Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Foresight Group half-year results to 30 September 2024. The presentation will commence shortly. After the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll be able to ask a question 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. If you have joined us via Zoom webinar, 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 Bernard Fairman, Co-founder of Foresight Group, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I'm Bernard Fairman, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Foresight Group. I'm delighted to welcome you to Foresight's half-year results for the period ended 30 September 2024. I'm presenting today alongside Gary Fraser, our CFO. Before addressing the Group's performance over the last six months, I would like to provide you with a reminder of who we are. We're an alternative asset manager that invests in the U.K. and Ireland through private equity and globally in real assets and listed equities. We have strong distribution capabilities, reaching over 40,000 retail clients and 200 institutional investors. Our range of strategies combine to provide investors with attractive investment opportunities across two key markets.
Firstly, our long-duration real asset strategies, both private and listed, focus on investment opportunities created by the global energy transition and wider decarbonization agendas, which reach beyond power into natural capital, as well as broader social, transport, and digital infrastructure. Secondly, our regional strategy is focused on generating excellent returns by providing capital for growth to small and medium-sized enterprises throughout the British Isles, where the SMEs funding market is structurally underserved. On the next slide, I'll show you how we've been able to capitalize on the opportunities presented by these markets to deliver growth in the first half of our financial year. Our regional private equity business continued to add and realize value against the backdrop of challenging macroeconomic conditions for both SMEs and private equity firms. During the period, successful exits delivered GBP 2.9 million of performance fees, with an additional GBP 1.4 million from our VCTs.
Within our tax efficiency products, our established sales team has made a strong start to the year, raising GBP 241 million into higher-margin retail vehicles. Our most scalable strategies have also shown positive momentum. Within energy transition, we secure commitments of EUR 300 million for the first close of Foresight Energy Infrastructure Partners II, FEIP II, as we call it, from two new cornerstone investors. This first close, less than six months after the end of the investment period for FEIP I, marks a significant milestone for the Group, as we aim to raise multiple vintages of institutional infrastructure funds across a range of low-carbon strategies. During the period, FEIP I also made its final investment, a 267-megawatt solar portfolio in Greece, through a joint venture with Mirova, a global infrastructure asset manager.
The solar plant due for commissioning in 2026 will be the largest in Greece and is expected to power over 100,000 homes with clean energy. We've also been contracted to provide asset management services for this project, leveraging the substantial in-house expertise we've built in this field, which helps to maximize investment returns and enhance our competitive position. Within decarbonization beyond power, we built on experience gained from our first forestry fund to develop a second dedicated natural capital strategy, which entered its pre-marketing phase in the period, as we look to leverage the Group's investment capabilities in this area. And finally, our listed equity products capitalize on a slightly improved macro environment, achieving positive investment performance of GBP 56 million in the period, coupled with decelerating net outflows. I'll now move on to talk about how these strategies combine to deliver a strong track record of growth.
Our diversified business model, built on the breadth of our investment strategies I just outlined, has provided another data point in our historic growth profile. Our AUM, with a compound annual growth rate of 27% since 2018, has increased from GBP 2.6 billion to GBP 12.4 billion today. Core profitability mirrors this trajectory, with a CAGR of 29%, increasing from GBP 10.6 million in our first six months post-IPO to GBP 29 million in the last six months. We're pleased with our track record of growth, and I was excited as ever about the opportunities we see to create further shareholder value by investing in technologies leading the global energy transition, decarbonizing economies, delivering nature recovery, and unlocking the potential of ambitious companies, all fueled by our ongoing institutional and retail fundraising efforts.
After Gary has taken you through the financials, I'll share some more color on our fundraising outlook and the key drivers of our future growth.
Thanks, Bernard. So, turning to key financial metrics. As Bernard mentioned earlier, our AUM growth in the period was delivered through a successful combination of both institutional and retail fundraising. Organic growth drove our revenue increase of GBP 5.4 million to GBP 73.2 million, which in turn led to a 5% increase in core EBITDA pre-SBP. This financial performance is in line with our expectations and puts us on track to achieve our growth guidance of doubling core EBITDA pre-SBP in five years, with the benefit of recent institutional fundraising expected to filter through to the financials in the second half of the period and beyond. The performance in the half translates into the delivery of further shareholder value, with our interim dividend of GBP 0.074 per share representing a 10% increase on the prior year. Now, I'll provide a bit more color on the movement of these key financial metrics.
Turning first to AUM, which increased from GBP 12.1 billion to GBP 12.4 billion during the six-month period to 30 September 2024. A key driver of this growth was the EUR 300 million accelerated first close of the second vintage of our European-focused FEIP strategy. Higher-margin retail products distributed by our in-house sales team also delivered a strong half of GBP 241 million in gross inflows. Against the backdrop of recent UK regulatory tailwinds, we remain on course for a record year of fundraising into these products, with H2 historically higher than H1 due to the timing of retail tax allocations and the opening of our current year VCT strategies. In combination, these inflows more than offset negative valuation and FX movements, as well as GBP 111 million of net outflows in our lower-margin products. Despite remaining in net outflows, these did notably decelerate in the half.
We would hope to see this deceleration continue following recent interest rate reductions and positive investment performance in the period, providing an improved outlook for this division. Moving on to revenue, the year-on-year increase of 8% was predominantly organic growth and was driven by fundraising into our higher-margin and longer-tenure vehicles, with strong performance in H2 FY24 continuing into H1 FY 2025. Our revenues remained of a high quality, with 87% of total revenues recurring annually, which is right in the middle of our guided range. We also continue to steadily diversify our revenues geographically. 21% was non-GBP denominated in the period, an increase in the prior year and a trend that we expect to continue as we expand our international reach. Turning to costs, we recorded a GBP 4 million year-on-year increase in underlying administrative expenses.
The main drivers for this increase were the incorporation of a full six months of prior year wage inflation, as well as headcount growth to support the delivery of the Group's fundraising ambitions. Current year wage increases returned to historical averages following the above-average increases in FY 2024 in what was a high inflationary environment. During the period, we have also made an acquisition-related net accounting adjustment of GBP 2.9 million. This incorporates impairment, earnout, and deferred tax adjustments in relation to our 2022 acquisition of Infrastructure Capital Group in Australia. Looking ahead, however, we expect cost growth to moderate. Finally, profitability. 5% year-on-year core EBITDA pre-SBP growth was driven by successful prior year and year-to-date fundraising into higher-margin and longer-tenure vehicles. The slight decrease in year-on-year margin was as a result of a higher cost environment, as well as investment in fundraising capabilities.
We expect operating margin to expand as we convert our strong fundraising pipeline across our highly profitable and highly scalable strategies. I'll now pass you back to Bernard.
Thanks, Gary. Looking ahead, we're confident that the fundraising pipeline remains strong and that this will fuel our ability to deliver on our guidance of doubling core EBITDA in five years to the end of FY 2029. In regional private equity post-period end, we completed a GBP 50 million first close of our 14th active regional fund, Foresight South West Fund. Our tax efficiency products remain on track for a record year, with strong inflows following clarity provided at the UK's Autumn Budget. And we're already seeing evidence of a move from AIM to unlisted investments among leading independent financial advisors. In energy transition, FEIP II continues to have strong investor engagement as the fund works towards a second close.
Into decarbonization beyond power, our first natural capital strategy has had a number of encouraging discussions with existing institutional investors to increase the fund size, and we're progressing well on our second fund in this sector. And finally, we anticipate that recent interest rate reductions will drive further performance across our listed equity products and lead to a subsequent return to net inflows over time. Separately, accretive M&A will remain a key strategic lever that we explore to accelerate profitable growth alongside our existing retail and institutional fundraising pipeline. Now providing a bit more detail on a few of these fundraising channels. Our retail tax efficiency products provide consistent and near daily inflows, with total fundraising across these products over the last three years equating to a 42% compound annual growth rate.
Looking ahead, the strength of our investment performance and the depth of our distribution team, with 50 in-house personnel, gives us confidence that we can continue to deliver meaningful fundraising for these products. Additionally, the UK's autumn budget helped to provide clarity to investors in Foresight's tax efficiency products. As a result, we expect demand for these products to remain strong, and we're on track to deliver another record year for retail fundraising. Post-period end, we successfully completed a GBP 50 million first close of our 14th active regional private equity fund, Foresight South west Fund, with a second close expected in the current financial year. This marks the fourth new regional fund we've launched in the past two years, with over GBP 250 million raised across our regional funds during this period. The fund is structured as an evergreen fund, providing a permanent pool of capital to support long-term regional investment opportunities.
To further strengthen our presence and engagement in the Southwest, we'll be opening new offices in Bristol and Exeter in the coming months to help connect with SMEs on a local level. With a strong track record, deep regional relationships, and government's desire to encourage investment in the regions, we're confident in being able to raise additional new funds, as well as follow-on vintages in this strategy. This includes an expected third vintage of our Foresight Regional Investment Fund that invests in growth companies across the Northwest, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and North Wales in 2025. With this area of our business firing on all cylinders, we believe that we can deliver further near-term growth in what we believe is a structurally underserved market. As I've said before, we see the global energy transition as the greatest investment opportunity of a generation.
To address it, we have created a diversified and differentiated strategy focused on portfolio construction, value generation, and sustainability impact to deliver long-term returns for its investors, namely our flagship energy transition strategy, Foresight Energy Infrastructure Partners Funds One and Two. FEIP I, the first vintage, secured EUR 1 billion in total commitments from 29 investors, with 97% of the fund now allocated to 14 different investments across the UK and Europe, just three years after final close. FEIP II, the second vintage, has already raised a EUR 300 million first close in June, and the fund is progressing well towards a further close in the spring of 2025, targeting a total fund size of EUR 1.25 billion and 12%-15% gross IRR. In conclusion, this period has seen us extend our track record of profitable growth since IPO.
Long-term structural growth in our key markets of the U.K., Australia, and mainland Europe is complemented by our highly scalable platform that's able to capitalize effectively on these trends. Our revenues remain predictable, providing us with good visibility on a very high percentage of our future earnings. This is supplemented by a valuable contribution from performance fees generated from successfully investing in unlisted growth companies, leveraging over 40 years of experience in this area to create value and deliver strong exits. Our company is built on robust foundations. We've created a diversified and resilient business model that can deliver growth through the economic cycle by investing in the energy transition, building scalable infrastructure, and backing growth companies. Thank you, and we'll now take your questions.
Participants 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 raised 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. We'll take our first question from Tom Mills of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks very much for the presentation. Just a couple of questions, please. You touched on how budget clarity is supported and noticeable pickup in demand for your tax efficient products, which sounds very helpful. I'm just interested to get your take on broader budget and Mansion House speech implications. Stephen, many of the headline announcements sound pretty positive for your business, which is quite my take, but I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. Secondly, can you give us a sense of where you think the second vintage of your natural capital strategy could get to in fund size terms? And then finally, I'd also seen that you printed a strong performance fee number in the first half, which looks like it's driven by private equity exits. But can you talk a little bit about that?
And do you have much view on the pipeline of exits there as well? Thank you very much.
Thanks for the question. I think the Mansion House speech and the budget together have endorsed the fact that the quickest achieved growth in this country will come from small companies in the main. And that's our target market. I think if you look at the idea of combining pension funds, local authority pension funds, just out of interest, we deal with virtually all local authority pension funds and have money from most of them. And in some cases, we've gone back to them two or three or even four times for pools of cash. So long-established relationships, profitable on both sides. But we've seen under George Osborne the first kind of genesis, if you will, of this idea of merging pension funds, local authority pension funds. That happened and has happened over the last 10 years. So I think it's just more of the same.
When it happens, it tends to slow down the responses of those affected, but it doesn't happen to everybody all at the same time, so net effect probably pretty close to zero from our point of view, and we expect to continue attracting money from local authority pension funds, and indeed, you'll see more of that before the end of this calendar year, I hope.
And just taking the second point, in terms of the Foresight Natural Capital Fund, I think our target fundraise there up to final close would be between three and 500 million, so it's going to be material strategy going forward. We're receiving a lot of inbound interest into that strategy, and as you know, we've been involved in the forestry area in the U.K. principally for over five years now, so it is an area we've got a lot of experience, so we're looking to develop that further and more so on the institutional side. And we see that as being a key strategy on the infrastructure piece, the wider infrastructure piece going forward.
I think the final question was on.
Performance fees.
Performance fees.
So I mean, performance fees have been strong, as you say, principally from the private equity part of the business. I think sometimes these things don't come in a linear fashion. I'd expect to see more performance fees again, principally from the private equity part of the business in the second half of the year. I also think we had a slight asymmetric deployment, first half, second half. So I think we'll see a higher degree of arrangement fees from deployment in the second half as well. So you might see more of a balance of deployment than performance fees in the second half. But overall, I think we're making progress on both fronts. And so looking ahead, just to reiterate the point I made previously, I see us falling within consensus for the year.
Tom, just in conclusion, as you know, we've got three parts to our business. It's rare that all are firing on all cylinders at the same time. And indeed, we know Foresight Capital Management, like everybody else in the market, has had outflows in recent years. We know that the infrastructure business is starting to raise cash again, but it's had a year or two when it hasn't. But on the other hand, the private equity business and the tax efficient business is, to put a point in it, booming in terms of inflows and returns. And you should expect to see more performance fees between now and the end of our financial year. That underlines the point that we're a business, not a platform. Lots of different bits.
Thank you, both.
Our next question comes from David McCann of Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Hopefully, you can hear me. Just one quick follow-up on the hydrogen thing. Just a question that's come in that I'd just be keen to hear your thoughts on from your side. Obviously, no longer going ahead with the funds. Obviously, you did see the write-down in that hydrogen asset you had in a couple of existing funds. So to what extent was the decision not to go ahead with the hydrogen funds to do with that write-down and how much of it was to do with the wider implications that's going on in the hydrogen market itself? Thank you.
David, I think the answer to that is it was all to do with the latter. I think we will launch the hydrogen fund, but just not yet. I mean, as everybody knows, timing is probably the most important thing in life. And the time is not yet right, as it turns out. So I would expect to see that relaunched in a year or so. Because if anybody can tell me how you power hard to decarbonize forms of energy use other than through hydrogen, I've yet to learn it. So I'm sure hydrogen will be a really important part of the energy transition. But you've got to get the timing right. And there's no point in pushing into a market that isn't quite ready yet. And it wasn't, which is why we took the decision.
But on the other hand, we do this in kind of pre-marketing. We do pre-marketing for a reason.
I think you made the point yourself, David. So by implication, BP, Shell, Repsol, Fortescue in Australia, and yesterday, Norsk Hydro, they all pulled back from immediately pushing ahead with green hydrogen projects. So I think it is a wider market point as demonstrated by some of those big names as well.
So just to follow up, what is it that is causing these issues in the market that's leading to the pullback of projects elsewhere, as you mentioned?
I think it's probably there are huge opportunities in decarbonization, bigger than the amount of money available to finance them. Hydrogen projects typically are pretty expensive. You need government incentive in most parts of the world for them to work. If you recall, back in the early days of solar, we needed feed-in tariffs, which were enormously attractive. And indeed, right at the beginning, we're 90% of the return, 90% from feed-in tariffs. And they gradually went down as governments around the world achieved what they were planning to. And by the way, I think that was the most successful effort I've ever seen of governments pump priming. I mean, normally, it's disastrous, but in this case, it was a great success and certainly brought solar on much faster than they otherwise would have done. Well, the same is required here.
I think governments recognize that, but governments, generally speaking, are pretty strapped for cash. And there are other reasons as well. For example, in Germany, the government subsidies that were expected haven't happened because a number of reasons, not least of which there is effectively no government in Germany. So until they have the election and they establish what their policy is, that's kind of on hold. So that's probably the principal reason, slowness of subsidies coming forward, without which it will take much longer.
Okay, thank you. And I guess one broader but related question to that. With the Trump government we have in the U.S. and what feels like possibly some rowing back on some of the moves towards renewable and sustainable energy, who knows exactly what will happen, but that seems to be the early rhetoric. Appreciate you don't have that much, if anything, in the U.S. But how do you see that potentially changing the demand and landscape for renewables and the energy transition that you've talked about more broadly?
Personally, I think it will make certainly for us, it will make not the slightest difference because we've never invested in things that weren't profitable. I mean, hydrogen's an outlier because it's an early technology, but there is no subsidy across a whole range of renewables that we invest in. Solar is profitable in most parts of the world. Certainly, it hasn't been a subsidy in the U.K. and solar for a long time. So I think you're not going to burn coal if it costs three times as much to produce energy as solar does. Texas is full of wind. California is full of solar. That won't stop. But the more kind of egregious handouts that we've seen over the last year or so under the terms of the IRA, rather amusingly named Inflation Reduction Act, will go away, and it'll be hard economics that will drive investment.
I think that's a good thing.
Great. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. There are no further questions on the webinar. I will now hand over to Elizabeth Scorer to read out the questions. Please go ahead.
Thank you. So the first question we have online is from James Allen at Panmure Liberum. He has a number of questions, the first being around the level of indicated redemptions on the Australian funds. Can you give any more color on the background as to what the situation is there with a follow-up question around if there's any further indications on redemptions for EIT and ARIF and what the implications for that may be?
Yeah. I mean, in terms of the redemptions, clearly, when we made these acquisitions, we'd assumed a level of redemptions. So the level we've actually seen on DIT is higher than we'd anticipated. These are private funds, so we don't disclose the exact amount. But I mean, it's disappointing that the amount of redemptions is higher than we thought. But I think, generally speaking, the strength within Foresight is the diversification of the business, the resilience of the business model. Without question, we're still on an upward trajectory in terms of the momentum behind the businesses. Bernard had alluded to earlier, we're driving forward in private equity and retail sales as well as institutional fundraising in other areas. So I think overall, we're still in a really positive upward trend. In terms of EIT, the redemption window is next year, and ARIF, there's no indication of redemptions whatsoever.
I think overall, we've got plenty of time. The redemption window is three plus years. We've got plenty of time to, A, look at replacing those redemptions with new investment. But also, we've now acquired that business two years ago. We're facilitating additional sales resources in that part of the world. And so we'd expect to start raising primary capital over there over the next couple of years that will hopefully supplant any of the redemptions that we see going out the door.
Also, the redemptions are not new in these funds. Long before we came along, there were redemptions, and they simply get placed in the market. In the secondary market, that's what we expect will happen here. I mean, clearly, it will take away from primary capital while you're kind of chewing through the secondary sales, but that, I think, is normal business.
Thank you, both. And then a final question from James on the hydrogen fund. So we've already touched on some of this in some of your previous answers. But is there any more color you can give in terms of with hydrogen having moved right in terms of being delayed? Is the natural capital fund that's being launched, is that expected to offset that as well as Australia? Or how do we think about fundraising and the different levers that are in place there?
Yeah. I mean, I think we've covered some of it. But just to be clear, I think the natural capital fund will be 300-500 million GBP at final close. We'd originally anticipated the hydrogen fund being as much as EUR 750 million at final close. So natural capital will cover some of it. It's likely to be at a higher fee rate than the hydrogen fund. So it will cover some of it. Where else do I see the additional money coming from the fee to subsequent closes. But we're also raising both retail and private equity money more quickly than we'd anticipated.
So I think overall, as I mentioned just previously, the resilience of the business model means that we're still confident in terms of achieving our targets, which just to reemphasize the point is to double Core EBITDA pre-SBP over the next five years. That's not going to be linear by any means. But once we raise those funds and we see the deployment taking shape, that will really increase the amount of money that's been driven through to the bottom line. So I'm very confident indeed in that regard.
I mean, it's worth saying, for example, that we're raising money in the VCT market faster than anybody else. The first offer, Foresight Enterprise VCT, is likely to close within the next week. I mean, only opened a few weeks ago. The next offer, Foresight VCT, will open next week. And it's likely to close by the end of the calendar year, or shortly afterwards in January. As a straw in the wind, yesterday, we raised GBP 7 million retail money on the day. So we're not a siloed business where it's all down to one fund happening exactly when you expect it to. We're a business with multiple bits. As I said earlier, at any given time, as long as one's firing on all cylinders, which is currently happening, we'll do our numbers.
I mean, we always do our numbers, but that's possibly why, because we've got lots of bits in the business. At any given time, one or two or three of them are firing all cylinders. That remains the case.
Thank you, both. We have one final question over the webcast, which is from Joshua McCarthy at Downing, and his question relates to FCM and whether the recent changes in cost disclosures on the look-through fees have started to have any impact on the fundraising outlook for that business, so perhaps a bit of a short update generally on FCM.
I mean, the reality is I think it's too early to say on that specific question. I think the update on FCM was during the six months with an outlook for reduced interest rates. We started to see both performance improve and the rates of redemptions reduce. I think now that people see interest rates being higher for longer, potentially, then that does have the potential to impact the level of redemptions. And so I think I wouldn't forecast the level of redemptions continuing to decelerate in the second half, as I might have done two or three months ago. We might see those levels of redemptions maintained at the current rate on average for the next six months, which would be disappointing given where we were a few months back. But that said, it's factored into our thinking. But we're not sitting on our hands here.
We've beefed up that retail sales team with specifically focused on the FCM part of the business. And we're also looking at other inorganic opportunities as well in that space. So I think there's a lot to go at. And we're really trying to push ahead with that part of the business. So watch this space.
Thank you, Gary. No more questions online. Bernard, do you have any closing remarks or any more questions?
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, everybody, for attending. I hope you've seen evidence in our numbers and our likely performance going forward of the breadth of the business and the strength of the model. We thank you for your support and look forward to speaking to you again next time. Thank you very much.