Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome at the Q3 financial results of Echo Investment Group. My name is Weronika Ukleja-Sałak, I'm the company spokesperson, and today's presentation will be led, as always, by our CEO, Nicklas Lindberg, and our CFO, Maciej Drozd. Straight after the presentation, we'll go to the Q&A session, so if you have any questions, please stick around, and without any further ado, Maciej, please, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good morning. Let's start from the key events. I would like to focus first on the most important thing that happened in Q3, which is the implementation of the new residential segment strategy for Echo Group. Many things happened in that quarter. First, it was the consolidation of the segment in Archicom for contribution in kind. Then immediately after that, Archicom raised through Accelerated Book Building process on stock exchange, PLN 220 million and increased its equity, and also very quickly after that issued PLN 210 million of bonds. So all of that was to collect money to secure plots and to buy aggressively in a very strong residential market, so Archicom could become one of the biggest residential players in Poland.
We are also working very, very hard, and we focus on converting some of the plots that are currently held by Echo to residential use. And we'll talk about this a little bit later. So what is Echo Group after this reorganization? So on one hand, we own around 75% of Archicom, which is active in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań, and Łódź, and which is also looking to expand to other cities in Poland.
The remaining part of Echo is focusing, of course, on traditional commercial segment, which is mainly offices, but we are also aggressively developing living sector, of course, in Resi4Rent area, PRS, but also we are looking at student housing, and again, we will mention this, in a, you know, bit a more expanded way a little bit later during this presentation. So obviously, a residential business is on a growing path. The environment is very favorable, and, by organizing, residential segment in Archicom, we created the basis, not only for operational efficiency, but also for a very strong growth. So, our intention is to grow from the current level of around 2,000 units sold per year to 3,000 and 4,000, in a midterm.
So that's very aggressive plan, but we believe it's very doable with the resources that Archicom has. And it's not only the expertise and current pipeline, but also the plots that we are buying in Archicom, thanks to the cash raised in Q3 and Q4. Next slides show already existing pipeline in Archicom, so which is divided between projects under construction and projects in preparation. And you can see that in total, it's around 11,000 units, you know, in different phases of development, which is impressive, but as I said, we are focused very much on growing this pipeline to achieve bigger size, to be able to sell 4,000 units per year.
Now, I would like to look, you know, at each of the segments, but to start, you know, from little bit more global outlook. So at the end of the quarter, we continued to have very strong cash position, large land bank, which you already have seen, but again, we are expanding it. Our presence in living sector is growing, and it's first, Resi4Rent , but again, we are also looking to expand it into student housing. Operationally, we see very strong demand and very good performance of our commercial assets, and I mean here, you know, leasing activity in offices, but also very good performance of retail centers in terms of footfall turnover and tenant sales.
Lastly, Resi4Rent with over 4,000 units already under operation and over 4,000 under construction, is the largest PRS operator in Poland, and we intend to develop it even farther. Now let's look at the segments. Residential segment, as everybody knows, performs very, very well, and of course, it's to a big extent due to the government program of subsidized loans, but it's not the only reason, because we continue to sell a lot or majority of our apartments to cash buyers and to people who support themselves with normal loans, right? So not the subsidized loans.
Our sales are good, but we are aware that we need to expand the offer even more, so we are buying the plots in Archicom, and we, as I mentioned, we continue to convert commercial plots into residential. We are very proud to start in Warsaw, Mokotów district, next to Galeria Mokotów. First stage, first stage of very large project, comprising 550 apartments. I mean, the first stage is, is that big. The total project is around PLN 1,600, which sells very, very well, and it really proves that the market in large cities really needs more offer, and the main barrier to sell more and to stabilize prices as well is to have higher offer. So this is our focus in Q4, but also it will be our focus in 2024.
In the living sector, we see that the prices, the rental prices are stabilizing. They are not growing as quickly as they did in 2023. They are more stable, but the market remains very strong, and there is still a demand gap. So we believe that absolutely we need to build more, and we need to develop more PRS projects. So, as I already mentioned, we have 4,100 units in operation, around 4,300 under construction, and now we are looking to reach around 11,000 units in 2026, which is on the basis of strong demand, but also it reflects the plots that we are already secured by now.
And we see that Warsaw is the strongest market, and we intend to develop now mainly in Warsaw, but not, of course, not alone in Warsaw, but this is the main focus of our living sector. Nicklas will also mention a little bit more on student housing. We believe that this market is very strong, and this is the next area of expansion for us. Office, I already mentioned that, we see a strong tenant activity. We have absolutely no issue to lease our projects that they are leased very, very successfully to big names, and we see that the rents are growing.
They are growing for well-located projects, and this is, you know, what we are doing, so we focus on three largest cities, Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław, on city center locations, and this is where we see rental growth, and this is where we see a strong tenant demand. And again, this is also due to the fact that the development activity after COVID is much, much smaller, so not many projects appear on the market, and that's why tenants who want to lease in good locations, in new projects, need to basically take what is available, and it's not much. Retail performance continues to be strong. We see year-on-year increases, both in footfall and tenant turnover. So we are very happy with how these assets develop, both Libero and Galeria Mokotów.
We focus on marketing, we focus on stabilization of the tenant base and on making it the most optimal. So we believe that the environment is generally favorable, and we see this reflected in the performance of our assets. Construction segment is interesting because we see that the price is stabilized or even in certain areas, they go down. I mean, the prices of materials that we use for the construction of our buildings. But also we see that because of low, relatively lower activity compared to previous years in the construction segment, we can achieve in tenders much better prices than expected. So we in tender process continue to achieve prices that allow us to achieve very good margins, both in residential and in commercial segment. This situation probably will stay for some time.
Of course, it is not permanent, but currently, we have very interesting situation where the construction prices are stable or even, as I mentioned, we can push them down in tender processes, while the sales prices in residential, for example, are growing and also the rents are growing. Not as quickly as residential sales prices, but still, there is a trend, there is a different trend in our cost and our revenue, which is very favorable. So the highlights and the current drivers of our business in Resi4Sale , we continue to focus on centrally located projects, and we believe that this is the area, which is sustainable, which is not only driven by the subsidized credit, but will continue to be strong, to perform strong.
And this is also the area where the shortage of product is the most visible. So the offer in large cities is really scarce in terms of in the area of, you know, more central areas of the cities. And this is the area where we see or where we expect price growth, and where we expect that the demand will chase, you know, not many available apartments. So we, this is really our focus area. In living sector for rent, we see very strong, stable performance, growing NOI year-on-year and definitely this is also area where we can grow and expand our business.
In commercial, by which we mean here office, we focus really on three largest cities, which always perform well, which is Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków, and on central projects. In land bank, we buy new resi plots, we aggressively expand our residential land bank, and we are working on converting some of our commercial land to residential use, which is definitely giving the best value in the current environment. Specifically, if you focus on Q3, our residential sales this year, you know, we reached around 1,300 apartments. We handed over around 800, and we will hand over much more in Q4, which is a typical annual pattern that we have, that we hand over most of our apartments usually in Q4. We started construction of office project in Wrocław.
It's very well located, beautiful location and beautiful project in Wrocław called SPOT. In residential, I already mentioned the whole reorganization, where that was very, very important event. We continue to pay dividend. Archicom paid remaining part of dividend for 2022 in Q3. After Q3, you know, so subsequently after the closing of the books, we introduced new apartment for sale, and we will continue to introduce more in this year and also a lot in 2024. We started, of course, construction of the commercial project, which I already mentioned. We are proud that our completed projects, like React and City 2, were fully leased, and we also refinanced them successfully. So that allowed us to release part of equity from this project.
Financially, I already mentioned before, Archicom activity, so equity rise, so largest issue of bonds in Archicom history. Also, Echo issued bonds in Euro. I think it's quite interesting. It's quite rare on Polish market to issue bonds in Euro, so it was EUR 43 million for five years, which is quite unique in our market. And we continue to issue on the prospectus program that we do with PKO to individuals. We just finished, you know, PLN 50 million, another PLN 50 million on top of what is on the presentation, which was done earlier and earlier, as well. So in total, we already issued PLN 100 million on the program to individuals.
And we did pay recently, 22 groszy per share of advanced dividend for 2023, as we usually do, each year. If you look at the key financial data and the performance, we can see that it was better than expected by the market. As I already mentioned, most of the result in this year, like each year, is expected really in Q4 on the basis of handovers. I will focus on the details of the profit analysis a little bit later in the financial section. Now, Nicklas, please explain, you know, the segments.
Thank you, Maciej. If we get into a residential segment, we have sold in Q1 to Q3, 1,300 apartments. And to say, like Maciej said before, we have always focused on making sure that we have a strong margin in all our products, and we continue focusing on that one. And what you will also see, we have a very, very strong land bank coming up ahead of us. And also, to elaborate on what Maciej said before, the money that we have raised in Archicom is now invested in product that can start quickly. 'Cause we see an opportunity today in the market to invest in products that we can quickly start and then quickly recycle the money again. That will be a big part of the growth in our strategy to continue getting up to 3,000 apartments sold next year.
So we are continuous investing, we're continuous growing, and we also hear us saying, an important thing, we want to be the market leader in the residential business, which has always been a driver for Echo to continue growing the residential presence. If you look at the offer, it's 1,150 apartments. We are now continuously increasing. Like you saw in the slides before, we have already put another 350 units on the market. We're gonna continue putting more products on the market in the coming months. We have a lot of great projects that are now being released for sale. A lot of them are in Warsaw and Wrocław, which are today the strongest market. And like Maciej said earlier, this is the market where we're gonna focus on continue growing.
You see here we have 3,200 apartments under construction. We have another 700 planned to be started this year. We have cash accumulated in Archicom, and we did this early in the process to be able to benefit from the market where we are today, where we find opportunities that we have not seen before, that we can continue investing the money and get a great return on the money that we have raised so far. We see in all markets very strong sales and a limited supply. This supply, we don't see short term, will be bigger. We see that we have went through the permitting process many, many years, and now we're coming to the final step of releasing great projects. So we think this is a market that will continue.
And also, like Maciej said before, the 2% margin is not a big part of the sales, and the people that are buying from us today under the 2% program would buy normally also, but using normal financing. So we think the residential market is a very, very interesting part to be present in. We have always talked before, if you look at the Echo Group, how much should we allocate into the different businesses? And where we are today is roughly that we are saying we would like to have 50% of our business in residential, we would like to have 25% of our business in the living sector, and 25% of our business in the commercial sector.
This is something that we are constantly evaluating and making sure that how we allocate equity in the business is what will get best return for the shareholders. If you look at the Echo Group, we are continuous selling quarter by quarter. We're continue increasing the volume now of apartment for sale in the Q4, and we will continue increasing it throughout the whole year of 2024. 'Cause we see the market is there. We see we have a lot of project who went through the permitting stage. The bigger project, where we have been managing to get the Lex Developer, a plan to be issued on those projects, makes it easier for us to, to release the project stage by stage. We also here actively working on the cost side to continue making sure that we have a healthy margin in all our projects.
If you look for the handovers, most of our handovers, as every year, are happening in Q4. And the reason for that is how the projects are being started and how we've been able to complete them. We are now going in full speed, handing over pro, apartments in all our different projects, and that will continue, where we have a very detailed plan to be able to reach the target that we have the plan for this year of the handovers. The offer of Echo today is not at the level we want it to be, but we will continue increasing. We have another 700 in the coming months and continue increasing it step by step after that one. And also, what will be interesting, a lot of the projects that we acquire today will go directly from land purchase into sales.
'Cause we have now managed to identify quite a few projects that would go directly from a land purchase to sale, which has been our strategy, and that is also one of the reasons why we increased the capital of financing into Archicom, to be able to benefit from these opportunities on the market that we don't think will be a long-term opportunity where we can do these things. Current offer is we have 10,000 apartments, and you see here 50% is Warsaw and Wrocław, where we see today that we achieve the highest margins and also where there is a very, very little supply. And many of these projects are now getting into permitting, and these are the best locations in all those cities.
And on top of that, we are adding on new projects that we will be able to start directly from the land bank, as I said before. So we are very positive or continue growing our residential presence. We see we have the right products, we are working correctly with the sales, and also we are working with the cost side to be able to benefit on the lack of new projects being started on the market. If you look at the living sector, living sector has always been something that has been very, very interesting for Echo Investment. We have the Resi4Rent, where we have 4,100 completed, another 4,300 under construction, and we have another 1,000 to be started shortly, which is very, very interesting to be able to start all these projects. We are constantly opening up new projects.
When we open up the new project, we see they're being leased out quicker than we are anticipating, and also they are being leased at good prices. To clarify what Maciej said before, is last year, we had an increase on the sale prices with up to 30%. Now we see increase of sale prices on the level of, eight to ten percent, which is still a very, very good growth in our business. So we are very, very bullish on continuing growing our, presence in the PRS. We are looking also how to we can continue growth in this sector, 'cause this sector is very, very interesting, and Echo has before been in the living sector earlier in the days, and we have a lot of competence that can be used for our next, investments in this area.
As you see here, Echo is taking a bigger, bigger part of this, the total Polish PRS market, and we think that going forward by 2025, we will have taken an even bigger part of the PRS market. As you see today on the market, there's very few new products being started. There's this very, very high demand, and we will benefit from this, being an institutional player, being able to continue growing our presence on that market, which we think is very, very interesting, and also we think we're just in the beginning of the development of this market. We have secured so far 10,400 plots. We are continuous securing more products now, and like Maciej said before, we are focusing on growing our presence in Warsaw.
We find opportunities today in Warsaw that we have not seen earlier, that we would like to continue benefiting from, to continue getting an even bigger platform with a strong presence on Warsaw. Here you see the portfolio breakdown of all the different cities, and like we said, now, the presence is continue growing Warsaw, continue making it stronger, based on. Before, we had a challenge finding new opportunities in Warsaw. Now we see much more opportunities coming, and we would like to take the advantage to benefit from the stage where the market is today. If you look at all our projects, we are fully leased in all our projects at rents that we were exceeding our expectation. We are renting out the projects quicker than we are anticipating, and we are constantly learning from one project to the next.
So we're being much more efficient in the construction period. We're being much more efficient, making sure we deliver the perfect apartments for the tenants on the projects. One of the examples is the new project we opened now on Wilanowska, which is a beautiful project, fully leased, way ahead of the schedule we're having before. And it also shows that, that all the clients moving in there is really, really happy with the location and the quality that we are delivering to the tenants of those buildings. The next project we're going into now that we talked about last time, and we will now have developed our analysis with market, and we think it's a very, very interesting market, is the student housing. It's very similar to what we do in the PRS. It's smaller apartments, and we are now at, addressing the student housing.
There is a very big lack of student housing apartments in Poland. There is not even a fraction of the apartments needed, and the quality that we can deliver here with the experience we're having from our Resi4Rent business will be really, really an interesting part to put into the market. This one, we will tell you even more in the coming quarters about, but we are strongly advancing. We think this is a very, very interesting part of our business, and we think it's a naturally next step for Echo to continue developing in the living sector. Coming back to what I said before, we want 50% of the business inside of Echo Investment to be into the living sector, out, and another 50% of Echo Investment as into the commercial sector.
And then I'm saying that then on top of that, I have the whole Archicom that is doing purely residential. So now, Echo Investment is taking the next step in the development, where we started as a retail developer, we went more into residential and offices. We then, after that, contributed a residential into Archicom. Now we're doing the next version of Echo Investment, that will be a mix between the living sector and the commercial part of offices and our shopping centers that are performing extremely well at today's market. As you see here on the market, there's a huge lack of apartments in this market, and the continuous amount of students in the market is increasing. We see this is both from Polish students, and it's also from international students studying in Poland.
Here we are focusing to make sure that we can deliver a great project for these students and which will also be up to the standards of today. Many of the student homes today are outdated and not really reflecting the standard that students are expecting of today, and here we think we can really add on a new layer of equality and also a new layer for all the students being in Poland. This is just summarizing what we said. We have a positive analysis. We're gonna continue taking the next step, and when you will meet us next time, we will have more to tell you in this, how we continue developing in the student housing business. Commercial, if we look at Echo from the past, we were focusing on the seven biggest cities around Poland.
What we're saying now, we are only gonna do it in the three biggest cities. We're only gonna do Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków. We're only gonna do it in the city center of these three cities. What's also interesting with all the new project we are starting today, with today's market, you see rental growth as there is less supply on the market, and we see much more effective construction cost. This means that we are developing our buildings at a much better development yield than we did historically, meaning that we can sell them at the different yields and still making the same returns to our shareholders. So here we see an opportunity, really, to continue growing in all the three cities. We see in all our completed buildings, we are now getting up to being 100% leased, and there's a really big demand.
We think by 2025, there will be no supply on the market, but there will be a very, very strong demand. And then we will come to the market with top-of-the-line office building, all the ESG criteria in the best location. And we think this will be the way to continue working, little bit against the market, but this will—what will create long-term the best shareholder value. We have Towarowa 22, the project where we started the office building, and hopefully shortly we'll start the next residential building there, and Swobodna in Wrocław, where the construction process started. And we have a central location in Kraków, where we are planning to start the next office project that will also be next door, a residential project. All our office buildings are now fully leased. We are going to get financing done. They are now the generating really good returns.
We see now that, the interest rates, has now peaked, and we think that 2024 will be very interesting way for us to market these products to the market, and we think the appetite for investors will come back in 2024, in the second half. We think new buildings that we're delivering with all the ESG criteria will really be a rare commodity when we're delivering it, both now and in 2025. So we will have a very rare product for the Polish market, and here you need to differ between what we're delivering Class A office buildings in the city center and the Class B buildings that are today a little bit out of date, and it's a massive difference between the two, and there's a very big shortage of Class A office buildings.
We also now mark the Towarowa 22, together with AFI, that is our next destination project, which is a fantastic project in the city center, Warsaw. We are really delivering something that I have never seen before. We're gonna give a 2-hectare park back to the city, and it's gonna be a project of close to 200,000 square meters. We have already started the first building. We are shortly starting the second building, and then you will see the buildings are coming up one by one as we continue going along, in the same way as we built the Warsaw Brewery. This will be a really, Echo's next flagship project that will deliver in Warsaw, and I'm super excited to see what we're gonna do of this part of Warsaw.
Swobodna is opposite of MidPoint, as you remember, the product we sold last year at a very good price to an investor, and the building is today fully leased. Now we're starting the next project, in a beautiful project, where we're doing offices, and as you see on top of the offices, we have terraces. So we're really making sure this is the project where it has all the ESG criteria. It has the terraces. It is all really the project where people will like to come back to the office, which we see a trend all over Poland, that many, many more companies are coming back to the office, and we see that trend is rapidly gonna grow during 2024 as well. This is the buildings that we have in our pipeline and target to be sold in 2024. All of these buildings here are fully leased.
Libero is having a strong performance, continue growing year on- year, but really all the hard work we put into all these buildings, they have all the ESG criteria. They are really top of the line in all the cities where they are being present. We see 2024, 2025 as a very strong leasing market. We see there's a lack of supply. We see that we are delivering the products to the market that is really needed for those years, and we think by focusing on the three major cities, we are really taking a strategically important decision that we will benefit going forward from. And we see here for Q3 2023, like we said, there's a very low office development, but also we are leasing very, very well in all our projects.
This is a big step back from 2023, where we had a slower leasing period in 2020. Now in 2023, we see it's really picking up. In 2024, we think it will be even stronger. CitySpace has now 13 locations focusing on the Echo buildings. We see the occupancies growing across all the buildings. We see also that the money they can charge per workstation is increasing. This is a business that we are continue gonna focus on growing in the Echo buildings, in the central location. This is a very important add-on to our buildings, as many new companies would like to have the opportunity for their employees to work in a flex space. So we think this is a really, really important part of our business that we're gonna continue growing.
Libero that we opened up just before COVID had really continued to develop great year-on-year. We see the NOI growth over 9%, and we see continued growth for next year. We have exchanged a lot of the tenant base. It's really gonna be a flagship and is focusing on the value retail. This is the fastest growing shopping center in Katowice, and this has really shown that when we do the things, we do the right things, we continue focus on pro sales, we continue focusing on having the right brands. We are just in the beginning of the journey of Libero to continue growing in the NOI. Mokotów is doing the same thing. We continue growing the presence, we continue growing the footfall.
We have a very strong occupancy ratio in the center, and we are continue focusing a lot on getting the right tenant mix in here. And we see here we have opened up a lot of new stores there, and we continue open up a lot of more stores. So we think for 2024, you will continue seeing strong NOI growth in both our centers.
Let's look again, you know, at the financials. You had a quick look at the beginning of the presentation. Now we can look a little bit closer. So, as I already mentioned, the results were better than consensus. In particular, our residential margin continued to be very strong at 39%. It's a gross margin, of course. We also continue to have to collect revenue from Resi4Rent and commercial segment with good margins. This quarter also showed a positive fair value gain on investment properties, over PLN 50 million. So all of that contributed to the result.
But as we, you know, already both mentioned, handovers are concentrated on Q4, so a big part of our result this year will, is expected to come from Q4 on the basis of handovers that are being done as we speak. Our balance sheet didn't change a lot from, you know, the end of the last year. We show investment and assets held for sale. As Nicklas already mentioned, these assets are prepared to be sold during 2024. This is our plan for office assets, and, and Libero is also in that category. So, we expect the market to improve. We are on the basis of, of interest rates in Euro, not growing, but stabilizing and hopefully going down... so, that's our plan in, in that area.
Otherwise, you know, not much change between end of the year and today. In terms of liabilities, they also, you know, our long-term debt and short-term debt was stable, didn't change a lot. Our net debt ratio continues to be favorable, it's 29%. So it's as planned, it's gives us a comfortable position, both cash and net debt ratio give us comfortable position for further growth in Archicom mainly. So in this part of our balance sheet, which is linked to residential assets, should show in next quarter's good growth on the basis of what we have today. If you look at our obligations, in particular, maturity of our bonds in 2023, we don't have anything left as of today.
We already refinanced a part of 2024, in particular, most of Euro bonds falling due in 2024. We continue to work on that, but we feel comfortable in the current bond market environment, and actually, we'll start to focus very soon on refinancing 2025, so pushing maturities to 2028 and beyond that date. So you can see again that we are quite active on the bond market, both institutional and individual investors, and also including Euro. So again, the financing market is working well for us, both for corporate loans, but also of course for project-level loans. As I mentioned before, React and City 2 were refinanced this year, quite recently.
So we see no issues with financing of our commercial projects or as if for rent or any other projects that we are doing. The dividend that we paid this year, actually, it was PLN 44 gross per share. Just to remind everybody, we paid first installment in February. It was in respect of 2022, and in respect of 2023, we already just paid advanced dividend in the same amount of PLN 22 gross per share. That's all in terms of presentation, and now Q&A.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Maciej. Thank you, Nicklas. Let's start the Q&A session. We usually start with residential, so let's start with offices for a change. I don't know who they like to start, but I have a question about demand. Why do we assume that demand in the office market will increase in 2024? Nicklas?
It depends what demand we're talking about. If you look from the tenants' perspective, we see the demand has already increased. Tenants are coming back to the office, they want to move into the ESG offices and the offices of the future. We see that is what we're delivering, and we see a strong demand for moving into these offices, and they are moving away from the offices they used to have before COVID. If we look at also from a perspective going forward, we think this is like really what... If going forward as the investment fund, that is what you would like to continue investing in. You would like to invest in the office buildings that has long leases. We have long leases, we have in the best location, and also we are having all the strong occupiers there.
What's different between many other markets and Poland is that we have a very strong demand from the tenants to move into our buildings. If you look from 2023, the investors has not been in Poland or anywhere else on the market. We see already now, the investors' appetite are coming back. We see that already now, deals are starting to happen again. My clear theory now is when interest rate has been coming to a level where it has peaked or is very close to peaking, and then if the investor will come back to the market and continue investing where the market is functional, and where we see it is in Poland, and will continue being forward in the locations where we've been present.
I understand. Since you already mentioned it before, but, can you repeat briefly which commercial assets do we plan to sell in next year?
We are planning to sell in 2024. We have Brain phase I and II , we have City2 in Wrocław, and we have React, which is the three buildings we're having.
Mm-hmm.
That will continue focusing on divesting. Here is also that we are at the same time making sure that they are, we're updating all the ESG criteria, we are updating the tenants mix, we are prolonging the leases.
Mm-hmm.
To make sure in 2024, when people are coming back looking at the market, we will have the most attractive offices for sale.
Yeah. Yeah, understandable. And now, let's talk a little bit about our exit routes and our vision for Resi4Rent. Maybe Maciej, could you please walk us through potential exit route and schedule regarding Resi4Rent? Or this is also a question to Nicklas?
Well, no, no, no, I mean, but this is really quite, I would say, specific, a specific question. We do not assume, you know, an exit that would happen quickly. We have a number of scenarios. I think it's not really a place to elaborate on them-
Mm-hmm
... here, but there are specific scenarios, depending on type of buyer, et cetera. We know that it's a great asset, and we know that of course, investment market both in, in our commercial and, and any other asset class, was not, great, you know, 2023.
We believe on the basis of, interest rates, you know, stabilizing and going down in 2024 and beyond, the investor interest, will be much more active. Because we do have investor interest, but it does not, you know, translate into, into transactions. And I believe the main, the main thing, of course, is, is the level of interest rate, which is expected to go down, but also, of course, the political climate. I believe, you know, it's, it's better as stock exchange performance shows. Recently, I think Poland is perceived better-
Mm-hmm
... which is also a factor. But I wouldn't like to go into the specific scenarios of exit. I think it's, it's not appropriate to do it here.
And also, what's important to highlight is that, here we are building value also by the performance of the assets. So if you look at the assets since we invested, how we have been able to drive up both, rents in this asset. So we are creating a lot of value over time, and we are now at 4,000 assets and another 4,000 to be completed shortly. So we are now building up our platform going forward.
Mm-hmm
Like Maciej is saying, this is a product that attracts a lot of investor interest, and also, this is where we have built today is by far the biggest PRS platform in Poland.
Yep.
That will continue growing with excellent locations in the city center. So we are very bullish about this market. Like Maciej is saying, going into the different alternatives of exit, this is not the right forum to go into that kind of discussions.
I understand. Still staying in the living sector, because this quarter, you also mentioned that we are interested in student housing. And our viewers would like to know, given investors in student housing sector are Euro-dominated, how do we propose to ensure a future exit of our developments to international investors?
If you look at all the student housing worldwide, they are in the local currency of that market. You can do part of it in Euros, and we are looking at that one. Investors are looking at this based on it being złoty dominated, and we see this is something that is not scaring investors continue focusing, looking at it. And many of the investors will look both at the residential rent or at the student housing, has a natural hedge on a higher level in their organization. So it's... We are looking, of course, both of them to be, if we're gonna have part of the rent in Euros, but this is not a critical part for continuing developing our student housing, neither for us or for the future investors.
Mm-hmm. Can we share a little bit more about our plans for construction of student houses in 2024?
We are planning to start quite a few projects in this sector in 2024, and we want to get up to be a market leader on that part of the segment. So, and the amount of project we're gonna start and which projects we will come back in the next quarter, too.
Okay. Yeah, thank you. And, let's talk about residential, because it's always the hottest topic. And, could you please provide our Q4 sales update? And, do we expect to sell over 2,000 apartments in-
Mm-hmm
... 2023?
Yeah, this, this, this remains the target. Of course, we are close to the, to the end. So definitely, yes. I think Archicom presentation was just few days ago, and
Yeah, with you.
... and I would encourage—I mean, the way it works now is that, really, you have a lot of details in the Archicom presentation, including project details and with the dates, et cetera. So I think, the best is, you know, not to bore everybody with all the data, to just look at what they are showing there in terms of project starts, and handovers. I think this information is quite detailed. And yes, 2,000 is our target for this year and around 3,000, I would say, for next year. All of that depends also on project starts. We are just starting projects as we speak.
Mm-hmm.
We will be close to that number, but how close, you know, it's hard to say at the moment. Yeah.
Yeah.
We still have one month, and usually December is a month, you know, despite of the Christmas, it's still very, very high activity month. So the sales will happen until the New Year's Eve, I would say.
Mm-hmm.
And also, like Maciej is saying, we are now starting projects on a weekly basis, mainly.
Yeah.
It's like every week-
Mm-hmm
... we're starting a new project that is coming to the market. Based on that, we have such a big pipeline of projects that are in that stage today that we can put on the market, that will be our strengths for 2024.
Yeah, uh-
Also what, what we are doing, which-
Yes
... I think is, you know, not everybody is aware how the market works. Because the offer is, the market offer is really limited, we are actually not focused on selling as much as we can, but we are focused on selling at the right price.
Mm-hmm.
And the problem-
Right
... that we have noticed, for example, in our, you know, Modern Mokotów project, that it was actually selling too quickly.
Mm-hmm.
Which means that the price was not right. So we could have sold more, but what we don't want is to sell at the wrong price.
Mm-hmm.
That's our responsibility as the management to really understand what the market price is. And it's very difficult, because with the market conditions are quite unusual. I mean, the imbalance between offer and the demand is very big.
Mm-hmm.
So it's very hard to say, you know, really, especially if you have 500 apartments to sell, right? Not 30. What is really the right, the right price? So we are focused really on that, I would say a little bit more than on reaching the sales target, which we think is, is less critical. It's more important to sell at the right price at, at the moment, yeah.
Yeah, I agree. Can we elaborate more about the subsidized mortgage program, and what percentage of our residential apartments have been bought with using of this program?
I would say recently in Archicom, it was around 30%, right-
Mm-hmm
... of all sales. But I think Nicklas already mentioned that, that we believe that, many buyers who use this program would buy with normal loans, but it was simply more favorable.
Mm-hmm
... for them to use that program. So, and of course, probably the next question is, you know, what happens, later on? And of course, nobody knows what type of program, if any, will be introduced later once, you know, this one runs out of the money. So, but anyway, we believe that, you know, that this, in our case, because I think it's not the case of all developers, but in our case, the buyers were simply using more favorable option. It was not the only option they had, so it's not the case that they disappear-
Mm-hmm
... in case this program is not continued, but it was the most favorable. So yeah, we believe that there could be some sales impact, but not very big. In terms of value, of course, as most of our projects are in Warsaw and Wrocław, and quite a number of them that will be newly introduced are, I would say, a little bit more expensive than-
Mm-hmm
... than the projects for this type of product. We mainly base our sales assumption on the overall strength of the market and on, not on this particular segment that is benefiting from subsidized loan.
Yeah. Thank you. Let's talk a little bit more about our JV projects, because our viewers would like to know what our suggested income from JVs in Q3 2023 is? How much of it was associated with Resi4Rent revaluation, and how much with Towarowa?
Yeah, I would say most of it was... Again, I wouldn't like to give a very detailed answer, but it was really Resi4Rent revaluation, which was very strong-
Mm-hmm
... based on, mainly on the very good year-on-year NOI performance, so the growth of net operating income. So the majority of it was that, and other JVs, so Towarowa very little and also similarly, Młociny. So it's mainly Resi4Rent.
Mainly Resi4Rent, and, still being on the topic of Resi4Rent, what is the current LTV of Resi4Rent, and what is the average yield, the apartments are booked at? Can we talk a little bit about-
Yeah, I think it's again very specific question. I think that the way we finance Resi4Rent is that we finance this at project level, but also at the corporate level. Overall, consolidated, I would say, LTV is below 50%, is well below 50%. Because we need to remember that at the moment we have also a lot of land, a lot of projects that we have acquired, so they are not leveraged at project level. And the project that are developed and in the investment phase, meaning they are performing, the value increase cost loans to be, you know, really below 50%. So the leverage is very comfortable at the moment. And there was also a question of yields.
We believe that the yields are in, I would say, of course, the yield is very important and it's indication on which price we can exit, you know, Resi4Rent. So I think it's a bit, it's a bit sensitive, and we believe that the cost at which we are developing these assets-
Mm-hmm
... I mean, historically and today, I would put it this way, gives us a lot of room in terms of difference between the yield at which we are developing-
Mm-hmm
...or running these assets, or potential yield at which we can exit. I would like to leave it at that because I think it's a bit sensitive discussion right now.
Mm-hmm
... in terms of exit, but we have plenty of room, and I think that we are growing that platform much quicker than other competitors, I think.
Mm-hmm.
Because we, we have a way to develop the assets on, on a very favorable development yields. Meaning, you know, NOI divided by, by total development cost, and, and I think that's something that gives us a big comfort, and, when we exit, we will exit at, you know, at a, a significant profit.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. And, I think that we still have time for the last question, maybe to you, Maciej. How potential return of tightening of monetary conditions in Poland could affect our business?
Well, I think it's a macro really question, and of course, we are both in PLN and in Euro, right? In Euro is affecting our commercial business, so the question was really more about a part of, you know, Polish environment.
Mm-hmm.
So in terms of financing, of course, you know, there could be an impact, not on loans on project level loans, which are mainly hedged, right? So in Resi4Rent-
Yes
... we do have, PLN loans, which are majority of them is, is reswapped, so it's not, something that, that would have immediate impact. But of course, we have bonds and, so far, we are benefiting from actually, decreasing, interest rates, in bonds, and we— I would say we do hope it will be that way. So I— mathematically, of course, you know, if the rates go up,
Mm-hmm
... we have higher costs, right? But we do believe that they may not go down as quickly as we would wish, right?
Mm-hmm.
But the path of them going down is quite clear.
Okay, thank you. I think this is it. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you to the viewers. Thank you for joining us today. We tried to answer all of your questions. If we haven't, either Grzegorz Iwański , our Investor Relations Director, and me, will answer them directly. This was the last presentation, this calendar year, but we'll see you in March to summarize our activity in the whole 2023. Thank you, and see you.