Good morning and a warm welcome to Taaleri's presentation of the third quarter of 2024. My name is Linda Tierala and I'm heading Investor Relations at Taaleri. Presenting today, we have our CEO, Peter Ramsay, and our CFO, Ilkka Laurila. The presentation today will be followed by a Q&A session, and you are welcome to send in questions through the chat function on the webcast page. You can send questions at any time throughout the presentation. With these formalities underway, I'm happy to welcome Peter to the stage. Welcome.
Thank you, Linda. And welcome to the third quarter numbers. The results were good, but they were driven by investment income, and the underlying trends are hopefully slowly improving, although that's not really visible in the volumes yet in our business, but we have continued determinedly to advance our strategy. If we look at the key figures, you can see that our continuing earnings were EUR 9.7 million for the third quarter. That is a decline of almost 6% from a year ago when they were EUR 10.3 million . Our income totaled EUR 21.6 million , and that's a huge increase from EUR 13 million a year ago, driven really by our investment income. And in particular, we recognized EUR 8.3 million from the sale of the development portfolio to the SolarWind III fund for the third quarter. The portfolio as such was sold in 2023 in June.
Our operating profit was EUR 14.7 million compared to EUR 5.7 million a year ago. Our AUM stands at EUR 2.6 billion currently. And if we look at the lower row here, we can see some 12-month numbers. So our continuing earnings for the previous 12 months stands at EUR 40 million. That's a slight decline of 1.5%. Our income is though up 5% at EUR 68.2 million, and our operating profit for the previous 12 months stands at EUR 35.5 million, which is a growth of 10%. The earnings per share for the first nine months is EUR 0.76. Moving on to the highlights for the quarter. As I said, the income grew to EUR 21.6 million. Our operating margin for the quarter was 68%.
I would, however, want to point out that we have four different sources of income, and in particular, our investment income and our performance fees do vary quite a lot over quarters. So therefore, comparing just one quarter might not always be the right yardstick. Rather, you want to look at smoothed-out numbers. On the fundraising side for the SolarWind III fund, we have now reached commitments of EUR 470 million. In the Bioindustry business, we have the fund number one, the Bioindustry fund number one, and they were looking to increase their investments. So they've done four, and they were looking to increase their investments with one. It didn't happen during the quarter, but after the quarter, actually, they did one more investment. In the real estate business, we have strengthened the team. We think we have a high-quality team now, and we're looking to increase that business.
Garantia continued to perform stellar numbers. The insurance service result was EUR 3.4 million. That is a slight decrease, very slight decrease from a year before. But in particular, the investment operations were very strong at EUR 3.5 million. The combined ratio continues to be very strong. It's 25.8%, or it was 25.8% for the third quarter. The fundraising climate, it is tough. We have sort of foreseen that it might improve going forward, and I will show you some statistics later, in particular on how long fundraising takes nowadays, and hopefully that will enlighten a little bit the situation there. Okay, moving over to our business units, and we start with the private asset management and the renewable energy. And here we can say that, of course, we continue the fundraising for the SolarWind III fund.
Then, of course, we already have projects that are ready to build, so the fund is starting to advance those as well. We are at the end of the life cycle, as we've earlier said, on the Wind II and Wind III fund, and we are continuing the preparations for an exit there. If we just look at the numbers, they might be a little bit smaller on the right-hand side, but I can read them out loud. The continuing earnings were EUR 5 million . That's compared to EUR 5.1 million a year ago. Income was EUR 3.2 million , which is a big increase of 90% from a year ago. Then the operating profit was EUR 9.7 million for the renewable energy segment compared to EUR 2.8 million a year ago.
We have 51 people working within our renewable energy business, and the assets under management are EUR 1.7 billion at the end of the quarter. If you look at the other private asset management businesses, we're looking to develop new products. Of course, we have the investment operations of the existing funds that we are pushing forward, as well as in the Bioindustry business. We are finalizing the Torrefied biomass plant in Joensuu, and we're also investigating potentially to develop the same kind of a plant in Canada. Within the real estate business, we're looking to advance both mandates and potential new funds. If we look at the numbers here, we can see that the continuing earnings were down from EUR 1.4 million to EUR 1.2 million for the third quarter this year compared to the quarter before.
Operating profit was EUR 0.5 million negative compared to a slight minus of EUR 100,000 a year ago. We have increased our amount of employees here as we are building for the future. So we have 37 people here compared to 34 a year ago. The AUM is currently EUR 1 billion. Now, if we look at the operating environment, as we said, it is sort of challenging, although maybe there are some sort of green shoots that we can see. But, of course, important for very asset-heavy investments like ours is that inflation is sort of contained, and now we've seen that inflation has peaked and that central banks have shifted to an easing mode. Talking about the fundraising environment, there's a picture here on the right-hand side which shows you the time spent for fundraising average months.
And you can see, although this is not a very long time horizon, it's from 2019, you can see that the amount has increased from 14 in 2019 to 29 months currently. And I think that sort of speaks for itself that once you have a little bit of a disruption in the market, interest rates go higher, people do not get money returned in the same pace as earlier, then you put the brakes on, and that we can see here. And of course, we hopefully believe that this will then sort of slowly but gradually shift into a more normal mode. In the renewable energy business, I just want to say that the global transition to renewable energy continues. That is, of course, a good tailwind for us.
If we look at the real estate market, we know, especially in the Nordics, but it's been actually a global phenomenon. We've had headwinds there, and the transaction volumes is one yardstick to measure how active the real estate market is. In particular, Finland, the transaction volumes are very low. However, they seem to have turned in the other Nordic countries. Garantia's sort of business is 80% driven by the housing market, and of course, the housing market is very much driven by job security and interest rates. Now, job security is still quite weak, in particular in Finland. It's not a disaster, but we can see that employment has still continued to rise. On the other hand, interest rates are now coming down. Okay, so if we move on to Garantia, and we can say that, as I said, the insurance service result decreased slightly.
It was 3.2% less at EUR 3.4 million compared to the year before, and there were some expenses. So there was a little bit of increase in insurance service expenses, and that sort of hampered the profitability. But as I said, the combined ratio is really low as we speak. Investment operations have been good this year. I don't know if you remember, but in 2022, we had a tough year for investments, as Garantia has most of their investments in interest rate-related products. Last year, we had some sort of give back to that, but this year obviously has been a very strong year for investments for Garantia. So if we look at the third quarter, the investments yielded 4% just for the quarter, EUR 6.2 million. This means actually, from a result point of view, we recognize EUR 3.5 million.
Those are over the P&L, but the portfolio as such increased 6.2 in value, which is then booked direct to our equity. That 6.2, 3.5 is taken over the P&L. What has driven the investments is, of course, the strong equity markets, but also then shrinking credit spreads, and that's really been the big driver there. Interest rates as such have come down, but the shrinkage of the credit spreads have clearly also benefited. Yes, looking at the numbers, we can see that the operating profit for the third quarter for Garantia was EUR 6.3 million compared to 3.9 a year ago. Okay, going over to the other, which is sort of our non-strategic holdings, and I'll just lift two things here. One is the fact that Aktia, we changed how we booked the Aktia shares. They used to be as a strategic asset.
We transformed them to our non-strategic investments in April, and we have sold down that position. We haven't sold all the shares, but some of it, and then the other thing that I would highlight is the fact that our balance sheet for the non-strategic investments stands at EUR 23.8 million. It was EUR 35.5 million, including the Aktia shares at year-end last year, and we are slowly but surely then reducing our sort of holdings within this, but we'll do it at our own pace, and we don't want to rush and do anything hastily here. With this, I will hand over to our CFO, Ilkka Laurila, and he will take you through our results and the balance sheet. I'll leave this here.
Thank you, Peter, and good morning on my behalf as well. As usually, we will go through some of the highlights of the numbers, as well as some of the changes that we have made to our reporting. First, a couple of highlights of our numbers, like Peter already explained, continuing earnings declined at roughly 6%. If we would adjust the previous comparison period numbers with one of the kind of the non-recovering items, it would have been almost on the same level as the year before. Maybe a second point to highlight that all cost line items are on a lower level compared to a year ago. Combined level is roughly EUR 500,000 lower level than in the third quarter 2023. That then ends in a result that the operating profit has increased quite significantly versus a year ago.
A third element maybe to highlight here is the, if you take a look at the year-to-date number of the comprehensive income earnings per share, that is already EUR 0.88, which is the same amount as it was the full year 2023. And that obviously indicates the kind of the fair value changes of the Garantia's investment portfolio, and therefore the kind of the potential and the income potential of the Garantia's investment portfolio in the near future, taking into account the kind of the interest rate changes and the duration, obviously, but already on the same level versus the full year 2023. Then, going through these our four sources of revenue, obviously the third quarter was now kind of the biggest line item comprised of these investment operations in total, EUR 11.9 million , followed then by continuing earnings from the private asset management business.
But again, like usually, if we take a look at the longer time period, we can see that the kind of the big picture is much more balanced. The biggest kind of the revenue source obviously is again these continuing earnings from the private asset management business, then followed by the investment operations. And third largest item is obviously the insurance operations of Garantia. On the next slide, further highlights the quarterly development. On the left-hand side, you can see that the continuing earnings is developing quite steadily. And then on the other hand, like usually, the other than continuing earnings is the lumpy part of our business. And that obviously explains in a short term the lumpiness of our income development. And is obviously on the right-hand side reflected in our operating profit development almost completely.
But again, if we take a look at the longer period, this is a rolling 12-month number. On the left-hand side, you can see how the development of continuing earnings is very steady. And then on the other hand, other than continuing earnings is also quite steady if you take a look at the longer rolling 12-month picture. And that is obviously also shown in the operating profit development on the right-hand side. As explained, it is almost completely reflected in our operating profit. Then, going to our balance sheet, as already shortly touched upon, our non-strategic investments have now declined from that EUR 35.5 million at the end of the last year. It's now EUR 23.8 million after we have sold some Aktia shares. And then on the other hand, the direct investments have increased at EUR 37.5 million. So tracking on our strategy what we have explained.
On the other hand, very stable development in Garantia's investment portfolio reflecting that fair value change is, which is shown in the kind of the comprehensive income, total assets over EUR 300 million and equity more than EUR 200 million. Maybe worth noting is also that like this development portfolio recognition in this quarter, we have also these some other unrecognized contractual contingent receivables, which then if it is seen likely, we will recognize the revenue in the coming quarters or coming years, and in a footnote, you can see a couple of those items, which are not now included neither in our P&L nor the balance sheet, then, two additional data points that we have included in our reporting. The first one is that previously we have specified the direct investments and the non-strategic investments more than EUR 1 million.
Now we have included the combined level of the other investments so that everybody can now reconcile these numbers to the direct investments and the non-strategic ones, so the other investment line item there, of which fair value is that almost EUR 4.8 million. That's the total value of the investments of which value is less than EUR 1 million by item or even recognized in a zero value, and obviously, if those are then kind of in the future, we'll have some kind of exit, obviously, that will have a full impact on the P&L. The second kind of additional data point that we have now included in our reporting is the AUM by the fund, and this number is now kind of the fee-generating AUM, and therefore, as an example, the SolarWind III, the number here is 386.
But on the footnote, you can see that at the end of the third quarter, the total amount of the commitments was EUR 440 million, but that included some conditional commitments which are dependent then on the final size of the fund. And that's why the fee-generating number at this stage is EUR 386 million. So that concludes my part of the presentation, and I will hand over to Peter again for the future outlook.
Thank you, Ilkka. So what do we say about the outlook? So if we start with the renewable energy business, we expect that to develop positively the continuing earnings for the rest of the year. But the profit of the renewable energy business is naturally driven, well, now we book this sizable income from the development portfolio, but of course also on any performance fees that we book for Wind II or Wind III fund. And the timing of those exits naturally then determine that booking. And it is possible that the exit will be postponed to next year as well. Then we're looking to increase our business in the other private asset management businesses. This means that we will have costs, so we've hired people there. We want to internationalize the business. We want to launch new products.
Therefore, our expectation is that it will be negative, the results for this segment for the whole year. Then within Garantia, the continuing earnings are expected to fall slightly from the level of the corresponding period. 2024 would be slightly less than 2023. Garantia's net income, given that the markets continue like this, would sort of yield more investment income for the rest of the year. Then the other group, finally, just reminding you that that is an investment portfolio. Of course, any exits done with a profit, they will increase the profits, vice versa. If something is exited at a loss, then that will sort of have a negative impact. If we make adjustments to the fair value, either up or down, so that will impact the profitability of the other group.
But I hereby conclude our presentation, and I guess we're open for questions. So thank you.
Thank you both for presentations. So we now have a possibility to ask questions. And you may ask questions both from the audience, and then those of you following the presentation online can ask questions through the chat function. So let's start. Do we have any questions from here? So we have one from Nordea from Jukka-Pekka Pesonen.
Yes, thank you for the presentation. One question. You decided to not launch the venture capital fund for the Bioindustry and moved the goalpost for the launch of the real estate products to 2025. So could you give maybe more color on the reasoning behind this, and should we interpret this as the fundraising market taking a step for the worse during the fall?
Well, for the VC fund, I guess what we lacked was sort of a strong anchor investor there, and at the same time, it is a tough environment to fundraise. So given those two facts, I guess led to it. On the other hand, we have ample use for the resources that we sort of used for that project, and unfortunately, in private equity, it is so that some funds just don't get the traction. Maybe it's timing sometimes that isn't optimal and so forth. We've been very happy to have that fund, but for the time being, it just was deemed that we will use our resources for something else, and on the real estate side, yes, I mean, the whole idea has been really to set up a fund now and use this market to its advantage. But preparations have been a bit slower.
I don't think you don't either want to rush that. You just want to get it at the right time. Yeah, it's still sort of in the pipeline.
Thank you. Maybe one question on the SolarWind III fundraising. I don't know. It seems that it's been a bit slower than maybe we have expected. But have you seen maybe any postponements in the renewable energy commitments overall, maybe for the U.S. presidential election, or have you heard that kind of narrative behind it?
That, actually, we haven't heard. So the U.S. hasn't sort of come up as a specific item. I'd say that actually what we've managed to do is to get some real good Tier 1 international investors into the fund. And those are very big milestones. Maybe it's slower. I mean, we saw from the chart there that fundraising is slower. But we still have time until June next year. And there's a quite good pipeline sort of of due diligences that are conducted. So we just hope that those will then be sort of converted into subscriptions or in this case, commitments.
Okay. I have two more. So you had changed the outlook so that the Wind II and III Exit might be postponed to 2025. So do you see it more likely now that they will be done in 2025 based on the preparations that you've done so far?
That's a hard question. I don't actually know the exact date. And therefore, it's just better to sort of in general terms say that these are processes that take time. And were it so that it moves to 2025, that may be the case then.
And last one on the Aktia shares. So I know you don't want to maybe commit to any timeline like you said, but do you have any ballpark figures on what do you have the exit plan for the rest of the Aktia shares?
Yeah, we've sold some of them. And I guess as we move them from the strategic to the non-strategic, it's a clear sign we will sell them. So eventually, we will not hold any Aktia shares.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kasper Mellas from Inderes.
Thanks. Are the new recruitments in the real estate included in Q3 figures? If so, why did the headcount drop?
Maybe Ilkka, you want to take that. But some are replacements. But yes, go ahead.
Yeah, exactly. But you already kind of answered to the question. Those were kind of the replacement, but no new recruitments as such. So the headcount has not increased.
Thanks. One question more about the exit of the old wind funds. If the exit should happen next year, does that mean that you won't book any profit in Q4 this year?
I'll give it to Ilkka again. He's the IFRS expert here.
Yeah, it's really not that straightforward. It depends, you could say, because according to IFRS, you kind of should recognize it according to if the possibility increases. And now, as we have not kind of recognized more revenue on that, the kind of the conclusion therefore is at the stage that the kind of the likelihood and the amount of that has not increased. And that's why we have not recognized more revenue on that basis.
Do you still expect the next close of SolarWind III to happen by the end of the year?
Yeah, I won't give you a 100% sort of promise, but yes, there is an expectation.
My last question. Did you redeem the Tier 2 loan with cash only?
Yes.
Okay. That's it from me. Thanks.
Thank you, Kasper. And we have a question from online. It's quite long. But it goes, so you terminated one to two funds and your company is not growing. But at the same time, you increased the workforce from 119 to 129. Why was that? And the second part of the question is that it seems that your new strategy investing in Bioindustry is not working since there is no new AUM. So what's the next strategy?
On the Bioindustry, just separating sort of the Bioindustry fund business and the Bioindustry direct investments, we did invest EUR 5 million in Fintoil. We now own 39.7% of the company. That was done in the summer. On the increase of the personnel, so it has really to do with we are sort of investing for future products. Within the Bioindustry space, it is true that we discontinued the VC fund endeavor, but at the same time, we still have sort of two projects that are very much live. We have the Bioindustry Fund I, which has already a number of investments, looking to do more investments. Then on the other hand, we have the Biocoal factory that is now being sort of finalized. Of course, we need resources for the ramp-up and for the activities around that.
On the FTEs, I think we also did a change in how we measure FTEs. I think, did that have an impact on the FTEs?
There might be some technical changes, but obviously, because now the question is referring to year-end versus third quarter, and obviously, during that period, we have increased the number of the employees in the Bioindustry and the real estate teams as well. Yeah. And that is reflecting our kind of the growth ambitions in both of those segments. Maybe worth noting also is that the third, obviously, kind of the project which takes some resources in Bioindustry is the Canadian Biocoal development, looking for opportunities to Biocoal development in Canada.
Any other questions?
Yes, there are follow-up questions from Nordea, from Joni Sandvall.
Yeah, thanks. Maybe Peter, one follow-up on you mentioned that you have been able to close some Tier 1 customers. And I'm just thinking, how is the, and you said that you have quite good pipelines. So how interest on your funds, especially on SolarWind III, but also for real estate, has developed among investors during, let's say, past six months?
So if I start with SolarWind III, I mean, it's really a long process. We started, we did the first close in 2023 in June in a tough market environment. So I think it's just that it takes time to get these things through. And then the interest as such, I would say that now that we're this far in the process, it's narrowed down. So we're not talking about tens of potential investors, but there is a good number of high-quality investors that are looking at the fund. And of course, they're quite big tickets as such. So one success actually makes a big difference. So you just need enough of those to convert. So I would say that it's really more now down to the ones that have been around for quite a while. I don't think there's going to be any new LPs looking at it.
We know the suspects and they know us, and then it's more that some have a process that takes time, and the other ones are, of course, contemplating this or something else. On the real estate side, I think our team has got good traction. I think we have a really good team there. We'll see if we have anything to tell in the near future, but what we can say is that we're doing the preparations for the fund.
Okay, thanks.
There's a question from Henri Elo.
Yes, Henri Elo, SalkunRakentaja. Interest rate level has gone down quite quickly after summer during the last few months. So how do you see effects in your businesses like renewable energy and Bioindustry funds and real estate funds as well as current asset general level from that perspective?
Yeah, of course, interest rates are one thing and then credit spreads is another. But we have very asset-heavy businesses. If we think of the renewable energy, it's very asset-heavy. You use debt also there. So for the debt piece, it sure has an impact. It should drive IRRs and everything else equal. Then we've also had inflation. So input costs have gone up. At the same time, energy prices have slightly gone up as well across the board, especially in those regions where we are. Finland maybe not so much. So there's a lot of moving things. But of course, interest rates do impact all of these. And inherently, if your financing cost or your cost of capital comes down, it is sort of positive.
In the real estate business, I think there's a little bit of a different story because you had an overextended sort of bull market, and then kind of the bubble burst, and then what you have is sort of you have this reconstruction phase, which we're sort of seeing the end of, and I think therefore it would be really good to get that fund going because that's where you have the good opportunities to get above-cycle returns, but of course, there, a prerequisite sort of is that interest rates don't continue to go higher and that there's cost containment, so inflation isn't sort of pressurized, and we've seen both of those ease, which is important, and in the Bioindustry, it's a little bit back to the same as renewable energy. You have a lot of moving input costs.
You have feedstock, you have off-takers, you have substitutions to your products. And then, of course, you have this green wave. How strong is the green wave? Does it have support? Where is that going? Are people willing to accept sort of new consumer patterns? And I think in the Bioindustry, it's actually most complex of all of these. And then yet, you do very capital-intensive investments. And you have a certain amount of uncertainty when you do it. So what you try to do is increase the amount of certainty as you look at the investments that you do. But you will still always have that. You will never have 100% off-takers, 100% sort of feedstocks suppliers because some of that is in you can't do forward contracts and all. So what I'm just saying is that interest rates have an impact, but it's not the whole story.
But of course, always when it comes to the cost of capital, if that is lower, it does help. But then you have all the other factors. And I guess that's what when we say that we've increased our personnel, I think it's really about increasing the quality of our execution and that you cannot actually jeopardize. If you want to be in the business long term, you have to be able to deliver quality on what you're doing. If you then can create some new business, that might be great. But then also, you have to be able to terminate some of the ventures that you're looking at simply for the fact that you don't get enough security or the margin of safety isn't good enough to forward those. It's a long answer to a question, but I think it's good to give some context.
Thanks. Is it so that it was in currently, it was better investment income? So does it come both from interest income investments as well as equity investments?
Yeah, I think we showed a graph last time. So we've increased our equity exposure. So it's more like normal now. I think it's around 30.
25 or.
Yeah, between 25 and 30. And then the interest rate component has come down. I think it was sort of 87 at a high, and now we're at 70-ish. But of course, the interest component has generated most of it. And that's really due to credit spreads coming in. If you look at long-term rates, actually, in some jurisdictions, long-term rates have gone up 50 basis points from the low. But then the credit spreads have come in. The duration isn't that long in the portfolio. It's slightly over three years. Yield to maturity is good right now because we're coming from sort of a high regime from the credit spreads. And that also gives us sort of some encouragement with that. But of course, equities have performed well this year. And that has or Garantia's equity portfolio has performed well. And that has also supported the investment income.
Okay, maybe one last question. You said in your report that you have got new international investors. And it's also your strategy. Could you open a bit that, please?
Yes, our strategy is that 50% of our investors in our new funds should be international, or that's our target. And if you look at our renewable energy team, this is the sixth fund actually that we're doing in renewable energy. We are in 14 countries. We do get traction abroad. And we're really glad for these new openings. They are very, very important. And as the plan is to be a long-term player in the business, it's almost more likely that when you do your next fund, if you deliver, you will have these investors with actually bigger commitments. So that's why it's really important that you have these openings. And therefore, that is sort of, it's part of the strategy, yes. But a strategy can just be a word. I think the execution is important.
Therefore, it's nice to see that we can execute also on this.
Thank you. We have one question from the chat.
Yep.
So are you intending to distribute the cash that you received from the sale of the Aktia shares back to shareholders if you don't find any other investment opportunities for that?
Yeah, we stick to our dividend sort of target, which is that we distribute at least half of our annual earnings to our shareholders. But we're not looking to do any extraordinary distributions for any reason. It's just going to be business as usual. But of course, the board decides this, just to be clear about this one.
Are there any further questions from the audience? If there are no further questions, then we're ready to conclude the presentation for today. Thank you very much and have a great day.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.