Pollen Street Group Limited (POLNL.XC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Pollen Street's Interim Results Presentation for 2025. Nice to see so many familiar faces and some new ones, too. Thank you for joining. I'm Lindsey McMurray, CEO of Pollen Street, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Crispin Goldsmith. I'll start with the key highlights of the first half of the year, together with a summary of our progress. And then I'll hand to Crispin to cover the financial performance in more detail before I return to outline our strategic priorities and provide some time for Q&A. So looking at the first half, I'm proud of the progress the team has delivered. We set out our clear priorities for 2025 and we're making strong progress against them. We completed the fundraising in Private Equity Fund V well ahead of target, and we are on track to outperform our target for Private Credit Fund IV as AUM continues to expand, and we're scaling deployment in both strategies. Earnings are growing strongly, underpinned by higher management fees. Overall, the group is firmly on track to deliver its strategic objectives for 2025 and beyond. As we've communicated, Private Equity Fund V closed at EUR 1.5 billion, ahead of the original target of EUR 1 billion, supported by strong demand, particularly in North America. And we're pleased to be able to deliver GBP 500 million of co-invest to our limited partners, too. We have raised GBP 600 million for Private Credit Fund IV already by June and with a strong pipeline of investors giving visibility of exceeding the GBP 1 billion target during the second half of the year. This drove significant growth in total AUM, up 35% year-on-year to GBP 6.1 billion and fee-paying AUM up 37% to GBP 4.7 billion. We achieved good deployment across both strategies. In Private Equity, we invested in 2 new platforms, which I'll explain in more detail later, and we completed 7 bolt-on acquisitions. In Credit, we closed 14 new deals bringing the tool to deployment in the first half to GBP 600 million. Earnings stepped up correspondingly and the Board declared an interim dividend of 27p per share and carried out GBP 6.3 million in buybacks in the period. Since January '24, we have returned GBP 70 million of capital to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Now with the strong fundraising, we're seeing a structural shift in the revenue profile of the business with the Asset Manager delivering the majority of the growth. The Asset Management revenues accounted for 58% of group revenues in H1 '23, and that's now grown to 76% in H1 '25. Recurring Management Fees are clearly now make up the largest share of our earnings, and these are our highest quality revenue streams, given their contractual and recurring nature providing strong visibility and resilience as we look forward. This shift underpins the quality of our revenue mix and positions us to deliver sustained earnings growth in the years ahead. Our AUM continues to grow, which underpins our confidence in reaching our medium-term target of GBP 10 billion AUM. Total AUM has grown 29% CAGR since 2021, increasing to GBP 6.1 billion at June '25, and fee paying AUM has also grown at a 32% compound annual growth over the same period, reaching GBP 4.7 billion at the half year. Both Private Equity and Private Credit have contributed to this, and it's particularly notable to see the momentum building in Private Credit fund raising, which will be the key driver of AUM growth in the near term. Now looking at our products and taking a look at Private Equity. We well trailed the completion of the fundraising of Private Equity V but the fund is also -- is already well invested with 8 exciting investments already made. The core investment themes across payments, wealth, insurance, tech-enabled services and lending continue to witness deep structural change and our team identified the businesses positioned to benefit from these changes. We've completed 2 new platform investments Order Yoyo, a payments-enabled e-commerce provider serving the European restaurant sector. And Leonard Curtis, a U.K. provider of corporate restructuring services. Both have significant growth, both organically and inorganically. Alongside these platform acquisitions, we executed 7 bolt-on acquisitions across the portfolio, strengthening the existing businesses and supporting their buy-and-build strategies. The outlook for deal activity in our sector is attractive and is the leading specialist investor in the mid-market. We have an exciting pipeline to create a very attractive portfolio for Fund V. In Credit, we do not invest in corporate direct lending, but are focused on asset-based lending. This type of financing underpins much of the real economy from people buying homes and cars, to SMEs financing equipment and working capital to real estate developers funding projects and even intellectual property owners monetizing their rights. And as such, it's less correlated to M&A activity. It's a very large and growing market expected to reach $7 trillion by 2027. And we have developed a leading platform in Europe, and we're excited to build this out as the market grows. We've had a very active first half in private credit, capitalizing both on strong demand for our product with investors, but also good momentum in deploying capital, too. Total credit AUM increased 17% in the first half, up to GBP 2.3 billion with fee-paying AUM up 41% to GBP 1.8 billion. 14 new Transactions across our asset classes were completed and together with growth in credit AUM and the pace of deployment, driving an expanded base of fee-paying assets which will continue to support management fee growth in H2 and beyond. And why are we able to deliver fundraising outperformance in a competitive and challenging fundraising environment? Because we are focused on delivering alpha in our asset classes. A combination of sector specialism, mid-market positioning, disciplined structuring and pricing enables us to deliver top-tier returns within a controlled risk framework. In Private Equity, we invest in businesses that are well positioned to take advantage of structural change. We are disciplined as to pricing and then apply an operational framework focused on revenue-led growth margin expansion, a buy and build to create long-term value. In Credit, our origination networks and structuring expertise gives us access to opportunities with attractive pricing dynamics. This combination of specialist focus, discipline and a proven framework underpins our ability to deliver sustainable, high-quality alpha for investors. And with this focus on delivering high-quality returns for our LPs, we're able to build an increasingly large and diversified investor base across geography and investor type. Over the last 18 months, we've broadened our reach with notable growth from North America as well as increasing commitments from Middle East and Asia. And to support this momentum, we recently opened an office in Abu Dhabi, strengthening our commitment in the region. I'll now hand over to Crispin to take us through the financial performance.

Thank you. So as Lindsey has talked about, the key highlight of the first half has been the increase in fee-paying AUM. That has come from a combination of new fundraising and deployment within Credit IV. As a result, we've seen a step-up in Management Fee income. We've talked before about the impact of operational gearing. We're able to be selective about the OpEx investments we make as revenues increase. So this step-up in Management Fee income has fed through into scaled up profitability and Fund Management EBITDA margins. We've done this at the same time as having returned significant amounts of capital to shareholders through both dividends and share buybacks. I'll go through these points in more detail in the next few slides. So during H1, we've delivered increasing profitability and strengthening quality of earnings. Fund Management income grew by 55% to GBP 41.4 million, which included GBP 8.4 million of catch-up fees. We've held administration cost growth at 29% as we've chosen to make further OpEx investments in the business development team to support future fundraising and in the investment team. That operational gearing grew the Fund Management EBITDA margin to 43%, up from 31% this time last year. As a result, the 55% increase in fund management income translated into a 112% increase more than doubling of Fund Management EBITDA to GBP 17.7 million. Income on net investment assets was GBP 13.3 million for the half year, and that reflected the equalization effects where gains are reallocated between investors as if they'd all come in at first close from a strong fundraising period. The phasing of equity gains, which are expected to be concentrated towards the second half of the year and also the GBP 70.6 million capital returned to shareholders since January 2024. And you can see the benefit of those share buybacks in EPS growth of 25% from an underlying 18% increase in profit after tax. So as Lindsey said, our growth is being driven by Management Fees, our highest quality revenue stream. And that allows us to see a continuing trend as we discussed in the full year accounts, net results, and as previously highlighted, of an increasing share of revenues coming from the Asset Manager. Asset Manager revenues of GBP 41.4 million for the half represents a compound annual growth rate of 38% versus H1 2023. Within that GBP 3.4 million came from performance fees, reflecting the expected weighting of equity returns towards the second half in line with the phasing of the underlying investee company budgets. So we can see that as we grow fee-paying AUM, we're unlocking operating leverage in the Asset Manager and for the group as a whole, which is complemented by consistent, resilient and cash-generative investment company returns. As a group, we continue to benefit from a very strong balance sheet. Drawn leverage has increased to GBP 206 million following the refinancing and upsizing of our debt facilities during H2 2024. And we maintained GBP 34 million of undrawn leverage with a net debt to tangible equity ratio at 55.6% at the half year-end. I'm pleased to say we're trading in line with expectations, both for H2 and beyond. We'll see a continuing growth in fee-paying AUM in H2 through rising credit for deployment. Their Management Fees will be lower than H1 without the benefit of catch-up fees. We expect performance fees to normalize towards the lower end of the long-term guidance and full year investment company returns are expected to be in line with FY '24, with both performance fees and investment company returns benefiting from the weighting towards the second half of gains on equity positions. Our longer-term financial guidance remains unchanged. And as does our capital allocation framework. Share buybacks continue to be a key component of this, and authority for further share buybacks was renewed at the June 2025 AGM. We also remain committed to a progressive dividend policy. Dividends per share in relation to the full year 2025 will be no less than 55p as previously communicated. And we're pleased to announce an interim dividend of 27p per share as the first tranche of this.

Thank you. Now turning to the strategic priorities for the second half of the year. The focus remains firmly in execution, continuing fundraising on Private Credit Fund IV, maintaining active deployment across both strategies, progressing the private equity realization pipeline and evaluating buybacks within a broader framework to ensure that they are used strategically where the most value can be created. And to bring this all together, I'd like to close by recapping our investment case. We're delivering strong consistent AUM growth supported by our specialist focus and strong returns while growing operational leverage, further enhancing profitability. There's been a step change in the quality of earnings with recurring management fees now the primary driver of growth. This builds a predictable high-quality income stream supported by continued AUM expansion. Our balance sheet remains a key differentiator, providing stability and enabling third-party AUM growth. And alongside this, our disciplined capital allocation balances the investment in growth with returns to shareholders. Together, these pillars create a resilient and scalable platform, positioning us to deliver long-term value for investors and shareholders. I'd like to thank our team for their hard work and our investors and shareholders for their continued confidence. And with that, I'd like to open to questions. Thank you.

I had 2 questions, if I may. Just firstly, on the realization pipeline. I appreciate timing is probably pretty hard to predict perfectly. But in terms of the impact of that on AUM and fee-paying AUM, could you just give us some sort of sensitivity? That would be quite helpful. And then just secondly, on private equity fundraising kind of more long term, you obviously kind of exceed your target for Fund V. Are there any sort of new opportunities that you sort of identified as part of that process and what you're talking to investors?

So the realization pipeline is factored into our outlook on an ongoing basis. And therefore, the guidance we give for AUM factors in the realization. So it's a steady sort of progression and you start to have some of the funds roll off as we're continuing to raise. So it's incorporated into the outlook that we provide. And so yes, it's a steady -- there's no 1 single change that will cause that to have a material impact. And on the new opportunities. So the -- so we've definitely built up very strong relationships with new LPs and we've had a very significant step-up in the number of LPs that have come into that fund. And with that also building out the consulting relationships, which are important to the fundraising also. We are very much staying in our heartland of mid-market, and that's our differentiator. That's where we can generate good returns. But what we are able to do is work with our investors to do some larger deals, which brings the co-invest. And so it's marrying up, we create the portfolio where we will -- the larger size of fund enables us to stay in our strategy, but add maybe 1 to 3 more deals into a fund. That's broadly how we're utilizing that extra capital. But also where we're seeing larger opportunities which are coming through, we're able to then partner up with our investors, our LPs to execute on those.

Can I just check on your guidance? Obviously, with the context of 50% EBITDA margins, what you think happens to operating expenses over the next couple of years, relatively big step-up in the first half. I think you sort of referred to a couple of factors driving that.

Yes. So -- and a key element of that is the placement agent costs as well, which is directly linked to the sort of outperformance on fundraising. I think, yes, as we said, we continue to plan to make active developments in the business development team to support future fundraising the way we invest in our investment team is by promoting within the team and bringing people on typically at a more [ genie level ] and developing them ourselves. Those are sort of decisions that we take. It's any sort of increase in headcount, we have the ability to take that as a selective decision. I think we previously talked about low double-digit growth in OpEx going forward to get to that 50% margin probably towards the current end of the -- sorry, the end of the current forecast period.

Yes. Just a couple of quick questions, please. First of all, obviously, deployment in private credit for new -- those of where you deploy across Private Credit, are there different areas of demand you're seeing, particularly more interesting elements and what's that implying for potential returns there? Is there anything incremental to talk about there? And I suppose the second 1 just on Private Credit IV. I mean the fee structures on new money coming through, are those all very stable in line previously? Or is there anything to talk to there as well?

So in -- the deployment has been very well diversified across there's a slide. I'm not sure if I -- yes, I can go backwards here, on the deployment on Private Credit, which you can see is across these different segments. So we've seen consistent over the last several years across these 4 mainly these 4 subsectors, you'll see a lack of exposure there into consumer. That's for a number of different reasons and partly because there's more competition than that ironically. But we've had a good run in SME lending, where there's a number of businesses in our product fits it very well. So across new, we've had a good experience and in the government-backed space where we provide facilities. We actually have the backing of a government guarantee sitting behind there. Often again, linked with SME because governments want to promote SME lending in their space. So across each of these areas, we've had a very good and balanced deployment so that the composition of the fund is well spread. We've been very disciplined as to our returns, and we continue to generate and deliver very strong returns for a senior credit fund. So in this 12% to 14% is what we're delivering for our ambassadors. So very strong returns, very good discipline and very well spread and composed, and we don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. So we're very confident about the composition of Fund IV and the return profile. In terms of fees in -- there is the allocations to credit are sometimes or can be much larger and to sort of single ticket allocations are larger, where you get those several hundred million allocations there can be a fee discussion, but we're managing to keep within the overall guidance and where there is any sort of fee pressure will tend to come with AUM outperformance. So overall, the financial guidance would likely to be more positive than negative.

Private equity, you said you're up to 8 in piece. How many do you generally target -- excuse me, agreements at the fund of this?

So we've typically said 10 to 12. And then as we outperformed, that's enabled us to probably be 12 to 13, 14 in the fund. But also we're executing a very active buy-and-build strategy within each of our businesses. And so we'll also use some of that capital to continue to deploy into the assets that we've already invested in. So it will be a - I think likely to be 12 to 13 and then further follow on, I would say. Well, if there are no further questions, well thank you for joining. And as ever, if you have any follow-up questions, we are available anytime. Thank you.