Deutsche Beteiligungs AG

XETRA:DBAN

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Roland Rapelius, executive]

Good morning. Thank you, operator, and good morning to the call participants. I'm Roland Rapelius, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations, and it's my pleasure to welcome you this morning to the third quarter conference call.

I'm here with Tom Alzin, the Spokesman of the Board of Management; and Dr. Matthias Döll, who is Director Legal and Shareholder Relations. And without much ado, I now would like to hand over to Tom. Please go ahead, Tom.

[Tom Alzin, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Roland. As you may see on the slide, we have 1 new face here with Matthias Döll, who is taking over from Roland Rapelius who has decided to leave the company. It's really with sadness that we see him go. He has been instrumental in raising capital for this company, be it via the share placement we did a couple of years ago and also in the placement of the convertible, which we just recently do, and we come to that later. In the meantime, Dr. Matthias Döll, who has been our Head of -- Director Legal and Shareholder Relations and also in charge of our Board will step in and try to fill the void Roland is leaving.

With that, I would pass on to the next slide, where we are -- where you see that it has been a rather uneventful quarter, unfortunately, in terms of earnings. But we have been, as usual, very, very busy with one very good exit, at least we deem it a very good exit, with in-tech, where we achieved a money multiple of above 3x in less than 3 years.

Further to that, we did 6 add-ons in Q3. And just recently, actually yesterday, we announced the signing of a further transaction for the ECF fund with the signing of UNITY, another very exciting company where we have been in touch with the founder since the beginning of last year. And it's a primary transaction. It's a transaction with the owners, something we really do like, and also a transaction where we feel we have been really partnering with the actors and not only buying at the highest price.

We have been -- we have raised capital of EUR 100 million by the issuance of a convertible bond, and you actually rightly may ask why we did that in such turbulent times. Quite frankly, I'm happy that given the events of this week that we did it when we did it. And in the annex of this presentation, on Slide 16, you will see that actually our opportunity funnel is the highest number since 10 quarters.

So we are in an environment where money, again, has a value where we see a lot of opportunities where we can pick and choose, and where we can pick it and choose at very attractive conditions, be it on the equity side, but also more and more so on the debt side. And hence, although the convertible has not been placed at the best terms, we could have waited for maybe an even better environment, we are very, very comfortable that this, in the midterm, will be a very accretive measure for the shareholders in the long run as is actually proving our share buyback program because I, actually, cannot believe at which prices I'm right now buying back the shares for our long-term shareholders.

Coming over to the NAV per share, year-to-date, after 9 months, we must say we have this year so low -- underperformed, 4.2% year-to-date NAV growth is clearly unsatisfactory. We're working to address on that. On the other hand, there are some headwinds also in some portfolio companies, and we try to reflect that at a very early stage and always have a very clean book here.

Nothing exciting to report on the Fund Investment Services side, which will be -- ultimately be driven by new funds coming in and fund closings after successful fundraisings.

We've specified our forecast. I want to reiterate that we were within our initial guidance. We just narrowed our guidance down and yes, a bit on the lower end, which was a cautious step we took.

Moving over to the next slide. I think it's a bit of a generic slide given what we've talked before. So our net asset value stands at roughly EUR 670 million. Fund Investment Services were EUR 11.7 million. This leads to a group income of EUR 25.7 million, as I said, unsatisfactory, but we're working on that, and we can only play the cards we've been dealt with. I mean, you are following the earnings seasons quite closely, I assume. And at least, I feel it's a mixed bag out there right now.

Moving over to the next slide. In terms of transaction activity, we have been able to sell in-tech in this quarter. And deviating from the usual stuff, just to give you an idea, of how seriously we are marking our book and also that we are definitely not one of the private equities or listed trusts out there where people are questioning the bookmarks. in-tech was sold at a 63% uplift in valuations on the book value. We carried it 6 months before the deal signed here.

So this gives you an idea that we feel very, very comfortable about our fair valuations, and we obviously, even in quarters like this, where the -- or even years like this, where the outcome is clearly unsatisfactory, and I'm stating that, and it's really me as a major shareholder in this company who is also suffering here, we're trying to address that, but we are very, very serious on our marks, and we feel very, very comfortable. And given that where our share is trading right now and buying back shares at these prices is just a very, very accretive measure we are doing.

Again, we continued to build out the companies we acquired. We did one add-on acquisition with akquinet, two with AOE and 3 with operasan, with operasan for the first in years ahead of budget and migrating into a very nice case for us.

Moving over to the next slide. Yes, you see that the split is very much diversified. Obviously, our growth sectors have proven well. And you see that our top 5 were risk or a chunk with 34% of the net asset value is dominated by companies which are about to be sold. And actually, the sale of in-tech has closed, so that will turn into cash and the same for Solvares. So we feel very, very comfortable where we are, and it's a very, very granular book.

You will also note that some companies over the quarters have moved from the top 5 -- top 1 to 5 bracket into a lower quartile bracket [indiscernible] so -- and that gives you a feeling of how we treat valuations. And obviously, not all companies are in-techs and some large companies, we have taken a more cautious stance, and that actually has also impacted our quarter, and quite frankly this year.

On the next slide, Page 7, you see that we are still by far the market leader. And actually, our #2 competitors with 22 transactions, having serious difficulties raising a fund and actually is about to close the German office. So it's a market there where we also -- for the first time in 20 years, where I am in the private equity industry, we see some consolidation taking place. And we are very, very confident that we will be one of the winner of this consolidation. And to be early on and to be able to be aggressive when others can't, that's also one of the reasons why, again, we raised our convertible bonds.

Yes, we still are buying a lot from families and founders, which is our dominating place. Otherwise, it's a slide you know very well, and I think we can move on to the next slide on the net asset value per share and net asset value.

And here, just 2 messages I wanted to tell you. We -- and our guidance is based on the net asset value, which is okay. But the net asset value guidance obviously did not reflect at the beginning of the year because it was not planned. It does not reflect a share buyback program, which -- paying out EUR 20 million just -- is cash out and reduces our NAV forecast by EUR 20 million.

On the NAV per share. It's quite a different story. But our guidance at the beginning of the year was based on NAV and not NAV per share. And hence, this EUR 20 million impact of a very accretive share buyback was obviously not reflected because otherwise, we would have also gone ad-hoc. And also -- what also has impacted our guidance on the NAV is the introduction of a private market factor, and we'll come to that later. The private market factor is there to dampen a bit the volatility of our results, in line with how valuations at our other competitors are being treated. But in the market of rising stock markets and where we are lagging now compared to our prior quarters and that's also one of the reasons of our ad-hoc treatment here.

So 2 special effects, which, at the beginning of the year, were definitely not budgeted and not planned as such because we were not sure if they would materialize or not. And that definitely has impacted our NAV. And I personally will guide you more on the NAV per share because NAV per share, it's really my key metric as, again, one of the major shareholders in this company.

With that, I would hand over to Roland, who will give you -- guide you through a bit of the granularity of the financials we have disclosed. Roland?

[Roland Rapelius, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Tom. I'm taking over here, onto the next slide, Slide #9, that is. Additions and disposals. Clearly, the key major additions in the 9-month period were NOKERA and ProMik, which by far made up for the majority of the EUR 63 million of additions. And in terms of disposals, it was clearly R+S and GMM Pfaudler were the main contributors to the minus EUR 65 million. And so the real -- and these 2 additions and disposals almost equaled out in the 9-month period. So the increase on the portfolio value was mainly driven by the retention value and to the change in value, we have, as always, a separate slide coming on that slide with the capital split.

Here, clearly the potential earnings of EUR 27 million were driven by predominantly the health care, industry and industrytech and IT services and software sector. And please keep in mind, in industry and industrytech, we also have companies such as congatec included, which contributed very nicely to that change in earnings.

Change in debt, clearly, was mainly driven by the health care sector, and that was here, first and foremost, the add-on activity, which Tom has pointed out a few slides before, where we did 3 add-ons in operasan, and of course, this increases the debt.

The operating performance in the first 9 months was slightly negative here with minus EUR 0.7 million, which is always the sum of change in earnings and the change in debt. And so the net gains and losses on measurement were mainly driven by the change in multiples, and the change in multiples of plus EUR 40.2 million were mainly driven by a broad range of the portfolio companies. Roughly more than half of the portfolio companies had a positive multiple effect, plus please keep in mind that transaction effects always play a role in this column here. And here, we, in the 9-month period, specifically are talking about in-tech and Solvares.

And then we have miscellaneous. These are currency effects and other effects from final liquidation, as you know. So these are the miscellaneous effects.

On the next slide, we come to the Fund Investment Services and yes, I can only follow up on what Tom already said. Nothing exciting to report about. The top line is increasing, and that's mainly driven by the ECF IV fund, our new fund, but also from our Luxembourg activities. And also for the first time, ELF Capital are contributing here, so a slight increase in the top line. And cost increases were lower than the increase in the top line, so we have a positive impact here on the EBITA in the first 9 months, and we are fully on track to achieve our guidance of EUR 9 million to EUR 13 million EBT for the segment for the full year.

Then having a look at our financial base for the investment plans and here on the right side, you can see that our cash and cash equivalents of roughly EUR 32 million, plus the undrawn credit lines of EUR 90 million add up to EUR 122 million vis-a-vis the co-investment commitments of EUR 300 million. But please keep in mind, very important, the EUR 122 million do not yet include the inflow from the convertible placement of EUR 100 million, and the inflow from the closed exits from in-tech and Solvares. So along the inflow from the convertible and from in-tech would lead to roughly EUR 150 million in the months to come going forward.

So that should be then a very narrow gap from available funds vis-a-vis the co-investment commitments. And that's a very, very good base to cover our attractive investment opportunities and to seize them, like Tom pointed out before.

And now I'm handing again back to Tom for the next slide.

[Tom Alzin, executive]

Yes. One slide, we added because we thought it might make sense, obviously. I'm sure that most of you are aware of our regulatory requirements, but I just wanted to flag again how detrimental it is to have volatility in our valuations, and that's also one of the reasons behind my push to get -- to value accordingly with the private market factor like our peers do to get volatility down.

And I acknowledge that this year, it has hampered a bit our NAV growth, but that's only a temporary effect. Because what we expect this will do is that it will smoothen the quarterly outflows, which you see are quite high and has no seasonal pattern whatsoever. And my issue as a CEO of the company, who's trying to also give you the best guidance I can and also give you comfort in owning our shares is that I'm, by regulatory reasons, required to issue an ad-hoc if our quarter deviates significantly from prior year quarter.

And as you see, that's basically, in nearly 50% of the quarters, that's the case. And I'm always due to issue out a warning that the quarter will be significantly better or significantly lower than the prior quarter, which always irritates markets a bit and always causes a bit of panic, especially if people are already nervous like in markets of -- these, here. So we are working hard to address that, but I also want again to educate you here that there is no deeper meaning behind the ad-hoc or it's also not us taking our guidance lower or higher. Obviously, we did narrow a bit our guidance, but we stick with our -- well within our initial guidance. And so there's no reason to panic once we issue an ad-hoc given that the quarter will be significantly higher or lower than the prior year quarter because there's absolutely nothing you can read out into that.

And obviously, my main issue is to really close the extreme doubts of volatility we're seeing from quarter-to-quarter by tweaking a bit the valuations without tweaking on the high side. We always -- and we strive to have at least a significant uplift when we sell something. Obviously, the uplift would not be as significant as it was in the case of in-tech, but if that's the case, we are very happy because the outcome is much better than we expected it to be. But nevertheless, I'm also a firm believer that having an uplift when you sell a company gives shareholders a comfort that we are serious about our valuations.

Moving over to the last slide. As I said, we specified our forecast in -- within our initial guidance at the beginning of the year, obviously, on the lower end. I think given the impact on our net asset value, our share buyback has, our net asset value per share, we'll do a bit better than our net asset value guidance. So we are aiming here at EUR 36 to EUR 38 per share, which obviously you've seen the shares trading around EUR 24 is a huge, huge discount. And I think I cannot remember in a very long time that DBAG has been trading in that kind of discount and at that attractive valuations.

I also -- yes, it's very unsatisfactory, but we're addressing that, and we're addressing that by being consistent performance, by trying to lower our valuation, and above all, immediately by buying back our shares. We are in the market and we're buying back roughly 25%, the regulatory maximum we are allowed to do because we think it's one of the best trades we can do.

I think also we are quite close to do our first transaction with ELF Capital this year -- this quarter, the quarter which has just begun. And just to give you an idea also, if we're deploying capital here, the IRR on this debt deal is calculated to be in the mid-teens. So even with having a convertible with a 5% coupon, this will be very, very accretive way of deploying money. And we are ready to deploy money based on our increasing set of opportunities we're seeing.

[Roland Rapelius, executive]

Yes. Once again, thank you very much, and thanks also for your interest in our third quarter call. And without much to do then, wish you a good rest of the day and goodbye.