United Bankers published its first half result today. Could you walk us through the kind of highlights of the first half and then a summary of the financial result as well?
The first half 2024 was the strongest half-year period in our 30-year 38-year history, so financially very strong. The top line grew by 33.5%. Our operating profit almost doubled. We managed to grow our assets under management, and the net subscription in our funds were positive. During the period, we continued to simplify and streamline the organization. We did some group internal mergers in the beginning of the year, and during the spring, we went live with the biggest IT upgrade, new base system in IT, which will help us further develop and simplify and automate our processes. In addition to that, we organized a share issue to the UB team during the spring. It was strongly oversubscribed.
Of my team, now more than 75% are shareholders in the group, which is very important for me, very important to align the interest between owners, key employees, and our clients, the three important stakeholder groups. Business-wise, the strong execution of our forestry strategy, which resulted in a divestment of our Nordic Forest Fund II, is probably the most important, financially and business-wise. We delivered 13.3% IRR to our investors, which is, when looking at forestry, it's a historically high number.
Let's talk a bit about fundraising, which, obviously is very important to your business model. How did your fundraising develop in the first half? What kind of products sold the best?
The areas where we saw the highest demand were asset management mandates, then different bond funds, our energy fund, and our forestry funds. These were the most sought after. If we look at client segments, one could simplify by saying that institutionals were slower than usually in making new investments, whereas then the private banking high net worth segment was even more active than we anticipated. So a bit depends on which client segment you look at.
Fundraising in the alternatives has been quite tough. Do you see that the trend should pick up upwards in the later part of the year, or how do you see the development in this area?
Yeah, I mean, the alternatives have been, have had some headwind after the very rapid increase in interest rates that we saw to tackle the inflation problem. So... And that effect in the institutional clientele, we still do see. On the other hand, alternatives is a important and permanent component in every well-diversified global portfolio, so the long, mid to long-term demand is not gonna disappear anywhere for the best managers in class. And of course, looking at the development of the interest rate in Europe, for example, during the last months, it of course most likely will be reflected into the sentiment of the investors over the months to come. So I don't see it as a very long-term phenomenon.
Of course, one of the biggest news in this first half, as you said, was the sale of your second forest fund. The returns were quite impressive, and I figure the owners of the fund were pleased as well. Have you seen that these investors are coming to becoming investors at your next fund as well?
Yes. Many, many have already made their decisions and basically moved over from fund number two to four. Some are still, have not made up their decisions, and some have declined to move to number four, fund number four. And the reason is not the asset class or our performance. The reason is typically the general allocation within that specific institutions between non-liquid and liquid. And if they are higher than they wish to be in non-liquid assets, they are not allowed to write new tickets in how good the manager ever is. It's a question of allocation.
But then on the other hand, we see an increasing amount of investors who have not been invested with us, who are making due diligence and investment decisions around NFF4. So we are looking forward to the autumn.
You sound kind of confident that the investors will come, should they make their final decision at some point?
... I believe our strategy and the markets we work on are a unique combination. So I am quite confident, yes.
Yeah. Real estate has, of course, had difficult years, and you also lengthened your redemption period. Is there something in the details, for example, are there gonna be more redemptions in the pipeline, or how should the investor interpret this?
The redemption period was aligned with our peers, basically. You should not be the most liquid one if there is generally a negative sentiment in a certain asset class. During the first half of the year, we have not seen any redemption panic, and the coming months will show whether there's gonna be a panic on the market or if the decreasing interest rates will actually turn around the market itself. Historically, when the interest rates are dropping, it is not the best time to redeem the units. On the contrary, it is historically the best time to subscribe, but time will tell, and we are...
We're actually even trying to not only continue to manage the funds we are, but we are launching a new housing-related fund to try to benefit from this situation, where sentiment is bad, there's an overhang of unsold apartments on a big discount, and the key driver of the market, the interest rate, is rapidly decreasing. So we try to be more opportunistic than reactive here.
And nothing... So nothing, nothing dramatic behind the figures?
No.
Yeah. Let's talk about the returns for forest products. They have been quite good in the recent years. How do you see the outlook? Is there something different in the dynamics of forest funds and the returns, or is the outlook still very positive?
The returns have been good also this year, and we don't see any. We don't expect any change there. The drivers are the rising timber prices, which, with a delay, come into the NAV of the funds. That combined with the increasing energy use of forest land, which is a new source of income for forest owners, and I mean, traditionally speaking as well, the predictability of the returns in forestry are high, so we are very confident in both short and longer term development.
The key driver in timber prices is boosted by the fact that in addition to the traditional use of timber, we are increasingly going to need this great raw material in replacing plastics, in replacing metals, in replacing cotton, et cetera. So, the growing and more added value use of the raw material is a very good underlying driver on the prices, and a mega trend we like.
As said, the sale of the second forest fund resulted in a high performance fee for United Bankers and, of course, raises the total of after-tax to this year to a high, a record high level, I'd say. So how do you see next year? Is there still room for improvement in the financial result of United Bankers, and what might be the drivers behind this? Or could this be the record high year for a couple of years at least?
Our strategy is based on a unique competence in alternatives such as forestry, energy, real estate, and if we look at forestry, for example, as an example, we have a unique portfolio from the growing tree to the new innovation, and added value use of the tree, as packaged into investable fund units. We know globally that institutions, they have their own ESG targets. They need asset managers such as ourselves to both generate, of course, their traditional best possible risk-adjusted return, but also to achieve their sustainability goals. So we...
To say it short, we see a lot of demand, and, of course, if we see demand, we will also see subscriptions, and that will, of course, translate into management fee, which is very predictable. Then the bigger the management fee, the bigger is the value of the performance fee option, in a way. And these two together is, of course, also more or less one-to-one correlating with the results. So, we are. We've been a growth company for many years, and we... Our aim is to continue to be one, and I'm very confident in our strategy and how it will be then translated into euros, profits, and market capital to our shareholders.
Thanks for the answers, Patrick, and good luck with the rest of the year.
Thank you so much.