Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HMC Capital Limited FY 2024 full year results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question- and- answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. David Di Pilla, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining today's call. With me on the call are our Group CFO, Will McMicking, and Group Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Misha Mohl. Before we commence, HMC would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and celebrate their diverse culture and connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. I'll start this morning's presentation on slide four with an overview of our financial year 2024 results. I'm pleased to report that our business achieved a record financial result in financial year 2024. This result was underpinned by new revenue streams and significant growth in recurring earnings. Funds under management grew at year-end to 12.7 billion, which is up 30% on last year.
Our total revenue of AUD 189.5 million was up 42%. Pleasingly, over 50% of our revenue came from high-quality recurring funds management income, which grew by 37% year-on-year. Our operating margin increased to 68%, which was aided by a AUD 15.6 million performance fee from HMC Capital Partners, which reflected two years of accumulated performance fees. We expect our operating margin can be sustained at over 60% going forward. This reflects the highly profitable nature of our business. Our pre-tax earnings of AUD 0.37 per share was up 40% year-on-year and continues the strong growth trajectory since our listing in 2019. Finally, the business is well capitalized with AUD 1.4 billion of balance sheet liquidity and over AUD 2.5 billion of investable dry powder across our funds management platform.
October of this year marks the HMC Group's five-year anniversary as an ASX-listed company. Since we listed, we've delivered a 29% annualized return for our shareholders. Whilst we are proud of our achievements over the last five years, we are not resting. Today, we will explain the growth for the next five years of our journey. Financial year 2024 was a landmark year from a strategic standpoint, with HMC establishing three exciting growth platforms in the form of private credit, energy transition, and digital infrastructure. Importantly, we have been preparing for these strategies for some time, and they build on the key philosophy of the group to organically grow funds under management via strategies which are exposed to global mega trends. For each strategy, we have secured high-quality people to build leading institutional scale platforms.
In the past five years, we've scaled our real estate business from AUD 1 billion- AUD 10 billion in AUM. As we look forward, we are aiming to replicate this success in private equity, private credit, energy transition, and digital infrastructure. We believe each of these can grow to over AUD 10 billion over the next five years. So as you can see, we now have the foundations in place to build a AUD 50 billion platform at HMC. Moving now to Slide 5. We've talked about our economic flywheel for several years now. It is now a substantially larger and more diversified flywheel. In financial year 2024, we began to see the benefits of our business model in the following ways: In real estate, we sold down 2% or AUD 50 million of our shareholding in HDN.
We recycled the capital to seed our high-growth private credit platform through the Payton Capital acquisition. In private equity, we underwrote a capital raising for our portfolio company, Sigma, and co-invested the balance sheet in strategic investments alongside HMCCP. Going forward, we will also use the balance sheet to establish a corporate private equity vehicle. For example, this could involve warehousing seed assets where we identify quality private acquisitions or public to private opportunities. In Private Credit, we are supporting the growth of our move into corporate and asset-based private credit via a merchant banking style model. This will see HMC underwrite opportunities on balance sheet and then syndicate these positions to institutional and wholesale investors, and finally, in energy transition, we recently completed an investment in battery storage developer, Stor-Energy.
We're excited about this investment, which can be either used to seed funds and institutional partnerships or be kept on balance sheet to realize significant future profits as we de-risk the development pipeline. The scalability of our business model is demonstrated on the right-hand side of this slide. Since IPO, HMC has grown EPS and AUM by 44% and 80% per annum, respectively. Our objective is to maintain this strong growth trajectory into the future. I'll now move to Slide 6, where we discuss our new growth platforms. Private Credit. As you know, last month, we reached financial close on the acquisition of Payton Capital. Payton is a leading Australian private credit manager with AUD 1.6 billion of AUM focused on commercial real estate lending activities. Payton generated EBITDA of AUD 20 million in financial year 2024, and a 45% EBITDA margin.
We recently announced that Jeremy Townsend and Craig Schloeffel will together lead the Payton business. They'll report to myself and Matt Lancaster as chair of HMC's broader private credit platform. I'm pleased to share that the business has made a strong start since acquisition, with AUM growing by over AUD 150 million, and monthly inflows running at record levels. In financial year 2025, we are aiming to double our AUM in private credit. This will be underpinned by strong growth in Payton and the commencement of our corporate and asset-based lending activities. The strong momentum validates the highly strategic nature of the Payton acquisition, which was secured on attractive financial terms. Energy transition. Our investment in Stor-Energy provides a foundation to develop a deep utility scale portfolio of battery energy storage systems.
To secure this opportunity, we made a small upfront investment and committed up to AUD 50 million over three years. Most of this investment will enable the business to progress its 1.4 GW development portfolio. Our teams identified additional bolt-on opportunities to create a market-leading platform and pipeline. We're now in advanced due diligence on a second seed investment, and we remain on track to commence fundraising in financial year 2025. In digital infrastructure, we flagged at the half-year result, the acquisition of StratCap, which is a U.S.-based digital infrastructure platform, primarily focused on data centers. The acquisition is now on track to reach financial close in the coming weeks. StratCap today manages 700 million of fee-paying AUM on behalf of institutional and wholesale investors.
While this is a relatively small acquisition for HMC, we're already seeing the firsthand benefit of StratCap's leadership and technical capability with a number of exciting opportunities we currently have under evaluation. We now have the foundation to create a global platform and are exploring fundraising opportunities across the U.S. and Australia during financial year 2025 . I'll now move to Slide 8, where we move to our funds management section. HMC's philosophy is to build around four high-conviction trends we identified several years ago. These trends remain unchanged. They continue to provide a high level of confidence in the long-term growth prospects of our underlying investment portfolio and our companies. Importantly, this investment philosophy is consistent with our belief that businesses exposed to structural growth are well-positioned to withstand market events which occur from time to time and deliver long-term, continued, sustainable earnings.
Moving to Slide 9 for an update on our real estate platform. Real estate is HMC's largest business today, with AUD 9.6 billion in AUM across listed and unlisted institutional funds. In financial year 2024, real estate generated AUD 85 million of high-quality recurring EBITDA. We expect the 11% return on invested capital this business generated in financial year 2024 will, over time, move closer to our 20% target. This will be driven by right sizing our co-investment in our listed vehicles to 10%, and we also expect to see an increase in transactional activity and related revenue when rates begin to moderate over the next 6- 12 months. The operational performance across our Real Estate platform has remained strong. This reflects the structural growth in our target sectors and our high-performing operational teams.
We recently exchanged on the acquisition of Brandon Park for AUD 108 million for our last-mile logistics institutional mandate. This is a high-quality metropolitan asset located in Melbourne, with significant development upside. We expect our first last-mile logistics vintage to be fully invested in financial year 2025, with a strong identified pipeline now in diligence. We're also today updating the market around the next LML vintage, with two to three anchor investors for a AUD 1 billion vehicle well advanced. Looking to financial year 2025, we are significantly more optimistic about the growth outlook for our real estate business. We believe now is the right time to deploy capital into high-quality assets before the rate easing cycle gets underway over the next 6- 12 months. Moving now to Slide 10, Private Equity.
Our Private Equity business, which was established just two years ago, was a major contributor to this year's financial result, with AUD 78 million of EBITDA, including management fees, performance fees, and investment income. The business generated a 48% return on invested capital and a 91% EBITDA margin. These are standout metrics underpinned by HMCCP's strong investment performance. Since inception, the fund has generated a 26% annualized return. That's 14% per annum above the ASX 300 accumulation index over the same period. This is a great endorsement of the fund's unique strategy and investment process, which we are confident is repeatable and scalable. Our team is playing a very active role in each of our portfolio companies on strategic and operational initiatives to improve shareholder returns.
We can see multiple catalysts, catalyst events over the next six to 12 months to deliver continued strong investment returns. Next month marks the fund's two-year anniversary. The fund's two-year track record represents an important milestone, which will enable it to achieve additional ratings and accelerate fundraising activity. This will be a key focus for Tim Koroknay, our newly appointed head of wholesale distribution. Moving to Slide 11: Private Credit. Our ambition in private credit is significant, and I'm confident this will be a major contributor to HMC's growth and financial results over the coming years. The integration of the Payton business is progressing well, and we have already implemented changes to ensure alignment with HMC's existing risk management, legal and compliance, investment committee, and IT processes. The business has made a strong start to financial year 2025, with the deployment and fundraising tracking ahead of budget.
We are accelerating Payton's business plan with significant investment in both fundraising and origination capability in New South Wales and Queensland, where Payton is currently underrepresented. We're also diversifying Payton's funding sources and recently completed a AUD 500 million new financing facility with UBS and are finalizing a similar facility with Goldman Sachs. This will enable Payton to target larger loan opportunities. It will also create additional opportunities for Payton to establish new products for retail, wholesale, and institutional investors. We're equally excited about the growth prospect opportunity in corporate and asset-based private credit, and in energy transition, the organic build-out of our energy transition platform is progressing well. We've assembled a high caliber team around Angela Carr. We recently announced the appointment of the former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to chair our platform, which is a great endorsement of the strategy.
Our ambition is to build an institutional scale platform with our sights set on assembling a 15 GW development portfolio focused on opportunities across the energy value chain. The team already has a deep pipeline of investment opportunities under evaluation. We are well advanced on acquiring a second seed asset following our recent investment in Stor-Energy. We're on track to start fundraising for an AUD 2 billion platform later this year, following strong interest from domestic super funds and institutional investors. Turning now to Slide 13. Our platform is primed for growth in financial year 2025, following 12 months of hard work to establish the three new growth verticals. We start this year with AUD 2.5 billion of available investment dry powder across our funds.
In the middle column of the slide, we've highlighted our key objectives in financial year 2025 to continue HMC's growth momentum into this year. In Private Credit, our objective is to double AUM to AUD 3 billion. We're also exploring the potential to establish an ASX-listed private credit vehicle to further diversify Payton's capital sources. The establishment of our corporate and asset-based Private Credit platform is also well advanced, with two senior hires expected to start in the coming months. This team will work closely with Matt Lancaster, who has deep global investment experience in these areas from his time at Macquarie. In energy transition, our current focus is on acquiring that additional second seed asset for our platform, including bolt-ons for Stor-Energy. And in real estate, we are now seeing transactional activity and institutional investor appetite pick up in our target sectors.
This is consistent with our view that now is the time to deploy before the market starts pricing in rate cuts. We are focused on deploying the remaining AUD 500 million of investment capacity in our existing last-mile logistics strategy, which we expect to be largely completed this year. Our next vintage last-mile logistics vehicle is also well progressed, with multiple investors in diligence. We're targeting a AUD 1 billion vehicle, which will focus on greenfield development opportunities. In Private Credit, our aim this year is to grow HMC Capital Partners Fund beyond AUD 1 billion of AUM, with a strong two-year performance track record, helping and assisting our ongoing fundraising activities. We are also now working on the development of HMC's first unlisted corporate private equity vehicle with multiple super suitable opportunities identified and under evaluation.
In digital infrastructure, we are focused on establishing a global platform by leveraging the origination and fundraising capability in StratCap, with potential asset opportunities in both Australia and the United States. There is a significant gap in the market to create a data center REIT with a diversified portfolio of income-producing and development assets. We are currently evaluating fundraising opportunities in both Australia and the U.S. As you can see, HMC is well-positioned to achieve our previously stated AUD 20 billion AUM target. And as I said earlier, we are now setting our sights on much more ambitious growth as we replicate our success in real estate across HMC's four other growth platforms. We believe each of these platforms can grow to at least AUD 10 billion in AUM over the next 5 years. I'll now move to Slide 14 of this morning's presentation, our Product Development Pipeline.
The key point I want to highlight on this slide is the significant amount of untapped blue sky in terms of product and fundraising opportunities. These opportunities are illustrated in the shaded green circles on the slide. The financial year 2025 growth initiatives I just outlined will see HMC take advantage of some of these opportunities. To support HMC's next phase of growth, we have made significant investment in our distribution and fundraising capability over recent months. We recently hired Tim Koroknay from Fidante to lead wholesale distribution. Tim will work closely with Craig Schloeffel and his investor services team within Payton to maximize fundraising opportunities across the broader HMC platform. In addition, we are also growing our institutional capital raising team to bolster capability in Australia and now offshore.
These initiatives will ensure that HMC can match opportunities across all of our platforms, with retail, wholesale, and institutional investors in Australia and globally. Moving to Slide 15, our Sustainability Achievements in financial year 2024. Here, we highlight HMC's sustainability framework, which was designed around our objective to create healthy communities. I'm really pleased to report on the following initiatives, which demonstrate the progress we are driving across our entire platform. Environmental. As previously mentioned, HMC Energy Transition Platform has made its first strategic investment in Stor-Energy. HMC's real estate platform has achieved our net zero energy roadmap for financial year 2024, with a 30% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions achieved during the year. And social. The HMC Capital Foundation has made grants to three organizations in financial year 2024, with the next granting round open shortly.
Our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan was endorsed by Reconciliation Australia earlier this year. With rapid initiatives underway across the group, these initiatives are centered around taking active steps towards advancing reconciliation through four key core areas: raising awareness, supporting partnership, employment, and education. On governance, we always strive to implement best practice in everything we do and are proud of our progress we are making. We received a rating of AA in the MSCI ESG rating assessment for a second consecutive year. HMC maintained its 50% gender diversity target across the entire organization, ahead of our financial year 2025 target. HMC also became a signatory of HESTA 40:40 Vision, an organization working towards gender balance within executive teams by 2030. We continue to make great strides and tangible progress on our sustainability strategy and practical initiatives.
I will now hand over to Will McMicking to discuss our financial results.
Thanks, David. And turning now to Slide 17. HMC recorded pre-tax operating earnings for FY 2024 of AUD 129 million or AUD 0.37 per share, with the latter representing a 40% increase on FY 2023. Management fee revenue increased by 14% to AUD 80 million, which was driven by the establishment of the AUD 1.2 billion wholesale healthcare fund in the first half of FY 2024. Performance fees of circa AUD 16 million were attributable to the HMC Capital Partners Fund, which delivered a total return of 45% after fees for the initial two-year period. Investment income increased by 60% to AUD 95 million, representing a 11% annual return on HMC's balance sheet investments. Capital Solutions income associated with the announced Sigma Healthcare equity raising generated AUD 8 million of revenue, which was offset by unrealized fair value losses on investments in the second half.
These investments have recorded strong fair value gains post 30 June, and capital solutions income is tracking at approximately AUD 9 million for the current financial year. Expenses for FY 2024 of AUD 60 million are running well below revenue growth, and HMC recorded an operating margin of 68% for FY 2024. A final dividend of AUD 0.06 per share has also been announced and is 70% franked. Moving now to the balance sheet on Slide 18. HMC maintains a strong balance sheet into FY 2025 to support the growth in funds under management, with net tangible assets and undrawn debt of AUD 1.4 billion. The balance sheet at June incorporates the successful capital raising announced in May. This raised circa AUD 160 million to support the establishment of a diversified Private Credit platform, including the acquisition of Payton Capital, which settled in July.
HMC also announced in May that it divested AUD 50 million of excess equity investments in HDN, with proceeds being used to contribute to the new private credit and energy transition fund strategies. This divestment demonstrates how latent balance sheet assets can be leveraged to deliver HMC's future AUM growth targets and increase our return on HMC equity. Turning now to Slide 19. HMC continues to take advantage of its increasing credit quality. In the second half, we increased our balance sheet debt lines from AUD 275 million- AUD 355 million at June, and subsequently increased to AUD 385 million post-balance date. These debt lines provide valuable liquidity to the group to support new funds management and investment initiatives and currently remain undrawn. I'll now hand it back to David.
Thanks, William. HMC is well-placed to maintain our strong operating EPS growth trajectory in financial year twenty-five, supported by five highly scalable and growing platforms. We now begin the year with materially higher recurring earnings, underpinned by funds management and co-investment income. Our private credit platform is expected to double in AUM this year and deliver strong EBITDA growth, including a contribution from corporate and asset-based lending. We're seeing transactional activity pick up in our real estate business, and we expect this will continue as the interest rate cycle begins to ease. HMC has a deep transactional and fundraising pipeline today across digital infrastructure, energy transition, and private equity. We're evaluating major growth opportunities, which have the potential to create outsized profit events for the group across each.
Finally, we are well capitalized with AUD 1.4 billion of liquidity and tangible assets to drive growth via our balance sheet. In addition, we have AUD 2.5 billion of investable dry powder across our funds management platform. Our financial year 2025 dividend guidance is AUD 0.12 per share. This is consistent with our strategy to maintain the dividend at this level and reinvest retained earnings into value-accretive growth opportunities. That ends this morning's presentation. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to the operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press Star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Andy MacFarlane from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for your time. Just a couple from me. Seeing Private Credit, yeah, you called out, obviously, the doubling of FY2025 from 1.6 . Just wondering what you are seeing out there in terms of corporate and asset-based private credit opportunities.
So the growth in FUM and our assumption there comes from two things: One, the Payton business is off to a great start since we acquired it. They've written over AUD 150 million of new loans, and the pipeline there is strong. What we're seeing there is that business is underrepresented in the Queensland and New South Wales market, so we're putting additional investment resources and origination resources into those markets to amplify its growth trajectory. And on corporate and private credit, what we're seeing there is we've already got, I think, five deals that have been originated, that we're evaluating as potential seed assets for that business.
We're gonna run a merchant banking style model, where we will get our foot on some assets, we'll underwrite them off the balance sheet, and then we'll syndicate them immediately down to institutional investors, so it's a nascent market. It's a market where contacts, relationships, the HMC network, the HMC flywheel will throw up deal flow that will be unique and proprietary deal flow that we'll get to see, as well as just general market velocity and growth as corporates look for more bespoke solutions, more creative solutions, that are not necessarily available from the domestic banks, so we're very excited by the outlook for that business.
Just in terms of Capital Solutions, I know Will pointed to tracking to AUD 9 million this year, but, you know, obviously, it was -AUD 0.7 million for last year, notwithstanding the Sigma fees. Are you able to give any more color just in terms of what's driven that and kind of what, you know, compositionally behind that?
I think the easiest way to describe that is when we gave a bit of an update after the half year result, we said, if you stop the clock and marked some of our listed balance sheet positions at that date, we're running at about AUD 0.40. That ran ahead of that. After that update, the balance sheet position we were holding came back leading into 30 June. That's what resulted in the AUD 0.37, but you can assume that's come back in the new year. So we're already sitting on some very significant and healthy gains starting this year. So effectively, that AUD 0.03 that we lost late last year on the mark-to-market has actually dropped into this year. So we start this year with very good momentum in our Capital Solutions business and our balance sheet positions.
Got it. And is that, is that comprised of kind of one thing or multiple things within that?
We've got. I'm talking about one investment specifically, but we've got three or four other investments on the balance sheet now that could be realized through the course of this year, that could give rise to, you know, some very interesting gains.
Last, last one for me, just in terms of the global healthcare strategy, we know you're still exploring that for kind of AUD 2 billion. I think last week, though, you talked a few opportunities and DD on the same vehicle, just wondering how that's progressing and whether or not there's more or less opportunities on the horizon for that strategy.
We remain focused on that. We continue to have it under evaluation. When we find the right opportunity, we'll obviously pull the trigger. But at this point, we haven't found the right opportunity, and we're probably seeing better deployment opportunities across other parts of our real estate platform right here, right now. But we are gonna be super opportunistic, and you can never write us off, and we might come out of the blue and do something very big in that space. So we just see it as a very open area. We see it as lacking a global champion, but we'll be picking our time and our moment very carefully and very decisively.
Got it. Thanks, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Bodor, from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, David. Just interested in going back to that corporate and asset-backed Private Credit and the merchant banking model. Will you ultimately co-invest in some of those higher returning investments over, you know, longer- term periods, or do you intend to always sort of sell down those exposures once you've sort of got your foot on them?
Where we like the return, we'll be open to co-investing, but obviously, we'll be very mindful of keeping the balance sheet in pristine shape as we have to this point, but we will be looking to opportunistically invest where it makes sense for the balance sheet.
Okay, great. Thanks. And then where you do co-invest or not, is there any potential for conflicts, or how would you look to manage those if they came up?
HMC, as I said earlier, in terms of our governance and our conflict process, has the most elite mindset on that. We wanna be best practice, we wanna be the very best in that area, and we never wanna get ourselves into a situation where we have a conflict. So as I said earlier, one of the big focus areas, despite growth, as being what I'm talking about on the call this morning, since we acquired Payton, all we've been focused on is the risk department and the legal department have been very focused on integrating it, integrating their systems, integrating our processes with what they do every day. Our governance processes are being rolled through Payton as we speak. So there won't be conflicts arising in the future. It's not something we have any appetite for.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from James Druce, from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning, David. You just touched on a good solid base for recurring earnings. Can you just give us a feel for what that will be, including the contribution from Payton, this year?
Well, we've been very clear that we've taken the same approach that we took this time last year around not providing guidance. Importantly, for a business of our nature, we keep marching ahead. You can have a look on page 21 of the presentation or even earlier in the presentation in the deck. We've generated earnings, operating earnings, EPS growth of a compound level of 44% since we IPO'd. With the rate environment as it stands and the outlook as it stands, we feel very, very good about the growth trajectory of maintaining that growth trajectory into 2025 for our business. We've got multiple different avenues for that to happen. But importantly, the reason we're even more confident this year than we have been in previous years is we start with a recurring earnings base of well north of AUD 0.30 a share.
So therefore, that gives us a great start leading into this year in terms of continuing to maintain the growth trajectory across the group.
All right. And is there any... Okay, no, that's good. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Pobucki from Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning. Congratulations on the result, and thanks for taking my questions. I mean, you've spoken about Payton a bit already, but would you mind talking to the acquisitions you've made over the past year and how those businesses are currently tracking to those initial expectations that you had when you acquired them, please?
So let's be clear. Most of our growth in this group is organic. The only significant acquisition we made last year is Payton. That's tracking well. I'm extremely proud of the ability of this organization to mobilize quickly and to integrate. So we're making great strides in that area. The Finance team are well down the path of integrating. Our legal and compliance team are well down the path of integrating, and our IT and general admin functions are all being integrated very quickly. So that's really pleasing. The business also, with the support of the HMC balance sheet, is going to be amplified quickly, and we're tracking ahead of where we expect it to be at this point in terms of that business, in terms of Payton.
If you just do the math, and you just work through what I've said on the call this morning, and if we double the size of the book across Private Credit, and you divide the purchase price into that, it looks like an absolutely outstanding acquisition for the group. But before we cash those chips in and we come and tell you about it, our heads are down, and we're working hard to just make sure we deliver, hit our numbers, and demonstrate that it was a great acquisition, and we've now stepped into a very high growth vertical for the group. In terms of other acquisitions, Stor-Energy was a very modest acquisition on the balance sheet, so that's basically our foray into energy transition.
That's exceeding my expectations, but it's very early days still, and we remain very optimistic around the outlook for that. And then, the other acquisition that we made through the course of the year was... or we announced, but still haven't closed, is StratCap in the U.S. Again, very small, acquisition there. But that's integrating well, and we're cooperating with the management team on a day-to-day basis and expect to be in a position to announce financial close there in the coming weeks.
Thank you. Appreciate the color. Just the second one for me is, if you could provide any color on what you're seeing in the fundraising environment at the moment and perhaps your expectations over the coming year, please.
Look, we're very optimistic around fundraising, and the reason I say that is, and you will have seen on the slide deck that we had in the pack this morning, where we gave a bit of an update around the huge blue sky opportunity that we have across HMC's platform. So if you go to that slide, and I'll just point everyone to that because I think it's something that may be lost in terms of the fact that on Slide 14, we articulate the massive blue sky ahead of us. So while we've got these four, five very high growth verticals across the business, the areas that we've ticked on that slide are the areas that we're currently fundraising in across those verticals. So importantly, there's a lot of opportunity to capture more capital. I touched on it earlier.
So let's talk for a moment real estate. We've basically got untapped opportunity there with wholesale, so we've made a big investment into the wholesale fundraising space by bringing in a new head of wholesale in Tim Koroknay. We've also got a very well-drilled, very well-run wholesale fundraising team embedded within Payton, so I'll be looking to integrate those through the course of this year, and obviously, real estate is an area that we obviously will start to focus on opportunities to do some wholesale fundraising in. In Private Equity, to date, we've really been focused on wholesale. Increasingly, we think there'll be opportunity to launch a new vehicle there, in terms of a genuine private equity vehicle. Energy transition, unlisted investors, and what we're talking about there is super funds and insurance funds. Really want a national champion in that space. We're building that.
We're getting a very open door reception from all the major super funds that we're speaking to on that. Most of them are uninvested in the space or underinvested, and they all want to be involved, so we're getting very, very good momentum there, and we're very confident around raising a fund around that over the course of this year. In private credit, we touched on that earlier. At the moment, we've only been focused on wholesale. We are exploring an ASX-listed private credit vehicle with four first mortgage-backed securities to seed it. We see that as a great opportunity, and there's real appetite for it, and that's all been driven by inbound interest. And then, in digital infrastructure, again, we're just scratching the surface there. But our thinking there is that we will look to create a REIT, global focus, U.S., Australian assets.
Watch this space. It's not far away. So what we're saying is, as rates fall, investor demand across retail, wholesale, and institutional is increasing, and HMC will match the market opportunity with investor demand. I've kept saying this for a while, our business is uncapped in terms of its growth horizon. It's only capped by our imagination and our ability to originate deals. So if we get this fundraising part right, that AUD 10 billion per vertical is a very real objective over the next five years for the group.
Thank you. Appreciate that call.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Di Pilla for closing remarks.
I just wanna thank everyone for joining the call this morning. I wanna thank the HMC team for their contribution in financial year 2024 and for obviously getting through another results season. We now buckle down and get ready for business and start marching into 2025 with a great start to the year and great momentum. Thanks to everyone for joining the call.