Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the mid-year financial results of Echo Investment Group. Hope everyone had a great summer, and you are ready to hear all about what we did in the first months of 2024 . My name is Weronika Ukleja-Sałak. I'm the company spokesperson, and I'm here with our CEO and CFO. So please welcome Nicklas Lindberg, our CEO, and Maciej Drozd, our CFO.
Hello.
will, of course, start with the presentation given by the gentleman, and then we will follow with the Q&A session, this time hosted both online and on-site with our guests in the studio, so Maciej, please take it away.
Thank you. Good morning again, and let's start looking at the highlights of the first half of this year. We are here, very close to our landmark project, Towarowa 22. Of course, I think each of you already heard about the project. I think what is very important is to remind you how important it is for Echo, because of its size, but also because it's a true destination. It's really something that we want to make money on, but also to be proud of. Today, I would like to explain to you in more detail than before what are the parts of this project and how we want to develop it.
So, again, to remind you, we already started construction of the first residential project, and that was just two, three months ago, but the first office building is already almost completed, and it's already quite well leased. So I think Nicklas will talk a little bit more about the office part later. But it's just the beginning, because what happened very, very recently, in summer, is that the master plan for the whole area was approved, and now we are able to build around 190,000 sqm of mixed-use project.
There will be three residential buildings, two office buildings, the one which is under construction, and the tower, 50,000 square meter tower that we want to start next year, and also large PRS component, so it's residential for rent component, that will be also very, very important part of this project. In the center, there will be a two-hectare park, which will be not only a park itself, but also will have as its element landmark, Dom Słowa Polskiego. Later on, we will also talk a little bit more about that, about the history of this place and how we want to connect history to the future.
What is very important, I think, for this particular project, is that we do this partially on our own and partially in joint venture. So the commercial part that I mentioned, two office buildings and the PRS part, is done in joint venture with AFI, where Echo is 30% partner and is also a developer, so we are the partner that is managing this project. But there's also residential part, which is 100% developed by Archicom, and as I mentioned, the first building is already ongoing. The construction of first building is already ongoing. What is also important that we have an arrangement with our partner that after we complete both office buildings and PRS buildings, they will buy our part.
We have a safe exit from this project, from the commercial part, and of course, residential for sale is clearly to be sold to the market. Another thing that we are very proud of, which happened recently, is a very quick development of Student Space. Student Space is a JV that we have with Signal Capital Partners, and again, we are 30% partner. That was created very recently, but we already started to build first buildings to be completed next year. We want to be ready for September next year with first buildings for students, and we are buying new plots, but Nicklas will tell you a little bit more about that in bigger detail. What is also important is that Archicom, our residential for sale company, started new segment.
Archicom was mainly active in mid-market projects, but not in the premium market. But now with Towarowa, with M7 project, it started a different brand, Archicom Collection. This is how we call it. And this brand is a symbol of different quality that Archicom will be delivering, will be offering to its clients. And two projects were started already under this brand, one in Warsaw and one in Wrocław. And we believe that it will be really very well received by the market because of the quality of the project, because of quality of the locations. Now I would like to talk a little bit more about the market, how we see the market, how market is developing in recent months.
So in residential for sale, we believe that we are currently in the period of stabilized prices. As everybody remembers, the prices grew up a lot from last year to the beginning of this year. Now, we believe that we are in the period where price is stabilized, and we need to adapt to that, of course. What is quite clear as well, and I think Nicklas will talk a little bit more about that, is, of course, that we had a period of uncertainty. So many clients were confused whether the new program will be implemented or not, which clearly delayed decisions, buying decisions in this segment, especially in summer.
But what we see already in September, we see that clients are coming back, and we believe that the market fundamentals are strong, and what we have seen recently is just a temporary slowdown. Because the shortage of apartments in Poland, especially in big cities which have positive migration, is very big, and it's just a matter of finding the right price, or finding the right product, but the demand is there. What happens in commercial and other living segments, we also see very clearly strong demand from our clients. We see stable development. Similarly to residential for sale, we do not see large rent increases in Resi 4 Rent this year, but we see prices which are stable and the demand which is strong.
Again, we'll talk about this a little bit more later. It's similar in office, it's similar in residential, in retail segment. We have strong demand from client, we have good operating results, so we are happy with each of the segments that we are working in. Let's look in more detail at the highlights of Q2. We are happy with the level of residential sales of 472 apartments. Number of handed-over apartments was smaller in this quarter, but it's purely, you know, seasonal thing when projects are completed. It's not too much to be looked at. We started Vita project in Kraków, and I think it's again an example of destination project in different city.
Again, Nicklas will speak a little bit more about that. The finance market continues to be strong, so we were very active. We issued more bonds both as Archicom and as Echo. And I already mentioned that we started a new student housing business. After the end of the first half of this year, we continue construction of 1,200 beds for our student housing segment. As I mentioned, it grows very, very rapidly. We have obtained master plan for Towarowa 22. And in particular, we signed a project loan for Towarowa 22, Office B building, so the smaller office building, which construction of which is substantially completed, and we will start soon the fit-out of this building to give it to our tenants.
So again, let's look as we always do at individual segments in a little bit more detail. So as I already mentioned, in residential for sale, we see stabilization of the pricing. We see increasing offer from clients on the market, but also from us. And I think it's very important to see that we did put on the market at the end of Q2 a lot of residential units, and we believe that we will see the result of that in the sales in the coming quarters. We increase our market share because we see quite clearly that smaller developers are lagging, their sales are not really growing, so we believe that the market consolidation will continue.
We focus on getting more building permits, starting projects, to really grow our sales this year in this segment to around 2,600 units, and we maintain our long-term target of 4,000 units in residential for sale. In residential for rent, we continue to be leaders in this segment. The segment performs very well in terms of rent levels, in terms of client demand. Our vacancy is very low. We continue to start new projects and to deliver projects that are already under construction. Again, we are very happy with the performance of this segment, and we are targeting almost 11,000 apartments to be ready, to be operating in 2026 . In student housing, we just started, so we are in the construction period.
Fundamentals of this market are extremely strong in Poland. There is very little supply in the private market, and the demand is growing. There is more and more international students coming, and for them, the current offer is absolutely not sufficient. We see a strong price growth in this segment. So, we maintain our target of 5,000 units to be developed as soon as we can in Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław. As I mentioned, in office market, we see stable demand from the clients, especially for new product, which is supplied in very, very low quantities. So there is not much competition.
Of course, you can see outside of the window, if you are in Warsaw city center like we are, that there are some buildings under construction, but this is a really unique situation. There is very little supply in other cities and in general, in Warsaw. And we see the demand coming from clients for the type of product that we are delivering, based on location, based on the quality of this product. And we see also growing rents, which is very, very positive that we can rent at the levels which are higher than we expected one or two years ago. In retail, we see again, a stable situation in terms of operating results and in terms of the market. The demand is strong, the consumption is growing.
We see improving results year on year in both our centers, in Libero and in Młociny. In construction market, we believe the situation is favorable. It continues to be as the demand for construction services is not as strong as the capacity of the companies. We see actually a declining material prices. We are able to build at the prices, at the cost, at the total cost, which is not higher, or it is even lower than what we budgeted, what we expected a year or two ago, which is very, very favorable situation.
We continue to work on new solutions, and I think it's also quite interesting that in particular, in student housing, we started to use prefabricated projects, prefabricated parts of the building, and I think Nicklas can tell you a little bit more about that. We find out then if project is suitable, the prefabrication costs are actually not higher than the cost of traditional construction, but clearly, it's possible then to build much quicker than using traditional methods. We are not only investigating prefabrication, but actually we are doing this in student housing projects right now. Let's look briefly at the key financial data for the first half. Our results were slightly better than the consensus.
We also had revenue, you know, higher than a year ago, and net profit, which was also higher. So again, we are satisfied with the result in the current market environment. I would like to spend a little bit more time on this page, which looks a little bit more complicated than most of the pages. I would like to explain how we see our business from the valuation point of view and how we perform valuation in our books. So as you know, we are active in all the segments that are listed here, so Resi for sale, Resi4Rent , Student Space, which is very new. And we also separated here Towarowa 22, commercial part as a separate segment.
We have also large commercial segment comprising office and retail projects. In most of our segments, except for Resi for sale, we revalue them at each balance sheet date. We revalue them to the market value. The assets, the individual projects are revalued, provided that they fulfill certain criteria, which means that they are under construction. You know, there are also other criteria like leasing for office projects, et cetera. They are not, so we don't revalue land. This is what I would like to highlight. Even if we obtained a master plan for Towarowa, which clearly increased the value of the land of this project, this does not have impact on the value of these assets in our books. It's only when we start the construction.
Student Space, for example, of course, was not yet revalued. It will be, but at a later date when projects are more advanced. I would like to, in particular, to highlight residential for sale segment, which is not revalued in the books. It's at cost, which is due to accounting standard. At the same time, of course, Archicom, which is comprising most of the assets in this segment that belong to Echo Group, is valued, right? It's valued at stock exchange. It's a listed company.
So if we make an exercise, which we show on this page, and replace the book value of residential assets in our consolidated accounts, which is 1.14 PLN per share, with Archicom market price in respect of the same assets, then the value of this segment grows to 3.83. And such assessed total value of Echo would not be 4.13, which is a book value that we currently have, but would reach 6.82, right? Which is a big difference. I would like to highlight that because I think it's important to understand how we value our assets and what you see on our balance sheet as the book value. And now we'll go into individual segment, and Nicklas, the floor is yours.
Yes, we will first talk about our living for sale business. Here it is. We sold 472 units, like we talked about before, but the most important thing here is we started 4,400 units, because this is a forward-looking business, and we are now building up a platform, and also it is a lot of these units are sold in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, in the bigger cities. We have really increased our land bank, which I will show on the later slides, in all these cities. We have a very, very strong land bank. We are sure that going forward, we will make sure that we utilize this land bank, and also during the last quarter, we have a lot of the cash we had on the balance sheet; we have used to buy more land.
There was an opportunity on the market for the last three to four months to buy land, and we used that opportunity really to secure a very, very good land bank going forward for our Resi for sale business. If you look at our market here, what we see, like Maciej said before, we have a stable market. We see that in the central locations, prices are very, very high. In the project you're going to look at later on today on Towarowa, we are selling at record prices that we have not seen before. And there's a lot of people who want to go into these premium locations. But the good thing about Archicom is that we both are present in the premium locations, we are present in the medium locations, and also we are present in the lower-medium locations.
So we will, in that way, address 70% of the Polish market. And what Maciej said also before, the smaller developers is struggling today and will continue to struggle going forward. So what you will see is a consolidation of the residential market. The bigger players will be bigger. And here we will use the benefits, like we talked about before, how we can build with the right quality at the right pricing using all the right technologies. Because what's different between the Echo Archicom Group versus other companies, that we have more than 200 people in-house that are dealing with construction management, which makes sure that we are getting the right price set at the right time for all our projects. What you see here is how we are growing our sales.
This year, we will grow our sales with another 30% from last year, which is a strong sign with all these products we're putting on the market, and we are going against the 4,000. The 4,000 is important milestone because then we are on the top developers on the Polish market. We will continue growing. We want to be number 1 to number 3 on the residential market in Poland. Like I said before, if we're not number 1 to number 3 on anything of the segments, this is not our target, and then we should not be in that segment of the market. Our sales, we put a lot of apartments for sale now in the second quarter. You will see the effect now going forward. In the third and the fourth quarter, we see the sales are picking up.
As you see in the rest of the market, you see there's the slow summer sales. Now in September, October, November, December will be the strong months, and we see people are coming back, we see people want to buy. We see the uncertainty on the market based on the new government program coming into force and not coming into force, but we still continue selling at a higher pace than we sold a year ago. Handovers are very seasonal. It depends how we're completing our products. We are certain by the year end, we will hit the target of handing over the amount of apartments as we have in our plans. We continue selling at a strong pace.
If you look at Archicom did a presentation two days ago, and what you see out of the residential apartment being completed this year, 93% are sold. So a very high percentage of what we have completed this year is being sold. And this you should take into relation with our strategy that upon completion, we should have 80% sold. In the coming six months, we should sell the remaining 20%. So what we see here, we have a strong market, we have a strong offer in our residential market. We're going to continue focusing on growing in all the markets we're being present, and we also continue looking at how we can enhance into new markets where we are today, having on Tri-City, a hole on the map that we are constantly looking on how to fulfill.
What's important here is coming from earlier slides, you see Warsaw. Warsaw, we have focused a lot to grow our land bank. And this is where we see much more of Archicom going forward. As a Warsaw developer, this is where the most of the strong market is. This is where we're seeing going forward. Wrocław will always be a big part of the market, Kraków as well... We are focusing on which is a market that is very diversified. But if you go and look at where Archicom is having the project in which, it's always spot on city center, the best locations on the market, and that's what you see continue selling. If you look at Poznań, it's a market that is stable, no matter where the market is. We have a very strong team in all these five cities.
If you meet Archicom in these five cities, it's five different teams, everybody's being local. We are now looking how to add on the sixth market to this map, and then we will cover the whole of Poland, which has been our strategy going forward. We will only do this when it's the right time to do it, and we see an opportunity to go something that will add value to the business, at the same way as when we acquired Archicom to make a clear residential player on the Polish market. Here you see the project under construction versus our land bank. We will continue selling, we will continue growing our land bank. We will also highlight here that we will buy land when the market is the right time to buy land.
The first six months of this year was really the right time for us to buy land. We secured fantastic plots with permits, that was at the right pricing, so we can continue growing our business. And also here, we have ramped up for the business of 4,000 units. If you look for Resi4Rent, which is a super interesting market, we are today at 4,000 units completed. By year-end this year, we will be 6,200 units completed. And you see on the slides before, we have a 25% market share today. I think going forward, our market share will continue growing. We have a super professional team on the ground. We are opening new projects. Jaworska is the latest one we open up in Wrocław. That is, after three months, already 70% leased.
So you see that there's a strong demand, there is a rental growth, and also here we are clearly number one on the market, and we're gonna continue growing that market leadership. If you look at this slide here, which I think is slightly misleading, because I think it's-- if you look at today's picture, you will see this is how it looks today, and I think that reflects the truth. I think going forward, I think we are, if you look at the map of Poland today, it's mainly us constructing at this pace what we're doing today. So I think when we're gonna look at this slide in Q1 next year, you will see we have 6,000 units, but I don't think the total amount of units has grown that dramatically, so our market share will be growing.
I rather think we will continue growing our market share, we will continue being a dominant player, we will continue opening up in the best locations in all the cities we're being present in. And here you see the important thing. We always said we're gonna get to 10,000 units. Now we are at the 10,000 units. So now we're gonna continue delivering, and these 10,000 units will be delivered by the end of 2025. We will have all of them under construction. More than 8,200 will be completed. The last 2,000 will be ongoing, to be completed in 2026. And then after that one, we have to decide what will be the next step for the platform.
But it's impressive over these years, how we've been growing, how we've been able to take the clear market leader position on the market. And when you talk about the rental market in Poland, you talk about Resi4Rent. Here we're doing some examples of the products we're having under construction, what we have already today completed, and they are all in beautiful locations. And we have also managed to do the right standard for all these different tenants we're putting in there. And you see how the products has developed along the years. We have been starting from the first products we did until where we are today. It's a massive difference, and we are continue improving. Based on our experience, what we've done in Resi4Rent, we said we're gonna do student housing.
This is a market where there is even more shortage than we see today in Resi4Rent. We found a key partner in Signal Capital Partners, and we signed agreement six months ago with this partner. Already today, we have 1,200 units under operations. We're gonna hand over 1,200 apartments next year, which is a miracle when you look from how quickly you start until how quickly we are up and running with the first apartments. You see here already today, we have secured land bank for 3,500 units, which is something that... Because for us, we learn, and we want to be quicker and quicker how we ramp it up. And many of you will question, how can you build that quickly? And that is because we have a very, very standardized product.
We are doing prefab, and we continue in that way to deliver the best products for the market in the most cost-effective way and also in the quickest way. Because students are different compared to Resi4Rent, but you can open up over all the twelve months of the year. Students, you have to open up when the semester is starting. The two projects that we now have flagged up that we're doing are two projects in Kraków. There will be more releases during the year, but we continue growing our platform. We will continue starting up more projects, and you will see that this is also targeting to be the dominant player on the Polish market when it comes to Student Space. If you look at this market, it's a very, very big shortage, and also here you need to see it from two ways.
You need to look at it, how much of this market is now today from foreign student and how much is from domestic students? How much of the existing stock is from the old stock that was built, like, 20 years ago today, and it's not really up to standard or what we want to do? Here we see continue growing, continue taking a bigger part of the market share. There is a lot of international students coming to Poland. There is a very, very strong domestic demand as well. We're gonna focus here on this map that you see, Warsaw, of course. We're going to open up, minimum, now in our pipeline, we have another three projects coming up in Warsaw. We have already launched two projects in Kraków, and this is the two cities that we're mainly going to focus on.
The third city after that one we're analyzing is Wrocław. But the stock is going to based on the two biggest cities in this when it comes to student living, which is Warsaw and Kraków. And this is something that I think is really, really interesting. And you will see the slide here comparing how is this looking to Poland versus the other markets when you look at the stock. You see here what the shortage there are in Poland versus other market. And here you will also see what is interesting here is that in private dormitories, that is today 1% versus the other markets. And this is where we're going to take a part, because a lot of the people today living in the, in the old stock of student homes, they're living there because they have no option to live anywhere else.
Here, when we are taking a big step into this market, we're going to continue growing quickly. The 1,200 we started up is just the beginning. You're going to see a lot of more launches going forward, and you will see a lot of it's happening in Warsaw and Kraków. If you look from commercial, you later on going to see today on Towarowa. Towarowa is a, an amazing product. We have today 190,000 sq m of mixed use. We have done the Warsaw Brewery. As a comparison, that is 108,000 sq m. Towarowa is going to be totally different. Towarowa has the office component, but here it's going to be the same way as we did on the Warsaw Brewery, but here we're going to build it around a massive park of two hectares.
This is going to be something new, because when we did the Warsaw Brewery, we were unique and first. After that, there's been a lot of things happening on other products. Here, we're going to do something unique and surprising for the market as well on Towarowa. Here, we're doing high-end residential. You see, it's a lot of interest from tenants that are already today signing up leases for the building Towarowa, building Office House that you see here outside of the window. And we're going to hand it over to the market in March, April next year. And it's already today, we see a very, very strong leasing. And we are continue signing leases with multiple tenants as we go along. And it's been financed by consortium, and we are focusing here in the office market on the three biggest cities.
We're only going to do Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, spot on city center. And what you see here, there's been a lot of discussion about home office, all these things that are happening around the office market. You see, Amazon was the latest now who announced that everybody should go back to office. It's coming more and more and more. And what we see on all these tenants, they are moving from outer locations to city center locations, taking less space, but taking the space in the better buildings with a higher quality, with higher fit-out. So what we will see in our buildings, what will make them even more future-proof, is that the tenants that are signing with us has already downsized the space. So it's already now, from this where we are today, I see it rather growth of the tenant than further downsizing.
The regional markets are strong in the city centers where we've been present, both with Swobodna and with Vita, that are fantastic products. If you look at this mixed-use development that you see on the slide on Towarowa, is really. We are not building a project, we are transforming the city center of Warsaw. This is where everybody who comes to Warsaw will visit this project. First, they will visit the Warsaw Brewery, then they will come to Towarowa. And then you have seen what Echo has done in Warsaw, and it's really unique that we have seven hectares that we can transform into something totally new. The master plan is a huge milestone, because now we can continue building all the different sites of this project. So you will see Towarowa, we are just in the beginning now. We're going to start up the next phases.
We're going to do a tower here that is really going to be a landmark tower, and also we're going to do this fantastic park that will be open to the public. Vita Kraków-Vita is another project. Next to the railway station, we're going to do this fantastic project consisting on offices, student house, Resi for sale in the same area. And all these student housing buildings here are already today being transferred to the student housing platform, and that is making sure that all the big projects, we are already today diversifying our risks. We have a huge interest of tenants who want to sit next to the city center. And also this mix between all these different functions in one project in the heart of a city is very, very seldom that you can do.
This is a project that we have worked on for many, many years, and there's a huge interest to continue acquiring products like this, spot on city center in the bigger cities. Here is also, we're going to do the food and beverage, we're going to do the entertainment. We are really transforming this into a city project. So when you go into all our products, all the amenities, all the functions will be existing in the same area where you have our product. In Wrocław, we do Swobodna SPOT, opposite the MidPoint that we successfully sold two years ago. This is going to be another project, and this is a project that's adopted to today's needs. If you see on the top of the project, there's a huge amount of balconies.
A lot of these people with a chance to using their own balcony have a chance to be feeling a different product than anything else around in the area. Here we see a lot of consolidations. We see people moving from the current location into the city center, into the new project. Also now, with the interest rates being cut, we see investors are coming back to the market, and there's a big interest for our project in both the regional cities and also in Warsaw. Here we have a project that we today are having all these criteria in place. They're having fulfilled all this certification, and it's the best products in all the different cities where they're being present. We will shortly announce that there's constantly interest with products.
There's all the time new things happening here, and in the coming weeks, you will see that there will be further developments in this area. That is all in the line with our strategy. We develop project, we lease them fully out, we get all the criteria in place, and then we divest them to investors. CitySpace are present in the five locations around Poland. We are continue growing this business, and it's continued being an important part because the co-working is an important part for tenants taking less space. They need that flexibility inside the building to continue growing and having that flexibility when people are coming back to the office. Our shopping centers, what we see in Libero, we are now really growing the footfall, we're growing the turnover.
We have really created a fun center that is attracting all the tenants that are around the areas. We are gonna shortly announce about some really new, big, tenants taking space in our building. But though mostly important, we are today 99.4% leased, and we have very, very healthy tenants. We continue growing the footfall. We think retail is really one of the healthiest areas when it comes to customers, comes to spending. And here we are also seeing now the first deals happening in this area, which shows that investors are coming back to the retail. If you look at the center we're having in Warsaw, with Galeria Młociny, it's a bigger center. Here we are continuing focusing, we're putting more activities, we're making it truly a destination project in this part of Warsaw.
You see how the turnover is growing, you see how the footfall is growing, and here we're gonna continue focusing on growing the footfall, growing the turnover, changing the tenant mix to adapt to today's needs. And here you see that we do a lot of amenities inside our centers. In the lower right corner, you see the slide that is going through the whole center. So if you come to Libero or you come to Młociny, you don't come to a shopping center, you come to a truly destination product. ESG has been a super important part of our business. We are implementing both on the project level and on the company level, really trying to make sure that we are the forefront as a company in ESG.
This is something that goes through the DNA of the whole company, and this is something we are gonna continue working hard on to be the leader in ESG, both in our project but also as a company.
Thank you. So let's look again at our financials. As I already mentioned, we had net profit, which was better than a year ago and also better than the consensus. If you look at the details of the performance of our businesses, you can see continued performance of both residential and commercial business on levels similar to previous quarters. As we did not have a lot of euro exchange rate movement, there was no big impact on valuation, and it was also a quarter where we did not have large revaluations impacting our results. Looking at the balance sheet, of course, you can see the growth compared to the end of the last year.
The growth is in particular in the area of inventory, which reflects the growing importance of our residential business. But we also have more investment properties and assets for sale, which is, as explained by Nicklas, we are in the processes to dispose of these assets in due course, and we see the market improving, and we see more and more activity based also on the decreasing interest rates in this area. We expect that this part of balance sheet, so investment properties or assets held for sale, should decrease looking forward as we dispose of the already completed assets. We have a strong cash position. We maintain a healthy level of liquidity.
Looking at the debt side, as I think it was explained before, we did issue a lot of debt in the first half of the year, taking opportunity coming from the very strong market, high demand for debt. Now, looking forward, we have slightly a different approach because we basically completed our refinancings for this and for the next year. So if you look at the debt in 2024, this is going to be repaid from the existing funds. And also, if you look at 2025 in the bonds, in the Echo bonds, these are individual bonds, we will repay them. And the corporate facilities that are shown here in 2025 will be extended.
They are typically one-year facilities that we keep open, and we extend them on an annual basis. So, clearly, if we look at the maturity of our debt at the corporate level, we don't have material events coming until 2027 or later, when we have bigger maturities, and this, we believe, will be already after the period of intense asset disposals, mainly, of course, in the commercial segment, but potentially also related to PRS, as I think we already mentioned more than a few times. Yes, we paid a dividend for last year, actually as an advanced dividend, and I think that's all that I would like to say about that subject, and I think we need to come to Q&A.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you so much. I would like to start with, firstly, with the question from our online viewers. This goes straight to you, Maciej. The group has the highest debt in almost four years, meaning before the takeover of Archicom.
Mm-hmm.
Does Echo have any plans to start reducing its debt in the near future?
Yeah. Actually, I think I already mostly answered that question, but maybe it's useful to repeat-
To repeat, yes.
... this answer, so yes, as I explained, we took an opportunity to issue debt in the first half of the year in a very good environment.
Mm-hmm.
As Nicklas, I think, already explained, in Archicom, that was actually due to opportunities in the land acquisition, so Archicom spent money on the land, and this turns into projects, and it turns into sales. While in Echo, what happened after end of first half of this year, we repaid PLN 180 million of debt in September. That was. We exercised our call option for 2025 debt, and we prepaid this PLN 180 million, and we have around PLN 200 million of debt falling due in Q4, which we'll also repay out of the money we raised in the first half. I think that's quite clear. We will continue, of course, debt reduction after disposals, right?
Mm-hmm.
So the money from the disposals, of course, will be allocated in different ways. But partially, it will also serve to reduce the debt that we have in the business. Of course, that's important because the debt is expensive, so we would like to also lower our financial costs, right?
Yeah.
But it will be important-
Yeah
... to highlight here is, this was a strategic decision.
Mm-hmm.
This not happened by coincidence. That we saw an opportunity to refinance at good levels, the bonds.
Mm-hmm.
We saw now that both us and the board thought it was time to secure both 2024, 2025, so we get that financial flexibility. Now, as Maciej also said here, we saw a strategic opportunity to grow a land bank to hit the 4,000, because we are today at 2,000, we're now at 2,600, and we're going to get up to 4,000. It's a lot of land that you need to do as a one go. Then when you are steady at 4,000, you will get cash flow coming in that will make sure that you are getting both cash and spendings at a totally different level. Also, now, as we are disposing our office assets and other assets, that will partly go to refinance the debt and partly to also to benefit the shareholders.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you to you both. I think it was important to elaborate on that. And now I would like to ask our audience: Is there any question that you would like to ask right now, or should I go straight to the online questions? We have a mic if anyone wishes to ask one question or more. Thank you. I think I will go straight to another question from the online viewers. So you mentioned that we are focusing on the most attractive regional cities, like Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków. What about other, like, for example, Tri-City? Do we have any expansion plans?
Tri-City, we have an expansion plan for our residential business-
Mm-hmm
in the Resi for sale. We are already being present there with Resi4Rent , with, two big projects there, but, and we have one standing there. So, but from an office market, what I talked about before, these are the three cities where you always have liquidity, where you always have tenant demand. And if you look at many of the commercial developers entering other markets, are not as easily to make divestments as we are seeing today in the other cities.
Mm-hmm.
But for Resi for sale, it's a very, very strategic, important question for us to add on Tri-City on the map.
Thank you. Thank you so much. And another question from the viewers is a little bit general, but maybe you can take it. What do you think? Is the financial market currently favorable to real estate activities? What is your opinion on that?
I think it's extremely broad question. I would say if you look at the financing, right? Which is-
Mm-hmm
... an important part of the overall financial market. I think the financing environment is very favorable from our perspective. Of course, it does not mean that all projects are being financed, but whatever we propose, you know, we have absolutely no issue to finance on very good terms in all the segments, right? So it's not a particular segment, but all the segments. So office, Resi4Rent , right?
Yeah.
Student housing, all of these segments are being financed on good terms. Of course, if you think about investment market-
Mm-hmm
It's slightly different. We had a period, a slowdown period, which was driven by the increase of interest rates. That was very, very rapid, so the last year and we had very little activity in the overall market, and this year started slow, but now what we are seeing is that, linked to the decreasing interest rates, you know, the last decrease happened a few days ago and overall sentiment improving, we see more and more deals happening also in Poland.
Mm-hmm.
We have more activity of investors. Compared to the level we would like to be at, it's low, but looking at the discussion, we have interest. We see more and more activity in this area. So we believe that 2025, especially, you know, the later you go, like second half, the more we should have more and more activity and more and more actual deals happening, right?
Yeah.
In the segments, because I think what happens is, currently the gap between the expectations of buyers and sellers is decreasing, right?
Mm-hmm.
It was very wide, now it's decreasing, so I think it looks like the deals will start to happen more and more often.
Thank you so much. Nicklas, so would you like to add anything on it? Because I have another question.
No.
Okay. So let's go to the Student Space. Sorry. Will Student Space be only in Kraków and Wrocław, and do we consider any other locations?
We at the moment now, what we have secured so far is, Warsaw, Kraków.
Mm-hmm.
Which is the two biggest cities, and that's where we would like to have the dominant part of our stock. We will also consider outside of this one, we are considering Wrocław as a third city to enter in that stage. But what you will see today, mainly now going forward, is opening or starting new project in Warsaw.
Mm-hmm.
That is also a strategic decision, where we would like to allocate and where we see the biggest needs for new student homes.
Yeah. Thank you. That's clear. So I started the Q&A session with Maciej, so I'll also finish it with Maciej. The last question goes to you. And this is about issuing bonds. So will the company return to issuing bonds for individual investors in the near future?
In the near future, I would say, we do not have such plans, but of course, we want to continue to be active in this market. So, later, yes, but in the near future, specifically, no.
This is a clear answer.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I think we used all the time for the online presentation for today. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in today, and thank you, gentlemen, for explaining it so well. And I'll see you in November. We'll see you then, and I hope you have a great day.