Partners Group Private Equity Limited

Good morning and welcome everyone to PGPE Limited Results Call. My name is Andrea Mattescu and with me today are my colleagues Cyril Vipsi and Federica Cataniga. Today we'll provide an update on the NAV developments and the portfolio highlights as of 30th of September 2024. Now before we dive in, I want to address some housekeeping items. If you would like to ask any questions during the webcast, please use the Q&A tool which you can find on your screen. We will answer the questions at the end of the presentation. In the interest of time, we will group similar questions and answer in one go. And if we run out of time or you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to send us an email at pgpe-ltd at partnersgroup.com or through the contact form available on the website. Now, before diving into the presentation, just a few words on PGP Limited. DGB Limited provides shareholders with exposure to Partners Group direct private equity investment strategy, participating in transactions alongside our institutional clients. Partners Group is a thematic investor focusing on investments in companies where growth is underpinned by long-term transformative trends. We bring extensive resources with a global team of over 200 investment professionals supported by a global network of external industry advisors and operating directors. Turning to the results, year-to-date performance is positive with NAV total return of 3.1% as of end of September. Share price total return for the period stand at 5.9%, reflecting an expansion in the company's discount NAV. now stands at about €1 billion, which translates to €14.24 per share, while dividend yield is just below 7%, considering the last 12 months' dividends paid to shareholders at the closing share price of September, with just above €24 million paid to shareholders with the first interim dividend this year. Of course, liquidity position remains healthy with the revolving credit facility of 140 million euro fully undrawn as of the end of September, further supported by 5.4 million euro in cash and cash equivalents. Now moving on to the next slide. It is not worthy to mention the largest contributors during the quarter. Unsurprisingly, KinderCare is among them. However, we will talk about it in more detail later in the presentation. Another positive contributor during the quarter was International School Partnership, or ISP, how we like to call it, which increased in value during the quarter, reflecting its continued robust financial performance, both organically and via acquisitions. And one can say that ISP is a testament to our platform building strategy. Actually, the company was founded in 2013 by Partners Group, and ISP looks to capitalize on the growing demand for high quality education and is now the fifth largest K-12 schools group globally, with 88 schools across 24 countries, serving over 85,000 students. Barnas Group continues to work with ISP's management and board on the transformation of the business into a world-class learning platform, achieving the best student outcomes. And ISP is progressing well on its expansion plan and recently acquired five schools, including Colegio Montemayor, Alphaville and Pinnacle schools, alongside two newest Greenfield schools. While Telepass, a pan-European leader in electronic tolling systems, which you may know whenever you're mainly traveling to Italy, is performing overall in line with the underwritten expectations. Of course, Partners Group is working closely with the board and management team on a range of value creation initiatives. And perhaps most recently, you've read the news that it has partners with Atlanta to make available over 1,000 electric vehicle charging points in Italy through the Telepass mobile app. And these charging stations, compatible with all electric vehicle models, offer power ranging from 22 kilowatts to 300 kilowatts and are powered by renewable energy. In relation to the quarterly portfolio activity, we observed that investments and distributions have been broadly balanced, although we see a clear tilt to the investment side. Noteworthy is the distribution from the sale of a portion of the stake in Galderma. The shares were sold to L'Oréal via an off-market block trade that saw the French beauty and cosmetics group invest for a 10% stake in Galderma. The two companies have also agreed on a scientific partnership to develop advanced future-proof technologies with direct applications in the field of dermatology. Now, more interesting is actually what we've done with the cash on the deployment side. We've closed the new transaction in Fairjourney, which we briefly mentioned in the last webcast, if you remember. And of course, we deployed in additional investments across the portfolio. Just as a quick reminder, Fairjourney Biologics is a leading European antibody discovery contract research organization based in Portugal. The company supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies and has worked with 250 clients globally to design and develop next generation antibody-based therapies. And with this, I would be very happy to hand over to Cyril.

Good morning from my side. Some of you have sent us already questions several days before the presentation, actually, so thank you for that. We like this. And one question was to please comment on the impact of Trump having won the U.S. elections. It is actually triggered that I included the following slides on macroeconomical environment in our investment approach. And as you all know, the nominal GDP growth worldwide is impacted by inflation. The real growth is lower, thus less tailwind. And interest rates are higher today than the 10 years 2010 to 2020. And we also have no crystal ball at Partners Group for seeing the future. So we map out different scenarios and test our investment cases against these scenarios and then select only those investments which are resulting in an attractive return for our clients in various scenarios. We don't invest in a one trick pony and we don't invest in a company which only strives when all stars are aligned. On page 7, you see that we always have a base case, which we expect to become true with a chance of around, let's say, 50%. But there's always the risk that the future will be worse than the base case, for example, recession, with, let's say, 30% probability. There's also a chance that the future will be more bright than expected. That is currently only a lower probability of, let's say, 10%. And of course, there's always the risk of the world falling apart. It's always there, but it's always low. So let's call a speculation scenario at the 5% probability. But I think what's key is that on page eight, you see that our thematic sourcing approach is designed to identify those investment themes which perform in most scenarios. So meaning long-term trends not impacted by which president won the US elections. So, for example, the trend towards more safety at the working place, meaning construction workers wearing protective clothes, helmets, gloves, shoes, steel caps, protective shoes, high-visibility jacket, you know, like a company like Sherbex, or pharmaceutical companies want to increase their speed to market, or tech services are increasing quality and standards, for example, natural gas pipeline inspections, which Rosen is doing, or companies which profit from working more from home, et cetera. So thematic sourcing is on page nine. You see what we are looking for. We're looking for companies with established business models, meaningful margins, cash generation, experience and strong management and position for growth. And then with our transformational investing approach, we then try to achieve returns which are working in a market which is not so much triggered always by interest rates, for example. Yes, I know, interest rates are not zero anymore, but they're also not 8%. And for example, in the 1980s, when our private equity industry was born, the interest rates in the U.S. were 8%. But the 80s returns in private equity were actually very high. So it's not just a single factor which is influencing this. Now, I'm not the macroeconomic expert, to be honest. So our team prepared these slides for me. But I am actually the expert on evaluations. I wrote my PhD thesis on evaluations of private equity companies. And this is my 23rd year with Partners Group. because I believe I am qualified to make a statement that we have one of the most sophisticated valuation approaches in the industry. Our fair value evaluation approach is not just in line with fair value principles and accounting standards like IFRS 13 or US GAAP topic 820. Our valuations approach are bottom-up driven using the most recognized valuation methodologies and our approach is proven through various cycles the last 20 years. third-party valuation experts provide positive assurance on internally prepared valuations and valuations of course are reviewed by auditors who need to sign off on the valuation approach now the majority of pgp limited over 70 companies are valued using the eb multiple approach in theory If you read books about the valuation approach, this approach is inferior to the discounted cash flow approach. But in reality, it works best if your goal is to do mark-to-market, meaning comparing the valuations of your private companies with the valuation of your public peers. In a DCF approach, you have too many variables for a mark-to-market. In an EV-EBITDA multiple approach, using the last 12-month EBITDA, everything the market expects in public markets is baked into the ebitda multiple which makes it very easy to define for each company in our portfolio a basket of public companies having similar business and then we mark to mark the ebitda multiple to these baskets of public companies now for a minority of companies we do use the discounted cash flow approach for example for a company which is a turnaround situation But if you think about it, DCF in reality is actually not much different to the multiple approach. In a DCF, you model out the next 10 years in theory, but in reality, nobody's bold enough to do this because nobody has a crystal ball. So in reality, you model the next five years. But if you only use five years, then 80% of the value is the terminal value, which is nothing else than the equivalent of a multiple approach with one divided by the weighted average cost of capital, the VAC, is equivalent to the EBITDA multiple. On the next slide, you see the valuation frequencies. I mean, the industry standard, I would argue, is to do quarterly valuations. BGB Limited publishes monthly valuations, but apart from Scoop, we value our assets actually even on a daily basis, because we have some products which require daily valuations. So although we only report once a month in NEV, our more than 30 valuation experts worldwide are busy every single day incorporating valuation drivers like listed exposures, foreign exchange movements, debt exposures, interest accruals, or extraordinary adjustments. For example, in case of an exit like we had this year for SOS distribution or IPOs like we had this year for Caldera or KinderCare. On page 15, You see that although we really try hard with probably the most sophisticated valuation approach in the industry to estimate the net asset value, if you look at the exits this year, we had been too conservative. The exits this year happened on average 21% above the previously reported NEV. 21% above. But the share price traded yesterday at a 26% discount. So 21% above NVE and 26% below NVE is a whopping 61% difference. And this is definitely not justified. I'd just like to hand over to Federica to talk about the portfolio.

Thank you, Cyril. And good morning, everyone. I'll take it from here and provide an update on portfolio development over the third quarter. But first, on slide 17, let's take a quick look at the portfolio composition as it stands at the end of September. The key takeaway here is that the portfolio has remained blurrably unchanged in its key dimensions over the quarter, continuing to offer access to a very diversified private equity portfolio invested across global developed markets in resilient and foundational industries. The most notable change is in our top 10, where Galderma, previously top nine, leaves space to Clario. Galderma's weight in the portfolio marginally reduced to 2.5% after we commenced the gradual sell-down of our position in Q3, as Andrea mentioned earlier. A few words on our new entrant, Clario. This is the company where PGP first invested in 2020 when the company was known as eResearch Technologies, a provider of integrated online software application services that enable the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries to collect, interpret and distribute clinical data more efficiently during clinical trials. In 2021, we provided follow-on capital to fund the company's merger with Bioclinica, a provider of clinical trial imaging technology solutions. And Clario is the result of this merger, a company with the expertise to address the most complex clinical trials that aims to cement its market-leading position in a growing segment with high barriers to entry. Since our first equity investment, Clario has recorded resilient EBITDA growth and stable, strong margins. supported by merger synergies, cost control initiatives, and operational improvement, and now stands at number 10 holding in PGP portfolio. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'll conclude this overview reiterating the meaningful degree of diversification we've built over time, which results in a portfolio that does not rely on a single or few industries, regions, or companies to generate returns. The same applies to vintage year exposure, as I've already covered in previous calls. The portfolio is today almost perfectly split across the vintage year buckets we have identified here on slide 18, with just about 50% of its NAV invested pre-2020. The pie chart here is one that you'd be familiar with. This time around, however, I've grayed out the previous company update to allow us to fully focus on the most meaningful development that took place over the quarter, which largely involved pre-2020 assets. These mature vintages are expected to be the main contributors to portfolio return. These very assets, however, have seen their positive earning growth in recent years been largely offset by the impact of rising rates, which weighed in on valuation multiples that were applied effectively to those earnings growth. Looking backwards, this effect has limited their contribution to the overall portfolio return, which has arguably been subdued in the past two years since 2022. Looking forward, however, we maintain high conviction in these pre-2020 assets and in their ability to support future performance. Return potential, besides EBITDA growth, also comes from realization, which are gradually materializing. This quarter, I will therefore not highlight companies that are being prepared for exit, but companies where we have made tangible progress towards realization, providing encouraging signs of performance potential that is being unlocked within the portfolio. I'll start on the bottom left with Galderma, whose IPO obviously was announced earlier this year, and whose stock price has seen a positive trend since listing, and therefore we've commenced a gradual sell-down that has generated approximately 6 million proceeds for PGP through September. I'll use the next slide instead to cover Techem and Kindercare, two of our top 10 holdings for which we've recently announced exit. While these were technically announced after the end of the quarter, both exit processes took place over months as our investment team has worked hard to identify the most suitable exit path that maximize value for our investors. In the case of Tefium, for example, we started working with the company's board to assess exit readiness already in mid-2022, formally commencing a sale process in May 2023, contemplating both an IPO and an M&A transaction. The dual track exit process ran in parallel for close to 10 months until we agreed to sell Techem to a consortium of TPG and GIC on 30th September 2024, realizing a two times gross money multiple for our investors. During our ownership, Tekken transformed from a B2B submetering service provider largely active in Germany into a leading provider of a wide range of digital solutions that enable energy efficiency in the entire building ecosystem, serving over 400,000 clients across 18 countries. We've achieved this through a combination of business excellence as well as digital transformation initiatives that have improved the operational model and the customer experience alike. Tehem is an excellent example where PG's thematic sourcing, hands-on value creation, and the tailwinds provided by secular trends of digitization and decarbonization all came together to transform the company into a scale player with an enterprise value of approximately 6.7 billion. As the sale is anticipated to close in Q1 2025, Tehn remains today in PGP's portfolio, representing approximately 4% of NAE. Turning to KinderCare, here we have a company operating in a different region, a different sector, yet again a recognized market leader that provides core services to hundreds of thousands of customers, and an exemplary case of PG's investments approach. The company's IPO in early October is the first public listing of a lead portfolio company on a U.S. exchange for Partners Group. KinderCare, you are probably familiar with, is the largest provider of high-quality early childhood education in the U.S. that offers flexible childcare solution to over 200,000 children across 2,400 centers and sites across the entire country. During the nine-year investment journey, we worked hand-in-hand with the company's board, successfully driving value creation initiatives, but also navigating periods of unprecedented stress, like the COVID pandemic, when the company had to close over 1,000 centres and lost a significant share of its revenues overnight. Not only have we overcome that challenging period, but over our ownership of KinderCare, the company has also added additional grants, grown capacity for quality education services, introduced leading technologies capabilities, and partnered with hundreds of employers to provide childcare benefits, including partner groups. And the company also presented a great opportunity for over 40,000 teachers to deliver quality care and a curriculum each day. This all translated in significant value for our investors, and also in a company that appealed to the broader market. Positive price action on the first day of trading resulted in an approximately 50% uplift to PGPE's August carrying value of the company. Similar to TechEms, KinderCare remains in PGPE's portfolio, representing approximately 5% of NAD at the end of September, as no liquidity was generated for PGPE at IPO, with a lock-up period of 180 days applied to the listing. On the following page, we have a snapshot of current portfolio NAV broken down by TVPI marks as well as key operational metrics for the portfolio. There have been no material changes here as our companies continue to generate double-digit EBITDA growth on an LTM basis and maintain strong capital structures, resulting in approximately 90% of NAV marked above one. SPG's value creation initiatives continues to unfold. Over 60% of portfolio is outperforming our base case on the writing plan, and a further 30% are considered to be on plan, with less than 10% NAV in companies that fall below our expectations. Compounding operational performance also continues to be the key driver of portfolio returns overall. And by 21, we dissect this year-to-date growth portfolio return to show how EBITDA growth really remains the largest contributor of the 5.6% year-to-date portfolio performance. A marginal increase in multiples and also portfolio changes contributed positively overall. And this was mainly thanks to the successful realizations of SRS and the listing of KinderCare, as well as the early positive performance of our 2024 investment, DelbitCare. These positive effects were only partially offset by a small increase in net debt, as we took the opportunity to refinance some debt packages and lower spreads, strengthen capital structures to sustain growth and platform building plans for our companies, although this happened largely during the first part of the year. I'll conclude my portfolio and performance overview by reiterating conviction in the quality of our portfolio, which has navigated a challenging market environment demonstrating resilience. Companies like Techem and Kindercare are not cherry-picked case studies here, but tangible examples from a portfolio that is well-positioned to deliver on its performance potential. I'll now hand it over back to Andrea to summarize our discussion today before opening it up to questions.

Thank you, Federica. With this slide, I just want to highlight a few things. The company's investment objective is focused on delivering long-term capital growth and an attractive dividend yield. Over the last 10 years, we've achieved double-digit annual returns for both share price total return and NAV total return, showcasing our commitment to creating long-term value. And the dividend paid out over the last 12 months have yielded around 7% based on September's closing price, aligning with the objective of providing an attractive dividend yield for our investors. And this brings us to a brief overview of the key takeaways. Now, PGPE Limited provides shareholders with exposure to Partners Group direct private equity investment strategy, participating in transactions alongside some of the world's largest institutional investors. The strength of PGP Limited lies in its diversified portfolio, which provides investors exposure to companies operating in a variety of industries and geographic regions. The portfolio was built over time, achieving a very good vintage diversification. The mix includes both mature assets as well as newer investments still in the value creation phase, and that gives a consistent performance over cycles. From an investment perspective, we continue to focus on the discipline deployment of capital and the identification of companies where we believe we can support management to create value. And so, we believe that a current discount to NAV offers value, providing exposure to a well-diversified global private equity portfolio that continues to generate positive NAV performance. And finally, The company's investment objective is to generate long-term capital growth and an attractive dividend yield. And once again, we're happy to highlight that we have achieved double-digit NAV and share price return over the last decade. With this, we conclude the update. And at this point, we're very happy to open for the Q&A. Okay, I see we actually have received a number of questions. As mentioned at the beginning of the webcast, in the interest of time, we will group similar questions and answer in one go. Now, I see a first question. already um that one it's actually regarding the dividend um this one i think federica would uh would be for you so how will you find on the second dividend and if you plan to use the revolving credit facility when will it be repaid

Sure. Thanks, Andrea. Happy to take this one. At present, as we speak today, BGP has enough liquidity in cash in the portfolio to cover the vast majority of the dividend payment proceeds. We might need to resort to the credit facility to cover for a few million euros, so the balance of what's outstanding. However, we see a positive liquidity action, so we expect for the facility to be fully repaid by the end of the year, restating the net positive liquidity position in the coming months.

Thank you, Federica. Now, Looking also at the questions, we actually have a couple around the capital allocation policy, and also with the current realization and expansion of the discount, when would we expect to see any share buyback? Now, let's just remind to all of you, or the ones who don't remember that well, Beginning of this year, we have announced the clear and the robust capital allocation policy, which addresses the fundamental point of liquidity and also has the dividend payout at its heart, right? Now, this lays a very disciplined approach, depending on the discount to NAV, availability, cash flow, and certain percentages being allocated to do such acquisitions. Specifically, I can give you examples, right, if the company would, or the discount would be between 20 and 30% and 50% of the cash flow would be used to do share buybacks, respectively, if the discount is wider than 30% and 75% of the free cash flow would be used. Now, of course, at the moment and considering the outlook, We do not have enough free cash flow to do share buybacks. However, as we start to see more realizations in the portfolio, the situation may change. Continuing with the questions, there is actually another question I see regarding KinderCare. Federica, is actually PG still under a lock-up rule?

Yes, as I mentioned, the IPO did not result in any liquidity proceeds at issuance for PGP, and a 180-day customarily lock-up period applies to the IPO.

Yeah. Thank you, Federica. Now, one question for you, Cyril. Your base case policy rate looks aggressive. Do you want to comment on the underwriting on that basis?

Yeah, so I try to explain that our approach is not that there is an Excel file spitting out one figure, and if it's above 20% gross IRR expected over the holding period, then we do the investment. If it's below, we don't do the investment. What I try to explain is that when we identify assets, it can be ideally one or two years before we do the investments, and then we think hard about the growth in this industry, and then when we do due diligence for six months, We really stress test the case. Yes, you have a base case, but you also want to know how does this asset perform in a recession? How does it perform if we're wrong? And the future is actually much more bright. What upside are we giving up by being too conservative? And how is the asset performing if the world falls apart? And ideally, you find an asset who is performing well in all four scenarios. So that's why, no, it's not just that we're only looking at the base case. If it looks at the base case, then it's good. The asset really needs to be very solid in more scenarios.

Thank you. Cyril. Okay, now I see another question coming through. Actually, this is quite a broad discussion, to be honest. It's regarding the KID and EMT topic, right? And as we've seen in the in the market, right? Some have already started to zero to reflect the updated guidelines from the FCA. Now I have to tell you, interestingly enough, just yesterday we had quite a long meeting and we have discussed about this topic. We are still looking into it and rest assured once we will have the decision considering all the aspects of it, we will also reflect the kids and the EMTs accordingly. So yes, we are still looking into this and we are happy to come back once we have updates to share. Now, further questions looking through the Q&A. I have another question this time for you, Cyril, regarding the EBITDA growth at around 11%. Can you comment how much would be M&A bolt-ons?

Yeah, I admire actually some of our competitors who publish such a figure. Unfortunately, we actually don't split out organic growth and M&A growth in these statistics, just because it's not like if BMW buys MINI cars, for example, then even three years later, you can clearly distinguish how much growth has came from BMW and how much is coming from MINI. and but this is not how our companies work we always have a platform and then you have for example kindergarten's 2400 centers kindergartens and so if you add one or two to them it's not that they have their own p l they are totally absorbed by the by the p l of the of the platform and so we're actually not we're not in a position of then find out, okay, how many centers were acquired this year and how much was their contribution to the overall growth. So unfortunately, that's a mix of organic and M&A. And of course, we always like to have companies which have a strong organic growth, but we also like them to have even more growth through M&A. And as Rico alluded to, on average, the companies actually increase the net debt, which is an indication that they also had to do M&A acquisitions, which they find as by net debt.

Thank you, Cyril. I think we have another question for you, Federica. Are you able to comment on the expected pace of selling down the staking alder amount?

not really able to provide a clear clear guidance here we're obviously part of a consortium of owners here so we do expect to continue a gradual sell down especially if the stock price obviously remains remains at levels that we've seen in past months we expect some liquidity to come through in the next in the next few months and throughout 2025 but we expect to exit the position again gradually over the next couple of years in line with other shareholders.

Thank you. Now, I see another question actually on Techchem. This one is for you, Cyril. Could you comment on the uplift to the carrying value? or Federica, one over two.

Yeah, I can take this one. Yes, there was no uplift in the case of tech and scale. As I mentioned, this was a relatively long exit process, exit discussion where we considered dual track, dual option for a significantly large company. So we had sort of adjusted our carrying value as this discussion progressed. And the approximately two-time multiple was what we had marked the company in our book's pre-disclosure announcement.

Fantastic. Thank you, Federico. Now, there is another question coming through. I will allocate this time the question to Cyril. So, can you comment and perhaps provide backdate on the pricing of secondary market transactions in Partners Group funds?

yeah i i like your thinking so i think what you're what you're trying to say is it will be very attractive to buy actually parts group phones at the discount to that but yes i like to think unfortunately reality is that most of our clients actually not selling so we we would love to buy um our own funds on the secondary market but that's not reality reality is that actually um Very, very rarely somebody is actually selling a fund of Partners Group. So our Partners Group funds, they buy other assets from other managers. But unfortunately, we don't have a lot of transactions of our own funds. So we don't have here a data point of funds which have a similar content that you could say, okay, we sell something at the 10% discount or a 5% discount. Unfortunately, that figure is not available because our clients are just holding on to their investments in the limited partnership structures, for example.

Thank you, Cyril.

But maybe to add, I mean, we have semi-liquid products like the parts from the Global Ezekiel, which every month go in and out at NAV. But maybe next question.

Now, one question for you, Federica. Have there been any changes to your company watch list?

Thank you, Andrea. No. No, I'm pleased to report that there were no assets added to our watch list since 2022, so really no changes to this part of the portfolio. It remains relatively contained to a handful of assets that now represent less than 10% of NAD, well-known cases. So no update, thankfully, to this part of the portfolio. Thank you.

Now, one very interesting question. I'll assign this one to you, Cyril. How do you see ethics moves impacting performance?

Yeah, so I don't know the future, but I can tell the past. So the exposure is 50% euro, 38% dollar, 5% Swiss francs. So the big exposure is really US dollar. And if you look at what the US dollar did this year, then it was basically flat-ish in the first half of the year against the euro. And then the US dollar became weak against the euro in the third quarter. And that's why we have here today the negative impact on FX on the Euro portfolio. But as you all know, the US dollar has strongly recovered in October. So it probably will be no surprise that in October again, the performance will be positive from a stronger US dollar against the Euro.

Thank you. With this, we would like to thank you all for your attendance, and as mentioned at the beginning of the call, if you feel that we did not provide enough background or in case there were any questions which are left unanswered, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, both directly, right, or through the contact form. We thank you very much for joining us this time, and we're looking forward to hear from you, meet you, and also give you another update next time. Thank you.