Oakley Capital Investments Limited (OCI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Oakley Capital Investments Limited Interim 2021 Trading Update Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via our Investor Company dashboard and you'll be notified once they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Steven Tredget, Partner at Oakley Capital Investments Limited. Good morning.

Good morning, Paul, and thank you for the introduction, and I thank you for those joining us today. I should clarify for those that my name is Steven Tredget. I'm a partner Oakley Capital. And to clarify for those less familiar with us, Oakley Capital manages private equity funds and the public company we are here to talk about is Oakley Capital Investments or OCI, as I referred to it, and I invest in the funds that Oakley manages. That allows private investors like you or I to gain exposure to private equity returns through the stock market. So as described, OCI is what is known as a direct listed PE company in contrast to a fund of funds. And I guess that's like a comparable peer of the likes of 3i and HG. So the plan today, if you've seen it is that yesterday, we announced a short trading update. I guess the key bit of information there was to provide the kind of latest net asset value. I'll give a little bit of detail around that in a short 15-minute, 20-minute presentation, and that will be followed by 15 minutes or so of Q&A. So first up, let's look at the kind of key details that we published yesterday, GBP 804 million of net asset value through the end of June. That's that red number, and that's a NAV per share of 445p. And that compares to -- I guess, the obvious comparison is GBP 640 million of market cap and 355p per share. So although clearly, the share price has performed relatively well, shareholder total returns kind of in excess of 25%, we're still trading at discount, a discount that is continuing to narrow over time, but our value is still present. The key bit of information here, it will be the focus of this and the interim results, is that NAV return, NAV return of 11% over the last 6 months and over the last 12 months to June, that's 26%. And that's healthy growth. It's in excess of our 5-year average compound annual growth rate of 16%. It's pleasing to kind of be moving that average up. It's been achieved despite the fact that some of the portfolio has endured some kind of COVID impact. We'll touch on that later in one of the slides. And I think just as importantly, when you consider the OCI NAV, the growth in NAV is largely -- I mean, in fact, approximately 75% driven by the increase in the portfolio company earnings. And that's in contrast to evaluation being driven by us increasing the multiple at which we hold company at. As we've noted before, valuation multiples that we hold portfolio companies at, they tend to increase fairly modestly over the life of which we're holding a company. And I guess the thing that really kind of demonstrates that is that at the point of exit, you get typically a particularly large uplift in the value. I think the average since inception was -- it has been -- is 44% on average premium to the holding valuation. So that would be a 44% premium to the NAV today if we sold any or all of the businesses [indiscernible] Now actually, in reality, I mean, in 2019, the premium was 89%. So you get this big uplift when you get the kind of point of price discovery when you sell an asset. And with the kind of companies that we're going to discuss the kind of businesses that we own, particularly heavily focused around digital solutions, you can imagine the increasing popularity of those firms since we bought them and as a result of our value added while we've owned them. It's also -- I think it's also worth reiterating that there's no incentive for a private equity manager to inflate the value of an existing holding. Their performance fees are entirely based on the exit price. So if I combine those kind of 2 facts for you, then it should provide you with a lot of confidence in just quite how robust and relatively conservative the kind of published OCI NAV is. Let's look at kind of NAV over time. In the chart here, the purple bar shows the growing NAV per share, it's kind of June each year. We've kind of stuck it in the interim period and the OCI share price tracking this growth and OCI's growth is in line with the progress you've come to expect. I think importantly for me, it underlines OCI's increasing reputation now for delivering repeatable long-term kind of market-leading growth regardless of economic circumstance. And it's a NAV that isn't being unduly stretched. And even up here where there are no realizations, it's still growing, thanks to the underlying growth of the companies. So here, we've just given you a sense of how the NAV breaks down by assets, so total assets, GBP 766 million, cash of GBP 172 million. It's cash that we hold in order to be able to meet the commitments that we've made to the funds when they draw down and make investments. And then there's other liabilities, and they essentially are debt facilities sort of held at the fund level, and helps smooth out the drawdowns over time. Net those off and you get to your GBP 804 million of net asset value that we announced yesterday. So here, we've just given you some sense that there's 21 companies now that OCI gives you to look through that sit across the Oakley funds. And the graph here just shows, one, our kind of balanced exposure to the 3 sectors of technology, consumer and education. And then I pick on just some of the larger holdings there just to give you a sense of the kind of businesses that we own. You've got WebPros right on the top there, that's the leading global provider of web hosting software. And it won't surprise you to learn that it's continued to benefit from the growing need and importance for individuals and small businesses to have a web presence and a growing hosting requirement and they're a direct beneficiary of that increasing trend. In education [indiscernible] is the largest exposure to a single company in the portfolio is IU Group. And it's previously known as Career Partner Group for those that have known us for a bit longer. And you'll be familiar with it, it's Germany's largest and fastest-growing university. And that's thanks to its online higher education focus. It provides design for purpose, completely flexible student-orientated learning. And as a result, in the 3 years we've owned the company, student numbers have more than quadrupled to close to nearly 70,000 and EBITDA has tripled. And it's been one of the largest contributions to OCI's value growth today and it will no doubt be so for the next couple of years. The key characteristic about this group of companies, if I was to choose one, is that over 70% of them deliver their products or services digitally. And that's regardless whether they fall in technology, consumer or education. It's one of the most significant trends that are borne out by the portfolio and is a deeper of expertise for Oakley. The other key to that is that now over 75% of the portfolio has some subscription-based or recurring nature to their revenues. And as you'll appreciate, not only have you got higher and growing EBITDA, the idea that you've got great visibility on revenue and therefore, profitability regardless of the bumps in the road that might be caused by, for example, any kind of COVID or economic swings. Here, we've just outlined the impact of COVID on the portfolio. It's more to outline there has been some impact. I mean, clearly, the performance shows that by nature, by being very digital and focused, you would expect us to have continued to perform regardless of kind of lockdowns and the circumstance of the last 12 to 18 months. But there has been some impact. It's been fairly modest in the case of the 4 companies there, Schülerhilfe, WindStar, ECOM and Daisy, And in many cases, that is purely based upon the physicality of some of the sites, let's say in the case of WindStar distributing through retail channels or it's Schülerhilfe, which is about after school education in Germany, and it's about getting your child up to the required exam grade. If exams are canceled, then adoption of that service in a year has slightly faltered, but it's a group that you expect to return pretty quickly and to kind of normal levels. There has been significant impact, 3 names, Time Out, North Sails and Iconic BrandCo. These are groups that have relied upon direct access to consumer and physical locations. And as a result, they've seen significant disruption over the last period. Clearly, we've achieved our performance despite that. So there is some kind of COVID recovery upside within the portfolio as well, which is great to know that's kind of in the potential of the group. Let's remind you of what -- where Oakley's focus is and how it differentiates itself as an investor. This is all pretty self-explanatory, but we're typically looking at businesses, mid-market, lower, mid- to mid-market companies. We're looking to put equity to work up to GBP 150 million in a particular investment. And these are companies that have circa up to GBP 0.5 billion in size. What's relevant about that is they're established to a certain point, they're profitable, they're fast-growing and they're often still founder-lead, founder-owned or family-owned businesses, which is kind of key to the way we operate. But we also focus on Western and Southern Europe and the sectors I've already highlighted, technology education and consumer. This is a key slide for me to understand the difference in -- for -- of Oakley's approach for those less familiar with us is that one of our key approaches is our partnership with entrepreneurs and business founders such that we are widely recognized now particularly kind of across Europe as being an empathetic supportive partner to help business founders continue to grow and develop their businesses. Such is the strength of that relationship is that in many cases, some of those business founders go on to repeatedly do transactions, but sometimes we're on to a third or fourth transaction with some of these individuals. And just as encouragingly, they themselves have then gone on to invest in the funds, which I think is a great endorsement of their experience of working with Oakley. If you combine that way of sourcing with our own expertise and kind of screening and the fact that we are really kind of happy to kind of work in complex environments where a company may be sitting deep within a parent company, so there's the need to carve out. Those need to put accounts together for the first time. It might be multiple M&A at the point of acquisition. You combine those 3 factors together and you get the kind of stats on the right-hand side, which I think are kind of the most important I'll give you in kind of defining the difference of Oakley. One is, is that as we say here over 75% of the deals that we've done are uncontested. That means that they have not been acquired as part of an auction, as part of a competitive intermediated process. They've been as a result of a proprietary connection of working with a founder. And as a result, the most likely outcome of that is that we have the opportunity to buy assets at a much lower valuation than would be available in the wider market. We're often the first primary so 85% at a time where the first primary capital, what does that mean? We're the first private equity or private capital to invest in these businesses. So we're actually growing the kind of hopper of companies that sit within the private equity realm. And as I've mentioned before, we've -- 40% of those deals have been carved outs. So I've described a bit of what Oakley does and how it does its origination. And I guess that's all teeing up the, okay, well done, that's what you've managed to do in the past. Have the last 6 months borne out that that strategy can still continue? Because I guess the question I'm most often asked is, wonderful performance, really exciting sectors, but everyone now knows that digital is exciting or that education is a great environment to be in. And so can you still, using your origination model and using your unique sourcing, can you still access companies of that quality and of that growth? And we've announced 4 new platform deals in the Oakley funds in the period. And they all very much sit within kind of Oakley's sweet spot. Top left there is idealista. And this is essentially kind of Europe's -- Southern Europe answer to a Rightmove or a [ Ziegler ]. It is the #1 real estate classified player in Spain, the #1 in Portugal and the #2 in Italy. It's just going to reach that status. But these are in regions where real estate classified adoption is still some way behind the more mature markets of the U.K. and Germany and some of the other markets within Western Europe. This is not unfamiliar territory for us, taking our knowledge and understanding of maturer markets like the U.K. and investing behind the digital disruption curve in other regions throughout Europe. And here's a great example. Whilst we are the #1 player in this space, the market is still, in comparison to the U.K. kind of relatively young in terms of kind of consumer adoption of real estate classified portals and also the amount of spend per agent that is obviously continuing to increase. So a lot of exciting growth. To give you some sense of the valuation differential. Idealista, which is kind of #1 essentially in 3 Southern European markets, each not too dissimilar in size to the U.K. and idealista is probably a fifth of a valuation today of a Rightmove. And that -- as that maturity plays out in those markets as digital kind of Internet penetration continues amongst consumers we'd expect to see the valuation gains that have been achieved here in more mature markets. Dexters is on the right leading from our kind of online real estate sector experience takes us into the offline world for the first time. What attracted us to Dexters is, one, its performance over the cycle, kind of consistently delivering 15% growth year-on-year for the last 10, 11, 12 years. The other key point looking at the kind of typical traits that we have looked for in the portfolio of companies, which certainly is the case at Dexters, is that they focus on letting. 75% of their top line is lettings. And as you'll appreciate, that is much more visible. There's much more longevity in a lettings relationship rather than the one-off transactional nature of a property sale. It's still a incredibly fragmented market despite Dexters strength, for example, in lettings and sales, it's really only 3% of the London and Southeast market. And the fragmentation means there are still a lot of single site -- high-quality, but single-site operations in lots of different satellite towns of urban areas around London. And Dexters has, and will continue to kind of roll up those single-site opportunities. The other clear opportunity for us is to take our digital experience and create an online solution for Dexters, either through white label or acquisition to essentially make Dexters multichannel and for them to capture the part of the value lettings value chain that currently it doesn't touch. Bottom left, ICP nurseries, ICP Education. This is a nursery group, U.K. nursery group. And if you followed our progress in education before, this is entirely a strategy that's now become synonymous with us in that we are looking to build platforms where we can roll up in, again, a fragmented market, lots of single sites to kind of build a kind of national or global champion as we did in private schools a number of years back at Inspired. Here, the opportunity, big U.K. market GBP 7 billion nearly spent in the U.K. nursery sector. There's 850,000 children in 15,000 nurseries and most of which of those are on single-site basis. The appeal here is the market continues to grow steadily 4%, 5% over the last kind of 10 years. There's rising female labor market participation. And there's an increasing awareness, I guess, of the importance of early years education. Through our network, we are introduced to the opportunity and exclusive access. We're backing a kind of industry veteran who has continued to do -- Stephen Booty has continued to do roll-ups of this kind. And we've got a long target list of really high-quality nurseries that our current team to form to be part of a group where we're known for kind of nurturing kind of entrepreneurs and helping them run and develop a business in the way they wish. And then finally, on that page is ECOMMERCE ONE, another entry into our technology portfolio. This is an e-commerce software roll-up opportunity, and we've acquired 2 of the leading software solutions for kind of German online merchants. And this is merchant selling -- this is smaller merchants selling via online marketplaces that you'll be aware of, the likes of Amazon and eBay. And as a result of this deal, we're now one of the top 3 players in e-commerce back-end kind of software market. And as you can imagine, there's a lot of tailwinds in the increasing kind of use of online for retail sales. And there's a lot of functions that we can continue to add on to this suite to make this the complete product. Look, I think the other kind of key thing to take away as your -- hopefully, your -- I think we've talked about this, but we're taking advantage of real kind of secular megatrends here. We're not looking to take a bet on consumer confidence or economic strength. It's the growth of global Internet use. It's the adoption of digital solutions or it's the growing demand for accessible high-quality education, and these will continue to be kind of strong themes for Oakley, or for OCI. I'll leave you with a couple of highlight stats. Again, mentioning the returns despite some headwinds in the period. The fact that so much of what we're about is kind of digital solutions, and that is such a high -- strong theme within the portfolio. Origination of 75% of our deals come from proprietary means purchased in an uncontested environment. And then the next news for us will be our interim results, which we'll look to publish on the 9th of September, and we can provide you with a bit more detail on exactly what's behind the growth, the average EBITDA growth, the average EBITDA multiples we're acquiring with -- that we're currently holding the business on and a little bit more flavor about the performance that we have achieved to date. So at that point, I'll hand back to Paul.

Steven, thank you so much indeed for the presentation. [Operator Instructions] But just while Steven takes a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already, I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation along with the copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via our investor dashboard on the Investor Meet Company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected to the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. And Steven, thank you for the presentation. We have also had quite a few questions that have come through. If I may, if I could just hand back to you just to click on that Q&A tab and perhaps start at the top and where appropriate to do so, just read out the question and give you a response that would be fantastic. Thank you.

That's great. Thanks, Paul. I'll try and get through as many of these as possible. And in order to do so, I'll go at a relatively high pace so that I can try and cover off as many of them in the time. James asks, please can you outline the fee structure I face as an investor in OCI? Essentially, there's 2 ways in which cost of charge. One is any fee, any management or performance fee, which are the key fees that essentially we face as OCI shareholders, they are paid within the funds. So like any investor in the funds, fees are taken from the funds and we're given our realizations net of all fees. And the funds charge a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee, and that's pretty much in line with the size of fund or a GBP 2 billion -- circa GBP 2 billion size fund, a management fee of that size is pretty typical within private equity. There are other fees, and that's potentially OCI has no -- kind of other than the Board has no assets or direct employees itself. And so all services that it has, it has essentially -- it kind of pays those in addition. And that's about 0.34% of NAV is the cost for fund finance, accounting, lawyers, communication, everything else that basically it needs in order to operate. Paul asks, your sector has recently expanded with the listing of Bridgepoint. Please could you summarize the cache which would differentiate from Bridgepoint? I think the first thing to kind of make clear is that we're talking here about the listed OCI. OCI is an investment company and it commits its funds to the Oakley Capital funds, which are managed by Oakley Capital. So -- I mean, OCI is quite a different proposition to Bridgepoint. If you're buying shares in Bridgepoint, you're getting access to -- your buying shares in the manager itself, so it would be like buying shares in Oakley Capital. So they're quite different investment propositions that there -- in terms of comparing Bridgepoint and Oakley Capital, I guess that's an entirely different conversation except to say that there are some similarities, both of us based here in the U.K., both of us look to affect buyouts in the mid-market. But there are a heap of other differences about the way we approach kind of entrepreneur relationships and the way we -- the sectors we focus on and the way we source transactions. Richard asks how much of the GBP 172 million cash is committed? Well we've got outstanding commitments to date in the funds of about GBP 428 million. I think the thing to say about that number is, some of that is committed to funds that maybe -- funds that tend to draw down every single penny that has been committed to it. And so if you take that into consideration, plus you might commit GBP 100 of funds, but because of the use of debt facilities within the funds or because of realizations that mean cash can be recycled back in or a number of reasons, you don't tend to be drawn down on the full amount you committed. I mean, in fact, on average, it's been something like 50% or 60% of what you committed is drawn down. So of the GBP 428 million, this is very approximate, but I'd expect something more like GBP 250-odd million to the amount that's actually kind of drawn down. So in answer to your question, way more than the cash we have is committed, but we're pretty comfortable there's enough cash to reach -- to meet our commitments. If OCI -- if Oakley didn't sell a single asset, we can continue to meet our commitments for the next few years. Now as it happens, we're very confident about future realizations from the funds and most of our portfolio companies would have had some kind of discussion at some point with a future acquirer. Christopher asks does the Board intend to increase the dividend? The only kind of guidance we've given on that, Christopher, is that we maintain a dividend. Yes, it's a fairly modest dividend at 4.5p. It's not to say it won't increase in the future. We've not given guidance to that extent. I think the Board's kind of focused on returning capital to shareholders tends to be much more focused around buybacks rather than dividends. And also, I guess, OCI is more a capital growth opportunity rather than an income-generating opportunity based on the nature of how it invests. But as I say, that's not to say that the dividend won't increase in the future, it's just not guidance we give. James asks, what is the planned holding time in investment? And are you expecting partially or fully -- full exit of investments in the next 6 months? Our average holding period is about 3.5 years. And I think -- sorry, that's the average holding period of any -- of an exited portfolio company is about 3.5 years. And I think the average holding period of the portfolio today is roughly about 3 years. So I guess in answer to your question, you would expect to see partial or full realizations over the next year. I can't guarantee those and maybe that we refinance the businesses and bring cash out of the investment that way in the initial step. But there are plenty of opportunities to do that. If we're not doing it's because we think there's such scarcity in the assets that we own that there's an increasing desire to continue to hold these assets just because of the increasing growth in value we're creating is doing so. That said, there has to be -- there is a limit to a funds holding period. And of course, we'd imagine you'll see future realizations over the next 6 to 12 months. Richard asks, is the issue going on in China with regard to education a concern to Oakley? I don't know what this specifically relates to, but we're not exposed to the Chinese market in education. We're very much in spaces that we know well and markets that we know well and are very confident about. And that particularly, in the current environment, is Germany, France and the U.K. Tom asks is the Board manager's ambition to upgrade the listing from SFS to the premium listing? It is, is the short answer. We only made the move to the SFS in 2019. We weren't able to make a move directly to the premium list. And we think that our main impediments to that upgrade have now been removed, which is really around the concentration of money across too few funds. Now as we launch new funds, new fund families like the Origin Fund earlier this year, we think we'd have tackled that particular hurdle. It takes time and energy to move to the premium list. It's certainly on our horizon, and we'd like to think it's something that will be achieved in the next 12 to 18 months. Dan asks please can you touch on the breakdown of the NAV that is significantly impacted. And is debt exposure included in this? Yes, I believe in that number it is. We have a loan into North Sails. It's a guaranteed loan. It's a much more -- I guess, much more robust in terms of where it stands in the pecking order to equities so it's a relatively safe instrument and it yields us kind of 10%. In terms of the other companies that are in that list, so there's Time Out, North Sails and the Iconic BrandCo. Look, they're consumer-led companies that have -- in the case of Time Out, clearly, Time Out is geared towards selling people have the best to go out and when you couldn't, that meant that there was less than sort less digital advertising revenue for them to generate. I have to say, though, that their online audience has remained incredibly stable. If that grew through the first 6 months of the kind of COVID lockdown, which really talks to just how valued and -- the authority, which Time Out has switched to time in during that time. And as the homebound content was just as popular as it's going out content. Clearly, the markets are now back open again, we're starting to return to some normality, there's really encouraging footfall despite the restrictions in the market. But clearly, we need a return to kind of freedom of movement, no restrictions and travel again to really see Time Out start to return to the kind of level of revenue generation. But frankly, that should be in the near future. And the same for North Sails. I think it's really driven by the sailing world. The more you sail, the more you need to replace your high and high quality sails. We dominate that sector. And of course, we're seeing activity around redactors and the like coming back as we are seeing a lot of adoption of kite surfing and action sports which has been a high-growth area for us. As well, we're seeing in our technical apparel and our leisure apparel that has moved profitable for the first time, and it will be one of the kind of key growth drivers for this business over the next couple of years. James, there is a question on dividends. Hopefully, we've covered that for you in terms of future stance. Chris, you asked about Time Out. Hopefully, we've ticked that one off for you. As I said, I'm confident to meet future fund raise. Absolutely. We're in a very comfortable position based on our current cash, but also kind of plans. We keep close track on plan investments and realizations, we're very much in it there. I've got 5 more minutes to try and tackle a few more of these. Can you give more details on the 20% performance fee? So the 20% performance fee is entirely upon -- is based on each investment exit. To get a performance fee, it has to be over an 8% hurdle and it is based upon that, that the returns achieved on that company willful basis. And as I say, that happens entirely on a fund basis and is not on the basis of OCI's NAV, for example, they're 2 very different things. James asks why we announced the share buyback program. We haven't announced necessarily a buyback program. We've always maintained a buyback program. We've always said this is a key to one of the levers that, that the OCI Board will continue to use as we look to -- I guess, we don't buy back to address the discount. We buy back because the shares are trading at a discount, and that is an earnings in shareholder value-enhancing event is to buy back shares of what are sitting around a circa 20% discount. Whenever we buy back shares, whatever the amount we're going to buy back, we have to preannounce that to the stock market. So in this case, we have preannounced that the OCI Board has given authority for 2 million shares to buy back. We could have bought those back today this morning or we could have bought them back in 1 go or we could buy them back over the course of the following year. It essentially is just telling you, here's the net amount authority, and we have to preannounce so that you, as anyone selling the shares, knows that they could be selling the shares to the company. And look, we continue to remain committed to a buyback program. Vincent mentioned the kind of key kind of COVID impacts and how we believe those will set to turn around in the coming months? Is the share buyback program -- Dan asks, is the share buy back program likely to be extended beyond 2 million shares announced today. Yes, we've openly said that we're committed to a buyback program and continuing that buyback program. And today's purchase is a part of that. Mark asks, your performance is well ahead of the 5-year average, what do you feel would make a better return sustainable? Or is it a more reflection of short-term factors, which may not recur? So sorry, I think you're saying you're outperforming your kind of 5-year average, is -- I guess the question is, does that mean your average is going to kind of increase? Or is this a one-off? I mean I think as the funds mature and the and the quality of the company kind of continues to increase as they are, there's no reason why you wouldn't see our average performance continue to grow as it is. So this is not kind of one-off out-performance that you're seeing from us. And look, I think currently, we're operating -- the compound growth has been about 16%. Last 12 months has been 26%. That's a healthy range, I think, to set anyone's expectations, if we can consistently produce returns within that range and with every confidence of doing so, if not more than that. But I think that's a healthy position for us to be in. And Richard asks how long do you think it will be before we exit Time Out? I mean I think I can't give a time horizon on that. I think that is entirely down to our ability to -- for Time Out to sort of seek the valuation that it needs to seek over time. And that is down to rolling out more markets, generating a profitable media business, and we're much more focused on achieving the successes within Time Out before we think about the kind of realizing our position in the asset. There's a long way to go for Time Out in terms of potential upside, and we're much more focused on that right now. And then the final question, Anthony asks how does the Origin Fund differ from the other Oakley funds? There is -- so to explain, there's 2 fund families, if you like, within -- that Oakley manages. One is the flagship fund, and that is, I mean, we've gone from fund 1, 2, 3. We're currently deploying fund 4. The flagship funds and the Origin Fund has recently just launched and were on Origin Fund 1 essentially. The investment strategy from a kind of sectors that we target, geographies that we target, types of businesses that we target is exactly the same and the same and the Oakley Capital current manager sources opportunities in exactly the same way, and they all come in through the hopper. The distinct difference between the Origin Fund and the flagship fund is that the Origin Fund is lower mid-market and the flagship fund 4 is mid-market. You're looking at putting equity checks up to GBP 100 million -- from GBP 50 million to GBP 150 million initially into investments -- platform investments within the flagship funds. And with the Origin Fund, it's GBP 50 million and below. Are we stretching into new territory? No, probably of the kind of 30, 40 investments to date, 14 of those would be characterized now as being an Origin Fund investment. It has been an area of great outperformance for us. And as the Flagship Fund grows in size, we basically didn't want to -- we didn't want to miss out on the opportunities we were still unearthing within that lower mid-market space. And as you could imagine by its nature, you've got a lot more founder-owned entrepreneur businesses that pervade in the lower mid-market. So there's a rich lane of opportunities for us, which we continue to participate in. Paul, that ends for Q&A, and I'll hand it back to you.

Thank you so much. You have covered off, well, every single question. So of course, if there are any further questions that come through, Steven, we'll be able to review those post the event, and we will publish the response on the Investor Meet company platform. Just before we redirect the attendees to give you some feedback, Steven, perhaps just a few final words, if I may?

Thanks. Well, look, I mean I think the first thing to say is just that it's a pleasing first half from OCI despite some headwinds, reiterating the fact that this is entirely driven by -- majority driven by EBITDA growth, but not making grand moves in terms of how we value the businesses. I mean, these are companies that you would typically expect to grow at around a 30% EBITDA growth. And the average EBITDA multiple when we'll give the exact number in September will be kind of around about 12x. So some pretty modest values to be holding some pretty exciting companies at. We have a pipeline of about 150 investments as we sit here today. So we're not short of new investment opportunities in exactly our sweet spot. So the pipeline, the current portfolio both look, we're incredibly optimistic about both, and that feeds through to us being optimistic about the continued NAV growth for OCI.

That's fantastic. Steven, thank you again for updating investors today and picking up so many questions. That's fantastic. Can I please ask investors not to end the session as you'll be automatically redirected to the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Oakley Capital Investments Limited, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session. Thank you very much, and good afternoon.