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

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Oakley Capital Investments 2021 Full Year Results Webcast. In summary, we saw strong earnings and realizations, which drove significant NAV growth in 2021. And looking ahead, we expect the current 22 portfolio companies to deliver the benefit from a range of long-term trends across 3 core sectors. Based on the portfolio being fully revalued to December, the NAV per share has risen from 445p at June to 338p at the end of 2021. Sustained NAV growth is delivering scale for OCI with net assets now shy of the -- just shy of the GBP 1 billion mark. The 35% total NAV growth for the year speaks for itself, and we'll talk more on what specifically drove this and how our growth can be sustained. Cash of GBP 163 million currently sits on the balance sheet, representing 17% of NAV, much closer to our long-run average of 15%. This healthy level of cash and expected proceeds has enabled us to make an initial commitment to the recently launched Fund V. As an after-share bar chart here shows, performance momentum is building, thanks to an established portfolio and a focused investment strategy. Our 5-year compound annual growth rate of 19% is one of the highest in the sector and in line with what we believe is repeatable in the years ahead. Now we take a look at what drove the recent NAV growth. In short, portfolio company financial performance was the key driver in the period, with 75% of portfolio company growth being driven by the increase in EBITDA over the year. The average portfolio EBITDA growth in the period was 28%, with the growth rate higher in the second half of the year, reflecting that this growth wasn't based on a pandemic-related boost to our tech investments. We'll highlight some of the best performers over the slide. In turn, multiple expansion drove 25% of the value growth, half of which was based on the realization of TechInsights. The portfolio now stands at a conservative average EV/EBITDA multiple of 14x. And we'll talk more on this and our confidence in these ratings shortly. The largest contributors to OCI's NAV-based -- on their financial performance was IU Group. The German University with an online platform that can deliver tuition of multi-topic degree to people in work anywhere in the world. So student numbers exceed 80,000 by the end of the year, up from 52,000 that started it. Wishcard added 10p to net asset value, as Europe's leading gifts and rewards platform saw sales grow by 70%, selling over 9 million multibrand gift cards in the year, with the business recording strong growth across all business segments, with particularly impressive e-commerce sales, which more than doubled versus last year. And thirdly, Contabo, which has seen above-budget demand for its web hosting services, continuing to surge, leading to a doubling of EBITDA in the year. When it comes to multiple expansion, as we touched on, TechInsights is the key contributor. The technical content platform for silicon microchips saw its valuation raised reflect the signing of an agreed sale of stake to CVC in December. The sale at 130% premium to the June book value reflects: one, the transformation, the quality of the company's earnings, with 20% subscription revenue on acquisition growing to 65% in 2021. It also reflects the discipline that Oakley adopts when valuing portfolio companies. And thirdly, it demonstrates the continuing strong demand for our tech-enabled assets, particularly from the large global sponsors. Paying 14x for a 28% EBITDA growth sounds pretty attractive, a conservative rating in contrast to many tech growth stocks, which were priced for perfection in 2021. But even after recent falls, it appears prudent. If we compare with, say, the tech-focused NASDAQ, it is trading on double our portfolio rating. Yes, our EBITDA is growing 50% faster than that of the NASDAQ. In addition to this, it's worth considering 4 [ hygiene ] factors when it comes to our valuation multiples. One, Oakley and the Board of OCI received independent valuations to compare with those provided by the manager. On average, since inception and through cycles, Oakley has sold investee companies at an average premium to book of 50%. The current multiples are not underpinned by listed peer groups. IU Group, as a great example, doesn't have a direct listed peer. Instead, the prevailing multiple trends -- tends to move -- to trend closer to reflect the entry valuation. And finally, it's worth clarifying that the manager Oakley, as is the case in [ general ], with true private equity, has no incentive to aggressively value the portfolio as it has no bearing on its management or performance fees. They are only paid the latter at the point of realization. Taking a closer look at how the NAV breaks down based on December valuations, OCI currently has a total look through portfolio valued at GBP 928 million. It has GBP 163 million of cash at the period end, and both were offset by GBP 130 million of liabilities, which are largely fund facilities within the Oakley Funds. The net of these 3 is GBP 961 million of net asset value. Focusing initially on that cash. This, combined with expected near-term proceeds, puts OCI in a strong position to participate in future fund performance. To this end, OCI announced an initial EUR 400 million commitment to the new Fund V. Now there's a range of factors underpinning our confidence in likely near-term proceeds, and they include the consistent engagement from interested parties, the current age of the portfolio. Despite recent new investments, the average age of the holdings is still just under 3x. And the average hold period of our realized assets is 3.6 years. Today, 7 of the investee companies have been held for more than 4 years. The expected proceeds are also in line with past levels, with the last 2 years generating proceeds of GBP 460 million. And finally, as this week's [ Bain ] Private Equity report underlined, there's a record $1 trillion of dry powder sitting in buyout funds, particularly the large cap global funds, which bodes well for our future exits. The assets are split with GBP 758 million held by the funds and GBP 170 million of direct portfolio investments, which includes GBP 123 million of [ North Sails ] debt and the residual being a direct equity stake in time out. The Board has confirmed that the intention is to realize these direct positions within the next 12 to 24 months. Due to the impact of the pandemic, North Sails required additional funding support in 2021 to fund [ Apparel ] losses and the working capital of both the Apparel and the Actionsports division. It is encouraging to now report a very positive outlook for the company, which is currently ahead of budget in all divisions and expect it to deliver an EBITDA 2.5x that generated in 2019. As you can see on this slide, our equity positions are evenly split between the 3 focused sectors of Technology, Consumer and Education. They're also reasonably evenly split by underlying companies. Noteworthy is OCI's increasing relative exposure to IU Group, which remains one of our most exciting prospects in the portfolio as it moves from being a German and European opportunity to being a global one. Whilst we divide the investments into our 3 focused sectors, there is clear overlap between them. It's 70% essentially qualifying as being Technology due to them delivering their products or services digitally. The majority of the remainder that currently sits outside that Technology subset, we are exploring the adoption of digital solutions as part of the investment thesis. We often highlight this, but it's all the more important on certain times, that 75% of the portfolio or 17 of the 22 companies enjoy an increasing level of subscription-based or recurring revenues, with the visibility attracting increasing valuations as TechInsights has demonstrated. In the current climate, it's worth highlighting the Western and Southern European focus on the portfolio. Based on our expertise and network, this will remain the fund's geographic footprint going forward. I should note, however, we are less geography-led, but primarily opportunity and sector led when looking for investments. As we look to the future and consider the resilience of the current portfolio post-COVID in the face of global economic uncertainty and consider -- the ability for Oakley to repeatedly source new deals in spite of strong demand for its hot sectors. The next slide will outline the 3 key factors, which is the continued performance, the Oakley Funds built upon. Firstly, Oakley will be sticking to its knitting with focused sectors that it knows and understands well. Importantly, these sectors we've been investing -- sorry, importantly, these are sectors and trends that we're investing behind, which are irreversible long-term trends that are in there relative [ infancy ]. As we outlined here, they include business migration to the cloud or the consumer shift to online, which was only just begun in some sectors and geographies. And it's not just digital trends we invest behind, but also, for example, the growing global demand for quality and accessible education. Importantly, although at an early stage in the year, we can report that the portfolio across the board has been responding well as you'd imagine from these trends and trading very much in line with expectations. There is one facet of our approach, which has delivered us, which is defined as since inception and most differentiates as an investor and is a key ingredient to how we earn such attractive companies at attractive venture valuations, that is our relationship-led approach to origination. Our empathetic partnership style to -- for backing and supporting successful business founders has built us an enviable reputation and a network of entrepreneurs-proven talent, some of whom we have backed 3 or 4 times, and who between them would have committed some EUR 400 million to Oakley Funds themselves. The mid-market opportunities that help us -- they help us are straightforward. They may be a carve-out from a larger parent or a family-owned group with little management information, poor accounting or messy shareholder structures. It could be a very short time frame in which we have to act. The key point is that they are complex, and they are not close to being part of a competitive auction. If you are equipped and inclined to navigate this complexity as Oakley is, then there is the opportunity to acquire companies at really interesting multiples, in spite of growing competition for private assets. I'll tell you more about the exciting new investments we've made. But first, let's talk about what we do with businesses once we've invested in them. The third pillar of performance is Oakley's value creation toolkit. We've outlined here 4 of the strategies, which we are most prolific at. All enable us to drive value regardless of the economic cycle or operating environment. In the interest of time, I'll highlight 2 of these. Second, now on the page is digitization. And that's taking offline or companies with an early-stage digital solution and driving the growth of that channel. Alessi is a great example of this. We acquired the business in 2019 when it was loss-making and at a very modest online sales, less than 5%, thanks in part to a dysfunctional and third-party provided website. 2, 3 years later and despite of COVID with an entirely new management team, sales were up 50%, but just as importantly, after a full revamp of its digital channels and marketing, 30% of sales are now, thanks to e-commerce. And the EBITDA this year is set to exceed EUR 6 million. Now Buy & Build is a well-known strategy for us. We've made 40 platform builds to date, and they between them have made over 100 acquisitions. And we have plenty of active rollout strategies still within the fund. That include the likes of ECOMMERCE ONE, ICP Education, Contabo, Windstar, Ocean, but most notably Grupo Primavera, which after 8 acquisitions, it's fulling it -- fulfilling its mission to become Iberia's leading independent provider of business software, helping thousands of SMEs migrate to the cloud. We know the kind of value that can be created by being the national Software-as-a-Service business champion. [indiscernible] is a clear case in point. To briefly demonstrate what we've been describing throughout much of this presentation, the chart here provides a value creation bridge for Oakley's realized investments, demonstrating that organic growth is the key driver, with 45% of value created here post M&A and multiple expansion of circa 20% and 30%, respectively. 2021 saw Oakley continue to source new opportunities with 6 investments made in the year, laying the foundation for future growth. We've talked about most of these at the half year. They include idealista, Southern European -- Southern Europe's [indiscernible], with digital penetration amongst consumers in Italy and Spain far lower than Northern Europe. It's a really exciting growth opportunity, and it builds on our track record in digital marketplaces. ICP Education is a leading chain of premium U.K. nurseries, extending our breadth of education investments in yet another highly fragmented education vertical. One new investment worth highlighting, which we made in September, is founder-led Seedtag. The Spanish advertising technology business is the leader of contextual advertising, which allows audiences to be identified based on the content, written, image, video or otherwise that they are consuming. So why is this appealing? Well third-party cookies are disappearing and -- amid privacy concerns and big brands are having to prepare for a cookie-less future. And that is why the likes of Adidas, Renault, Nestle, Microsoft and Unilever all working with Seedtag. We've already exceeded their expectations, growing sales over 80% in the last 12 months. In conclusion, what I hope this brief presentation has underlined, we have significant confidence in the performance of OCI in 2022 and beyond. As earnings growth, which thanks to the digital focused portfolio continues to benefit from the accelerating megatrends. We have cash and expected proceeds, leaving OCI well placed to meet its commitments to the Oakley Funds as we make new investments. And finally, we can expect continued activity as we see strong prospects for both investments and realizations. That brings the formal part of the presentation to a close, and thank you very much for listening. I'll now hand over to James to moderate the Q&A, should there be any audience questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question is, Steve, great set of results as usual, but the world has changed somewhat since year-end. How confident are you, you can sustain strong performance going forward?

I think confident -- I mean, look, I think it's fair to say that no one quite knows what is in store for the global economy this year and the disruption that geopolitical events are causing. And clearly, we won't be unimpacted by that. But I think, hopefully, what we've identified here is that many of the trends we're investing behind are very persistent, irreversible trends. And we're confident that we're going to continue to benefit from those. And look, if we look, it's very early in the year, and we're only in March, but performance so far has proven to be in line with those expectations.

Thank you. Another question. Given the paucity of sizable education assets listed on public markets is an IPO for IU Group a strong possibility or probability?

It's a possibility. I think just as much as there is a lack of public market access to an asset like that. There's a lack of access to that across all asset classes. It is a relatively rare asset as we touch generally in education across all verticals. It's an incredibly fragmented space. As many will know, whether kind of online or offline, most education assets tend to be managed, owned and operated in a single-site basis all over the world, which is why there's been so many roll opportunities for us within education and will continue to be. IU Group in its size and scale makes it an incredibly attractive asset. And I guess the point I'm making is, whilst it could be the target for the public markets, you could imagine it'd also be a target for kind of the large global sponsors.

Thanks. We've got a question on Wishcard now. Can you give us an idea of what proportion of Wishcard's revenues are currently from Germany? And what is the target, or give us an idea of growth in revenues in other markets?

The majority of the revenue is German. One of the opportunities is to take it further or of course, is because it is the dominant player in Germany, in a relatively nascent market, it obviously makes it a particularly strong target for those looking to further internationalize and break into Germany. I don't have kind of international reward card sales kind of growth numbers to kind of compare, but we're happy to come back to you to those who asked the question to give more color on that later.

Thank you. A question now on opportunity and pipeline. Has anything changed in terms of opportunity and pipeline in the last few months? And I think that's pipeline for new investments.

Now I guess the short answer to that is no. I mean, I think just, in general, we've yet to see much disruption within private equity for either kind of M&A deals, opportunities that we're seeing or even in the performance of the portfolio companies. I mean admittedly, it is only March. But so far, the -- and as you often see with disruption and uncertainty, it often leads to potentially more to catalyst for more opportunities to maybe accelerate. So actually time lines kind of start to shrink as a result of that. But I think the key thing to say is our pipeline remains healthy and is in all the types of companies you would imagine would be kind of targeting. It's in a range of potential new roll-ups in education. There's some new online marketplaces that we're considering in our kind of obvious target geographies and in some potential SaaS businesses. So no surprises. And at this point in the year, the pipeline looks consistently healthy.

[Operator Instructions]. Steve, we've got a question about megatrends. The question is megatrends come and go and some have come and gone, and you talk about megatrends being enduring. Just on the shift to online, isn't everyone online now? Isn't this megatrend spent?

Yes, it's a really good question. I think it comes from the mindset of being here in the U.K. because clearly, there are certain sectors that have been completely disrupted by a shift to online. And some of those sectors are -- it's just simply not the case in other parts of Europe alone. I mean, it's often going to start, but is still relevant for us if we take just price comparison, which is a reasonably established mature market here in the U.K. and take one of the verticals within that car insurance I often mention that kind of over 80% of car insurance now in the U.K. is now arranged online. So clearly, that shift has taken place. But in Italy, where we bought the #1 price comparison website, Facile, a number of years ago. When we bought it, maybe about 12% of car insurance was arranged online. Even after COVID, that number is only something like 20%. And so Internet penetration, even in kind of Western and Southern European countries, is still not nearly in the same position it is in the U.K. remarkably. And it's -- you actually have people going to brokers within Italy to physically arrange their car insurance and the broker sits over an iPad with Facile on it. There are still some trends which have kind of yet to shift. Even Amazon is seeing a slower adoption in Italy than maybe it's seen in other countries, but still the growth and progress is heading in the right direction. I'd also say that, whilst we're talking about consumer shifts, yes, there are sectors that have been wholly disrupted earlier, but there are plenty that have not, where online marketplace is in and plenty of other kind of services or goods are still relatively early and are not ubiquitous. I mean to try to rust up some examples then maybe in second-hand book sales or the kind of the arranging of [indiscernible], they're often either an online, specific on the marketplace, like an eBay, but not dedicated, or they're currently provided like services like [indiscernible], maybe provided by certain companies, there's not a marketplace to serve that or at least not an established marketplace to serve some of these products or services.

Thank you. We've got another question on IU. How many countries is IU Group operating in now? And what are the near-term expansion targets?

Yes. So students -- I mean, essentially it operates in Germany, but there are students now from some 100 companies -- countries, sorry. And probably most exciting for us is that of the growth in students this year, 25% of those come from those international countries. And that's really been a shift for us in IU. I mean we did initially invest in the business as a German opportunity. And kind of why do we think it was particularly kind of relevant to Germany. Well, one that hasn't really been a player in that space, an organized and well-equipped player with high-quality courses, but also with an advanced kind of web analytics approach to the courses it launched and with kind of advanced digital marketing. The comparators were really kind of relatively small kind of state-backed kind of players. So we view this just as a market that was essentially behind kind of the U.S. and parts of Western Europe. And so initially, we -- and also, it's worth kind of mentioning that there is a -- with the kind of significant bias towards apprenticeships and then work training within Germany, you also had a significant portion of the population that maybe hadn't gone on to higher education. And so initially, the kind of focus was on that kind of 25- to 35-year-old age group that maybe didn't come from an academic background, 70% of them don't. They are now in work, have families. They might be budget constrained, but they now want to either have a degree for the first time or at least change and move to more relevant career-focused degree based on current circumstances. And that's exactly what we saw. I mean the average age of an IU student is around about 27. We saw increasing uptake of demand from kind of German students. But then what became clear and let's face it, we were frankly fortunate, driven by the entrepreneur, we started to see increasing uptake for our countries throughout the world. And it was clear that our multicourse platform was better than most is in 2 -- has over 200 courses in English and German. There was still a great demand from students the world over to have that quality of degree behind them, but they don't have the ability to either come to Europe, nor the time to be on campus university. And so that's where the real growth focus has been towards the end of last year and this year. We are seeing particular traction in places like Africa, where we're actually kind of offering support for more and more kind of local students to be able to study our courses and provide kind of bursaries for some of those. And when we talk about kind of what we anticipate to growth, I mean we are not seeing a slowing in the adoption of the courses at the moment. I think it's the most simplest thing to say either as a result of greater student numbers wishing to study in this way and also because of the driver of new and relevant courses that we can launch throughout next -- this year.

A few more questions, we'll try and get through as many of these as possible. If we can't get through them all, just a reminder, we will follow up with by e-mail afterwards. [Operator Instructions]. Steve, a question about inflation. What is the impact or what will be the impact of high inflation and interest rates in 2022 and beyond on the portfolio of companies?

Yes. Look, as you can imagine, we like anyone -- while it's hard to tell exactly what the impact is, there no doubt will be some impact. We are in quite a privilege position as you can imagine, with kind of digital tech companies, they're relatively light in CapEx, high in margin, relatively low in OpEx costs, quite nimble. And what does that mean? It means from a cost perspective that there is less of an impact than inflation can have on you. Inflation generally, particularly some of the sectors we're working, does make companies and consumers more cost conscious. As you can imagine, some of the portfolio companies benefit in that type of environment, price comparison websites, for example, become more relevant, more in a rising cost environment, and you see far greater inquiries in the likes of -- well, all the verticals, frankly, car insurance, broadband, but particularly energy and finance and beyond. They're also relatively from a kind of -- if you think about a rising interest rate environment, these are very cash-generative businesses. There isn't an awful lot of costs below the EBITDA line, very little CapEx. So that cash generation has been in a very strong position to kind of meet the demands of our debt, where we have it, relatively average modest net debt to EBITDA across the portfolio of about 4 times. I think the other thing to say as well is based on that subscription that we talked about and also the dominant position with which most of our portfolio companies hold in markets is that we have relatively strong pricing power. I mean, in some cases, we essentially have a quasi-monopoly to some of the services that we provide. And consequently -- but also the spend on the particular service -- software service we may provide to maybe the marine industry or to the web posting industry, they're relatively small sums when you consider the overall costs involved in running a tanker ship or running a business online or otherwise. And so constantly, to date, we have had a pretty strong track record in price rises with very little, in many cases, no churn.

Thank you. We've got a question about family succession or succession of family-owned businesses and opportunities there. Do you see a positive impact of the generational change in family-owned businesses on your deal origination?

An interesting question. I think where that's most been prevalent has been Germany, actually. I mean traditional long-run family-owned businesses within the middle [indiscernible] notoriously wary of private equity, and there's very few examples of private equity kind of investing in those kind of companies. However, the real shift came, and it was a real -- we were lucky as an unexpected advantage for us. But in the new economy and the digital-based tech businesses, particularly in Germany, it is a completely different mindset from a new generation that actually wanted the benefit of financial partners that saw the different skills that a product from like Oakley could bring to the table, whether that's around M&A, internationalization, helping them hire new senior talent, whatever that may be. And so that really started with us with the likes of Verivox, the price comparison site of Germany, and Parship, the online dating app. We found for the first time a new generation of kind of privately-owned businesses, family-owned businesses that were willing to engage with us. And actually, if you look at the kind of average age of some of our recent -- of the entrepreneurs we backed kind of recently, they would imply that maybe I haven't really considered this, but there has been a generational shift and a different approach to kind of private capital. If I look, I'd say the average age will be somewhere between kind of 30 to 50, kind of maybe in the early 40s and maybe that marks a change in the way, the change in the [indiscernible] some family businesses where they perceive private capital.

Thank you, Steve. That now concludes our OCI results Q&A session. Thank you very much for participating. I will now hand back to our moderator.