Good morning, welcome to Taaleri's first quarter results. The first quarter for us was very much business as usual. There was a lot of action under the motor hood, but less events that create headlines. However, our highlights for the quarter was that our continuing earnings increased by 24% to EUR 9.8 million. Within the renewable energy business, the fundraising of SolarWind III was in full force, and we have also increased the amount of projects in the development portfolio to 35. The bioindustry did their third investment in the Bioindustry Fund into a company called Nordic Bioproducts. It's a company that is engaged in cellulose-based materials, and they also started preparations for a new fund. Garantia had a fantastic combined ratio.
It stood at 24.3% for the quarter, and the insurance service results increased by 44% to EUR 3.8 million. Garantia now applies the IFRS 17 standard as of the 1st of January, so we have restated the numbers for 2022 so that they are comparable with the ones being disclosed. Looking closer at the numbers for the 1st quarter, as I said, the continuing earnings increased by about 24% to EUR 9.8 million. The private asset management business, there we had an increase of 13.8% in the continuing earnings to EUR 5.6 million. Garantia's continuing earnings increased by 52.2% to EUR 3.9 million.
We didn't book any performance fees for the quarter, and our total income for the PLC increased by about 6% to EUR 9.3 million. Our operating profit stood at EUR 1.6 million. That's a margin of 16.8%. Our assets under management were flat compared to the end of last year, standing at EUR 2.5 billion. Thus we booked earnings per share of EUR 0.02 for the quarter. Now, if we look at our 12-month rolling performance, I'd want you to focus on the left-hand bars on the third one where it says LTM. It shows our last 12-month continuing earnings, which are about EUR 38.7 million.
We have other than continuing earnings, which in our case is investment income and performance fees, they are about EUR 23.7 million. On the right-hand side, you can see our operating profit, which for the last 12 months has been 48%, and the euro amount is EUR 29.9 million. We look at the various income or cost sources for Q1, it's rather one-sided. On the other hand, we have a lot of continuing earnings, we have no performance fees and a slight negative investment income for the quarter. A quarter is a little bit too short to look at our business. It's more sensible to look at the last 12 months rolling.
Of course, here you see slightly more even bars starting in the left-hand corner with the net continuing earnings from our private asset management business. We have the performance fees that we booked during the last 12 months. We have Garantia's income from the insurance operations, and then the investment income. The pillar is a bit smaller, but as we remember, last year was a troublesome year for the fixed income market and Garantia's investments are mainly in the fixed income space and thus, that is a little bit lower. On the right-hand side, we see the operating profit for our role in 12 months, which is EUR 29.9 million. Moving over to our private asset management business, we start with the renewable energy.
As I said, the SolarWind III fund is heading for its first close. Just as a reminder, this is a dark green fund under Article 9, under EU's SFDR, i.e., Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. As I said, we're heading for a first close in this quarter, as earlier communicated, the development portfolio stands at 35, which is a good number, i.e., that is the projects that then will be executed within this fund as it has raised money. The income was EUR 3.6 million, slightly down from a year ago. It's mainly driven by currency effects. If we look at the continuing earnings, they actually were up 11.2% to EUR 3.9 million. Moving over to our other private asset management operations.
Within the real estate business, they have been active in trying to develop new products. Not an easy market for the real estate investors right now, but there's always room for new innovation. They also have some older funds that are coming to the end of their lifespan, we will probably start preparations for an exit there in the coming years. Within the bioindustry, as mentioned, they did their third investment within the Bioindustry fund. This is a really interesting company that produces cellulose-based materials with a high processing value. The team is also making preparations for a potential new fund that would invest in startups in the bioindustry space.
Our reasoning is, as the bioindustry ecosystem is being currently developing quite rapidly, it feels logical that we want to be a player in the field, also look at companies in... that are in an earlier stage, as in, you know, that we invest in these as well. The team has had numerous encounters with extremely interesting companies in the space, but really lacked a vehicle to invest into these situations because the Bioindustry Number One Fund is a growth investment fund and does not invest in early-stage companies. Wrapping up on the other private asset management business, one could say the continuing earnings increased to EUR 1.6 million, mainly driven by the, that we managed to raise more AUM last year.
There were no performance fees for the quarter, and the income was actually also EUR 1.6 million, and the EBIT, so the operating profit stands at minus EUR 0.5 million. If you look at the private asset management business over a rolling 12-month period, we can see that the continuing earnings and our other than continuing earnings are about evenly struck, slightly over EUR 21 million each. On the right-hand side, we see the operating profit for the last 12 months, which is EUR 17.8 million. That is an operating margin of 42%. This is a picture of our funds that we manage and the AUM from these funds. There's a...
It's a very busy slide, but on the right-hand side, you can see the split between the various business lines. Of course, as we expect to do a close here for the SolarWind III fund in Q2, that dark blue bar that stands 4% will naturally increase its portion of the AUM. Moving over to Garantia, which we call our strategic investment, and as I earlier said, we have restated the numbers for Q1 as we now apply the IFRS 17 standard from the 1st of January. If we look at the combined ratio, it was 24%. This is a remarkably low number, and the insurance result within Garantia grew 43.8% to EUR 3.8 million.
This was a mix of increased revenues and a decrease in expenses, we actually booked no losses in policies or in contracts within the IFRS regime within the first quarter this year. Last year there was some losses booked. Income stood at EUR 4.8 million, and this was due to an increase in insurance service result. There was also an increase in net investment income. January, February were very strong in the fixed income market. In March, Silicon Valley Bank was rescued, we had a slight increase in spreads due to that. Nevertheless, there was a profit of EUR 0.9 million in the investment income. The operating profit for the first quarter was EUR 4.4 million.
The guarantee insurance exposure is currently EUR 1.8 billion. It's slightly down from the end of last year when it was EUR 1.9 billion. The solvency ratio is very strong. It's 235% for at the end of Q1. Moving over to what we call our non-strategic investments or other, I mean, what really counts here is we look at the book value of the portfolio, and here you can see in the light blue box down in the right corner, the book value was EUR 24.6 million at the end of the first quarter. This is really mainly a technical correction from year-end. We haven't really sold anything. There's slight currencies that gone against us, and then, one of the companies we did a small adjustment to fair value.
All in all, the continuing earnings were EUR 400,000. Investment stood for a loss of EUR 500,000, and the income was more or less zero, and the operating profit -EUR 1.4 million. That's due to the fact that we are allocating costs here as well. All right, I'll hand over to our CFO, Minna Smedsten. She'll run you through our results and the balance sheet.
Thank you, Peter. My name is Minna Smedsten, and I'm the CFO of Taaleri. Let's take a look at our businesses a little bit next to each other and how our income comprises of the businesses. You can see that, basically, our continuing earnings were EUR 9.8 million, and our private asset management share was nearly 60% and Garantia's 40%. As we didn't exit any funds during the quarter, we didn't book any performance fees either, and we booked a $0.3 million decrease in the fair value from currency exchange in the Texas wind farm project. Now a few words about our strategic investments.
We present Garantia here, and Garantia's continuing earnings grew to EUR 3.9 million, and the net investment income grew to EUR 0.9 million. We also present the fair value change in our Aktia share position, and that position decreased with EUR 0.7 million in Q1. According to IFRS 17, most of Garantia's insurance-related expenses are netted from the cost side and transferred to the income, and thus, Garantia has very small expenses, and you can see our operating profit of 90.2%. Our group's operating profit excluding net income from investment operations improved from EUR 1.6 million in Q1 last year to EUR 2.1 million, and that corresponds to 21.8% of income.
Let's take a look at the quarters next to each other. Our continuing earnings grew to 24%, our turnover increased 59% to EUR 9.3 million. A few words about our costs. Basically our biggest cost items are naturally our personnel costs. Here we have booked EUR 1.5 million in bonuses. That's an increase of EUR 0.4 million from last year. Our fixed personnel costs grew 14.5% to EUR 2.8 million, mainly due to recruitments in renewable energy and Bioindustry. Here you can also see a comparison of the IFRS 17. Looking at the right-hand side, you can see a column of IFRS 17. That is how we have restated our last year financial figures, the IFRS 4 what we actually reported last year.
Now looking at the items and the columns next to each other, you can see that most of Garantia's expenses are transferred from the cost side to the income. When the costs are netted, then naturally also our operating profit then increases in the group or actually in the according to IFRS 17. On the whole year basis, we didn't see any changes in the profitability, but we will see a variation during the quarters, so the IFRS 17 will increase the volatility between the periods but not on a long-term basis. Finally, a few words about our balance sheet.
Taaleri has a solid balance sheet with an equity of EUR 202 million and total assets of EUR 308 million, and that gives us an equity ratio of 66%. Our AGM that was organized in April decided to distribute a dividend of EUR 0.70, and that corresponds basically to EUR 20 million. When you take that EUR 20 million away from our cash balance sheet, you can see that our cash stands today basically at EUR 32 million. Our biggest item is naturally Garantia's investment portfolio that consists mostly of fixed instruments, and that total EUR 144 million, and that is after the dividend of EUR 10 million that they paid to their parent company during Q1.
Actually, Garantia has now paid the acquisition price back to us as they have returned EUR 63 million in dividends, and we actually paid EUR 60 million in 2015. All in all, we also had then strategic investments in private asset management, and that totaled EUR 37 million. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Minna. Summarizing our first quarter, we had an increase in continuing earnings. Within the renewable space, all eyes is on SolarWind III fundraise. Of course, they've increased the project portfolio. We must not forget that they are also advancing the projects in the previous SolarWind II fund every quarter. Within the bio-industry, we did one more investment, they're preparing for the next venture capital fund. Garantia restatement of the results, plus they had a very strong quarter. What's gonna happen in the next quarters? Well, of course, we're eagerly looking for first close in SolarWind III. Within the bio-industry, I'd say it's...
They're of course evaluating new investments within the fund, the Bioindustry I fund. Then they're also starting the construction of the torrefied biomass plant in Joensuu, which we have talked about earlier. Within the real estate business, they're looking at the possibility of developing new products. In Garantia, I would say it's business as usual for the coming quarters. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter and Minna. Now we have time for questions. You can ask questions on the webcast platform, but let's start with questions from the floor.
Thank you, Sauli Vilén from Inderes. About the new bioindustry fund, let's call it a startup fund now, can you give us any indication what size that fund could possibly be?
It's not gonna be a big fund because it's sort of a venture capital fund and, you know, I don't know what the size. It has, of course, to do with what the market can take, but we're not talking about more than max EUR 50 million if anything. So that just to give you a ballpark number.
The fee structure, I guess the Bioindustry I gives a good indication about if fee structures of fund in that field?
Yeah, let's have the fund in place first before we talk about fees.
Okay. about the Bioindustry I, how much of the capital is committed at the moment?
The Bio Fund One. They've done three investments. I don't have the exact number, but I would say it's between 20% and 30%. This is a very... I'd rather give a broader, sort of broader range on that, but that's what I would say.
About the real estate. Obviously you think that you try to develop new things, I mean, how confident are you that you are actually able to sell anything in this market since, I mean, basically all of your peers who has real estate, real estate funds or products, they basically cannot sell anything at this stage? Actually the outflow. There is outflow more than inflow, I mean this kind of a tricky situation, I guess.
Yeah, it's a tough market. I mean, you're absolutely right. You know, developing new funds is then finding opportunities that fit into this market, but it's not gonna be an easy sell.
Lastly about the SolarWind III, I mean, you're basically getting closer to the first close now. Can you give any indication like how what has the feedback been on the market? I guess the demand is there for that kind of assets, but are the institutions willing to close at this stage when the market is overall... Like the alternative market is fairly, I mean, it's not as what it used to be like-
No
... with a year or two year ago. I mean, can you give us any indication about the overall feeling?
Yeah
on the new sales?
I think, you know, if anything you want to raise in this market is a renewables fund, so you know, that's perhaps the good news on the fundraising side, but you're absolutely right that, you know, the pipelines are not what they used to be and the appetite is not. That's perhaps sort of the only good thing that if you want to raise something, it's this kind of a fund. Let's see where the first close ends up at. Of course that's not the last close either, so I think it's sort of, you know, typically you have two or three closes. That might change in the due course, but it's definitely a different landscape than it was if we go back one or two years. That's for sure.
I mean, there are several factors that affect that. One is of course the fact that interest rates have risen. The other thing is that, the sort of uncertainty with how, you know, allocations are that, you know, are people overweight or how do they look at that? Fortunate for us is that this is a very specific, sort of allocation. It diversifies your holdings and it doesn't necessarily correlate to the extent with the exception of the interest rate. Of course there we have a mitigation from energy prices, that then of course are sort of. You have to balance those two.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Joni Sandvall from Nordea. Maybe couple of follow-ups still on the, on the renewable side. Have you seen any changes in LPs allocations? Have you seen, you know, reduction in allocation sizes?
It's too early to say. We have to see the first close when You know, when the ink is dry. I mean, we're aiming of course for a bigger fund. We have a bigger pipeline. I would expect that at least some people will increase their allocations, but it's kind of hard to give you a exact answer on that before it's sort of Before it's closed.
Okay. Thanks. Maybe a bit about exit pipeline for the non-strategic investments. Obviously it's tough market currently, so when should we expect some news on that front?
We have sort of our internal roadmap for that and we hope that we can show something also this year. Of course if you look at some of the investments that we disposed of last year, it was a better market to dispose those. I'd say I'm not saying we were lucky, but you know, we had the opportunity. We did that. We're not gonna force anything out of the portfolio, and especially if it's not yet ripe to be sold. I think also for our shareholders it makes sense then to sort of harvest those a bit longer.
Okay. Final, related to new possible bio funds, so how large investment in personnel you need to operate this?
Well, we have a team today that's eight and, you know, we might talk about one addition to that within that current team. We have structured it so that there is room for this fund. We're exploring if we can execute on that. I think that's our sort of take on the whole situation is that the ecosystem is developing. It's been very polarized, driven by the big companies and then you've had, you know, the universities that do research. There is sort of a space and we've run across so many companies there which are interesting. Really the idea comes from that. You know, the future will tell if we will have investors that also are aligned with our thoughts. Maximum one person it would take to sort of be able to run that fund in a professional manner.
Okay. Thanks.
Any more questions?
Rauno Mattur . Good morning. Investor. I'm also on the fee side. On 83, is the fee structure similar to the previous ones where after first closing the full commit that co-commitment is counted into the fee which starts running?
You mean, yeah, subsequent. Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, it starts from sort of when you do your first close, then retroactively, you sort of collect the fees.
Okay.
Yeah.
That starts after quarter two?
Well, the idea is that we do our, yeah, our first close during this quarter.
Right. Okay.
Yeah.
Any reference clients there that you can mention that have signed?
I'm gonna wait till we do the first close.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no questions from the webcast at the moment, so I think we are wrapping up.
Okay. Thank you very much.