Thanks and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining AGA's Q1 results presentation. My name is Ralf Gruss. I'm the COO of Apax and a member of Apax Global Alpha's Investment Committee. I look forward to taking you through the presentation, and will answer any questions you may have at the end of the call. It's not been long since our last update, and there have been little movement in the portfolio since we last spoke. AGA currently provides shareholders with access to 79 private equity portfolio companies, and these companies continue to perform well in the first quarter, showing good earnings growth with EBITDA up 15.6% over the last 12 months, despite the challenging and volatile market backdrop. This helped drive NAV return, which was 1.9% in the quarter, with currency being a headwind in the period, though. Adjusting for currency movements, total return would be 2.8%. Adjusted NAV was broadly flat year-over-year at EUR 1.3 billion despite the payment of the dividends. On a per share basis, this translates to EUR 0.0263 or GBP 0.0231 per share. I will touch on investment activity later. Two exits were achieved in the period at an average uplift of 25%. The Derived Debt portfolio also performed well in the period, achieving a 2.8% total return or nearly 4% on a constant currency basis. Let me now move to the next page and explain why we believe that AGA's portfolio and the Apax Funds investment approach is well placed in the current market environment. What is shown on this page is AGA's invested portfolio at the end of the quarter. You can see the largest private equity portfolio companies highlighted and investment in Apax four core sectors color-coded. Private equity investments make up approximately 71% of the invested portfolio, with the remainder largely invested in Derived Debt. Given the volatile market backdrop, making any predictions in this environment obviously remains difficult. Having said this, whilst in these volatile times, no investment strategy can be totally immune, we continue to believe that the Apax Funds investment approach is designed to outperform and offers good value to shareholders. Let me touch on a couple of observations as to why we think this is the case. The investments in AGA's private equity portfolio have been made over a number of years, and as the Apax private equity funds are deployed prudently, with new investments being made typically over three to four years to fund. This provides for vintage year diversification and has helped avoid overexposure in recent years to historically high multiples. Second, the Apax Fund is also diversified by sector and by geography. Diversification is a common-sense investment discipline, it's been at the core of the Apax Fund strategy to not follow the latest or the area of sector, but trusting that the funds will thrive in the long term if they build a portfolio which is very diversified. Last, as you all know, the Apax Fund strategy is to seek and invest in businesses with strong economic motors where there are multiple levers to pull and which can help mitigate against valuation or macroeconomic headwinds. This means that the focus remains on driving Alpha through the hard work of business improvement rather than being driven by financial market tailwinds. Testament to the success of the strategy are the consistent uplifts achieved on exits. I will touch upon this in more detail later on, but as a preview, over the past years, average uplifts and exits in the Buyout Funds have ranged between roughly 20% and 50%. These uplifts also speak to the robustness of the valuation methodology used for AGA's private equity portfolio. As a reminder, this is predominantly a comparable-based valuation methodology, where fair value of the Apax Funds private investment is largely determined using public trading comparatives and/or transaction comps, in each case as appropriate. Finally, to ensure the robustness of AGA's balance sheet, capital not invested in private equity is deployed into a portfolio of primarily debt positions, which help generate income towards the dividend and additional returns. Moving on to the next page, one important aspect of Apax private equity strategy is the firm's long-standing commitment to sustainability. It has been a core of Apax identity since inception, and in the first quarter of this year, Apax celebrated a decade of sustainability reporting, publishing its tenth sustainability report in March. An important and differentiating initiative at Apax is to focus on data integrity. The data science team within Apax Operational Excellence has, for example, built a comprehensive data analytics platform designed to pool all financial and non-financial portfolio company data streams within its system. The full Apax ESG indicator set of more than 130 KPIs was merged into this data platform in late 2021, creating additional state-of-the-art analysis capabilities and heightened data accessibility. To mention another area of focus, the Apax team continued to progress its carbon measurement exercise launched in 2021 to assess the carbon footprint of majority on portfolio companies across the Apax IX and Apax X funds. While it's not yet completed, this exercise has already allowed the Apax team to identify key hotspots and decarbonization opportunities that individual portfolio companies can integrate into their overall strategic roadmaps. We've included a link to Apax full sustainability report on this page should you wish to find out more about the ongoing work within the private equity portfolio. portfolio. Turning back now to AGA's quarterly performance though, and the private equity portfolio. As I mentioned at the start of the presentation, we continue to see good operating performance across the portfolio in the first quarter. We've seen a slight decrease in both LTM revenue and EBITDA growth when compared to the year-end numbers, which is reflecting a continued challenging market environment. Average Average net debt to EBITDA levels across the private equity portfolio companies remain modest at 4.7 x, and almost unchanged to year-end leverage levels. As mentioned at AGA's full year presentation, the portfolio company's capital structures are well-positioned with long dated maturities and reasonably low leverage. Additionally, approximately two-thirds of portfolio debts rate hedge for fixed rate, limiting the impact of interest rate rises in the short term. Valuation multiples remain broadly stable from the 2022 year-end, and if measured on an EV to LTM EBITDA basis across the portfolio, they were 17 x in Q1 2023. If you go to the next page, I will give you a breakdown of performance over the last twelve months. This bridge, which you've seen in prior presentation, breaks down the total return achieved in private equity into its main drivers. Due to the nature of private equity, where investments are held over longer periods, this bridge shows performance over a 12 months period rather than the quarter. This is why the return here shows a -6.8% rather than the 1.8% I've talked about, and which was the total value return in the fourth quarter of the year. Turning back to the bridge and starting from the left, as I've just mentioned, operating performance across the portfolio companies was good, and the movement in the underlying earnings metric contributed 18.2% to returns in private equity. However, as I talked about at the time of AGA's full year results, this operating performance was not enough to offset the multiple compression, which over the last 12 months contributed a negative 14.4% to private equity returns. This multiple compression was mainly driven by the Apax Funds listed holdings, which contributed approximately 70% to the overall movement in multiples. As a reminder, the majority of these listed holdings are from IPOs that took place in 2020 and 2021. Taking advantage at the time of attractive valuations achievable in public markets and where significant value has already been extracted for the benefit of AGA. With that, let me turn to slide 8 and the investment activity since the start of the year. Starting with new investments, there were two in the period, one in the Apax Digital Fund II, and one in the AMI Opportunities Fund II. Starting with the former, at the end of 2022, ADF II with the Apax Digital Fund II, signed an agreement to acquire Magaya, a leading digital freight software platform that automates critical workflows for logistics providers. The investment team believes that the company's highly configurable platform, pricing model, strong brand, and customer service focus positions it to emerge as one of the market leaders in a large, attractive, but still highly fragmented market. Meanwhile, AMI II agreed to invest in Zoo Eretz, which is an Israeli distribute and retailer of pet food and pet-related products. Again, the investment thesis here is to back a market leader with a strong brand in a rapidly growing, yet highly fragmented industry. This will be the first investment of AMI II, to which AGA announced a $40 million commitment in 2022. Turning to the exits, as mentioned already at our full year results presentation, the Apax Funds agreed to sell Duck Creek in a take-private, which valued the company at a 57% uplift to its year-end valuation. As a reminder, the business was originally carved out from Accenture, upgraded and transformed, then listed on Nasdaq, then taken private by Vista. This deal closed in March 2023 and delivered a gross money of invested capital of 5.2 x. Also in the period, Apax VIII sold its remaining position in Shriram Finance, which is a non-bank finance company focused on the micro-enterprises segment in India. The transaction delivered a total money of invested capital of 0.8 x. The reason why the deal underperformed expectations was linked in part to unforeseen regulatory changes in the Indian government's demonetization efforts, as well as the COVID-19 impact, which impacted, you know, both impacted Shriram's microenterprise customer segment. Overall, the 2 exits achieved an average uplift of 25% to the last unaffected carrying values, which takes me to the next slide showing the track record of uplifts over the longer term. The chart on this page shows uplifts achieved for all global buyout funds since Apax Europe VII, which was launched 15 years ago, together with uplifts achieved in the strategy-specific Apax Digital Fund and AMI Fund. In total, this is a track record spanning four buyout funds, two adjacent strategies, and some 50-60 portfolio companies. The message is very clear here. Uplifts and exits have been a consistent feature of exits out of private equity. For the Global Apax Funds, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, these uplifts on average range between approximately 20% and 50% over the years. In my view, these uplifts not only speak to a conservative and transparent valuation approach used for the private equity holdings, but also to the benefits of an investment strategy that focuses on improving the quality of a business. As I mentioned at the start of this presentation, the Derived Investments portfolio absorbs liquidity not invested in private equity, enhances the robustness of AGA's balance sheet, and thereby supports unfunded commitments to the Apax private equity funds. It also generates income towards dividends and is an additional source of returns for AGA. The derived investments portfolio primarily consists of debt positions which delivered a 2.8% total return in the quarter. 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 generates a 9.8% income yield. All yield majority of the overall portfolio remained at attractive levels of 11.8% at the end of the quarter. The Derived Debt portfolio is also a source of additional returns for AGA, and as you can see from the chart on the right-hand side of the slide, over the last five years, the Derived Debt portfolio has achieved a 38.8% cumulative constant currency total return versus 19.5% for the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Index. Before we go into Q&A, let me summarize a couple of takeaways from the quarter ly results. The first and the most important one is that the private equity portfolio companies continue to experience good operating performance, and Apax's investment strategy is well-suited to continue to deliver in the current environment. The portfolio has a compelling track record of uplifts and exits, evidencing the effectiveness of the strategy. AGA's investment strategy is underpinned by a disciplined approach to balance sheet management, with Derived Debt generating additional returns for AGA. Despite the volatile markets, the pipeline of new investments is looking promising, offering shareholders the opportunity to participate in future value generation. Finally, AGA's post-IPO, AGA has established its track record of consistent long-term growth in the public markets. Over the last five years, the cumulative NAV return for AGAs was 79.5% or 13.8% per annum. With that, I'm now happy to answer any questions and hand it back to the operator for that. Thank you. Of course, if you'd like to ask a question via the telephone lines, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you choose to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When answering your question, please ensure you're unmuted locally. Alternatively, if you've joined via the webcast, you may submit a written question via the Q&A chat box on your screen. If you'd like to ask an audio question, as a reminder, that's star followed by one now. We have our first written question here from Mark Adrian Thomas of Hardman & Co. Mark asks, "Slide 6 showed both your revenue and EBITDA growth rates have slowed by 3% versus a year ago, which suggests your companies are not seeing the margin erosion that is affecting the market as a whole. Can you give some more color on why that has happened? Yeah, Mark. Thanks for the question. As we've discussed in prior calls, generally our portfolio and the portfolio companies have, you know, strong market positions. They have generally been able, you know, to pass on pressures that they had on the cost side, i.e. cost inflation, you know, through price increases, which, you know, you would expect is one of the drivers here. You know, why you're not seeing margin erosion in those numbers. Perfect. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to submit a question via the telephone lines, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you joined via the webcast, please submit your question in writing. We currently have no questions registered via the telephone lines or the webcast. We'll hand back over to Ralf Gruss for any final remarks. Well, thank you everyone. Thank you for participating in today's call. If you have any further questions or would like to arrange a meeting, please contact the investor relations team. With that, goodbye, and good day to everyone.
Loading workspace