Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Wendel's Half Year 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listening-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask questions, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. You can also ask questions on the webcast. Olivier Allot, Director of Financial Communications and Data Intelligence, will read them out. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand you over to the conference, over to Mr. Laurent Mignon, CEO, Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you to be there on the first of August for our first half result analyst conference. So I'm very pleased. I will be making this presentation together with David Darmon. So we will be both of us doing the presentation. And Jérôme Michiels and Benoît Drillaud will also be there in case needed to answer the question you may have. So let's start on the key highlights of this first half, 2024. I think if we go, Wendel Group is a permanent capital structure that now have a dual strategy, with principal investment side and developing the asset management on the other one, while both activity generates some links between each other.
In the first half, the contribution to portfolio companies has been one contribution to net trading, at EUR 865 million. This is a 9.4% growth restated from constant exchange rates and scopes, as you know, at the very beginning of this year. So restating from that is up 9.4, which shows good resilience in an environment which is difficult. On the asset management, this is first time consolidation of IK Partners, but still the fee-related earnings of IK during the first half is EUR 29.5 million.
Very much in line with what we were expecting, with the growth of the fee-paying AUM of 16% since the beginning of the year, showing a very good development of the activity, supported by EUR 2.2 billion, EUR 1.7 billion of fundraisers and very good perspective for the rest of the year. So we're very happy to be able, thanks to the quality of the performance of IK, being able to raise significant amount of capital and be in line with the growth we're expecting from that activity. All together, if we take principal investment and asset management, today, Wendel Group is managing EUR 20.4 billion of assets, but we'll come back on the way it is split.
Our fully diluted NAV, which is a new metric which take into account the share buyback we've been doing, is established at EUR 175.2 per share as of June, which is up 7.9%, year to date, compared to the same aggregate, a fully diluted NAV as 31st of December 2023, which was EUR 162.3 per share. Our loan-to-value pro forma of all the acquisitions and operations that we've announced, even if they are not realized at 30th of June, is 5.9%. If we take the loan-to-value at its 10, as of 30th of June, it is -6.2%.
But, you know, we have announced Globeducate and so on, since then. So net of that, the pro forma of that is 5.9%, which leave the company investment capacity of EUR 1.4 billion, to be able to work on our strategy and implement our strategy. Today, we announce we finished the first share buyback that we've announced a few months ago, and we're announcing a new share buyback program of EUR 100 million that will go on starting today. If we go next, I... This is really to show you the links between the different asset and how it developed. And you see how far, I mean, the very important thing for us is, how does our business model always create value.
On the principal investment, obviously, this is the value of the underlying asset. That will be the number one element, and the listed asset during the first half has increased in value by 9%. Listed asset has been slightly down to 1%, despite, which is a pretty good performance when we look to the environment in which the assets are evolving, but we will come back with more detail on that. We've been very active on the principal investment part during this half year. We've had EUR 2.3 billion of disposal and value crystallization, thanks to both the sale of Constantia Flexibles on one side at the beginning of the year and the investment of 9% of Bureau Veritas during the first half, too.
We've been investing or committing close to EUR 700 million during this period also. So a very active management of the portfolio, and as you've seen, the contribution to the net earnings is up at EUR 388 million. And, no, the net income group share is at EUR 388 million, with constituted sales, which are up 13% during the period. Part of the profit is linked to the disposal of Constantia at the beginning of January. On the other side, the asset management is developing itself. GP, the first time, the GP value growth today is not significant because it's first time consolidation of IK. Sponsor money invested is not yet invested, not yet called, so we cannot give you how it has evolved, but it will.
We've committed, as you see, up to EUR 400 million on IK X, and potentially the Partnership Fund III. We've bought 51% of IK for EUR 383 million. Out of it, EUR 128 million will be paid in 2027, pending some conditions. We had strong growth in fee earnings in the first half compared to last year. It is very much in line with what we expected, and I mentioned a good momentum in terms of fundraising that is continuing, and we are very optimistic for the end of the year. So all of that is giving an improved growth profile for the company with increased recurring cash flow generation, thanks to the asset management development that is starting. And again, it's just the start.
We've got a very strong cash position to fuel execution, and we have set a higher dividend yield profile, EUR 4 being paid during the first half, and we are developing an opportunistic share buyback program, as you see with this renewed EUR 100 million commitment to buy back shares. We've sold 9% of Bureau Veritas for EUR 1.1 billion. The internal rate of return for the investment in Bureau Veritas is 24.8% per year since investment, which is a pretty impressive one. We've made the investment on Globeducate, and we'll come back on this one. EUR 625 million in equity to co-control the company, and this company has a very good growth profile and will enhance the portfolio going forward, supported to carry on its M&A strategy.
Also, as you can see, just kind of support the environment investment. CPI made a refi project during the year and within this refinancing made a small dividend recap of EUR 93 million that was distributed to Wendel. And Wendel Group made the sale of Preligens, which has been signed, is will be realized, not yet. And we've invested EUR 15 million on a very promising company called Yes WeHack . Asset management, I don't want to come back on what made the acquisition. We have access to 20% of the issue, future carried interest also from starting from IK X fund, EUR 1.7 billion of fundraise, which is very, very to any other and sponsor money will be not called yet, but has been committed.
Globeducate, we mentioned increased recurring cash flow generation and supporting dividend yield growth. Dividend yield growth will continue to grow in the coming years, thanks to development of the asset management business. We have strong investment capability with EUR 1.4 billion of, sort of, I would call it some sort of, dry powder, I mean, not only the principal investment of Wendel, per se, and we announced the new EUR 100 million share buyback program. So all of that is geared to value creation and increase our TSR, and dividend profile, and hopefully long-term, to reduce our discount to NAV. If I move to the next slide, I think it's the first time we present that, because we have the consolidation of IK Partners today.
Wendel managed EUR 20.4 billion of assets. EUR 7.3 billion is in principal, 9%, not 9% of the EUR 7.3 billion, 9% of the total billion. But a portion, a significant portion of that being in the education with ACAMS, CPI, and Globeducate. Now, a significant portion in the business services, which is the highest portion with Bureau Veritas and Scalian. A bit in industrial with Tarkett and Stahl, and a very small portion in Wendel Group and in telco through IHS. On the other side, you have the EUR 13.1 billion AUM of IK Partners. That includes close to EUR 2 billion of dry powder, 15% of the total, of the total EUR 15 billion. So it's even more.
It's three billion, sorry, of dry powder, which is a significant amount to be invested and show the capacity of IK to both invest and divest, but we'll see that when we talk about IK platform during the first half. Maybe a little bit of a highlight on Globeducate, and I will share that with David. We've made the investment on this very great platform of K-12 education through a network of 65 premium bilingual and international schools. This is present in 11 countries, mostly in Europe, and it is a very attractive market, we think. We have students in the schools with a world-class education, predominantly taught in English....
Sales are EUR 440 million in 2025, expected with EUR 120 million of EBITDA. We think it's a great business because it's a very stable, predictable, and strong double-digit growth expected together with potentially organic and M&A. Strong cash flow generation, mostly invested in organic and external growth. David, you wanna say more on Globeducate?
Yes. Thank you, Laurent. Good afternoon, everyone. So we announced on June first, this acquisition of a 50% stake alongside Providence. Providence is a global PE firm with a long track record in education. They've been successful in Galileo and obviously in Globeducate, and they have other educational companies in their portfolio. So we thought it was it was a great partner. We do intend to invest EUR 625 million of equity upon closing. We expect this closing by the end of the year. And as Laurent was saying, we were very excited about this investment opportunity, because, one, there is a great mix of growth avenues, both organic with increased numbers of students. What we call semi-organic, which is basically opening new campuses, and M&A.
It's a highly fragmented industry, and this is a great platform to buy moms and pops. We're also very excited because there is strong predictability of cash flows. At the beginning of the year, you have a good view on volumes and fees, which in LBO is very helpful. We look forward for the closing by the end of the year of this very interesting investment opportunity.
Great. Next slide shows you something we will present you now, which is really to show you how value creation has been done at Wendel. So you've got two first bar, is the principal investment, the second one will be asset management. Then you've got what to add to that, which is cash operation costs and the net financing result. Then you have potentially any action we take on the, on the buyback of the shares. That gives you the total value creation. So this, during the first half, principal investment has created EUR 16 per share of value, 19% growth of the listed asset, mostly driven by Bureau Veritas, growth. As I mentioned, the non-listed asset has been zoom.
We'll make a zoom on each of those, but we'll make a zoom on that. Asset management for the time being, it's first time, so the negative minus EUR 0.1 is strongly linked to the acquisition of IK Partners, but globally, the fee payment is growing fast, so this will be a significant value creation driver in the future. The negative part of the cash cost, we have a good cost control. We'll make a zoom on that, and we've got a positive carry because we're lending the money to a higher yield than we're borrowing it. So we'll make a little bit more of a zoom on that.
We've made share buyback, which have been relative of EUR 1.3 per share during the period, which obviously makes sense. Total value creations on the fully diluted has been EUR 16.9 per share, 10.4% of the fully diluted net asset value as of the current first half. Now, we go into the detail. David, you wanna go into the detail a bit?
Moving to page 10, more specifically on principal investment, as Laurent was mentioning, the growth is EUR 708 million, +8.6% compared to last year. You can see on this slide that the lion's share is coming from Bureau Veritas, with an increase in EUR 791 million of value creation from Bureau Veritas. This is obviously driven by the strong share price growth since the beginning of the year. I will come back in a minute on the reason for this growth. You can see that the rest of the portfolio in principal investment had a marginal impact, a marginal negative impact, because IHS and Tarkett combined share price evolution led to a decrease of EUR 56 million.
Our four remaining unlisted assets, plus Wendel Growth, had a small decline of EUR 28 million. Pretty marginal impact from those six companies compared to the major evolution of the Bureau Veritas share price. Moving to slide 11, where you can see the operational performance of those assets. You can see that Bureau Veritas had a strong growth, both organic and in terms of EBITDA, +4% in terms of sales, and +4.1% for the EBIT. The share price grew more than that on the back of a very good reception of the new strategic plan, the LEAP | 28 plan, which was announced, and the company is starting to implement, and we can see here the early results of this plan.
We saw in the market some upgrades in terms of forecast, which drove nicely this share price. Target had a mixed result about the H1, with a flatish to declining sale. You can see -3.1%, but at the same time, a very strong margin increase, as it was able to maintain some of its prices, while the cost base, in terms of raw material, remained pretty low. So with this increase in margin, you can see that this decline in sales did not reflect in EBITDA. EBITDA actually grew by 17.5%. IHS is going to publish over the months its results, so we are not going to comment on those today.
But we can come back on the recent announcement in terms of change of governance. You probably saw that the resolution and changes we proposed to the shareholders meeting were voted by over 98% of the shareholders. So, very well welcomed by the shareholders, and we do believe that those governance improvements is going to lead to a better share price performance and better relationship in terms of stakeholders, which will be very beneficial to the company. I'm moving to slide 12, and reviewing now the performance of the other private assets we have in our portfolio. Starting with Stahl, you can see that Stahl had a good beginning of the year, both in terms of sales growth, with an increase of 4.9%, and in terms of EBITDA, with an increase in margin.
Like, I mentioned on target, Stahl was able to increase its margin because of a good price discipline and enjoying some raw material price decline. You can see the impact when you control your fixed cost and you benefit from a raw material decline, a very strong margin increase at Stahl. Regarding CPI, CPI enjoy a very strong H1 growth, especially in North America. The international was still growing, but at a lower pace. In terms of margin, you can see a small contraction because the EBITDA only grew by 9.2%. The company is making some significant investments in some IT and some processes, and hiring some talents, which is marginally impacting the margin here, but it's still enjoying a very healthy margin.
The net debt you see here is slightly impacted by the dividend that Laurent mentioned earlier. CPI was able to go to the bank market and a global syndicate and distribute a dividend to its shareholder which obviously increased the net debt as a consequence. ACAMS had a mixed result during H1. You can see that sales were pretty flat during the first six months, with good growth from North America and the European banking clients. But some disappointment in terms of sales in Asia. Some customers did delay some orders. So we call it a sort of transition year for ACAMS, with a lot of work being done behind the scenes. Obviously, starting with a change of CEO and the arrival of a new CFO.
And some important investment in learning management system as well. So you can see some impact on the margin as well. We are still confident on the long-term prospect of the company, but the first six months were really a bit disappointing. Scalian is navigating a tough market. The global market for consulting in digital transition is seeing a slowdown, and you can see the -1% pro forma, the acquisitions of Mannarino and Dulin. Which is very different from the traction that we saw in the semester before, where we had a very strong growth. So Scalian is seeing similar headwind than the rest of its peers. In terms of margin, we mentioned that last time we talked with...
Which is what we call the inter-contract, the unbilled hours. Scalian had some consultants on its payroll which were not staffed, and that did impact its, its margins. And so you can see that the EBITDA actually declined by more than the 1% sales decline I mentioned earlier. Moving to page 13, Laurent, if you want to follow on.
Yeah, maybe a word now on IK consolidation. So IK has a great first half, with very strong, very good growth momentum and significant ability to manage value to its LPs. Liquidity for LP. Another. This is a very important element because they have generated EUR 1 billion of proceeds by more than five exits, and I will make a little bit of a highlight on that on the next slide. The those sales were done in very good condition, with an average 2.8 x money multiple of money. So a very good return for the LPs on those sales, and it's a very important element. The development, they've been very consistent in investing.
They've invested EUR 870 million, 9 transactions across IK strategy. EUR 145 million of co-investment were offered, by the way, to LPs on four of these investments. Fundraising is going very well. Strong momentum for the flagship IK X. Overall, we're close to 80% of the EUR 3.25 billion IK X hard cap, and we will reach the objective, so we're very confident on that. The first reinvestment on IK X has been done with Kooi, Eurofeu and BOMA. So, starting to invest the money of our clients. In terms of innovation and new strategy, they've been the first continuation vehicle that have been done on Yellow Hive.
Continuation vehicle, which was very largely oversubscribed at an equity value of enterprise value of EUR 505 million. Then, the IK X has been classified as Article 8+. We are launching the IK Partnership Fund III now. Next slide show you what is very important in the asset management, is the ability to give back money to the LPs, which is one of the issue for some of the fund, where LP don't have any returns. So DPI is one of the key ratio that is very well and looked at by LPs in order to reinvest, and it's very high at IK. IK always have been returning more money than it has drawn from its LPs.
You see that there've been five exits that have been done during the first half. Mabtech, Eres, Yellow Hive, and Carspect. Globally, 2.8x money, 21% realized RR on those exits. EUR 41 million add-on has been executed across the portfolio today, and there has been an average EBITDA increase of 140% since entry on those companies. So, all those metrics rely on the five, but just explain how this 2.8x money has been realized at 1%. So very successful sales and that result in a very ongoing and good fundraising activity. You see that the fund fee paying AUM were EUR 7.5 billion at the end of December.
They upped EUR 1.7 billion thanks to fundraising. There have been five exits for EUR 500 million, so they are now at EUR 8.7 billion, up 16%. Global asset under management, including NAV and co-investment that is given by the LPs, is move up from EUR 11 billion to EUR 14.1 billion, which is up 18%. So very good, good momentum. The H1 fees globally were EUR 79 million. The fee-related earnings were EUR 30 million. All of that very much in line even with our forecast when we presented the transaction in October 2023. The dry powder today is significant, is close to EUR 3 billion.
Cash operating, the other element of value creation was C and D, cash and net financing results, which was a negative impact of 0.7 per share, with a very good control of the cost to one-- to less than 1% of the total GAAP on an annual basis, to EUR 0.9 per share. There will be, we've made some work in order to reduce our costs, but there's some timeline between the fact the, the action we're taking and the realization to that, but we'll see more to come in that. And the net financing result has been positive, thanks to the positive current situation, as you know.
Share buyback that have been done, 100 million have been done, under the program, which had EUR 1.3 per share impact on a fully diluted basis as of 30th of June 2024. It was not fully done, by the way. I'm saying 100 million. It's, that's the situation as of 30th of June. Since then, the program has been finalized, and a new one will start today.
Thank you, Laurent.
Maybe-
I'm moving now. Yes?
Yeah.
Moving now to slide 18. You have here an overview of the IFRS P&L, which does not really reflect all the capital gain and inflows generated by our investment activity. Our mission is to deliver performance, but you can't always see this performance directly in our P&L. For instance, the close to EUR 800 million capital gain made on Bureau Veritas shares in April does not appear here, as well as the change in fair value of the IHS share. And the dividends, for instance, as well, received are eliminated during the consolidation process. But let's move to the most important KPI, which is the NAV on slide 19. We already commented extensively the performance triggers earlier, so I'm going just to highlight what is new here.
We have added a section for asset management activity. You will there see the valuation of our GP. Today, it's only the 50% stake we own in IK. Tomorrow, it will be all the other GPs and sponsor money we invest as an LP. We will value the GPs with market multiples and the sponsor money according to the valuation provided by our asset managers. It is worth to be noted that below the bond debt line, you have a new section as well, to reflect the deferred payment in IK, the 51% capital share. So it's EUR 128 million, plus the ticking fees, plus the interest that you will find there.
In addition, you have at the bottom of the table the fully diluted NAV to take into account the share buybacks fully in the NAV. Moving now to slide 20. Laurent, you want to describe the debt profile?
No. You can go to. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Okay.
So we have, as you know, we're fully funded and we've got a low LTV ratio today, which allow us to have some significant headroom in term of investment. Our average maturity of debt is 4.1 years. The average cost of our debt is 2.4%. The return that we have on our cash is 4%, hence our positive carry. So next, the next debt coming maturity is March 27, 2026, which is the convertible bond on Bureau Veritas at EUR 32. Then we've got some debt in 2026.
We have re-installed the undrawn credit facility to EUR 875 million, which is due to July 29 now. And, so yeah. So we've got a very good liquidity situation, as you can see on that slide. Next slide, maybe. With a 2.4% average cost, as I mentioned. Return to shareholder, EUR 4 per share at, up 25% compared to last year. It's a yield, average yield of 4.8% on the share price and a 2.5% on NAV. We've bought back 1.2 million Wendel shares since the program launch in October 2023. We'll do another program of EUR 100 million, today, starting today. And, maybe I go to the key takeaways.
brings you during, we're acting on all the levers in order to increase value creation. That will... That's taking time, but it's ongoing with investment in B2B service transaction on principal investment. Our equity check sweet spot, as you know, is between EUR 500 million-EUR 800 million per investment. Exactly what we've done for Globeducate. We aim to, you know, geographically diversify our portfolio. Today, France, by the way, represent 15% of the group exposure to. We're a very small exposure to the French. It's a very wide exposure globally, and we aim at further growing our exposure to the dollar assets.
We're on the asset management, we believe that the benefit of the asset management platformization is important, and I think many viewing that as a very positive thing to create platform in this field. IK is the first step, and we're looking to other steps going forward. Our priority is to grow new verticals. We've done the to develop asset management solutions. Acquiring acquisition to add on to what with different, which I say that, you know, grow the with an venture target EUR 250 million, and create potentially, thanks also to that development, potential performance-related earnings, thanks to the part of the carried interest we're getting in these different asset management companies.
So, our mid-term upside to net asset value and share price is really, well, We've got a new share buyback, and we've got, you know, asset management rely both on organic and IK is with very good numbers, M&A potentially, and the development of synergy between different platforms, specifically in the, well, there will be some in the significant one also on the distribution, which is the main benefit of the platformization. On the principal investment performance, growth, both organic and bolt-on M&A. And we're committed to improve the operational situation, and having an active management of our portfolio is also a key element of value creation. So I'm finishing here, and David, Jérôme, Benoît, and I are here to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question from the phone, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. If you wish to ask questions from the web, please do so now. We're gonna take our first question from the phone conference, and the first question is coming from Joren Van Aken from Degroof Petercam. You're live. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. First, I have a question on the asset management business, and I heard you talk about growing new verticals, but the line was very bad on my end, so apologies, I couldn't hear that part. So I'm just wondering, could you remind us a bit about the long-term vision for the asset management business? Is the idea to acquire new verticals or specialists in verticals? Like, for example, Antin is a specialist in infrastructure, and that you build this business with specialists in each segment, or would you also be open to, for example, buy another private equity asset manager, for example? Just your idea there. And then a second question would be... Because you have, of course, plenty of liquidity available to do something.
Should we expect then that the next investment would be an investment in the asset management business? Or are you looking at, for example, another private company? Because I think most people really liked the Globeducate acquisition. So any insights or your thought process there would be helpful. Thank you.
Well, on the management, we want to create a true platform that will allow us to provide to LP different strategies, so that you can, you know, have a real complementarity of the different team that we're building up. So, the idea is certainly not to buy another buyout companies. We've made an acquisition of IK. We think IK is a great team, and we're going to use IK and to help IK growing itself on the buyout. And I don't want to have, and would not want to have competing teams, within the same thing. Maybe we can help some if IK find a good opportunity to grow faster in some region or area with making a small bolt-on acquisition, we can help IK to do so.
But the priority for IK will be to be developing organically, grow its business, and we think we can grow it and help it, and the numbers we've shown is showing how successful it is, and not to have any sort of a competing team. So the objective is to have complementary teams. So you mentioned infrastructure is one, we could add some debt funds on the other side. So that's really to have different verticals in terms of expertise, that have a very strong complementarity in terms of distribution to that. So the value added to that is that you are providing a complete offer to LPs, and you're going to have a much deeper relationship with the LPs, because you're talking about different strategies with them, rather than having a monoline in one.
We want to support the teams to develop themselves. We want to avoid to have any competing teams, so that we end up in situation where you have two teams running for chasing the same type of assets. And that's the strategy. I think it's really what we've tried to explain since the beginning, but to be more clear. So we will not buy another PE, private equity, buyout firm, in coming. IK is really the one. I mean, we can think about one day having one in the U.S., but it's not a top priority today on the list. Number two is, where do we want to invest our time? Well, it's again, where you have opportunity. If we get a great private investment, we'll do it.
If we find the right asset management company, we will do it. Our strategy is still to grow the asset management platform, so it's obviously a strategic objective, and should we find the right team, then it may be this will be what we want to do. But we need really to make sure that we have the right team, because to create a platform, you need to have team that can work together. So we're paying attention to the quality of the teams we're buying. So there is no clear answer to your question, but clearly developing the asset management is the key to us, in order to develop that platform, IK being the first pillar to that strategy.
That's very clear and makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We're now gonna take the next call, question from the call. And the next question is coming from Grégoire Hermann, from Berenberg. You're live. Please, go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be on IK Partners. When we look at the figures you've released, you've shown today, it looks like the asset management fee that you're actually charging is in the very high top range of what we're seeing in the industry. So I was just wondering here, if you could give us a bit of information on the dynamic that you're seeing there, and especially on the new funds raised recently, whether it's pretty much at the kind of the average rate that we can currently calculate, or if there is anything you're changing here? And maybe the second one would be on the share buyback program.
It's maybe obvious, but just trying to clarify. If I remember correctly, at Q1, we briefly touched upon that, and you somehow said that you were ruling out any additional shareholder distributions. You were really happy with the increase in the dividend targets. You were already having a share buyback program. And so I'm just wondering whether here anything has changed, or you just basically want to take advantage of the share price weakness that we've seen right after the situation in France? Thank you.
Well, I'll start with the second one. There's no change in our view, and we don't want to make a. But we think that the discount is very high. So I think to allocate a part of our capital to do some buyback for that makes sense and create some value, as long as it leave us enough room in order to make acquisition and deliver the strategy. So it's part of the value creation strategy that has significant pillar, not only one. Long-term perspective is to create a great principal investment portfolio, to create a great asset management platform that will generate a recurring revenue. But also you have some financial tricks to do it, which is to buy back when the discount is too high.
So it's part of it, as long as it's not becoming all of it. So that's really it. We've defined a clear dividend strategy, and that is not gonna change. And that dividend will go within the development of the asset management platform as a significant portion of the fee-related earnings will be distributed in addition to the 2.5% return on NAV that we've defined for our dividend policy. So that's giving, I think, a clear view of where we want to go. So no change of strategy. And we've said, by the way, opportunistic share buyback program, because the conditions give us, I think, this opportunity. It's part of a value creation plan, not all of it. Number two is on the asset management. No, I think we're...
By the way, we're a pure private equity fund, so we're charging a private equity fee. When you relate that to, often it's. On the other side, if you look to some of the LP, they pay the fees, but they don't pay fees on co-investment. So you have to look to the mix between fee-paying AUM in order to get a good view of the average fee. But we're in the market. We're talking about a one, I mean, we don't give the. But if you make the math, you will see we are in the market of the private equity. We're not higher, but we don't have to make discount.
This is a good quality fund, and we've got good money coming, and we have big LP that are willing to come put significant amount of money and being offered also significantly some co-investment, hence the co-investment part of our asset under management.
That's clear. Thank you.
Obviously, fees on, you know, AUM is not a fee. In private equity, it's higher than fees on debt or fees on infra. It depends. Each AUM has its own dynamic. But you know very well.
Okay. Clear. Thank you.
Good.
Thank you very much for your question. We have another question from the phone conference, and this next question is coming from Alexandre Gérard from CIC Market Solutions. You're live. Please go ahead.
Well, good afternoon, and thank you for that, presentation. Three questions on my side, if I may. The first one is related to the change in value of your unlisted assets, which is more or less flattish, slightly negative. Can we have a feel of what were the changes in value for each of the five assets? I'm not asking for a number, but more direction and the magnitude-
Yeah
- for each of these five assets. Second question regarding Scalian. So the operating margin was down, so I understand the cyclical impact. But, I mean, that company was, on, is at the very high end of its industry in terms of profitability. Don't you feel that this might be more than a cyclical impact? And the third question, sorry to be playing on that subject, the asset management business. When you mentioned that EUR 150 million target for 2027 in terms of fee-related earnings, is it your share of that metric, or is it-
Yeah
on a consolidated basis? And-
No, no
- On the AM basis, on private debt, I mean, private debt is, if I am not wrong, a segment that is of interest to you. And, apparently, one of the large European players is about to be acquired by Arctos. I'm talking about Hayfin. Is it a company that you have looked at? Thank you.
So, just a quick answer to the 140. So because it's not the consolidated, so it's our shares. Now going to just a quick word. I'm not commenting on the Hayfin. Hayfin is a great company. We know them well. I think their willingness was for the management to keep the majority of their operation. So obviously, that was not in line with objective to reach to join a platform. So we have high respect for the team, but they had different views, and that's why they've made this transaction with Arctos.
So, a very great team, very good business, but we fully understand that the willingness of the founders to have a fully independent platform supported by some financial help, but not to join a platform like ours. Now, on the where does the value of the assets, private assets? Obviously, well, it has... The movement is following the movement of the EBITDA. That's a clear indicator where the value is moving up or down, and even if the multiple may change. But, you know, we're using a-... has negative movement on margin, well, that has an impact on their value. So that's a good way for you to have a sort of, but you know that, so implicitly that had an impact on that.
That was the main driver of the values during the period. David, do you wanna comment-
Comment on that?
Yes, please.
Yeah. So excellent on Scalian, so you saw that the margin on the last quarter is slightly under 10% EBITDA margin, which is actually not on the high end of the industry. So we don't think this is like a permanent contraction. And well, almost the contrary, because this contraction, as I mentioned, is mainly due to a lot of unbilled hours, and because we actually hired with the anticipation of a very high growth, so we were caught a bit by surprise by this contraction of the market. So we need to fix this unbilled hours issue, which will increase the margin from the level where it is today.
But in addition, we also have plans to increase the offshore of the company, which today is really minimal. We are talking about a few hundred employees in the offshore countries, and there is a midterm plan to increase that significantly, and that should have an impact on margin. And last, we also mentioned that we want to rebalance the geographic exposure of Scalian, which is today mainly exposed to France. International has higher margin in terms of business mix. And by shifting to a company with a higher share of international revenues, we do believe it's going to have an impact on margin as well.
So, a long way to go to basically say that we believe that the current level is not the long-term sustainable level, and we see midterm a recovery of margins.
All right. Thank you very much. That's clear.
Term of top line is resisting well in this environment. So we're pretty. We think it's a difficult environment today, but the company is resisting well and taking action in order to increase margin, as David mentioned. So yeah, we see a good future for that.
On the fee-related earnings, you said that was your share. Sorry to make you repeat, but the line is bad.
Yes. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yes, our... Did you get it?
What'd you say? Sorry.
I say, yes, it is our shares.
Yeah. All right, your share. Understood. Thank you.
Sorry.
Okay, thank you very much. At this stage, there's no more questions on the phone conference. So I'm now gonna hand you over to Olivier Allot for any questions on the web.
Thank you. So we have two questions from Arnaud Palliez. Bureau Veritas was the main contributor to your value creation in H1. If you want to reduce your holding, what would be, according to you, the optimal Wendel's participation rate and exposure to the company?
Well, I think that today we have a good share. We have 20% share. We already have made a convertible bond that will potentially dilute us when it will be exercised. So we're happy with the situation. We think that we were needing to reduce slightly our exposure in order to have a better capital allocation, not because we don't believe in Bureau Veritas, but because we thought it was a better capital allocation altogether. Today, it represents a portion which is more reasonable of our global NAV, and we have the convertible bond on top of that, as we are very optimistic on the ability of Bureau Veritas to deliver value. We're pretty happy about the situation of how we are.
Thank you. Is there any restructuring program to implement in Scalian, or its EBITDA recovery only relies on a better market environment?
I think I covered that previously. So it's mainly making sure that people are not on the bench. So it's basically winning new businesses and working towards more a higher exposure to offshore and international. So no, we're not talking about restructuring. We're talking about increasing sales, operational leverage, and going abroad.
Thank you. We have a question from Samarth Goyal. Question on sponsor commitment. Can you share expected timelines when the sponsor money would be called? And just to reconfirm, what would be the term of management and performance fees on sponsored money to IK Partners?
The sponsor money will be called... Difficult to say, but it will start to be called probably the half of this year, partly and fully or what would happen? It's difficult to give it a good, it's more than the same. We have the same term as being a LP, so exactly the one that another bank. So different. And there's no on the, the LP has the performance fee is for the team.
So maybe I'm going just to summarize what you just said. So we have the same condition as other LP. We are very significant LP in those funds, but we don't benefit from different terms. And regarding the deployment of the fund, it's from our side, it's difficult to give a timeline. It's going to start now, because as you saw, IK X has already three investments made, and it's going to be deployed over the life of the fund. So it comes back, deploying on the speed of making the investment two, three, four years. But the regular timeline you expect for a PE fund to deploy capital.
Yeah, and in terms of conditions, it's really the same as a. So, there's no fees on the investment. The performance fee, either we have 20% of the fees as a firm.
Thank you. Laurent, the sound is not very good. So next, question is again regarding IK Partners. Following the acquisition of IK Partners, which are the key segments within private markets that you are looking to diversify or enhance your third party asset management portfolio, how should we envision the asset management to look within the next three to five years?
I think it's two... I've already expressed on that, but the segment are debt, infra, and secondary. And I think a clear sign is really to look to the fact that we are aiming to have EUR 150 million of fee-related earnings in 2027. That's really the goal.
Thank you. Last question from Samarth. I wanted to understand the drivers of valuation within unlisted assets in the second quarter of 2024. My calculation indicate high single digit to double digit organic growth across Stahl, CPI and ACAMS. So what has driven lower valuations? Is there any specific asset where profitability has presented the valuation drag during the quarter? Or is it to adjust the peer multiples?
David, you wanna take this one? Because my line is not good.
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, if, if you go on slide 12, you can see the EBITDA growth of the private assets. And, and basically, the good indicators of which one saw its valuation going up and which one saw its valuation going down. And as we mentioned, on slide, I think it was slide 10. Yes, slide 10, you can see that overall the decline is only EUR 28 million. So, you're probably not off. Overall, those five companies had marginal or no negative impacts on the NAV. And, it's a, it's a combination of a few assets going up and a few assets going down.
But it's a combination of EBITDA, as you see. So as I say, it's a good driver, and also some peers' PE going down.
Thank you. I have no more question on the web. I think we have an additional question by phone.
Thank you. Yes, we have one more question from the phone conference. And this question is coming from Alexandre Gérard from CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Three quick ones on my side. We didn't ask you the traditional question regarding the deal flow and whether you see any significant sign in pickup of the global M&A activity, or the market is still frozen. What's your point of view at the moment? Second question regarding Stahl. Its financial leverage is not that high at 1.4x. Would you be ready to consider, as you did in the past, a leverage recap for a dividend coming from Stahl? And if you could remind us, finally, the date at which ends your lockup on your Bureau Veritas stake following the recent placement. Thank you.
So on the last one, Alexandre, this is Jérôme speaking. I don't know if you can hear me.
Yeah.
On the lockup of BV, we have an undertaking of six months following the block, which was carried out early April. So the lockup expires early October this year.
Thank you.
On the market, Alexandre, so I would say that deals are getting done. You probably saw in the press a few recent announcements. IK Partners invested in Harvest, Orisha traded, Ardian invested in Magimix. Obviously, we invested in Globeducate. So, it is definitely a better market right now. There are still some situations which are not going through up to the end. So buyers and sellers are not talking the same language. But it is a market where transactions are actually happening. So it's not frozen anymore. It's a difficult market, but it's not what we had like six or nine months ago.
So thank you. I think we-
I think there was another question about how can we do a dividend recap? Obviously, we have to do a dividend recap. Well, we assess with the right thing, clearly, but yes, we have did it.
There's no more questions on the phone conference at this point.
So thank you very much. So I think we can close this conference call. Many thanks to everybody for attending this H1 result call, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.