Eurazeo Paris Ord

Hello and welcome to the Eurozeo Financial Information H1 2023 results. My name is Caroline and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over the call to your host, Mr. William Kiddas Cheshing and Mr. Christoph Berweger to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good morning and thank you for joining our H1 Results presentation. Thank you for the interest you take in our company. This presentation will have three parts. First, key highlights for the first half. Second, we talk about operational performance. Third, we talk about financial performance. We will then be available for a Q&A session. Let me start with the key highlights. As regards financial highlights, let me remind you that we changed the qualification of the company at the start of the year, and this is the first time we are reporting under the IFRS 10 exemption. Eurozeo net results for the first half stands at nearly 1.8 billion euros, with three factors behind it. First, we continue to grow our asset management business at a steady pace. Fee-paying AUM are up 16%, one-sixth year-on-year, and fee-related earnings are up 37%, at 69 million euros. The contribution of the asset management activity amounts to 64 million for the first half, up 45% year on year. Second, the value of our portfolio is stable at around 8 billion, with a slightly negative mark to market of 27 million. We maintain a cautious approach to valuation in spite of good underlying operational performance of our portfolio companies and supportive valuation benchmark. As you can see, the per share value of our portfolio increases by 3%, nevertheless, partly thanks to our share buyback program. Third and last, we have two exceptional items in H1, one positive at 1.9 billion stemming from the impact of the change in IFRS qualification, as I said, which was already announced in Q1, and one negative, one slightly negative, with 74 million lost, resulting from the unwinding of the Rhone partnership. On non-financial, we continue to thrive, as you know, for leadership in ESG. And as a case in point, we made further progress. The share for AUM that we qualify as impact is up 8% to reach 4.4%. 7 billion at the end of the first half. As you know, we are a great believer that impact will become increasingly a driving force in our fundraising. Let me update you on key decisions taken in the past five months since Christophe and I took over as co-CEOs of Eurazeo. These decisions are milestones to achieve our objectives which is to create the European-based leader in private markets on mid-market growth and impact. First, we took decisions on organization and people. We adjusted our organization to reflect our strategy to operate as a full-fledged and scalable asset manager. We renewed leadership in some key investment teams and functions. And as you know, Together with our stakeholders, we adapted the remuneration structure of the Executive Board that is now more aligned with shareholders' interests. Second, on strategy. We announced that we would review our minority stakes. We announced today that we have just disposed of our 30% stake in Rhône. The decision on MCH will be taken by the end of the year. On top, we are also assessing the mid-term potential of all key investment strategies and will communicate at the end of the year. Third, on efficiency, we have launched key initiatives such as merging management companies that will simplify greatly our organization, investing more strongly in our digital roadmap, and harmonizing operations across the company. Finally, We took the decision to change materially and improve our financial reporting. We also published today, on top of the new qualification of the company, we also published today new KPIs with the performance of a selection of our funds, which you will find in the appendix. I now hand over to Christophe, who will comment on the operational performance for H1. Thank you, William.

So let's start with asset management KPI. Total AUM are up 3.5% over 12 months, but third-party AUM are up 7% with balance sheet AUM growing at a lower pace. A double-digit growth in fee-paying asset management, which are up 16%, thanks to our recent fundraising and deployments in some asset classes. Turning now to fundraising, as you are all aware, the current environment for fundraising has become more challenging in the short term. LPs are taking more time to allocate their funds, given a slower pace in asset rotation and distributions. The impact of the denominator effect, and caution on rate hikes. The latest data available points to a market decline in fundraising for the European market of 17 to 20% in the first half of this year. In this context, we raised 1.3 billion over this period, down 15% for the same period last year. Private debt again recorded good inflows, both in direct lending and in corporate loans through a program called Obligation Relance. In private equity, we collected funds mainly in venture and in secondaries and ongoing funds. We just announced the final close of the Smart City 2 program above target at 400 million euros. wealth management inflows remain a strength for our group. We raised around 350 million euros in H1, around 27% of the group's fundraising for the period. We expect this segment to remain dynamic thanks to the new partnerships we recently signed like CNP and La Banque Postale, Boursorama, Allianz Belgium, and Apicil. I just mentioned that private debt is currently doing well. Allow me to give you a few highlights on this strategy, which represents nearly 20% of our assets under management. We are one of the leaders in Europe on the mid-market segment. Our particular strength here is clearly direct lending with promising development in asset base and corporate financing. Our direct lending franchise benefits from a strong positioning with our mid-cap focus. As you know, the ongoing disintermediation of banks and financing tools fully based on floating rates offers a very favorable risk-reward profile for investors. Take our last vintage, which is called Eurazeo Private Debt 6. We are on track to reach our 2 billion euro target, let's say, during this autumn. Our target net IRR is between 9% and 10%. The default rate of the portfolio is very low, at 0.3%, and the loss ratio is basically 0%. This is due to the fact that we are financing strong cash-generative companies backed by blue-chip sponsors. we are also able to continue to deploy capital at a good pace. This enables us to be very selective, and this bodes well for our future fundraising.

A word now on asset rotation.

As you know, the M&A market is currently slow due to macro uncertainties on rates, and on the macro economy. According to PitchBook, private equity deals in value are down 54% year-to-date in Europe, and this is even more on large deals. Private debt deals are down 35%. That being said, the need for private capital remains very high, especially in key segments like infrastructure, energy transition, and in the digitalization of our economy. In this context, we continue to be extremely selective on investment, with deployment of €0.9 billion in H1 compared to €1.7 billion for the same period last year. That's a decline of more than 40%. Realization proved more resilience and are down only 32% in H1. Conditions remain healthy for quality mid-caps, which is Eurazeo core focus, and we have a good pipe of potential exits, especially in the small mid-cap component of Eurazeo investment strategies. The underlying performance, and this is a key element, the underlying performance of our portfolio companies remains solid on average. Revenues of our PE and real asset portfolio, excluding growth, are up 14% in each one. EBITDA is up 13%. The revenues of our growth companies are up 15% in each one, with the bulk of our investments posting revenue growth in the 20% to 30% range in a context of a stronger focus on improving profitability. Thank you. I now leave the floor to William for our financial results.

Thank you, Christophe. Let me start with the contribution of the asset management business. As said, we continue to enjoy steady growth. Management fees are up 13% in H1. Third-party management fees are up 3% in the first half. Adjusted for base effects, notably catch-up fees of about 10 million in H1-22, growth of third-party fees would stand at 9%. And total management fee growth would stand at 19%. This is more in line with the growth you see in third-party fee paying AUM. Fee-related earnings for the first half of 2023 are strongly up at 37%. They stand at 69 million. This results from the combination of management fee growth, as said, and a very strong discipline on cost, enabling a positive use effect. During our Q4 results, we guided you towards strong growth in FREs for the year. As you can see, we are on track to meet this target. Let me stress, and you can see that on the chart, right-hand side of the page, that we further increase our margin, our FRI margin in H1 stands at 33.5%. It is up 200 basis points relative to the end of the year 2022. And this is trending towards our mid-term target of 35-40%. As you can see on the chart, we have steepened the increase in the margin over the past two years. Our asset management business, in a nutshell, posted a contribution of 64 million. This is up 45% year on year, again, thanks to strong positive Joe's effect. The level of performance fees remains low due to limited realization on the portfolio currently. This is a market-wide issue, as you know. In addition, we expect performance fees to pick up in the next years due to the maturity of our fundraising. In the medium term, As our funds are maturing, we indeed should enjoy a level of PREs at the percentage of our total revenues more comparable with peers. Let me now run you through the results of our investment activity, starting with a change in fair value of our portfolio, which has become, as we said, the main driver of the P&L of our investment activity with a new FRS 10 accounting norm. Before I comment on the evolution pertaining to Eurazeo, let me comment on the context of the first half. As a matter of fact, we benefited from the rather favorable dynamics for the valuation of our portfolio in the first half. First, as Christophe already highlighted, we have a solid underlying operational performance of our portfolio with double digit revenue and EBITDA growth. Second, We have indeed supportive valuation benchmarks. Public market multiples have trended upwards since the beginning of the year, both on the broader market and even more so in the tech space. Finally, as we highlighted a few quarters ago, we continue to enjoy a limited sensitivity to interest rates for the valuation of our portfolio as we have implemented a conservative hedging policy. Nevertheless, this is the next page. As I highlighted before, in spite of this rather favorable context for valuation, we maintain a cautious approach to valuation in H1, leading to a slight decrease in fair value of $27 million, or minus 0.3%. In a nutshell, portfolio valuation is flat in absolute terms, and post a small increase on a per share basis, thanks largely to the share buyback program. The main reason why we decided to remain cautious on valuation is a slow M&A and capital market environment, as Christophe highlighted. There are too few exits we consider in the market to take a more positive stance on valuations, we say. Now, should you only take the underlying portfolio performance, you would easily get a plus 5% increase. This equates to $384 million due to the underlying performance I mentioned. This is offset totally by valuation metrics we use for minus $392 million. We have $132 million of change in scope, and in total, the value of our portfolio in absolute terms is up 1% at $8 billion. and the value per share is up 3% at €103 per share. In a nutshell, the contribution of the investment company, this is the next page, stands at minus 74 million, of which, as I said, 27 million of change in fair value of the portfolio, 61 million charged for management fees, which offsets the same amount recognized as a plus in our asset management business revenues. Other items include some transaction costs and the cost of financing of the holding company and are rather insignificant. Now, to summarize, you can see the group IFRS profit and loss. We post 1.8 billion net results for the first half, with again, first a positive contribution from the asset management activity at 64 million, a negative contribution from the investment company at 74 million, and 1.8 billion of non-recruiting items, as I said, a positive gain of 1.9 billion due to the first-time application of the IFRS 10 exemption, and a negative impact of 74 million stemming from the sale of our 30% stake in Rome. On the balance sheet, let me say that, again, we end up a period with a significant financial headroom. Our net debt remains very muted at 5% financial gearing, $426 million, and we have $7.4 billion of dry powder, of which $5 billion from our limited partners. To wrap up, we operate, as Christophe highlighted, in a more difficult environment for fundraising, and asset rotation. In this result, we consider our results as satisfactory. We continue to grow our asset management, improve the margin of our business, and our portfolio valuation is stable at 8 billion. We remain very confident about the strength of the underlying fundamentals of private markets, and more specifically on the potential of Eurazeo. As I mentioned, We have launched some key initiatives, and we will present you our mid-term roadmap and financial trajectory during the Capital Markets Day on November 30, 2023. Thanks for your attention. We will now be available for questions.

If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line Alexander from CIC. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for that presentation. Four quick questions on my side. The first one is related to the rise in management fees, which is mainly driven by your sales investment activity with management fees from third-party clients being up only 2%. Can you come back on that point? Why is this so low and what can we expect for the second half? The second question is related to steering costs and other costs, which are also significantly on the rise. Why? Can you come back on that point? The third question is obviously related to the fundraising. We do understand the slowdown due to the complex environment, but what can you expect for the full year and with the major funds that you have on the road. Can you come back to that? And the last question is related to what you state on the first slide of the presentation when you talk about ongoing assessment of key strategies besides RON and MCH. Are there other assets that could be disposed? Thank you.

Thank you. So I'll take question 1, 2, and 4, and Christophe will comment on fundraising. Rising management fees. As I said, if you focus on the third-party management fees, adjusted for the base effect I mentioned, they are up 9%. And as you can see, the fee being AUM from third parties are up 11%. So in the context, it remains... quite satisfactory metric. The reason why we have a 45% increase in balance sheet related management fees for the first half is largely due to the fact that the decision on the commitment from the balance sheet to our flagship mid-large buyout fund which is significant, it's a 1.8 billion commitment overall, was made during the period. So this creates, I wouldn't say one-off, but a specifically important move. So you should not expect such movements in the next quarters. Now, with regard to steering costs, let me remind you first that we are amongst those people... who have an investment company amongst the most conservative in terms of allocation of transversal cost to the holding versus the asset management. In other words, most of our cost base is allocated to the asset management. This is close to 92% of the cost base. So if you make comparison, you'll find that people allocate only 75 or sometimes 80% to the asset management. So it means that the margin you see on the asset management to begin with, and hence talking about the increase in the margin, is really reflecting the truth of our cost space and the profitability of the business. Now, more specifically on steering costs, we're not talking about big numbers here, right? but there is an increase. This is totally associated to a few things I've mentioned before. When you say I want to digitalize most probably my operations and automate some of my key processes, it comes with some investments that some of them, when they are deemed transversal, would be booked there. Same when you decide to simplify your management structures, it comes with some costs, obviously, to implement that. And so there is no other explanation than that. Maybe I'll take the last one, and so Christophe will comment on fundraising. When we say we review our investment strategies, this is with a view that we will communicate to you at the end of the year, during our capital market day, what is the potential we see mid-term for each and every business we have in the portfolio. So it doesn't necessarily mean, or let me be clear, it doesn't mean that we will stop a specific business as we've decided to unwind the minority stake we had in Rome. It means that we will be able to tell you how far a business can go within our portfolio. Now, having said that, we had already given to you four criteria to assess an appealing business that fits to our strategy. The four criteria are, it has to be relevant to a client in terms of risk profile and return, It has to be relevant in size compared to its peers. It has to be accretive to the profitability of the asset manager. And it has to be consistent with our ambitious ESG strategy. So these are the criteria according which we assess the businesses. Fundraising.

Thank you, William. Well, thank you for raising the point. It's an important... topic in the current environment. Well, first, what we would like to say is that despite the less favorable environment, with a decrease of circa 20% in fundraising activity in Europe, our view, William and I share the same view, that Eurazeo fundraising in H1 for the funds we add on the road is satisfactory. Regarding H2, well, as you know, we don't give guidance at this stage of the year. And considering the challenging environment, what we can say is that we are cautiously optimistic for the full year. We have significant interest in our funds from blue chip LPs, from repeat LPs, which we expect to materialize before the end of the year. And As you know, we continue to have a positive momentum in wealth management, and this confirms the fact that Eurasio has a specific strength by diversifying its fundraising with a component. The bulk is obviously done with institutional money, but the wealth management market is reacting differently And as you know, so far, it is resisting better than the institutional market.

All right. Thank you very much.

We will take the next question from line Arnaud Villette from CIC. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Arnaud Pellier from CIC. I have two questions. The first one is regarding the adjustment you made on your portfolio valuation. I would like to have more details about what type of assets, what type of sectors have been mostly affected by the lower multiples. It's the first question. And the second one is on the MCH. Can you please remind us the story about MCH and what's going to happen next?

Thank you.

Again, when we talk about adjustment in the portfolio evaluation, This is on the basis of strong increase in the underlying performance. So any area where the performance is less strong would be already embedded in the aggregate. But to be more specific, the areas where clearly there is pressure on the margin or on the revenue increase, this is particularly the areas in true in the b2c particularly true in the b2c uh market platforms you know possibly these businesses have benefited strongly uh from you know the the so-called netflix effect some of them obviously enjoy a less favorable environment you have one or two businesses in the financial sector for which situation can be conjuncturally point in time a bit more difficult because of the ALM. But I'd say, generally speaking, our portfolio enjoys performance on a very broad basis. This is a reflection of the sectors we are in. We are in sectors which are more B2B, B2B SaaS with predictable cash flow profile. Healthcare is the same. Energy infrastructure as it relates to energy transition is the same. So high growth margin, predictable cash flows. So that explains and still structural growth. So a lot of the adjustment is frankly being a tad conservative because we also know that there is a bit of pushback by you guys, by the way, in the context of a few realizations about private market valuation versus market valuation. As we compute most of our valuation based on average multiples, we are mindful of the fact that we may not have adjusted downwards as much in the second half of 2022. And so we don't want to go too fast in adjusting upwards. But as we said, pressure is rather on the upside. MCH, we completed this acquisition of 25% stake in MCH, which is a Spanish Madrid-based small-mid market buyout platform in 2019. The view at the time, and it is interesting to mention that the one who led this acquisition of the stake is the head of our small mid-market buyout business, Olivier Millet. The view was precisely that it could contribute to the internationalization, the Europeanization of our small mid-buyout business. As you know, we strive to be a leader with a pan-European approach, sometimes more global, but usually a pan-European approach. The one area where we're still rather French is our successful small buyout fund of 1 billion completed the fundraising last year. Now, we are in the process with Olivier and Christophe to assess whether taking over the full control of MCH is interesting from a return standpoint. And from a strategic standpoint, this is a good business. They have a good historical performance, a strong team. But obviously, it's too early to say. We're just beginning to dig into it. And as we said, we will tell you by the end of the year if this is rather buying the full or exiting.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. We will take the next question from line Jeffrey Michelet from Odoo. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Hello gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. I have one and it has to do with your asset management, third-party asset management business. I was wondering if you could maybe in the coming communication or release maybe give more granularity on the split of the carried interest that will come in the following year between the listed company, Eurazeo, and the teams that have also a right in this carried interest, knowing that there are great variations among the listed players, you know, from the UK players or Antin being more geared toward the teams and two partner groups being more geared toward the listed companies.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your question. I think we are quite transparent on the carried. First of all, we differentiate when we publish PREs, third party versus balance sheet, so that's quite explicit. As regards to the split between the asset management and the teams, knowing that we apply carried rules which are totally market practice, the usual 80-20 years of vesting, very consistent with the market, etc. The split between the asset management and the teams within the 80-20 can vary. It's usually more favorable to the teams in venture funds, for example. This is a legacy of the past. And it's closer to our target of 60-40 in buyer funds as a case in point. So we monitor what the market is doing, which means we monitor what our clients are saying. And, you know, I'd say in aggregate, we are around 70-30. 80-20 is a split between client and GP plus teams. And within the 20, I'd say in aggregate, we are 70 for the teams, 30 for the GP. So our numbers that result from that, you know, they are very transparent because when we have a PRI, we tell you then what is the credit for on the balance sheet and the credit for third party. The thing we will not do is be very specific on giving amounts to the teams that because that's obviously not what the competition is doing. And we know for sure, having talked to our market authority, that our level of disclosure is very satisfactory.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will take the next question from line Christophe Grelitsch from Barenburg. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, William and Christoph. Thank you for taking my question. It's just one from my side on the balance sheet portfolio. Could you provide a bit more color on the exit pipeline in H2? And is it fair to assume that the realizations in 2023 as a percentage of any we will be roughly in line with the historic average?

Thanks Christoph. As we said during our full year results presentation. We target 15, 20% asset rotation every year on a normalized basis. Last year, we were at 18%. It can be that, you know, like 21, there was a bit of catch-up. We were closer to 30%. So it is a bit through the noise that we get to this 15, 20%. What we had said also is that being mindful of the context, we expect that we would be rather at the lower end of the range, maybe a tad lower than the 15%, but this is where we are as it stands for 2023. Now, let me add, It's not your question, but let me add that for the years to come, in a normalized environment, obviously, given the maturity of our portfolio, we have a strong backlog of exits for the years to come.

Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We will take the next question from line. Olly will carry this from Goldman Sachs. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Hi there, it's Oliver from Goldman Sachs. Two questions, please. First one, on the change in your investment activity valuation, am I correct to interpret the 392 million multiple contraction impact as being broad-based, reflecting overall uncertainty, fewer precedent transactions, rather than being driven by any asset in particular? And then second question, now that you have implemented your new reporting structure, How are you thinking about future dividends as you scale up the cash flow generation by growing your asset manager? Should we still just be thinking about a progressive policy? And then as a follow-up to that, how are you thinking about capital returns more broadly as you scale up this third-party asset management business ahead of your own balance sheet like we saw today? Thank you.

Thanks, Oliver. You're right to point that it's rather broad-based. No, obviously, it's also line by line. So we make adjustments when we think we need to be a tad more conservative. But in fact, as I said, the underlying performance, the increase is broad-based. It's not specific to some companies. And the adjustment on the valuation is also broad-based. Also, sometimes we kept multiples just stable. There is no situation where we increase multiple given the context. This is a combination, by the way, of not just the multiples, because we extend valuations, methodologies for some areas using a DCF on top of multiples. Sometimes if I think about the tech slash growth portfolio, we would, as you know, use the last fundraising and then apply a discount if we consider that the last fundraising is a bit dated now. So you can see there that we've widened some of the discount that leads to the 40 million decrease in mark-to-market value out of 1.7 billion in total. So that's a combination of six. But you're right, it's not just specific to one asset or two or three. The question on dividend... right now you're right to say that you know we we start to get to a to a point and this is our expectation in the next years where we will start having a stronger cash flow stemming from the asset management this is a purpose on top of key strategic positioning matters to of this transformation having more stable foreseeable cash flow profile now right now the dividend policy as we stated in during our full result presentation remains based on willing to increase steadily and regularly the dividend per share and looking in a constructive way at doing some share buyback so long as we consider we trade at a discount to the fair market value of the company, particularly of the portfolio. So expect that, in other words, we'll continue to think for the year to come at least in terms of dividend per share increase and potential share buyback. The capital return policy as a whole allowed me to push back to 30th of November As you know, at the core of our strategic ambition is capital rotation, capital optimization. So I think we'll be quite specific as to what we think can be the capital creation of the company in the years to come and how we split it between shareholder distribution and potential strategic moves.

Thank you, very helpful. Look forward to hearing more about that on November 30th.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will take our next question again from Jeffrey Michelet from Odoo. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you again. Another question on your capital structure and gearing. In the past, you used to have rather a net cash position than a net debt position. Although I appreciate that there were only a few realizations in the past quarters, but do you see the future of Rio Razeo still being in a net debt position or should go back to a zero or net cash position in a normalized environment? Thank you.

Thank you for your question. If I may say so, and I've been in this company for only a year and a half now, But I still remember that in the course of the year 22 at some point, we had a minus 790 million net debt because we had a good pipe of deals already signed. but time lag in the closing. And at the end of the year, it normalized. So for us, the fact that on a quarter or on a half year, we could have some debt and then go back to zero gearing is the history of the company. Now, again, this gearing is very low. If you look at it, 5% is very low. I can tell you that when we look at what could be the rating of the company, even with a much higher gearing, we would still qualify for investment grade. As regards to policy, our intention is not to have permanent net debt to finance what I said, the normal course of business. With Christophe, we think it's good that we keep a conservative policy and keep some continuity because we consider there's leverage in some strategies. And so the only reason why we would have permanent leverage would be to finance strategic moves. But again, we have to take stock of the pace at which we realize assets. There are also opportunities on the deployment side. So the fact that we have some gearing in a year like 2023, I'd say it's quite normal.

Thank you very much. No more questions on my side.

Thank you. We will take the next question from the line. Nicola Weiseli from BNP Paribas, the line.

Hi, good morning. I've got two questions on my side. The first one would be on the departures you've seen among the leadership team and the growth strategy. I know you have announced succession plans as well, but I'm curious to know how this is impacting the current fundraising for this fund. What are the discussions you're having with LPs and what they're telling you? How do you address their concerns? And also, What should we expect in terms of the timing for this new fund, which should be a significant contributor to near-term fundraising? Should we expect delays on the fundraising there, or maybe a size that would not be as high as we could have expected? And I could also have the same question on your buyout strategy, which has experienced as well deeper tears in the leadership. Then I wanted to know in terms of the asset rotation, which areas of the portfolio you think would be more likely to contribute to realizations in the near term? And also, which are the likely buyers for that based on the discussions you have? Is it more driven by maybe a return of trade buyers or sponsors? If we could have more... call around. Would that be helpful? Thank you.

Thank you. So for the first question, we'll do two voices. I'll start as a supervisor of the growth team with the departure, and Christophe will comment on the consequences, and he will also take the second question on asset rotation. We have four people who have decided to leave the company in a team of 21 people, i.e. the Gross Equity Euroaseo team. The first thing I would say that one may not like it, but it's rather common in the industry that people decide at some point to do... something different. We know that some of the leaders have the intention to create their own entrepreneurial funds. And I'd say that's life. In addition to that, I'd like to stress that we had some divergences with the people who have left the firm. At some point, people draw the conclusion on some divergences. You know that we want to be a best-in-class private market asset manager, which comes with a number of objectives. First, complete alignment with the best interests of clients. Second, to known performance on all accounts, including realizations. And third, as we operate as a platform, a truly cooperative mindset to leverage upon the strength of the platform. Now, we are very happy that we have been able to appoint a strong leader with Alaphadel. Alaphadel has 25 years of experience in both asset management, which was not the case of the previous manager, and she has a strong experience in tech. You know, she sits at the board of MIT. She has a very deep international culture contact. She's created her venture fund, which she led years. And she's a very strong caliber in the industry. She will be able to leverage on a strong team that is very motivated to grow. And most of the people that will be with her are the real dealmakers on many of the acquisitions we've made in the portfolio. In addition, we may complete some hiring we've already started the process so we we we are confident that we have a strong team having said that it is clear that we have uh to talk to our lps as we have done and i will hand over now to christophe about a new team thank you william and um you know we share this

the same view. Well, first of all, what is important to remember is that Eurasio is a full player. When it's about covering fast-growing innovative companies, as you know, we have a very strong practice in venture and in growth, and this also includes biotech with our subsidiary called Curma. So we are a full player in this ground, I would say. Growth equity is an area where size You need to have the financial means, the financial resources to support your portfolio companies. And even more important than that, you need to have the tools to support them operationally. On these matters today, Eurazeo growth assets under management represent 4.5 billion euros. We are a clear leader. And this hasn't changed with the departure of some people. So our LPs continue to look at Eurazeo as a clear leader. And again, in this specific area of growth equity, you need to have a decent size to be perceived. by LPs as a decent, a reasonable, a credible player. So this, again, hasn't changed. And as William just remember, we have a complete team of 17 people inside the team today. So this hasn't changed. Our investors have been with us for several funds now. So we have a robust base of repeat LPs. And they are in due diligence, they are pursuing their due diligence. You may remember that the next fundraising will be called growth number four, and they are all the blue chip usual suspects of fundraising are currently in due diligence with us.

Maybe regarding the second question,

which is about asset rotation. Again, maybe what is key here is to, we have a very, your second question was about asset rotation, and what you need to have in mind is that, again, the portfolio of Eurasio is quite diversified. So to point where will be the next exits in a diversified portfolio is obviously a difficult exercise. But what we can tell you is that we have a very diversified portfolio. And again, what makes us, what makes William and I very confident on the asset rotation of Eurazeo is the fact that, as you have seen, the underlying results of the underlying portfolio companies are quite robust.

maybe an additional information, not comment, 63% of our portfolio has a duration of less than five years. So it's a fairly recent portfolio, but you can see from that that the percentage of what may come first, usually, obviously, you don't sell asset too early unless you have a a strong opportunity either to recap or do a continuation fund that has value from an IRR standpoint.

Thank you very much. If I could just quickly have a follow-up. Just regarding the people living, not just for growth, but more generally, Do they completely forego the entitlement they have in your different carry code? Or how does it work on that side?

It really depends upon the case, whether the carried is vested or not vested. If the carried is not vested, then they don't have any entitlement to it. If this is vested, we usually have six years vesting period. In some funds, we even have some clawback features, although we are not American. So that's the answer. But allow me to do a more general comment when you talk about people leaving. This company had 234 employees in 2018. It ended up the year of 2022 with 427 employees, so 1.8 times in four years, plus 17%. year on year, over four years. We are, at the end of H1 2023, 427. We are stable. We have 21 recruitments, and we have 21 departures. Some of them, you know, pertains to the executive board. So we are also managing carefully our headcounts, because in the context that we described, lower deployment in the industry and softer fundraising we also manage our cost base so sometimes when you have a departure it is also because you manage well your structure and you give opportunities to people that can be promoted which is what we've been doing with christophe we we had promotion of very talented people that was not your question but i take the opportunity because sometimes I still see that in this industry, as I've seen many years ago in the investment banking industry, there's always a bit of anxiety because someone leaves. This is a normal breathing of a company. What is our role is to obviously make sure that we have strong and diversified and well-incentivized teams.

And regarding the buyout team, because you also covered this point, and... Yes, we announced a new organization of the buyout team a few months ago. And it's important for you to perceive that our ambition in this strategy remains unchanged. The team has a positive track record. We want it to remain relevant to our clients. So once the changes, once the promotions have been announced, We receive clear marks of interest from our LPs, and currently many due diligence are underway. We expect them to materialize before the end of the year. So as you can see, this activity, for example, is now, I would say, back on track with the new organization is very well perceived.

Thank you very much. And also, thank you for the additional disclosure on fund performance. I think it's quite useful to have.

Thank you.

We're going to take the last question from line.

Hi. Good morning. Just a quick question on my side about the general outlook you see in the fundraising markets at the moment. Is it fair to say that You're seeing maybe bid-ask spreads starting to tighten again a little bit. Do you see deal flow in general starting to pick up across the industry? And second, about LP allocations, we're hearing from some of your peers that a lot of the LP allocations are almost full for this year, and that's why fundraising is also quite low. Do you expect a big pickup then next year? Thank you.

Maybe I'll start with a bid ask and then obviously Christophe will comment on LP allocation. This is a very nuanced answer that we have to do there because it depends upon the geography, the typology. So Christophe will comment on that. There is much talk about the fact that the M&A market should be much better in H2 because bid ask spreads would stabilize. We are a bit more cautious on that. For very high quality assets, we see that there is demand. The good thing is it is now attractive for strategics. They have the capacity to compete against sponsors. But I wouldn't say that, or we wouldn't say that it is, there is a bit of green shots, but I wouldn't say there is a silver lining, so it's a bit too early to say. Hence my comment earlier that we probably will be at the low end of our usual asset rotation. Now, clearly one of the very positive signs is that people sit on a huge amount of dry powder, historically high, and many of the corporates that could buy our assets have sound financial situation. So that's the only thing I would say.

And maybe regarding the appetite we perceive from LPs, so it's a very important question. And yes, temporarily there is, and it's more specifically In the institutional world, there is the denominator effect, there is the impact of interest rates. But in the long run, I don't see that many, and more specifically in continental Europe, I don't see that many institutional investors that are over allocated to alternative asset classes. It may be different in the US where you may have very, very mature institutional investors with a very, very high allocation to alternative assets. But we talk a large part of our LP base today is still with an overweight of European institutions. On top of that, if you think about the sovereign funds all over the world, Usually they are not over-allocated to Europe. And so we continue to see a long-term trend where there is appetite for less volatile, for regular outperformance in the industry. Another benefit of Eurazeo is the fact that this is what we are, and we have the full benefit of it. We are a platform. We have diversified strategy. We have several flagships. So, yes, we covered it. We benefit from the fact that the private debt activity is currently facing a more favorable environment. Yes, we also face the fact that some sector focus strategies like you may have noticed that we just announced the Smart City 2 program at something close to 400 million euros, which is quite an achievement for a niche strategy. And so the benefit of being diversified is huge. And on top of that, it has been clearly, it was clear to say it in the first half of the year result, to be present, to be able to face, to have the logistic tools, to have the middle office and the commercial organization to face the wealth management demand is a strong strength because this market reacts differently.

Thank you very much. We are at the end of this conference call. We thank you again a lot for attending. We know it's a very busy day from a results standpoint. And we wish you a good day and a happy summer if you take some break. Thank you very much.

Thank you for joining today's call.