Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome at the Echo Investment Group financial results. Today, we are going to summarize our 2023 activity, and give you a broad overview for our 2024 plans and goals. My name is Weronika Ukleja-Sałak, I'm the company spokesperson. I'm here with Nicklas Lindberg, our CEO, and Maciej Drozd, our CFO. Welcome, gentlemen. We will start, of course, with the presentation, and then we'll host a Q&A session, so don't hesitate to ask any questions. So, without further ado, Maciej, please take it away.
Thank you. Welcome, and let's start from the highlights. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we are now not only active in commercial and residential business, but we are expanding in what we call living sector, which is resi for rent. That, that's a business in which we are already for many years, and we just started student housing, and we'll talk more about that today. In the residential segment, residential for sale, we see very, very impressive growth, and that's something that we'll also focus on today. In commercial business, we experience strong tenant demand in central locations of Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław, and this is where we want to continue to expand our office projects.
The bond and bank financing markets are very supportive, and they help us to achieve our plans and to continue to build projects. We are working and focusing on exits from the already completed projects in office and retail, and we'll talk about that as well. So once again, we are currently organized in a way that we work on the sectors that I just mentioned under, you know, in two companies. Archicom is focusing on residential for sale business, so this is a part of living sector for sale and is active in many cities in Poland, and we are planning to add Katowice to the list of cities where Archicom is already present.
In commercial segment, we are focusing in Echo on Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków on central locations, but we are also expanding very, very aggressively living sector for rent in Echo Investment. And as I mentioned, this is resi for rent, and this is student housing business, which is new, which is just started by us. What is also interesting is that we use synergies between commercial and residential segment, and we are converting currently a part of our commercial land bank for residential use, which is currently the best use available for this land. Important events of 2023 were that we contributed our residential business from Echo to Archicom. So Archicom is currently consolidated entire residential business of Echo Group. We are very proud of the results of 2023.
So, we sold over 1,800 apartments, and we delivered, we handed over, over 2,100. But it's really only a basis of our achievements that we target for 2024 and 2025, in this segment, which we believe is very strong and is supporting our ambitious growth plans. In commercial segment, we started the construction of first building of Towarowa 22 destination project, and that's something very, very important for us, both because it's city center of Warsaw, but also because this project, Towarowa 22, is the largest destination project in our history. We also started in Wrocław project called Spot, which is also a proof that regional cities in commercial segment are active and are supporting our growth plans. As I mentioned already, financial market is strong.
On this basis, Archicom increased its share capital, raising PLN 220 million from the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which is very important. And just after that, had its largest bond issue in history of over PLN 210 million. Echo continued to refinance its bonds, and we started to do a new thing on the market. We proactively refinance bonds maturing one year or even more ahead, so the process is more organized and more predictable. After the end of 2023, Archicom, who raised money that I just mentioned through ABB and through the bond issue, acquired a lot of very, very good projects, land for residential purposes, including land already having building permit, on which we started to sell immediately.
We started the construction of commercial projects, and what is interesting, we also refinanced two of our already completed projects, React and City 2, which are operating very well, and they are ready to be sold. As I already mentioned, we started, we signed a joint venture agreement, which is currently subject to anti-monopoly clearance, which we expect to obtain shortly and to start develop on the plots we already secured to roll over this project very, very quickly. Financial market is strong, so we continue to issue bonds. We continue to refinance our bonds. We just did a refinancing of PLN 100 million of bonds maturing a year from now. Archicom continues to raise financing to buy more land, which is supporting its growth plans.
I already mentioned that we are also focusing this year on the disposal of already completed projects, which are modern, which are complying with ESG criteria, and we are expecting the market, the investment market, to perform much better towards the end of this year and in the beginning of 2025. So let's look in more detail on the segments in which we are operating. I already mentioned that the residential market is very strong, that we are performing very well. We have large increase in units under construction, increase in the land bank, but we continue to buy new projects, because we have very big ambitions for this year and for next year, on the market, which is very supportive.
We are also growing our presence in living sectors, so which is ready for rent, ready for sale, and we expect the combined size of residential for sale, for rent, and student housing to reach over 75% of our business. We continue to see good performance of shopping centers, which are showing increase in rent and footfall, which is giving a good basis for our expectation to improve, to further improve operating performance and to dispose them on the strong market. Let's go now, you know, segment by segment. So residential for sale. Of course, you know, we all know that this market performed very, very well in 2023, that it experienced a high growth of the demand and supply, that it was not really following the demand.
As a result of that, the offer started to be smaller and smaller quarter by quarter, and the prices were rising very, very quickly. This is the market, which is, of course, supported by the government program, but that was also a response to fundamental demand that is present in Poland, and we believe it will continue for many, many years. We also believe that the supply issues are rather fundamental, so we don't really see a risk of oversupply. On this basis, we are focusing on increasing our land bank, increasing, starting construction of as many projects, as many units as we can.
So, for this year, we have a plan of over 5,000 units to be started, and 3,000-unit sale target is also a 50% increase compared to the last year. We are well prepared to do that, in terms of cash position, in terms of available financing. So, when we buy, we focus on buying the right land, when we can achieve and maintain very high margins, which we experienced last year. We achieved many building permits in Q4, and we continue to get them in Q1, but we also buy land already with building permits, so we can start these projects quickly.
In Resi4Rent segment is performing well, but we are starting project, we are constructing as quickly as to keep our leading position. So we have around 30% market share in the institutional PRS sector with over 4,100 units under operation and 4,700 under construction. We expect to add over 2,000 units this year to operating units. We are focused on staying on the leading position in this segment. It's the rents are continue to be strong. Of course, they are not growing as they did in 2023.
In 2024, we experience they are, that they are stabilizing, but they are very high, and they are supporting returns on the projects that we are starting this year and that we plan to start next year. Student housing is a new business that we want to also to become the leader in this, in this sector. Polish market is very interesting. We have a very big student population. We have very little product in terms of institutional institutional space for students. So, we are experienced to a certain extent in this area, because we already built, in the past, a few student houses. So, we believe that our plan to build and operate 5,000 beds in the coming 3-5 years is absolutely achievable.
So we are looking for new plots in Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław, mainly. We already identified a number of projects, and we secured a number of projects, so we are focusing on starting them as quickly as we get the approval of anti-monopoly office for our JV. In commercial segment, we see that the supply is much weaker than in the previous year. As a result, we expect that we see that the vacancy rates remain stable, and we expect them to remain stable. And we focus on delivering new product, new offices in central locations, because they are in demand by the clients. We started, and we have right now projects under construction in Warsaw, in Wrocław. We are starting Kraków.
We focus on operation of already leased projects, so we can dispose them as soon as the market comes back, and we believe investment market, and we believe that this is happening by the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. This, to a certain extent, will be driven by declining interest rates in the environment of lower inflation. Retail continues to show strong performance in terms of both footfall and turnover of tenants. We are satisfied with how the centers improve year-over-year in terms of NOI and overall performance.
And we also see that they were built few years ago, but they are fully, you know, ESG compliant currently, as we had a proof that, coming from the fact that we have refinanced one of them recently, and that was done based on the very high, very, very strict ESG criteria. So this is one of the areas on which we start to focus more and more, because it is also being demanded by the financing institutions. So we are happy that we are already there with the buildings, with the projects that were built recently. Construction market is supporting for us, meaning that the pricing is favorable. Actually, we see that the prices are stabilized or declined.
We have currently lower budgets than for many projects that we had a year ago, even by 10%. We believe this is due to the fact that the activity in the construction market is slowed down compared to previous years, and that there's a lot of resources that can be used, and they are sitting and looking for work. So we benefit from this situation, and we contract as much as we can currently, because we see that the pricing is favorable and is helping us to achieve high margins. Financial data for 2023 they were in line with the consensus, so we had a revenue of around PLN 1.6 billion, and net profit of PLN 67 million.
That was as expected, and in later part of the presentation, I will give you more detail on the structure of our revenue, our margins, and our balance sheet.
Thank you, Maciej. Now we'll take you through the different segments of our business, and we're starting from the residential segment. If you look, like Maciej said before, if you look back to the last year, we sold around 1,800 apartments. We have another 4,833 under construction. We're starting up over 5,000 new apartments, which is really showing that we have worked a lot, and we are really now showing that we is benefiting from this one. We are keeping a high margin in our residential business, and also, we are allocating the right land bank from the both businesses into the right place of the organization, which is really helping us to do very much of the attractive projects in Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków. We have talked before that we want our residential business to continue growing.
We said that last year we're gonna be around 2,000, and this year we're gonna be around 3,000, and by next year, we're gonna sell around 4,000 apartments. This has always been in the strategy that we had from beginning. The companies that we're investing into, we are building it up to be the leaders on the market segment where they are being present. What you see on the residential market, there's a very limited supply, but it's a very, very strong demand. What we see here is the prices are continuing to increasing. We are working, like Maciej is saying, very much on the cost side. As we have a much, much bigger business than many other, but is a much more diversified business, we can do bigger packages, we can use the synergies.
So we would like now to try to this year start up as many projects as possible to benefit from: we have a construction market that we are stabilizing, slightly decreasing prices, and we have a residential market where we see increasing prices. We have also went into last year with a big land bank, because all the money that Maciej talked about before we raised via the ABB or via bonds has already today been allocated into land plots that are with building permit or very advanced in the building permit process. So this is all in line with our strategy of quickly recycling the capital into land. Here you see what we had talked about before, how we are continuously growing our business. And this is all in line with what I talked about before.
We are not going to grow a business by cannibalizing our profit margins. We're going to keep having a steady profit margin, which you've seen that we have grown throughout the years. You're going to see us growing forward, where we have a very, very healthy margin on the products that we're delivering. And that is based on that we are the leaders in the segment. We can get the right pricing out of it by delivering the right quality, and also that we are super effective when it comes to how much money we spend by building our products. So we are now saying by 2025, we're gonna be up to 4,000, and from that one, we're going to continue making up our next plan, how we will continue growing our business.
And as you see, like Maciej talked before, we closed a lot of land plots last year, and now week by week, we continue investing in more and more land to be able to support this growth inside our business. And I think it's important to say that to reach the 4,000 apartments sold next year, this is land that is already in our land bank, that we will continue growing with that. And we now are looking how to buy more for 26 and forward, and also to supplement 25. You see the apartment for sale, you see how we are selling in all the different markets. What is very important here looking forward, if we look for 2024, we're gonna have a very big portion of our started project in Warsaw, Wrocław, which is two of the strongest market.
You know, for Warsaw, that we have worked a long time to be able to start up many of our projects, and they are now coming to life, which is really supporting our strategy and continues to work on getting more land plots in the bigger cities. The handovers that we continue doing and what we did last year is, like, it's always a consequence of how many new project we're starting and how we've been able to turn them into completed projects. This year is a lot of focus on starting a project, selling project, benefiting from the strong market that we're being present in at today's market. As you see here, the offer, what we have today in the Echo Group, and this is a slide that is already today updated.
You will see already now in 2024, we started another 11 or 12 projects that are not included here. So you will see here that going forward, there will be a lot of new products started. The land bank will grow, like Maciej said, with more than 5,000 apartments, and we will sell out of them 3,000 apartments. So we are very, very well equipped to benefit from the residential market in Poland. And here you see how our land bank is spread. We have close to 12,000 apartments in our land bank, and you see Warsaw stands for 44% of it. And as all of you has been with us for many presentations, you see this is a very big figure for us, where we continue growing.
As you see here, it's really supporting for us that we need to do more things. In Kraków, we're starting a project. Poznań, that is today zero, we have also started up another project. So both these two here is today not zero. We are already up and running. And also, like we said before, you show Katowice, where we're starting up another project now in Q2 of this year. And this is one of the projects that is benefiting, that we have converted it from a land plot that was used to be an Echo from commercial land, but we're now turning into residential land in a very, very good location in the city center of Katowice. We are focusing on being a developer on the five markets we're being on.
We are continuously analyzing to get into more markets, and here we are, of course, like we said before, we are analyzing Tri-City, but we are also analyzing how we can grow our presence in Kraków. Because Kraków is a very, very big market and very strong market where we like to have more projects under construction. And here you see what I talked about before. Already in Q1, we have started close to 2,000 apartments, and this is a figure that will increase further because Q1 is not completed yet. And you will see here that we'll continue starting many, many more projects. And, our target is by the end of this year to start up close to 30 new projects. And this is things that is really benefiting from us, that we have worked many years on the land bank.
We have worked on bigger projects where we can call off the stage after stage. All these things is done in the way that we are really supporting the growth of the residential. Resi for rent is a market that is really, really interesting. We have seen a rapid growth for all the years. We continue seeing rental growth, but still on a lower level today than it used to be, but it's still on the 6%-7% growth this year. We have gonna open up another 2,200 projects in 2024. We opened 1,100 projects in 2023, 1,100 apartments in 2023. We have a very, very strong land bank that we're starting building on. So it's really showing us that this is the right market to invest in. The NOI is growing.
We are showing that the tenants are really appreciating the quality we're delivering, the stability we're delivering. And also, what you see in this slide, which I think is super interesting, today, we are roughly 24% of the market, like Maciej is saying. But if you look on how big part we are or what's going under construction, this figure will go up to 40% based on what we are taking part of the market. So what you'll see on the market is the PRS market is still growing, but we are growing quicker than the market is growing. Because we have a stable project, we have an established brand, we have all the supporting functions, and also we have established all the routines and processes that makes us grow.
So, for us, it's super important to start up more projects, being able to deliver the 2,200 apartments that we want to deliver this year, and then, already then exceed the 6,000 threshold in coming years, even further growing from that. We already today have land banks secured for 10,700 units. By the end of next year, we're gonna have exceeded, completed more than 9,000 units, and this year we are at 6,200 units. So, what you see before, we said we're gonna be close to 10,000 units by 2025, and this is the target that we are achieving as well, which I think is a very, very strong signal base, that we have went through some pretty difficult market situations since we started up our Resi4Rent business.
It also shows that the Resi4Rent business is working throughout all the different stages of the market. You see our portfolio breakdown. We are focusing here, continue growing in the cities we're being present. We like, all the cities. Warsaw, we continue growing with even more projects, 'cause it's still the capital of, Poland, and this is where we want to continue growing. But we want to be spread over all the different markets, but with a strong presence in Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków. Here you see that, the projects were completed. And if you look at how much we are renting our apartments, in average, we are around 98% leased in all our apartments, which shows basically they are fully leased. And that is also a signal of our quality and what we can deliver to the market.
Student housing, this was a natural step of us after our Resi4Rent business, and this is a market where we see huge potential to continue growing. In the same way as we invested with PIMCO in, Resi4Rent, we are here investing with Signal Capital Partners. For us, as I said before, it's important not to allocate too much of your equity into one single part of a business, and here we see a great potential of growing. This is an undersupplied part of the market that we have just starting to explore. We are having the same setup here as we're having in Resi4Rent.
Echo's sourcing the land, Echo is developing, Echo is contributing with all the competencies, and then getting fees for this, in the same way as we're taking part of the upside in the developing of the platform, in the end, in the exit of the platform. This is a very, very effective way of getting into platforms, where you both are making sure that you get cash flow, you also have a secure off-taker of what you're delivering, and in the end of the day, in the end of the day, you will get the benefit of the value creation inside the platform. So this is something that we're gonna continue looking at. We're gonna continue doing it, both in platforms. We're also analyzing it in products like we do with Towarowa, with AFI, where we also have a JV partner. This is the way for us, where we can diversify our business.
We can then also get the maximal shareholders, return to our shareholders, and in that way, we think that we are much more safe for the changes on the market, compared to many, and many other companies that are there. The Polish market for student has just started growing. Poland is a market that is both coming from international students and from domestic students. The universities are having very high quality. You have students that are from all different countries in Europe, and also we think that this is something that all the new students coming here, they will look for the right quality of the student homes that we're delivering. Here, we're also benefiting, like I should say, by securing a lot of land plots today, where the market is softer than it is before.
This makes that we can then get hold of land plots that we can never get hold for a year or two ago. And here, it's important for us, we want to quickly ramp up this market, we want to quickly get into the market, and we want to be able to deliver our first student homes already by end of next year for the first semester. If you see the markets overview on the international students, how many students are in the different cities, how much are the different countries growing, this is a huge potential for Poland. And we think Poland, as being a big country, this is where a lot of international students will go to. High quality, many universities, still a good quality of living.
This is a market where we're gonna continue investing, and like we said before, within 3-5 years, we want to be up to the 5,000 beds that we have targeted here. Rents are continue growing and will continue growing, maybe not in the same rapid pace, but continue growing, we see in all the different markets, and this is all about location, location, location. And here, we have been able now to secure fantastic plot close to the universities that we have not seen for many, many years. So we thought now, together with our investor, this was the right moment to enter the market. 'Cause now we have opportunity to do things that we have not seen for a very long time. Here you see a snapshot on the Polish student housing market, and here we are gonna continue, continue informing you about that.
For the next presentation, we will already show you the first project that we're putting on the market, and how we're doing with that. So you're gonna see quickly that this is not something we are just talking about. You're gonna see quickly how we turn this into action, and you're gonna see then already next year, the first projects up and running. In office and retail, in our commercial segment. We are gonna stick to the strategy we communicated last time. We are focusing on the three biggest cities, Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków, and we're only gonna be in the city center of these three products, cities. We have already started Towarowa in Warsaw, we have started Swobodna in Wrocław, and we're starting Kraków Wita in Kraków.
And all these buildings are having the highest ESG standards, they have the highest quality, and this is what we see as well. They are also destination products. This is what we are really focusing. We're gonna deliver destination product, which we've seen after COVID. This is what all the tenants and occupiers want to come back to. This is the future of offices and the future of the commercial segment. We see here also, there's fewer and fewer products being started. Like Maciej said before, we are fully leased in all our completed buildings, and we see a strong tenant demand for all our projects, and we are very bullish. But by the end of this year, we're gonna have a very, very high occupancy in all our projects, and then forward-looking how we can continue developing that part of the market.
Today, the commercial market, the office market, is not looking the best as it is. But what you see, the fundamentals, there's a strong demand, we see rental growth, we see no new buildings being built, and we see a strong tenant demand. This is showing that the investor demand will come. And by 2025, when we'll deliver, there will be not any products on the market that is fulfilling the same quality with the same tenant mix, and with the same long leases that we're gonna deliver here. So we are sure that this is the right way for us to continue building. And like Maciej said, we are constructing this much, much cheaper than we did a year ago.
This is Kraków Wita that we are now starting up, and here you see how we are mixing it and how we're truly creating a destination product with offices, with reserve sale, with student houses, everything in one area. The full ground floor will be of restaurant, attractions. So this is a place where you can work, live, and entertain. You never need to leave this. For you that doesn't know Kraków, you are within 10 minutes walking distance, you're in the old town of Kraków. So this is as central as you can get. You're in 45 minutes in the central station. So it's really, really a beautiful location in Kraków. Here, we're gonna do a lot of greenery, we do a lot of parks. We are really building a fully new area in the city center of Kraków.
This is very similar to what we've done on Towarowa, what we did in Warsaw Breweries, what we've done on Fuzja and Wita, we're now doing in Kraków as well. Towarowa, that is our flagship project. We are now started up with the first office building. Shortly, we're gonna start up with the residential building, and then we're gonna continue developing building by building to be able to deliver this destination project. This is gonna be a groundbreaking project, not only for Poland, but for whole of Europe. This is like really, truly a destination project that's gonna be observed from many places around Europe, just to show how you can deliver a beautiful project on a seven-hectare site in the city center. If you look here, you see in Wrocław, where we're creating our next project, a lot of greeneries, a lot of BREEAM certification.
You see here a lot of terraces. This is truly a place where we see from the tenant that they are really requiring to move into locations like this. So if you look from the offered market, we see a strong leasing market at the moment. We see that it's gonna be even stronger. We see rental growth, we see tenants coming back to the office, we see investor market coming back year-end this year, early next year, and we continue, you're gonna see for 2025. The products we are delivering, there will be a massive shortage of it. And also, international investors see that Poland here has a unique fundamentals with all these BPOs that are now coming back to the office, looking for new space.
CitySpace is another of our business that is continue growing because the short-term offices is just in the beginning. Here we continue putting them into our new buildings, our new locations, and here we're focusing, continue growing them in the same way as we're growing Echo's business in the three bigger cities in central locations. Galeria Libero, the center that we have now had up and running, we have a turnover in 2023, that is 14% higher than 2022. We already see figures now in 2024, that is also two digits higher than 2023. We see a huge interest for new tenants entering the center. So in the coming months, we are now gonna highlight more new tenants entering the center.
The footfall is increasing, we see the NOI is increasing, and we see this center is now slowly getting ready to be put on the market. 'Cause it's really a fantastic center that we have been driving up now, and being one of the best performing centers in Katowice at the moment. Młociny is a slightly bigger center. We are on the right track. We grow 12% in 2023. We're gonna continue growing in 2024, also two-digit figures. We have put in the biggest slide in Warsaw there. We're gonna come put in more things there. We attracting more families to come into the center, and we're gonna focus on continue growing our NOI. So the retail, as a summary, there's a lot of NOI growth in the center. We see footfall growth, and we see really people coming back shopping in the centers.
ESG is a crucial part of our business. We have an ambitious ESG strategy. We're gonna continue focusing on environmental, social, governance, and also-
... how we continue being a better company for our employees and our stakeholders. So we want to be in the forefront of leading the ESG, and we want to continue making sure that Echo becomes a better organization and a company.
Thank you. So, look, let's look again at the financials, you know, in more detail. So as I mentioned, our total revenue was around PLN 1.6 billion, out of which around PLN 1.3 billion came from residential, with a very strong margin, over 30%. And I think this is the margin that we want to continue. So as we repeated, you know, a few times during this presentation, we focus on managing the costs, and we focus on managing the top line, to maintain that type of margin in our residential business.
We also continue to deliver services to Resi4Rent platform on a high margin, and we also benefit from rents coming from offices and retail that we have under operation. So overall, our combined margin was at a level of 31%, which was strong. If you look at the fair value gain on investment properties, we experienced a strengthening of zloty, so euro went down, and as you know, our commercial assets are all valued in euro because they are achieving euro rents. They are receiving—we are receiving euro rents, both in office and retail.
That's why, when euro got weaker against zloty, we also had a decline coming from that, and the negative impact of that decline was over PLN 86 million, out of 105 of fair value change in Q4 2023. So it's very strong impact, but of course it's coming from the external factor. If you look at our balance sheet, it didn't change a lot compared to a year ago, if you look at the total numbers. So we are around PLN 6 billion.
Also, our inventory did not change a lot because, on one hand, we are buying a lot of projects, a lot of land for residential, but as you have noticed, in Q4, we also had a very, very big handover number, which, of course, reduced the inventory. So that's why it stays on the same, it stayed on the same level, despite of the fact that we grow our business and we will continue to grow this in 2024. Cash figure also very strong, over PLN 800 million, and that's a source of our comfort and our ability to continue growing residential business, where we are investing cash. You can also see that the value of our JVs increased.
This is mainly the growth of value of Resi4Rent, but in future, you will also see here quite impressive growth of Towarowa 22 project, which is also done in a form of the JV. If you look at our liabilities, you can see that, again, total number of equity and liabilities, of course, it's around PLN 6 billion, and didn't change a lot compared to a year ago, but you can see some changes in the structure. Our equity slightly increased. Our liabilities coming from financial debt, short-term and long-term, slightly increased, but these are not big movements. And we had an important decrease in other liabilities. Our overall net debt ratio, fin...
We finished the year with 35% net debt ratio, which is, you know, within our target range, so we are fine with that. But, of course, we are looking at the debt reduction, overall debt reduction, with asset disposals, because, as you remember, our commercial assets, they all have project debt on them, so this project debt, of course, will be repaid when they are sold, and this will have a large impact, a positive impact, decreasing net debt ratio. If we look at, as usual, at our bond and corporate debt maturities, you see the similar profile. We are focusing right now on managing already 2025. We did some of that in, you know, already in 2023.
We refinanced 2024 and later, and we'll continue to do that. The market is, as I mentioned before, very supportive, so we can achieve that objective. And just want to report, you know, how we are progressing right now. So, already in Q1, we did refinance both, you know, 2024 and 2025 maturities. We issued new debt, and if you look at 2024 and 2025, our plan is that we will mainly repay 2024 maturities, and we will continue refinancing 2025 to move the maturity to 2029. So that's basically the plan.
And also what you can expect is that as Archicom is growing, it will issue more debt, because Archicom, in the past, was having no net debt for a long period of time. So now, we see the move being that Archicom will issue more debt, will be more active bond issuer and corporate debt issuer, but Echo part, the commercial part, will need less debt, so we will move the balance within the group and with the intent that overall indebtedness is stable, is not growing, or rather decreasing. So that's the plan. The dividend we paid last year, PLN 0.44.
It's just a reminder, that's not a new information, but as a reminder that we paid twice, including the advance for dividend for 2023, in the amount of 22 groszy per share, which was PLN 90 million. That's all. Thank you, and now it's time for Q&A.
Our Q&A session. Okay, thank you, gentlemen. Let's start with a question regarding our biggest destination project so far, so Towarowa 22. I think this question goes to Nicklas. When is the construction of our PRS apartments at Towarowa going to start?
The PRS apartment is gonna start as the second stage of this development. Because what you see now, what we communicate, we are first gonna start offices, that is already ongoing. After that, we're gonna go, shortly, starting up the next, first reserve sale building. Then I think, after in Q3, we are then gonna start up, the PRS buildings and, receive for more reserve for sale buildings as well. But what you will see now is offices ongoing. We're gonna start up the next reserve sale in the coming month, and then in Q3, we're gonna start up more reserve sale and reserve rent buildings. And also, we're gonna do the whole park and the Dom Słowa Polskiego that is happening in between.
What you will see now, in the coming months, you will see a massive change on Towarowa and how it's clearly developing into the destination product we want to build.
Exactly. Thank you so much. Now let's move a little bit to our living sector. Maciej, maybe you will answer our viewers about converting commercial plots into living. Can we elaborate more on that, how we are going to do that?
Right, right. So, I mean, we, I will not give specific examples. Of course, we are working on rezoning, on permitting, but, in fact, we were pioneers in a so-called Lex Developer, right?
Mm-hmm.
We converted office park into modern residential for sale in front of Galeria Mokotów. So this is what we want to continue.
Mm-hmm.
And we have a number of plots which are suitable for similar conversion, right? And we are using our experience in that area to achieve that. And we do this not only in Warsaw, we do this also in other cities. It's mainly through that mechanism, as I mentioned, so Lex Developer, but not only because sometimes we can use different planning tools-
Mm-hmm
... to change the use. And I think it shows that we can, you know, benefit from the fact that we have a diversified business. So if the best use of the plot changes, we can, you know, change it to benefit from that. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Thank you so much. And, sticking to the subject of, living sector, residential for sale, our viewers would like to know, given the favorable, cost environment, is there a space for margins growth, in the residential segment in 2024? Nicklas, please.
It depends on which market you are, because if you look at it, we have a very, very healthy margin in Archicom. If you look at the just presented results yesterday, it's a very, very healthy margin. What you will see here, we will do more products in Warsaw, which of course, will drive up the margins even further if in the Warsaw projects, but we have a mix of the different projects. So from our point of view, if we can stay at the margin we are today at, and then growing with another 50%, I think that will be an extremely good result based on what the margin we already are achieving today.
Thank you. And, along with our financial report, we have published our fourth ESG report, and we have some questions in that segment. And, Maciej, this goes to you. Do we monitor our carbon footprint emissions, and are we planning to reduce it in any way?
Right, right. Well, I think in general, I would say we just published the report, which is a massive document, and of course, it has a lot of detail.
Mm-hmm
... and there is absolutely no space to elaborate-
Into that
... on these details right now, right? It's simply a huge amount of information, and if any of you is interested, I strongly encourage you to look for the answers there. Of course, yes, we, it's already our fourth report. We started to monitor Scope 1 and 2, for you know, for a couple of years. We just started to do it with the Scope 3, and we can proudly say that we managed to reduce, you know, in Scope 1 and 2, by 35%.
Mm-hmm
...compared to the previous year, and we will continue to do that. We have ambitious plans both for the offices we use, right? So for our offices, but also for the buildings that we build and sell, right?
Yes.
As I mentioned, you know, I mean, we have no space to go into a lot of details, but we already mentioned that we do have, you know, BREEAM certificates and other certificates-
Yes.
You know. We use more and more of green energy in the buildings, so this is what we can do and what we do already now. But we have ambitious plans, and we are currently, when we reorganize with Archicom, we are actually working on renewing or reformulating our strategy, ESG strategy, and including decarbonization as well, yeah.
Thank you so much. So, we strongly recommend reading our ESG report in detail. Now let's have another question, I guess, for you, Maciej, as well. Because given the expectation for European Central Bank rate cuts this year, is there a space for yield compression in 2024?
Well, I would maybe call it differently. I think that the reason why there is so little activity in the market currently is because the expectations of sellers and buyers are, you know, quite apart.
Mm-hmm.
It's not that there is no buyers, but and of course, there are sellers, but the expectations are apart, and I think what will help a lot is the compression, so they will come closer. And I think that we will see, on this basis, we should see market becoming more and more active.
Mm-hmm.
And I think on this, as a process, I think later on we'll see yield—we may see yield compression, but I think it will be a process.
Mm-hmm
... and not a one-off event, right? We first need to see the transactions happening and decrease of euro, you know, rates, is necessary and extremely helpful, and I think necessary for this process to happen.
We've already seen now in Q1-
Yes
... that, the investors are coming back to the market, and there is transactions ongoing. So we are hopeful for, like we said before, for the second half of this year-
Mm-hmm
... or beginning next year, but that is when the market will clearly come back.
It be recovering. Okay, thank you so much. I think there's another question to you, Maciej. I'm sorry, to-
Mm-hmm.
Now, let's ask you a couple questions in a row, and I will then switch to Nicklas. What about dividend for 2023, apart from the advance?
Well, I mean, I think you can look yourself at the result of last year and of the... What you already paid for the advance. So I think that, if you do that, that will answer your question, that simply it was high enough according to our dividend policy. And but I think it's too early to talk about, you know, entire year.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's... We are just at the beginning. A lot of things may happen, so we don't, you know, do any declarations-
Yes
At this stage, right?
One question about Archicom and their intention to issue more bonds. Can we count on the company to also conduct public offers for individual investors?
Well, I think we see that the individual investor market is also strong. It's not only, you know, the institutional market, but also there is a strong demand coming from individuals. We had a huge oversubscription of Echo bond issued to individual investors.
Mm-hmm.
I think, I, I believe, strongly believe that Archicom would also be, you know, very much in demand. Of course, it's a process that takes time, right?
Yes.
You know, you do prospect all these formal steps. But I think I would say that in the future, it's possible or maybe even likely that Archicom will also use that tool. Because we have experience with the group, we can support the process, and that... As I said, I think the demand I would expect would be also very, very strong-
And so-
-for Archicom bonds.
Thank you. And so maybe to finish it up, Nicklas, you already mentioned about the importance of ESG within the organization, using green energy in our buildings. Do you want to add something on that?
No, if you look for our buildings, we use green energy in our buildings, where it's being available today, and where it's not available today, we work actively for it to be available going forward.
Mm-hmm.
This is a big part of our whole business and how we both want to talk to investors, talk to tenants, how we talk to our own employees, so that's why it's a big part of the whole group. That's why we put a lot of focus in it, and like we said before, we strongly encourage you to read our report.
Okay
... where there's a lot of facts and a lot of things, how we continue working. And this is a live document that we're gonna continue updating and working on every year.
Thank you so much. I think this will be it for today. Thank you, gentlemen, for this Q&A session. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we will answer your questions if they haven't been answered so far, either Grzegorz Iwański, Head of Investor Relations, or I, by email. We'll see you in May on the quarterly results. Thank you so much, and see you soon.
Thank you.