CVC Capital Partners plc (CVC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the CVC Capital Partners plc 2026 Half Year Results Call. Please be aware that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would like to hand over to Bruce Hamilton to begin the meeting. Bruce, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Today, we'll update you on our performance for the first 6 months of the year. We have up to 60 minutes for the call. We'll begin with the presentation. And after that, we'll open the floor to questions. Presenting today are Rob Lucas, CEO; Rob Squire, Head of Client and Product Solutions; Peter Rutland, President; and Fred Watt, CFO. Rob, over to you.

Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our half-year results call. Starting on Slide 2, you can see the first half of 2026 was a period of real momentum with strong performance across every part of our business. Once again, we've delivered record realizations at highly attractive returns, a track record that remains second to none. This is translating into fundraising momentum across all 4 platforms and each client channel, driving growth in fee-paying AUM, greater diversification and still stronger financial performance. First, let me provide a bit more detail on our operating performance. Realizations continued at record levels, up 79% LTM, and these continue to be delivered at highly attractive returns. Value creation saw further increases to 11% over the last 12 months, reflecting the benefit of our sourcing and value creation engines. In the first half of this year alone, value creation for PE and Infra was 6%, with Europe, Americas delivering value creation of 8% Deployment continued at a consistent pace of EUR 26 billion over the last 12 months to June and with a strong pipeline going forward. And we saw broad-based fundraising momentum right across the business with gross inflows of EUR 11 billion, again showing the strength of our diversified platform. That operating momentum translates directly into our financial performance. With group fee-paying AUM up 9% year-on-year, fee-related revenues followed that trend, growing 9% as well. Combined with strong performance-related earnings, first half EBITDA has increased by 12% and adjusted EPS is up 11% year-on-year. And our strong predictable cash generation supports a dividend per share up 12% year-on-year. And this is alongside our ongoing share buyback program. Fred will take us through the financials fully in a few minutes. Looking in more detail at realizations, our record last 12 months really does mark us out as an industry leader and follows a record year in 2024 and again in 2025. Realizations in the first half of 2026 were up 19% compared to the first half of 2025, driven by exit strength right across our platform. These include notable exits from our Europe Americas Fund VII and II, such as Naturgy, the Spanish-based energy company; and Rayner, our MedTech eye care company as well as from Asia and infrastructure, as highlighted on the slide. For the full year, we expect realizations broadly similar to last year. These record realizations feed directly into our track record of creating exceptional returns for our clients and delivering DPI that truly differentiates us. Over the past 4.5 years, we've returned 33% more capital than we have called from our private equity platform. And within that, 40% more than we have called from our Europe Americas franchise, something that is quite unique across our peer group. In an environment where our clients are ever more focused on DPI, this is central to our high confidence in our future fundraising, not least Fund X, which we'll be launching in 6 months' time. Our returns over this period are equally strong, 3.6x gross multiple of money and 26% gross IRR across our private equity exits or 4x and 29% across Europe, Americas. But how are we able to consistently deliver these returns and realizations? For me, 3 factors stand out. First, the upper mid-market size of our investments gives us flexibility. We aren't reliant on the IPO markets to exit. Second, our prudent portfolio marks, which allow us to exit consistently at an uplift. And thirdly, and very importantly, our ability to drive strong outlook during our ownership, creating high-performing valuable businesses. On the topic of investment performance, we are seeing very positive operating momentum across our portfolio companies. Over the last 12 months, we have delivered EBITDA growth of 13% across all of our private equity funds and 14% across Europe Americas Fund VIII. And importantly, this growth is broad-based as these funds are diversified with typically 30 to 40 investments in Europe-Americas funds. It's also worth noting this value creation includes the markdowns to our limited software exposure, in line with changes in public market valuations in the first quarter. With this value creation, a number of our funds have seen strong progress in gross MOIC over the last 6 months, with Europe Americas Fund III, for example, increasing to 1.5x from 1.3x 6 months ago. As I've said previously, the importance of AI for portfolio companies can't be overemphasized, and we are putting material resources into preparing ours for this enormous technological change. AI will have disruptive effects, but can also be massively beneficial for those who really embrace it. This is why we are very much focused on accelerating the adoption of Agentic AI across our portfolio companies to drive further value creation, including by using partnerships with all the major providers. In our investment process, we are also leveraging AI platforms to enhance knowledge sharing and support investment decision-making, including for due diligence. We were early adopters, taking our whole senior team out to Singularity University on the West Coast in early 2020 to better understand the significance of large language models. Since then, we have fully embedded the AI opportunity and risk lens into our investment committee decisions. More broadly, the strength of our network shows in the breadth of our capital deployment across the platform and the way our teams work together. In the first half of the year, we acquired the Animal Nutrition & Health business of DSM, an investment made possible by the combined efforts of our Benelux, DACH and Chemicals teams. In sports, media and entertainment, where we are a world leader, we acquired the world's largest online Chess platform, chess.com, and made an investment in Equine Network, which is a leading North American equestrian sports league. Both investments combine the expertise of our SME sector team with our U.S. platform. In the first half, this led to a deployment pace that remained consistent with a 3- to 4-year investment cycle, running at a similar level to the prior year, and our healthy pipeline gives us real confidence as we look forward. We have built CVC into one of the world's broadest and most diversified private markets leaders. This breadth is a huge competitive advantage as clients consolidate relationships and are looking for partners who can serve them across multiple strategies, channels and geographies. As you can see on the left of this slide, our 4 platforms are all in sizable and very attractive markets, private equity, credit, secondaries and infrastructure. Within each of those platforms, our unparalleled global network of 30 offices and our specialist teams provide the deepest origination funnel in our industry. This is complemented by a highly aligned, very distinctive compensation model and a business that is fully integrated as one CVC. As you can see on the other side of the slide, we are proud to have the highest quality client base and relationships. Our consistent track record of outperformance through the cycle has helped us create deep, long-standing relationships with the top LPs in the world. And at the same time, our fundraising capabilities continue to broaden and expand across the insurance and private wealth channels. All this means we're extremely well positioned for growth, benefiting from the trends that work in our industry. We're gaining market share on the back of our consistent outperformance and investment appetite for Europe. We are demonstrating strong growth in credit, infrastructure and secondaries. In each case, we are using the power of the CVC network to keep scaling these platforms and broaden them further, including into adjacent products and client segments. And in private equity, we are confident in future growth, driven by Fund X, which we expect to be the same size or larger than its predecessor, which is still the largest private equity fund ever raised. This all underpins our previously guided double-digit CAGR in fee-paying AUM to 2028 and a clear path to a substantial step-up in our earnings in 2028 as we activate Fund X. With that, I'll hand over to Rob to take you through fundraising. Thanks, Rob.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I'll start my section with an update on our closed-end institutional capital raising. Slide 11 shows that our strong execution in this channel continued in the first half with momentum across our entire platform here at CVC. We held 2 highly successful final closings during the period. Firstly, our CLO Equity Fund IV with commitments of $1 billion, a 25% increase on the predecessor Vintage III and powering $15 billion of CLO issuance. Secondly, we closed our maiden European middle market buyout fund, CVC Catalyst, with aggregate commitments of $3.4 billion. This total is 70% above our initial $2 billion target and offers yet one more data point on the strong institutional demand for European private equity. In our secondaries business, SOF VI closed $9.3 billion at the half year, and we'll hold a final close there in the coming weeks with more capital. On the back of this success, we feel well positioned to now broaden our secondary platform into new adjacencies, including the imminent launch of credit secondaries and over time, the launch of infrastructure secondaries. And on infrastructure, we've closed EUR 5.2 billion of aggregate commitments at the half year into our Value-add Fund IV and our DIF Fund VIII. Combining this capital with further closings already held in July and other IC approvals received, we're now over 75% complete on our combined EUR 8 billion target. When taken as a whole, we see this execution demonstrating CVC's capacity to raise institutional capital at scale as we broaden our platform. The support and the partnership that we're seeing day in and day out from our long-standing client relationships provides all of us with real confidence in our pipeline for '27 and our Fund X raise specifically. Pre-marketing for that process is now well underway and is very much in line with expectations. CVC's outstanding investment and realization metrics, combined with our proven underwriting model for that specific process, underpin our confidence in delivering a fund at the same size or larger than its predecessor. Now turning to Slide 12. And as Rob referenced, we see CVC's platform continuing to gain share in each of our channels. And I want to quickly detail the structural drivers that I'm seeing firsthand, which position CVC so strongly. First, as we've referenced on prior calls, we see the vast majority of our clients continuing to concentrate their capital with fewer and fewer GPs, focusing both their time and their energy on relationships that can span multiple asset classes. Secondly, we see an ever-growing emphasis on partnering with managers that can demonstrate a proven track record of generating alpha across economic and market cycles. And I see this focus point especially gathering even more momentum in the years to come. Third, institutional clients are placing ever more weight on actual cash-on-cash returns and actual DPI metrics instead of mark-to-market paper gains. On this front, CVC's track record is second to none. And fourth, we continue to see a rebalancing of private market portfolios towards greater European exposure. Given CVC's leadership position in European private equity, credit, secondaries and infrastructure, we feel very well placed to be the partner of choice for our clients. Now Rob referenced several of these trends as emerging or indeed accelerating since the start of 2022. And as we show on the right-hand side, during that time period, we've generated in excess of EUR 100 billion of gross inflows onto our platform. While the aggregate scale of that capital is pleasing and is set to jump again with our Fund X process, what's most encouraging is the acceleration in the year-on-year cadence of these flows as we broadened our platform, specifically the growth in flows to secondaries, infrastructure and to credit. And I fully expect this cadence will amplify further when we onboard the Marathon products in the coming months and years ahead. So lastly from me, on Slide 13, we cover private wealth, and I'm pleased to report that we've continued to make good progress in the channel with around EUR 7 billion of aggregate value now in our evergreen structures. This total is more than 4x the level of just a year ago and is 90% up on the values which I provided at the full year results. During the first half, we accepted over EUR 2.6 billion in subscriptions, and we had gross redemptions of around EUR 80 million, implying net inflows to our evergreen products of around EUR 2.5 billion. As a reminder, we see these vehicles as an important long-term opportunity for CVC to accept different forms of capital alongside our long-established strength in the traditional closed-end format. Aside from private wealth, we believe these structures will be the conduit for defined contribution retirement plans to gain exposure to private markets, including over time, the emerging 401(k) opportunity in the United States. I'm pleased to report that from a standing start just over 2 years ago, we now have active evergreen offerings in each of private equity, credit, secondaries and infrastructure with multiple vehicles tailored to the large U.S. market. In conclusion, as is the case with our closed-end funds, provided that we maintain strong performance, I have every confidence that the long-term trajectory of these vehicles will be incredibly positive as clients in this maturing area increasingly seek to align their capital with high-performance managers. So with that, I'll now hand over to Peter to provide an update on the developments that we're seeing in credit and insurance.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everybody. We have significantly scaled our credit platform in recent years to build market-leading positions in both private and liquid credit. Today, we are a top 3 manager in European private credit and the #1 CLO manager in Europe. The quality of our underwriting is reflected in our outstanding performance track record with very low default and loss rates, an annualized default rate of just 0.2% since inception in European direct lending and 0.2% loss rate in CLOs, well below industry averages. In direct lending, this is partly because European private credit markets have a more favorable dynamic in terms of capital supply and demand than in the U.S. But in addition, like in private equity, portfolio diversification in credit is a key driver of this outperformance with, for example, software exposure well below industry averages. This performance has driven strong growth, and we have scaled our European direct lending program from EUR 1 billion to over EUR 10 billion in only 2 vintages and a 30% CAGR in our credit fee-paying AUM since 2020. We also see substantial future growth potential. We have continued to invest in our product offering. Notably, the acquisition of Marathon, which closed on July 1, brings us market-leading performance in a number of attractive subsectors, especially in the U.S. market, including the fast-growing asset-based lending, structured credit and real estate credit with minimal exposure to the U.S. direct lending market. This significantly expands CVC's addressable market opportunity across all our routes to market. Indeed, with this broadened product suite and our market-leading performance, we are confident that we can continue to scale in the institutional channel. In private wealth, as just touched upon by Rob, we see significant further growth potential from the EUR 3.5 billion we've reached in our CVC credit vehicle in just 2 years. And in insurance, the addition of Marathon's capabilities will allow us to further accelerate our growth in that segment. Indeed, the size of the insurance opportunity is considerable, and we are well positioned to win. Insurers need to improve the risk-adjusted returns on the asset side of their balance sheets to meet the competition from insurers backed by alternative asset managers. We have already raised EUR 18 billion over the past 5 years. And given the focus on the insurance channel, we're now bringing together our insurance expertise more closely with our credit expertise into one credit and insurance organization. Our credit investing capabilities, together with our experience in insurance private equity and technical experience from our global insurance solutions team means that we can create solutions that are highly attractive to insurers. This broadening of conversations we can have with insurance clients is illustrated by the $3.5 billion strategic partnership we entered into with AIG at the beginning of the year. And with that, I'll hand you over to Fred to take you through the financials.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. Starting with Slide 17 and fee-paying AUM, which as we can see, grew 9% year-on-year to EUR 153 billion. As Rob noted earlier, that growth was led by credit, secondaries and infrastructure, which together were up 19% year-on-year. Private equity was in line with the June '25 levels, reflecting, on the one hand, strong realizations, but offset by fee-paying inflows with the completion of Catalyst and also the positive momentum we've seen in private wealth. Moving to Slide 18 and turning to the P&L. Fee-related revenues were up 9% versus the first half of '25, in line with fee-paying AUM growth at EUR 771 million. As you can see on the slide, fee-related revenues included EUR 22 million of catch-up fees relating mainly to the capital close in H1 for Catalyst and SOF VI. Fee-related earnings up 11% to EUR 442 million and FRE margin of 57% also benefited to some extent from those catch-up fees. Performance-related earnings of EUR 110 million were up 15%, tracking in line with our expectations and also tracking our prior guidance for the year. Taking both FRE and PRE together, EBITDA increased 12% to EUR 554 million. And finally, profit after tax was EUR 434 million, up 10% with the effective tax rate, excluding carried interest at around 20.5%, higher than last year, but within the range of 19% to 21% that we discussed at our full year results. Turning to Slide 19 and costs. Total operating expenses grew 7% year-on-year, reflecting our focus on cost discipline alongside investment in our growth areas such as private wealth and insurance. For the full year, we continue to expect total cost growth to be slightly below 10% with higher growth in the second half due to the phasing of hirings. And consistent with what we said in March, we expect total cost growth to revert to mid- to high single-digit percentage from 2027 onwards. Turning to performance-related earnings on Slide 20. The basic message here is that we are reaffirming all guidance set out at the full year results in March. Firstly, the future carry potential embedded in funds already raised remains unchanged at EUR 5 billion, with carried interest recognized in the first half, offset by carry on new capital closed in the period. This will flow through the P&L over the coming years and is based on our key funds achieving the midpoint of their target ranges. Secondly, on the outlook for PRE, we are also reaffirming the guidance that we set out at our full year results, including for 2026. The strong realizations we have delivered in the first half gives us increasing visibility and confidence in delivering this. Our unchanged expectation is for aggregate PRE of around EUR 600 million to EUR 700 million over 2026 and 2027, with the most likely path still being 2026 and around the 2025 level, followed by a first step-up in 2027 with expected initial carry recognition of Asia V. Finally, we continue to expect that a further substantial build will then follow across 2028 to 2029 as Fund VII recognizes its initial IFRS carry given the IPO perimeter and IFRS accounting effects we have discussed previously. Lastly, turning to our balance sheet and cash generation on Slide 21. As of the 30th of June 2026, we had a healthy balance sheet position with gross cash of EUR 645 million and long-term debt of approximately EUR 1.9 billion. This reflects the issuance of $550 million of U.S. private placement notes and is adjusted for the cash used for the closing of the acquisition of Marathon, which took place on July 1. Strong operating cash flow in the first half supported the payment of the 2025 final dividend of EUR 250 million as well as EUR 194 million of share buyback completed out of the announced program of up to EUR 350 million. The net debt leverage ratio as of June was 1.2x adjusted for the closing of the acquisition of Marathon, well within our maximum leverage guidance of 2x. The second half of the year will see continued strong operational cash flow, supporting the payment of a EUR 275 million interim dividend plus further progress in the share buyback program. With that, I will hand back to Rob for some concluding remarks.

Thanks, Fred. So to conclude, what excites me the most is not just the strength of the first half's performance. It's that every structural trend shaping private markets today, client consolidation, demand for alpha, insurance capital, private wealth, European allocations and product diversification. They all play directly to how we have positioned CVC and how we've built our strengths. Our market share gains continue. The strong double-digit growth in EBITDA, EPS and dividends in the first half is underpinned by fundraising momentum, including the $3.4 billion raised for Catalyst and the $9.3 billion raised so far for SOF VI. You've heard today about our strong growth in private wealth and in insurance with Marathon materially expanding our offering. At the same time, we remain firmly focused on our core institutional clients. We see continued growth in private equity with increasing visibility and confidence in our ability to deliver Fund X at the same size or larger than Fund IX, alongside continued fast scaling in credit, secondaries and infrastructure. This all underpins our previously guided top digit -- double-digit CAGR in fee-paying AUM to 2028 and a clear path to a substantial step-up in our earnings in 2028 as we activate Fund X. Thank you very much. Now just before I hand over to Bruce to start the Q&A, you'll have seen we announced in May that John Hourican will join CVC as CFO in September and succeed Fred, who will retire after almost 20 years with the firm. I'd just like to take a moment to recognize Fred for his exceptional contribution to CVC over nearly 2 decades. Fred joined in 2007 and has played a central role in helping us build CVC into the global business we are today, including, of course, our IPO in 2024. On a personal basis, Fred has been a trusted partner and colleague to me and to many others over the years and externally as a trusted contact for many of you on this call. On behalf of us all, thank you, Fred, for everything you've done and best wishes for a happy retirement. Bruce, over to you.

Thank you, Rob, Peter and Fred. Now let's open it up for questions. Please try to keep to 2 questions per person. Operator.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Hubert Lam with Bank of America.

First, I'd like to thanks Fred, for all the help since the IPO and all the best in the future. My 2 questions. Firstly, on wealth. Any indications of slowing demand near term for your wealth products? Or do you see any change in terms of your goals or launches because of the more challenging backdrop within the evergreen sector? That's the first question. Second question is on credit. How do you see deployment opportunities now? Do you see more now just given the sector dislocation? Or is the lack of sponsor activity slowing your deployment activity?

Thanks, Hubert. Rob, would you like to take the first question there? And Peter, would you like to speak to the second?

Sure. Hubert, Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball. And so what I can tell you is that we're really pleased with the momentum that we're seeing. We had net inflows into all of our evergreen products in Q1 and in Q2. And so we feel incredibly well positioned. And I've said on prior calls, we're really seeing that differentiation in terms of that European nexus play through in terms of the reception that we're getting, not just sort of in the rest of the world space, but also specifically within the U.S. wealth space. So that's how I'd answer that. Peter?

Thanks, Rob. Yes, Hubert. As noted by some of our peers, there has been a muted level of activity in the first half, partly driven by overall industry new deal activity being lower. We see this more as a temporary phenomenon. And from our point of view, our underwriting remains extremely disciplined, and we are really focused on making sure we're picking the very best opportunities ahead of us.

Our next question comes from Nicholas Herman with Citi.

Okay. I think I -- two for me as well, please. Firstly, on insurance, outside of the U.S. players, I'm not really aware of such high integration between the insurance and credit team. So it feels like that's quite relatively unique. And I guess from a competitive standpoint, outside of your global U.S. competitors, can you just talk about the competitive environment to win these insurance mandates, which are clearly -- there's clearly a significant opportunity there. And I guess -- and then finally just bring that all together, it feels like the AIG partnership and SMA was not really a one-off. Is that fair? That's the first one. And then the second one, just a quick one on Fund X. Just trying to conceptualize the guidance on Fund X to be at least as big as the next -- as the last fund, given the clearly very strong DPI were Fund X to be the same size as Fund IX. What level of re-up rate would that broadly equate to?

Brilliant. Thanks very much, Nick. Peter, maybe you could just take the first question, and Rob Sure.

Thanks, Nicholas, for the question. And I'm not sure whether others have integrated quite as closely as we have. But certainly, we think that to be successful with insurance clients, you do need this combination of the right products that we talked about in the presentation as well as bringing an overlay of the expertise of the specifics that insurance balance sheets need to have. And absolutely, we do have big ambitions for the insurance route to market, and we hope and expect that the AIG partnership will not be the only strategic one that we will have in a few years' time.

Great. And in terms of Fund X, Nicholas, look, we will announce the target size, the cover amount at our Annual Investor Meeting in London in the second week of September. And then in terms of your question around sort of re-uprates, as you know, we have a very proven underwriting process for that fund family where we re-underwrite every single line item over the course of the preceding 18 months. And so we're very confident that we will achieve industry-leading, quite frankly, re-up rates there. And I think that with this renewed appetite for Europe, I do actually think that the existing clients will probably contribute more into Fund X relative they were in Fund IX. So we feel quite positive again at this stage.

That's very helpful. Could you just remind us how much the existing clients contributed to Fund IX in that case, please?

I'm not sure we disclose that, Nicholas.

Our next question comes from Arnaud Giblat with BNP Paribas.