Hello, and a warm welcome to CapMan's Capital Markets Day 2025. My name is Charlotte Wessman, and I'm Head of Communication. CapMan has over 35 years been successfully investing across a wide range of private asset sectors. An owner that is very active and focused on creating financial and sustainable value across our investments. The purpose of today is to give you an extra deep dive in our strategy, and also focusing extra on our areas: Real Estate, Infrastructure, and Natural Capital. The agenda for today is that we will start this afternoon with Pia Kåll, our CEO, presenting the strategy of CapMan and how we position for profitable growth. We will move over to our areas: real estate, infrastructure, and natural capital, presented by Mika Matikainen, Ville Poukka, and Tapani Pahkosalo. We will have Atte Rissanen presenting our financial highlights, development, and key objectives.
Each section will be followed by a Q&A session, and you are welcome to ask in the audience here live questions, and also using the chat box in the webcast link. We hope you will get an interesting and fruitful afternoon, and I will now give over to Pia Kåll, CEO of CapMan.
Welcome, everyone, also from my behalf. At CapMan, we are, through all the investments we do and also the value creation work that we do as owners in our assets, building the society of the future. It is guided by our vision to become the most responsible private asset company in the Nordics. We create value for the society as a responsible investor and owner, with a focus on the real asset market. Out of our Assets Under Management, 75% are in real assets, the largest of these investment areas being real estate. Within real estate, we develop human-centric sustainable properties with a focus on residential, logistics, hospitality, and transitional office assets. We are today the owner of 222 properties with a Total Lettable Area of 1.3 million sq m. Through how we develop the properties, we can support and influence more than 500 commercial tenants in these properties.
Within Infrastructure, we are part of building a sustainable society and part of the green transition by investing in Energy, Transportation, and Telecom sectors. Currently, our portfolio is 11 portfolio companies with just over EUR 1 billion in aggregate turnover. Within natural capital, we are one of the largest private timberland owners and investors across Europe. We invest in natural capital, biological growth, and climate change mitigation, with a portfolio today of 240,000 hectares of land across eight European countries. In addition, within private equity and wealth, we have specialized Private Equity Strategies that are driving growth and internationalization of small unlisted companies, a portfolio of 38 portfolio companies at the moment, a total aggregate turnover of almost EUR 2 billion, and some 10,500 employees in these companies. In our business model, we have two businesses.
We have the asset management business, where the value drivers are Fee Profit and Carried Interest from the funds that we manage. In addition, we have our balance sheet investments, where they are partly there to support the growth of our Asset Management Business as we focus these investments into our own funds. From a shareholder perspective, they are also generating investment returns. In our Asset Management Business, we are focused on the private market, where the funds typically have a 10-plus year duration, which means that for these 10 years, we have recurring stable fee income from these funds, and then towards the end of the lifetime, also additional upside from Carried Interest when we do exit in the fund. The fund lifecycle works so that it starts with fundraising.
It's usually a one to two-year period where we raise capital commitments from institutional investors for a specific fund strategy. After that, the investment phase starts, which is usually four to five years long, during which we select the 10 to 20 unlisted assets in which we invest. Immediately after the investment, the Value Creation phase starts, where our teams, investment professionals, and asset management experts, together with other stakeholders, are increasing the value, developing the asset. Usually, a typical ownership period for a single asset is somewhere between three to six years. When the value creation plan is done, we move to the final part, the Exit Phase, finding the next owner for these assets, be it an industrial owner, another financial owner, or in some cases, a listing to the stock market.
In this phase, we realize the returns and the value creation we have created, returning capital to our investors. With happy investors, with good returns, it also gives them the capital to deploy into the next vintage of the fund. Our client base and our customer base is really institutional. CapMan is the partner for Institutional Investors that seek attractive returns in the Nordic market. In our investor base, some 50% of Assets Under Management come from outside of the Nordics, Europe, and North America. We have today some 200 Institutional Investors as our clients and 300 private wealth clients. The largest segments really are Pension Funds, asset managers, and other institutional investments, investors that make up some 70% of our AUM.
These EUR 6.1 billion in total of Assets Under Management are spread across our investment areas, with real assets taking up 75% of the capital: Real Estate, Natural Capital, and Infrastructure. We are also constantly growing and expanding our investor base. If we look at last year, 2024, we raised a total of EUR 570 million of new capital. 66% of this came from outside of the Nordics. We are also actively expanding our investor base that, if you look at the investor type, 56% of the capital we raised came either from new investors to CapMan or by cross-selling. An investor who was in one of our strategies is now investing also in one of our other investment strategies.
When we look at where the capital went last year, these some 85 investors who committed new capital to us committed it across our investment areas, real estate being the largest one, taking in most of new capital, but a good spread across all of our areas. During the past two years, we have gone through a very systematic transformation, and today CapMan is positioned for profitable growth. We have completed several structural moves, creating a real asset-focused investment firm with a very strong solidity, and with this also operating in a very attractive growth market. It's a people business, and we're continuously investing in our people, but over the last two years also systematically into technology, with the objective to build a scalable business where the best people can thrive.
A relentless focus on sustainability and performance through active asset management, which is really at the core of CapMan's DNA. We are generating strong fund returns and sustainable returns to our investors, which is the prerequisite to execute on profitable growth. If we take a deeper look on each of these three areas, as said, we have during the past two years completed several structural moves and are today a real asset-focused investment firm. We completed the acquisition of Dasos Capital early 2024 and established CapMan Natural Capital, increasing our share of real asset investment strategies. We have also divested our service business, JAY Solutions, in 2023 and CaPS in late 2024, as well as focused our balance sheet investments really to our own funds and also selling down external fund investments.
What it means today is that today we have 100% of our fee income coming from asset management, long-term recurring contracts. We have also doubled the share of real asset fee income from 45% to today, or last year, 77%. We are in a position where we have a very strong solidity and financial position to support future growth and our shareholder value creation. The Real Assets market is also an attractive market to be in, expected to show continued solid growth. Over the past three years, we have been in a situation where fundraising and capital raised to new funds has been declining year over year. Still, during this time, if you look at European funds in this segment, the total Assets Under Management has continued to grow, and looking forward, is expected to grow with a healthy 8%-10% per year of growth.
If we look at the market outlooks out there and market analyses , 2025 could already be the year when the fundraising market turns. What it will require is that the transaction market activates, and with a more active transaction market, also more distributions to fund investors who can then commit more. I would expect that after we see the transaction market easing up, maybe two to three quarters, and then the fundraising market should also start to move again. Looking across regions, Europe is the region that is expected to turn the fastest, both for Real Estate and Infrastructure. Within Europe, the Nordics remain a bright spot and an attractive market for investors. Moving to our people and our organization. Today, CapMan has a strong local Nordic team of active value creators, business builders across all other Nordic countries.
Our real asset strategies employ in total around 100 persons in investment professionals and asset management experts across the Nordic. This is half of all of our employees. Our private equity and wealth businesses are very specialized, more focused on Finland, and in total in these, roughly 20% of our personnel. All of our investment areas are supported then by joint platform expert services, which includes fund investor relations, everything related to fund operations and management, sustainability experts, and support functions. As it is a people business, we are continuously investing in our people, but we are also in parallel investing into technology. The logic here is that we want to build a scalable, profitable business where the best people can thrive.
If you look at the last two years, we have been recruiting very targetedly, mostly into investment professional or investment teams, and somewhat also into our fund investor relations client-facing base. At the same time, we have been investing into Technology and Automation, really with the target to remove and automate manual repetitive steps in processes. Some examples include the construction of Data Warehouses and Data Models, which allows us to automate reports, and also taking into use smart tools when it comes into contract management, obligation management. Just as a concrete example, as an organization, we are producing some 400 different reports every quarter, and by automating these, we've already been able to save hundreds of hours. It's not only building efficiency. It's actually also building employee satisfaction because it means that our experts can then focus their time on the really value-adding tasks.
We are building a workplace where the best people in the industry can thrive. We have a high employee satisfaction with an eNPS of 49 and an inclusion index of 85. At the same time, we are building an effective, scalable business with strong profitability. If you look at the personal growth for the past two years, on average 8% growth per year. At the same time, our Assets Under Management have been growing 10% per year and our Fee Profit 27% per year. This is a trend that we expect also going forward, really a scalable, efficient operating model with high employee satisfaction. When it comes to our sustainability work, our target and objective is really to bring it into practice and to build financial value with the sustainability work we do.
We work across five material sustainability themes: climate action based in science, where we have signed up for the Science Based Targets Initiative and validated our targets, set our net zero year for 2040. Here, what to highlight: Real Estate's achievements. Since our base year 2021, we have reduced greenhouse gas emission intensity in commercial real estate with 37% and in residential with 54%. Climate alone is not enough, so we are also working to safeguard nature and the planetary boundaries with tailored approaches for each of the investment areas. We work for diverse, equitable, and inclusive businesses that provide meaningful work and to safeguard human rights throughout the value chain, actively monitoring and working to improve tenant satisfaction and employee satisfaction, and making sure the necessary policies and processes are in place in our portfolio.
As the fifth theme, accountability and transparency, which for Real Estate means increasing the share of green building certification, last year at 58% of our portfolio, and in our portfolio companies, monitoring and impacting the gender distribution when it comes to appointment to boards and management teams. This sustainability work is also being recognized. When we look at international benchmarks, GRESB being one of the best-known ones, we have annually improved our scores, and in 2024, five of our funds received a full five-star rating. It is not only the ratings, but what is really around is also driving fund performance. Looking at our portfolio today, we have strong fund performance. Looking at the funds in the Value Creation phase, 90% of those are today above the Carried Interest hurdle rate.
What it does is it's growing our Carried Interest potential, but it's also setting the foundation for future successful fundraisings. The other important aspect looking at our funds in this market environment is the capacity to be able to make new investment and capture market opportunities. We have across our funds EUR 1.3 billion of undeployed capital or dry powder to invest into new investments or add-on investments, and this goes across our funds, closed-end funds in investment phase, and our open-ended funds who all have good capacity to capture a very attractive market. In addition to fund performance, what also sets us up for future growth is really the diversified portfolio we have of funds and vintages. We have some EUR 2.5 billion of Assets Under Management within closed-end funds, equally split between value creation phase and investment phase.
Here, when we look at our flagship funds, we can see that they are all in their either vintage two or three, which means that there is ample room still to scale these strategies to their full potential. When we raise vintages three, four, five, we will be able to scale the size of these funds in a meaningful way. In addition, in evergreen open-ended funds and mandates, we have at the moment some EUR 3.6 billion of Assets Under Management, and here also growth potential both from scaling the existing funds and mandates, but also where we see investor demand launching new products like social real estate that was launched really late 2023, early 2024, to a specific investor demand. This together then setting us up for a good growth outlook.
The transformation we have been doing over the past couple of years is also showing in our financial metrics, with 2024 really accelerating the pace. Our Assets Under Management has grown on average 12% for the last five years, 22% last year. Fee income is growing largely in line with Assets Under Management, 10% per year for the last five years and 15% last year. Fee Profit growing faster, so on average 26% per year during the last five years, but last year 81% here. Also, this financial development supports us when we go into executing on our strategy and on growth. When we look at our growth objective, it is to reach EUR 10 billion Assets Under Management by really scaling our real asset investment strategies and launching new products, selectively looking at acquisitions.
Our private equity and wealth products are very specialized niche strategies with strong return potential and carry potential. The growth in AUM is, on the other hand, really coming from our real asset strategies: Natural Capital, Infra, and Real Estate, all three proven strategies with a strong scaling potential. Adding on top, identified ongoing discussions on organic or acquisition-based opportunities, taking us to our target of EUR 10 billion. Opening this up even further, we can really see that this plan relies on ongoing and planned fundraisings. There are four main drivers in this AUM growth target. It is the open-ended funds and mandates in Real Estate. It is the Nordic Real Estate IV, European Forest Fund IV, and Nordic Infrastructure III flagship funds. These four areas are accounting for more than 90% of the growth target.
Within open-ended funds and mandates in real estate last year, in a very difficult fundraising market, we were still able to take in EUR 250 million of new capital with basically no redemptions at the same time. We have already this year completed the Hotel II acquisition of the Midstar portfolio, doubling the fund, adding EUR 400 million of Assets Under Management. Going forward, we expect these funds, all of them in the open-ended segment, to have ample room to grow, basically double their size and annually take in capital. On the flagship funds, Nordic Real Estate IV is out in fundraising at the moment, target a first close during this year, and a target size at final close of EUR 750 million.
We are, as we speak, planning for the fundraising, starting the fundraising on our European Forest Fund IV, so the Natural Capital next flagship fund targeting towards institutional investors. Within infrastructure, we just last year completed the fundraising for the second infra fund, doubling the size from the first fund. Once the second fund starts to be further deployed, we will start the fundraising for the third infra fund. As a highlight, also going into the Midstar acquisition that we already completed this year or announced in February, this is a very good example of strategically scaling a product. CapMan Hotel II fund acquired Midstar's portfolio of hotels in one go, making it a Nordic fund from a well-performing portfolio of 26 hotels, adding 28 in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, making it a truly Nordic portfolio.
It's also one of the largest transactions of its kind in Europe in the recent years, and it added EUR 400 million of fee-paying Assets Under Management for CapMan. What this also does is setting the fund up in an excellent position for future fundraising with now a strong Nordic portfolio. With this being the top-line growth objectives and targets, when we look at how it's impacting the Fee Profit, Fee Profit is really fueled by this Assets Under Management growth, where fee income largely grows in line with Assets Under Management. Success in flagship fundraisings and in some of the growth opportunities, organic or inorganic, that we have ongoing at the moment. As a third significant component for Fee Profit, also the scalability of our operations really continuing on the path of efficient, scalable operating model.
To execute on this strategy, we have four strategic programs across CapMan, CapMan Wins programs. Winning team, continuing to building teams that outperform and making sure we attract, develop, and keep the best people in the industry. Investors' choice, continuing the path to be the partner for institutional investors investing in the Nordics, continuously broadening, but also deepening the healthy relationships we have. As a backbone in this strategic program, obviously also keeping the focus on fund performance as that's a prerequisite for fundraising and being attractive as a partner for investors. The Nimble Operations Program is our organizational effectiveness scalability program, where we are really driving technology-enabled operations that scale in a way that both create a profitable business and increase employee satisfaction and allowing our experts to focus on what's most important.
Lastly, but definitely not least, sustainable, where we continue to drive sustainability and developing in a responsible way our assets with the objective to drive financial performance. Summarizing our strategy and our targets for profitable growth, we are currently in Assets Under Management at EUR 6.1 billion, the target EUR 10 billion Assets Under Management. Fee income expected to grow in line with AUM and Fee Profit faster than fee income as we scale. Carried Interest potential grows in line with the AUM that we have in closed-ended funds, and with this financial performance, we are also able to sustainably grow our dividend over time. When it comes to our long-term financial objectives that were set in 2022 at the beginning of this strategy period, they remain unchanged. Growth of management company and service business on average 15% per year, which we also achieved last year.
Keeping a strong balance sheet, return on equity about 20%, equity ratio about 50, and with the distribution policy to pay sustainable distributions that grow over time. For 2024, the board of directors expects the overall distribution to be EUR 0.14 per share, clearly up from 2023. In summary, CapMan today is a real asset-focused investment firm in an attractive growth market. By investing in people and in technology, we have built and continue to build a scalable business where the best people can thrive. Keeping a relentless focus on sustainability and performance, active asset management, we generate strong fund returns that sets us up to execute on profitable growth. Thank you.
Thank you, Pia. Now it's time for our first Q&A session. Let's see if we have any questions from the audience.
Thank you for the presentation. I'm Jukka -Pekka Pesonen, and I'm from Nordea.
The first question, the focus of your future growth seems to be seemingly only on your core investment areas, real estate, infra, and natural capital. I see the buyout funds and growth is missing from the pipeline. What's behind this and have this completely been dropped from the pipeline of funds?
If you look at the pipeline of funds, really the strategies that are scaling and account for the majority of our growth is the Real Asset strategies, Real Estate, Infra, and Natural Capital. When it comes to our private equity strategies, they are very niche and focused with good return potential, good carry potential, but less of a scaling potential. What you see in the graph there is what's now under preparation is the Nest IV fundraising, so the credit fund, and special situations going out to raise their next fund.
When it comes to growth, for example, they do not fit into this short timeline that we have there because they just completed their third fund last year, scaling it to EUR 130 million, and they are now deploying that fund. Of course, when that is deployed, we will go out raising the next fund. When it comes to buyout, they are in the Buyout XI fund and now focusing on exits, taking that fund closer to carry. There is not in the moment any plans for a Buyout XII fund. The private equity segment as such, high returns, good carry potential, and continuously the fundraisings when the vintage is mature.
Okay, thank you. Another question, which of the investment areas are the ones that maybe have most of these either organic growth opportunities or M&A opportunities, and does that differ between the investment areas significantly?
Partly I will let you ask that also from the managing partners when they are up here. There are actually at the moment when we look at organic opportunities, and like Midstar in Hotel II is a good example of what type of opportunities it could be. We actually have of those across the board. In addition, when it comes to acquisitions, we are, as before, what we are looking at is products or strategies that would complement what we have today. Adding like Natural Capital or the Dasos acquisition, a good example, adding something that we did not exactly have before and that fits into our total portfolio. Also there are discussions ongoing, but they are always, it is a question on timing and all interests meeting on if and when they realize.
Okay, and maybe last one from me.
Could you see reaching your EUR 10 billion AUM target with organic growth only, so with your existing platform and no M&A?
The way base plan looks like now, it needs also M&A. On the other hand, take a couple of opportunities to scale the portfolio in some existing fund significantly, and that would make up for the gap. The way it is now, the base plan, yes, we are looking to also acquisitions. We could make it organically if there are good portfolio opportunities in some of the areas.
Thank you.
Hi, this is Kasper from Inderes. In 2024, 66% of the raised capital came outside of Nordics. How do you expect this to develop during the target period?
I would expect the same trend to continue or even increase because if we look at where the investor base is for our Real Asset Strategies, that is minimum 60% outside of the Nordics and in some cases even 80% outside of the Nordics. Overall, I would expect that trend to stay or continue.
Okay. You are looking for scalable growth. During the last two years, you have increased your personnel in LP relations and platform as well. Are the current resources sufficient or are new requirements, recruitment still required in those areas?
I would say, first of all, they are slightly different. If we look at the platform expert services, probably you can say that overall there is no need to, definitely no need to grow in line with AUM growth.
What there is need for is targeted specialists here and there with some kind of substance matter knowledge. In that sense, recruitments might happen also in that area. When it comes to our LP facing, so fund investor relations and wealth, there where it makes sense adding people because that also means more feet on the ground, more people meeting investors more systematically. As we grow, I would expect some growth in that area as well.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, thank you very much. Let's move on to the audience online. Also coming back to the question of our core, should we look at Wealth as a non-core going into the future?
We do not talk about core or non-core in the sense. What Wealth is for us is, first of all, in the wealth management business, we've seen more interest now, for example, for their IP programs during the end of last year and now than at any time before. They are adding more products also into their portfolio. They are also a very important client interface for wealth clients investing into our other investment strategies. There they play a very crucial role. It is also what differentiates them and makes them competitive in the market.
Regarding the funds, how many of the funds belong to the top 25? To the first quartile?
I don't have that number top of my head across the board at the moment. We can also say that when we look at these statistics, they are all based on, there is no general market statistics. It's what people report in.
We have also seen the number of funds reporting in going down when it has been tougher years now. Like I said in my presentation, 90% of the funds in value creation phase are above their Carried Interest hurdle rate. Many of them are in the top quartile, but the exact number I do not have top of mind.
Looking at the target AUM of EUR 10 billion and the expected allocation across investment strategies, how do you expect your average fee in relation to AUM to change?
We do not expect any large changes in that, and it has been very stable also if we look back over the past years.
Broadly speaking, how much capital would you expect to have to raise on average on gross basis to achieve this target?
I will have to turn that question to Atte, who's coming last with the financials as well on exactly how much we expect outflow annually.
With the sales of the Service business, you have increased means to also distribute profits to shareholders. Why is the reason the company has decided to not pursue buybacks to supplement the dividend and support growing the EPS in the long term?
Share buybacks, it's definitely something that is in the toolbox for us. The way we look at what we know, the proceeds that we got from the sale of CaPS specifically is that roughly one third of those proceeds are now being distributed as dividends. Part of the capital is needed to take down external debt to a solid, reasonable level. We have growth of opportunities.
The hotels transaction that was mentioned is, for example, an example where us being able to put in also a small share of equity bridge into that transaction was part of making it possible. To create really shareholder value over the long term, we are also keeping part of those proceeds to execute on these growth initiatives, organic or inorganic.
Thank you. That was the last question for this session. Thank you very much, Pia.
Thank you, Charlotte.
With this, we go over to Mika and Real Estate deep dives.
Hi, my name is Mika Matikainen, Managing Partner for CapMan Real Estate, and I will now give you an introduction and update to our Real Estate business. The way we position our business is being the local partner for Global Capital in the Nordics when it comes to the real estate markets.
While being the local partner for capital coming from outside of the Nordic region, we also obviously partner up with Nordic capital, institutional capital, and help them diversify capital into the other Nordic countries outside of their home markets. We started our business in 2005, but went into the Nordics in 2013. Up until then, we were a 100% Finnish business, but ever since 2013, all of our products have been investing outside of the, you know, not outside of Finland, but also outside of Finland, so in the Nordic countries. Being the local partner for international capital also, of course, means that we need to be local. It is really essential that we are where we invest. For that reason, we have 80 people working out of our local offices in all of the capital cities in our target markets today.
Local knowledge and networks is obviously a key to success in our business. Since the beginning of our business, we have raised over EUR 4.5 billion of equity, predominantly after we started going into the Nordics. Today, unlike what we are doing on the group level in Real Estate business, the proportion of capital coming outside of the Nordics is even higher. Over 80% of capital is actually coming from outside of the Nordics. We believe that that trend will continue also in the future. In terms of the product offering, we're very much focused on value-add funds and longer-term income funds. The top line here represents our value-add fund series. We started investing in Nordic value-add investments since 2013 when we raised our first value-add fund. In this fund, we are and we have been in the exit mode for a long time.
We are almost fully exited. There is only one asset remaining, which is a little bit larger asset in Denmark, and hopefully we will exit that during this year or even over the coming months. We are currently investing our third value-add fund where the investment period will end in Q3 this year, and obviously we will continue with the next value-add fund. When it comes to the value-add funds, this is the sort of more typical private equity model that Pia was describing in her presentation, where the fund life is close-ended. There is a predefined investment period, typically four to five years, during which we invest. Then there is Asset Management on an asset level. Typically, business plan is anywhere between three to six years, and then we exit. All the other funds that we are investing are more long-term. These are open-ended by nature. We are continuously fundraising.
There's no predefined investment period. There's no end date to these funds, but we're continuously fundraising, continuously investing. Investors have an opportunity to come and go. They're a little bit more flexible in that nature. We started this business with the residential mandate, investing in core rental residential apartment buildings in the Nordics. Once that mandate was fully invested, it's an evergreen in nature, so we hold on managing those assets. Once it was fully invested, we started our open-ended residential fund, which we're currently growing and investing. The Nordic Property Income Fund is our only what we call a Special Investment Fund compared to some of the local funds that our local Finnish competitors are managing. This is the only fund where we also have some retail clients' money in the fund.
This is relatively small in size still, but obviously we plan to grow this. Unlike some of our Finnish competitors, this fund is also Nordic with this focus. It is less dependent on the hiccups in the Finnish real estate market. Obviously, the diversification helps, and we have had very limited redemptions from this fund. In hotels, we've been investing since 2008 when we first launched our first closed-ended hotel fund. Back in the day, we had an opportunity to buy a big portfolio, so it was not really a big master plan to start going into long-term income investments. It was more of an opportunistic play, as I said. In 2019, what was remaining out of that initial portfolio, 27 hotels, we used that as a seed portfolio into our open-ended residential fund. Sorry, hotel fund, which we then restructured in 2019.
Obviously, that is a fund that we now continue to grow. On the Social Real Estate Fund, this is off to a really good start as well. This is capital mainly from Germany and German-speaking countries investing in long income in the Nordics, specifically focused on public sector properties, including schools, medical centers, police stations, and so on. There we have made our first investments in Finland and Denmark, and obviously we will continue to grow. We have seen a great pickup on the fundraising side for that fund as well. To conclude this page, the value-add funds come every three or four years, depending on how quickly we invest the money in our previous fund. On the Income funds, we obviously continuously grow.
Today, if you look at the allocation between the income funds and the value-add funds, about 75% of the real estate Assets Under Management is already in the income funds. We feel that this proposition will obviously continue to grow, although there are obviously big plans for the next value-add fund as well. It will be a big bump on the value-add side, but then obviously on the income side, we will continuously grow. In terms of the investment approach, we take a top-down view on selecting the themes and growth areas we want to invest in. There is that macro analysis that goes into place to define the areas that we believe in more strongly. When it comes to selecting the assets, it is more bottom-up. It is very disciplined, detailed analysis on trying to select the best assets in best locations.
We're very much focused on the most liquid markets. That typically means the capital cities, and we have the advantage being in the Nordics to work in four very dynamic capital cities. There, obviously, the asset selection is key and the local knowledge. Our local teams will obviously help identify the best opportunities in these markets. It is very important to know which areas are the most interesting ones, where the tenant takeup is best, and so on. Also, when it comes to the characteristics of the assets, we're very much focused on the defensive side of them. In-place income, good locations, and so on. We always try to identify untapped value creation potential as well.
Both in our value-add funds, but also in the income funds, it's very important to focus on improving the net operating income of the assets and drive the value over a longer time. This obviously comes through active asset management, and we have that in-house in our team, and it's very important that we do most of that work in-house because that's really the extra we can provide to our institutional clients that are investing with us. In terms of leverage, we take a very conservative approach. We use that to boost the returns, but we're not over-engineering it. We do use leverage, but are also very careful when using it. Sustainability is increasingly important, as Pia mentioned in her presentation.
The way we look at it is that it's very much linked to the superior returns, and we believe that it will be so going into the future. More on sustainability in a few seconds. I mentioned the top-down view that we take on selecting the best areas to invest in. This is how we look at the opportunity set currently. This obviously changes over time and has evolved over time, but this is how we look at it now. The areas that we believe in most today is living, obviously driven by the urbanization, continued urbanization. We see great opportunities, especially in Copenhagen and Stockholm regions. Helsinki was maybe a little bit overbuilt over the last few years, so it will take a few years to take up that oversupply. Especially in Stockholm and Copenhagen, there's a demand-supply imbalance, less supply than there's demand.
It was already so before the markets changed, and it only got more severe when the new development stopped. Obviously, for someone that is well capitalized, this provides good opportunities. On the logistics side, we see good demand for modern logistics, especially after the repricing in the market when the yields moved up 100-150, sometimes even 200 basis points. This now provides good opportunities. This is a growth area that we're very much focused on. Under the logistics, there's also the light industrial assets that we look at. This could be both standing and development opportunities. Under the Megatrends, an area that we focus on is public sector properties or Social Real Estate, as we call it. This is specifically interesting in Finland, where this sector is obviously a major part of the whole real estate market.
Obviously, this investment type provides a good inflation hedge, and obviously, it's very attractive for many core investors. We see it as a great opportunity both on the value-add and income side. On the value-add side, obviously, we're very keen on creating these sort of opportunities. On the income side, we buy that long income. Another area that we focus under the Megatrends is flight to quality. It could be high-quality offices. We're very selective when it comes to offices today, but it could be the best-in-class office or something that we can create into best-in-class. We see premium rents being achieved in these sort of assets, and also there's good liquidity for these sort of products. This is only a very narrow area of the office markets. Another area under the megatrends is hospitality, as I mentioned before.
We're very big investors in hotels, and Pia mentioned the example of the Midstar acquisition. Obviously, the Nordic markets are getting their fair share of the growth in the global travel, and we see the opportunity to go into that in the Nordics as well. Across all these different sectors, special situations is something that we keep an eye on all the time. There's nothing wrong buying cheap and buying at a discount. We're trying to take the advantage of the dislocation in the market, and this is obviously something that we're very much focused on. Since the interest rate started increasing, obviously, the markets halted. We saw that also in the Nordics, so Nordics is no exception. This is a global phenomenon. The transaction volume stopped or went down. We went down to sort of 2010, 2011 levels also in the Nordics.
Then again, now more recently, what we have seen is that the markets are starting to pick up again. Obviously, what happened in the market was when the interest rates increased, the yield started moving up and the values going down. There was a big spread between what the buyers were willing to buy for, and what the sellers were willing to sell for. This spread has started to narrow down, and as you can see on the right-hand side of this page, you can see that the yields are starting to stabilize. Now there is also evidence of the yield starting to stabilize. In some areas of the markets, like residential in Copenhagen, for example, we have actually started the yield starting to decrease again.
This is a good sign that, okay, once there's stability, then there's more activity again, and the buyers are finding the sellers, and the activity will pick up. As you can see in the 2024 results and numbers, you can see that there's already a little bit more activity than there was in 2023. There's definitely a lot of capital on the sidelines waiting for good opportunities, and when the sellers get closer to the buyers, then obviously there's more transactions to come. There's a lot of capital chasing for cheap real estate, and generally speaking, real estate is very cheap at the moment when you look at over the recent history. On a relative basis, Nordics continues to be the bright spot. Obviously, Europe is not doing so well in general in terms of the economic growth, but especially Sweden and Denmark stand out.
The outlook for economic growth is projected to be much higher than the EU average or European average. This is obviously reflected on the real estate markets. There is a very direct link between the economic growth and the real estate markets and how the real estate markets are doing. We believe that this will be the case this time around as well. Historically looking, you can see on the left-hand side that the Nordic countries have done extremely well in terms of overall returns when you compare the overall returns to the other major Western markets, but with less volatility. There is less risk, but you can achieve the same returns. This graph sort of explains what the opportunity set in the Nordics is. There is stability, but there are good results and very active real estate markets.
Size-wise, Nordics is a big real estate market, historically comparable to Germany, sometimes close to Germany, but definitely bigger than France in Europe. We are talking about a big market as well. On the right-hand side, you can see this is Oxford Economics that put together the statistics and forecast for the overall returns on the real estate market. The expectation is that the four Nordic countries rank in top five, all of them among all the European countries when we look at the outlook for Total Property Returns from now until 2028. We obviously hope that this, and we do not only hope, but we also do believe that this will be reflected on the LP appetite towards the Nordics and Europe in general. As I said earlier on the previous page, Nordics clearly is the bright spot.
Hopefully that will mean that there's more capital coming into the Nordics together with the capital that is flowing into Europe. Here you can see that 2025, according to INREV, which is the organization for unlisted real estate managers in the Nordics, their recent study shows that there's more capital now flowing back into Europe. This is especially European capital going back into Europe. The American investors still remain a little bit biased to their home markets, but based on our recent discussions with the U.S. investors, existing and both prospective investors, they all seem to think that Nordics is a little bit of an outlier in Europe or in European context. We do hope that this will materialize into LP commitments later this year and also in 2026. On sustainability, I think Pia covered sustainability quite well in her presentation already.
It is obviously increasingly important to us, and here we are aligned with our investor clients, tenants, or most of the tenants, and then a lot of the lenders as well. Real estate contributing such a big part of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions, for example, obviously this is something that you cannot ignore when you're investing in real estate. We have set certain goals for us as a business on the fund level, but also on the asset levels, and we measure these goals on a continuous basis. There is evidence of good results by reducing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions, increasing the number of properties that are EU Taxonomy aligned, certifications on assets, and so on, and also the most recent GRESB results, which continuously improve.
Sustainability is not only about making buildings greener or doing something that is required by regulatory authorities or something that we want to report on. It is also very much linked to the returns, as I mentioned earlier. We have fully integrated ESG as part of our investment and asset management processes. We do due diligence on ESG and try to identify opportunities how we can drive value. Here's an example of how we can actually impact the returns by doing ESG investments. First of all, on the rental income side, obviously, when you do CapEx investments, you improve the quality of the assets. You can attract premium tenants with premium rents, and that is directly reflected on the Net Operating Income. Same goes to the operating expenses. When you make buildings more efficient, you can reduce the operating expenses, again driving up the value.
For better assets, you can attract better buyers, more core buyers, and you can decrease the cap rates, increasing the value of the assets. Again, on the debt side, the lenders are very keen on providing financing for better assets, and in some cases, there is financing, first of all, available for qualified assets. In terms of the fundraising targets for us and how we see the near-term future, obviously the main project for us is the Next Value-add fund, where as Pia mentioned earlier, we are targeting EUR 750 million. Again, a little bit bigger fund than the previous time.
I mentioned that the third value-add fund is ending its investments in Q3, and that's the time when we hope to do the first closing for the next fund so that we can just continue right away after we're done with the third value-add fund, and we want to be able to take the advantage of the prevailing market environment on the buy side. On the other funds, obviously, we have a lot of institutional capital there. They're not really panicking when the cycles change. They're typically investing over cycles. We have seen very limited, if any, redemptions in our funds. They typically think that at the bottom of the market is not really the best time to sell. On the contrary, they think that that's the good time to buy.
We actually think that after revaluing many of our funds or all of our funds, we are well positioned for further capital intake also in our income funds. Obviously, the focus is on scaling up these businesses, and over the next couple of years, we aim to double the size of the AUM that we're managing under these different income funds and mandates. We keep an eye on different opportunities as well. There's always thinking about new funds and mandates where we see an opportunity. Speaking of doubling, obviously, this is something that we did on the hotel fund just a few weeks ago when we announced that we signed a deal to acquire the Midstar portfolio. No need to go into this in more detail because this was already covered in Pia's presentation, but there were good reasons to do that.
Obviously, it's a good time to buy such a portfolio. Strategically, this was a great fit to what we had. The map explains how we diversified the portfolio in one go from predominantly Finnish portfolio into a Nordic portfolio. Obviously, when doing that, we feel that we're much better positioned for future fundraising. Obviously, when we were fundraising capital for the fund, which was predominantly Finnish portfolio back in the day, there was a lot of feedback that, okay, well, very interesting, good income profile, but can you make it Nordic? Obviously, our answer would have been that give us money and we can make it Nordic, but it would have taken time. Now, in one transaction, we created this pan-Nordic portfolio, and we now feel that we're very well positioned for future growth on this fund as well. A few key takeaways.
First of all, we feel that the real estate markets are now bottoming out. The yields are starting to stabilize. At this moment, it is a very good entry point for new capital to go into real estate. Real estate is considered cheap. Nordics, on a relative basis, is very well positioned, especially in Europe, and we feel that this will definitely support the rebounding investor appetite. We have a very strong pipeline for future deals, and obviously, we're executing on deals as we speak, but also we're building up a pipeline for future investments and for new funds, including the fourth value-add fund. Obviously, not everything that we're working on can go into the current value-add fund, but a lot of the pipeline is already going into the new value-add fund.
We think that this is obviously something that will help us in the fundraising when we are talking to the investors about the next fund. Generally speaking, I think we are very well positioned both on the income side, but also on the value-add side for future growth, including obviously all of our strategies and potentially new funds and mandates as well. This is all I had. Thank you very much. Now I would like to hand it over to Ville from Infra.
Hello everyone. I am Ville Poukka, Managing Partner of the Infra Business at CapMan. I will introduce the Infra Business and talk about our future outlook and what we do. CapMan started the Infra Business back in 2017. We have been building the business and building the team for the last eight years.
We're managing total AUM of around EUR 650 million, predominantly in two closed-end funds. Our clients are mainly Institutional Investors. Most of them have large allocations to alternatives already, and infrastructure is a small part of that allocation dedicated to Infra. Over 60% of capital to our funds comes from LPs and investors outside of the Nordics. I am very pleased to say that our funds are performing at or above the return target, so good progress there. To date, we've done some 30 investments that include all of the transactions across 10 platform companies that we have in the two Nordic funds. When we take a step back and talk about the infrastructure asset class and the market, it's interesting to see and a clear takeaway that it's a growth market. Alternatives in general is a growing market, but within there, a small niche called Infrastructure is growing well.
You can see on the left-hand side the capital managed in Europe-focused infrastructure funds has continued growing over the slightly more difficult fundraising years that we've had. On the right-hand side, the deals and the transaction volumes, then again, a bit more volatility in the recent years with interest rate increases and inflation. Overall, I would say a very solid transaction volumes as well. That is growing as well. The market is getting deeper, and it's a good place to be. Why is infrastructure then such a good place to be, and why is it growing? There are a couple of distinct characteristics in this asset class that I'd like to go through.
If you think about infrastructure businesses, they're based on heavy real assets of some sorts, which means that the businesses will have an inherently strong market position or even Monopolistic position or a long-term contract, which usually makes them more inflation-protected. This can practically mean that there's pricing power or even technically that, for example, in our public transport contracts, there is a Cost Index, and when inflation comes into play, that index will be reflected in higher revenues for our businesses. It is a good place for institutional investors to put their capital to work, having inflation protection and generally lower correlation with the equity markets and also general GDP development. I would say a lower risk, stable long-term returns is what we can offer to our institutional clients. Those are the sort of fundamentals of the market.
On top of that, there are clearly strong megatrends that are supporting the growth of the asset class. As we all know, we're fighting climate change, and energy transition will require a lot of investments into infrastructure. That means obviously investing in Renewable Energy Sources, both electricity and heating, switching away from fossil fuels. In order to enable that, the society needs to be electrified. Electrification will require investments into infrastructure such as electricity grids or EV charging, EV fleets to public transport, and so forth. Another trend is obviously digitalization of the society. The usage of data is growing massively. AI is obviously driving that as well. That will require investments in telecommunications infra, for example, fiber, but also processing and storage capacity through data centers and such. That will definitely drive growth in infrastructure asset class.
On top of that, we in the Western world are seeing a strongly and quickly aging infrastructure that we've built decades ago, and that needs to be renewed. Urbanization is an accelerating trend. A lot of cities will require quite a lot of basic infrastructure investments. This can obviously happen on the public side, but increasingly more also by private capital. It is a very attractive place to invest currently. How do we at CapMan Infra then invest into this opportunity? We've selected relatively traditional infrastructure sectors, so energy, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure companies. These companies are built on the business is built on real assets. They provide essential services for the local communities and societies. The range of businesses can be quite wide, talking about district heating, electricity grids on the energy side, but also then public transport or data centers across transportation and telecommunications.
These are downside-protected businesses. They're not usually prone to GDP fluctuation. In terms of risk return, we focus on Core Plus Infrastructure assets, and we do aim to deliver a premium return compared to the asset risk to our LPs. Sustainability is a critical factor in these businesses, and we'll talk about that a bit later. We feel that CapMan Infra has quite an attractive competitive position in the Nordics. There's not a lot of funds that are solely focused on Nordic infrastructure. We have a lot of competition, European-wide competition, and at times we do see international funds invest also in the Nordics, but predominantly they would focus on companies and businesses that have an enterprise value above EUR 200 million.
That leaves good space for us as a local player to look for Core Plus assets in the Nordics with an enterprise value roughly up to EUR 200 million. A bit smaller companies that we can develop and grow then to a future exit to perhaps larger investors. How we do that is that we have a local team, very entrepreneurial sourcing of deals. We try to fly under the radar and avoid competition and competed auctions, and really then grow the businesses and develop them in order to, again, target for premium returns compared to the asset risk being core plus. I will talk about the sort of variety of risks and the assets a bit on the next slide as well. What kind of businesses have we then invested in? You can see our two funds here. Fund one, EUR 190 million.
We have the classic energy core infrastructure businesses of district heating, both in Finland and in Norway, but then also a bit newer segments to infrastructure investing, including Valokuitunen, our fiber to the home business here in Finland, and then Koiviston Auto, the largest urban contracted bus operator in Finland. Fund two, EUR 375 million, actively still investing, looking to add two to three new companies still into the portfolio. Even so far, you can see that there's quite a variety of companies that we invested in. Again, more classic core infrastructure company, Hamina Energia, district heating and regulated electricity grid, Skarta Energy, building renewable power solar parks in Finland, but also then Napier Agriculture Wellboats, long-term contracts together with serving clients, long-term clients like Salmon Farmers, and then co-location data centers in the Netherlands and in Denmark.
Again, quite a variety of core plus asset risk with a very active management of the business. We would like to do more in Sweden, but it's definitely a Nordic theme and a Nordic strategy. We've so far actually found more interesting opportunities in Norway, even though one third of the team sits in Stockholm. We will obviously continue to hunt for new investments across the Nordics. What do we do then in terms of value-adding asset management when we invest in these businesses? First of all, we're not an operational team as such. We're investors and active owners. We need to make sure that our businesses have the right operational team and management in place. We've actually strengthened the talent and recruited new talent in all of our businesses so far for Fund I and Fund II.
In Valokuitunen, a sort of extreme example, together with Telia and the management team, we've built the whole organization up from six people to over 120 people currently. That's a bit extreme, but usually there is growth in the team to achieve our objectives. With the right people in place, we start growing the business. That usually means both investments and capital expenditure into existing business, which for example in Koiviston Auto means heavy investments in electrification of the bus fleet and investing in infrastructure to charge the electric fleet at depots. Also, we've done, I think, 17 or even more add-on acquisitions to date in our portfolio companies. Inorganic growth is also a key source. Operational excellence—everything we do in the businesses, we try to improve, whether that's tendering or screening for new solar park sites, we try to do it smarter and more resource efficiently.
When we modernize the fleet or the assets we invest in them, usually they use less fuel, for example in electric bus or electrified district heating provision. We are going to be more efficient in operations. Also, we are driving sustainability in our businesses. Using less fuel, being more resource efficient will obviously result in better sustainability in the portfolio and make the assets more attractive for the next owner. This brings me to our commitment to sustainable societies where we invest. We want to put our clients' capital into work to build a better society for all of us. Practical examples of what that means in our investing activities. We've invested heavily in electrifying and decarbonizing public transport. We've already completed our new lead investment, but currently doing that in Koiviston Auto here in Finland.
Tens of millions of EUR put into work to electrify the fleet and build charging infrastructure. Also, heating infrastructure needs to be decarbonized increasingly more in the Nordics. The very interesting example is in Hamina, where we've acquired the district heating network and we are actually investing in heat pumps to take advantage of CO2-free waste heat from Google's major data center in Hamina. In future, Hamina homes and properties will be heated with CO2-free waste heat coming from that major data center in the city. A great practical example. Also more traditionally, we are developing renewable energy assets, especially through Skarta. All of that needs to be measured, and there are different frameworks and different commitments on the ESG side.
As we already, previous speakers talked about, GRESB, we're doing that as well across our portfolios and measuring annually, asset by asset, our GRESB scores and obviously trying to improve them continuously. GRESB is something that our clients are following with interest as well. An important way to quantify the progress in our sustainability commitments. I would like to just talk about a practical example of what kind of businesses our infrastructure portfolio and the companies can be. Valokuitunen is the largest fiber to the home business in Finland. We established this company together with our partner Telia back in 2019. The thesis was really that Finland was falling behind in terms of availability and acceptance of Fiber to the Home. We were a bit sort of thinking that 5G and mobile networks will solve our data needs also in the future.
We felt that there was not a lot of arguments technically for that to hold. Fiber is the future-proof technology of transferring a lot of large quantities of data, and that is very scalable and with a long technical lifetime. We felt that there is going to be a time when more investment in Finnish fiber will be needed and there will be demand for the consumers as well. We have been building this business together with the management and Telia, grown the organization as I already mentioned, but we have also invested over EUR 250 million to new fiber connections to really private homes and small apartment buildings in the suburban areas across Finland. The growth is quite interesting. If you look at how many houses or homes we have passed in the beginning, it was 20,000 homes passed. This year we will be passing altogether 400,000 homes in Finland.
If you think about the population and number of homes in Finland, that's quite a considerable amount and great growth. That growth also reflected in the financials. Last year we made EUR 15 million of EBITDA in this business and forecast that growth to continue quite rapidly. Just a practical example of what kind of businesses and what kind of growth can be found also in infrastructure. To conclude my presentation on Infra, CapMan Infra will continue its growth journey. Like Pia said, we've proven the strategy. We are currently managing and starting to crystallize value from Fund I, which was EUR 190 million. Last year we completed the fundraise for our second fund, EUR 375 million, so double the size from the first fund. We are still investing. As said, we're looking to do two to three more investments. We have five companies in that portfolio already.
While we achieve that towards the end of this year, we will start to prepare for the launch of Fund III. We have an ambition to continue growing our business and we see that the markets are deeper. I'm trustful that Fund III will be larger than Fund II. That's it. Thank you from my part. Now it's Tapani and Natural Capital.
Yes, good afternoon everyone. I'm Tapani Pahkosalo with the Natural Capital team from CapMan. Institutional Timberland investment started in North America in the 1980s. The local forest products companies had heavy balance sheets and they needed to invest in their industries to modernize that. At the same time, the Pension Funds had need to find a new asset class where they would have more stable returns. They were heavily invested in equities markets. They found each other in the 1980s.
Fast forward 25 years later, institutional Timberland investment came to Europe also. Dasos Capital was founded in 2005 and pioneered the asset class. During a time from, let's say, 2005 until 2015, there were many people and many managers in the markets. Dasos founded the first fund in 2009 and the second fund in 2013. There have been new entrants, new managers coming to the market between 2015 to 2020. Dasos launched the, we launched several co-investment vehicles, the FS partnership, Forest Limited partnership, and the LT partnerships in this time to significantly increase the capital we are managing and acquiring several assets. There has been some consolidation of the asset class ever since. Many European managers have been bought up by other financial institutions. Via Dasos, we launched the Dasos Habitat Fund, which was the first European impact investment fund in forestry.
We launched that in 2019, again pioneering something new in asset class. We launched the Dasos Sustainable Forest and Wood III Alternative Investment Fund, where we have a distribution cooperation with Nordea Bank. That was in 2021. Finally, we were acquired by CapMan in 2024, becoming CapMan Natural Capital. Today, the market value of our portfolio is about EUR 1.5 billion. We're managing 240,000 hectares of land. That's a sizable landholding in Europe. I think we're among the top 10 private landowners within Europe. We have investments in eight countries, which allows us to do certain things. I'll be explaining to you how that affects our value creation to be in this size. We also have 5 gigawatts of renewable energy potential in our portfolio. Our fund investors are also exposed to the green transition through this.
We act as partners to renewable energy developers and enter into profit-sharing agreements with them. We can facilitate their work by providing ready developed portfolios for them where they can develop and build investments in scale. Total of seven funds and co-investment vehicles, so four funds and co-investment vehicles which we're managing today, they have performed well. We have over 10% average return to our investors in these funds. We are managing or we have managed over some 30 platform companies where we have made some 800 transactions. It is important to know how to make transactions in this market. We have developed a very wide European network to do that. That is one of our strengths. Some of the attractive features of forest investments are described here. Forest investments, firstly, they do increase diversification in institutional portfolio. The efficient frontier.
There's very low correlation to other asset classes, mainly because of the biological growth. The trees grow every year and they don't really, they're not dependent on the economic cycles, which is of course great in these times. We see the lowest correlation to global listed equities. We have seen large movements on the listed markets in the past months and over the, let's say, very long term also. The forest returns are not dependent on that. There's some positive correlation to euro bonds. Inflation hedging is another important feature. We have looked at the timber price series in Europe from 1949 until 2023. I want to highlight that during this very long period, there's been some significant developments on the global stage: Korean War, Vietnam War, Ukraine War. There's been a financial crisis, an oil crisis, and a pandemic.
The wood prices have continued to increase faster than inflation. There has been real price increase providing the inflation hedge. The exact figure is 0.72% per annum. That is important here. This is also what the Institutional Investors look for in our products. The return profile has been very stable due to the nature of the asset class, the biological growth that is driving the returns. I have compared here the NCREIF Timberland Index. That is a North American index. That is compared to MSCI World Total Return Index in USD terms. 6.2%, 6.3%. Very similar returns, but much less volatility there. The asset class is very North American, and a lot of the European money is also going there. We are showing our investors, European investors, why it is a fantastic idea to invest also in Europe. We are doing very well with that.
The European investments, they have provided very good returns. We can compare them to U.S. markets, the material markets. The look at the natural resources instead of Finland has an index that has had a return of 6.6% on the time series you see there. That compares perfectly well to the NCREIF index in the U.S. Our simulated portfolio for the same time period for the European investments with a professional management has provided a bit higher yield there. The managers' selection here is also important. European forest industries are well invested. There has been significant investment into European industrial capacity over 10 years. The bioproduct mills are state-of-the-art mills. New one just opened last year. It is doing very well. New products are coming on stream. We have a lot of things happening on the wood product side, solid wood products. There is CLT, Cross-Laminated Timber.
We have, of course, LVL, the Laminated Veneer Lumber, which are very high-paying forest products, high value-add products. Europe is full of these and the demand is on this end. Also, a lot of new investments have been announced that will be increasing the demand for wood in Europe. If we look at the growth of forests in Europe and compare it to the harvesting we have today, we still have room to increase harvesting. In my view, we should be utilizing the forests more to produce the sustainable products we need to replace steel, plastics, concrete, fiber, textiles. This is in the plans. This is in the investment plans also. If you look at the 2050 demand forecast for wood, we're going to need a huge amount of wood more in Europe, 27% increase in wood demand, which is difficult to supply that.
In practice, this means that wood prices will keep strong, increasing. The competition will decide who gets the wood and who does not get the wood. Not all the investments can take place and some old capacity will have to be closed down. Another feature in Europe is the diverse forestry markets. The forest property markets are strong. There has not been any significant turmoil in any of these markets. I have divided here them into six different types of markets. We have the Nordics as one market, very strong pulp and paper industries, bioproduct industries. The Baltics, very strong on the solid wood product side, and then supplying a lot of the chips and round wood, the pulp wood to the Nordics. Central European markets, which are more domestic markets that import wood from outside also. We have the Southeast European market, Iberian Peninsula.
Again, very different market, very different demand drivers. For example, one of our investments is in cork plantations, cork forests really. The demand drivers are the wine and champagne markets, not the pulp market. We have U.K., Ireland, fantastic place to grow timber and a very big import market for sawn wood. That's a good place to be. We are, as I mentioned, in eight different European markets today with our investments. A bit more on the value creation drivers. How do we create value in forest investments? First, we have the biological growth. That's the basis that provides a big large important part of the returns. There we can diversify for the species and age and geography, depending on the end-use market where you want to be. We actively drive the wood price chains.
We negotiate wood long-term sales agreements, off-take agreements. In a situation where the supply is limited and there is an increase in demand, we are in a good position to be a partner for the industries and provide them with fiber in the long term. Of course, have a compensation for that for the fund investors. We do some tactical wood sales. We have seen significant changes of wood prices in the European markets in the past years. We do a lot of our deals sourcing directly from the markets. We have about 100 people in the network of forest managers on the ground in these eight countries. There are always good deals to find. There are some pricing inefficiencies. We also do opportunistic sales. We think there is a right buyer for every piece of property we have. We are patient enough to wait to find that.
Forest management, we have, are we using the modern simulation tools? We aim at optimal forest management. We are not capital constrained when we do the management decisions. If it's time to fertilize, we do that. If it's time to do the thinning, we do that in the right time. That helps us to have a better return if we compare to private forest owners who have different motivations and different situations there. The time horizon is different for us. It's infinite time horizon really. Buy and build is important. The European markets are fragmented. I have an example of that for you. The highest and best use land policy. We put the land to the best use always. An example of that also. Renewable energy.
We provide the land infrastructure for the renewable energy developers there, provide them the opportunity to develop portfolios on large scale. Certification is important for us also, not only because we are in the sustainable investment business, but also we see a willingness to pay at the markets. The consumers are concerned about the sustainable forest products, and they do pay a price premium, which then belongs to the forest owner who does the activities to increase the sustainability of the forestry operations. Ecosystem services, Carbon sequestration, it's an important part of this in the future. The carbon belongs to the forest owner. We can produce more biodiversity and carbon in our forests. Let me go into the examples a bit here. The European forest property markets are very fragmented. Property sizes are typically some tens of hectares.
They should be hundreds of hectares or thousands of hectares or really tens of thousands of hectares to have a very efficient management. There is no really upside for the size where you need to be. We have very deep local knowledge and networks there to implement the buy and build operations we do. There's an example from Ireland where we have carried out some 300 transactions in the past years to build a new forestry portfolio. There wasn't really anything. It's very difficult to create new forest. In Ireland, you can. We can do some afforestation. With this, we have created new Industrial Size Forestry portfolios where we are lowering the unit cost of operations significantly and also we're increasing the unit price of sales when we're doing this and achieving significant upside and return there, additional return. Coming to the exit, not all players can do this.
Not all players will do this. We are finding the right buyer. All the time we do the value creation work, we keep this in mind, finding the right buyer and then sell the entire portfolio when the value creation part is ready. A practical example of how you create a new forestry portfolio. In this company, we started in 2013 by acquiring a small portfolio. Ever since, we have done over 200 acquisitions there to increase the size of the portfolio. We launched a very active buy and build campaign in the beginning of the project. We chose some areas where we want to be, the logistics hubs and so on, industries and supply of the properties. We focused efforts there.
We found that the market provided some room for us to find the properties, went out, bought them mainly directly from contacts, individual transactions there and some smaller portfolios. Once we got to the sufficient scale, we were able to review the operating model, introduce the optimization softwares where you really optimize the forest management rotation ages and time of selling the timber, creating a company with stable returns. You can see the profitable levels there. We built this to a size of about 13,000 hectares. After the first 50 properties were acquired already, we could see a significant drop in the cost of operations and increase in the sales. We introduced certification here. We were able to get a price premium for certification and also for the volume of wood we are selling. Now we have sold some non-core assets from there.
Maybe there was a right buyer for it. Maybe there was a neighbor who wanted to have exactly that asset. Now we're getting ready to exit this portfolio. Another example of value creation is the highest and best use. We have some potentials there. Typically, the large forest portfolios haven't been screened for these opportunities. We had a place where forest operations were a bit complicated. It was on a peninsula. We took an active approach, went to the zoning authorities, planning authorities, did the zoning work and established 23 holiday site plots there. We sold it at once at the 7x multiple. It is a good example of value creation. Of course, it takes some work. This is something a private forest owner typically wouldn't do. Sustainability is something we started with the slogan of sustainable timber investments. Today, we're Natural Capital.
Sustainability has been inbuilt into our operations. We are FSC and PEFC certified. We have double certification for most of the work we do. We have the carbon calculation reporting and sustainable development goals there. Most of our work on sustainability is very practical work. We have increased the, in Finsilva, one of our portfolio companies, we have increased the volume of living retention trees. We have doubled that in a few years' time. That meant leaving 114,000 retention trees and tens of thousands of biodiversity stumps in the forest to increase the amount of dead wood, which the biodiversity needs. For us, it's about measuring the biodiversity we produce. We can manage that. Of course, we want to commercialize or monetize the biodiversity also in the forest we're doing.
Just today, we announced creation of 150 hectares of conservation areas in northern Finland. The press release went out this morning. Again, a great example of work we do on a daily basis. Together with the municipality of Salla, we identified a waterfall, which is in the forest. We created a conservation area around that and have some payments for that. This is the track record of value creation we have done in the past years. We have provided very good IRRs, returns to our investors in the funds. We have also shown that we can exit the portfolios at good valuations. EUR 600 million worth of realized exits at 12% IRR in Europe, in these countries. This is a unique track on European level. I do not think any team has this. We were the first team to start.
We've been doing this for 15 years. We have also demonstrated now that there's an exit market for this and enough liquidity. I can summarize that the team today has this 15-year track, which is unique in Europe. We have double-digit returns from the funds we're managing. We have a great investment team, I can say, with over 20 years of experience on average, then supported by CapMan Platform Functions, which for us, coming from Dasos Capital, we were a small company. For us, it's a great benefit to have the platform services so the investment professionals can focus on the work they do, the fundraising, and then the value creation acquisitions of the forest properties. We have deal sourcing capacity. We have demonstrated this in the past. We're able to access industrial deals and also do private deals in the markets, source them directly from the markets.
We have the Value Creation Toolbox, which is well tested in the EUR 1.5 billion portfolio there. We know it works. We have great solutions for climate change and biodiversity. What to do with this track is, of course, to raise a new fund. We are now, Pia already mentioned, we are fundraising for the European Forest Fund IV. The asset class is interesting for our investors. They see the inflation hedging properties, the non-correlation, fantastic ESG characteristics. The sustainability is there. We know Europe is an investable place. Forestry in Europe is an investable asset class. We have the global mega trends that are absolutely supporting us. There is a significant demand increase and there is very limited supply.
All the mega trends, let's say, low carbon economies and, of course, the GDP growth and population growth globally, they support increased use of forest resources and also the increased conservation there. We know there's more value to be created. We have the keystone solution to climate change and biodiversity crisis we have at hand. We need to create more nature. That's what we do. Thank you.
Thank you very much to all three of you for the presentations. Now it's time for Q&As. Let's see if we have any questions from the audience.
Thank you all for your presentations. It's Jukko -Pekka Pesonen from Nordea. This is maybe for all of you around the investment strategies you have. Do you believe the geopolitical and market uncertainty as of now is actually working in your favor with investors looking for maybe more stable investments and the money now keeping inside Europe? Does it work in your favor or against maybe your target? I think you'll follow all of you.
Maybe if I start from how I see the opportunity set and how this whole situation is impacting our business. Obviously, uncertainty slows things down. That's for sure. We've already seen that over the years and it hasn't really got any better in that sense, there's even more uncertainty. As I mentioned in my presentation already, on the relative basis, we are well positioned as countries in the Nordics. I think Nordics stand out as a sort of safe haven in quotation marks in Europe in many ways. There is more stability when it comes to the politics, for example. It's a very stable environment. A lot of investors see that as a big benefit in this environment. There are many things that work for us. Obviously, the general uncertainty for sure will slow things down.
Obviously when it comes to investors and their decision making, for example, they will take their time to see how things turn out. That is obviously the negative thing. That is one thing.
Yeah, easy to agree that sort of would like to avoid sort of unnecessary volatility and uncertainty when fundraising. From my experience, geopolitics has been more a topic with, say, global investors that sit in the U.S. or North America or Asia when they think about whether they want to allocate capital into Europe sort of in a large sort of macro perspective. Then again, within Europe, we're kind of in the same boat that European LPs have continued to invest in Europe even though there has been this geopolitical pressures directed to Europe. I think that's a good point that real assets and low risk asset class might have a relative benefit and sort of non-correlation to equity markets could play into our favor. We're currently not in fundraising.
I don't have the sort of latest picture of what people think about like yesterday's market crash in the U.S.
Yes, thank you. I agree with colleagues. I mean, uncertainty is never a good thing on the markets. These volatilities, of course, slowing down the discussions. I think in the long term, looking at my asset class, natural capital, timber, there's an old saying in Timberland investment business that the trees do not read the Wall Street Journal in the morning when they decide to grow or not to grow. Of course, that does not, the biological growth is always there independent of the economic cycles. Around the Baltic Sea Basin, there's one wood sourcing area. There have been undesired positive consequences of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Russian wood supply has been cut off from the markets. That has impacted the market. The wood prices have increased significantly in the area, but also it adds uncertainty to the area.
If I may add to what Ville already touched on, the other different groups of investors are thinking. Clearly, when we look at the U.S. investors, they see Europe now a little bit differently than they used to, let's say, five years ago or even three years ago. There is that whole market bias now. European investors see it the other way around. Many of them are thinking that maybe now it's not a good time to go to the U.S., but rather stay in Europe. There are plus and minuses on this. Investors definitely think differently. It's not black and white that would apply to every investor group, for example. We are obviously fundraising. We are talking to all these groups and we get a little bit different feedback depending on what and who we're talking to.
Thank you. Maybe second one directly for Tapani on the natural capital around the LULUCF regulation. Has this affected maybe your discussions with investors and are investors maybe waiting for the final version of the regulation and how that will affect harvesting rates, etc.?
Yes, thank you for the question. A very interesting topic. I mean, scientific truth hasn't come out yet and will never come out about the carbon emissions or sequestration of land, land use chains. EU regulation will have some impact. What we know for a fact is that those carbon sinks, which are permanent and additional, they will be valued at the markets. The forest, let's say, nature-based solutions in general, they offer a very cost-efficient and a very large potential sink. It provides a great way to sequester more carbon from the atmosphere. I mean, we strongly see that the benefit of that belongs to the owner of the land. So the fund investors in our case. EU regulation is a good thing and necessary here. EU is creating the European biodiversity, sorry, carbon markets, voluntary carbon markets for Europe.
That's one time I see the regulation actually helping the markets.
Thank you. I'll let other ones ask.
Do we have any more questions? Thank you very much. And then we give over to Atte Rissanen, CFO of CapMan.
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Atte Rissanen. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of CapMan. Today, I will be talking to you about the financials of CapMan and how our strategy will be translating into numbers during the future years. To start things off, I'd like to take a brief moment to talk about the key financial highlights for the year 2024. Our AUM at year-end stood at EUR 6.1 billion. That's a record level. With that AUM, we were able to generate turnover of EUR 58 million. That's turnover growth of 17% compared to year 2023. Our operating profit stood at EUR 19 million. Following the divestment of CaPS in October 2024, our balance sheet is very solid. We have a very solid financial position with EUR 260 million of investment in cash versus some EUR 100 million of interest-bearing debt.
As for the dividend, the board is now proposing to the AGM a distribution of EUR 0.14 per share. Taking a little bit of a longer-term view, here on this slide, we have on the left-hand side the AUM development during the past five years, with AUM, of course, being the single most important top-line driver for our business. From 2020, AUM has grown from the beginning level of EUR 3.8 billion to the current level of EUR 6.1 billion, and with the strategic target of EUR 10 billion remaining intact. We have been able to achieve AUM growth even despite the challenging market conditions. As for the turnover, it has grown roughly in line with the AUM. Growth of nearly 12% per annum since 2020, driven by AUM growth.
One thing I would like to highlight is that as of 2024, more than 90% of that revenue is based on fee income, i.e., recurring revenue, long-term contracts, whereas the remaining part is from Carried Interest Income, so performance fees from our funds. Looking at the comparable operating profit development of CapMan, it is very visible that there is a degree of quite high variability. One thing you need to keep in mind is that our operating profit consists of three components: Fee Profit, Carried Interest, and Fair Value Changes. Of these three components, Carried Interest and Fair Value Changes are by nature very volatile earnings components, bringing inherent volatility also to the operating profit. Thereby, the operating profit alone does not give the full picture of the underlying business performance.
Moreover, all of three components need to be looked at separately to really get a good understanding on how the business is actually performing. Here on this slide, we have last year's operating profit broken down into these three components: Fee Profit, Carried Interest, and Fair Value Changes. Fee Profit is calculated as fee income less all operating expenses. This is the one item that's based on long-term contracts and is highly predictable and recurring in nature. The next item is Carried Interest, the performance fees from our funds. This is very meaningful, but the timing of Carried Interest varies based on the timing of exits. The last component is Fair Value Changes, which is returns from our balance sheet investments. As all investments by nature, there is volatility. When you take a longer-term view, our balance sheet investments have been generating approximately 10% returns annually.
All these three components summing up the total operating profit, but as mentioned, the operating profit alone does not give the full picture. Looking at the first component, Fee Profit, the development of that during the past five years. To reiterate, Fee Profit is fee income less all operating expenses. This has been growing on average by 25% per annum since 2020. Fee Profit is, of course, driven by AUM and thereby fee income. What you need to keep in mind is that Fee Profit grows faster than fee income as the relative profitability of CapMan improves as operations scale. This inherent operating leverage and scalability, I think, came pretty clearly visible during 2024 when we achieved a notable step change in the relative profitability during that year of strong turnover growth. The next earnings component, the Carried Interest.
This is performance fees that depend on fund performance as well as the timing of exits. If it is a more active exit market, you expect more Carried Interest, whereas now, as with some lower exit activity during the recent years, lower Carried Interest. That does not mean that the Carried Interest potential goes away as long as the fund performance is where it should be. During the last five years, the average Carried Interest has been EUR 4.2 million. Currently, we have three funds in Carried, so Nordic Real Estate 1, Growth Equity One, and Nest 2015. Each following exit from these funds will generate carry to CapMan. In addition to these funds, we have several other funds currently approaching carry during future years. Right now, 90% of our eligible funds are above their respective hurdle rates. Good things going forward.
Of course, as AUM grows, this improves the overall future carry potential. Before going into the last earnings component, the Fair Value Changes, I'd like to take a minute to talk about the underlying investments driving those changes. Right now, as mentioned, our investment allocation, we have EUR 262 million of investment capacity. Of that amount, EUR 94 million is in Cash and Money Market investments, and the remaining part in private asset funds. It's a well-diversified portfolio across strategies and vintages, and the majority of our investments are made into funds managed by CapMan. The fourth point to note is that now, as the external fund investments are no longer a strategic priority of CapMan, and we're not planning to make those in the future, fund investments are expected to generate notable positive cash flow during future years. Then the Fair Value Changes.
From the graph, it is visible that the change in fair values is the main driver in operating profit volatility. In 2024, Fair Value Changes were EUR 7.8 million, some 5% of the balance sheet value, okay year. As with all investments, you need to take a look at the longer-term performance. The historical annual average return has been 9.3% during the past five years. That is an operating profit contribution of on average EUR 15 million during the past five years from Fair Value Changes. Now, as we have covered all of the earnings components, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about our balance sheet. After the divestment of CaPS, our balance sheet is extremely strong. Our equity right now is standing at EUR 203 million. We have an equity ratio of 60%, and we have nearly EUR 100 million of liquid assets.
In addition to those, we have an undrawn credit limit of EUR 20 million. Strong liquidity for investments and support to support the growth of our fee business and financial stability to provide security in all market situations. These two points have been recurring on previous events as well, and this is something we aim to go for also in the future. Now, following the divestment of CaPS, a few words on what's in store for our balance sheet and how we aim to utilize the proceeds from the CaPS exit to maximize value creation. There are three main themes. First one is investments to support profitable growth. We invest alongside our LPs into CapMan funds. So making investments, putting our money where our mouth is alongside our LPs.
A recent great example of this was the Midstar transaction in connection with which we made a new EUR 15 million bridge equity investment into the Hotels II fund to facilitate the transaction and thereby enabling the team to raise EUR 400 million of new fee-generating AUM. The other point is that when we have these own balance sheet investments in our funds, it enables us to make tactical opportunities. A recent example from last year was ensuring a large investment into Nordic Infrastructure II from a new large international LP, completely new to CapMan, by being able to, in connection with the investment, sell them a sort of a deal sweetener, a EUR 5 million secondary stake in the previous Nordic Infrastructure I fund from our balance sheet, thereby providing the investor immediate exposure and a more diversified portfolio.
This is a clear benefit, and we have various examples of similar situations. The third thing related to the investments to support profitable growth is continuous exploration of M&A opportunities. When we can do complementary M&A to expand our product offering or LP coverage, that's something we are continuously on the lookout. The second main theme is financial stability. Now, following the divestment of CaPS, we need to optimize the level of our interest-bearing debt for the current operations. This is to ensure financial stability and flexibility, as well as to, of course, manage financial expenses. The third main theme is dividend distribution. From last year, the board is proposing the distribution of EUR 0.14 per share, amounting to EUR 25 million, and maintaining an attractive dividend distribution also in the future is one of our key themes also going forward.
To conclude, I would like to reiterate that CapMan now truly positioned for profitable growth. Our AUM right now is EUR 6.1 billion, with a clear pathway towards EUR 10 billion, backed by strong fund performance, flagship fundraising, scaling of existing products, as well as pursuing new growth initiatives. Fee income is expected to grow in line with AUM. Currently, fee income is about 0.9% of AUM. That ratio has remained stable throughout the past year, and we foresee that ratio remaining stable also in the future. As for Fee Profit, it is currently 13% of fee income, but as our business scales, as we make the investments to technology and automation and the inherent scalability of the business model, Fee Profit will grow faster than the top line.
As for Carried Interest, growing the potential in line with AUM in closed-end funds, and of course now with good performance in our current funds and with the funds in carry, a good outlook on carry as well going forward. Fair Value Changes have contributed positively with average returns of about EUR 10 million per annum and good cash flow generation also going forward. As for the dividend, EUR 0.14 per share, as mentioned, and sustainably growing that over time, enabled by good cash flow generation, growing profitability. CapMan's long-term financial objectives remain as is, so growth of our management company and service business, 15%. This goal was achieved during 2024. Return on equity in excess of 20%, as with the equity ratio in excess of 50%, and the distribution policy also kept intact. CapMan's policy is to pay a sustainable distribution that grows over time. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now it's time for our last Q&A session. Let's pick up on the question you got.
Yeah, exactly. Before we let you dive into questions to Atte, I got the question earlier on how big share of our funds that are in the top 25% of first quartile. As I said, the benchmarking data at the moment is not very good. To give you a couple of just data points on this one, all of our Real Estate, Infra, and Natural Capital funds are above medians in their segments. Infrastructure, Natural Capital, and Growth, really excellent stellar returns, way above their targets. If I look at the end-of-fund estimates for all of our funds across the board, 80% expect to reach or clearly exceed their target returns.
If you just look at backwards in what has been required to be in the first quartile, usually you do not need to be even at your target or at your kind of promised returns to be there. That gives you a bit of a view on the fund performance, the strong fund performance we have at the moment.
Thank you. Let's see if we have any questions from the audience.
Hi, this is Kasper from Inderes. You stated that 90% of your funds are above hurdle rates. Could you tell us which one of the funds are not?
We have currently, if we look at the currently of what's in there, there is one of the real estate funds that is slightly below at the moment.
Okay. Next funds to reach Carried Interest are Nordic Real Estate II, Infra I, Buyout XI, Growth II. Could you tell us a bit in a bit more detail that how close these funds are from booking Carried Interest?
I'd say of those three funds mentioned, Buyout XI is the most likely to, or the first one to achieve carry. As you heard from the list presentation, Infra I still has four portfolio companies remaining, so carry there depending on the exit timing. Maybe not giving or linking those infra or real estate in time, but yeah, Buyout being most likely the first one to reach carry, hopefully during, not linking that into time either, but avoiding too heavy of a guidance, but relatively soon.
Okay, thanks.
Yes, thank you. It's Jukka-Pekka Pesonen from Nordea. Maybe one question on your M&A agenda. What size and what type of companies are you researching for, for example, if you compare to the Dasos acquisition?
I think we can, or NPO, feel free to compliment, but sort of categorize the M&A opportunities into two pockets, one being sort of tactical opportunities and one being larger scale strategic moves. Tactical opportunities being smaller targets, maybe Dasos is a good example, and whereby the larger strategic structural moves would be notably larger targets. Where we are focusing right now is definitely on the first bucket, i.e., complementary new teams, additions to our existing setup, much like what the Dasos acquisition represented and brought into CapMan.
That's all for me now.
Okay, let's move over to some questions from our audience online. How are you preparing for potential macroeconomic challenges such as rising interest rates or inflationary pressures?
I think inflationary pressures, we've seen that already playing out during the past three years from CapMan's POC point of view and how it has impacted our P&L. There is very limited direct impact because the management fees that we have are fixed long-term contracts and are cost-based. Of course, with external services, there's some inflationary pressure, but for example, our largest cost item is personnel expenses and we don't have those linked with any sort of inflation components. As for the rising interest rates, our balance sheet is currently extremely strong. One of the key themes is also to optimize the level of interest-bearing debt going forward. Right now, all of our outstanding debt is based on fixed interest rates. In a sense, there's no sort of open interest risk there.
Of course, that's something we keep ourselves on the lookout all the time and seek to maintain financial stability at all times to counter any and all market situations.
If we look at our investment strategies, I would actually say that uncertainty, changes in inflation rates, in interest rates, in geopolitical situations, I think we lived through that for basically the last five years, more or less with different things coming. The best hedge that we have is the really active investment teams and asset management teams that we have on the ground working with each of our assets, basically being able to, in a very agile way, then adopt the value creation plans, work together with management and other owners in those assets. When we're looking at our fund performance, we've also been able to do so over the past year. It is just keeping this up. That is the best hedge we have. Yeah.
Coming back to AUM, broadly speaking, how much capital would you expect to have to raise on average on a gross basis to achieve the AUM growth target?
EUR 3.8 billion. That is the figure we have right now in the blank going forward, and that was a question that was expected. About two-thirds of that is close to AUM and then one-third into our open-ended funds. Of course, what the realized outcome will be is depending on what is sort of the fundraising environment and which products have the most sort of traction with the investors going forward. That is basically what we are building on now. With the current AUM being first EUR 6.5 billion now following the Midstar transaction, EUR 3.8 billion, then there are exits, and then some new growth opportunities on top, we should be at the EUR 10 billion level during 2027.
Last question, what are the primary risks CapMan faces in sourcing new investments, and how do you plan to mitigate these risks?
The main risks in sourcing new investment, because I would actually say it's a really attractive market to make investments at the moment. There's plenty of investment opportunities out there in all of our asset classes. Like you heard from Mika, Ville, and Tapani, the market situation right now has really revalued some assets. There's a lot of movement. There might be owners who are distressed and need to take action. At the moment, I don't see a risk in sourcing. I see actually kind of being very diligent now in really finding and picking out the investments that are attractively valued because of circumstances, not because of the fundamentals of the assets, and then entering now and developing those. It's a very good market when you have capital to deploy.
Thank you. That was the last question. Thank you very much. This concludes our Capital Markets Day. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you to Mika, Ville, and Tapani for sharing your outlooks on your respective investment areas and to Atte for dissecting our financials. As we've gone through, we have over the couple of last years gone through a transformation. Today, CapMan is a focused Real Asset Specialist in a very attractive market with good growth outlooks. We have a scalable platform, which is both the best place for experts in the industry to thrive, and that scales in a profitable way. We are continuing to very actively and in a sustainable way drive asset management and value creation in our assets that drives fund performance. In short, CapMan is positioned for profitable growth. Thank you.