Good morning or good afternoon all and welcome to the Apax Global Alpha's 2022 Q2 results call. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question in the Q&A portion of today's call, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad, or by using the Q&A box provided on the webcast. I will now hand over to Ralf Gruss to begin. Ralf, please go ahead when you are ready. Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining AGA's third quarter results presentation. My name is Ralf Gruss. I'm the COO of Apax Partners and a member of Apax Partners Investment Committee for Apax Global Alpha. I look forward to taking you through the presentation and will answer any questions you may have at the end of the call. Before I go into the details of this quarter, I'd like to start with the long-term value creation AGA has achieved to date for its shareholders. As you can see from the slide, AGA has delivered cumulative NAV returns of 91.2% over the last five years, which translates to 15.2% on an annualized basis. This performance is right at the top of the target range AGA has set out at the time of its IPO. Key to this performance is the Apax Funds investment approach, which is rooted in a desire to seek assets that are under-optimized within the four core target sectors of Apax, and then to unlock the full potential of these businesses by accelerating financial performance, as well as increasing their relative valuation multiples as that potential is unlocked. We call this approach mining the hidden gems, and it has been coupled with the discipline to sell once that potential has been unlocked, and once the asset is recognized as a gem by other market participants. We believe that this approach is an all-weather strategy, as it does not rely on tailwinds of financial markets for value creation, and should continue to generate attractive private equity returns throughout different economic cycles. With this in mind, let me now update you on AGA's recent performance. It goes without saying that uncertainties and challenges surrounding the global economy have rarely been so high as at the moment. Against this backdrop, I'm pleased to report that AGA's performance continues to remain robust, with a positive total NAV return of 3.2% in the third quarter. This is a testament to the portfolio continuing to perform well and showing resilience, and I'll give more color on this shortly. Investing successfully in the current environment requires deep asset insight and an increased margin of safety, and the Apax Funds continue to follow a disciplined approach to new investments, remaining focused on coveted categories within the four core focus sectors. Within these focus sectors, the Apax Funds have made three new private equity investments in the quarter, which I will review later. In addition to these three new investments, demand for the Apax Funds portfolio companies remains strong, with two exits closed in the period, both at very significant uplifts. Let me also touch upon AGA's balance sheet and liquidity position, a relevant question in the current market environment, and as we are generally seeing a slowdown in private equity deal activity. AGA has a strong balance sheet. In addition to available cash and its undrawn revolver, AGA has invested close to EUR 400 million in derived investments. As you know, these are predominantly loan instruments sourced with an inside-out approach, leveraging the broader Apax platform. Not only has this part of the portfolio delivered attractive returns when compared to benchmarks over the years, in particular in this market environment, it adds stability in addition to being a source of capital to cover future private equity calls. Also to reiterate, the board takes a very prudent approach to liquidity and capital management with rigorous scenario modeling and stress testing when agreeing new commitments to the Apax Funds. This approach provides the board with confidence regarding commitments that AGA makes to the Apax private equity funds. As discussed in prior calls, private equity as an asset class typically outperforms after periods of market volatility. With the commitments made, AGA is also well-positioned to play offense and participate in new investment opportunities as they come along. With that, let me now discuss the private equity portfolio in more detail. AGA's private equity portfolio has grown to 80 carefully selected companies. The total value of AGA's private equity investments at 30 September was approximately EUR 1.2 billion, and performance in the third quarter was stable, with the private equity investments posting a 3% total return. The portfolio is well diversified across the four core sectors and by investment vintages, and also as the Apax Funds invest globally, the funnel for new investment ideas is wide and allows the Apax Funds to invest in the most attractive opportunities across a broad spectrum. This sector and geographic diversification also eliminate the risk from being solely exposed to a single industry or geography. Let me go into more detail on performance and private equity, and I will touch on operating performance, valuation multiples, and leverage. Starting with the most important one, operating performance. Despite the challenging markets, the portfolio companies continue to perform well and are showing resilience. Many companies have demonstrated good pricing power in face of higher costs. This is also reflected in the numbers with LTM revenue growth across the portfolio of 17.7% and LTM EBITDA growth of 17.6% over the last 12 months. These growth rates are broadly in line with growth rates posted at half year, so you can see the resilience. Having said that, in the current environment, there's no room for complacency, and the deal teams remain vigilant for any early signs of weakness. For example, order books or extraordinary inflation which cannot be passed on to customers. Let me give you a bit more color as to what is happening in the portfolio at the moment. If you look at the portfolio in more detail, the picture's obviously very nuanced by sub-sector and by portfolio company and may even vary significantly within the same sub-sector. Let me, however, share some general observations. In software, retention rates remain high overall due to the sticky nature of the products. However, we are seeing some signs of weakness in new bookings for some of the companies. In IT services, we continue to see good growth across the portfolio, albeit some companies are seeing signs of slowing of pipeline conversion as some new projects may be delayed. In healthcare, and here specifically in MedTech and healthcare services, underlying demand tends to be less cyclical, and the pressures are more on labor cost and supply chain focused. These companies are focusing more on their supply chains, if you take, you know, the MedTech subsector or combating high attrition and wage increases in healthcare services. Moving on to the services sector. Density-driven businesses and residential services continue to show good resilience given the largely non-discretionary nature of the services. Although those businesses typically have a higher exposure to blue-collar labor and transport costs and are experiencing incrementally more margin pressure compared to the other subsectors. In internet consumer, online marketplaces operate with a low level of fixed costs in winner-takes-most markets and are generally mission-critical for their customers and continue to show strong top and bottom-line performance. In the niche consumer packaged goods, the three companies that the Apax Funds have invested in continue to see strong demand for their premium branded consumables, and they are also mainly exposed to the U.S. and have so far largely been insulated from the slowdown. Now, moving on to valuation multiples. Valuation multiples across the portfolio have again slightly decreased when compared to half year. The average EV/EBITDA multiple is now 17.2x, which is slightly below when compared to half year. Excluding the residual stakes in previously IPO portfolio companies like ThoughtWorks and Duck Creek, which in total represent 15% of the private equity portfolio, the average valuation multiple of the private portfolio companies now stands at seventeen one times. Sorry, 17.1x versus 17.8x at half year. Last, leverage levels across the portfolio. Leverage remains at moderate levels, with the average net leverage across the portfolio being 4.9x. Again, as a reminder, the mining the hidden gems investment approach of the Apax funds simply relies less on high leverage levels, but more on operational improvements. Let me now move to the next page, where you can see how these factors have translated into returns in the quarter. In line with what I've just discussed, you can see here that the resilience in operating performance is the biggest driver of returns in the period. Movements in that debt show up as a negative here, as broadly flat net leverage multiples, the 4.9x I've just spoken about, and you get to a negative movement as the bridge shows equity returns. Movements in comparable multiples reflect the reduction over the quarter I just touched upon. The other movement really to highlight here is the positive foreign exchange movement, which is largely a function of the US dollar appreciating during the period. However, stepping back from the details again, the key point to take away from the slide is that portfolio companies continue to perform and grow, and this is offsetting the multiple compression we've seen. This leads me on to the next two slides with an update on new investments and exits from the private equity portfolio. Starting with investments. The largest investment in the period was EcoOnline. EcoOnline is a software business developing software in the environment, health and safety space with an aim to create safe and sustainable workplaces while ensuring compliance and environmental sustainability. The investment thesis of the Apax funds to acquire a strong software platform that is mission-critical to customers with a clear growth opportunity across Europe and beyond. The company was acquired in a public to private transaction. Going by size of new investments. Pickles Auctions is a new investment in the services sector. Pickles is Australia's leading marketplace for used vehicles, salvage, industrial, agriculture, and general goods. The investment thesis here is to back a high-quality market leader with a strong growth trajectory, which is in the early stages of a meaningful digital transformation, and to apply the best practices and expertise developed from prior investments in this category, including experience gained from Trade Me and CarExpert. Finally, the third investment, the Apax Funds acquired Xeneta, which is a leading ocean and airfreight rate benchmarking and market analytics platform. The investment thesis here is to invest in a category leader that has a unique offering and a sizable addressable market, which is currently largely untapped, allowing it to differentiate its offering and create barriers to entry to its data assets and breadth of offerings. The investment in Xeneta was made by the Apax Digital Fund II. Now moving on to exits. There were two exits that completed this quarter, both at very attractive uplifts to unaffected valuations. The uplift on the exit from Attenti was 33% and the uplift on the exit from Lexitas was 41%. Both of these exits have been trade sales. Just while we're on this, you know, while exits during 2021 saw a high share of public offerings due to the strength of the markets and attractive valuations achievable, the Apax funds are in no way dependent on that exit route and will for each investment identify the value maximizing route to exit. In fact, if you look back over the past five years, IPOs have accounted for less than a fifth of all exits. Now to conclude and, you know, reviewing year-to-date, 2022, the Apax funds have collectively exited four portfolio companies since the start of the year at an average gross multiple of invested capital of 3.3x and an average uplift of 27% with respect to previous unaffected valuations. You know, while exit activity is lower than for, you know, the boom years of 2020 and 2021, we are confident of further opportunities in the near term, given the quality and maturity of large parts of the Apax Funds portfolio. Moving on to the next slide. I've touched upon uplifts for the two most recent investments already. To put these numbers into context, this chart shows uplifts achieved on exits over the long term and across a number of funds going right back to 2014. As you can see, there is a pattern of consistent significant uplifts from roughly 25% to almost 50%. What this shows is that uplifts are not a function of cycle as these funds cover a range of investment vintages. Also, an additional point to highlight here is that many portfolio companies in the Apax funds were acquired at a discount when compared to relevant peers. For example, when you look at the investments that were made by the Apax X Fund, the portfolio companies were acquired at entry at an average discount of 22% versus peers on entry multiples. Now both these factors, uplifts on exits and entry multiples at a discount when compared to peers, it should provide you as investors in AGA with comfort over the robustness of AGA's NAV, but also the ability for future value creation. Finally, let me move on to AGA's allocation to derived investments. As a reminder, these investments are called derived because the investments are sourced from knowledge derived from Apax Partners' activity in private equity. You can see the statistics here on the chart. All the investments benefited from either private equity style due diligence or insights, even current or prior ownership of the underlying businesses. AGA's derived investments are an important component of AGA's investment strategy and concept. There's a couple of points I'd like to highlight. First, the invested approach of focusing on opportunities where Apax can generate a differentiated insight due to its large and global private equity business has delivered strong returns over the years. The derived debt portfolio has achieved a 34.6% five-year cumulative return. If you had invested in a broad leveraged loan index, you would have only generated 15.8% per annum. Sorry, 15.8% return. There is real alpha here, driven by the insights-driven investment approach employed. Second, Derived Investments add stability, especially in more volatile market environments. Derived Investments are a capital buffer and the source of liquidity that can be used to fund capital calls if needed. Third, you know, holding Derived Investments is reducing the cash drag of the fund as it reduces the need to hold significant cash balances over the long term. As you can see on the chart, you know, the weighted average of the debt investments in the derived investments portfolio averages 10.4x, which is a very attractive level of returns, in particular, given that almost two-thirds of the derived debt investments are in first lien secured loans. Last, obviously, the income from these investments underpins AGA's dividend policy. To summarize on the page, the insight-led investment approach for derived debt has delivered strong returns over the years. This part of the portfolio provides resilience and a capital buffer to AGA, and the income generated from this part of the portfolio also supports AGA's dividend policy. Before we go into Q&A, let me just summarize a couple of key takeaways. Really three to highlight. AGA has a strong track record reflecting the high quality of the underlying portfolio companies. Two, you know, the portfolio continues to perform well and shows resilience, and we continue to see uplift on exits. Three, AGA's robust balance sheet and healthy liquidity position allows it to participate in future private equity value creation, you know, through the commitments the fund has made to future Apax private equity funds. To conclude, you know, AGA, you know, continues to be positioned well and continues to deliver attractive returns for AGA's investors. With that, I'm now happy to answer any question and hand it back to the operator. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question today, and you've joined us by the phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your headset is fully plugged in and unmuted locally. That's Star one if you've joined us by the phone. If you've joined us via the webcast, you may use the Q&A chat box provided. Our first question today comes from Charles Murphy of Singer Capital Markets. Charles, please go ahead. Your line is open. Ralf, good morning. Couple of questions in two different areas. In terms of investments and exit activity, are you exiting to strategics or to other GPs? Your new investments, where are you sourcing them from, and what are you seeing in the wider market? Hi, Charles. Morning. On exit activity, you know, the two exits that we have that closed in the period, you know, both were to strategics. You know, the one corporate, you know, the one buyer is backed by a financial investor. In terms of new deal activity, look, you know, it's obviously chasing opportunities, you know, in all parts of the market segments. I think as we've discussed in prior calls and obviously different to prior years, you know, with public markets, you know, with public market valuations correcting, you know, P2Ps might become an interesting source of deals over time again. Again, if you think about the, you know, new deals done in the periods, EcoOnline, for instance, was acquired through a P2P. Brilliant. Then we've seen, I've seen in the FT, one of the, I think, Citibank's been curtailing subscription lines. Is this something that's affecting Apax or widespread to the whole of the market, or is this just Citibank on a small section of what it's doing? Yeah, I haven't seen that particular piece of news, and I can't comment and don't wanna comment on what Citi is doing. We are, you know, operating subscription lines across the funds that we run. Okay. I think that's it. Thank you very much. Thanks, Charles. We have a question from the webcast. What caused the QOQ cash drawdown from EUR 150 million to EUR 89 million? Yeah, thanks for that question. You know, that nicely ties onto the question we just had on subscription lines. The Apax funds operate capital call facilities where essentially new investments are bridged until calls are made, you know, from the investors. The drawdown in cash during the quarter is in particular from investments made previously by the Apax X Fund and the Apax Digital Fund. We have another question from the webcast. I note from the appendix slide 18 that adjusting for M&A, that the underlying company last 12-month revenue and EBITDA growth has accelerated since June. This is really impressive given the deteriorating macro environment. I appreciate your model is all about micro-opportunities from mining hidden gems, and you gave us the sector overview in your presentation. Can you give some more color on the accelerating organic revenue and EBITDA growth? Yeah. Thanks for the question. I mean, it takes me back to what I've discussed more generally across the portfolio, which is that the portfolio continues to perform well and is resilient. You know, underlying EBITDA growth remains strong. I mean, given the size and the mix of the portfolio, you know, movements from quarter- to- quarter are also driven by various factors among the portfolio. I'm not sure. I'm unable to pinpoint a specific company here. I'd wanna leave it, you know, with the general statement that it's a well and resilient performance across the portfolio, you know, which is underpinning that you know that EBITDA growth. We have a follow-up from Charles Murphy of Singer Capital Markets. Charles, please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah. Just on the Ralf, sorry. On the derived debt portfolio, we've seen quite a lot of stress in debt markets. Is there still enough liquidity there for the portfolio to sort of act to be accessible if you needed to raise capital? Yeah, Charles. As you know, in terms of the way the derived debt portfolio is managed is that the ideas are sourced bottom up, you know, drawing on, like, insight from our private equity activities. The portfolio's always been managed also on a top-down basis. You know, considering and obviously risk, but also liquidity. If you look at the portfolio, around two-thirds of the loan investments are in first lien secured debt. You know, these first lien loans are, you know, usually more liquid and, you know, while pricing in first lien syndicated markets has reduced, you know, we continue to see liquidity for these instruments. Excellent. Thank you very much. We have another question from the webcast. If inflation stays higher as well as the global rate situation remains tighter for longer, how would that impact the valuation of your portfolio? I think it's a good question, and the answer here is probably nuanced and there's a lot of detail you could debate here. We look on higher rates and generally other higher interest rates. I think, you know, what we're seeing in leverage markets, let me start there, is that, you know, leverage for new deals. Leverage levels have come down over the last couple of months, which is probably not a surprise. If I look at valuation levels in the private markets, you know, for stable, or sorry, for high quality companies, valuation levels are still holding up. Not sure that's a surprise. I mean, again, if you look at the historic precedents and what happened in judging the past experience, you know, valuations in private markets are moving slower, you know, when compared to public markets. Look, in terms of higher rates and valuation multiples more generally, and this is a backward-looking comment now, you know, what we obviously see is that public market valuations in the last six- nine months have been impacted as interest rates have gone up, but mostly, you know, for these super high growth companies, pre-pro-profit type companies to which the Apax funds have less exposure to. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question today, that's star one on your telephone keypad or the Q&A box provided on the webcast. What do you make of other investment companies that have struggled to cover their yield? How does AGA compare? This is from the webcast. Sorry, could you repeat that question again? What do you make of other investment companies that have struggled to cover their yield, and how does AGA compare? Well, I don't wanna comment on other investment trusts. What I can say for AGA is that AGA has access to multiple sources of capital, you know, to support its dividend payment. It has a derived portfolio, you know, which produces a recurring income yield, obviously irrespective of exit activity, you know, from the private equity funds which contributes to paying the income yield. You know, as I said, you know, there are multiple sources of capital in the fund. The balance sheet is strong. I think the fund has the ability, you know, to pay its dividends. Next one from the webcast. Were there any new fund commitments which drove unfunded commitments marginally up to EUR 1.189 billion from EUR 1.152 billion last quarter? No, there hasn't been any new fund commitments. You know, this is mainly, you know, small movements, you know, from, you know, from foreign exchange, and, you know, some distributions which are technically irrevocable. As a final reminder, that's star one or the Q&A box provided on the webcast. Should we expect longer holding periods from deals completed in 2020 and 2021 akin to the GFC? Again, it's a very general question. I think it very much depends on. It's a company-by-company answer. It would be a company-by-company answer. As I said, you know, we're still seeing demand for high quality companies. You know, we've had two exits complete in the quarter. Also given the maturity and diversification of the portfolio, I'm optimistic with regards to further exits. I think whether the average is gonna move for the AGA portfolio specifically, it's difficult to say. As we have no further questions, this will conclude today's Q&A session, and I'll hand back to Ralf for any concluding remarks. Well, thank you all for, you know, attending, you know, the call this morning. You know, I hope, you know, it's helpful to give you a good understanding as to where the fund is. As I said, you know, it's performing well and the portfolio is resilient. Thanks for your time and have a good day.