Good morning and welcome, everyone, to our results call. I am Andreea Mateescu, and it's a pleasure to have with me today Peter McKellar, Chair of PGPE Limited, and my colleagues, Dr. Cyrill Wipfli and Federica Cazzaniga. Today, we are excited to provide you an update on the NAV developments and the portfolio highlights as of 31st of December 2024. Now, before we dive in, I just want to address some housekeeping items. If you would like to ask any questions during the webcast, please use the Q&A tool, which you can find on your screen. We will answer the questions at the end of the presentation, and in the interest of time, we will group similar questions and answer in one go.
However, if you run out of time or you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us or send us an email at pgpe-limited@partnersgroup.com or through the contact form available on the website. Before diving into the presentation, just a few words on PGPE Limited. PGPE Limited's investment activities are managed by Partners Group, one of the largest firms in the global private markets industry. An investment in PGPE Limited enables shareholders to invest alongside Partners Group's other clients and access the global portfolio of private companies that is not directly accessible to investors in public equity markets. Turning to the results, we are excited to report a NAV total return performance of 11.4% for the year, which includes dividends paid to shareholders.
This performance aligns well with our long-term track record, which includes a 10-year annual NAV total return of almost 11% and showcases the results of our robust value creation initiatives on asset level across thematically growing sectors. The dividends paid to shareholders over the last 12 months align with the objective of distributing 5% of the previous year-end NAV in semi-annual payments. At the current share price, this results in a 7% dividend yield. Liquidity remains in a strong position as of year-end. PGPE Limited has a revolving credit facility of EUR 140 million in place, which is used for liquidity management purposes. Following the receipt of distributions, the credit facility is fully repaid as of 31st of December 2024, and almost EUR 19 million in cash and cash equivalents further strengthen the liquidity position.
Now, in 2024, PG continues to identify investments supported by long-term secular trends and to create value through asset transformation. This thematic investment approach helps us to originate new investments, including Rosen Group, Velvet Care, and FairJourney Biologics. Moreover, we have executed several high-profile exits, which will positively contribute to realizations in 2025 and beyond. Now, the realization activity at portfolio level kicked off with the IPO of Galderma and the sale of SRS Distribution. Later on, we have agreed to sell Techem, which is an excellent example where PG's thematic sourcing, hands-on value creation, and the tailwinds provided by secular trends of digitization and decarbonization all come together to transform the company into a scaled player with an enterprise value of around EUR 6.7 billion. Now, just as a reminder, the sale is anticipated to close in H1 this year.
As the IPO markets became more conducive to transactions and increasingly offered an attractive exit route, we have announced the listing of KinderCare Learning Centers on the New York Stock Exchange and later on Vishal Mega Mart on India's National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. Before moving on to the next slide, I would like to conclude the summary with a few words about the current market dynamics. Financial markets are adjusting to a new era defined by macroeconomic volatility and elevated uncertainty. In this environment, we emphasize the importance of value creation through asset transformation and identifying themes supported by long-term secular trends. At the macro level, the global economy continues to display signs of overall resilience, but the outlook is heavily dependent on policy shifts, notably the potential for tariffs, which is fueling uncertainty.
Inflation has moderated across major developed economies, but recent upticks in the U.S., in particular, highlight ongoing challenges in fully cooling price growth. While central banks are navigating this confluent landscape with cautious monetary policy adjustments, in its base case, Partners Group anticipates navigating an investment landscape characterized by inflation and interest rate volatility, which will lead to fluctuations in valuations and cash flows. At the same time, we are seeing an accelerated transformation of the economy due to rapid technological advances. This situation reinforces the need for disciplined underwriting with a careful approach to leverage, as well as a focus on margin resilience. With this, I would like to hand over to Peter McKellar for the board update.
Thank you, Andrea, and good morning to everyone. I want to, on page five of the presentation, reflect on what we've done as a board over the last 16 months since my appointment in late 2023. As many of you know, the first thing that we did was we strengthened the board through the appointments of Axel Holtrup and Gerhard Roggemann, who bring significant private equity and listed company experience. We also put in place a clear and robust capital allocation policy that many analysts said is class-leading. That capital allocation policy is a focus on ensuring the payment of our dividend of 5% of year-end NAV and also using surplus free cash flow when available for share buybacks. We also improved shareholder engagement with a program of one-on-one shareholder meetings, meeting over 75% of shareholders. We improved disclosures in our annual reporting accounts and in our stock exchange announcements.
In June of last year, we made a name change to Partners Group Private Equity, more closely highlighting the strong links that we have with Partners Group, which is one of the world's leading private markets managers. Two days ago, I'm pleased to say that we launched a new website, which hopefully will be a focal point for shareholders in terms of information on the company. On the 19th of February, we announced material fee changes, which I will talk about in a minute. Finally, we undertook a deep dive on performance to understand better the performance of the company over the last three years. The manager will talk more about performance as we go through the presentation. If we turn now to page six of the presentation and we start to discuss the fee changes we announced in February.
In August of last year, I announced with the interims a review of the manager's commercial returns to ensure that the manager was better aligned with the outcomes for shareholders and the effective cost to serve, which is the largest cost that companies face, was competitive. To support this exercise, we undertook a fact-based review supported by our advisors, looking at the costs of the company and the manager relative to peers, including listed and unlisted private equity investment companies and other Partners Group-managed vehicles. We had three principles at the heart of our review. The manager's terms needed to be fair on a relative and absolute basis. They had to be simple to understand, and that's not always the case in private markets. Thirdly, and very importantly, they had to be aligned with shareholder outcomes.
In terms of the changes that we announced on the 19th of February, and if you can turn to page seven, firstly, in relation to the investment management fee, we retained the fee at 1.5% per annum. That is, we've changed the basis of calculation. No longer is the basis of calculation based on the height of net asset value or the value of the company's gross assets, less temporary investments plus unfunded commitments, but is now calculated on net asset value, effectively on NAV, less any temporary investments, plus unfunded commitments, but only on direct investments. We believe that change is worth about 10 basis points to shareholders in terms of cost.
More importantly, if we look at the incentive fee, the old incentive fee arrangement was based on the realized gain after deducting purchases and sale costs, but took no account of the management fee nor any other costs of the company. Effectively, it was what is described as old-school deal-by-deal without reference to the overall net asset value performance of the company. Importantly, in many of the meetings I held with shareholders, this came up, and many of them asked that we move to more of a fund-as-a-whole approach. This was also the case in speaking to potential shareholders. In some cases, you would not invest in the company because of the incentive fee arrangements. The revised incentive fee is now payable on the net asset value performance of the company and is thus aligned with the net asset value performance for shareholders.
The incentive fee remains at a rate of 15%, which is important when the industry standard is 20%. The incentive fee operates as a high watermark, whereby performance fee is only paid when the company's net asset value exceeds the level where performance fee was previously paid. This new arrangement has the significant advantage of being calculated on the whole portfolio and after accounting for all costs. Essentially, it actually takes into account existing investments, not just new investments. The existing investments were actually technically done under the old regime, but the changes we have made mean that the existing investments will now see an incentive fee based on net asset value performance at a rate of 15%. The performance fee is also subject to the company having sufficient liquidity when the performance fee is due.
Taken together, the board believes that the changes to the investment management incentive fees will reduce meaningfully the fees paid to the investment manager. What does that mean? I've already said there should be a 10 basis point saving through the changes in the management fee. On the incentive fee, we calculated it should be at least 30 basis points. Depending upon investment performance, it could be materially higher. We also took the opportunity to update the investment objective and policy. 99% of the portfolio is now in direct deals and 97% in private equity deals. Going forward, we will no longer make investments in infrastructure, private real estate, or private debt other than temporary investments. We will no longer make primary and secondary fund investments. Overall, the board believes that these changes are materially beneficial to shareholders, reducing both costs and improving alignment.
With that, I will turn to Federica to take us through the rest of the presentation.
Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everyone, on my side also. If we move to the next slide, I have been presenting this portfolio overview for many quarters now. The key message on this page remains really unchanged, meaning that PGPE Limited remains relentlessly focused on building a direct private equity investment portfolio, which, as Peter now mentioned, not only represents close to 100% of NAV, but going forward, it is going to be the sole focus of new investments as formalized in the updated investment objective and by the new policy just presented. The portfolio is diversified across over 70 investments across regions and industries, with a clear bias towards the resilient sectors in Western economies Partners Group focuses its thematic sourcing on. Perhaps one observation on the top 10 companies reported on the right-hand side of the slide.
The list should not come as a surprise to you because we report this every month in our monthly report. Last quarter, I've mentioned the introduction of Clario amongst the top 10. This time around, you might see that Foundation Risk Partners entered as a top nine holding in the portfolio. It is worth noting that there are several companies around 2.5%-3% of NAV. In this region, we have a few that might move in and out of the top 10. Perhaps a couple of words on Foundation Risk Partners. Again, the new addition this quarter, this is a specialist insurance broker business in the US. It is our ambition in a highly fragmented market to create a top 10 national broker with Foundation Risk Partners with the ability to service clients across the entire country.
Amongst the company's near-term priorities, the deployment of their bespoke data analytics suite that aims to promote customer retention and new business wins. Foundation Risk Partners partnered with another Partners Group portfolio company, Version 1, to develop and roll out an AI-based solution for the processing of their risk analysis reports. We often get questions around the impact of AI in our portfolio companies. This is indeed a great example of a use case that can reduce time-consuming manual tasks, increase speed and efficiency, and also accuracy of client-facing deliverables for an insurance business like FRP. Together with these AI tools being developed, these are expected to drive value and have a positive impact on EBITDA for the company, while also helping Foundation Risk Partners build its profile as a tech-enabled broker.
welcome Foundation Risk Partners to the top 10 and a company that you will see in this list going forward. Now, turning to the next page, we sort of dissect 2024 performance and would like to emphasize that this continues to be driven by operational value creation in our private equity direct holdings. Indeed, out of the 12.2% portfolio performance over the year, the majority, so 7.6%, as you see in the first bar, stems from EBITDA growth in our portfolio companies, also supported by a marginal increase in the EBITDA multiple for an additional 2% contribution. Over the year, we saw an element of destruction in performance coming from an increase in net debt as we took the opportunity to refinance and extend some debt packages for our portfolio companies at lower debt costs.
Perhaps it's worth pausing here to note that these, again, clearly resulted in a marginal higher leverage level for the portfolio. This also implies lower debt costs for the companies where we refinanced the debt, given that both interest rates, so base interest rates, but also debt spreads came down significantly in 2024 in the U.S., but also even more so in Europe. In this supportive environment, the refinancing packages we negotiated for our portfolio companies resulted in aggregate cost saving of over EUR 80 million across the Partners Group platform for our portfolio companies. Ultimately, these will be accretive to free cash flows, but also to profitability. Also worth mentioning that net debt to EBITDA levels remain around historical levels, approximately five times. Cyrill will also touch on this later on.
These refinancings are instrumental to strengthen capital structures, sustain growth, but also for more mature assets, this can be seen as a preparation for a successful exit. Indeed, successful exits were also a key contributor to 2024 performance. This is the bar marked as number four here, so +5.6%. Over the fourth quarter, in particular, the contribution of exits and new assets increased, with four out of our top 10 investments seeing a partial or full realization during 2024, as well as strong early performance for new investments such as Rosen and Velvet Care. This, again, remains a key contributor to the overall return for the year. Moving on to the following page, we highlight here, I am on page 11, we highlight here the top contributors to value creation over 2024. We have mentioned Vishal as a top contributor earlier in the presentation.
Clearly, this was a strong success story as we announced the IPO of this company in December. This is a leading retailer in India serving middle and lower-middle-income consumers. I was really surprised when I read the statistics that Vishal serves almost 1 billion individuals across the entire country. That's quite a powerful figure. During our ownership, we supported Vishal's business transformation, optimizing its store footprint, but also driving double-digit same-store sales growth and also implementing operational efficiency improvements that eventually led to a 55% increase in EBITDA and a 60% rise in revenues just over the last two years of our holding period. At its IPO in December, as I mentioned, Vishal ranked as the largest-ever IPO on the Indian stock exchange and represented a multiple of investment capital of over seven times for PGPE Limited. I want to touch on SRS.
This is a company we've highlighted in previous calls as we exited in the first half of 2024. I will instead spend a couple of words on the other two top value contributors, so ISP and DiversiTech. ISP is a dedicated K-12 school group that increases value over the year, reflecting a robust financial performance driven by both strong organic growth, but also by acquisitions. The acquisitions were led by a strong acquisition team, proving capabilities in onboarding and integrating new schools, but also delivering sustainable organic growth through high-quality offering and learning-focused philosophy that led to EBITDA and revenue growth of over 36% each during the year. Finally, a quick note on DiversiTech, a manufacturer of components and supplies for the US residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning market. The company also reported strong financial performance on the back of strategic acquisitions and also operational efficiencies.
Throughout the year, interestingly, DiversiTech benefited from lower raw material costs, productivity gains from automation, AI coming into the picture here, and also contributions from recent acquisitions. Despite competitive pricing pressures, the company maintained healthy margins, sustaining positive growth in EBITDA and positioning itself competitively in the market. Touching on investment and realization activity over the next couple of slides. In 2024, PGPE Limited invested just over EUR 31 million, including investments in Rosen Group, Velvet Care, FairJourney Biologics, Aphelion, and Pest Control Partnership. A couple of words on the top investments that you see here in the pie charts and also highlighted in the text on the left-hand side. Rosen Group is a Swiss headquartered global market leader in mission-critical inspection services for energy infrastructure assets.
For example, they produce little robots, which are then sent through pipelines to inspect them to identify potential problems, leakages, so that the maintenance teams can actually fix them before the pipeline breaks or leaks. We have strong conviction in this business and in its success because its growth potentially is supported by regularly tailoring for more safety. Rosen also has a particularly resilient business model with proprietary state-of-the-art tools and fully vertically integrated in-house manufacturing. The company has continued to deliver positive financial results throughout the year and is already tracking ahead of expectations. In light of this performance, Rosen Group also completed a refinancing in October 2024 with a portion of the proceeds that were already allocated to shareholder distributions, which resulted in an early DPI of 0.23 times.
Velvet Care, the second addition here for EUR 6.4 million, is a large manufacturer of hygiene paper products in Central and Eastern Europe, offering both private label but also branded products, which allow it to target premium and value consumer sectors alike. For this company, key value creation initiatives include expanding its international reach, broadening the product portfolio with a focus on high-quality and high-growth categories, and also making targeted acquisitions to expand its footprint. Velvet Care has posted solid recent financial performance with both volumes and revenues exceeding budgets. Margins have been positively impacted in this case by decreased utilities costs and lower pulp prices over the second half of the year since our investment. Finally, FairJourney Biologics as our third largest investor during the year.
This is a leading company in antibody research that offers design and preclinical production of antibody-based therapies to over 250 pharma and biotech companies worldwide. FairJourney Biologics is already the European leader in its market and amongst the top three globally. It's already recognized as a preferred partner by its customers, and Partners Group aims to leverage its operational expertise to further expand the company's Technology and enhance its efficiency of drug development to strengthen their partnership with customers. We've also made several add-on investments to existing portfolio companies to support operations and acquisition pipelines, and that accounts for pretty much the rest of the remaining EUR 31.3 million we invest in through the year.
Taking a quick look at realization activity, we saw 2023 as a sort of year of record low for PE market volumes in general, and 2024 showed only a marginal pickup if I look at the broader market. In such an environment, we are pleased to report that PGPE Limited recorded substantial distributions during the year for a total of EUR 144 million. This is very much in line with what the company has seen historically. That brings us back to historical distribution levels. Again, ahead of what's been seen by the broader market, this really reaffirms, in my view, the strength and quality of our portfolio. Looking at the drivers, the main drivers of this EUR 144 million we received from our portfolio companies, the bulk was driven by exits in the first half of the year, SRS Distribution and Civica.
As mentioned, these two combined contributed to over EUR 90 million. In the second half of the year, we also received proceeds from partial divestments in companies that went through IPO, so namely Vishal and Galderma, which together accounted for EUR 28 million distribution. The remaining balance of EUR 23 million was received predominantly from other direct investments. I mentioned Rosen, for example, and this really underscores the benefit of diversification. Perhaps one final note on my side, you will see KinderCare listed here in the bar chart on the bottom right-hand side. The EUR 5.5 million received by KinderCare did not relate to the initial public offering in October. The initial public offering was entirely primary shares. Those proceeds were entirely used to pay down debt and delivered to three and a half times.
The $5.5 million you see here are actually distributions we received pre-IPO from a dividend recap executed by KinderCare. All in all, very pleased with the investment and realization activity in the portfolio during 2024, but we're equally excited about the quality of the companies that we continue to hold. I'll now pass it over to Cyrill to take us through the quality of our portfolio.
Thank you, Federica. Good morning from my side. You know me, I'm always honest. You know in the meantime that I personally don't like the portfolio company KPIs like capital weighted, average loss per month, EBITDA growth, average net EBITDA, average EV/EBITDA multiple, because the averages can be misleading. That is why I killed them in Q1, but the feedback from you, the shareholders, was that you liked them, and the client is always right.
In Q2, we brought it back orally, but then after the request, also inviting as of Q3. If you look at the figures now as of the end of the year, 12% loss per month, EBITDA growth on average on our top 20 portfolio companies actually does make sense, as well as five times net debt to EBITDA shows the healthy financing levels. This is after the slight increase of net debt mentioned earlier by Federica. The 21 times EV/EBITDA is inflated because we included the three public companies, Vishal, Galderma, and KinderCare. You know, Dr. Wipfli, the doctor in my name, it does not mean that I can save lives, but I wrote my PhD thesis about valuation of private equity companies.
Pardon my passion and my focus on this, but I do take it personal when we trade at a 32% discount to any EV. It's interesting, the public market shareholders are challenging the valuations of private equity companies because they are afraid that the private equity industry values the companies too high compared to public markets. In reality, it's actually different. When we say the NAV is 100, but the supply demand of shareholders trading the shares at the London Stock Exchange leads to a share price which results in a 32% discount to NAV, that means 68 value, not 100. The average exit in 2024 has shown a 37% uplift in valuation, which means 137. 137 is actually twice as much as 68. In that sense, we even trade at a 50% discount.
Applied to EV/EBITDA multiples, we say 17 times EV/EBITDA is correct for our private companies. The public markets say, "Oh no, actually 32% should be the discount, so it actually should be 12." When we IPOed Vishal, Galderma, and KinderCare, they then traded much higher. If you look at implied valuation, Vishal traded more at 50 times, Galderma at 29 times. This led to an increase to 21. In other words, if the companies are private, the public investors do not trust our private equity valuations of, for example, 17 and ask for a large discount of, for example, 32%, which means 12 times. As soon as the same companies go public, the public market investors value the companies much higher. Last year, even twice as high. Now change of topics, the realizations.
The last slide has shown the exits in 2024, but I would like to talk about potential exits going forward. Almost half of the portfolio is invested pre-2020. Thus we'll reach five, six, seven, eight years of holding period this year. This means these companies are candidates for exits soon. Interest rates helped too. As mentioned earlier in the presentation, the interest rates had come down last year, and companies could refinance themselves cheaper. This had a massive impact on the profitability of the investments. The portfolio companies of the whole Partners Group platform have achieved last year interest rate cost savings of over EUR 80 million. That's the whole platform. Maybe let's take a little illustrative example.
If a company has an EBITDA of $100 million, it's financed 40% equity, 60% debt, has an average tax rate of 20%, and the cost of debt can be reduced from 10%- 8%, then this 20% lower cost of debt doesn't sound like much, but it leads to a 30% increase in profitability. Now on page 15, only 9% of NAV is invested in companies which are valued below 1x, meaning below cost. 44% of NAV is invested in companies which are in their normal phase of value creation, meaning on their way from 1x to 2x. 30% have already surpassed 2x and even 3x, whereas 16% even have surpassed 4x, meaning clear outperformance. Private equity is not magic, but value creation is hard work, and it takes time. Thus it would be of no surprise to you that the longer the holding period, the higher the value creation.
For example, 1.75x over 3.8 years is 16% IRR. 3x over 6.5 years equals 18% IRR, or 5x over 7.7 years equals 23% IRR. Now after the outlook on potential exit activity, let me now give you a quick outlook on new potential investments. Partners Group has a thematic sourcing approach grouped into what we call verticals, meaning industry-specific teams across the world targeted to identify new investment opportunities at attractive entry elevations. Partners Group maintains a solid pipeline of direct equity investments on the due diligence, with EUR 6 billion in Health & Life, EUR 5 billion in Goods & Products, EUR 3 billion in Technology, and EUR 8 billion in Services. Attractive themes in the Health & Life vertical are, for example, pharma services or specialty pharma. Attractive themes in the Goods & Products vertical are, for example, industrial technology solutions or multi-retail.
Attractive themes in Technology vertical are, for example, financial services technology or, of course, enterprise security. Attractive themes in the Services vertical are, for example, what we call testing, inspection, certification, compliance, TICC, or Rosen would have been an example in the same segment, as Federica explains, or lifelong learning. With this, I hand over to Andreea.
Thank you, Federica and Cyrill, for this comprehensive portfolio overview. Now let's take a moment also on this slide and touch base on the consistent performance across cycles of Partners Group Private Equity Limited. Over the last 10 years, we've achieved double-digit annual returns for both share price total return and NAV total return, showcasing our commitment to create long-term value. This consistent performance across market cycles reinforces our dedication to deliver sustained growth, and our year-to-date results further underscore this with a healthy 11.4% year-to-date NAV total return.
Our portfolio demonstrates diversification, providing investors exposure to companies operating in a variety of industries and regions. The portfolio was built over time and achieved a very good vintage diversification. We have an attractive mix of mature assets, but also assets that are in a newer stage in value creation. While from an investment perspective, we continue to focus on the disciplined deployment of capital and the identification of companies where we believe we can support management to create value. Now, my last remark is going in line, actually, with Cyrill's comments on the discounts and NAV. The current discount of 30% is clearly below the average of the last 10 years, which stands at around 18%. Ten years ago, while the portfolio was 44% fund-of-fund-like, today it is 99% direct. Now I let you be the judge on this.
With this last word, I would like to open now for questions. Just as a quick reminder, as I've mentioned in the beginning, we will group similar questions and answer in one go. If we run out of time or you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Peter, I see we have a couple of questions on the same theme. In particular, could you let us know why is there no hurdle in the new fee arrangement?
Thank you for that, Andrea. I did note some analyst comments from one analyst in particular in relation to this. It's maybe just worth taking a step back just in terms of the incentive fee arrangements. The old arrangements were deal-by-deal. They took account of purchase and sale costs, but no management fee accrual or any of the other costs that the company pays.
We could see that impact in 2022 and 2023 when, against the background of poorer NAV total return, significant sums were paid out by way of incentive fee. It was very important for us to move to a fund-as-a-whole model. If you have an 8% hurdle in fund-as-a-whole, traditionally across the industry, you have a 20% carry. That is something that Partners Group charges on its direct funds. What we were able to negotiate was 15% effective carry. That is the incentive fee on net assets. More importantly, we also managed to achieve 15% on the old portfolio existing investments, which I alluded to before, but effectively being done under the old fee regime. Also, if I turn to maths now and just let's actually look at what effectively an 8% hurdle relates to.
If you have an 8% hurdle and 100% catch-up, which is the traditional norm in terms of Partners Group, the manager is effectively paid out at 9.2% return. The returns for the company, as Andreea has alluded to, is a NAV total return over the last 10 years of approximately 11%. If we add in the fee savings that we expect from these changes, we're closer to 11.5%. That's materially above the 9.2%. In layman's terms, what does that mean? It means across the cycle, the 8% hurdle is less relevant. It is also worth bearing in mind, we do have a hurdle. That hurdle is the high watermark, which protects shareholders in an environment of negative returns, which you may see in a recessionary environment.
Thank you, Peter. Now, Federica, I think I now have a very good question for you, actually.
Could you walk us through your current exposure to the listed companies? Are you concerned that the company could underperform on the back of public market volatility?
Yeah, thanks, Andreea. Listed company exposure obviously went up during 2024 on the back of the IPOs we announced. It might remain relatively contained with just below 15% of total NAV, went up slightly a couple of percentage points over the year. That might add an element of volatility if public markets were to continue remaining sort of volatile as they have for the first couple of months of 2025. It is worth noting that our public companies are largely trading positively to date, and that we also expect to reduce down this exposure through gradual sale down.
You might have read over the past couple of months already in 2025, we've signed sale of remaining exposure in Global Blue, also an additional tranche sale down of Galderma. We expect, for example, this exposure to move down back towards the 12% or so in the next couple of months. We will continue to take advantage of positive trading where we see it to further reduce that.
Okay. Actually, there is a follow-up question exactly on this topic. Should we see more IPOs in PGPE Limited portfolio?
Yeah, I would say difficult to say. We will definitely see at some point other IPOs coming in the portfolio. We said in the past that we always explore all possible exit avenues for our portfolio companies, and eventually we'll go with the one that maximizes value for our shareholders and for our investors.
The IPO option remains on the table. That said, given the current market volatility, I don't see this as sort of the most preferred option, at least sort of in the coming months. I wouldn't exclude it that sort of a more stable public market environment might lead to more IPOs in the portfolio down the line, yes.
Thank you. Peter, I see now also a question, which is very well placed with you in particular. Can you tell us more about the capital allocation policy and whether there will be a pool for buybacks?
Thank you, Andrea. As most of you know, we put in place a capital allocation policy in March of last year. It was regarded as class-leading. It presents a cash flow waterfall.
At the heart of that cash flow waterfall is recognition of the importance of paying the current dividend, which, as I mentioned, is 5% of the previous year-end NAV. It also, if we have surplus cash flow, provides an opportunity to enhance NAV returns by buying back the company's shares at material share price to NAV discounts. Where are we at the moment? The anticipation is that as distributions continue to increase, we could see some surplus free cash flow that we will use for the purposes of those buybacks. I know a lot of you look at the numbers in terms of our calculations, and I can say to you that we're sitting today with cash and temporary investments of somewhere in the region of about EUR 10 million. We've got contracted distributions of, broadly speaking, about EUR 30 million, so in aggregate, about EUR 40 million.
We need to see that number move above 70 before that surplus pool becomes available. That is perfectly credible given last year with over EUR 140 million of distributions, and we also have, as Federica has said, significant listed equity available to us. It is also important to remember, we do not just have a capital allocation policy. We retain the discretion as a board to undertake share buybacks at any time. That is something that the board is very focused on as we come to an end in terms of delivering on the various objectives that I set out when I joined back in November 2023.
Thank you, Peter. Now, I have a question for Cyrill. Any idea how one could mitigate the discounts to NAV?
Yeah, I think two things. One exits, one investor relations.
Regarding exits, I think the industry saw a high discount to NAV in 2023, for example, because there were just not enough exits. That is why public market investors did not believe the private equity valuations. Whenever you have an exit and you actually materialize the net asset value and you can show that you even sell above NAV, then the market trusts much more. I think one factor is definitely exits. 2024 has already seen exits. I mentioned 37% uplift versus the last published NAV. I think we need to spread the good news there. The second one, the focus of Andrea and I this year will be investor relations.
I think we're very thankful of the shareholder base we have currently, but we need to find new shareholders who are also willing to actually buy more shares if the share price goes down and sell shares when the share price goes up. I think we have a very loyal shareholder base at the moment who does buy and hold, and we love that. I think the goal is to attract new shareholders who are also willing to trade more and actually take advantage of share price movements. I think in the long run, it doesn't really matter so much. As Andrea mentioned, you have a 10%-11% performance last 10 years on NAV and on share price. The buy-and-hold strategy is a very valid one over the long run.
I think I'll try to find also more additional shareholders this year who are happy to pick up on a higher discount. If I'm speaking anyhow, there was a question which was pulled because hopefully I explained EV/EBITDA multiple correctly. Just to reconfirm, the EV/EBITDA multiple, which we use for our evaluations, which is 80% of NAV, for this private portfolio, it's 17 times EV/EBITDA. If you include the three public companies, the capital-weighted average increases to 21. For the ones which we use for evaluation of private companies, it's 17. The question also asked about whether 12% last 12-month EBITDA growth was not low compared to others. There, I don't want to comment on the others because I don't know what the others are doing, but I do can tell you what we are doing.
It's a huge difference whether you look at last 12-month EBITDA growth or you actually look at the expected future 12-month EBITDA growth. In other words, we decided that we do a mark-to-market approach where for every company, we have a basket of public companies, and we look at these public companies. If the valuation multiple goes up or goes down, we want to mark-to-market our private equity companies as well. We realized that in the public market world, if you use last 12-month EBITDA, meaning the annual report, audited figures, and then you look at the share price, and then you have an implied EBITDA multiple of last 12 months, you only have one variable, which is the share price. If you actually go for earnings estimates on the public market comparables, and then you have their estimates, some analysts are more bullish than others.
You suddenly have two factors. You have the earnings estimates, which can go too high or too low, and you have the share price. That is why we said, you know what, I think it is much better to use last 12-month earnings growth. It is easier to compare our private companies with the public market companies. That, of course, last 12 months is always lower than if you bake a lot of hopes or cost-cutting exercises in a future forward-looking growth figure.
Thank you, Cyrill. Federica, now just maybe one, at most two, questions as I am mindful that we are actually already over time. Quick for you, do you expect to see a similar level of new deals in 2025? Maybe something on the sectors and regions you are looking at.
Yeah, as we mentioned a couple of times during the call, the investment environment appears to be more supportive with, again, financing markets opening up and many GPs out there seeing lower levels of liquidity in their portfolio to transact effectively. I would expect investment and distributions level to continue to pick up in 2025 above what we've seen in 2024. Relatively higher, I would guide as far as what I can see right now. In terms of sectors or regions, no real changes. The way we approach our investment, our investment due diligence and philosophy will remain the same. I would just at the margin say that we will see higher distributions, therefore higher investment activity also.
Just the last question, have the priorities regarding deals pipeline changed in a way following Trump's recent tariffs?
Yeah, I was expecting this question.
Obviously, there's been ongoing flux of information coming out of the White House, and probably new tariffs are being announced as we speak. It's difficult to position based on the sort of ongoing noise here. I would say, if anything, the volatility and the news flow that we've seen in recent months reinforce our existing approach to due diligence, where we are focused sort of on the downside, where we put strong emphasis on the quality of earnings, of pricing powers, on selecting market leaders in our portfolio companies. We look at the risk outlook for each of them at underwriting. We incorporate downside scenarios to ensure resilience of our companies to macro headwinds wherever we can.
I would say in terms of the actual pipeline, we've been more and more mindful of rising protectionism and increasing political polarization over the past sort of six months, so to speak. We haven't invested in China for a while now. I believe we only have one portfolio company in China for GPE. It is really, really limited and contained. We focus on domestically oriented firms in our pipeline, and we maintain our sort of active approach to pivot towards the more attractive segments where we see more resiliency as well, also in direct exposure, as well in the supply chain where we can.
Maybe if I add, that was a question about the pipeline, but what about the existing portfolio?
The Partners Group sees the value creation in our portfolio companies through so-called Lead Operating Directors, LODs, which are board members of these 70-comp portfolio companies responsible for a specific value creation lever. We have advised all LODs to make this a special topic for 2025. The first analysis has shown that no portfolio company stands out with a big red flag in terms of immediate negative impact from the Trump tariffs that we are not proactively addressing.
Thank you. Most importantly, thank you to all of you joining us today and asking the questions. We really, really appreciate the dialogue, and we hope to continue this way. Just as Cyrill mentioned earlier, we're very happy to be on the road to meet with you one-on-one or also virtual meetings. Just let us know. We're always available for you.
With this, we would like to close the webcast, and we wish you a fantastic day ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines and have a great day.