Hello, everyone. I'm Andre Medina. I lead Patria Shareholder Relations, and welcome to the fourth edition of our PAX Talks on Macroeconomics: Investing Amidst Ugly Geopolitics. This will be a fireside chat Q&A format, so you're welcome to submit your questions. If we're not able to, if we don't have the time to answer your questions live, we'll get back to you via email. Before we start, I have to read the forward-looking statement. So I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements which are uncertain, do not guarantee future performance, and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Patria assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any such forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current management expectations and involve risks, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our latest Form 20-F annual report.
I also note no statements on this call constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in any Patria fund. As a foreign private issuer, Patria reports financial results using International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, as opposed to US GAAP. Additionally, we would like to note that we may refer to certain non-IFRS measures, which we believe are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business, but which should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable IFRS measures are included in our earnings presentation and SEC filings. So with that out of the way, I'm very happy to have here with us today Luis Fernando Lopes, our Chief Economist, that most of you know, and Thiago Pasqua, our Chief Strategy Officer.
To kick off, I would like to ask both of them to give a brief introduction of themselves, of course, touching base on how they support our investment team and Patria's growth story. So Thiago .
Thank you, Medina. Good to be here. Pleasure to be with you guys. I've been at Patria for seven years, roughly. I work directly with Alex Saigh, our CEO, running the strategic office, and we call it the office of the CEO as well. So related to our strategy, our M&A agenda, and I support Alex on our management daily activities and, of course, strategic initiatives that we have internally. Pleasure to be here. Good to be with you guys. Luis Fernando, please, the floor is yours. Introduce yourself, and we can jump start.
Thank you very much, Thiago . Thank you, everybody, for connecting. It's good to spare some time to listen to our history, well, Head Economist and Partner for Patria. I'm definitely the elder here in this conversation. I joined the company 30 years ago, 1996, and the role of head economist at Patria actually speaks of several jobs at the same time, so how do we help our investment efforts? First, of course, we have to produce regular analysis on the basic macroeconomic indicators: economic growth, inflation, interest rates, foreign exchange, so on and so forth. Also, that we started doing because the focus, our initial focus, was only Latin America. Knew that geopolitical analysis was something very important for the region, and over the years, we learned that, well, that's something very relevant for investing in any corner of the world, not only Latin America.
And then, but there is a second block of things that we do, and we may deep dive today, which is called sectoral knowledge. Something that the economic team also does is to connect the macro story with those key verticals, investment verticals in which Patria has an expertise. So if we look in terms of our capital deployment, two-thirds of the capital that Patria has deployed so far are concentrated in six key investment verticals, which are health and wellness, food and beverage, agribusiness, power, transmission, generation, and distribution, especially renewable power, logistics and transportation, and then digital and tech services. So we have to produce research, knowledge, insights on these key sectors and connect to the macro story.
And last but not least, there is a third block of what we do, which is basically look at the markets, see the capital flows, where they're going to, portfolio changes. And of course, we do this to help our fundraising activity. And in addition to that, we have to measure ourselves, our funds, our products against the benchmarks, against the competition. So that's also something that the research team helps do. And then in this condition, for example, and actually summing everything that I mentioned, we travel a lot. We talk to a lot of limited partners and investors around the globe. So we also can have a very good intuition about their concerns, portfolio changes, if they are getting increased exposure to one region or the other, so on and so forth. So this combination of this, everything shows what we do.
And then, just to start, I think perhaps keeping the ball here, one thing that we can start if you focus talking about Latin America. We think that's interesting. That's a mix of everything that we mentioned here. For instance, there is, in addition to geopolitics, we are going to discuss probably what's happening in Venezuela recently, but there are fundamental trends happening in Latin America. And then one of them, probably the most important and not very correctly estimated, there are fundamental reforms taking place in the region, especially on the pension systems in Latin America. So key economies like Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru, they are changing the regulation of their pension plans. And that basically speaks of higher increasing contributions by employees, by employers of the system. So this speaks about increasing the AUM in the region.
In addition to that, there is a change in regulation that is making more space for alternative investments. That's definitely an under-penetrated asset class in the region. Typically, the allocation of institutional investors in Latin America pension plans or insurance companies, we are talking about 5% of AUM. With this increase in AUM coming from the pension reforms, plus some changes in regulation, this allocation is going to increase significantly. For example, we see a significant increase in demand for alternative assets that Patria offers in Latin America or even outside Latin America. This is a very interesting opportunity that is taking place despite all the changes in currency, U.S. strike in Venezuela, so on and so forth. This gives you an example of what we do and how we do research and how we help our investment teams.
Of course, our shareholders are well to understand the investment environment around us. This is my long introduction, but I think it's an interesting message to start conveying.
Thank you. Thank you, Luis. I think just to maybe set up a common ground and starting point for everybody, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on, give us a snapshot on what is Latin America, current main figures, you know, and its global relevance that we see nowadays. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit so we can set up a stage here for deeper questions to come.
Definitely, Thiago . So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to share my screen just to show you. The idea is not to go through a presentation, but basically to show you some examples of what it is. So what we have here is a snapshot of the region. Actually, in every country that we invest, and even if you go to the sector, the six that I mentioned, we have to produce something like this, which is a summary of the big numbers and the most important trends. So for example, Latin America as of last year, 2024, the latest number we have, it's a $7.3 trillion economy space, 662 million people living there, a lot of FDI inflow going to the region. I'm going to go back to this point. 7% of global GDP, 8% of global population, 14% of global net FDI.
So this $196 billion that you see on your left-hand side is 14% of the net global FDI. And then you start to see something that differentiates Latin America from other regions. 8% of the global population, 7% of global GDP was 14% of global net FDI. That speaks of a region that welcomes long-term foreign direct investment. So let's be clear about FDI. FDI, foreign direct investment does not include investment in bonds and stocks, which are considered portfolio investment. This is really long-term capital expenditures in new factories, in new assets. So you have to create new assets. So this is the FDI thing. But most importantly, in this region, the dynamics is in the very center of this chart, which is basically Latin America is an unusual combination of two things. Perhaps unknown to several investors, it's a story of robust domestic markets.
This $7.3 trillion GDP, if you take the 662 million people that live there, nearly half of these people are middle class. This is the World Bank standard. The world average in terms of the size of the middle class is 31%. This speaks of a deep domestic market. A lot of investment stories and opportunities in Latin America are related to domestic demand, domestic markets. For example, in the six key sectors that we mentioned, healthcare and wellness typically are domestic market stories because the exports of health and wellness are not meaningful. But then you have the second interesting story, which is in the bottom, which is natural resources. That's probably what most people that get familiar with Latin America know. They are rich in natural resources. That's true.
So we have in the columns the share of Latin America in global exports, for example. If you take the second column left to right, soybeans, Latin America is a net exporter of soybeans, $54 billion in 2024. This is 59% of global exports. If you combine the two, it's a story of domestic market opportunities plus expertise in global commodities. So usually when you are in emerging markets, you have either one story or the other. So either you have a big, big domestic market, for example, if you go to India, if you go to China, there are humongous domestic markets, there's lots of opportunities, but then natural resources are a bottleneck. If you go to Africa or some countries in the Middle East, if you're talking about oil and gas, the natural resources are there, but then the domestic market is not that developed.
Latin America combines both, and that's the thing we like in the region, produces multiple investment opportunities, but also produces a kind of return. If you find the right industry, the right player there, the right investment story, typically the excess return that you get in Latin America because of this combination is very little correlated and sometimes completely uncorrelated with the kind of returns you get from similar investments in other geographies, so this is an example of what is Latin America for us, the different things that we see that compare to consensus, and most importantly, the way we create value and then the way we do investments in infrastructure, in private equity, in real estate, in credit is exploring the opportunities, looking at this market space the way we are doing right now. Now I'm going to stop sharing.
Thank you, Luis. Thanks for the initial thoughts. I think you mentioned in the beginning about the political environment in the region. I think we're seeing kind of a political shift from recent elections. Could you give us your view on the 2025, 2026 elections also to come and how it could benefit the region and Patria? Is it a new cycle in the region? How do you see this and how we can actually work and get better results in this environment?
If you talk to Latin America, basically you're talking about everything from Mexico down. So it basically does not include the United States, of course, and Canada. If you take the election cycle in the region, it's been very active for actually a couple of years. It's important to stress we are talking about 35 nations in Latin America, including the very small ones, of which two now are not functional democracies at this stage, at this moment, Cuba and Nicaragua. Venezuela was not a functional democracy, but that story may change. We can discuss this later on in this conversation. All the other nations, they are functional democracies, which means regular elections, and there are political changes and political cycles. A couple of years ago, we start to see a change in the region, starting with a relatively large economy, which is Argentina.
Basically, we moved from governments that have a very ambitious social agenda, environmental agenda, but the economic agenda was not that ambitious, that was not that robust, and then we start to see a change towards market-friendly administration in which there is still a social ESG agenda, but clearly the focus or the emphasis was to speed up growth, to fight inflation, to speed up investment, especially private investment. That started in Argentina, but now we are seeing actually a wave in the region, so if I may just show another one slide, again, promise it's not going to be, I'm not going to do this all the time, but just to show the visual impact, I think it's worth showing. Here we are. On the left-hand side, we have the picture end 2024, shades of pink.
We are talking about these governments with more social ESG, environmental agenda, more active or more ambitious, and then shades of blue, purple are the governments that are more market-friendly approach, so the first change that we saw was Argentina, and then if you take the picture, as we expect towards the end of 2026, this year, we had already change in Chile, which moved, it was pink on the left-hand side, moved to blue. Also in Bolivia, Central America, their elections also, we have now more market-friendly governments. There is this question mark in Venezuela. We don't know exactly. Definitely, the dictatorship is not there, so there will be some kind of transition we may discuss, and there is Brazil elections in the end of the year, so the election cycle here is very clearly the governments are getting more ambitious on the economic agenda.
Part of what the market is liking in this conversation, we can show the asset performance. It's basically this slide, which shows you looking at the election cycles in this century in Latin America. The left-hand side shows what happens with public equities, stocks, right-hand side corporate bonds. So it's basically fixed income, but with a focus not on government bonds, but on the private sector issued bonds. And then you see what happens before elections and after elections. If there is a change towards market-friendly governments, that's the black line. If we have the orange line, it's exactly the opposite when the change takes place, but it's from a market-friendly administration into a more social, active or state-active kind of thing. So what we are seeing in the region because of the change in election cycle, we're midway through the cycle in black.
Stock markets in Latin America last year outperformed almost all the world. We are talking about the MSCI you see on the left-hand side. It was north of 50%, 5-0 last year in U.S. dollars. Also, we have 30% appreciation in bonds. So that tells you a story that in addition to the fundamental trends, the fundamental dynamics in Latin America, that's different, there is the political change. And that's political change because it favors market and private investment. We are halfway through, we think, in terms of where on the chart, both on the left, on the right side, shows you what happens at minus one day, minus one, which is basically the day before elections. And then what happens 90 days after three months, 181 days, of course, is six months, and then one year down the road.
We are in the middle of this story, so cautiously optimistic that if we have more of the same in terms of political change, we are going to see additional asset appreciation in the region. This is the importance of the election cycle in the region.
Thank you, Luis. Thank you. I think despite this short-term election cycle that we are facing and this direction that you just mentioned, I think a lot of things will happen in the region given all the regulatory framework, you know, and things that actually bring robustness to the market itself. I think you see some independent central banks, fiscal rules, and so on and so forth. How these things actually are meaningful to Patria in a way as a local player in Latin America? And how does it relate to mid-long-term investments?
It's an important thing. Thank you for this question. It's important to understand that doing investments in Latin America, not only now, but over the past 30, 40 years that what Patria has been doing speaks of dealing with volatility, so it's not because the regulators of the central bankers in Latin America, they are smarter than in the rest of the world, but the regulation in Latin America and the monetary policy is very, very strict compared even to developed geographies. For example, take what happened during the global financial crisis, which was the epicenter was the United States. That was a classic credit crisis, and there was no spillover in Latin America. Latin America had one or two quarters of adverse economic growth. That was an adverse shock.
The contagion in the region was close to zero because most of the asset mispricing and the lack of adequate reserves and the idea that you could do off-balance sheets investment, that could not happen in Latin America because we had so many crises in the past that the regulation in the region was very strict. And then the contagion effect coming from what happened in the United States was zero. But in addition to that, because we have also decades of very high inflation in Latin America, especially until the mid-90s, the central banks are very, very hawkish in terms of monetary policy. So just to give you an example, the latest cycle of inflation pressures in the region that emerged after the COVID crisis. So everybody in the world had an inflation problem after COVID, but the reactions of the central bank were very different.
So in Latin America, the central bankers led the cycle of monetary tightening. And by tightening, we are talking about interest rates that were never zero. So Latin America never had the experience of zero interest rate policies. So interest rates, I think the lowest we had in the region was 2%. But then this 2% turned out to be 10, 12, 15%. So that's how tough monetary policy can be when the central banks hit the brakes in order to combat inflation. So imagine if you have a highly leveraged buyout investment story in which the cost of capital increased fivefold, sixfold. It is a full disaster. So there's no way to do this in Latin America. So again, not because we are smarter or more intelligent, it's just because of the regulation, the way the central banks operate. Capital markets are pretty robust, resilient in the region.
Then what you have basically is if you have further evolution in fundamentals, for example, the recent governments approving pension reforms, so we're going to have probably more resources flowing into insurance companies and into pension plans. The AUM of the industry is going to increase, but as I mentioned before, it's still underpenetrated industry in terms of tapping on alternative assets. There is room to be cautiously optimistic that we are going to have additional demand for private equity, for infrastructure, for structural credit or real estate. That's going to be in a healthy environment. Amid interest rates, they are still relatively high. Inflation is trending lower in Latin America. Most of the countries are already having inflation within the targets.
That means that from 12%-15% short-term interest rates, now interest rates are 200, 300, 400 basis points lower, but there is still a lot to go. For example, if you take the largest economy in the region, Brazil, interest rates are about to decrease or about to trend lower. We are at 15% short-term interest rates. The market yield, the yield curve shows interest rates going down 250 basis points this year. But depending on the election cycle, remember the slide we showed, there is a question mark. If this is more of the same and President Lula achieves a fourth mandate, he's seeking reelection, probably we're going to have this 200-250 basis points cut this year, a bit more next year.
But if Brazil goes the same way the rest of the region and then we move to a more market-friendly administration in 2026, late 2026, early 2027, interest rates can go down significantly more. And then all the story that we mentioned, long-term trends going in the right direction, of course, it will be much more impactful. And then everything that we said concerning Brazil in terms of the penetration of alternative assets, interest rates going down faster, probably growth acceleration is going to be even more impressive than we have mentioned so far. So our scenario is more on the conservative side, more of the same in Brazil, but the alternative scenario, the 40% probability scenario is something better in terms of market developments. If the opposition wins and then Brazil joins the team of the group of countries with more market-friendly policy, that can be a game changer.
Again, not our base scenario at this stage, but let's keep monitoring this because this is going to be a very competitive election.
I mean, I'll bridge to our strategy in the region in a second. Just a reminder here, feel free to make your questions. We're happy to get your questions and elaborate on that. But bridging to our strategy, I think you mentioned cycles of high interest rates, high inflation, and although it's happening in the region, we continue to see a financial deepening, not only on institutional investors, but also individuals as well. So how does, you know, we rely on a strategy, of course, in financial deepening in the region? Outside has a very low penetration. So how do you see these cycles to come and how durable it is and how do you see this phenomenon in the region?
So definitely we have a deepening of capital markets in the region. It started not as a trend triggered by the major players. So the institutional investor, the pension plans and the insurance companies, they were followers. It started basically with the family offices and people that are wealthy. And then because they see what's happening with alternative assets and the changes in capital markets in the United States or Europe, et cetera, they start to demand this kind of thing in the region. But then, of course, over time, if there is demand, the supply will show up. So we are in the process of deepening capital markets, diversifying in a universe of very high interest rates. It's very difficult to sell the appeal of moving into alternatives, right? If you, for example, if you are in Brazil, you can receive 15% in your government bonds.
In addition to that, the currency is appreciating 11% against the U.S. dollar. That's one thing that is not that easy to sell alternatives. But looking forward, as we said, the yield curve in Brazil projects to at least 250 basis points of interest rate cuts. In addition to that, we start to see some interesting structuring of alternative assets in Brazil. So actually, Patria is spearheaded or pioneered in many of these in real estate and credit especially. So what we are seeing is basically Latin America is following through the process that happened already in the United States and Europe 15, 20, 25 years ago. So definitely you can say that now it's a relatively generalized movement. So the institutional investor, the one that writes big checks, they are moving in that direction. We see this in our fundraising in the region clearly.
And looking forward, given the reform that we mentioned, pension plans, et cetera, given low interest rates, given the spectacular performance of some of these alternative assets. We mentioned, for example, a very simple thing. If you go to structured credit, local currency, but then you calculate the return in US dollars, we are talking about over 30% appreciation last year. So this is mind-blowing. So definitely the capital deepening in the region is taking place. And now it's a much faster pace because the institutional investor, the ones that can write the big checks, they are doing that. So we see momentum. Again, it's very clear already in our fundraising efforts.
And I think that we have seen recently, right, inclination toward private credit, right? I think we saw it, of course, in the U.S. and Europe as well. And now it's happening in Latin America. So here in Brazil, just for instance, we have our FIDCs. We call it kind of CLO structures, financing working capital for companies, just an example. And when you come to the client willing to invest in this kind of product, you go from institutional investors to individuals. So I think it's a phenomenon that's also happening here on high interest rate cycles. I think credit emerges. And we can see it not only on this FIDCs, but also on real estate credit as well. So I think it's a matter of the wider offering. It's also ready to navigate from different kinds of tides, right, in the region.
Yeah. And looking at, again, our market intelligence, two things are worth mentioning here. If you look at the credit industry in the region, Latin America, especially the biggest economies like Brazil and Mexico, it's still old-style financial intermediation, in which the big banks, they control, depending on where you look at AUM or the outstanding credit. We're talking about over 50%, sometimes 60% are controlled by three, four, five big banks. So there is room for undercutting the traditional banks. So the de-banking thesis in Latin America can take place because the market share of the banks is abnormally high for modern standards. So that's one thing that we'll see where we are going through. It's basically trying to cut on the market share of the traditional banks. But in addition to that, you mentioned something that's also important.
That is, the new financial technology in the region is taking place at a surprisingly fast pace. So what we are seeing here is those new technological innovations in which you create institutions that are mostly digital. They can provide these new services or new products, and they can tap it. They can service, of course, the institutional investors or the family offices, but they can provide access to these new products, the alternatives, to middle-class people. So we have institutions, for example, in the case of Brazil, like XP. It's something that you're hard to find in other countries. So these guys are able to cut through the financial intermediation, provide very appealing products, risk-adjusted, and the guy can have, of course, there is they do the proper diligence in terms of the investor profile, the risk aversion, and knowledge of the market.
But the guy now can access. Don't need to have a family office. He can access very good real estate alternative products and credit and also private equity and also infrastructure, et cetera. That's something that is really interesting and has to do with this new financial innovation with an awful lot of technology. A lot of this is digital investing.
No, thank you, Luis. Thank you. I think you mentioned two topics in the beginning of our conversation here. One is the pension system reform that's taking place in some countries in the region. The other one is about what happened in Venezuela and how all this Trump's new way of dealing with the world is impacting maybe investment flows to the region, so on and so forth. Maybe we can start with the second one, elaborating a little bit on what happened in Venezuela, how does it affect the region, how does it affect Patria's business in the region, and how you see the money flowing to Latin America from the U.S. perspective, from Asia and other parts of the world that usually invest here in the region.
Okay, definitely. So our take on Venezuela, there is this so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which is basically the American continent for the Americans, not for the Europeans or the Asians, et cetera. So we have now a practical example of what does that mean. So it's basically the United States reasserting its hegemony in the continent, which means basically a very active program to reduce the penetration of other economies or nations or powers that are seen as competitive to the U.S. It's basically China, but also lower tech. There was some penetration, some noise in the region coming from investments or actions from Russia and Iran as well. So we don't think that there is any meaningful similarity to what's happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. So Venezuela probably is going to be a very different story first because Venezuela has a very long democratic tradition.
Venezuela is exactly one of the richest countries, a fully functional democratic system in Latin America until the mid-1990s. The dictatorship that eventually emerged in Venezuela is an exception in the history of Venezuela. It was a market economy, not socialist, with relatively robust institutions. One president was elected. It was Chávez. Because he got a constitutional majority in the Congress, he began to control it. The executive power began to control the Congress, and then they took control of the judiciary and then the media, et cetera. We landed in a dictatorship. But now this is changing. If there is mean reversion, if Venezuela can go back to where it was 25, 30, 50 years ago, we can be cautiously optimistic. That's different from Iraq and Afghanistan that had no democratic tradition, no market institutions or solid market institutions.
Probably the best proxy for what the United States is planning in Venezuela is what happened in Panama in 1989. At that time, there was also a dictator. The United States has to intervene, get rid of the strong man. The name wasn't the gentleman was not Maduro, of course. It was Manuel Noriega. The guy was sentenced to 40 years behind bars because of drug dealing, et cetera. But then Panama became actually a very impressive success story in Latin America because GDP per capita since the strong man, Manuel Noriega, was ousted in late 1989, grew by nearly 160%, 160, whereas the whole of Latin America grew. If you take the Latin America region, real GDP per capita grew around 60%. So it's 160 versus 60. Actually, Panama was a big success. Venezuela can be a similar story.
Definitely, we don't buy that Venezuela will become something like Iraq or Afghanistan. Can be a very constructive story. And then, but if you don't dare to take at face value what we are saying here in this conversation, we can just go to the markets and see how they are reacting in terms of currencies, in terms of stock markets, bonds. Year to date, remember the U.S. sanctioning Maduro was January the 3rd. If you take stock markets, currencies, corporate bonds, et cetera, the market is better now than it was like that. So there is no pricing of contagion and then things getting out of control in Venezuela. And then if I can show another slide, if you please just share another one, promise probably it's going to be the last one. Let me show this thing here. So this is what they call extreme geopolitical risk.
It's not calculated by us. It's actually a couple of guys from the Federal Reserve. You see the reference in the bottom of the chart, so it's this Dario Caldara and Matteo Iacoviello. Basically, they map extreme geopolitical shocks, so what do we mean by extreme? We are talking about wars. We are talking about terrorist attacks. We are talking about civil conflagration in terms of people dying or substantial currency depreciation or interruption of capital flows, and then the model uses artificial intelligence and then tracks from where these extreme geopolitical shocks are coming from, so basically, we have here Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Middle East and Africa since the end of the Second World War, so you can see here, easy to spot, Latin America is the orange line.
If you take what's happened in Venezuela, there is an uptick in the geopolitical risk, but we are talking about Latin America as a region accounting for less than 2% of the extreme geopolitical risk. At this stage, the bulk of the risk is still Europe. It was worse before. You see the peak in 2022 that was Russia invading Ukraine came down and then got a little bit worse, but the bulk of the global geopolitical risk, things that actually move prices, asset prices significantly, they're taking place in Middle East and Africa. They're taking place in other regions, and in North America, there is this uptick here, not because exactly of Greenland or things like this. It's more a combination of what's happening in Canada and Mexico, which is part of, in this case, North America.
In terms of Venezuela, we are monitoring what's happening on a daily basis, of course. But given what we think is the roadmap for Venezuela, it's much more Panama than Iraq or Afghanistan. Chances are that five, 10 years down the road, Venezuela is going to be a better story than it is right now. And then the final number here, I would like to disclose or the trivia in terms of numbers. If you take GDP per capita in Venezuela 50 years ago in the mid-1970s, it was three times higher than it is today. So what happened with dictatorship? GDP per capita as a proxy for individual wealth and how much income people have in Venezuela is a third of it was back in the 1970s. So anything that gets a little bit better than that, it's a plus for the region.
And then we already have a cautiously optimistic scenario in terms of growth acceleration in Latin America before the events in Venezuela. We are talking about the region that grew little 10 years ago. So the GDP growth was below 2%. We can have GDP growth going to close to 3% in 2026, 2027. There is political change. Some economies are clearly growing faster. Argentina, for example, last year probably grew close to 5%. This year is something between 3% and 5%, 3% and 4%, sorry. And Venezuela, negative number, if it goes to zero, it's a plus for the region. So Venezuela, again, is a shock, is an adverse geopolitical shock, but it's a small fraction of what you see in other regions. And probably the odds of a positive outcome in Venezuela are not zero. Actually, they are substantial.
All right. Thank you, Luis, and thank you, Thiago . Very nice questions and thoughtful discussion. We do have some questions from the audience here. Let me start with the first one. I'll read it as it came. So, Luis, can you discuss Latin America's infrastructure build-out, particularly as it relates to data centers? How large is the new build data center opportunity beyond Patria's Omnia finance project in Ceará?
Okay, thank you, Argentina, for the question. So infrastructure is one of Patria's key investment areas. So we have infrastructure along with private equity, real estate, credit, and listed equities as well. Infrastructure, basically of the six key verticals that we mentioned before, three are very important for infrastructure, which are power generation and distribution, et cetera. There's a focus on renewables, logistics, and transportation, and infrastructure and data and tech services. So clearly, infrastructure build-up in Latin America is key. Probably the most important fundamental trend or the fundamental dynamic in Latin America is it's a middle-class society, Latin America. So the evolving demands of this middle class, when you are poor or lower middle class and you upgrade to middle class, your demand patterns change.
You tend to move away from public health into private health and move away from public education into private education, so on and so forth. What happens if most of the infrastructure, which is the case in Latin America, was provided by governments through state-owned companies? And these governments are now constrained by fiscal discipline or fiscal rules, and they cannot invest, pari passu, the demand. We have huge gaps in basic infrastructure. And we are talking about power generation. We are talking about transportation. We are talking about telecom services, et cetera. To understand the infrastructure dynamics in the region, it's very important to talk about a huge and probably the most ambitious program of privatization and concessions in Brazil. We are very much a part of and very active on this process of privatization and, more recently, concessions.
So concessions, we are talking about toll road concessions, 30-year concessions, inflation-adjusted, or in some cases, you can have an indexation to the U.S. dollar. We are talking about power generation, transmission, and distribution that's becoming mostly private. In the past, it was public or state-owned companies. Sanitation, water and sewage, so on and so forth. So we are talking about in terms of actionable infrastructure theses that you can pursue if you have, you can write a check. Looking at 2026 to 2030, over $100 billion equity checks. So if you add some leverage, some project finance, depending on your ratio equity to that, the actual investable thesis increase twofold, threefold, et cetera. So in terms of lack of opportunities, infrastructure in Latin America, that's the problem you don't have.
Of course, some of these projects, they have a risk profile that is closer to what we think that's appropriate for our investors. Some we think it's too risky, or if they are not that risky, the return profile is not that good. But having said that, we are very constructive. And in addition to that, remember the exits or the opportunities to divest because of the deepening of the capital markets. You can, in the past, you basically could sell your infrastructure assets to, once you stabilize your infrastructure, it's become regularly yield-generating, et cetera. You could sell to another electric utility or public utilities or a multinational that was arriving in Latin America, or you could do an IPO. Today, you can do something different.
The deepening of capital markets means that you can list, you can use a fund structure, list the asset, and then it becomes tradable, and you start to exit through a listed fund. It's not the need to go into the IPO necessarily, or you have to sell to a multinational, et cetera. So you have more ways to exit. So this helps also the asset class. But then let me concentrate now on infrastructure, digital on the data centers. So what we have here, and Patria has already a very successful venture in data centers. We actually, we create from scratch and develop a network of data centers, so sites in Brazil, in Mexico, in Colombia, and in Chile. We sold, we divested a very handsome multiple in U.S. dollars. And now the demand is still there. And actually, we are developing and starting the thesis all over again.
But just to give an intuition about the size, the first asset that we have to do in the second generation of data center investment, the first asset, the capacity is equal to the combined capacity of the four sites we sold in the first venture. So this is how strong and robust is the demand for data centers in Brazil. Of course, the idea is not going to stay in Brazil. It's going to be again a regional platform. You're going to build up assets in other regions as well. And then probably some attendees here may ask the question, but who, where is the demand coming from? It is from the local economies. Remember, this is a middle-class story, nearly 700 million people living there, middle class. So there is this pent-up demand, which is local.
But in terms of AI and the usage of data centers, if you are not extremely strict on issues like technical issues like latency, you can provide, for example, AI is different from streaming. You can provide or can use these data centers as a backbone for the hyperscalers around the globe. It's not only in Latin America. So actually, this asset that we are now building on is the beginning of a new cycle of investment in this area. And the demand is coming from the rest of the world. And then, of course, we located our assets very close in Brazil, where the point in which the fiber cables coming from the United States undersea and Europe, of course, it's very close, so we can connect very easily.
But in terms of the potential for this investment, as it is right now, and increasing significantly in the near future, it's there. And most importantly, and that has a little bit to do with geopolitics, we can definitely play with consumers and demand from several quarters of the world. So do we have demand for these data center services coming from the United States? Yes. And coming from Europe? Yes as well. And coming from Asia? Yes as well. So it's not the case that, oh, now there is a new geopolitics, and then you have to pick sides. Either you service the United States, or you service Europe, or you service Asia. Not true for Latin America. We are going to service everybody, even with the new President Trump's corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, we are going to service everybody.
Of course, it's a different proposition to say, no, are we going to have an Asian nation building up a mega port complex in Latin America? That's a different proposition. But building up a data center or a network of data centers whose services can be provided worldwide, why not? So we are very, very constructive on especially these data centers with the vertical within the universe of infrastructure. But let's be clear here. There is still demand for the basic infrastructure. So we are also moving into our first initiative into sanitation and water services. Our first move is a concession, long-term concession. Patria is doing this. And there are opportunities in toll roads. Yes, there is opportunity on other basic infrastructure assets. Yes. Desalination plants, for example, something that we do, a very interesting project. We don't think that there is value added for Patria.
For example, we are not going to go into mining to dig copper or lithium, but we are providing infrastructure services to the big players in the mining industry. For example, the most important operation of a multinational mining company in Chile. They had this problem of water, climate change. This operation, this mining activity used to rely on natural sources of water, basically a river, and then the river flow starts to get a more complicated issue. And then they have to service the population as well. So the government of Chile decided that the priority should be given to the population, which is quite correct. And then the mining activity had to find the water in a different source. So it comes to desalination plants. So we are doing this. We are talking about a big project, 1,000 liters per second capacity. We can double this.
And it became vital to this mining activity. So just to show you, it's infrastructure completely different from digital. But that's the way, for example, we service the mining industry. And then if the question is, how do you play with the critical mineral things? So that's the way we can help mining with a focus on critical minerals and other minerals as well.
Great. We do have some additional questions coming from the audience. And I would like to remind everyone that they can submit their questions through the webcast platform. Luis, you already touched base on this, but I'll read the question here. Maybe you can give more details. Do you think the macro scenario discussed, the renewed Monroe Doctrine, can negatively impact the dollar inflows from Asia and increasing flows from the U.S. if it becomes a U.S. administration policy to encourage it?
Okay. That's a very good question. Let me tell you what we think and actually what we are seeing from our LP basis. One of the major drivers of diversification into the region, there is this interesting story, combination of middle class and expertise in commodities. But in terms of getting additional interest from investors, what changed over the past 12-18 months was the dollar depreciation globally. So interesting stories in Latin America, but we start to have conversations, people that had exposure to Latin America but want to increase. And some other investors that were happy with exposure to the U.S. and the Latin America story was not that enticing for them. It's basically the dollar started to depreciate significantly. And then they said, okay, I need something different from the typical portfolio that I have, which is heavily exposed to the U.S.
We don't think that this trend is going to change. We think that there is additional room for U.S. dollar depreciation. If you combine everything that's happening in the United States, yes, there is a very constructive and encouraging story in terms of technological revolution. This is artificial intelligence. But on the other hand, you have the trade policy, fiscal policy, now issues in terms of monetary policy credibility, the clash between the executive power and the Federal Reserve. So in addition to that, if you do any calculation of exchange rate valuation, the U.S. dollar is still very expensive by any metric. So we are talking about at least 10% overvaluation looking back 25, 50 years, depending on your calculation, it can get to 15%. So there is room for additional depreciation of the U.S. dollar.
So we see continued interest in Latin, actually greater interest in Latin America as a portfolio diversification story. In terms of the Asian demand, it's not slowing. I think it's important to say, perhaps there is a little bit too much focus on Asia, meaning China. At least for us, that's not true. So China is a key player and a key investor, yes. But in terms of the proportional checks in proportion to the economy as a share of the economy, Singapore is very active, very impressive, highly professional investors from the sovereign wealth funds. But Japan invested with us as well, and so does Korea, et cetera. So in terms of the Asian interest in Latin America, we haven't seen any change. Of course, depending on what the kind of investment that China did in Venezuela, there will be a shock.
But we suspect, and looking at what happened in Venezuela, China was not investing more in Venezuela for actually for a number of years. So probably the slowdown of monies from China into Venezuela already took place in terms of what we see for our products, not only from China, but adding Singapore, Japan, Korea, there is more interest, not less. But having said that, are we seeing renewed interest from North American investors, U.S. and Canada? And the answer is yes. This interest was decreasing five, six, seven years ago because the United States market was performing so well. There was no much need for diversification. Last year, the United States market performed well. It was not a terrible market. Until April, it was convoluted, bumpy. But after that, the market improved nicely. The thing is, just compare the numbers again. I think I can show again a slide.
I can show the numbers, but perhaps the visual impact is higher. So what I'm going to do is to share again the slide. And then here it is. So what we have here on the left-hand side.
Luis, there's not any screen, I think.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Sorry, sorry. Not sharing.
There we go.
Now it is?
Yes. Now you're good. Yes.
Okay. Sorry, sorry for that. Left-hand side, listed equities measured in U.S. dollars, MSCI, the bottom of the same chart, fixed income. So we're taking the global corporate index by J.P. Morgan. So we are talking about U.S. listed equity, MSCI, 17% total return last year. That was not bad, and 6.2% return in fixed income, corporate fixed income. Not bad at all, but look at Latin America, 54.8% return on listed equities and 33.6% return on corporate bonds. So this is what's bringing Canadian and American interest to Latin America. Okay. They saw the depreciation of the U.S. dollar. They saw that Latin America outperformed. Probably there is, we don't think that's going to be the same performance in 2026 and 2027 because it's impossible for our region to deliver 50% plus or 30% plus return.
But the issues that these guys are having, and I'm discussing this a lot with them, is on the right-hand side. This is the typical portfolio allocation of global investors and the exposure to the U.S. dollars. The number is not ours. It's Cambridge Associates, which is also an investor with us. So they calculated that by mid-2025, a global investor typically had 82% exposure to the U.S. dollar in terms of venture capital, 76% in private credit, a 70-30 portfolio of stocks and bonds, 75% exposure, 66% private equity, and 64% stocks. So our little theory here is that the typical global investors, and even in the United States or Canada, they are still going to be overexposed to the U.S., but not at that rate.
So if you trim 1%, 2%, 3% of the numbers on the right-hand side, if you sum everything you see on the right-hand side is an estimation of the financial market assets, liquid like bonds and stocks and illiquid. We are talking about trillions of U.S. dollars, several trillion U.S. dollars. So any 1%, 2% of that you reduce on the right-hand side and move into Latin America, well, we are talking about hundreds of billions. And then that changes prices in Latin America. So what we are seeing here is on the right-hand side, investors reducing their excessive exposure to the U.S. or U.S. assets. Again, they are not going to be neutral, not even underweight. They are just going to be a little bit less overweight in the U.S.
But every 1%, 2%, 3% that they move out of the U.S., and if Latin America captures a small fraction of this, you have significant impact on price because, of course, it's a much smaller market than the U.S. is. So that's what we are seeing in terms of portfolio changes, Asia and also United States and Canada. When we talk North America, it's a combination of U.S. and Canada because I think everybody knows the institutional investors in Canada, especially the pension plans, are very active and they're pretty big.
Interesting. We're getting to the top of the hour, but I think you can squeeze one more question from the audience here, Luis. Now I'll focus more on the local fundraising, saying more and more of Patria's fundraising is coming from local investors within the region. How do you see local capital flows into private markets evolving the next few years, both for institutional and individual investors? And what do you see driving that?
The trend is clearly upwards. As I mentioned, the economies are growing probably a little bit faster than they were before, so the economic growth per se gives you more room to increase your allocation to alternative assets, but you have these other two changes, so the pension reforms in the region increasing more the AUM of institutional investors, but in addition to that, there are regulatory changes in which you can invest. There was a limit in some, there was a cap on some countries on how much money you could invest in alternative assets because they were deeming too risky, et cetera. Now this is changing as well, and so what you see, and it was a good surprise in terms of fundraising that we had in Latin America, the local fundraising, even in an environment of very high interest rates, they were going down.
But in absolute terms or for international, they were pretty high. The fundraising surprised to the upside. So we think more of the same is going to happen in 2026 and 2027 because we have the combination of low interest rates, a little bit faster economic growth. This political change and the regulatory framework is becoming more friendly. So in terms of this penetration, the deepening of capital markets, it's all there. The thing that you have to pay a little bit of attention to, depending on the government, on the jurisdiction, this increased demand for alternative assets that we supply, sometimes it comes with some strings. For example, yes, you can invest more, especially if you are a pension plan. You can invest more in alternative assets, but you should invest in alternative assets that can help finance infrastructure in that country. That may happen.
But then, as we explained, we have a vast array of infrastructure solutions in Latin America, ranging from desalination plants to power distribution lines going into data centers, et cetera. We can easily fill this gap. This is more difficult for our international competition. So some of our competitors, very good companies, excellent managers, they have a more difficult environment because they can provide international assets to these investors in Latin America. But in terms of, oh, how can you help us invest in local infrastructure? That's more difficult for them. For Patria is not. We are locals. We are locals in Brazil, locals in Argentina, locals in Colombia, in Chile. So what's happening there? We can provide the solution. So we have the best of two worlds. So you're raising more money.
And even in those jurisdictions, you need. You can invest more, provide more assets or more solutions in terms of alternative assets. But you have to help the country in terms of local infrastructure, et cetera, or develop the credit market. We can do that. For our international competitors, it's more difficult.
Great. We did start on time, so let's be mindful of everyone's time and finish on time as well. Thank you very much, Luis. Thank you very much, Thiago , for this very thoughtful conversation. I do still have some questions from the audience that we can reply to. We'll reply to you guys via email. Yeah, thank you, everyone. Again, have a fantastic 2026 for all of us.
My great pleasure. Thank you, Medina. Thank you, Thiago . I hope it was a productive session, and please count on us. There are other topics that we may explore via email, or we can schedule another session like this. For sure, we are going to have several interesting developments in terms of the investment opportunities and the investment environment around us, so it'll be my pleasure to show up again.
Likewise. Good to be here. Thanks for your time.
Thank you.