Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the analyst presentation for FY 2023 annual results announcement that were made earlier today for both Hang Lung Properties 101.HK and Hang Lung Group, 10.HK. We welcome the audience who are at our newly renovated office at Hang Lung headquarters in Hong Kong, and also the audience who join us through our live webcast. My name is Joyce Kwock, and I'm the General Manager of Investor Relations at Hang Lung. Today, our senior management team is here at our Hong Kong office to join the presentation. They include Mr. Ronnie Chan, our Chair; Mr. Adriel Chan, our Vice Chair; Mr. Weber Lo, our Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Kenneth Chiu, our Chief Financial Officer. At this time, Ronnie and Adriel would like to give a few words, which I'm sure all of you are looking forward to. Weber will then share some highlights on our results. Adriel might go through some of our key milestones on our sustainability side as well. After that, we will address the questions from the audience, from both here and through the webcast. So Ronnie, would you like to start first? I assume you meant that everybody's looking forward to it because I'm leaving. You're right, I'm resigning, retiring. Retiring, not resigning, but anyway, I'm 74. And we have... Huh? You're young. You're right, you're right. So while you're still young, you want to do a lot of things. And the succession plan is really basically 10 years in the making. So it's nothing new to us internally, to our long-serving non-executive directors. They were very much involved in the whole process. So much so that, I remember one time, a few of the directors, because one of them live in America, three of us flew over there, just to have a meeting, to talk about these kind of things. And that must be, what? eight to 10 years ago. I'm glad that, you know, it worked out the way it did, because things may not work out, right? What if you've got a dummy of a son? In which case, you know, better not do it, but it turned out okay. I think that we are also very happy that under the leadership of... To judge how good or how bad Adriel is, he was charged with hiring a CEO. So if you think our CEO is good, then Adriel must be okay. If our CEO is no good, then Adriel is no good. So, your judgment. Anyway, thank you for all the support all these years. I think it's been a good ride. I will be a non-executive... No, I will not be a non-executive director. I'll be off the board. So the title that the board chose to give me, Honorary Chairman, is just a titular title. I have no vote on the board. I can attend meetings, but, you know, basically, I'm out. And so for those of you who don't know me, over the last 20 years, you know, I have involved- I've been involved in many nonprofit organizations that I think some of you know. For example, I was a global chair of Asia Society, based in New York City, for seven years. I was the chairman of the One Country Two Systems Research Institute for 15, 20, for about 20 years. I was the founder, the main founder and founding chairman of a thing called the Asia Business Council that I built. So, you know, these are organizations that I've been intimately related to for a long period of time. And yet, you know, when it's time to go, in every case, you know, basically, I told the board, "I think it's time for me to go," and I go, and don't meddle around. Let them, let the younger generation do their job. But on the other hand, recognizing that the family is still the controlling shareholder, we own, you know, 40% to 50% of Hang Lung Group, and then the group owns about 61% of Hang Lung Properties. So, you know, we basically have control. And so, to protect the family asset, I'll be watchful, but I will not be meddling. So, I trust that you will be seeing me here and there. Somebody asked me: "Would you write the letter again?" The answer is no. Number one, it's a lot of work. Number two, unless the board want me to write, which I doubt, because if they want my views, we can just close the door and talk ourselves. We don't need to let the world know. I have no obligation to let the world know what I think. But when you're the chair, I think it's my job to let the world know what we are thinking. We are not the most profitable company. We did okay. We created some shareholders value. But I think that, if anything, I pride in the fact that we're probably the most transparent... in the real estate sector in the whole of Hong Kong. I think our board is probably the most genuinely operating as it ought to be, as it ought to operate. I just frankly see very few of such in the whole sector in Hong Kong, and in much of Asia, probably. So, that is something I think we can be, proud of. We, our risk management is good. We are, you know, relatively conservatively, geared. Our risk control systems are good. The audit committee is in charge of that as well. No other family-dominated company, will have the chair's salary dictated by, the non-exec directors. But this company, for the last 20 years, whatever, has been... No, 25, 24 years, my salary is determined by the nominating committee. And, their salary is not determined by me. I recommend, but it's determined by, the board. So, you know, a lot of these kind of things, corporate governance, ESG, I think we are among the best. As you will hear, there are only three companies that has the, what? AA standing. Oh, this is MSCI. Yeah, and the MSCI, and we are one of them. So I think that, there are many things that we can be proud of. But looking forward... Well, maybe I'll talk about how I see the market later, if you guys are interested, and let, Adriel say what he want to say first. There's not a whole lot to say, really. I think the path that we've been on over the last several decades is very clear. The strategy has been enunciated many times, and there's no expectation for deviation from that. We've done it, we've done it, I think, fairly well, and so there's no need to adjust in a big way, at least. Obviously, we have to react to the market quickly and effectively, but that's just BAU, business as usual, as far as I'm concerned. I think in terms of all of our colleagues, our day-to-day will probably more or less be pretty similar to what it was over the past several years. You know, Ronnie's given us a lot of space and a lot of leeway. We make our own decisions. It's only on very, very large decisions where we seek more input from, from him. So actually, you know, you know, knowing it or not, we've sort of been operating in this fashion for, for some time now. So I, I don't foresee any dramatic change, at least not in the near or mid-term future, beyond what we need to do as responsible shareholders and, and management to react to the market. Thank you. So, now Weber will go through the ten- Yep ... highlight slides. Thank you. Yeah, I think this is more routine part, and I think that is more interesting, right? That's interesting, too. Our core business, I think maybe I just focus on the P, then of course, it's similar. HLP, the core revenue, on the rental side went up by 3%, underlying up by 1%. I think you all know the headwind was mainly coming from the devaluation of renminbi, averaged down by 5%. So I think in the later page you will see, that actually have a big drag of that. We keep our dividend at HKD 0.78 for HLP and HKD 0.86 for HLG. I think this page, we introduced a few years ago, now I would like to revisit them. Net debt, inevitably, we will go up a little bit. At the same time, interest cover is still at a very, very healthy level. Also, in terms of net debt, it's about HKD 45 billion, which up by HKD 5 billion, mainly coming from all the CapEx that we put into mainland, to make all the construction on all the Hangzhou, and Wuxi, and Kunming, and now almost close to the completion. Our sustainable finance went up from HKD 46 billion to HKD 55 billion, which is a great achievement in a few years' time. And we also focus on our fixed and floating in the offshore lending, which is the Hong Kong dollar. Mainly, we keep it at 50-50, like last year. The borrowing costs inevitably also go up from 3.5% to 4.3%, which is back to our 2020 level. This is... I think this is a really one page to summarize all our financial management. Okay, as I mentioned, the renminbi depreciation on average at about 4.7%. If you look at the H1, H2, the H1 was down by 6.1%, and H2 was down by 3%. So therefore, if you look at our mainland rental revenue, it went up by 8% in renminbi terms. And also, we would like to also highlight compared to 2021, because we all actually remember 2021 was the peak for the domestic consumption in China. At that time, we also went up by 9% in terms of renminbi. However, in the last two years of depreciation of renminbi, when translated into Hong Kong dollar, it's only 3% versus last year and flat versus two years ago. So basically-... If you just calculate quickly, renminbi depreciate by 9% in the last two years. Hong Kong rental revenue went up by 2%, the first time in the last four years since 2020. It's still a bit lower than 2021, -1%, but it's more or less flat. But at least, the momentum went up, mainly driven by the retail recovery. Okay, Mainland, as I mentioned, 8% growth year-on-year. But I would say a lot of you, I'm sure, will look at half-on-half and year-on-year and all that. So I think the key, for me, I would like to highlight, is the H1 is 13% growth because of the low base of 2022, because of the Shanghai lockdown. But however, the H2 also we show 4% growth. 4% growth, as we discussed in July, I remember when we have an interim, a lot of you mentioned, after that, that we are very cautious. We indeed cautious, and then we are correct. The slowdown start in the middle of May. Actually, everyone feel it, and now basically it shows, but we can still show a 4% growth in the H2 of 2023. The mix between retail, office, and hotel, more or less unchanged. You can see that, the hotel side went up because, you know, right now the domestic travel resume, and then you can expect that the hotel doing better business. Okay, this is retail, 8%. As I mentioned, 13 in the H1 and 3% in the H2. Okay, this chart I think is worthwhile for us to take you guys through. Overall tenant sales in H2, with all the things slowing down, we are still showing 7% versus H2 of 2022, and 3% versus so-called golden year of 2021. So I think sales is there, and one thing I want to elaborate, I remember in the last 3 years, every one of you asked, overseas spending, economic slowdown. This is the combination of both, right? The first, the H1, you can argue the people going to overseas are gradual, but H2, basically, everyone travel. Everyone—basically, if you go to Shanghai, Beijing, and all the Tier One cities in the Christmas or in the, in the Labor... Sorry, not Labor Day, the, the National Day, you can see a little bit more quiet than the last two years. But actually, I will just remind my team, it's exactly the same before COVID. When more people can afford to travel, normally when we have seasons, we have festival, people will start to travel. So I think this combination of slowdown of economy as well as the overseas spending resumption, the good news is we are still showing 7% growth and 3% growth versus two years ago. Luxury mall, although you can see that come down to 5% and 3%, sub-luxury mall resumed big time, back to 32%, and also back to 21.4%. Right? So I think, I think they are very sensitive to footfall, and when the footfall come back, the sub-luxury mall sales actually increase accordingly. Next page. Okay, this one, I think everyone may have concern, but to me, I don't think it's a concern. I think it's kind of expected. As I mentioned, 7% and 3% for the overall H2. However, if you look at Shanghai, yes, full year, 25% because of the lockdown in 2022. But compared to H2 of 2022, we are just -1% with the combination of overseas spending and economic slowdown, right? Compared to the golden year of H2 of 2021, yes, it down by 9%. However, the full year of 2021, as you all remember, all the sales triple up, in one year or two after the COVID. So therefore, now we can finally visualize and tell you, okay, now, the impact of overseas spending and economic of slowdown, there is an impact. But especially in the Tier One city like Shanghai, like Beijing, like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, I would say may be the same. Shenzhen, even though a lot of people in Hong Kong talk about going up, but they go up for a low-value spending rather than luxury spending. So I think it's kind of similar kind of pattern. But the good news for our portfolio is that at Shanghai, you can see H2, 18% compared to 2022, and 21% compared to 2021. And they keep more or less the same percentage of the full year. So that means our property outside Shanghai, the growth rate continues even with the slowdown and overseas spending. Next. Office. I'm sure you heard in the market quite quiet. The good news is, we are still showing you 5% growth. I think we are doing better than the market, driven by, I think, our old properties like Plaza 66 doing really well with the positive rental reversion, and also some of our property outside Shanghai having a higher occupancy. So I think this one still continue to contribute to our revenue, and now the absolute level is quite high because half a year, basically, it's cost HKD 1.1 billion already in terms of the sale in terms of the revenue which is sizable, account for 20% of our business. This number we introduced a few, maybe last year or the year before. I think it's important for us to look at the customer data and see where are they coming from. If you recall, our, our sales was 23% growth. This is exactly more or less similar to our member sales growth, 22%. This year, 22% is different from used to be, because you can see that the valid member increase, that means we activate, not only acquire new member of 23, but we activate a lot of inactive members to be active again, right? After the COVID, after the opening of China and all that. So these days, I think the key is, in old days when we are in COVID, we just need to find those top-end customer to shop luxury, and we are done. Now, you need to get every single one, to spend with you. Even though the average spending come down, but you can see that the penetration is the same, and also the spend, member sales actually increased by 22. And I can share a little bit more here, is that everyone may suspect the top-end customer spend less, because obviously spending and all that. Actually, in contrary, our top end, which is Emerald and Sapphire, they spend more and average spending is more. The only part which we see to drag the whole economic cycle is the Amber and Ruby. Because if you are the lower end, you feel the economic pressure, you are more cautious, you may have a bonus cut, or you may have some difficulties on jobs, and those people are spending less. And that's why we need a lot more of those people. That's why we—if you talk about the trade, our boutiques, our trade mix, on F&B and all that, has to be improved in order to retain them, and therefore they will spend more with us. In Hong Kong, we have Hello Program, similar trend. The penetration will not be as high as mainland because we are not running a luxury mall per se. It's more a neighborhood mall, therefore, the penetration is lower. The new member and valid member also increase because now they can come to our mall more often. Hong Kong rental up by 2%, mainly driven by more or less the retail. Our office was up by 1%, our retail was up by 4%. So I think our office are a little bit different from the other, I would say, real estate developer office, because we only have here and the others in Central and also with Wan Chai and some others. Not really a CBD office. For some others, we are doing retail trades and all that. So I think the impact is less, but unfortunately, the economic sentiment or the market sentiment for the office is quite quiet in Hong Kong, therefore, we need to watch closely, but at least we can still show a 1% growth. There's a bit of drag in the residential, mainly because we closed down Summit for the renovation, and that's why we have some drop in the residential in Hong Kong. So I think the sustainability, I just walk you through a few things. Ronnie just talk about this double A. This is the MSCI ESG rating. We got the A rating in 2021 from nowhere, and now we got to double A in two years. So we make a lot of progress on this one. Even in this office, a lot of material we use, even the carpet, even some of the wooden furniture, we basically try to save some of the waste, and therefore we can use some of the recycled materials in order to support our ESG target. Tenant partnership, other than LVMH, now we roll out to the other tenant and make sure that we work with them, and therefore we can improve not only the big tenants, but also the smaller tenants. Sustainable finance, as I mentioned, from the 46% to 55%. That's all I have. I'm sure you have more question, so I will just stop it here. Thank you. We now start the Q&A session. Please feel free to raise your hands, and raise your questions here in the office or by typing the questions in the box on the webcast page. First of all, anyone from the floor? Thank you. Mark from UBS, please. Yep. So first of all, thank you, Ronnie, for all your hard work over the past decades. And other question is maybe, both Ronnie and Adriel. So maybe over the next five years, how do you see Hang Lung Properties or Hang Lung Group, as a whole? What's our strategy going forward? Because I think I recorded, Ronnie, in the past you mentioned, if you got the cash, you only want to do three things, right? First of all, it's about to repay the debt, secondly, to increase the dividend, and thirdly, is, growth, but we prefer on, acquiring existing project and increase the stake, first. So not sure how would you review the strategy going forward? I think that's the first questions. And the second question is regarding on the luxury sales, outlook in 2024. Because I think half years ago you mentioned there's lack of visibility. But obviously, we have already entered in 2024, not sure if we have higher visibility right now. Thank you. ... Well, the next five years, I won't be around. I'll be on Earth, not under the Earth, but I won't be, you know, sitting here. So I think that that question is better answered by Adriel and Weber. Do you wanna take the second question first then, or the other questions? It's the second question. So, really, like I said, I think the strategy doesn't change. What we've done is very stable. It's extremely strong recurring revenue, so I, you know, don't see any need to make any big changes to that. With the cash that we have on hand, obviously, what we said just a few months ago, probably still stands today. Interest rates, at least, in Hong Kong, aren't getting any lower, so we're still keen to reduce our debt. That being said, we should top out next year, well, this year or next year, which actually coincides with the construction cycle. So we will be doing the most construction. We'll be actually completing the second-most GFA this year. The highest amount of completed GFA was 2019, in which we finished almost 5 million sq ft. This year we'll deliver about 4 million sq ft, which includes Westlake, which is in Hangzhou. So, obviously, as our CapEx peaks, you know, barring unforeseen opportunities, we should be able to pay down our debt starting pretty quickly. So that's still, I think, priority number one. Obviously, you know, who knows where the market will go? If there's some really unexpectedly, shockingly good land, but I think we still have headroom for that. But for the time being, we can't foresee that. So, you know, some of you may have picked up the news in Shanghai. Obviously, we are working on expanding Plaza 66. There will be a small, but meaningful, expansion to that existing mall. And I think where we're most interested is these markets in which we have the biggest foothold, where we already dominate the market, where we have basically almost anything short of guaranteed returns. These are where I think the best opportunities present themselves, given the market today, so that's what we'll look at. But in terms of when we have cash, it's- I think it hasn't changed. It's pay down debt, dividends, and then finally, reinvestment. Weber? Yeah. I think, basically, you cover most of the key one. I just want to highlight a few things. Going back to 10, 15 years ago, when you go to a new cities, and go into the most, I would say, popular or the best CBD of that particular city, and ask the government to give you a big parcel of land, I think that kind of period, to be honest, in today's environment, has gone. Not many available. It takes a long time for you to development- to develop. I think the Plaza 66 extension, I think is another way of doing expansion, but in a more effective way, because you don't need to rebuild a new team. You basically, you know the demand of your particular site, you know what kind of trade you want to add in order to make your shopping center more interesting. We always talk about the behavior of customer has changed. Now, they are not transactional. They want to enjoy your places. Therefore, we have to put more place-making, restaurant or even something for fun for the people to hang around for longer, right? So I think this kind of expansion, with a reasonable size of CapEx, you will see us doing a bit more like this, in this kind of environment. But never say never. You, if you see an opportunities come with some of the headroom that we have in the financing, of course, we will look at it carefully and also in a disciplined way. But as Adriel mentioned, the strategy doesn't change. Our core business, like this year, 100% is from leasing. We are not like the others, having 30-70, 50-50 on development properties and leasing properties. What we need to do is to complete some of our land bank in mainland, and we don't even we just, a previous section, one of the reporter asked us, "What is your land bank?" I told Kenneth, "In a upcycle, land bank is good. In a down cycle, I don't need land bank." Right? So therefore, because the price might be lower in two years' time. Right, so therefore, I think for us, it's more how to make sure that we have a discipline on spending the CapEx. I think this is important, as Kenneth always mentioned, the next two years is the peak of our CapEx. If we don't invest further, basically, hopefully, after that, we will enjoy the revenue growth to cover all those, and it takes a bit of time, and I know this. I joined the company now five and a half years. This is a long cycle business. Even we want to make a decision change, when you make a decision three years ago, you could not change much, because you have to keep a relationship with the government, you have to keep a lot of other stakeholders intact. A lot of things which we just need to going, but at the same time, we are just withholding. For example, I can share some of the project that we may not see a high return, we slow down and stop, if without any obligation to continue, right? So therefore, I think we will be a little bit more disciplined, a lot more disciplined on that, and making sure that we spend the money wisely. And hopefully, the headwind, yes, the market is quite uncertain. But hopefully, if we can continue to work on our basics rights, a lot of our shopping center are still, like, two years, three years, four years old. And therefore, we will have, hopefully, a lot of good cycle coming in, and therefore, we can see continuous revenue growth. Since whatever I say only has a shelf life of three months, I can say a lot more. And this has been the last time I'm addressing this audience. Let me just offer a couple of thoughts in response to the last question. You know, we are finding some opportunities that doesn't take much cash. You saw the scrip dividend, right? That is one form of, you know, conserving some cash. So we are very conscientious of, you know, that cash is king. But that said, there are opportunities that doesn't take a whole lot of money, and the return upside can be pretty good. Such as the Plaza 66. I mean, it's amazing. You know, we can increase, what, 40,000 square meters? Four, four- 4,000 square meters. 13%, yeah. 13%, right? And we know what we can do with the site because of Plaza 66. And the cost we are paying is pittance compared to the potential reward. And I can assure you, we're working on other deals. And, you know, I always ask myself the question: When the government... when the economy is so bad, and when the government is so short of cash, there must be good opportunities somewhere to be had. I don't want to spend money, but I want to, now is the time to steal, legally, of course. That, you know, you can expense very little and really get good deals. This morning, we presented one such deal to the board, and, you know, hey, not that we need the board approval for a project like that, but, you know, it's still good to keep them abreast of what's happening. So we are finding such opportunities that are, to me, very satisfying. You know, just like basketball, I will never play basketball, but I watch people play basketball. Man, some of those guys are so damn good, they can steal a ball from your hands. And this is a time to steal legally. And so, hopefully, we can announce more of these opportunities in the coming months and, yeah, in the coming months. The other day, I bumped into a lady that really, really knows every developer in the... Of significance in the mainland China. For the last 15 years, this lady has been my advisor. Whenever I need to know anything about anybody in the mainland China real estate field or the market itself, I call her up. She's from the mainland. Well, the other night, my wife and I bumped into him in Hong Kong. And so I said, "Hey, let's go and have tea." So, you know, she was telling me how that her friends are so... Well, not her friends, so, you know, yeah, her friends who are developers, are so negative. One guy said to her, "In my lifetime, I will never see the market return." Another guy said, "I told my daughter that in your lifetime, the market in China will never return." I thought that very intriguing. I really find it very meaningful. And, as you know, I said two things. Number one, I said, "Well, people say, you know, Hang Lung is a bear hugger." You know that. But you also know that I said, about two years, three years ago, that this bear is not that bear. This bear is a different kind of bear, so don't react like a regular bear, right? And a regular bear in the cyclical downturn, you know, you can basically prepare for the next round up. But this time, this bear is far more complicated and, and serious than the previous bears. And so, don't expect anything soon. It's a structural issue. But that said, when I hear those two stories of those two mainland developers saying things like that, I say, "Well, it reminds me of what JP Morgan said, you know, when there's blood on the street." Man, there's blood on the street. And it doesn't mean that I'll act now, because this is a different kind of bear. But sooner or later, I believe that opportunity will present itself, taking advantage of everybody lacking money, including the government. The government is short of cash, and certainly my, well, I don't need to tell them how little cash I have. We have quite a bit. But anyway, you know, and so I think that I'm not so bearish that there would not be a time when we'll reenter the market. I think that, the more bearish people are, the faster the recovery may come. So, but even then, I'm not expecting the next two, three years to be any good years. So right now, conserve cash, and right now, do scrip dividend, right? And right now, sell property. You saw we sold a, a Blue Pool Road unit, and it was considerably lower than the last one we sold it. But hey, you have to be realistic. The market is like that. And so, so, you know, we are very serious about, conserving cash, but at the same time, we should also prepare ourselves for the day, that there will be a lot of good deal to be had. I was thinking... I'm not here to talk about my competitors, but, you know, these are all friends. You know, I was thinking, "You know, Sino has so much cash." And everybody is so bearish nowadays, and nobody very few people is going to invest, and buy land. And Henderson publicly said, and the CFO just said to me, a couple weeks ago, he said, "We're not gonna buy anymore." And if I were Sino, I'd say, "Oh, gosh, my HKD 100 Hong Kong bill had just become HKD 110." Right? You know what I mean. So, you know, it's not the end of the world. So, I am actually quite invigorated by those two stories told to me by my mainland lady friend. To me, it's a good sign. Most people, when they hear that, they can't go to sleep. When I hear that, I sleep very well. But whatever I say has three months shelf life. Thank you, Ronnie. Any questions from the floor? Cal, from JP Morgan. Thank you. Thank you, management. I just want to check on how the rental reversion trend was like in the H2 last year, and then what is our expectation for next year? And then, in terms of turnover rents, what was the contribution in the H2, and then what will be our expectation for next year? So that's about the first question about our rental. And the second question is, just now, Ronnie also mentioned that right now, you know, many other developers may be off on a distressed situation. That could be some opportunities, right? So would we be considering, you know, acquiring assets from some of these distressed developers? Is this something that we might be proactively looking for? Thank you. I answer your second question first. Deals are a lot, but no, not interested. The first question is, I think, Actually, in the annual report, you can see our numbers on the turnover rent. I think it's around more or less the same. You can expect, the higher, they are actually mid-20s. First half is higher than mid-20s. Second half is lower than the mid-20s. So they are still within the 20s, as a percent. So I think the turnover rent doesn't change much. It's subject to the sales, but the good thing is, our fixed rents, no matter you look at first and the H2, we have high single-digit growth. So I think that basically cover, even though you work out the math, our H2 mainland revenue down by 1% versus H1, right? Absolute numbers. But you can look at the sales number, it's down by 3%, but actually, you don't see much in the revenue because the fixed rent was up. Right, so I think the key fundamental issue is that, which, Ronnie, maybe in the last few long time ago mentioned, the key is for us to show to the tenant that we can make this kind of sales. Therefore, when we have a lease we renew, we have a chance to show them, "Why don't you pay us more fixed and less variable?" Because that is the way how we can get the rental reversion. Now, of course, we hope that this kind of way will work, because if the down cycle come, we also need to make sure that we can consolidate the store from the other mall to us, right? Because if you don't want to expand, come to the most high productive one and do more, right? So I think this is the year of, or the period of consolidation. The good news is, five, seven years ago, maybe you can only say we have Plaza 66. Now, we have seven luxury mall, and basically, are the leader in the market in their own right, right? So if we can continue to do well, I think the chance of us consolidate sales from others will be higher, right? Rather than, you know, asking them to expand and expand and expand. And also, I'm sure you understand the game, the game. The chance of us, the chance of the tenant closing hours will be less if we are doing well. The chance of us consolidate from the others will be higher if we are doing well. So this is, I think, the way how we look at it. Even the whole cake is getting smaller or the same, but if we can continue to do well to be the leader of the market, I believe that we can continue to do well. So I think the visibility, I think we missed your second question. The luxury, we look at the last 20 years, not look at the last 3 years super growth. The CAGR was 7% in the last 20 years. So luxury will not disappear, but it just normalize it. So I, I will expect luxury sales growth will be at mid-single digit or a little bit higher than mid-single digit. But they still be the best tenants for the shopping center because their margin is the highest, right? So therefore, I think, I believe that, this will normalize. This will not be like 100% in 2021, that kind of range. Never, right? But the key is, but they are still be the most desirable one, in the shopping center, like our high-end shopping center. Ken, from Citi. Thank you. Yes, thanks. I would like to check with you on, because Ronnie here probably can answer these questions. A couple of clients also are interested, why do you want to prefer a full retirement? For example, you get to a non-executive director or an advisor before you... Now, you show a full retirement. Of course, you can internally discuss with Adriel. I'm sure that every day probably you can discuss it, but we don't know. So, what's the rationale of this? I think this is one. And secondly, we noted that this is the first time, I'm not sure where, but scrip dividend that in place. So does it mean that, group will be taking scrip, and if it's, I mean, on the next round, and if it's the case, should we expect that you will still have a goal to maintain a steady, absolute DPS HKD0.78 if you already chosen scrip? So you save half of their cash already. The second question has been discussed internally in detail. I'll let my colleagues answer, maybe Kenneth can answer that. On the first question, I think it's more personality than anything else. I don't like to... Sorry for the Chinese, huh? You know, don't be too sticky. You know, when it's time to go, just go. Let's face it, I'm not gone. I'm still here. I still have a office here. I just don't get paid, that's all. And so, you know, I work very well with my colleagues here, and so, you know, I think they respect some of my views, and I know my limitation, what to push, what not to push. And so I think, frankly, I don't think that it makes that much difference. It's just a good time for younger generation to amass more experience faster, right? Weber is 54, Adriel is 41. Oh, by the way, just a little anecdote. My late father founded this company when he was 41. I took over the chairmanship when I was 41, and Adriel is now 41. That's not why we do it this way. That's, Ken, that's not the answer to your question, but nonetheless, sort of, you know, a little sort of niceties of of life sometime. So, I'm pretty sanguine about these things. And you know... By the way, Joyce told me, he said, "Hey," the first person I talked to when I told him that you're retiring, he said, "Oh, no, is Ronnie's health okay?" And my health is very okay. I just had a COVID, my wife and I just did our fourth COVID shot the other day, and so I'm a little sore, that's all, you know. But apart from that, I'm perfectly fine. Scrip Dividend. Okay. I think all of you guys, as professional investors, analysts, I don't need to tell you the benefit of scrip dividend, which we have already stated in our recent announcement. So investors shareholders can reinvest, you know, with the encourage brokerage fees, and more importantly, the company can also benefit by retaining more cash as working capital. This is the knife you take, and this is true. And I think you may ask, why we do it now? So, as our Adriel mentioned, this year we are at the peak of our CapEx. You know, we are going to like spend around HKD 6 billion, you know, on CapEx. At the same time, I think senior management and also my board keep reminding me that, "Hey, Kenneth Chiu, please, look, take a look on the gearing." So we are very mindful on the financial discipline. There are many ways to reduce that, okay? Asset disposal, you know, but for certain asset, you may not want to sell at a very cheap price, right? Then what you can do? And some people say, "Hey, you may cut dividend." Is it something that we want to do? No. Our earnings are quite robust. Kenneth says no, so what can we do? Finally, we think that scrip dividend- Thank you, Kenneth- ... is one of the option that we may consider, and we propose to the board, and we get the board's consent to do that. So I hope that this arrangement can be well received by the market. ... And by the way, for scrip dividend arrangement, it will be reviewed regularly by the board, and including our cash dividend as well. You asked me, you know, what - how much HLG will opt for. You know, I can't tell you right now, but I believe that, naturally, our... As major shareholders, and majority of the dividend, we may see that in scrip, but I can't tell you the details right now. Legal counsel told me that, "Ronnie, don't say it. You are not supposed to say it. Ravi, you've got questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. This question you have answered in some way on dividend, but I just wanted to understand, there was a last time when you cut your dividend by a cent, just to showcase. Obviously, market didn't like it, and this is good that you keep it. I reminded the board of that- Yeah this morning. But I'm still thinking about what went through this conversation, even with the script, basically. Because clearly, if you add the capitalized interest, you're paying more than your net income, right? That, that, the percentage is written there. So and we are bearish to a certain extent in China. Again, we can discuss with this big bear, long bear, small, short bear. And so was it prudent to say, let's go back to 80% or a certain percentage of your earnings, let's rebase it, and then in future, we will grow as the market comes back to us? So I just wanted to understand the discussion behind this one. The second question I have is about, for Weber. On the fourth... You gave in H2 number, right? Mm. Some of these numbers were negative for Shanghai, for example, right? Yeah. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about Q4 versus Q3? We feel that luxury kept getting worse. No, getting better. Okay. Third quarter is, was the worst. Okay, that's, that's very helpful. And then, I have one more question, which is: why are you renovating Summit? I mean, the rent was very good when before some renovation. And, I'm not sure the market is strong enough that even after renovation, you can ask, I don't know, HKD 200,000. Is that the new rent? So just want to understand the logic behind why we're doing it, and that's it for me. Thank you. Uh- Last question first. Um- Summit. Just, I think the renovation—okay, this is an asset of 21 years. Of course, you can do just like what we do in the past by renting it out. Ronnie always complained the rent was too low. But at the same time, I think the renovation can give us option in the future, right? So therefore, I could not say more than that, but of course, the rent will go up, and especially if you look at today's market, even though the transaction of selling and buying drop a lot, but rents actually went up. First, the first batch of people going into Singapore now, some of them coming back. Second, those people may have a view that the market may correct more, they rent first before they buy. Therefore, we can see that the rental market was quite robust in the last quarter of 2023. If you look at our Burnside, we are 96% occupancy, right? Coming from an 84%, just in a few months. So that kind of high-end segment rents, I think in the next few years, no matter what happen, unless everyone go and leave Hong Kong, right? Otherwise, I see people are coming back after the COVID. They may not want to jump in and try to get the bottom by buying it, but they may want to rent. So, the completion of our renovation will be early next year. So by then, we will have a much better properties, a much better option. And you can argue that, why spend those money? But hopefully, by then, we can prove to you that this is a worth money to spend. On the why the scrip dividend, how did... What's the thinking and how did it come about? First of all, you know, I have been writing how negative the environment is. And I began the last several board meetings in my opening statements how concerned I am over the market. And I have expressed to you all, and you know how I felt. And it is not just the regular business risks, the business risks such as financial, technology, obsolescence, you know, marketing risks, and all that kind of stuff. It is all there, still. But today, you have an overlay of geopolitical risk and geo-economic risk, which is, you know, wasn't that critical in the old days. In the old days, once in a while, one incident of geopolitical nature hit, but today, we're under that threat every day. So I've been very careful and negative, and I keep telling my colleagues here, "Hey, spend your money very carefully." Capital expenditure, right? Big capital expenditure is how you sink a company in a troubled time like this, so be careful. So if I'm saying that, what can you do? Well, among other things, the board decided to freeze our salary raise. For me, it's okay. I'm out, you know? I only have four more months to go, but these guys, right? It's not because the board think that they did a bad job, that the board think very highly of them. With the exception of some unique cases where, you know, for some that you should raise otherwise, we get nothing, no raise. That's one way, but that doesn't save that much money because our salaries not that high anyway. We're sort of in the middle of the pack, probably, in the industry. I think the scrip dividend in that light really makes a lot of sense. You can easily save, you know, HKD 1 billion, HKD 2 billion, you know, in one go. And shareholders don't mind if they give a- you give them an option. You can choose you want cash, you can still do cash. Now, obviously, we recognize that the dilution effect, if you were to have too many scrip dividend out instead of cash, then next year, can you still maintain, right? And so we discussed that in-house. You know, we think there are ways for us to do our best to keep you guys happy, not just this year, but next year, right? It may work, it may not work, but, you know, we have some thoughts and ideas on how to make you guys happy, at least not unhappy. So, how did it come about? Well, one day, the four of us were meeting, and then Weber had to go. He went. The rest of us, the three of us, were shooting the breeze, and Ken said, Kenneth says, "Hey, you know, we can always have a Scrip Dividend." I said, "Yeah, that's right. Scrip Dividend makes sense, doesn't it?" Right? And, you know, so we looked down that path, and I think it's very reasonable. Moreover, Hang Lung Group is net cash. Well, we have debt, but, you know, we have cash on hand. And so, you know, Hang Lung Group need to be sure that they can pay dividend to not just their family, but everybody else. So, Hang Lung Group is not short... It's not short- desperate for money, for cash, right? So, all those things put together, it just makes sense for Hang Lung P, for Hang Lung G, even the major shareholders. You know, so it's okay, and it seems to be the right thing to do. How would you choose, Praveen? Would you take cash, or would you take scrip? Ken asked me. Hey, I'm gonna ask you that question. Yeah. I'm sure you must take... You're a long-term investor, probably you take the shares. But we still have a lot of short-term investor, I let them to make the decision. When we give out the good case and bad case, probably everything, a coin has two sides. Some people, some of us are already immediately asking, "Hey, what about the dilution? Mm. Even the shares, share price is quite cheap now. So you issue share now, it's driving more dilution than the growth. So I think it's everything have a positive and negative. But for you guys, you invest for 10 years, 20 years, you must take shares. I think my legal counsel, in-house legal counsel was correct. I better not say, because, hey, the price is not yet decided, right? As you all know, you guys, no, no, your clients muck around sometimes in the market in its particular days. So- I would rather ask, Praveen, you just asked that question. Why don't you rebase or do the Scrip Dividend? If we choose to go rebase by cutting the dividend, do you happy? Look, the stock is down 6% anyway. My point is... No, no, I genuinely think that it is a very innovative idea, and as you mentioned, it depends on next year, what's the impact is. So far, so good. Keeping the dividend intact and knowing that CapEx is going to peak, that is something that you know. If there were many years of CapEx and gearing was not supposed to drop, I would have cut dividend where it goes to a sustainable level. Paying 105% for many, many years is not something that one should do. But if you know it's you're doing it for one year, then that's fine, and that's why it sounds okay at this point in time in scrip. It's just that we have to get back to normal level of dividend payment, whether it's scrip or cash. God knows what will happen next year, right? What if the market suddenly recover? Every- You will have a lot of money, and you'll have a lot of stake at a lower price, so you will be happy. Right. That's right. or we sell, you know, we're able to sell at reasonable prices some of our assets. So all those things come into the picture. Okay. Our analyst presentation has been overrunning a little bit, so I'll wrap up this by a bunch of probably specific questions. Okay ... and as the last question here. So the first question is actually for Weber, who has mentioned about the Plaza 66 extension. That sounds very interesting. So, what kind of tenants would you like to introduce to this extension, and what is the timetable for it? The second, probably specific question is on Westlake 66. What's the status now? And the third question is the performance and competitive positions of Wuhan mall versus the major competitor. Yep. Thank you. Wow, this is a long answer. For Plaza 66, I think we already line up all the prospects because the demand is higher than supply. You will see definitely there will be luxury brands. There will be F&B, there will be some lifestyle kind of trade, which can enhance our overall offerings in Plaza 66. The good news is we have a seamless connection in the B1, so basically we can extend, even make our B1 a lot bigger than today. Therefore, we will be able to continue to extend our men's couture from our existing B1 into the new one. So I think it's quite exciting because I would say you will never have a project that before even you start, you already have pretty good demand in front of you. So the payback will be quite handsome. So therefore, we are quite confident for this project, and hopefully we can finish it by 2026, Q3. I'm not sounding too aggressive, right? So we are getting every approval, hopefully in the first quarter, second quarter, and then we will start work in the Q3 of this year. Right? Because it's only a four-story, very small footprint, hopefully, it's quite quick. And then you don't need to dig very deep, so the construction time is quite fast. The second one is the Westlake. So far, so good. Not as rosy as what I just described in Plaza 66, you already line up everyone, but the key anchor we identify a lot of them already. But you still need some time to make sure that we fill in all the other trade category other than luxury. Because as I mentioned, just getting luxury done is not enough in today's environment. You just need to make sure that we shows our beauties of our new properties. We have a lot of indoor, outdoor. Indoor, outdoor not require one luxury store or not. You require a lot of F&B and a lot of interesting trade to activate that. So I think it's on a good track. We start our leasing initiative almost actually 2 years before opening. So I think we make good progress on that. There are some headwind, suddenly because of the slowdown of the whole economy, but, but I still believe that we will be able to open this mall with a very good trade mix. And we call internally ourself, Westlake 66 is Plaza Plus. So you can imagine our, our positioning as well as the offering will be even better than Plaza 66. So I think this is what we aim for. It takes a bit of time because some of the luxury brands may not open immediately at your opening, but hopefully the line up will continue to impress not only us, but, but the customers. Wuhan competition is very keen over there. You can see that we had our occupancy up and down a little bit over there, even though our sales and revenue actually went up. Partly because we lost, we lost our supermarket in the B1, which account for 6% of the occupancy. Hopefully, we can replace them very quickly, and then also we can continue to compete the competitor next mall. But again, if you look at our luxury shares, if you look at our offering, actually, we are getting on the right track. Of course, we would love to see even faster, faster pace, but of course, the market and also competition, we are working very hard to make this work. But I truly believe that if you look at the sales, if you look at the size, in certain aspect, the sales of Wuhan, even with today, 80+ kind of occupancy, the sales is already bigger than Kunming. So that means the market is much bigger over there, even though we have a competition next door. So I believe that if we can crack Wuhan, like what we have done in Wuxi, what we have done in Shanghai in the past, which we have proven that we can- Dalian. And Dalian, and we can get this done, and this will be handsome. So I think overall, it's still not like a low-hanging fruit you can pick any time. But I think we are working across our portfolio and now towards into more or less the similar kind of characters that we see in each of the successful mall. So I think overall, we are, we are optimistic. We believe that we can get it done in hopefully short period of time. But Dalian, Wuxi, and all the others can actually prove to us that we can get it done very quickly. Can I ask you guys a question? When Messi has the ball and is moving toward the other goal, and if I cannot outrun him, can I pull his shirt, his jersey? Can I just pull his jersey? Is that legal? It's not! Right. Okay. Well, that's what America is doing to China today, but that's international relations. International relations, maybe it's okay. But then in business in China, people do that to you all the time. And when we opened Shanghai, our neighbor at that time did exactly that to us. And that company is now bankrupt. And then in Wuxi, our neighbor did exactly that to us. That guy is almost bankrupt. I'm serious, okay? So now in Wuhan, we have the same thing. You know, if a brand go into our place, then they're gonna cut him off for, you know, for the whole province or something. You know, even a supermarket, they would take it away from you. But they are not the only brand. There are other very good brands of supermarket, right? So it's... Yeah, they're just dumb. They are forcing us to introduce a better competitor, a better brand. And, you know, you see a little bit of a vacancy rise in Wuhan. It's because of that. Well, that's 4% or something like that, or just... That's 6% of the space. So, we'll get there. We are gaining on our competitor. Not as fast as I hope, but today's market is also very challenging. But, you know, gain we will. And so I'm very excited that we will one day declare victory, just like in Wuxi or in Grand Gateway 66 in Shanghai. And I trust that Hangzhou would have a similar situation. No doubt, I'm Messi, I'm sorry. No doubt they'd love to pull my jersey, and they will, and you expect that. But whoever pull Messi's jersey don't have a good ending, as evidenced by my competitor in Shanghai and in Wuxi. So we'll see. I think the future is fine. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll just, I'll supplement with a quick word on the construction in Hangzhou. Thank you. So it's going full speed ahead. We plan to open, as expected, early next year, and we may even be able to do a soft opening later this year. That's the hope, but we've already topped out three of the six towers. And the other three are coming up very quickly. The Mandarin Oriental there is highly anticipated, and I think that would also do very well. So all full speed ahead. Thank you, Ronnie, Adriel, Weber, Kenneth. Ladies and gentlemen, this wraps up the analyst presentation for our FY23 results. Thank you very much for your participation. We will see you next time.