Hi, everyone, a warm welcome to Exor's today here in Turin with us. I would also like to welcome who isn't with us, particularly hoping that who is in the U.S. had a good Thanksgiving weekend. It's been two years since we last met. As you know, we have every two years a gathering for our Investors Day to give you an idea of what has happened in the last two years, and more importantly, share with all of you what we want to do in the years to come. Where we'd like to start with today is really where we left you in 2019, which was an indication of what we would have wanted to achieve over the next decade. We're two years into the next decade. As you recall, 2019 was the first decade of Exor.
Really dividing it by companies, which is where most of our capital is invested in investments, which are activities that we were able to start as we bought PartnerRe. Finally, financials, which are really the metrics on which we measure our performance. Back then, we also described how important it was for us, the ESG theme, and what we would have developed in the years to come. Today, we really want to go into these areas, speak to you about our companies, our investments, our financials, what we've done on ESG, and share with you what is next. I'd like to start by this page, which is really a summary of what Exor is about. We are a company that has more than 100 years, which has been building companies for now more than a century.
Last time when we met, we wanted to be very clear about our purpose, which is building great companies, and being clear what it meant to build and what it meant great. We also wanted to be clear about how we did it, which was through the application of our values. Our values are all important, and the first one is very relevant for us as all of them, but particularly at the moment we are living through, which is humility and ambition. Humility, staying grounded, but being ambitious to build great companies. We also wanted to make sure that our culture, which is a combination of entrepreneurial spirit and financial discipline, is very important. What is important is to get the balance right. That is achieved through people, which is something that today we really want to make sure that comes across.
If we look at our companies, the last two years have been difficult for all of us, and our companies have lived through the very difficult crisis that we went through and we're still in. What I wanted to do here was to give you an idea of what happened with these three companies. If you take the aggregate value of these three companies, they represent two-thirds of our gross asset value, Ferrari, Stellantis, CNH Industrial. These three companies acted very quickly. They acted very quickly in making sure that everyone who worked in the company was protected and made sure that the companies were protected. It also required changes in leadership, and with the board of these companies, Suzanne and myself had to take on responsibilities as acting Chief Executive Officers.
We wanted to make sure that as we navigated the crisis, and we made sure that the companies were protected, we also built the future. As we went through this period and the last two years since we last met you, these companies have all been developing important step forwards for their future under new leadership, having appointed new Chief Executive Officers. What I'd like to do is really now pass it to Suzanne, who, when we met in 2019, spoke to you about CNHI. A lot has happened that she's lived firsthand since then. Before doing that, what this page here wants to illustrate is the seriousness of the commitment that our companies had during the crisis, the COVID-19 crisis.
We really wanted to address what was happening in two ways, prioritizing where we could be of help to the healthcare system that, as you remember, were in great difficulties. Subsequently to that, try and come and help with different initiatives around the communities in which we operate, where there was more need.
Thank you, John. So what we want to do was to just illustrate a little bit what's happened over the last two years by telling you the story of what happened with CNH. As John described, alongside our other big industrial companies, it had to get its way through the COVID crisis, which was quite a major challenge. What we said to you when we met back in 2019, we actually presented CNH as a case study when we met then, and we said that we'd done three things. First of all, we'd helped the management at the time develop its five-year plan, which we, Exor, had supported. We said that we supported the proposal to spin the company into two parts, which CNH had announced in its 2019 capital markets day with our support. We'd strengthened and empowered the board.
We'd actually done some board transition. We'd shrunk the size of the board. We'd made the board more effective. What then happened, of course, was the COVID crisis. During the COVID crisis, as John said, I had to step in for a while as acting Chief Executive Officer . With the management team, we gave ourselves three primary challenges or three primary objectives on the left-hand side of this page. The first one and the most important one was keeping people safe, making sure that we could close down. We ended up having to close down all of our plants across the world, and then we had to open them all back up again, and we had to do that in a way which kept everyone safe. When they were reopened, they were reopened with all of the COVID protocols.
We had to make sure that we had business continuity, so a huge amount of work was done around looking at where all the R&D was being spent, whether that was effective. We looked very extensively at things like the actual footprint of the company, whether there were opportunities there. We looked at all of the different kind of costs going out of the company, decreased them relatively significantly. All of that meant that the company ended the year with a lot of liquidity, with very good free cash flow. So in a strong position from a business continuity point of view. The third thing that we did was we worried about the wider network that CNH operates within.
'Cause there was no point in getting CNH through this crisis in a strong way if we didn't also take our dealers with us, so CNH sells to end customers through its dealers, and if we didn't do it working very closely with our suppliers. Of course, what has happened since has emphasized even more the importance of working very closely with your suppliers. We spent a lot of time supporting both suppliers and dealers as we went through the crisis. However, it was very important for us at Exor and for the company not to lose focus on those priorities that we talked about back in 2019, even though the timescale for those has obviously changed a little bit. That meant that we kept on focusing on technology.
Some of the initiatives that we have, for example, with Nikola, around battery trucks and around fuel cell electric vehicles. A lot of work that we've been doing around decarbonizing agriculture, methane tractors, and so on. We've also continued to make investments. We actually completed the Raven acquisition. It was completed today, which is great. We made a whole series of other acquisitions which are important to strengthen the company and get the company ready for the future, both on the agriculture side and on the on-road side. Finally, we kept on investing in people.
First of all, we helped people work from home, as many organizations did, but also we launched a big new push on diversity and inclusion, which has been a real priority during this period, alongside getting through the COVID crisis. That continues to be a big priority for the management, as it goes forward into the future. It was really something that we accelerated during COVID. That's what CNH did. What that means is that the company now is ready to do what we talked about in 2019 a little bit later, but still the same basic plan, which is to spin the company into two halves. On the top half of the page, we have what will be the future CNH Industrial.
On the left-hand side, you have the agriculture part, which encompasses the brands, the Case IH brand, the New Holland brand, the STEYR brand. It's a very strong company with some very interesting brands, very interesting technologies. That company also encompasses the construction business, the CASE construction business, and the New Holland Construction business, where we've had a new acquisition just to strengthen that portfolio. That company will be led by Scott Wine, who currently leads the overall company, and you can see the size of it on the right-hand side. The second company which we'll spin out is Iveco Group, and Iveco Group consists broadly of three main parts. First of all, the bus company, then the truck company.
We also have a defense business, and we have an engines business, and that's going to be led by Gerrit Marx. You can see, you know, somewhat similar in terms of revenues, similar in terms of the number of employees. The work that we continued during COVID really has enabled the company to get back to this plan and to do this spin, and the logic for the spin, which was laid out by the company very, very clearly in the 2019 capital markets day, still, we believe, remains very strong.
We've made it clear, from an Exor point of view that we support this spin, which is due to take place now, in very, very early January, and we look forward to seeing both of those companies become part of the Exor portfolio from the start of next year.
We also added to our companies in the last two years. We made four acquisitions in different companies, two of which are twenty-first century companies, Via, Shang Xia, and we are very present in all of these companies with positive traction in where they are and where they want to go. Louboutin is the latest, and it's very aligned with our purpose and our values. That was very interesting how it resonated with the founders and the management team as we were walking through what our purpose was and how we operated. That made it very clear how the way in which our culture operates and with whom it can operate is a distinctive feature we have, and is one of value for our companies and the people who work in them. The latest announcement that we had was the sale of PartnerRe to Covéa.
We are working very hard with Covéa to get to a signing by the end of the year, as we have announced. You can see how the terms are similar to the ones that we had agreed back in 2020. For me, what is important today is really sharing with you how one needs to stay firm to his principles, but at the same time open to maintain relationships. What we were able to establish with Covéa, despite we didn't go ahead, was a working relationship and one that was very positive and that led to the outcome that is a good outcome for PartnerRe, a good outcome for Covéa, and a good outcome for Exor.
We are very confident and having spoken today also with the leadership team of Covéa and working with the leadership team of PartnerRe to be able to sign by the end of the year and close in the first half of 2022. What this has also allowed us is to build investment capability and be able to deploy capital in investments. I'm happy to have here today also, in addition to Suzanne and Enrico, whom you know, also Matteo, Nikhil and Noam, which have all responsibilities in today the three pillars of our investments that we manage directly. In private markets, which are led by Nikhil, in public markets, which are led by Matteo, and in the early and late stage opportunities, which are led by Noam, and we will have a particularly strong zoom on seeds today.
I'm also pleased about the alliances, and we have made an alliance with NUO. These are alliances where we don't directly invest, but we do it with a partner. We have here with us today also Tommaso, which I'm happy can be with us. I also would like to congratulate him on the announcement of the first investment in Montura, which is exactly in line with what the scope of NUO is, which are high-end consumer brands based in Italy with a high potential of development globally. What we really want from our investments are returns, and we are targeting double-digit returns. We have been able to build, thanks to our colleagues, our partners who are here today, the possibility of deploying capital in different strategies, in different sectors, in different geographies.
We are doing it for financial returns, but we also believe that they do add to Exor as a whole in terms of additional insight that they provide, but also the opportunity of creating opportunities for us. This is exactly what we would also like to talk to you about today with Noam, who will present seeds. We also have with us later Daniel Ramot, who is one of the co-founders and Chief Executive Officer of Via, which is an exactly an example of how a dialogue that started early on, a seed investment, has led to Exor and Via becoming more closely joined and Via one of Exor's companies.
Thank you, John. So four years ago, we initiated, launched Exor Seeds, realized it was really important for Exor to partner with entrepreneurs and founders earlier in the life cycle of the companies. We're doing this both at the early stage and at the late stage. I think even though we don't have much time, it's always exciting to have an opportunity to say a word about the entrepreneurs and founders themselves. At the earlier stage where we come in typically at the seed or Series A, we backed, for example, Bo Jiang, who's the founder of Lithic. Met Bo when he was a young graduate from MIT from applied math, was very humble but very ambitious.
Might resonate with some of the things you heard earlier about our values and he was passionate about building software for payment. We were here very early today. Lithic is an important payment company that is at a very high valuation. You know, we've been backing them along the way. On the later stage, you also have a few examples here where we really want these more mature companies. We care about the metrics already and financial and commercial traction. An example here is Casavo, which some of you might be familiar with Giorgio Tinacci, the founder.
We saw really his ambition to build a European champion and leading really this transformation in digital real estate or rather the digital transformation of real estate, disrupting the way that we all can buy and sell homes in Europe. Today, Casavo is in eight cities in three countries, and we're very, very excited about the future. A word about portfolio composition. We've invested in 53 companies. We are focused on mobility, fintech, and healthcare, which you can see reflected here in the sector exposure. Still a high conviction portfolio, as you can see from the concentration of our core positions. We expect to do more in healthcare in the future. We think it's an important sector, and we think that Seeds can bring some of these talented founders to Exor.
Via is a good example of how Seeds can play a role beyond seeking the financial returns, backing these early-stage founders. We built a relationship with the co-founders over many years, had the opportunity to back them in multiple rounds and in December 2019, we really committed to lead the Series E with a $200 million investment and subsequent investments. What matters a great deal for us in this type of high conviction bet is the alignment with the founders and from a value standpoint, purpose standpoint. Here, you know, this alignment was really obvious to us. That is probably a good segue to introduce Daniel Ramot, who is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Via.
Daniel had a prior life. He has a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford, and he was also leading a supercomputer for drug discovery at D. E. Shaw. He's now going to tell us a bit more about how he's transforming and creating really a new category about what they call transit tech. Daniel is-
I think Daniel is having connectivity problems.
Hi. Daniel, can you hear us?
I can hear you guys. Can you hear me okay?
Loud and clear.
Great.
Great. Unfortunately, in perfect time, Spectrum in N.Y. lost internet at my home, so I rushed down to the office and downtown, and I'm all set to go. Very nice to meet everybody. I'll just speak for a few minutes about Via and what we do around the world, and happy to take a couple of questions as well. If we can jump to the next slide. We at Via about 10 years ago launched on a journey to create a new category that we refer to as transit tech, similar to health tech, fintech and so forth that you folks are, I'm sure, familiar with. The vision here is to transform an industry that has been really immune, one might say, almost insulated from technology, which is the public transportation industry.
I wanna walk you through a few examples of what it is that we do for the public transportation industry. If we can jump to the next slide. Fundamentally, we digitize public transportation systems. For example, we take bus systems that run, as you can see on the left here, on fixed routes and fixed schedules, very rigid, and we transform them into dynamic shuttles that can be booked on an app on demand, where the routes are determined in real time based on data and the locations of passengers, as they're requesting rides. Instead of having buses that run on fixed routes, we have a collection of dynamic vans, minivans, minibuses that are all routed by our algorithm.
As you can see here on the right, that can lead to significant improvements in efficiency and, of course, in quality of service. I think what's really nice to see is this is a map on the bottom of Jersey City, a city just across the river from Manhattan. You can see the bus route map on the left on the bottom and then in the middle on this heat map that shows where people are traveling using our system.
What we see here is that when you give people the option to use public transportation outside of the traditional bus system, they use it to travel all over the city and in particular, which is really nice, to connect to the existing fixed route transportation system, what's known as a first/last mile solution that drives increased adoption of public transportation overall. This is one way in which we digitize public transportation systems. We take fixed route bus systems and transform them into dynamic on-demand shuttle systems. If we can jump to the next slide. We've taken the same technology and applied it to the school bus system, the traditional yellow school bus system, for example, in the U.S..
We provide software for the N.Y. City Department of Education to power more than 10,000 buses, allowing parents in real time to track where their bus is. For students, using a QR code to scan on and off the bus so that parents and schools can know where their students are. Also reroute the buses in a way that's data-driven and far more intelligent than the current routing, with the potential to save the city hundreds of millions doll ars over the course of the contract. We're really transforming what is an experience for students that hasn't changed in decades into a digital I believe modern experience. If we go to the next slide, you can see what we're doing in the paratransit space.
Paratransit is a parallel system of transportation that exists to support folks with disabilities and mobility challenges, typically serving some of our most vulnerable residents with, frankly, some of the worst service out there. Reservations have to be made by phone 24-48 hours in advance. Usually, the passenger has no idea where their vehicle is. They're given a 30-minute, even potentially longer window to wait for the vehicle. We're again using technology in our software stack to completely transform that experience so that for these passengers, it feels like taking an Uber. That's a real transformation in their quality of life. You can see the quote there on the bottom right. We do believe we're having a real impact on some of the people who need technology most and often don't get access to it.
Last, in the next slide, we are using technology to help cities and transit authorities plan their systems better, whether it's their streets, where they should have protected bus lanes or protected bike lanes or bus lanes, how to plan the fixed route transit system and the on-demand transit system, that shuttle system that I referenced in the beginning. If we move to the next slide, our overall vision, and those were just some examples of how we're achieving it, is to build a digital infrastructure. Not a physical infrastructure, but a digital one that transforms the way that we move around the built environment, whether urban, suburban or rural. We're doing on-demand transportation, as I showed, school buses, paratransit.
We're helping cities plan the network and their infrastructure, and we're moving into managing autonomous fleets, even things like controlling access into the system, congestion pricing or road use charging, as it's now referred to. Our vision involves controlling the traffic lights themselves, so we can manage right of way. If we have a bus that's got 50 people on it coming down the street, perhaps we would like to give that bus priority over a car with one passenger. If we jump to the next slide, we have deployed our software with over 500 partners, as we refer to them. These are cities, transit authorities, transportation operators, universities, corporations. They're all our customers in 38 countries around the world today.
As we go to the next slide, you can see some of the ways that our partners are using our software. As I mentioned, we provide a platform. This is a Software as a Service business model. Some examples here of how our partners are deploying that platform to support their unique transportation needs. On the next slide, we have the impact. What is it that we are helping our partners do? Everything from reducing their cost per trip, meaningfully increasing access, significant increases in ridership. It turns out that when you give people good public transportation that works with good visibility, they use it. In fact, they flock to it, and we see that everywhere where our system is deployed around the world.
Lastly, these are some examples of what we are doing to support our partners. This is the ROI, if you will, the return on investment for our customers. In the next slide, we have an example of the return on investment, if you will, for the planet or for society. We do believe that our technology not only helps reduce single passenger trips and therefore reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but perhaps equally importantly, it provides access to people who otherwise don't have access to transportation. In Birmingham, Alabama, as an example, prior to launching our service, only 10% of the jobs were accessible by public transportation in under 30 minutes. After we launched, 90% of the jobs were accessible by public transportation in under 30 minutes.
We believe this is real impact, true impact that we're having in the cities in which our software is deployed, and that is resonating with our customers and with cities around the world, and they are seeking to deploy our platform quite rapidly. In this next slide, I will say that we are very focused on building a great company, and we feel that is a very strong alignment with Exor's mission, as you all know. We are on a multi-decade journey. This is just the end of our first decade, one of many to build the digital infrastructure for transportation. We have greatly valued Exor's support throughout our journey. Whether it was during COVID, when times were tough, they were a great partner. They're right alongside us, alignment with our vision.
The fact that Exor is a values-driven company that supports building great companies, which is exactly what we're here to do, resonates with us very strongly and was a key factor in our decision and hopefully in Exor's decision to partner with us. We're very grateful for the support and very pleased to be partnering with John and the Exor team. Thank you all for being with us all these years, and we're looking forward to working together for several more decades to build a truly great company. Thank you very much, and I'm all done.
Are we, Daniel, I know you have to run to build Via into a great company, but I'm sure there are questions that, or who's here physically or virtually might have.
I could answer any questions that folks have for me, John.
We have one.
Great. Should we take the slide off? I'll be able to see the room. Would that be possible or?
Thank you. Any change provokes resistance. What resistance did you meet?
Good question. So you know, there's no coincidence that this is a, as I put it up front, you know, was a journey, and that has taken a decade. When we started the business, this was our vision. Our vision was, Oren, my co-founder, and I had the idea that software could greatly benefit public transportation. But in the early days, that vision, unfortunately, was not shared by nearly all cities and transport authorities that we spoke with. There was tremendous skepticism, one, about the ability to run public transportation in anything other than just buses and trains. Secondly, the idea that technology could be a force for efficiency and for progress versus just a cost center was foreign to transit agencies.
Many, many transit agencies, when you look at their budget reports from, you know, several years ago, they will say things like, "We are more efficient than other transit agencies because we spend proportionally less on technology than they do on IT." IT was considered a cost center. There were several barriers like this that we had to overcome. The way we approached it was, you know, we said, "Okay, if you don't want to adopt our software, if you don't wanna try it, we will go launch it ourselves." We launched services in N.Y. and Washington, D.C. and other cities, running our own dynamic shuttle service, and it took several years to demonstrate that this was truly a mass transit system, that transit authorities and cities should consider it.
Once we broke through with that first city, you know, cities and transportation government authorities in general are quite risk-averse. In our experience, once one or several of them adopt the system and they're happy with it, then the rest follow very quickly. That's sort of what we've seen. That's been a really great trajectory over the last couple of years.
Daniel, one question that has come from our virtual audience is who are Via's competitors, and how does Via's business model work?
I'll start maybe with the second piece. As I mentioned, we provide our software. We have one stack that offers our customers all of those different options that I showed earlier, whether it's a school bus solution or a microtransit, as it's known, on-demand transit solution or paratransit or planning solution. We offer that as a service. Software as a Service is our core business model. In some cases, we also provide services to support that. If we are partnering with a city that doesn't have its own vehicles and drivers, we will support that city through third parties. We have an ecosystem of third parties that we can connect with that city so that they can find the drivers and the vehicles that they need. For example, we partner with Avis.
That's one of our largest partners to provide vehicles. We have several other partners. The model is fundamentally a SaaS model with some services added into it to enable and accelerate adoption. We don't believe we have any single meaningful competitor. The type of competition we face really depends on the vertical. In microtransit or on-demand transit, we are the leader. We created this category. There are several small startups that attempt to compete with us, but we feel very comfortable with our competitive position. In verticals like paratransit, where there are existing software providers, legacy providers who are incumbents, we are usually the disruptor coming in with new technology, and there the competition looks a little bit different.
We typically also have seen quite good success in the last year or so as our software gains traction. There's a pretty big gap between the legacy software that's out there and the far more modern cloud-based mobile-first software that we are providing.
One last question, Daniel. What is the current stance of authorities on you potentially controlling the traffic lights? Are there any examples already available?
You know, controlling traffic lights is, on the one hand, a bit of a long-term vision. On the other hand, there is, of course, software that cities use for it. If you go to the control center, for example, for London, of Transport for London, they do control and have the ability to manage the traffic light systems, both the settings of them and then in real-time, intervene. Certainly, we've all seen that in action films, where the bad guys take over the traffic systems and cause all sorts of havoc. There's precedent for software that allows traffic lights to be controlled. What it isn't typically connected to very efficiently is the real-time traffic that's flowing through the city, and in particular, considerations of right of way.
This is a right of way decision. Who gets to go when and how much does everybody have to wait? How do you sort of route, if you will, just like an internet packet? How do you think about routing? I think those problems could benefit from far more advanced algorithms that take into consideration things like societal benefits, greenhouse gas emissions, and other considerations. That's not currently in the way these systems are built, but we do believe that there's opportunity to do something really interesting.
Thank you.
My pleasure. Thanks very much. Thanks for having me. It's been an honor, and I hope to see you all soon in person sometime. Bye, everybody.
Good afternoon, everyone. In terms of a performance, Exor has delivered very strong performance, both in terms of cumulative performance and in compound annual growth rate. The performance since 1929 until today has been positive for 1,500% in terms of Exor TSR, and in terms of compound annual growth rate, 24%. We compare our performance with MSCI World Index, our benchmark that has been positive for 404%. We are listed in Europe with the EURO STOXX 50. As you can see in the slides, our performance has been positive and above our benchmark. In terms of debt, the amount of gross debt at the end of year 2021 has been estimated in EUR 4.5 billion. We will continue to manage actively our debt, trying to optimize both the source of financing.
As you know, we use both private placement and public bonds and bank debt, and also in terms of maturities. As always, very important for us to keep a very strong rating and it will remain one of our targets also in the future. In terms of objective, our objective is to have our NAV per share performance to outperform the MSCI World Index. This has always been our target and will continue also in the future. We have also other KPIs that you can find in the slides. The free cash flow on dividend paid, cash holding cost compared to our GAV and the loan-to-value ratio. We manage actively our KPIs and our objective, and we compare our return and the performance to our targets, fixed targets, and also to the peers.
As you can see in the slides, our performance has been in line or better than the target and above our peer.
Thank you very much, Enrico. We wanted to come back to something which on the earlier slide, John said, back in 2019 was going to be one of our priorities for the next 10 years, and that was to define our approach to ESG. Indeed, over the last tw o years since we last spoke to you, we have been doing that, through COVID, and before COVID. We wanted to make sure that we'd really spent time thinking about this before we came back to you and explained how we were going to do it. I should emphasize that it's not that our companies haven't been working on this. Many of our companies are actually very advanced in how they've been addressing this. You just heard Daniel talk about how it's very fundamental within Via.
It's actually very fundamental within a number of our companies, and they've reported on it for some time. At Exor level, we wanted to put together a clear framework that we believed in, which will take us forward into the future for a long time and be a framework which we can use both for ourselves and to apply to our companies. These are our beliefs. First of all, we believe that ESG is absolutely fundamental to being a great company, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a moment. We believe that there are a set of foundational ESG measures that we're going to expect all of our companies to put in place, and that's a set of measures that will grow over time.
We've then identified a set of passions around E, S, and G that we're going to look to hold consistently across both ourselves at Exor level and also our companies. We want to measure the impact of what we do, and we're gonna hold ourselves accountable for them. Our board has now created an ESG committee, which we'll tell you a little bit more about in a moment, and they will help both hold us accountable for what we do at Exor level, but also help us to champion this new, work with our companies. I wanted to take you through the various different elements of this.
First of all, if we go back to the elements of being a great company, which you saw on that earlier slide about both our purpose and our values, acting in a responsible way is one of the elements of being a great company. We actually believe it affects all of the different elements of being a great company, because acting in a responsible way is something you should be doing today in performing to the highest standards, and it's also something that you should be thinking about as you seek renewal and change, and as you think about being distinctive.
What we mean by acting in a responsible way is clearly you've got to be aligned with all of the best practices and reporting frameworks and all of that, but we also expect, and we're gonna expect this both of ourselves and of our companies, that you will be continually raising the bar of what your expectations are around ESG, and that each company should be aspiring to lead its industry, be amongst the leaders in its industry in ESG. Now, obviously, that differs by industry, what they're going to be doing, but that's what we're going to be expecting all of our companies to do over time. I mentioned before that we'll have a set of foundational elements that we expect all of our companies to meet.
In addition to those foundational elements, what we spent time defining is what are the Exor passions, as we've called them, within each of the pillars of E, S, and G, which we want to try and promote across all of our different companies. These are what we would like to kind of put forward, and these are the ones that we've spent a lot of time talking about with our companies. If I take each of them in turn, on the environment, emissions reduction is something that we're going to ask all of our companies to measure. Many of them do already, but we're going to ask all of our companies to measure them and, over time, to set clear reduction targets and to track those.
Now, you can see at the bottom here that some of our companies are already doing this. You know, Ferrari has said that it's going to be carbon neutral by 2030, for example. This is something now that we want to see across the portfolio, and we're also gonna hold ourselves at Exor level accountable on this, as I'll come on to explain. On the social side, we're sitting here today, those of us who are here in person, in the Fondazione Agnelli, which is very much around improving education. Education is at the core, really, of the fabric of Exor and has been for a very, very long time. It makes a lot of sense for us to focus on education within the S part of ESG.
We'd like all of our companies to think about education initiatives of one of two sorts. One is reducing inequalities, and the other one is promoting innovation, promoting excellence within education. Now, again, many of our companies are doing this already, and what we would like to see our companies do is to do things which are aligned with their own purposes as companies. We're not intending to have a cross-Exor single initiative on education. We want to have each company doing something which makes sense for them and what they want to do. You may have read a little bit about what we did with the Fondazione Agnelli around the Arcipelago Educativo, particularly during the COVID crisis, which was to help particularly children from poorer households to catch up with some of the education losses that took place during COVID.
To actually help, in the end, more than 500 students across six different Italian cities to do that catch-up during the COVID period. That was something that we did at Exor, which was very much around the reducing inequalities part of this. Our companies also do a lot on the innovation, the kind of the higher end of education. For example, the work that Stellantis has been doing around physics in schools. The third part of this on the governance element, the thing that we would like to highlight and promote across all the companies is diversity and inclusion, which we think is absolutely fundamental. I mentioned earlier, some of the push, some of what we did in CNHI during the COVID crisis around this. We were very proud when Ferrari achieved the equal pay salary certificate.
This is, again, something that we now want to see across all of our companies, that they're all doing initiatives around diversity and inclusion. These are our three passions, one under each of the pillars of E, S, and G. Under each one of these, we're going to set commitments for ourselves at Exor level, and we're gonna be clear about what we're championing with our companies. If we take the emission side, at Exor level, we want to achieve carbon neutrality by 2022 and net zero emissions by 2025. With our companies, we're gonna be asking them all to set reduction targets for Scope 1 and 2 emissions and to measure Scope 3 emissions. When we turn to the social side, so that's the education side, we have two initiatives that we're very excited about.
One is helping young entrepreneurs to build ventures, which is something that we're doing together with an organization called Vento, which is very much on the innovation side of the educational push. The other one is, this is more on the inequality side, we want to try and do something to help reduce the gender gap in STEM subjects. Particularly helping girls try and close that gender gap. We have an initiative that we'll be doing with the Fondazione Agnelli to test a new way of doing that, which incidentally will be open to boys as well, but we think that the biggest gains will be from girls because they tend to be further behind on the STEM subjects.
On our companies, as I mentioned before, we're gonna ask every company to have a company-relevant education initiative and to accompany that with clear metrics and targets. We're very grateful to the Fondazione Agnelli who's been helping us work with the companies to make sure that we, across all of our different companies, have best practices in terms of measuring the impact of educational initiatives and also designing them, given all the expertise that sits here in this building. Then finally, on diversity and inclusion, at Exor level, we want to reach a 46% gender balance, and we're going to be considering diverse candidates for all of our new appointments. Then across our companies, we're going to be asking all of our companies to have clear diversity targets and to measure and report progress against them. We will be reporting this.
In fact, we already do report under the GRI standards, but we'll also be reporting looking at the alignment with the SDGs. This is something that you'll hear us coming back to over time. It's something that we really believe very strongly in. We hope that by setting this as a framework, so we have very clear passions that we're going to look to champion with our companies, we will see real progress being made over time. Importantly, if we're going to do this, we need to not only measure it, but we need to be held accountable for it ourselves. We're very pleased that our board, the Exor board, now has an ESG committee, which is gonna be chaired by Ajay Banga, and also has Lawrence and Mark on it as well.
All of the members of that committee have a lot of experience in this area, so we're very pleased that they have volunteered to step forward, both to help us hold us accountable at Exor level and to help us as Exor champion this with our companies. Finally, I wanted to say that we are also looking for opportunities to invest in the ESG space. We've already made a couple of investments, and we've got a couple of the logos at the bottom. Hopefully, you all have on your seats a little, a little thing from Treedom. What you'll find if you have a look at that is that that will enable each of you to scan in a code and Treedom will plant a tree on your behalf. You can then follow the progress of that tree as it grows.
Treedom is a company which has been set up with this as its purpose. It enables people to gift trees to each other. Those trees are then planted by farmers in local communities to help the environment. As part of today, we would be very pleased if you could all take advantage of the opportunity to plant a tree and follow the progress of your tree over time. We will continue, as I say, to look for opportunities here. We do think it's a very interesting investment space for us, and particularly an investment space which is interesting when it links back to our companies, as does the green steel investment. Thank you.
What's next? First of all, I would like to give a summary of what are the available cash that we can deploy on the back of a successful transaction on PartnerRe. We have today EUR 1 billion of cash and cash equivalents that we can deploy. We are expecting in the next three years to be able to generate EUR 1 billion of free cash flow, measured as Enrico described before. That taking into account EUR 100 million of dividend that Exor would give to its shareholders, and the proceeds of PartnerRe are close to EUR 8 billion.
We would like to have flexibility of a buyback in the next years of EUR 0.5 billion, and we would like to reduce our debt, which now is at EUR 4.5 billion-EUR 4 billion, which as you know we'd like over this decade to get in the range of EUR 2 billion. That gives us EUR 9 billion of cash that we can look at deploying on the back of the successful sale of PartnerRe to Covéa. Where are we going to look? First of all, we will continue giving priority to companies, and we will look into three distinct sectors.
We want to do more exploration in healthcare, which is a sector in which we're not present, but one that we've learned a lot about and seen how relevant it is as we think where the needs are and where technology is going, and where we need also to help reducing the overall cost of how the healthcare systems operate. Luxury is an area where we have been putting effort. We are not planning on building a luxury company or a luxury group, as there's been many speculations, but we do think that luxury and luxury broadly defined in different categories is very interesting. Which is also why the initiative that I mentioned before, the alliance that is NUO, is very interesting in that respect.
The two companies NUO is invested in, one is in personal care, and the other one now is going to be in outdoor. How you think about this needs to be broad. Finally, technology, where Noam has allowed us to proceed to have a stake in the future. We see as an important sector in itself, but also as a theme, as we do think that technology is really going to cut across all different sectors. What I do want to emphasize is that we will remain, as we always have, open to new sectors and geographies.
As Suzanne mentioned before, the ESG topic is also one of great interest for us as we think about the investable opportunities that will occur on what is going to be a big driver of change between energy transitions and also good place where bits and atoms meet. What we do think is ultimately very, very important in everything we do, and I would like to really make this point clear, is on people. What we have been able to achieve and what we will be able to achieve will be thanks to people and great people with whom we can work. Our investments are also going to provide opportunity for us to deploy our available cash, and also one in which we expect, as we discussed before, to have mid-teens returns.
Through our investments, we also are very hopeful, as you have seen with Via, that they can provide interesting opportunities for Exor in the future. Our overall direction of travel remains the same as we shared with you in 2019. We are very committed in making sure that on companies, on investments, and that our financial metrics are all in sync. We also are very cognizant that as our gross asset value grows, the returns that we have been able to achieve in the past are more difficult as the asset base is higher. We remain very disciplined in the way we measure all the different metrics that Exor has, which Enrico talked to you about. We expect the ESG topic to be one that is and will become over time, more and more important in what we do and how we do it.
Before answering to your questions, I would like to close with a quote from my grandfather who would have turned 100 years old, so a century, in 2021. Which is also how we ended the shareholders letter of Exor in 2020. Because I do think it is also reflective of the moment in time we are living at Exor, where we are very optimistic about the future, the future of the companies we are in, the future of the companies that we will be acquiring, the investments that we are making and the ones we will make. One important part of this quote is young people, and the future will be made by young people. I think we have very, very good colleagues of ours at Exor and in our companies.
That emphasis as we go forward on people and on young people is going to be a key factor of success for us. I thank you all. I am sad that we're not able to be more together physically as we would have hoped, but very confident that in two years from now, we will be able to be together. I'd like to thank everyone who has come here, but also everyone who is remotely and virtually connected with us in different parts of the world. Thank you very much. Now we'll open it for Q&A.
Thank you very much for the presentation. It was very interesting. Can I ask you talked a lot about ESG. One thing I see a lot with group companies is their shares trading at substantial discounts to their asset value. Obviously, that connection's important if shareholders are gonna participate in the growth of the assets going forward. With that in mind, you had, I think, a slide showing that you may consider EUR 0.5 billion of buyback over the next few years. In the context of EUR 9 billion, I think, of available cash, that was quite a small amount. I was just wondering your thinking as far as governance and buybacks and what you think basically, or what the thinking was behind that EUR 0.5 billion type number.
Thank you.
That's a good and relevant question that we've discussed with our board. I think the thinking is the following. We believe that the opportunity set in the years to come, bearing in mind also volatile times that we are living and will live, provide good opportunities. On the other hand, because we have fixed a dividend for the next years to come at EUR 100 million, so without increasing it, the board felt that a good way of us having Exor shareholders participate rather than increasing the dividend, would be through a buyback. The buyback would also provide Exor more flexibility on when we could apply. Of course, if our shareholders were to accept. The discount is a structural aspect of holding companies.
The way to see it is that this is an opportunity to buy more of Exor if you believe that the underlying is an interesting one.
Good afternoon. Monica Bosio from Intesa Sanpaolo. and thanks for taking my question. We have seen that the focus is on three sectors. I was wondering if you can elaborate with us about your approach on the future size of the investments across the different areas. You have just told us that you are not going to create a big group in the luxury segment, but I was wondering if you can elaborate on the technology and on the healthcare. If the technological investments will be made only through Exor Seeds or no. The last question is on the ESG. Can you tell us the share of ESG investors on your free float, if you have this number? Thank you very much.
Thank you. What I think is important to bear in mind is that the three sectors, healthcare, luxury, and technology are all expensive sectors. They definitely have tailwind, but they also have high valuations. We believe that these are important sectors to think about as we believe that we can build companies, which is why starting early through seeds or in smaller companies is a way in which we believe we can then provide more capital over time. The way in which we want to think about how much capital will be available per investment will on one side depend on what age the companies we will invest are. Via is a good example, as Daniel mentioned, of how he's been building it over a decade and has more decades to go.
What we've been discussing with Noam is really to be in that timeframe, where you not necessarily want to invest a lot of money in a company that already exists, if you can participate and enable that company to grow. It will prove to be more interesting in terms of returns over time. On the other hand, we have in the past been able to make large investments, and we do believe that ultimately being concentrated where you have high conviction is one of the strength of Exor, and that means that we will definitely be looking at opportunities if they were to arise. But I do want to stress the fact that ultimately we will be, as we always have been, very clear about the value and the price.
We want to make sure that the price we pay reflects value that we think can be created. On our shareholder base, how many ESG related funds we have is information that I don't have, but we'll make sure to have that information for you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for having us here. Thank you also for providing a model of how a company should be run, and I really appreciate that living in Europe. My question is how you, individually or as a group, managed the decision with Covéa. Because if we go back a year, emotions were riding high, the markets were moving fast, and they pulled a pretty dastardly move. Actually what you described as well, what I saw was you very quietly just said, "No, we're not doing that." You managed to maintain the relationship to revive the deal, and I think that's extraordinary. I'm curious to understand how you did that.
First of all, I think that the logic remained intact. Covéa is interested in developing in reinsurance, PartnerRe to further develop itself, because we have been able, in the five years that we've been owning, PartnerRe, to improve operationally the company. The company is a much more efficient company to be in the top quartile in terms of investment returns, which were two levers that we felt we could apply, but also change the mix of the company with a large acquisition in the life and health sector and building a third-party capital business. Our ownership of PartnerRe was one that made PartnerRe a better company.
As we believe that the future of PartnerRe and how PartnerRe can develop as a great company further, the balance sheet and the capabilities that Covéa can provide are ones that we wouldn't have been able to provide as Exor. Which is the reason why we felt that full PartnerRe that would have been a good opportunity. Finally, we needed it to be also good for Exor. At a certain price it's good, at another it's less good. The reason why the price was negotiated was also linked to the moment in time that we were going through. The importance then, as in other instances, will be to be very clear about what is changing and why it's changing.
We also had a counterpart in Covéa and its leadership that was willing to continue a dialogue and working together. We have since developed also their interest in investing alongside us. Our investment activity has been one that they valued the relationship with Matteo, with Nikhil, and that has created the right level of trust, which ultimately you need in any business venture you go forward with.
Hello again. Thank you for the investor day. It's a fresh breath of air, not only because of the new trees we will plant together. I attended the first Exor annual meeting in Amsterdam still in 2016, and so it's now the sixth year. My name is Robert Karas. I'm with Bank Gutmann, a family-owned private bank in Austria. I'm here today as a private investor. What interests me is the investing side, so especially to Matteo Scolari. I saw on your website that you have investments in Cameco, Ocado and Schlumberger. I'm wondering, are these three stocks 80%-90% of your portfolio still following the ethos of Charlie Munger, that three stocks are plenty? The other question is on the venture side, have we ventured into anything that is decentralized, blockchain, crypto? Thank you.
Those are some of our most. They are the biggest investments we hold today, but actually the portfolio is a little bit more diversified than it used to be. One is a function of the fact that sometimes you just find you know, the fat pitch, as Charlie Munger calls it. You really think you're gonna hit it out of the park and with very low downside. Over time, since we started five years ago, there's been moments of that, and we've had positions that have you know, been up to 35% of the portfolio in a single name. Today, with you know, valuations having run up the way they have, it's not the case.
We have more things that we think can double in value as opposed to go up three, four, or five times as it used to be. Therefore, our position sizing has slightly changed. Those positions specifically you mentioned are around 15% of the portfolio each. Another way to look at it though is by sector concentration and Schlumberger, for instance, which is the largest oil service company in the world, as you know, is only one part of our focus on energy. Energy, we do believe in aggregate is a bit of a fat pitch opportunity, but we play it not uniquely through one name, but through a portfolio of names.
Also because as often is the case, when the markets are very depressed, liquidity becomes an issue, and the most interesting stocks with the highest upsides become too liquid for the size of portfolio that we're currently running. We're somewhat forced to diversify a bit more.
Thank you for the question. We followed the sector quite closely. We've made some initial investment. One company called Crusoe Energy, which provides oil and gas companies a solution to gas flaring and using the energy actually to mine Bitcoin. It's a beautiful solution where you can help them solve an environmental problem and use that to create value. Solidus Labs would be another example, which is a software for compliance for trading platforms for people who do trade cryptocurrencies. We've started to make some bets and learn more, and I think the way that we do it is always the same.
We seek these founders who have that vision and try and also navigate this new space with enough you know care so that we partner with the right people.
Thank you for having us, and it's great to see you guys. Just a question on the war chest that's quite large. I wonder if that size is strategic for you guys. Is that a particular part of the market or that size allow you to play in particular arena that you think is less competitive? I'm also wondering, could you flex that over to public investments fairly quickly if you see some volatility, or do you expect to keep a lot of it in cash waiting for private investments? How do you think about that public/private liquidity trade-off? Then maybe just a final one. Do you ever see a scenario where maybe it's 10 years from now, but where Exor itself is actually spinning companies to shareholders, and maybe focusing each of the group's units a little bit further?
I feel like that's probably way too far in the future, so thank you.
Thank you for the good questions which aligns with one that was asked virtually. What's the timeframe and methodology for investing the huge amount of cash? I suppose you envisage higher returns than PartnerRe could deliver. I think it's really good that we have been building investment capability because it does allow us to have more opportunity to deploy our cash, which is what we've been discussing with the board and is definitely something that we want to size properly. What we want to be though mindful is that we think it is an advantage to be able to move fairly quickly and to have availability of resources. What we've seen in general transaction is that
You don't necessarily have that many organizations that can deploy that amount of capital. As I said before, we are comfortable on high concentration. The concentration Matteo discussed is something that we're comfortable about. Noam, his largest position are really composing the big bulk of what we have in Seeds. We are comfortable in really trying to get to high convictions, which could lead to high concentration.
I also think that we need to have time working in our favor, and that's also something which is important and that we've learned in the past, that being able to have patience but at the same time, making sure that you can act decisively when it's required is something that I believe is an advantage. Again, the sectors we described as the ones we want to give thought and priorities are definitely ones that are really going to be important as the world and the economies develop, but they're also expensive for that reason. One has to be always cognizant about that element too. Finally, Exor itself is a holding company.
I think we will be more participating in eventual deconglomerations, like we have been doing and which are increasingly very fashionable, rather than seeing Exor itself as looking at spinning off its own companies.
Thank you. Just continuing the line of questioning about the share buyback and the discount to NAV that it trades at. So just wondering why you think that discount exists, particularly wide versus other holding companies. And my understanding is that there are minimal tax effects if you were to liquidate your holdings. So just wondering how you make sense of that. And then secondly, if the discount did widen out, is there a level at which you would say we should allocate more capital toward buybacks? If the discount got to 50, 60, pick a, you know, pick a number, is there a level you say, "Okay, this just doesn't make sense to do anything but buy back stocks." How do you think about that?
Well, can you repeat the first question on the technicalities?
Why do you think the discount exists?
For-
...at such a wide level? Looking at your share price to the-
Yeah
Net asset value per share.
There are many theories on discounts. All have some rationale. I ultimately believe that what's important is if on one side you're able to generate returns on an NAV per share, there's a correlation with your stock. If we look at our total shareholders' returns, historically, that would be a good indication if we were able to continue in the future. What would we do in terms of buying back stock? We have bought 10% of our capital over the last decade. If there were a strong conviction for multiple reasons, we would look at it.
Again, it's more important the underlying than the discount, because if you had a very valued underlying, though the discount would be high, probably you're better off not going into an aggressive buyback versus having a small discount, but the underlying gross asset value being, in our views, undervalued. I think it's not mechanical per se. It needs judgment. I'm very confident that the discussion with our board on this topic has always been very, very healthy.
Yes, looking back, I'm Alex Pitcher from Delmo. Hi. Looking back, some of your incredible value creation has been achieved through boldness of certain leaders. I would mention Sergio, probably. What I now see is that you're stepping in and acting as Chief Executive Officer s in some of your companies. Doesn't that inhibit somehow boldness of managers if I see that the Exor people are stepping in and running companies?
I would say that that has been something that was not by design. We had unfortunate circumstances that happened, where our ownership and our governance was able to address effectively and swiftly. As I described before, we are lucky to have very strong leaders of our companies today. The success as I closed my presentation will be based on having strong leaders. I think that on the contrary, we have been evolving and developing with more leaders than we used to have.
Good afternoon. Gabriele Gambarova from Banca Akros. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on Iveco Group. It is set to start trading on its own at the beginning of January. I think it's a good company. Probably it is not a great company. Question is, what are the options on the table? What do you foresee to make it a great company? Similar question for CNH Industrial. I believe, in this case, it's already a great company, but what's next? I mean, do you envisage any, I don't know, M&A or major M&A deal to make it even better than now? We know that the gap between CNH and the leader in the agricultural industry is pretty wide. Third and last question on Comau. It's still in the Stellantis portfolio.
We know that should be, let's say, spun off. I was wondering if there is any new initiative on this front. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll take the first two parts of this, and then jump past you on Comau. On Iveco Group, I hope you had the opportunity to see the Iveco Group Investor Day presentation that we did on November the eighteenth, which hopefully described what is an exciting future for that company when it spins out of CNHI in early January. It is a company which has shown already that it's very good at creating partnerships, as it did with Nikola Motors. That partnership has been successful. It's now producing the electric-heavy trucks and will go on to produce the fuel cell electric vehicles. It is well positioned to continue to do partnerships. It's shown that it's able to do that.
Of course, it also has a very strong bus business, and a very strong engines business. We believe that the different parts of that company together are very interesting, a very interesting collection. We've said at Exor level that we very much support it spinning out. We see no reason to do anything further with that company. You know, obviously, if there was an approach to it, then the board would look at it, but there's no intention to look for anything. We're very happy with that as an independent company within our portfolio. We, at Exor level, will support it in becoming a great company.
By the way, I think if you look at the Investor Day presentation, there was a lot in there about ESG, which is a very big part of that kind of company's future. On the CNHI side, by separating the companies, I think it's going to be somewhat easier now for that company to start to progress and really develop within the agriculture and construction sectors. We supported the acquisition of Raven, which as I mentioned earlier, completed this morning, which I think gives the company a very good base in terms of precision agriculture, which is one of the pieces which will be necessary as we look forward into the future, and rightly one of the things that people have kind of highlighted as being important for that company.
We see the company as having a good future, moving forward to being a great company, under the leadership of Scott Wine. There will be a CNHI Investor Day on the February 22nd next year, where they will lay out more the plans for the company in the future. There will also be, actually, on the Iveco Group side, in the first half of February, there'll be a technology day going through everything that the Iveco Group is doing. Both companies are very active in laying out what their future is going to be. I think at Exor level, we've made it clear that we are supportive of both sides. We're going to stay as investors in both sides, and we're excited about the future potential.
I have a couple of questions coming virtually that I'll read. How do you intend to manage potential investments in the consumer luxury space between the alliance with NUO or directly by Exor? Will size of the possible target be the criteria? We believe that size is going to be the criteria, and we think that NUO, under Tommaso's leadership, has the ability of really identifying very interesting companies. As those companies scale, and if there are ones that would be interesting for the company and for Exor, NUO definitely has the opportunity of providing a funnel for us, similarly to Seeds and similarly to how we're thinking about some investments in the private market with Nikhil.
We look at it in terms of size and then compatibility with the company and Exor. You benchmarked your financials against other European holding companies such as Investor AB and Kinnevik. What have you learned from studying other holding companies? We learn a lot from other holding companies. Definitely the Nordic holding companies have been very good in entering sectors of the future and being very much very ahead in all the ESG related matters. That is for us a very important example of what they've been doing and how systematic they've been acting.
In fact, the opportunity that Suzanne mentioned, H2 Green Steel is a Swedish company in which other holding companies and families behind those holding companies are also investors. We definitely think that there's a lot to learn about how to participate and be bolder, more courageous as our values state, in looking at sectors of the future. Thank you for buying back shares and not increasing the dividend. Why do you limit the sectors you're looking at to three? Some European insurance companies aren't expensive at all, and with EUR 9 billion, you can make an impact and realize nice returns.
As I mentioned, we are going to prioritize on those three sectors, but we will remain open to opportunities and those opportunities could be in very different sectors. Having said that, financial services at large are very regulated. It's a very regulated industry, if you look at the whole spectrum. With all that is happening in these sectors, particularly also driven by technology, we want to make sure that we are on the right end of history. One of the things that we've learned with our companies, particularly our older ones that are not twentieth-century companies, but nineteenth-century companies, is that the transformation and the renewal can be very painful. You need to be very...
You also need to be very clear about the trade-offs of where you spend time. Ultimately, it all depends on price and value. We have one question, which is any update from the family fund? How do you see the split public-private investments going forward? We believe that the family fund is very important. We actually within our investments have continued to allocate some of our liquidity to it, and it has performed well. What it has allowed us is really to learn a subset, which is the owner-operators companies. The companies who are owned and operated who actually have performed even better than the family funds.
That has been a big part of our thinking and our reflection around some of the evolution of our governance and also how important the attributes of leaders, where we believe there's a lot to learn from owner-operators. What does it mean for the Agnelli family in terms of strategic optionality, the voting rights multiplied by five for long-term shareholders? The multiple votes is a feature that exists in the Netherlands, which is very aligned to incentivize long-term ownership, which has been applied to Exor, but also to our Dutch-based companies. We think it's a very important tool in terms of the alignment, the long-term alignment with shareholders. There is no significant change today that we foresee in the ownership of Exor.
The Giovanni Agnelli B.V., which is the largest shareholder, is committed to its ownership and we believe that this has been a very effective tool of incentivizing long-term ownership. Technology has a wide meaning. May you elaborate some more on specific areas of potential interest? I will divert to Noam on this.
I think we've had just a few words about that earlier, but mobility, fintech and healthcare have been a focus as of late. I think you should expect to see more healthcare. We've made a dedicated effort to really you know screen for opportunities in the sector, both in biotech and in digital health. That's one thing I will say. On the crypto side, I think you know for us it would be more about infrastructure, about finding the right groups that we can start to build relationship with. You know, that would be it.
Thank you, Noam. We have a question on luxury. There are multiple questions on luxury. Can you elaborate about what verticals you consider interesting in luxury broadly defined? Is luxury sectors one of your priorities? As I said, we believe there's very interesting characteristics of the luxury sector. We think that good quality of products or services at a good pricing point are very interesting consumer goods businesses. We've been very fortunate owning one of the world's prime luxury company, which is Ferrari. As we're developing Ferrari, learning about the different segments of the market in terms of additional markets to what is the core business of Ferrari, which is building the great cars it does.
We have in the recent two y ears been investing in Shang Xia and Louboutin, which are very specific opportunities in the luxury sector. That is what is going to drive the possibility of Exor of doing more. It will be very much driven by specific characteristics or opportunities where we will be a good fit for the company. They're very interesting in terms of these three companies of where they are, 'cause Ferrari is a very strong, legitimate brand in one category, and now it's trying to build in new categories. Louboutin is a growing company and one of the prime independent luxury companies.
It's very strong in specific markets and in specific categories, and it's really working on developing it in new markets, for example, China or in additional categories in the leather goods. Shang Xia is really an opportunity of China, which is the largest market, as you all know, for luxury in really identifying itself as a native proposal and a way in which the Chinese market has the opportunity of also having a company that can express itself for that need. It has already ten years of longevity, so we are in an adolescent phase, which is a very interesting moment in time. These three companies are in different moments of their lives, and they present very unique opportunities for Exor, which is the reason why we are invested. Will there be more?
We don't know. We're not planning at the moment, but we're definitely open. We are, as a general conclusion for today, very eager and very open for business. That really means that if there will be interesting ideas, interesting opportunities, and more specifically interesting people with whom to work, Exor is a place that will be open for those conversations. I really would like to thank all of you who are here physically with us and virtually, and looking forward to exciting two years ahead. Thank you.