EQT AB (publ)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to EQT's Q1 announcement 2026. It's been a busy first quarter at EQT. We kicked off the year by announcing the combination with Color Capital. In Galderma, we completed the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever to deliver the largest single fund capital gain ever. We closed BPA9 at hard cap. We launched our new AI infrastructure strategy, and we had a record quarter in terms of net inflows to our evergreens. This quarter again faced significant volatility across markets, which affected our fund valuations in different directions. So we'll cover all of these points in further detail over the next 30 minutes. And with that, let me hand over to Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof. And good morning, everyone, from IKT's London office. It's been a volatile quarter driven by rapid advances of AI technology, as well as geopolitical uncertainty. And that uncertainty having a short-term impact on energy prices and also the broader macroeconomic outlook. In this environment at DQT, we remain focused on executing on our strategic priorities. And as we're entering the second quarter, I'm happy to say that we continue to see strong and broad-based momentum across our business. You will have seen that we yesterday in our infrastructure strategies launched our new AI infrastructure fund, seeded by our highly successful investment in EdgeConnex. Our infrastructure business has seen strong deal flow during the quarter and been very active since the start of the year. Most notably, we launched a $30 billion plus public takeover offer for AES, a very exciting and highly thematic investment in the energy sector. In private capital, we pursued a number of attractive new investments out of our early stage strategies, and we continue to monetize investments. As Olof said, most importantly, IKT8's remaining stake in Galderma. In the quarter, we also saw strong fundraising momentum as we are continuing to take market share. We closed BPA Fund 9 at $15.6 billion, a close to 40% increase in fund size compared to BPA Fund 8. And for IKT 11, we're also seeing strong momentum and we see this fundraise being on track for a strong first close around mid-year. Our evergreen vehicles for the private wealth segment saw record net inflows of 1 billion euros during the quarter. And the combination with Kohler Capital has really been very well received by stakeholders, including our clients. And the transaction is on track to close in the mid to latter part of the third quarter. Business momentum in Kohler Capital remains strong, and we target to double fee-based assets under management within four years. Across strategies, we have more than 40 billion euros of dry powder, putting us in a strong position strategically, and this doesn't yet include the upcoming EGT11 fund. During this time of volatility, we remain focused on executing on our exit agenda. With Galderma, we executed the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever done, despite significant and elevated geopolitical uncertainty. Similar to last year, in our exit pipeline, we target approximately 30 exit events this year. And if I look at the pipeline, I see that exit pipeline nicely spread across our focus sectors. Our target exit volumes for the year is in line with last year's volumes. Next slide, please. AI is arguably the most important investment team of our generation. It will substantially impact most of the sectors and businesses that we're investing into. And it will change how we drive value creation in our investments. And it will also change how we run our firm. I'm saying this with all humility, given the rapid advances of technology. But if I was asked to design a private markets platform from scratch to best capture the AI investment opportunity, I would design it exactly the way EQT is set up today. First, we are the only scaled private markets firm with both a ventures and a growth strategy. Out of these funds, we make attractive investments into native AI winners, examples being Harvey, Parloa, and Lovable, just to name a few. Our early stage platform also provides the rest of the firm with valuable insights and access to talent. This helps us in our deal selection and gives us access to the capabilities required to drive ambitious AI-based value creation and transformation plans in our private equity portfolio. Second, being active across infrastructure, real estate, private capital, and soon also secondaries means that we can allocate capital to the entire spectrum of compelling AI opportunities. In infrastructure, we invest into the physical assets required to power AI. We now even have a dedicated strategy to do just that. The infrastructure team is working closely together with the real estate business on the AI opportunity. For instance, out of our real estate funds, we source land for data centers. And post the acquisition of Collar, we will also be well positioned to invest into the market dislocation triggered by AI, particularly in the private credit space. In our private equity funds, we target investments where we can leverage our active ownership model, our governance model, our expertise and resources to implement ambitious AI-based value creation plans. Across the private equity portfolio, we're already seeing the impact as we're accelerating both AI-driven revenue growth and AI-enabled cost savings in companies such as IFS, CFC, IVC Evidencia, and Nordic Ferries, to name just a few. We want to make sure we can provide our deal teams and portfolio companies with direct access to the most relevant AI expertise. This is why we keep on developing our ecosystem of AI natives and strategic partnerships, partnering with key players such as the large language model providers and other companies that are at the forefront of AI technology. And this is nothing new for us. We've been building our AI capabilities really over the last 10 years when we first launched EKT Digital and EKT Motherbrain. And thanks to this head start, we're well set up also in our internal processes, including how we structure the data that we sit on across our firm. And this way, IKIT, you could say, is really set up already in a way that is very similar to an AI-native organization. Next slide, please. At EQT, we want to be the most attractive global provider of international alpha. This is how we think about developing our platform, how we set our priorities. And as a result of this mindset, we took the strategic decision not to be in private credit, but instead to grow our active ownership strategies through the combinations with BPA in Asia, the acquisition of Exeter in real estate, and LSP within private capital. And, of course, now most recently, the decision to build our capabilities within secondaries by joining forces with Kohler Capital. Being able to clearly articulate your sources of alpha and value creation matters more than ever, and the scale players in our industry are pulling ahead. Post Caller Capital, we now have four top performing platforms delivering global alpha. The most attractive returns and the most attractive solutions for clients. We're now taking the next steps to align our governance and reporting more closely with our four business lines so that we can further sharpen accountability, drive even closer global collaboration, and really maximize the potential in all of those business lines. Bert Janssens has been appointed chair of a newly created global private capital management committee, and Bert will be joining the executive committee. We see strong potential to grow our real estate platform, both organically and through M&A, which is why I've asked Henry Steinberg, head of IKT Real Estate, to join the executive committee. As part of these changes, Lennart Blecher will step down from the committee, but Lennart will continue to work closely with myself and with the relevant business line heads, and he'll continue as chair of Real Assets. Massoud Omayoun continues to lead IKITI infrastructure. And of course, we also look forward to welcoming Jeremy, Jeremy Kohler, to the executive committee once the combination with Kohler Capital closes in Q3. Next slide, please. Let me just double click on the AI opportunity that we're seeing in our infrastructure business. The newly launched AI infrastructure strategy builds on IKT's deep expertise and leadership in digital and energy infrastructure. Through our ownership of Edge Connects, IKT Infra today operates more than 90 data centers globally. On the connectivity side, 29 million miles of fiber network has been deployed globally across our portfolio. And the energy companies that were invested in IKITI Infra have a development pipeline exceeding 100 gigawatts. The enterprise value of our digital and energy assets combined today is north of $100 billion. We see global demand for AI compute and hence data centers and power consumption only accelerating. Industry estimates suggest that $4 trillion will be invested into data centers and energy infrastructure to meet this demand over the next five years. At the same time, we see bottlenecks in the form of access to power, reinforcing the need for a coordinated investment approach across digital and energy infrastructure. And this is why we're now launching a dedicated EQT AI infrastructure strategy focused on investing in a holistic way in the physical infrastructure that AI requires. The strategy is seeded by Edge Connects, one of the world's leading data center platforms. And as I mentioned, an existing EQT infrastructure investment. It sits in funds four and funds five in our infrastructure platform. The fund will have an open-ended structure and will enable EQT investors to double down on existing AI winners that are providing integrated end-to-end solutions to the global hyperscalers and large language model providers. Next slide, please. During the quarter, we saw significant share price volatility and pressure on listed software companies as fears of an AI-led business model disruption for this sector spread. Against this background, I'd like to just now take the opportunity to share some perspectives on how we at EQT think about investing in software. Software today represents approximately 7% of our fee-based assets under management and 14% of the fee-based assets under management in private capital. We have, over the last years, built the capabilities necessary to properly assess AI risk and opportunities. The EQT software investments are focused on mission critical B2B enterprise software, companies that are really deeply embedded into the workflow of their clients, supported by proprietary data, and are really incredibly difficult to displace. These software companies will be the primary diffusion mechanism for AI into large organizations. So we're really invested into software companies that will be at the center of the transition to AI. All of these investments that we've made in software are control investments that allow us to attract the best AI forward CEOs and to move quickly in terms of implementing ambitious AI based transformation plans. Performance is strong and on average across our software portfolio, net sales grew at low to mid teens and operating profit at 20 to 30% last year. And this momentum in our software portfolio has continued into the first quarter. And in 2026, we expect the operating performance of our software companies to significantly outperform broader public market software indices. Zooming in on the individual fund exposures and looking at each of the key funds in private capital, starting with EQT7 and EQT8. Both of these funds are largely de-risked and the funds are performing above plan with top quarter performance for their respective vintages. To date, we've had four software exits across these funds at a weighted average gross MOIC of approximately five times. We still hold one software asset in each of EQT7 and EQT8. Turning to EQT9, where we last year sold a minority stake in IFS, crystallizing a gross MOIC of more than seven times. IFS remains exceptionally well positioned also going forward. IFS is actually a great example of the AI-based value creation potential that we see inherent in mission-critical software companies. IFS has been embedding AI into its processes and products for years and company management is continuing on this journey. In 2026, IFS will, as part of that journey, actually reducing its workforce by approximately 20% thanks to realizing AI-driven efficiency gains across its business. And the annual savings that IFS will be achieving as part of that of up to 100 million euros will be 80 to 90 percent reinvested into growing the company's library of industry leading AI agentic solutions. This will help IFS continue to expand margins and continue to grow ARR at more than 20%. And this is quite outstanding, also in light of the fact that its sales are quite a bit above 1 billion euros today. The strong performance of IFS continues to underpin also our confidence in the performance outlook for EQT9. As we know, EQT9 was invested in a tricky vintage for the private markets industry. But EQT9, we can today confidently say, is invested in a number of winners. Companies such as IFS that I mentioned, but also BESPAC, Bayer Ref, Idealista, and CFC, just to name a few. So we're confident that IKT 9 will be a top performing fund for its vintage. In IKT 10, it's still early days, but you know, software, represents below 30% of the fund. And these investments that we've made are still early in their value creation journey. But also here, we've already started to see the positive impact from AI, helping us drive revenue growth and margin expansion. The underlying performance across the EQT 10 software portfolio is strong. And we're confident also here in the outlook for these investments. If we turn to Asia, software today represents a fairly small share of the portfolio. The existing software investments are also here performing well. But given the limited exposure that we have so far, in particular also in BPA Fund 9, we actually see the current market dislocation as an attractive opportunity to allocate more capital to software. And we're excited about our pipeline. Next slide, please. There's really no better way to illustrate EQT's differentiated thematic investment strategy and hands-on approach to value creation than Galderma. This investment ticks all the boxes for how we unlock structural alpha at EQT. from how we source investments to our unique ownership and governance model with access to world-class buy-in shares and CEOs, to our value creation and differentiated exit capabilities. EQT8 and its co-investors acquired Galderma in 2019, and post a complex carve-out, we embarked on a full transformation of the business. Caldera was listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange in the beginning of 2024. And since the IPO, the share price has approximately tripled. And within two years of the IPO, we were able to fully monetize the investment, sending back approximately $26 billion to investors. The investment generated approximately $20 billion in capital gains, making Galderma the largest fully monetized capital gain from a single fund in the history of our industry. Our final sell-down was the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever done at $6 billion. After Antisemex, Nord Anglia, IFS, and EdgeConnex, to name just a few, Galderma is just another recent example of how we keep on producing those incredibly attractive investments and long-term winners across our target sectors, geographies, and strategies. With that, I'll now hand it over to Gustav, who will start by giving you the latest on the caller acquisition. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. Since the announcement in January, we've been truly encouraged by the positive response that we've received. Clients and employees on both sides have been very supportive, while industry peers, shareholders and other stakeholders have recognized the strategic logic. Meanwhile, the caller business momentum continues to accelerate. In private credit secondaries, the team is just about to launch CCO3 with very good traction, especially given the current interesting dislocation in the credit market at the moment. In private equity secondaries, the team is preparing to launch its next flagship fund, SIP10, during Q3 on the back on very strong fund performance. In private wealth, Kohler had over $400 million of net inflows in Q1, despite the negative sentiment around credit in the evergreen world. And finally, in insurance, Kohler continues to have strong momentum in terms of structuring bespoke solutions for the insurance channel. The integration plan is progressing at full speed and we're on track to close by mid to end of Q3. And as Per said, we're confident in our ability to scale collar and double fee-paying AUM within four years. Next slide, please. Turning to fundraising, we're off to a strong start of the year. Starting with BPA9, which closed at US$15.6 billion in total commitments, hitting the hard cap and with fee-generating commitments of US$14.9 billion. This makes BPA9 the largest Asia-focused private equity fund ever raised. The fund attracted more than 75 new investors, including more than 45 investors from EQT's other strategies. And these 45 clients contributed close to 25% of the total commitments. This is a clear validation to the success of the combination. With that turning to EQT11, fundraising momentum remains strong and we expect the fund to have a first close around mid-year. And then finally, on the flagships, we're preparing to launch fundraising for Infra7 around mid-year. Despite the volatile market environment, we see our fundraising progresses strongly across a broad base of investors, as the concentration of capital to larger managers is just accelerating. In total, during this year, we will be in the market with more than 10 other closed-ended fundraisers, and many of these fundraisings will continue into 2027 with the full fee-paying AUM contribution continuing into that year. And then moving over to the open-ended institutional products, we expect these to grow as a share of our fee-paying AUM. Active core infra is continuing to see strong development. And as Per said, we're excited to introduce the AI infrastructure strategy where our institutional clients can access long-term return opportunities at scale. And our private wealth clients have a unique opportunity to get dedicated exposure to AI infrastructure. The fund is an open-ended structure which charges fees on NAV, effective from early Q2. The fee rate is broadly in line with our other long-haul strategies, and the strategy is also eligible for performance fees. In terms of initial size, think about this in line with our guidance for other first-time funds. And then over time, we see the potential to scale this strategy to become a key fund. And then finally, let me comment on our Evergreen offering. Next slide, please. Soon three years since the launch of our first Evergreen vehicle, we continue to see strong momentum building. Quarterly net inflows have been growing meaningfully from approximately 200 million in Q4 2024 to 1 billion euros in Q1 26. A result of new successful product launches, the build-out of our network of distributors and strong early performance across vehicles. We're currently preparing for two additional vehicles, one for infra in Q2 and one for private capital in Q3. Redemptions continue to be very, very low and amounted to less than 0.5% during the quarter. We have embedded the right lessons on product design with institutional underwriting standards and ongoing investor education. Something we believe will only grow in importance as the industry continues to develop. And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.