Mutares SE & Co. KGaA (MUX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Q3 2022 Earnings Call of Mutares. On the call today, the CIO, Johannes Laumann; and the CFO, Mark Friedrich, will present the results and most relevant events of Q3 2022. After the presentation, they will be available to answer your questions. The presentation shown is available on the Mutares website after the call. Before we start, I would like to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, including projections which may not develop as currently expected. I, therefore, kindly ask you to take note of the precautionary warning about forward-looking statements that is included in the materials on the website. Now let me hand over to Johannes Laumann. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome to our Q3 results. After having a very successful Capital Markets Day earlier in October, with more than 150 full-time participants, I would like to welcome you today to the Q3 results, starting off with a quick intro, key highlights, giving you a little bit of insight on how did we translate the company model and the business model in Q3 before Mark takes over the financials, and I conclude with the outlook. Coming to a little bit reflashing the Capital Markets Day where we had the slogan, the Power of Winning. And I think we talked about this in the Capital Markets Day. We talked about the story of the bulls facing the hurricane and going through as the DNA of Mutares. And I think with today's announcement around lunchtime, where we have announced that we have divested Royal de Boer to a strategic player from the U.S. with Turntide. We have again proven that in abnormal situation, our business model, our company model, our DNA and our spirit works. And I'm very happy that we could conduct and had the signing of this transaction and found the new best owner for the business, who will incorporate that in their strategy -- in their global strategy. And I'm very happy that we could sell Royal de Boer in a win-win scenario to Turntide. Let me take you besides that a little bit to the key developments of Q3. I think, again, you could see we did heavily working on the transaction side. So we closed transactions like MoldTecs and Cimos, but we also made -- and maybe to point it out, we made 2 transactions with Siemens Energy, which are NEM and which is about to close by the end of this month. And Guascor, which we have closed last month, and we have started this week. And this -- I think were 2 main success drivers also for the future, in our project business segment, in our Engineering Technologies segment, where we expect a very, very good development in the years to come, and which is also -- at the moment in this situation, also a quite stable segment. Coming to the sell side, where we have shown activities, but clearly also this is the focus for the upcoming months. We have divested BEXity in the beginning of the year. We have divested the first step of Frigoscandia France where we have also recently acquired another add-on in Sweden for Frigoscandia to develop really, really this cooling logistics company to a #1 player in the Nordic market. We have divested Nordic, where we expect closing this week. And we have just announced the signing of Royal de Boer, where we also expect a closing, hopefully, by the end of this month already. Looking at the development of the portfolio, and Mark will come to that also more in detail than with the financials. I think we have done Mutares here. We have adopted -- we are willing, we have adopted, we have changed and we should change due to the situation, energy prices, shortfall, still COVID impact and obviously also the war in Ukraine. And we have adopted, and we have handled our portfolios in a way that we overcome the crisis situation, and we managed the crisis situation. On the capital market side, we have seen that by the recent developments of the last couple of weeks since our half year since we were back, we have outperformed the SDAX, which is a very nice development as well. And in these difficult times, we not only stick to our growth plan, and we stick to our targets we have committed to, it's also about our people fighting every day in order to get all this done together. So making 12 buy-side transactions, which is not the end of the journey for this year, having the sell-side transactions, having difficulties in the portfolio with all the reason, geopolitical, energy, et cetera, development. And still sticking to the growth and profitability path. I think this is a big, big thank you to our guys all over the world, supporting on this one. Coming to company business model. I think we -- numbers are known. So the group revenues is expected of rough -- around EUR 4 billion. We want to grow to around EUR 7 billion in 2025, and respectively, also the profitability. And then calculation-wise, the earnings per share of the current share capital is calculated there. But let me focus a little bit more on the 3 focus areas where we are active, and give you examples of them. European focus, we have committed that after 9 countries where we are active, we also want to go to Poland. We're currently in the final stage of recruiting the #1 in the country, we had -- which was very interesting and very charming to see. We had 10 serious applicants on the latest list, and 8 out of 10 are familiar with Mutares, have heard about Mutares before, even in a country where Mutares was never active. So then, this shows clearly the plan development we have done over the last couple of years. When it comes to the 3 segments, and we'll come to that in the presentation over and over again. I think in a situation like we have now, like we had in Q3, it proves again that our 3 segments, the diversification of the 3 segments were exactly the right decision, which we took 3 years ago. We have the automotive and mobility segment, which was really, really struggling in the entire year. September was okay. October is to be -- is expected to be good -- very good, and November is to be expected good. But the first 8 months of the year was a nightmare. And so we were struggling there, obviously, a lot. And then the project -- the Engineering & Technology side, the project business side, went rather well, went rather stable. We had good developments of our portfolios there, so which gave us also the opportunity with Royal de Boer, for example, to divest. Also, they're a well-performing company. When it comes to the 3 segments, and we'll come to that in the presentation over and over again. I think in a situation like we have now, like we had in Q3, it proves again that our 3 segments -- the diversification of the 3 segments were exactly the right decision, which we took 3 years ago. We have the Automotive & Mobility y segment, which was really, really struggling in the entire year. September was okay. October is to be -- is expected to be good very good, and November is to be expected good. But the first 8 months of the year was a nightmare. And so we were struggling there, obviously, a lot. And then the project for Engineering Technologies side, the project business side, went rather well went rather stable. We had good developments of our portfolios there, so -- which gave us also the opportunity with Royal de Boer, example, to divest also they're a well-performing company. And then Goods & Services, you have a mixed basket here as well. You have a little bit struggle on the very direct consumer part of it. But on the other hand, we do see nice, nice improvement, for example, of Terranor or of Lacroix. And then the comprise size, which we have lifted up, I think with the latest buy-side acquisition of ARRIVA from Deutsche Bank, but also NEM from Siemens Energy, where we are in the range of EUR 200 million, EUR 300 million, EUR 400 million of turnover. We have made clearly the step up in what are we going to acquire and what is our sweet spot when it comes to the platform acquisitions. Again, very, very shortly here. What you clearly can see is the opportunities are there. Pipeline is building up. That's, I think, the main message of this. We're currently working towards the end of the year on 3 hot-list projects where we can strike a deal in case we want to. We are in SPA negotiations on all the 3 projects here. However, the good message is the pipeline is building up very strongly for 2023, especially Germany, Spain, France and the U.K., where we see recently lots and lots of projects and opportunities started to come in. So this year, so far, we have conducted 12 transactions, summarizing in EUR 1.8 billion of turnover in addition. And the pipeline for '23, currently, we can confirm is really, really building up very nicely. So the outlook and what we will expect in the growth path also following this year looks promising here. What can we expect? I want to spend a little bit of time, and give you a little bit more insight on how do we do the day-to-day. I think it's worth also for some of you to repeat that. So our business model basically, and how Mutares holding makes money lies on 4 stages. So the first stage, unfortunately, it's a stage where we sometimes spend money. That's the acquisition stage, where we go to a corporate, we ask them to fund the business. And in return, we are also asked to participate in this funding of the business, and we are obliged to do equity injection in the business. That we did for Lapeyre where it was a EUR 20 million equity injection that we did for LMS, where we are obliged by the SPA to inject here at closing date in the acquisition -- in the equity of the company. So a lot of times, a lot of this EUR 200 million -- EUR 207 million spend is injection in the equity of the company. The second part is that we pay a purchase price for strategic add-on acquisitions, for example, such as we did for MoldTecs, which was a strategic add-on for LMS, bringing the LMS Group to a EUR 1.2 billion, EUR 1.3 billion operation. So this is the first part of the life cycle. We buy the company, 12 companies so far this year. We are beginning of November, so there's still a little bit of room of time to do more. And then starts the earning. So the realignment phase starts. And in the realignment phase, we send in our consultants. We have today roughly 130 -- I think 127, to be precise, going into the companies together with the management, helping to turn around the business. Being there every day from Monday to Friday and with different angles, with different skill sets, managing or being the experts in some of the areas and supporting the first development of the business. So this, for example, is the first income stream of the Mutares holding. And in October, we had the record month so far in October, more than EUR 7 million of consulting fees were earned by the Mutares holding through sending in our operational people. So this is also the run rate to come between EUR 7 million and EUR 8 million for 2023. And then once the company is fixed, once the company is breakeven or slightly better, we're not only going on the M&A side again and trying to buy and build, but we're also asking the companies to distribute dividends. Distributed dividends to the holding, that's the second income stream, which we are obviously doing very careful in crisis situations. But however, this is a valid income stream, especially on the Engineering & Technology and the Goods & Services segment. And then comes the harvesting phase. And I think the harvesting phase is the one, which is the hardest to grasp for investors, to stakeholders in order to justify the success. But for us, it's the ultimate justification of success, and it also helps for the net profit of the holding, for the dividend distribution of the holding, and at the end of the day, also for the value add for the shareholders. And this harvesting period is the last period of a lifetime. So when we have done the restructuring, when we stabilize and grow the business most of the time and organically, then it's in the harvesting phase. And harvesting phase means within 12 to X months, we are going to divest the company. And I would now like to share with you quickly a little bit how a company in the harvesting period looks like for us and how we -- what have we done in a company in the harvesting. And I would like to share with you 3 companies. So two, we have divested. It's a done deal. So nothing will move there. It's Nordec, which we acquired in 2020. We have grown the revenue of this business by 60% since acquisition date, and we have grown the operating profit since acquisition date by more than EUR 10 million. Royal de Boer, a slightly smaller business. We have grown by 15%, and we have grown by more than EUR 3 million the operational profitability of the company. So those 2 are divested, and we made our target of 7 to 10x, which is whatever euro we invest, we want to get 7 to 10x back. And then I give you an example of 3 companies, which we have in the harvesting phase right now; one is SABO, which we acquired in 2020, Clecim in '21 and La Rochette also in '21. And what you see here is that for SABO, for example, we grew significantly the revenues since we acquired it from John Deere. And with the revenue, we improved the profitability of this business, which is highly negative by more than EUR 10 million. And at the same time, obviously, this has a benefit for us, where we already made our starting investment into SABO, which was an equity injection in the business actually by more than 7x. Clecim, same situation. Clecim, we acquired from Primetals, and it was a joint venture with Siemens for years. The company was super stable, and stable in a way that they lost roughly EUR 8 million to EUR 10 million every year. We acquired the company in '21. We put in our team, a big team under the lead of François Martin and Thomas Comte, and we improved not only the turnover, but we improved the profitability of the business also by more than EUR 10 million. And by doing this, we didn't half the cash burn, which was anticipated, because we outperformed here our business plan. And already there, also there, we made back our investment, which in that sense was a purchase price, a small single-digit purchase price. And last but not least, La Rochette. I think there was an extensive presentation on the Capital Markets Day also there, 2021 acquired. We grew the turnover here. Business is going very, very well and also the profitability. And La Rochette was a business, which is rather new. So we are below our target of 7x to 10x. But imagine SABO, Clecim and La Rochette, those return on invested capital is without exit proceeds. So the exit proceeds on those 3, for example, will also help to increase the profit of the holding, but also will help the dividend capacity of the holding at the end of the day. So this was a little bit to give you an idea of what does a harvesting company look like and how do we -- and what have we done with a company, which we classify as harvesting and where do we stand also here on the returns. When it comes to all the developments of the portfolio, and Mike will come shortly to the segment reporting. I think what is important there is that we lead our portfolio, not only by budget forecast, monthly results and operational turnarounds, but we also lead them on a way of sustainability. Speaking to environment, social and governance. And let me give you an example -- one example on all the three. So environment, for me, it's very simple and easy. We do environmental improvements as long as they make commercially sense. So what we basically do is, we have partners in different areas. And when we acquire a company, which has an office, which has a factory, we send in those partners. One partner is looking for lighting and energy consumption on lighting. So we -- I would say, in 70% to 80% of the cases, we changed the lighting to LED lighting. We look at the heating. We look at solar or for alternative energies, and we look also for the air net and leakages of the air net and air loss in the entire plant. So by doing the environmental focus, we also have a commercial sense behind that. Looking at social, I personally believe that diversity brings success to a company. Diversity in looking to problems. We want diversity in looking into new ideas. We want diversity in being creative. We want diversity to think how can we grow this business further faster and sustainable. And for me, it's important that we have this diversity always in our groups, in the acquisition teams, in the operations teams, but also in the admin team supporting all of this. And when you see the Mutares holding, you see a number here of -- it's not only the diversity for me, of male and female, it's the diversity of regions of nationalities, but it's also the diversity of age. I think our youngest employee is 22, our oldest one is 79. And all this diversity comes together, and I think this is also part of our success story that we face problems. We look into ideas and we look into growth and creativity from all kind of views and all kind of angles. And last but not least, the governance. There, I think we, as a management, try heavily to be as transparent as possible, knowing that sometimes it's quite hard to understand our business model. And that's why our aim is to be maximum transparent towards the shareholder, towards the stakeholder, but also towards our employees and the sellers. So all this comes together where we believe that the growth we have shown, the sources for growth we have shown, and the company development we have shown also is grounded on a sustainable floor. And when we look at the portfolio, and I don't want to go into detail of the portfolio because we currently also are in the process of the budgeting of 2023, 2024. But what you really see on the Auto segment, for example, when we start with the first segment, the Auto segment, as I said, September, October, November is to be expected good. Q1 is to be expected good. But the budget -- the first budgets we see from our companies shows that 2023 will be below the level of 2019. So we will not be fully recovered looking at 2019. Engineering & Technology, the second segment, I think we see a quite strong outlook on the companies we have here. Order books are good. Profitability levels are sustainable, and we are quite happy with the Engineering & Technology part. And Goods & Services, a little bit of mix. However, our 3 largest companies, Lapeyre, Frigoscandia and Terranor, they have a very, very positive outlook with significant improvements on the profitability, but also especially Frigoscandia on the top line, now with all the synergies coming from the latest acquisitions we did in Sweden. So this was a quick outlook or a quick insight on the portfolios and an outlook what we expect budgeting from our portfolio in 2023. And to give it now a little bit more details also on Q3, I'll hand over to Mark, and I'll see you back then on the outlook.

Thanks, Johannes. Coming to the financials, and starting with the overview. And my main message, even though it might be not here transparent in all the figures, Q3 was actually pleasing from a financial perspective. The revenue of the group increased again compared to the previous quarters because we closed a couple of transactions in Q2, and we closed a couple of transactions in Q3, which give us the basis for an increasing holding revenue. On the other hand, Q3 is always dominated by the summer breaks across Europe, in July and August, pretty much in all entities. But nevertheless, revenue of the MUX Group increased a bit due to the acquisitions on the one hand, but also, and we will see it in the quarterly segment reporting that part of the group was adding a lot to the revenues by just increasing organically the revenues. Like Johannes already mentioned, the Mutares holding revenue increased in Q3 substantially because we added a lot of new team members in the group. And we also prepared for the growth in Q4, and therefore, the run rate that we currently see in the revenues that we have in the holding is above EUR 20 million per quarter. And that's what we're going to see in the Q4 then for the Mutares Group. Portfolio income, also in total, year-to-date, Q3 way higher than last year, and we will, as always, have some dividends or exit proceeds in Q4. And that's why we here have again the net income for the year 2022 that we confirm in the range between EUR 72 million and EUR 88 million. Also introduced last time the overview by segment. And here, we have a couple of different developments. Pretty much in all segments, we see that we have a summer break across Europe, so there is a bit of lower activities. But on the other hand, the profitability still moves forward. And here, we see the nice development, even though it's negative, in the Automotive & Mobility segment, because the volumes were picking up in Q3, so substantially, obviously, in September. But on the other hand, also the companies make progress in rolling over the prices to customers. This takes a bit longer in Automotive & Mobility because customers are much more reluctant to accept higher prices and that's the main difference in the profitability and the adjusted EBITDA to Engineering & Technology and Goods & Services. These segments are having a way higher flexibility in changing prices, and therefore, profitability is much better in these segments. Engineering & Technology is a segment that is traditionally weak in Q1, and that is picking up throughout the year. You see it here in the financials. On the other hand, we have added a couple of new transactions here, new acquisitions. And therefore, the adjusted EBITDA was impacted by these acquisitions. And then we have Goods & Services, where we have a very broad range of different portfolio companies and therefore, this is most stable segment. And I will go into detail why the revenue is -- was decreasing in Q3. Coming first to the Automotive & Mobility segment. This segment is still growing, and we added here in Q3, two companies, Cimos and MoldTecs to that segment. And the biggest segment, the more possibilities we have in terms of cooperation within the segment or even synergies in the segment. So we really think that Cimos can contribute quite a lot to KICO and ISH, but MoldTecs can be a really nice combination with LMS and SFC. We yesterday had the budget meeting with Elastomer Group, and we strongly pushed for much more integration and cooperation with the SFC Group, especially also here with the add-on we did included in Cimos called [ ceilings ]. On the other hand, we see the profitability in terms of adjusted EBITDA improved throughout the quarter by just having a bit more of activity in Q3. And we will see -- and that's what one of the comments here on the right side. We will see in Q4 a much better profitability because part of the negotiations with customers will kick in, in Q4 with onetime payments or increased prices that are then applicable for the whole year and are kicking in into the profitability in Q4. The high increase in revenue here on the right side that you see in the bridge is mainly due to LMS and ISH that were acquired last year. MoldTecs was closed at the end of the quarter, so it's not contributing in terms of revenue, is only contributing in terms of bargain purchase income. Second segment, Engineering & Technology, here a segment where we added in Q2 VALTI and SMP, so Special Melted Products. These 2 companies together with the acquisition of Balcke-Dürr Energy Solutions are contributing substantially negative. We have here written it on the right side, approximately EUR 13 million in adjusted EBITDA. On the other hand, we have here the segment with the highest organic growth that we have seen now in 2022. And that organic growth is attributable to especially the Donges Group with approximately EUR 80 million. Johannes has mentioned it quite -- most of it coming from the Nordec Group, but also the other auto companies under the Donges Group were contributing positively. From La Rochette and also Lacroix, these 2 companies were able to roll over the increased purchase prices to customers. I would not say easily, but in a faster manner. So therefore, the sales prices were going upwards, and this is contributing to the organic growth in that segment. On the other hand, in terms of just operational development, we see here a very nice development at La Rochette, Clecim, Royal de Boer, but also at Japy, so the smaller entities that we have all, pretty much located into our harvesting stage. In the Finance segment, Goods & Services, which is clearly the broadest segment, and therefore also has a lot of stability when it comes to development. The decrease in revenue is mostly attributable to Lapeyre. And that is a normal development since -- in the summer in France, people are going on vacation and do not buy too much for their homes. And therefore, Lapeyre pretty much is responsible for the decrease that we see here from Q2 to Q3. Nevertheless, the segment was still contributing quite positively. The main contributors to the year-to-date adjusted EBITDA development here are Terranor, Frigoscandia and SABO with almost EUR 23 million. And in addition, we see here also a quite nice operational development in Lapeyre, Ganter and also in Asteri. Coming to the final slide here, the life cycle. And here, we have, for the first time, added the phase that we normally do not show, the acquisition phase, where we have also 5 entities at the end of the quarter, end of Q3, that we are supposed to close now within the next 2 to 3 months, in total, so also in next year already. And these companies will then move up into the realignment phase where we have our companies that are normally loss-making [indiscernible], so the profitability is approximately minus 5%, so quite a pay actually for us. So we have a lot to do here to move them upwards then for 2023. And the optimization phase is phased where we looked in detail into the figures, and it's really a broad range in the developments that we saw here. We have a couple of automotive companies and companies in France that were impacted by the summer break and therefore, profitability was not too much improving in Q3, but we are quite confident that this will happen in Q4. And then we have the final stage, harvesting phase where we have 6 companies or once we have closed the announced sale of Royal de Boer, then we have finally 5 companies in there. And here, also profitability remains quite stable, in the positive territory, despite the summer break. And with that, I hand over back to Johannes for final outlook.

Thank you, Mark. Let me give you the outlook for the next 6 months, how we see it, and what will be the focus. So on the buy side, I think we have conducted 12 transactions this year. There will be more to come. As I said, 2023 pipeline is building up very strongly. So we expect a very good move into the first quarter compared to last year, where we had little bit a slower move into the year. So there, we see really, really good developments on the buy-side pipeline. On the transaction sell side, we have conducted Nordec and Royal de Boer in these difficult times. This will be the clear focus for the next 6 months. We have companies in the harvesting period. We have companies which are nicely performing, and where we believe we have done 80% of the job, and we have done the restructuring, we have stabilized the company, we have carved them out. And in case there is an opportunity to divest, we would divest them. And slowly but surely with our expected holding period of 3 to 5 years, also, now the way of the companies we have acquired in 2019, 2020, where we strongly increased number of acquisitions will come now to a phase where they are ready to go to the next best owner. And then on the portfolio development, the third focus point, is clearly to make our portfolio strong. To overcome the situation, the difficult situation of this year with the Automotive segment, and as an example, we're going to form their Plastics Group and LMS, which -- under the name of LMS Group, where we act and where we want to get the synergies done between the 2 acquisitions we have done. And last but not least, the shareholder value, which is the driver of our day-to-day work and our day-to-day decision. The situation like we have now, with all the circumstances in the world, is a great opportunity for our business model and for Mutares. And the past already shows that these kind of situations in the markets are the ones for the best investments. And we firmly believe in that. We believe in that we are one of the beneficiaries of the situation. And I think with the buy side and the sell side, we have conducted and the portfolio development, we have proven that again in 2022. And last but not least, this is nothing new. We want to reassure that we deliver what we promised. We have talked about the outlook, and we have talked about what we want to achieve. And last but not least, on the right-hand side, as I said, you see the Polish office, which I have said before, we want to go. And then we also will conduct a feasibility study, and I will be in the U.S. the coming week to see if it makes sense to be over there in America, a little bit the Pocahontas story going over to see, trying to convince Americans with our European approach and at the end, become the beloved daughter or the beloved kid and be the #1 in the turnaround as well. But this is a future story. So our focus is still Europe, and we will investigate the upside in America. Before we now move on to the questions and answers, I would like to recall the statement or upgrade the statement, which we have made on the Capital Markets Day, which I was nicely told by one of our research banks. And if you remember I told the story about my family and the bulls going through the storm. They raised cattle and I always was wondering why they build so many shelters. And I think being Mutares, being the bulls, that's one of our USP, that we don't hide and we don't run away. We face the problems and we go through the storm. But I have to confirm even though it's not the right wording for it, also lots of female bulls in the Mutares world. And that's to be precise, in Mutares, we also have the female bulls with the DNA of going through the storm and we are very, very happy about this. And thank you very much for now. We are open now for questions and answers. And we are very, very happy to see you back for the year-end results, then in the same presentation format. And until then, we will continue our belief in the power of winning and facing the storms and going through the storms instead of hiding. Thank you very much. And now back to the moderator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from the line of Tom Mills from Jefferies.

Thanks for the update. It seems like you guys are sort of running flat as ever. So it's very impressive to see, and congratulations on the exit earlier. I was wondering if you could just help us understand how much do you think that you need to do in 4Q in terms of harvesting activity to support the kind of confirmed dividends that you've kind of pointed to for FY '22? I see -- it's obviously reassuring that you've kind of confirmed all the targets, but it would be helpful just to understand what kind of milestones we need to see past just to sort of underpin the dividend.

Thanks, Tom, for asking. So we have to split income streams. Obviously, it's the one from the consulting fee, the dividends and then the harvesting from the exit. We would feel very comfortable if we conduct one more exit signing until year-end on the harvesting stage, but we are comfortable in order to achieve that with the companies listed in the harvesting and we have just churned.

The next question is from the line of Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research.

So the first is actually on the exit side, actually a clarification. So Japy technology is still in on board, and was it just the board going out?

Sorry, the line was bad. But if the question was if Japy is still part of us, the answer is yes.

Okay. Yes, that was the question, actually. And the next one is, let's say, for 2023, is it already time like thinking of that one of the larger companies could be ready for next? I mean that's a bit more out than the 6 months probably you elaborated on before. But is that a viable thinking?

Well, generally speaking, yes, right? So if a rich guy on the horse with a lot of gold in his bag comes here along in Munich, we will invite him. But I think it's a question of market, it's a question of demand from the market and if they're interested. We have a clear exit strategy for 2023, where we clearly know already, which companies we want to exit, which is in alignment with our guidance we have given. And we will also then together with our annual results 2023 -- 2022, giving a guide -- give then a guidance, a more precise guidance for 2023.

Could you repeat the last sentence?

With our annual results 2022, which will be, I think, published in April, we will also give a guidance for 2023 more precisely, which then obviously will be on the way to the one of '25, so it will not go down. And we have clear exit candidates in mind supporting and underlying the future growth in profitability as well. But if your question -- and I know you love the company, if your question points to Lapeyre, I believe we don't exit Lapeyre in 2023.

I think that one is actually a bit early, true. But do you think if you bring up the guidance that you make a statement like -- or on the buy side, you buy a company every month that you also come up with an idea of what is a possible target on the sell side. I mean, obviously, the market needs to play along at least to your gold.

I think your sell side is very nicely reflected in the profit of the holding. And the target of the sell side to me does not make too much sense. So we have that in the profitability of the holding, which we expect in the range of EUR 1.8 billion to EUR 2.2 billion of the turnover, which currently on an annualized basis is in the range of EUR 5 billion as we speak.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Marie-Therese Gruebner from HAIB.

Yes. I have a couple of questions. I will ask them one after the other, if you don't mind. The first one regards the run rate consulting fees on the one hand and dividends on the other hand, can you kind of clarify, please, what is the run rate for both in Q3? And what we could expect for Q4?

In terms of for holding revenue, the run rate and what you can expect then for Q4 is approximately EUR 21 million.

The revenue, right?

The revenues, exactly.

But then what about the portfolio income, which is...

The portfolio income, we will derive some dividends out of the portfolio companies in our financials 2022 based on what we have communicated also on the Capital Markets Day. We say that we want to divest part of our companies in order to come to our EUR 72 million to EUR 88 million. And let's say that we always said that in terms of dividends, we expect to derive from our portfolio approximately EUR 15 million at all times. That means that in the last quarter, we had to derive something like EUR 10 million in dividends across the quarter, if we do not divest some of the portfolio companies and expectedly that would have contributed to the dividend.

Excuse me, Mark, but it was a bit complicated to hear your acoustically. I'm not sure I'm the only one having this issue. But could you please repeat? Sorry, to ask you, could you please repeat what the dividend expectation is for Q4, therefore?

The dividend expectation for the whole year, which is mainly in Q4 is EUR 15 million, minimum.

Okay, minium, perfect. All right. And then I was wondering if you could give us some color on the divestiture of the Boer, I think it's the company called, which you announced later today. Anything you can share with respect to impact on holding net income and cash proceeds, obviously?

Well, first of all, I think as we have said, closing will happen this month. The impact on the holding net income will be a single-digit number, but a very high one.

Single digit, very high. And then the -- do you disclose the cash you are collecting because from the divestiture?

Cash and P&L impact is the same.

That's the same. Okay. All right. And then with respect to 2023, I think you mentioned throughout the presentation that you're kind of targeting, if I'm not mistaken, dividend in the EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million range for the full year. Is this correct? Is this something we can assume? Sorry, consulting fees, yes.

That's all in results. Yes. Consulting fees for '23 will be in the range of EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million, at least, yes, correct.

Okay, 2023. And then yes, you showed us the slide with the harvesting candidate. You mentioned that you are expecting an additional exit before year-end, yes, obviously difficult question for you to answer, but what can you tell us more in terms of what you can expect to see, what kind of company is more likely to be the next one to be announced before year-end? And I wish you really all the best in being able to do that announcement.

Well, the first thing is, you're right, it's difficult to answer this one. The second thing is, I think I have shown you 5 companies in the harvesting stage, 2 are divested. So -- and the rest is for you to guess, your chance is 33.3%.

Okay. All right. And then one more question, the U.S. How do you feel -- okay, I can understand that you have a lot of U.S. buyers probably looking at Europe with a strong dollar. How are you thinking about your competitive edge with the strong dollar in the U.S. at the time when you want to enter that market? Is this something you're worried about that you're going to be paying with a weak currency?

For -- two things. So the America, I think, is equally interesting for us from an investor base as well as from an M&A base. So on the M&A side, matter of fact that we don't pay a lot of purchase prices per se, the weak dollar doesn't -- the strong dollar compared to the weaker euro doesn't make so much difference. But the angle I see on the M&A side is basically 2 main ones. So the one is American corporates divesting in Europe. And a lot of times, what we see is they go through American investment banks. So we see quite a bit of processes going -- for divestments in Europe going through investment bankers in New York or Chicago, and that's the first angle. So if you're there on the spot and if you connect to the guys in New York and Chicago, you have a much, much better position than if you just wait in old Europe until America calls. And the other one is European corporates divesting stuff in America where they are scared to death to close something down on the impact on media, political pressure, et cetera, et cetera. So this can be also a very good angle, especially in the automotive spot and in the automotive valleys, Charlotte, up Detroit, these areas. So this is equally important for us than the investors. And for me, the strong U.S. dollar doesn't play a too big impact here.

The next question is from the line of Zafer Rüzgar from Pareto Securities.

Actually, 2 questions left, more housekeeping questions. The first one is on your slide with the invested capital. Can you give us the number for the invested capital, also for the purchase price paid in 2022 so far for all the acquisitions?

So in 2022, we have a CapEx for the acquisitions of approximately EUR 60 million.

Okay. That means is this the purchase price or also the invested capital in the current portfolio?

Only purchase prices or investments in the course of the acquisition. So Johannes has explained that normally, we do not pay, a purchase price can happen, but we normally do what we do with Lapeyre where we invest into the target, so -- but this sums up to EUR 60 million in 2022.

Okay. Good. And then one final one. We haven't seen the number yet, but where is your cash per end of Q3 on holding level?

EUR 16 million.

EUR 60 million, EUR 16 million?

EUR 16 million.

So there are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to you Johannes Laumann for closing comments.

Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you very much for being with us today. Wish you a good rest of the year. Stay with us, there will be more to follow. We will be bullish, as we always have been. And we are just at the beginning of a very, very good journey, which we are very happy to have you onboard, and which we are very happy that you support us here on -- in this abnormal situation, and we will prove that we will use it for our advantage on the buy side but also on the sell side. So stay with, thank you very much. It was good to having you. And good rest of the year. Thank you.