Wendel (MF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good morning to those here. Good morning for those -- good afternoon for those who are connected on the webcast from the United States. It's the first time we hold the presentation with people in the same room since the end of 2019, believe it or not. So we are pleased to see you in person. David Darmon, Deputy Group CEO; Jerome Michiels, EVP, CFO and who has taken charge of the Wendel Lab; and myself will go through a presentation of the 2021 full year results to be followed by a discussion where those on the webcast can submit their questions though the platform. Obviously, those who are in the room much easier. As a reminder, the presentation is recorded and will be available for 1 year on the webcast. So I'm now on Slide 2. Highlights for 2021. We've been very active in 2021. Active on the portfolio as evidenced by the good performance of Wendel and our portfolio companies, which delivered a 10.2% organic growth for the year with strong margins. We continued to bring in selectively new leadership in our companies. We've been active on the portfolio composition as we've made 2 significant new investments, Tarkett and ACAMS and one significant disposal at a very good price, Cromology. The long-awaited listing of IHS also finally happened mid-October. So in total, we deployed EUR 640 million over the last 12 months in the new investments including the Wendel Lab. We've been active on ESG, which is now fully embedded in our investment strategy and in our day-to-day management of the firm. Turning to the next page. Our main KPI, net asset value, was up 20% if one includes the dividend we paid, and its increase would actually have exceeded 27% without the disappointing aftermarket trading of IHS Towers following its IPO. Even with this adverse IHS share price development, our NAV is close to its historical highs at EUR 188.1 per share. The previous high -- historical high was in June at EUR 189.1, so it's really awfully close. We have a solid balance sheet, enabling us to look forward with ambition to continue to redeploy our road map and to pay a growing dividend of EUR 3. A busy slide. Over the last 4 years, as a reminder, through a wholesale refocus of our portfolio by selling small assets, by reorganizing teams, by reducing leverage at all levels, you get a measure of what we have been doing. Only 4 assets present in 2018 are still in the portfolio in 2022. And one of them, IHS, was unlisted in '18. We also remind you, sold down EUR 400 million of BV shares in 2018. It's 1 of the 4. Three new companies labeled new on the chart, of which 2, ACAMS and CPI, bring a new, much higher growth profile to our portfolio. We invested during this period of time in excess of $900 million in the U.S. from '19 to '22 to date, so the last 2 years unchanged. Wendel Lab is now properly equipped to deploy efficiently more capital. And our goal is that this would represent 5% to 10% of NAV in 2024. During the period, we returned more than EUR 800 million to shareholders in dividends and buybacks, and we deployed EUR 1.5 billion of capital. 2021 was the first year -- only the first year in our '21, '24 road map, and we are pleased with what we accomplished. Even in the current uncertain environment, which I'm sure we will discuss induced by the war in Ukraine, and despite the resurgence of COVID in particular, in China, Asia, Wendel can definitely look forward to moving forward with confidence, which is the BV motto. Main achievements on ESG. Over the past 3 years, Wendel has been investing a lot in ESG, both at our level, group holding company and in our portfolio. We've established a 2023 roadmap with objectives and KPIs that we are tracking closely and disclosing on an annual basis. We are addressing several ESG priorities with a special focus on climate, health and safety, diversity and echo innovation. 54% of Wendel's consolidated sales are generated from products and services with social and environmental added value. It's a new KPI. We published it for the first time. It has been reviewed and checked and certified by an independent third party. You will find more detail -- plenty of detail and extra financial information in our universal registration document to be published mid-April. In 2021, as you can see on this slide, Wendel continued to receive awards in solid ratings with, for example, our renewed inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability World and Europe indices, DJSI, where we believe we're the only financial player. And we are now also included in Sustainalytics, ESG Global 50 top rating company list with a negligible risk rating, I am not paid to see negligible risks. I always have to see risk, all the risks, but we are proud by this acknowledgment by Sustainalytics. ESG, again, our companies are successfully deploying their road maps. We provide a few highlights on this page, their strategies and their product offerings. We lead, by example, but like for financial performance, extra financial performance is the result of this company's teams and their management. As you can see on the slide also, how we get to the 54% figure and the way that our consolidated companies are fully embedding ESG in their strategy and product offering. They also benefit from strong ratings. So I'll now get into the specifics of performance of group companies. I will start with the largest one, Bureau Veritas as the -- I would say, the Chairman of the Strategy Committee of BV on which Board I sit. And David will take it from there for the other portfolio companies. We're not going to be commenting on IHS Towers' results since the company has been deconsolidated from our accounts following the IPO and even more to the point, the company publishes a lot of information of its own and has just announced its own annual earnings. Post the IHS listing, I remind you that we don't have significant influence anymore. We do not have an employee on the Board. We designated someone, but we don't have a valid employee on the Board, and the shareholders agreement pre-IPO has been updated for the public status of IHS. So I'll turn to BV. Another very, very busy slide, so apologies. I'll go through some of the highlights. BV published its annual results in Feb. So you can get a lot of details from that. But I remind you that it had an excellent operational and financial performance in 2021. Revenues were up 8.3% versus 2020 with organic growth at 9.4%, above its peers if you make the comparisons. All 6 divisions posted organic growth, with more than half the BV portfolio, including consumer products, certification, buildings and infrastructure, posting a strong recovery of 13.3% organically on average in these areas. I'd like to also highlight the all-time high EPS of $1.07, up by almost 70% year-on-year. In a stabilized environment, we expect the EPS to grow. Leverage has been further reduced to 1.1x EBITDA, below its peers and a historical low since the IPO. This allows considerable financial flexibility to the company. Management has completely overhauled the company's focus on cash generation over the course of the last couple of years with now a very attractive level of working capital to sales. The Green Line offer, BV sustainability services offer, represents today more than 50% of BV sales. It's a unique positioning for Bureau Veritas, and we believe there are strong opportunities ahead of us in the field of ESG. Bureau Veritas will also actively pursue M&A in targeted strategic areas to complement the company's mid-single-digit organic growth in revenues, and we will very much support this. All divisions are expected to contribute by improving their adjusted operating margins and by generating sustained growth -- growing cash flow with a cash conversion rate overall above 90%. Didier Michaud-Daniel was recently renewed as the company's Chief Executive Officer and a succession plan has led to the recruitment of Hinda Gharbi as Chief Operating Officer. We think this is a very exciting development with an outstanding individual, and I'd be happy to say more if you have some questions later. So this is my introduction and the discussion of BV. David, now up to you.

Thank you, Andre. Good morning, everybody. So let me give you the highlights of Tarkett 2021 performance. So moving to Slide 9. So in 2021, Tarkett posted a EUR 2.8 billion sales, which is a 6% growth over the previous year, including a 6.4% organic growth. While the sales performance was satisfactory, the EBITDA margin did contract to 8.2%, which is a 240 bps contraction, mainly due to increase in purchasing costs. The company has been passing many price increases, but it was not enough to offset the pressure they saw on the raw material costs. The net financial debt was nearly stable at EUR 475 million, which means that the leverage ended up at 2.1x at Tarkett SA level. As a reminder, Wendel invested with Deconinck family in a holding company, Tarkett participation where the leverage is 3.6x. Despite the reduction in margin and the increase in working capital, which is due to the material inflation, I just mentioned, the cash flow was positive for the year at EUR 20 million. For 2022, obviously, we track the situation in Ukraine and Russia. As you know, Tarkett has a presence in Russia, which is close to 10% of the combined sales. The focus of the team and the management team is clearly on the safety of employees. We know that they are doing everything they can to manage those who are exposed to the conflict there. As a reminder, Tarkett accounts for roughly 1.9% of Wendel's gross assets value. Moving to Page 10 and talking about Stahl. In 2021, we saw the arrival of a new CEO, Maarten Heijbroek. Maarten followed suit to Huub van Beijeren, who has been our partner since 2006 and his transition was actually an excellent transition. We are very happy with Maarten's arrival, and I think the whole team at Stahl is very happy there. So as you remember, 2020 was a tough year for Stahl. So what we saw in 2021 is actually a strong rebound from a low base and Stahl posted a 25% plus organic growth from this space, and we are today above 2019 level. We saw among others a rebound of the automotive business, which did rebound significantly versus 2020. The company also posted solid margin. It's in slight reduction at 21.6%, but it's still a healthy number as the company maintained to keep its fixed costs at a low level, actually below 2019 and managed to pass most of the material prices increase with different prices increase over the year. On January 1, the company posted a 15% price increase across the board, and we do expect to see more of those coming in the next months as well. The net debt ratio, as I would say, as always, with Stahl, has continued to go down. It does stand at 0.8x at the end of the year as the company was again capable of producing strong cash flow conversion during the year. And in terms of ESG performance, Stahl was rewarded with an award from EcoVadis and a Gold rating, which did place the company the top 5% of companies of assessed by EcoVadis, which is a very good performance and a testimony of all the efforts to grow more sustainable products at Stahl. I'm turning to Slide 11 to talk about Constantia Flexibles 2021 results. Constantia had a good year in 2020. So it's not the same story as the Stahl one. 2020 was growth story. 2021, we built on that. And company posted again some good organic growth, 4.2% with an overall 6.5% sales growth. The consumer market actually grew significantly while we saw a decline in the pharma business as -- because of the lockdown, we saw a very mild season in terms of flu and cold with all the masks that we were wearing. The season was actually a low season in terms of flu and cold and that did impact the pharma business of Constantia. The India business of Constantia was also very challenging with a severe lockdown locally and, on top of it, with local price pressure from competition as well. The EBITDA margin was still maintained at a high level at 12.5%, close to the previous year, as the company did embark in a very strong cost containment program, and that is quite successful, as you can see, maintaining this level of margin despite the raw material pressure. The cash generation, we believe, has been structurally improved. The measure that was passed in terms of CapEx rationalization, working capital, are we believe sustainable. And you can see that the leverage is at 1.8x. This is post the Propak acquisition that the company financed for EUR 120 million during the year. So they maintained their leverage and was able to self-finance this acquisition, which, to this state, is performing very well. In terms of ESG, we see some positive momentum in the company as well. The Ecolutions projects is actually getting good traction from our customers. We have over 10 customers today using the solutions. And we have a multiple of this number of customers who are actually developing and testing the products. So this is giving a lot of confidence on the traction there. In terms of outlook, the company is rolling out its Vision 2025 plan with a return to strong organic growth, acceleration of performance and still continue to target a 14% midterm EBITDA margin. Moving to CPI on Slide 12. You probably remember that 2020 was a tough year for CPI for a couple of weeks in March and April, the company had to stop all training because of COVID. They transitioned successfully to an online offer. And then they've been rebounding very, very strongly. You can see here that for the first time in CPI history, they did pass the $100 million mark for -- in terms of sales, which is obviously a very strong growth compared to the previous year, up 58.8% organically. Beyond the transition to more virtual learning, the company also developed new products, new trainings and specialty topics such as trauma, autism and advanced physical skills, which is enlarging the market addressed and also leading the company to strategically increase prices for those new trainings as well. EBITDA is up 97.3% with a record high margin of 49.4%. So anticipating a question, this level of margin is probably not sustainable. It is clearly much higher than the 40%-ish typical margin of the company. We saw very strong growth in terms of sales, and the company was able to keep costs at bay for some time, but, obviously, there will be investment coming up. And we expect margin to progressively come back to lower level than this 49%. The leverage went down to 6x December 2021 from a 10-plus leverage in 2020. So we are in a healthy position compared to the covenant and well below the leverage that we had when we acquired the business. In December 2019, we acquired the business with 7.5x EBITDA leverage. So you can see that the company is actually capable of producing healthy cash flows. In early 2022 with the Omicron resumption, we saw a few programs -- a few on-site programs being delayed and pushed back to Q2. But despite those pushbacks, the current trading is actually quite good. The next slide on Page 13 is about our latest acquisition. We closed on March 10 the acquisition of ACAMS. ACAMS is the world's largest membership organization dedicated to fighting financial crime. I'm sure that a lot of people here in this room have used their training. We have invested $338 million, which is slightly less than the number we previously communicated, because as the current trading is actually pretty good, we increased our amount of debt at closing and reduced our equity invested. We own roughly 98% of the company with an equity partner and the management team. You can see on this slide, the numbers that we did communicate at the time of signings. As a reminder, these numbers are pro forma to carve out and unaudited at this stage and do include $2 million of exceptional revenues that the company enjoyed in end of 2020. The last comment I will make on this slide is ACAMS actually is almost like a posterchild of what we want to do. It fits exactly the road map that we're trying to achieve. It's a company with strong growth, strong resilience, a very strong leadership and a good cash flow profile. So we are happy that we managed to close this quite complex acquisition because it was a carve-out of a carve-out of a listed company. So it was not an easy one to manage, but it's exactly what we want to achieve in the next few years in our road map. I'm moving to Slide 14 to talk about the leverage at the operating companies. You can see that we have either modest leverage in terms of multiple or moderate leverage in terms of quantum. And you can see a general improvement over the year with Bureau Veritas posting a 1.1x EBITDA leverage, which is the lowest number since its IPO. You can see that Propak is flat at 1.8x, despite the financing of EUR 120 million acquisition, Propak which I mentioned earlier. You can also see the deleverage at Stahl, which is a recurring story; and CPI, who clearly managed to half its leverage with the superb organic EBITDA growth I just mentioned. IHS is at 2.2 leverage. They mentioned a couple of acquisitions since those numbers were published. And so the current leverage is actually higher. And again, on Tarkett, I mentioned that 2.1x is -- Tarkett SA leverage. Wendel has invested at Tarkett Participation level where the leverage is 3.6x. I am moving to Slide 15 to discuss about the current event in Russia and Ukraine. Obviously, we are paying a close attention to what's happening there. We expect some direct impact and indirect impact on our portfolio. The main one that could be an increase in our cost structure of our portfolio companies. We see raw material prices going up, we can see some supply chain disruption and obviously, some inflation across the board. So we are very vigilant on what's happening there. Overall, the Wendel direct economical exposure to Russia and Ukraine is roughly 1%. You have on the right hand table, reminding you the both the share in our gross asset value and the total of sales in 2021 of the various companies. You can see that those numbers are pretty low with the exception of Tarkett, around 10%, as I just mentioned; and Constantia, which is a bit lower than 5%. The priority for the management team locally is to make sure that the team is safe, and we know they are working hard on that to find a local solution on a case by case, obviously. I'm now transitioning to Slide 16, and Jerome will talk about the Wendel Lab. Thank you.

Thank you very much, David. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very exciting -- excited by this Wendel Lab opportunity, which is ramping up. As you know, this is our initiative in venture capital, in growth, which will contribute to diversify and enhance the growth profile of our portfolio whilst helping us building intelligence and expertise on disruptive technologies and digital trends. I think there is a great opportunity for Wendel in this space which we intend to grow our exposure to 5% to 10% in terms of net asset value in the next few years, both through commitments to high-profile funds and through direct investments. 2021 has been a busy year on the front part, thanks to the arrival of Chris Witherspoon, our Head of Fund Investments. We have committed an additional EUR 49 million of capital this year, bringing our total commitments to about EUR 115 million as of December 31, 2021, 70% of which have already been invested. We have further committed about EUR 21 million since the beginning of the year, and we have a healthy pipeline of new fund opportunities currently under review. We have also been actively working on qualifying direct investment opportunities since the beginning of this year. And we are very happy to have welcomed Antoine Izsak, who joined from BPI early this year, bringing his rich expertise of investing in very successful start-ups. As the environment is becoming more volatile, we think there could be good opportunities for Wendel to selectively invest in high-quality companies. Now on to the 2021 results. Let's start with consolidated sales, which came in at EUR 7.5 billion this year, up 9.8%, of which 12.2% organically. As detailed by David and Andre on the previous slides, the activity of our portfolio companies has been quite strong in 2021 with all companies posting revenues above 2019 levels. This good performance is reflected in our net income from operations on the right-hand side of this slide, which has reached EUR 654 million this year, more than twice the level of last year. Bureau Veritas has been the largest contributor of this increase, obviously, adding more than EUR 200 million versus 2020. But all other portfolio companies have also contributed positively to the increase. As in previous years, Wendel's operating and financial expenses have been kept in check, actually posting a slight decrease, driven by the reduction of our financial expenses. Below the line of net income from operations, we have registered a large nonrecurring item related to the accounting treatment of the deconsolidation of IHS following its IPO. I already commented about it at the Investor Day, but I think it's useful to remind you that post listing, Wendel does not have significant influence on IHS anymore. And as no Wendel employee sits on the Supervisory Board and on the Board of this company and the shareholders' agreement has been updated for the public status of IHS. In compliance with IFRS, the listing has been treated as an exit from IHS, and we have stopped the equity method accounting, generating a EUR 913 million capital gain, which corresponds to the difference between the IPO value and the net book value in Wendel's financial statements, that is despite not having sold any share of IHS until now. As a result, IHS has been accounted for as a financial asset at fair value since its IPO with changes in value since then being booked in equity. Following the share price drop between the IPO and December 31, 2021, a loss of EUR 357 million has been booked in equity. The other line worth mentioning in our P&L this year is the decrease in impairments and impacts of goodwill allocation. Contrary to 2020, which was high in terms of these impacts and impacted by the disposal of Tsebo, 2021 has seen very few noticeable impacts. So the number is only EUR 124 million. As a result of the above, the net income reached EUR 1.376 billion this year and EUR 1.047 billion in terms of group share to be compared to a loss of EUR 264 million in 2020. Let's now turn to net asset value, which has been calculated at EUR 188.1 as of December 31, close to all-time highs. This represents an improvement of 18.3% versus the end of 2020 and roughly EUR 30 more per share. This growth has been driven by the increase in the value of Bureau Veritas, EUR 24, whilst unlisted assets value contributed EUR 15 in total. Within this bucket, I'm happy to report that CPI has been an important driver, following the very strong recovery of the business and the strong deleveraging induced. The disposal of Cromology has been done at a value, which was higher than that of the net asset value of 2020 year-end, representing an increase of EUR 8.7 per share on the whole net asset value of Wendel. Obviously, this nice picture has been tarnished by the very disappointing aftermarket performance of IHS, decreasing our net asset value by more than EUR 12 per share in total. All in all, when adjusting for the dividend paid during the year, our net asset value was grown by more than 20% this year. As of yesterday evening, when adjusting for the drop in the share prices of our listed assets and comparable peers used to value our unlisted assets, I estimate our spot net asset value would stand at about EUR 170. In terms of loan-to-value and net debt, we stood at 10.3% at the end of 2021, but that was before the closing of the disposal of Cromology and the investment in ACAMS. When adjusting for these 2 significant events that took place over Q1, the loan-to-value stands at 4.3%, quite a healthy level within the investment-grade category. But bear in mind that this ratio is not adjusted for the drop in market prices that I just mentioned, following the situation in Ukraine. In terms of net debt, now the deployment of capital in Tarkett, in the Wendel Lab and the return to shareholders carried out in 2021 have resulted in a level close to EUR 1 billion at the end of 2021. But this level has been trimmed down since then to about EUR 400 million through the combined effect of the disposal of Cromology and the investments in ACAMS. Regarding the dividend now for 2021, we proposed to slightly increase the amount to EUR 3 per share, which represents a 3.4% improvement versus last year. As you know, the dividend payment is accompanied by share buybacks that have reached about EUR 40 million in 2021 and which will continue in 2022. Lastly, as in previous years, we have continued to improve our debt profile through the refinancing of our existing maturities at very attractive terms, resulting in an average coupon of 1.7% pro forma of the early repayment of our 2024 bond that we have just announced. As a result, our cash balance is high at about EUR 1 billion, which is, again, the pro forma level when adjusting for the disposal of Cromology, the investment in ACAMS and to make whole of our 2024 bond that has been refinanced by a new 2034 issue. As a result of the latter, our gross debt is now down to EUR 1.4 billion with an average maturity of more than 7 years, which is well aligned with our strategy. David, Andre, over to you.

Thank you, Jerome. Maybe to conclude, we can go to Slide 26 and 27. So on this Slide 26, it's a reminder of where we want to go. You can see on the right part of this slide, the portfolio that we are trying to build, a group of 7 or 10 companies where we will invest roughly between EUR 150 million and EUR 500 million of equity with a more diversified portfolio and with a higher growth profile. On the left part of this chart, you can see the journey to get there, where while we are selling some of our assets, like we did this year with the sale of Cromology, we are also investing in higher growth businesses. So on the back of the acquisition of CPI end of 2019, we just announced the acquisition of ACAMS with similar profile in terms of growth. And this is going to lead us to 2024 and the portfolio we have in mind. In the meantime, we also saw an opportunity in the market with the acquisition of Tarkett. It was the opportunity for us to partner with a family, which is like-minded, and we thought this partnership will create value long term as well. While we are building this portfolio, we also want to continue to reward our shareholders and to return capital, and we will continue our strategy of opportunistic buyback and a strong and predictable dividend as well. Maybe a few words of conclusion, Andre?

Thank you, David. Well, to summarize, in 2021, our company has performed very well with engaged chief executives at their top and with properly incentive teams at the top. They are well equipped to continue their development and to address headwinds. We have a strong balance sheet at the Wendel level and also at the company level, enabling us to roll out our redeployment strategy, and we intend to have an active redeployment strategy. We work permanently on ESG, and we're convinced that it is a strong value creation lever. Finally, as David just said, we continue our shareholder return policy through a growing dividend and opportunistic buybacks. So I think it's now time for Q&A. We will take your questions from the room and then take questions from the webcast platform. Thank you very much.

Alexandre Gerard, CIC. Three questions on my side. Firstly, can you comment on your deal flow today? Are there any pending offers that you recently submitted? Second question, we are all disappointed on -- regarding the IPO of IHS. Can you please comment further on that? Any complaints from investors regarding the profile of the company? How do you explain the sharp contractions in the IPO? And third question on Tarkett maybe, some European corporates are withdrawing totally from Russia, might this be the case for Tarkett? And since the share price contraction, have you recently bought some shares?

Do you want to take the question on deal flow?

Yes, on deal flow, we -- so despite what we see in terms of political and macro environment, the private equity market is actually still strong. There are still some good companies up for sale, buyers doing diligence and financing being there. So we don't see a slowdown of the market. And so our deal flow is actually pretty healthy. Obviously, our U.S. team is very busy right now in the integration of ACAMS, I remind you. So it is a carve-out of a carve-out, so the company we bought did not have very structured corporate functions for instance. It doesn't have like a legal function, we need to build and beef up the compliance functions. So they are very busy in making sure that we put ACAMS on the right trajectory. But our European team is very active on looking at few situations. So it's a healthy deal flow.

Regarding IHS, well, it's obviously very disappointing, as you said, we're 50% down versus the IPO price, which is unfortunately not entirely off. When you look at IPOs done last year, I think more than 50% are actually down by this type of amount. But nevertheless, it's very disappointing. The float is very limited with only 5% of the company being listed, which results in a very low liquidity. Obviously, that's a concern for big institutions who want to get exposure to the name. Another key driver, obviously, is the exposure to Nigeria, which is a country that is -- that has dual currency system. And although the growth there is very strong and has been, again, very strong for IHS this year, this is a country that investors need to understand. We believe that it will take a few quarters before the situation could normalize and before investors realize that the discount to the main peers is -- at least such a wide discount is not warranted, but it will take time. We're not aware of any complaint by investors, but we do think that it has been also very disappointing for them as it has been for us.

Just to add on that, it's obviously come to us as a total surprise, point number one. Number two, management has delivered as they now have delivered for the second time on their guidance. And so we have -- we believe that with time -- and that's the benefit of being a long-term investor. We have not sold any shares. So we believe that the situation will improve over time. And that Nigeria is an attractive business -- country to be in where you are the leader, and there's a lot of growth. Regarding Tarkett, your question there. No, we are not withdrawing from Russia. Well, Deconinck family is in control. We are minority, but we aligned with them. The company, they are very -- actually, the French government has not given instructions to French companies not to operate in Russia. There are sanctions – we -- strictly in the company, in particular, but we had general -- strictly adhere to the various sanctions. And no, we have not bought any shares since the announcement was made of our ownership.

Other questions from the room?

Yes, Patrick? Okay. Sorry.

Patrick Jousseaume, Societe Generale. I have some questions regarding the margin at Stahl. So first half, the margin was up 500 basis points to 26%. Second half, I have not made the calculation, but given the margin was down around 100 basis points in full year, there was a sharp deterioration, could you tell us what you expect for 2022 in this respect given the share price increases that you have passed, please?

So you're right to point out that H2 was different than H1 because we started seeing a heavy pressure on costs at the end of the year. I also mentioned that the fixed cost basis was quite well maintained by the company. So this pressure is on the gross margin as you can expect. We continue to see pressure on raw material prices. The company continues to try to catch up with that and passing price increases. And so we believe that the pressure will continue, but not to the extent of what we saw in H2. As we said, the pricing policy is more firmly implemented by the management team. So we see double-digit price increases, which is not something that in the past Stahl have been doing, but to catch up with what they're saying, they have to go there. So it's hard to know what's going to happen at the end of the year, but where we stand today is a slightly better position than what we had in H2.

And regarding CPI, you have been more, I would say, precise regarding the margins that you expect for the next few years starting from the 49% of 2021. Regarding the revenue evolution, what do you expect? Obviously the 50% increase in 2021 was something exceptional because 2020 was quite low. So what would you expect?

So we are not giving guidance, but I will say that from the 40%, which is where we were when we invested, the company made some significant improvement in terms of being more efficient in sales force and pricing more strategically some topical training. And so we expect structurally to have improved the margin. That being said, the 50%-ish margin that we saw is clearly abnormal. So where it is going to end up between this 40% and 50%, it's -- we don't want to communicate on it, but it's higher than 40% and lower than 50%. if that's precise enough. And in terms of growth profile, I think when we invested 2 years ago, we mentioned a high single digit, low double-digit type of sales growth, and we still have this mindset. There's a lot of traction.

[ Francois ] [indiscernible]. Question for Jerome, I believe, about Wendel Lab. Could you elaborate on the type of companies you have invested or deployed your capital in '21? And if you could provide some names or at least some subsectors indications?

Yes. So we have only invested in funds for the moment. So we have indirect exposure to companies through our funds -- our investment in funds. We've selected very high-profile funds like Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins. And we have, as I said, already deployed about 70% of the 115 commitments that we're looking at the end of 2021. We've had some good successes already in the fund strategy with companies having been IPO-ed and resulting in a positive multiple on our earlier investments. Wendel Lab has been actually started at a very low pace, about 3 to 4 years ago, and we've really stepped up this year, adding EUR 49 million of commitment, but this is still a young and early portfolio. In terms of the type of companies that these funds invest in, we're targeting what we call late-stage venture rather than early stage, most of the time, I would say, because this gives us access to this market of companies that we could invest in as well as co-investors alongside our fund commitments, or when these companies come back to market for another capital raise, obviously, this would be easier for us if we already know the company from one of our investments in the fund. So we are looking at Series B onwards. And that's what we're trying to qualify at this time with Antoine Izsak.

The only equity investment we have in our portfolio is a company called AlphaSense. I think we invested 3 years ago. It's a search engine. It's a B2B search engine, and it's performing very well, yes.

This is Mourad from BNP Paribas Exane. What should be -- would be your NAV if you were to mark-to-market your assets given the current market conditions and taking into account the pro forma net debt, please?

Yes. So we've done the exercise, but please consider this as an estimate because, as you know, the calculation of net asset value is a very thorough process, which is -- which has a lot of checks and balance with the auditors, with the Audit Committee, with a third-party appraiser. So this is really a rough estimate that we've done. We've taken the current share prices of our listed assets, Bureau Veritas, Tarkett and IHS. And we've adjusted the share prices of the peer comparable set that we use for unlisted assets. This results in EUR 170 per share compared to EUR 188 at the end of 2021. In terms of net debt, there is really no change because we've just moved assets. Cromology at the end of 2021 was valued at the transaction value already, and ACAMS is just a cash outflow of $388 million, so it's not -- $338 million, so there is no change in terms of net debt. So EUR 170 about and change for the current spot net asset value.

What's really missing in the process is any reforecast by our companies and any analysis of the valuation of comparables, which are based on many times broker estimates, which have not been adjusted. So the samples -- there's noise in the samples. That's why Jerome is stating rightfully that it's an estimate.

A question on your current setup at the Wendel level. Are you satisfied with your current setup in terms of investors, operating partners? Or do you feel that you need to add more talent or different talents than you already have currently?

We're broadly satisfied. When I joined, I was very dissatisfied. So there has been a lot of change. The team is rightly sized to be able to produce the sort of redeployment that we have in mind. We will add selectively. We're considering adding in the U.S. a little bit, but nothing that would significantly enhance our cost base. We also have an eye on our cost base, obviously. Our cost base, you can see that we're more active because our cost base reflects Board costs on transactions when they don't happen. So it is a balance. We also don't want to have too many people sitting around and not fully busy at all times with portfolio companies and new investments. We -- that's why we regrouped on Paris and New York. There's only 2 hubs to process opportunities. We are adding on the growth side. So we're in the market to add resources under Antoine Izsak. And on the operating partner side, we have 2 operating partners. They are very -- we're very happy with the way they are embedded working with companies on what matters for the companies. And we may, at some point, add another one in the United States now that we have $900 million invested there. But for the moment, they're being supported by the team in Paris.

Other questions from the room, maybe?

You said that beyond Russia and Ukraine, you were also carefully looking at China. Are you starting to feel the heat there on some of your companies? And if I'm not wrong, looking at the Wendel Lab, the bulk of your assets are American software-related assets. What -- I mean, are you looking at the French stake and the French unicorns? Is it something that you've been looking at?

So Jerome may be on the unicorn.

Yes, I'll take the second one, yes. So yes, very much we are looking at these soonicorns or unicorns on the French market, that's really our home turf. And I must say that I'm positively surprised by the interest that the Wendel name generates, long-term French institution, family investor, it looks very attractive to a lot of entrepreneurs, not all entrepreneurs but in the French ecosystem. I think we can bring a lot given our roots in France, our involvement in the ecosystem of large companies. So we are targeting these types of opportunities and have reviewed already a couple of them.

Just we will probably end up changing the name, Wendel Lab, a little bit because some people say, well, I don't want to be in the lab. I'm a grown-up company. So we may reposition the marketing proposition a little bit. But yes, it's been, I think, very encouraging. Regarding China, the main eyes on China at Wendel or BV, which employs almost 17,000 people, as you know, in China. There -- the Shenzhen area has been locked down, not every part or every business. So there is something to watch. It's -- at scale, we're not at the moment concerned. But remember last time how it started, a few cases and it spread all over the world. So we have to be vigilant. And by the way, we know we all dropped our masks. There's no more masks here. I must say, for one, anecdotally, I've never seen so many cases around me recently. So -- but COVID is not completely behind. Hopefully, the full lockdowns are behind for us.

We're also watching the situation for Stahl where some customers in China are starting to be impacted as well.

Yes, maybe a last one just to make sure that I understood correctly. The full year 2021 EBITDA for ACAMS without that positive exceptional element stood at $22 million or...

We did not communicate on the full year. We communicated on the [ LTM ] September, which was $18 million, including $2 million of exceptional.

Okay. But at the same time, you gave the financial debt at the end of the year and the leverage. So this is why I'm saying $22 million.

You're good at math.

Yes, it's because the bank definition of EBITDA is different from the accounting definition of EBITDA. And so the chart is based on bank definitions. And the bank definition is more lenient. This has been the banking financing market. For deals, the banking criteria is a bit more favorable. But it's the one that counts in terms of the governance. Now…

If [indiscernible] that far takes on.

I take advantage to say sometimes we get lucky, sometimes we don't get lucky. It's too early to tell, but it's pretty nice. It feels pretty good to have bought a sanctions business right now. This is the #1 leading authority in the world in terms of sanctions, training, compliance and I don't know about -- well, I presume every one of your firms, our firms is completely focused about sanctions, which is a moving target. And ACAMS employs the world-leading authority. It's lady out of the U.K. She is in seminars where everybody wants to hear her. All the community of the 90,000 members wants to know how they've changed from yesterday to today. And what needs to be done and its sanctions and crypto and beneficial ownership and all these various products, the potential for webinars, conferences. So the initial sense we get from the ACAMS training is pretty good. And it's -- we don't always get bad luck on timing and it's also good luck. So hopefully, that's what's going to materialize. And the fact that we've been doing exceptionally well with CPI, which some people said, what went wrong with you? Why did you pay 20x plus to buy this small company in the U.S.? Well, it's doing great, and these companies are worth a lot more than they used to be. So with any luck, ACAMS will join the trend, but it's too early to say.

Other questions from the room? If no, Olivier, questions from the web?

Yes. So a question from [ Jaron Baxter ]. The new strategy still doesn't seem to convince the market even through some times since its announcement and the beginning of its implementation has lapsed. Actually, the discount has widened even more. Does this mean that the strategy needs to be amended? Does the dialogue with investors cause you reflect upon amending the strategy?

We're a long-term investor. The strategy is what we said, and we're going to execute this strategy. Thank you very much.

An additional question from [ Jaron ]. Last but not least, how about distributing the shareholding in BV as a special dividend as investors could consider the stake in BV, is too large?

We're not going to engage in this direction of distributing it to our shareholders. Anyway, I will not, so that's one thing. Is it too large? It's a legitimate question. If I had listened to people saying it was too large when the stock was trading at EUR 20, we would have left EUR 1 billion on the table last year. So it's really interesting. Everybody says, BV is a great company, a lot of analysts are buying it. It's riding good trends. It's trading well, but we should have less. Well, that's not very generous. We'd like to have plenty of BV. We think it's a great company. Now does that mean over time, we won't rebalance a little bit depending on opportunities? I don't know. We did it in 2018. So that's what we're prepared to say at this point.

Thank you. A question from Samarth Agrawal from Citi. It's about margin outlook. Given the current economic scenario and supply chain pressures, what is the degree to which any additional price increases can be passed on to customers?

Wish we knew. This is all happening like right now in real time. Last year, we -- our companies did a pretty good job, that we would not have these results if they hadn't been able to pass through. Those who had a little more difficulty, learned some very useful lessons. One general comment. I mean, we were discussing with one of my friends here, many people don't know how to manage it in inflationary times. We have not lived through inflationary times over the course of the last many years. And now we're looking at 8% inflation in the U.S. We're looking at -- your guess is as good as mine, but maybe 5% or 6% inflation in Europe. The real interest rates are massively negative. So there's a learning process involved in companies as to how to price, how to manage flexibly their production and cost, et cetera. So last year, I think, was very satisfying better than I thought. I'm thinking, for example, of Constantia did a very good job last year, in particular, but not only. And so we are watching this very carefully with the management teams, all of them, no exception. But we cannot today be definitive as to what the result will be because you see the oil price goes to $140, it comes down to $100, it bounces all over the place. So we'll unfortunately have to see as the year unfolds, how successful we have been. But generally, the competitive position of the companies are pretty good or very good. And we hope that we'll come out of this in good shape.

And the impact will be very different company by company. As Andre mentioned, Constantia had an impact on its gross margin, but was capable of maintaining the EBITDA margin. We have companies like ACAMS or CPI who are expanding margins and others who are going to have some tightening pressure on gross margin. So the whole portfolio has different reaction to the current environment.

Some are late when it goes up, but they manage to keep it when it comes down, and that's when you have the parachute effect. So we'll have to see how it plays out.

Thank you. Additional question from Samarth Agrawal, again, from Citi. I understand you cannot comment on IHS, but want to understand your thoughts regarding the company as part of your portfolio over the medium term.

It's a company we've been backing now since 2013. We will be, long term, a very sizable shareholder in IHS. And we find the share price very disappointing, and that's all really we can say right now.

Strategy is a good fit. We're looking for growth in ESG positive companies, and IHS is in this category. So it is to deliver performance because we want to invest in companies, which is creating value. But if it's creating value, it has the right profile to be in your portfolio.

Thank you. We have 2 questions from Joren Van Aken from Degroof. It's about NAV. How much of growth in portfolio was from multiple expansion and how much from result growth? Second question, are you using the original acquisition multiples for CPI? So did you fully reverse the previous impairment?

So in terms of what happened this year with the net asset value, I will -- I can give you a little bit more color on that. But there is one very important driver, which is taking into account the 2022 forecast. As we calculate the net asset value at the end of the year, 2021, we use 2021 actual and 2022 budget or forecast and taking this into account and actually substituting 2020 for 2022 results in an increase in the net asset value, whereas the multiple effect has been slightly negative at the end of 2021 when compared to 2020. But this has been offset by the deleverage of the portfolio companies. So most of the increase in valuation at the unlisted companies, if I exclude, obviously, the impact of IHS, Cromology, is resulting from the change in the aggregates that we use.

So its results, but with a peculiar effect linked to the method as well.

Yes. And regarding the second question on CPI, we are not using the acquisition multiple here. We've fully moved to the peer-based sample average multiple. So there is no change there, and we haven't reversed the impairment.

From an NAV point of view, from a valuation point of view, CPI has very much recovered in terms of the valuation -- its valuation in our NAV by virtue of the fact that its operating metrics, as described by Jerome, has gone up. And the multiple applied is based on the basket of comparables, obviously, imperfect because there's no exactly company that's exactly the same, but a stable panel of comparables.

To make it simple on CPI, the LTM EBITDA is 40% higher than what it was 2 years ago when we acquired the business.

4-0.

4-0, so no surprise, the valuation is higher than our cost.

Thank you. No more questions from the web.

Lunch? Okay. So thank you very much.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you.