Taaleri Oyj (TAALA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. My name is Peter Ramsay, and I'm here with our CFO, Minna Smedsten, to tell about Taaleri's fourth quarter and also full year results. Let's jump into the highlights. The fourth quarter was twofold. So on one hand, we booked a lot of -- and recognized a lot of performance fees. And on the other hand, our net income result was negative. Within the renewable energy space, we announced our SolarWind III fund. We have been building that development portfolio for the fund, and it included over 20 projects at year-end, and it has been advanced since. And also now it is official, Taaleri is the largest wind power producer in Finland. This is, of course, a great achievement, and it has taken a lot of effort to get there, but we have a 12% market share, and the second biggest has 9% of the market. Within the real estate business, we continue to deploy the capital that we receive from our investors. So some of the funds are -- we manage for Aktia, they're special mutual funds. And then we have these closed-end funds that we manage ourselves. Our Bioindustry Fund made its first investments, one into a company called Colombier, a company producing ecological packaging; and the other one, to Nordtrea, a company that produces bio-based flame retardants. Last but not least, we have Garantia, which had its best-ever operational profitability with a combined ratio of 23.9% for the quarter and 28.4% for the full year. This is an extraordinary good achievement. They had some negative results in their investment performance, and that was really driven by higher interest rates and higher spreads in the fixed income market. If we look at the numbers for Q4, our continuing earnings grew by 2.1%. That's split between -- within the private asset management business. The growth was 3.9%, up to EUR 5.7 million. And our strategic investment segment, which is Garantia, basically, that's -- they rose 2.4% to EUR 5.7 million. As I said earlier, we had a good quarter with respect to performance fees. So EUR 12.4 million was booked in performance fees, and that's compared to EUR 10.6 million a year ago. And our investment income was negative with 6.7% (sic) [ EUR 6.7 million ] compared to last year of 7.4% (sic) [ EUR 7.4 million ]. Now that's partly due to the portfolio where we saw increased -- or higher rates and increased spreads. So -- and that's Garantia. And then on the other hand, we also did some impairments in our own investments on the corporate level. All in all, our income decreased to EUR 17.3 million from EUR 29.4 million, and this is a result of that -- some of our investment income is booked over our P&L, and that affects our income, whereas some are booked directly on to our equity. And thus, this effect took down our income to EUR 17.3 million. Our operating profit was EUR 7.1 million compared to EUR 14.7 million a year ago. This corresponds to a 41% operating margin. If we look at the full year numbers, our continuing earnings grew by 0.8% to EUR 41 million. The private asset management business, our private equity business had a growth of EUR 2.8 million to EUR 20.7 million -- sorry, 2.8% to EUR 20.7 million and Garantia had an increase of 2.2% to EUR 18 million. For the full year, we booked and recognized performance fees of EUR 19.4 million. That's an increase -- substantial increase. We had EUR 11.4 million the year before, and this is split between our different business lines, but the biggest one was in renewable energy. And then we also had Ficolo, which we disposed our -- the data center business during the year. All in all, the income from the investment operations was EUR 2.8 million, so a substantial decline from EUR 17.6 million a year ago. And all in all, on a group level, our income decreased 9.3% to EUR 63.2 million. Our operating profit came down about 10% to EUR 27.3 million, and that is an operating margin of 43.2%. Our assets under management grew during the year with almost 13% to EUR 2.9 billion, and our earnings per share was EUR 0.73, and the Board of Directors proposes a dividend of EUR 0.70 for the year of 2022. Now if we look at the rolling 12-month numbers, which probably gives you a better picture of our operations, we can see the dark blue pillar shows the continuing earnings. They've been quite stable. And as I've earlier said, they do move up or down, depending on if we launch a new fund or if we dispose a fund of substantial size. And above -- the higher -- or the light blue pillar shows the other than continuing earnings, which is our performance fees and our net investment income. And so for the last 12 months rolling, that has been EUR 22 million. And on the right-hand side, we have the operating profit over the last 12 months standing at EUR 27.3 million, and that's an operating margin of 43.2%. If we look at the last quarter and our various income sources, of course, the quarter is very short, I'll come back to the 12 months rolling one after this. But if we start on the left-hand corner, we have the net continuing earnings from our private asset management business for the fourth quarter, EUR 4.1 million. Then we have the performance fees, which were very strong. And we have the net income from our guarantee insurance operations, and then we have a dent in the chart here with the negative investment income. And then we have our costs. And finally, we see our operating profit on the right-hand side. If we look at the same picture over 12 months, it looks a little bit more smooth. But now we've earlier managed to show quite even pillars. Now we see that the net investment operations have declined from a higher level to EUR 2.8 million. As a whole, we then end up with our operating profit on the right-hand side of EUR 27.3 million. I would say that, about these investment incomes, it's always good to remember that some of our investment incomes are booked over the P&L. Some are booked directly to our equity. And within the Garantia insurance portfolio, their investments are 88% fixed income. They are typically hold to maturity investments. That means that if the price comes down, you hold on to that investment. Basically, your yield to maturity goes up. Okay. Here's a summary of our financial targets, our long-term financial targets, and we have 3 of them. First one is continuing the growth in continuing earnings. And we say that, over time, it should be at least 15%. Now last year, we're substantially under that. We didn't have any major launches. Yes, we have the Bioindustry Fund I. That is EUR 100 million fund. We also had some funds that we exited. So thus the growth ended up at 0.8%, but we still hold on to our long-term target. On our operating profit, again, we've been exceeding that for a while. It's now at 43.2%. Our target is 25%. And then the return on equity, we say at least 15% over a longer time horizon. It was 9.9% last year. Now we are overcapitalized. We know that. We're distributing some of that in the form of dividends, but we still think it is sound economics to have a good, healthy financial position in this stage of the cycle. And of course, the plan is perhaps to use the money for something where we can acquire something. Okay. If we move over to the private asset management business, we start with the renewables. There's a lot of text here. But if we take a step back, yes, we are now the biggest producer of wind energy in Finland. But the truth of the matter, however, is that this is a very international business. We have operations in many jurisdictions, and this is also a truly dark green operation in the form of an Article 9 within the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. The operations here are quite large in the sense that we cover everything from development, financing, construction and operation of our wind, solar, and now also we move into the battery storage. So we run those -- that business quite extensively through the whole life cycle of a project. Now of course, we have launched our SolarWind III fund, which is very important, and we built an extensive development portfolio to support that fund. And basically, what that means is that the investors need -- know in forehand where the money is going to be deployed that they invest into the fund. Looking at the numbers. Management fees were unchanged. Continuing earnings fell slightly to EUR 3.8 million from EUR 4.2 million. And the performance fees that were booked within renewable energy were up at EUR 8.8 million -- sorry, EUR 10.3 million, out of which EUR 8.8 million are management estimates for coming disposals. Operating profit for the quarter was EUR 9 million and really boosted by the performance fees. So to that extent, that was a good number. And the assets under management within the renewable energy is EUR 1.4 billion currently. If we look at the other private equity -- or private asset management businesses, the growth was quite substantial. That's 47.5%. Now it comes from a very low base. So we're looking at a continuing earnings of EUR 1.9 million. And a year ago, it was EUR 1.3 million. So thus, we have a base that is very low and really driven by the Bioindustry I fund. Within real estate, during the quarter, there was one acquisition made for a special mutual fund that we manage for Aktia. Although there is a slowdown in the real estate market, the operations and the assets themselves, it's more of business as usual as we operate these assets. And within the Bioindustry fund, we did these 2 investments that I already mentioned. And I'd say that the fund in itself is really a true success because it is first of its kind, it is also a first-time fund, and we already have over EUR 100 million there. The final close will probably be sometime this year. Looking at the numbers within this segment, we can say that continuing earnings were up, as I said. Performance fees were booked of EUR 2 million. That's compared to EUR 5.2 million the year before. And the income stands at EUR 5.8 million, slightly down from the year before, but the EBIT was up at EUR 3.3 million compared to EUR 2 million the year before. That's, of course, the mix between the performance fees and the continuing earnings. All right. Looking at the 12-month rolling chart over the private asset management segment, we can see that you have the dark blue bar, which is the continuing earnings and then it's basically performance fees in the light blue bar. As you can see, the performance fees have been going higher, whereas the continuing earnings have been quite stable there. On the rolling 12-month operating profit, it's now about 43.8% driven really by these performance fees that we have recognized. Here, we can see the funds, I won't go through every one of them with you, but I can say that the aggregate is EUR 2.5 billion. Of course, SolarWind III is not here as it has not had its first close, but the split of our funds within the business areas on the right-hand side shows you that renewable energy is 55%, real estate 32% and bio is slowly but surely climbing. It is now at 6%. And moving on to Garantia. Garantia, as I said, had a great combined ratio in the fourth quarter, 23.9%. And you can see on the right-hand corner here in the box, their combined ratio for the full year of 2022, that was 28%. Now if you look at the net income that grew by 2.5% to EUR 5.7 million, and operationally, that's a really good -- great achievement. The income decreased, however, from EUR 8.4 million to EUR 2.4 million, and that has to do with how we book some of these investments. They come over the P&L and thus, they drag down the income. All in all, the investment operations booked a EUR 3.3 million loss for the quarter. And as I said earlier, that's really driven by -- during the year, we had higher rates. We also had a tick-up in the rates in the fourth quarter, and spreads widened in the last month of the quarter, and that, of course, affects the valuation of the portfolio. Now it is a quite conservative portfolio, 88% in fixed income. And the duration -- or the maturity of the loans are not that long. And if you hold these to maturity, then, basically, what this means is that your yield to maturity in the portfolio goes higher as the prices go down, assuming that you can hold them to maturity and get your money back. The gross guaranty insurance exposure grew by almost 10% to EUR 1.9 billion from EUR 1.7 billion, and the solvency ratio is really strong. It's a 231% now compared to 219% a year ago. Okay. Looking at our so-called nonstrategic investments. We can start with the box down on the right-hand side. You can see the book value of our nonstrategic investments. They stand at EUR 25.2 million at year-end. The year before, they were at EUR 23.7 million. Now of course, our ambition is to slowly but surely dispose these investments. Why did it rise? Well, we reclassified some assets. We have had some disposals. We have done some investments. For instance, we invested EUR 2.5 million in Fellow Bank during the year. And then we did some impairments at the end of the year. And of course, the impairments, we also have to take into account what our accountants say and how we view those assets. So the impairments stood at EUR 3.8 million, and we also had a small currency exchange loss mainly due to the dollar -- the U.S. dollar and the Canadian dollar. So that was EUR 0.5 million. So all in all, in this segment, the income was minus EUR 4.5 million and the operating profit, minus EUR 6.8 million. Now I will hand over to Minna Smedsten, our CFO, to talk through our results and balance sheet. Go ahead, Minna.

Thank you, Peter. So my name is Minna Smedsten. I'm the CFO of Taaleri. Let's take a look at our financial figures and first comparing the segments a little bit to each other. And when you look at our income statement, you can see that half of our continuing earnings comes from private asset management and half comes from Garantia. And then again, from the private asset management, our renewable energy stands for 70%. Now when we reach the set fund target and investors' expectations, we can receive performance fees, and we recorded EUR 12.4 million in performance fees in Q4, and that is EUR 10 million in renewable energy and EUR 2 million in other private asset management. And as Peter mentioned, the investment operations weighed on our income. Now looking at the bottom row. And if you look at the operating profit margin in all business areas, that was very strong. It ranged from 55% to 69%, but group other half the group's result. The group's operating profit, excluding investment income -- or investment operations, doubled from last year to EUR 13.8 million, and this corresponds to a profit margin of 57.5%. And now let's move forward and take a look at our quarterly development. Our continuing earnings were flat during the year. We recorded 17% more in performance fees than in Q4 '21, but investment operations turned from plus 7% to minus 7%. Now when you take a closer look at our costs, you can see that our fee expenses, they declined EUR 1 million due to the extra fees that we had in '21 to the exit of Housing Fund VI. Our personnel costs, they also declined almost half, and this is naturally due to the low income growth that we had. And therefore, we can see smaller bonuses for '22, but also due to the extra costs that we had to our former CEO in '21. When you look at the operating profit for the whole year, that was EUR 27 million compared to EUR 30.1 million -- EUR 30.8 million in '21, while our operating profit without investment operations was EUR 24.5 million compared to EUR 13.2 million in '21. So all in all, a good result. There's not so much to say about our key financial figures, but maybe to just point out the cost income ratio, excluding investment operations, that improved from 78% to 61%. You can see it on the graph. But anyway, just to point that out. And we also saw a nice growth of 13% in assets under management from the beginning of the year. Then let's move forward and take a look at our balance sheet. Taaleri has a strong balance sheet. We have investments in different forms. Our total assets were EUR 301 million, and our equity was EUR 203 million given an equity ratio of 67%. As Peter mentioned, Garantia has a conservative investment policy, and 88% of the investment portfolio is invested in fixed income instruments. Garantia has also decided to distribute EUR 10 million in dividends for last year, and that will now be recorded now in Q1. All in all, we had EUR 47 million on our bank account at the end of the year. Our Board proposes to distribute a dividend of EUR 0.70, of which EUR 0.45 comes from the operating profit and EUR 0.25 is extra due to the sale of wealth management, and this totals a dividend distribution of EUR 20 million. And then just a few words before I give over to Peter about IFRS 17 that came in the 1st of January '23. And IFRS 17 is about valuing insurance contracts at fair value, and we will restate our financial figures according to IFRS 17 before we publish the interim statement for Q1. The new standard may increase dollars earnings volatility going forward. The negative net difference of approximately EUR 1.5 million to EUR 2.5 million will be recognized in group's equity. The implementation of the new standard will decrease the group's total income as well as our operating expenses as these are netted out. But the standard is not expected to have any significant impact on group's operating profit. And now back to Peter.

Thank you, Minna. So summarizing our last year, what was important? I think the most important thing was that we've been executing our strategy, and all our activities are aimed at that. Now our results were twofold. On the one hand, we booked a lot of performance fees. On the other hand, our investments did not perform as well as they did the year before. Within renewable energy, we announced our sixth fund, so SolarWind III is our sixth renewable energy fund. We have been building out the development portfolio for that fund in a rapid way. But let's not forget the ongoing operations that we have. We have a lot of windmills and solar panels out there. They are operational every day. Somebody is looking after them. We're optimizing how they perform. And we are also advancing the construction of several wind parks and solar projects in the geographies where we operate. Within the bio fund, I mean, truly pleased that we managed to raise over EUR 100 million at this stage. And then, of course, we have Fintoil, which is the tall oil factory. However, it's an associated company for us, but they started the operations during the fall. And of course, also the biomass -- torrefied biomass production -- or investment in Joensuu has been advanced. And within the real estate activities, we sold the Daycare Properties fund in the beginning of the year. They have been extremely active, as always, in investing and managing the funds and the projects that they're involved in. And for instance, the -- we have the Aktia special mutual funds, we have Taaleri Housing Fund VIII and then the Taaleri Home Fund, which it's -- the activities have been centered around these. And then Garantia, as previously mentioned, very strong or, should I say, outstanding operational results weighed by the investments, but they might come back. And as a whole, I would say a big thanks to all of our shareholders. We have over 10,000 shareholders today, of course, to our customers, our fund investors and to our employees. It's been a very active year, and it's been great to execute on the strategy that we have chosen. Now if we look ahead, what do we see this year? Within renewable energy, it's, of course, focused very much around the fundraising for SolarWind III. And as I earlier mentioned, so we've had wind and solar before, and now we have energy storage as a new component. And you might have seen the announcement last year that we did our first standalone energy storage project in Finland. The bioindustry business, we will continue to invest. The fund -- the Bioindustry I fund and also advanced the project in Joensuu. And in Fintoil, it's now sort of more normal operations. And of course, in that business, it is very much about optimizing the refining margin. The real estate business, so looking ahead, they will develop new products. And of course, they will transact on the capital that is already around, but we'll see what we can achieved on the new product side. And in Garantia, I'd say there, it's more business as usual. And they have been very disciplined on the underwriting, and I think that will continue. And that is, of course, one source of their success. And finally, as Minna mentioned, we will publish restated figures for 2022. So when we publish our first interim report for this year, we have then restated the Garantia numbers in order to mimic the new standard, the IFRS 17. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter and Minna. Now we have time for questions. You can ask questions on the webcast platform, but let's start with questions from the floor.

It's Daniel Lepistö from Danske Bank. Can you give us any estimate on the number of potential fund exits that you're maybe planning for 2023? As I guess, you have still several funds quite close to this exit phase of their life cycle.

Yes. It's within the wind fund. Within renewable energy, we have some wind funds that are sort of coming to a mature stage, so those are the ones that would be sort of the given candidates here.

And maybe if I continue on the topic. On the real estate side, has this sort of market uncertainty made any changes to your exit plans? Or is it more business as usual? Or how is the situation there?

We actually don't have any funds there that are -- there might be one small fund that might be sort of -- but there are no major sort of exits coming up in that segment.

Okay. And my sort of second question is that what is your current view? And do you actively look for any inorganic opportunities? Maybe reflecting on the slightly more prudent dividend that we saw proposed today.

So you asked about the balance sheet, what are we going to do with it?

Yes. Is there any inorganic opportunities on the pipeline?

Yes. So yes, of course, we can't say in concrete terms, but that's our belief that we can use some of the balance sheet also for nonorganic activities. But time will tell.

Yes. Joni Sandvall from Nordea. Maybe one question about the SolarWind III. So first close is expected in H1. So what size are we looking for, for the first close?

That's kind of a digital question because, of course, we know that there are due diligences going, but I wouldn't sort of want to give a guess and anchor any number here. So I think the important thing is that what we said is that we aim to double our former fund, and then we'll stick to that. Because you might have somebody who's doing a due diligence, do they come in the first close or not? And then that's sort of a digital, so I don't want to give the sort of the wrong impression then if that wouldn't materialize. So thus, I would restrain from really giving you a number.

Okay. You made a EUR 3.8 million write-down in the nonstrategic investments. Could you open up what's behind this?

Well, it's an assessment. Of course, in some cases, if we paid the goodwill for something and we take it down to a lower value, it's, of course, an impairment where you have to make a judgment on what is the value there. So that's one of the major reasons for doing this. And I think for us, of course, we've made disposals. We look at that portfolio continuously. And some companies, as they develop, maybe they don't sort of fulfill those expectations we had when we did the investment. And I think our accountants wouldn't be very happy if we wouldn't sort of react to that.

Okay. Then going into Garantia, solvency rate was very strong. Is it including the dividend payment to Taaleri? And how much is the dividend payment?

EUR 10 million.

EUR 10 million, yes. Then last question from me about the Garantia's combined ratio. The claims were again low. Are you expecting this to come up during '23?

Well, not necessarily. I mean, the thing is that when you look at the portfolio as a whole, we haven't seen a deterioration in the risk assessment we've made of it. I think that is sort of answering your question. Where are we to see that? That would be different, but we haven't.

Kasper from Inderes. In other private funds, you booked a performance fee of EUR 2 million. Could you elaborate from where did that come from?

Maybe Minna wants to answer something.

Yes, yes. So please, I don't know it. Can you see? But anyway, the other private asset management, you can see a listing of the funds that we have there. We haven't mentioned which fund it is. It is a fund. But then naturally, it is one of those elderly funds that we have. That is exceeding the -- naturally the hurdle rate, and we are very confident that we will actually receive that performance fee.

The new -- you booked performance fee of around EUR 10 million from the old wind funds. Could you make a guess of how much of these performance fees are still unbooked from those funds?

Yes. And we actually comment on that, but it's in the notes. So we use a discount rate of 30% to 50%. So in that sense, I can just give you a cut. So it's -- we have a management estimate that's a conservative estimate, and then we use the discount rate of 30% to 50%, that we have as a haircut from that performance fee. And that is naturally -- that was the situation at the end of the year, and that naturally then changes as time goes by.

Time goes by.

Thank you. And we have 2 questions from the webcast. Could you please elaborate how cash reserves will be allocated near -- in the near future for dividends, for investments, for M&A, et cetera?

We haven't earmarked as such anything. What we say is that we pay -- strive to pay over half of our annual profits and dividends. And then we have an ambition, of course, to optimize our balance sheet over time. And we've also said that if we cannot find anything to do with that money, then we will distribute that. But we haven't earmarked it as such. And I think we will stick with that sort of narrative. That doesn't make sense to earmark it as such, but -- or rather, in that sense, a little bit opportunistic then.

And a question about Garantia. Could you please elaborate how Garantia business model is made more scalable, if anyhow?

Well, of course, looking at the construction of their -- the business right now, most of it is -- over 70% is in the consumer segment. And I think that has -- still, there's margin to grow there. So if it works, why fix it in a way? But at the same time, you have to be very disciplined in your underwriting, and I think that's sort of the way to do it. Now can somebody use this platform for something else? Then that will be shown. But we haven't really sort of opened up that to any larger extent. But it's still the business cases that we do also corporate-driven guarantees. And maybe, right now, if you look at the market, people are looking on how to fund their businesses or investments. It might open up for us some commercial guarantee opportunities there as well, especially if banks are sort of not that willing to lend.

Thank you for all the questions. I think those were now all we have, so we can wrap it up.

Well, thank you very much. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.