Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being with us today. Today is about three words: acceleration, profitability, and value creation. And everything we'll discuss this morning will connect back to these three priorities. I'm Théodora Xu, Head of Investor Relations for Tikehau Capital, and I'm delighted to be hosting today's full-year results and strategic update. So today, you'll hear from our two co-founders, Antoine Flamarion and Mathieu Chabran; our Deputy CEOs, Henri Marcoux, Thomas Friedberger, and Maxime Laurent-Bellue; and our Group CFO, Vincent Picot. So a little bit of housekeeping element on the flow of this session. So we'll first start with a look on the Tikehau Capital key achievements for 2025, and then open the floor for a first session of Q&A dedicated to our annual results.
We'll then take a short break to allow everybody to refresh, to grab coffee, before moving into our strategic update. Then, you'll hear first from Thomas, who will share his perspectives on opportunities shaping the next decade. Then, we'll have Maxime hosting a fireside chat with our co-founders, discussing accelerating profitability across asset management. Then, we'll have our co-founders and Henri provide insights on our evolving approach to balance sheet allocation before taking us through the harvesting phase Tikehau Capital is now entering, and providing more details on profitability drivers and value creation framework. We'll then host a second session of Q&A dedicated to our strategic update. With that, it's my pleasure to welcome to the stage Mathieu Chabran, co-founder, for opening remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, Theo. Welcome. Welcome, everyone here in London, and welcome for all the people who dial in on the webinar or the webcast. I hope that you can hear us okay, you got all the documents, and that you will be enjoying this presentation with us. Very happy to be back in London, not only for 2025 full-year earnings, but also for this new Capital Markets Day, you know, as we call it, and very excited with the, on behalf of all the team, you know, to to to host you at Tikehau and give you a little bit of the forward-looking, which is really what we would like to focus on today.
But, first, let's start with our 2025 earnings that were released this morning. I like to call it a record year because the numbers, you know, stand. But before we get into the numbers, I would like to tell you and witness how strongly the franchise has evolved over the past few years, and the acceleration, as Theo was rightly saying, that we benefited from in 2025. It's been a record year on the deployment, despite, you know, if you look back and think about what 2025 was as a year and as markets to operate in, you know, that was a record year on the deployment.
On the realization, you know, we come back to that, on exiting some of our portfolio companies and distributing back to LPs, and as well as, you know, the fundraising, you know, the gross and net inflows, we'll get back to that. We told you in 2022 that the focus was to, you know, develop, grow the profitability of the asset management. Remember that when we went public nine years ago, we were barely doing EUR 5 million of EBIT. It's close to EUR 150 million, you know, this year, and you will see that this growth and expansion in asset management profitability is here to stay, and we'll give you some guidance where we think we can go.
And then finally, you know, the portfolio, you know, we've got these two engines at Tikehau, right? The asset management, the principal, our balance sheet, you know, we saw some strong, you know, contribution, albeit this year, impacted by some Forex, and we'll come back to that. So as I was saying, record in deployment, realization, inflows. On the deployment, it's EUR 7.6 billion that we put at work, you know, at Tikehau, which is an increase of 35% compared to 2024. On the realization, on the exit, you know, we like to say at Tikehau that you have to give back so that people keep giving, and you keep hearing about investors not getting money back.
You know, what we tried to do last year is to demonstrate that, yes, you can exit some portfolio company, give back to your investors, so that keeps fueling the next cycle of growth, and that was twice what we did in 2024. On the capital formation, it's EUR 10.5 billion of gross inflows, and that's the fourth consecutive year of a record year in fundraising. It's eight billion, you know, in net inflows. And what we are very encouraged by is that the whole investments we made in the platform over the past few years globally... Remember, we went public, we had five offices. When we saw you in 2022 for the Capital Markets Day, we had seven offices. It's now, you know, 17 offices.
We've got, you know, across the world and from Asia, including Japan, Middle East, across Europe today, North America, even, you know, South America now. We've got all this new customer base that are fueling the fundraising at Tikehau. And so 80% last year came from new customer base, new geographies outside of our domestic market, taking our overall AUM to EUR 52.8 billion. So, as I was saying, you know, we've been focusing on larger transaction with a more global portfolio, not only in Europe, you know, domestic markets, but in Asia, in North America. And that has enabled us to raise additionally more than a billion, EUR 1.2 billion of co-investments on some of those larger transactions.
You'll have the, you know, some examples later on, you know, that you may have picked up over the past year, but that has been a strong, you know, driver. On the capital formation, as I was saying, few elements, in Asia and Middle East, you know, it's EUR 1 billion that was contributed. We hit the EUR 1 billion of inventories of clients in Korea that we had open, you know, six years ago. Just I'll leave you with an example that, you know, we kind of like. Just last year, out of the 10.5 growth info we had, you know, four investors, four new investors actually accounted for 20% of our fundraising, and they were all new relationships of ours. Bigger, bigger commitment.
I mean, they, they came from some very complicated to penetrate, you know, markets. I'm thinking about Japan, I'm thinking about Germany, I'm thinking about the U.S., I'm thinking about Middle East, GCC, Abu Dhabi. You know, this, this is a strong illustration that the investment we made in the platform is now paying off, and we're investing all this investment that we had made. And so, as I was saying, giving back capital to our LPs, EUR 4.1 billion that we returned to our LPs last year. And just as a data point, because people have been talking a lot about private equity last year, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of questions about Private Credit as well, and we're looking forward to addressing them, but it's a 2.6x that we return to our investors on the realized transaction.
So where does that leave us on the financial? I mean, we issue this morning, you know, all the numbers in the details, we'd come back. But if I look at the first pillar of our business, our asset management business, it's a 8% growth of our revenues, converting into 18% growth on the EBIT level. We grew by 12% our core FRE, Fee-Related Earnings. And for the first time, as we told you a few years ago, we passed the 40% core FRE margin, and you may have picked up, and we'll come back to that, that we're giving an improved guidance, you know, on this very important profitability element.
On the second pillar, you know, the portfolio, it's a 19% growth in our realized revenue, you know, for the balance sheet, our investment portfolios, and a 33% revenue growth if we exclude, once again, these currency effects that Vincent will be detailing. So finally, it's EUR 136 million net income that we are reporting for 2025, which is 51% growth if you exclude, you know, this currency effect. And so we will be, we propose an EUR 0.80 dividend that we'll be voting at the next AGM. So that's, you know, for the key element. There'll be plenty of details, you know, on the session. Once again, thank you very much. We look forward to an interactive session.
Thank you, and I will hand over to Henri for more details.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Mathieu, for this introduction. So, let's jump into our asset management flywheel. Maybe we'll start with deployment. As you have seen, deployment has clearly stepped up during the year 2026. We've reached EUR 7.6 billion of deployments, so that's an additional EUR 2 billion, 35% compared to the year 2024. Starting with private equity, maybe with a EUR 2 billion compared to EUR 600 million the year before. Clearly, we've accelerated deployment, notably on aerospace and defense, cybersecurity, decarbonization in Spain, Belgium, Germany, and in U.S., through our flagship strategy, but as well through our co-investment vehicle. Real assets represented EUR 1.4 billion of investments, compared to EUR 1 billion during the year 2024. Here again, you know, discipline has remained paramount.
We continue to focus on high quality, well-located assets, notably to be noticed during the year 2024, big residential portfolio units in France, as well as a big investment, first investment in real estate in the U.S. and notably, several additional investments in the Netherlands. As far as credit is concerned, so that's clearly a stable deployment versus 2024. We are standing at EUR 4 billion. Very well diversified allocation through Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, U.K. Very strong momentum as well on our CLO issuance business. And so we are ending the year with more than EUR 7.6 billion of dry powder end of 2025 to be ready to capture new investment during the year 2026. We've been talking about executing larger transaction. That's a very key important point that we wanted to mention today.
So out of this EUR 7.6 billion of deployment during the year, we had EUR 1.2 billion that were deployed through dedicated co-investment vehicle. That has been the case on the private equity business, such as the Egis transaction we've been commenting for, for a few months. AESA in Spain, that has been the case for as well, ScioTeq , aerospace and defense deal in Belgium. That has been the case as well for real assets through this residential deal. That has been the case as well for private debt, where we had several deals where we have welcome co-investor. So that's clearly a new, new feature here, creating adjacencies, creating new funds alongside our flagship and welcoming co-investors. What does that mean? That means that through this creation of new vehicle, we are bringing into the platform additional fee paying.
So management fees that are going to fuel our fee-related earnings and additional performance fees, which will depend on the exits, of course, but which will fuel as well our asset management EBIT. So looking at what happened in 2025 over those co-investments, that's roughly more than EUR 1.2 billion of additional co-investment, bringing more than EUR 150 million of asset management EBIT for the coming year. Realization, clearly here, once again, strong, a strong increase. It's almost the double figure as what was exited in 2024, so reaching EUR 4 billion of exits. Here, again, private equity has been increasing significantly. That's EUR 1 billion of exits for five positions that we're exiting during the year, reaching 2.6x multiple. So clearly in line with our fund expectation.
As far as real estate is concerned, we remain stable, EUR 500 million of exits. Multiple on real estate achieved has been 1.6x. That's at asset level, unlevered, and those exits are mainly residential and light industrial. As far as private credit is concerned here, clearly very strong increase. Our realisations have reached a record that's almost EUR 2.7 billion. As far as direct lending and corporate lending are concerned, those are repayments. The average MOIC reached has been 1.4. As far as our special opportunities business is concerned here, we've been exiting several positions as well, at our initiative, achieving a gross MOIC of 1.6x.
I want to insist on that because clearly, you know, in 25, I think that the global macro environment, as far as exits is concerned, has been challenging. In that context, we've been able, you know, to deliver EUR 4 billion of exits. So we are sending back money to our LP. We are increasing the DPI, which is key. We are increasing the performance, and all the average gross MOIC that have been realized on all of our exits are clearly either in line or above our fund expectation. Fundraising. So here again, we've been mentioning a EUR 10.5 billion of gross inflows, record year. As far as net inflows is concerned, that's EUR 8 billion of net inflows, so a 13% increase during the year.
Looking at this fundraising a little bit more in detail, you can see that as far as private equity is concerned, we've reached EUR 2 billion. We'll come back on that. Notably, those inflows have been driven by the cybersecurity final close, regenerative agriculture as well. Our specialist fund, being Decarbonization Fund II, Aerospace & Defense Fund II, have been benefiting obviously from strong inflows in the current environment. As far as real estate is concerned here, it's a performance of EUR 1.3 billion of net inflows, focusing on value add and core and core plus. This is including the previous transaction I was mentioning, notably residential in France, the one in the Netherlands as well. Strong contribution from credit, EUR 4.4 billion, stable versus last year.
As we've just announced a few days ago, we've been closing, you know, our Credit Secondaries Fund II , $1 billion, which is almost double the size versus previous vintage. As far as direct lending, vintage number six is concerned, which is still open as we speak, we are close to EUR 5 billion, and here we have secured, you know, the two largest individual LP commitment in our history from Germany and in U.S.. Demand, as far as direct lending is concerned, remain quite strong. So as you can see over here, you know, diversified strategy, larger tickets, co-investment, client convictions, bringing us into this record EUR 8 billion for the year 2025. So just a snapshot, here on where we stand on our flagship.
So I was mentioning Special Opportunity Fund, vintage three, EUR 1.2 billion, which is almost, you know, the double versus the previous vintage. Credit secondaries, $1 billion. As far as private equity is concerned, regenerative agriculture, vintage 1, EUR 600 million. Cybersecurity, 4th vintage, almost doubling the size versus the previous vintage. As far as 2026 is concerned, lots, lots of ongoing fundraising as we speak. Obviously, Direct Lending VI. Well, sure. Can you hear me like that? Is that okay? Okay. Obviously, Direct Lending VI , still open as we speak and benefiting from strong inflows. This year will be, as well, a strong year as far as private equity...
As far as private equity is concerned, we are still open during all the year, Aerospace and Defense Fund II, and Decarbonization Fund II.
Good news?
So you have here on the screen, the evolution of our AUM during the year. So starting, it started at end December 2024 at EUR 49 billion, ending at EUR 52.8 billion. Different movement of the year have been impacted by the inflows I was mentioning, EUR 8 billion, and the distribution standing at EUR 4.1 billion. You have on the right side of the page, you know, the diversified and the complementary asset class, the split by business unit. Thank you. We'll do, we'll do like that will be a bit easier. Client base, as far as client base is concerned, one important feature, Matthew was mentioning the number of offices we are operating, namely 17 offices as we speak.
Important to notice that as far as inflows are concerned, that's more than 80% of net new money that has actually been raised from international client. You have here the biggest contributors for the year 2025 being U.S. investors, U.K., Spain, Germany. To be noticed during the year 2025, strong contribution from Asia, namely from Korea and Japan. Korea has gone over the EUR 2 billion mark for the year 2025. Contribution as well from Israel, where we are approaching the EUR 2 billion mark as far as LP commitments are concerned. So those are the most represented nationalities in 2025.
On the right part of the page, you do have actually the split, which means that international clients have increased from 44% in 2024 to 46%, so that's a 13% increase, representing EUR 24 billion at end of 2025. Private marketing is important feature. We've been focusing significantly over the past year over the strong growth era of growth. That has been the case as well for 2025. That's 25% of third-party inflows that were raised through private client. That's actually notably, you know, all the initiative we've been launching on private debt, private credit, unit- linked product have now reached more than EUR 1.5 billion at end of December. As far as AUM are concerned, that means private market, private customer clients are now representing more than 34% of our AUM.
That's actually more than EUR 18 billion. Two dedicated initiative that have been launched during the year 2025, one on private credit, namely TEPC, Tikehau European Private Credit, semi-liquid fund, focusing on mid-size European company. And second, important initiative that was launched during the summer, which is a unit-linked dedicated to defense, security, aerospace. This unit-linked is currently distributed through partnership that we are having with big insurance company. We are currently standing over EUR 200 million for this product, which, where the distribution has started end of 2025, focusing on our aerospace and defense practice, and notably the track record that we are benefiting on that practice, aerospace and defense practice that was launched back in 2018. Last point on sustainability.
You know, a few years ago, we had a set, a target on AUM, you know, dedicated to climate and biodiversity. Our target was to achieve at least EUR 5 billion of AUM dedicated to that practice. End of 2025, we are standing at EUR 5.8 billion, notably thanks to our decarbonization practice, fund number two. So that means, you know, continued sustainability integration across the several pillars that we are benefiting through the whole platform. I will now leave the floor to Vincent for the financial review. Thanks.
Thank you, Henri. So I'll start the financial highlights with our fee-paying AUM and the revenue generation in terms of revenues. So first, fee-paying AUM grew by 6%, compared to 2024. It was driven by net new money on our private equity practice, capital markets, and also by a very dynamic fundraising and deployment activity for our direct lending and CLO business. In addition, it's worth mentioning that future fee-paying AUM grew by 24%, and it was supported by solid net new money in direct lending strategies, which charge management fees on invested capital. So together, fee-paying AUM and future fee-paying AUM increased by 8% year on year, so that's a sign of securing future management fee generation.
Also, the impact it has on management fees is that management fees increased by 8%, reaching EUR 358 million. That's an acceleration that we have noticed specifically in H2. Average revenue margin stood at 88 basis points, which remains resilient. And worth noting that we recorded a clear performance-related earning level of EUR 22 million, which is a record. On the following slides, a few data points on performance-related earnings. So at end 2025, AUM eligible to carried interest grew by 10% to EUR 24.8 billion.
In addition, at end September 2025, we had EUR 220 million of unrealized performance-related revenues, which are actually accrued at fund level, and such level is based on the current performance at portfolio level. This amount is not crystallized yet. It is not yet accounted for in our P&L, and it will be recognized as funds approach maturity. In terms of asset management profitability, and as Mathieu mentioned, we grew our asset management EBIT by 18% YoY, reaching for the first time EUR 150 million. This growth reflect specifically the increase in the core fee-related earnings, with a notable acceleration in H2. Now, this is mostly due to an increase in management fees in this period.
Overall, core fee-related earnings increased to 41% in terms of margin, exceeding, so for the first time, 40%, and it reached exactly 46% in H2. Overall, and looking now at the cost base, we remained very disciplined, because the operating cost base only grew by a mere 3% YoY. So that's a testament of an efficient resource allocation. Moving now to our investment portfolio. So at end 2025, the total fair value reached EUR 4.4 billion, very and still very granular, with a bit more than 300 investments. Approximately EUR 3 billion of this amount is invested in our own management strategies, so it ensures an alignment of interests with our client investors.
The remainder of this, of this amount, EUR 1.3 billion, is invested in our direct investment ecosystem. As, as you can see on the right-hand side, we've got a pretty well-diversified portfolio in terms of asset classes. Now, looking at the flows and what happened over the year, investment reached EUR 1.3 billion euros, of which EUR 951 million of capital called in our own strategies, CLO, credit strategies, private equity strategies, mostly. But we also invested EUR 370 million in our ecosystem, and it was mostly driven last year by our investment in Schroders. Over this, over 2025, so we carried out close to EUR 800 million of exits.
Returns of capital were from various asset classes, CLOs, special opportunities, but also decarbonization and aerospace strategies that Henri mentions when talking about distributions to our LPs. Market effects, -EUR 18 million, reflecting mixed effects, positive fair value changes for our Schroders stake. Also, positive reevaluations in some of our private equity strategies, mostly aerospace and defense, and also decarbonization, but it was offset by negative market effects in some very specific credit and real estate situations. And finally, currency effects amounted to -EUR 161 million, and it's mostly linked to the sterling-euro exchange rate. Slide 20, next slide. So in terms of portfolio revenues, so in 2025, portfolio revenues reached EUR 166 million.
That compares to EUR 207 million in 2024. But as mentioned also by, by Mathieu, realized revenues actually grew very significantly by 19% YoY, reaching EUR 239 million, so that's worth highlighting. It's composed primarily of coupon, dividend, and distribution from a whole spectrum of credit strategies, listed REITs, and also ecosystem investments. As regards unrealized revenue of EUR -73 million, we've got a P&L impact of foreign exchange for EUR -52 million, mostly linked to the euro-sterling exchange rate. And as I explained in the slide earlier, also around EUR -20 million of unrealized negative changes in fair value. So excluding currency effects, our portfolio revenues grew by 33% YoY.
If I have to wrap up our 2025 financial performance, strong performance in our asset management platform. As explained on the asset management, EBIT growth, it was offset to some extent by the currency effects and also by unrealized fair value changes on our investment portfolio. Looking now in a bit more detail, non-recurring item and other of EUR 13 million, it's mostly linked to positive Forex impacts on our U.S. financings. Tax expenses, EUR 551 million euros in 2025, in line with our net result before tax and a tax rate of around 25%. So overall, our net result group share amounts to EUR 163.6 million, and if we exclude main currency effects, our net result grew by 51% YoY
In terms of balance sheet metrics, our model is strong, supported by means of EUR 3.1 billion of shareholders' equity group share, and also by short-term financial resources of EUR 1.2 billion euros. As regard our financial debt, which stood at EUR 1.9 billion euros, it encompasses a EUR 500 million euros new bond issue, a renewed and upsized RCF line of EUR 1.15 billion euros. And at end of December 2025, we had drawn EUR 150 million euros of our revolving credit facility. And as of today, we have fully reimbursed our RCF.
...In terms of, so based on this. So building on what I disclosed and building on our 2025 performance, we are also pleased to formulate a new 2026 vision that is disclosed on the screen. We will be laser-focused on reaching an AUM of at least EUR 60 billion by end 2026, reaching a FRE between EUR 175 million-EUR 225 million, and a net result group share between EUR 420 million-EUR 520 million, excluding Forex effect. Worth noting that approximately EUR 180 million of net result comes from the full disposal of our stake in Schroders that happened earlier this year.
Also, we also disclose a return on equity between 13%-16%. So all those metrics show improvement compared to 2025 and are above market expectations. 2026 has to be seen as a mere step in our journey towards a long-term profitable growth that will be disclosed and presented just after. We will be providing, of course, more details on our targets later this morning. Thank you very much for your attention. I will let Antoine for the concluding remarks.
Thank you, gentlemen, for this very thorough presentation. We'll now open the floor to questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand so we'll give you a mic. And we will address, in priority, questions from the room, obviously, and also take questions from the webcast. One question from Sharath Kumar from Deutsche Bank.
Good morning, all. Very impressive presentation, so congratulations. I have two questions, if that is okay. So first one is, while I totally understand your investment story, but I think it will be much simpler with an asset-light business. Although I kind of understand where you're coming from in terms of your balance sheet, funding your strategies, but ultimately, I think it is very hard to deny that this has been hugely dilutive to your valuation. So has there been discussions to spin off the investment activity outside the listed entity so that it can improve your valuation? So that is the first one. And, I want to come back to the usual topic on the, your share price valuation, low free float. A couple of years ago is when you disclosed your 2026 targets.
At least on the asset management side, you have been mostly on track, while on the investment activity side is where I think consensus is widely divergent from your targets. Just been a very painful wait for the sector to rerate, and you have not been alone in that, so. But when it comes to increasing the free float, what is the latest update that can give you? I know it's been a chicken and egg situation for the valuation to increase or the free float to increase, but what is the latest update that we can hear? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. That's a usual relevant question we had on balance sheet and asset light. As you all know, we started the firm just as an investment company in 2004. In 2007, we launched the asset management. So our asset management is 19 years old. We are celebrating next year, our 20-year anniversary for the asset management. So we decided from day one that having a balance sheet will help fuel, grow the asset management. And as we discuss a little bit later during our strategic update, we'll be more precise into that. But the truth is that we've been using the balance sheet to seed, sponsor new initiative.
Without the balance sheet, it would have been impossible to launch CLO in 2012, direct lending in 2009, Decarb in 2018, aerospace and defense in 2020. Needless to say that nobody will even answer our phone, so we used the balance sheet to seed sponsor that. As a result, we have this balance sheet, a EUR 5 billion balance sheet, and now a EUR 53 billion AUM business. We are clearly unhappy with the valuation. You know, the sum of the part is miles away of what we should be. So clearly, we don't get the credit of having both the balance sheet and the asset management. For all of you who are very familiar, you just saw the latest M&A transaction announced, which is the Coller purchase for EUR 3.2 billion.
Coller is making EUR 145 million of EBIT, let's say, so we just announced 150. So that tells you the, more or less the valuation we should get on the asset management, and on top of that, we've got EUR 3.1 billion of equity. So we've been growing the firm using the balance sheet to seed, sponsor, launch new initiative. As we enter now a new chapter, and we'll discuss that during the, the strategic update, we are committing less amounts to our funds. We don't really need now to seed sponsor with large amount of money. And as you see, for the first year in 2015-
... the commitment we had in our fund declined. So we started the year with EUR 1.6 billion of commitment in our fund. At the end of the year, it's EUR 1.3 billion. So that's telling you that we don't really need as much capital as we needed before. So moving forward, we'll have really the two businesses, the principal investing, which will still remain invested in our funds. Skin in the game is critical for us. And we have the asset management business, which is now profitable. When we list the firm, if you remember, we are making EUR 4 million EBIT, so no profitability at all. In nine years, we grew from EUR 4 million to EUR 150 million.
As you saw on the 2026 guidance and vision, we are targeting between EUR 175 million and EUR 225 million of FRE. So now asset management is profitable. The balance sheet, we think, is really back on track to be profitable. Vincent mentioned, for instance, Schroders. We, we'll detail that, but Schroders has been a 64% IRR on a EUR 240 million net income. So that's why we are highly confident on the 2026 net income. So it's a very long answer to your question. People have very clear view on asset-light versus non-asset-light. Blackstone is really asset-light. KKR is not asset-light. KKR is now compounding as a strong pace, the balance sheet.
At the end of the day, for the shareholder, I think what matters the most is the net income. To increase the net income, having the two engine, the balance sheet and the asset management, will probably lead into more net income, more dividend, and share price appreciation at the end.
Thank you. Two more questions in the room. From Antoine—from Arnaud, from CIC.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Three questions related to currency impact. The first one is, can you give us the breakdown of your AUM by currency in order to forecast what could be currency impact on these assets? Then, do you intend to put in place any hedging policy? I think all your debt is in euro, so, do you intend also on the liability side to have a diversification by currencies? And the last one is, regarding the net profit guidance for 2026. Is it at constant currency, or do you make any assumption at this level?
Okay. Thank you for your question. So as regards assets under management and the part of the share in foreign currency, so it's about 10%. 10%, and mostly in U.S. dollars. We're exposed to the U.S. dollars around and through our U.S. CLO and private debt strategies, mostly. As regards your question around hedging, so we've got a hybrid approach at TKO. Like other actors in the sector, we have decided to put in place a natural hedging with a financing in dollars.
So it's a $180 million U.S. private placement put in place in 2022, and we also put in place some forward contracts on some sterling on our sterling exposure to some extent. So we've got this hybrid approach using these options at our hand. And regarding your last question around our 2026 guidance in terms of net result, which we mentioned is between EUR 420 million-550 million. We mentioned very specifically that it's excluding foreign impacts, so basically at constant currency versus December 2025.
What we'll do moving forward when it comes to currency, when we have been issuing bonds, we've been initially only raising money denominated in euro. A few years ago, three years ago, we raised for the first time a USPP, dollar-denominated. Moving forward, we will probably match our non-European currency exposure, matching with the right liabilities. Probably issuing more USPP rather than euro if we need. We consider that it's probably the best way to hedge, having a proper asset and liability match. It costs less money, it's much more efficient, and this hedging, currency, is always complex because you can hedge the amount of money you invest. Let's say you invest $100 million or GBP 100 million, you hedge that.
But if you end up making 3x multiple, having just the nominal hedge, your capital gain is not hedged. So we think that moving forward, we're going to issue more in other currency, if I may say.
One question from Nicolas Vaysse from Exane BNP.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is on shares. I mean, you have a big windfall coming your way. That's a great problem to have, right? I'd like to know how you think about reallocating those proceeds between reinvestments or potentially payouts to shareholders via share buybacks, exceptional dividends. Second question on your 2026 new FRE guidance. I'd like you to help us understand a bit how we bridge from where we are in 2025 to get to the bottom end or even the top end of this guidance. So I'm wondering if you bake in some lumpier items like catch-up fees that you're expecting for this year, expecting some recovery at Sofidy in the subscription fees, because they are meaningfully accretive to the margin.
And what you expect in terms of evolution of the cost base next year. And then finally, my third question, you mentioned some negative mark-to-market effects on the credit portfolio. We've seen some of your peers actually suffering quite a bit, so I'm interested in any comments about your credit portfolio balancing, balanced exposure, how it's performing, and then the equity CLOs, notably. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question. Maybe I take the first two one. On the reallocation or reinvestment, as mentioned before, we still have EUR 1.3 billion of commitment into our funds. So first of all, for instance, the shareholder proceeds is close to EUR 600 million. As Vincent mentioned, we are gonna we reimbursed already our RCF, which was EUR 150 million drawn. So that means that we have excess cash on the balance sheet. We're gonna probably use that for our capital call, EUR 1.3 billion. Also, it's over the next few years, so it takes time. We are gonna continue to invest the balance sheet alongside our strategies.
So we have commitment in our funds, but the balance sheet is, is now doing two things: co-investing within our strategy. So I suspect we're gonna probably deploy more money into Aerospace and Defense, where we are clearly ahead of the curve. Same thing for decarb. And we start seeing more and more credit opportunities as the cycle became, is becoming more complex. You probably read a few days ago that we closed our secondary second vintage of private debt above EUR 1 billion, so twice the previous vintage. We are the only firm having such track record when it comes to secondary private debt, so I suspect that we're gonna allocate the balance sheet more into secondary private credit.
Maybe I start on your question on 2026, and I will let Henri comment. So we have four metrics in our 2026. One is our return on equity between 13%-16%, which is mid-teen double digit. As mentioned before, we are fairly convinced that we should reach between EUR 420 million and EUR 520 million of net income for 2026. Part of that is obviously the Schroders disposal, and as disclosed in the market, we decided to sell in the market our stake rather than waiting the end of the offer, which could happen in Q4, but could happen maybe in Q1 2027, you never know.
So we are fairly convinced that, that we're gonna reach this level of net income, and as a consequence, this return on equity. Your question specifically on catch-up fees, and FRE. We have several vintage of private equity currently raised, namely, AAP 2, which is Aerospace and Defense, and Decarb II. There is potentially a very large amount of catch-up fees, as stated in the bylaws. So within this range of 175-225, there is some amount of catch-up fees, and we are fairly convinced of... You know, when we look at our pipeline right now, coming from LP, there is a very strong demand, obviously, for Aerospace and Defense, and there is still many European appetite for Decarb.
Yeah, maybe in summary on that, there are mainly three drivers on that. First of all, you may have seen that future fee-paying have been increasing significantly end of 2025. So all this future fee-paying will obviously be transformed into fee-paying when we will be deploying these funds. So this is the first driver for evolution of fee-related earnings in 2026. Second one is a mix effect. Obviously, you will, as just described, you know, on the pipeline within our funds, we are now on the road, you know, investing and fundraising on our two big platform PE funds, namely Decarbonization Fund number II, Aerospace and Defense Fund number II.
Yes, there will be catch-up fees, but, you know, namely, out of the, maybe excluding even these catch-up fees, you know, there is a mixed effect with these two private equity funds and the track record we have been affecting on these two area. And maybe the third drivers to increase effectively the FRE in 2026 is obviously cost control. We started to be more, you know, to take care carefully more of the issue around cost already back in 2025, and we will be keeping in that area for 2026.
Just if I take-
Sorry, go ahead, Mathieu.
No, I just wanted to address the third question on private credit. You know, I mean, I wish we had two hours to discuss private credit, since so many things have been written over the past few weeks, you know, or few months. But more specifically, we happen to have our CLO business within private credit. So just to answer specifically on the U.S. side, beyond the Forex that Vincent elaborated on, obviously last year was a volatile year, and as you know, the CLOs are some arbitrage, you know, vehicle with some liabilities issued, and that can be reset.
And so what we had last year was effectively, on this specific part, some kind of a lag between, you know, the end of September, end of December, you know, valuation at the asset side and the reset on the refinancing. So we're expecting to catch up, you know, on this side, you know, when we reprice and reset the CLO. Now, more specifically on the private credit,
... you know, I think there are, as Antoine said, you know, that's a big opportunity for secondary private debt, but we've, we've never been as bullish on the opportunities, you know, to keep deploying with the same underwriting discipline when it comes to direct lending. The issue we've been facing, there are two comments. One is cyclical, the other is structural. On the cyclical aspect, you know, what we've experienced, you know, partly in the U.S., is this massive growth and fundraise on credit, where, you know, many managers, and not being judgmental whatsoever, you know, have started to have to deploy zillions, you know, raised. And as you know, when some of our competitors raise, you know, EUR 50 billion a quarter, it takes some time to keep the same discipline underwriting.
We're still, I think, you know, and our partner, Cécile, is in the room. I think we're 5%-7% selection rate on our private credit deployment. So that has been driven effectively. A lot of talk, you know, around the direct lending. The other thing that in the US, the bulk of, you know, all the noise you've been hearing was coming from the US. You've got the mid-market direct lending, which is on average 6-7x now levered. In Europe, it's more like 5-5.5. Our portfolio is 4.4. So as always, on credit, because the only thing you're getting is par, it's how do you underwrite and how do you structure, you know, going in?
So it's a much more defensive portfolio that we've been having, and we just closed, you know, the sixth vintage of our strategy. We started in 2007, so it's a 19 years track record, when, as I'm sure you know, 92% of the private credit managers were launched post GFC. So, you know, I think that here it's important, you know, to... I mean, we have our, our share of, you know, situation of negative watch where we're working.
A lot of the cyclical aspect is effectively all the credits that were originated in 2021, you know, the zero interest rate environment, the central bank very accommodating policy, and when people—you had a base rate at zero and spreads at 300, obviously, fast-forward five years, and you've got a base rate, you know, at four or five, and the spreads may be at four or five. Obviously, you know, your cost of refinancing is much higher, and then you have to effectively recapitalize, you know, part of them. Now, the silver lining, as Antoine alluded to, is that we're entering the golden age of the secondary private credit, and we are best positioned to tackle that.
Well, thank you so much. I'm sorry, I'm conscious of time. We'll address more questions later on, during the second Q&A session. So let's take a short break. We'll resume in 10 minutes. Thank you very much. Welcome back, everyone. So before moving into the strategic update, we would like to take a few moments to step back and revisit who we are and how we have built our platform. So we're going to show you a short video that retraces our journey, highlighting the evolution of our platform and the areas of expertise that position us as a differentiated alternative asset management. Let's watch.
Tikehau, an island on the edge of the world, the promise of a great journey. It all started in 2004 with nothing but ambition and the desire to discover new paths in the world of investment. Think big. At Tikehau Capital, we're not just alternative asset managers, we are explorers. As we expanded our global presence, we continued to navigate the ship efficiently. Curious, resolved, fiercely independent. To us, exploring is not about rushing or following trends, it's about making informed decisions and heading in the right direction. We focus on four fields of expertise: Private Debt, Real Assets, Private Equity, and Capital Markets strategies. Together with our client investors, we share a common goal: to guide global savings towards sustainable financial solutions, towards uncharted territories. Create, don't compete. Exploring is about creating a link, connecting the dots.
Tikehau Capital relies on a global network of local talent with nearly 50 nationalities spread across three continents. Their extensive local experience allows us to keep our boots on the ground. Our thirst for discovery has led us to become forerunners in specific strategies, such as private debt or decarbonization. We are pioneers. Investing is not about conquering, it's about supporting. Supporting entrepreneurs to enable them to achieve their goals, because we are entrepreneurs at heart. ... We speak the same language. And because we're on this journey together, we've chosen to align our interests with those of our client investors by investing alongside them. At Tikehau Capital, we share so much more than investments. We share the same conviction, the conviction that with innovative solutions, we can create sustainable value and drive positive change for society.
Continuously searching, understanding, and pursuing, this ongoing drive to discover uncharted territories is our oxygen. At Tikehau Capital, our work is an endless exploration, and we are proud to lead the way.
So we hope you enjoyed this video that really captures our journey. So today is not only about looking back, it's about what our platform is capable of delivering. We would like you to leave today's session with three key messages. First, we're exiting our built-out phase in asset management to move into a harvesting phase with accelerating profitability. Second, we're entering a new phase characterized by a greater strategic allocation of our balance sheet. It has been used since IPO as a great growth enabler, and now, looking ahead, it will be used as a more strategic allocator. Finally, as Antoine mentioned a bit earlier, those two distinct and complementary growth engines will offer significant optionality for us to close the valuation gap and also maximize value creation for our shareholders. Aligned with our 2026-2029 roadmap, we'll be focused on delivering the following objectives.
First, deliver cumulative net inflows of over EUR 34 billion, representing a 22% growth compared to the EUR 28 billion we have raised over the last fundraising cycle. This is first one, and the second one is that we aim to generate core fee-related earnings margin of between 45% and 50% by 2029, compared to 41% achieved in 2025. On top of those objectives, we have formulated two commitments. Those are to maintain our investment-grade rating and continue to distribute over 80% of our asset management EBIT to our shareholders. So now let's start with the first section of this new chapter and please join me in welcoming on stage Thomas Friedberger to share his perspective on opportunities shaping the next decade. Thank you.
So, Thomas, first question for you, and thank you for being here with us today. What would you characterize the evolution of global markets today, and what do you see as the most impactful trend shaping the industry today?
Thank you, Théo. So, if you, if we look at the size of the private markets, they were estimated at $26 trillion in 2022. They are expected to grow at $61 trillion in 2032. Those are not, those are not small numbers, you know. It's, it's approximately 50% of the current global GDP. And if you want to compare that to other markets, let's say, you have a global market cap today in listed equities of $140 trillion. So this number of $61 trillion expected in a couple of years is not small at all. It means that the, the private markets are converging with liquid markets, and the convergence, that doesn't stop there.
Let me take the example of private credit. Private credit has converged in size with the high-yield corporate bond market and with the leveraged loan market, both in the U.S. and in Europe. That's done already. The consequence, the fixed income markets are more and more integrated with private credit spreading to investment grade, to asset-backed lending, and this will offer, you know, a full range of new options to, to issuers going forward. We also think that, by the way, having a strong expertise in liquid credit through our capital market strategies is a strong advantage in that perspective of convergence.
I would also say that in a complex world where uncertainty, volatility, dispersion are increasing, where asset allocators need to deploy large amounts of capital, on the back of a strong growth in savings, the one-stop-shop model is appealing. Why? Because platforms benefit from clear processes, from clear risk management methodologies, compliance, conflict of interest management, better client servicing, better reporting capabilities. Platforms also are able to source larger transactions, allowing co-investors to deploy large amounts of capital quickly. And they also can afford the multi-local approach, which we think is absolutely essential in the generation of performance. So the message here is that the convergence between public markets and private markets creates value. It creates value for companies and issuers.
You know, the increase in size, in deal size, in private equity and private debt provide more options for companies issuing debt. They can allow company to be taken private, for example, or to remain private for longer. It also creates value for LPs. We said that, you know, it's allowing asset allocators, large asset allocators, to deploy large amounts of capital in private markets. It also gives access to private markets for private investors, which is kind of new. Also it will bring the best practice of liquid markets to the private markets in terms of conflict of interest management, reporting, and risk management. So all of that is positive.
Thank you, Thomas, for those very interesting insights. We've seen an increasing sophistication in private markets. What investor behavior shifts are most material, and what capabilities must managers build to truly differentiate and capture growth?
So if I start with the institutional world, we notice a sharp increase in demand for co-investments, for SMAs, for bespoke solutions, and that requires from us robust origination capabilities. I mean, capability to originate locally but at scale, which is the challenge. Also, solid fund structuring and tailor-made solution to address all the, you know, the specific demand from all over the world, and also robust processes in terms of allocation, valuations, reporting. So that's on the institutional side, and so hence the importance of the, you know, the strengths of the platform.
If I, if I now go to the democratization of private assets, so addressing private investors, it, it requires from us global distribution channels, so the necessity to talk to a large number of distributors or global distributors all around the world, and also digitalization to deliver data-driven client experience and reporting, which we are addressing partially through our Opale platform.
As we look to the future now, what structural themes do you see defining the next decade, and where do you see the most compelling opportunities emerging?
So complex question to answer in a couple of minutes, but I'll try to do my best. So there will be growth in 2026, 2027, but we think, we have the conviction that this growth is gonna be led by investment more than consumption. So CapEx-led growth, meaning that growth will be probably more concentrated on the sectors that are the priorities of the government. So, you know, that the famous four Ds of McKinsey: decarbonization, defense, digitalization, deglobalization. We think that the growth will be concentrated with the companies able to enable this to happen. So the sellers of picks and shovels of the resilience, if you will. So aerospace and defense, energy transition, cybersecurity are among those sectors, and that's the reason why we are focusing on them.
But let me also, you know, consider deglobalization. There is a need in Europe to create European champions also at the SME level, and that is addressed through direct lending because private equity players use three times more direct lending than capital markets or leverage loans to finance those transactions. And so we think there is a strong opportunity also in European direct lending to build those European champions. Number two, we think that, you know, the economic value creation in the world is switching from efficiency to resilience, and resilience has a cost.
The cost of producing closer to, to the consumer, the cost of getting insurance against climate risk, against cyber risk, the cost of operating with higher equity buffers and less debt to cope with, you know, COVID-like, situations, the cost of having more robust supply chains. So we expect lower growth in the world, with high growth concentrated on the sectors I mentioned. It will also probably change the way to invest in private equity. Companies are becoming more asset-heavy than before. You know, even in the tech sector, you look at, you know, some companies now own data centers. They were asset-light before, they own data centers. Some of them are now building their own electricity production capabilities to feed those data centers. So the...
It will be more asset-heavy, and probably that the way to invest in private equity will switch towards more what Warren Buffett was doing, which is invest in more asset-heavy sectors, looking more at return on invested capital. And it will not be easy because the best CapEx are all, you know, done by the best management teams, but you can expect a lot of misallocation of capital also when there is a lot of CapEx in a sector. So probably less reliance on multiple expansion, and key investors will need to use less leverage. And if you look at what we've been doing for the last 15 years at Tikehau, it's exactly that. We've invested in sectors that are more asset-heavy, aerospace and defense, for example, with less leverage than the average.
Third theme is we are entering into a war economy, which does, doesn't mean hopefully that we, we will go to war, but which means that all economic agents are put at the service of the priorities of a given government. That means probably accommodative monetary policies going forward, starting probably in May, you know, in the U.S., but also massive fiscal expansion, which means probably lower short-term interest rates and higher long-term interest rates, so steeper yield curve, which is good for banks. Which drives the strong conviction that we've been having at Tikehau for years, saying that we prefer credit risk to duration risk.
And so from that perspective, we think that direct lending, which is 100% floating rate, is very well adapted to this environment, but also, for example, short-duration credit in our credit capital markets activities. And last but not least, we think there is a strong opportunity in Europe, because Europe is cumulating accommodative monetary policy, massive fiscal expansion in Germany, which will have consequences all over Europe, lower valuations compared to the U.S., lower levels of leverage in the corporate world, and the end of the deleveraging of Southern European banks, which, you know, probably provides appetite to finance the economy from those banks, not only in Southern Europe, but in the whole of Europe.
A very benign investment environment, despite all the European bashing that we see. With the condition of being disciplined, there is a very strong opportunity in Europe, where we deploy 80% of our AUM right now.
Very insightful. Thank you, Thomas. Last question. In that context, what are the implications for our different asset classes if we go through each of our strategies, and what aspects of our value proposition best position us to capture these opportunities?
So of course, I mean, it will be all about performance. Performance will drive fundraising, so performance will be key. And for that, you know, we will continue to rely on one, local sourcing, which is absolutely essential to the generation of performance, but also in terms of risk management, and, you know, addressing tricky situations locally. Strong corporate culture of alignment of interest, and as such, strong investment discipline, which we think we have, you know, by DNA. And also partnerships to benefit from superior expertise and avoid crowded areas, partnership with corporates, partnership with partners in regions where we are less developed, with, why not other asset managers? So that's the create, don't compete angle of what we do.
Now, in terms of opportunities, you know, there are a lot. I will regroup them in three categories: growth, value, and niches. So in terms of growth, as I said, in private equity, the solution providers to the sovereignty, to the resilience, will continue to experience strong growth in a world that will grow at a slower pace. So aerospace and defense and decarbonization are our two strong convictions, and we are really confident there that by allocating our capital well, we can generate a lot of value for investors. In liquid strategies, we are very excited by anything related to the building of European sovereignty, which is a theme which connects to what I just said on private equity.
On European direct lending, of course, this opportunity to build, you know, European champions in a credit space that is growing and is growing also more towards larger cap financing, with the condition, of course, to have the right allocation geographically and by sector, is also a strong growth opportunity. Now, value, value being, you know, benefiting from low valuations, but also liquidity gaps. We think that here, real estate is the obvious candidate, both in equity and financing. Very strong opportunity in real estate, with depressed valuations and volumes that are starting to pick up.
Private debt secondary is also addressing this, you know, this opportunity, buying, you know, LP interest or GP and LP interests at a discount. Being selective is a strong opportunity. Special situations, which we define as financing good companies or good assets with a bad capital structure, so having a problem at a certain moment of their development. There is a lot of things to do in Europe. And with regards to niches, I would mention financial subordinated bonds. Those steep yield curves will continue to favor banks. It's a very European-centric opportunity, but we have a very strong expertise there in capital markets. Asia credit is also something that we want to be involved in.
We launched a fund recently, and we think it will be a high-growth area in the coming decades.
Okay, very interesting discussion. Thank you, Thomas, for your time. Well, to explore these themes further, we'll now be joined on stage by our two co-founders and Maxime Laurent-Bellue, our Deputy CEO, for a fireside chat on accelerating growth across asset management. Thank you, Thomas.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here today. It's a real pleasure for me to have this chat with our two co-founders, gathered in the same place, which is not every day. Today, we will talk about the firm, we'll talk about the industry, we'll talk about the perspective. I want to start with Antoine, maybe, and I know Theo said that we would not do too much history, and we'd rather look forward, but just a quick question to start. It's been a 20 years plus entrepreneurial journey, which was quite incredible. And I must say, I took part of a decent part of it, probably around 19 years today.
I've seen the firm changing, improving, growing, from the startup I joined in 2007 to a global asset management and investment company with 17 offices globally. Obviously, a lot has happened. Antoine, in your own words, I'd like to understand what are the, the sort of the key strengths or the key defining features that have been shaping or, or positioning?
Thank you, Max. Let's try to capture the secret sauce. The truth is that, as all of you know, there is no secret sauce. It's a lot of conviction, ambition, entrepreneurship, innovation, and maybe I start with that. We are entrepreneurs. As Max said, as Theo said, the plan is to look forward for the next 20 years, but the truth is that we started, as you know, with EUR 4 million as real entrepreneurs. And the journey has been colorful, complex. There is not a single day when you have something new coming up, someone resigning, someone you're trying to hire, a deal going not in the right direction, a financing not in place at the right time, an historical shareholder willing to sell shares. So that's what's happening all the time.
Because we are entrepreneurs, and I think a lot of people at the firm became entrepreneurs, maybe some in a different manner, but everybody is putting a lot of energy to make sure, you know, we keep the drive, we keep the energy, and we innovate all the time. Financial industry is boring. You know, as I keep saying, we used to have banks, insurance company. Now, one of the largest European financial institution is probably Revolut. If you look at least on the valuation, EUR 75 billion. Now, the banks are trending up, and you've got several banks above EUR 100 billion market cap, but this is what's happening. Revolut, you know, was nowhere, and now it's EUR 75 billion. Everybody wants to make sure that they put their funds on the Revolut platform.
As Thomas mentioned, we create our own digital platform called Opale. It's been a record year last year, so we sell Tikehau funds and other GP on the platform. It's a greenfield. We started with zero. Hopefully, in a few years, it's gonna be several billion EUR, and we started that again from scratch. So part of the secret sauce has been innovation, and you can innovate in this boring industry either on the way you raise money or the way you invest. We discussed earlier, Mathieu mentioned secondary private credit. We've been the first firm to launch secondary private credit in 2020 in the U.S. Secondary private equity was everywhere, but secondary private credit was really new. Now, we raise our second vintage. We are accelerating on this front, and we've been doing that all the time.
When we launched direct lending in 2009 in Europe, it was popular and well known in the U.S., but nobody was doing that in Europe. Defense is a very good example, and I think there were a question online, we did not answer earlier about the deal flow when it come to aerospace and defense. You know, it's multi-billions coming, and we launched that in 2020. So I think, you know, part of the journey, and, and I don't know if it's the success or not, but we've been innovating all the time. We're gonna keep innovating, and you can innovate, as I said, on the asset or the liability side. When you partner with corporation, nobody in the industry has been partnering with corporation. When it comes to aerospace and defense, you know our partners, Airbus, Dassault, Thales, Safran.
You know, they put money. They sit on some of the committee. They help us analyze some of the company, and as a result, since 2020, we own now 35 companies in the sector. We exited already three of them, reaching on average 2.7x multiple. You partner with these guys, you're probably ahead of the curve. When you launch Decarb with Total, and we launch already the second generation, again, you partner with Total, that give you an edge of understanding, you know, the sector, the trend. Does it make sense to look at hydrogen? Yes, no. Battery storage? Yes, no. And we've been doing that all the time. Max has been part of the team who, a few years ago, start investing and financing a data center. You know, we've done that a while ago.
We sold one in the Netherlands in December. Because we are born in France, you know, everybody know Mistral, the French AI company. We've been the one financing their data center, and I think it's been all the time for more than 20 years, so we're gonna continue to innovate. Hopefully, you know, that will generate more businesses. We'll create more partnership with financial institution, with corporation. And it's a very long answer because, as I said, there is no secret sauce. We are entrepreneur, we innovate, we keep, you know, the same pace. As some of you know, you know, we put a lot of energy.
We, being, you know, the 715 employees, are putting a lot of energy to make sure we make things happening, and that's gonna be the same thing. But if you look now for the next 20 years, we have 17 offices, a very strong platform, a very talented pool of people, and we see a big acceleration coming.
So it's interesting 'cause innovation and partnerships have been at the foundation of our journey and sort of interconnected together. Should we expect, obviously, more innovation and more partnership?
Yeah, I think, you know, it's, we, we've been-- I don't know if it's good, but we, we always find, Thomas mentioned niche, a very specific thing, because when we launched Decarb, it was a niche in Europe. Frankly, when we launched Aerospace and Defense, now it's super popular, but it was not even a niche. It was nobody wanted to touch that. And I think, you know, we are looking all the time at what's happening in the financial services industry, and we look at traditional asset manager. Schroders is a good example. We look at alternative asset manager, we look at insurance company, we look at, we look at digital company. And you could expect, you know, more innovation, more partnership, because that's how we build a firm.
I think now the partnership we can achieve are probably much bigger in terms of size than what we've done before.
Thanks, Antoine. Mathieu, I'd like to move on to more the industry. In the same period of time, obviously, the industry has transformed rapidly, tremendously. Thomas touched on the growth of the market, how the market and participants have been increasingly sophisticated. More players coming in, more competition, I guess, more strategies, so it's in constant movement. I'm not even mentioning the backdrop, which is obviously quite complex right now with geopolitics, tax, and so on and so on. But how do we prepare for the next growth phase of the firm in that context, and how do we define our approach in this fast-moving environment and fast-transforming industry? It's a long question. Sorry.
It's a great question. First of all, congratulations for coping 19 years with us, you know. I must say, you know, that, I, I did not realize, but, that certainly illustrate that, you know, it's an entrepreneurial and it's a people business, journey. But, I mean, think about, you know, where we started and what-- you know, when you joined us in 2007, what the... I don't even think that alternative asset management was defined as a term. We barely talked about private credit. That really was born on the, you know, on the ashes of the, you know, of the GFC, I mean, certainly in Europe. We, we were still very much in the GP, LP world.
I mean, particularly, you know, if you look at the—we were born in Europe, as Antoine said, not to mention France, and the market was extremely defined. You know, it was the GP, LP, you were doing mid-market European buyout. We were barely talking about private credit, as I said. You had some real estate managers, you know, for sure, but even real estate was not really perceived as a, I think, an alternative asset class. That was probably, certainly in Europe, the most advanced and most developed asset class that people could address, and not to mention infrastructure, et cetera. Fast-forward, you know, 2026, the name of the game, every day you read in the press, you know, you see in the media, all these juggernaut platforms.
I mean, I can name them because they've been modeled, you know, and developed, you know, the Blackstones, the Apollos, the KKRs, you know, managing more than a trillion. I mean, we like to use this, this anecdote, you know, with Antoine. When we started in 2004, Tikehau was EUR 4 million of asset under management. Blackstone was managing $40 billion, and he was sitting at Goldman Sachs. I was in at Merrill Lynch, you know, over there, and we were like, you know, "Well, $40 billion." Fast-forward, you know, today, it's $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion, you know, they're getting or something, and it's only starting. So this transformation of the industry and which has accelerated, you know, over the past, you know, five years, it's, it's complicated, you know, to, to date that.
But you see that there is this massive transformation of increased savings on the one hand private savings bank insurance regulation which is now very different in Europe than it is, you know, in the U.S., interest rate structure in some part of the world. You know, I can think of Japan, I can think of others. And this globalization phase, which all of a sudden enter a de-globalization phase, because maybe there is this cyclical moment, you know, with the with the U.S., where, you know, you're constantly on the edge. You know, it's like being on a rugby play field, right? And waiting, you know, for the information and seeing whether the ball is gonna be coming from, where you're gonna have to, you know, to play defense, to play attack.
That has been, you know, extremely exciting as far as I am concerned, we are concerned, and we've only been able to do that because we were lean, agile, that, you know, obviously our team, our people, were fully, you know, embarked, you know, in this, you know, in this, in this dynamic. And that's why, you know, we're so—I am certainly, I guess we are, yeah, Antoine, so excited about what's ahead, because I can tell you that, you know, when people ask us, you know, "What have you done, you know, differently?" Well, maybe starting with EUR 50 billion and not, you know, EUR 4 billion, with 17 offices and not just, you know, sitting, you know, in our, in our cellar, you know, in Paris.
So, you know, we're at this crossroad now where we can tackle an industry that has been, as we said, changing dramatically, which I must say, has been somehow dominated by American brands, platform, franchise, which once again, I respect, you know, greatly, but the world is in a different place now. And I think you cannot have some limitation on goods with tariffs. You cannot have some limitation on people movement, you know, with immigration, and not have, at some point, some limitation on the most liquid assets, which is capital. And what we're seeing right now, which is rightly the point that Thomas made about sovereignty and the real defining investment that need to happen right now, there will be a massive opportunity for platform, you know, for platform like us.
We've been saying all along that you have to be multi-local, which means that when you are, when you're addressing Europe, and we're all sitting in London today, but I can see in the room, you know, many people coming from different places. And we all know that doing business in Madrid, in Milan, in Frankfurt, in Paris, in London, you know, it's different. You know, the culture is different, the rural—I mean, the legal environment is different. You know, the networks are different, and we've been making this investment for the past 20 years. When we're talking about harvesting, that's what we are referring to, is that Tikehau today is deeply rooted in every single market to be able to size, to execute, to monitor, to, you know, sometime to restructure, you know, those situations.
That's what investors or certainly, you know, the 80% of the investors we've been referring to, that we are now trusting us, that's what they are looking for. I'll give you an anecdote. When we started talking to Korean investors seven years ago, and, you know, you spent a lot of time there, we all spent a lot of time there. I remember seven years ago that some of them, in our direct lending, for example, strategy, they were asking specifically to carve out Spain and Italy, because back then, you know, we were coming out of the, a euro crisis, the peaks, the whatever. Over the past 12 months, all the capital we raised in the region has been for private equity investment in Madrid and in Milan, because, you know, it's moving so fast.
What those people are expecting from us is to be the local guide with the skin in the game, not just, you know, selling them, you know, the product of the month, but effectively promoting some investment strategy where there are some strong conviction at heart, but with capital, you know, aligned to them. So here again, you know, a long answer, but, I've never been, you know, as excited because the platform we have to tackle, you know, this new chapter, you know, in the market, where effectively there is a dominance, like in many other sectors, by some of our U.S. friends. There is this, I guess, once in a lifetime for us, opportunity to be this next gen native European alternative asset managers, which has grown organically across asset classes with capital, you know, fully aligned.
We might discuss later on, you know, M&A or something, but not trying to build artificially a one-size-fits-all platform, but to have, you know, a real, bespoke and hopefully relevant, performing, as Thomas said, offering, you know, for those, for those investors. So, long answer, but, I think we're best, you know, that's why we wanted to have this discussion with you now, because I think the platform now is mature, you know, is mature to be harvesting these opportunities.
Thanks, Mathieu. Shorter question now for Antoine, maybe. We've—I think we've sort of outlined a bit of the roadmap for the next few years earlier today. I want to be very specific, Antoine, on what would you... and if you could elaborate on our key priorities. We've mentioned scale, we've mentioned profitability. I'm sure underwriting is one of them as well. But could you give us your vision on that?
Thanks, Max. Maybe I will start using what Mathieu described as harvesting. We've been investing for the last 20 years, building the platform, and we consider that the platform, which is multi-local, 17 countries, strong local investment team, is fairly unique. Meaning that we can source a lot of local opportunities, and when it comes to private assets, you're not buying, you know, asset behind your Bloomberg. You know, you need to be local. So we started doing, I don't know, a lot of residential, for instance, in Portugal, in Spain, in Germany, and as you know, real estate market is very difficult.
Now, we start seeing really big guys, almost all the sovereign wealth fund coming, knocking at the door to say, "We want to co-invest with you in your residential expertise." And I think that's exactly the illustration of harvesting. We invest in the platform, we can source fairly unique asset with a very strong risk-reward profile. And that's about now the time to make sure we do, we deliver a larger transaction, we keep the same investment discipline, and at the end of the day, it's not about, you know, growing the AUM. The most important thing is making sure you deliver performance for your LP, for your investor, and as a consequence, for the balance sheet and your shareholder.
I think now for this chapter, we're gonna be focusing on more profitability at the fund level, at the firm level, because we've been, we've been investing for 20 years. So now the operating leverage is much higher. We reached EUR 150 million of EBIT, you know, 19 years after launching the asset management. The asset management has been launched in 2007. After 19 years, now we reach EUR 150 million, and it's exponential. So I think now it's about time to harvest, to make sure we increase the profitability. We need to be very selective in a very changing world. You know, the example of Mathieu is, is, is clearly what's happening.
Seven years ago, people will tell you, "Oh, please, no Spain, no Italy." And now people will tell you, "you know, you're doing, you know, too much France. We want to do really Italy and Spain." And it's changing all the time. When it comes to real estate, people have been obsessed by buying, you know, retail real estate, office, you know, real estate. Needless to say, you know, what's the office market looks like now. So we need to continue to adapt. So I will say to answer and, and summarize what I say: scale, operating leverage, profitability, investment discipline, and keep the same ambition, and that's the plan.
...What about M&A, Mathieu? We are, as we discussed, we are well capitalized, so we are a potential buyer for not anything, but for many objects. The industry has been consolidating recently. How do you think we'll be active, and how do we assess the right match, essentially?
Yeah. That goes back, you know, to what we were saying. I mean, there is this imperative of scale right now, in terms of footprint, size, assets and strategies, platform. And whilst, you know, there will always be the great and perfect, you know, investors, very focused, either locally or by industry, clearly, the trend that we've been seeing over the past few years is accelerating and will be, I think, even more impacted by the cost of doing business. You know, from a regulation standpoint, you know, from, as I said, you know, the footprint you need to have. And we are very well positioned.
I mean, it's going back to some of the questions we had earlier on about the balance sheet. The balance sheet has been a huge enabler for the asset management business, as Antoine, you know, addressed. But it's always been, you know, as entrepreneurs, you're never overcapitalized. It's quite often the very opposite. And so having this opportunity to be able to buy, cede, merge, sponsor, we've become the partner of choice for many bankers. Some of you, you know, in the room, and, you know, I like to call on you to give you some evidence. But the... I mean, I think today we've got 85 names in our spreadsheet, you know, for the pipeline of situations that we are looking at.
Small, single strategy, single country platform, all the way to some of the large platform that traded recently. And we have become partners of choice because of this balance sheet. I mean, if people just want to sell, cash in, and move on, that's not the type of things, you know, we're looking at. But people who say, "Okay, now we need to have a stronger partner that can seed, anchor, you know, the next phase of fundraising, the next fund, to have, to be fully aligned in the mindset and the culture and see the cross synergy we can have in the distribution," then, you know, the discussion becomes, you know, highly interested. Obviously, you know, the...
I mean, the starting point is that there needs to be. I think the first and foremost is the cultural fit. I think it goes past the financial merits. And now, you know, that we are 5-7 years into some structuring M&A, I think, you know, that some of them will demonstrate that the cultural fit was not there, and, you know, there could be, you know, some issue there. So I will always put culture, you know, first. Then it has to be about the complementarity, obviously, because there will be little merits for us to be doubling up on some strategies where we are already a market leader in a market or in a strategy. And then it has to be financially accretive, right?
The last thing we want to become is an asset aggregator, because that comes back to the discussion we're making, you know, about—we were having about the, you know, our earnings. It has to be a profitable growth. And so that, when you put all that as a filter, you know, it leaves, you know, from 100, it gets you maybe 10 situations, right? And from 10 situations, there's maybe only three you want to do and maybe one that will conclude. But we believe that M&A will keep... As a general comment, M&A will keep developing, certainly in Europe, where some platforms are subscales, partly for some investors.
We also discussed the fact that many asset owners, they are reducing the number of relationships they're working with, but they are increasing the amount of capital they are allocating to. And that's something that, you know, we can benefit from, you know, now that we are at scales. And the other thing, you know, I don't think we commented on this on this KPI, and Vincent, tell me if I'm off-piste here, but I think we're still at two-thirds of our investors, LPs, are invested in into more than two strategies. So they will be into credit and private equity, into infrastructure and real estate.
That's something, this cross-selling and the upscaling that you can have, you know, with your LP, that's where, you know, you can make obviously a big, you know, a big difference. So, it's about being, you know, very selective.
On that, Mathieu, I was actually thinking probably even more selective than in any of our strategy, right? Because you certainly don't want to misunderwrite an investment-
No
... in credit, in PE, real estate, but you, you for sure don't want to misunderwrite an M&A opportunity, right? Because-
No, 100%, 100%. It's a people business. You have not seen us entering into a transformative M&A that, with all due respect for my investment bankers friends in the room, you know, what I call sometimes, you know, the bankers' idea, you know, with which is on paper, on Excel, it's always perfect. It always works on Excel. And then, you know, you've got the, you know, this people business component that needs to be factoring. But as the industry mature, as some people get into some succession challenges, as, you know, some platform may be struggling, you know, to raise the next, the next fund, those discussions are becoming very interesting. Okay.
Maybe I'm adding a comment on M&A. All the transactions you've seen in the sector, all the comments are about how many times, what's the multiple on FRE, okay? BlackRock is buying HPS on, whatever, 17 times. Coller is being purchased on 17 times, and so on, and so on. Our view is that we should be focusing on the underlying fund and not the FRE multiple at the management company, at the GP. Because at the end of the day, the value of an asset management business is the underlying performance. And I think people have been a little bit distracted in the last 15 years, so people have been buying a lot. As you noticed, we bought nothing.
And we are in a position whereby we will be the one consolidating, but as long as we make sure that we are buying very strong team, the same DNA and culture, and very strong performances at the fund level. Because, you know, if you start having good performances, the value of your business is probably close to zero. So we are going to remain disciplined. We look at a lot of situation, and thanks to the balance sheets and our shareholder base, you know, we can, if we want, if it makes sense, be acquisitive, but no doubt that we're going to be very, very cautious. And we see, we start seeing more and more opportunities coming. And as the cycle change, which is the case, for instance, in private credit in the U.S., there are more and more people knocking at the door.
We are really well positioned if we want, if it makes sense.
And, you know, an extension to your question, Max, is it doesn't just have to be, you know, an M&A deal. It can be, you know, all these partnerships where we've been, as Antoine, you know, pointed out, you know, I think pretty good at, you know, with some corporates, with some financial partners, with some asset managers. I think that's going to be increasing.
And when we were detailing the fact that moving forward, you know, you have this asset management pillar, this balance sheet pillar, you know, on the asset management level, we become a partner of choice for those partnerships partly with the more traditional insurance companies I can think of, with some other asset owners who are looking for some ways to deploy more into certain strategies. And that's also, you know, a step forward, where our track record of having this partnership will certainly resonate well with this at this time in the cycle.
Thanks. I'm conscious of time, so maybe before wrapping up, two final questions, one each. Maybe starting with Mathieu. What would you say? What would you like to preserve the most, or what would you like to never change within the firm, regardless of where we go, how we grow?
Yeah. Well, Theo put this, you know, this little movie there, and, you know, obviously, we're in a, in a particular seat, Antoine and I, because, you know, it was the two of us, and now it's, 700, plus, you know, people we are working with. You know, it was in a small office in Paris, and now, you know, we're on the road all the time, meeting with, all our, teams and colleagues and partners, you know, locally. I think it's close to 50 nationalities we've got across the, across the platform now.
You know, I no longer want to use the, you know, the word DNA, but I think this culture, the singularity that we tried to developed over the years and still maintain, that makes effectively a, hopefully a small difference between similar platforms, is certainly what we need to be focusing on. And when I look at the breadth, the expertise, the wealth of the people, you know, working around us, I mean, that makes a huge difference.
Because at the end of the day, as Antoine said, you know, what we do is not rocket science, but for as long as you are fully aligned, that you are fully embarked in terms of the people that you know are working together, then you can make effectively a difference in good and bad times. And you will know very, very well, you personally, and many of our people that sometimes sitting at an investment committee, you know, sometimes we don't even have to talk.
You know, looking at each other, people, because having been through all these cycles together, and that might be, you know, the benefit of now time and experience, you know, it makes a huge difference in the way you're approaching what is at core, as Antoine said, you know, the investment, the risk underwriting, the fact not to be forced to doing something or ... I mean, each time we did something wrong was when we got to lean into the FOMO, you know?
Mm.
For as long as we can resist that, because the people, we've been in the locker room together, we've been on the pitch together, you know, we had the, the fight, you know, the win, the losses sometimes, but we came back. You know, that's what we need to preserve, for sure.
Is it difficult sometimes?
For sure. For sure, I said
... Is it difficult sometimes-
I do something familiar.
... to combine, you know, ambition, growth, with maintaining, entrepreneurial spirit, nimbleness?
You know, just to share maybe with the audience, I mean, where I'm really, really happy is that, you know, today, our team, our senior leadership team, our partners, you know, they're spread across all our offices, you know, from Singapore to New York, obviously here in London. And that is something that has also been a key differentiating aspect, where you need to obviously hire locally, but you need to maintain this backbone, you know, this what is the culture of Tikehau, and hopefully the discipline, too.
Antoine, you opened, you close. Any key message, any key commitment maybe for our partner, shareholders, investors?
Talking about commitment, you know, we've been committed to this business with our 715 people. We are very committed, we remain entrepreneurs. Mathieu mentioned DNA. You know, it's still the same company, with the same drive, the same energy, a more global platform, a longer track record, because, you know, when you start, you have not a real track record. Now we can claim that in several strategies, we have a strong track record, a solid track record. The world is becoming more and more complex, and we mentioned sovereignty, technological changes, geopolitics, politics. It's gonna continue to be like that, so we're gonna keep diversifying our business from a geographical point of view, from a sector point of view. We need to adapt the firm.
I mentioned Revolut, our own platform, Opale. You know, we launched several initiative called either Retina or Lagoon, which is our own AI tools. So we need to adapt all the time because we are not really AI or tech native, so we had to spend times. We hire, you know, younger people, specialize in this area. So it's gonna be the same. We still have a lot of appetite. We are not gonna do stupid things. We discussed briefly M&A. We've got very strong conviction globally. We could be... and I don't want to be arrogant, but we could be discussing U.S. asset management for two hours. You know, it's there, we, we spend a lot of time there.
I'm not telling you that we are, you know, announcing next in the next 10 minutes, something in the U.S., but we are looking at all of our option. We've got these two very solid businesses, the balance sheet with permanent capital that everybody is looking at. You know, 10 years ago, you talk to some people in the GP industry, they say, "Oh, we're gonna enter, you know, permanent capital." And, you know, we said, "We have EUR 5 billion balance sheet," and we've got this now profitable asset manager.
So we're gonna have the two businesses, making sure they are both highly profitable, and we're gonna keep doing the same thing with the same drive, same energy, with a very strong group of talented people internally and a very, and I finish here, a very unique set of partners, corporate partners, financial partners. We did not really discuss today, but as you know, some of the largest families around the globe are invested with us from the U.S., from Greece, from France, from Italy, from Netherlands, and that's also part of our crowd. So more or less the same, with a little bit of new innovation coming.
23 seconds over time. I think that's fine. Thank you so much.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, gentlemen, for this very interesting insight. Before delving into our final sections, beyond strategy and expertise, what truly defines us is the way we operate. Our entrepreneurial spirit is not confined to our offices. It shapes how we think, how we collaborate, and how we challenge ourselves. So we'd like now to share a short video that captures this spirit in action.
You know, it's great to have everybody's back. It's the tenth anniversary. We want it to be as inclusive as possible. Having all our clients, partners, and team together is what make this Ventoux event, you know, the best get-together every year.
I think, you know, it's important to have fun when you build a business. When, whatever you're doing, it's really important to have fun, and that's how, at the end, you're successful. To climb the Ventoux, you have to, you know, train yourself because it's really hard, and it never stop.
I think that I have watched the greatest sense of the Tour de France, and one understands that fantastic experience. Although I am an aging amateur, the chance to go and climb something like that and hopefully, you know, summit it in a terrific environment, you know, with a great team, will be, you know, something I'll be very happy to have said I've done, and I probably will tell a few people.
In the UAE, it's very flat, so I was challenged by the mountain at Mont Ventoux. I've never been there, but they say it's the most scenic mountain in France, so I'm very excited about it.
Because of the spirit that Mathieu and Antoine put into this event, you're willing to make the effort, you're willing to come, because you know that you're gonna be participating into, like, a real, you know, collective and group activity.
... Amazing! Let's do it again.
Okay.
When you think about investment or when you think about cycling, there are some similar values about it. It's a tough sport. It's very hard. You suffer, you need to train, you need to have discipline, and also you get a lot of pleasure. You are proud of yourself when you manage to achieve something, and you share that experience with people.
I think doing this challenge with external partners and friends help building better relationship with them and for the firm, because it creates long-standing relationship of trust, of fun, of challenging and pushing yourself. It's all about what we want to push forward at Tikehau Capital.
Do we just do cycling, you know, FRE, net income, that's the real Tikehau. It's a cycling and sport company.
Just got down from my bicycle, so ... Good morning again. Yeah, so we'll be finalizing this presentation, starting maybe a quick introduction in terms of compounding effect and velocity focus. We wanted to remind you a few data points. First one, there was a question earlier this morning on our balance sheet, asset light. We wanted to remind you a little bit the way we've been using our balance sheet, how have we been operating over the last years. Here, quick snapshot, once again, on our investment portfolio. Few takeaways, first one, significant increase of our investment portfolio went up from EUR 1.6 billion back in 2017 to EUR 4.4 billion as we speak. Second takeaway, the way we've been rebalancing this investment portfolio.
Earlier, back in 2017, it was allocated 33% through our strategies. It has gone up roughly to 80% in 2023. End of 2025, the allocation to our own strategy stands at 69%, and that's actually a direction we want to keep on going, which means actually having lower intensive allocation to our investment strategies. So what have we been doing with our balance sheet? A few examples have been given this morning, but obviously, investment in our own strategy, we've been mentioning that. We put our own capital at work, we invest alongside our LP, alongside our partner. That enables us to effectively have a compounding third-party fundraising, accelerate international expansion. On the other way, investment in all our ecosystem, as we've been doing in the past, to forge partnership, complement our expertise, and structure co-investment.
We'll be coming back on the two first pillars. So first one, Tikehau Capital strategies. EUR 4.3 billion have been committed in our own strategy. As you can see, credit has represented most of this allocation. Up until now, 48%, 48%. Out of that, 18% in our CLO platform, which, by the way, has enabled us to launch effectively 24 European and U.S. CLO since we started the business. Alongside that, launch as well, vintage and new flagship and adjacencies. Another 17% of allocation has been done through real estate, and a significant part of our allocation of this EUR 4.3 billion has been carried out in private equity, roughly 36%.
And all the initiatives that we've been talking about up until this morning, Decarbonization, Cybersecurity, Aerospace, and Defense, all these initiatives that were launched back in 2018 have been done thanks to the allocation initially made by the balance sheet. One important point, we've been talking about this, kind of, third-party fundraising compounder. You can see here, each time from 2018 to 2021, that we were putting EUR 1 from the balance sheet, we had a kind of multiple of by 7 of third-party inflows. Since 2022, so during the latest fundraising cycle, from 2022 to 2025, this multiple has increased to 13. Several aspects to that. First, it's true that once the flagships are becoming bigger, once vintages are more advanced, for example, which is the case on vintage number 6 on direct lending, the multiple is higher.
So clearly, you know, we've been demonstrating that this fundraising compounding effect was very efficient. Other key priorities already that was announced this morning, as well as co-investment. The use of the balance sheet is a key asset for effectively this co-investment opportunity. We are using the balance sheet to warehouse partially some of this co-investment. That was the case back in 2022 on this first private debt secondary initiative, more than EUR 500 million. It has been the case last year on several co-investment deals in real estate, in private equity, in private debt. We mentioned the deal in Spain, AESA. So here, clearly, you can see that this warehousing capacity and use of the balance sheet is clearly playing a strong role in our business model.
Now, switching to ecosystem and direct investment, I won't come back, won't be long on that, EUR 1.4 billion, but once again, here, it's a kind of full ecosystem, which clearly this full networks, you know, is expanding deal flow. It is deepening expertise, it's, and it is clearly enhancing market intelligence. So we are partnering here with 56 GP, 60 LP interests, and it's providing a huge diversity around investment type, geographic coverage, or sector coverage. Antoine, do you want to provide a comment on that as far as our GP relationship are concerned?
One thing we thank you, Henri. One thing we try to do is build relationship around the globe and long-term relationship across asset classes, geographies, sector. We've been using this balance sheet in what we call ecosystem to generate, you know, opportunities. It could be co-investment opportunities when it comes to private equity, to private debt, to real estate. It could be financing. And you've got two example here. We co-invested five times with J.C. Flowers doing financial services all around the globe. So for instance, when they invested into BTG Pactual a while ago, when the bank was private in Brazil, we co-invested with them alongside GIC.
More recently, we invested with them in Jefferson Capital, who just conducted an IPO, and for us, it's a 2x realization, but the multiple is close to 8x now, after the IPO. And so we generate, within our ecosystem, long-term relationship with families, with financial institution, with very strong GP, and that's part also of what I described earlier as the cloud. You know, Tikehau is not only 17 countries, 715 people, it's several families, several, really big and smart investor. And I think when I keep doing that, that will generate more opportunities, and also that's avoid you to do mistakes.
When you partner with some of the smartest investor in the financial service sector, it could be Flowers, but we've done things with Stone Point, which is the other big investor in the financial industry in the US, then you're a little bit smarter if you look at a leasing company, at a private equity company, at an insurance company, and so on and so on. That's really illustrate, you know, the DNA of Tikehau. It's not only one firm, one culture, one P&L, it's a cloud of partners all around the globe, which enable you to find smarter opportunities, avoid mistake, and accelerate when it times to accelerate.
And what's the takeaway? You're going to tell me. So here, we've provided a few data points, you know, both from listed ecosystem investments. Realized proceeds now are amounting above EUR 1.5 billion, net MOIC 1.4, that's a 13.2% net IRR. And as far as exited investment on co-investments are concerned, that's more than EUR 270 million of realized profits and a 2.3 net MOIC. So once again, here, you demonstrating—quite demonstration of what we've been achieving over the last cycles, have clearly demonstrated strong returns within our business model. Do you want to provide a comment, or we can-
Yeah, no, we had the opportunity to discuss a little bit earlier our investment in Schroders, but as you know, we've been using our balance sheet to invest in the financial services. Back in 2012, we bought Salvepar from Société Générale. In 2017, we were the second largest shareholder of Eurazeo with a 9.5%. So we are always, you know, screening the entire financial services industry. When it comes to Schroders, which is probably—which was the best name in the City of London, with a very unique business, size, very strong track record, the company has been under, you know, some pressure, and as a consequence, valuation was very bad.
So we decided to do two things: one, to become a relevant shareholder, owning more than 5.4% of Schroders, but also building a relationship with them, trying to be able to, you know, create product, increase our distribution channel, and we are still discussing with them on opportunities. And suddenly, a U.S. investor came, almost 2 years after we made the initial investment, decided to launch a takeover, and that's, you know, for us, is generate close to EUR 240 million of P&L, a very strong return. And we use the balance sheet to really do two things: deliver good investment and generate business. And that, that's part or that's illustrate perfectly what, what we've been doing for 22 years.
So now moving forward and now looking at the next four years, the next chapter, what we are gonna be, our allocation policy to as far as balance sheet is concerned. We are now exiting, you know, this phase where, as we mentioned, balance sheet was a growth enabler. We are entering into this next phase, where our balance sheet will be strategic allocator. Our priority will be now probably to deploy less, rotate faster, target higher velocity, and more value-add opportunities. No change here. Balance sheet allocation will be gearing forward Tikehau Capital strategies and ecosystem.
As far as Tikehau Capital strategies are concerned, obviously, we will keep on going, and we will have still strong skin in the game alongside our partners, but a focus will be reinforced on value-add strategies in PE, in real estate, and in credit, with expected returns over 15%, and as I mentioned, previously as well, greater flexibility, notably on co-investment, on ecosystem, similar pattern, strategic transaction, focus on high-performing investment and ancillary business. Three main objective, very clear: improve portfolio velocity, generate increasing profitability, and grow shareholder return. I mentioned lower capital intensity into the funds. If you have a look at the two previous cycle from 2018 to 2021, average out of yearly allocation in the funds was roughly EUR 450 million a year.
Since last cycle, from 2022 to 2025, it was roughly EUR 450, but including co-investment, the allocation will still be keep on going within co-investment and secure capital fund. But once again, lower capital intensity expected on this new cycle coming. We mentioned profitability and this next phase with its strong objective. Clearly, three main pillars will be enhancing our profitability scheme for the coming years. First one, operating leverage, and I'll be giving you in a minute the details of that. Performance-related earnings will be the second pillar on which we will be relying, and investment portfolio. Operating leverage, we are exiting this cycle, 2022-2025, where we have reached EUR 28 billion. We are now targeting more than EUR 35 billion for this next chapter in the coming years.
So clearly here, more selectivity—we will be more selective in adding adjacencies and target new initiative. We will be more focused, clearly, on scaling existing strategies. How are we going to achieve that? Once again, by deepening institutional relationship, high-growth region, such as APAC, Middle East, North America, and we will also broaden our distribution, like it was mentioned before by Antoine and Mathieu, notably to capture more private wealth demand. What will be the growth driver? You have them here, but clearly, all of them will be clearly used, and all the structure that was developed over the last 20 years, the 17 offices and the setup in place, will be clear in this new target to once again achieve more than EUR 35 billion, EUR 34 billion of fundraising for this new cycle.
Operating leverage, once again, here, I think that we have demonstrated that over the latest two fundraising cycle, operating leverage has already taken place. So, asset management, EBIT, moving from EUR 4 million to 114, at the time of the, latest Capital Markets Day back in 2022. Since then, reaching EUR 150 million, as we have described this morning. So that's a 52% CAGR since IPO. And once again, this sustainable growth has been supported by mix improvement and scale efficiencies. In that context, new chapter will be focused on reinforcement of this operating leverage, and we will be harvesting in this new phase. We are now targeting above between 45%-50% of core FRE margin by the year 2029.
Second pillar of this new phase of profitability, of this new phase of development, will be performance-related earnings. We've been repeating that for many years. Strong value embedded within the underlying value, the underlying funds, shareholder allocation, more than 54% of allocation of this carried interest to the balance sheet, significant profitability driver. We've seen that during the year 2025, by the way, it was the highest year in term of performance-related earnings, EUR 22 million. So we mentioned this morning, this EUR 220 million of unrealized performance related earnings. That's the picture, how the picture looks like at end of September 2025. So that's the underlying, you know, carried interest, which are being valued at fund level. We are expecting more than EUR 160 million to be maturing before the year 2029.
So we are here providing you a kind of a data point where we think the timing of this EUR 220 million, when, where we think it will be realized. By the way, that does not include any potential additional value creation that can be created between 2025 and the next coming four years, which will potentially create additional carried interest. Third pillar of this new chapter, we mentioned operating leverage, we mentioned performance-related earnings. Third one will be investment portfolio, and here we wanted to provide you a data point. Sorry to be a bit technical on that, but in terms of how do we recognize within our P&L the return of the fund? So up until now, all of our funds in which the balance sheet was invested have obviously been realizing capital gain.
They have been disposing of underlying stakes, and cash has been returned to the balance sheet. However, we want to assess that up until the DPI is below one, it does not create any P&L impact at our balance sheet level. So up until now, we had effectively some cash flow, but no, no P&L impact. As we are exiting the J-curve of most of our flagship, and as we will be entering over a DPI over one, we are expecting significant P&L effect from our balance sheet, and thus, the new, the kind of new forward-looking that we are providing today as far as net result, profitability is concerned. I was mentioning this J-curve effect. Once again here, two key decisions, two new allocations that are being discussed today.
First, allocation in new even-investment, which are allowing higher velocity. Second one, exiting G-curve for existing investments. These two elements will clearly drive this third pillar of the investment portfolio. Important data point as well on investment portfolio. Since the IPO, two clear cycle, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2025, these two cycle have so far return, have generated more than EUR 1.6 billion of capital return to the balance sheet. The next cycle that we are facing, from 2026 to 2029, we are expecting an increasing return of capital for the balance sheet, roughly above EUR 2 billion for the next four years.
So which mean that all the investment, once again, the investment portfolio that we have been describing together a few minutes ago, will generate more than EUR 4 billion of return of capital for the balance sheet. So now, how are we going to use this EUR 4 billion? And we had the question earlier today, new investment within our fund, balance sheet optimization, and shareholder return. Talking about shareholder return here, providing you a few, a few data point, our historical, dividend distribution history since IPO. We are reiterating today our guidance, which is to effectively a strong commitment to distribute more than 80% of our asset management EBIT per year.
Meanwhile, we are providing you this new guidance on asset management, EBIT for 2026, and as well for 2025 up until 2029, notably reaching this 45%-50% core FRE margin. So I hope that all these points, once again, are illustrating this new next phase of development, once again, based on these three pillars clearly identified and described together. Antoine, Mathieu, maybe I will let you the floor for any concluding remark, if any, or otherwise we can open a Q&A. Thank you.
Maybe just thank you, Henri. Just commenting on the last slide on the dividend. As you notice, you know, we've been two times since the IPO paying exceptional dividend. If we continue to deliver strongly on the balance sheet return, we'll probably, you know, have excess capital, because as Henri described, we need to put less money into our asset management funds. So we could expect probably in the next cycle to make sure that we improve the return for shareholder. Shall we take some question? Yeah.
Let's take some questions. Several questions from the room. Question from RBC.
Hi, David Beck, RBC Capital Markets. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one on, fee-related earnings margin development. Can you share more color on what sort of cost discipline assumption underpin the margin expansion as you continue to scale? Second is on secondaries. Perhaps you could expand on what is your longer-term ambition for these funds, and how competitive do you expect the secondary space to be over the next few years as your listed peers, well, some of your listed peers, are actively pushing to accelerate growth there? And then lastly, on AI, and specifically, if you observe any material impact on your cybersecurity mandates. Also interested to know how you distinguish between AI winners and AI losers within your investment process. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Maybe I, I take the first one, on, on operational margin. I think we have a slide, Theo, on, a basis point per, management fees per asset class, if we can show that. As everybody know, there is a, a strong pressure from management fees in the traditional asset manager, which, which get totally disrupted, by the ETF, business. When it comes to private assets, we continue to, you know, preserve the, the, the, the management fees, if I may say, and if we can get the slide, you, you will get a sense. But overall, our management fees remain a little bit stable, decline a little bit, but we have our private equity, increasing in terms of size. And as you will see on the slide, the private equity management fees is improving.
We are at 177, so 1.77% management fee last year. We are above 1.85% management fees. So when it comes to revenues, we're seeing that revenue will increase because of the private equity is increasing at Tikehau in terms of size and businesses. When we look at credit, there is some. It's not pressure, but our average management fees is declining because we are issuing more CLOs, and CLOs, the management fees is lower than the direct lending or the secondary private debt. But overall, we managed to keep the same management fees. As Henri pointed, we have more performance fees. We noticed that in 2005, with a 5.4 basis points.
So when it comes to revenue, to answer your question, revenues will continue to increase. We are fairly convinced of that. Henri mentioned it, we start managing the costs. You know, the first phase was really the growth phase. We open offices, we hire people. Now we are becoming much more cost-conscious, so that's mean that operating expense will, you know, probably be managed in a better way. And as a result, that will lead to an increase in the margin of our asset management business.
... Yeah, I'm happy to take the one on the secondaries. So when we decided to launch the private credit secondaries, which is, you know, what we are focusing on, you know, right now, that was in the context of our opening in North America, you know, in New York. And when we discussed with our partners, you know, with Cécile here, who's leading our direct lending practice, we say: Okay, I mean, what would be the differentiating angle for us to be another direct lender in the U.S., which is already a highly populated market? And that was seven years ago. That was, you know, even before you know what's going on, you know, right now.
We came to the conclusion that after this very solid and robust cycle of primary allocation to private credit over the past, you know, 10, 15 years, similar to what had happened to private equities and the development of secondaries private equity, there would be a natural opportunity to provide liquidity to some LPs allocated to the asset class, who would be willing to rebalance, you know, their portfolios. We thought that we were best positioned to do that because we were not a secondary solution provider, like many of our competitors can be, you know, and that's their positioning.
But we were a credit investor at heart, and so we could demonstrate the merits of doing the underwriting, using our balance sheet, as Henri just told you, and that's how we launched, you know, this practice. And what was perceived in 2020, like, a very cyclical opportunity that was, you know, right in the middle of COVID, people were, you know, throwing away their financial assets, became very quickly a structural strategy. And today, you know, as some of our competitors and some more established names, you know, started to develop there, in a matter of four years, it has become an asset class on its own.
As Antoine said, you know, we just closed our second vintage, so we now have, you know, more track record than some of our competitors to demonstrate the merits of the of the strategy. We've been allocating a lot of our on-balance sheet. We've been using the balance sheet. You know, the example that Henri was saying earlier, you know, I can elaborate on that. Our first fund was shy of $500 million, and then came an opportunity to buy a portfolio, actually, a single asset, but a portfolio from a Taiwanese insurance company who was getting out of a Goldman Sachs mezzanine fund, a very large $15 billion fund, which we're already an LP with.
We knew the credit, and we knew that in order to do that, you know, we could not do that with the fund, or by the time we would go and pitch our LPs or, "Are you interested with this co-invest?" The opportunity would be gone. So that's where the balance sheet is the most differentiating asset, and that's why, you know, today we're trying to once again convince you that it's not a burden, it's our most valuable asset. You know, enabled us to underwrite that, get this asset at some very attractive financial terms, and then once you had secured this opportunity, bring on some LPs, including some, Hong Kong-based insurance companies, European insurance companies, and turn this balance sheet capital into third-party, fee-paying asset management.
So today, you know, as we close the second vintage, you know, at a $1 billion capital, we are convinced, as I said earlier, that not only it's a natural evolution when you're in the private market to find, you know, some, some liquidity. And add on top of that, the little noise, you know, that we've been having for the past few weeks, we would expect this to increase. And today, when you look at all the competitive landscape of our friends, you know, all the managers, it's probably $20 billion that has been raised by way of funds or SMAs, and the opportunity set in front of that is $100 billion. And those are public-private pension funds, insurance companies, family offices who are rebalancing their portfolio.
And we like this situation where the supply-demand is totally in balance because that's where you become a little bit of a price setter. And as a consequence, I mean, today, you saw public numbers, you know, where we're disclosing our fundraising. The close to EUR 2 billion that we have deployed there have been, you know, both at $0.84-$0.85, which, you know, on an average 3-3.5 years remaining portfolio, you're creating a 500 basis points pickup for this illiquidity. If you remember, in secondary private equity during COVID, when interest rates were at zero, the secondary market was trading at a premium to NAV. Because that's when people were like: If I can deploy overnight some capital instead of having...
Or we had some negative interest rates, if you remember, having some cash at the bank was costing you some money. So obviously, you know, in some more defensive, downside-protected credit investment that we can underwrite in a bottom-up, we like the risk-reward and that we can generate effectively some mid-teens return. That's the return that we've been generating so far, which ticks exactly the type of return on equity we want to have for the balance sheet.
You had a question on AI and impact on our cybersecurity business. Difficult for me to comment on. I'm a bit puzzled, to be, to say the least, on AI winners and AI losers. I've seen some company that are dealing, you know, with food premises and so on, being AI losers and suddenly having decreasing value, so trying to understand that. I will not provide further comments. All I can tell you is that our cybersecurity business, we are currently operating the fourth vintage. We had strong demand from investors, and the size of fund number four has roughly doubled. By the way, meanwhile, something is currently happening over the last years, in notably since 2022, which is clearly called sovereignty.
I think there's a clear here, a new environment, new paradigm, where people are realizing that it's key. I can tell you that within our portfolio, we are the biggest, you know, venture cybersecurity business with this fund in Europe. We are shareholder of a company called ChapsVision. It's a global data treatment. All its system are being used by the European government. Some may call it, you know, the European Palantir, but clearly this company is growing significantly. We are a shareholder of Memo-IT, which is a company, you know, providing data access to local information system locally or at distance.
I can tell you what we are seeing is strong business growth in all this company, because major, many companies in Europe are trying, you know, to replace, you know, and to be less dependent from the U.S. on all these sectors.
Isobel from Autonomous. Thank you.
Hi, it's Isobel from Autonomous Research. Thanks for taking my question. So I have two, please. My first question, it was in the context that I understood from the full year 2025 results session, that you expect FRE operating expenses to be broadly flat YoY. So first of all, correct me if I misunderstood there. But given this, we are seeing a number of your global peers move aggressively into Europe, both institutional fundraising and on the private wealth side, including lots of hiring of dedicated sales teams to push distribution. So how are you thinking about reconciling the need for operating cost control against maintaining or expanding your competitive positioning and market share? And then my second question is on PRE. Thank you for the color on when you think it's going to mature.
On the EUR 160 million that you expect to mature before 2029, should we expect that to be more back-end loaded towards 2029, or could we see a substantial share come through this year, please? I appreciate that might be hard to predict, but maybe if you could set out some parameters. Do we need a certain fund to do very well or a couple of disposals, to trigger that first recognition? Thank you.
You know that-
Go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead.
You know that performance-related earnings, I don't have an Excel spreadsheet with every month for the... It will obviously depends from value creation and exits. So obviously, internally, we have all of our underlying, 600 position, that we are hosting on PE private debt. We are working on some kind of forecast, but difficult effectively to provide you data, strong data set, either by year or by quarter.
But, but maybe what we can say is that the figure you saw here, the 220, it was the same figure as two years ago, if you reflect.
Mm-hmm.
We add in between for the two years, 40. So we receive 40, 22 this year and a little bit less in 2023. So we still have the same 220, so that means that our AUM base is growing, our eligible AUM base to carry interest is growing. As you know, we try to be conservative on that because you cannot really predict PRE. What we can say is that we are building more and more private equity exposure, which will generate probably more carried interest than traditional real estate or credit. When Henri and Vincent highlighted 2.6x multiple on exit on private equity, it's generating more carried.
So I think, you know, we are very optimistic, very difficult to predict because it depends on the market, on your asset, where you're going to exit, but we are fairly confident that one is growing, and it's highly diversified because secondary private debt is, is another example, where we're going to get carried interest as well. So that's mean that we are diversifying our pool of carried interest. Difficult to predict, but it's improving, and we are very confident of that. And in fact-
If I make co-investment, carried interest are obviously quicker than fund carried interest.
Maybe if you go back to your first question regarding retail, one of the firm's motto is "Create, don't compete." 30% of the money we manage is coming from retail investor, directly or indirectly. So we've been pioneer in France with unit-linked product. We launched with our partner in Intesa four years ago a very big program. We've done the same thing with our partner in Abu Dhabi, First Abu Dhabi Bank. We just signed something with the largest bank in Singapore. So my comment is that we still have 30% of our AUM coming from retail investor. I mentioned large family offices that investing directly with us. So do we need, to go back to your question, do we need to build a giant sales force to tackle the retail?
We are not convinced, and that's not what we are going to do. We see our peer group in the U.S. hiring 100 of people to cover IFAs, banks, and so on. We are fairly convinced that we can, you know, keep growing there without adding gigantic cost, number one. Number two, we'll try to be more digital, so we create our own platform, Opale, which is already fully operational. It's not gigantic, but in 2025, we raised EUR 260 million through this channel, and it's a greenfield. So we don't think we need to add a lot of resources. Our competition is doing the other way around, and they have larger brand than us, the U.S. guys, not the European guys.
But we are fairly convinced that it will not destroy the profitability of the asset management.
Maybe to preempt, you know, a follow-on question, which is, all this retail focus, you know, by, by many, we've been fairly constant and, and public on that. We thought that there's, that, that there might have been a bit of mis-selling in trying to address this market with open-ended evergreen structure. And I'm not only reacting to the headlines, you know, of the past few days, but, you know, there's been-
... you know, I don't want to name anybody, but there's been some things on the real estate, you know, happening. How can you have some daily liquidity when you're owning 25 buildings in the City of London? How do you want to offer, you know, the liquidity to your clients? On the private equity, the same thing, and some of the boost funds have grown exponentially because obviously, you had a very good brand, a good track record. And some people may have said, and it's not about, you know, the managers, sometimes the distribution saying, "Oh, you can buy, you know, this private equity or private debt fund. It's like buying, you know, Euro-European equity UCITS." Well, it's not the same thing when it comes to liquidity. And, you know, our conviction is that you rarely die of your assets, but very often of your liabilities.
That's a risk that is now, you know, in the market, that don't want to be overreacting, you know, to some news flow. But, you know, part of what we show you, we have out of the EUR 52.8 billion, we've got EUR 200 million in an open-ended structure with a targeted return of 7%-8%, when the other people are showing a low teens because of the leverage which is putting. So, you know, we are looking at the technology. We want to make sure that we can, you know, address and tackle, you know, the opportunity, but that will never be with... You know, that we will never compromise with the asset liability matching that we believe is what we owe to our customers.
There are some product whereby you don't really need specific sales force. So we have we launch one unit- linked product with our French partner, Société Générale. It's a unit- linked product dedicated to aerospace and defense, and for the first two months, it's been EUR 1 million per day, more or less. It's not our sales force, it's it's really the sales force of the bank. So we don't need to add extra people to market that.
Question from Nicolas Payen from Kepler.
Here.
Oh, here, please. Thank you, Lucy.
Thank you. This morning, thanks for taking my question. Nicolas Payen from Kepler Cheuvreux. The first one on net inflows. Just wondering, what kind of environment assumption have you backed in in your planning when you set up your net inflow targets? And also, if you could give us a bit of color regarding the kind of asset class mix you're expecting or regarding net inflows to till 2029. That's the first question. Then the second one will be on balance sheet investment returns. Thank you very much for your comments regarding the acceleration on the J-curve. Just wondering, what kind of return shall we expect on the in the balance sheet? If I remember well, last time you mentioned something like 10%-15% return on balance sheet investment. So wondering if that still holds. Thank you.
I start with net inflows. As Mathieu, when he started, highlighted, it's the fourth year in a row, record year when it comes to fundraising. If you look at the net new money, the EUR 8 billion we get or the 10.5% growth, it's now really coming from all around the world, and still 50% is going into private credit, but within private credit, it's highly diversified between secondary private debt, direct lending, CLO, and so on.
Special
My, my point here is that we try to diversify as much as possible. As business owner, you want to build a very diversified business. So now that the platform is fully operating, we're gonna expect net inflows coming from all around the globe. For the first time, we had, you know, a reinsurance company invested EUR 500 million with us in 2025. You know, 12, 12 months ago, we never came across this investor. We had a German reinsurer company investing EUR 350 million with us in 2025, first time. Large Japanese insurance company investing EUR 200 million in 2025 in a direct lending fund. So to illustrate that, the net inflows will come, you know, from all around the globe.
We will probably benefit from the geopolitics at some point. So I give you one of our favorite topic, Canadian pension fund, which are by far the largest, probably similar to the super annuities in Australia. They used to put all their money with the large U.S. GPs. Now, they want to find European and Asian GP. So going back to your question, the net inflows will really come broadly from, you know, all the geographies, number one. When you look at institutional investor and retail, we comment a little bit earlier, but we keep build the infrastructure, the technology to attract retail investor. It will also come on specific asset classes. So as everybody know, real estate has been very difficult for a lot of people around the globe.
We've been very acquisitive in 2024 and 2025, so we start reinvesting in real estate because we see very good opportunities. So I suspect we're gonna be the one benefiting from this shift back to real estate. We are not commenting and giving the exact breakdown of the 2029 in terms of asset classes breakdown. So that will be my... Sorry, my answer on net inflows. Maybe Mathieu?
There's one, it's an anecdote, but I, I kind of like it. You know, Q2 2025, so a year ago, we raised more in Latin America than we raised in France. For me, it was, you know, it was an interesting anecdote because I've never been there. Antoine has never been there. You know, we've got our colleagues covering Peru, Chile, Mexico, you know, from Madrid. By, you know, working this market over the past two years, now we're starting harvesting, you know, at a time where some in, you know, our domestic market... You know, so that's where this complementary, you know, comes. This harvesting concept where we've been, we've been reinforcing, you know, all morning, it's really about that.
That, you know, we made the investments because our CapEx are our OpEx, and now you're starting to have the investment payback.
... maybe your second question on, on balance sheet return. Our goal is, is to make sure we continue to deliver, mid-teen returns. We've been, a little bit trapped into J-Curve, as, Henri describe. So the way we are, we are allocating the balance sheet moving forward is probably in a much more cautious manner. We have still, you know, the s- the same target. And by the way, we build the firm being good investor at building the balance sheet. I, I like saying that, but we started Tikehau as an investment company in 2004, and it's only 3 years after that we launched the asset management. And the asset management has been able to grow from EUR 4 million AUM to EUR 150 million AUM because we've been seeding the strategy and investing.
We are investor before being asset manager, and I think we're going to be very disciplined and probably much more disciplined than when we were before. I'm not saying that we are not disciplined, but now it's really the time of harvesting. And the investment committee managing the balance sheet, called the Capital Allocation Committee, is becoming much more difficult. For instance, when internal teams are knocking at the door to say, "Yeah, we have a new strategy. We want, sorry, to launch a new fund dedicating to cycling, and we are targeting 7%," but the likelihood, you know, we take the piece of paper and, it's going directly in the shredder is 100%.
When it comes to balance sheet investment and balance sheet return, we're going to stick to the same, you know, mid-teen return, which is going to be a mix of stuff because, you know, asset classes are different. But that's what we target.
There, there's-
And that's not-
Last, last-
Sorry, go ahead.
No, last point, coming back to your first question. There's no dependence on one market, sorry, on one geography or one asset owner type, you know, for our fundraising. Now, it's really, you know, broadened. And the same thing you may have picked up this morning in the detailed report we issued. Last year, our real estate fundraising on our open-ended funds and our CMS, you know, fundraising was actually, you know, very modest, to say the least, which historically have been very strong engine of growth. So obviously, those one are open-ended, but you should expect, you know, significant pick up there, too.
He wanted to say engine.
Questions from Iulian ODDO BHF . Thank you.
Afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. I have two. Perhaps the first one is on the core FRE guidance that you give. Just wondering if you could speak about the drivers for reaching the upper end of the range, so that would be the 50%. Kind of, you know, think about the building blocks, so, you know, what would be the step up from 45% to 50%? And the other one is, if you could also say something about the potential gaps that you've identified in the operation model, so perhaps strategies, niches, and that you'd like to develop, or I think, using Antoine's words, innovate as you enter in this new growth cycle.
On the core FRE margin, you know, I provided earlier the three main drivers. Obviously, we have the mix effect driving the core FRE margin. We have, in terms of revenue, the pace of co-investment as well is an important feature. You know, the more we are able to structure a co-investment with additional revenue will be as well impacting that. And then there you have, on the other way around, obviously, all the cost initiative. And here we will be most, we'll be more cautious, notably on extending any geography or extending any services.
Difficult to assess in terms of timing, but we are clearly seeing something like 50% could be achieved, depending on the pace on deployment on these three drivers.
Probably it will depend, as you know, on the business mix. So if we have more private equity coming, obviously, the operating margin is improving, and the plan is really to keep growing at a faster pace our private equity. If you think about it, at the IPO time, you know, we had no private equity, a part of balance sheet investment. Now we are getting close to $10 billion of private equity. So in a difficult market, because nobody has been waiting for us, private equity is suffering a lot. But the margin will be depending also on the pace of our private equity expansion.
But if I may, on private equity, I think you mentioned it, but I think we are the only one to have such differentiating factors, notably this partnering with industrial. You know, we are relying on these two main transitions, energy transition, this decarbonization on one hand, Aerospace and Defense on the other hand. And on both strategies, we've been partnering with the biggest knowledgeable people in the industry, and that provides a key differentiating factor.
Going back to your question on innovation, you know, we really build the firm innovating, and it's been asset class. It just was already described. You know, people doing private equity have been generalists. We decided to be specialized just because we said that, you know, we're not going to be another LBO shop. So we decided to be vertical. We are studying various vertical right now. So you're going to see us innovating. We want to make sure, while we innovate, we are doing stuff we understand. So, you know, we don't expect to be active in cryptocurrency or, you know, we're going to stick to what we are good at. It's sourcing good opportunities that we understand. We have a lot of idea, and we keep having a lot of idea.
What changed probably is that we want to make sure that when we launch a new strategy, it needs to be really scalable. In the past, we saw that we had great ideas. So for instance, my colleague will kill me, but we launched something called Tikehau Green Assets, which was an amazing idea, an amazing team, and we have EUR 130 million into the fund. And I must say that EUR 130 million is totally subscale. So we want to make sure that while we innovate, it needs to be really scalable, you know, above EUR 1 billion for sure, and, and potentially make sure it's multi-billion. You, you should see, I guess, you know, some extension or, let's say, you know, adjacencies.
So, when launching, I don't know, let's say CLO, you know, CLO is a very scalable but commoditized product. When we launched in the U.S. four years ago, we had been operating in London since 2015. The CLO pool in the U.S., because of the nature of and the structure of the market, is running twice as fast, and we're scaling, you know, we're now pricing of CLO number eight in four years, when we had, you know, 15 in London.
When we launched direct lending in Asia, you know, that's because we think that we're getting to the point with the right partnership, the right shareholders, the right investors, to effectively have these adjacencies of a, you know, a first fund, a first move, that then we'll be able to to scale. As Antoine said, you know, our very first direct lending fund in 2007, so it's almost 20 years now, it was EUR 125 million. The last vintage, number six, that we just closed a couple of weeks ago, is past, you know, EUR 5 billion. So you get effectively all that is, is feeding, you know, the operating leverage and the operating, you know, margin that we were, you know, talking about. You should see us expanding in real estate in North America.
We've got a EUR 20 billion real estate platform in Europe. We're managing public REITs, private REITs, commingled funds, open-ended, open-ended funds. There is an opportunity right now that the natural extension into real estate, be debt or equity, is made, I wouldn't say at marginal cost, but it's made at a phase in our development that the drop-through is also, you know, feeding your, you know, your bottom line. So, so that's where you would see some, you will see some, you know, some natural expansion of the platform.
Thank you. Maybe I'm conscious of time. One last question from this gentleman from DLTV, Beltrán Palazuelo. Thank you.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may.
Mm-hmm.
First one is share price. Very strong execution, very strong everything, but the share price does not reflect it. So how far is this management team willing to know, to execute its tools in order that the market recognizes its intrinsic value? Because I think the market is not nearly recognizing the net asset value of its balance sheet. And the second is strategies for risk mitigation for the thirst of the French government of taxing everything. So, what now ideas, when we see all competitors, sometimes they have other jurisdictions, to make their tax not go higher and higher. So thank you very much, and thank you for the strong execution.
Thank you for your question. Share price, you know, needless to say, not only because as we are, the, the largest shareholder, because we still control, the employees still control 54% of the firm, we get very frustrated as some of our shareholder. So I think to cope with that, few things. One, we need to make sure we keep executing, and it's, and it's painful because, you know, you execute, and your shop, your share price is not moving. So if you look the slide I like on the EBIT, you started, you know, when you list the asset management was EUR 4 million EBIT, now it's EUR 150 million. Let's forget everything, okay? I'm launching a new company, I give you a business plan, and I'm telling you that 9 years from now, I'm going to reach EUR 150 million of EBIT.
Everybody will tell, "Okay, this guy, you know, he smoked something," because you cannot move from zero to EUR 150 million of EBIT. So we're going to keep, you know, delivering on the profitability of the asset management, and I think it's really accelerating. So that's number one. Number two, the balance sheet, and that's why, you know, on purpose, I put this slide. We have really two businesses, which are very different. We use the balance sheet to launch the asset management, to seed, to accelerate. But we are fairly convinced that the sum of the two balance sheet, the sum of the parts, if I may say, is probably twice at least, the stock where we trade now at EUR 16.
So we're going to try to keep delivering, but also at some point, if we are not able to move the share price - and it's not only, I think, hopefully, us, the sector, it's also mid-market. Stock market in Europe is a little bit broken. So at some point, it will come back, and we start seeing a lot of U.S. investor coming to buy European shares. Not only doing takeover as Nuveen and Schroders, but we start more U.S. guys coming, so hopefully it will change the market because we need the market to change. But I must say that, you know, if we are not able to change the stock price just doing our regular job and probably increasing the payouts for the shareholder, we may took more, I don't know, structural changes.
You know, we already simplified the structure. When we listed, as everybody remember, we had a baroque structure. We simplified the group. So now we are clearly saying that we have two businesses, and I'm not telling you that we are gonna split the company in two companies. But, you know, we want to make sure if you are listed that the stock price and the stock performance is working. Because when you travel the world, you know, everybody's looking at your stock price. You pitch a Korean investor for your direct lending, the first thing he's doing is Google stock price, flat, a little bit down. But these guys are telling me they deliver a lot of performances at their fund level, but... So we are all on top of that. We are spending a fair amount of time.
Now, as the asset management is more profitable, I think it's going to be much more easy for us to change that. There is plenty of, you know, structural optionality. I guess that's part of the message, you know, we wanted to convey today. I mean, we've always been long-term greedy in making sure we can demonstrate and execute, because when you start from zero or five, you know, you have to show over a cycle, a few cycle, that you are delivering, which I'm convinced, you know, we are doing, and the rest, you know, should follow. If it does not follow, there are some structural optionality.
Now, your question on France is a key question. We're going to face election in-
For sure.
in a few months. We are, I mean, dealing with it, and then.
That-
... difficult to comment, but we are dealing with it.
That's why, you know, I think I mentioned it two times already, but we make sure we build a very diversified business in terms of asset classes, geographies, both on the asset and liability side. So we want to make sure we raise money all around the globe, and we want to make sure we invest more or less everywhere in Europe. But also, Mathieu mentioned North America, we start doing more and more real estate because real estate is a mess. So we took advantage of that, being contrarian, and at the end of the day, we're going to build a global, diversified business. And it's changing all the time. You know, the perspective, we discussed Spain and Italy.
Ten years ago, you know, when we opened— So this year, so in 2025, it was the 10-year anniversary of our Italian opening in Milan, okay? People at the board of Tikehau told us ten years ago, "You're opening in Milan? Are you crazy?" And now everybody is going to Milan. So that's why, once again, create, don't compete. We have very strong conviction. You know, France remain France. It's one of the largest country in Europe when you, when you look at, you know, economic footprint, innovation, and so, you know, we're going to continue to do stuff in France, but maybe the way we allocate is going to be, you know, more diversified.
Well, thank you so much to everybody. Thank you to the speakers, to the audience today for your engagement. We can continue our discussions in a more informal manner with a light cocktail. Big thank you to the IR team that works in the shadow. And thank you very much, and we look forward to build this next chapter together. Thank you.