3i Group plc (III) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for 3i half year results. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being live streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand over the call to Simon Borrows, Chief Executive, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to 3i's interim results presentation. You can see from this morning's press release, this has been another good half for 3i. Our portfolio overall continues to generate healthy earnings growth in today's difficult macroeconomic environment. We delivered a total return of 10%, giving us a net asset value per share of GBP 18.86. And we've ended the half with a gross investment return of 11% from private equity and 2% from the infrastructure team. We also produced a good level of cash income at GBP 62 million. Next, we have our Marimekko chart showing the makeup of the 3i portfolio on a page. This is what you're investing in, in buying a 3i share. The underlying theme you can see here is resilience. And you can also see that the proportion of our portfolio in the resilient sectors of value for money, private label, infrastructure and healthcare, represent 85% of total portfolio value. We expect that proportion to keep growing over time and this trend gives us real confidence in the continued compounding power of the 3i portfolio. Private equity has delivered another solid performance with 89% of our portfolio companies by value, growing their earnings in the 12 months to the 30th of June 2023. We've seen another consistently strong performance from [indiscernible]. It's also been a good year of recovery for our travel-related businesses, even if we have seen some softer booking weeks in this period of inventory destocking across the wider bioprocessing industry. So far we're very focused on hands-on asset management of the existing portfolio. And we have closed some important bolt-on or transformational acquisitions for the portfolio, but we have made no new PE investments in the half. We've come close on several things, but we've been unable to close a deal on terms we find acceptable. In 2 cases, the companies were not sold. And that really illustrates the challenge of finding a middle ground between buyers and sellers, especially in this higher for longer interest rate environment. We are prepared to remain patient and keep our price discipline because we expect refinancing pressures to grow in this climate. In turn, that should throw up more opportunities later next year. This year, our investment teams have devoted a lot of their time to making sure that our portfolio companies remain well positioned strategically and that they are tightly controlling costs and focusing acutely on cash flow. As we reported at our Capital Markets Day in September, we like to be ahead of the curve on debt facility management and we can report the portfolio is in good shape in that regard. We've not completed any realizations from the PE portfolio so far and remain cautious about the current environment for selling companies. We do expect to receive significant refinancing and distribution flows throughout this year. Earnings growth across our top 20 companies continues to present a strong picture with 84% by value, growing earnings above 10% but while Action and 6 other companies are growing earnings at over 20%, we now have 8 companies where earnings are declining over the 12 months to June this year. This change is down to the deteriorating macro environment across Tato and Wilsons end markets in particular as well as continuing weak trading across a number of our discretionary consumer assets such Luqom and BoConcept. We still have a healthy balance on the winners and losers slide, but it has been very frustrating to see some continuing large write-downs as a result of weakening consumer or business demand. As we said at our Capital Markets Day in September, Action has once again delivered a very impressive first 9 months of the year. Net sales were up 31% on the prior year, and year-to-date P9 operating EBITDA was EUR 1.065 billion, as you can see here. That's 44% ahead of 2022 with like-for-like sales at 19.2%. That's on top of 15.8% last year. These like-for-like sales are down to very competitive pricing, which has driven very good footfall growth. And more and more people shop at Action for their essential items before they visit their local supermarkets. Like-for-like comparisons are tougher in the last 4 months, as we've already indicated, but trading through September and October has continued to be materially above budget and ahead of our earlier expectations. In fact, year-to-date net sales to the end of October or P10 are now GBP 8.85 billion, and that delivered another operating EBITDA of some GBP 1.21 billion, 43% up on the same 10 months last year. A high-performing supply chain and good availability of products in store has led to better-than-planned sales. When you combine those better sales with tight cost control, you get an EBITDA margin well ahead of budget and you get very strong cash flow. Like-for-like sales in the first half and over the summer, have been exceptionally strong compared to last year and we're delighted to be reporting double-digit like-for-likes for P9 and P10. Both well ahead of budget. And clearly, that performance bodes very well for our key periods running up to Christmas. Trading over the last 3 weeks in particular, has seen a strong pickup in traffic. So far this year, we've added 195 new stores and we remain on track to open about 300 by the end of the year. Trading across our new countries like Italy, Spain and Slovakia has been very good. And we've crossed a number of store expansion milestones. 50 stores now open in Italy, 100 stores in Austria and 300 in Poland. We also have over 500 in Germany and more than 750 stores in France. As you may recall, we used 4 tables to demonstrate the power and consistency of Action's performance under 3i stewardship. These are exceptional results and Action's organic growth engine powered by its ability to seamlessly open stores in new countries is a very rare attribute in the retail sector. The consumers' response in all of our new countries underlines the appeal of our format, it also demonstrates that we have very considerable runway for growth. As you have seen, the year-to-date numbers suggest we are looking at another very good step-up year of growth. This year, capital structure and debt financing have been a key agenda item at action. In the spring, we achieved an amend and extend of the existing European debt facilities. And we laid the groundwork for a debut 7-year U.S. dollar term loan financing in the U.S. private debt markets. We completed this U.S. dollar financing last month. And to say it went well as a debut issue for a European company is something of an understatement. Demand for the Action debt was so strong that we raised $1.5 billion against an original target of $1 billion, as well as securing rating upgrades from both S&P and Moody's during the process. The new $1.5 billion term loan has been fully hedged back to euro, with 70% of the debt fixed at an all-in cost of 6.3%. In fact, that interest cost of 6.3% compares better with where a lot -- 40 companies have been issuing bonds rather than the private equity sector. As the 2 rating upgrades from Moody's and S&P would suggest, Action remains conservatively financed. Today, debt currently is a 2.1x run rate EBITDA after netting off Action's current cash balance of EUR 1.030 billion. The company's cash flow, like everything else at Action, is growing very strongly. The proceeds from this debt issued together with EUR 207 million of existing cash in Action have been used as part of a capital restructuring. That money was used to fund a EUR 1.6 billion pro rata redemption of shares with 3i receiving EUR 877 million of that cash. We used EUR 524 million of cash to buy some [indiscernible] for the shares in Action, which takes our 3i equity interest up to 54.8%. The infrastructure team has had another good half. Their portfolios are performing well, even if this is not reflected in the 3i in share price, 3i generated a total return of 6.3% for the first half and agreed to sell its interest in Attero at a circa 31% uplift to the 31st March valuation. Cash from fee and portfolio income has been strong at GBP 62 million. Both the European and U.S. infrastructure assets have delivered good performance. And the U.S. team have made a further new investment, Amwaste, which is a waste collection and processing business in the Southeast region of the U.S. So all in all, another decent half for 3i. Our teams put in a lot of good portfolio work to make absolutely sure we can manage our companies through these challenging times, with as little drama as possible. And on that note, I'll hand over to James, who will fill you in with some more detail.

Thank you, Simon, and good morning, everyone. Our total return on equity was 10% in the first half of the financial year. The NAV increase was driven by value growth of 197p per share with negative carry and net foreign exchange movements of 16p and 11p per share, respectively. Our dividend payment reduced NAV by 30p per share. That meant we closed the half with an NAV per share of GBP 18.86. You can see the components of the 197p per share or GBP 1.9 billion of value growth here. Simon has highlighted the continued strength of action, which again provided the largest contribution to the value growth at GBP 1.8 billion. We also had a good number of strong performers in the rest of the PE portfolio, making a material contribution to the result in the half. We covered the growth of European Bakery Group in our recent Capital Markets Day. And it was joined by Royal Sanders and AES as well as Cirtec and Q Holdings. Collectively, these portfolio companies generated the majority of our performance-driven value growth of GBP 353 million. Softer trading from Luqom, YDEON, Tato and Wilson accounted for most of the performance decreases of GBP 219 million. The net impact of the multiple movement was negative GBP 23 million and we will cover these movements later in the valuation section. We also had a reduction in the value of our 2 quoted assets of GBP 54 million, resulting from lower share prices at both 3i and Basic-Fit. Taking the pluses and minuses together, the portfolio grew to GBP 20.3 billion. So let's have a look at the Action valuation. Action continues to outperform its peers in terms of the most relevant key performance indicators. And we've been disciplined in applying a consistent valuation methodology for Action. In practice, that means we've again applied a post-discount multiple of 18.5x Action's run rate earnings. That gives action an enterprise value at the end of September of EUR 30.2 billion. The valuation on the 3i balance sheet after deducting debt and taking account of our percentage ownership is GBP 12.9 billion. We've shown the current peer group valuation charts on this next slide. This covers the period from September 2022 to September 2023. Taking these multiples, Action sits well within the better rated peers on the last 12-month basis, which is more than justified when you look at its KPI performance. As you also know, we have referenced a proxy for a next 12-month multiple fraction by looking back a year, the enterprise value in September 2022 translates to 12.8x the run rate EBITDA actually achieved 1 year later. That isn't demanding compared to the peer group. We also thought it made sense to show a longer-term perspective on Action's valuation multiple versus its peers. This slide shows the valuation levels of the same peer group over the last 5 years. It splits out the more consistent and better rated peers, which includes Costco, Dollarama, Five Below and Ollie's, as shown by the light blue line at the top of the graph. None of the peers which make up this group is a perfect comparable, but we think of them collectively as more relevant valuation benchmarks for Action. This longer-term time frame includes periods of significant volatility in the stock market, particularly around the COVID years, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the impact of higher interest rates. The graph shows the 5-year average multiple of the better rated peers of 21.2x. This longer-term perspective, is also supportive of our mark. Okay. Let's look at the whole portfolio and its valuation multiples compared to the peer set. This slide is a favorite. And we've decided to keep the arrows, which we introduced at the year-end. They show, albeit anonymously the multiples that have gone up and down in the period. Just to remind you, this chart shows our portfolio valuation multiples in dark blue compared to the average of the multiple for the relevant peer sets in light blue. The picture hasn't changed materially from the position of the year-end. We've applied our valuation process asset by asset. And as always, our independent Board valuation committee and KPMG have both scrutinized this process. Overall, only 3 assets are marked above the average of the peer group out of 28 valued on an earnings basis. These are shown on the far right-hand side of the chart. All of the assets are with the respective -- within the respective peer group ranges. This quarter, we've taken 2 multiples up, to put that into context, the average multiple of these 2 assets before the upward revisions was just 7.5x EBITDA, which reflected the discipline we applied in buying these assets. We are moving these assets up because each business is outperforming its respective investment case. As you can see by the green arrows, these assets remain valued below the average of the peer group and in 1 case, significantly below. Where we have marked multiples down as we have in 4 cases shown on the slide with the red arrows. We've done that largely as a result of either softer performance and/or a material move downwards in the peer group or both. Overall, we continue to retain a good buffer between our marks and the average of the peer group, which will no doubt be helpful if we continue to see further market volatility. The portfolio weighted average multiple, excluding action is now 12.9x just below the 13.1x we disclosed in March. So turning to the business line performance for the half year. As Simon said, our private equity portfolio generated a gross investment return of 11%. And just to be clear, -- that investment return included GBP 127 million loss on foreign exchange. As you can see, it was a relatively quiet half for both realizations and investments in the private equity business. We did invest GBP 50 million in European Bakery Group to support its transaction activity and in ten23, our CDMO business. The overall PE portfolio value ended the period at GBP 18.3 billion. We covered the leverage position of our portfolio at our recent Capital Markets Day. I thought I'd give you a quick update, particularly in the light of the recent U.S. debt issuance of Action. As you can see here on the left-hand side of the page, our private equity portfolio, excluding Action, had a net debt to earnings ratio at the end of September of 3.8x, down from 4x at the end of March. That reduction in leverage is a result of generally solid cash generation across the portfolio. Action's debt ratio was 1.3x at the end of September. The portfolio has a long-dated debt maturity profile, as you can see in the 2 charts on the right-hand side, which show the position before and after the Action debt issue. After the debt issue, approximately 74% of the total portfolio debt is repayable in 2027 or later. The portfolio as a whole is well protected against interest rate risk. After the recent Action debt issue, 2/3 of the portfolio is subject of interest rate hedges. The all-in debt cost for this part of the portfolio is 6%. Our Infrastructure team delivered a gross investment return of 2%. That outcome largely reflects the continued pressure on the 3iN share price as well as the dividend and interest income of GBP 24 million and a small foreign exchange gain. It's worth reiterating that the underlying performance of the 3iN portfolio is strong. Scandlines continues to benefit from good strength in leisure travel in the period, but we've remained cautious on Scandlines' short-term freight outlook and we reflected that view in our September valuation mark. Both 3i infrastructure and Scandlines remain important contributors to our operating cash profit. The Infrastructure business and Scandlines combined generated GBP 72 million of cash income in the period. That meant we recognized a small cash operating profit in the half, as you can see on this slide. We expect to end the year with a cash operating profit in line with our objective to at least break even on this measure. So now let's take a look at the balance sheet. At the end of September, we had GBP 55 million in cash. The change from the year-end position reflected the payment of the full year dividend and further carry purchases, which I will come to in a minute. We closed the period with liquidity of just under GBP 1 billion. At the end of September, net debt was GBP 1.15 billion, with gearing of 6%. In October, we received proceeds of GBP 762 million from Action, of which we retained around GBP 300 million. As a result, the pro forma net debt position is within our tramline guidance of between GBP 500 million cash and GBP 1 billion of net debt. We've made no material changes to the group's FX hedging program. That means we have continued to roll the EUR 2.6 billion and GBP 1.2 billion of dollar hedging we put in place this time last year. The continued strong performance of Action and performance increases in other vintages, led to a GBP 147 million increase in the carry payable in the period. On the balance sheet, carried interest payable of GBP 962 million reflects the above increase, that's against the cumulative impact of the purchase of GBP 200 million of carry we announced at the full year results and the additional purchase of GBP 258 million of carry we executed in this half year. Given there are a number of moving parts, we thought it would be helpful to summarize where we are in terms of gross and net ownership of action and the associated carry dilution. Action's U.S. debt issuance and the resulting capital reorganization and reinvestment all happened after the end of the period we're reporting and was covered by Simon earlier. As he set out, 3i now has a pro forma ownership of Action of 54.8%. In fact, you can see the ownership progression over the last 3 sets of results, including the position at the end of September 2023 on the top line of this slide. You can also see the cumulative impact of the carry purchases we've made over the last 12 months. All these purchases have been of the 10, 12 vintage that owns our investment in Action. That has meant a reduction in the carry dilution on our interest in action from about 10% this time last year to roughly 5% today. Given the subsequent growth in Action, these purchases have been very beneficial to 3i's NAV growth. The cumulative effect of the increase in our gross holding and the reduction in carry dilution results in a 3i group pro forma equity holding in Action, net of carry of 52%, that's up over 4 percentage points from September last year. This slide and the table is specific to action, but it's worth reminding everyone that in terms of all other PE vintages, a sensible guide for the net carry accrual as a percentage of GIR is around 12%. Finally, let's turn to the interim dividend. Here, you can see our dividend policy. In line with that policy, we will pay our first FY '24 dividend of GBP 26.5 per share in early January, which is half of the prior year's total dividend. Before we get into Q&A, I'll hand it back to Simon.

Thank you, James. This has been another good half for us. And despite the current macro and geopolitical concerns, we're anticipating a strong second half to round out another year of solid progress at 3i. We're benefiting from our long-term approach, which is supported by a growing base of permanent capital. We have a resilient and prudently funded portfolio, and we've already addressed shorter-term refinancing requirements. In fact, the majority of our company's debt facilities don't mature before 2027. That means we avoid those busy refinancing years of '25 and '26. Over the last 10 years, we have been rigorous and disciplined investors and we were not big investors at the peak of the market. And our careful approach to leverage has been matched by our grounded and consistent approach to portfolio valuation marks. Over the coming years, we intend to establish another group of investments that will sit between the core private equity portfolio which acts as our origination engine and action. This new bucket of investments will eventually contain some 5 or 6 longer-term compounders. And we expect it to come over time, a significant part of our balance sheet. We've already identified 4 or 5 assets that we believe are capable of meeting our 15% annual return level over the long term. And we will consider them as part of the longer-term bucket when they're reaching about $100 million of EBITDA. Action is a core long-term holding where over the last 5 years, we have increased our direct equity holding from some 44% to 55%. At the same time, we've also reduced the cost of carry dilution from 15% to about 5% of Action's annual return to 3i. Action is delivering another exceptionally strong year. Footfall has been growing throughout the year. And as you have seen, P10 or October has even eclipsed 1 of the very strong months last year. As Action's volumes in installed base grows, so does its buying power? So these scale benefits are being returned to its consumers through lower prices. Since the summer, we have been reducing prices across the Essentials catalog on a rolling basis. These reductions reflect Action's reduced COGS on these items, and we are now seeing that volume growth is more than making up for these price reductions. Action's prices have always been very competitive. But now the gap between Action and the rest of the [indiscernible] is increasing. In return, that gap is driving further footfall growth in Action stores and incidentally, a store in France hit EUR 500,000 in sales in the last week of October. That's pretty astonishing given this was a non-Christmas week, and it wasn't a big city store. It was great to see Action's valuation this summer hit 100x our original purchase investment in 2011. It took just under 12 years to get to that 100x milestone, and that's really fast compared to most companies which have become 100 baggers. But the really exciting thing with the power of compounding is that as Action continues to grow, the next step to reach 200x will come about very much quicker. 3i [indiscernible] of Action has been a key part of this success, and we're delighted to be working with Hajir and her team on this exciting next stage of the Action journey. Okay. Thank you. We'll now open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Bruce Hamilton at Morgan Stanley.

2 or 3 questions, if I may. On the strength in Action. Obviously, you pointed to September and October still growing double digits like-for-like despite tough comps and a pickup in November. I mean you've argued that we should assume cost of living crisis, do you view that as really too conservative? That's the first question. Secondly, just on the releveraging scope, I guess, at 2.1x net debt EBITDA, Action is still arguably suboptimal from a leverage standpoint. So how should we think about sort of quantum and timing of any further releveraging? Would you go to 3x, would you go above that? And in terms of your use of proceeds, would you prioritize buying in more Action shares? Or how should we think about that? And then final point on the long-term compounders, clearly that's kind of setting up the business for what it feels like for a sort of post-Action environment. But can you just give us some indication on sort of time frame for ownership. Because compounding growth would suggest many more years of benefit from holdings. So just to check, that's still the case.

Okay. Thanks, Luke. Let me deal with these. I think the original guidance in March of high-single-digit like-for-likes in a higher inflation environment has obviously been proven to be very, very conservative given the outcome this year. And we obviously don't expect it to come back to single-digit like-for-like for the year, this is looking much more like I don't know, a mid-teens outcome or something like that, given the strength of the like-for-like, we have to jump over in the last 2 months. But it's going to be a very strong year. And -- but I think we always tend to put out future numbers on a fairly cautious basis. So I think that's explicable for what -- the guidance that was given in March. In terms of the leverage of 2.1x, I mean this thing really does degear very quickly because not only does it have very strong cash flow, but the profits grow so strongly. There is clearly room to address the capital structure again in due course and we'll be very alive to that to make the capital structure more efficient. So I would expect back to see more of that in due course. And then in terms of the long-term compounders, there's no change in our view about Action that we see this as a very long-term hold. But I guess the encouraging thing about the current portfolio is that we do see some of the private label and healthcare assets as having the potential to join that group and be compounders for us over a decade or multi-decades depending where you start from.

Our next question comes from Luke Mason from BNP Paribas.

First question on Action just on the consumer. Can you give any more details in terms of the outlook for the consumer? You mentioned essential selling well. How are discretionary items selling across the store base, just given what you've seen across the rest of the portfolio with some weakness in discretionary, does that apply to Action? Or are people still buying a lot of discretionary goods in Action as well? And then secondly, just the comments you made on pricing around lowering pricing in certain areas. Is that -- any more detail you can provide there? I mean, what kind of quantum are we talking about in terms of price deflation. Where is that coming through more in the general merchandise or fast-moving consumer goods, et cetera? And how do you expect that to feed through to like-for-likes going forward? And then third point is just on EBITDA margins. Just wondering if you could give any more comments or quantify in any way kind of the margin benefit given the like-for-like still trending well ahead of expectations and obviously related to the previous 40 basis points kind of margin expansion over a 4-year period, it looks very conservative now. So is there a new kind of sustained level of margin that we should think about?

Thanks, Luke. Okay. On the -- I would say on the consumer, the very strong performance that we've seen in the year-to-date is it's significant that the essential side of the category has had consistently very strong like-for-likes throughout the year. And that really shows our -- I guess, our true price positioning against other stores because those are very comparable items in general. So things like laundry and household and things like that have been the very strong performers. The seasonal side of the business has had its moments, but actually the weather has not been helpful to retail, as you've heard from others. So that probably hasn't been quite a strong contributor. But in the round, if I were to look at the 14 categories, we probably have about 6 or 7 categories at 20% or 30% plus like-for-likes, most of the rest are in the teens, and there'll be more of the seasonal ones in the teens, more of the essential ones in the 20% plus. And we've got 1 in high-single-figure digits. So that's how the categories really break down. And I'll remind you they're on top of very big growth numbers the previous year, where actually seasonals were very strong in the previous year. In terms of pricing, I mean, it really varies dependent on the product. But all I can say is earlier in the year when we've been placing orders and again, through this year, given the turnover numbers that we're seeing, we are buying significantly increased amounts and some of our vendors have had lower orders from other retailers. And so we've been able to secure really good prices and we're sticking to our 40% gross margin. So the benefit of those much lower COGS are all being passed through to the consumers, which is really creating a significant further price advantage for us and widening our moat, I believe. In terms of EBITDA margins, as I said before, this is an output, not an input for us. So the guidance in March was actually way too conservative in respect to this year and potentially in respect of the 5-year plan. So you can do the math yourself. You've seen the growth in the P10 numbers relative to the P9 numbers. We're already knocking up to mid-teens margins, which is going to force us up to somewhere between 14.5% and maybe a little better than that over the full year, I would expect.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Hubert Lam at Bank of America.

I've got 3 of them. I've got 3 questions. Firstly, can you talk about inflation and what's the impact on that on supply chain and just general cost for Action, it doesn't seem like you've been that impacted by it just given you said you're lower -- you still managed to keep pricing low and inventory costs have been low, but just wondering how inflation has impacted overall supply chain and just general costs? Second question is again on Action. On Slide 28, you can clearly show that your holding in Action has been increasing I guess, over the last year, is it also to further increase your stake in Action? And is there a limit as to how much you think of holding Action or what's your target in terms of your Action holding? And lastly, just a general question on the general investment in exit environment. I know it's quite muted period for you on both fronts over the last 6 months. So when do you expect the activity to pick up again? What do you think is going to drive that? And would you expect next year to see a decent recovery.

Thanks, Hubert. Inflation, specifically on supply chain for us the costs are coming in below budget this year. We're benefiting a little from the higher sales coming through the system. But we're conservative when we budget for these costs and supply chain has not been a major inflationary factor this year and things like freight and containers, as you know, have come down hugely in price. So that's been a bit of a tailwind for us, I would say that the inflation that's still hanging around is wage inflation. COGS has come down pretty drastically in virtually all categories, but it's really wages which are still the inflationary factor, I would suggest across Europe. In terms of our holding increases, I think it's reasonable to anticipate there will be modest further increases in the holding if we get the opportunity. It is interesting at the moment where there is a lot of pressure on the LP community. They're short of cash from the GPs who've been realizing very little in the way of assets. And so some of those smaller LPs are looking for liquidity and they have to look to their best assets if they want to raise some cash in the current market. So that's really an opportunity for us and perhaps some of the bigger GPs to consolidate the ownership of Action. And we'll, of course, consider that as we go forward. I don't think we've thought about a top limit for our holding in Action. But actually, if you look over the life of this when we did the Pearl transaction back in 2020, as I said in my talk, we had about just under 44% of the equity. We've managed to move that up significantly as well as take the carry down from a 15% track to a 5% track today. So there's been a very potent increase in our drop-through holding, which we'd like to see bigger if at all possible. In terms of the investment and transaction market and realizations. I've been in investment banking or private equity for well over 30 years. This is about as stuck as I've seen it. And there has been a big drop off in flows, and that is significantly affecting the realization and the investment market, I would suggest. So I don't see this getting easier very quickly, like we're not off to the races in the first week of January or anything like that. But I will think there will be more refinancing and mark pressures on people as we move through next year because they'll have to be doing something about those 25 refinancings of which there's a lot and they're going to be done on very different economics to the money they have at the moment. So I would expect there to be a more interesting situation as we move through next year, but we're not expecting anything speedy to change at the moment.

Our next question comes from Chris Brown at JPMorgan.

Just a quick question really on the Action's sort of the additional purchase there. Were you -- was 3i the sort of only person sort of buying extra shares from the sellers? Or did some of the other LP investors sort of top up their holding as well from those who are selling. And presumably, this is all done at the sort of 30th September valuation. Would that be fair? And equally, when you buy out the carry, is that sort of done at the same valuation as well?

The -- we do the purchases at the prevailing mark. So the prevailing mark in October was actually our June mark, it wasn't our September mark, Chris. So that's an important point to understand. And in this period, we've not been the only purchaser. I think over the last year and again in this quarter, some of the larger LPs have taken advantage of those liquidity issues and bought some stakes off to smaller LPs.

Yes. Yes. So it's fair to say, given what happened to the valuation of Action in the last quarter, then you bought quite well.

Yes, well, that's arithmetic, I would agree.

Yes. Okay. And just on investment. I know I hear what you said about being a sort of tough market. Have you gotten any guidance for what you might sort of seek to deploy in H2?

Not really because to be completely honest, on the transaction market, I think it's turning out to be worse than we were expected in terms of flow and in terms of opportunities. So it's very hard to call at the moment. We remain active, and we are looking and considering things. But it's -- as I tried to illustrate in what I said, matching buyers and sellers requirements at the moment is as difficult as I can remember it.

Yes. So it's most likely probably to be sort of just sort of existing companies sort of M&A from the retained earnings and maybe a few follow-ons.

Yes. I think like...

A bit like in infrastructure.

We hope that there were more bolt-ons, and we've done some very interesting ones in the first half, but that will probably be the priority in this environment.

At this point, there are no more questions in the Zoom webinar, so I will hand back to Silvia Santoro to address the written questions.

I have one. Can you comment on your intention for further carry purchases at Action and perhaps on other assets as well? And should we expect the 5% dilution to fall to 0 as a priority?

Yes. I think the intention will obviously be to deal with the carry over time. And indeed, that's the expectation on any asset we buy with the carriers in it that we do, we do satisfy the carry over time, and we will look at the right opportunities to do that with the balance of the Action carry. And also, if we do transfer effectively some other assets into a longer-term hold category, then that would require us to buy out the carry and we would move on to that in due course when those assets became longer-term holds. So that would be another feature of the business as it develops going forward.

[Operator Instructions] Sorry, Simon. We do have a question on the Zoom webinar. It comes from Charles Murphy from Singer.

Just on this new long-term hold category, how long do you think it's going to take to establish this? Is this something that we'll start to see next year and then fully established in, say, '25? Or can you give us a sense of how fast that evolves as a distinct category?

I think we have at least a couple of assets that are within striking distance of that GBP 100 million hurdle that we've set up there before we come to a consideration point. So I would say in the next 1 or 2 years, you're going to see this bucket start to take share, Charles.

Looks like we have no further questions.

Okay, thanks, Silvia. Okay. Thanks to everyone for attending, and thanks to those people who asked the questions. Hope you have a great day. All right. Bye-bye.