Hello, and welcome to the Apax Global Alpha 2022 results call. We will begin shortly. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Apax Global Alpha 2022 results call. Thank you for your patience. My name is Daisy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question, please press Star followed by one on your telephone keypad if you've joined on the conference call. If you've joined on the webcast, please type your question in the written Q&A box at the bottom right-hand of your screen. I would now like to hand the call over to your host, Ralf Gruss, COO of Apax Partners, to begin. Ralf, please go ahead. Thank you. Hello, good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining Apax Global Alpha's annual results presentation for 2022. My name is Ralf Gruss. I'm the COO of Apax and a member of the investment committee for AGA. Also with me today is Salim Nathoo. Salim is also a member of AGA's investment committee, as well as a member of the investment committees of the Global Buyout Fund and the Apax Digital Fund. I hope to give you an overview of AGA's portfolio and the performance in 2022. Salim will then cover the private equity portfolio in more detail before we open up for questions. 2022 was a challenging year. We saw a fundamental change in the investment environment. Inflationary pressures and rising interest rates are only two factors in the changing market environment that is challenging businesses everywhere. Against this backdrop, AGA's private equity portfolio performed well, and operating performance across the portfolio companies remained strong, with LTM EBITDA growth of 18.5%. Multiple compression, particularly from the Apax funds listed holdings, took its toll and impacted total NAV return, which was negative minus 7.4% in 2022. Despite the volatility in markets though, we saw continued high demand for quality assets in the private equity portfolio, and exits were achieved at an average uplift of 15% to last unaffected valuations. In derived debt, which makes up 94% of the derived investments portfolio, now that portfolio has cushioned the overall NAV return, delivering a total return of 2.7%. With 99% of debt investments currently invested in floating rate loans, and with increasing base rates, the portfolio generates an attractive 9.9% income yield, you know, which supports the dividends. Speaking of which, the board announced a full year dividend of GBP 11.82 pence per share, in line with AGA's policy of 5% of NAV per annum. The second semiannual dividend of 5.82% per share is expected to be paid on the 3rd of April. I will go into more detail on each of those points now, but let me first give you an overview of the current portfolio. As most of you know, AGA provides shareholders with access to several private equity funds advised by Apax, and through these funds to nearly 80 portfolio companies. Salim will talk more about Apax's investment strategy. Let me first give you a brief overview of AGA's portfolio at the end of 2022. Starting with sectors. The portfolio is sector-focused. It's split across four sectors. You know, these are tech and digital, services, healthcare, and internet consumer, with tech and digital making up the largest portion of the portfolio. If you look at the slide, the chart on the left shows you the sector split, as well as the largest 10 private equity portfolio companies, which you as shareholders have exposure to. If you're interested, more details on the top 30 holdings can be found in the appendix of the presentation. Aside from the diversification, you know, from 79 portfolio companies across four sectors, important to keep in mind that the portfolio is also very well diversified from an investment vintage point of view. 48% of the private equity portfolio companies were acquired, you know, from 2022 or later, 38% were also acquired, you know, between 2017 and 2019, the remaining 14% were acquired before 2017. It's therefore a nice mix of companies that are in realization mode, are going through the value creation phase, or have recently been acquired or are ready to be acquired. Returning to the chart on the left, as you can see, 29% of the portfolio is invested in Derived Investments, and that's predominantly in debt investments. This part of the portfolio absorbs liquidity not invested in private equity and enhances the robustness of AGA's balance sheet. It supports the unfunded commitment to the Apax private equity funds, it also generates income towards dividend and is an additional source of alpha generation for AGA. Again, I go through this in more detail towards the end of the presentation. Let's move on to the next slide, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this slide, but in short, it shows the robustness of AGA's balance sheet. This balance sheet strength allowed AGA to make new commitments to three new Apax private equity funds during 2022. A $700 million commitment to Apax XI, which is the most recent Global Buyout fund, a $40 million commitment to the second generation of the Israel-focused AMI Opportunities Fund, and a $60 million commitment to Apax Global Impact, which is a new strategy that aims at delivering private equity style returns, while at the same time investing in companies that have a measurable impact on society or the environment. With these latest commitments, AGA now has invested in all Apax private equity funds launched since AGA's IPO in 2015. These new commitments ensure that AGA can participate in future private equity deals and benefit from future value creation in the private equity portfolio. If you take these new commitments together with existing unfunded commitments, this takes the total of unfunded commitments to the Apax funds, you know, with recall of the distributions at year-end to EUR 1 billion. These commitments are expected to be drawn down over the next four to five years. Importantly, and I want to stress again that the Apax funds operate 12 months capital facilities, which gives AGA a strong visibility on upcoming calls. Let me now turn to the private equity portfolio. As I mentioned at the start of the presentation, operating performance across the portfolio in 2022 was good. As you can see on this page, LTM revenue growth was 21.5% to December 2022, and LTM EBITDA growth was 18.5%. This is evidence that the Apax Funds private equity strategy is working and demonstrates the strength of the fund's underlying portfolio companies. Average net debt to EBITDA levels across the private equity portfolio companies remained moderate at 4.8x. The portfolio company's capital structure also well-positioned, with long-dated maturities and reasonably low leverage. Also, approximately two-thirds of the portfolio debt is rate hedged to fixed rate, limiting the impact of interest rate rises in the short term. Some of the private equity portfolio companies also have portable capital structures, you know, which makes them more appealing to buyers. Let's move to valuation multiples. The valuation multiples have reduced significantly in the period. If you measure that on an EV/LTM EBITDA basis across the portfolio, they contracted from 23.2x- 17.2x during 2022. As I've highlighted before, you know, this is mainly due to the multiple compression of the Apax Funds listed holdings. This impacted returns on private equity. This will become more visible when we discuss the breakdown of the private equity returns on the next page. Before we go there, I want to briefly remind you of the valuation methodology used for AGA's private equity portfolio. The Apax Funds predominantly use a comparable-based valuation methodology, which means the fair value of the Apax Funds' private investments is largely determined by using public trading comparatives and/or transaction comps, you know, as appropriate. Public stock, in contrast, you know, which is largely being positioned in previously IPO portfolio companies, are valued at the closing share price of the portfolio company as of December 30, 2022. Now turning to the private equity return bridge. As you can see on page seven, and as I just mentioned, operating performance across the portfolio companies remained strong in the period, and the movement in the underlying earnings metric contributed 22.9% to return on private equity. However, this wasn't enough to offset the multiple compression in the period, which contributed a -28.9% to private equity returns. This multiple compression was mainly driven by the Apax Funds listed holdings, and the contribution was approximately 80% to the overall movement here. You know, the majority of these listed holdings are from IPOs. These IPOs took place predominantly in 2020 and 2021, where the Apax Funds took advantage of attractive valuations achievable in public markets, you know, also where a lot of value has been extracted for the benefit of AGA. Looking at valuations in 2022, you know, valuations for private companies, in contrast, have remained much more stable during the period. We've seen a real disconnect between private and public valuation movements during the year. For example, the exit from Duck Creek, which was announced post year-end, is a good proof point here. The take private valued the company at a 57% uplift to its year-end valuation, which just demonstrates the valuation levels achievable for high-quality companies in the private market. As the public holdings in the private equity portfolio had a bigger impact on multiples during 2022, I think it's worthwhile double-clicking on these investments. Let me turn to the next slide for this. The way to think about the Apax Fund listed holdings is that they are really a function of the successes the funds had in exiting some of the private equity holdings. Already mentioned this, the listed holdings are mostly from IPOs that took place in 2020 and 2021, where the private equity funds took advantage of strong public market valuations, you know, particularly in the tech sector. To illustrate the success that the Apax funds already have with these investments, if you take those IPOs together with subsequent secondary sales, you know, these IPOs have already returned distributions totaling 3.4x initial cost to AGA. Clearly, the decision to monetize a large portion of these holdings at a time of high public market valuations was the correct one. With that, let me now hand over to Salim, you know, who will talk more about the transaction activity in private equity during the year and also Apax investment strategy. Salim, over to you. Thank you, Ralf. Before I go into these transactions in more detail, let me give you a high-level overview of each sector to set the scene. Starting with tech. In software, there was some weakness in new bookings. Retention rates remained high overall due to the sticky nature of the products provided, leading to solid revenue and profit growth. In tech-enabled services, good growth continued despite some evidence of increased delays in projects, albeit growth has weakened in the second half of the year and as we enter 2023. In telecoms, underlying performance was strong and valuation stable due to the defensive nature of this subsector. In business services, the core subsectors are route-based businesses, outsourced sales and marketing, and residential services. Companies in these subsectors saw strong earnings performance and demonstrated their resilience against the downturn, given the largely non-discretionary nature of their services. In healthcare, underlying demand tends to be less cyclical and demand is proving resilient for most companies. However, inflationary labor and supply chain pressures have probably had the largest impact in this space compared to our other areas, particularly in healthcare services. Turning to internet consumer, portfolio companies in online marketplaces experienced strong performance in 2022, and in the premium consumer packaged goods space, portfolio companies continued to see increasing distribution for their premium branded consumables, remaining largely insulated from the economic slowdown as they are targeting wealthier customers. Coming back now to the deal activity in 2022, the Apax Funds continued to see good demand for high-quality assets, with AGA receiving distributions of EUR 227.8 million during the year. All seven full exits were to corporate or financial buyers and were achieved at an average uplift of 15% to previous unaffected valuations, indicating the robustness of the valuation process even in a more difficult environment. There were also three minor partial exits in 2022 through sell downs of publicly held shares. While there has been a decline in the valuation multiples of the public portfolio, as Ralf mentioned, private valuations remain robust. A fact reinforced by the successful sale of the legal software company, MyCase, to AffiniPay in Q2 at a significant uplift of 49% to its previous fair market value. This was a company acquired by Apax X in 2020 through a carve-out of AppFolio, a publicly traded software company. Because it was an unloved carve-out and not fully polished, the funds were able to acquire the business at a significant discount to comps. The investment thesis was to capitalize on rapidly increasing technology adoption by law firms by investing in a leading player with clear improvement opportunities. We worked hard with the company to transform the business. Firstly, in carving it out to have a fully stand-alone business and then in go-to-market, product expansion and M&A. This resulted in a material increase in earnings, as well as being able to sell the business at a premium to comps since the business was transformed, which resulted in a four times return in under two years. A perfect example of the Apax private equity strategy in action. In tech, there were an additional two exits. Apax IX sold Attenti, a global provider of offender electronic monitoring services to G4S, and the Apax Digital Fund sold Lever, a leading talent acquisition software provider, to Jobvite. These investments delivered total gross MOICs of 1.6x and 1.4x respectively. In healthcare, the Apax funds exited Unilabs and Kepro. We've talked about Unilabs before, but as a reminder, this was a Pan-European provider of laboratory and imaging diagnostic services, which delivered a gross MOIC of 3.1x for the Apax IX fund. Kepro, which is a provider of tech-enabled solutions to government-sponsored healthcare programs, was also an Apax IX investment acquired in 2017. The original investment thesis was to back a leading player in an attractive fragmented market, which was benefiting from increased outsourcing by government payers looking to ensure cost efficiency, quality and compliance. Apax worked with the company to support the business around several growth initiatives, including strategy, M&A, sales optimization and talent acquisition which together generated strong commercial momentum and helped transform the business into a national tech-enabled market leader. The company was sold in November, delivering a gross return on capital of 3x cost for Apax IX, another example of the Apax private equity strategy in action. In business services, Apax VIII sold its entire stake in Boasso Global, the premier provider of depot maintenance, cleaning and transportation services for ISO tank containers in North America and Europe. Apax VIII acquired Boasso in 2015 as part of the purchase of Quality Distribution, a global logistics and transportation provider, which Apax VIII took private, having tracked it for a number of years. The original investment thesis was to acquire a standout business in an attractive market with high barriers to entry, which was benefiting from entrenched secular tailwinds, including chemical capacity growth and increased ISO tank adoption, but which was suffering from a decline in share price that the Apax sector team considered exaggerated. The investment in Boasso delivered a 2.1x gross MOIC for Apax VIII. Turning now to new investments. AGA invested EUR 132.8 million in 10 companies in 2022. I will focus on the investments made in the second half of the year as the others will have been covered in previous results presentations. In tech, there were two new investments made by the Apax Digital Funds and one by Apax X. Xeneta, which is a leading ocean and air freight benchmarking and market analytics platform, received an investment by the Apax Digital Fund II as part of an $80 million funding round. This investment will help Xeneta accelerate its platform development and continue to scale its global commercial teams. ADF I and II also made investments in ClearBank, one of the largest next generation clearing and embedded fintech banking platforms in the U.K. Apax X acquired EcoOnline, an environmental health and safety software company, which was combined with the software assets of Alcumus, an Apax X business services investment. The combination, as well as having synergies, materially improves scale and market position, which should result in a higher multiple combined company, which should be well positioned for the future. In business services, you will see Authority Brands feature both as an exit and a new investment. This is because in September 2022, Apax IX agreed to sell Authority Brands to a consortium consisting of British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and Apax X. While the initial phase of the value creation had been done, providing a good window for Apax IX to exit, there is still significant growth ahead with a medium to long-term investment horizon in mind, providing a good opportunity for Apax X. In addition, Authority Brands should be relatively resilient to macro and inflationary headwinds. There was one new investment in the internet consumer space in the second half of 2022 in Pickles Auctions, one of Australia's leading marketplaces for transport, construction, mining, aviation vehicles, general goods and salvage assets. Apax significant global experience in online marketplaces ideally positions it to partner with Pickles Management to accelerate the company's digitalization strategy and fuel future growth. Having talked about the exit activity in the period, I just wanted to remind you of the private equity's track record of uplifts. This is really the evidence that the strategy is working. The chart here shows the uplifts achieved on exits across the global buyout funds and the two strategy-specific Israel mid-market and digital funds. As you can see, there is a consistent uplift of roughly 25%-50%. It is interesting to note that even in the tough and declining market environment of 2022, the funds were able to achieve a premium of 15% to the last unaffected valuations on exit. In my view, these uplifts not only speak to a conservative and transparent valuation approach used for private equity holdings, but also to the benefits from an investment strategy that focuses on improving the quality of the business. Before I hand back to Ralf, let me talk a little bit about Apax's private equity strategy. Whilst many of you will be familiar with it, I think it's worth pausing here for a minute, given the current macro environment. There are two important themes affecting the investment environment right now. Firstly, a valuation reset driven by interest rate normalization. Secondly, volatility across a range of macro factors, slowing GDP as well as inflation, supply chain effects, and the beginning of economic decoupling as the world fragments politically. The reality is that when you combine both of these factors, no investment strategy can be immune. The best any investment strategy can do is mitigate these effects and navigate around them as best as possible. What is our answer to how to invest successfully in these challenging times? Our answer is the same answer we have given for years. The application of common sense disciplines that have been at the core of our strategy. Firstly, portfolio diversification. Not following the latest hot area, but trusting that we will thrive in the long term by building a portfolio which is well diversified and not just focused on one subsector. Secondly, investing in businesses with strong economic motors. What we are calling coveted categories. Last but not least, driving alpha through the hard work of business improvement. The days of paying up for optimized businesses and watching them continue to increase in multiple are over. Any successful private equity strategies in the years to come will have to generate alpha by transforming these businesses. This strategy not only enables the creation of superior returns, but also mitigates risks by having multiple levers that can be pulled to offset valuation or macro headwinds. I'm now going to hand back to Ralf Gruss to give an update on the Derived Investments portfolio. Thanks, Salim. As I mentioned at the start of the presentation, the Derived Investments portfolio absorbs liquidity not invested in private equity and enhances the robustness of AGA's balance sheet by supporting unfunded commitments to the Apax private equity funds. It also generates income towards dividends and is an additional source of alpha generation for AGA. Looking at the performance of the Derived Investments portfolio in 2022, the Derived Investments portfolio delivered a 1.9% total return in the period, driven by good performance in the debt portfolio. At the end of 2022, debt instruments made up 94% of the Derived Investments portfolio. These debt instruments primarily consist of first and second lien loans. These debt instruments are at the core of the Derived Investments approach and are in sectors and companies where Apax can leverage insights gained from its private equity activities. As 99% of the debt instruments are in floating rate loans, duration risk is minimized, and with increasing base rates, the portfolio now generates a 9.9% income yield. The rise in interest rates and some widening of spreads in the market saw the average yield to maturity of the overall portfolio almost double to 12.1% at the 31st of December 2022 if you compare it with prior year-end. The Derived portfolio is also a source of additional alpha for AGA. Looking across the last five years, the Derived Debt portfolio has achieved a 31.2% cumulative constant currency total return compared to, you know, 17.7% for the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Index. To summarize, the Derived Investments portfolio is in good shape. It provides resilience and capital flexibility for AGA, allowing for significant commitments in new private equity funds, while at the same time producing attractive returns and avoiding cash drag. I hope this has given you a good overview both of the overall performance of AGA, but also the individual portfolio companies and positions in the portfolio. Before we go into Q&A, let me summarize a couple of key takeaways. Private equity portfolio companies continue to experience good operating performance, and as Salim has discussed, Apax investment strategy is well suited to continue to deliver in the current environment. Portfolio has a compelling track record of uplifts on exit, evidencing the effectiveness of the strategy. NAV return in the period was primarily impacted by multiple compression in the Apax fund-listed holdings, where significant value has already been extracted and where opportunities still exist for further value creation. This is all underpinned by a robust balance sheet and healthy liquidity position. To conclude, overall, you know, despite the challenging macro environment, we are confident that AGA will continue to deliver. With that, Salim and I are now happy to answer any questions you may have, and I hand it back to the operator for that. Thank you. As a reminder, if anyone would like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad if you've joined on the conference call, or if you've joined on the webcast, please type your question in the written Q&A box on the bottom right-hand side of your screen. Our first question today is from Christopher Weaver of City of London Investment Management. It reads: Can you confirm if the Duck Creek uplift, EUR 0.02 per share, is included in the year-end NAV? Yeah, let me take that. Thanks. Very good question. No, it hasn't. It's worth noting that, you know, Duck Creek is listed, and in line with the valuation policy for values, on its closing share price at year-end and as the transaction was post year-end, you know, the uplift achieved on that transaction is not in the year-end NAV. Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Adrian Thomas of Hardman & Co. The question reads: Your underlying company, EBITDAR growth, has been accelerating during the year from second quarter, 15.1% to third quarter being 17.6% and the full year of 18.5%. The margin erosion during the year also appears materially less than the market. I appreciate we cannot just take a quarter or two as a trend, what has driven this accelerating growth and margin outperformance through the year? I'll take that one. Well, thank you for the question. Firstly, I think, as you rightly say, it's very difficult to look on a quarter-on-quarter basis to determine overall trends, mainly because the perimeter of the portfolio changes. We buy and sell companies. Also, some companies acquire as well, meaning there's inorganic growth in there. I wouldn't say that there necessarily is a fundamental acceleration in revenue growth throughout the year. I will say the portfolio company performance has been robust, and margins were relatively stable. They contracted a little bit, but perhaps less than the market, as you say. I think the reasons for that is, one, the Apax portfolio has been exposed to companies which probably have less impact from inflation. I think inflationary pressures have been felt a lot in the industrials sector. We don't have exposure to that. All companies where there's been a lot of blue-collar labor, and again, we don't have a huge number of companies with exposure to that. Most of our companies have pricing power, and so they have been able to mitigate any cost increase with improved pricing. Overall, I would say, our portfolio has performed well during 2022. It has been able to maintain margins basically through the sectors it's been exposed to and through pricing power. Thank you. Our next question is from Yusuf Samad, from Bellfield Capital. Yusuf's question reads: Do you believe revenues and EBITDA will continue to rise for AGA portfolio companies in 2023 as the similar rates to 2022? Are there frictions arising due to weakening economic conditions? I think we cannot ignore the macro, and I think we will see some slowdown in revenue and profit growth for 2023. I think we don't give forward guidance, but we are seeing some slowdown, but not a meltdown at all. I think the Apax portfolio is performing robustly now. As I mentioned, our companies have demonstrated the ability to pass on prices and so withstand inflation. In terms of the demand environment, the picture we're getting, it's obviously company by company specific, is of a slowdown, but nothing that would indicate a material, very, very significant slowdown. I would expect a slowdown in growth for 2023, but not a disaster at all. Thank you. Before we take our next question, I'd just like to remind everyone to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad if you've joined on the conference call, or if you've joined on the webcast, please use the written Q&A box at the bottom right-hand side of your screen. Our next question is a follow-up from Christopher Weaver. It reads: Do you roll over any carry from the sale of Authority Brands from Apax IX to Apax X? Yeah. The simple answer, there wasn't any carry, generated through the sale, of Authority Brands. Thank you. Our next question is from Fiona Huang, from Jefferies. Fiona's question reads: Could you give us some color on the exit environments today? Yeah. So overall, the exit environment is less robust than it was a year or a year and a half ago, as is true with the new deal environment. However, as you will see, we have been able to exit a number of positions even in H2, 2022. Duck Creek, Vela Software are perfect examples of that. We do have some companies in the pipeline for exit. Buyers are selective, but there are a few buyers who are active and we will seek to monetize positions where we can. There, I would say what we can see is it's currently less active than 2022, but there are some exits in the pipeline. Thank you. This is all the questions we have today. I'd like to hand back to Ralf for any final remarks. If there are no more questions, then, you know, thanks, everyone, for participating in today's call. Obviously, if you have any further questions after the call or would like to arrange a meeting, you know, please contact the investor relations team. With that, you know, goodbye, everyone, and have a good day.