Taaleri Oyj (TAALA) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to Taaleri's Half Year Financial Report Presentation. We're doing this for the first time in English, but we aim to make this a tradition. And my name is Peter Ramsay. I'm the CEO of Taaleri. And with me today I have Minna Smedsten, our CFO, and she will take you through the numbers in a while. So our second quarter highlights. If we start off with the results in our investing operations, they were twofold. On the one hand, we had changes in our fair values, negative changes in our fair values in our Strategic Investments segment. But on the other hand, we booked a EUR 6.7 million profit as an earn-out from our Finsilva holding that we already sold in 2016. Our Bio fund had a successful first closing, it hit its target size of EUR 80 million. And within our Housing Fund VIII, which we closed already at the end of last year, they did their first investment. And then they also -- the real estate team did two investments for the special mutual funds that we manage for Aktia. And within the renewable energy space, we continue to build out the development -- project development portfolio. So now we, in total, have 14 projects in the portfolio, and this is a very important building block as a pipeline for our upcoming SolarWind III fund. And within Garantia, our credit guarantee business, they had an excellent operational quarter with a combined ratio of 31%. Now financially, our second quarter numbers were such that the continuing earnings decreased by 14.3% from the corresponding quarter last year to EUR 9.3 million. And this is split between the private equity segment, continuing earnings, which fell 14.4% to EUR 4.8 million. And the decrease in the private equity segment was mainly due to one-off income that we received last year in the corresponding quarter when we had the final close for SolarWind II. And the continuing earnings in our Strategic Investments segment decreased by EUR 4 million, 12.2%, mainly due to future reservations as a consequence of the underwriting product mix, but I will come back to this later. We didn't book any performance fees in the quarter, and the net earnings from our investment operations was EUR 2.3 million, and this includes the changes in fair value. So the income on the group level was EUR 11.9 million compared to EUR 14.3 million last year. Our assets under management increased by 6.3% to EUR 2.4 billion. And maybe I should conclude by saying that 1 quarter is a very short period for our type of a business consisting of private equity funds and a long-dated credit guarantee business. And following on to my last comment, it's perhaps better to look at our trailing 12-month income and profit numbers to get things more into perspective. So on the left-hand side, you can see our continuing earnings in dark blue and then other earnings in light blue. And the continuing earnings, as you can see, they're quite stable over time. And then the performance or the other income, which consists of performance fees and net income from investments, that is a little bit more volatile. And the continuing earnings is, of course, a function of the assets under management, multiplied by the management fee -- and this means that any larger fundraise or disposal has a material impact over time on the level of that -- of the income. On the right-hand side, we can see our operating profit on a trailing 12-month basis, which now stands at 35%. Here, we have an EBIT letter. So our operating profit from our various earnings and income sources and then the expenses and costs. So the income is in dark blue and the profit and then the cost is in light blue. But perhaps it's more illustrative to look at it in a 12-month trailing perspective. And this shows a more even distribution between the various income sources and the various expense and costs leading up to the operating profit of EUR 21.3 million over the last 12 months as a trailing number. If we look at the private asset segment or private equity segment, we can start with the renewable energy. And they still have the SolarWind II fund investing and building projects, mainly in Finland, Croatia and Lithuania. And then as I mentioned, the project development portfolio, it now stands at 14 which is also important for the upcoming launch of our SolarWind III fund. On an income level, the income was EUR 4.3 million, exactly the same number as last year and the assets under management stand at EUR 1.3 billion as of the end of June. Within our other private equity operations, the Bio fund reached its target size at the first close, and we're particularly proud that the Finnish Climate Fund, it's a state-owned special assignment company, came in as an anchor investor with EUR 10 million at the first close, and they were very well flagged by Aktia's successful sales achievement that enabled us to get to the hard cap or to the target size at the first close. Now within the real estate business, as I said, Housing Fund VIII, which is still open for subscriptions and might make a new second closing during the second half, did their first investment and then the Aktia's special mutual funds where 2 investments were made. We terminated our infrastructure business during the second quarter, and we booked a EUR 350,000 write-off -- write-down for that. Here, we see the development in a trailing 12-month perspective within the private equity business or private equity segment. And as you can see, the continued earnings are fairly stable. And as earlier mentioned, new fundraise or fund disposal would then, of course, affect that in either direction. And then the light blue is mainly performance fees that then are booked as successful exits are made. Here, we have all the funds that are private equity operation is managing. And on the right-hand side, if you look at the picture there, you can see the split of the assets under management. So slightly over half is in the renewable energy space, 36% within real estate, Bioindustry is slowly but surely rising from a low level, standing at slightly under 10%, and then the rest is the other funds that we also manage. If we move over to our Strategic Investments, I'll start off with Garantia, our credit guarantee business, which had an outstanding combined ratio at 31%. As a reminder, the lower the combined ratio, the better the operational efficiency of the underwriting business. But although gross premiums were flat during the quarter. The net premiums were down EUR 500,000, showing at EUR 4 million. And the earned net premiums decreased due to the change in the provision for unearned premiums. And as I said, that was EUR 500,000. And the growth in provisions for unearned premiums was attributable to the guarantee insurance exposure, focusing more on consumers, i.e., mortgages. And I know this sounds fairly technical, but it's perfectly logical from an accounting perspective. And one could actually add that 1 quarter is also a very short time for a very long-tailed insurance business. The investment net income was minus EUR 3.9 million for the quarter, and this constituted a changes in fair value of minus EUR 4.8 million and then they booked a gain from asset -- or sales of assets of EUR 1 million. And the portfolio, which consists mainly of fixed income instruments, it's around 90%, was affected by rising interest rates and widening credit spreads during the quarter. And the -- if we look at the exposure in the Garantia insurance business, it stands at EUR 1.7 billion, went a little bit up during the quarter, and the solvency is still very strong at 238%, up from 219% at year-end. And then we go to what we call the nonstrategic investments, a portfolio that we're slowly but surely disposing of. We mentioned the Finsilva earn-out, it's booked here, although the company was already sold in 2016. But if we move to the right-hand side to the table down there, you can see that our exposure, our book value of the nonstrategic investments has risen by 12%. And the reason for that is the following: we reclassified assets of EUR 8.2 million. So now they're booked in the nonstrategic portfolio. We participated in the equity -- or the capital raise at Fellow Bank with EUR 2.5 million. And then we made some currency gains also. So that sort of even if we've been selling down the portfolio, we still ended up with an increase in the book value of this segment. Okay. Now I'll hand over to Minna Smedsten, she'll take you through the result and balance sheet. Go ahead.

Thank you, Peter. So my name is Minna Smedsten, and I'm the CFO of Taaleri. I thought that we will just wrap everything together and look how our business units are performing next to each other. So let's have a look at our results and then a few words about our financial performance and then also on the balance sheet. So when you look at our development during the Q2 and when you have the businesses lined up next to each other. And starting from left, you can see that half of our income in continuing earnings comes from Private Asset Management. And in Private Asset Management, we have the renewable energy that makes up 70% of the -- of the continuing earnings. We actually saw a nice development in the investment income in Private Asset Management of EUR 1 million. We had Finsilva earn-out, that boosted other group's income, but then we had the fair value changes in our Strategic Investments of EUR 5.5 million negative earnings. The operating profit of our Private Asset Management, that was negative, and that is due to the ramp-up of our other Private Asset Management segments. Basically, real estate and bioindustry and then also, as Peter mentioned, the rundown of the infra business. The excellent performance in other group was due to the Finsilva and we saw a very solid result of EUR 5.5 million in that group, and that is more than 70%. The group's operating profit was EUR 2.4 million, and that corresponds to 20.5%. If you then look at our quarterly development and then basically, the changes to last quarter or last quarter -- last year's second quarter, you can see the decrease in continuing earnings that was mainly due to the SolarWind closed at EUR 0.9 million extra income last year and the fair value changes that we had in our Strategic Investments segment. Then a few words about our cost side, naturally. You can see that our personnel costs, they were basically flat as also our fee expenses, but then you see an increase in our costs. And a few words about the cost. So we have extra costs in the Q2 results. And these are, naturally, some are linked to the Finsilva earn-out, some are to the infra business goodwill depreciation that we had, EUR 350,000. We also renegotiated our profit-sharing agreements to Wind II and III management fees. And all these extra costs make up EUR 900,000 for the second quarter. We had ICT projects also naturally set up and those also burdened our results. A few words about our key financial figures and now especially about H1 as we have gone through the quarterly development pretty well. So our continuing earnings for H1 was basically EUR 90 million and corresponded to the income as well, EUR 90 million. The change to last year, especially in income for H1 is also mainly due to the fair value changes now in H1 compared to last year. We had a very nice development in assets under management. So our assets under management actually grew with 6.3% to EUR 2.4 billion. And then finally, a glance at our balance sheet. So Taaleri has a strong balance sheet. We have investments in different forms. We have total assets of EUR 270 million and an own equity of EUR 182 million. We have made Strategic Investments to pace up our Private Asset Management where we have invested EUR 70 million in renewable energy and EUR 7 million in bioindustry. Garantia's investment portfolio, that EUR 143 million that is 87% of that amount is invested in fixed income instruments. So it's a very conservative portfolio. But you saw the changes that we had in the fair values during the end of the period. We also distributed EUR 34 million in dividend during the quarter. And that was for me. And then, Peter, please.

Thank you, Minna. So let's summarize the second quarter. I guess one can say it was a fairly uneventful quarter from -- apart from the sell-off in the fixed income markets and then receiving the earn-out from Finsilva. But of course, bioindustry had the first close of Bioindustry Fund I. That was a big thing. The new renewable energy focused on building SolarWind II projects as well as increasing the project development portfolio. And then finally, Garantia continued its very strong business. But of course, the net income from the investment operations continued to suffer from the rising rates. But most of the investment losses were unrealized. So that's just the change in fair value. What about the next quarter then? I'd say that a major event for Taaleri will be the launch of the SolarWind III fund. That is sort of something that we've been preparing for a while, and it will now be launched. The first close will most likely be at the beginning of next year, early innings of next year. And within the bioindustry business, we'll continue the fundraising of the bioindustry fund, and we aim for a second closing during the second half. And of course, the team will also continue to advance the torrefied biomass plant in Joensuu. The Hamina biorefinery of Taaleri associated company, Fintoil, will become operational during the third quarter of the year. And our real estate business will focus mainly on transaction -- transactions to deploy the money that we have at hand. And Garantia, of course, continues to execute the strategy. And then finally, one could say that we have already announced that we sold data center business called Ficolo, and we will book a total income of about EUR 14 million in the third quarter. Thank you very much for your attention, and have a good weekend.