Caledonia Investments plc

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today for Caledonia Investments PLC full year results presentation. The presentation will commence shortly. A copy of the presentation slides is also available to download from the results centre on Caledonia's website www.caledonia.com. After the presentation we'll conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question you'll be able to do so either through the Zoom webinar link provided separately or or by submitting written questions using the Ask a Question button on the Spark Live webcast page. Please note that this call is being live streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. I would now like to hand it over to Matt Masters, Chief Executive Officer, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.

Hello. I'm Matt Masters, CEO of Caledonia Investments, and welcome to our results presentation for our year-ended 31st of March, 2026. Before I get to the results, I'd like to take a moment to update you on two changes to our board. Will Wyatt has been appointed as successor to David Stewart as chair. Many of you know Will. He successfully led Caledonia as chief executive for over a decade until becoming a non-executive director in 2022. He is also a member of the Kayser family and brings a deep understanding of Caledonia's culture, investment strategy and long-term approach. I'd like to thank David for his support and counsel throughout his tenure. In addition, after a little over four decades of service, Charles Kayser has decided not to stand for re-election at the AGM. Charles has helped guide strategy, and played a key part in creating Caledonia's unique culture, both as an executive and, latterly, as a non-executive director, which omits its wisdom and experience. And now on to the results. The past year once again demonstrated the strength of Caledonia's distinctive model and long-term investment approach against a volatile global economic backdrop, we delivered a solid NAV total return of 5.4%, with all three investment pools contributing positively. Throughout the year, we remained disciplined, taking opportunities where we saw value, and continuing to manage risk. A standout development was the agreed sale of Stonehaig Fleming, which once completed, will deliver a 3.2 times money multiple and, pleasingly, the performance of our Asia funds has improved, reflecting the more favourable IPO and fundraising environment. Caledonia's balance sheet continues to be strong and we have the flexibility to deploy capital selectively and decisively where we see compelling opportunities for long-term value creation. In March, the Iran conflict affected both our NAV performance and our total shareholder return. Over the year, Caledonia's shares traded at an average discount to NAV of 34%. That discount widened in March and by year end was 43.4%. That move reflected weaker markets in the final month of the year. The result was a total shareholder return of negative 7.1%. We recognise that shareholders will understandably be disappointed by that outcome. Now Rob will talk about this and our actions in more detail later. On dividends, today we are announcing our final dividend of 4 pence per share, taking our total annual dividend to 7.68 pence per share, an increase of 4.4% year on year, extending our track record to 59 years of consecutive dividend growth at around 5% annualised growth rate. This slide shows Caledonia's long-term performance over 3, 5 and 10 years. Over 10 years, we have delivered NAV total return of 9.2% per annum, ahead of the first fuel share and at the top end of our target range of inflation plus 3 to 6%. That reflects the strength of our diversified portfolio and the benefits of our long-term approach. The three-year number is more mixed, with NAV growth ahead of inflation but below target reflecting the more challenging market environment we have seen recently. The clear area of disappointment is the share price total return, particularly over three years. This reflects the widening discount to NAV rather than the underlying quality of the portfolio. So, on to the first of our investment pools, public companies. This is a focused portfolio of around 30 public equity holdings and it's all about really understanding the fundamentals of high-quality compounding businesses and making long-term investments. The idea is simple, buy well and then hold for the long term. We research companies for a long time and wait for the right time to invest. This tends to be where markets sell off. We treat those periods as opportunities. This is exactly what we did in April 2025 when markets fell sharply following President Trump's Liberation Day announcement. We deployed £24 million into Charles Schwab, a US-listed brokerage business, which we've been tracking since 2017. This de-restart entry point and provides a clear example of our time well-invested approach in practice. We also initiated two other positions. Sintas and Paychex, both of which we have been following for a number of years. For the year, the pool delivered a modest total return of 1.2% against a challenging market backdrop. In this context, it is helpful to look at the progression of the capital portfolio's total return over the last five years. In this chart, you can see the volatility over the financial year and the two market-driven troughs in March 2025 and March 2026, with pull returns declining by 7.8% in February this year alone. Whilst the portfolio comprises good quality companies, which we are very happy with, the more recent sell-off was not quite enough for us to significantly add during the period. You can also see the meaningful recovery since the year end. Another theme of the year was AI, and our investment in Oracle illustrates both the opportunity and the volatility it can create. The shares rose sharply in September as the market responded to a very positive trading update, and we risk-managed the position, realising £65 million. Since then, the shares have softened as market appetite has weakened. We made a 96.3% return in the year versus the stock's 2.4%. We first invested £35 million in 2014 and have received £112 million through top-slicing and dividends. and is in the NAV for 42 million. That's a 4.4 times money on money and 19% annualised return. That's a great result for us, demonstrating the benefits of compounding and our disciplined approach to risk management. On to private capital. This is where we partner with management teams, mainly in UK operating businesses, to help them grow and improve over the long term. It's a portfolio of up to 10 companies focused on the mid-market. We look for control positions, or at least a significant minority, where we can be influential and we sit on the board. And unlike a traditional private equity fund, we're investing from our permanent balance sheet. So there's no fixed timeline, no pressure to do deals and no forced exits. We can invest at low volume with real conviction and focus on long term value creation. We're also conservative on debt, typically around two and a half times EBITDA. The pool delivered a 13.1% return for the year. We agreed the sale of Stonehaig Fleming to Corriant Wealth. Since investing $90 million alongside the founding partners in 2019, we have supported management with their growth plans. On completion in the coming weeks, we expect proceeds of circa $290 million, equal to 3.2 times cost. Stonehaig Fleming is a great example of our partnership-led approach. AirTurb delivered a strong return of 23.8%, as it continued to expand its footprint, entering Portugal and Austria. It remains highly cash generative, paying a £24.5 million dividend to Caledonia while continuing to invest in its estate for future growth. AirServe is exactly the kind of business we seek to back. High quality, well led and able to generate cash returns today while building for the future. The other companies in the portfolio continue to make progress in executing their value creation plans. The bubble chart plots realised IRR against uplift to carrying value for our major realisations. And you can see Stonehaig Fleming there, with a 30% uplift to the March 2025 carrying value. Since 2012, we have generated 1.4 billion of proceeds, returning around 700 million of net cash. with realised investments, delivering an excellent 17% IRR and a two times more pull on costs. And with that, I'll now hand over to Rob to talk through our funds pool and the financials.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everybody. I'm Rob Minnert, the CFO. Our funds pool partners with managers and provides access to two significant market opportunities. These funds tend not to market in Europe, meaning we are often the only European investor, a real differentiator. The pool NAV of $941 million is a diverse portfolio invested in some 82 funds by 46 managers and in 600 underlying businesses. 62% of the NAV is focused on the North American lower mid-market buyouts. The funds are typically the first institutional investors into relatively small, often owner-managed businesses that are profitable, cash generative. The playbook is to transform the companies by strengthening the management team, improving operational efficiency and growing sales by product and by geography and both organically and through bolt-on acquisitions. These improved companies with greater scale provide the feedstock to mid-market private equity. It's a very pure form of capitalism. The remaining 38% is invested in Asia, where we target two megatrends. The first is focused on domestic consumption and supply chains, fueled by the aging population, growing middle class and tech adoption. The second is world-leading innovation, where we invest in government-supported new technologies. The pool has delivered solid returns of 11.4% and 13.1% over 5 and 10-year periods. Pleasingly, The performance from Asia improved over the last six months to generate 7.7% return in the year in local currency. This reflects good execution, but also an improved IPO and fundraising environment. The North American funds delivered 6.8% in local currency, continuing the good trading performance of the underlying companies. Overall, the pool produced an annual return of 7.1% in local currency and 4.9% in sterling. Looking at the cash flows in a little bit more detail, the chart shows realisation and investment activity over a recent 12-month period. For the last few years, activity has been at subdued levels, following higher interest rates, the US tariff announcements and the economic uncertainty caused by geopolitical tension. In the second half of the year, there was some pick-up in activity, but still below normal market conditions. And this has resulted in a slightly higher weighted average life of our primary portfolio, increasing to 4.7 years. Our capital commitments are 346 million, 78% of which is to North America, 117 million pounds was invested in the year, and 55 million of new commitments were made into two North American managers. So, to the numbers. During the year, our NAV total return was 5.4%. growing our NAV to 3 billion, of which 2.8 billion is invested in a diversified portfolio of listed and privately held companies and funds that have global reach. Cash on balance sheet was 90 million. This, combined with our undrawn revolving credit facility of 325 million, enables us to act quickly to invest in companies and funds that we find attractive. This was demonstrated in April 2025 when we deployed approximately 50 million into the public company's strategy, including that new position in Charles Schwab that Matt mentioned. On the 13th of May, we renewed our revolving credit facility. The RCF is provided by three banks. Of the 325 million, 150 has five years of maturity and 175 has three years. We are proposing a final dividend of 4p. which will bring the dividend for the year to 7.68p, an increase of 4.4% over the prior year, and making this the 59th year of progressive dividend payments, at an annual growth rate of 5.3%, well ahead of inflation. The final dividend will be paid to shareholders on the 6th of August, 2026. And of course, now to my beloved waterfall charts. This chart shows the movement in NAV over the period. We started the year at $2.9 billion. The portfolio return of $167 million includes the negative impact of FX. We then deduct management expenses at $29.9 million. This equates to an operating cost ratio of 83 basis points. There is then the cash return to shareholders, $34.6 million allocated to share buybacks of $47.4 million for the prior year final and current year interim dividends. and this results in a closing NAV of 3 billion. 53% of the assets are domiciled in US dollars and 38% in sterling. Movements in the dollar sterling exchange rate therefore will impact on our imperiod results and in the year we suffered an FX loss of 22.4 million reducing our NAV by 0.7%. We have a robust balance sheet with no structural leverage. Walking you through the cash movements, we started the year with $151 million and net $5.8 million has been invested into the portfolio. The investment income from our assets was $58.7 million, higher than in previous periods as it includes the $24.5 million dividend we've received from AirServe. We've consumed $32.2 million in the cash costs and management expenses and working capital. And next you have the payment of the dividend, 47.4 million and 34.6 million allocated to share buybacks, resulting in that closing cash position of 90 million. We expect to complete the sale of Stonehaven Fleming in mid-2026. Many shareholders have asked how we intend to allocate the expected proceeds of circa 290 million. Following the sale, private capital will represent 23% of Caledonia's NAV. so we will want to deploy a meaningful share of the proceeds into new private capital companies. However, we feel no pressure to invest and we will continue to appraise investment opportunities across all three pools on their merits and as they arise. Overall, we have a prudent capital allocation policy to investments, our dividend and, where appropriate, share buybacks. During this 12 months, We allocated 34.6 million to share buybacks, increasing the total since March 2024 to 100 million, delivering 9.72p NAV per share accretion, or 1.8%. The average discount over the financial year was 34%, but at its widest in March, in part due to the Iranian conflict, ending the year at 43%, which has resulted in a negative 7.1% TSR. Whilst the discount has recovered during April to 37%, we continue to believe fundamentally on the values, the quality of the portfolio, our track record and prospects. We are taking action over the things that we can control. Continue to invest in a quality portfolio, allocating capital to share buybacks. We've completed a 10 for 1 share split. In addition, we have rebalanced the profile of the dividend. These measures will improve visibility of income, make payments more balanced and make dividend reinvestment easier. We continue to evolve our IR and communications to ensure that the Caledonian investment proposition is understood and rated. We've held capital market spotlight events, focused on the investment pools, and if you've not had the opportunity, I would encourage you to visit the website and watch the presentations. They provide a great insight into how the pools operate, what differentiates us and how we add value. When you visit the website, you will see that this has been significantly improved with new content, which we will continue to develop so that along with the results announcements, investors understand the progression of the pools. I will now pass back to Matt.

So to close, while we expect uncertainty to remain a feature of markets in the year ahead, we believe Caledonia is well placed to continue delivering long-term value for shareholders. our diversified portfolio of high-quality companies and active approach to risk management to help deliver NAV growth against an uncertain backdrop, demonstrating the resilience of our model and the strength of our investment discipline. At the same time, our strong balance sheet and liquidity gives us the flexibility to pursue opportunities as they arise. Our focus remains on compounding net asset value per share over time, delivering shareholder returns, including maintaining our progressive dividend policy and ensuring the strength of our investment proposition is more fully reflected in the share price. Thank you for your time. There will be a short pause and then we'll take questions.

Morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. We'll be taking questions initially from the analysts, and then we will take questions from the webcasts, where questions cover similar themes, and we will group those together and address them collectively. And if we are unable to get to your question during the session, we will be sure to follow up with you via email shortly after the event. I'll now pass across to the moderator to assemble the queue.

Participants who've joined via Spark Live can submit questions in a written format via the webcast page by clicking the ask a question button. If you're dialed into the call and wish to ask a question, please use the very hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you've dialed in by phone, you can raise your hand by using star nine and unmute yourself by pressing star six. We'll pause just one moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question, from Anthony Latham from Appeal Hunt. Please unmute your line and go ahead.

Good morning. Hopefully you can hear me. I'm just asking about the quality focus on the listed equity portfolio. Obviously, that's been quite challenging for a number of actively managed strategies, certainly over the last 12 months. Have you and the team gone back through the key criteria and and maybe looked at, you know, how challenging it's been and considered whether there's anything to be adjusted in that public equity selection process.

Hi, Anthony. Matt here. Thanks for the question. Yeah, so the team were, unfortunately, the portfolio obviously sold off during March. and that's the second time that's happened because that happened last year as well so the results have been depressed by this range phenomena happening at two year ends we remain very happy with their approach and the way that they're investing they handle the volatility of Oracle pretty well during the year they sold a lot of Oracle but when that shot up that case in protection when it came off again So I think they're managing the portfolio well and we're sort of happy with their approach.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question and are dialed into the call, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. If you're dialing via phone, you can raise your hand by using star nine and unmute yourself by using star six. We'll just pause a moment for any further questions. We have another question from Anthony Leitham with Pill Hunt. Please go ahead and ask the question.

Great. Thank you. Sorry for dominating the questions. Can you just give us a bit more colour on the fund's portfolio? You mentioned, I think, that the Asia portfolio had been performing better. Obviously, the market's hoping for a turnaround in terms of IPO activity. Any additional detail on the two parts of that fund's portfolio would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Anthony. So with respect to Asia, we've seen a significant uptick in fundraising activity and IPOs. In a year, six companies successfully IPO'd. And really that was through the sort of back end of 2025 and in the first quarter of 2026. We've also had two companies IPO since our financial year end. And there are five that are in the process of filing for IPO. So I guess that gives you a feeling of the increase in activity. The companies are performing well. But as people will be aware, activity has been subdued for a number of years. So it's particularly pleasing to see that uptick in activity now. And I should just remind people that when, firstly, the companies are relatively small given the diversification of the portfolio. And then secondly, when a company does IPO, we are often locked up for a 12-month period. So it will take some time for the managers to decide or be in a position to liquidate that position. And with respect to North America, again, trading activity of the underlying companies has been strong, and it's really that that's driving the underlying performance. There has been some exit activity, and we've benefited from some uplifting in value through exit activity. Really, we sort of started to see that improvement in the final quarter of 2025. And so that starts to sort of pick up into 2026. There's been a sort of further sort of pause given the Iran conflict. So, you know, currently I think the portfolio is performing well, but the sort of visibility and the sort of cadence of exit activity remains a little bit subdued.

There are no further questions on the Zoom. I will now hand back over to Rob. are covered with some questions. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. I'll just pull together a few of the questions. There's one with respect to Stonehenge Fleming, which is why did we decide to sell that asset?

Matt, would you say that? Well, thanks for the question. It's obviously a really good success for us. We invested for many years and really enjoyed partnering with Giuseppe and his team. and the business has developed very well over that period of time. And I think often what we find is that when you take a longer-term view and you really improve the quality of these businesses, they become strategically very interesting for purchasers. And that's exactly what happened with Stonehenge Living. So we got an approach from Corient. It made a lot of strategic sense. They were and they were very keen to buy the business. And so it just made sense in the context of everything in and around the business to enter into discussions with Corrin and then sell the business. So that's how that came about.

Okay, thank you. We've got a few questions, obviously, around discounts. capital allocation, and if I can try and just pull those together. As we mentioned on the call, we have a proven capital allocation strategy. We want to remain invested in the investment pools that we have. we will be receiving just under $290 million from the sale of StoneAid Fleming in due course. But at that point, as I mentioned on the call, the share of net asset value within private capital will be 23%. And our strategic allocation range is 25% to 35% for private capital. So we will want to add a meaningful portion of that $290 million to private capital but also we will allocate to the other investment pools for appropriate opportunities. And then with respect to buybacks, we've completed $35 million in a year. People are sort of saying, why have we not done more because of where the sort of discount has been? And I think you'll probably see that in March and April, the level has picked up. We were a bit lighter in the first quarter of the year, partly through being in a closed period and not being able to act. So we'll continue to buy back, particularly where the shares are, but it will be balanced with making sure that we are invested in the portfolio. We've got a question which has come through, which is why are the funds so diversified? So 600 underlying companies and 48 managers. Maybe, Matt, would you take that one?

That's a good question. So it does look very diversified. I think we've got to accept that. Not necessarily a bad thing. The team are very good at keeping track of everything and understanding what's going on. However, one of the reasons for the diversification is, of course, it's across two geographies. We're covering North America and Asia, and hardly any of the funds cover both geographies. I think there's only one that sort of covers both. And then there's a sort of mathematics of it all that we want to – we're not chasing investments here, but we're looking to get a certain amount of money at work into the lower mid-market or earlier stage funds in Asia. So they're not big funds. And so just the math of getting a certain amount of money to work into funds that themselves are quite small, and then it doesn't make sense for them or for us, but to us be over a certain sort of size in those funds just ends up sort of driving that sort of diversification, which I think we would all admit does look, you know, very diverse, but not necessarily a bad thing.

Great. Thank you, Matt. I think we're about there on time. I think we've answered the majority of the questions which have come through. And what we will make sure that we do is that we will come back to each of you with specific answers to your specific questions if we've not already called them. So thank you very much for your time this morning. Have a good day.