case there are any more questions, because this has really concluded the agenda for the annual general meeting, we don't have yet the Q2 results. I think next important milestones will be 15th of June, 15th of July. Of course, 15th of June will also be the NAV announcement. 15th of July will be also the NAV announcement then with the new valuations.
Yes, for the purpose of this buyback program, most likely a new follow-up investor meeting will be happening on the 21st of June. If there are no more questions, then I would like to thank you for the participation and keep monitoring our NAV announcements about potential, the recovery of our rental income and, if not sooner, then we will have another follow-up on the second general meeting on the 21st of June. Thank you very much. Recording stop.