Morning. Welcome to Antin's full year 2022 result presentation. On the video call this morning, you have Alain Rauscher, Chairman and CEO, Mélanie Biessy, Senior Partner and COO, and I'm Patrice Schuetz, Partner and CFO. We'll start by sharing an update on our business activity, and I will then move on to talk about our 2022 results and our outlook. As always, we conclude the video call with an opportunity for you to ask questions. With that, I hand over to Alain.
Thank you, Patrice. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to spend some time sharing with you the key highlights of 2022 on five main points. The evolution of our assets under management base, the amount of capital we have raised in this in 2022, and the numbers of investment we have done in 2022. Our investment performance fund by fund, our growth in investing in the team and the members and in our platform, and our per-financial performance and outlook. The first point is that in 2022, we have experienced very strong assets under management growth, which has been powered by investment performance and differentiating positioning. The first point worth mentioning is that infrastructure happens to be in a fast-growing market.
We expect that the asset class is going to grow at a CAGR of 16.6% on the period between 2021 through 2026, which is much faster growth base than the one you could expect to see in other private market segments. The second important feature is that we have a scaled investment platform. We are the largest pure-play infrastructure private equity firm in Europe, and we are among the 10 in the world globally. The third element is that we enjoy top-tier investment returns. We have achieved 2.7x money multiple on realized assets, and a 23% realized growth IRR.
This allows us to experience very strong growth in our assets under management base, of 38.4% for the fee paying asset management, and at large of 34.9% for our global assets under management. The second important point to raise is that we have managed to raise a lot of money in 2022, and also make a very large number of investment. By far, 2022 is the largest year for us, for Antin's history, with EUR 8.2 billion raised compared to 2021, where we raised EUR 2.5 billion.
You all know that this was an extremely challenging times, marked for most of the year by the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, which had very negative impact in many of fundraisings in the private markets industry. Nevertheless, we managed to prevail. To give a bit more color as to this fundraising result, we have achieved to raise 75% of our target size for the Flagship Fund of EUR 10 billion, and we have managed to raise 80% of the target size for the NextGen Fund I. It gives you an idea, we are way advanced, thanks to an extremely active fundraising activity during extremely challenging times. Second important point is that we have made our record year in terms of number of investment.
We have made eight new investments, two for the flagship strategy, threee for the midcap strategy, and three for the next generation strategy. In terms of amount invested, we have deployed EUR 2.7 billion of equity in new investments to be compared with EUR 1.7 billion in 2021. All this, I remind you, in extremely challenging times. We also managed to make two significant exits for a combined amount of EUR 2.2 billion in 2022 compared to EUR 1.3 billion in 2021. One being Roadchef in the U.K., and the other one being the sale of Lyntia Networks, which is the bulk of Lyntia in Spain. 2022 was a very special year for Antin.
It was a year when we raised the largest amount of capital ever in a single year. You can see how 2022 compares to 2019, 2021. What I think is, beyond the numbers of EUR 8.2 billion is interesting to note, is that we managed to basically raise EUR 5.6 billion with existing investors. On top of that, EUR 2.6 billion with new investors, which basically not only reflects the solidity of our ties with existing LPs, but also our attractiveness to new investors. We made a first close on the Flagship Fund V this fall for a commitment of more than EUR 5 billion. Another important thing to note is that we have expanded significantly our fund investor base.
T he number of investors in our funds, has grown to 268 LPs at the end of 2022, from 213 at the end of the year 2021. It's an increase of number of investors of 26%. This, of course, paved the way for further expansion of our asset base and amount of capital that we can raise. We have continued to globalize our fund investor base. Two figures illustrate that. The first one is that the capital raised in the Americas, and it's mostly in the U.S. and in Canada, has gone up 3.6 x.
3.6 x historically, we are now have EUR 1.5 billion of North American investors in Flagship Fund V. From up from EUR 1.1 billion in Flagship Fund IV, EUR 0.4 billion from Flagship Fund III. Those figures are not final at all as we are continuing to raise money in America in particular. We will give you an update in a month from now about which we'll show a much significantly higher number from that geography. In Asia also, we enjoy a very, very strong growth in capital raised. This has been multiplied by 5.6 x from the Flagship Fund III to EUR 2.3 billion.
We have a very solid beyond France, and which is a small portion of our asset, of our capital base, but mostly Europe. We have some very strong, I would say, pools of capital coming from the Americas and from Asia. Another important things to note is that we have been capable to capitalize on existing relationships, given our three strategies, which are Flagship, MidCap, and NextGeneration. 40% of fund investors invested in multiple funds, which we think is a very important feature and very promising for the future. The performance of all funds have improved in 2022, I think this is also quite remarkable given the difficult market conditions, in particular on the debt funding market.
All funds are performing on plan or ahead of plan. Fund II vintage, which is a vintage of 2013, is now realized as of 91%. We are one deal away from closing this fund. As you can see, to date, we have made a money multiple, which is cash money multiple of 2.6x, very consistent with the performance of the previous Fund I. We have one more investment to go, and we expect that this realization will happen in the not so distant future. On Fund III, which is a 2016 vintage, we have only realized 23% of the portfolio to date.
We have nevertheless a 1.8x money multiple, which again, I insist, does not compare for a cash, for cash business. It's a money multiple which is based on NAVs, net asset valuations, which assumes we sell the whole, the entirety of the remaining portfolio tomorrow morning, which of course we will not do. This is a strong performance which we think is totally consistent with the one of Fund I and Fund II that you see on the side, because we will of course sell this portfolio gradually over a say two, three to five-year period and achieve the same kind of cash for cash money multiples. Fund III-B, which is a 2020 vintage, follows the same path. Fund IV, which is a 2019 vintage, of course is a more recent one.
There has been no realizations, no disposals to date, we believe that this will also be an extremely profitable vintage comparable to Fund I and Fund II. We have some very strong built-in resilience of our performance of a fund manager. Just few metrics for your attention. The first one is that our portfolio is very diversified by geographies and sectors. If you look at the sectors, you will observe that digital accounts for about 40% and environment for 34%, with social representing 16% only, and transportation 10%. Diversified with two big, I would say, more active sectors.
This is very important for us because we try to benefit from the best opportunities and the most profitable opportunities of investment when we can. Having four sectors allows us to have some flexibility to allocate capital on the most promising and profitable projects. By geographies, you'll see also that we offer some very good diversification. America is performing extremely well. We deployed about 30% of our capital in this geography, which is as you know, an important geography, so they're really performing in line with our ambition. For the rest, in Europe, we are, I would say, very diversified with France, accounting for 13%, U.K. for 20%, Italy for 9%, and Iberia, Spain and Portugal for 16%, and the rest of Europe for 12%. Something very important.
People often ask us about the underlying performance of our portfolio companies. Our portfolio companies are very resilient. They have experienced growth of revenues in 2022 of 27% and an EBITDA growth of 23%. We're investing in, I would say, mature businesses, dogs which don't show growth. On the contrary, they are very focused on delivering growth, profitable growth. There are two additional factors of resilience for Antin portfolio companies. The first one is that more than 90% of our portfolio companies benefit from strong inflation protection. If we do not suffer from a growing cost base, because we can, through our contracts, pass through those cost elements to our, I would say, to our clients.
The second thing is that, you know, we have an extremely cautious debt management policy. More than 90% of our debt expires in 2025 and beyond, which means that, you know, we have the ability to navigate higher interest rates, which are, I would say, very which is very favorable in this amazing, I would say, surprising environment. T he three elements, diversification of portfolio by countries and geographies, strong financial performance of our underlying companies, and the protection that we have against inflation and debt refinancing, I think are unique features. Now we'll hand over to Mélanie, who will talk about, you know, our platform and our sustainability track record.
Thank you, Alain. Good morning. Indeed, because of the strong growth that we've experienced that is in front of us as well, we continue to build up the team and invest in our platform. Looking at the numbers at the end of 2022, we have 200 investment professionals at Antin. Out of the 200, 174 are impacting the P&L of the firm. The others are part of the fund administration team. We've added 32 new employees in 2022, 23 in the first half, and nine in the second half. We are pacing our hiring because we want to make sure we leave time for integration, which is extremely important to preserve our unique culture.
We've hired across all functions, 11 investment professionals in total, mostly at the junior level, because we want to integrate them and make them grow up until the partner's position. It's our philosophy to hire at associate level and to grow talent internally. We did also appoint two new partners for the investment team, one for the NextGen U.S. efforts, and one for the flagship Mid Cap in Europe. Two investor relations professionals as well to beef up our investor relation team, which is already extremely well-resourced with more than 22 people. 19 employees have been also recruited in operations support functions to reinforce our ESG setup, technology teams, but also to reinforce our finance team. Those hires were related to the IPO that happened early in 2021.
We've also reinforced our setup in the U.S. As Alain was saying, there's huge growth in the U.S., and therefore, the employee base in New York grew by 30% to 43 employees. We also launched technology projects to increase the efficiency of our back and mid-office, which will be extremely important and will significantly enhance the scalability of our operating platform. As I will mention to you right away, we've made huge progress on the ESG roadmap and therefore have also invested in new resources for the ESG team. Let's move on to sustainability, the sustainability highlights. 2022 was another very positive year on the sustainability front. This has been marked by significant progress made in key ESG areas.
We've identified five material ESG matters, after having gone through a materiality assessment, I will comment on those key areas. We've also had outstanding scores received from external rating agencies. Let's start with climate change. This remains at the top of our sustainability agenda. To align our climate change mitigation efforts with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, we've started working on the deployment of science-based carbon reduction targets.
Those targets will be shared with you later this year. We've also continued actively engaging with all our portfolio companies to help them decarbonize their operations. As of end of 2022, all companies that have been with us for more than a year had measured their carbon footprint, and half of them had set or were in the process of setting carbon reduction targets.
We also performed a high-level assessment of our portfolio climate risk exposure to identify our portfolio companies likely to be most at risk from climate change impacts, and that we should engage with in priority going forward to develop a climate risk response plan. On the social front, we maintained our strong focus on diversity during recruitment and continued taking action to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workplace. For instance, providing DEI training to all our employees. We are also very happy to report that our efforts paid off with the share of women in our total workforce, increasing by 4% from 42% to 46% between 2021 and 2022. We also reinforced our career development program with the implementation of new employee training courses and a 360-degree performance appraisal system.
We maintained, furthermore, robust employee health, safety, wellbeing policies, which allowed us to record a pretty low absenteeism rate of 2%, and this has been the record percentage for the second consecutive year at Antin. To deliver on our commitment to act as good corporate citizen, we maintained our existing academic partnerships in Europe with HEC Paris, Bocconi University, but we also established new ones, one in the U.S. with Cornell University, and more recently, one in the U.K. with the London School of Economics. We've also supported eight charities through corporate donations, but also multiple fundraising activities across our different offices. We remained also actively involved in various industry groups promoting responsible investment practices within the financial sector. It includes the UN PRI-endorsed International Climate Initiative and also Invest Europe's Responsible Investment Roundtable.
In the area of ethics and governance, we maintained an effective board. Our board is comprising a majority of independent directors, and we have continued building a positive, trusted working relationship with all our board members. We've held 17 board and specialized committees meetings over the year. We also, and that's really important to note, continued rolling out our compliance program, which has been recognized as best in class by most rating agencies. To ensure the effective implementation of our responsible investment process across all our funds and portfolio companies, we offered a responsible investment training course to all our Antin investment professionals and implemented a new responsible investment protocol with the aim of defining actions that people must take throughout the investment cycle to make sure that we properly incorporate ESG risks and opportunity.
Last comment that I would like to make is on sustainability ratings. We are delighted to report our sustainability efforts were recognized by multiple rating agencies. We've been placed within the top highest performing companies in our sector by Sustainalytics and more recently by Moody's and by the UNPRI, which we have been a signatory of since the early days of Antin. On that note, I will leave the floor to Patrice to cover the financial performance.
Thank you, Mélanie. I will talk about our financial performance for 2022. I'm pleased to report that we have made significant progress during the year. As Alain mentioned, we've substantially grown our assets under management by 35% and our Fee-Paying AUM by 38% to EUR 19.1 billion on a Fee-Paying AUM basis and more than EUR 30 billion on a total AUM basis. What's really important to mention about those Fee-Paying AUM is that 43% are contracted for 10+ years, options for e-extensions. When you look at our average life of those total EUR 19.1 billion in Fee-Paying AUM, we're standing at about seven years. What this really gives you is a very predictable long-term contract, a management fee stream that provides very strong visibility on our P&L for the years to come.
If we move to the right-hand side of the page, you'll see that we've grown our management fees by 22.5%, and we've grown our total revenues by 18.6%, reaching a total revenue of EUR 214 million in 2022. 98% of our total revenue are management fee revenues. Our effective management fee rate has decreased slightly from 1.38% to 1.35%. That's really an effect of a larger number of investors, you know, coming in Fund V with sizable ticket sizes and therefore benefiting from a very slight, you know, very slight fee discount.
Overall, we would say that we expect effective management fee rates to remain largely stable. Looking at the different components of our revenue, you know, revenue composition and the bridge from 2021 to 2022. For Flagship, we've increased revenue on a net basis by EUR 15.4 million. EUR 42.9 million is an increase that relates to Fund V, which is really five months of management fees on the basis of the EUR 7.4 billion commitments that we've secured for Flagship Fund V. Now, it's important to note that if you were to look at those numbers on a 12-month basis, we would run at more than EUR 100 million in revenues related to Fund V, which is already secured and contracted today. Another EUR 60 million that's gonna come through in 2023 that's already contracted.
Obviously, beyond that, because we expect to continue to raise significant amounts of capital. Those EUR 42.9 million have been offset by step-down effects related to Flagship Fund IV, which moved from the investment period to the post-investment period in August of 2022. That means, fees are being charged on the basis of invested capital, rather than on the basis of the committed capital. In addition to that, you've seen slight declines in management fees for Fund II and Fund III due to the realization of investments. For Midcap Fund I, we've seen management fee revenues increase by EUR 8.1 million. That's because Midcap Fund I has generated management fees for 12 months for the first time.
For NextGen, we've seen management fees increase by EUR 15 million on the basis of the EUR 1 billion in commitments that have been secured at the end of the year. The effect on carry interest and investment income has been slightly negative relative to 2021. That's really because of two reasons. The first reason is that we've grown our valuations for Fund III at a slightly lower pace than we have grown them in 2021, which is really just a reflection of the market environment that we've seen in 2022. Still positive performance for the year, but growing at a slightly lower pace. The second effect is that for Flagship Fund V and for NextGen Fund, we're seeing ordinary J-curve effects related to the majority of those funds.
Essentially, in the first year, we're accruing management fee expenses and cost in those funds, while no revaluation of the portfolio companies has taken place. The last effect is that we've seen small changes in our admin fees, which relate to fund administration services that are provided by the group in Luxembourg. Overall, roughly 18.5% increase to EUR 214 million. If we look at our cost base, we've increased our personal expenses by 27.7% to EUR 64.5 million. As Mélanie already explained, a majority of that increase is really driven by the hiring activity and the increases in headcount, which have grown by 22.5% during the year.
The balance relates to wage increases, which we can really split into two parts. We have wage increases that relate to promotions and about 3% wage increases in 2022, which a majority of our employees have been given in connection with, you know, inflation and sort of ordinary salary increases during the year. Now a note for 2023, those salary increases will be more in the range of about 5% + promotions coming on top. Because in 2023 we've promoted seven individuals to partners, the amounts may be slightly higher than what you've been seeing in 2022. Moving to the right-hand side of that page, we've grown our other operating expenses by a headline number of 43.6% to EUR 31.2 million.
That amount is not really reflective of how we've managed the underlying cost base because our other operating expenses are affected by a number of periodic effects that make the numbers not directly comparable to 2021. I will walk you through those periodic effects. The first one is that we've recognized EUR 2.1 million related to placement fees which occur in connection with fundraisings. Meaning when we're raising a fund, we will recognize placement fees in our cost base, and in a year when we're not raising a fund, we wouldn't recognize those placement fees. 2021 had very marginal amounts, whereas 2022 recognized EUR 2.1 million. We've also recognized EUR 0.7 million in temporary office rent in 2022.
On top of that, we've seen a return of business travel coming from environment in 2021 where COVID restrictions have essentially led to abnormally low travel expenses in 2021. If you strip out those periodic effects and also strip out the effects of business travel, we've grown our cost base by about 18.5%. I think the important thing to note is we've managed our cost base in a prudent manner and are demonstrating good cost control on that basis. Moving to our underlying EBITDA, we've increased EBITDA by 9.3% to EUR 118.5 million. That's really an effect of the revenue and cost effects that I have just described. We've increased our margin.
Our EBITDA margin stood at 55% with significant improvements seen during the year. We've recognized 50% margins in the first half of the year, 60% in the second half of the year. Even within the second half of the year, we've seen significant improvements between the third and the fourth quarter of the year. Obviously, as we continue to add commitments to Fund V and grow the revenue base, those margins are expected to improve further. Moving to the right-hand side, we've increased our underlying net income by 7% to EUR 79.7 million, resulting in earnings per share of EUR 0.46 per share. Those are, you know, robust improvements in our P&L.
The real step change is obviously expected to come in 2023 when we'll see the first year with Fund V reflected in the earnings capacity of the business. I'll talk about our balance sheet because we have an exceptionally strong balance sheet with EUR 422 million in cash and cash equivalents and no financial debt. That means the cash that we're holding today accounts for almost 15% of our market cap today, providing significant value opportunity once we deploy that into earning generating business opportunities. All of our cash holdings were held with globally systemically important banks, you know, meaning we don't have any exposure to the banking sector turmoil that you're seeing, no direct exposure to the banking sector turmoil that you're seeing.
A portion of that cash has now been invested in term deposits to essentially produce some positive earnings in 2022. You've seen some of those effects in the second half of 2022 already, but it's obviously going to be higher in 2023. Our objective is to invest those funds over time, we should really break that out into two parts. The first part is that we will invest alongside our fund investors through co-investments and through the investments in the carry vehicles. We have about EUR 107 million in commitments that are undrawn for investments into the Antin funds and about EUR 20 million in commitments that are undrawn into the carry vehicles, meaning EUR 126 million overall is going to be earmarked for co-investments alongside our fund investors.
That still leaves us with close to EUR 300 million to support our growth initiatives. You know, for those growth initiatives, we will be looking at geographic expansion opportunities as we've done it in the U.S. in the past, strategy expansion, as we've done it with NextGen, and very opportunistically, we will also consider M&A opportunities. In light of our very strong cash position, we've decided to dividend out a majority of our underlying earnings in 2022 or related to the earnings for 2022. We're going to pay out 92% of our earnings, which equates to a dividend payment of EUR 0.42 per share.
EUR 0.14 per share has already been paid as an interim dividend in November of 2022. EUR 0.28 per share would be following in June 2023, subject to shareholder approval at the AGM. The total dividend payment would be EUR 73.3 million. I think the distribution, you know, underpins the attractiveness of our business model, which is a highly cash flow generative business model with very limited amount of capital required to support our strong growth. With respect to the outlook, we continue to expect long-term growth in fee-paying AUM that is well above that of the infrastructure market. Alain alluded to market growth rates of, you know, we're at 16%. We are confident in our ability to grow faster than those market growth rates.
Specifically with respect to Flagship Fund V, we feel confident in our ability to achieve the hard cap of EUR 12 billion. With respect to NextGen Fund I, we feel confident in our ability to reach the target size. What's less certain in today's market environment is the pace of fundraising. Whether we achieve the EUR 12 billion in 2023 or whether some of this is going to move into 2024 is difficult to predict at this point, which is why we've also changed slightly our guidance on the EBITDA.
Our expectation for EBITDA is that we will significantly increase the underlying EBITDA in 2023 and achieve a level on an underlying basis of EUR 200 million-EUR 240 million. You see the range is wide, but it's really driven by whether we achieve, you know, EUR 10 billion of commitments for Fund V or EUR 12 billion. At EUR 10 billion, the EBITDA will be around EUR 200 million, so 70% growth relative to 2022. At EUR 12 billion it would be about EUR 240 million, so, you know, approximately a doubling of the EBITDA in 2023. Now, just as a reminder, any commitments that we raise in 2024 instead of 2023 will be subject to catch-up fees, meaning we're not foregoing any profit.
We're just delaying profit from one year to the other, because fees are due from the moment of first close of the fund, and technically that first close happened the 2nd of August 2022. With respect to distributions, we expect to pay a majority of our cash profits as a dividend, and that guidance and objective is really unchanged. We expect to pay the dividend in two installments, and we expect to see dividends that are going to grow on an annual basis in the future. With that, I would hand over to Alain for some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Patrice. If I sit back and look at the last decade, what I see strikingly is that it's growth powered by performance. In our Flagship Funds, we have made 31 investments, of which 15 have been exited, which is a remarkable number, by the way. On those realized assets, we have made a 2.7x money multiple and a 23% gross IRR, which also illustrates, I would say, the merits and successes of our value add strategy. When I mention growth powered by performance, it translates into Fee-Paying AUM, which have grown at a CAGR of 33% over the last 10 years, since 2012.
Revenues have grown up at a CAGR of 29.2%, and underlying EBITDA has grown up at a CAGR of 38.2%. This is, I think, very, very strong numbers of performance and of growth, which pave the way for further, I would say, successes. With this, we are very happy to listen to your questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow the signal to reach our equipment. Our first question comes from Nicholas Herman from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Three from me, please. One on fundraising, one on the EBITDA guidance, and one on costs. On fundraising, you've pushed out the expected time to completing Fund V fundraise. I guess just why now? I guess it's been pretty clear for a while that 2023 would be a tougher year for fundraising for the industry, so just curious what has changed. On the EBITDA guidance, you previously talked about hitting the 70% in 2023 or 2024. You've now changed that. Just to be clear, though, does the guidance change reflect the more uncertain pace of fundraising, or is it higher cost inflation? Presumably the latter because you would get catch-up fees regardless.
And as part of that, presumably you would expect to be at 70% + margin after Flagship Fund VI, whenever that might be. And then finally just on costs, you've attributed the slower pace of hiring to a desire to preserve culture, but it does look like you've slowed the pace of growth versus prior expectations. Is this just a postponing of hiring rather than an absolute reduction in plans? What are your highest growth, priority growth areas for 2023 and 2024? And can you talk about hiring plans for 2023 and over the medium term, please? Thank you.
Thank you, Nicholas. Maybe I can try to put answers on the first two questions. On the fundraise pace, I think first of all, you have to bear in mind that out of a EUR 10 billion target, we have raised EUR 7.5 billion, so 75% of that, which is, I hope you appreciate that, a huge result. I will repeat it's a huge result. Most of that has been basically raised in, I would say, adverse conditions, typically since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. This, I think you want to appreciate. If you look at our industry at large in the private markets, you will find that very, very few people have achieved this kind of fundraising or above.
The second one is that, and I know it's difficult for you because you are thinking about updating your figures, year by year, if not quarter by quarter. Clearly what is very important for your appreciation, and I know this is not the way you write things, but I will nevertheless reiterate it, is where do we think we shall land in terms of fund size? What we are telling you is that we confirm the target, the objective of raising EUR 12 billion. Now, you may have a bit less fundraised and a bit, I would say, less management fees, and therefore EBITDA for 2023 if we raise EUR 10 billion. We'll be roughly around EUR 200 million.
If we were to raise 12 billion in the course of this year, we would be at EUR 240 million of EBITDA. The reality is that our business is long-term. You cannot just look at it on a single calendar year, because what we will not raise this year, as Patrice has alluded to, we shall be caught next year through the catch-up mechanism. Again, think of the uniqueness of the earnings that we provide you. When we raise EUR 1, this is for 10 years. Which business do you know which has this kind of recurrence of earnings? Which business do you know? Okay, this is unique. I know it's a difficulty for the market to understand that.
To be quite direct, raising 10 billion EUR this year and two more next year or raising 12 billion EUR makes no difference for the long-term valuation of our business. It is absolutely immaterial. What we do not have, and I'm sure you don't like to hear that, in 2023, you will get through the catch-up effect in 2024. We are long-term investors securing 10-year revenues. 10-year revenues. Which business matches this?
That's my first question to the first point. On the cost side, to be quite frank, I think inflation doesn't play a material role, and probably Patrice can provide you with more data. The increase in our cost is very simply really geared to reinforcing our setup, particularly in the States, but not only, but particularly in the States. When we think of the impact of inflation, namely the growth of packages we provide to existing salaries, this accounts for a very minor part. Patrice can share more data.
Yeah, look, I think there are really three effects on the EBITDA margin side that sort of in combination make it up. The first one is that, you know, if fundraising is a little bit slower in 2023, that obviously has an impact on the top and the bottom line. You know, we felt that in that context, the 70% looked ambitious. If you add on top of that the fact that we've had some inflation, you know, even if it makes up small amounts, and on top of that, some FX effects in our case, particularly on, you know, the stronger dollar that's added a little bit to the cost base.
The combination of those three effects have sort of led us to change the guidance on the EBITDA. Now, you know, I expect that we will continue to have exceptionally strong margins in an industry context because, you know, nothing changes about the way we run or operate the business. It's just the number of effects that have led us to give a more specific guidance for 2023 in the context of the environment.
There was a third question, I think.
Yes, on the, on the hiring and the pace of hiring.
I think we'll continue hire, but at a, it will be paced based on the fundraising progress as well. You can assume that for 2023, we'll hire roughly 30 people, a bit below than what we said for 2022. Of course, there are some recruitments that have been postponed to 2023 because recruitment process is always long. We'll always have this kind of lag and postponement of recruitment from one year to another. We, as we said, it's really important to attract first the right talents that really fit with our culture, but also the right number of people to make sure that we continue delivering on the high returns and high performance that we've promised to our fund investors. Slightly less, and we are clearly pacing the hiring based on the evolution of fundraising.
That's very helpful, thank you. If I could just quick follow up. The cost per head actually did fall in the second half. Is that a flexing compensation or is that just mix with a high proportion of junior staff? If it is the latter, does that effect then kind of continue as well?
Yes.
In addition... I mean, I think you did talk about the promotion effect and the 5% underlying inflation.
Yeah.
Is there also a mix effect as well going on too that we should need to be thinking about going forward?
Yeah, yeah. There are different things you see that contribute to that. The, the first one is it really depends on, you know, when you hire the people. Do you hire them at the beginning of, of a certain reporting period or the end of a certain reporting period? That, that can, that will have had an impact. The second one is that in the second half of the year, we have hired more at the, at the junior end of the, of the spectrum. The third effect is that in, you know, because of COVID in 2021 and because of the IPO in 2021, people have accumulated holiday overtime, holiday and overtime. You know, in early the first half of 2022, some of that was paid out. It's sort of three effects that are, you know, contributing to what you're describing.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Arnaud Giblat, from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, would you mind giving us a bit of a trading update on Hesley Group in 2023? Has what's the outlook there? My second question is valuations have held up well in 2022. I was wondering if you could break that down into some moving parts for us.
How have I suppose the EBITDA growth of the underlying companies has been very positive for valuations. How have exits and change in multiples affected valuations overall? A sub-question to that as well, 3% EBITDA growth, is that on an organic basis? My last question is on deployment. What's the outlook, given a tougher macro environment? Have purchase price multiples adjusted to levels that you deem are attractive? What's the outlook there for putting money to work? Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I'll comment on the Hesley situation.
Sure.
I cannot comment more. As you all know, the situation, investigations are ongoing and no conclusion has been really presented to Antin. As far as I can say, there have been no charge or retained against Antin or Hesley on allegations that have been made in relating to events that have occurred in some of the Hesley residences. Hesley has been acquired in 2018. It's part of the social sector, totally part of our mandate. It's a Fund III asset. Clearly, when we decided to invest in that sector, it was really because it was providing essential services to communities in a sector that suffered underinvestment.
We've chosen those schools and Hesley because they were extremely well-rated by the regulator and our intention was really to build out care capacity. We've invested a lot of money to improve the quality of care and to build up this care capacity. Well, we had to take immediate actions as soon as we heard about those allegations in some of those residences. Clearly, today the trading is low. It's not the best of performer, as you can imagine, in this portfolio. We continue being involved.
We are shocked by what we learned because any misconduct is unacceptable and totally at odds with our high standards of care and compassion. We continue being a shareholder and controlling shareholder of this firm, and we'll make everything we can to sustain the trading and to make sure that residents that are still coming at those residences, the ones that have not been closed, that they get the proper level of care. In terms of relative value, Hesley, Kisimul Hesley represent 1% of our Fund III portfolio.
I would just like to complement on that. We had, I think four years ago, a comparable, I would say incident at Kisimul. Basically, we immediately took action on the individual who were involved or who allegedly were involved by ensuring they were no longer into contact with patients. After a more than two years period, there was no charge retained whatsoever against the company. Of course not for us, but against the company. It gives you an idea that there is a disconnect between the allegations and actual things which may have been committed, wrongdoings may have been committed by individuals, and the legal consequences. That's the first thing. The second thing I would like to say that we take...
We are a very ethical firm, I would say, and we take this activity very much at heart and are in whatever will happen, we will always have, I would say a compass, which is to ensure that all measures, whichever measure we implement, is going to be in the best interest of the patients going forward.
Just to tackle some of the other questions, Arnaud. On the underlying company valuations of the portfolio companies. First of all, a majority of our portfolio companies, as Alain had alluded, had exceptionally strong performance. You know, 90% of all portfolio companies increased revenue and increased EBITDA over the last 12 months. As you know, we go through our quarterly process of doing valuations, and in each of those quarterly processes, we assess updated business plans for the businesses. When we feel that we need to make adjustments to the valuation, we will do so. You've seen some of those adjustments come through in the second half of the year. They reflect updates to the business plan.
I think it's in these cases, you know, very small number of portfolio companies that are affected. We would always do that when we feel it's appropriate to do so. Across the portfolio, it's obviously keeping up extremely well. Just to comment on the growth rates.
You know, those growth rates, they include organic and inorganic activity. It's sometimes, you know, not that easy to separate because we're investing in the build-out of infrastructure, and then we see EBITDA being generated once the growth has been realized and comes through. That can happen in an organic way, or it can happen in an inorganic way, but obviously always with value creation in mind. Alain, I don't know if you wanted to comment on the exits, you know, outlook on exits as well.
Yes. I think it's something also very, very important. We shared with you some information on our main funds' performance. For those where, which is typically one deal away in Fund III, in the portfolio, in, of course, in NextGen and Fund IV, not even to mention Fund V, which is just invested for one asset. We have plenty of divestitures to make. What the outlook of the market. First of all, we have to be very. Again, I know it's not easy to understand that, but I will try to be very clear about that. We are not in a situation where we have to make sales tomorrow morning.
We shall not make any sale tomorrow morning. It's simple as that. We have built portfolios, fund by fund, over a five-year period, more or less, or four or five-year period, doesn't matter. We have five more years or six more years in some case, beyond the investment phase to realize our investments. If we think about the kind of how many investments we expect to make in, say, 2023, I think it can be close to zero, maybe one, maybe two, if we got a very good offer for an asset. Probably it will be the same for 2024. You should not think that, you know, our performance is under pressure because of adverse market condition. It is not the case.
I mentioned about, you know, this long-term refinancings that we have put in place systematically since actually Antin was formed. We think it's one of the elements of its strong performance. We are never in a situation where we are forced to fire sale, so to speak, and we have time ahead of ourselves. You have to appreciate that, you know, there might be some times when, say, the energy market is under pressure, and therefore we cannot maximize value. Fine, we will wait. There might be times when transport market is under pressure. There's no problem. We shall wait. We have under no pressure to make disposals now.
Again, I think it's very important for you because what we see when we look, and I must say I plead guilty on that, when we look at the share price evolution of Antin and actually of our peers, I see that, you know, we are very much, I would say, responding to themes: inflation, growing inflation, interest rates, frankly, which are totally decorrelated from our activity. I'm not here to advocate for the sector, but from our private market sectors.
I mean, the only case where you could justify such a negative reaction is if everybody was forced to sell tomorrow, which is not the case. Our portfolios, companies will be sold over, say, a 10-year period. That's the same. You identify how, what, how many we have, and you say maybe 10% of each year after year. This is what we are. Therefore, we are not exposed at all to short-term conditions.
That's what I understood. I was actually asking on the outlook for investments.
Oh, for investment. I mean, investments, it's very simple. We are looking at plenty of things. As we told you, we made eight investments, you know, last year. It's just maybe it's, I think it gives you an idea of our ability to navigate those difficult times. I'm very confident that, you know, if we find some good investments in the coming months, we will do so. The debt market is available for infrastructure investors. It's simple as that. We have been tested at the acid test, so to speak, during the great financial crisis. Our asset class and ourselves as a manager were always, again, always got available financing, debt financings in the worst possible time, because we probably are the last man standing.
We benefit basically from, because of our very moderate risk profile, we benefit from whatever cap, whatever debt potential remains available in very difficult times. I'm very hopeful. We will just factor the cost of it, and that's it. We will always do what we've always done before, which is when we find some ways to refinance our debt in better terms, more favorable terms, we shall do it. That's why I said, you know, our financing and refinancing team, it's the same team, is a key part of our success, because clearly we are very able to be very agile and benefit from better terms whenever they are available. No impact, no negative impact in my perception on the, on our ability to make, to land new deals in 2023 and onwards.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question from Arnaud Palliez from CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. I have one remaining question regarding what we can expect from the outlook you gather from the on exits and investment. This is that probably the level of dry powder of cash available will remain the same in 2023. I would like to know if it's the view you share. Also, what is today your cash management policy? Was there for instance some cash deposits made by U.S. portfolio companies in SVB or Signature? Do you expect of course a higher remuneration of your cash this year?
Okay, Arnaud, thank you. I will leave Patrice answer the second question. On the dry powder, we clearly have quite a lot of dry powder because we're fundraising, we are at the beginning of our fifth vintage, Flagship Fund, clearly we have plenty. There are quite a lot of money actually available in the market, which is good. There are plenty of opportunities also available in the market. I would say that many of our largest peers, I will not mention name, but you can easily trace them, are in fundraising mood.
We probably having already secured EUR 7.5 billion, you know, for the Flagship Fund V, we certainly have an edge there because we have money ready to be deployed, I would say from now. I would say from now. We made a big first investment in Germany in a company called Blue Elephant Energy, which is a solar PV business, which is a fantastic business with plenty of opportunity to deploy more capital in this to grow this business. Of course, we have plenty of capital to be invested. That's, you know, for us, a very favorable time to get to have some capital to deploy. On the cash management policy and exposure to banks-
Yes, on cash management, we need to separate two things. What's happening at the listed company level and what's happening at the portfolio company level. At the listed company level, where we hold EUR 422 million in cash, we've decided that we will allocate a majority of the cash that we don't need to serve our day-to-day liquidity into term deposits. We've done that because we did not want to take interest rate risk and revaluation risk related to, you know, fixed income instruments in an environment where rates were moving rapidly. I think in retrospect, that was the right decision.
Most of those deposits are now yielding, you know, anywhere between 2.5%-3%, and probably when they roll over, they're gonna reprice again. They're still very short-term, term deposits, you know, sort of three months for a majority of those term deposits. They're held with different banks in a diversified manner and with very sizable banks that have strong, you know, strong credit ratings. No exposure to SVB, no exposure to Signature Bank, you know, and no exposure that would concern us in any way. At the portfolio company level, we tend to hold, you know, quite small cash balances in the businesses, essentially just the cash that the business needs to operate on a day-to-day basis. In essence, this is not so relevant.
What we've done across the portfolio is evaluate our bank counterparty relationships, and ensure that none of the portfolio companies is holding cash balances with, you know, small regional banks that we believe could be a concern in the current market environment. And across the portfolio, there's been, you know, obviously no exposure to SVB or Signature Bank or any other bank that would be a concern to us.
Okay. Thank you. If I may, I have a second question regarding the Free Share Plan. The non-cash cost of this plan is, was significant last year. I would like to know if you can remind us the characteristic of this plan and what we can expect for 2023 and for the years after.
Yes. The Free Share Plan was essentially a one-off plan that was put in place in the context with the IPO. The objective was to grant access to the share capital to partners that owned either no shares or very small amounts of shares at the time of the IPO. The total amount of the Free Share Plan equated to EUR 180 million on the basis of the IPO price of EUR 24, EUR 24 per share. The way it's being recognized in the P&L is that over the two-year vesting period of the plan, we are recognizing the EUR 180 million in a linear manner as a personal expense.
That's a non-cash expense because essentially what it is, it's just approximately 4% dilution in share capital that will occur once that plan vests, which is in September of 2023. On top of that, you have social charges. Social charges differ from country to country. They're about give or take 15% in the U.K., about 20% in France and I think around 1.45% in the U.S., if I recall correctly. Those social charges will come on top of the EUR 180 million. They're a cash expense, and we have hedged those social charges because they are based on the plan's value at the time of vesting. Meaning we took share price risk related to those social charges and we have hedged those.
What you see in the P&L is three effects. It's recognition of the EUR 180 million over the vesting period in a linear manner. It's recognition that the social charges revalued at each reporting period to where the share price stands, and then an offsetting hedge on the social charges. With respect to my outlook for the, you know, Free Share Plan, post vesting in September of 2023, it's gonna vanish. You're not gonna see any effect in the P&L in 2024.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Angeliki Bairaktari from JP Morgan, please go ahead.
Good morning, thanks for taking my questions. Can I please ask if you are able to provide an update on where do we stand year to date in 2023 with regards to fundraising in the Flagship Fund V and also in NextGen Fund I? Considering that the fundraising for Fund V is now slightly delayed potentially, does that mean that, you know, we should expect a launch of the next vintage Fund VI to be in 2026 at the earliest? With regards to the EBITDA margin, is it fair to assume that we should expect the margin to converge towards 70% after the Fund V is completed, so towards 2025, 2026?
Is there a sort of any other reason for structurally higher costs, versus what we sort of previously had been expected? One last question on OpticalTel. On this deal that you mentioned today in your press release, that you have terminated, I was just wondering if there is any risk of sort of costs incurred by Antin as a result of that termination. Thank you.
Maybe I can start with the first two questions, Angeliki. First of all, I'm very sorry we cannot give you an update on the fundraising on the Flagship Fund since the beginning of 2023 because we are going to announce basically a figure in one month from now. I'm very sorry, but you will have to wait for one month. We are not allowed to give you figures. The only thing I can tell you is that we continue raising money, but I'm not authorized to give you a figure. Please wait for, kindly wait for one month. The second thing is that, you know, we are not telling you that, you know, only EUR 10 billion will be raised this other year.
There is a possibility that in fact we raise more or we raise EUR 12 billion during the course of this year. Again, out of caution in this very, I would say, difficult market, uncertain market, and you can see that some of our peers are basically failing to raise funds or delaying the fundraising of some funds. We wanted to give you some guidance out of caution. Again, it doesn't mean that, you know, you have to assume it will be, we raise EUR 10 billion instead of EUR 12 billion this year. Other questions?
Just with respect to the EBITDA margin and the convergence towards 70%. You know, it's I can't really comment on it that far out because of course we're not gonna.
That's a good question.
We can't withdraw the 70% target and then reconfirm it. I think there is a reason, you know, a reason as to why we've moved from a percentage guidance to an absolute euro guidance. You know, I'm gonna give you an example for that. It's very obvious that we are reflecting very actively on eventually launching a new strategy. While 2023 is not going to be the year for that and the environment for that, at some point in the future, it's our intention to do that. If we do that organically, you may be seeing, you know, year one having a negative EBITDA impact because we're investing. You may be seeing year two having a very strong positive EBITDA impact, year three being even more positive.
It may be still below a margin of 70% because we're launching a new strategy that hasn't scaled yet. Essentially, as we've been thinking about the future, you know, delivering absolute EBITDA growth because we're launching new initiatives is, in our view, going to be great for shareholders, but may not necessarily come at a 70% margin. We need to recalibrate when we get closer to the date. You know, absent of that, it's clear that Flagship Mid Cap is a hugely scaled strategy that produces extremely attractive margins, and that's not going to change. It's just about business mix and what else we're gonna do.
On Optical Tel maybe, for the benefit of all, Optical Tel is an investment that has been made in the U.S., signed for the benefit of the Mid Cap Fund I, it has been signed end of the year 2022, with a closing that had to occur once condition precedents were satisfied. During this phase between signing and closing, some breach have been made on fundamental representations made by the seller at the time that were relating to the company's and the group ownership. Very, very fundamental breaches.
The seller had a cure period to cure and remedy those breaches which he didn't do, and therefore, we had no other choice because we like very much the business, but we had no other choice than terminating the merger agreement with the seller, which the seller didn't take well because he filed a claim against Antin. We counter filed, by the way, we counter claimed, and this file has been made a couple of weeks ago. To comment Angeliki on your specific question and answer, there is no material impact on the financial position or profitability of Antin.
This is, you know, this happens, this is something that happens, but it's at fund level. We do not anticipate any impact at all, on the Antin business.
Thank you very much. If I may just follow up on the sort of new strategy that you indicated, would you like to give us some color as to the regards of the direction of what you're thinking? I know there's nothing, you know, immediately in the pipeline, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts with regards to, you know, would that be a geographical expansion of a fund or some sort of other vertical that you're thinking of launching within the infrastructure space? Thank you.
Maybe I can take that. I think first, as you said it rightly, Angeliki, there is nothing, I would say, cooking. I don't want to give any expectations, because currently, there is nothing. We've been working a lot, and we are working a lot on those things, evidently. If you look what we've done in the last two years, we moved from one strategy to three, which gives you an idea of our ambitions and ability to raise new strategies. We have done that by essentially organically. We think that the organic route is probably the best one, the most safe, the safest one in terms of making sure we recruit the right people for the right strategies.
My guess would be that we will continue mostly the organic route. NextGen, you know, is a typical example of that. We basically launched a new strategy which frankly differentiates from our, I would say, value-add strategy historically. And we recruited a team which is made of new hires and, or I would say Antin old-timers, to be sure that, you know, our culture is well shared by all. This is, I think, extremely, it is extremely successful. We will do more. In terms of there are opportunities of new strategies within infrastructure space. I don't want to comment on that now, we are certainly reviewing some.
There are also some, I would say, opportunities outside the strictly speaking infrastructure arena in, I would say, PE strategies or real estate strategies. Clearly we think that we are in a people's industry, and we are a people's business. Ensuring that we have the right people on board is of paramount importance as opposed to making a financial deal where you end up, you know, buying an asset and you find that, you know, half or a third of the people are not right and you have to replace them, and then You paid a lot of money for, frankly, not much. Organic route is favored for us. Not to worry, Angeliki, we are very ambitious people and we'll come back in due course with some good announcements and performance, I hope.
Thank you.
We will now take our last question in the queue from Tom Mills from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Oh, hi. maybe I could just follow up on maybe Arnaud's question, I think it was, just on deployment opportunities. It feels like there's quite a lot more money chasing assets in the space now. There's been a lot of money raised in the last six, 12 months, globally. I mean, I kind of note comments made by certain listed companies, particularly in, like the telco, in the telco tower space, like Cellnex saying that that market's now closed to M&A given cost of financing, limited availability of assets. I kind of know that you're saying that there's plenty of opportunities, but are you seeing any pockets of difficulty in what you're, in certain areas that you're looking at, please? Thanks.
I mean, I think first of all, you say there's plenty of money to be deployed. Yes, you are right. One thing which we integrate in our thinking when we define a new fund strategy or a new vintage, is to be in a spot where we are not faced with, I would say, excessive competition. I will quote you two reasons for that. The first one is we have some of our peers who now are raising EUR 20 billion or dollars plus funds. Evidently, if we were to raise, if we are, and this is our objective, to raise EUR 12 billion, you can see we are in a different space. Okay. In that space, to be quite frank, it's not a very packed space.
We are pretty confident that, you know, we'll find deals which are differentiated without having to compete head on head with, say, your three or four, I would say, peers. That's the first element of my answer. We have observed that. We have followed this discipline of sizing the funds to on the ground of a competitive competitive environment and our ability to deploy capital. The second answer I would like to provide to you is our midcap strategy. Clearly, midcap strategy has been. We've been raising money very successfully, and I'm sure it will be a big success when we go back to market. I think we deployed about 40% to date. It's been deploying very fast.
We are in a space where, frankly, which has been pretty much abandoned because everybody has been so much focused on growing super large cap funds. The midcap space has been largely abandoned. If you may have a macro view about, say, okay, plenty of capital to be invested, plenty of dry powder in the infra space. In reality, if you look segment by segment, you see there is plenty of opportunity with, I would say, moderate competition. We are very, very confident we can deploy capital profitably.
Thanks very much.
Next question?
I think it was the last question.
Yeah.
We've done. No further questions. Thank you for your time.