Good morning, everyone, welcome at the Echo Investment 2022 financial results. For those who don't know me, I'm Weronika Ukleja, I'm the company Spokesperson, I'm here, of course, with Nicklas Lindberg, our CEO, and Maciej Drozd, the company's CFO. Without further ado, Maciej, please take it away.
Thank you. Thank you, Weronika. Welcome, everybody. Let's look at our results. This time we would like to start from talking about one particular project. This project is Towarowa 22, and it's the largest destination project in our history. I think everybody here is familiar with our Browary Warszawskie project, which was huge success. Is an example of great architecture and also a fantastic commercial success for the company. We strongly believe that Towarowa will go, you know, in every measure will exceed Browary Warszawskie. The project actually started in a sense that we already demolished, you know, the old structure that we also presented recently an updated design, and you will see shortly the details of that in the form of the movie.
The project will be mixed use like brewery, so it will comprise Resi4Rent, resi for sale, office part, and also retail and services on the ground floors. What is very important, it will also consist of a very large green area, of a green park of 2 hectares in the center of Warsaw, and we are very proud that we will be able to do it. Without, you know, further delay, please have a look at the vision and at what we want to build.
Imagine a place where you can comfortably live, work, rest, and spend your free time. A place full of greenery that's in harmony with nature. A place open to all, including residents and tourists, where one can enjoy peace and quiet while being in the center of the city. Since that is where we are, in the middle of Warsaw's Wola district. This is where we have created a unique project, a place that's easy to get to and somewhere you'll wish to stay for longer. We're in one of Warsaw's former industrial districts, and this is the largest printing house in post-war Poland, otherwise known as the House of the Polish Word. We want to leave a visible mark of its industrial past.
The entrance building of the former printing house, with its amazing architectural design, will lie in the center of the project, whereas the hall's characteristic structures are going to be applied throughout the spacious park. Together with the project's investors, Echo Investment and AFI Europe, we're transforming this plot into a mixed-use section of the city, combining offices, apartments for rent and for sale, as well as space for restaurants, services, and culture. A sustainable district where each particular usage complements the others. We have come up with the idea to bring what is most lacking into these buildings: greenery. The key central element of the project is to be the 2 hectares park surrounding the pavilion, with trees growing through the former structures. Wronia Street is the access of the composition.
It is a kind of model street for us, where you'll find both elegant shop windows and cafe gardens, but it is also a place filled with greenery. People will be able to move around this area easily. Our intention was for the former printing house to take on a new significance, for this industrial site to become a place open to everyone. In the design of this area, we were guided by the idea of restoring nature to the city and fostering interpersonal contact. It was also the idea of building a mixed use district in response to the needs of the local community, a place that attracts people, a true destination.
To sum up, we are building 200,000 square meters here, and residential for sale part will be done entirely by Echo, and the remaining commercial part and resi for rent part will be done in joint venture with AFI, which is our partner. As you can see on the film, the vision is fantastic and we are absolutely convinced that it will be also a great commercial success. On this slide, you see all our destination projects, and I would like to remind you that Echo is a company that is focused on that. That's one of the pillars of our strategy to build destination projects. You can see that we have them in Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, and Poznań. I would like to focus on one of them, which is Vita.
This is a project near the old town in Kraków, very well located. It is smaller than Towarowa, around 40,000 square meters. Because of its fantastic location, we believe that it will be also very, very successful. You can see some visualization here. Of course, like all destination project, it will comprise different functions, so it will be mixed use in a very center of Kraków. Let's now look at the broad perspective. We move from destination projects, in particular from Towarowa to our segments. Before we do that, I would like just to give you a sort of a picture where we were at the end of the year, in terms of our balance sheet and performance.
You will notice that we had a lot of cash at the end, over PLN 900 million, that we have a strong land bank in residential for around 12,000 apartments. Our commercial assets were highly leased up in a strong leasing environment. In December, we sold one of the largest projects that, you know, we built and also in the market-wise, one of the largest transactions in office market outside of Warsaw. It was Face2Face office project that we sold for around EUR 113 million. Our Resi4Rent segment that we have in JV performs very well, that all apartments are leased and the rents are growing very strongly.
You also notice that we in December, we refinanced a big part of our bond debt, and also that during the year, we reduced the bond debt overall by around PLN 95 million. Our net debt in particular was very low compared to last year's. That's of course, also part of our strategy. We have a very strong balance sheet and very well-performing assets, and we get into a new phase of our development. Let's look at the segments. Residential segment, of course, last year, was under pressure coming from high interest rate from inflation. The sales market-wise, were much lower in 2021. What we see now and what we are focusing on as Echo is that already in Q1 this year, the market improved very significantly.
It's very noticeable. If you compare Q1 to Q3 of last year, the difference is very, very big. We see that not only cash buyers are buying now, but we see more and more people who finance their purchases with bank credit. We believe that the momentum that started in January or maybe even in December last year will continue throughout this year. We think that it's right time to buy land, it's right time to start new projects. Indeed, if you look at our residential segment, you will notice that this year we are starting new projects, in particular in Warsaw, where there's a lack of product. We believe that this project that we are starting will be very successful.
Resi4Rent, of course, everybody knows that there is a lack of apartments for rent, and we see that very, very clearly in our portfolio with a strong increase in rent. We stick to our plan, which is to build 10,000 apartments by end of 2024, early 2025, because absolutely, the performance of the market, the demand from clients supports that plan. We already think about, you know, going even beyond what is already secured in the portfolio. You know, Nicklas will talk about that a little bit later. Office segment, similarly to Resi4Rent, not as strong, but it is visibly performing, meaning that we were able to close a number of leasing transactions. Of course, we are successful, but also the market is supportive.
Market is really allowing us to work according to plan. We completed last year 5 buildings. The buildings that are completed are leased very highly, and as I said, the leasing performance is good. We focus right now on starting new projects, and we focus also on selling projects in 2023. As you know, we sold in 2022 7 buildings in 4 projects, and this year, we plan to sell another 3 office projects to the final investors. Also in this segment, not only in residential or Resi4Rent, but also in this segment, we are looking for new plots for new projects, and we are starting also projects on the plots that we already own.
You know, based on the market performance, we believe that this is the time to start new projects, to buy land, and to expand these segments. Retail assets are generally performing well. In particular, of course, our assets, Galeria Mokotów and Libero, but also we see that the market is relatively strong. The year-on-year turnover is growing, and we are rather optimistic about the performance of the assets that we own, and we focus right now on achieving targeted NOI before disposal of these assets. Construction market is very interesting. Of course, there was a lot of talk about growing construction prices for a long period of time.
We see that because of the less projects started in residential segment and also, you know, other segments, that there is more and more capacity in the construction sector, and we see that reflected in our ability to reduce construction prices. We believe that the environment from that perspective is supportive and should allow us to achieve higher margins through lower construction costs.
That's actually, you know, if you sum up what I just said, you see that the outlook that we are seeing is favorable, meaning that this is the outlook where we should invest more, we should start more projects because we believe that the market is really supportive from operational point of view, so that these projects will perform in terms of leasing, in terms of margins, in terms of cost reduction, and that's what we are doing. Let's look again and the main highlights of our business. In resi for sale, as I already said, we are focusing on central located projects in larger cities because we believe that they will perform strongest in the market that is coming back.
That's what we start actually in, in Warsaw shortly. Definitely this is one of the, of the main focus points at the moment. In Resi4Rent, we focus on doing our plan of building 10,000 units, but as I already mentioned, we already look beyond that. In commercial segment, of course we plan to complete the leasing and sell finished buildings, and we are definitely also starting new projects, in particular, Towarowa. One of the office buildings in Towarowa, we are very much focused on starting this project still this year and actually quite shortly, hopefully. In corporate part, I would like to highlight that the bond market is performing better and better, especially this year.
We are confident that financing is definitely available for our projects. If you look at, you know, individual segments, we sold over 1,500 apartments, as I said, in the, in a difficult market and also in a environment where we did not have enough product, in particular in Warsaw. We handed over 2,000 apartments. In commercial segment, we sold 7 buildings and this created liquidity of, you know, coming from the sale of the level of around EUR 300 million. In the land bank, in permitting, area, we are very satisfied that we achieved master planning Kapelanka, which is another destination project in Kraków. In corporate part, again, we are very active in the bond market, and we achieve financing for all our projects.
Already in 2023, so after the balance sheet date, we are starting Towarowa 22 project. We are progressing with the leasing. We are issuing bonds. We also, just to remind you, paid a dividend that was approved last year, but it was paid this year in the amount of PLN 90 million, which is 22 groszy per share. Our financial performance was slightly better than expected by the market in the consensus. If you can look at Q4, we had a net profit that was exceeding the consensus. In the whole year, net profit was PLN 127 million, based on almost PLN 1.4 billion of revenue.
Let's now look at the segment. Nicklas?
Thank you, Maciej. If we look at the residential part of our business, like Maciej said before, we sold 1,515 apartments last year. Here I want to stress out this is not the long-term target we're having in Echo to sell 1,500. We want to sell between 3,000-4,000 apartments per year, that's the target that we're pushing forward to as well. During last year, we were having a shortage of new land plots that was went through the permitting stage, especially in Echo. We see now that that is coming forward much quicker than we saw before.
We think in this year we're gonna start up a lot of the new projects, especially in Warsaw. If you look back at our total land bank that is up to 12,000 apartments, it's really showing the potential that we have to continue growing. It's important from this point of view is how much we are having as big developers, we can continue growing, we can continue to develop on this market. If you look for the market consolidation, what we see here is the bigger developers are getting bigger and bigger. We see that it's gonna be more and more coming out from the bigger developers, and that is the way how we can continue growing. We see potential of putting a lot of new products in the bigger cities in the market.
We focus especially on Warsaw, where we have 3 or 4 new products coming up on the pipeline, which all of them are big, and all of them will hit the segment that were really a lack of new products in the market. We are very positive about starting up new products. We think we will build fewer products started. We see also, like Maciej is saying, that demand is coming back here quicker than we expected. We see prices staying at a high level, and we think this is the market that we will continue growing on.
On the other side, we also see that there's come a lot more land for us that we have the possibility to acquire now, where that one is a positive effect of the lot of divestment that Maciej showed from you from last year, where we built up a very big cash bulk in the company that we will now continue investing both in new products and also in new land. If you see on the list here, we still stay among the top developers. We still have the target to get up to 3,000-4,000, we will now continue climbing up. Like I said before, the focus on Echo has always been to have a strong margin in all our products.
We're gonna continue growing in all our segments, but we're gonna continue focusing on having a high margin that will develop a great shareholder value. Here you see how we're selling among the different cities. What you see here between 2021 and 2022, that we had a dramatic drop in the sales. This is what we are catching up now again in 2023. We're starting up a lot more new projects. What you see here is Warsaw. That's gonna be the main focus for 2023, where we're gonna start a lot new projects. This is also where we see the biggest potential. If you look for that in our market, we see this year we start a project in Warsaw, we'll start a project in Wrocław, we start Poznań, Łódź, and Kraków.
In all these markets, we are starting up new products. Our Wrocław business has a lot of products ongoing, and they have selling very, very well. Like Maciej is saying now, we think this year will be a year of strong sales. Also we think there will be a very limited supply on the market, which will give us a very big advantage by having a strong land bank. Lot of products in the advanced permitting that we can start up and deliver to the market. The handover of the apartment is continuous, going in a good space. We are now continue handing over a lot of apartments in Q1, and we're gonna continue focusing going forward to continue having a stable flow of handing over apartments. Here is coming back to the handovers.
The important thing you should look at here is the slide on the bottom of your slide, where you see that we still have a margin of 34% for the group, which is a very, very strong margin. This margin, we are seeing that we continue defending going forward now and will even increase when we are then expanding our supply that we're having in Warsaw. If you look from Echo point of view, we have a current offer in the different cities that we are focusing now on growing. 'Cause here what you see now is that we have a very low offer in Warsaw. We have a very low offer in Poznań. This is where we're gonna now this year, stably increasing that offer with very, very interesting products that we're now putting up here. This is all big destination products.
What you will see now when we present going forward, you will see an increasing offer both in Warsaw and Poznań that will lead to much bigger sales. This is a very exciting year for us going forward in our residential business, we are now ramping up to come back to the 3,000 - 4,000 units that has been our target. You see here we have a land bank of close to 12,000 apartments, which is defending the target that we're having of selling roughly 3,000 - 4,000. 'Cause we should have a land bank for between 3 to 5 years of production always in our land bank. What we see now, this is also, like Maciej said, a year where we will be able to acquire much more land than we've done historically.
The Resi4Rent, we have completed close to 3,000 units. We have increased rents. This year, we have above 30%. We have a very, very strong land bank with up to 10,000 units. We're gonna continue, like Maciej now, looking beyond the 10,000 units. We see here that we are one of the few continuous growing in this segment of the market. We're gonna continue starting up a lot of projects. Like Maciej said before, we are in a beneficiary construction market where we see prices continuous going down, but will benefit us in our Resi4Rent, in our Resi4Sale, and in the office part of the business. Also in our Resi4Rent business, we have now during the year got EBRD financing that is helping us to further grow this business.
What is interesting here, if you look at it, we are today roughly 40% of the market, we're gonna continue being around 40% of the market going forward. I think if we look at it today what's being started, I think we are gonna be above 40% of the market in Poland, and we're gonna continue growing our pipeline here. This is such a big potential on the market with this Resi4Rent. We see this is of something that has just started, and it will just continue growing and growing and growing. Here we have the forefront as we started this business five years ago, and we have all this in-house team, we have all the experience, we're building up all the tools. I'm super excited about this business.
I think the strategic decision we took 5 years ago to go into this business is really paying off today. We're just in the beginning, if you compare to many other modern Western markets like Germany, like Sweden and others, it has a much, much bigger institutional residential market than you see in Poland. This is something we're gonna talk about much more. Here is a lot of hidden value creation in this business that is gonna be released as we are then showing more evidence on the market where the transactions are happening. Here we're showing about the rental growth. You see this is how it's continued growing across all our different cities. We think now that we're gonna continue seeing growth. We have a lot of people looking for new apartments.
Here is like for us, continue delivering great products in the best locations with attractive setups in rent, and also delivering the right product to the market. We think here that we are one of the leaders in this market, and we're gonna continue driving this market going forward. Here you see also how we're having it. We have 3,000 in pipeline. We have under construction, another 3,000, 4,000, and we're gonna have another 3,000 in the pipeline. The target to get to 2024, late 2024, early 2025 with 10,000 is very, very feasible. When you get up to 10,000, we are really having that critical mass. You remember us talking back, we talked about 5,000, then we delivered the 5,000, then we talked 7,500, now we talked 10,000.
We're gonna continue growing this going forward to be able to to satisfy the market needs. Already when you are the leader in the niche, it continues growing. That leadership is the crucial part for all our businesses. As you remember, since we have been talking, Maciej and me, since the beginning, we have always said we're gonna be number one to number three in all markets where we're being present. Here we are clearly number one in the Resi Rent. If you see our portfolio breakdown, you see how we are in the different cities. We are gonna continue expanding in Warsaw, where we're gonna get an even bigger share of our business into Warsaw. We are already now seeing the potential acquisitions in Warsaw that we have not seen before.
We will here use the market where it's other developer might have a more struggling position, where we are coming in, we have a stronger cash position and can acquire more and build now when there's less construction at lower prices. In two years, we will hit the market that is then much stronger than it is today. In all our businesses, we are trying now to go in full speed and move against the cycle. Here we see a breakdown of the different products, what we have under construction, what we have in operation, and what is in preparation here. Our commercial business, I think this is super exciting going back to 2022.
We managed to sell seven buildings, out of which we did the last transaction in December for an office building in Katowice for close to EUR 113 million, which is by far the biggest transaction outside of the regional cities. I remember we got a lot of questions during the year, will you really sell all of these things? I think what we showed now is that in all markets, our products are that attractive, so they will be transacted. We continue seeing now for 2023 that we have another attractive pipeline of products that we're gonna put on the market, and we have already now seen big interest of them. We see a leasing market coming back, but we see a lot of leasing on all our different products.
Like Maciej said, now we have leased up React in Łódź to above 80%, we continue now in the coming months to get closer to 100%. That product will then disposed. This is really something that we are seeing with us being able to divest all this product, being leased up, the ones we're having, give us a perfect opportunity to start up new product like Towarowa, like Swobodna, like M- Park, like all the products we're having around in our portfolio. This is really the right time for us to continue growing our business. Here is a picture of Face2 Face in Katowice, which is a beautiful product. It's 100% leased, sold to investor in Q4.
This is really where we see that when you have the right buyer looking for quality product in the regional cities, it's really paying off to be able to deliver this and also to show to the market that Echo can deliver sale of office buildings no matter where the market is. Here is the start of the new project, where you see Towarowa, like Maciej talked, an office building of 31.5 thousand square meters. Swobodna we've got the first phase of 16,000. In Kraków, another phase of 27,000. Why we're starting up Kraków now is that our project Brain in Kraków is now getting up to leasing above 80%, when it's time to us to start up the next project. All these three projects are flagship projects in the city center of all these three cities.
We already now see strong demand from tenants. This is also a project that will come to the market in two years, where this will be attractive for many, many investors. By doing what we're doing today, we will be able to hit the market when there is a lot of tenant demand, but also where prices are much lower for construction than it was 6-12 months ago. As I said before, we are now this year going to sell the four buildings. My Place II that we said before, that is in a very advanced stage, we'd shortly come up with more news about this.
React, Brain, and City 2, that all of them now being fully leased up and all now talking to investors about how to take the next steps. Here we also have a strong land bank in all the different cities, where the three cities that we're mainly focusing now is Warsaw, Wrocław, and Kraków. These are the three cities that in all times, no matter market is, we'll continue divesting our products. We also know, like Basia said, we see the opportunities of continuing increasing our land bank. This year will be where we're looking a lot to increase our land bank, both in offices, in lease of rent, and in lease of sale.
We're doing that because the market is now giving us opportunity to buy land at prices where we think is attractive, and we can make the returns that we think are the right returns for our shareholders. What we see here as well is that there's a limited supply that will drive further rental increase. We see it already now. Rents are increasing. There are tenants coming to us looking for new products. We see that the cost to build is also going down. We think now, and also on top of that, all the new buildings we're delivering now is fully ESG compliant. This we see a lot of new tenants looking for this one. They want to move into our new buildings. They want to get the new feeling. This is also one of the drivers that brings back people to the office.
When you come to a new super fresh building, you get a new fresh start, and it has all these ESG criteria. It has all the greeneries. It has all the things that you want to come back to the office. We see a strong drive coming back to the office, a strong drive coming back to the new office buildings that we are delivering. We are now up to 80% leased, and we continue now leasing on the last square meters of this building. It also shows in which you need to be much more advanced with your building. You need to be in the end where this building is standing there, and then you are leasing it up. It's really the way that we're gonna continue developing. CitySpace has always been a nice add-on to our business.
We see they are now filling up in all the different locations. We see that it's really the first step when people are coming back to the office, they go into the CitySpace locations. We see many new tenants that are taking space with us are decreasing from the space they had before to less space in our new locations. By that, they also want to have the option to have CitySpace in the building. We are now up to 12 locations in CitySpace, and we're gonna continue growing that in all our new buildings going forward. This is what I talked about before, how we are present in all the different cities. Now we are present in the Aequo buildings, and we are now close to 4,000 workplaces across Poland.
Galeria Libero has always been a project that I really focus on make sure that it's a beautiful project. It's in retail location that really makes sense. We have now increased turnover year-on-year. We're up 40% in turnover to a year ago. Footfall are up 35%. It's really showing that people are coming back to the centers. We have changed the tenant mix. It's a lot of value add into the shopping centers. There's a lot of value add fashion tenants and really showing that people want to come back to shopping centers. You only need to make sure that you have the right product, that you can really deliver what clients want here. We see this trend continues growing. Like Basia is saying, this is one of the centers that we continue growing the NOI, we continue growing the footfall.
When we get up to the satisfactory level, then we will put this product for a divestment. Galeria Mokotów is a bigger center. It will take us more time for it to be stabilized. That is why we continue working on this. We see really that it's the turnovers is following the same trend as we see in Libero. We see we continue working it, we continue expanding the center. This is really two centers that are on the right track. We're still gonna put a lot of more work into the both centers. Libero is gonna be on the stage where we can divest it quicker than Galeria Mokotów, but they are both in a very positive growth, and they are all, both of them going in clearly in the right direction to continue being the profitable centers that we developed.
ESG. Do you have this? We have an ESG strategy that we have implemented now for 2030, where we're gonna reduce the CO2 emission, we're gonna have more greenery, we're gonna focus both on the planet, on the people, and on the stakeholders. This is something that we've worked actively with throughout the years, and we are very proud of this, and we're gonna continue focusing working on how can we improve, how can we contribute much more to the ESG, and how can we contribute to the society, both by planting trees, by doing destination products that we're doing. How do we get heating? How do we get energy to our buildings? We want to be the responsible company who takes care of the planet and our people. This is also another positive thing that we do.
We continue supporting the Ukraine's refugees. We still have our center open here in Warsaw. We were visited there. We were very prominent visitors. It really shows what we're doing. We have had this center open for more than a year, and we're going to continue having it open to continue giving that support because I think that is very, very important for us as a company and in our ESG philosophy to be taking care of the people that are in need. Over to you, Maciej.
Thank you. Let's look again on financials now in a little bit more detail. To repeat, a net profit of PLN 127 million for the year. It was driven then to big extent by margin that came from residential segment, but also, around 20% of that margin came from commercial segment, from rents and different services. That was a good composition in total, percentage margin was around 35%, including commercial part. Fair value gain was good in offices. I think we see that the market should be performing in terms of actual sales and realization of the profit that we show.
We also focus right now on preparation for the sale of Libero, as Nicklas mentioned. We expect that actually the accumulated fair value gain that we show on this project will convert into cash in the near future. Balance sheet is strong. As I mentioned before, we have a high cash position of over PLN 900 million. We have assets held for sale, My Place, City 2, and also some other assets in the preparation to be sold in 2023, which will both increase cash and reduce net debt.
This will give us a lot of power and flexibility to expand the parts of our business that we want to expand, which is residential, by increasing our land bank and continue growth in Resi4Rent. If you look at our liabilities, what is quite clear is that, you know, they went down in particular short-term financial debt, because, you know, this debt is always linked to commercial assets. When they are sold, it automatically goes down. The net difference between asset value and the debt, you know, shows up as cash. This helped us to reduce the net debt ratio well below 30%, with a potential to go even lower when we sell further assets.
Again, this confirms that, you know, we are in a very strong financial conditions. Cash position is compared to maturity of our bonds, again, is high. We don't have a lot of bonds maturing in 2023. We will nevertheless continue to issue bonds in 2023. We are more focused now, as we already did in December on refinancing 2024 and 2025. We were very successful because in December we refinanced 20 2024 bonds to 2027. It was PLN 180 million. Definitely, that's one of our focus points for this year. We are paying dividend.
We paid last year PLN 0.22 in respect of 2021. We declared additional dividend, so advanced dividend for 2022, which was paid in February. We continue that policy according to our long-term dividend policy. We'll continue to do that as well. Actually, that's time for Q&A.
Thank you, gentlemen. I think it will be easy to start with the subject that comes up on every presentation. What about the price uplift in the residential sector? Maybe Nicklas, would you care to start?
We see. It depends where you are here. We see a price uplift in the all the segments of our residential sector. We see especially Warsaw will have a dramatic price uplift because there's so little supply. Like I said before, we have beautiful project, three big destination project coming up in Warsaw. We're both Towarowa, we have M-Park, and we have Ordona. That are three really big projects that we are super excited to put on the market. For us here, it's important to say that we are continuing growing our residential presence, and we're not happy with the 1,500 apartments we sold last year. This year we're gonna exceed 2,000, and then we're gonna complete 3,000, then 4,000.
We are clearly on the path on continue growing our residential presence in all parts of the segments. For us here is like both we see a price uplift, we see construction costs slightly going down, and we see the part of our pipeline now going through the permitting stage, which is really, really exciting as this is big part of a value creation to get these 12,000 apartment in land bank up to be started projects.
Okay, thank you. If we are in the subject of residential, we received a lot of questions regarding PRS. Our viewers want to know if you have some guidance regarding the Resi4Rent revenues in 2023. Maciej?
Well, I think if you, if you look at our project, I mean, we don't give, you know, specific guidance for the total number. Of course, if you are an analyst, you can look at our financial statements where we give project-level data, with, you know, NOI and the dates. In the current environment, we are actually consistently exceeding our expectations. If you look at, you know, for the, for the last 12 months or even longer, if you look at what we are achieving compared to what we are planning, you know, it was always higher. I think that performance is very strong. Of course, you know, we are not right now in a phase where we actually take out cash from this segment. It is being reinvested.
Mm-hmm.
Of course this means that we don't need to invest as much because, you know, revenue is actually paying for the growth of the platform for new projects. Again, we are not taking cash out, but we can, because of strong lease performance, because of EBRD financing, we can actually grow platform, and now, without significant equity investment, which I think is, is a great thing, because it's to big extent self-financing.
I think that is something that is very important to highlight, like Maciej is saying now, but this is nothing that we're focusing on the NOI at this stage. We want to grow it up to 10,000 units. We see a lot of interest. We get financing both on the product level, we get financing from EBRD, we need to put in less equity, the business is continuously growing with 4,000 units now this year. So it's really an impressive business, where we are now continuing focusing on continuous growing it. Like Maciej highlighted, we've a limited equity cost to be input into the business.
Okay. Following up on that, still sticking to PRS sector, do you see any visible yield uplift in the PRS in Poland?
Of course, yields are moving as interest rates are moving. I think what's interesting to see here from our point of view, we had a rent uplift of 34%-36% last year. If you look for us, even if you look into yield shift here, the total volume of the deals is still getting much bigger than it was a year ago based on that rent has moved much.
Mm-hmm
... much more than the yields has moved. Also, if you want to go into Poland and invest into Resi4Rent, you will then give a premium for having a very, very big platform with a management in place to be able to... You will go from directly into the market to be a market leader-
Mm-hmm
With potential to go, grow enormously up to new heights.
Okay. Thank you. Switching to retail. I think you mentioned it before, but can you talk a little bit more about plans regarding the disposal of Galeria Libero?
Galeria Libero is now stabilizing. It's still not up to the levels where we wanted it to be, but we see now it's coming up to the levels where we think it's interesting to start to talk to investors.
Mm-hmm
and see the potential and what you can do with an asset like this. We have now changing on the tenant mix, we're having an attractive scale. There's a lot of people coming in there, and the footfall and the revenue is increasing. We are still in the early stages of this one, this is nothing that we are highlighting, especially at this presentation.
Yeah.
This is something that we will come back to clearly during the year.
Mm-hmm
... and give more information about.
What about retails part of Towarowa 22? Our viewers want to know, do we plan any bigger retail part in this destination project?
It will be very similar to what we've done on the Brewery with restaurant, cafes.
Mm-hmm.
It will be the retail that is really adding on to the resident offices building there. There will be no retail in that aspect. It will be retail that is serving the people and the offices and the surrounding areas with gastronomy, pharmacies, all this add-on retail. There will be no retail in the meaning of retail centers.
I understand. Thank you. Regarding the valuation of our commercial project, we have a question regarding our cap. Have we decided to lift our cap rates in Q4 in 2022? Do you think that there's another yield uplift that can follow?
Well, I think we are, of course, constantly, you know, reviewing our evaluations, right? Of course, because of the increase of the Euro rate-
Mm-hmm
... right, in 2022. Recently, of course, the cost of financing increased for the buyers-
Yeah
... which affects the yields. The, the good thing for us is that it affected our projects relatively, you know, in a relatively small way, meaning that the yield shift was relatively small. We also need to remind you that there's a rental growth coming from indexation.
Mm-hmm
that was around 9% year-on-year. Also, the supply is relatively small of new projects.
Yes, true.
We believe, especially in Warsaw when we start Towarowa and, in central projects like, you know, Swobodna in Wrocław, we see that we can achieve, you know, better rents than before. It's a little bit similar to Nicklas, to what Nicklas mentioned in Resi4Rent. You have the effect of higher, you know, cap rate. But you also have the effect of higher rent, right? To a certain extent, this offsets each other. Of course, in the case of office products also, euro rate, you know, foreign exchange rate, euro to zloty is important. If it's high, then our profit is also high. There's a number of factors that influences that. As I said, we are constantly, you know, reflecting this and of course this also affected Libero last year.
We market to market, so at the moment of sale, we basically convert, right? What is showed as a profit, we convert into cash, right? If you ask me, should we expect more, you know, yield expansion, of course this depends on what's going on with the interest rates in Eurozone.
Mm-hmm.
That's sort of a bigger question. At the moment, you know, all expectations are already priced in in the cost, they are priced in in the yields. We see that investors are active, which I think is very important that it's not, you know, a theoretical valuation exercise, but we are able to convert these values into cash. We sold, you know, that many office projects last year.
Mm-hmm.
We have very active processes for the assets that we showed during presentation to be sold. And also Libero, you know, will soon enter this path. So we think that the assets are, you know, priced in the right way and we focus on, you know, turning this into cash.
Thank you. And, you mentioned interest rates. Our viewers, they would like to know if we see any risks regarding the increase of interest rates concerning, for example, our bonds?
Yeah. That's of course sort of a macro question, right? Meaning that, it's not specific to Echo, right? It's everybody is subject to the same, you know, to the same market forces, both in PLN and euro. Of course, it's, you know, it's something that may change and there's always a risk. For the time being, what we can see in, you know, how people behave, how our, you know, investors behave or how the buyers behave.
Mm-hmm
... for residential for sale apartments, it seems that they believe, you know, that the further increases are not likely, at least people who buy from us. That's I think the approach, and I think that's how we also explain what's going on in residential for sale. I mentioned before that we see more and more buyers who support themselves with credit, right? With bank loans.
Mm-hmm.
Of course it's not as big as, you know, two or three years ago where the debt was very cheap, but it's much bigger than it was in Q3, Q4. It's a clear trend, and I would explain this trend by exactly that people start to believe that it's a time, you know, to get.
Mm-hmm
... because the likelihood of interest rates going up is low, right?
Yeah.
I think.
Time is now.
... that's how the market seems to be going. Yeah.
Thank you. If there's not anything that you would like to add, I think that we are finished with questions. If there's any question that remained unanswered, it's like either me or Grzegorz Iwański, we will contact with you directly via email. Thank you so much for joining us today, and see you very soon during the quarterly results. Thank you.
Thank you.