EQT AB (publ) (EQT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much and welcome to EQT's AGM. I am happy to see so many of you here today. I would also like to welcome the school students here. Well, maybe we'll see more [indiscernible] next year. Together with Chris, I'll tell you something about the activities of EQT during the past years, and I will share my thoughts for the future. Afterwards, [indiscernible] will tell us somewhat about [indiscernible] Nexon and Margo will tell us about the structure of our program, which as we promised at the previous AGM. Don't hesitate to ask the questions to the speaker today, they're here. Hopefully, you have [indiscernible] punchlines, which we could discuss before moving on, I'd like to share some of our reflections. Today, EQT turns further [indiscernible] this fairly short term, as we have been operational, we've developed into a global investor, which owns companies with global reach, in different sectors with attractive possibilities of growth and profitability, creating prosperity to the investors who's been to invest, but also for the other stakeholders, who work where there could be suppliers, it could be employees, it could be customers. During the time we've been active, a lot of things have happened. China has developed into an economic powerhouse during the first years when we started into [indiscernible] existed. We've had several global financial crisis. So when people are nervous, we know that we've seen this before. We know how to act. We have new challenges. We have the agent climate crisis, which we are doing our best to make sure that we can combat the crisis, and we hope to balance the crisis. We are quite used to having [public [indiscernible] companies. So one of the companies is publicly]. So we had the pandemic when everyone believed that the world would come to an end. I think about that, sometimes you couldn't travel, everything was shut down. You can go to your local supermarket. So a lot of things have happened in the past years. Now we have other things to handle. We have horrible [ wars ] in Ukraine and Gaza, where also some positive issues in the society, digitalization and i.e., and that could move the society in the positive direction for all of us. So we cannot only say -- well, it is true. 30 years, it feels like a short term, but a lot of things have happened, and this is the environment we like the most. And EQT has always been in the course of constant transformation to constant changes, not because of the things which have happened around us, but we believe that this is [fine as] a good business to develop, to challenge ourselves. So we don't consider changes or transformation as a problem. We consider this to be something positive. Our friends in the [indiscernible] family, [indiscernible] over 1946 to change from the years old tradition with maturing, and this is how we live. We are always to be at the full forefront. We try to be around the corner. It's difficult -- but when we manage that, we normally see very good results. We believe we're doing things differently. We believe we challenge ourselves, challenging our surroundings, why? Because it means change and change for us is something very active and very attractive. And this is how we think about investment, our portfolio company. We want them to change. We want to develop them, not just to be the manager of these companies. We are not asset managers. We [don't buy] shares. We buy companies. We're owners. We're entrepreneurs. We build companies for the future. This is our mantra. This is our segment in a world of constant changes, where things move quicker and quicker. You need a strong culture and strong common value grounds. In order to challenge -- to face and to manage the challenges we are seeing. And this is the core of EQT, our culture, our set of values, it's central in terms of everything with essential terms of decision-making, is essential in terms of how we act. It's essential in how we recruit people, how we train people. We develop, we assess our employees annually about how they follow [a set of values], how well they fit with our culture and we develop individual development plans, when we believe there are things which can be corrected or improved, but this is a dynamic process. Everything else can be changed, developed, but not our DNA, our set of values, our culture. This is something that is constant. It's part of our culture to take responsibility, being the owner of companies who are the parts -- who are a part of this society, society facing large challenges and large opportunities. It's part of our responsibility to take responsibility. Today, we have almost 300 portfolio companies all over the globe, about 700,000 people are employed in these companies, SEK 250 billion in assets under management. And this results in enormous responsibility, because we are the ones who have the final responsibility for what all those companies [do] all over the planet. And this is a responsibility which we're prepared to [indiscernible]. And I think we're doing that as well. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes, there've been bad business. We've made bad decisions, but we had to take the consequences to correct, to amend, but it does make a scale, which tries [indiscernible] from this. With [Christian as the CEO], I feel secure that he, together with the management group will continue to take this responsibility and continues to develop ourselves and the portfolio companies, as we've done historically. And I would like to use this opportunity to thank Christian for his extraordinary work during the year, which has passed, or a couple of words about the composition of the Board. Some of the transformation of EQT plays [indiscernible] Board. As you've seen, John will leave the Board today. You'll hear more about this later, and we will also propose to elect Richa Goswami as a new member of the Board. Just a couple of words about why Richa is so important and so -- for us, and so relevant for the challenges we are facing [indiscernible]. Richa has had executive position in branding and marketing for financial services and fast-moving consumer goods in Fidelity International, HSBC and Johnson & Johnson. She has been working more or less all over the globe, the United States, Europe, Asia. Richa was born in India, studied in Singapore and [indiscernible] Singapore her energy and her multi festive background will be a perfect complement to the Board and will create a better balance [indiscernible]. We have a challenge, the entire financial sector including EQT, we have a challenge with gender-balance, but I think we've been doing this pretty well on the Board. And this is something with the entire organization has to follow. So it's very important to address you on the balance for [indiscernible] Richa to enter the Board, but she is there because of her enormous skills in terms of sales and marketing. We'll be coming back to you and Richa later during the program. Having said word, I pass the floor to [indiscernible], who is here today, and she will take us through the day.

Thank you, Conni. And now I start with the formal. I declare the AGM opened. And before we start, I'd like to present some of the [indiscernible] have here today. Next to me is one Conni and then Christian Sinding, who is EQT's CEO. We have a number of members of the Board present. It's Margo Cook, Brooks Entwistle, [Johan Forsell], Gordon Orr, Diony Lebot and Marcus Wallenberg. We have also representative from the management group of EQT and another colleague from EQT, it's the Group General Council of the group, who I asked to keep the minutes. In addition, I'd like to say that there will be presentations, both Swedish and English. And if you want to listen to translation, there is simultaneous interpretation offered and you should listen to we receive your headphones when you enter the building. Second, item on the agenda is the election of chair person of the meeting, and the management Committee has proposed that I am elected Chairman of the meeting. Any further proposals, can [indiscernible] resolve in accordance with the proposal by the [indiscernible] Committee. Carried. Thank you for entrusting me with this role. Let me give you some housekeeping issues before we move with agenda. Phones. All of us have the phones. Please make sure that they are in a silent mode or in the flight mode, [so they] don't disturb during the AGM. It's also quite [indiscernible] that all audio, video recording the meeting is prohibited other than the official shoe documenting the meeting on behalf of the company to make sure that everyone who's here can ask questions make other statements. For your information, only this stage will be filmed and not [indiscernible]. Can the meeting resolve in accordance with this. Yes. Thank you, [Carried]. Just like Conni said, if you want to request the floor, want to ask questions, please do so raise your hand, then an officer will come forward to you with the microphone, so that everyone here in the room can hear what you'll be saying. I'm also grateful if you -- the speakers can introduce yourselves by say the name. Digital voting, you received QR code and possibility to vote digitally. As usually, we will contact digital voting for the items which require qualified maturity, which are [indiscernible] 2021. So voting for these items already open and will close as we proceed with items on the agenda. And I can inform you that digital voting could be used for other items on the agenda, if it is requested by shareholder. So during the AGM, you can ask this to be done, then it will be done. Otherwise, we will continue making decisions here by so-called acclamation. Just like at with [indiscernible] I ask you a question and your answer yes. And if there is an emergency, than [indiscernible] alone. What [indiscernible] supposed to do -- well, you shouldn't stay here. You have to get out of this room. The emergency exits safety first -- one there, one there. So please go there and leave the room. Okay. Let's get started. Item 3. Preparation approval of the voting list. So advanced voters and present shareholders and those that have -- and I will give you some data. The number of represented shares so I will think it takes a little bit of time figures, 1,700 billion -- [indiscernible] of these shares. [indiscernible] represented at this meeting. So is this voting list approved? Yes. Thank you. Point 4 -- Item 4, approval of agenda. So the agenda has been included in the notice of today's meeting. Does the meeting approved the proposal to the agenda of today's meeting. I find that is so. The next is the next one to pass will approve the minutes. The proposals that also come from [indiscernible], who is prepared to [indiscernible] minutes. Is that correct? Yes. Can the meeting resolve to appoint [indiscernible] approve the minutes? Carried. So now we have appointed Anders Oscarsson, who together will approve the minutes of the AGM. Next item is [indiscernible] whether the meeting has been duly convened. And the next, I can inform you that the notice has been -- this meeting has been done in accordance with the applicable lower articles of [indiscernible]. Just the meeting fine that has been duly convened? Yes. Then it's the most interesting point. Item 7, presentation of the CEO. I now hand over to CEO, Christian Sinding.

Thank you, [indiscernible]. Hello, everybody. As you remember from last year, I speak Norwegian. I will do my best to speak my best in Swedish Norwegian. I will start in all my presentation, both internally and externally, start with where we came from, where we were established in 1994. We said the EQT would be more than finances. We will be the best owner of companies that could be thought of. This is exactly the same thing today. We have some modern ways of saying this to future proof of the companies and have made a positive impact for all, both companies that we own and also from the [indiscernible] perspective to include all the other elements, society, with the first company suite of public companies, that in our purpose have included in the -- it took some time to get through. So we're committed into our purpose. Our mission in the field. is really simply to more return to our customers. We've made this -- we've kept to the core that we talked about -- we are working active ownership everywhere. We even going to the real estate sector very actively. We not just built on in engineer -- financial engineering, we work by developing transforming companies. This is from the Wallenberg network. We've just built on that. Today, we are 1 of the biggest in the world in our field, #3 or 4 with the limit of where we're top 3 in infrastructure, top 10 in the real estate private equity real estate. If you look at the context in Sweden, where stock exchange, fourth biggest company, 1,200 institutional owners in from all over the world. We're active in 24 countries, and we cover 80% of the world's GMP. So we have a great range, a lot of responsibility, but hopefully also a lot of positive impact when we talk about what's absolutely most important for EQT? It's about people. We do that in several ways. We work with active ownership in the Board, in the networks and the management teams and the companies we are local. We are on the -- in the field in Sweden. We do with the Swedish team with global understanding of what that company needs. We work [indiscernible] investments, we find trends in site that are important and then invest with our local competence. We have a big network of specialists, CEOs all around the world that help us. And we think that we have a good governance model, good and clear governance. Not all in our field do have that. We work through the Board, and the Board works through the management to strengthen the company, and they become stronger and stronger and stronger. Well, of course, our culture is behind all this -- and our value-based culture. And I want to show a video now that we prepared for internal purpose, my assistant called all different people all around the world and asked, why do you work at EQT? What do you think about? Why do you work -- we prepared a video so that we can show it to you. [Presentation] People, people, people. That's what it's about. Now if you think about people, what we do when we transform companies, we invest in long-term trends in society. Here, we see four energy conversion, digitalization of society, health and well-being and logistics. We mean that private equity is very important in this role, in this energy transition. We have a lot of investments to support that and electrical car networks, electrical storage, transport sector, which has transformed the whole Nordic -- very transport lines from fossil energy to sustainable energy, et cetera. Very exciting. We also go into digitization of society. We're a big owner of fiber to get broadband to everybody in society, computer centers and equipment are surrounding this. We are one of the world's biggest investors in health, and healthcare is very positive because hopefully, we create better conditions for people to have a better life. Especially in the real estate sector, we invest in logistics. It's more and more important because in the geopolitical world with the digitalization society, logistics chains come closer and closer, we need new systems, new networks, and we're building these new networks. We think that is fun. We do this, and we try to measure that we really do it in a good way. We transformed companies we always measure. How is this company turn over the profitability? We prove that we really can improve the companies, develop the companies. This is central. We see that the turnover over several years between 12% and 17% per year, whereas the profitability has increased even faster. Well, that is -- we want to be the best owners of companies and to prove that is to differentiate the results in returns, but also this is part of the proof that we really create something in transforming companies. By creating these better companies, we mean it's a very robust strategy that's simple to understand, it's timeless. We create a good return. We see the return figures. What we measure in our field, met IRR to our company's annual return to the customers in these fields. We are proud of this. This drives us every day. Performance, performance. This is what we deliver to our customers. And the customers, these are private individuals, pensioneers all over the world, governmental investment funds. It's important that we contribute with our return -- with our return, we contribute to create better pensions for all that has been invested and this is really interesting and exciting. We want to hear in a little while from [Gustav] on about new products that we are launching. Since our field both has good regulation, which creates more transparency but open regulation, which makes it simpler for everybody. The market over the last few years have been -- this year have been better than previous year -- purchases, sales of companies, but it's still a bit slow. We have good activities on the purchasing side. We're working in the health field, in the business, deliver capital [indiscernible] customers. And the cycle, we believe, continues to be better and better, but it also means that the customers have less capital than they usually have in our field. So fundraising has been difficult. We've gone through this. We've delivered EQT EUR 24 million, the world's largest fund in this field, and this was over our target was EUR 20 billion, which is good. At the same time, we invested about EUR 17 billion. We've sold for a little bit less than that. And we want to sell more in the next cycle. Where we want to -- if we want to look one target, KPI is important, is the one to the right. All our key funds perform on or above the plan. This is one of the few areas where we talk about the future, that we can talk about the future. It's very important that we still believe -- we are sure, that we will continue to deliver to our customers is super important. Let's think a bit wider. We also have the integrated BPA, our Asian activities, one company. It's EQT Asia, it's called now. It's been performing very, very well. We see the potential in Asia. It's even bigger than we thought it would be. Asia represents more than half of the population of the world. The middle class grows 2 billion people in the middle class in the next 8, 9 years in Asia. And through BPA, we became local, we have become a local, because we continue to grow there. We're also very active in India, about 1/4 of our investments are in India. It's been like that in 25 years about. It's also positive to see that after that we became one company. We launched a new fund, mid-market growth, it's called in Asia, and that fund is today with EUR 1.6 billion to that fund, EUR 750 million was our goal. So we almost doubled the size of that fund according to our plan. So that shows the momentum that we're building in Asia. In the Autumn, we will come into [indiscernible], which builds upon the other 8 funds. And we're also very positive about that. In addition, we have started investing in infrastructure in Asia and the real estate area. Conni has challenged us to become #1 in Asia, and that's our target. Good. When we think about EQT, we have an expression, which is called, if you could translate a bit, everything can be improved all the time. Something like that. That's something that Conni has thought up once a day, we can always become better. If something can be very good, it can be super good. If it can be super good it can be ultra good. If it can be -- bad, it can become better. It doesn't mean anything. The important thing is that we move ahead. EQT 30 forward thinking from the start is the logo. We try to be ahead, test new areas and to see if there is artificial intelligence. In Norwegian, it's called Strange Intelligence, but it doesn't work in Swedish. Now artificial intelligence. Well, it can be strange intelligence, but that's something else. We at least already had 2015. We started with artificial intelligence. We have a brain team that you heard about 40 people, and we're driving this in our company's, everything is out AI. And there's a lot to do there. Regarding sustainable field, we will return to that in a moment. And regarding other dimensions since the -- we have to deliver solutions to the customers, co-investments our agreements with the customers or many different funds and longer funds ownership of companies a longer time. So we're developing it organically, and also by purchasing. Regarding sustainability, we have a report from our sustainability committee, led by Gordon, who is in the Board, Konar, who is in management. And we're also proud we are really building sustainability entire strategy of EQT and into the companies that EQT is investing in. Here, we see some other companies. Here's some proof that we're really growing in the right direction. I want to highlight something. BCG has done a benchmarking, we're leading in almost all areas compared to our competitors. There are some that are better than us in other areas. So we have to be inspired by them. 44% of our companies of our [indiscernible] company, validated size-based targets. The only company in our field that is proved by [indiscernible] sustainability indices. We have a good progression. We're part of UN Global Compact. We secure our business in a different dimension in a responsible mode. Looking ahead, of course, it's super important. Maybe it should be written performance, performance, performance. if it was internally, we would have said it three times, that's so important for us. Investment strategies to continue to expand and develop. We have some new ones that we're healthcare growth, growth companies in health, energy transition, which is a [indiscernible] fund and increasing our investments in North America, Asia, we talked about, super exciting and both for infrastructure and for real estate in Asia. Regarding customer side, we have new solutions, including two private individuals. And we work very much -- very positive has been that we on the stock exchange, we become much better about our platform, not just about reporting compliance, IT, scalability, creating new products -- really robust operating platform, which is about half of our employees work with. We've done much more with that and become much, much better. We have come far ahead in this area as well. That feel is really good. With that, I would like to finish First, introduce any questions now? As you wish. [indiscernible] Okay. Let me introduce my colleague, [indiscernible] who is -- who heads our business partner is part of our Executive Department has been Sales, [indiscernible] and he will tell us about the products for prior individuals called EQT Nexus. Gustav, please welcome on stage.

Okay. I will speak a bit about our offer to private individuals and small institutions so just a starting point, why we believe this to be interesting. So it's based on quite simple macro [analysis]. You can see on the slide here, if you look at the global assets on Global Wealth, the share is more or less equal between institutional investors and individual investors, but [indiscernible] invest approximately 7 times more into private markets private equity compared to individual investors. And this has been the case for quite a while. And now we're seeing developments where things are changing. And this is driven basically by the fact that there have not been any products which were suitable to private individuals, and how come we believe that individual investors want to invest in to that world. Well, basically, you could say that there are three big reasons. Why? Naturally, the product which we are producer, which we're working with, is about creating returns, and looking at the returns on the private market compared to the public market, then there has been clearly a higher returns on that market. Secondly, lower volatility and correlation to the public market. And the last factor is that if you look at what it looked like about 25 years ago. In this state, there were 4x as many public companies compared to private companies. If you look at the same store show today, it's twice as many PE companies or private companies compared to publicly owned companies. So it's gone like that. We believe that a lot of this contributes to a higher flow of individual customers to us, who want to invest in the private equity market to create a more diversified portfolio. As I said earlier, one of the difficulties earlier has been the case of the products which you could invest into, we're not particularly suitable. And what has happened recently is that more and more products have been developed, what we call the evergreen funds. Funds which live forever, and which are more suitable for private -- for individual investments, sorry. And why is that? Because the amounts are low, for example, the Q2 Nexus, which is our first Evergem product, you can invest an amount of EUR 25,000. Normally the minimum amount to invest in our funds, EUR 1 million to EUR 5 million. And that advantage is the product diversification, which [you get] for example, [indiscernible] Nexus of time, you'll get several hundred different companies, which you will be exposed to, compared to a regular fund, you may have maybe 15, 20 companies. Three, -- we -- when we talk about the Evergreen Funds, we say that they are fully paid in. That is that they operate in almost the same manner as a regular fund, that you pay the full amount on day 1. Therefore, you don't have to do anything while you are an investor in the fund, and this simplifies life to an individual investor. And then finally, the [indiscernible] it's not full liquidity. But normally, you can make an exit every quarter with certain limitations. So in January, we believe that the creation of these evergreen funds and equity -- Nexus is our first fund, will contribute to creating better opportunities for individual investors to invest in the private equity market. Obviously, there are several things we have to do to scale this up. One of the issues is to create a bigger sales organization linked to these products, to strengthen our brand in an area where -- where we're have been particularly exposed to individual investors earlier. We -- our customers used to be our associations. A lot of this is about trading and education of the final customer and the distributor will be distributing our programs to make sure how EQT is [indiscernible] some of the things which were mentioned by Christian just a while ago. And finally, the regulatory climate to invest into these types of products requires a lot of solution, on country level in order for all of this to work. Having said that, we are very expected in terms of what will come next and how this will be developed. So looking at Equity Nexus. This is our first product. It has been -- it was launched about 10 months ago, and we have launched a number of initiatives to scale it globally for example. We are developing in this -- in the areas where we already operate. We started -- we launched this in the Nordics. Today, we have approximately 5 distributors who distribute this in the Nordics, and we add another distributor more or less every month. Secondly, we are in the process of launching in other countries. So over the next 6 months, we plan to launch in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Hong Kong and Singapore to mention some. This will create better opportunities in terms of having a global diversified customer. And then finally, we are doing a lot of product innovation. For example in Sweden, we cooperate together with [ certain ] partners in order to launch this product within the occupational pension area. This is an area which we believe has a lot of potential. Additionally, we are in the process of developing new products within this Evergreen fields. We have just launched EQRT in the U.S., which focuses on real estate investments where we believe that we'll acquire new customers quite soon. And additionally, we're developing three more products which we plan to launch within the upcoming 12, 18 months. And they are sector-based but they are also directed at the customers on specific geographical areas. Thank you. Back to you, Christian.

Thank you, Gustav. A very exciting area. Then in that case, I'd like to open the floor to questions from the audience. It could be online or you could ask questions physically here. [Operator Instructions] We'll get one in the middle, please.

I'm Lewiston. I represent Folksam, KPA Pension. And we focus on the areas that we think are especially important. We have chosen corruption or anticorruption. Corruption decreases the -- so for the site -- if a company can work against corruption to increase the possibilities to successful activities for a better world. Many reasons for corruption. Sometimes it said that the risk for corruption increase, the great -- the bigger and the fair businesses and the profits to gives quite high fees to its owners. And the coworkers are driven by earning a lot of money. How do you feel about the risk that coworkers employees could lead to management could make wrong decisions. Could you describe your anticorruption activities in your...

It's an important question for society. I agree with everything you say. I mentioned before that we and all our companies senior [indiscernible], and you are aware of that. It's -- anticorruption is -- we have training programs for anticorruption. 100% of all -- everyone that works at EQT have to go through that. So we measure it digitally online, it is very important at EQT. There's no connection between big business and decision. Our teams have remuneration that goes over a long time. It's on team basis, not an individual basis. So from that perspective, there's no connection between our compensation system that create that type of problems. We also handle our value chain. We control that as much as possible how we work with that. And also, we have a vision at EQT to be the best well reputed player in this field in our field. The most well-reputed investor and owner that's a high level. So we take it very, very seriously. I don't think we have any problems in that connection. Any further questions, please. All the questions are welcome. There's one here.

I was [ there ] from the start when you became public listed, good. And I'm very grateful for that. But I think I was a bit too stringent back at the time. But if I believe that the company has been progressing. Well, however, I am slightly critical to the following and I'm sorry I hate this system with annual reports where you have sheets of paper.

Are you talking about the digital annual report?

No, I get a printed version. And what do we get? You get a copy, right? That was the same thing last year. And I believe with the figures which you mentioned, huge numbers, the company of this size should be able to afford to print a traditional year report, now without doing this [indiscernible] Swedish, but you have money for that. And it's quite simple. You just print a new copy. But one thing which you have not done properly is that -- you don't have the page numbers, although you refer to the page numbers in table of contents. But I understand that you are quite a young company in terms of your staff. So maybe members of your staff don't think about that. But we -- all the people we need to -- we ask a little bit more from an annual reports. Another thing, Conni said one of your biggest fans is the Wallenberg family and showing that big show at [indiscernible] recently, where [indiscernible] was present. They talked about the environment [ applicable ] to -- is it correct. Mr. Wallenberg he's not answering. No, it's Marcus. Okay, sorry. You look quite similar to Mr. Wallenberg, since I have been working in printing during my entire life, doing this the way you do, this is quite better than. I'm not voting for the green party but still printing annual reports conventionally is much better to the environment. So other things you have said in your presentation. Everything can be improved.

Okay. And just give you -- explain as to why we try to be as sustainable as possible. And this is why deliver this digitally on a tablet, but I understand your point. And we'll keep this in [ mind ] until next year's AGM. Next question?

My name is [indiscernible]. I present [indiscernible] at this general meeting. It's very exciting to hear both Conni's inspiring presentation and your Christian, very nice to hear about -- interesting to hear about Nexus that you hope a lot will grow very strongly. I have a question about Nexus. If I've read properly in the annual report, private equity is about 8% of your capital requirement today, 8%, 9%. How great a large share of the private equity should be of the total? When will you -- will you be satisfied as you said, to be diverse -- have a diversified portfolio.

It's a very, very important question and interesting. Well, we don't really know how big it can grow. We have five different Nexus products that we are creating. And we do believe if we look at similar companies 8%, 9% that we have today that could be closer to 20%, but we're talking about 10 years. But if we see further ahead, there's a lot of capital in the world that has to be -- should be invested. So it will continue to increase and grow as long as we create more return. Well, the following question maybe it requires a little bit more clear reporting and that we're used to because now you're talking about general public. That's right. To our international customers -- clients, we -- 60 days we report, which is in the public market, EQT AB take 10 after a monthly basis. We have to finish the reporting within 30 days. In 3 years, we have decreased from 60 days to 30 days, and we wish 2008 or something we talked about transparency. We were the first company -- one of the first companies in the world in our field to have an annual report at all. So we are positive about the transparency, and it will grow. You mentioned the problem is in capital composition it's difficult today. What is the biggest barrier -- when do you see a churn? If you look globally, the 2 barriers. This the share market decreased and the interest increased. Now the interest rates have stabilized. The other barrier was that Normally, we deliver in our field 2x from what we invested on a 5-year basis. After this very difficult cycle, the pandemic and the interest. Now we invest more as a business than we deliver back to the clients. This has to be changed, so that the fundraising market improves. It creates -- it consolidates our market, our business. We have global specialists. Those that are in the middle, stuck in the middle. It's very difficult for them with the fundraising. When does it change? If we knew we're working with it. working. And in the annual report, you mentioned something interesting patents in automation, what kind of patents? To be honest, I can't explain that patent. I would have need a professor that works with us. We have patented a part of the process internally that is about reporting. If you imagine we're creating a more efficient platform. It's part of the platform. We're automating a process through artificial intelligence, and we patented that first in the world. That was great. is a game -- it's not life-changing, but we have our ambition. We're ahead. EQT, as you showed before, in your presentation, the stock exchange fourth biggest company, but you have a quite 17% -- less than 18% the other big companies on the stock exchange are quite a bit bigger comment. We're working systematically from being noted and all, there are more and more shares that are sold all the time, turned over all the time. And many of us not selling our shares. We need more liquid assets. Dow Jones Sustainability and [ OMX ], we're working on with communication, 15 analysis creates more -- the more companies in our field that are being on the stock exchange, more interested in our field. There are many elements. We're working with this -- the trend is very positive, and we hope for that in the future. Now I'll give you a difficult question. we need that.

Could you please tell us about your three main challenges for EQT and for industry and a slightly long perspective?

What I'm thinking of as the CEO more than 800 people three, four countries, it's about keeping our uniqueness. What makes us -- EQT special, our values, our culture. the spirit of entrepreneurship, it's really important. And it gets more and more difficult. The bigger, the more bureaucracy, with the more red tape there is. And pure [bureaucracy] is often counter act that against moving quickly, creating new opportunities. So this is what we work with, which this in today will be celebrating -- this also will be celebrated our 30 years anniversary and that's what about. As we're getting big, we should maintain the unique culture and the differences. This is what I mostly think of as the CEO. Looking at our industries in general. I think this is something which we discussed just few minutes -- just a minute ago. We will continue to deliver returns, which is great. We'll have to get better -- to get better becoming a part of the society. I think we are quite good at that. Resi relatively speaking, but a lot of our customers -- sorry, of our competitors are not transparent enough, are not communicating enough and this creates uncertainties among the other stakeholders in the society. So these are the [ details ]. Does it make you happy or I just have to? Thank you. Okay. Any more questions? Anyone from...

My name is [ Jean]. I'm a student [indiscernible] Victor High School. My question is you've mentioned investments and expansion in Asia, Europe, North America. Do you have any investments that you plan to expand in Africa, South America. Why not? If you don't have any.

Well, gradually -- slowly but gradually, we're expanding to new markets and we are in some of the major markets, Southeast Asia Malaysia, Indonesia, India, I mentioned already, we're haven't developed -- started our own strategy in terms of going into even newer market. And this is because we're already growing a lot in the markets where we're already active. But in the future, our ambition is to become global and to work on the markets which you have mentioned. One of the reasons -- several reasons. It's our resources, but also the capital were so big. So the capital markets in these countries have to develop more for us to become an efficient player there. Thank you.