Wendel

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining this call. I am here together with Benoit Adriault, our CFO, as well as with Olivier Hallot and Lucille Roque from our investor relations team. Let's go directly to the highlights of this first quarter. If you have the presentation in front of you, it's on page three. And let's start with the principal investments. that have, in general, performed well with total revenue growth good across the board. Some slight impact from market volatility in terms of asset valuation. I will come back to that in the presentation. On the asset management side, A very good first quarter with IK partners having posted revenues up 33%, assets under management up 9% year-to-date, and about 600 million euros raised over the quarter. Importantly, IK has closed the fundraising of its flagship fund, the 10th generation, and this fund has reached its outcap of $3.3 billion, making it the largest fund ever raised by IK Partners in its history. So a great success. When we look at the group as a whole, we're looking at $34 billion of assets under management when we include Monro Capital on the asset management side. And we are also publishing today a net asset value, which is $173 6.7 euros per share, slightly down by 4.8% year-to-date, and the loan-to-value ratio is 17.2%. Let me now go into a little bit more details on the next slide and go through the very active deployment that has taken place in terms of our roadmap over the quarter. On the principal investment side, I'm sure you will have seen that we've completed a forward sale of Bureau Veritas shares at about 27.25 euros per share. That netted us 750 million euros of proceeds up front. In terms of performance, as I said, the portfolio has performed well. with good total sales growth across the board. We have also seen our companies active on the external growth front, with four acquisitions having been completed at Bureau Veritas, CPI, and Scallion, driving the sales growth, obviously. And we are now looking at a total value for our principal investments of 6.3 billion euros, We have netted the share of our Bureau Veritas shares that we have sold forward from the total as we have received the proceeds on the cash side of 750 million. So we are now at 6.3 billion. At the same time, we've been pretty active in terms of accelerating our model transition towards more exposure to asset management with the closing of Monroe Capital that we completed on March 31st. So we have acquired 72% of Monroe for $113 billion as expected. And this is a strong rebalancing towards our business model, towards more recurring cash flows and growth thanks to this acquisition. At the same time, the fundraising activity has been very healthy. As I told you already, at IK with 600 million raised, and in total, if we add Monroe, we're talking 3.4 billion. We have not included Monroe Capital in our results for Q1 as the closing occurred on the very last day of the quarter, but Monroe Capital is now consolidated. And we will report on figures aggregating both IK Partners and Monroe going forward. So this is the number you see at the bottom right of this slide. 34 billion euros of total assets under management. So quite a large platform now that we have closed the acquisition of Monroe. And a very active quarter as well. Let's now look into the net asset value in greater detail. So as I said, 176.7 euros per share as of March 31st. Starting with the listed assets, about 2,965,000,000. So this is slightly less than at the end of December because of the forward sale that we conducted for Bureau Veritas. So the 90 million shares reflect that for the Bureau Veritas total, as you can see. In terms of unlisted assets, 3.346 million euros. And asset management, which is which corresponds to 51% of IK Partners plus 72% of Monroe Capital and a little bit of sponsor money called for about $29 million, totaled $1,778,000,000. So if we look at gross asset value, which includes cash, asset management now represents 17%. of our gross asset value, which is pretty significant. When you look back 12 months from now, this was 0%. Now it's about 17%. And if you strip out cash, which is a little bit in excess of 2 billion, you're talking slightly more than 20% of exposure of our group to our asset management platform. So this is the net asset value as of the end of March, 176.7. If we compare that to the level that we published at the end of December on slide six, you remember at the time we published 185.7 euros per share. So the total change over the first quarter is nine euros or 4.8% deviation. Starting from the top with the principal investments within the nine euros change, principal investment represents 6.5 euros. And when we zoom into that, actually, listed assets have been flat thanks to the very good performance of Target and IHS share prices over the period. This is adjusted, obviously, for the forward sale of Bureau Veritas, so this is comparable. flat levels of valuation at the listed assets portfolio. For the non-listed, the minus 6.5 euros per share is mainly the result of the decrease in market multiples and foreign exchange that we have seen over the quarter. So this is driven by the change in multiples that we use to calculate the value of our net asset value. As you know, this is quite mechanical. we have a set of comparables that we use each quarter. And we are reflecting there the decrease in market multiples on the non-listed asset side. The rest is pretty benign, less than euro change at asset management, which reflects, again, the slight decrease of the peer multiples that we use to calculate the value of IK partners. We've had a little bit of operating costs, net financing results and changes in other assets and liabilities representing 1.7 euros in total. We are still seeing positive carry on our financing with cash returns a little bit in excess of our cost of debt and we are very focused on controlling our costs as well which has resulted in this minus 1.7 euros and in total the nine euros per share over Q1, so a little bit less than 5% change compared to the end of last year. Let's now double click on the performance in terms of revenue of each of our portfolio companies on page seven. As I told you, we have seen a good revenue growth performance across the board. with all companies being in positive territory, save for Scallion, because of very challenging market conditions in the sector. If I start with Bureau Veritas, 1.5 billion euros revenues, plus 8.3 total growth, 7.3 organic growth, with three businesses at Bureau Veritas having delivered double-digit growth, and a very healthy level of growth elsewhere as well, which led Bureau Veritas to confirm its outlook and also announcing a €200 million share buyback, which is, I think, a great sign of confidence. Stahl has posted plus 2% with a strong impact from Scope, related to the acquisition of Wild Burger last year. As you can see, organic growth is slightly negative at 5.4%. Scallion is the one that is in negative territory, minus 6%, despite the good impact from scope related to acquisitions that were completed in 2024 and in 2025 as well. of 4.9%. The organic growth is negative at 11.2, reflecting the challenging conditions in the market for engineering services and IT services. I'm sure you're following that and will have seen that this market is currently under pressure. CPI posted a healthy level of both organic and total growth, 5.3% and 5.8% respectively. With a little bit of help from SCOPE, CPI completed the acquisition of VERGE and this is a positive development showing the potential in terms of M&A that exists for CPI. ACAMS posted very good results with organic growth shy of 7%. We are very happy to see the first signs of a very large amount of work that is going on at ACAMS with a new management team now fully operational and a lot of initiatives that have been carried out over the past quarters now bearing fruit and delivering this very good growth. GlobEducate, lastly, 11% total growth, a little bit of help again from Scope. As you know, this is part of the investment thesis with 3.5% related to acquisitions and very good growth coming from really the organic part of the business. In terms of asset management, which is again solely IK Partners for this quarter, but starting from next, it will be IK Partners plus Monroe, but just for this quarter. very impressive level of growth at IK Partners plus 33%, which reflects the healthy fundraising and the elevated activity levels at IK Partners. So now if we step back a little bit and look at the group as a whole, both the principal investment side and the third-party asset management side, Actually, we're talking 40 billion euros of assets, which is quite sizable. 6.3 billion on the principal investment side, 34 billion on the asset management side. I think we have a good level of diversification on both legs. Principal investment is about 45% exposed to business services, a category that we've been investing in for quite a long time now. and with secular trends that make sound levels of growth. About 35% exposed to education, professional training, and tech. Here again, some very good trends and growth. And about 20% in industrials, with Stalin and Tarket that you can see on this chart. On the asset management side, we have 45% in Europe with IK Partners, 15 billion, and about 55% with Monroe in the U.S., 19%. We believe this provides us with a very interesting exposure and quite diversified, actually, when you look at the various countries those managers are investing in. and 34 billion of AUM, about 500 people in 11 countries, so quite a large and diversified group already. In total, if we look at the economic exposure in terms of geography, aggregating both principal investment and asset management platform, we have about 35% in both North America and Europe, The rest spread between Asia and the rest of the world. So quite a diversified exposure as well in here. Let's spend a little bit of time on asset management before going to concluding remarks on page 9. So as I told you, asset management is now a very significant value creation driver within the mix. for us with 17% of gross asset value altogether and about 20, 21% if we strip out cash from the gross asset value. And there we are seeing a very positive momentum with revenue growth of 33% at IK, thanks to the strong fundraising. Altogether, IK partners and Monroe have raised 3.4 billion in total just for this quarter, which is quite a big number, I think. Now we are looking at 34 billion of AUMs, as I said, well spread across geographies and a very good positioning. on the small and mid-cap markets, which are really, I think, sweet spots in terms of where capital needs to be invested, in terms of ability to generate liquidity and performance for limited partners. And we are expecting the benefits of the platform to materialize gradually over the next few quarters. building on this very good momentum in terms of fundraising and the very impressive success of IK partners with their 10th generation fund, which closed at its hard cap. So very good development there. In terms of concluding and takeaways, I think the most important for me is that the transformation is well underway. And you are now looking at a pretty different company than 12 months ago, given the move that we've made in asset management. In terms of financial performance, I think our net asset value has been pretty resilient with slight impact from market multiples mostly, so down 4.8% over Q1. Given the current environment, I think this is showing good resilience. This is the result of the good performance of our group companies across the board. Obviously, we have some sectors that are performing better than others, but overall, our exposure in terms of geographic diversification, in terms of underlying markets, provides us with a good level of resiliency. Portfolio rotation has been strong, and I think we've had a good timing with regards to both conducting this forward sale of Bureau Veritas shares and investing in Monroe and in IK about a year ago. The asset management business is now really an important, if not significant part of our performance and will be for the future, as I said. In terms of the tariffs, we haven't seen any material impact until now. Liberation Day was on April 2nd, so just a few days after the end of the quarter. But when we looked at the portfolio, we expect that those tariffs will have a limited direct impact on our portfolio given the exposure that we have. where we see maybe a higher level of risk is in terms of global macro and the evolution of the dollar, which are more the after effects of the tariffs, when they will be implemented and depending on the level that is finally going to be implemented. In face of that, we have a very strong financial structure with our LTV at 17.2%. and a very strong liquidity of 1.7 billion euros. We are happy to confirm, to see our rating confirmed by S&P, reflecting the portfolio rotation that we carried out and the reduction in our loan-to-value. So we have, I think, a good level of caution as well as the resources required to continue to upgrade our business model and accelerate portfolio rotation. We are, as I said, very happy about the fundraising momentum that we see at our asset management platform and also happy about the performance of our principal investment companies and their levels of leverage at this juncture. Lastly, we've announced a strong increase in our dividend, which is part of our, I think now, of the equity story of Vandel. We've announced 4.7 euros per share to be paid this May, which is a 17.5% increase, so quite important one. This is based on our new dividend policy, which is now as you know, determined as 2.5% of net asset value gradually increasing to 3.5%. We already passed the 2.5% and the yield now represents based on current share price levels about 5.5%. So this shows our level of confidence and I think also reflects the ongoing transformation of our business model. This will continue and we are very focused on executing on our strategy as well as being very focused on the performance of our companies. I will end the presentation there and will be happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you very much.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press 1-1 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it in the box and click Submit. We will take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Jeroen van Ecken from Digroof Petercam. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Yeah, good afternoon. I have a couple of questions, but I'll start off with three and then I will go back into the queue. So first one is the multiple compression in the private portfolio. Could you give us some idea whether this was across the board or whether there were some particular companies that were more hit? by this multiple compression? And was the multiple compression in any way impacted by the fact that you added or removed any peers from the peer set? So that's the first one. Secondly, on Scallion, we've seen the organic decline of 11%. Have you seen any signs of recovery in this sector yet? And should we pencil in a bit of improvement in H2, for example, or is that already Is that still too early? And then finally, on the leverage and acquisition part, because we know that you want to further expand your asset management business, but since you are at the LTV of 17%, I'm a bit wondering what is now the way forward. Does it mean that you first need to sell something before you can buy something new? Or would you be willing to go beyond the 20% LTV