Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Caledonia Investments PLC Fund Spotlight. The presentation will commence shortly. A copy of the presentation slides is also available to download from the Results Centre on Caledonia's website, www.caledonia.com. After the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll be able to do so either through the Zoom webinar link provided separately or by submitting written questions using the Ask a Question button on the Spark Live webcast page. Please note that this call is being live streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. I would now like to hand over to Mat Masters, Chief Executive Officer, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Hello, I'm Mat Masters, CEO of Caledonia Investments, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to our Fund Spotlight. This follows on from the Private Capital and Public Company Spotlights, which are available on our website. The purpose of these events is to provide you with the opportunity to hear directly from our Specialist Investment Team, for them to explain the strategy and how it's executed. Today, you'll hear from Jamie Cayzer-Colvin, who leads our Funds Team, alongside Eloise Fox, who will take you through our North American strategy, where the bulk of our NAV and future commitment is, and Min Ong, who will provide an update on Asia. Before we get to the spotlight, a short reminder about Caledonia. We are long-term stewards of our shareholders' capital, including the Cayzer family, who have entrusted us with theirs for generations. Now, looking after multi-generational capital shapes everything we do.
We need to make returns but do so whilst limiting the risk of losing capital. We target absolute returns of inflation + 3%-6%, and this influences the level of risk we're prepared to take. Over the last 10 years, our approach to investing has delivered results at the top end of this target range at 9.8% per annum, outperforming inflation by 6.5% per annum, and we have consistently increased our dividend for over half a century. Our approach to investing is straightforward. We invest in high-quality businesses and hold them for the long term. Our maxim, "Time well invested," captures the essence of our approach perfectly. Our in-house investment team is fully aligned with shareholders. We do not manage anyone else's money, and there is no fundraising.
Performance is measured against NAV per share over time and rewarded in Caledonia shares, so our incentives are directly tied to long-term value creation. Across all our investments, we look for the same three core ingredients: attractive markets to operate in, resilient businesses with strong fundamentals and return characteristics, and management teams that are high quality and well aligned with shareholders. We are organized across three main strategies, giving us exposure to both private and public companies across a range of sectors and geographies. Each team takes a focused, concentrated approach, while shareholders benefit from the diversification that comes from having exposure across all three strategies. Our public companies pool comprises two portfolios investing in high-quality businesses with good long-term prospects. We take a concentrated, long-term approach, seeking to buy well and hold durable compounders over time. Private capital invests alongside management teams in predominantly U.K. mid-market businesses.
We typically hold a small number of investments, often as majority shareholder, and work closely with management to build sustainable value using prudent leverage. Today, you will hear about our Fund Strategy, which provides us with diversified exposure to two great long-term markets and represents 30% of our NAV, or GBP 894 million. We have chosen to focus our Fund Strategy on two areas in order to capitalize on attractive risk-reward dynamics in the case of North America and the opportunity to harness significant macro themes in Asia. Turning to North America lower mid-market first, which is where around two-thirds of the Funds pool is invested. You will hear how the Funds in this market invest in small but profitable companies, often the first institutional capital into owner-managed businesses and then help them to improve and broaden their operations to allow them to grow in the world's largest market.
The risk these Funds take on is that smaller companies bring higher operational risk, but this is managed across a very well-diversified portfolio, and we can offset this risk by the Funds typically paying lower multiples and using less leverage than the larger part of the market. Our returns are primarily driven by operational improvement, backing private equity managers who are entirely aligned with us on this aim. Importantly, we are often the only European investor in these Funds, giving us differentiated access to managers and opportunities that are not always available to international investors. The other third of the pool is invested in Asian private market Funds, which focus on two important macro trends: a growing middle class and innovation. These Funds take on early-stage risk with their investments and typically don't use any leverage.
This Asia exposure also provides a very good source of diversification for the portfolio. Across both these areas, we invest alongside experienced, operationally focused managers with deep local knowledge and proven track records. This approach allows us to access high-quality opportunities that are difficult to reach directly from the U.K., while benefiting from disciplined manager selection, robust due diligence, and ongoing portfolio monitoring. Funds play a key role in broadening our opportunity set, enhancing geographic and strategy diversification, and complementing our direct investment capabilities. Thank you. I'll now hand you over to Jamie.
Hello, my name is Jamie Cayzer-Colvin, and I head the Funds pool. As a member of the Cayzer family, it's a real privilege to be part of an enterprise that's flourished for 147 years across six generations, and the seventh now joining us. My perspective is shaped by generations, not months, quarters, or years, and that's why Caledonia's ethos, "Time well invested," rings so true and continues to inspire us today. As Mat said in his introduction, the Funds pool strategy complements our direct investment strategies by providing diversification into markets that are otherwise difficult to access. We do this through partnership with some of the best managers in the world. These managers have the skill to build better businesses. They can help companies fulfill their potential, who in turn generate shareholder value.
Now, before we go into the details of the portfolio, let me first explain how and why we do this. You'll hear us talk about partnership a lot because partnerships are at the heart of what we do. We began this now-proven process 16 years ago, focusing on Asia and North America, large markets with depth and long-term growth. Here, we have built extensive networks and deep market expertise. Given the scale and maturity of North America, it's not surprising that it now accounts for around two-thirds of our portfolio NAV. We have forged relationships with highly skilled, experienced managers where we can be truly aligned and share in their value creation approach. We prefer smaller funds where management fees only cover the running costs of the investment team, and we like to be aligned with managers who are motivated to share in the value they create.
Many of these managers do not market themselves outside their home regions, so gaining access will be almost impossible for investors here in the U.K. without our network. We invest only when we have deep conviction that the manager will deploy capital consistently and in line with their stated strategy. That conviction comes from getting to know them extremely well with frequent meetings. We often build a relationship over many years before committing to a fund. These are long-duration assets, so we seek to deploy capital steadily, not opportunistically, and avoid market timing. Our goal is a consistent, well-diversified exposure across managers, sectors, and investment styles. Caledonia's unique structure enables us to block out the noise of the market, allowing us to take our time. After all, markets reward the patient investor. Investing does not end with committing capital.
We monitor our managers through financial and operating reporting, performance benchmarking, and in most cases, we take a seat on the Funds Advisory Board, the LPAC. This gives us oversight and a voice on critical governance matters. We also engage directly, in person, with portfolio leadership, ensuring transparency, accountability, and adherence to investment objectives. The process we have developed gives investors diversification into markets they could not access alone, underpinned by a rigorous risk management system that delivers strong, long-term performance. We have built our portfolio using the three Ts: team, thesis, and track record. This thorough analysis, often conducted over many years, allows us to build the conviction we seek. We start with the team. Some of the key questions we ask of them are: What's the value creation skills that they bring to the portfolio companies?
What is their depth and breadth of experience in both up and down cycles? Are the team hungry for success? And how well does their culture and incentive structure align with our own values and long-term objectives? We spend significant time with the managers to understand their leadership style, their succession planning, and their ability to attract and retain top talent. Ultimately, we back people, and in our experience, the quality and character of the team is the single most important driver for long-term success. Next, we look at the thesis. We ask, what is the manager's differentiated angle or edge in the current market? How clear and robust is the plan for value creation and risk management? Is the thesis supported by strong fundamentals, long-term trends, and defensible market positions?
We also test whether the thesis is robust and fits with the broader portfolio objectives, and whether the manager has shown discipline in how they deploy capital. Our objective is simple: to back only those managers with a clear, compelling, evidence-based thesis that can be executed in practice and not just in theory. Finally, we examine track record. We don't just look at headline returns. We break performance down by vintage year, sector, deal type, geography to understand what really drove results. Our process includes attribution analysis to separate genuine skill from luck or market beta. We review managers' price discipline on acquisitions. We examine exits to find out what the value creation drivers were and the consistency across cycles and the ability for the manager to generate multiple expansion. We reference past investors and portfolio company executives to validate what we're told.
We look for a proven, resilient, transparent track record that demonstrates repeatable results. Now, executing this strategy requires a rigorous, methodical process, and there are literally thousands of managers in our target markets. Through systematic desktop research, we narrow that universe to around 500 managers, all of whom are met and actively monitored. From this group, we then reduce the number by half, creating our focused pipeline. From that pipeline, we have built an investment portfolio of 46 approved managers overseeing 82 underlying funds. This portfolio provides exposure to more than 600 companies. Our investment process is lengthy. We build confidence as we get to know our managers, and this is matched by a rigorous internal approval process, with all commitments being approved by the investment committee.
We conduct formal legal reviews of the limited partnership agreement which governs the funds to ensure we negotiate the best possible investment terms, and in most cases, we have a seat on the Funds Advisory Board. Once invested, monitoring is intensive. We meet each manager in person at least twice a year. We attend their annual and LPAC meetings, as well as participating in quarterly update calls. I am proud to say that we know our managers extremely well. We take the word partnership very seriously. I'm immensely grateful to the team here at Caledonia, who spend a great deal of time on the road. I've been incredibly fortunate that soon after setting up the Funds pool, I was joined by Min Ong and Eloise Fox, and the three of us have built the processes, relationships, and portfolio you see today.
You will shortly hear from both Min and Eloise, but before you do, I'd like to briefly mention three other colleagues who help manage the portfolio: Geordie Cox, Freddie Buxton, and Shen ying Li . They bring legal and accountancy expertise, fund portfolio experience, and regional perspective. Caledonia places great value on the next generation, something reflected in our long-standing intern program, and it is especially pleasing to see Freddie return to Caledonia, having first joined us as an intern a decade ago. The investment team is supported by Rachel Mak and Sarah Harcourt- Wood and their team, who do an outstanding job of keeping everything running smoothly. Ours is a truly multicultural team with colleagues from China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, and Britain. I would now like to turn to the North American portfolio and introduce my colleague, Eloise Fox, who will present the next section of this review.
Thank you, Jamie. Good morning. I am Eloise Fox, and I run Caledonia's North American Funds program. I have had the great pleasure of working at Caledonia for the past 14 years, and I started the successful program when I joined the firm in 2012. Today, I'd like to tell you more about the attractions of U.S. lower mid-market private equity. The U.S. economy is dominated by small privately held businesses. There are 400,000 companies in the U.S. where EBITDA is in the range of $2 million-$10 million. In aggregate, it's thought that these companies generate more than $10 trillion in revenue a year and employ over 48 million people, and this is typically where the lower mid-market is considered to sit. What makes this segment particularly compelling is the strength of the founder-owner culture in the U.S.
Founder-owners have been instrumental in shaping corporate America, driving innovation and value across all ends of the market. These hardworking and adaptable entrepreneurs, often family-backed or self-made, embody agility, risk-taking, and hands-on management in a market where they possess a really deep local market knowledge. These are established businesses, cash-generative, and are typically started and grown primarily using the founder's personal savings and the company's own profits without relying on any external investors. This approach allows the founder to maintain full control and operate leanly, but it often means slower growth due to the company being underinvested. As a result, there's often clear headroom for value creation through targeted investment and professionalization. 57% of founder-owners are 50 or more years old and therefore may be thinking about retirement plans, succession planning, partial liquidity, or looking for a partner to help grow the business.
This combination (depth of supply, resilient operating businesses, and a consistent pipeline of founder transitions) creates a significant opportunity set. Not only are there many companies in the lower mid-market, this part of the market is less intermediated and therefore less efficient than large-cap private equity, resulting in lower entry valuations. There's less capital targeting this part of the market, leading to reduced competition for deals and more attractive entry opportunities. As the chart illustrates, the lower mid-market consistently trades at materially lower and much more stable entry multiples than the broader U.S. buyout market. As lower entry multiples can support this, typically lower levels of leverage are used in lower mid-market transactions versus larger deals. Here, we are trading greater operational risk for lower financial risk. There are many sources of untapped value, more often than not revolving around the founder.
The companies are well-run, but there's plenty of room for value creation. This is often focused on investing in and augmenting the management teams, improving a company's data and analytics, and growing the company organically and inorganically through M&A, increasing scale by number of locations and service offerings. All of these operational levers create a more professionalized and scaled business, which is attractive to a broader buyer set, larger private equity funds, as well as strategic buyers. All this generates the potential for outsized returns. The diligence process includes an assessment of a manager's pricing discipline, as well as their exit discipline, where consistency is key. To provide a real-life example of this, let me take you through a case study from one of our long-term fund relationships, CenterOak Partners. CenterOak is a Dallas, Texas-based private equity firm.
The firm invests in business, industrial, and consumer services and has a history of creating significant value through organizational development, operational improvements, and transformational growth. We have partnered with them for 11 years and are invested in their Funds 1, 2, and 3. The CenterOak team spun out from another Dallas-based private equity firm, and we were able to diligence their prior track record in order to be comfortable backing a first-time fund. CenterOak Fund 1 is now fully realized and is a top quartile fund, having generated a 2.7x net money-on-money and a 28% net IRR. Funds 2 and 3 are tracking in line with our underwrite of 2.5x net money-on-money. CenterOak acquired Turf Masters in 2022, a leading provider of residential lawn care services.
Turf Masters was founded in 2002 by Andy Kadrich, operating from his basement in Atlanta, Georgia, with just a handful of customers, and I have enjoyed spending time with Andy and hearing his amazing story firsthand. The Turf Masters business quickly grew to be a household name in Atlanta, all the while maintaining the high level of service and care that only a family-owned local company can provide. Turf Masters differentiates itself through high-quality application work, exceptional customer service, investment in best-in-class equipment, and a people-first culture focused on skills development and really meaningful career opportunities. At the time of CenterOak's acquisition in 2022, the company was a strong regional leader serving approximately 100,000 customers. As the first institutional investor, CenterOak partnered closely with management to accelerate the company's evolution from a regional operator into one of the nation's premier residential lawn care platforms.
Over the course of ownership, CenterOak invested behind the core value creation levers we like in the lower mid-market: talent, systems, expanded service offerings, and scaled shared services. They supported 19 add-on acquisitions that expanded the branch network from roughly 20 to more than 40 locations and helped more than double the customer base. Equally important, more than one-third of EBITDA growth was organic, driven by new customer growth, disciplined pricing, strong retention, and enhanced cross-selling of high-margin ancillary services. This investment exemplifies not only CenterOak's differentiated value creation approach, but also reflects the broader, repeatable playbook across our mid-market funds. The exit of Turf Masters was the second exit from Fund 2, a 2020 vintage fund, and the fourth CenterOak exit in the past 24 months, all of which have been in the range of 2.2x-3.5x net money-on-money.
So how do we go about finding groups such as CenterOak and incredible founder-owners such as Andy Kadrich? Over the past 14 years, we've systematically mapped the U.S. mid-market. We've identified around 1,500 mid-market managers who share a similar value creation mindset, but each with their own sector or geographic focus. Importantly, many of these firms don't actively market in Europe and often even outside their own state, which means they're often underfollowed by international investors. On average, we've spent around 12 weeks a year in the U.S. for the past 14 years. Desktop research helps, but there's no substitute for building relationships face-to-face and earning trust over multiple cycles.
This graphic shows the focus of our time on the ground, which was more dedicated to the coasts and large cities in the early years, New York, L.A., Boston, Chicago, before moving to the large states and large economies of Texas and Florida, so Dallas, Austin, Miami. More recently, we've been deliberate about spending more time in the Midwest and the flyover states, places like St. Louis, Nashville, Jackson Hole, and many others. These are large markets in their own right, with a high density of founder-owned businesses, but fewer private equity firms on the ground. That dynamic creates a real edge, more proprietary deal flow, and typically lower entry valuations. This on-the-ground sourcing is also critical to our fund selection discipline. We're not just backing the same managers. We deliberately seek a renewing pipeline of emerging and next-generation managers because that's where alignment is strongest.
In practice, we typically invest once a manager is proven, but before the firm becomes too large. Once funds scale beyond a certain point, incentives can shift from being hungry for capital gains to being driven by fee growth, and that's not where we want to be. As a result of these efforts, we've met around 1,000 managers over the years. We actively monitor about 400 as credible, investable opportunities within our strategy and have conducted detailed due diligence on about 150 firms. So how does this translate to our current portfolio? The detailed diligence undertaken on 150 firms has resulted in a current portfolio of 30 managers across 45 funds, with typical commitments of $25 million-$30 million per fund. Currently, we are invested in around 200 underlying companies. With fund of funds holdings included, this would be in excess of 800 companies.
These companies provide a balanced portfolio with exposure across a wide range of industry sectors. Industrials, consumer discretionary, healthcare, and technology are the largest sector exposures. The same data cut by line of business rather than sector shows that the portfolio is 60% services-focused, with this being B2B and B2C services in the U.S. domestic economy, therefore largely insulated from first-tier tariffs. To dive deeper into these underlying portfolio companies, this graphic shows that we are invested in businesses that provide essential recurring services and that benefit from long-term structural demand. I have already mentioned lawn care, but we also have exposure to termite and pest control. Once your lawn is in good shape, it's important to keep the fire ants and armyworms at bay, not to mention the cockroaches and the mosquitoes.
Heating, ventilation, air conditioning, essential for those bitterly cold winters and swelteringly hot southern summers, as well as plumbing and electrical services. The trend of DIY has moved to one of do-it-for-me, particularly for younger generations. For even the simple matters of swimming pool maintenance or gardening, there is someone to do it for you. And no matter how many YouTube videos one watches, nobody wants to DIY their own electrics or re-roof their own house. Caledonia has a lot of exposure to these essential recurring services revenue streams across the portfolio. We also have exposure to automotive repair, an area supported by strong underlying fundamentals. The average age of a passenger car on the road in the U.S. is 14.5 years old. These cars need regular maintenance, whether as a result of collision repair or general maintenance due to wear and tear.
We are invested in traffic management systems, including traffic lights, road markings, car park cleaning, paving, and it's not all traditional businesses. We also have exposure to cutting-edge technology within the industrial automation space, with robotics and machinery automation to improve assembly lines and production efficiencies. So taken together, this portfolio represents a broad and diversified exposure to everyday America, with a focus on essential services, recurring revenue, and businesses positioned to compound through operational improvement. To bring further insight to our portfolio, we will now show a short video featuring one of our managers, Boston-based New Heritage Capital. We have known New Heritage since 2014 and are invested in their funds three and four. The funds have consistently been strong performers, performing ahead or in line with our fund underwrite of 2.5x money-on-money.
In 2006, when we set up New Heritage Capital, we saw a real opportunity in the world of founder-owned businesses, both from the perspective of the investment opportunity, but also the opportunity for us to really be different as a firm. I think people do not fully appreciate that when you come across a successful founder-owned business, it was a very hard road for that company to get there. And there's a bit of natural selection going on. There's a natural selection of the management team that sort of put it all together, a natural selection of the niche strategy that they came up with to put it all together, and that represents a terrific investment opportunity.
I think founder-owners are sometimes undervalued by private equity, but the experience they've had of building their business from the ground up, of taking risks and saying yes when others might have been more conservative. We think that passion and that experience make them incredibly valuable assets for us to sort of invest behind. Value creation is a huge piece of how we add value and grow our businesses, and it's a big focus at the beginning of our investments. I think one of the core areas we focus on first is around management team augmentation. Sometimes that's a CFO, sometimes that's a COO. One of the other core things we do upfront is around data and information. So a lot of founder-owned businesses in the lower middle market, they have good data, but they don't sort of use it to the best of their abilities.
Often when you have the right information in the right hands of senior leadership, you can just make better decisions. We invest in systems and data information gathering techniques and analysis and reporting that puts that information in the hands of the C-level leadership so that they can make really good decisions about growing the business. The three key levers for us in driving equity value creation are really organic growth, inorganic growth, and multiple expansion. The organic growth, that is what we back in our founder-owned businesses. We're backing companies that historically have grown 10%, 15%, 20%, and we're putting in place business plans that allow that sort of same organic growth to continue. The second piece is around acquisitions. We do acquisitions in most of our companies, but not all.
But it is really more of a strategic value that we're trying to bring to the table. So if we're trying to enter a new market, a new geography, if we're trying to expand capabilities, if we're trying to build a certain type of customer base, we look at acquisitions as a way to enhance the overall positioning and strategy of the business. The last piece is really around multiple expansion, and it is a huge opportunity in the lower middle market to be able to continue to drive businesses and get that multiple expansion at the next liquidity event. Sometimes it's partly its size. So being able to bring a company from 5, 6, 7, 8 of EBITDA to 20 or 30 of EBITDA really drives multiple expansion, but it's more than that.
It tends to be a transformation of that business, putting in new people, new process, new infrastructure that allows that business to double and triple in size. That transformation, that growth of the business to the next level really is the driver of where we can get strategic and financial buyers to pay significantly higher multiples on the back end. Some examples of our companies that we've invested with alongside our founders are are really across broad industries, so business services, manufacturing, and healthcare, but there's really niche wonderful examples within those. So for example, we invested in a company called Revela Foods, which is the largest manufacturer of liquid pouch mac and cheese here in the United States. And it's a 100-year-old company that four founders sort of brought together.
It was about bringing sort of savory ingredients and seasonings and flavorings into the center of the grocery aisle store. It's important to us to have representation of European capital in our firm, but it's very difficult to access specific European limited partners. There are very few that are coming over to actually get to know a $400 million fund in the U.S. Many might prefer to go through fund of funds or something like that. Caledonia is very unique where the senior professionals come and spend time getting to know a middle market firm such as ourselves well enough to be able to make a really well-informed investment in us. And that allows us to have a relationship with a European limited partner that's very different than is typical.
When we first met the Caledonia team, I think we were operating in a closet of an office with a really interesting strategy and a few great investments under our belt. The Caledonia team spent years visiting us, hearing our story, hearing what our plans were, and checking as to whether or not we actually came through on those plans and ideas. It was after many years of those kinds of discussions and follow-up and then intense diligence, I think from our perspective, that switch went on in Caledonia's mind that this is a great investment firm to back. Knowing us means understanding our investment strategy better and means being able to support our investment strategy better. For us, Caledonia has really turned out to be one of our core strategic limited partners.
Huge thanks to Mark Jaffe and Nickie Norris at New Heritage Capital for their tremendous partnership with Caledonia and the successes we have shared. On performance, over the long term, returns have been strong. This has largely been due to solid underlying operating performance across the portfolio, alongside a stronger exit environment over the period. Recently, returns have been impacted by a slowdown in the exit markets, but we remain confident in the quality of the underlying companies. In terms of cash flows, these are influenced by a number of factors, including commitment pacing, the speed at which the fund manager identifies opportunities and deploys capital, the growth trajectory of the underlying assets, and importantly, liquidity in the exit market. The program is maturing, with about a third of North American NAV being owned for over five years.
As the portfolio continues to develop, we would expect it to become increasingly cash-generative under normal market conditions. Pleasingly, we are beginning to see an improvement in market engagement, with transaction activity starting to pick up. To summarize, we believe the North American lower mid-market represents a really compelling opportunity set in private markets today. It is vast in scale and highly fragmented, which means there is no shortage of opportunity and significant value can be created through disciplined sourcing and operational execution. Over the past 15 years, we've built a deep pipeline and portfolio of specialist managers who know this market intimately. They are on the ground, they see opportunities that others don't, and they have a proven track record of professionalizing founder-owned businesses and scaling them into higher quality platforms.
The result is a portfolio with broad exposure to everyday American life, underpinned by essential services and recurring revenue streams. Thank you for your time today. I'll now hand over to my colleague, Min Ong, who will take you through the Asia Funds Program.
Thank you, Eloise. Good morning, everyone. My name is Min Ong. I joined Caledonia 14 years ago, and I lead the firm's fund investments in Asia. Asia offers long-term growth driven by a rapidly expanding middle class and its growing role in global innovation, providing differentiated return potential through active, selective investing. The first mega trend we want to highlight is the large and growing middle class in Asia that is driving domestic consumption.
It is home to around 60% of the world's 8 billion population, but its share of the global middle class has risen from under 25% in 2010 to more than 1/2 today and estimated to rise even more to 2/3 by 2030. This effectively adds about two European Union's worth of consumers or about 1 billion consumers in this decade. Share of spending by this middle class from Asia has also increased from 23% in 2010 to 57% today, potentially reaching 60% in 2030. These dynamics are underpinning rising living standards and sustained aspirational consumption across the region. In many markets, domestic demand is now sufficiently deep to support the scaling of high-quality businesses, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of growth, investment, and further consumption. The second mega trend to highlight is Asia's increasing role in global innovation and industrial capability.
China's share of global R&D spend has risen from around 4% in 2000 to 26% in 2023, underscoring the region's deepening scientific and technical capacity. In biotechnology, cross-border partnerships is an increasing trend. Approximately one-third of the drug candidates recently licensed by large pharmaceutical companies originated from China. In electric vehicles, the scale of adoption and manufacturing advantage is clear. China dominates the global electric car market, accounting for roughly two-thirds of total EV sales and production. As automation becomes increasingly critical to competitiveness, China has moved decisively ahead in robotics, accounting for around 51% of global installations and reflecting the power of its deeply integrated supply chains, driving productivity and scalable lights-out manufacturing. Let's look at this from a portfolio perspective. On the left, you can see investments that have already been realized, and on the right, investments that have yet to realize.
These illustrative examples evolve around the two themes described earlier. On the theme of domestic consumption, Imeik captures the enduring human preference for looking and feeling good. It is a leading Chinese medical and regenerative aesthetics company supported by strong in-house R&D, a deep clinical pipeline, and the ability to scale clinically validated products at price points accessible to the middle class. The company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in September 2020, and the fund began selling down once the lockup period expired. A small amount of NAV remains, but the position has largely been exited, delivering a blended return of 30x. In the interest of lifecycle coverage, we also invest at the other end. Our Korean fund acquired a pre-need funeral services platform in 2016, and through organic growth and a merger with another leading player, created the largest provider of its kind in Korea.
The business was sold to a strategic buyer in 2025, generating a 3.6x return. On the theme of powering innovation, we have Momenta, an AI-driven autonomous driving software company with partnerships spanning General Motors, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, as well as mobility platforms such as Uber and Grab, with an exit potentially being an IPO. Our CEO, Mat, and our CFO, Rob, have both experienced Momenta-powered vehicles on public roads in China. Their presence today attests, at the very least, to the safety of the technology, and they would no doubt also vouch for its stability and smoothness. The portfolio construction is the result of thoughtful, deliberate bottom-up work, spending around 10 weeks each year on the ground in Asia, visiting portfolio companies, conducting on-site due diligence, stress-testing processes, attending annual meetings, and monitoring the portfolio.
This frontline presence enables direct engagement with founders, industry participants, regulators, and government bodies. Through our managers, we have access to highly driven founders who are deeply mission-led, technically exceptional, and intensely focused on long-term value creation. These founders and fund managers we back are typically educated in both Asia and the West, providing a differentiated perspective on technology and markets. With three native Mandarin speakers, we're able to conduct deep local language diligence, broaden coverage efficiently, and remain close to fast-moving developments through local media and social channels. The total portfolio value on the ground is GBP 313.8 million. The current portfolio comprises 15 managers across 35 funds and investments in 385 companies. With fund of funds holdings included, this would be an excess of 800 companies. The portfolio provides broad sector diversification, with the heaviest weighting to healthcare at 33%, followed by consumer discretionary at 24% and IT at 20%.
The current weighted average age of these underlying companies is five and a half years. Taken together, this illustrates a highly diversified portfolio that is aligned with the two mega trends discussed earlier. Macroeconomic uncertainty and foreign exchange movements across Asia have weighed on valuations and sentiment over the past three years, contributing to slower exit activity amid a prolonged weakness in IPO markets. This more broadly reflects weak market sentiment rather than any deterioration in underlying asset quality. Portfolio companies have continued to execute well operationally, with our cash flows over the period broadly neutral but more subdued recently, given Asia's greater reliance on IPOs as an exit route. In the past year, however, we have seen an improvement in IPO markets and are cautiously optimistic. In summary, Asia offers three core attractions for Caledonia.
One, it is large and growing with significant scale, a rising middle class, and increasingly self-sustaining domestic demand. Two, it is a center of innovation, leading in strategic technologies such as biotechnology, climate technology, and robotics. Three, it provides diversification, offering long-term structural growth exposure to one of the largest and fastest-growing regions in the world today. Thank you, and I'll now hand you back to Jamie.
Thank you, Min. Thank you, Eloise, for those in-depth reviews of our portfolio. Here at Caledonia, we have developed an interesting and proven investment strategy, one that is not easy to replicate. It provides shareholders with exposure to global markets and investment products that are difficult to access from the U.K. without our network and resources.
Hopefully, we've demonstrated that we have a highly skilled, experienced team that spends a considerable amount of time on the ground engaging directly with our markets and managers, and that we interact with those opportunities through an appropriate cultural lens that helps gain better and original insight. You'll have seen that the risk management systems that we have built around our team and investment processes would be very difficult to replicate. They reflect years of investment, hard-earned experience, and substantial resource, giving Caledonia a genuine competitive advantage.
This, in turn, supports a highly diversified portfolio, giving our shareholders exposure to the rising middle class and global innovation in Asia and the broader North American lower mid-market. These are two of the largest and most dynamic markets in the world. Now, all of today's presenters will be happy to answer your questions, and I shall now hand over to Rob Memmott, our CFO, to conduct that process.
On similar themes, and a few have come through already, we will group them together and address them collectively. If we're unable to get to your question today due to time, then we will respond to you by email shortly after the event. I'll now hand over to the moderator to assemble a queue.
Participants who have joined via Spark Live can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you are dialed into the call and wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you are dialing in via phone, you can raise your hand using star nine and unmute yourself pressing star six . We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. The first question is from Anthony Leatham at Peel Hunt. Please unmute yourself and begin with your question.
Thank you very much. Some very interesting presentations there. Appreciate it. Just on the Asia portfolio, I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail on performance drivers as you've experienced them and maybe a comment on future commitment levels. And then on the North American portfolio, I think you described quite a lot of the businesses as representing kind of everyday America. I'm interested to learn more about how you've assessed the impact of tariffs on the underlying businesses and perhaps how the portfolio might behave in an economic downturn. Thank you.
Thanks, Anthony. Jamie will s tart with a response to that.
Thank you. Just to reiterate, as Min said in the presentation, I mean, the last three years have been challenging, and the sort of macroeconomic uncertainty, foreign exchange movements across Asia have sort of weighed on valuation and sentiment, contributing to a sort of slowdown in exit activity. However, we remain confident about the underlying quality of our funds assets. And if we just look at the last 18 months, we've had seven IPOs in the portfolio. And looking forward over the next six months, we have got four companies that have been approved for IPO and another six that are filed. So hopefully 10 IPOs in the next six months. On trade sales, during the last 18 months, nine of our companies were sold via trade sale, and they averaged more than a 30% uplift in NAV at that sale time.
So I think it's fair to say sort of cautiously optimistic, but there has been a lot of uncertainty out there, but we stick with the sort of fundamentals of our assets. Maybe I should hand over to Eloise to take a little bit about tariffs on North America.
Yes, of course. Thank you, Jamie. So in terms of the exposure we have for the North American economy, in terms of tariffs and a broad economic downturn, they would have an impact on returns, but we don't think it would be catastrophic. Usually, in a downturn, demand will slow but not disappear. For example, households, property owners, we may delay optional upgrades, but repairs and maintenance and failures will continue and require action, and that's where we have a lot of exposure across our portfolio. And that's also where manager selection is key. So we're backing managers with operating partner capability and really hands-on experience running these types of businesses.
Anthony, thanks for the question on commitment. So we are opportunistic with how we commit any capital across Caledonia. We continue to support the strategies. Typically, in America, we've been committing about $130 million per year. It's been a bit more muted in Asia over the last few years as we are watching the opportunity set.
Any other questions, moderator, from the analysts?
Just a reminder, if you have dialed into the call and wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you are dialing in via phone, you can raise your hand using star nine and unmute yourself using star six. There are no further questions on Zoom. I will now hand back to Rob to cover the written questions. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Question that's come in relates to exposure to North America and are we considering reducing the overall exposure for Caledonia to North America? And then related to that is a point on hedging and what is our strategy with respect to hedging. So maybe, Mat, if you deal with the first question there on exposure to North America and then I'll pick up hedging.
Yeah, well, thanks for the question on North America. Very topical. I'm guessing that's because of the sort of volatility with President Trump and his recent actions. Look, the areas of exposure to North America for us are across our quoted equities pool and then obviously the North American part of the funds pool. Just breaking those down, the quoted equities exposure, that team are looking to invest in the world's great long-term compounders as we evaluate them.
They're free to invest North America, Northern Europe, or across Europe mainly. And so we're really driven by the opportunity set there. I don't anticipate them making major changes to their portfolio as a result of sort of what is probably short-term volatility. They also tend to invest in companies which are somewhat immune or resilient to macro volatility. Turning to North American funds, we just have the benefit of watching Jamie and Eloise take us through the virtues of that strategy. It's a long-term strategy. You can't sort of dip in and dip out of it. We remain enthused about the consistent fundamental, largely operational returns drivers that we get to access through that market. And so we don't anticipate making any changes to our allocation there. Rob, you should probably ask yourself the question about hedging because you'll do a better job than me.
With respect to hedging, we don't hedge the balance sheet. If there are specific sort of cash flows and we are aware of the timing of those cash flows, so for example, a large sale of a private capital event that was in a particular currency, then we would consider hedging that. But hedging the balance sheet, given that we are a long-term investor, is expensive. And generally, you end up in the same place anyway. It's just you pay for the privilege of a smoother ride. So we don't deploy hedging for the balance sheet. In terms of next question, there's a question actually on the fund of fund holdings, which is sort of referenced. And a specific point of that is, why do you use fund of funds within the strategy?
Shall I take that one? Yes. So fund of funds, we've used both in North America and Asia, and they've been incredibly helpful. Great teams that we've got back behind. We did this at the early stage of our program when we were really getting access and exposure and getting to know our markets. And these fund of fund platforms allowed us to deploy capital then while we were beginning to develop that knowledge. They've also had very good relationships. So many of our early introductions came through the fund of fund platforms. As we developed our programs and Min and Eloise really began to understand and get better knowledge of their markets, then actually the information flow between the fund of funds and ourselves was sort of two-way, and we were able to share knowledge and information with them.
The fund of funds still, we still have about a quarter of our NAV is actually in fund of fund structures. However, if you look at our outstanding commitment to fund of funds, it's just shy of GBP 40 million. So you can see that it is being generally sort of winding down, but they still have a role in our portfolio and great teams that we like to partner with.
Okay. Thank you. And Jamie, the next sort of question is maybe one for both Min and Eloise. And this sort of relates to the sort of cash flows coming from each of the pools. And how do you expect those to evolve in this upcoming period? And I think it's implicit in there, do we expect to see the cash flows improve over the coming period? Turning to Eloise first.
Sure. Happy to answer that. So we believe the portfolio is well positioned to benefit from an improvement in the exit environment. What we feel is it clearly covers the whole PE sector, and the last few years have been quite challenging. But we're seeing selectively more exits, structured transactions, and early indicators of improving distribution activity. So specifically for North America, over the last 3.5 years, portfolio net cash flows have been broadly neutral with distributions of around GBP 300 million. We're seeing increased deal engagement now, and we are starting to see some of that translate into cash. So roughly a third of the North American portfolio is over five years old and maturing nicely. So with significant dry powder in the sector, we think this part of it is primed for capitalization once the exit environment improves. And I'll hand over to Min Ong to cover Asia.
In Asia, over the last three and a half years, similarly, portfolio net cash flows have been broadly neutral with distributions totaling around GBP 130 million. While market conditions vary by region, we are indeed seeing momentum moving in the right direction. All that being said, this is unlikely to be a sharp rebound in either region given the uncertainty surrounding the broader environment.
Okay. So I guess in summary, we're sort of cautiously optimistic that the cash flows will start to improve, recognizing that they're sort of break-even-ish at the moment. There's a couple of questions on valuations and how do we deal with valuations from the funds. I guess I'll take that one. Really, the view of valuation starts with our due diligence process.
A key component of that is to ensure that the funds are audited by reputable firms, Big Four accounting firms that audit the majority of the funds where we're invested. They all account under IAS or U.S. GAAP, and that means that they account under fair value. We receive the manager's NAV statements on a quarterly basis. And as we receive an updated NAV statement, then we reflect that updated NAV statement in our NAV. In addition, we adjust for cash flows, so additional cash going into a fund or cash which we've received. So we're rolling the statements for actual cash flow. There is then a point where when we are reporting our NAV, particularly at the half year and at the year end, there is a little bit of sort of what we would class as stale pricing.
That is because we're receiving a NAV statement, and it might be three months out of date, three months lagged to the point where we are reporting our NAV. So the team do quite a bit of extensive work to make sure that if there are any key themes or any issues in a particular company, that we consider those and we would adjust our NAV accordingly if there was a material sort of impact on our investments. So hopefully that covers the valuation point. Maybe one question, increasingly common are continuation vehicles. Is this a significant feature of the markets where you operate? Maybe Eloise, if you take that.
Yeah, happy to. So just for context, continuation vehicles are new funds that are created to put existing portfolio companies into beyond the original fund's life. So it gives LPs the option to cash out or to roll into the new vehicle. So effectively, this is a manager selling to itself. So in the sort of larger private equity landscape, we are seeing these vehicles being quite widely used, and it's a growing feature. I'd say that where we play in North America, which is in the lower mid-market, these are a lot less prevalent. So we do see them occasionally, and typically we take the money rather than following on and staying in the vehicle. But we do get very good oversight of these given we sit on a lot of LPACs. As an advisory board member, this typically is something that would come up for discussion. And so the managers are talking that through with us in terms of their thinking around the exits and how they're planning that.
Sometimes these continuation vehicles do take place, and sometimes they get discussed and the fund decides to hold it for another year and have an outright sale instead. So I would say less prevalent where we play.
Thank you, Eloise. Question that's come through, which is how significant are you in the funds where we invest? So roughly what is the percentage of the AUM or the fund where we are investing? Maybe Eloise, take that one as well.
Yeah, happy to. So typically, in terms of fund commitments, it's typically about $25 million-$30 million per fund. And typically, we're doing sort of 5 of these a year, which is how we get to that sort of $130 million commitment number that Mat referenced. In terms of underlying fund sizes for North America, it's roughly around sort of $400 million-ish is sort of the average fund size. So a $30 million commitment into a $400 million fund, we are a meaningful investor. And that also means that quite often we are then able to sit on the LPAC and be an advisory board member because we are a meaningful investor to the manager.
Great. Thank you. There's a couple of questions, I guess, not specific to the pool and the presentation today. The first one is an update on the Stonehage Fleming sale. As many of you will be aware, we've agreed to sell Stonehage Fleming, and that should realize cash proceeds of GBP 290 million as of the 30th of September. And currently in the December NAV, we are holding it in the books at GBP 260 million.
The sale process is continuing. We're going through those regulatory approvals. Once all of those regulatory approvals are completed, then the first payment of GBP 251 million will be made to us. We're expecting that still in the second quarter of this calendar year. That final one on the discount and any additional actions which we are taking to address the discount. Clearly, the discount, as we've said, is a very important issue which is front and center in the board's agenda. In recent periods, we've done a number of sort of initiatives, things like enabling the Concert Party to go through 50%, which has unlocked the ability for us to do share buybacks. We have done the share split, and we've also reprofiled the dividend, which are all, we hope, shareholder-friendly initiatives.
We continue to pursue share buybacks, but that's part of a broader capital allocation policy, which is understandably sort of prudent. We want to remain invested. We want to commit capital to our dividend. But where appropriate, and clearly at north of 30%, we do think it is appropriate to continue with share buybacks, which we're committed to do. And then the other thing on ways that we can, or the other two areas of addressing this gap is to continue to make sure that we're delivering good NAV growth coming from the three strategies, so continue to perform well. And then improving and increasing the disclosure which we're making to shareholders and potential shareholders to make sure that people understand and rate Caledonia's strategies.
Obviously, today's spotlight, which is the third of three, is a step in making sure that people properly understand the opportunity set and how we go about investing in the good markets where we participate. I think we have now just about out of time. So thank you very much for all of your questions and your participation today. We will just sort of sweep through any sort of remaining questions, and we will email directly if we haven't specifically answered your question. Thank you again for your time. Bye.
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