David Sleath0:04
The headlines for the first half of 2019 are that we've maintained momentum throughout our business and we're on track for another strong year. Our portfolio of high-quality and well-located warehouse and industrial assets has continued to perform well, and this combined with ongoing robust demand from occupiers and investors have enabled us to report a double-digit earnings growth and a further uplift in net asset value.
The main drivers of this performance were a record volume of development completions. In fact, we achieved more in the first half of 2019 than the entirety of 2018, which itself was the highest year on record for our development completions. But we've also delivered some excellent gains from asset management and running of the existing portfolio with a 3.7 percent uplift in like-for-like net rental income. Meanwhile, property values have further increased as a result of our development gains, our asset management activity, and the ongoing strong demand from investors to own this asset class.
The UK has continued to do well, but what's particularly pleasing is the performance in continental Europe where leasing and pre-leasing successes, rental levels, and portfolio valuation gains have been strong. In fact, in the first half of this year, continental Europe was up 5.8 percent on a like-for-like basis compared to a 2.3 percent increase in UK values. This is probably the first time in several years that the continent has outperformed our UK portfolio. One of the things that's behind this performance is that the e-commerce growth and urbanization that have been driving our UK business for quite some time are now starting to gain traction and are becoming increasingly evident on the continent.
The big-box market always has the potential for an increase in supply in response to favorable market conditions, and we've certainly seen a pickup in speculative supply in a number of markets, particularly in the UK. We monitor these trends very carefully indeed, and we're not particularly concerned at the moment for a number of reasons. Firstly, take-up continues to be very good. In fact, take-up in the first half of 2019 was better than most people expected and was above the five-year average. Secondly, most of our investment focus in big boxes in the UK is through the development channel and particularly pre-let development, and most of the speculative supply that's taking place isn't really competing directly with the product that we're creating. And finally, it's worth remembering that although this is an important part of our portfolio, it represents only 10% of our gross asset value at this stage.
There continues to be good investor demand for well-located, high-quality warehouse assets, and this combined with development gains, our asset management gains, and the rental growth that we've secured has enabled us to report a further uplift in values and NAV. The development program remains our primary focus for capital deployment.
Back in February when we did the equity placing, we said we expected to spend 400 million pounds this year on development excluding land purchases, and we're on track to do that, having spent about 200 million in the first half of the year and with a very strong pipeline of ongoing developments and near-term pre-lets coming towards us. In terms of investment acquisitions, these are fairly modest in the period. We've just spent 27 million pounds in continental Europe, and that's consistent with our view that we'll get a better return on our capital right now from development. I expect we will be able to add some further acquisition opportunities in the second half of the year.
So far as disposals are concerned, we continue to take a disciplined approach to managing the existing portfolio, looking to take money off the table and recycle it out of more mature assets into new opportunities such as development and acquisitions which will offer us a better return. In that regard, we've sold a hundred million pounds of assets in the first half of the year, and we expect to make further disposals in the second half in line with the guidance of between 150 to 250 million pounds of sales that we gave earlier in the year.
The numbers we're reporting really represent the tremendous progress the business has made during the first half of 2019. Earnings per share are up 13 percent to 12.2 pence, and the dividend is up 13.5 percent to 6.3 pence per share. All the hard work across the business to enhance the quality of our property portfolio is reflected in the valuation up 3.5% to just under 10 billion pounds. That's carried the net asset value per share up 3.5% as well to 673 pence.
Looking at the balance sheet, it's in terrific shape. The loan-to-value is 24% and the cost of debt is just 1.5%. We've raised just over 800 million pounds of new financing this year, just over half of that coming from the equity raised we launched back in February. That provides us with 1.6 billion pounds of liquidity to invest in new growth initiatives across the group. We remain alert to a range of macro risks, not least Brexit, but so far this has had little impact on our portfolio and we expect it to remain the case. Therefore, as we go into the second half of the year, we're confident about our prospects of delivering further income growth both from the existing investment portfolio but also from the development program.
