Caledonia Investments H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 26, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Caledonia's results presentation for the 6 months to 30 September 2024. I'm Matt Masters. I'm Chief Executive of Caledonia Investments, and it's my pleasure to present these results today. And I'm joined by my colleagues Jamie Casey Colvin, who runs our funds pool and Rob Mellott, who is our CFO today to take you through these results. Now we're going to try and balance taking you through what's quite a short period of time for us, the last 6 months, with reminding you about the strategy and the long term returns of the business.

Operator

So just going through the cautionary statement and just providing you with some building blocks, just to provide some foundations, if you will, for our investment approach. Now our target is to deliver long term NAV per share and dividend per share growth for our shareholders. And our track record, which is the graph just at the top there, shows you that our approach of taking long term investments in the equity of good quality companies has proven to be a good way of delivering this. A reminder that we are self managed or, as I say, very self managed by the in house investment team, who are focused on getting Caledonia better and better at executing against our long term strategy. And we're very lucky in what I describe as our ecosystem to have the supportive shareholder that we have in the CASEA family who originally sets up the company.

Operator

Now our culture, purpose and values are really well brought together and explained through the recently added tagline to our logo, which is Time Well Invested, and it really helps explain our approach. Our aim is simply to invest in good companies that have the potential to generate excellent returns without taking undue risk. And we execute the strategy by investing mainly directly into high quality listed and unlisted companies and then also into funds that we select ourselves with our in house team. And with no fundraising or any assets other assets under management to worry about, this in house team is solely focused on the current portfolio and taking care of that and then carefully considering what the opportunity set should be for making investments as we go forwards. And there's tremendous alignment between this investment team, so that's everybody from me through to the people selecting each of the things we invest in and our shareholders because we are only paid against in terms of performance against improvements in NAV per share.

Operator

And a lot of our performance is paid in Caledonia's shares. So we're measured against our shareholders' assets improving on a per share basis, and we're paid on the performance element in Caledonia shares. So I think that makes us very well aligned with shareholders. And the whole investment approach is designed to make time our friend, and I hope you can see that having time well invested is a great way of bringing that all together. So this is a summary of the portfolio, which we described as being well balanced between the 3 different areas.

Operator

There's roughly onethree of the portfolio or onethree of the NAV in each of the areas. We have our public companies piece, which is a concentrated portfolio of the best long term confounders, excuse me, compounders, I should say, that we can get our we can understand and follow, and we're highly selective. We're looking for well managed businesses with underlying growth, good returns on capital, good margins that we think will persist into the future. Private capital, this is where we directly own companies, generally UK based, and we partner with management teams to help them grow and improve quality over time. And then we have our funds area, where we're backing proven management in the North American lower mid market area and then also more growth orientated managers in Asia.

Operator

So that's an overview of the portfolio. You can see their long term returns track record in the bottom right hand corner of each of the segments, and we're pleased to see that they are either towards the top or actually beyond the top end of our target. So we're very pleased with the areas that we've selected to invest in and also with how they're performing. When you put them all together to look at our long term performance, We're pleased to see that over the longer term, the gold bar, which is the vertical bar, the NAV per share returns are at the top end of our target range. And our target is keeping ahead of inflation plus 3% to 6%, and that's what that horizontal gold bar is showing.

Operator

Share price performance has not kept up over the shorter term due to discount increasing by just under 17% over the last 5 years. Actually, during the half year, so March through September, the discount did come in a bit, which was good. But Rob will talk more about what we're doing about Investor Relations in general later on because it's important that we address that. So turning to the short term and looking at the results for the 6 months to the end of September. Here are the highlights.

Operator

So our NAV total return was up 0.5%, but this performance was heavily impacted by foreign exchange, mainly the U. S. Dollar weakening against the pound from March through to September. And that cost us, we estimate, £104,000,000 and reduced our NAV total return by 3.6%. Breaking it down, public companies performed well, whether looked at in dollars or pounds, delivering 7% in pounds and 11% in dollars.

Operator

And this is driven by good operational performance in the portfolio being reflected in share prices. So we're obviously very pleased with that performance. Private Capsule experienced a weak return at minus 2.8%, but this actually masks good performance across most of the portfolio, which the portfolio, leaving Cook out of it, was positive 5.2%. However, Kirk, we have continued trading weakness. This is the aftermath of the sort of movie industry strikes, and so that got written down further during the period.

Operator

And that's why the 5.2% ended up as a minus 2.8 percent portfolio return. During the 6 months, we acquired DTM, which is a very interesting business, and Rob will go more into that later. And we're very pleased to welcome Lee and his management team to Caledonia, and we're looking forward to partnering with them over the future. We invested £55,000,000 into that business. Within Private Equity Funds, the North American portfolio delivered a 5.5 percent 5.3 percent positive return in dollars, and the Asian portfolio delivered 1% growth in dollars over the period.

Operator

So both portfolios were positive over the period. But taken together and then taking into account the pound strengthening, the portfolio delivered minus 2.4%. So there's a bit of a foreign exchange story with the results. And I'd note that the dollar pound has actually gone back to where it was at the beginning of at the end of March. So it's all a bit transitory perhaps.

Operator

And just to recap, the foreign exchange reduced our performance over the period by 3.6%, Cook reduced it by a further 2.1%. So looking through these, we're very happy with how the underlying portfolio is performing. Today, we're announcing our interim dividend at 19.69p, which is a 4% increase on last year's interim and continues our 57 year streak of increasing dividends. And over the half year, we purchased just under 3 quarters of 1,000,000 shares, which at an average discount of 34.8 percent is the easiest investment decision that we have to make and straightaway added 25.6p to NAV per share. Now to maintain our ability to carry on doing buybacks, we've issued a circular today asking non concert party shareholders for permission to do so on the understanding that this would result in the concert party or a family holding, as I call them, going above 50%.

Operator

We've carried out a significant consultation exercise with shareholders before enacting this, and we believe that this is in the best interest of all shareholders. And Rob can fill us in with a few more details on this later on. So moving on to the portfolio. I will cover public companies, where we have a shade over £1,000,000,000 invested or roughly 35% of the portfolio. This is a concentrated portfolio of long term compounders, highly selective, looking for well managed businesses with sustainable underlying growth, pricing power and attractive returns on capital.

Operator

With these ingredients, we expect long term ownership will be rewarded. Now this approach was really well proven this period, with the biggest contributor to the portfolio coming from Oracle, which we profiled in last year's interim presentation. And you may recall from that that we invested in Oracle in 2014, so we're 10 years into that holding. So just getting going really. We invested €34,000,000 We've had all of that money back in the way of sales and dividend income, and it's worth €96,000,000 in our portfolio today.

Operator

So, so far, it's early stages, but so far, it seems to be going okay. Now Oracle's origins are a database company. And so it should not be much of a surprise that with the growth stimulated by advances in AI, that they really are beginning to benefit from this. So they're experiencing increased demand. They're building capacity to feed this demand, so to convert bookings into revenue and profit.

Operator

And in fact, they recently increased their guidance for the next 5 years from 10% per annum growth to 14% per annum growth, which is a big change in growth profile for Oracle. And this resulted in a 20% increase in their share price. And it was a big holding in the portfolio because we like it, and we thought it was looking like a well balanced risk reward opportunity for us, and we've been rewarded for that over the half year. So it's very good work from the team. We added a new position during the period with PoolCore, which is a leading supplier of swimming pool equipment in America.

Operator

Now as I mentioned, we like to develop these opportunities over time, and it takes a while to get to know these businesses. And POLLCOR is a really good case study. In fact, it was referred to us as an idea by Watsco, one of our other holdings. And we were visiting with them, and we were asking for other ideas from them. And they said, well, you might want to go and look at Paul Cour.

Operator

In fact, it has been run for a while by a former Watsco employee. And so we thought that the DNA of the business would be pretty good. So we patiently got to know it. We watched its price. It actually experienced a massive boom in earnings and share price during COVID as everyone stayed at home and redid their pools.

Operator

So we just stayed out of it whilst that took place. And the thing is, we think, calmed down, and we've it's moved into an attractive pricing and rating territory. And so we have added to it in the period, and I think it would be a good long term investment for us. Just looking at our top holdings, people talk about the Magnificent Seven. We do hold one of them, Microsoft.

Operator

We first invested in Microsoft in 2014, so we've been in it for a while. But technology is an important driver of operational performance. And when I think through those holdings that you can see there, there's a technology story behind most of them, certainly innovation. So we might not be in all of the MAG7, but we are definitely paying attention to the impact of technology. At this results presentation, we're going to profile Fastenal, which is an American supplier.

Operator

It does have international operations, but it's mainly American supplier North American supplier of construction and industrial products and is another cracking long term compounder. Now it's categorized as a distribution business, but it's delivering a 20% operating profit margin, very good returns on capital and has a 20 year total shareholder return of 15%. So it tells you that there's something special going on in this business. Now Fastenal partners with its customers, often with their people and kit, operating full time in their customer sites, and they ensure that the customers have a reliable supply of what might be termed non manufacturing inventory. So if you think personal protective equipment, cutting tools, the bits and pieces that industrial businesses need to keep their businesses running.

Operator

There are fastener vending machines in the Amazon Estate, in the Amazon Warehouse Estate to dispense consumables. And that's a good endorsement of the business's quality and sort of logistics. But most of their business are with regular industrial companies all across North America and providing a very compelling value based proposition for them. It's a really well run business. One of the hallmarks that we see in these well run businesses is that they're decentralized.

Operator

And decentralized businesses tend to have long tenured, well experienced and trusted staff, and they're provided with the autonomy to react to the market opportunities ahead of them as they see fit. And that's a theme across a lot of the portfolio. We do like this decentralized approach to managing businesses. Businesses the business of Arsenal typically carries no debt and has a good history of paying a growing dividend. Unusually for America, it pays in a special dividend every so often, and it takes a value approach to doing share buybacks.

Operator

Sounds familiar to other places. We would model our policy being similar to that. I think it's very well run, as I say. And the business invests mainly in its IT. And the core of that business is its inventory management system, which it builds itself, and that is that's the sort of the core part of what makes that business very special.

Operator

We added the holding in March 2020, actually having only followed it for 3 years. But the COVID sell off provided us with a good entry valuation. And that, together with good operational progress, has delivered us an annualized return of 22% since we've invested or 2 times our money. So we're very pleased with it. It's sort of early days, although we've held it for 4 years.

Operator

I still think of it as being really early days in the portfolio, and we expect it will continue to be a good contributor for us. With that, I will hand over to Jamie to talk about funds.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. My name is Jamie Keeserkolvin, and I'm pleased to present the funds pool to you today. In this brief presentation, I'll remind you about the funds pool strategy. I'll discuss its recent performance and conclude with a case study. As you may have gathered from previous presentations, the Caledonia partnership model involves significant rigor and time to make these investments, just illustrated by Matt and how long you followed some of these investments.

Speaker 1

Within the private markets, this approach becomes challenging, particularly when you're hunting in markets that are located far away from the UK. Consequently, we initiated a program to partner with top tier managers in regions where we're lacking a presence. However, recognizing the finite nature of Caledonia's resources, we've concentrated our efforts on the world's largest economies, that being, obviously, North America and Asia. In North America, our investment strategy is centered on the very foundational elements of American capitalism. That's specifically targeting small founder owned businesses.

Speaker 1

Here, value is created through simple things: revenue growth, margin growth and multiple expansion without relying on complex financial structuring or substantial debt. We refer to this opportunity as the low mid market, which encompasses companies typically with operating revenues of below €50,000,000 It's a vast market. There are nearly 6,000,000 companies in it, and there are over 600 investable managers that we monitor through regular meetings over a long period of time. In many of the Caledonia funds that we're invested in, we are the only European investor. And in the majority, we do sit on their advisory boards.

Speaker 1

Characteristics we like about this sector is that it's less competitive due to the small nature of the company sizes. Many of the sellers are also not necessarily motivated by purely maximizing valuation, and very often, the seller is influenced by the acquirer's culture. Numerous businesses in the sector have underdeveloped strategic plans, and very often, the management team lack the depth of experience typical of a larger company. So therefore, when an operationally focused manager goes in, these companies can be professionalized. They can position themselves for growth and make themselves more attractive for acquisition and thereby increasing the likelihood of achieving higher valuation multiples upon their exit.

Speaker 1

Our Asian program has transitioned from a Pan Asian multi style program to one more focused on the regional growth, particularly emphasizing on China growth in Venture. The program is primarily split between funder funds and growth in Venture funds. Approximately 40% is exposed to funder funds and 60% to growth in Venture. The fund of funds component is essential for diversification, providing wide access to different Asian geographic regions, various fund styles and multiple sectors. Growth in venture program capitalizes on the significant growth witnessed in Asia over the past 20 years.

Speaker 1

Initial investment in this segment occurred in 2026, and since then, our managers have successfully multiplied our invested capital by 2.5 times after accounting for all costs and fees. Currently, our entire fund program encapsulates investments in 76 funds across 42 managers, 25 of which are in the North America and 17 in Asia. Over the longer term, the funds portfolio continues to deliver double digit growth. Performance in the half has been impacted by weaker U. S.

Speaker 1

The weakening of the U. S. Dollar. However, both North American and Asian portfolios did make positive returns in the 6 months in local currency, as Matt told us just earlier. In particular, the North American program is performing well, as mentioned, But sadly, Asia has not fully capitalized on its potential, and this is primarily due to the macro uncertainty in the region.

Speaker 1

But we believe the portfolio is well positioned to generate good returns despite these challenges posed by geopolitics. In terms of investment activity, we deployed €67,000,000 in the period, with the bulk of that being invested in North America, and we also committed €130,000,000 to new funds, dollars 130,000,000 sorry. After a quieter year last year, realizations have gained momentum as exit markets have improved, and this has especially been the case in North America. Overall, as I said earlier, the portfolio generated positive cash flow of €27,000,000 with €67,000,000 being drawn down, being offset by €70,000,000 in distributions, and we also had a secondary sale of 1 of our fund positions of €19,000,000 We hope this trend continues, and certainly, early indications support this optimism. The portfolio is very well balanced.

Speaker 1

You can see in the graph there, we have onethree in new and emerging investments, we have onethree that are nice and maturing and onethree that are in that exit mode. Now I'd like to shift my focus to Der Chong, a global life science and health care fund with a presence both in China and in the U. S. A. Notably, 58 percent of our Asian primary fund program is invested in the health care sector through investments in over 120 companies.

Speaker 1

Now I'm sure many of you have heard about the patent cliff. Globally, dollars 300,000,000,000 of pharmaceutical sales are at risk between now and 2,030 as patents expire. Now large pharma has not been idle, and they have a 0.5 $1,000,000,000,000 firepower, which they're likely to use to address this challenge. As an investor in early stage biopharma opportunities, Dertrong is well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. Year to date, we have observed 23 transactions exceeding $1,000,000,000 with Alpine Immune Sciences being the largest at $4,900,000,000 a company from a Dertriong portfolio, which I'll revisit shortly.

Speaker 1

Now we first connected with Derchong just after its founding in 2012. The founder, Min Choi, has impressed us with his clinical expertise across life science and pharma, combined with a truly remarkable drive and ambition, providing a strong platform with which to drive commercial success, but also with the added benefit of the investments that they make really do make a positive impact and save people's lives. The Dertrong team actively seek early stage life sciences companies with transformational technologies. They focus on firms with excellent clinical data, but recognizing the fact that robust data alone is insufficient. Proven and capable management teams are essential to realizing the value creation opportunities along with a very clear strategy for monetization from day 1.

Speaker 1

Now historically, China has been seen as a me too market where you can get cheap knockoffs. And I'm not saying that you don't still get cheap knockoffs there, but you also get those in London. But clearly, China, over the last 20 years, has no longer been seen as a Me too, but actually, in many, many areas, has become world class and leading. And this is also in the case in Life Sciences. Diseases don't stop at country boundaries and neither should cures, and Dertrong has been able to find and identify an interesting Chinese opportunities and help structure their expansion overseas, particularly into North America.

Speaker 1

Now I mentioned earlier Alpine Immune Sciences. This is a prime example of a Dertrong investment that was sold earlier this year for €4,900,000,000 to Vertex. In 2018, the Dertrong team identified Der Chong team identified exceptional clinical data from a proven team in the immune oncology field. They recognized an unmet medical need related to kidney disease, which makes it hard for the kidneys to filter out waste from the blood. Now, Dertrong led the initial pipe financing and then co led and participated in 2 further investments, investing in a total of €52,000,000 and became the company's largest shareholder.

Speaker 1

2 members of the Dertrong team, including Minh, served on the Alpine Board, playing a pivotal role in guiding the company through to its successful exit, yielding an impressive 8.2 gross returns and therefore, a distribution to us of £11,000,000 in the half. Dertron specifically the Dertron team specifically helped identify suitable co investors for Alpine, helped formulate the monetization strategy and also helped in the negotiations with Vertex. In summary, our funds program is well resourced and supported by an incredible and highly capable team. Over the long term, it's delivered good double digit growth for our shareholders. The team boasts an extensive network and has got a robust portfolio and an impressive pipeline of investment opportunities, and we firmly believe

Speaker 2

we'll generate excellent long term performance going forward. With that, I'll

Speaker 1

turn it back over to

Speaker 3

Thank you, Jamie. Good morning, everybody. Our Private Capital pool directly invests in predominantly UK focused businesses. The pool now is GBP 848,000,000 with 5 companies representing 90% of the value. The majority of the valuations are between 9 and 14.5 times LTM EBITDA, and we typically use very modest leverage 2 to 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA in the capital structure.

Speaker 3

And this is because we want the business performance to drive returns and also dividends. The pool has delivered strong returns, 13% to 15% over 3, 5 10 year periods. In the 6 month period, positive performance in the majority of the portfolio generated 5.2% NAV growth. This was offset, as Matt said, with the Cook Optics result, resulting in an overall pool reduction of 2.8%. A notable highlight in the first half was the acquisition of DTM, Direct Tire Management, and I'll provide a little bit more detail on DTM in a moment.

Speaker 3

Just to run through the main companies. First of all, Cook, as previously reported, the business was heavily impacted by the Hollywood Actors and Writers strike in 2023. This resulted in reduced demand for the core Cine lenses as content production in the U. S. And worldwide suffered a severe slowdown.

Speaker 3

Content producers are cautiously adapting their business models. And whilst production volumes are recovering slowly, L. A. Shoot days are still continuing to operate at lower than historic average levels. We are working with the management team in navigating this challenging period, resulting in restructuring in the cost base and developing our digital capability.

Speaker 3

The Cooke brand and product portfolio remain highly regarded as evidenced by the successful launch of the new prosumer lens, the SP3. However, once the sector recovers, we expect there to be a lag in the improvement of demand for the new Cooke Cine lenses. And this has resulted in a reduction in our valuation of GBP 50,000,000 Kebipa, our investment in a Belgian headquartered investment company, has a diversified pool of 20 private investments. We've invested for over 20 years and Kibipa has delivered annualized returns of 12% during that period. The current year returns are slightly depressed, having an average cash balance of approximately 17% of NAV, which just pulls the return down for the period, 1.6% in sterling, 4.4% in constant currency.

Speaker 3

StoneAge Fleming continues to build its LTM driven by growth in assets under management, revenue in its family office and its financial services business, a 7.6% return in the period. Air Serv, a return of 6.1%. This reflects continued momentum since the acquisition last year. It's continuing to trade well with an increased number of machines and also good progress in improving revenue per machine. Early in the year, we received our first dividend of £6,200,000 demonstrating the strong cash generation of the business and the benefit of our prudent capital structure.

Speaker 3

Finally, Liberation, our pubs and brewing business. Pleasingly, all three revenue categories of food, drink and accommodation have grown year on year. Cost inflation and cost pressure has eased, which has resulted in both revenue growth and margin expansion during the period. And we continue to progress the optimization of the Sirus Inns with a capital program of refurbishment progressing well. Overall, a 9.1% return in the period.

Speaker 3

Now since the 30th September, we've had the budget. The increase in National Insurance and minimum wage will have the greatest impact on liberation within the portfolio. The management teams are currently working through various ways of mitigating this increase such as reviewing rosters, recruitment plans in addition to driving a number of profit improvement initiatives. So, to Direct Tyre Management, DTM is a leading provider of outsourced Tyre Management services to specialist fleet operators. And when you think of specialist fleet operators, think of a council or a construction company with a varied fleet of vehicles delivering time dependent services to disparate locations.

Speaker 3

We acquired DTM in August and are delighted to be supporting Lee Goodland and his team develop and grow the business. This was a competitive process. Some of the reasons that we were successful were the management team understanding the nature of Caledonia's capital investment, which is in the ordinary equity as opposed to a high coupon loan picking instrument, which is common within the majority of the PE industry. The deliverability of our proposal, in particular, our ability to underwrite the debt, which we've now refinanced, the relationships that we built with management throughout the process and also strong references provided by colleagues in other portfolio companies to the management team. We like DTM as it's a high quality cash generative and growing business.

Speaker 3

Its established intermediary and independent market position helps generate margin from and deliver value to all parts of the supply chain. The customer offering is a key differentiator given the essential nature and high cost of service failure for DTM's customers. Its competitive advantage is sustainable, demonstrated by its long term track record, net new customer wins, very little churn and growth in financial metrics. Technology underpins its service with further potential to increase operational efficiency. The market is growing, and we see an ability to increase market share.

Speaker 3

We're also particularly considering sort of adjacent services and also geographies. The strength of the management team came through throughout the process, and the breadth of that management team is something which we are sort of particularly pleased at through the acquisition. Trading has been in line with expectation and the team are making very good progress in the 100 day plan, including the recruitment of a high quality Chair in David Brennan. So to the numbers. During the first half, our NAV of just under GBP 3,000,000,000 generated a return of 0.5%.

Speaker 3

As we've already said, GBP 4.1 percent on a constant exchange rate. We have GBP 2,700,000,000 invested in the quality diversified portfolio of listed private and privately held companies and funds with global reach. During the period, we have completed a new revolving credit facility, increasing its size to GBP 325,000,000 and on improved terms. The facility is provided by 3 banks GBP 175,000,000 has 3 year tenor GBP 150,000,000 with 5 year tenor. The facility is currently undrawn, so the €325,000,000 plus €135,000,000 of cash on balance sheet gives us €460,000,000 of firepower.

Speaker 3

This means that we can act quickly to invest in assets that we find attractive, as we evidenced with the acquisition of DTM. Our interim dividend of is a year on year increase of 4% equating to £10,600,000 and the interim dividend will be paid to shareholders on the 9th January 2025. It wouldn't be a presentation of mine without a few waterfall charts, so we won't disappoint. The first of which is the portfolio of investments. These have increased from just under €2,700,000,000 on the right hand side to just over €2,700,000,000 on the right hand side left hand side, right hand side.

Speaker 3

The drivers of that growth, euros 227 €1,000,000 of investments made during the period, €55,000,000 into DTM within the private capital pool, €66,000,000 into funds, €81,000,000 into our public companies, including new positions of POOLCORP Sage Croda. Our realizations were GBP 177,000,000 including GBP 94,000,000 from the funds. That included that secondary sale that Jamie referred to GBP 19,000,000 GBP 68,000,000 GBP 68,000,000 GBP 68,000,000 GBP 68,000,000 from public companies as we took advantage of market pricing, trading around our core position. In addition, disposing a position of BAT within the capital pool and D. S.

Speaker 3

Smith and Pennon in the income pool. We received investment income or a cash yield of £29,000,000 and recorded returns on investment of £21,000,000 That's a return of £0.7 on the assets. This was driven by a strong performance in the public pool, majority of the private capital performing well and North American funds offset by that FX and the adjustment made to the Cook valuation. With respect to valuation, our quoted assets are mark to market daily. Within Private Capital, we follow the IPEV guidelines and account at fair value.

Speaker 3

For the funds pool, we rely upon the Fund Manager NAV statements. All of these funds are managed by are audited by reputable firms and are accounted on an IFRS or U. S. GAAP basis, fair value. The team reviewed the valuations to ensure that trends and company specific issues are appropriately reflected.

Speaker 3

As of the 30th September, 98% of the Fund's pool NAV was based upon the 30th June NAV statements. On the table on the bottom right, you can see the sort of performance by pool and the cash yield by pool. Our NAV is now GBP 2,900,000,000 and you can see the sort of impact of FX impacting on returns during the period. In addition, 2 important bars returns to shareholders, €28,000,000 of payment of the prior year dividend and €26,000,000 allocated to share buybacks. Share buybacks have accreted NAV per share by 25.6p.

Speaker 3

The pie chart on the right hand side shows the split of the assets by domicile currency, 52% U. S, 38% sterling. Therefore, the movement in the sterling to dollar exchange rate will impact on in period returns. Matt mentioned about the sort of FX and it's sort of moving around a little. Those of you who have reviewed the October fact sheet will see that £71,000,000 of the £104,000,000 has now been has now reversed.

Speaker 3

Net debt bridge, movements from the left hand side to the right. We started with €227,000,000 of cash and net €48,000,000 invested in quality assets, cash yield of GBP 27,000,000 and cash costs of GBP 17,000,000. There's a little bit of working capital in both of those two numbers. We then have the payment of the prior year dividend and the share buyback. Undrawn facility plus cash on balance sheet, €460,000,000 of Firepower.

Speaker 3

We fundamentally believe that the long term shareholders should benefit from the increase in NAV. TSR over 10 years is just under 8% per annum. Over 3, 5 years, the gap between NAV per share and TSR has increased driven by the discount widening. We consider the current discount, 38%, 39%, significantly undervalues the quality of our investments and our long term track record. As mentioned at the year end and at the AGM, this is a live issue for the board and we are progressing the things that we can control.

Speaker 3

Firstly, this is to continue to build on our track record of investing in quality assets and delivering long term real returns. Secondly, is to continue to evolve our IR and communications to ensure that the Caledonia investment proposition is understood and rated, the objective being to widen the shareholder base and generate more marginal buyers. A date for you in the Diaries. On the 22nd January, we'll be holding the first of a 3 Capital Markets Spotlight sessions. The first session will be on Private Capital, where with 2 more events planned over the coming year, focusing on the other 2 pools.

Speaker 3

3rd area that we've been working upon is the share buybacks. We benefit from the ongoing support, stability and cultural underpin to our investment philosophy of the Kaeser family. During the 6 months, we have continued to repurchase shares within the restrictions that we currently have, which is to keep the concert party below 49.9%. During the period, we've acquired just under 750,000 shares, resulting in 25.6p nab per share accretion. The Concert party now own 49.5%, which when you factor in a little bit of headroom means that we are now at a ceiling for the amount of shares that we can acquire.

Speaker 3

Following regular shareholder feedback, this morning we have announced the issuance of a circular to request approval from non concert party shareholders to remove this cap. This will enable us to acquire shares. And if the concert party exceeds 50%, this will not trigger a mandatory offer under the takeover code. We believe that acquiring shares at a significant discount is a good investment and capital allocation for the company. It is accretive to NAV per share, beneficial to all ordinary shareholders and will free the company to be an acquirer in the market.

Speaker 3

We have consulted with close to half of the non Concert party shareholders, and this group is a substantial proportion of the shareholders who voted at the last AGM. The non Concert party directors are unanimously recommending that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The circular will go live on the website later today, and we will include a Q and A, which we hope will be helpful to shareholders. In addition, if shareholders would welcome a call from with Matt and myself, then please do get in touch in the normal way. So in summary, Caledonia has built a diverse portfolio that is well placed to deliver long term returns.

Speaker 3

We invest in quality businesses focused on free cash flow, meaning the portfolio is capable of responding to challenges posed by the macro environment. We have a robust balance sheet with liquidity of £460,000,000 giving us the firepower to invest if we find attractive investments. The experienced team are 100% focused on continuing to invest and manage a portfolio of high quality companies and private equity funds. And as a management team and Board, we're committed to doing what we can control to drive shareholder value. We're now going to take questions.

Speaker 3

Initially, we'll take those from the room and then we can go remotely to people who are online.

Speaker 2

Hi, there. Ash Nandy from Deutsche Numis. Just a question on Liberation Group. I can see it's one of the larger returners within the private capital space. Could you talk a little bit about the split between its operational business and what percentage Cirrus forms of Liberation Group?

Speaker 2

And a bit more about the background of what's happening with Cirrus and the improvements that are being made?

Speaker 3

Sorry, interrupt. Yeah.

Operator

Forgive me if I don't get the numbers precisely correct. So Liberation has roughly about 150 pubs that it owns. The majority of those, they also manage, but they do have a tenant in the state. Sirius came with 24 pubs. And they were very well invested, but Liberation has an operational approach, which we believe and we've seen does improve return on investment, so the way that they invest in their pubs.

Operator

They've got a consistent and more predictable way of getting good return from investing in the pubs. And also, the operational practices within the business, including how they do the menus and train staff and all the rest of it. So it's just so the integration job is converting or adapting the Cirrus Estate and its staff, so it marries in, so it's properly consolidated within the Liberation group. And that's taken a while to do because you have to get planning permission and you have to make changes. And then as you're doing that, you have to go and find as you're upgrading some premises, you're looking for different staff.

Operator

So that process is being ongoing. And a recent example, which is convenient for us all to see, would be the Punch Bowl Pub, which I recommend everyone dropping into. And you'll see that if you can remember being in there beforehand, you can see what it's like now. You'll notice there's been an improvement. And I think so what we're seeing is the improvements we expected to happen are happening, but it just takes a little while to play through into numbers, and we're beginning to see that in the numbers now.

Operator

So I hope that helps you.

Speaker 4

Alan Brailey from Investec. Great to hear that you refer to buybacks as the easiest investment decision. The waiver, obviously, it's uncapped. But realistically, taking a crystal ball out, how do you see the family's ownership evolving? And is there a level that you would start to feel uncomfortable with?

Operator

So I can't speak for the family, and I won't ask the family member to either. So we're this is a broad exercise in capital management, and we've got a number of uses of capital. And I could go through them here. We want to keep investing in the portfolio. We do want to keep paying dividends and the occasional special dividend.

Operator

And then we will want to do a few buybacks. But I think the term we would use is they would be judicious. We've been doing buybacks over the last 6 months, and we did about somewhere between £20,000,000 £30,000,000 worth of buybacks, just to give you a sense of pacing. We during the consultation, we listened to what people were saying about buybacks, and they and people were interested to understand kind of where shareholdings could move and perhaps what impact that would have on liquidity of the float. And we're obviously wanting to make sure that we don't materially erode the free float.

Operator

So I wouldn't expect the numbers to move around a lot very quickly, Alan, to answer your question. It's a judicious approach.

Speaker 5

Chris Brown from JPMorgan, Caskervoy. Just a quick question on the Asian Funds portfolio, the secondary sale. I just wondered if you could talk about the thinking behind that realization or secondary sale and also the impact you had on NAV, whether you what sort of discount you might have sold that out?

Speaker 1

This was a tail end fund position. There was quite considerable amount. 90% was in 1 investment. We felt that the prospects for that company over the next couple of years was fairly marginal and an opportunity that was put forward to us by the manager to create some liquidity as quite a number of their investors were seeking liquidity, looked attractive. It was executed at a small discount, but we felt that the cash in hand justified that discount.

Speaker 5

Should we are there any questions online?

Speaker 6

Yes. First question online. Will the family holding going over 50% impact on Investment Trust status?

Speaker 5

Rob, you want to take that?

Speaker 3

Yes. The answer to that is no. I mean, the family have sort of stated within the and it's within the sort of circle in the release that the continued operator are very supportive of the continued operation of the business. As Matt sort of announced, the level, which I'm trying to give people a view of sort of pacing and the amount of buybacks that we're going to do, continuing the sort of program which we're currently operating on and the pace of that program we're currently on means that really there won't be sort of huge swings in the percentage ownership of the company.

Speaker 6

Another question online from Michael Pollitt. Would a share split make the company's shares more marketable?

Speaker 3

I mean, I think that's a sort of good question, and

Speaker 5

we're doing a little bit of modeling on that

Speaker 3

at the moment. We're sort of mindful of making sure that our shares are understood and attractive to the retail market. And therefore, that might be something which could help out a little bit in that space.

Speaker 6

Another similar question from Mark Westwood. Why are you only seeking permission to buy back up to 5% of your shares? Why not more?

Operator

Shall we get this one? Yes. So we're asking for 5% and it is over 18 months. And people do ask for more over shorter periods typically. And I think that's our sort of signaling the pacing at which we expect the buyback to be carried out at.

Speaker 5

Okay. Any more questions from the room? No? I think on that, thank you very much everybody. Thank you.

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Earnings Conference Call
Caledonia Investments H1 2025
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