Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Apax Global Alpha Q1 2025 results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the team will answer questions at the end of the call. If you wish to ask a question, please submit them via the Q&A box, which can be found at the bottom of the screen by clicking on Q&A. Questions can be submitted at any time during the webinar. Please note you'll be unable to submit a question through the Q&A box if you have dialed in using a mobile or landline, but you can send any questions via email to investor.relations@apaxglobalalpha.com. Questions will follow after the presentation. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Ralf Gruss to start the presentation. Thanks and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining Apax Global Alpha's Q1 2025 results presentation. My name is Ralf Gruss. I'm a partner at Apax and a member of AGA's Investment Committee. I will take you through the presentation today and look forward to answering any questions you may have at the end. Starting with the key highlights for the quarter. At 31 March 2025, AGA's net asset value was approximately EUR 1.16 billion, translating into EUR 2.38 or GBP 2 per share. AGA has declared a dividend of GBP 5.50 per share on 4 March 2025, so the NAV per share I just mentioned is a post-payment of that dividend. In euro terms, total NAV return per share for the quarter was down 2.5%, but positive at 0.5% on a constant currency basis. The delta between the euro returns and the constant currency return is largely driven by the weakening of the US dollar during the period. I already mentioned AGA paid a £5.50 dividend per share. This is in line with AGA's dividend policy and equates to a dividend yield of 9.4% against the 31 March 2025 share price. Including buybacks, total capital return to shareholders was EUR 36 million during the quarter, and therefore AGA continues to return significant amounts back to shareholders, both through dividends and buyback of shares. Before we look at the operational performance of the portfolio, let me reiterate the board's and our concern over the weak share price performance. Addressing the discount remains the board's key priority to ensure that shareholders benefit from the intrinsic value of AGA's investment portfolio. Turning to portfolio performance, the message here is that performance in the private equity portfolio is steady, but euro returns have been impacted by the weakening US dollar. Operationally, the companies in the private equity portfolio continue to demonstrate steady growth, with average last twelve months at a D/A growth of 16%. Valuation multiples across the private equity portfolio remained largely flat overall when compared to December end, and broadly speaking, this reflects European public market multiples increasing offset marginally by US market multiples declining. Two deals that we previously discussed closed during the period, and this is S&W and CohnReznick. Both of them are accounting services providers. We are excited about these investments, and I will cover the reason why later on. A new Apax Fund investment at a company called Dealer DMV was also signed during Q1. Dealer DMV is a software and tech-enabled services provider to US car dealerships, and we expect the deal to close in the coming months. In terms of exits, the tech private of Paycor closed post-quarter end, taking the Paycor journey to a very successful conclusion. The tech private valued Paycor at a 21% uplift to the December valuation, and the total gross money multiple realized on the deal was 3.1 times. In addition to Paycor, a partial exit of Lexitas has also closed post-quarter end. Lexitas has sold its corporate compliance division in a strategic sale to Walter Schluter. A part of the proceeds was distributed back to AGA. Also, a quick comment on the debt investments of AGA. These were similarly affected by the depreciating US dollar, but the portfolio achieved strong returns on a constant currency basis and continues to provide balance sheet flexibility. Before I go into the details of AGA's portfolio, I want to address a few topics, though, which I assume are top of mind for everybody at the moment. Starting firstly with the recently announced US tariffs in April, financial markets have initially seen a sharp increase in volatility as a result of these announcements. We've undertaken a detailed review of the Apax Funds' portfolio companies. The good news is that, based on this analysis, we estimate that approximately 90% of the private equity portfolio is not expected to have any first-order impact from these tariffs. The key reason for this is that most of the Apax Funds' portfolio companies are services or tech-oriented businesses. Within the core sectors of tech, services, and internet consumer, there are simply not a lot of businesses which are manufacturing-heavy. There is a bucket representing approximately 7% of NAV, where we are seeing some limited first-order impacts. Companies in this bucket include Bazooka, Palex, Newlow, Old Smoky, and Farniente. Farniente, the wine producer, for example, sources corks for its bottles in Europe. The two most impacted companies in the portfolio are Cole Haan and Candela, which, however, only represent 3% of NAV. Cole Haan is a specialty shoe retailer, which has a significant part of its manufacturing in Southeast Asia, mainly in Vietnam and China, and a majority proportion of sales in the U.S. Candela is a medical device manufacturer, which has a manufacturing footprint in Mexico. However, it's worth noting that Candela has approximately 30% of sales going to the U.S., so 70% of sales are expected to be unaffected by tariffs. Now, this analysis focuses on the first-order impacts of the announced tariffs. In relation to second and third-order impacts, the impact on overall business-to-consumer and business-to-business demand, it's simply too early to call. As the pace of policy announcement remains rapid, we are actively monitoring developments, and our teams are working with the impacted businesses to mitigate potential downside. Also, having a long 10-year experienced senior team and a large operational excellence practice equips us to respond swiftly and decisively should broader market conditions deteriorate. What does this mean, this uncertainty mean for the broader private equity deal environment? As you can see in the chart, private equity transaction momentum picked up in 2024, and there was again a small uptick in volumes in Q1 2025. Though activity remains still significantly below the peak seen in 2020 and 2021. I mean, generally speaking, the industry expected 2025 to be a more active year for realizations. Presently, though, there's much more of a wait-and-see approach until more clarity becomes available on the impact of the recent tariff policies. Whilst there is still some activity, we should therefore expect 2025 being a slower year for private equity markets deal activity. Now, on the flip side, we know from history that macro dislocations can create attractive buying opportunities, and the private equity asset class has historically outperformed following dislocations. Also, the sector specialization and hidden gems investment strategy of Apax is very well suited to take advantage of these opportunities. As a last point, there's been a shift in perceived relative attractiveness of Europe versus the U.S. in the last couple of months, which makes the Apax Funds' geographic diversification more valuable now than ever. Finally, you know, where does AGA stand in relation to its balance sheet and liquidity? The chart shows the balance sheet against the unfunded commitments made to the Apax Private Equity Funds. As you can see from the chart on the left, AGA's balance sheet remains robust. As most of the Apax Funds operate capital call facilities at the level of the funds, AGA also has very good visibility on upcoming calls to the underlying funds. To fund these capital calls, AGA has approximately €55 million of distributions from the private equity portfolio from signed transactions that have not closed yet, together with other available resources amounting to €417 million at the end of March. These available resources outside the private equity portfolio are made up of investments in debt, cash, and €238 million of undrawn RCF. These resources together cover 61% of unfunded commitments at 31 March 2025, with expected capital calls over the next 12 months covered 1.8 times. Now, a quick comment on the RCF. The RCF was drawn EUR 12.5 million to bridge short-term cash flows around quarter end. Post-period end, though, the RCF has been fully repaid today. In summary, AGA's balance sheet is robust, and liquidity requirements for the next 12 months are well covered. The board continues to monitor AGA's liquidity position closely to ensure balance sheet robustness is maintained, in particular in an environment where the market is more uncertain and deal activity might be reduced. To note as a final point, and as you can see from the last bullet, AGA also sold $13.5 million of its Apax 11 commitment post-quarter end. This was an opportunistic transaction, and the buyer paid December NAV. Let me now turn back to AGA's portfolio. At 31 March, private equity investments represented 86% of AGA's investment portfolio, providing shareholders access to around 80 companies. As a reminder, the investments in AGA's private equity portfolio have been made over a number of years as the private equity funds are deployed prudently, with new investments made over three to four years per fund. The pie chart on the left shows the 10 largest companies in the private equity portfolio. These names are primarily investments in the tech and services sectors. Combined with the internet consumer sector, the core Apax sectors represent 94% of AGA's private equity portfolio, with the remaining 6% being healthcare and retail investments. Capital not currently invested in private equity was primarily invested in debt instruments, which provide capital flexibility and add to the balance sheet robustness I talked to in the prior slide. Looking at the private equity portfolio companies, they demonstrate solid operating performance overall. Average last 12 months revenue growth was 10.6%, and EBITDA growth was 16%. EBITDA growth was mainly driven by tech and services businesses, offsetting a modest slowdown seen by some of the consumer exposed businesses. Valuation multiples were relatively stable at 18 times, and as I have already highlighted, leverage remains modest, consistent with the Apax Funds' long-term strategy, with net debt to EBITDA at 4.3 times. We are also seeing continued strong performance from the more recent global buyout investments. As a reminder, these are the investments in the most recent Apax Buyout Fund, Apax 11, to which AGA has committed $700 million in 2022. All of these recent investments in Apax 11 are listed on this page. Now, these deals will be a key driver of overall AGA performance going forward, and shareholders of AGA will get increasing exposure to these companies over time, given the size of commitment to the fund. I'm not going to go into the specifics of each. We've covered them before. Overall, though, these investments continue to perform well operationally, with average LTM revenue growth of 16% and LTM EBITDA growth of 25%. Let me now move to the next page to give an update on investment activity. This page shows the new Apax Fund investments and realizations since the start of the year. AGA expects to deploy or has already deployed a total of EUR 60 million across three investments. S&W and CohnReznick both closed in the period. Dealer DMV, the deal I mentioned at the beginning, is expected to close later this month. I want to discuss S&W and CohnReznick in the broader context of investments in professional services on the next page. Briefly on Dealer DMV. Dealer DMV is the Apax Digital Fund II's ninth investment, bringing the fund to approximately 50% invested and committed. Dealer DMV is a leading provider of automobile electronic titling and registration software and tech-enabled services to US car dealerships. The investment thesis here is to accelerate the growth of a high-performing business by scaling its go-to-market engine, expediting product development, strengthening the leadership, and pursuing strategic M&A. On the realizations front, Apax Global Alpha will receive total distributions of around EUR 55 million from the three businesses in the timeline. The distributions from Paycor and Lexitas already came in post-period end, and the full exit of Assured Partners is expected to close in the second half of the year. On Paycor and Lexitas, let me provide a quick recap of both these deals, you know, both the exit from Paycor and the partial exit from Lexitas. Paycore first, Paycore is a provider of human capital management software in which the funds acquired a majority stake in 2018 and subsequently took the company public in 2021. Over the past six years, the funds partnered closely with Paycore's leadership team in the transformation of the company, accelerating its top-line growth, expanding into tier one cities across North America, and building a modern human capital management platform for the mid-market. At the beginning of the year, Paycore entered into a definitive agreement with Paychex to be acquired in an all-cash transaction. Including prior distributions, the transaction delivered a total gross multiple on investor capital of 3.1 times and represented an uplift of 21% to the NAV of AGA at 31 December 2024. Moving on to Lexitas, Lexitas is a provider of technology-enabled litigation services in the United States. Apax Funds acquired Lexitas towards the end of 2019. In February of this year, Lexitas sold its corporate compliance division in a cash sale to Wolters Kluwer. The divestment was a strategic move to refocus Lexitas on its remaining service lines that are more synergistic and refinancing the business on more favorable terms, enabling the acceleration of its M&A strategy. The transaction closed last month. Part of the proceeds were returned back to the Apax Funds, implying a distribution of approximately EUR 3 million to AGA. An area where our services team spend increasing time over the last couple of years is the professional services subsector. To date, the Apax Funds have made three investments in the subsector: Lexitas, which I just talked about, and the two more recent investments in S&W and CohnReznick. Why are professional services an attractive space to invest, and why are we excited about these deals? There are really two pillars here. First, the companies in the space usually exhibit resilient growth. Resilient because a lot of the revenue here is recurring or reoccurring, something which is particularly attractive in the context of the macro environment we are in. In addition, there are growth tailwinds driven by an ever more complex environment with increasing regulation, which necessitates businesses to get more advice from companies like the ones you see on this page. The second pillar for why it's an attractive subsector is that there are idiosyncratic value creation opportunities that our services team have a lot of experience in executing. Just to name a few of those opportunities: margin opportunities by investing in tech, new product innovation, pricing initiatives, or also M&A opportunities. For example, given the very fragmented customer base of these businesses with many small ticket customers, these deals lend themselves to our playbooks and pricing in go-to-market in particular. I'm looking forward to providing future updates on these businesses over the coming years, but let me now turn to give you an update on the debt portfolio. AGA's debt investments have performed well, but were similarly impacted by the weakening US dollar. During the quarter, the portfolio returned 2.5% on a constant currency basis, but returns were offset by adverse effects movements, primarily from the dollar, bringing total return to -0.8%. The debt portfolio primarily comprises first and second lien loans and investments in companies and sectors where Apax can leverage insights from its private equity activities. A total of six positions were exited across Q1 and post-quarter end, realizing EUR 51 million, very near to par value, showcasing the flexibility benefit the portfolio provides to the balance sheet. Also, before I wrap up and move to Q&A, I want to provide a quick update on AGA's capital allocation and returns to shareholders. In the three months to 31 March 2025, AGA returned approximately EUR 36 million to shareholders, which includes EUR 32 million via the dividend payment and the remainder through buyback of 2.1 million shares. Since the launch of share buybacks at the end of June last year, AGA has bought back 1% of issued share capital. The AGA board continuously monitors the effectiveness of the share buyback program, and as you can see from the chart on the right, the board has accelerated the velocity of share repurchases more recently. The total funds remaining in the distribution pool stand at EUR 22 million at the end of the quarter. Let me summarize a few key takeaways before we open it up to Q&A. Total NAV return has stabilized, with the quarter impacted by foreign exchange. However, the issues we discussed in the past are now largely behind us. Looking at drivers going forward, the underlying Apax Fund portfolio companies continue to grow steadily. The recent Apax 11 investments are also continuing to exhibit strong operating performance and are poised to be key value drivers for AGA's long-term NAV performance, given the relative commitment size. With regards to tariffs, the portfolio is relatively insulated, with no first-order impact expected on 90% of NAV. However, the second and third-order impacts, which could be more significant, remain to be seen. Lastly, the balance sheet is robust, with expected calls in the next 12 months covered 1.8 times. Now, with that, I hand it back to the operator and open it up for Q&A. We will now start the Q&A. We will pause for a moment to allow questions to be submitted. The first question is, how common is it for you to sell AGA's commitments? What goes into that decision? Yeah, so the sale of the Apax 11 commitment, as we've set out, was more of an opportunistic opportunity to sell it down. It obviously came at an attractive valuation. It was sold at December NAV and therefore represented a good opportunity in the context of, frankly, no capital allocation to realize a small part of the existing portfolio at a very attractive value. The next question is, notice that you have sold a portion of the Apax 11 commitment. Will AGA be doing more of these transactions to manage liquidity? Yeah, here my, look, I think I've sort of partially probably answered that question already. This was an opportunistic transaction, as hopefully shareholders have already seen last year, you know, through changes to capital allocation. Through capital allocation, the board is quite focused on playing its role of generating value. This was an opportunistic trade, but you know, the board is open to consider those types of transactions. The next question is, I appreciate we should not read too much into one quarter's numbers, but revenue and EBITDA growth appear to have modestly accelerated. Is there a story there? Yeah, I'm glad you're pointing it out. I think it comes down to two things. You know, one, I would agree, you know, you shouldn't read too much into like one quarter's numbers. I think the pattern has significantly changed. We've said before, you know, outside these single issues which we identified in prior calls, that the core of the portfolio now, core sectors, is performing well and steadily. That has continued. We're seeing, in particular, like, as I said, you know, the companies in the Apax 11 portfolio performing more strongly. Yes, some acceleration purely from the numbers, but it's a quarter and it's a continuation of like a steady and good trend in operating performance that we've seen in most of the companies in our core sectors. The next question is from Niloot Pappes at Edison Group. Has the recent macroeconomic uncertainty affected your appetite for new investments this year? Look, the current environment has naturally led to a more selective and cautious approach across, I guess, all of the private equity market and also for our investment committee. The bar has gone up. Now, that being said, you know, we continue to look, you know, for high-quality opportunities, you know, particularly in the areas where we have strong conviction and sector and sector expertise. I mean, you've seen, I've talked about recent deals and the recent investments done in S&W, CohnReznick, and also Dealer DMV, you know, that fall into that bucket. What I would say is that, you know, while, as I said, you know, the bar has gone up and deployment may be paced more carefully, you know, our strategy works well in the environment. It's an all-weather strategy. You know, we continue to obviously look and invest in those high-quality opportunities like the ones that I've just mentioned. We will pause a moment to allow questions to be submitted. The next question is from Florian Harp at Carter LTD. Looking at the share price today of GBP 1.18 and the share price of your IPO almost 10 years ago on the 15th of June 2015 of GBP 1.23, how do these numbers square with AGA's goal stated in your interim report of the 30th of June 2015 to achieve the annual total shareholder return of 12-15%? Looking back on the past decade, would you call AGA's performance a success or rather a failure by your own goals? Look, as I've said in my presentation, we are disappointed with where the share price is. We're disappointed with where the discount is, and particularly the discount, the discount doesn't reflect the intrinsic value of the portfolio. I think when you compare back to IPO and what I would also highlight to shareholders is the significant amounts of capital that AGA has distributed back to shareholders over these years. Purely, obviously, in a share-to-share price comparison, also needs to consider the returns that went back. As I said, are we disappointed with the level of discount and are we disappointed that it doesn't reflect the intrinsic value? Yes, we are. We will pause a moment to allow questions to be submitted. The next question is from Kim Hanson. What measurements are being taken to improve the stock price? First of all, I mean, the board has put forward a new capital allocation framework last year. Second, I do believe, and we've talked about this in prior calls, that share price over recent quarters was impacted by some idiosyncratic issues that are now in the rear mirror, and in the first quarter, we haven't seen any impact of those anymore. Third, I can only highlight, you know, what Carl said in a statement to the quarter, which is that the board remains concerned by the discount and the board continues to evaluate, you know, the potential options to ensure that shareholders benefit from the value of the investor portfolio. There are no further questions. I will now hand back for closing remarks. Thank you for listening in this morning and for dialing in. You know, thank you also for these questions. I appreciate you taking the time and the interest in Apax Global Alpha. I hope you all have a good day. Goodbye and thank you. 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. Goodbye.