Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Partners Group Interim Financial Results as of June 30, 2025 webcast and conference call. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, David Layton. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and welcome to our H1 2025 results call. My name is David. I'm CEO. I'm joined by Joris, our CFO, and Roberto, our Head of Portfolio Solutions. I also have a couple of other colleagues present for Q&A, should that be necessary. We're actually presenting today from our London office, where we're joined by several members of the analyst community here based in London, as well as a number of you on the phone. I'll start on page two. You know, our platform delivered what we believe is solid results for the first half of this year from a fundraising perspective. We had $12 billion in new assets raised. That's about 10% growth year on year. We had steady client demand from our bespoke solutions category in particular. That made up about 74% of the inflows during the period.
We have reconfirmed our guidance for full-year fundraising of $22 to $27 billion. In terms of management fee, we had a stable management fee margin at 1.23%, which resulted in management fees of CHF 854 million. That development is broadly in line with our average assets under management in Swiss francs. That management fee margin is also kind of within the historical range that it's been at for some time. Performance fees saw quite an uplift during H1, 94% growth year over year. They came in at about 27% of revenue.
On the back of that activity, as well as some of the additional exits that we have signed but not yet closed, where we have visibility on the closing timelines in H2, we have increased the expected range for this year to be consistent with the 2026 guidance that we had previously given of performance fees making up between 25% and 40% of revenues for the full year. Earnings came in at CHF 733 million, up about 17% year over year. We had growth that was more or less in line with revenues, a little bit of margin impact from M&A and from currency, but nothing significant. We continue to have a strong hand on the wheel as it relates to steering from a cost perspective. On the next slide, just digging a little bit deeper into our asset flows.
Again, this speaks to the long-term trend that we have been driving in our business away from products towards bespoke solutions. We do think that the future of private markets is portfolio solutions that solve more comprehensive needs of clients. You have seen that consistent shift in our asset mix over time. Indeed, that was continued with 74% of H1 inflows into these bespoke solutions. On the mandate side of things, private credit was a highlight for this period, building solutions for insurance companies in particular. With our evergreen business, private equity was the largest contributor to that particular segment. If you look over the past decade, you've seen bespoke solutions increase as a % of our total assets from 39% a decade ago to roughly 68% of our asset mix today. Roberto, do you want to dig a little deeper into mandates and evergreens?
Thank you, Dave. We continue to drive tailorization and democratization across our client segments. Tailorization is what we mainly reflect with separate mandates. It's the largest client segment nowadays with 38%. The reasons for a mandate can be almost as many as we have mandate clients. Oftentimes, it relates to investment-related allocation focuses, a specific region, a specific segment. It can also go to the opposite, be as broad as possible so we can play the relative value and benefit from tactical asset allocation shifts across private markets. There is a big, big number of reasons that simply relate to regulation, relate to efficient capital deployment in cases of insurances, for example, or simply wanting to start a mandate at a time when there is no closed-ended fund starting in our offering.
One of the changes you have seen here over the years, we've been increasingly able to offer mandates from smaller and smaller starting sizes. Today, you can get a separate account at Partners Group starting from CHF 50 million. The other big area, often summarized under the buzzword democratization, is the whole evergreen and private wealth space. That's the segment of our business that has grown most strongly over the last five years. While it used to be a very limited number of products and partners, today you talk about more than 20 programs. We've been talking a lot in July also about the new offerings that we've been bringing to market over the last two years specifically, but it's a trend that's been going on for the last several years.
Similarly, on the client side, we've seen a substantial increase in partners geographically both and by sources investing with us in this segment. We've added 40 distribution partners over the last 12 months. Some of those will be more typical distribution partners and be smaller in scope. Some of those are more strategic, like names you will see below there. We will announce a few more over the next couple of months. Just to pick out a couple of examples, you can go all the way from highly branded efforts together, like here on the left side of the chart. Let me pick out two examples here in Asia-Pacific, where we create white-labeled products for local banks in Japan and in Taiwan, which is something that we're then providing the engine under the bonnet for. We're not necessarily out there with our name riding the wave.
Last but not least, I think a link to the strategic partnership. Nowadays, also in the evergreen space, we're moving more and more from product to solution. The beauty of many of those partnerships is that you create something together, you create something bespoke, which typically is a much more lasting and longer-lasting partnership than it can be in the case of a single product. That's not too dissimilar to what we have been observing on the institutional space over the last decade.
Thank you, Dave. On the next slide, I think this really highlights the diversification that exists within the business. You'll have some periods where certain geographies are more challenging, other times when other geographies are more attractive. I think the diversification within the Partners Group business gives us a lot of stability as it relates to building solutions for a clientele that is truly global in terms of its needs, in terms of solutions that they require. Also, if you look at the type of client that we service, it is not a one-trick pony. We are indeed building solutions for a wide range of institutional investors, as well as individuals and families. On the back of that diversified network of clients, we have built a bottom-up pipeline that gives us pretty good visibility into new assets raised.
As you're aware, we anticipate $26 to $31 billion in new assets this year, $4 billion coming from M&A, and $22 to $27 billion coming from fundraising. We are on track to achieve within that range of expected outcomes from a client flow perspective. On the next slide, it speaks to the investment activity that we saw in the first half of this year. We have seen activity picking up, and that's reflected in the reality that we had about $9 billion in investments that were closed in the first half of this year. We have an incremental $8 billion signed but not yet closed as of August. We do see investment activity picking up. We have an extensive long-term pipeline. It's not just in one category.
That's across private equity, where we had a number of buyouts close and pipeline assets progress in the first part of this year, as well as infrastructure. Infrastructure is actually having quite a strong year with regards to converting on its pipeline. There are a couple of interesting growth investment opportunities, which we're quite pleased with. The royalties business, which is a newer initiative, I think it's made 10 new investments this year in some really attractive spaces and is helping us to build out a seed portfolio in that asset class that we're able to take to market. We have the belief that 2025 has the potential to be actually quite a good vintage year. We are staying active and working hard. It is hard work, though. It's not just one type of investment, not just direct investments either. Our portfolio team has also had a pretty strong year.
Our secondary business, for example, was very, very active. They screened $102 billion of opportunities this past year and invested in just the top 2% of things that came across our desk. You do see the secondary market becoming a more regular tool that's used. We have the flexibility to invest across the spectrum. Sometimes they're $20 million solutions that we're buying an individual position in an individual fund, and sometimes they're billion-dollar solutions that we're bringing to the table for a large institutional seller. Our ability to work across the spectrum, I think, does give us a leg up in that regard. Performance fees, obviously a topic in H1. When the tariff drama unfolded earlier this year, I think there was a lot of skepticism that performance fees were going to be able to be generated within the industry more broadly.
I think the fact that we have had performance fees in this period that are consistent with the performance fee levels that we've been able to generate over the past number of years, I think it speaks to the strength and the diversification of the platform. If you think about where these came from, we had about 37% of those performance fees that came from our evergreen vehicles. The balance came from our mandates and traditional programs. We had performance fees that were generated across all four asset classes. Obviously, most of that came from private equity and infrastructure, but about 10% of those performance fees came from credit and real estate combined.
The direct portfolio made up the majority of those performance fees, but we had over 40% contribution from our portfolio assets to that performance fee number, which speaks to the diversified nature and the fact that our secondary investments are indeed generating strong returns, as demonstrated by the diversified infrastructure portfolio, which is highlighted on this page, $1.5 billion in distributions, 2.4 times on the four exits that have been generated out of that portfolio to date. You also see 90 different investment programs that contributed to those performance fees. This is, again, not a one-trick pony. They came from multiple sources. Over 27% of the performance fees that we generated were generated from selling down existing public positions, and the balance came from new exits or new developments within the existing programs. Indeed, we have a number of sources.
That even includes the reversal of the tech and performance fee, which we had talked about, where that contract needed to be restructured. We expect for those performance fees to be reinstated as soon as that contract closes, probably in the second half of this year. We have pulled forward our guidance for performance fee expectations. We have been working within a 20% to 30% guidance range for a number of years now. I think that was appropriate for the investments that were being realized during that period of time. Just to jog everyone's memory, over the last decade, decade and a half, we have effected quite a significant mix shift within our investment portfolio, not only investing on behalf of more and more clients and deploying more and more dollars, but also having a more significant deployment within direct investments.
Those direct investments are the most significant source of performance fees for most managers, Partners Group included. As you see, the primary realizations coming from this era of higher direct investments and higher volume, performance fees will continue to come through on a larger and larger basis. We feel very good about our ability to at least create performance fees as a percentage of revenue consistent with what we've done in H1. Indeed, if our signed pipeline continues to progress according to the time that the schedules that we see, you could very well see performance fees in the 30% plus range for this year, hence the need to update the guidance. With that, Joris, I'll hand it over to you to review some of the financials.
Thanks, Dave. It's a pleasure to be here with you, all of you, today. I would like to walk you through the 2025 interim results. Let me start with our assets under management. As you have heard, these are diversified across asset classes and regions in U.S. dollar. They grew 70% year over year. AUM growth in U.S. dollar was positively impacted by FX and the addition of $4 billion in underwritten contribution from Impera. In average AUM in Swiss francs, this translated into growth of 8% following the strong appreciation of the Swiss franc against the U.S. dollar. Total revenues increased 20% to CHF 1.17 billion. Performance fees contributed meaningfully and represented 27% of total revenues, in line with our guidance given in the AUM call in July and up a stake of 17% from last year. EBITDA grew in line with revenues, increasing 17% year over year.
Let's move to the next slide, where we see our revenues in more detail. We have two sources of revenue: management fees and performance fees. Management fees represent most of our revenues and are recurring in nature. Management fees grew by 5% in the first half of 2025 following the growth in average AUM in Swiss francs of 8% year on year. However, FX and lower other revenues and other operating income had a negative impact on management fee development. Looking at FX, we saw a negative impact of 3% on management fee growth. Other revenues and other operating income decreased 36% year on year, largely due to modestly lower late management fees and a decrease in income related to treasury management services. Let me talk about the management fee margin on the next slide. Our management fee margin stood at 1.23% in half year one 2025.
This is well within our historical bandwidth of 1.18% and 1.33% since IPO. If we look at the recurring portion of this margin, it was at 1.16% for half year one 2025. This is a slightly positive development from our 2025 recurring margin, which was at 1.14%. As I mentioned in the AUM call, our management fee margin is driven by several factors. First is the product mix, which in half year one contributed negatively with a higher share of credit. Second, we saw the positive impact from products now showing the full effects of the fee clock being activated late last year, including direct infra four. In addition to that, our new evergreen vehicles contribute with a solid margin.
Finally, next to a few other items having smaller impact, like ethics, we were able to profit from the impact of the additional management fees from the acquisition recognized in the first half year 2025. We expect also in the future to see slight variances between the years driven by the timing of the fees and the mix of our asset classes. Our revenue margin increased to 1.69%, supported by strong performance fee growth in half year one. Let's look at the performance fees on the next slide. In half year one 2025, performance fees represented 27% of our total revenues, well within the prior range of 20% to 30% of total revenues that we had guided for. We're proud of this development, and as Dave mentioned earlier, it underlines the strength of our diversified platform.
As you will remember, we previously communicated that as of 2026, we expect performance fees to account for 25% to 40% of total revenues. When we look today at our exit pipeline, we see a continued strong momentum. If the currently signed pipeline closes already this year, with PCI as an example, and a continued consistent performance of our high watermark programs, we can very well pass into the range above 30%. It is requisite to update the previously issued guidance, and we decided to pull forward a new range and now expect performance fees to account for 25% to 40% of total revenues already in 2025. A portion of this added performance fee in 2025, we originally expected to realize in half year one 2026. Let us move to operating costs on the next page.
Profitability remains strong with an EBITDA growth rate of 70% at an EBITDA margin of around 63% or 62.7% to be precise. While Impera is accretive to our overall management fee margin, it operates at a lower EBITDA margin than Partners Group, as is usual for vertically integrated real estate platforms. Total operating costs increased by 25%. As you can see, personnel expenses accounted for 86% of our operating costs, and I would like to go more in depth into those. Performance fee-related personnel expenses increased 91% in line with the increase in performance fees, which were up 94% in half year one. These two categories typically move in tandem as we allocate a fixed proportion of up to 40% of the performance fees to our employees. Management fee-funded personnel expenses, on the other hand, typically grow in line with average FTE growth.
In half year one, we added 256 average FTEs, increasing our average FTEs by 7% over the period. This is driven by the M&A activity, which we completed in half year one. Management fee-funded personnel expenses followed this and increased by 9%. Other operating expenses increased to CHF 60 million because of the inclusion of Impera in half year one. Excluding acquisition, our cost discipline ensured other operating expenses at the level of the prior year. Let's move to the next slide. We are a global business reporting in Swiss francs. However, most of our revenue comes from U.S. dollar and euro denominated funds. Unsurprisingly, as the Swiss franc strengthened, this created a negative translation effect on our EBITDA margin of approximately 0.4%. Let us move to the next and final slide. We invest around CHF 1.4 billion alongside our clients across various programs.
In the first half of 2025, these investments generated a positive performance of CHF 38 million. The net financial income translated into CHF 13 million as impacts from foreign exchange, hedging, and interest expenses were at the previous year's level. A tax rate amounted to 18% in half year one 2025 within our previous guidance. Just to recap, we anticipate the tax rate to be within the range of 18% to 19% looking ahead. This leaves us with a profit of CHF 578 million, up 14% year on year. Looking at our available liquidity, we increased the level to CHF 2.9 billion. We believe this gives us substantial room and flexibility to continue growing our business as we look at the coming years. With that, I would like to hand over back to the operator and to open the Q&A.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. I will now hand the call back to the room for live questions first.
Thanks. We'll start here in the room. Any questions?
Yes, thank you. Hope you can coming through, Kate. Yeah, it's Nicholas Herman from Citigroup Inc. I've got three questions, please. I guess a big picture question on democratization and then two questions for Joris. On the alternatives that democratization, I mean, I guess since we last spoke, we've had the U.S. president issue an executive order to democratize private assets. I guess are you now increasingly confident that we will get a safe harbor provision issued? At an industry level, how long do you think it will take before we start to get more retirement plan providers following Empower and offering private assets to plan members? The two more technical questions. One, the first one on performance fees. In March, you talked about $19 billion of NAV to be exited over the two to three years. I appreciate that $19 billion will grow and continue to grow.
Just broadly, based on the new performance fee guidance, what proportion of that $19 billion will you have exited by the end of this year? The final question is, you've now got $1.2 billion of net debt today. I guess you've made some fairly sizable seed investments in the past couple of years. When do you expect those seed investments to start? You'll be able to realize some of those seed investments and generating cash from that so that you can start to kind of boost your cash position rather than being a headwind to that. Thank you.
Maybe I'll take one and two, and Joris, you can take, or maybe Roberto who oversees any of those seed positions can take number three. With regards to democratization, we were very encouraged by the actions taken by the Trump administration to continue to support the democratization of private markets. This is a trend that we have been hoping to see for some time. 401(k) is a substantial potential client for the private markets. A lot of people have thought about private assets as being mostly applicable to large institutional investors. There is a matter of fairness in that the largest investors in the world have had access to investment types that are maybe not as accessible to everyday investors. That move pushes the industry to, or pushes, I think, investors globally towards more fairness of options and allowing everybody to have access.
It primarily, I think, helps to protect against litigation. Not perfectly so, but it helps with that overall trend. Litigation has been one of the gating items that has kept plans from participating. Empower, the second largest 401(k) provider in the U.S., was an early mover and went ahead of that announcement by just a little bit to announce that they're including private markets as a part of some of the solutions that they're going to be providing. We welcome that and are pleased to be participating in that announcement. There is a lot of other work that's being done right now by other plan providers to get ready for adoption. I would anticipate this next 18 months are active with regards to laying the groundwork for a number of participants. You're going to see an adoption curve that is probably similar to what you saw in wealth, right?
Where you had some early adopters that moved first, some pioneers that kind of helped to create the solutions that work for them. You'll see an adoption curve that kind of gradually comes over probably a decade in all reality, and then starts to steepen pretty materially after that. That would be my best hypothesis of how long it takes to see that really play out. With regards to the pipeline that we shared, indeed, we have had in March $19 billion of assets where we had investment teams assigned to drive liquidity in those. Our team has been hard at work. You saw a portion of those assets get realized as a part of our H1 efforts. You also have had other teams that have been assigned to other assets. That pipeline has gone up, not quite by 2X, but approaching that.
We do have a quite sizable portfolio of assets that has matured and is ready. I wouldn't read too much into that. We were kind of giving you some insight into what our teams are assigned. Oftentimes, you'll have a team that'll explore a particular topic, come to the conclusion it's not the right time. I'm just saying we have a real portfolio of assets where we've developed them over a long period of time that's reflected in the fact that we have all of those direct positions that we shared earlier. Keep in mind that the values that you see in those circle charts with regards to the direct investments that were made, that was the cost that was invested. That cost has also appreciated and adds to a pretty substantial continued pipeline of opportunities.
I would just keep in mind, though, and Joris mentioned it, there's probably $100 million or so of performance fees that we had anticipated for 2026, where the closing timelines currently place that revenue is most likely falling into H2. There is a little bit of pull forward that you need to take into account. That doesn't take anything away from the fact that we have a very robust pipeline of assets. Joris, anything to add to that?
No, I think that's summing it up well. I just go to the next question, which is about the seed investments. As you're well aware, I think last year we were quite active in launching all the new evergreen vehicles and the multitude, which were also performing quite nicely. With this, we also allocate the seed investment, which is typically available for sale, so it's expected to be due in roughly 12 months. Of course, depending on when we launch these, they can also move in and out. I'm not that much concerned about that position as it just will basically translate at the beginning to a higher balance sheet position, and then as soon as the fund is growing, it will then translate back into the cash position.
& Co, three questions from me as well, please. If I can just first follow up on Private Wealth. When you gave us the update in July for the H1 fundraising, we saw that Private Wealth fundraising, or evergreen fundraising, I should better call it, was actually better than what we expected or what the market expected at the time. Having said that, obviously April was quite volatile and probably the second quarter was a bit more difficult than the first quarter. What do you see at the moment with regards to the third quarter? What have you seen over the summer and what is your outlook in terms of fundraising in the Private Wealth/evergreen channel for the rest of this year? Second question, just to come back to the management fee margin.
You mentioned that the margin excluding other income stands at 1.16%, which is two basis points better than last year. Is that sustainable going forward? What is the outlook for the management fee margin in the second half and also sort of 2026, 2027? You did mention that we should expect to see some variance as we have seen in the past. In most of the years, really, the margin has been above 1.23%, including other income. I just want to understand if the 1.23% is kind of like a new base and whether we could move lower consistently from that level just because I think if I'm not mistaken, some of the new evergreen vehicles are at lower margins than the older evergreen vehicles. You are now perhaps doing a bit more credit, so just the dynamics there.
Just a last question on the performance fees for the second half. Is it fair to assume that they could be higher than the CHF 314 million that we saw in the first half of this year? Thank you.
Maybe I'll take the first one, Private Wealth question. First, on the fundraising in Private Wealth, I do think, and I mentioned that there's no change in that sense from July. We have seen a relatively good result. It's probably still worthwhile mentioning that under the bonnet, there's a dynamic where on a relative basis, new funds have been coming online, not just structurally, but also adopting broader distribution throughout H1. We expect that to continue into H2. When it comes to the more mature evergreen funds, we have seen a pickup in performance that I was referring to in July. At the same time, we're also aware there's a certain dynamic at work where with the new entrants in the market, there is a higher diversification that clients go for, and therefore a smaller share of wallet that remains with overall Partners Group versus a few years ago.
We certainly believe this will continue for another few quarters, the same way the effects of a stronger performance typically manifest themselves with a bit of a lag in terms of client flows. In terms of guidance, we stick with what Dave had mentioned at the call last time. Let's maybe go to the management fee margin. Again, I'm sorry to repeat that there are multiple factors, of course, driving the management fee margin, which are also for us a thing where we need to think in scenarios. When we assume, of course, that the mix in the asset classes remains the same and also the levels remain roughly the same, I think you can also take an assumption that you can write this forward at least for the next period in time.
Having said this, of course, at some point in time, we then definitely will see how the fundraise comes in during Q3 and Q4, and when the fee clocks will be activated, that kind of cost can also start changing slightly. I hope I've given you a...
I mean, you could see a little bit of a reversion to kind of where it was last year, like without any real surprise on our side. At the same time, you've got a number of new relatively high margin funds that are expected to hold closings in the second half of this year. You have a couple of factors there, but I think we're at a reasonably stable and consistent place today with regards to where that is. With regards to performance fees and if we expect higher performance fees in H2 versus H1, we would not have updated our range unless we had reasonable visibility on getting into the 30% for an average for the year. That does imply H2 having quite a bit of activity potentially in it. We've got a good line of sight onto that.
Again, Joris, just to repeat one of Joris's messages, that is dependent on a couple of things. Number one is the environment staying reasonably stable because a portion of our performance fees do come from vehicles with a high watermark structure where you need kind of performance to contribute a certain percentage of that. Number two is closing of already signed transactions, PCI being one of those, where according to the current closing schedules, we do anticipate that to happen in H2, but there could always be drama that could turn that around. I'd say a good floor would probably be that 27% where we were in H1 and maybe into the 30% somewhere should the market stay where it's at today and should the pipeline close.
Hi, good morning. It's Craig Simpson from BNP Paribas. Two questions from my side. Firstly, on the secondaries market, it feels like it's become quite attractive for evergreens with the evergreen market in terms of the accounting around secondaries. Could you talk about how you're seeing secondaries in terms of pricing, the attractiveness to deploy, get the returns you want at this point in time? The second question just on M&A, any comments on how Impera has gone so far since closing and your kind of outlook around further M&A coming through and time horizon discussions? Thank you.
Yeah. I'll take maybe both of those. If you think about the secondaries market, indeed, if you have a single investor in a fund that's seeking liquidity on their position, they oftentimes have to take a discount in order to get out. There's been a lot of attention that's been placed on that. It is very normal.
If you think about what if you went into business with three friends and bought a summer house, put some money in, fixed it up, and rented it out, you guys wanted to do that for 10 years, and one of those three friends wanted to get out five years in and the other two wanted to stay, you would need to find an individual that's willing to step into a very specific arrangement and they might indeed need to take a discount in order to find a buyer who's willing to do that. That doesn't have any bearing on the neighborhood that that house is in. It doesn't have any bearing on the value of the home itself. Indeed, there is a discount for somebody who's willing to, that somebody that needs to find liquidity on a very specific arrangement that they're stepping into.
There is some opportunity there to capture value. Now, that has never been a big part of our specific secondary strategy, however. If you look at our secondary business, we are multiple of money focused, which means we're buying earlier assets, meaning earlier in their life cycle. If you look at our returns for our mature secondary vehicles, we have about a 1.83X return that we've been able to generate for our clients in the secondary business, which is relatively high. As you analyze where that return has come from, we have about 0.09X that has come from capturing discount and about 0.74X of that gain that has come from positive development of the underlying asset. 90% of the gains that we have booked in our secondary activities has come from identifying assets with upside and getting in front of those specific assets. That's not everybody's play.
Some people do buy tail-end assets or complex assets where you can get a big discount and capture a big discount. Indeed, those can be used to provide an immediate uplift within certain structures. That's not a huge part of what you'll find within the Partners Group portfolio. Indeed, when you look at our returns that we've generated through our secondary investments, some of our best returns are actually assets we paid a premium for and actually had to take our immediate write down making that investment. Those have been some of the most attractive secondaries that we've ever done because we're buying assets where we have a fundamental belief in the development. Yes, you'll see reasonable secondary activity from us.
We do think that it's an attractive place to play, but we have kind of our own corner of the market that we've carved out and not as much heavy discount activity for the Partners Group team. With regards to M&A, we're quite pleased with the acquisition that was announced in Q4 of last year and closed in H1 of this year. We continue to believe that the real estate business will move in a direction of vertical integration, that the days of asset allocation strategies are going to be more challenged. The future of real estate is vertically integrated experts that have a particular area that they're very, very deep in. You could well see us pursue another couple of acquisitions related to that specific theme.
In terms of broader M&A activity, we continue to believe that we are in a position to consolidate our unique corner of the market, but there's nothing to speak to at the current point in time.
Thank you. Charles John Douglas Bendit from Redburn (Europe) Limited. Two questions, if I can, on private wealth. Firstly, can you comment on the net flow dynamics within your U.S. evergreen funds? Are we seeing a steady pattern, or is there evidence of larger gross inflows and outflows, potentially reflecting a combination of increased demand from high net worth clients, but also some rebalancing from advisors now that there are more products available across the warehouse platforms? Secondly, could you just update us on private wealth dynamics outside the U.S. and how you're positioned vis-à-vis the competition in those markets where distribution is perhaps more fragmented? Thanks.
Roberto, do you want to...
I'll be taking the U.S. questions first. Kind of relating to what I mentioned before, there is a certain rebalancing dynamic that has been going on. At the same time, we have been adding new distribution partners from the traditional private wealth segment, but there's also a number of sources that relate to defined contribution that feed into the registered funds. I think overall, and you know us, this is all public, and the bottom line is we're roughly flat, but I think net flows in H1, we're about -1%. We don't see the growth that we'd like to see, but we see the underlying drivers in place for that to change back to a growth path in the future. Regarding the dynamics outside the U.S., I would say it's probably a bit more fragmented when it's about the product mix, but also somewhat the asset class mix.
We do see a picture that includes infrastructure, that includes royalties in the private wealth segment. Yes, I think you're right, being more fragmented means also effectively that from our sales force perspective, we have built a team that literally is present on the ground across all of those countries where we deem there is potential. Solutions that we work on, I mentioned Thailand white label, that's all very specific. It's probably at the margin a bit more structuring required and a bit more bespokeness in how you set up those partnerships or distribution arrangements, which vary market by market.
Shared from Deutsche Bank. A few questions from me, please. First is on the management fee margin. We saw a compression of more than 200 basis points in the first half. I suspect the combination of FX and Impera. If you could split it, I think that would be helpful.
You mean EBITDA margin?
Yes, the fee-related management fee-related EBITDA margin, not the one outside of the performance fees. Do you think the current level of around 62% would be a fair expectation given what you have seen in the FX? That's the first one. It would be helpful if you could provide the EBITDA contribution of Impera separately just to understand this. Second, any guidance on operating costs would be helpful. I would say low double digits would be a reasonable expectation going forward, broadly in line with AUM. Finally, on your BlackRock partnership, any updates there and any updates would be helpful. Thank you.
Joris, do you want to...
Yeah, I think if you look at the... I mean, we told you that we had an FX impact on the EBITDA margin of negative 0.4%. Translating this backwards, if you compare it, that also means that the rest of the platform was relatively stable in the margin. The other impact might have been or must have been acquisition-related. Of course, you also see that Impera, you see this in the details. I think that added also revenues of CHF 41.5 million. The EBITDA margin is coming in lower than the overall like-for-like Partners Group platform margin, the previous margin. Now, if we look at the future, we still expect that when we look at new business coming in off the group, I think we can still expect to stay within the 60% of operational margin that we also guided, even though we added now an acquisition.
With regards to timing around new portfolio solution launch for private wealth in partnership with BlackRock, no update to the expected timing there. It continues to be kind of a Q1 next year anticipated launch. Anything else from the room? If not, we'll turn to the operator to field questions from the phone call.
Thank you. Your first question from the phones comes from the line of Daniel Regley from Sureshare Continental Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for having my questions. One question is on the performance fee contribution from evergreen funds, and can you give us a little bit of a feeling how this has developed over the past couple of semesters and remind us about important factors we should keep in mind for H2? Is there any kind of high watermark dynamics to keep in mind for H2, or can it be assumed to be largely proportional to the performance of the evergreen structures? Secondly, follow-up questions on the recurring fee margin, and obviously this one has been up to 1.16%, as you said. Can you maybe give us a little bit of sense about how much of this increase was driven by the Impera acquisition?
Further, maybe also on the management fee margin, there has been some press articles from larger newspapers towards the end of August about private equity firms being struggling to raise money and giving enticements or discounts to attract new investor money. Obviously, this seems to contradict what you have just presented. Can you maybe elaborate on this? Is this just something which is not affecting Partners Group, or was this article just outright wrong? Thanks.
I'll maybe take the first couple of questions, and then Roberto and Joris, you can fill in where I have gaps. From a performance fee perspective, I would assume that performance fees develop roughly in line with, over the long run, the percentage of assets that they contribute. We have had evergreen vehicles in the mix for a long period of time. There are some people that treat evergreen assets like management fees. Indeed, we have seen periods where they contribute and periods where they don't contribute over the last 15 years that they've had. For the type of management fees that we want to provide, being sticky and contractual and consistent, that's not our approach. We keep these as performance fees because there is a variable nature to them.
One of them is indeed the high watermark features that they often have, but there's no drama with regards to those high watermarks that I would point you towards at the current point in time. Indeed, if you continue to see appreciation within the underlying portfolios consistent with what we saw in H1, you should expect to see contribution consistent with that in H2. No particular drama that I would point you towards there. In terms of the recurring fee margin, Impera was one of the factors that was on the positive side of the scale. As Joris mentioned, we had our asset mix, which was credit heavy, which was kind of on the negative side.
We had some new funds that we closed on that were higher margin, as well as some Impera funds that we closed on that were higher margin that were on the positive side of that average. The Impera acquisition probably contributed, I don't know exactly what it was, but it did contribute probably a basis point or two to that result. With regards to fundraising for private equity specifically, indeed, it is a more challenging environment in the private equity segment of the market, which is the segment of the market that we are primarily in. If you look at where most of the, let's call it, most of the easy money is being raised right now, it's with credit-related solutions, total balance sheet type of solutions for insurance, etc.
Being a firm that's primarily equity-oriented, we probably don't have as much of that, let's call it, credit solutions that you see as being raised out there. At the same time, we are an investment firm first. We really do think of ourselves as much more of a business builder than as an asset manager that just raises money based on where it is. You do see a pickup in demand for credit solutions. Indeed, I think it's not a total balance sheet solution that we provide. Many of the mandate solutions that we're building for insurance companies that are having to raise their game on the investment side of their portfolio, informed by some of the captively owned insurance companies out there and them having to compete with them, has been a driver of growth for us.
That's in the higher margin, higher value segment of the market by and large. We are not one to chase commodity business. With the evolution that you see happening within the private markets today, you have thousands and thousands and thousands of firms that have historically raised traditional funds, limited partnerships. Institutional investors have a relatively mature allocation to private markets, and that has not been growing at the same rate that we have seen historically. You do indeed see a lot of competition for traditional private equity funds that are having to battle with each other over who stays in their existing slots and who gets replaced by consolidating investment allocations from those traditional allocators. Partners Group differentiates itself with a lot of factors, with the fact that we build a more comprehensive solution for our clients. Oftentimes, we'll own the entire client's private markets allocation.
Oftentimes, we'll build a mandate solution where we're steering towards net asset values as opposed to just having traditional drawdown funds. We have a lot of means of, I think, differentiating ourselves other than just being another limited partnership that has to compete and give discounts. We are very disciplined. It does, at times, limit our growth, how disciplined we are, because we are a firm that holds the line. We will indeed sacrifice a couple of points of growth for the stability of the platform at times. It is a phenomenon that is not a false news report. It is an absolute dog fight for a traditional private equity fund to get raised right now.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Just one quick follow-up question. Can you kind of remind me about the late management fee developments recently? Obviously, this has been subdued over a period of time. Can we expect this to recover soon, or will this just take another couple of things until we see late management fees to recover?
Joris?
I think if we look at this year, I would just stick a little bit to what we've seen until it's then going to recover going forward.
Okay, very clear. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning. Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for taking my question and thanks for the presentation. I just have one follow-up left from Charles's question on the U.S. evergreen business. Roberto, I think you said that the underlying drivers here are now in place to get back to a growth phase. If we look specifically at the master fund, the $17 billion fund, which is the bulk of your AUM in the U.S. evergreen business, it looks like the performance side of this is really improving, is inflecting, was strong in July, as you mentioned. I guess on the other hand, we saw an acceleration of net outflows in the second quarter. If we marry up these dynamics and take your comment, Roberto, is it reasonable to assume that Q2 was probably the trough here, or is it too early to draw that kind of conclusion yet?
Thank you.
I'd be always careful to make point estimates about how exactly a dynamic for a specific fund is moving quarter by quarter. I do agree with you, though, that the underlying drivers that we've known to have been good indicators of how future fundraising develops or net flows develop have been pointing in the right direction since our June AUM update call.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand the call back to David for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you for your participation in this results call and for your ongoing interest in our company. We're pleased to now wrap this call up and look forward to speaking again soon. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.