Good afternoon and welcome to the HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited presentation. Throughout today's recorded meeting, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The Company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the Company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Stephanie Hocking, Head of Investor Relations. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for joining our HVPE update call today. Now, as you're probably well aware, we advertised today's call as more of a macro markets update call with Managing Director and Head of Primaries for HarbourVest, Carolina Espinal. However, we will be rearranging that presentation, as today we announced a series of bold new initiatives, which we're going to be discussing instead. The RNS can be viewed in the handout section on the right-hand side of your screen on the platform today. I'm joined by Edmond Warner, Chair of HVPE, and Richard Hickman, HVPE Managing Director. Our talk will be relatively brief as we want to allow plenty of time for Q&A. We appreciate that there's a lot to unpack in the release. Carolina, despite not presenting today, is still available for more macro or private market-themed questions post our short talk. I'm going to pass over to Ed, who's going to kick off the session with an introduction, and then Richard will talk us through the initiatives in detail, followed by some Q&A. Thank you, Stephanie, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us. You may well remember, certainly if you've been a longstanding shareholder, you'll remember that early in 2025, we announced three very shareholder-friendly measures intended to address the wide discount that our shares were trading on, along with all of our peer group. We said that we would review the success of those measures one year in. We have done that. We are still frustrated with the size of the discount that HVPE shares have been trading at, in spite of very strong share price performance. We've got a share, which is close to its all-time high. It delivered 18% share price growth in sterling last year. In fact, last time I looked, I think the shares are up almost a third over the last 12 months. Our discount has remained stubbornly in the high 20%. That's not good enough, we don't think. We've reflected, talking to some of our largest shareholders, and with our advisors, and very much with our manager, HVP, on what we could do to continue to tackle that discount and to drive our shares closer to net asset value. This morning we've announced half a dozen measures. Richard's going to take you through them one by one, and then we'll open up for questions. I think Stephanie's just described them as bold. I would say they're very much industry leading, not just for our sub-sector within the investment company world, but for the investment company sector overall. I do believe they're very shareholder friendly. As a Board, our focus is very much on delivering shareholder value. I'm a shareholder, as are all my board colleagues, and we don't like to see the shares languishing at the size of discount that they have been. We recognize there's some challenges in the private equity sector, which has weighed on us and on others, but we can't just sit back and blame the cycle. We need to do what we can do to buck the cycle, and I think this is very much a set of measures which can help us do that and should see the benefit in share price narrowing its discount to net asset value over the course of the coming weeks and months. So, with no further ado, I'll hand over to Richard. I'm available for questions after he's finished, and we'd very much like you to go away from this call understanding what we're doing and feeling enthused by it as we are. Richard, over to you. Thanks, Ed, and thank you everyone for tuning in. As Ed suggested, I'll take you through the six key initiatives that we've announced today, building on the measures we've already introduced. First on the list is an enhancement of the Distribution Pool. Shareholders may remember we introduced this actually back in early 2024 as a mechanism by which to allocate capital to shareholder distributions. Up until today's date, we have been allocating solely to share buybacks in pursuit of NAV per share accretion, and we've delivered 5.7% accretion to NAV per share through that mechanism. It's been very valuable for driving shareholder returns up to this point. However, there were constraints on the Distribution Pool. We introduced the pool with a cap on the total balance back in early 2024. Otherwise, given the other measures we're announcing today, that could have constrained the amount of capital that could be allocated to the pool, so we're suspending the cap as of today. We're also increasing the allocation from 30%-100% in respect of secondary sale proceeds in the year. We'll continue to allocate 30% of natural distributions to the pool, but in respect of secondary sales, where we are voluntarily disposing of assets in exchange for cash, we will allocate 100% of that cash to the Distribution Pool for this year. That does encompass the transaction that we announced in December, which will generate $300 million of proceeds, of which $136 million were received at the end of March. That full amount is already effectively transmitted or transferred into the pool. Point number two, we have undertaken to distribute at least $500 million, which is around 12% of current NAV, to shareholders during 2026 as a whole to include the buybacks already completed. The $500 million will come from a combination of, firstly, a $400 million tender offer scheduled for the autumn of this year. That will be struck, we expect, at a 10% discount to NAV, a very material premium over the current market price at which the shares are trading, and that is a very sizable tender offer as you can see. The second component, $100 million via share buybacks, we will continue to buy back shares on a monthly basis. Up until today, we've been in the market on a daily basis. We expect to continue to deploy very frequently into the market in that way. We're still capturing the benefits of that full discount at which the shares are trading in the interest of continuing holders, but we're also offering this tender process for those who would like to realize at least part of their investment. Number three, the Board intends to distribute approximately 5%-10% of NAV annually up until the next continuation vote. This is not a one-off process. We are committing to an annual distribution of significant scale between 5% and 10% of NAV each year up until the next continuation vote. That will take the form of periodic tender offers but also continued share buybacks if the Board decides that is the most suitable route to continue deploying. We do expect tenders to represent a material proportion of annual distributions going forward. Point number four, the HVP investment committee has undertaken formally to run a twice-yearly liquidity review. This essentially means that the body that comprises the HVP IC, which is myself, Carolina Espinal, who's on the call, John Toomey, the CEO of HarbourVest, and Gregory Stento, the CIO of HarbourVest. We as a group will conduct reviews of the portfolio to identify opportunities to sell assets. Clearly we'll be looking at a number of variables when we conduct those reviews, notably, the conditions prevailing in the secondary market, the likely pricing that we may be able to achieve on certain subsets of assets in the portfolio, and of course, with an eye on the potential lost growth from selling those assets. Clearly there is always a price to pay for selling assets that will otherwise deliver a positive return. We will balance all of those competing considerations to optimize the process around disposals. Point five, we have decided to place new commitments on hold for the remainder of 2026. As a reminder, we've already committed $250 million to the separate account, which is the only route through which we are currently making new commitments. The most recent commitment to a HarbourVest fund was actually made nearly 18 months ago. We've solely been committing through the SMA. Even that, though, will be placed on hold for the remainder of the year. I would like to be clear, however, that this does not mean that HVPE will no longer be investing because the existing commitments that we've already made will continue to call capital for new investments as we go through this year and for several years to come. There will be a minimal impact on vintage diversification, on our ability to take advantage of opportunities in the private markets for the remainder of this year. Finally, point six, the Board has announced that we'll run a subsequent continuation vote following this year's vote, which takes place in July. We'll hold another vote no later than July of 2029, a maximum of three years following the vote that will take place in three months' time. Hopefully, this represents an attractive package of initiatives. We believe that this really is a market-leading package, certainly in our sector. We hope that shareholders are supportive of the measures we're taking. Clearly, there'll be further updates, particularly on the tender nearer the time. In the meantime, and in the interests of providing sufficient time on this call for Q&A, I'll take a pause here and see if there are any questions we can address at this point. Great. Thank you, Richard and Ed. Well, we've got a number of questions already from our audience. Thank you everybody for submitting and please do keep them coming. The first one I'm going to put to, well, Richard and Carolina. Perhaps Carolina, we can start with you on the secondary market. I appreciate you're focused on the primary market, but hopefully you can give some color here. This is from Charles. How liquid is the secondary market in the current environment? The secondary market remains very active in this type of environment, particularly as investors are looking for liquidity and secondary buyers have raised significant capital, being well-positioned to unlock these opportunities at this point in time. Thanks, Carolina. We've got a question here which I will put to Ed from Tom. Thank you, Tom. Do you regard today's initiatives as a competitive response to the growth of evergreen offerings? Do you regard HVPE as effectively offering the best of both worlds now? Yeah, I'd love to have been able to write that question myself because I think that's absolutely spot on. We have seen and heard a lot about evergreens. In fact, HarbourVest have their own products that sit alongside HVPE. As all good investment managers, they have a suite of ways to access their capabilities. The great attraction for me of listed investment companies is they trade every day on the market, you have constant liquidity. The frustration investors have is they can't always get out a lump of their cash very easily at close to NAV. This, for my mind, does provide a hybrid opportunity. What you won't see with an HVPE is the gating that you sometimes see in evergreen structures where you have quarterly opportunities to take your money out, but if there's a queue of people wanting to exit, then the shutters come down. You don't get that in the listed markets, but you do here have an opportunity to get out of 10%, or possibly more, depending on how many people tender, of your shares at a tight discount at least once a year. I think it's innovative because it's something that isn't a one-off. We're committing to distributions on an annual basis through to the next continuation vote. I hope that people will see this as a way to access markets which are inherently illiquid in a liquid fashion, which particularly should be attractive to retail investors, wealth managers managing money on behalf of retail clients who have unusual situations arrive in their lives in which they need cash soon. They can't wait for a fund to wind up over a period of many years, or they can't wait for a gating opportunity to unstick itself. Yes, I think it is a hybrid solution. I think it's an attractive one. Shares have reacted well today, but you don't judge situations like this on a 24-hour basis. Let's see how it plays out. I suspect it will provide a strong following wind for our shares in the coming weeks and months. Thank you, Ed. We've got a question to you again here from Steven. Comments to the Chairman, well done for these initiatives. His question, will HVPE get smaller? Are you confident that HarbourVest will still provide the same level of service? I hope so, because Richard's a very proud man, and he's doing a fantastic job for us, and I don't just see that slicing 10% off our NAV through a tender is going to take anything like 10% off his enthusiasm. I shouldn't think it will take anything off it. It will only get smaller if the markets don't grow. We delivered an 11% NAV per share return last year. That's roughly equal to the size of distributions that we're modeling for 2026. It depends on the markets, but if the markets grow, if valuations expand, if we exit through IPOs and M&A underlying investments at the premium, which we have been doing year in, year out, then this vehicle net net will become larger. Let's remember, this is the biggest and most liquid of the private equity fund of funds listed in the U.K. Even with this tender offer, it remains bigger than its nearest competitor, and I believe that will continue to be the case. Oh, by the way, thank you very much for the congratulations, Steven. I'm going to put this question to you, Richard, one from James. Can you please explain the rationale of the 10% discount to NAV for the autumn tender? Why not NAV to NAV? Does this suggest your marks are too high? That's a great question. It certainly doesn't suggest the marks are too high. The rationale for the 10% was that we want to give the opportunity, as Ed stated, for investors to achieve an exit close to NAV or certainly closer than the market price. That needed to be a material uplift, clearly, to the current share price. Also we wanted to preserve a degree of NAV per share accretion for those who may not wish to sell, so that it's still a net-net beneficial transaction for shareholders who want to remain fully invested. That's where we've struck the balance, and we believe that 10% is the right level. Happy to perhaps hand over to Ed if there are any further comments on that. Yeah. Thank you, Richard. I'd chip one further thing in. If you look at the $300 million sale that we announced in December, that was at a headline discount of 6%, but the proceeds were deferred. As Richard said, the first chunk has come in in March, and the remainder comes in later this year. If you time-weight the value of the money that you receive, the look-through discount was sort of 10% on that transaction. The discount on this tender is largely reflective of conditions in the secondary market, give or take. The secondary market clearly moves around, and conditions today, given all that's going on in the Middle East, might be different to the conditions that will prevail in three-six months' time or prevailed six months ago. Again, we only thought it fair on all shareholders if we were setting the tender price at something reflective of our ability to trade in the secondary market. It's a balancing act. We've said around 10%, so we'll tweak according to market conditions nearer the time. We want it to be fair to all shareholders, those who stay in and those who choose to tender. Thank you. We've had a number of questions on dividends, which I'm going to try and amalgamate. First of all, question that we won't be paying a dividend. The shareholder returns will be through buybacks and tenders, not dividends. A second question as to why dividend payments haven't been included as an option, and I might put that to you, Ed. Yeah, look, we consult with our institutional wealth manager shareholders all the time. It's very difficult for us to consult with individual retail investors, although we do reply to every incoming that we have. The very strong message we've received from the wealth managers, who are typically managing money on behalf of retail investors, is that they look elsewhere for their income in their portfolios, and they look to this because it's investing in private equity as a capital growth story. They've encouraged us not to compromise the appetite for capital growth by paying a dividend, which, for many people, is tax inefficient. Now, I know that doesn't apply for everybody, but cutting through our shareholder register and thinking about what's best for the consensus of shareholders, we believe it's right to continue to construct this as a vehicle which grows its net asset value. On top of that, as we've seen through the Distribution Pool, it delivers lumps of that capital back as a capital distribution rather than income. If we had a different share register, we might take a different view. There are clearly other vehicles that you can go to in this sector if you want to pick up some dividend and have private equity exposure, but that's not what HVPE has ever been about, and we don't think in talking to investors, and particularly the wealth management community, that it's right to start doing that now. Okay. Thank you, Ed. A question for you, Carolina, from Christopher. What impact has the Iran conflict and this year's market volatility had on deal activity within the PE sector? You've touched on this already a little bit. Yeah, I think Ed touched on the current macro landscape and the impact that's having more broadly, and it is one where at the beginning of the year, obviously there was more momentum around deal activity because people felt some of the volatility we experienced last year was largely tempered. Obviously the conflict has reemerged a lot of that volatility and that potential concern, which has given more pause in terms of the activity levels. That said, some of the corrections that we saw in the software space, particularly at the public market, has unlocked what people think are some good buying opportunities in terms of valuations for some quality assets. We are seeing a more tempered deal activity level, and it is true that private markets, the impact, the ability to absorb shocks of what we're seeing, we'll see it slower over time that we see that come through the portfolio. Really it's going to be a function of how long the conflict endures and then seeing the second order effects of what happens with the higher energy prices, inflation levels, as well as what might happen with interest rates as a result. That will determine the balance of the year activity levels. Okay. Thank you, Carolina. A question here that I'll put to Richard from Xander. With new commitments on hold for 2026, how should remaining shareholders think about the impact on HVPE's long-term NAV compounding? Does pausing new commitments risk diluting future returns by missing a potentially attractive vintage period? How do you weigh that against the benefit of near-term distributions? Thank you for the question. It's really important to make the point that we have $2.4 billion of unfunded commitments, so we essentially have a very large pipeline of investments we've pre-committed to. That capital will be drawn down for new investments over time over the next few years. The fact we've committed $250 million to the SMA this year, in combination with the existing commitments we have in the ground, mean that the investment pacing, at least in the near term, at least for this year, will be impacted very marginally by the pause in new commitments. Now, clearly, if we paused for two, three, or four years, then that does have a material impact on the portfolio. We have been very clear in the announcement that the pause applies only for the remainder of 2026. There will be another decision point later in the year regarding 2027. I do want to reassure shareholders we will continue to be deploying into this market via the HarbourVest funds and via the SMA into attractive new opportunities. This is very much a continuing portfolio and a continuing program into the foreseeable future. Thank you, Richard. A question here for you, Carolina. From your experience, are the loss ratios for single asset secondaries lower than co-investment deals or regular individual buyout deals? Is it fair to assume that the upside capture is lower for the single asset secondary deals and the range of returns is narrower compared to co-investment deals and regular buyouts? The short answer is yes. Directionally, thinking about that way is fair, but there are some important caveats, particularly around asset quality, entry price, and the ultimate GP behavior. I would say that empirically and anecdotally, there are lower loss ratios in the single asset CVs relative to a blind pool buyout and many of the co-investments. What you're trading off in a secondary single asset CV is that right tail convexity, the outcome bands that you can get on the upside for that underwriting certainty that you get. Okay. Thank you, Carolina. I'm going to put this question to Richard, from Charles. The proposals envisage returning significant monies to investors. How much of this cash can be generated via natural portfolio turnover versus secondary asset disposals? If you are required to make secondary asset disposals, can you guide what sort of discount to NAV, a general range do you expect to have to accept to raise the necessary capital? Okay, great. Thank you for the questions. There's a limit to clearly what we can say today about future potential sales. I would say that we are not banking on natural distributions from the portfolio returning to long-run averages in the near term. We're absolutely modeling for a continuation of relatively depressed exit activity in the market. We're certainly hoping for a recovery, but we are not banking on that. Our assumption is that we will need to be more active in the secondary market. We do not have to sell further assets this year to fund the obligations we've just undertaken, but we will be evaluating opportunities on a very regular basis, as we've said. Clearly, we'll be looking at potential pricing, potential asset mix, before embarking on any further sales. The offers that we expect to receive will have to meet a certain threshold to be considered. Clearly we are not a forced seller. We have time on our side, and we're able to hold out for optimal conditions to the extent that's possible. I wouldn't want to put a number on future discounts, but I think Ed mentioned the transaction we announced in December was at a headline discount of 6%. I think that did surprise the market, particularly as that portfolio was predominantly a fund of funds portfolio that we sold. I think there's growth in the secondary market on a secular trend type basis, and notwithstanding current uncertainty, we should see a continued progression towards greater liquidity in the secondary market going forward, which I think will be very helpful as we embark on our revised capital allocation approach. Thank you, Richard. A question here, which I'm going to put to you, Edmond Warner, first, but, Richard, you might want to, and Carolina, you might want to follow up from Jordan. Can you explain how the Manager is aligned with shareholders? Do the Managers or Directors own shares in the company, and if so, do their positions represent a significant portion of their net worth? How, for example, are their bonuses or LTIP structure aligning them with shareholders? Well, I'll take the Board first, and I think maybe Carolina can take the Manager and structures there. Clearly, the Board doesn't have LTIPs and incentives and bonuses. That would be entirely inappropriate. I think our Directors' fees are fair when referenced against the scale of this and complexity of this vehicle and other vehicles in the listed investment company space. All of the Directors are shareholders. I'm not going to open up my bank account for you, but if you look at the accounts and see how many shares I own, it's certainly a non-trivial amount and it is a substantial part of my net wealth. I take this role just as seriously as you would expect me to. Being a shareholder, I guess sharpens my attitude towards every decision that we take. If any of my fellow directors is on the call, they'd say exactly the same thing. We're all firmly aligned with shareholders. We know our duties, and we're not here to protect the manager or protect our own positions, and being a shareholder is certainly helpful in that regard. You can make your own judgment as to whether I own enough or not enough. I think it's a very fair shareholding. Carolina, do you want to talk to the incentivization for the HarbourVest team that managed this vehicle? Yeah. We have, as you can imagine, the team that's directly involved in managing the vehicle that you have here today, Richard, Stephanie, and a number of others that work with a team who are very much focused and aligned, in terms of their incentives, not only to shareholders directly, but also in terms of their end-of-year performance evaluation relative to the performance of the share price. That comes across both the bonus payments that they would receive end of year. More importantly, behind that team, you have the entirety of the manager at HarbourVest, which is very much aligned in terms of its incentives for the value creation of the underlying investments that HVP is participating in. That's across a variety of structures where the upside potential around management incentives is the carry, and very much aligned to generating outperformance at the investment level on behalf of the manager that's investing the HVP assets. Thank you, Carolina. A question here from Stephen to Richard and Carolina. Do these initiatives make it really hard to run HVP, i.e., a fund that is more limited than what you are used to? Perhaps I can start, Carolina. Clearly, a fully closed-ended fund with no distributions has a greater degree of certainty in terms of capital availability for investment. This is not specific to HVPE, but any investment company that is fully closed-ended is clearly the easiest vehicle to manage from a capital allocation standpoint. At the same time, we absolutely are aligned to the interest of shareholders through extensive discussions in recent months, certainly telling us they would like to see more liquidity. The steps we've taken today are a real improvement, I think, in terms of the availability to shareholders of liquidity closer to NAV. This is clearly an important step in light of the persistent discount of which the shares have been trading. I would say, certainly it makes it a little bit more difficult to plan cash flow and to plan new investments. We of course have very sophisticated tools and modeling that enable us to do that with a reasonable degree of confidence. We run scenarios across multiple assumptions to ensure we're capturing upside and downside cases. Clearly, nobody can foresee exactly how markets will turn out even over a fairly short period of time. We have the humility to understand that, and we bake in uncertainty into everything we're projecting. At the same time, this is still a controlled structure. It's still a very predictable pace of capital return, as has been outlined. We're looking at 5%-10% of NAV per year. Each year, therefore, we need to plan for that kind of disposal and distribution. In that sense, it's a fairly straightforward task. Thank you, Richard. A question here for the Chair from Peter. It is logical for most holders to tender their shares. Do the Chair and other insiders expect to tender their shares? Why is there such an emphasis on tenders rather than buybacks? There's two parts to that question. Firstly, the logical thing to do is tender. However, you've got to take personal capital gains tax liabilities into account in doing the math, and I guess it depends on where the shares are trading going into the tender. The closer they are to a 10% discount, the less the incentive to tender. I need to take advice on whether optically it's right or wrong for the Chair to behave logically or not to tender because someone can make a cheap headline out of the Chair sells 10% of his shares into a tender and then buys some back further down the line. I reserve my position to take advice. You'll probably shoot me either way. The logic, that is logically correct, subject to tax liabilities clearly. Look, with the shares trading close to their all-time high, by definition, pretty much every shareholder's in the money. If you're a taxpayer, you're going to have some tax liability. Everybody's going to have to take that into account. Why is there the emphasis on a tender rather than buybacks? Because we've heard from a broad swath of shareholders that they want to be shown the opportunity to get out of some of their holding on a regular basis at close to NAV. In fact, Tom asked the question earlier about whether this was a fantastic, he may not have used the word fantastic, but he was very complimentary, a hybrid solution in providing some close-to-NAV exit as well as daily liquidity. That is the case. The buyback doesn't enable you to get out at close to NAV. It maximizes NAV accretion but doesn't give people that periodic exit opportunity. That's why we come up with a hybrid solution. We'll never please all the people all of the time, but I believe overall this will be pleasing. If I can pick up a couple of questions I've seen come up here because they are contradictory. One was saying, why isn't the discount zero? Why don't you trade at NAV? You're punishing people who tender by having any discount at all, and another one saying, aren't you punishing people who choose not to tender? Again, we've tried to strike a fair balance here that give people a close to NAV exit opportunity, but still giving some NAV accretion for those who choose not to tender. You've got to strike the balance somewhere, and that's where we struck it, which we think is a fair middle ground. Thank you. I've got a question for you, Richard, here from Michael on the debt facility. Do covenants on the debt facility constrain your plans in any way? For how many years going forward is there a requirement for the present minimum draw to continue? Yeah. Thank you for the question. There is no constraint imposed by the credit facility on the announcement that we've made, even at the upper end of the range that we've indicated. We have very substantial headroom where we are today in terms of covenants. There's no realistic prospect of any kind of reduction in borrowing availability on the current line. The credit facility is committed until June of 2029, so there's still more than three years to run. Until we refinance that facility, the minimum draw will continue to apply at the current level. Of course, as regular or long-term investors will know, we do tend to refinance fairly frequently and generally well ahead of the expiry date. I can't be precise, but that hopefully will answer the question. Thank you, Richard. Got a question for you here, Ed, from Andrew. In a very general sense, do you think boards across all investment trusts, not just private equity, should be more determined, as you are, to find new and different ways to reduce discounts? Go on. What's a diplomatic answer to that? Yes, I do. However, every board's got to make its own decision, and every situation is unique. Each investment company does different things, does it their own way. We've got a peer group, but each one of those is subtly different. People who've heard me before have heard me say I own pretty much all of the peer group in my own portfolio. Each of those companies does different things. I couldn't turn around to any of them and say, "You should do it our way." They have to find their own way. All boards should be lively in debating discounts and the challenge that they pose to the health of the sector, the marketability of the sector. The AIC is working hard to improve the awareness of investment companies amongst retail investors. Wealth managers would love the sector to be more vibrant, for discounts to be narrower. The role of a board in each individual case is to find its own route. We've identified a route here. We think it's a route to success. Maybe others will want to watch and see how it plays out. Maybe they'll want to take some of this as learnings. Maybe they'll look at it and say that's not for us. Our route is a different route. Doing nothing probably isn't an answer when you're sitting on a wide discount. We've been very active for the last two years in debating with a wide range of people, advisors, and shareholders, and amongst ourselves, what we can do rather than sitting back and watching and blaming the market. The single-word answer is yes. The diplomatic answer is everybody's got to find their own way. Okay, great. Thank you, Ed. I've got a question here on private credit, which I'll put to you, Richard. Investors remain fearful of private credit. Can you talk about HVPE's indirect exposure to private credit via portfolio companies? Do you expect any impact on NAV going forward? By the way, thank you for the transparency on alignment. Yeah, thank you for the question. Firstly, I should point out that we do invest into private credit funds managed by HarbourVest. We have 3% of our NAV in total in private credit on a look-through basis, which of course is a relatively small allocation. The majority of that is to what are called the Credit Opportunities Funds, which invest into unitranche and junior credit, plus generally with an equity element as well. They've been very strong performers for us in recent years. Clearly, the private credit situation is unfolding in the market. I think there's clearly been a huge amount of press coverage on a relatively small number of isolated examples of portfolio companies experiencing difficulties. Our team is not seeing any issue in our portfolio. Indeed, we have extremely low default rates historically in the HarbourVest private credit portfolios. No direct concerns at present, but of course, as you would expect of any experienced and credible investment manager, the firm takes all of this very seriously and keeps a close eye on portfolios. I might hand over to Carolina for any further comment on this. Thank you, Richard. No, I think very much the headlines are focused on the gating headlines in private credit, and those structures are working as designed and not necessarily a reflection of defaults or impairments, as Richard just said. If you just contextualize, roughly 10% of private credit is in evergreen vehicles. It really is a small proportion, and that is obviously not the segment that HVPE's invested into. The indirect impact to portfolio companies of refinancing risk and potential tightening liquidity, which could affect more at the macro level discussions that we just had, is where the focus is. There is no ongoing concern regarding the private credit exposure that HVPE has here. Thank you, Richard and Carolina. A question for you, Ed, here from Andrew. Is there any concern over the July 2026 continuation vote outcome with shareholder feedback or activist noise being a key component? Is this the motivation behind the action taken now, and how does the Board feel about the July 2026 vote outcome? No and excited. No, I'm not losing sleep. No, this isn't a reaction to activist activity leading into the continuation vote. I'm excited that we are the first of our peers to offer this democratic opportunity for people to express their view on the existence and future of the company. If we had any nervousness whatsoever, we wouldn't have introduced it, and there's been no nervousness creep in since we made the announcement back in, I think, the end of January last year that we would conduct this opportunity. I'm an investor in lots of different investment companies, and I think that the democratic approach that we've adopted to give shareholders a voice, shareholders of all size, is the right way, and I'd like to see every investment company have this periodic referendum, if you like, on its existence and let's see where we go. It is unknown territory, but all my conversations with shareholders have been friendly, supportive, full of suggestions, some of which are reflected in the measures that we've taken. We haven't cooked this up with a couple of advisors in a locked room. We've been all ears and had a lot of dialogue for the last 18 months, and this is the fruit of that dialogue, which gives me a lot of confidence that the vote will pass very successfully. If it doesn't, that's democracy. Thank you, Ed. Richard, I've got a question here from Julian for you. Will the approach to secondary sales include an element of focusing the fund's investments on smaller PE fund managers? We're looking at this from the point of view of optimizing liquidity in the portfolio and maximizing returns to shareholders. That's the primary lens through which we're evaluating any future secondary sale opportunities. What we're not trying to do at this stage is actively reshape the portfolio in any given direction other than to ensure that we remain as close as possible to our strategic asset allocation targets. For example, the sale we announced in December helped reduce our buyout exposure closer to the target percentage for that particular part of the portfolio. To some extent we're fine-tuning, but this is not a wholesale change of strategy in terms of how we see allocations going forward or an attempt to fundamentally reshape the portfolio. Okay. Thanks, Richard. Question for you, Ed, here from Elliot. Is there excess supply in the listed PE sector, and should these initiatives serve to kill competitors? That isn't our objective. I don't think there is excess supply. I think there's a deficiency of demand, I would say, because when I look at private markets and private equity, for me, they should be an integral part of any broadly spread, well-diversified portfolio for investors of all sorts. The returns that private equity have delivered for years have had relatively low volatility, strong positivity, and over time have outperformed listed markets. If you're going to run or manage a diversified portfolio, you need a good private markets component. I think there's ample buying capacity for these trusts, but it hasn't been triggered in the last two or three years, and that's because the private equity world has been rather glued up. There haven't been the exits at pace that the sector has been used to, and that has to change. I think when the cycle turns, you'll see the discounts narrow right across the space here, but we don't want to wait around for that. Someone, I see one of the other questions that's come up is suggesting that maybe what the market's saying is that 30% is a natural discount for these. Someone called Peter W., I'm not sure whether that's Pete Wilson, who used to be on the Board and work for HarbourVest or not, but there's lots of Peter W.'s in this world. When I look at the history of the discount of HVPE, there have been periods in which it's traded consistently in the teens as percentage points. For me, normal conditions, without war in the Middle East, without the level of interest rates, bond yields we've got at the moment, without the uncertainties that we have, these could easily trade consistently with discounts under 20%. I don't think 30% is long-term steady state. I think 30% reflects the rather messed-up world that we've all been operating in for the last couple of years. I see that as our target to shoot at, is to get the discount into the teens over the course of the next sensible period. Thank you. I have a question here from Tom, which I will put to you, Ed, but Richard, you may want to add some color here as well. Was any consideration given to allow institutional investors to subscribe for tender shares at the tender price so as to be able to acquire a position at scale at the time of a tender, a.k.a., a mix and match facility? No, if this is the Tom who I think it is, then if you've got one of those investors, then absolutely you know where to find us, and come and have a conversation. Great. Richard, I've got a question here for you from David. At an underlying level, have IRR targets expectations changed from levels achieved to date? Broadly speaking, I'd say the answer's no. The manager continues to underwrite secondary purchases, primary investments, and co-investments to very similar IRRs that we've achieved over the long term. I think the routes by which value is created have shifted somewhat in recent years, certainly in the direction of expansion of businesses, efficiency in terms of operations, buy and build models, and scaling platforms. Those are all more dominant, I would say, in terms of value creation drivers. Broadly, we're targeting the same sort of returns as we've achieved to date, which are essentially low mid-teens+ per annum in terms of IRR, fully net of all HVPE's costs. That's the 10 year track record up to the end of February. We see no reason that can't continue. Thanks, Richard. I've got another question here for you from another Tom. Are you kicking the can down the road by making no commitments in 2026? Will this just result in a fallow period again in three to four years' time? I would reiterate my point from earlier. I think it's very important to note that HVPE's structure is very different from many of our peers. We do have a very large pipeline of unfunded commitments, which are essentially commitments made to underlying funds, whereby a third-party General Partner, a Manager, is looking to find investments and then call down capital from HVPE and other investors who've committed to those funds. In a sense, HVPE's structure really helps to buffer the portfolio against any short-term variation in commitment pacing. What's really important is the capital call pacing, which has been very consistent over the last several years, right through COVID, right through interest rate rises, everything that's happened since 2020. We've seen a very consistent $400 million-$500 million of deployment into new investments by HVPE over that time. The commitments we've made, the new commitments at the level of HVPE to HarbourVest funds and more recently to the separate account, have varied from year to year. The really important measure is that pipeline and how quickly that is called down, and that's been very steady. Thank you. I've got a question here from Ian, Andrew, which I might put to you, Richard, as well. Wouldn't investing more and returning less capital produce better returns in the long run? That is a very difficult question to answer. It depends on many assumptions around the method of distribution of capital, around the growth rate in the portfolio, both resulting from current investments and future investments yet to be made. It's a very difficult question to answer. Now, clearly, we spend a huge amount of time modeling the portfolio. We typically look at a five year horizon for the existing assets and for new investments. What we've tried to do with the initiatives we've announced today is strike a balance that maximizes returns for shareholders over the medium to long-term. We strongly believe that that is what we're likely to achieve. Clearly there are no guarantees. It does depend on how things turn out in the years ahead. Great. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Ed and Carolina. We've had a number of helpful comments and positive comments from the audience who've dialed in. Thank you for all of those. We really appreciate your feedback and your time today. Ed, I wonder if you just wanted to say some quick closing remarks before we end the call. All I'd like to say is that I'm very proud to chair this vehicle, which has delivered incredible returns since launch. I believe we'll continue to do so for years to come. I want to reassure all investors at all times that we take their own interests very much to heart and everything we do is designed to deliver for them. I think this company will continue to deliver for a long time, and I see these measures as something which are market leading, will unlock value, and I hope the market will applaud as the weeks and months unfold. Thank you very much for being with us. Those of you that are shareholders, thank you for being on the journey. Those that aren't, I'm sure you know a stockbroker who can buy you a few. Fantastic, Ed. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you to all the team today. Could I please ask investors now to close the session? You should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. This only takes a few moments to complete, but I know it's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the team at HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good afternoon to you all.