Good morning, everyone. Pleasure to have you all here. My name is Youssef Zauaghi, overseeing External Comms at Deutsche Beteiligungs AG, and more than happy to kick off our quarterly analyst call. In the interest of time, I'd like to hand over to Tom Alzin, the Spokesman of the Board of Deutsche Beteiligungs AG.
Yeah. Thank you, Youssef, and a warm welcome also on my side. I would also like to introduce you and welcome, for the first time, but she's been working for one year now with us, Melanie Wiese, our CFO. She will guide you through a more detailed picture and the granularity of the numbers below our conference call, yeah. Jumping into the first slide, we have been highly active in terms of re-reviewing deals, but, obviously, we have not yet materialized nor on the sell or buy side, something. We just closed some transactions. I come to that later. All in all, the NAV has been barely unchanged. I would not interpret too much into this, one quarter of earnings.
I would say this could be a very typical quarter result, notwithstanding our forecast or even our midterm guidance. We feel very comfortable where we sit at. That's why we've reiterated our forecast and view this as a rather uneventful, although not the most pleasant, quarter. Obviously, earnings from fund investment services have been stable and in the range we provided you. Jumping to the next slide, with NAV barely unchanged, we're still sitting around EUR 30 per share. The share still trading significantly below that, hence also one of the reasons why we changed our dividend policy and guided and reiterated our guidance also in the press statement that we are actively looking at share buybacks somewhere down the road.
Earnings before tax, slightly negative, with EUR 8 million, but all in all, that's a 1% change. The cash flow from investment activity has also been negative, given that some investment and also our investment in ELF just closed this quarter. Yeah. Fund investment services, as I said before, EUR 2.5 million, and that leads to a group income of minus EUR 5.9 million. Jumping to the next slide. Again, you know this chart from prior quarterly calls. Our market is still quite intact, although there has been a significant drop in 2022 that has continued in 2023.
Probably, nevertheless, we have been very active and also, we have been rewarded by that, because we just got the title from a renowned German finance magazine that we have been the most active player in the German market over the last year. You know, there's the old saying that when blood in the streets, there's also opportunity, and we think we seized on some opportunities in bilateral situations, being very stringent on our purchase prices. We did some investments where we feel very comfortable over the long term and their development. For us, our investment opportunities have been quite, reviewed opportunities have been quite stable. Jumping over to the next slide. Our investment in NOKERA closed, our investment in ProMik closed.
The transaction in Pfaudler has closed in the quarter, also our first full long-term investment in LNS has closed during this quarter. We did one add-on on akquinet, one of our IT platforms. We did two add-ons with RWE, we're very happy also to do already a first add-on for Avrio Energie. Please bear in mind that RWE and Avrio Energie have only closed two quarters before. That's a very active start to these two investments already, we're seeing a nice pipeline in both. Obviously, also on Metalworks, our game-changing acquisition for this investment closed during the quarter, we're very happy with that because that absolutely return as a prime customer to our jeweler base here.
Jumping to the next slide. Nothing eventful there. Given that no new investment has been done, it remains pretty much the same. We continue to remain very diversified in terms of sectors, and we're not going to change that. As I said before, relative to where we have been historically, our book is still valued at the very early phase of where, you know, the appreciation came from. We are looking to do 2.5, hopefully more, on average on our transactions. I think that's also what has been achieved historically on our long-term track record.
With the book, which is valued on roughly at still cost, we have a portfolio which would bode very, very well for capital appreciation as of now. That's why we feel very good about our NAV and also our share repurchases. Here, as I alluded before, you see that we have gotten an award which is a bit of a silly metric in our in our market space, but nevertheless, we are proud of. More and more, and that's what's playing in our cards, you know, brands becoming a differentiator. The times where five seasoned investment bankers could start a private equity fund and be successful and quickly grow are, in my opinion, over. We are more and more viewing a consolidation in the alternative asset space.
As you've seen before with ELF transaction, we decided to be an active consolidator also in that space and looking forward to the development of our company. Hence, brand image is becoming more and more important and becoming a differentiator. We see that in the market. We see that especially in difficult markets like these markets, be it, you know, trust on the seller side, be it trust on bank side. So it's a market which obviously is difficult from a capital appreciation point, but it's a very good market to seed new investments, yeah. You see, we, as before, you know that quite well, some 60% of our MBOs are still from families and founders. I think that share forward is going to increase going further down the road, yeah. With that, I would hand over to Melanie, who will give you some granularity on our numbers. Melanie?
Thank you, Tom. Thank you. A warm welcome also from my side. Actually, nice to meet you here in that call first time. As Tom already mentioned, the net asset value overall is really unchanged in the total numbers, as you can see on the graphic. It's also very important to state that the forecast remains unchanged. We believe that we are on a good track to achieve that. If we look into the details, then we can see that. Maybe one page further, please. There you can see we started with EUR 631.9 end of last quarter. We have the additions Tom already mentioned with NOKERA, ProMik, also the disposals. Very nice disposal actually.
I like that as a CFO to get the money also in. Really driven by R&S and Pfaudler. If you come now to the valuation and the details there, I would really hand over or jump over to the next page. As we can see, what is really great for us, we have a very, very good positive change in earnings. That means we received new budgets from our portfolio companies. They have full order books. They are up and running. We reduced overall the debt slightly, which is a positive operating performance offset by the multiple development to year-end, which was not fully compensated at all. As you can see, that's the net gain/loss on the right side with minus EUR 9.44 million.
Overall, a very stable environment and for me, it's really important that the portfolio companies are really up and running with full order books and performance in the overall operations. If you now go to the next page, we come to our fund investment service, and as you can see, we have forecasted a very stable earnings compared to last year with EUR 11.5 and earnings result in EUR 2.5. For sure, as you have noticed, we acquired ELF. We have some lead costs there. It's a little bit lower than last year. We are also in preparation of the CSRD implementation and so on, and cyber is also a typical cover topic where we really spend and take care that everything is on track and up and running.
If you look in our employee overview in the details, you will find 15 people more than the year before. For sure, this has an impact also on expenses. Overall, stable as expected and as planned, I would summarize the slide. Let me come to the next page. I think that's also very important, the liquidity. End of September, we started with EUR 20 million. The cash flow from operating activities are slightly negative as we have the typical bonus payment in December as usual. Now you can see from the investment and proceeds that we have an outflow for sure with ELF Capital Group closing and payment. We also took something from the credit line to be prepared for January. All this is good.
We still have free capacity and headroom in the group's investment entities, and we still have the unchanged credit lines available. All in all, good where we are. If you now go to the last number page or details page, it's about our co-investment. This is still the old DBAG with the co-investment into the portfolio. Next quarter, you will also see the ELF commitments here increasing the co-commitments. Here we are on a good track shaping our inflow and outflow. As usual, we really have an eye on that and take care, so no change at all. That's how I would at least go to the last page. This is our actual versus forecast. As Tom already said, we reiterate and reconfirm our forecast.
Overall, in a good shape, but in a nearly normal quarter one as we have seen it in the past as well. Tom, anything else?
No. As I said, in the beginning, a rather uneventful quarter. We closed our transactions as expected, and I would not read too much into these numbers. We are looking forward quite confidently, and feel good where we sit currently also in this kind of market. Yeah. No closing remarks from my side except that, you know, a very uneventful quarter. We are reiterating our guidance. Obviously, when you don't have any earnings in one quarter and you still reiterate your guidance, the next quarters need to be stronger. That's not something we're afraid of, hence we're reiterating our guidance and we're comfortable where we sit at right now. Yeah. We have a very healthy book. We have our investments generated nice inquiries.
Also, you know, last year was the highest year ever on the group based, where we returned money to our investors. That set us really apart in a frozen market. That was very appreciated by our investors, and we think we're still, we are also able to act this year, be it on the acquisition side, but also on the disposal side. That would be all from my side, and I would leave you with that. Cheers and bye.
Bye-bye.