Thanks, very warm welcome from my side. I will guide you through our ramp year, which is obviously not a highlight from what the numbers you could have grasped, but I will go through that now in quite details. If we start on page three, you will see that our NAV has barely budged over one year. That definitely is below our aspiration and definitely also below our long-term growth rates. The quarter was quite kind of weak with EUR -35 million of group income, and we will come to the reasons for that later. We maintained our dividend steady, and we're paying out also dividend for the ramp year.
Our fund services has been stable as mostly of the time, and we have EUR 250 million of undrawn liquidity, which is quite frankly, on the higher side of where we are and which is also a bit too high. We are actively out in the market. We did close one transaction on the debt side in January. We think we will do one or two more debt deals quite soonly. We have quite a high amount of letters of indication out on the private equity side. Let's see. It's a bit early there to tell, but we are really looking to deploy this money in what we think is a very benign investment environment here.
For the time being, we, given our ample liquidity and, we always said that, we will pay a stable dividend and steer out excess liquidity via share buybacks. That's why, we have renewed our share buyback program. And we think that it's still an appropriate and also very attractive way to reward, especially long-term shareholders. Because one share buyback program doesn't alter the needle, but over time it will and should compound nicely, especially if we keep on buying at significant discounts to what we deem a very conservative NAV. Moving over to the next slide. Again, it's a bit repetitive to figures. The EUR 35 million of negative net income translate into minus EUR 2 per share.
Overall, also backed by the share buyback program, our NAV, we were able to keep our NAV stable over a period of 12 months. On the next slide, you see in terms of sectors and the sectors picture does not have changed. What you see here is still that we still have quite a high concentration in the top five, despite Solvares having left that field. It's a picture you see also on the stock market. A few companies with secular growth drivers are really hammering ahead, whereas the other others still are lagging traction. Although, we see that some of the restructuring measures we did over the last two years are bearing fruit.
For example, our investment in Metalworks in Italy, which we had taken a cautious stand and also take down valuation is because of the situation in the luxury space, for example. That will be interesting for some of you who are looking for a cross-read. For the first three months of this year, it looks like the company will be ahead of budget, which is also a bit reflected on the luxury, on the feedback you get on the luxury side on LVMH and Kering. It's not all doom and gloom. We see clearly signs of stabilization and also when you add stabilization to restructuring and reorganization efforts, we think we are on the verge of again having growing earnings throughout the broader fields here.
Coming to the next slide, our transaction activity. You see, we have done another deal in Italy, another deal in the luxury space. It's a very niche-y business. It's like here, the market leader in world market leader in premium natural hair extensions. It's a business with very attractive margin, very attractive cash conversion. We bought it over a lengthy period of negotiations with family members directly from the family in a bilateral way. The beauty, and we have not shown that here, but one of the beauty of the bilateral situation and the lengthy discussions was that we were able, what was perceived as a potential valuation gap in terms of what the family thought the business was worth and what we were willing to pay, to bridge that in the form of structured equity.
Our equity is senior to the reinvestment of the family and also subject to a very nice preferred interest payments. We think that we have invested here our money and the money of our shareholders in a very defensive and also attractive way. Our aim is to grow in the U.S. because the company, although it's a clear world market leader and it has a tremendous market position in Europe, but in the U.S., we can still, we see ample room for growth, and we are looking and stretching our heads on and what the best approach to enter the market in the U.S. in a more consequential way. Very excited about this opportunity.
It shows also that in Italy we are able to source really nice transactions in the bilateral way with a very German name. Coming to the numbers on the next slide, to give you some more granularity on bridge. You see that our net asset value per share decreased from EUR 37-EUR 35 per share. We were able to match, say, in the range of our guidance, and I will not deny it, given that it was a ramp year and given that we saw that because of multiple changes, it would anyway be a weak quarter. I think we also took a very cautious stance on some laggards in the books. We feel very clean now with our books going forward.
We had one company in the automotive sector which came in with a negative EBITDA. I think it's one of the last companies in our portfolio in the automotive space, and we basically have written that off. That was not the main driver of our earnings. On the next slide, you see a bit in terms of portfolio value. You see that our additions were much smaller than we wanted them to be, and they were also eclipsed by the size of the disposals. Then again, the change in multiple was really what hit us in this quarter. In terms of the largest exits, was Solvares, which was a top five portfolio company that was sold to a continuation fund with more money outside.
We also sold our long-term part of our long-term investment in Hausheld. In terms of investments, the main drivers were Solvares continuation fund and our investment in Great Lengths. Now to the probably the most, no, I would not say exciting, but the most important slide in the conference call is when you break down our negative income of EUR 36.2 million, you see that the main part is really driven by multiples, change in multiples. It might be counterintuitive given the good way the stock market has behaved. Nevertheless, if you look in depth in terms of the IT service space, for example, also with other companies, multiples have come down in our peer groups, and the effect is twofold.
Typically, this was always our weakest quarter because what happens is that, per 31st of December 2024, we base our valuations on new budgets and new peer groups. The capital market multiples typically decline in Q4 because valuation multiples do not reflect the new 2025 budgets. It's like, when you roll over from one year to another, you take a share price, which is EUR 6, and you have higher earnings, or as typically you have higher earnings in the year N+1 because everybody's optimistic. What happens then is that your multiple goes down. That effect had and has always been hammering us. Again, here we took also a cautious stance with other portfolio companies.
If you look at the operating performance, that was really just a minor driver in terms of what drove our net income. Yeah. We expect, and I'm being cautious here, but we expect that effect to reverse over the course of this year. I come to that later. That is also why we really explicitly stick with our mid and long-term guidance. Because if we look at the granularity of which companies were hit by the change in multiples, it's mostly very benign companies which are doing quite well, actually. Yeah. We note that out more as an accounting bad income than an operating bad income.
I am quite happy that with now moving to a normal calendar year, this effect will be only felt in Q4 and no longer in Q1 for DBAG, which will allow us to smoothen and steer out a bit more the income and don't come in with such negative surprises in the start of the year. It always is a bit difficult. I'm fully aware it also makes valuing and also investing in our stock quite difficult. On the next slide, you see that we have increased our fund services business. This was also driven by the a one-time payment in because we fronted some of the investments in the ECF IV, our fund we closed.
When some other investors joined during the course of our last year, we got an equalization payment. Rather technical terms. All in all, this was a very strong quarter and unfortunately also a bit inflated by the tune of EUR 2 million. Nevertheless, also with the Solvares Continuation Fund kicking in, we expect at least stable earnings here. On the next slide, you see that Right now, we have a bit of excess liquidity. We really have an excellent financial base to serve all of our commitments. We are lagging a bit behind on employment, something we are fully aware of, and we aim to address over the course of this year. On the next slide, coming to the guidance and our outlook.
I really want to make the point that we stick to our full year guidance in 2025. You know, when you say that, you stick to your guidance, you know, the reference point should actually be the midpoint, yeah. We see-- although we had a weak start, we don't see any reason to change that because, as I said, the negative net income was also due in some parts to technical valuation issues, yeah. We expect significant more capital deployment, but also realizations. I think the capital deployment will be something which will be more in the 1st half of the year. At least it looks like it, you never know until it is done.
The realizations will be something towards summer and then September, October, just in terms of managing the expectations. We have a comprehensive realization program ongoing. The banks are mandated, and quite frankly, the debt markets are also very, very supportive for the time being, so that has also improved significantly. Okay, thanks. That would be all for us. Again, a disappointing quarter, driven also by technical effects. No excuse here from our side, and we will try our best to reverse this during the course of the year and, yeah, stick with our guidance and our check.
Thank you for joining the call.