EQT AB (publ)

Good morning everyone and welcome to EKT's H1 results. It's been a very busy first half where we executed strongly across the board despite the volatile market backdrop. First, we delivered on our focus on realizations and returning liquidity to our clients. Exit volumes more than tripled compared to the first half of last year. And over the past 12 months, our realizations exceeded investments. Realizations delivered a weighted average returns of 2.3x over the last 12 months. Second, we delivered on our fundraising agenda with the final close of Infra 6 at hard cap, a strong first close of BPA 9 and the launch of EQT 11. Third, we reached several milestones in our private wealth journey. EQT Nexus is now available in more than 20 countries and we launched two new evergreen vehicles. And not least, we had a CEO transition. And today, Per will cover not only our results, but also take some time to reflect on the market dynamics, industry developments, and importantly, the strategic priorities for EQT. So let us go directly to Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. I'm very excited to present to you all today our first half results as the CEO of IKIT. In a volatile market environment, we remain well positioned to continue to deliver on our objectives. Our strong global presence and the geographical diversification puts us in a good position to continue to deliver Alpha for clients in a volatile and increasingly multipolar world. Our global platform gives us an edge in relation to both monetizing investments and sourcing new deals. And this is actually particularly true in the current slower deal-making environment that we're seeing in parts of the world. We continue to find attractive thematic investment opportunities, and we put 7 billion euros of capital to work for our clients during the first half. And we continue to have an attractive pipeline. I'd highlight Asia in particular and places such as India and Japan, where we expect more activity during the second half. Being one of the largest platforms in the private markets industry also helps us achieve several other things. Thanks to our scale, we can continue to invest into our sector expertise, our value creation toolbox, our digital and AI capabilities. We can stay ahead of technological shifts, we can stay invested in the right themes and sub-sectors, and we will be able to continue to future-proof our portfolio companies. It's taken us more than 30 years to build this platform. It's taken big investments, and it really only works thanks to the strong alignment that we have across the firm around our values. Of course, there are regional cultural differences, but our values are really non-negotiable. At IKIT, we're respectful, entrepreneurial, high-performing, informal, and transparent. And these values combined foster a culture of global teamwork, knowledge sharing, and constant improvement. And we want to continue to build and run Nikiti in a way that we remain true to our values, that we remain an agile and entrepreneurial organization. A high-performance organization centered around deal-making, value creation in everything we do, and excellence in client service and capital raising. And this has been a key focus of mine during the first 100 days of my leadership. And I'll come back to that later on in the presentation. Next slide, please. Performance is what enables our future growth. It gives us the right to win both with institutional and with private wealth clients. Over the last three decades, we have consistently delivered strong risk adjusted returns. Across strategies, on average, we've realized returns of more than two and a half times. During this time, we've also consistently delivered alpha to our investors outperforming relevant public market indices. Next slide, please. Thanks to our thematic investment approach, we're invested in attractive businesses with strong management teams in non-cyclical sectors supported by long-term structural growth trends. And it's exactly these type of assets that investors want to allocate capital to in volatile times. Today we have top quartile DPIs and we continue to work systematically with exit prioritizations. Maintaining attractive DPIs is strategically important to us. It earns us the trust from our clients to be able to raise new funds and also the trust from our investors to stay invested in our winners. Today, we're in a position that unless terms are attractive, we don't have to monetize deals in any of our funds. Having a disciplined approach to managing exits also ensures that we maintain a young and thematically invested portfolio over time and that our deal teams don't waste time on legacy assets that will not really drive fund returns. The way we monetize deals in a volatile environment during the first half is a testament to this mindset and our differentiated exit capabilities. Over the last 12 months, we've generated proceeds of approximately 20 billion euros for investors whilst delivering on our return targets. And during this time, across the key funds, we produced a weighted average MOIC of 2.3 times. All key funds in realization mode show top quartile DPIs based on the latest available benchmarking data. Our exit push is helping us maintain that young and thematically invested portfolio. Only 20% of the portfolio has been held for more than five years. And on average, the portfolio is only approximately three and a half years old. We have a strong exit pipeline also for the second half of the year. So if market conditions remain as they are today, I'm optimistic about our ability to continue to de-risk funds and monetize investments. Next slide, please. Our strong progress on value creation and de-risking funds is even more differentiated in the currently slower deal-making environment that we're seeing in certain parts of the world. The flagship vintages invested between the years of 2018 to 2022 illustrate this well, and we have three examples on this page. All of these funds are invested in attractive, resilient sectors and high quality market leading companies with pricing power. BPA7, a 2018 vintage fund, has come the furthest on its value creation journey and has already made 11 exits. The fund is invested across Asia, in India, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. And India represents the largest part, approximately a third of invested capital. It's invested in the healthcare sector, in tech services, and industrial tech, and is expected to generate a gross MOIC above plan. EQT 8, a fund that is not shown here on this slide, that's also a 2018 vintage fund and is in a very similar advantageous position. Turning to our 2020 vintages, EQT 9 and Infrastructure 5. As we invested during 2020 and 2021, we knew that we were in a high valuation environment that was fueled by low interest rates and easy access to liquidity. We therefore made sure to invest those funds in a disciplined way when it comes to sector selection, geographic diversification, also investment pace. We made sure to assume significant multiple contractions in our exit multiple assumptions, and we prioritized flexible financing structures over maximum leverage. And all of this is really paying off for us now. And if you look at the relative performance of these funds, they are in a strong position. Of course, we also do have challenges in those funds, as you would really expect from almost any of our prior vintages. This is part of our model. But we deal with these challenges in a responsible way. And this is also very much reflected in our overall assessments, in our on-plan assessments for these funds. In EQT 9, we've to date had three exit events, Idealista, Bayer Ref and IFS. The recent stake sale of IFS valued the company at an enterprise value of 15 billion euros. And this means that this investment is now valued at close to six times gross moic in Fund 9. And we see significant further potential ahead. Looking at prior funds, riding the winners like IFS typically has an outsized impact on overall fund returns. Post these exits, EQT9 has reached a DPI of 0.3, which is relatively strong for this vintage. Turning to infrastructure five, this fund has made one full exit so far, the sale of FibroClar last year. The exit was realized at our target returns, but it was relatively small in absolute amounts and hence not really moving the needle when it comes to DPIs for the fund. Importantly, just like for EQT 9, also in Infrastructure 5, we have a clear winner in the fund with EdgeConnex. Since our entry in 2020 and during our ownership, EdgeConnex has become one of the largest data center platforms globally. The investment was recently valued at close to $20 billion in a minority stake sale. For both IKT9 and Infrastructure 5, we're confident to reach our target MOIC returns, but we'll need a somewhat longer time to get there compared to prior vintages. And many investments in these funds are still in value creation mode and will only gradually enter into realization mode. Next slide, please. Since our IPO in 2019, we've grown fundraising volumes by nearly four times. A testament to our strong track record and relative outperformance. The recently released PEI, infra and real estate rankings for 2025 really speaks for itself. EQT continues to rise in the rankings and has become the number one European player across strategies. EQT is the second largest private equity firm globally now based on capital raised. And even though we're one of the largest players in the private markets industry today, we still see significant potential to build and grow our global platform from here. We will continue to invest into our presence across Asia, Europe and the US. And whilst we have a very strong presence already in Europe, we still see scope to grow our activities in parts of Europe. Having said this, geographically, we do see the biggest remaining growth potential for us in Asia and in the US. Across strategy, we see an opportunity to scale all our existing platforms. In private capital, there's an opportunity to really substantially grow our private equity business in the US and in Asia. Asia is set for tremendous growth ahead, and we're uniquely positioned to take an outsized share of that growth. For example, The buyout market in India, one of our most important markets in Asia, is expected to triple to more than $50 billion by 2030. In private capital, we're also excited about the potential that we see in some of our newly launched strategies, long-haul strategies, the growth funds and the mid-market funds. In equity infrastructure, we see potential to scale all the existing platforms that we have. And geographically, we want to leverage also here our strong Pan-Asia presence to increase our activities in that part of the world. In EQT real estate, we've maintained a disciplined thematic investment approach and we've had strong performance, including a relatively young portfolio. And relative to the size of the asset class, of course, our business within real estate is still small. So this is an area at EQT where we believe that we can grow substantially from here. And to do this, we want to continue to invest into that platform to broaden our thematic investment focus beyond logistics also to other areas. And a good example of such an area could be data centers where we see also synergies with our infrastructure platform. Next slide, please. The private markets industry is a cyclical growth industry. Recently, the deal-making environment in some regions has been a bit slower. As a result, the industry also is currently facing a more challenging fundraising environment. Mid to long term, though, the secular growth trajectory remains very much intact. Over the past decades, private markets have outperformed public markets and investors are looking for managers like EQT to get access to diversification and global alpha. The largest share of the expected growth in absolute terms will continue to come from institutional investors. But the most rapid relative growth will come from the private wealth segment. And this is also the area in the private markets that is seeing the fastest and most significant developments when it comes to products as well as distribution channels. EQT is very well positioned to benefit from this growth, both with our institutional clients and within private wealth. Around 75% of private markets AUM and the growth in AUM in the next decade is expected to come from institutional investors. About a third of that growth is expected to come from sovereign wealth funds. At DGT, we have strong and long-term relationships really with all of our institutional clients. the average tenure of our top 100 clients is 15 years. We expect to continue to capture an outsized share of the institutional growth in the industry. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, clients are increasingly concentrating commitments with fewer managers. They are increasingly focusing on scale managers such as EQT that have a strong track record. Almost all of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds are invested with us, and we're continuously growing our share of their private markets allocations. Secondly, around two-thirds of our fund investors over the last five years have only invested in one EQT product. meaning there's significant opportunity for deeper engagement with our existing client base. We're also driving product innovation, new thematic strategies, co-investment programs, continuation vehicles, new exit concepts, and this also helps us attract new clients. And finally, as a result of the volatile and uncertain market environment, we've also seen a mindset shift among private market investors. For the first time since I started in the industry, investors are really focused on portfolio diversification. Many institutional and private investors are realizing a need to rebalance their portfolios. Thanks to our scale across Europe, Asia, and North America, we're really uniquely positioned to help investors achieve this objective. At TQT, we have a differentiated ability to deliver global alpha. During the last 12 months, we've attracted 60 new clients to our platform. And also in private wealth, we're seeing very encouraging, very strong momentum this year. We've seen a breakthrough in our private wealth journey, reaching several milestones that Gustav will elaborate on shortly. Next slide, please. Looking ahead... In the EQT leadership team, we want to make sure that EQT is ready for this next phase of our growth. As the new CEO, this has been my priority out of the gates. Over the last couple of months, I've been working together with the leadership team to review our organization. Together, we've taken a number of actions to ensure that we maintain a firm-wide focus on excellence in deal-making, value creation, and client services. that we stay true to our values and keep our entrepreneurial culture as we scale, and that we have an effective and efficient operating model so that we can continue to invest into our growth opportunities whilst delivering on the margin targets that we've committed to as a public company. To achieve this, we've decided to take action and to reduce complexity and drive simplification in parts of our business. For instance, we're combining the early-stage strategies into one integrated platform, EQT Ventures and EQT Growth, under the leadership of Carolina Brocado. We've decided to further integrate our value creation functions within digital AI and sustainability further into the investment organization. And when it comes to AI, we want to stay at the cutting edge of the technological development, both in terms of how we support our portfolio companies in driving value creation, but of course also how we embed AI into our own organization. We're also merging the client relations and capital markets platforms under the leadership of Jim Yu. We see an opportunity to drive even more innovation at the intersection of capital markets and client services to create even closer and more strategic partnerships with our investors. As a result of all of these initiatives, there's been an opportunity to also reduce the size of the executive committee from 10 to eight members today. And all of these actions will help us remain that entrepreneurial, lean and agile organization that can move quickly in a volatile world. And this will put us also in the best possible position to continue to actively participate in the ongoing consolidation of the industry. As I mentioned earlier, fundraising markets remains a bit more challenging near term. And during this time at DQT, we will continue to make investments into the strategic growth areas, AI, private wealth, branding, marketing, to name just a few. But of course, not everyone in the industry will be able to make those investments. We therefore believe that all of these factors mean that industry consolidation is likely to accelerate. In the EGT Executive Committee, we want EGT to be the partner of choice for well-performing players in our industry looking to become part of a scaled, alpha-focused, high-performance platform. We enjoy a good reputation as a consolidator in the industry following some of the successful transactions that we've already done. In particular, I'd highlight the success of the integration of bearings. And that is also something that is well known in the private markets industry. Our North Star is that we want to continue to build the most attractive platform in the industry, delivering global alpha and excellence in client services and innovation. Whilst investing in these growth opportunities, we remain committed to our ambition to reach a fee-related EBITDA margin of 55% plus. Assuming we deliver on our fundraising agenda, we will see a step up in management fees. We also expect to see the benefits from scaling some of our recent growth initiatives, including our investments into growing within private wealth. And we will continue to seek ways, of course, to always run EQT in a better way. You know our philosophy. Everything can always be improved everywhere at all times. The ongoing right-sizing of the organization and the new leadership setup is part of that journey. It's a journey to make sure EKT remains agile, fast-moving, and increasingly profitable so that we can continue to invest into the growth opportunities that we see. With that, I hand it over to Gustav. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. The first half of 2025 saw strong fundraising momentum with gross inflows of €18 billion, of which €15 billion in our key funds. Infrastructure 6 closed at €21.5 billion, significantly exceeding the €20 billion target and hitting the hard cap. BPA9 held its first close in April and has secured 11.4 billion US dollars in commitments to date. We expect the fundraising to materially conclude this year and to reach the hard cap of 14.5 billion US dollar upon final close in early 26th. We've also launched the fundraising for EQT 11, our next generation flagship fund for private capital in Europe and North America, targeting 23 billion euros, which so far has been well received by our clients, not at least on the back of the strong exit track record during 25. We expect EQT 11 to be activated during the first half of 26. The key fundraisers will then be followed by infrastructure seven, where we expect to activate that fund during the second half of 26. Furthermore, we continue to raise capital for certain other funds, including expecting a strong first close for equity real estate logistics Europe fund five in July. As a reminder, the predecessor fund was closed in 21 at 2.1 billion euros, and we expect a fairly significant increase of fund size for Fund 5. Furthermore, we continue fundraising for two of our first-time funds in EQT Transition Infra and EQT Healthcare Growth. where our previous guidance still holds, i.e. healthcare growth at 1 to 2 billion euros and transition infra more around 2 to 4 billion euros. We currently have dry powder of approximately 50 billion euros with around 10 billion euros still to be fee generating upon deployment. Next slide, please. As previously stated, we expect to raise approximately 100 billion euros in the current fundraising cycle, primarily driven by the institutional channel and increasingly complemented by private wealth. Of the 100 billion, the largest portion, approximately 60%, will come from our free flagship funds across private equity and infrastructure. For these funds, we expect a material absolute growth. For example, EQT 11 is targeting 23 billion, which is 3 billion above the target for EQT 10, which is then a 15% step up. Next to the flagships are our newer and scaling strategies. These are critical for EQT's long-term profitability and platform diversification over time. We expect some of them to become breakout strategies in terms of size and growth potential. That said, we're still in a cycle where newer strategies take a little bit longer to scale. Real estate continues to scale through our logistics-focused strategies in the US and Europe. As I mentioned, fundraising is ongoing for our European Value Add Fund. And in 26, we will also initiate fundraising for the next value-add fund in the US, where the last fund was around 5 billion US dollars. In total, we expect private wealth to represent around 15 to 20% of fundraising in this cycle, consisting of three main types of fundraisings. Firstly, into the closed-ended funds via feeder funds. Secondly, into the closed-ended funds via our equity nexus strategies. And thirdly, alongside the closed-ended funds via our US evergreen structures, as well as via co-investments in the nexus strategies, which is around one third of the total capital in the nexus funds. We expect that this third bucket could contribute up to 10% of the capital raised in this cycle. Next slide, please. As Per mentioned, in the last six months, we reached several milestones in our private wealth journey on the back of clients increasingly selecting EQT to access global alpha. We have recently launched two additional Evergreen products. Firstly, in April, EQT Nexus infrastructure was launched, providing access to our infrastructure platform to clients in EMEA, Asia and Canada. And secondly, on July 1st, we launched our private equity vehicle targeting U.S. private wealth investors with the global private bank as its first distribution partner and expecting a large wire house to start providing inflow by September 1st. Fundraising for ICT Nexus has progressed well during the first half of 2025, with more than €500 million raised and several new markets opened up. In June, a private wealth initiative in Japan raised around €125 million during its first month. Japan is a key market for ICT's private wealth strategy, especially in Asia. We're still early in our private wealth journey, but the progress in the first half of 25 shows that we're gaining momentum and that we have the right to win in this channel as well over time through providing the global alpha. In June, we raised around 300 million euros across our evergreen strategies, setting a good goalpost for monthly inflows. In the second half of 2025, we expect to launch two additional vehicles, one for one US structure for infrastructure and one additional European structure for private equity, creating increasing opportunity for scale across our evergreen offering. And with that, I will hand over to Olof to talk about investments and exit activity. Next slide, please.