Deutsche Beteiligungs AG (DBAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Very warm welcome also from our side. Actually, today, I'm joined not only by Matthias Doll, whom you know quite well, but also by Brigitte Friedrich-Haack. Brigitte is new on the Board. She's Chief of Staff to our Executive Board and also will take over shareholder relations from Matthias going on forward. Do you want to say hello, Brigitte?

Hi, everyone. Looking forward to work with you.

Jumping straight away to Page 3. We are happy to provide quite an eventful quarter in terms of realizations and also deals. Obviously, the sale of duagon is a significant highlight for us given the importance for the portfolio and also the valuation uplift we achieved. I'll come to that with a bit more granularity later. And the other big news is another highly attractive or at least we deem it a very high attractive investment in the IT service space, which it might. We've been early on, and we've been able to do that on a strictly bilateral basis, working relentlessly through August. And so we were able to buy this asset before any process could have started, which is also a great testimonial in terms of how aggressive this team can move forward in an environment which is still characterized by a lot of fights for trophy assets, and this undoubtedly is a trophy asset. So overall, we invested EUR 148 million in private equity and private debt over the last 9 months. That's an unusually high amount. And we are pleased to say that we see, at least in terms of deal pipeline and still looking at bilateral situations, and that's also where we focus on. We see that the deal flow is not abating, and we see that people want to engage with us in bilateral situations, a bit more complex situations. And so we are still able to pick and choose in the market, which is a bit frozen for most of our -- especially external competitors who have flocked into Germany over the last couple of years. I am still ardently focused on also keeping distributions to our shareholders quite high. And so with the dividend and our continued pace of buybacks, especially in the light of what we at least deem an attractive share price level, we continue to distribute nearly EUR 1.8 so far this year to our shareholders, which is basically nearly all of our profits. We explicitly reiterate our guidance. And on Page 4, you will see how that translates into numbers. Obviously, on the NAV per share has not moved a lot, but that's also marked by -- that's also marked -- impacted by our distributions in the magnitude of EUR 1.8 per share to our shareholders. Same holds true for the NAV in the absolute amount, which actually has come down given that EUR 33 million has left the company and which is about what we have been earning so far. In terms of fund management service, we are on track, I think, to at least achieve our guidance and the guidance in that space looks conservative right now. We come to that later also with Solvares, where we have some news in that regard impacting our fund investment services space. The group net income is a bit on the low end until now. Still, we are also here reiterating our guidance and expect quite an eventful Q4, I must say an air of caution or pinch of salt is needed because maybe one or another transaction might slip into Q1 next year. So it's difficult at this point in time to really have more visibility in that space here. But overall, I think in terms of what we want to achieve in terms of disposals and valuations uplift, we're quite confident that we will achieve our program over a 3-year period. On Page 5, nothing excited here. You will see that we keep a very granular portfolio. And although the top 5, the concentration has increased, the increase is mostly driven by the uplift of the duagon valuation where duagon, we expect the transaction to close in Q4. Coming over to MAIT. MAIT is another IT service company, a space we do quite well given our history of Cloudflight, the successful investment of Cloudflight, akquinet, but also now here. We signed the transaction in August. We bought it from 3i, a listed private equity investor. And with that, our IT service sector is now 20% of our portfolio. MAIT is a top 10 German company. It has 25 locations, given that it is the result of an extensive buy-and-build strategy, which we want to pursue. And it has 900 employees in the DACH region. You see also the great stickiness of the customers is underlined by the fact that more than 60% of the customers have been with MAIT for over a decade. And that's really something we really liked together with still growing our underlying market trends. That was a key attraction point for us. So we are in the process, and we are already in the midst of launching further add-on acquisitions. I think the company will do 1 to 2 more add-on acquisitions before the year closes. The transaction, MAIT is about to close for us in the next week. So -- but we have full access to management already because -- granted. And so we are already working very, very closely with the management team, which is also very significantly reinvested. In terms of top line growth, we expect the company to grow on an organic basis in the high single-digit to low double-digit range going forward, at least until 2030. Moving over to the next case study, our sale of duagon to Knorr-Bremse. We signed the transaction in September, as I said. Closing is expected for December this year. We achieved a money multiple north of 2.5x. You could also say a bit below 3x. But yes, very, very happy result. And also here, the valuation uplift was 100% on a year-on-year basis. So during a 12-month period, quite a very significant amount, and it shows what we always thought would be a very strategic asset. We also were able to sell it at a very strategic price. It's -- for you, it's quite helpful to notice that when we bought duagon, duagon itself was a company with below EUR 30 million EBITDA in revenue. And so through quite a significant amount of add-on acquisitions, we were able to significantly strengthen the strategic profile of duagon and making it a must-have asset for Knorr-Bremse or Wabtec from the U.S.A. and also some other strategics were quite keen. So it was not the most complicated asset to sell, I must say. Very pleasant development here. Coming over, that's out of the press, and we are going to announce it next week officially, but the transaction is signed. You may remember that we put one of our star asset, Solvares, into a Continuation Fund. And with that Continuation Fund, together with our -- the lead investor in the Continuation Fund, Five Arrows Principal Investments, we were able to acquire Totalmobile in the U.K., combining the 2 assets. And just to give you an idea, the Totalmobile transaction is a transaction north of EUR 500 million enterprise value. So there's 2 things I would like to stress here. On the one hand, we have been able to do a very significant add-on, which will also increase the size of the Continuation Fund because we will raise new money for the Continuation Fund. The money is already underwritten. That, in turn, will increase the fees by, I would say, EUR 1.5 million roughly management fees per year for the Continuation Fund. And the other thing is we have been able by swimming the exposure, we have -- we are not running into a concentration risk for DBAG, but still increase the amount of fees flowing to DBAG. So all in all, this is an asset which continues to make us very, very happy where we are also happy that we did the Continuation Fund because obviously, it increases the fee volume we're getting on the one hand, but also it helps us to keep winners for longer. And so that's why we think that this asset and also the transaction is really why Continuation Funds make tremendous sense at least from a sponsor perspective. Moving over to the next page. You see the bridge in terms of our NAV per share, which is obviously heavily impacted by the dividend and buybacks program and negatively impacted by the valuation change. On that note, it is worth mentioning that -- and obviously, it's not something we highlight very highly, but it's actually quite a positive event. The sale of duagon has put the Fund VII firmly into carried interest territory. And the way we booked it now is that 80% -- there's a catch-up phase because the preferred return for our investors is earned. And when the fund is into carry, it's probably a very successful fund and thus also lays the basis for further fundraising. But nevertheless, at some point, we also had to book the carried interest reservations. And given that the fund with this exit is into a catch-up phase, 80% of the proceeds go for now to the team and not to DBAG. It's -- for the time being, it's not a cash payout. The cash payout for duagon will be quite significant to DBAG in the order of nearly EUR 80 million, but it's more an accounting provision we are taking here. And with that, I think we have taken a cautious stance in terms of carry provisioning. But it somehow puts -- yes, it bends the uplift of the very successful duagon sale. Moving over to the next slide. You see the portfolio development in terms of the change in value. You see that obviously, earnings have been a very positive development. Nevertheless, given also extensive buy-and-build acquisitions, especially with congatec and Avrio, the change in debt is also quite significant. And the operating performance on a whole is still challenging, I would say, for a large part of the portfolio. And then what saves us was the multiples and valuation changes. Here, it's worth noting that normally, that's the worst kind of change in value because, obviously, you don't want to -- you want to have nice operating performance and low multiple and valuation changes. But here, most of the valuation changes is actually driven by the uplift of the duagon sale. So it's -- for once, it's mostly also it will turn into cash change, this multiple valuation change by Q4. With that, I would move over to the EBITDA from Fund Investment service where nothing exciting is happening. We are firmly on track, as I said, to reach our guidance. And obviously, also once the Solvares Conti Fund will close with the new upsized facility that will help further. On Page 13, you will see that our capital commitments have come down quite significantly given our -- capital commitments have come down quite significantly given our frenzied investment pace, but so have our financial resources and also our dry powder, but these are communicating basis. Overall, we are ahead in terms of deploying money, and these figures will significantly change once the duagon transaction closes, as I said, adding up some EUR 80 million in cash going forward. And duagon, hopefully, will not be the last exit -- could be the last exit for this year. Let's see. But we are still in a very -- we have a very mature portfolio, and we're still in a harvesting mode. So I would say stay tuned for some more exits down the road from here on. So moving over to our last slide. We firmly reiterate our guidance. The NAV per share is definitely reiterated where we might see some issues is the net asset value on a gross basis because if we don't see a further valuation uplift and we continue our frenzy pace of share buybacks, obviously, that could come in at the low end of the range here. But I think as investors, you should be more focused on the NAV per share, where obviously our share buybacks significantly below NAV are highly accretive here. And also that going forward, we will no longer guide the gross or net asset value on a total amount, but our key KPI will be the NAV per share as a KPI and performance bonus for the management team going forward from here on, starting with next year. Yes, thanks. I want to close with what was a very frantic quarter. I can assure you that the team is over busy -- more busy than normal, but I cannot promise anything for the year-end. We may see some slippage in Q1. So -- but nevertheless, we are in a very good -- we feel that we are in a very good spot to continue to produce meaningful events for our shareholders. Thanks.