David Sleath0:05
We've continued the strategy set out in 2011 in terms of disciplined capital allocation and operational excellence, supported by a very favorable market backdrop and some structural tailwinds that have helped us. In terms of disciplined capital allocation, we put two hundred eighty million pounds into the development program, including some additional land purchases, and we've spent just over fifty million pounds buying some urban logistics parks in continental Europe. In terms of disposals, after a lot of activity over the last few years, we're much more into normal recycling activity and we've sold 85 million pounds of assets either directly to third parties or to our joint venture. On operational excellence, we've continued to take advantage of a supportive market backdrop. We've delivered some excellent leasing figures, achieved a very high customer retention rate, maintained a high occupancy level in the portfolio, and we've delivered further rental growth. Meanwhile, strong investor demand for the asset class, supported by the rental growth we've achieved, has driven up asset values and we've shown a six percent increase in our like-for-like portfolio valuation over the period. What's behind all of this good news is that the structural drivers of demand, particularly urbanization, the digital economy, and especially e-commerce growth, have continued to be more important factors in our markets than any concerns around the macroeconomic environment such as Brexit. As you'd expect, when the fundamentals are so strong, we have started to see some more competition in terms of speculative development, particularly in UK big box logistics, but that's a small part of our total portfolio, and the land position we have at our East Midlands Gateway site has proven to be very popular in the marketplace, so we're delighted, despite the competition, to have secured four very substantial pre-lets in the first half of this year. More generally, we've got a fantastic, irreplaceable portfolio of assets and a great land bank, so I think we're very well positioned to face competition from other developers, and bear in mind that most of our development program is pre-leased, so over 70% of our activity in development is pre-let before we even start construction.
The particular highlights for the first half would include the phenomenal amount of leasing activity we've done, which is 44% up on the first half of last year. We've already secured within that 30 million pounds of new pre-let development activity; that's more than we achieved for the whole of 2017 just in the first half of this year. Within those pre-lets, we've secured four deals at our flagship scheme East Midlands Gateway, including two online retailers such as Amazon and Shop Direct. Elsewhere, we've been doing more business for Amazon with Rolando and a number of online retailers and parcel delivery companies. We've completed 16 development projects in the first half of the year, delivering 19 million pounds of new rental income, and already it's 78% leased up. Some great schemes coming across the portfolio, but I'm particularly pleased about the work we've done in East London, where the first of the East Plus sites, our joint venture with the GLA, have started to come through and deliver results. And finally, we've had a fantastic period in terms of asset management activity, achieving a 91% customer retention rate, a 2.3% level of rental growth compared with the first half of last year, and we've maintained a very high occupancy rate across the portfolio with just 3.3% vacancy in the standing assets, or 5% including the newly developed assets. So we had a really busy, positive, and active first half.
And you see that in the numbers for the first half of the year. Earnings are up 11% to 10.8 pence per share, really driven by the volume of development completions, capturing reversion from the portfolio particularly in the UK, and a lower cost of debt driven by the refinancing from last year. Dividends are up 6% to 5.55 pence per share; it's a lower growth rate because we set the dividend with respect to last year's growth rate, but I'd fully expect good performance for the second half. That positive performance extends to the property portfolio. Net asset value per share is up 8% to 603 pence per share, and that's really driven by the valuation of the property portfolio, which is up 6% to 8.8 billion pounds. The capital structure is in great shape because the debt is down to just 2%, and the loan-to-value remains really low at just 29%. Liquidity is over a billion pounds, and that gives us great firepower to help us continue to invest in the property portfolio. As we look to the second half of the year, we're already carrying tremendous momentum with 50 development projects on site under construction, worth a million square meters of new space, 70% of which is already leased up. That includes our first two-story building in Paris, which is now fully leased to Leroy Merlin and IKEA, and we have a number of further pre-let opportunities that are at advanced stages of negotiation, including a fantastic development right next to Heathrow Airport, a data center in Slough, a number of further projects for online retailers across the business, including eight potential opportunities in Italy. So, while we are alert to a number of risks on the macroeconomic and political front, our business is in great shape and we're confident about our prospects.
