Welcome to the Eurazeo 2026 half-year results presentation. Today's conference will be hosted by William Kadouch-Chassaing, Co-CEO, and Christophe Bavière, Co-CEO. For the first part of the conference, the participants will be on listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, you may ask in two ways, by submitting a written question in the box below the player, or by joining the conference call and dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. I will hand the conference over to the speaker. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for joining this call. Christophe and I are pleased to welcome you to our 2026 half-year results presentation. Our presentation will be in three parts. I will share with you the financial highlights for H1. Christophe will focus on fundraising, commercial dynamic, and asset rotation. I will detail our financial results. We will then be available to take questions. We publish a good set of results for the first half of 2026, showing further progress in the execution of our strategic plan. Let me share the key highlights for H1. Asset management passed another semester of solid growth. Fundraising stands at EUR 2.3 billion with some notable closings in PE and debt, confirming the attractiveness of our franchises to clients. We continue to demonstrate our ability to scale our flagship strategies.
Christophe will come back to this in a moment. As a result, we continue to grow our earnings, with management fees from third parties up 14%, EBITDA growth of 20%, and strong growth in operating cash flows as we grow our third-party fees and performance fees start to materialize more meaningfully. Our balance sheet return, as announced, positive value creation in H1 with a growth of +2.3% per share.
Realizations continue to be on plan with a good pipeline of exits expected for the rest of 2026, allowing us to reshape the business model as per our strategic plan. We are on track to deliver the announced EUR 2.3 billion in shareholder return by the end of 2027. We have already returned EUR 1.3 billion since the beginning of 2024. In 2026, we have already distributed a dividend per share increasing by 10% and executed half of the share buyback program for the year.
Thank you, William. As you know, the development of an asset management platform starts with good fundraising. Eurazeo raised EUR 2.3 billion from clients in H1 2026, ahead of last year's already strong performance. This is, we'd say, particularly encouraging given a challenging environment for fundraising. No doubt, this success highlights the quality of Eurazeo's franchises, as well as the relevance of Eurazeo's positioning as a European mid-market, growth and impact-focused investment firm.
Our strategy is to be the go-to investment firm for this deep and growing investment universe, mid-market companies all over Europe. We have had several marquee successes in H1 with, in particular, the final close of EPD VII in direct lending, the final close of ESF V in secondaries, the first close of PME V in buyout, and successes also in thematic funds such as Kurma Biofund IV and SME II.
Wealth Solutions channel continues to deliver despite a more competitive and challenging market backdrop. One of the keys to Eurazeo's success in the development of its asset management platform is its ability to scale existing flagship franchises. Let me guide you through clear example of how this works. Look at direct lending. The size of our more recent program, EPD VII, increased by 70% at EUR 5.5 billion, driven by its leadership position and strong performance of the strategy focused on the lower mid-market. Look at secondaries. Our fifth program more than doubled at EUR 2.3 billion with growth both on the institutional flagship fund and in wealth and mandate solutions. Note that for these two programs, demand has exceeded the hard cap, which is quite unique in current market conditions for fundraising. Look at the lower mid-market buyout segment.
Eurazeo is currently raising its fifth vintage, PME V. We have good traction among investors thanks to the strong performance of the previous vintages. The first closing of this fifth vintage has already exceeded the final closing of the fourth vintage with, I would say, plenty of room to grow further. In our strategic roadmap, William and I outlined our ambition to further expand our client franchise through the internationalization of the LP base. In recent years, we have extended our coverage in Europe, in the Middle East, and in Asia. The results are there. Around 70% of our inflows are now coming from outside of France. A growing share of this fundraising is coming from outside of Europe, with repeated successes all around Asia as we are signing new clients in China, in Korea, and in Japan.
Our Wealth Solutions franchises also continues to grow at a steady pace, with now EUR 6 billion of AUM, a 17% CAGR for the past five years. Yes, our flagship evergreen fund, EPVE 3, surpassed EUR 3.7 billion in AUM, thanks to the positive inflows. In parallel, we are actively working with our partners to distribute our new international evergreen funds all over Europe. For the rest of the year, Eurazeo will pursue on its fundraising on the back of a solid and diversified pipeline, both on the institutional side as well as on the wealth segment. As you can see, our funds are at different stages in their fundraising. We continue to raise on our flagship Eurazeo Growth Fund IV and PME V, and we have many thematic funds on the road like EPBF, SME II, Eurazeo Future Industries III, ESORE, and ETIF II.
Let me now turn to deployments and realization. Eurazeo deployments amounted to EUR 1.9 billion in H1, down 17% for the same period of last year, with transaction reflecting an expanding pan-European investment approach. Main deals include in Denmark, Eurazeo, through the EPBF team, acquired T1A, a leading electronic recycling firm. In Germany, Eurazeo, through PME V, bought Nextron, a leading cybersecurity software firm. In France, through Capital, Eurazeo invested in Netco, a conveyor belt maintenance business, and in the infrastructure, we finance Lauralu, active in demountable structures.
Eurazeo is well-placed to continue to grasp opportunities with EUR 8.3 billion of firepower, out of which EUR 6.6 billion of third-party money. Realizations. Realizations stood at EUR 700 million. Eurazeo has had several exits, notably with Fermax and Ex Nihilo in buyout, Memo Therapeutics in biotech. We maintain Rendesco, LegalPlace in venture, and several exits in secondaries. Regarding H2 2026, we are looking at a solid pipeline of exits across strategies. I now hand over to William, who will get you through our results.
Thank you, Christophe. I will now take you through the financial results for H1 indeed. Let me start with the asset management activity. Overall, as you can see on the chart, AUM growth and fee-paying AUM growth illustrate the dynamism of our asset management business. Total assets under management were up 9% in H1 relative to the year past, surpassing EUR 40 billion, with third-party AUM up a strong 13%, which is above market.
Fee-paying AUM were up 6% at EUR 29.4 billion, with third-party fee-paying AUM growing also a strong 13%. Management fees stood at EUR 213 million in H1, up 6% from previous year on a comparable basis. Third-party management fees were up 14%, with a strong performance of private markets up 18% and a better performance of iM Global Partner at +2% like for like. The growth of IMG was driven by positive net inflows, particularly in active ETF.
Balance sheet management fees were down 14%, as we voluntarily limit our new commitments in our funds and execute our exit plan. Of note, our private market fee rates remain stable at 120 basis points. With the steady growth of our third-party assets and fees and the managed downsizing of our balance sheet, we are well on track to reduce the weight of our balance sheet in the funds below 20%, faster than initially planned. You may remember we had announced that target back in November 2023 in our Capital Market Day. At the end of 2023, our balance sheet represented 31% of our total AUM. AUM from the balance sheet now represent only 22% of total AUM. Likewise, management fees from the balance sheet represented around 31% end of 2023, and are now down to 23% in H1 2026.
Logically, the combination of growth in third-party management fees, strict cost discipline, and a more meaningful contribution of performance fees leads to a jump in the cash flow of our asset management business. This is how the model works. As you can see, fee-related earnings are up 11% in H1 with further margin improvement. EBITDA is up 20%, reaching EUR 100 million. Finally, operating free cash flow from the asset management activity reached EUR 54 million, up 75% from a year before. In a nutshell, the contribution of the asset management activity, excluding financial cost and other income, is up +38% in H1 on a like-for-like basis. As mentioned, we continue to be very disciplined on costs, with OpEx up 3% only year-on-year. Financing costs at IMGP are down significantly, especially in H1 2025, as H1 2025 figures were impacted by negative Forex impact.
This also reflects the reduction of the indebtedness at IMG level. Let me now turn to the investment company. As announced, we returned to a slight positive value creation in H1 2026 at 0.3% organically or +EUR 20 million. In buyout, we posted +0.2% in value creation. We continue to have positive earnings momentum in our portfolio companies. We, however, remain disciplined on multiples given the context in some sectors, notably in SaaS and business services. Growth equities posted a positive value creation of 1%, driven by further progress in our new vintage EGF IV. In real assets, we enjoy a good momentum in infrastructure and in operational real estate. We adjusted down some specific valuations in direct real estate to reflect multiples and cap rate. On a per share basis, our portfolio is up 3.3%, to EUR 105.4 per share in H1.
Our share buyback program thus added +2% on the portfolio value in H1. Let me come back to the fundamentals behind this performance. As said, overall, H1 2026 was another illustration of the quality of the underlying assets in spite of a mixed macro environment with some headwinds in Q2 from the tariff wall. First, in buyout, which represent 57% of the total value of the portfolio, you can see revenues and EBITDA were up respectively 4% and 7%. Going into details, April and May were slower, arguably, but we have been seeing green shots in June and July. Second, companies in our growth portfolio, which represent 22% of the portfolio value, posted an aggregated revenue growth of 22% with our largest companies outperforming. The EGF IV portfolio continues to perform strongly above +50% revenue growth.
Third, in our real assets portfolio, which accounts for 14% of Eurazeo portfolio value, EBITDA in the hospitality business was up 6%, while infrastructure continues to perform very well. You will find in the appendices of the presentation, and we will do that regularly, further details on the balance sheet performance and components, and in line with our deep dive of April 29th. Turning now to the investment company P&L. As mentioned, we returned to positive value creation in H1 on the portfolio at +EUR 20 million. IMG had a positive impact on the fair value of its partner, in particular with the sale of its stakes in RBA. Combined with lower internal fees, cost discipline, and lower financial expenses, the IC contribution improved by nearly EUR 300 million compared to H1 2025 to reach -EUR 69 million. Turning now to the group P&L.
With a stronger contribution from asset management activity and an improvement in the investment activity, net present group shares improved by EUR 300 million to be close to zero. Let us finish with portfolio rotation and capital distribution. We announced and realized around EUR 300 million in exits pertaining to the balance sheet during H1 2026, corresponding to 4.3% of last year NAV. We have a good pipeline of exits for H2, as said by Christophe, with some promising processes already underway. This should put us on a path towards our historical average in realization. During H1, we continued to prove our ability to sell assets with an uplift above NAV. We realized the exit of two buyout companies early in H1 at more than 2.5 times cash on cash each, and together with an uplift of 150% on our last mark.
We sold a portfolio of Spanish hotels at NAV, and our Kurma franchise, our biotech franchise, sold a company with 150% minimum uplift, with further upside depending on the achievement of certain milestones. Let me stress again that for us, this is the best proof point to assess the quality of our portfolio valuation approach and processes. As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we continue to deliver on our capital return promise. Since our capital market day, we distributed EUR 1.3 billion through EUR 600 million in ordinary dividends and EUR 700 million in share buyback. We already acquired 14% of our own shares through H1 2026. Looking ahead, we plan to continue to increase our ordinary dividend and to buy another 11% of our own shares by the end of 2027, maximizing our legal limits.
Depending on the price at which we will do the share buybacks, we will consider adding extraordinary dividends to complement our distribution to shareholders to reach our targets. In a nutshell, we had a strong set of results in H1 2026. We continue to grow fast our asset management and to transform our business model. Our balance sheet is back to positive value creation, and we continue to deliver on shareholder return. We believe this momentum should drive a re-rating of our stock. As a reminder, let me just come back to how, with Christophe and team, we see Eurazeo's fundamental value drivers. We are first a fast-growing asset manager, profitable and cash generative. Based on undemanding multiples, it should be worth up to EUR 40 per share. We have a balance sheet portfolio net of carried tax and debt that is worth EUR 105 per share, rounded.
We have a net debt that should be deducted of EUR 21 per share. Hence, our calculations put this total value between EUR 115 and EUR 125, leaving significant upside for the current share price. That is for you to judge. Thank you for your attention. We can now open to the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you may ask in two ways: by submitting a written question in the box below the player or by joining the conference call and dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. The next question comes from Nicolas Vaysselier from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. The first one, I want to check a bit the extraordinary dividend potential. On my tracking, assuming today's share price, you would be at about EUR 1.1 billion of share buyback since 2024, at the end of 2027. The CMD highlighted the target at EUR 1.5 billion. Do you say that the extraordinary dividend could be as high as EUR 400 million to make for a gap then? Secondly, exit activity has been a bit muted in H1 on the balance sheet side. You expect an acceleration in H2. I wanted to know if you view the current pipeline as enough to deliver the roughly 20% asset disposal pace that you're trying to aim as a year. Thirdly, you also flag potential for improving investment returns in H2.
However, I've noticed that the growth figures you're quoting in the press release when it comes to EBITDA growth and revenue growth in buyout seem to be slowing a bit versus prior reporting periods. What makes you confident that returns can accelerate? Is it that you expect the multiples to start increasing, reflecting strong markets we are seeing right now? Do you think the macro environment improves from here? Thank you.
Thank you, Nicolas. I'll take these three questions. First, on the distribution, what we say here is that we're committed to the portion on the ordinary dividend. I think we have a track record of increasing it by 10% or above in the past years. I won't commit, of course, for next year, but this is a board and general assembly decision. Expect that we will continue to strive growing the dividend per share. We are committed to execute the 25% de-equitization of the company through the share buyback, and the cancellation of shares. We've already completed a significant portion of it. When you look at the math, clearly there is a factor which need to be taken into consideration, which is the average price at which we buy shares.
What we are saying here, effectively, I think your understanding is correct, is that conceptually, we will compensate the shortfall in euro amount for the share buyback with other means, i.e. dividends. Exit activity, and I hope it's clear, it's not, please reiterate your question, but again, EUR 2.3 billion and 25% de-equitization are the key commitments we take. Exit activity, I think it's very much as we had said. Arguably, the environment is not good, and I think everyone would tell you that. We've been able to sell what we had in mind to sell in H1, and we've launched a number of processes for H2. Yes, we are confident that we will continue to execute on our exit plan and converge towards the historical average.
I think we have now established a track record of being able to rotate assets a bit faster than market, which translate into DPIs, by the way, in the funds, which are almost in every category in the quartile one range. We'll see how it goes, but we reiterate, we have a rather good pipeline for second half. Investment return on the investment company. Let me be a bit more specific. I don't think we've said we see an increase in H2. We said, from 2026 onwards, we see a gradual improvement in value creation after the adjustment we had to do in the past two years, partly because some companies, we had to write down, partly because we had to factor in the new elements in the market, i.e. AI impact on SaaS multiples and some companies more impacted by some macro events.
We said we have a strong portfolio that continue to perform reasonably well. We're going into a gradual improvement rather than a marked improvement. This is how you see that. We are resuming with value creation, in other words, and we see the pattern as being more or less dynamic depending upon the multiple environment. Fundamentally, on the buyout company's performance, there is a very good element into it, which is that it is very broad-based.
Companies across the board, including, by the way, in SaaS, do perform well. There are a few companies which had more difficulties and now have been marked down quite significantly, so this should be an issue for the future. That's how you can see the dynamic on the earnings. In other words, what I'm trying to say is that we are not betting on multiples. We continue to mark up assets primarily, I should say even solely, on the earnings growth.
Thank you very much. That's all clear.
The next question comes from Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning, both. Thanks a lot for the presentation. I just have one follow-up question from your final point. Did I just hear you correctly on this returning to positive value creation? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like on the buyout side, this is a broad-based, I guess, flat-up dynamic in the first half. It's not being driven by uplifts from a couple of big assets, say it's broad- based. It just sounds like the language you're using is that we're at the end of this multi-year multiple adjustment period, which would be a bit of an inflection point, but just wanted to check I understood that correctly.
Sorry, the second question, just on the acceleration in realizations that you were in terms of strong pipeline for the second half, could you just comment on the types of exit processes that we should be looking out for just to understand the sensitivities to market dynamics? Thank you.
You comment on the pipeline, which is going to be a short answer probably, but on the value creation, let us be very cautious there. I think we take the word of inflection point, because there were a few companies we have adjusted. Remember the 29th of April presentation where, together with the team, we really showed where we had made some adjustment, and there were a few companies that now have been put to zero. There was the bulk of the adjustments. By the way, some of these companies can recover value a bit in the future because some of them have better trends, but that's not taken into account as of yet. We said we also have taken into consideration some multiple compression in some areas, namely software.
We had said at the time, by the way, that we have not started adjusting these multiples just beginning of 2026, but there was a story already starting in 2025 for us. Looking forward, the reason why I'm cautious is because we live in a very uncertain environment. You can see that we have an improvement, as I said, in the pattern of growth, both revenues and EBITDA in buyout in June and July, after a reasonably slower Q2 because of what you know.
We'll see how it goes for the rest of the year. Inflection point, yes. That's going to be a gradual improvement in 2026, given what I've just said. The good thing is we are able to sell always with an uplift to the lesser NAV, and we continue to have a broad-based, decent to good performance on the underlying metrics. On realization, Christophe will take the question.
On realization, yes, you are right to point out that the EUR 700 million is a six-month picture. It doesn't reflect our goal for the 12 months of 2026. We said previously, we are aiming for our historical yearly realization over the course of the plan. We have no bad news on this because we have a quite healthy pipeline of exit candidates. Several monetization processes are being initiated. We are using the full range of what can be used. We are obviously working on some plain vanilla exit, but we also use dividend recapitalization, and you can use, in some cases, continuation vehicles or tools like that to reach the 2026 target. As you know, we cannot comment on any specific transaction. Again, we continue to aim for historical average level, and we will reach 15%-20% of our previous year's NAV rotation.
Got it. Very helpful. Thank you both.
The next question comes from Arnaud Palliez from CIC CIB. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have two questions. The first one is on the real assets that are a bit lagging behind in terms of fundraising, value creation. I would like to know what is, for you, the outlook for these real assets. That's the first question. The second one is a more general question. Following rising inflation and interest rates, do you see any change in the outlook for your investment policy? That's the two questions.
On real assets, we'll answer together with Christophe, just starting with the value creation. As you can see, the underlying metrics, we didn't give the number because it is on a small base, it's double digit on infra increase in revenues. Hospitality, which is the bulk of what we have in real estate, has a growth of plus 6%, as you can see. I'd say the value drivers are pretty good. We are in a real estate market that remains difficult overall. It's improving. Let's say stabilizing. It's not the time where you really take on more value on assets, we have adjusted a few non-operational assets in the portfolio, which has translated to this slight value destruction in real estate in the first half. Overall, the operational trend is pretty improving. On your comment on fundraising, maybe Christophe?
Yes. Well, as you know, on fundraising, it's based on we need the fund to raise, there has not been funds that were open. ETIF I, which is dedicated to infrastructure, is now almost fully invested. Yes, we are preparing the next vintage. I remind you that ETIF I was targeting EUR 500 million, and we've reached EUR 750 million, which is quite a good result for something that was a first-time fund. It was not a first-time investing team, but it was for Eurazeo, the first-time fund in infrastructure. During the pace of this fundraising, we have contacted a large number of LPs that were a little bit cautious on a first-time team, and we will benefit from the fundraising of this second vintage from this work that has been completed, when was it? Three years ago, four and three years ago.
We already have a solid, robust pipeline of not only re-upping investors, but also investors that have seen the proof of concept of Fund One. I remind you that we have an infrastructure, quite a differentiated approach. What we do is energy transition infrastructure. It fits with the DNA of Eurazeo, which is to be a mid-market player with probably north of EUR 750 million for the second vintage. We will still be a mid-market player in infrastructure. This is the core of what we do. Again, what we perceive is that this mid-market investment universe all over Europe is deepening, and we see a lot of appetite for very differentiated investment strategies in the infrastructure world.
Now, on your point on the investment strategy, as we had highlighted many times with Christophe ever since the Capital Markets Day, we do consider that our investment approach, the type of focus we have regionally, size of companies and sectors, the value creation playbook, which is a transformational valuation playbook aiming at increasing earnings as opposed to optimizing financial structures. I mean, that's well suited to exactly the world you describe, where the investment rates, the interest rates are sustainably higher for longer. We will continue to give you data points, but fundamentally take the view that we're at least 2/3 of the value creation of the companies we invest into across the board stem from earnings.
More rarely from deleveraging, sometimes from increase in multiples, because at the outset, given that they are small companies, you tend to have a calibration, a discount to the reference multiples. That's we think the right approach, being mid-market, Europe, transformational, and focused on five sectors, which are financial services, healthcare, business services, tech, environmental solutions, which are driven by structural shift in the global economies and societies.
That's the way we address, from an investment case standpoint, the approach to that environment. You'll see, because we've put that back in the appendices, the type of leverage we have when we do a buyout or real estate, and you can see that we are pretty conservative on that. There's clearly an increase in the cost of debt in the deals. I wouldn't say we are not sensitive. We are obviously sensitive to it, but to a limited extent, given what I've just said.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Nicolas Vaysselier from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Sorry for coming back. I just had a very technical question on the extraordinary dividend. In terms of timing, would you wait until the end of 2027, i.e., announcing it in 2028? Is this something we can expect for next year?
Mechanically, Nicolas, don't be sorry to come back. We like when we have questions. Mechanically, we will wait until we know what is the average price at which we would have executed a significant portion of the share buyback program before we decide on the calibration of potential extraordinary dividend. This would be here to compensate for the shortfall in euro amount. Again, the commitment is EUR 2.3 billion on the one hand, and 25% de-equitization on the other hand. When does it happen? When do we think we have enough visibility? Probably not before second half of 2027.
Yeah. Okay. Payment would probably be 2028 then.
I won't comment on that because obviously there are a few things which are not in our hands. What I want to comment on together with Christophe is the direction of travel, I think, I hope, is clear.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Alexandre Gérard from CIC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Four quick questions. The first one is related to private equity and to fundraising, which was weaker than last year. Can you help us maybe better understanding that performance? How does this performance compare to the market as a whole? Second question that's related to the net financial debt of the group, which stands at EUR 1.4 billion. At the end of the plan, by the end of 2027. Do you expect that net financial debt to be back to zero, where it was when you announced the plan in November 2023? Can you help us understanding where you see the debt of the group? The third question is more or less related to that good set of results. It's related to AI.
Do you think that AI might help you maybe continuing to increase your operating profitability, which has already progressed rather well? My fourth question is related to M&A. Are you still studying M&A opportunity? The market continues to consolidate, if we could have an update on that front. Thank you very much.
We start with fundraising.
Thank you, Alexandre, for your question. Yes, just the fact that private equity fundraising was weaker during six months is mainly due to the fact that the product offering for private equity was, during six months, less important than the product offering that was mainly occupied by private debt. In the second half of this year, we will have, again, the tail end of PME V, and we are working right now on several potential opportunities to raise money in private equity, mainly through co-investment. Fundraising can be organized through the fundraising of flagships, but you can also use co-investment and continuation vehicles to attract new categories of LPs. The sovereign funds are very large, the most experienced pension funds in the world. They want to get access not only to good flagships, but also to direct investment opportunities.
This phenomenon was purely technical during the first half of the year. Again, we have completed the first closing. A first closing is always difficult, takes time to realize. Now that the first closing of PME V has been completed and quite at a good level, we will accelerate on this.
Net financial debt, we are operating at a moderate gearing, and that's the intention of the group on a mid to long-term basis. We got an external ratings from two ratings agencies now, Fitch and S&P. It's well into the BBB category. That's based on the cash flow pattern of our asset management improving, and it's also based on our sustainably low gearing between 15% and 20%, 20%+ depending upon the period in time in the year. That's what we intend to have.
We intend to have a modest gearing over time. Trend-wise, it goes to zero, but it's not necessarily a good policy to have it at zero. AI, that's a broad topic that obviously all our teams on the investment side, but I'd say also as an asset manager or our team in the different transversal functions are very focused on. I'd say that for the companies we invest into, what the major focus is on is more to see if the revenue model is disrupted by AI, or if the revenues can benefit from an early adoption of AI, particularly agentic AI.
That is extremely relevant for growth teams, which now invest a lot into agentic AI type of companies, and even are able to rotate them in less than one year, hence Cognigy, for example, in growth. It is true, of course, for all our buyout companies that are more software-oriented. On top, of course, everyone is asking itself, including us, what we can do operationally to be more efficient, and we have identified a few areas. On the minute, Christophe, I guess we're going to do the same answer as usual. I think with Christophe, we've told you many times, we think we can grow this company organically at a pace that is above market.
This is what we do. We said we can transform the business model efficiently through that growth and the rotation, and combine with distribution to shareholders. That's what we do. We said we are not blind. We also see that the market is a market where there is more concentration on fewer players. This is the age of platforms.
We think Christophe has reminded you of it, that we see a potential place that is natural for Eurazeo, which is being the leading cross-asset platform in European market. In that context, could M&A help us? Why is M&A to go faster? Potentially, yes. On top of what we do every day, we also assess potential opportunities. As you can see, so far, we've been mainly focused on the organic growth.
I would say, just to complete what William has said, in the past, yes, it is true that Eurazeo has been able to successfully integrate some acquisition. What is Eurazeo PME today has been in the past also private equity, and it has been a successful integration. Part of what we do today in private debt in secondary comes from the acquisition of Idinvest.
I think that, yes, we have demonstrated that should an opportunity occur, we will be able not only to acquire it, but also to successfully integrate. As William was mentioning, the core of our strategy today is to be attractive. We want to be attractive should we have an opportunity. We want to be selected also by these people to be a place where we can accelerate.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Iulian Dobrovolschi from ABN AMRO- ODDO BHF, please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. This is Iulian from ABN ODDO. I have two questions, please. One on the value creation, and the other one on the exits in the balance sheet portfolio. To begin with the one on value creation, I think over the last few years, value creation was held back by several legacy assets and valuation and recess, as also flagged today. I'm just wondering, are there still any material assets in the portfolio where you see downside risk to carrying value over the next quarters? The other one is on the exits. Appreciating your comments on the H2 exit outlook, wanting to understand the exit seasonality you expect in 2026. Antoine mentioned in the conf call today that the realized value of the portfolio in H1 was pretty much on plan, and you expect realizations to be on plan again in the second half.
Also that would imply about 2x acceleration over the H1 level. I was actually wondering why there should be such a seasonality in the exits. Is the slow pace in H1 driven by your decision to wait for better pricing or do you see any buyers still pushing back on the valuation expectations that you have? Thanks.
Let's start with value creation. I hope you won't take it the wrong way, but let me just reiterate that at any point in time when we do valuation, we factor in everything we know. There is no case where we would hold on marking down should we know already that the company should be worth less than what we publish it is worth. Just quoting the obvious. Your question is nevertheless very legitimate. Where do we see the risk? We are very comfortable with the valuation we have. It doesn't mean that there couldn't be a risk, as there are, by the way, opportunities. If I start with the opportunities, what we see, for example, is that the software companies continue to have a very good performance. We don't see the disruption in our numbers that everyone talks about.
We see that if the market start to realize that it's been too sanguine on the valuation of SaaS companies, maybe there's an upside here in the multiples. Let's see. By definition, we are a bit cautious on the environment because of the tariff war. I mean, that has created some dysfunctionalities in the macro that we've seen in Q2. Trends improving June, July. We see how it goes. I said the risk are more of macro risks than specific risk on some companies that we would know are in danger of losing value. By definition, in the portfolio, you have some standard deviation in the performance, but it's rather macro, both upside and downside.
On the exit, I do the same answer as Christophe has just done on the private equity fundraising. We have a number of assets that are disposed of every year pertaining to the balance sheet. That is not a big number, right? We're talking about six, seven, sometimes up to eight. You can't say there's a seasonality that you can forecast based on statistical evidence. It's the same for fundraising. As Christophe said, you may be on the road with two debt flagship and one real asset flagship and no PE, but that doesn't mean that you're bad in PE fundraising just because you don't have a product on the slate at the time. This is what basically explained the pattern of our exits.
We knew when we did the comments in the frame of our full year results that the processes that had been launched end of 2025 would yield a certain amount in H1, whilst other processes, maybe more numerous processes or bigger processes, would be launched rather towards Q2 this year. That's how we confirm what I've just said. Again, seasonality doesn't make much sense to us given the relatively small numbers of items we're talking about here.
Understood. Thank you.
I think we have no further questions on the phone. We have three more minutes, so I will try to take a few questions from the script. There are actually two on the fundraising. One is more about the potential for this year and maybe beginning of next year. After the successful close of ESF V, EPD VII, and the first close of PME V, is it reasonable to assume that fundraising for the next 12 months will be substantially lower than the previous 12 months?
There's also a mention of EGF IV, which has done a first closing, and we're wondering what's next for this one. That's, I would say, our first question, and I'm taking the second one as well. It's a question on the Evergreen Wealth funds. Why do you not seem to be experiencing the same performance and redemption issues at other platforms? What is the growth potential for the Evergreen family?
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. As you know, we don't give guidance for the full year at this moment of the year, but we will be more precise during our Q3 trading update. No, it wouldn't be reasonable to be pessimistic on the fundraising of Eurazeo. Yes, the environment is what it is. Yes, some investors are slower than before to take their decision. Again, we have a robust and diversified pipeline. It's based on flagships. It's also based on thematic fund, and we have plenty of room to continue to deploy, to diversify, to expand our LP base. We don't give guidance, but we are reasonably optimistic at this moment of the year, given the fact again, that our fundraising will be based on flagship, thematic funds, CVs, co-investment, mandates, Wealth Solutions, and internationalization.
If we move now to the Evergreen issue, which has been, without any doubt something volatile during the first half of this year, let us remind you that our Evergreen vehicles at Eurazeo are quite specific. First of all, they are bought through unit-linked life insurance contract. At 73%, EPV is held through unit-linked life insurance contract. Unit-linked life insurance contract are a very stable component of savings. EPV III is a French product, it is a French legal structure, it is subscribed through French life insurance contract and also in the Benelux. It is mainly used by final users that are very stable in their behavior, in their savings. That's the first answer to your question. The second answer to your question is the fact that we have currently 20% of cash in this vehicle.
We have always managed this vehicle, the past performance that were in average close to 7% have always been realized with this very generous proportion of cash. We don't want to avoid the issue regarding the increase of redemption of the usage of gates. We are currently, if you look at the first half of this year, the percentage of redemption in percentage per quarter is at 1.6%, which is still much lower than the inflows.
The inflows that we receive are more than the double of the quite stable outflows that we naturally face. For the first half of this year, the performance is already at 3.5%, we are back to this historical performance that we have been able to achieve, which is close to a quite stable and robust 7% per year. Yes, we are very optimistic that the Evergreens vehicle at Eurazeo are a very stable component of our business activity.
Thank you, Christophe. We have two other questions, but not enough time. I will revert back to the investors who are asking the question. There was one on deployments. We can address this. One on the valuation of the asset management company. I will revert back to investors on this one, how we are managing the multiples.
Thank you, Pierre. On behalf of all the team, Christophe and myself, we'd like to thank you for attending this conference. Obviously, as we are end of July, for those who are taking holidays, we wish you a nice break. Otherwise, we'll be in town in the next week. If you have questions, please direct them to us. Do not hesitate. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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