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

Good morning. My name is Steven Tredget. I am a Partner at Oakley Capital, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the Oakley Capital Investments 2024 Half Year Results Webcast. Before we start the presentation, can I remind you that questions can be submitted in writing during the webcast by following the questions tab at the top of this broadcast window, and we'll tackle as many of these as possible at the end of the session. You can download the presentation to view at your leisure by clicking in on the Downloads button at the top of your screen. To summarize OCI's 6 months to June 2024, the underlying portfolio of private European founder-led businesses has continued to perform well, driving growth in asset value in a challenging environment. This environment has, however, been a tailwind for investment opportunities, which Oakley has capitalized on with six deals signed in the last 6 months, laying the foundation for future growth. And despite a slower market for exits, it's encouraging to see Oakley signed [ the sign ] of its portfolio companies -- two of its portfolio companies since the end of the half, demonstrating the appeal of the existing portfolio. Let's start the presentation with the new deal, in fact, the most recent deal, taking the opportunity to highlight what characteristics Oakley has been looking for in new investments and how we have been originating these deals. In some cases, successfully navigating contested situations even when we are the underbidder. Signed in June, I-TRACING is the leading independent cybersecurity service provider in France, with an EBITDA that has grown over 30% CAGR for the last 8 years. Its services include defense, identity access management, cloud security, data protection and encryption. And as you might imagine, it enjoys high pricing power, has an over 30% market share amongst the largest French cybersecurity customers. And it was a rare opportunity for us to acquire a founder-led, pure-play cybersecurities provider, with there being less than a handful of assets of this quality in Europe. We identified cybersecurity as a technology subsector. We wanted to target some 8, 10 years ago. And, through sector mapping, had identified I-TRACING. We made contact with the founders every year for the last 7 years, building a rapport and providing a demonstration of our committed founder-first approach to investment partnerships. When they and PE investor, Eurazeo, wanted to choose a 40% co-controlling stakeholder, we were ready to move quickly. And our reputation preceded as such that despite a lot of demand for this asset, we were the selected buyer. What makes I-TRACING an Oakley investment? What characteristics does it exhibit that are consistent with the other 31 companies in the portfolio? First off, and most obviously, it's a Pan-European mid-market control transaction in technology. One of our four target sectors alongside education, digital consumer and business services. Secondly, it's Founder-led. We're backing Théodore and [ Michael ], two ambitious proven business leaders that have the same long-term equity alignment as us. Thirdly, as it's typical, it's a digital solution with a subscription model that delivers 65% recurring revenue and 25% EBITDA margin. Fourthly, as with all Oakley deals, we're investing behind a clear enduring megatrend. A EUR 5 billion French market alone is growing double digits, thanks to two trends, with the ongoing shift of business and consumers to online solutions and the ever-increasing threat of the cost of cybercrime. Ransomware attacks in Europe were up 200% year-on-year, and the average cost of a data breach for European companies reached EUR 4.5 million in 2023. Finally, with a controlling stake, we are looking to influence the investment outcome with the creation of value through pre-identified measures. In this case, there are numerous M&A opportunities including some transformational ones. This is, of course, a global market. So there's an opportunity to internationalize the company. And thirdly, there is the possible for upside from operational and ESG improvement. Turning our attention to the existing portfolio and its performance in the first half. The headline numbers tell a story of continuing performance momentum, with the NAV per share increasing 26p to 708p and are now reaching GBP 1.25 billion. This is based on the portfolio being fully revalued at the end of June and, when including the dividend paid, amounts to a total NAV return of 4% or 5.6% before the impact of FX. The performance over the last 12 months is a total return of 8% or 9% pre the FX impact. This return achieved largely through earnings growth has been improving since the start of 2023, but it's modest in comparison with a 5-year CAGR of 18% and still reflects a cautious approach to trading outlook and portfolio company valuation multiples. And as we'll explain on the next slide, approximately 1/3 of the NAV was also not subject to change in the period. Despite key activity levels in Europe continuing to fall in value, Oakley closed four new platform deals. The existing companies made over 20 bolt-on acquisitions, and the venture strategies added six new investments. The combined activity amounting to a look-through of GBP 184 million of new investments. The pace hasn't slowed since, with two new deals signed but not completed and, most notably, the agreement to sell Idealista and Ocean Technologies Group, both at their prevailing book value, which is expected to generate look through proceeds of circa GBP 120 million by the year-end. In its most basic breakdown, the GBP 1.4 billion of total asset value includes GBP 1.1 billion of equity investments that sit within the Oakley funds, with the exception of Time Out, GBP 128 million of cash and GBP 146 million of preferred equity in North Sails. We'll give a specific update on the direct investments later in the presentation. If we take net cash, investment made in the last 6 months and that North pref, they're out about circa 30% of NAV, which has not changed in value since the start of the period. While it's not abnormal, it is elevated, and we'd anticipate this being a lower percentage over time, more in the range of 10% to 20%. Splitting the portfolio by sector, we see it reasonably balanced across our focus segments as it has been in OCI's recent history. All four sectors have grown in value since December 2023, with the largest organic growth being from the technology sector. Most notably, the exposure to Business Services increased 78%, reflecting the addition of automotive repair group, Steer, life science compliance service provider ProductLife Group and the strong organic and acquired growth of Phenna, the U.K.'s largest testing and inspection group. Breaking the portfolio down by geographic exposure. The chart tells a story of where Oakley has its longest-standing track record, expertise and founder networks. For the first time in many years, the U.K. represents the large proportion of the asset value with 8 of the 32 companies headquartered here, reflecting the emergence of attractive deal flow, our building reputation amongst founders and advisers within the region and the larger opportunity set within business services. Germany is a close second with 10 of the 32 companies domiciled there. Spain and Southern Europe remains a fast-growing region for Oakley, reflecting a large pool of opportunities, less PE penetration and the opening of the Madrid office. Although not fully reflected in this chart, one of the fastest-growing regions is France following two recent investments assisted by a-soon-to-be-appointed French partner in the region. Based on the currency of investments, the offsetting underlying debt in the portfolio companies and cash, the NAV currency exposure splits down 15% pounds, 58% euros and 27% dollars. Now for the split of the 32 PE portfolio companies. We're starting to test your eyesight now with the scale of the portfolio, and the largest of the investments with the near-term potential for the biggest impact on NAV: Cegid, Phenna, IU Group, Time Out and WebPros. We'll touch on the performance of most of these over the coming slides, with two of them being the largest drivers of growth in the period. Within venture, Oakley Capital, Oakley PROfounders and the Oakley Touring fund made a further six investments, taking them to a combined 15 investee companies. Whilst they are comparatively small, they are nonetheless an exciting possible driver of growth for OCI in the future and, as previously discussed, give OCI exposure to a highly attractive subset of generative AI-powered software companies. Performance across the portfolio is robust, with circa 80% of the companies owned for more than 6 months increasing in value, thanks largely to growth in earnings. Looking to the average KPIs of the portfolio. Earnings grew at an average organic 14% over the last 12 months, which has been maintained since the full year. Thanks to robust trading across the portfolio. If we put this into the context of our expectations, broadly 1/3 of the portfolio grew above budget, 1/3 in line and 1/3 is lagging. But they're still growing, just not to our expected levels. The figure doesn't take into account for growth via M&A, which in companies like Phenna, Steer, Liberty Dental and Affinitas, for example, played a large role in value creation with their share of over 20 acquisitions during the half. At 3.9x, the average net debt-to-EBITDA has continued to contract as debt is cautiously deployed within the new and existing portfolio companies. Finally, the average valuation multiple stands at 16.4x EV/EBITDA, unchanged since last year with recent realizations of book value underlying the robustness of the valuation process even in a softer exit environment. During the half, the biggest drivers of NAV growth were IU Group, which added 8p to NAV per share as it continued to generate strong revenue growth from the demand for its online degree courses. Total number of students now stand at 146,000, up from 15,000 at the time of Oakley's acquisition in 2018 and generating over 35% EBITDA growth year-on-year. International revenues, while small, is on track, with a number of the new regions, particularly U.K. growing at -- doubling growth year-on-year. Phenna added 7p with the majority of its divisions growing their earnings, cementing its position as one of the fastest-growing testing and inspection groups globally. It continues executing on its accretive bolt-on pipeline, with 8 acquisitions completed in the year-to-date. Dexters increased NAV per share by 6p, which continues to successfully integrate the London estate agents, Marsh and Parsons and LifeResidential. It benefited from a sustained expansion of its core London lettings business, which accounted for over 60% of the overall revenue and was up 13% year-on-year. Cegid, for reference, was the fourth largest, contributing to adding 5p driven by 15% EBITDA growth. The global provider of business management software made notable acquisitions of French software solution providers and implemented generative AI initiatives across 4 of its functions. Of those that fell in value, TechInsights declined 3p, reflecting the challenging period for the industry, with semiconductor volumes down 10% year-on-year. This has mostly affected IP and litigation activity, negatively impacting TechInsights' discrete revenues. The group has still been able to achieve growth in the subscription business, supported by strong renewal rates from existing customers. Vice Golf decreased NAV per share by 1p. Whilst trading in all its major channels were ahead of the prior year, D2C advice underperformed expectations, driven by delays in the Q2 launch pipeline and shop system migration. Vice launched an unprecedented number of new products, including new golf models of first-generation golf clubs and a new apparel collection. Windstar fell 1p, which actually reflects some stabilization in the company. The consumer health private label group suffered much upheaval as a result of COVID, supply chain disruption and personnel change, but it is now back delivering, albeit on a reduced budget expectations and encouragingly delivered growth in the first half of 2024, with revenue up 11%. Turning to the two remaining direct investments, both of whom contributed to NAV growth in the period. Time Out continued to grow to show positive momentum across the business, and both media and market sales accelerated during the final quarter of the financial year. This, combined with effective cost management, led the group to announce it was trading ahead of full year 2024 market expectations of GBP 6.7 million EBITDA. Forecast has since increased 20% ahead of the results, which are set to be released in October. In the meantime, new markets opened in Porto and Barcelona to much acclaim and encouraging early footfall, taking the total markets open to nine. North Sails, the market-leading ocean sports brand, saw the Masts divisions performed particularly well, with Sails revenue also up on prior year, supported by strong performance in the premium segments, unsurprising in an America's Cup year. There were softer trading in Action Sports. The Kites and Wind Surfing division has challenging market conditions and supply chain issues prevail. Apparel is also down against the prior year due to shortfalls in online sales, driven partly by softer consumer demand. However, management has taken steps to refocus the Apparel business towards higher-value customers with less discounting. The group continued to expand its portfolio of best-in-class ocean sports brands by adding two further Sail makers to the group: Doyle Sails completed post June and Quantum Sails signed post period end in July 2024. It's now allowing North to support Sailers at all levels at many price points. We've spoken about it being a busy period for Oakley investment activity as it should be, with overleverage in the system, the cost of that debt and the failure of other sources of funding such as via the junior stock market. But how does this -- how does our experience compare to activity levels in the broader PE market? The chart there with the dark bars on the left tells us that whilst the total deal value declined in Europe for the third quarter in succession, estimated deal count shown by the purple dots has been rising, returning to 2021 peak levels. This apparent rise in lower-value mid-market deal activity is confirmed on the right-hand bar chart, which shows, in purple, the increase in the comparative market share of deals with an EV of EUR 100 million to EUR 500 million, Oakley's sweet spot. This is in contrast to the decline of larger mega cap transactions, which grab the media headlines and remain impeded by the closure of the IPO market. As described, the first half of 2024 has been a period of significant deal activity for Oakley, with six new investments either announced or completed during the period. They include U.K. automotive service provider Steer Automotive Group; ProductLife Group, which provides regulatory and compliance services to the life sciences industry; Spanish medical software provider Horizons Optical; and transport and logistics software business Alerce. Oakley has also announced an investment in broadband open access platform, vitroconnect. And I-TRACING, mentioned upfront, is set to be Oakley's first investment in the highly attractive cybersecurity services sector. As important as to what the companies do and their performance metrics. Some of the key characteristics are what made them typical Oakley deals, what was key to their -- in their origination. The businesses have at least 1 of 3 traits in common that reflect Oakley's differentiated origination. 5 of 6 are led by exceptional founders, which is in line with 72% of Oakley investments being founder-led businesses. 3 of the 6 involve some kind of deal complexity. They were carve-outs or had some messy ownership structure to navigate. And 4 out of 6 were bilateral discussions with the founder such that they were uncontested deals. There were deals outside of an auction process as has been the case for 3/4 of Oakley's transactions to date. It's one of the key reasons that often in 90% of cases, we are the first controlling institutional private equity owner in these assets. One of the key advantages of this approach is the attractive pricing we achieved. The light purple bars here reflect the average entry multiple of the companies in each fund vintage, with the chart demonstrating that on average, Oakley acquires assets at an average 25% discount to the comparable peer group. They're the purple dark bars or the dark purple bars. More reassuring than the ability to invest is the ability to sell assets, crystallizing attractive returns in the process. On this slide is Oakley's realization Hall of Fame, which gives the money multiple returns on the 25 companies we have exited to date. In the blue and purple colored bars are the soon-to-be-realized returns at our recently signed exits of iIdealista and Ocean Technologies Group, which have broadly met our base case return target of 2.5x gross money multiple. The current portfolio, including recent acquisitions has been held for an average 3.2 years compared to the average holding period or realized Oakley investment to date of 4.1 years. Given the age of some of these investments, we could reasonably expect another 1 or 2 realizations in the next 6 months. Much has been written about the interjection of deals within PE and in contrast to Oakley. Global PE hold periods have been lengthening. The average hold period of the 2022-2023 exit, for example, was 6.4 years. It is vitally important in the current trading environment for PE managers to be able to influence the outcome of investments. Oakley has a track record of doing that through talent hires, internationalization, digitization, sustainability and more. We're going to briefly focus on two such leaders. Those being M&A and AI and Data Analytics. 10% of the realized value in Oakley's deals today have been thanks to portfolio company acquisitions. They can unlock synergies, increase product range, expand geographic footprint, deliver multiple arbitrage, and they can build scale. Oakley's earliest example of a successful buy-and-build strategy was our first foray into education, where we grew Inspire Group with its founder from 5 schools to over 50, making it the third largest global private schools group. Through 12 acquisitions, we built Grupo Primavera as being Spain's leading independent business service software provider that merged with Cegid in 2022. As the chart demonstrates, the portfolio has been never more active with a number of roll-ups in fragmented markets underway, including Affinitas in private schools, Bright Stars in nurseries, Liberty Dental in dentistry labs and Steer's roll-up of automotive accident repair centers. And on that subject, since Oakley's investment in April of this year, Steer has completed 5 bolt-on acquisitions totaling over 60 sites, with the group now standing at close to 190 sites. It's now the largest of its kind in the U.K., securing its importance with the insurance market, which in combination with its systemized approach to car repair, allows us to double the margins and volumes of the sites it inquires inside 12 months. This is just the beginning of a journey for Steer as it looks to take advantage of the underpenetrated European market, replicating the success of consolidation plays in the U.S. And here, we touch on those plays, with the bar charts here demonstrating 10 years of consolidation in the U.S. market, which has seen a number of highly valued lead players emerge through M&A, the largest being Caliber Collision, which has seen a -- which has been a high-profile PE success story having had 66 locations and circa $300 million of revenue in 2008 and finished 2023 with 1,700 locations and $3 billion of revenues. It's clearly a model we're looking to replicate, and it's achieving -- or Steer, as a result, is gaining a lot of attention, not just from investment groups here in Europe but globally. And the second lever we'll touch on briefly is Oakley's increasing use of AI and data analytics within portfolio companies to automate manual tasks in order to improve operational efficiency. The results of such initiatives have included significant student productivity increases in IU Group and revenue and profit increases from AI-based sales and marketing projects. With the adoption of AI assistance and new workflow tools at Alerce, the logistics software company has identified time savings of circa 15 hours per developer per month. Oakley's ability to keep providing high-touch portfolio company assistance across broadening areas of expertise, sectors, geographies and across an ever-growing portfolio has been achieved in part because we have invested heavily into the team, more than doubling its size in the last 3 years. This has included the launch of the portfolio support team highlighted here in orange and includes specialists in much demanded skills that may not exist within the investment team and include talent experts, a sustainability team, capital markets advisers and an AI and data analytics expert amongst the 15 strong team. The final part of this presentation analyzes the liquidity of OCI, its outstanding commitments and the corresponding cash available to meet commitments and the prospects for near-term proceeds. We first break down OCI's outstanding GBP 800 million of commitments by fund strategy and vintage. Of each bar, the dark purple represents the look-through value invested in the fund and the light purple, the outstanding commitments. It reveals that the majority of the committed funds that have yet to be drawn from OCI are in the youngest vintages and Oakley's biggest funds to date, being flagship 5, which is circa 60% invested and origin 2, Oakley's lower mid-market buyout strategy, which is 10% deployed, funds which can take up to 5 more years to invest. To give us a better indication of when we can expect the GBP 800 million to be called these bars break down if and when commitments will be called. Starting at the left, there is over GBP 200 million that is not expected to be called, GBP 215 million that is set to be called after 12 months and over a 5-year period and GBP 360 million that is expected to be called in the next 12 months. This compares to GBP 184 million of liquidity from cash and available credit facilities. This would suggest OCI is highly cash constrained and overcommitted. However, as we know, with the signing of two recent exits, further cash proceeds have already been secured. We expect further realizations in the coming 6 to 12 months and also have the safety net of a deepening secondary market for Oakley's fund investments. On the subject of realizations, the chart here shows the look through proceeds to OCI of annual realizations over the last 12 years, outlining the high level of -- the high level achieved since 2022 during a comparable period of steep decline for general market deal activity. For 2024, the dark orange represents the anticipated cash proceeds for OCI from the already signed exits, and the light orange is the proceeds from possible refinancing and exits. To bring us to the end of the presentation element of this webinar, we'll leave you with the four factors that will drive OCI share performance in 2024 and beyond. One, the persistence of structural trends that will drive continuous earnings growth in the portfolio companies. We expect outward pressure on the 14% organic average weighted earnings growth delivered in the last 12 months. Two, continued realizations, which will provide further NAV confidence and liquidity. Three, we expect to take advantage of market turbulence and the sustained high cost of debt as it continues to create significant investment opportunities. And fourthly, we remain confident in the eventual closure of OCI share price discount to NAV per share. As we know, discounts proliferate across the sector, and there are no silver bullets, but most of the cause is beyond our control, like the impact of cost disclosure regime, the historic outflows from U.K. equities or the general risk adjustment for the small and mid-cap shares. We can, however, delivers three things: increased transparency and communication to deliver the opaque -- to address the opaque nature of PE portfolios and the uncertainty over value multiples and the future prospects of portfolio companies. Performance, if OCI continues to deliver outperformance, as it has done over the last 10 years that the conviction in the NAV will grow. Performance also drives scale and, with it, share liquidity, which is key to any share trading at its fair value. And finally, governance. The Board is working towards resolving the outstanding direct investments which have represented a conflict of interest in the past. It is considering the employment of further independent directors and has the ambition to move to a full premium listing. Thank you for remaining with us this far. And at this point, I'll hand over to Rosanna to take us into the Q&A section.

Thank you, Steven. Good morning, everyone, and thank you to those who already submitted questions. For those of you who would still like to, there is still time. Please use the Q&A tab on the top of your webinar page, and we'll do our very best to get through as many as your questions as possible. Steven, we're going to start with a question on EBITDA growth. You've talked a bit earlier about the companies that make up that sort of key drivers. But can you unpack that 14.5% EBITDA growth again? Which companies are currently the main drivers of growth? And do you expect them to remain so in the near future?

So the fastest growing probably organically or the -- let's focus on the larger of the investments because they have the most impact on NAV and the top 5, which are growing kind of well over 20% would include IU Group, Affinitas, Schülerhilfe, Time Out and Steer. And I'd expect them with kind of around the periphery, Cegid, even the North Sails and a couple of other names to probably still be the biggest drivers of growth. And maybe Phenna would add to that kind of going into the second half of the year.

Thank you. But there's been a few questions come in on the topic of realization, which conscious that you've covered in some of your final slides. But generally, realizations have been strong in 2023 and 2024 to date. Have you considered using some of your cash for buybacks? And then just wrapping another point into that question, what is the outlook for further realizations in 2024 and 2025?

First let's talk about kind of the market for realizations and how we kind of -- what we experienced over the last couple of years and what we kind of see in the near future, and then we can tackle the buybacks question. So I think if we look back over the last few years, the contrast to us being able to find a lot of opportunities, I guess our busy activity is very specific to us. These off-market transactions, deals with founders, companies that we've been looking to work with for kind of many, many years. And we kind of -- yes, the wider market is helping us -- probably helps us more in M&A, because there's more companies just willing to sell -- smaller companies willing to sell. But our overactivity kind of belies a general kind of slowing and tension in a lot of M&A activity. And if I look back maybe a couple of years, we would probably observe a lot of preemptive strikes on our portfolio companies with -- we didn't start processes. We had the larger, big PE firms. We've had a lot of attention to our portfolio as we kind of do the messy work to kind of take companies from hundreds of millions of pounds of EV or euros of EV up to into the kind of billions still growing fast and really kind of moving into the global kind of PE sweet spot as they're trying to come down to kind of 1 billion or so of EV. And so consequently, we're often selling businesses maybe after 3 years of ownership. But being paid for that kind of full ownership period, which is one of the reasons why you often saw kind of significant premiums. Plus in that market as well, you had kind of very cheap and very available debt. So that's kind of what we were seeing kind of prior to a couple of years ago. Now, of course, there is a slower exit market. Exits that we've started have really been of our own fruition. There have been approaches. But they may be -- the prices haven't quite been as robust, but haven't immediately been the kind of pricing tension that there maybe has been a couple of years ago. And so we've been running processes, processes that have been successful, because they're great assets, but we still observe that there's probably been less participants in some of these auction processes than there might have been a couple of years ago. And we've certainly been a beneficiary of that when we've sold -- when we've been buying businesses over the last year or 2 years. However, with a number of things happening, while I think you're getting much more clarity on performance of companies outside of COVID, that kind of COVID effect negatively and positively skewed the businesses of so many companies and the kind of lag effect of that has taken a kind of a year or 2 years. So the buyers can see a much more kind of consistent performance for a number of years post COVID, allowing them to have a more accurate attempt of valuing those kind of businesses. Better strength in public market valuations as well has helped and then overlay that a bit more certainty around interest rates and slightly more availability of debt would suggest to us that we think that, that kind of activity and potentially the ability to realize that is steadily gaining momentum. And we'd expect to see kind of just generally more activity of that kind across the PE market. And as we reflected earlier, we'd anticipate, and there's always a danger being held hostage to fortune, we'd anticipate kind of at least 1 or 2 more realizations that could happen as soon as in the next kind of couple of months or -- but at least over the next kind of 6 to 12 months conservatively. So we -- how does that relate to kind of cash flows? We had a slide earlier, which attempted to kind of -- given illustration of the likely kind of cash proceeds into OCI by the year-end. And what it demonstrated, if you compare that to the kind of what we anticipate being our outstanding commitments that we've drawn over the next kind of 12 to 24 months -- sorry, yes. But we are starting to get a level now where we can confidently predict we'll have the cash to meet those level of commitments. And crudely, that's what you want. You want to kind of up to the kind of 2-year cover of your likely activity, which basically -- which also says in the event of a significant shock in the system when we can't really -- kind of used to the fact that shocks are not kind of once-in-a-generation experience. And as a consequence, no realizations may be possible in the near term. We're absolutely fine and that OCI is appropriately liquid such that it can meet the commitments to the funds if they continue at the same level of activity, which then leads to buybacks. I mean, the first point to make is that the Board is firmly committed to making buybacks. They are proven to be earnings enhancing, and when discounts at these levels, there's clearly a very attractive opportunity to buy back shares. And to that point, if you look back over the last 3 years, at the listed PE universe, we're the second highest in terms of value of shares bought back over that period to kind of underline our conviction. However, clearly, with commitments made to the funds kind of a number of years ago, we don't have complete flexibility of every pound of cash that comes in. They're committed to the funds. And so in the relatively near term, the cash we have is earmarked and will be put to use relatively quickly. If we're in a situation, the luxury of the situation as a result of kind of higher-than-anticipated realization values or more realizations such that we have greater cash inflows than anticipated, that will give us the opportunity, once again, to start buying back shares.

Thank you for that. So that's covering obviously the topic of realizations. If we switch to the pipeline now, what about the pipeline for future deals? How healthy is it? And where are you seeing opportunities?

Yes. As you'd expect the answer to be, it is healthy, and it's at record levels. You'd also expect it to be at record levels. We're kind of -- the team has never been bigger. The funds under management have never been bigger. The more deals you do, the bigger your network gets, the more opportunities you find. I think what's particularly important, though, is over the last year or so, we've built an origination platform, a team that joined us 12 months ago that sought to essentially encapsulate the best of what Oakley does. It's kind of taking its founder network, taking that mapping but looks at opportunities aside the adjacent investments that we've successfully made, and then combined with our platforms, there's one single source of truth, overlaying that with kind of a lot more input and connectivity with advisers. As a result of all that, we're getting a lot more opportunities in. We've had to provide a lot more discipline as we now review a lot more opportunities, but they got a scorecard, an Oakley scorecard with 20 key components that we believe are kind of crucial to an Oakley success. If it meets a certain criteria, then they go through to early due diligence. To give you an example, if I take the first 5 months of the year, the system reviewed 1,500 opportunities. Of those, about 200 met the kind of early criteria and went through to an early stage of DD. We took a further 30 through to kind of deeper due diligence and from those kind of 2 to 3 deals came out. That's the kind of the scope of the funnel now for us, the ability for us to process that many opportunities. Our right to win allows us now to be able to compete in so many of those opportunities, particularly around our founder-led reputation. And so all of this is kind of outlining the fact that we have a much more demonstrable, replicatable kind of investment process now and sure to say that the pipeline has kind of never looked more attractive. And it sits right across the sectors and right across the geographies, with no particular focus on any one area. Although if -- you might expect kind of tech to be up, there with kind of possible for the next first deal with digital consumer, but we're really interested in continuing sort of opportunities within cybersecurity and expect to have new deals to announce in the coming months.

Thank you. We don't have lots more time, but we're going to squeeze in one more question. We've had a couple comments on the topic of potential premium listing, which you touched on earlier. Could you comment a bit further on this ambition, likely time frame and why that's an important goal?

Absolutely. I mean, so to clarify, OCI is AIM listed back in 2007. When we wanted to move off the A market a number of years ago, but we didn't qualify then for the full list, principally because the listing authorities don't look through to the underlying portfolio of the now 32 companies. I don't know exact number then. They look at the number of funds. And at that point, we only had a couple of fund vintages and only one strategy. And so consequently, we didn't qualify through investment concentration at that time. We have since had advised that, and whilst this is being kind of reviewed that we now have that relevant diversification. So whilst being investigated, we believe we have the qualities to be full list. In terms of timing, slightly out of my hat, there is a process. The Board wants to fully evaluate the positive reasons for doing that. And whether or not they exist, do we qualify for index inclusion, what are the governance reporting requirements, do we naturally meet them, et cetera. The general ambition of the Board is to move OCI to a premium list. What are the advantages of doing so? Firstly, it's a disadvantage of SFS, it is really the kind of motivate us. If there's any retail investors on the call, you may know that some platforms prohibit or make it hard to invest in OCI. It's classified as an expert investment. And that means that either certain institutions choose not to provide access to OCI, don't provide live pricing or they put a number of hurdles in the way as part of the investment. In some cases, institutional investors largely focus on the full list. There's generally the index inclusion, as I mentioned, upfront will be important. And I think it just naturally shows the evolution and the quality of the business that should have a full premium listing. As I say, that is the intention. The timing and processes are -- it takes time and cost money, is something I don't have an exact date for.

Thank you very much. And that is all the time we've got for questions today. There are lots of questions that come into and haven't quite got around to, so we will do our best to get back to you individually. Over to you, Steven, to wrap it up.

Thank you, Rosanna, and thanks once again for joining us for this interim results webcast.