Welcome to the Catella Audiocast with Teleconference Q4 2021. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Christoffer Abramson and CFO Mattias Brodin. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you. This is Christoffer Abramson speaking. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. I'd like to jump in and start this year-end presentation on page three. Most of you know Catella quite well, and we now operate within three property-focused business areas: property investment management, principal investments, and corporate finance. Catella now manages SEK 123 billion in its Pan-European property investment management business and is a leading advisor in corporate finance in several large European markets. Principal investments, where we invest our equity directly, has around SEK 1.1 billion of capital invested as of the Q4 , with a growing number of partnership platforms. Let's move to page four, the key operational highlights during the Q4 . From a group perspective, we continue to deliver strong underlying growth and financial performance.
During the quarter and shortly thereafter, we have progressed with simplifying the group structure, a very important step for all of us. The banking license was finally returned, freeing up capital to invest in development projects through principal investments and in other activities. On the tenth of January, 2022, we sold the remaining shareholding in Catella Fondförvaltning to Athanase. The liquidation of IPM is progressing according to plan and is in the rear-view mirror. We've continued to deploy capital into development projects, but we still have a strong liquidity position of SEK 1.4 billion, that's well prepared to capture upcoming growth opportunities, investments, growth in new partnerships, and potential M&A transactions. The strong financial year and the solid liquidity position enables us to increase the dividend to SEK 1 per share.
In property investment management, we continue our strong track record of growing assets under management with a record growth of SEK 11 billion during the quarter. During 2021 in total, assets grew by SEK 21 billion to SEK 123 billion. We're especially pleased to see strong interest and inflows to our sustainably-focused funds. With, for example Catella European Residential III reaching a milestone of EUR 750 million in managed assets. Other exciting news were that our British operations, Catella APAM, were selected to manage a large part of Greater Manchester Pension Fund's U.K. property portfolio. A prestigious mandate strengthening our position on the European landscape for institutional investors. We still have significant amounts of additional committed capital available for investments in 2022 and beyond, which makes us feel positive and confident about future growth.
We move to principal investments. We invested another SEK 300 million in ongoing and new projects during the quarter, and we now have a total of SEK 1.1 billion of equity deployed in development projects. We are particularly excited about the new direct investment in the property, The Maltings in the U.K. The property has considerable development potential, both in terms of new and improved commercial premises and residential properties. Mainly, it's an important step for us as we use our equity here to support the launch of new investment partner mandates, which is a key part of our European strategy. Out of the portfolio of our 16 principal investment projects, seven will come to market during what will be a very exciting 2022. It starts with Infrahubs's automated and sustainability-focused logistics property in Norrköping in Sweden.
Catella Corporate Finance is the sell-side advisor in this transaction, highlighting further the synergies that we can capture within the group. Moving to corporate finance. Corporate Finance had a very successful quarter, especially with our Swedish operations having its strongest quarterly profit to date. We see increased demand for capital raising advisory services, and Catella advised both in the eQ Community Properties Fund structuring of a new EUR 700 million loan facility through our Debt Advisory business, and as a financial advisor in connection with the IPO of Titania. The European market, again, for capital raises remains fragmented, to meet customer demand for high-quality advisory services, we're already providing in certain countries, and cross-country as well, we have established a new European business line within Corporate Finance under the name Debt Advisory.
On page five, we give a summary of the group's consolidated core results, adjusted for discontinued and divested operations. Catella delivered a solid financial performance in the Q4 , with revenues at SEK 633 million, up SEK 161 million or 34% year-over-year. An operating profit of SEK 140 million, up around SEK 100 million and, with a healthy margin of 22%. In property investment management, PIM, as we sometimes call it, property investment management had substantial inflows of SEK 26 billion during the year and SEK 11 billion in the Q4 alone. Q4 profit margin amounted to 26%, driven by increased acquisition fees primarily as new properties were added to the property funds. While our continued growth in AUM generates fixed fees and an annual solid margin of 23%.
As mentioned, further SEK 300 million was deployed into development projects through principal investments in the quarter, leaving total invested equity at SEK 1.1 billion. No sales were made in the quarter, but a pipeline of seven properties, as I mentioned, will be completed and divested during 2022. Corporate Finance showed the best quarter to date, fueled by very active transaction markets and by Catella's broadened product offering. The expansion into capital raising advisory services continues to progress. As mentioned, we advised in 1 IPO and the structuring of a significant new loan facilities, among many other things. We retained and increased our market share in our largest markets, and notably with the high number of transactions where Corporate Finance Sweden acted as advisor, generating the highest profit to date. In Europe, we ended the year with an operating profit of SEK 71 million.
On page six, for brief full year EBIT comparison. As we mentioned last time in our Q3 call, in 2020, Principal Investments sold the Grand Central development project in Düsseldorf, which generated an EBIT of SEK 229 million, split between both Principal Investments and Property Investment Management. Adjusting for this transaction, we can more clearly see that Catella's underlying performance improved significantly from last year, up nearly 90%, highlighting the strength coming both from increased fixed fees from our growing assets under management and from increased advisory fees. Clearly, creating fees and material equity gains is part of our normal course of business within Principal Investments. I want again to stress that we should always look at the long-term profitability and growth rather than individual quarterly gains.
From the portfolio we're building up, these types of exit gains should become more common and we shouldn't have to do these sort of adjusted comparisons going forward. 2022 obviously looking particularly exciting. The primary strategic goal with principal investment is to create recurring investment profits from a diversified asset base from a number of European investment platforms. I think we will have a very different view of looking at this going forward. If we then move to page number eight and discuss property investment management in a little bit more detail. Summing up, 2021, we can see that property investment management grew assets under management by 21%, continuing a strong annual 23% track record since 2015.
The growth continues to drive increased fixed fee income, which is our key underlying property investment management metric. 2021 fixed fees ended up at SEK 676 million, up 23% compared to prior year. PIM continues to be the main growth engine of Catella, and we have a strategic focus on raising new capital and launching new sustainability-focused funds. It's encouraging to see this through the very strong 11% quarterly growth in our fund platforms. Property asset management also shows healthy quarterly growth of 7%. The main contributor being the new mandate entered with the Greater Manchester Pension Fund by Catella IM in the U.K. On page nine, we look at the AUM growth of property investment management. As I mentioned, adjusted for the sale of Catella Asset Management in January of last year.
IPM has grown its assets under management by SEK 21 billion during 2021, with a particularly strong Q4 . A large portion of the growth stems from inflows into our modern residential funds, with particular interest, which is we're very happy and proud about in sustainable assets. Notably, we had strong inflows into Catella Wohnen Europa and our dark green residential fund, Catella European Residential III. Total property funds AUMs are now at SEK 90 billion. Growth in asset management AUM was limited during the year, but during the year, we also exited several low margin mandates and sold successfully managed properties for gains, which leaves our asset management business in a stronger and a good position to grow profitably with higher margins.
Looking ahead, we have SEK 12 billion of unlevered committed capital ready to be deployed into our funds for additional growth in AUM through new acquisitions and continued progress in ongoing developments in our various funds. On page 10, we turn to the PIM, property investment management P&L. Revenue has decreased somewhat on a full year basis, mainly related to the material performance fee we received in 2020 from Grand Central and the divestment of Catella Asset Management in France. Underlying net revenue growth was 12%.
The exits of Catella Asset Management and other low margin mandates have, however, resulted in a solid increase in our operating profit margin. This positive trend was even stronger during Q4, with a 33% net revenue increase, both from an almost 20% increase in fixed fees and from very high variable revenues with the large number of property acquisitions into our funds during the quarter. We thus continue to feel positive about significantly increased fixed fees going into 2022 and about our ability to grow with significant new capital to be deployed in a well-diversified higher margin portfolio with a broad risk profile. On page 12, an overview of principal investments, our newest business area, and we continue to invest into a diversified portfolio project in different asset classes.
The total portfolio now consists of 16 development projects in 6 European countries, and they continue to progress according to plan and within budget. In the Q4 , we started the construction in the Setúbal do Sado. It's the first site in the initial phase of the project, which is a very long, multi-phase, multi-site project. The first phase here, of 250 residential units are expected to be completed, by the end of 2022. Other new development projects included direct investment in the U.K. property which I mentioned earlier, the Maltings in Salisbury, U.K.
It has considerable development potential, as I mentioned earlier, and the investment was made together with Catella APAM and we are pleased to see this first step towards starting larger mandates and funds aimed at the British market, with Catella's equity as a support and driving force, something that we continue to do more of across Europe. Seed investments and co-investments from our own balance sheet are an important strategy for how we can use our capital to strengthen existing and build new European platforms, which is a key thing that we aim to increase in 2022 and beyond. Let's go to page 13, continue with principal investments. At the end of the year, Catella had a total capital of SEK 1.1 billion invested with about SEK 300 million added in the Q4 .
2022 will be, call it something of a harvesting year, for Principal Investments. Seven projects are on track to be finalized and divested during the year, starting with the largest Infrahubs projects in Norrköping in Sweden. For this transaction, the interest has been considerable and it shows strong demand from investors for these types of assets and the value, of course, for Catella of having platforms creating a pipeline of projects throughout the years. Looking ahead, we continue to see a solid pipeline of opportunities fulfilling our IRR requirements. Again, as we emphasized in our Q3 , Principal Investments is not, or at least will not be, a list of one-off significant profits.
This is rather a new growth platform for partnerships and co-investments and continuous investments, as can be seen both from the increased asset diversification but mainly in strong partnerships in the way that we grow assets under management as well, by investing our own equity. Very exciting future. On Corporate Finance and turning to page 15, the year ended on a very strong note for Corporate Finance in a dynamic transaction market with a broader Catella product offering, all of which generated the business area's strongest quarterly profit to date. To sum up a really strong year, operating profit increased from SEK 23 million to SEK 71 million with a fantastic, I would say, SEK 57 million in the Q4 alone. We are very proud of the 2021 results.
It is of course always challenging to repeat this type of activity in the transaction advisory field. You know, it's a great business, but you start from scratch every year. We have advanced our positions on our main markets, and we have acted as a financial advisor in more capital raising and in debt advisory, which is particularly encouraging given our strategic focus on precisely this. The year has started, I think, strongly, but again, it's always a challenge to repeat in this area. I now hand over to our CFO, Mattias Brodin to cover the financial summary beginning on page 17.
Thank you, Christoffer and let me briefly cover the financial summary focusing on ongoing operations. As Christoffer already mentioned, the strong quarterly revenue development was driven by solid growth in our fund platforms as well as a very strong last quarter for corporate finance. The revenue increase also naturally resulted in an increase of OpEx related to higher performance-based salaries, a good expense to have. Operating profit for the quarter ended at SEK 140 million, representing a solid increase of nearly SEK 100 million compared to last year. Looking at our key ratios of operating margin, earnings per share development and return on equity, we see that they are all stable or improving. Continuing to page 18, where we look at the financial and liquidity position. Catella has continued strong balance sheet and equity ratio supporting our future growth plans, both in new investments and potential M&A activities.
Total assets increased by SEK 1.2 billion to over SEK 5.4 billion. The increase is related to additional and new investments in our property development projects and the issuing of our senior bond, which increased the group's cash with SEK 480 million net. The liquidity at the end of the quarter amounted to SEK 1.4 billion. The return of the banking license freed up previously restricted capital, enabling investments in further business development and projects with further headroom if needed. That was all regarding Catella's financials. Back to you, Christoffer.
Thank you, Mattias. Right. Before opening up for Q&A and going through sort of the formal part of the presentation, I would like to briefly summarize the quarter, summarize a little bit from our perspective and how we look at it. We have finally completed the strategic transformation of Catella to a property-focused company. This has taken a disproportionate and way too much time for the entire management for a long time. Now, as we have returned the banking license, divested the remaining part of our mutual fund operations, and exited Informed Portfolio Management, our hedge fund, we can fully focus on growing and refining and improving Catella's three business areas and pursue further synergies as we grow Property Investment Management, Principal Investments, and Corporate Finance.
The business in our core operations then continues to perform well. In our largest business area, property investment management, we show the ability to continue to grow profitably, organically, with very strong inflows into our funds and mandates, with nearly SEK 12 billion of committed capital to grow further in the coming quarters. Principal investment continues to invest in regions and segments supporting the IRR targets. 2022 will be the first material harvesting phase, as we call it, for our portfolio, with 7 projects to be completed and divested during the year. The pipeline though for growth and reinvestment effectively of those profits continues to look promising, primarily through our various partnership platforms and the increasing number of co-investments and AUM supporting opportunities.
In corporate finance, Catella remains strong in our major platforms through a broadened and attractive service offering, and now including the launch of Debt Advisory as a new Pan-European business line. Like numerous other companies, we have in many ways just started our sustainability journey. Of course, in our funds and our other products, it's been a focus for a long time. As a group, this is now something that I and the entire management team are passionately focused on. These macro trends and how sustainability, not just the environmental, but all aspects of sustainability, these trends and increased investor focus will have a profound effect on the real estate industry and the investor landscape, of course.
With both major challenges in existing assets in our portfolios and how you need to invest and change your focus, but also, of course, opportunities to take leading positions. During the first half of 2022, Catella will finalize our sustainability strategy and goals, and we will clearly lay this out to the investor community in due course. We are continuously evaluating potential acquisitions and new partnership opportunities with the aim of strengthening our position and our geographical presence where it makes sense. Even though the market is relatively hot across Europe and the political landscape, unfortunately, today is somewhat challenging, we are looking at some interesting ideas that we believe fit our strategic thinking and growth objectives. Hopefully, we'll get back to that shortly.
Finally, the strong financial year behind us and our solid liquidity position enables us to increase the dividend to SEK 1 per share. With that, I would like to thank all of you for your time today, and we will now open it up for questions. Thank you.
The first question comes from the line of Patrik Brattelius from ABG. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Christoffer and Mattias. A couple of questions from my part. If I start with the property investment management. My first question is regarding your AUM base currently. Can you update us again on how much of the assets under management that are in closed funds and how much of the AUM base that are in open funds where customers can withdraw their AUM quickly, so to say?
Patrik, I think that level of detail will have to go back to you. I don't wanna be SEK 2 billion off in either direction, since I don't have that top of my head. You know, SEK 90 billion is in our property funds. Whether it's closed or open, as you know, regardless, is a very long capital call window. You know, most of the funds, if they're not protected permanently, so to speak, they have at least, I think, a 12-month window in all funds. We'll get back to you with the exact details.
Okay, fair. Thank you. My next question is regarding the high volatility that we've seen in the public markets here in the start of 2022. Do you believe this can lead to lower AUM growth here in 2022 compared to what you've seen historically? Are you seeing any signs that customers are more hesitant to do investments? Are you seeing any signs of increased requests for outflows or on the property funds?
Well, first of all, Patrik, if I could comment intelligently about the stock markets, I'd be doing something else for a living. I'm not gonna speculate on where that is going or how it affects us. I don't think we can say that we've seen an impact from the stock market. You know, that doesn't affect us more than our shareholders, of course. Our investors remain equally focused as they have been on high quality products, high quality services, and for us to continuously invest in attractive properties where we're meeting our return requirements. All we can say is that, as evidenced by the Q4 , that continues to be very, very strong.
I don't think we have any other impacts that we can comment on.
Okay, that is fair. I just imagine that perhaps some customers might feel that they become overexposed to your niche compared to perhaps public markets, when they investing. Yeah. Okay. Another question I have was regarding the variable fees. It was SEK 366 million here for the last twelve months. If you look into 2022, can you please try to elaborate a little bit on the underlying drivers why you believe variable fees will either increase or decrease compared to the last twelve months that we have seen?
As you know, in variable fees, it's hard to speculate. We of course have some foresight into our performance related fees, but that is only as of today. You look at an accumulated, you know, excess over performance in certain funds where we have performance-based fees. Those have been relatively consistent over the last few years, and I think we don't today. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, so we shouldn't speculate. As of today, I think we're confident that we're at similar level. With the rest of the variable fees, that is, you know, very correlated to the amount of acquisitions and dispositions we do in our portfolio.
All we can say is that with our projected and budgeted amounts of AUM growth, we should hope that we're at somewhat of a similar level.
Okay. Thank you. I move over to Principal Investments.
Yeah.
This is perhaps a little bit more of a provocative question, so excuse me. The sale of Norrköping was listed already in Q4, and you sounded quite optimistic on the last quarterly report presentation. We have not seen any press release yet here in Q1 that the process has closed. Has the sale process gone according to plan? Are you expecting it to be able to close before the end of Q1? Or what is the reason for perhaps the delay?
No, it's a very fair question, Patrik. Let me start with the last question. Yes, we are confident that we'll close this in Q1. It's a very simple reason. Our sales process, the best bid was from an investor that takes due diligence and care very seriously, as most large institutional investors do. We elected to maximize the price and go for a slightly longer transaction process, which is going according to plan. It's been, you know, a very detailed and solid due diligence. We have nothing but respect for our buyer. Our buyer has been performing extremely professionally.
We cannot speculate, as you know, in the future, but we hope that in the next, well, three or four weeks or so, we should be issuing a press release. The key for us is to make the best long-term business decision, and that was to allow our buyer, our investor to take enough care with the diligence process. Yeah, no, we feel very confident and good about the transaction.
Interesting. Looking forward to that press release then. My last question is then regarding the corporate finance. Last time we saw high volatility in the equity markets and uncertainty during the Corona crisis, this impacted the corporate finance department significantly. Have you seen similar signs that customers are being a little bit more hesitant to do corporate finance transactions here in the start of 2022? Or, what are you expecting the start of the new year for this segment?
Well, first of all, the start of the year is usually relatively slow. You know, most people try to push through transactions at the year-end, and our first quarter is generally you know, pretty modest. We have seen I would say two things. One is good continued core transaction activity. On the capital market side, we also see continued progress, especially, I would say in Sweden. However, when equity markets become shaky, as you know, there might be delays or restrictions in the amount of you know, IPOs and other significant capital raisings. Again, we cannot speculate. We haven't seen it really or felt it, but I think if experience is anything to go by, there's a chance that there will be limited activity, at least in the short term.
Can some of these transactions that was perhaps going to occur in Q1 be pushed into Q2? Or what are you thinking about that pipeline?
You know, I don't know, to be honest. Like I said, the core transaction market, we haven't seen an impact. You know, real estate investors and transactors. There's not a perfect correlation to the equity markets, obviously. You know, it's an alternative to the equity markets in a lot of respects. From the capital market side, of course, there could be an impact. We haven't seen it or felt it dramatically yet. That's all I can say today.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Patrik.
The next question comes from the line of Jesper von Koch from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Hello, guys, and congrats to the strong quarter.
Thank you, Jesper.
I have quite a few questions, so just stop me if we're running out of time. Starting with Principal Investments and Sersta, I've noticed that you've started renting out the apartments there. Could you specify at all how much you expect to invest in the first phase of that project?
Sorry, we couldn't hear the first part of that question, Jesper. If you don't mind repeating it.
Yeah. I said that I've noticed that you've started renting out the apartments in Sersta. Could you specify how much you expect to invest in the first phase of that project?
We have not started renting them out, Jesper. We have started construction just now. I think there might be pre-leasing activity, but that's not on a material scale that we can comment on. The total investment, we don't do forward-looking numbers, as you know. It's 250 apartments. As we get into each quarter, we can comment on how much has been poured into this development. Again, it's a very attractive development. We feel good about it. 250 units is quite a lot in a year. I think it's the right tempo for that size of the city. Investor and rental demand looks solid.
Again, as far as actual rental figures, it's far too early to comment.
All right. Do you plan to, like, complete the whole construction of Sersta before selling? If so, why? If you could just please elaborate around, like, how you look upon the risk level of the different Sersta alternatives.
Well, I think, as you know, Sersta is a very long multi-stage, multi-phase, and multi-asset type investment. It's projected to go until 2030. We have another eight or nine years of this. The first phase. Look, if there's a remarkable offer on the table for a forward funding transaction, for example, we'll of course look at that. Our job is always to maximize investor returns. If we feel that market sentiment remains strong and we have a better chance of higher profits by waiting until completion, that's what we'll do. We don't have a set strategy for any of our investments to exit. We evaluate that on a continuous basis.
Sorry that, you know, we can't speculate as to that.
No worries. Also, like, in just in general, for Principal Investments, do you have some plan of an optimal shareholding in each investment? Like, yeah, how long do you want to hold the investments? I guess it's a matter of like, you want to build up a steady cash flow from this business and so on. Please elaborate.
Sure. I think, like with the leasing or the exit process, there's no one single formula here. You know, we do a few different things, which I think we should all consider. Co-investments, which is, you know, really designed to drive asset management and other mandates. Our equity portion in those could be, you know, 5%. It really is about supporting our investment partner. It is about supporting our asset management platform's growth potential. If an investor wants us to have skin in the game and be part of the transaction, you know, and we feel that the asset is great, we'll co-invest and support it. In those instances, we can be as low as 5%.
As you've seen from our bigger investments, we're largely between 25 and 50. I think that's. I'm not saying it's a particular strategy, but since we deal with partnerships and partnership platforms, it is about growing together with our partners and take a reasonable equity stake in each project. Of course, as you know, there's a few where we have up to 100%, and that's situational. Some of these we have rather small equity amounts, but taking the whole position. For example, in the example of Kaktus in Copenhagen, we needed to take a bigger stake to see the transaction through. I think we feel very confident that has proven to be the right strategic decision. Again, it's a very fluid model.
We co-invest at very low amounts. We can go up to high amounts if it's the right investment with our partners. Like, as you pointed out, the key is continued stable cash flows through exits, not necessarily by holding, of course. We're not a developer planning to hold these for a very long time. Most of these investment horizons are within two years, I would say, maybe three years if you start from the first sort of development phase to completion. It's a long-winded answer because it has a lot of different strategies depending on, you know, we have 16 developments and no strategy is exactly the same.
All right.
The key is.
All right, good.
is to keep growing platforms, to keep finding new partnerships, and keep investing with great partners in projects that meet our return requirements and that supports our other business growth.
All right. Moving on to Kaktus. I've noticed that you've had showings for the apartments with expected moving in date from July. If you could just explore how this is going and if you expect like full occupancy directly from July.
Well, I think we hope so. That would be great. I think the demand has been very strong. Look, in the end, you have to sign actual leases. From the open house and the early lease interest. Well, I think our broker said it was the highest number of sort of registered interest that they've seen in the Copenhagen market. We can't get much better than that. The proof will be the final leases and how far we'll. So far, strong interest, strong demand. Copenhagen is a fantastic city with really strong residential market.
I think both our location, the quality of the product, I'd say the uniqueness of the product and how it's positioned is very strong in the market. We obviously have several commercial leases that we're about to finalize, hopefully as well. You know, the investor demand is there. You know, we look forward to a very exciting first half or maybe Q3 with regards to this transaction.
All right. Good. Moving on to PIM. How do you weigh between AUM growth and achieving a high revenue generation for PIM? Like, what I mean is that a higher turnover of your properties would render higher revenue generation but lower growth versus just accumulating properties to grow AUM. If you could just elaborate.
Sure. Look, it's not about targeting revenue. It is about doing the right thing in every asset, not just every mandate or every fund. It is about doing the right thing for every asset. Of course, there will always be turnover in the portfolio, and it's about reinvesting the capital. We would not and should not ever turn over assets purely to make fees or revenues. That is not in the interest of our investors. Our duty as managers is to maximize and take best professional care of our investors' money, and that is what we do. Right now, you know, for some time, that has been to increase AUM in attractive assets. We have had some exits, but much higher acquisitions, and we continue to do so.
We want to grow assets because our investors are trusting us with their money. We have excess capital that we continue to need to invest. All we can do is deliver outstanding returns, and a lot of our funds are up there in the rankings and we continue to see capital inflows. We do not transact to generate revenues. We only invest and transact to maximize our investors' profits.
All right. Good. About your public funds, I mean, those have shown a very strong growth lately and also in January. What is the plan for growing AUM going forward? Will that also focus on those existing public funds, or is it more of new funds that will increase AUM?
I think, look, the public funds are performing very well, and that will continue to fuel investor interest. From new funds, I think special funds are probably today a little bit more attractive. We have a broadened investor base of people who really want to work closely with us on special mandates. And those partnerships are incredibly valuable to both parties and we continue to develop those. It comes with slightly less administrative work as well, to be quite honest. And I think that's at least in the short term where we'll focus a bit more. Again, the continued growth in our public funds is fantastic and as you said, you can see it, you can track it.
You know, that comes with a daily valuation process. It's a lot of work. We are very happy to have all this trusted capital and to continue to perform well. We wanna broaden that. The more special funds, the more separate mandates that we have with investors who wanna partner very closely with us, I think the better.
All right. Good. Moving on to Corporate Finance. I mean, this seems to develop very, very well and you mentioned about the launching the Debt Advisory. Could you tell us more about like the underlying improvements that you've been working on and how these are developing?
Sure. I think over the last year we've had a focus on higher value transactions. As you know, our core is real estate transaction advisory services. That's our bread and butter, and we're very happy and proud to be among the best in many markets. That's a tough and competitive market and we have to do more. That's, I think, what we have successfully shown this year is that we can. We have done more capital raising activities. We have done more IPOs. We have done more Debt Advisory, and that is a trend that we want to continue. We have recruited and expanded sort of international cooperation to launch and win bigger mandates.
A lot of the capital raising and a lot of Debt Advisory is fragmented, and very local. I think by having a Pan-European capability, we can target clients and transactions that we have not been able to in the past. I think that's what we have at least started to prove in 2021 and continue to work on in 2022.
Yeah. Good. Because I was going into that about you saying that you have moved forward your position. Is that mainly impacting your potential in corporate finance or also the other parts of your company? Just please elaborate.
Well, if we focus on Corporate Finance, you know, I wouldn't say it's a strategic shift. It is a focus on higher value products. We have a number of, you know, we have an underlying core business which is, you know, selling and transacting and advising in single assets up to large portfolios. We also have, like I mentioned, sort of Pan-European advisory focus, our Pan-European Debt Advisory, which enables us to take on bigger mandates. We have in 2021, if we take France, which is our biggest market, very heavily increased our proportion of buy-side advisory, which is a tougher but more profitable place to be. I think, you know, you either complete it or you don't, you get nothing or you get a lot.
We've shown with our overall property focus and expertise that we can deliver very complex transaction advice and buy-side support, which has been, you know, keeping us very busy and profitable, even though other transaction volumes might have been a little soft in areas. So we also have a residential specialist platform working with development partners, and that provides a more recurring revenue stream. Those are all things that we're working on to both create more stability and to go into slightly higher margin areas. Again, it's not a simple one strategy. It's a lot of different strategies in several different countries and Pan-European as well.
All right. Moving on to capital allocation. I mean, after receiving the cash from Catella funds being sold, the bank and now the expected selling of both Norrköping and Kaktus and some other Infrahubs projects also, it seems that you have perhaps a too strong cash position. Do you expect everything to go into, like, principal investments? You also talked about M&A. Could you just talk about the capital allocation in general?
Of course. I think we cannot obviously comment on any financial position after December 31. What I can suggest is that when we look at our actually available cash outside of our operating entities, that number has gone down to a relatively modest level now during the first quarter as we continue to invest. I think we feel good about or at least relatively good about our capital efficiency, which is improving. After we raised more capital at the start of last year, we have been a little heavy on the cash side, a little heavy on the balance sheet. We have now invested a large amount of that. That is great. As you point out, we have 7 assets listed for sale in 2022.
There'd be a lot of capital coming back. Our job is to continuously find new opportunities to invest, and we feel good about that. Most of this is likely, as you point out, to go into principal investments. That is the core strategy of how to invest with a 20% target return, put all our cash into development opportunities like that. As I mentioned in the report as well, we are looking at new partnerships and M&A opportunities. You know, having a little bit of dry powder in a market where we want to be optimistic is good. Hopefully we'll have something to share this year.
All right. Would the, like, potential M&A, would that be more towards, like, the PIM kind of business, or how do you look at it?
I don't think we should speculate or comment on that. What we're looking are-
All right. All right
For our big platforms that complement and support and strengthen our growth. If that is supporting an entry into a new market or entering into a different type of investment management business, you know, it can be either.
All right. About, like, speculating about, like, rising interest rates, like, could you give some color about, like, how you cope with the expected rising interest rates? Like, is this an issue? Like, if you think and do anything differently, like especially in PIM and Principal Investments.
Well, first of all, we don't speculate. I think us, myself, our team know as little as everyone else where things will go in the future. What we do is make sure that our underwriting is always sound, that we never speculate on yield compression or any improvements in rents when we underwrite. We underwrite what we can see in front of us, and that gives us enough margin to meet our return requirements. For PIM, obviously as a parent company, we cannot dictate investment decisions in regulated funds. What we do know is that reinvesting in assets is focused on meeting the yield requirements on our investors.
We cannot and should not buy properties with unsupportable low yield levels, considering where we can borrow. That has been our strategy during a yield compression environment, and will continue to be our strategy if rates go up.
All right. Good. Finally, my last question about loss deduction. Sorry, did you have anything else?
No, no, I'm happy you have a lot of questions. It's
Good
It's interesting conversations.
About loss deductions, like how large are these, and can you do anything to change your corporate structure or anything to use these?
You said about tax loss carryforwards?
Yes, exactly. Like, about using the loss deductions there for underskottsavdrag.
Right
in Swedish.
Sure. I mean, we do have. I don't know exactly what's listed on the balance sheet in our financials, and I can get back to you on that. We do have a significant amount of tax loss carryforwards on our balance sheets. The challenge for us, of course, is that we're a Swedish entity, and those have to be utilized by Swedish profits in 90+% controlled companies. Historically and currently, with a majority of our businesses being partnerships where we might own less than 90%, and the majority of our businesses being outside of Sweden, that ability is limited.
Now, of course, as we try to grow our operations in Sweden, and as we look at opportunities to acquire, that'll be an important factor in how we structure. I don't think we can comment any more detail than that.
All right. Great. Thank you so much for all the answers, and good luck going forward.
Well, thank you for the great questions and the interest.
There are currently no further questions from the phone lines. I'll hand the conference back to you speakers.
Okay. Well, I think if there are no further questions, we thank everyone for, again, for participating, for your continued interest in Catella, and we look forward to speaking with you in a few months. Thank you so much.