Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today for Echo Investment midyear results presentation. Today's presentation will be held by Nicklas Lindberg, CEO of Echo Investment, and Maciej Drozd, CFO of the group. Maciej, can you please start the presentation?
Sure. Thank you. Let's look at the results of the first half of this year. I would like to start indeed from updating you on our continued support for refugees from Ukraine. We started that immediately after the start of the war, and we continue to do that. We offer them shelter in our office buildings, which are temporarily not used. They are used as office buildings. They are used for refugees. We actually have space that can be used in case of bigger need, and we are definitely prepared to continue this support throughout the winter as needed. Let's talk about you know the world that we have around us and how we are preparing for the times ahead.
Last 1.5 years when we started, you know, to get out of COVID, we focused on certain elements of our business. What we achieved is we created strong land banks with advanced permitting, that will help us in the future. We have very high level of leasing in the projects of commercial projects, mainly office projects, which are over 90%. Retail is fully let. We have outstanding Resi4Rent performance in terms of leasing. We are practically fully let. What is very important is that we reduced over 18 months our net debt from around 47% to below 30%, and we had a very strong cash position. If you look at our balance sheet, it was over PLN 1 billion of cash as of end of June.
What specifically are the challenges that we see, and how we think the short term and the long term will look like? Of course, construction activity is the core of our business. We are building. Construction costs are extremely important. We have seen strong growth of the costs after the war, but after that they started to stabilize. What we definitely see is the much lower activity of residential developers. We believe that this decreasing activity, which is decreasing the demand for construction services, will impact and mitigate the costs. Looking forward, we believe that the costs will stabilize and we will continue to manage the costs by working directly with subcontractors and using very strong cost controls, because it's very important for the profitability of our projects. Residential.
Of course, as everybody knows, there was a very significant decrease in the level of activity in the Q2 and also in the Q3. What is balancing the decrease in demand, which is mainly caused by the high interest rate environment, is the fact that the offer coming from developers is relatively limited, so it is still at the healthy level. Most importantly, many developers stopped starting new projects. We think that this will definitely help to keep the prices relatively stable with the demand from buyers focused mainly on centrally located and high quality projects. Less in popular segment, which was the typical segment, which required high participation of bank financing.
The buyers which will still be active are cash buyers, which will focus mainly on higher quality and very well located projects. This is exactly our offer. Long term, as I said, we think that there will be continued balance of supply and demand. We don't expect the prices to drop, despite the fact that the demand is clearly lower. What we think will happen in the market is that the market will consolidate, because it will be not possible for smaller developers to continue work. As long as the environment is characterized by high interest rates, we think that this consolidation opportunity will continue.
Resi4Rent is actually a very clear success story, and of course, it's linked to the residential market, because it's addressing the same need, which is a need to, you know, to have a house, to have home. When people cannot satisfy that need by buying, they will need to do that by renting. We see very strong year-on-year increases in rents. And I think everybody knows that there is practically no vacancy in the market. It's very difficult to find a vacant apartment. As a result, rents have grown 30%-40% year-on-year. We are active on this market already since 2018, so we are very well positioned to grab this opportunity.
We accelerate the start of new projects, and we plan to start the construction of 4,000 new units this year. Of course, it's a record for us, but it's also from market perspective, if you look at other residential developers, it's extremely high number. We absolutely believe it's very much supported by the environment, which is very favorable because of the demand, which is not short-term demand, but we believe it's a long-term feature that will stay with us, and we are very well positioned to deliver to people who need to rent. It's not only short-term, but also long-term opportunity that we are very well positioned to make use of.
Commercial segment, which is office, is interesting because during COVID, developers started to build much less. We see very clearly that there is not a lot of new projects which are available, but the demand is actually strong. It's driven by a new entrance to the market. Companies who relocate from the east, from Ukraine, and other eastern countries to Poland. They relocate their headquarters, they relocate the offices, and of course, this creates a new demand, both on long-term, for long-term rental, but also for short-term rental. We still continue to see a strong demand from investors and, you know, we'll give you more details on that.
They come from the region and that's a new thing that we see many investors coming from neighboring countries buying office projects in Poland. Our plan here is to continue to work in this segment and to benefit from this increased demand. One thing that is important, you know, to highlight is that we also see a strong rent growth, which is both explained by the demand, as I mentioned, but also by the fact that all the rents on this market are indexed with inflation. In this case, this is euro inflation because, you know, these office buildings are rented in euros.
Still, euro inflation is also high this year, so this will cause the whole market to go up, which is very important for us because it gives a very good reference point for new projects and improves economics of these new projects. Retail. We continue to see post-COVID growth of consumption, very clear signals that people prefer in-person shopping. We have very strong footfall growth, both in Libero and Młociny, which are our two retail projects. Of course, there are some challenges that we see, but so far we see that there are very strong signals coming from consumers that shopping centers, our shopping centers are a preferred way to buy.
We are preparing, of course, for the challenges which are linked to the growing cost of energy, which impact our tenants both in retail and in office and, you know, we'll speak a little bit more about that later. Let's focus on what are the drivers of our business. First, in Resi4Sale , we have actually a very well-targeted offer, which is, at current level of demand, I would say of perfect size because we don't need to accelerate the sales. We are very comfortable with putting new projects on the market, which we are preparing for because, you know, our offer is exactly of the right size for the moment.
Resi for rent, I already mentioned, you know, a target of opening 4,000 units, of starting construction of 4,000 units this year, which is driven by very high rent increases and very strong demand. In the commercial segment, what is important is that we continue to go through permitting. We achieve important milestones in that area. We've recently got a master plan for Kraków, for new destination projects, which we are very proud of. To implement, you know, all of that, of course, it's important that we have strong cash position, which allows us to execute on these opportunities. In particular, in the first half of this year, we had stable residential sales of over 1,000 units.
We handed over 755 apartments, which is of course responsible for a strong revenue line in our profit and loss. We started new projects in residential segment around 1,000 apartments in the first half of the year. In commercial segment, we not only opened MidPoint71, but we also sold it and the same with Fuzja. We are very happy that projects which are just finished were immediately sold in the first half of the year. We are working on our land bank, in particular on Towarowa 22 project, where we have a new partner, which is a perfect partner for the type of projects that we are working on. In the corporate area, we continued to issue bonds and be active on the financial market.
In the Q3, we are, you know, continuing getting master plan. We continue to issue bonds. What is also very important, and I will talk about this a little bit more in detail, we acquired 1.4 million of Archicom shares as a result of the tender that was just completed. If you look at our financial figures, you can notice very strong revenue growth, year-on-year, you know, first half of this year compared to the first half of this year, and strong growth of net profit, over, you know, 30% higher, this year compared to a year ago. If you look specifically at the Q2 numbers, they were broadly in line with consensus, as expected.
If you move, you know, your attention to the balance sheet, you know, you notice what I already mentioned is that our net debt continues to decrease over the period of 18 months, and it's now below 30%. That was due to the fact that, as I mentioned before, we continue to dispose of completed office projects, and of course, there is a plan to do more of that this year and early next year. We are on path to generate more cash from these disposals. Now let's move to the segments.
Yes. I will talk about the residential part of our segment, which is a very important part of our segment. Like I explained before, our business is consisting of multiple different legs. Now when we are in the more difficult times, it's important to understand the importance of being, having these different legs to stand on. I will talk about our residential, that has been very strong and continue being strong as we are, like Maciej said, in the right locations. We have our Resi4Rent that is growing extremely well. We have our offices, and we have our retail. If we look at the highlight for our residential, we sold 1,000 apartments.
If we look at our land bank or ongoing project, like Maciej said, we're roughly nine months of sales based on the sales today that we have on the offer, which is a really good measurement that we are really perfectly in balance with the market. We don't have a lot of stock out there, and we continue selling in line with our targets to have 80% sold at the completion of a project and another 20% within coming six months after the completion of the project. We are also, like we said already at times, and I'm repeating it over and over again, we are focused on a profitable growth. For us, the target is not to push to start a lot of apartments. The target for us is to continue delivering stable margin on all the products that we're having.
If we look for, like Maciej said before, the struggle today is in the popular segment. We have very few, if I say none products today that are in the popular segment. We are focusing much more on getting into this segment where there would be much more of cash buyers. If we look at the market consolidation, you'll see that the whole market is going down. We are going down slightly slower than the market, which is a good signal. The prices stay constantly at a stable level. There is still a household shortage in Poland that will not disappear shortly. Poland is still among the ones that is most overcrowded in the countries. There will continue being a strong need of increasing the amount of apartments that are coming out to the market.
Here we're having the benefit inside Echo to either choose between Resi4Sale and Resi4Rent, and we will talk more how we balance that now going forward. Looking at Echo, we are still among the top players in the market where we're being present. Our focus here is to continue delivering high margins to our shareholders. We are having a very strong land bank that we will continue building on. We'll continue selling in at a good pace. We sold 1,000 apartments in the first half of the year, and we will continue selling throughout the rest of the year. We will also see, going forward, we will continue starting up new projects.
We will not start up as many as we said before, but we will start much more in the central locations, and we will focus on the major central parts of the capitals of the cities. It's super important for us here. We're gonna continue building in Resi sale. We think this is a market that will come back again. For us, it's important to start the right product. The rest of the land bank, we're gonna continue on getting permitting on that part of the land bank to be ready once the market is picking up again to start up a lot more projects. What you will see here, which is interesting to look, the number of sold apartment in the major cities of Poland, how it has decreased. It decreased by 50%.
If you look in the Echo group, we notice only a drop of 40%, which shows also that we are continuously having products in the right location that will continue selling. Here you see the handovers. We are according to plan. We always have a very strong Q4, where we'll hand over a lot of apartments. We are confident that we will hit our targets of handing over the apartments throughout the years, and we will have done that all the years before. This is something that we continue working on to be able to hand out the right amount of apartments year by year. It's important here also when you look at it, we are constantly having a strong margin in all the apartments we're handing over. We are today around 34%-45% margin on the products that we're handing over in residential.
That is a very, very strong margin. We are focusing here to keeping that margin at that high level. If for the one of you who remembers our presentation back in time, this is always what we focused on. You can also see if you go back and look at an earlier presentation, the strong growth of margins that we had throughout the quarters in our residential business. The offer here is a slide that I think is very, very important to look at because, we have said here that we are constantly gonna have roughly around a year of stock under production. This is a good measurement that you have the right balance of the project you have ongoing and what you're selling. To clarify now, we have also adjusted our stock to our new sales target.
We will continue having the right amount of projects ongoing, and then we are gonna continue focusing starting up the projects in the right location. Why I'm stressing out that is when you have this and you will be able to hit the 80/20, we will not be rushed into lowering prices or doing other things that you need to do if you see that your sales are not catching up with your construction pace. We have just went through our projects, and we see all our projects are performing really well. The sales are in line with the production or slightly above, and we're gonna continue focusing on this going forward. Sorry. Me and Maciej will be much more involved here as well, looking at we start up the right projects in the right location.
Going through our pipeline, you will see we have very many Warsaw projects to be started up in Warsaw. In Archicom, there is a lot of apartments we still see started up in the central part of Wrocław. You will see it's a very, very strong land bank in the cities where there is a much higher margin than in other cities. I'm very positive about how we will continue developing our Resi4Sale business. What also we have seen here, we have a land bank that is now up to over 12,000 apartments. This is a land bank that we feel very confident with. Looking at, like Maciej said in the beginning, we have a strong cash position. We have reduced our net debt.
Of course, we're constantly looking at what kind of opportunities come up in the market, and we are very, very sure there will be some kind of consolidation in the market. We are monitoring this closely to be in the right position once that comes up an opportunity for us. Resi for rent is a very interesting part of the market. We started this back in 2018. We have continued growing our business. We've been very consistent. We have close to 2,500 apartments. By the year-end, I think we'll be closer to 3,000 apartments. What's important here, we've been able to increase our rents with 30% year-on-year, which also shows that we have a very, very strong portfolio. We are 100% leased in our portfolio, and we still are managing to continue increasing the rents.
We also see in our newer location that we are renting it up quicker than we have assumed, and the renter rebates are not even existing in today's market as there is a shortage of apartments in all the different cities where we are present. If you look at the target that we have communicated, by 2024, we will have around 10,000 apartments either completed or in the advanced stage of completion. Out of this, 9,000 is already secured, and we are now, as we speak, securing the last 1,000 apartments. We see also an opportunity this year to start up 4,000 new units. We believe that starting up now is the right time. We will hit the market at the right moment.
Also, we are of the strong belief that construction prices will go down based on there will be less demand for construction services on the market. We also see that there's a clear demand, and we have really identified the real niche of the market. We have a platform that can continue growing with the right amount of people inside the platform. What you see here also, we continue securing financing for the platform, and the platform is continuously growing. This is what you see. We are spread among the six biggest cities around Poland. We are continuously growing in all the cities. We always have the strongest amount of apartments in Warsaw. Today, we are roughly 50% of the market, and we will continue growing with the market share to have a dominant player on the Polish market.
This is a very important slide. If you look at the overcrowding rate, how many people live per apartment in Warsaw compared to other markets. You see still that Warsaw or Poland is very much an overcrowded market. Here it's important to see that we see this trend, and we will continue seeing this trend, that this will be decreasing over time. Also what we have seen now with the higher interest rates is a lot of people that used to buy apartment before are now going into renting apartment instead. We think that will be something that is also both benefiting the Resi for rent business but also will benefit our Resi4Sale business. Because a lot more investors will invest in Resi4Sale because they will see the opportunity to be able to rent it out at higher prices than they did historically.
Also both, the Resi for rent business and the Resi4Sale business is a good business to be in in these times. What also is interesting to see here is if you look at the housing stock, how is it represented in apartment for rent versus apartment that are today owned by people? Like we said before here, roughly 4% today is apartment that are for rent. We have said here, if that only goes from 4% to 5%, which is 1%, that will amount to another 150,000 apartments. This is really showing 1% will generate a massive uplift for the Resi4Rent business in Poland. What we've said here that sounds like an aggressive target, but we will get up to 10,000 apartments. It's not a very, very aggressive target.
It's a strong growth from our side, but there's a huge gap to be fulfilled here in the market. I think going forward, you will see this gap being filled step by step, and you will see the rental market getting stronger. Here we have the first mover advantage, and that's why I say it's so important for us to continue growing throughout this year with another 4,000 apartments. You see here that in all our developments, the rents are going up, and that is because there is so much more demand than there is supply. This is the supply gap that we are continuously trying to fulfill going forward.
This is something that you will see now, and you will see in our coming presentations how we're working really to be able to start up all the apartments that we have in our pipeline. Here we're talking about what I said before, how we continue growing, how we are starting up new units, and how we will get to our target by 2024, having 10,000 units either in operation or very close to be put into operation. We are very, very happy that we started early with this. We are now pushing strongly to continue growing this business. Here you will see for us, we see our Resi business as both Resi4Rent and Resi4Sale .
You see now how quickly we can move in the Resi4Sale market that is slowing down to be able to start much more in the Resi4Rent segment. Also, to be clear, the whole Resi4Sale market is not slowing down. What's slowing down today is the popular segment that's depending on mortgages. This group of clients, we are catching up in our Resi4Rent business. In our Resi4Sale business, we are much more focusing on the cash buyers that want to do this as an investment. To do it in investment, you need to be in the city center of all the biggest cities around Poland. Here you see our breakdown.
We're gonna continue having Warsaw as the biggest part of our markets, and we are also focusing now to continue growing in the other strong markets, where Tri-City is a part of the market where we're focusing now on continue growing in. 'Cause we see a strong demand for more products in that part of Poland. Here you see our projects, just to highlight where we are and where they are started. Here you see the amount of projects that we're starting up now in H2 and how they are spread across all over Poland, and this is that. Really, this is our focus. We are gonna continue growing the business. It's an important part of our whole company, and this is owned jointly with PIMCO, 30% by us and 70% by PIMCO. Our commercial business.
What you have seen during COVID is that the offices were struggling. People were staying much more at home than going to the offices. We were constantly saying that we believe that people will come back to the offices. Time has proven that we are correct. Our buildings are leased up to a very high ratio. We have been able to divest the four buildings. We are opening up new buildings. We are continue having strong interest for our new buildings as well. Also, what we're seeing now with higher energy prices and higher cost of electricity and everything, people are moving back from the home into the offices. We see our offices, especially Brain Park, that is in the last stages now of being completed at year-end.
The leasing is now up to 70%, and this will make, like I said before, that we move this project into the divestment stage of that project. Here what was the project that we have sold so far in Fuzja, MidPoint71, and West 4. This is the three more projects that are planned to be sold by the year-end. All these projects here, we are in advanced negotiations. We're continuously talking to the investors. Also what we're seeing here that is a good dialogue, both with the investors, with the tenants, and also with the banks. This is the project that we are planning to sell early next year. That is based on that we feel that at that point we're up to the right leasing level, and then we can be able to divest the projects.
What you see here, we have been able to sell through the first half of the year. We'll continue selling through the second half, and we will move that in even to the first half of 2023. What's important here is that we look at our land bank. We have a strong land bank that is working very well for us. We will be able to start up new project, because one of the effect of us divesting that much will be that for the future, we need to be able to start that new project. The good thing about the new projects, they will hit the market in the coming two years, where we will be ready developing the buildings.
Like Maciej said before, there's a shortage of a new office space coming to the market, and we will do this in the area of the destination project that has been proven to be so successful, both in Łódź, in Warsaw, and in the other locations. Like we said before, shortly we will be able to tell you much more about Towarowa. That is our flagship project that will coming now after what we've done at the brewery. What we think here is, the limited supply will drive rental increases. There will be two things that are driving it. Inflation will drive it, like Maciej said before, based on that, the inflation on the rents that is already signed will drive the.
Will drive the rents, but also what will happen here, there's a limited supply, and there's limited supply in the best locations that will drive the rental increases. One other thing that is happening after COVID is when people are coming back to the office, they expect so much more than an office. We see how much more people that are coming into our destination project and how many more people are coming to the office every day. The importance from that, from all the tenants that are talking to us, is just increasing. All the things we did with food and beverage and how we connected that to the offices is really paying off. We sold Fuzja C&D, that was a big tenant for Fujitsu here.
This is really showing that how you will be able to create a totally new city center within in which what we have done here. This is super important that we will continue building this project that has the combination of old and new, where the future meet the past. It's all of these things, how will we be able to create places that are really making a difference, both in the cities, but also for our tenants. MidPoint71, we sold, and I was yesterday visiting MidPoint71. It's a fantastic project. 80% is leased up. We have more tenants looking at the space than we have space there. We are very confident that this is the right thing, and we are excited of starting up our next project in Wrocław. Moje Miejsce in Włochy.
In Warsaw, we are now getting at least 90%, and we will shortly be at least above 90%. This is also showing the attractiveness of this location and how we will continue building destinations, 'cause here we have offices, and we have residential, and we have also food and beverage inside these areas. This is really showing how we can create new areas within the cities. Face2Face, 100% leased. 100% now is what we're doing now. We're talking to all the tenants, and we are also here making sure that everybody comes back to the office, and this is also in a very advanced stage of the divestment of the project. Kraków Brain Park, like I said, we have now hit the threshold.
We are 70% leased, and we will start to market this project like we do with all the rest of our projects. This project is consisting of three phases. What we will market is two first phases. Third phase will be ready at a later stage. In all these things what happen with offices is that people are coming back to the office, but also the short-term offices has increased in importance for the whole market. The philosophy always had that there should always be a part of our offices that is co-working or CitySpace in our area, has really shown that this was the right way of approaching the market. What you have seen here, we are filling up all our locations.
We are filling them up at higher rent that we have anticipated, and we think this is just the beginning of a new trend. You will see much more of us growing our CitySpace into new locations, and we're also looking at how we can do that as a complement to the conventional space, where we see a lot of tenants want to have part of their office as conventional lease and part of the office they want to have as co-working. Here we can give them the both these functions within the same building. Here you see that we are being present with our co-working business in the same properties where we're being present with our office business. This is super important. This is a big part of our business.
This is a part of our business that we're gonna continue growing, and we are now up to 12 locations, something that we will continue growing. Another thing that is very interesting, which I think Maciej addressed in the beginning, our shopping centers are performing very, very well after COVID. We see a big increase of footfall, we see a big increase in turnover, and we see especially in Libero that has been that convenient shopping center that everybody wants to come to. This is really showing that we have done the right thing. We have worked with our tenants. We have replaced the tenant mix, and we are focusing much more on being that convenient center that is really supporting the area around.
'Cause this is a center around 40,000 sqm that is really important to be close to your customers and close to what's happening around. What you see here, we are constantly opening new brands. We are replacing the brands that are not functional, but the center constantly stays at around 100% leased, and it really is a strong way of showing that we are picking up. You see turnover is picking up strongly and will continue picking up strongly for the coming six months as well. Młociny is much more of a bigger center, and here we see we are slowly, step by step, increasing. Turnover is increasing dramatically. We are taking bigger market share in Warsaw. It's clearly on the right path, and we will continue growing this both this year and next year.
Once we feel that these centers are up in the level where we think we are performing at the level where we are happy, and we see the market is there, then we will of course look at ways of divesting both, Libero and Młociny when we think the time is right, and we will get the right value for the centers that we're having. The strong thing about Echo, we have all this competence in-house, how we run the centers, how we make sure that we get the most effective out of the centers, and how we continue making sure we have the right tenant mix in all our centers. Permitting. Kapelanka, like we said before, it's. There is a new master plan in place, and we are now working as the master plan comes in force. We will create a new destination project on this area.
We see clearly that destination projects is the things that are working, and we are really focusing on to be able to deliver that going forward. What we also should remember. There is today a shopping center standing at the plot that is performing really well. This is one of the projects. We are working on the plan, but still we have a very strong cash flow in the background that is helping us to take the right decisions going forward. Cracovia next to the railway station, a fantastic location. We have two great locations in Kraków that we're gonna continue working on. Here's also a master plan. This will be another destination project that we're delivering.
With these two projects, we are very, very confident that we will take a leading position in Kraków by delivering this destination project that is really what we see that there is a big need for in all the Polish cities. ESG, if you look for our ESG, we talked before about the reports we're doing, all the materials we have created. Here we want to take it into more of a concrete way of looking at it. Our new projects, both Kabaty, you're looking at Towarowa, we are recycling 90% of the waste from those projects when we're demolishing it, which I think is the ultimate proof of ESG to make sure that we are not, by demolition, creating more waste into the environment. Instead, we are making sure that what we're doing can be recycled into new roads or to other functions.
The steel can be recycled into new buildings. What we're trying to do in our projects is to integrate the old structure into the new development, which is very, very important in any destination project that you're building.
Let's look at our financials in more detail than before. Once again, our net profit for the first half of the year was over 30% higher than a year ago. If you look at the details on this page, you will notice that it was, you know, the main driver was, of course, the margin on the residential sales, which was very strong both in Echo and in Archicom. As Nicklas explained, this is one of our priorities to keep the strong margins because this is, I think, right thing in this environment. This is obviously a driver of our result looking forward.
If you look at our balance sheet, you know, again, in more detail, you see that we continue to have assets which are under ongoing divestment process. You see that we have less assets held for sale than before, and we'll continue the disposal process, as Nicklas explained, you know, during the remaining part of this year and early next year. You will also notice, you know, this strong cash position of over PLN 1 billion. If we move to the, you know, liabilities part, you see that our short-term debt decreased, that our long-term debt is stable, that also our equity is stable. As a result, our net debt ratio is below 30%, which we think is important.
Of course, we need to remember that you know significant part of liabilities is linked to the assets which are held for sale. They will disappear simultaneously with the disposal of these assets. In particular, if we look at our cash position and versus the bonds maturing, we see that you know it's this position is comfortable. Indeed, if you think about 2024, we are already preparing you know the plan to refinance this ahead of time.
We are definitely, you know, active on the bond market and will continue to be active, but not only there, because I think, as I already highlighted, you know, a quarter before, we are working on other options, corporate financing linked to euro, because as you know, our assets, commercial assets are euro assets, so we are comfortable to keep at corporate, not only on asset level, but also on corporate level, some euro debt. This is what we are working on, and we'll continue to work on that actively in the next quarters. Very important event which was just completed, we just signed and acquired Archicom shares as a result of the tender.
We acquired almost 5.5% of all Archicom shares. As a result, we are over 71% shareholders of Archicom as of now. The result is within the expected range when, you know, when we started the process, we thought it's the opportunity for some investors to exit residential market will be welcomed, and we offered this opportunity. We are satisfied with the result, and now we will work together with Archicom on the plan to for Archicom, you know, to continue to develop in the residential market, which of course has its challenges that we discussed.
We strongly believe that, you know, together with the investors who decided to stay, that it's a market that long term it's obviously fundamentally strong, and it's a matter of time where, you know, we will see the benefits of that decision. We'll focus very much on that part. As a reminder, I just wanted to remind you that we paid a second part of dividend actually in July, so it was already in Q3. Our total dividend for 2021 was PLN 0.44 per share. Of course, that's, you know, paying dividend is part of our program. We do have dividend policy, as you remember, and we'll continue to be active also, you know, in that area.
I think that's all for now, and maybe we can move to Q&A.
Exactly. Thank you very much, Maciej and Nicklas. We received a long list of questions, so we will not be able to answer to all of them. At the same time to some of them, like Kapelanka for example, we already responded by showing the slides. I will try to ask as many question as possible. The first question, Nicklas, it goes to you. Do you expect a further increase of Resi4Rent rents and also a Resi4Sale prices? What's your view on that?
My view on that is, on Resi4Rent, we are already now seeing further increases of the rents. That will of course be very closely linked to inflation and other things that you will see on the market. We are strongly believers that the rent of Resi4Rent will continue growing with the rents for a foreseeable future. If you look for the Resi4Sale, it's more of a diversified question. What I will say that in the city centers, the rents, the prices will continue going up because there will be buyers and there will be very limited supply. If you look at the popular segments that is more depending on financing, we will see more that the prices will go down. It's depending which part of the segment where you will see.
As I said before, we are focusing on the locations in the city centers and not in the ones that are in the popular segment. It's also depending on how your stock is looking and how much you have under sale, how much you are in pressure to sell. What we see, we see a stable market, we see a Resi4Sale market that will stabilize at a lower level, but also there will be a supply at a lower level. We think we will see a market that are in balance but at a lower sales pace than it used to be.
Following on that question, we received a more detailed question. What gross profit margin on apartments deliver next year is achievable in your view?
It depends where I'm delivering my apartments. If it's in Warsaw or if it's in Poznań or it's in Łódź or in Kraków. It all depends where we're delivering. If you would see, we don't see that we will deliver less margins in next year than we're delivering this year based on the products that we are having handovers of next year.
Thank you very much. Maciej, next two question goes to you.
Mm-hmm.
Are we going to issue more bonds that are connected to the last tranche of PLN 95 million?
Right. Yeah, of course, we still have the prospectus, which is ongoing, which is still valid. As I mentioned before, we are definitely continue to work on that and we'll continue to work not only on the so-called retail bonds, so based on this prospectus that you mentioned, but we'll continue to work on the bonds and other products. Because as I mentioned, it's not only bonds, but it's also other financial instruments that are coming from banks or other financial institutions, not only in PLN, but also in euro. Yes, we do. We are active.
Mm-hmm
We continue to be active.
Another question, Maciej. We received a very interesting one, but probably a bit complicated. If you could deep dive a little bit more into this area. What are the implications of strong euro for Echo Investment?
Yeah. Actually, you know, as I think I already mentioned during this presentation, you know, a significant part of our assets is valued actually in euro. Shopping centers, commercial buildings, office buildings are valued in euro because we receive euro rents. Technically speaking, if euro is higher compared to zloty, I mean, if euro exchange rate goes up, then the value of this asset is increasing and as a result of that, our net profit is increasing as well. We are actually, I would say, hedged, right, in a positive sense, that you know, strong euro is actually good for us.
What is happening, you know, right now, so euro at the level of, say, PLN 4.6-PLN 4.7 is actually helping us, as opposed to weaker euro. That's actually in the current environment. This shows the benefit of, you know, this diversification, right?
Thank you.
I think also, Maciej, we should clarify that is also something that if you look at the debt side, it's important that we continue having more debt in euros as well to balance these two. We have a natural hedge of increasing our euro-denominated net debt that is today at a much lower level than the PLN. That's one of the things we're looking closely into.
Yeah, that's what I mentioned before, that, you know, that's one of the areas we are exploring in order to benefit from that. Really the effect would be that our interest costs are lower because of course, you know, still interest in euro is lower than interest in PLN, yeah.
By doing that in our business, we have a natural hedge.
Yes. Yeah.
It's
Great, thank you. Nicklas, one of our viewers was passing by Towarowa 22, and he noticed that the building is under demolition. Can you tell us a bit more what are the plans about the project, and what CapEx can we expect still this year?
We will shortly come back to you with more information about Towarowa 22. I can only assure you will be excited. This is a fantastic project that we are super proud about what we've done on Browary Warszawskie, and we're gonna be even more proud of what we're gonna deliver on Towarowa 22. Shortly we will come out and show the whole plans, what we're doing here, and just doing much more of a bigger presentation and what's gonna happen both 2022 and also 2023 going forward. We will come back with more of a big brief of the whole project.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. Maciej, we received many questions about financing in Resi4 Rent sector. I will try to combine all of them so that you can provide some answer.
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we don't want to go into the details.
Mm-hmm
Because of course, what you already said is very technical. It just, you know, construction or investment financing of specific segment. I think what I would say is that, as we mentioned in the presentation, you know, our projects are financed, right? Of course we use financing for construction purposes.
Mm-hmm.
It is absolutely not obvious in the market. I think it's important to stress that because we do that already from 2018, we built, you know, confidence of the banks, and we built the team, you know, to manage the assets, which is very important. What we can see is that many other projects are not being financed because there is lack of track record, because there's lack of team that can, you know, give bank confidence that the project will be completed. Our projects are completed, you know, on time, on budget. They are rented very, very rapidly, and I think it is. I believe it's because we have an excellent team, but also because we started to do that in 2018 and not today, right?
Mm-hmm.
If somebody starts today, I think it will be very difficult to catch up this opportunity quickly. It will simply take time. You can say other people can do that, of course, but it will take time. I mean, the financing is both in PLN and euro. I mean, we are using both types of financing. That's fine for different reasons. The margins you know are similar to the margins that you have on office financing, you know, et cetera. It's only that the base rate, if it is in PLN, is obviously higher, right?
Clearly, financing of Resi4R ent is a challenge market-wise, but I think we manage it very, very well. We are very well positioned to benefit actually from the boom in the market and build, you know, these 4,000 units.
Mm-hmm. Thank you very much. We have time for the last two questions. Nicklas, in light of the growing interest rate environment, do you see still feasible to dispose our office schemes that we presented on the slide?
We have high quality office schemes. We are talking both, like I said before, both to institutional investors and to banks. We are at the moment seeing that we are moving forward with all the projects. We are very confident that we're gonna continue delivering our projects. The only thing you can say today is that the market is now at the moment in a situation where it's a little bit challenging on all the different markets. I think with our unique buildings and the track record we're having and the strong leasing, I am sure that we're gonna deliver great results both for this year and also for 2023.
The last question would be about next year and starting new projects. Can you already tell us a little bit more about that? Or you would like to say it a bit later in this year or at the beginning of the next year?
It depends what. Are we talking office projects?
Office and residential.
The office and residential, we are focusing on starting projects in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, and that's what the main focus we're gonna have going forward. These are the three biggest and strongest markets in Poland, and that's where we're gonna continue pushing on starting. Natural to say that we talked about Cracovia here. We have talked about Towarowa. That is of course an interesting project as well to look at. Like I said also during presentation, we have another project, office project coming up in Wrocław, as we have sold off MidPoint71. For us, it's important to continue starting up new commercial project as we are now divesting of most of the ones we're having. As we've been very successful in balancing our construction with our leasing.
We are very, very well leased up in all our projects, which is the security buffer that you need to have as a developer. If it takes a slightly longer time to sell them, you know that you will always get rental income in the period in between.
Thank you very much. With this final answer, we reach the end of our session today. There are still some questions that remained unanswered, but either me or Emil Górecki will respond to you immediately. Would you have any more question after this presentation, please contact us as well. Once again, thank you very much for joining us today and hope to see you next time in two months.
Thank you.