Wendel (Euronext:MF) Q3 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Vandell's Q3 2026 Trading Update Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. You can also ask your questions on the webcast, Olivier Allot, Director of Financial Communication and Data Intelligence will read them. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Jérôme Michiels, Dandel's Executive Vice President.

0:45 Please go ahead, sir.

0:48 Thank you and welcome, everyone. I am here today with Cyril Marie, member of the Executive Board, Benoit Drillaud, our CFO, Olivier Hallot and Lucille Roque from our investor relations team. I will walk you through the main highlights of our Q3 trading update and we will be happy to take your questions after this short presentation. So let me start on slide number four with the highlights of another important quarter for Vandel with a solid operational performance at Vandel Investment Managers. with continued revenue growth at constant perimeter and constant exchange rate. From the start of the year, we've had 10% at Vandel Investment Managers. Cyril will come back to that.

1:40 At the level of WPI, principal investments, we have reached key milestones in terms of portfolio rotation with 1.6 billion euros of value customization from the disposal of data that we computed At the end of the quarter and IHS that we expect to complete in the coming months, these two disposals were carried out at an average 20% premium to the pre-announcement NAV. Lastly, we delivered a plus 5.1% increase in terms of net asset value per share over the quarter. reaching 167 euros per share supported by favorable valuation multiples impacts and continued operational performance across our businesses.

2:31 If we move to the next slide, you can see that Vanden Investment Managers now manages 48.7 billion euros of assets across private equity, private debt, and secondaries. In terms of fee-paying assets under management, Total 37.7 billion euros which is a 9% increase over the last 12 months adjusting for scope effects and plus 5% since the start of the year. Management fees and other revenues represent 344 million euros over the first 9 months of the year. It's a total growth of 41% compared to the prior year, but this reflects the full year contribution from Monroe over the nine months and the acquisitions of committed advisors that we closed in April 2026.

3:26 The growth at constant perimeter and constant exchange rate was solid, double digit at plus 10%. Moving on to Vendel Principal Investments, As you know, we are engaged in numerous value creation initiatives. We have registered major value customization events during this year. And our portfolio companies continue to deliver a solid performance across the board with some difficult market conditions affecting some of our businesses. But overall, we have had a good growth in terms of net asset value at Vendel Principal Investments. Let's now double-click on the increase of our net asset value over the quarter on the following slide, which adds up to €8.10 over the quarter.

4:21 Breaking down this number, you can see that Vendel Investment Managers, Vendel Principal Investments, and Share Buybacks have all contributed positively to the total of €8.10. Vandel Investment Managers mainly through the increase in the valuation of our sponsor money and Vandel Principal Investments through the increase of the share price of Bureau Veritas over the quarter and the rebound in the market multiples that we use to value our non-listed principal investments over the quarter. This is 2.7 euros coming from Bureau Veritas share price and 5.8 euros per share coming from our unlisted assets.

5:08 Lastly, the finalization of our share buyback program has delivered a positive, accretive effect of 50 cents over the quarter. Building up on this theme of shareholder return on the next slide, let me expand a little bit on what has been done. As you know, it's an important topic in our capital allocation strategy. Since the beginning of the year, we have returned approximately 450 million to our shareholders through dividends, 140 million, and share-by-back, 310 million euros, which is 9% of our share capital only in five months. Including the interim dividend to be paid in November of 2 euros and 55 cents, shareholder returns will exceed 500 million euros in 2026. Together with the positive performance that we report today, I think this demonstrates our ability to combine growth, portfolio rotation, sustained cash flows, and attractive shareholder returns that are now part of our business model.

6:21 Cyril. Thank you Jérôme. The Vandelien platform is ramping up. We have closed the committed advisor transaction in Q2. The onboarding of this new affiliate is on track, as mentioned by Jérôme. In terms of revenues for the first nine months, we are at 344, so plus 41%. It reflects now the full contribution of committed plus the IK and Monroe. If we try to Look at the underlying growth of the business on the line for like its 10% growth rate, double digit. So we are on track to deliver around 200 million of FRE on a pro forma basis for 26. That was the target announced in December last year.

7:11 What is also very important, I think, is the quality of the fundraising activity. As you know, Monroe Capital is always raising capital Committed Advisor is raising capital this year. We are at 3 billion of equity raise since the start of 26. We have done close to 800 million in Q3 coming mainly from Monroe. The pipeline for Monroe, the demand for private credit in the U.S. and for Monroe capital remains very strong and will pay. It has paid in Q3 and we will see more in Q4. It's very dynamic. If we look at the bridge in terms of AUM, so as mentioned by Jérôme, so we end the quarter at 48.7 billion in total. If we look at the fee-paying AUM, we end at 37.7. And if you look at the bridge, the contribution since the beginning of the year, so you have the benefit of the integration of committed advisor for 5 billion.

8:07 But if we look at the organic dynamics, so we have new fee-paying AUM for 5.3 billion. 4 billion coming from monroe capital and it's mainly the deployment here it's not the fundraise it's the deployment of the of the institutional vehicle and 1.3 billion coming from the equity raised by committed advisor exit and pay of 4.2 we have written a lot of capital to our lps mainly monroe and committed advisor it's very important and with that we end the quarter at 37.7 billion

8:46 Thank you. A couple of other items on WPI. As you know, portfolio rotation has been an important topic for us in 2026. I am pleased to report that we completed the disposal of STAL on October 1st, as expected, and we have received 1.1 billion euros of proceeds as part of this disposal. So together, STAL and IHS will represent 1.6 billion, in 2026 at levels again that are well above the pre-announcement NAV of each of these assets. On the operational side of things, most portfolio companies have continued to perform well despite an environment that remains mixed in certain sectors.

9:34 But in terms of valuation, as I said, the rebound in market multiples over Q3 has resulted in a positive impact on our NAV for principal investment. Let me now briefly comment on the revenue trends across our main portfolio companies on slide 11, starting with the largest one, Bureau Veritas, which has continued to deliver excellent performance in line with the targets confirmed and upgraded at their latest Capital Markets Day and showing a sequential improvement of organic growth to 6.2%. and over Q3 and 5.7% over the first nine months. Growth remains broad-based across key geographies and business lines and the company confirmed its objectives and remains one of the strongest performance in the TIC sector.

10:28 At Scallion, the performance remains impacted by softer demand in certain digital activities, particularly in France, but That said, aerospace and defense markets remain strong growers as Calion is regarded as one of the best players in these categories in its core markets. The ongoing execution of the operational transformation program has continued and is delivering efficiency gain and margin protection. CPI has faced some challenging conditions in its market, especially in North America. We've seen very good growth at the international division, but this has not entirely offset the softer trends that we are seeing in North America. But management is actively focused on strengthening the organization and executing initiatives to return to a higher pace of growth.

11:33 At ACAMS, management continues to execute well with membership growth, recurring revenues, momentum and increase, and a strong level of profitability. We continue to see attractive long-term opportunities around recurring revenue and AI-enabled solutions at this company that is coming online. Lastly, at Globeducate, strong growth as you can see, both organically and in terms of scope, which is part of the investment thesis there. We have solid demand across most geographies and operational initiatives and expansion projects coming online continue to support the long-term value creation plan at this company.

12:21 Just a word on the other unlisted assets. As you know, Tarket is now unlisted and Muno is classified as an asset aired for sale. The combined value of these two assets in our NAV as of September 30 is roughly 300 million. And as you will have seen, given the political context, the contribution of Target's Russian operations is not valued in our net asset value. There is no change compared to the previous NAVs, but I just wanted to report that together, Target and Mino represent roughly 300 million euros. So to sum up, we are seeing good operational momentum across most of our portfolio companies at WPI and our management teams are laser focused on addressing the challenges that we face in some parts of the market, aggressively executing transformation programs to protect margins and enhance the business profile of these companies.

13:28 A word on our financial structure, which is Very strong and one of our key strengths. Following the receipt of the proceeds from STAL, the level of our cash is at 1.5 billion euros. Our average cost of debt is extremely low and fixed at 2.8% on average. We have no debt maturity before June 2030. And lastly, our loan-to-value is at 9.5%, leaving substantial flexibility to us for future capital deployments. I remind everyone that this LTV calculation includes all the commitments in Van Den Investment Managers funds that haven't yet been called as well as the put options for our GPs.

14:18 So at 9.5% which includes again everything we have full financial capacity to grow. Let me now conclude and I would say that Q3 was another quarter of solid execution with a NAV increase of more than 5%, significant portfolio rotation and a very good momentum at Vandel Investment Managers which continues to scale, posting solid results. We remain focused on growing our asset management platform, at creating value within WPI and maintaining A disciplined capital allocation framework in line with what we laid out for the company through to 2030.

15:08 With that, we would be happy to take your questions. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To answer your question, please press star 1 1 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We will now take our first question. And the first question comes from the line of David Sardin from Kepler-Chevre. Please go ahead.

15:54 Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have a couple of questions, if you may. The first one is regarding the capital allocation with the disposal of Chital, so now you have plenty of options. What would you favor in this kind of environment and the risk maybe of certain economic downturn in the coming months? And my second question is regarding the cash-in and cash-out for your platform. So if I'm right here to date, you get some stronger fundraising than exit. So do you think that this positive trend is possible for the next month? Sorry. Thank you.

16:46 Thank you, David. On the capital allocation strategy, well, we've laid out at the last investor day what we intend to do within the 7 billion that we expect to generate between capital gains and cash flows from accumulated from our activities. We actually allocate, I would say, a slightly disproportionate share to building out the asset management platform, both through investment in sponsored money to support our fundraising and our GPs, as well as Paying for the puts that some of them are materializing by 2030.

17:45 We will however continue to invest as well in new principal investments and we do see some opportunities to invest. It's not a very active market but nevertheless we see good opportunities and we are obviously targeting businesses that can grow through the cycle that are profitable. So we will continue to allocate and lastly obviously we have a very strong policy in terms of shareholder return. with increased dividend that we also need to fund. So this is all part of the capital allocation strategy and having received 1.6 billion of proceeds is part of that. We are on track to execute our strategy and we expect to do more in the coming months.

18:39 Maybe for asset management, Cyril will further comment on the capital allocation strategy and on your second question on fundraising versus disposals.

18:49 Thank you Jérôme. So in terms of fundraising and what you call cash-in cash-out, I think by this you mean the evolution of the fee-paying IUM. So if you look at the situation over the first nine months, the large contribution is the deployment of capital at Monroe. We still have a lot of dry powder and as I said, we are raising capital. The demand from the institutional client remains very strong, so we'll pursue deployment of capital. then the other element of increase of the fee paying this quarter and the first nine months it's committed advisor because then they are paid on committed capital so they are just at the beginning of the fundraising the secondary expertise is you know there is a lot of strong demand from lps also on this so we believe that it will continue We will continue to gather assets and deploy capital on this, so we are quite confident for the coming quarters.

19:45 As you know, IK is not raising capital this year, it's for next year, and they have a good pipeline with the discussion of the client. The demand for European investment is good. For sure, performance remains key, but the key point is diversification. When we did the Capital Market Day in December, I don't know if you remember, but we have shown that each year will be different. This year, It's the year of Committed Advisor for the Closed and Found and next year it will be IK and where we have always new flows is for Monroe Capital so with all of this we are quite confident on the growth of the fee-paying AUM.

20:25 Just maybe a clarification, your objective for the fee-paying AUM is roughly to grow at 15% is it correct?

20:35 Yeah, on average, on average, on average over the period. So you will have years when it's above, years when it's below, but on average, yes, it's

20:44 15%. Okay, and sorry, if we exclude the committed advisor, we are below this number today, for in 2026?

20:57 Yeah, because this year, this year, the fundraising affiliate, it's committed advisor. Next year, it will be IK. And Monroe, Q3 for sure, as you can see, was lower because they have less deployed capital this quarter. They have been very selective. And they have deployed above $1 billion, which is low compared to what they did in the previous quarter. But they tried to be selective. It's a difficult environment. Thank you very much. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. That's star 1 and 1. We will now take the next question.

22:06 From the line of Philippe Goussaint from Dick Roof Peterkamp, please go ahead.

22:13 Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few, if I may. Just maybe a follow-up on the question from Kepler Schiffer on the capital allocation. So again, you're talking about €1.6 billion in dry powder, if I may call it. If I understood the answer correctly, what you're going to do with that €1.5 billion, It's more kind of like participating in the investment strategies of your alternative asset managers as compared to continue to build out your third pillar by making other acquisitions of other asset managers. Is that the correct way to understand it?

22:59 So you're basically done. You're now in private equity. You're in private credit. You are in secondary strategies. That's the platform you would like. Therefore, the capital that you have now available following the sale will go in for investing in the strategies of your partners or maybe also putting some money to work with the principal investment decision. How should I look at that?

23:27 No, I will comment on my side, Cyril. So if you remember what we presented at the Capital Market Day, we want to do the three. We want to pursue The investment in asset management, and on this, based on your comments, we have in mind to add new verticals, not five, but maybe one or two, infrastructure and maybe US buyouts. That's allocation one. Allocation two is pursuit, as Jérôme said, we want to pursue our investment on the principal investment. And three, the third use of the capital is return capital to shareholders. So we want to do the three. This will come from the capital generated by the activity but also by disposal and reinvestment. So you have the example of Stahl, you may have other disposals on the principal side. It will be reinvested in new strategies.

24:17 So it's a dynamic where we have to do the three. First you do the investment in asset management and also pay the contingent payment. Investment in principal investment. Strong return capital to shareholders. And for this, we have the capital generated by the FRE and also the disposal of our assets, which is the three-year time horizon. So it's the three.

24:45 Then my second question goes more towards the general state of the private markets. I mean, we had this morning Blackstone reporting results for the third quarter. It was somewhat mixed. They missed on the top line. They actually missed on an adjusted basis EPF as well, but anyhow. The two questions I have on the private side is one obviously first out of this year, many questions in terms of private credit as it relates to redemption requests, particularly for the evergreen strategies as a result of concerns or questions about the impact of AI on the software business. and now maybe some questions about the potential negative impact on credit quality given the rise in rates so if you just can comment a little bit with Monroe how they're being impacted by that and then secondly on the private equity side had an opportunity to talk to some managers over the last week in London.

25:53 They said the exit environment remains very difficult. Obviously, that impacts fundraising. So just kind of if you could elaborate a little bit on exits. Is that for you basically selling to other private equity firms? Is it selling to industrial buyers? Because I don't think you are that dependent on IPOs. So a little bit of color on exits. Thank you so much.

26:20 Okay, I hope you have 30 minutes. So, I'll try to be concise and we can pursue this offline. But on private credit, so let's start with client demand. So, as I said, the demand for private credit, at least for Monroe, remains very strong from institutional clients. You have the figure I gave you for Monroe. You can look at market studies. It's a record year for demand fundraising on private credit for institutional clients in the US, in Europe, and in Asia. And more importantly, for US private credit. Why? Because the underlying growth of the US economy remains very strong.

27:05 When you invest in this type of asset class, you get a double digit. When you do it as Mono does it, meaning with strong diversification by sector, by geography, etc. in the US, you get a very strong risk reward. They do it in the lower mid-market. It's an area where you can really get diversification. You have low leverage and they are not exposed at all to the large AI loan, etc. Not at all. It's not what they do. So it remains a very good value proposition for investors. So demand on the institutional side is very strong. Where you're right, it's on the retail side. There is a Still more requests in terms of redemption versus new money for the retail vehicle. It's true for the industry as a whole.

27:55 It's also true for Monroe. If we look at the first nine months, there are main vehicles called MCIP. It's a BDC. If you look at the exit and the net new flows, the net net is minus 165 million in terms of equity. So it's important. We would prefer to have growths. but the thing is that it remains limited versus the total growth of the business. So for sure on the retail side it's still the case. The good news for us is that the redemption request for Q3 was 6.9 after Q2 at 8.9 so it's decreasing and we are well below all our main peers and I think it's come from first the quality of the Thank you very much.

28:40 Thank you very much. The transaction remains difficult. You need to have very good assets. Valuation also is challenging with the rate increase. But still, we believe that we talk about IK, they are doing a good job to transform the firm and to create value for the DLP. So we have a lot of ongoing transactions and I hope Q4 will be a good quarter to announce exit.

29:33 You know, this challenging environment is a good way to show that you are better than the other to deliver alpha to your clients. And with IT, we are quite confident. In a nutshell, you have the market realities what you just described. I think you will have more and more dispersion between the top players and the other in this environment. That's my answer. Okay.

29:57 Okay, thank you. That may be a final, if I may. So, for the 2026 FRE objective, it's 200 million on an adjusted or on a pro-forma basis. Is it too early to provide us a little bit of a look into 2027, what your objective might

30:16 be? You know, in December last year, we gave two things. It was a long time ago, because 2026 was a quite challenging year. you know but we gave this target and it's still our target to reach around 200 million in 26 and we gave also second guidance is 15 percent CAGR per year it will not be exactly 15 percent per year because we'll have here with strong fundraising so we don't change what we said one year ago the capital market day okay that's very helpful thank you so much thank you We will now take the next question from the line of David Cerdan for Kepler-Chevret.

31:01 Please go ahead.

31:03 Yeah, I have a question regarding the bridge in the valuation of the enlisted asset. So if I'm correct, it's something like plus 10%. And when I look at the multiples, I think that it was more than 10% upgrade. So my question is, have you reduced maybe your estimate on your unlisted asset. And when I look at the performance year-to-date, it's true that Scallion, CPI and ACAMS are not really growing. So this is my question regarding the multiple impact and maybe the estimate impact, if you could share with us.

31:54 Good afternoon. Most of the variations come from the multiples.

32:02 Yes, we haven't changed significantly any of the expectations that we have at this point in time in the year. We are using 2025 actual and 2026 earnings estimate and You pointed out the negative trend at Scallion and CPI, but this was expected. The plan, as you know, at Scallion, we are executing a transformation plan. We see good results coming from the cost base, from the pipeline of offering and the commercial activity. But nevertheless, we had always expected to have still a negative year in 2026. and same thing for CPI we were expecting modest decrease this is what we see but we haven't changed any of our estimations over the quarter as Benoit said this is mostly related to evaluation multiples.

33:07 Okay and just for CPI and accounts what is the plan for the next years to accelerate this modest organic growth?

33:18 Well we have many initiatives going Just to illustrate a few Salesforce effectiveness, we are putting in place hunters and farmers type of organization. We have key account managers that are dedicated to the enterprise, to SME, to smaller businesses or institutions. We have account executive management and So much more efficient from a sales perspective. We're also working on the product content by itself and how we launch new product or we adjust our offering.

34:04 to make them more relevant. The delivery of the content, we are working heavily on that in terms of technology, digital, you know, the tech stack, the access, the online enrollment of the customer. So we have many initiatives going on. We are looking at pricing and say the CEOs of both companies are executing major improvements there. Thank you very much. Every month, obviously, KPIs that show that the transformation, which is ongoing, is starting to bear fruit.

35:03 But it will nevertheless take some further time before we return to growth. But I think we are on the right path there and management is doing the right things. As you can see, it's not a problem of profitability. The profitability remains very high. We are not posting profitability there in Q3, but I'm sure you will remember from H1, the profitability levels at ICAMS or CPI is very, very healthy. So the question more is now how we There is some investment required to come to that and we are making the investments in terms of incurring costs as well as capitalized costs or small capex.

35:51 But this is an important part if we want to return to growth. And it's the same at Scalion. We are investing, we are hiring people. We just hired the chief AI officer. We've completely redesigned the offerings to incorporate more AI. The organization is now much, much, much more efficient in terms of sales, in terms of delivery, in terms of executing financial reporting, etc. It's really very impressive what has been done.

36:30 And are you supported by IK partners?

36:38 Yes, for all our private investments we have an advisory agreement with IK. So IK has appointed a team dedicated to each of our investments. We have between three and four people from IK on each of our portfolio companies. It's not people that are working for other customers of IK. We are the sole customer of this team. and they have deployed resources on each of our private companies including operational partners and they are very committed and very helpful in the way we manage our companies. We used to be a handful of investment executives at Vandel spread out across the portfolio Now we have access to all IK's expertise and backbone, which is when you look at the success of IK in terms of fundraising, etc.

37:43 It's a testimony to the quality of the teams that run this organization. So we benefit from that and it's very helpful.

37:53 Okay, and the last question is regarding the leverage in the unlisted asset. So if I'm correct, Scallion has a debt maturity by 2028. So can you maybe give us some colors on what you expect to do? And if I'm correct, for Globe Educate, I didn't find the maturity of the debt. While the structure of the company is quite leveraged, so if we could have some details on that, it would be useful. Thank you.

38:28 Yes, certainly. So, yes, in Scalion, we have a big part of the debt that matures end of 2028, and we have very much that in mind. As I said, we are in the middle of a well-advanced transformation plan, and we expect leverage to come down soon. It's already coming down actually. I mean the last few quarters we've seen leverage coming down organically through the initiative that management is deploying. We've ratcheted down a bit on the margin. That's small details but nevertheless it's a little bit helping in terms of cash generation. We have a strong focus on cash generation.

39:15 All in all, we expect leverage to come down at the end of 26, at the end of 27, and potentially in mid-28. And by the end of 2028, we expect Scallion to be at a level of leverage that will be conducive to extending or finding new debts to extend maturity. That's where we want to be and we see no reason why we shouldn't succeed if the plan is well executed to come to a leverage level where we will be able to find financing at good conditions for this asset. It's delivering on its plan quarter after quarter so that's very supportive I would say.

40:05 In terms of the maturity for Globe Educate, it's June 2030. So you see we have a fair amount of time. And leverage has actually... You might qualify leverage as high, but remember we just did a capital increase during the month of September. to fund some M&A, which is part of the investment thesis. So leverage, I would say, is under control. Some view education businesses as infrastructure. We did not go as far as this. but once you've enrolled students in September you have excellent visibility on your revenues for the year and you can manage your costs according to priorities and pace your investment in terms of extension so that's you know a cash generating type of business after investment or before sorry investment in new extensions so The level of leverage is commensurate with the cash generating profile of this company.

41:26 Thank you, Jérôme. Very clear. Thank you.

41:29 Thanks. Thank you. There are no further questions on the phone. I would like to turn over to Olivier Allot for webcast questions.

41:39 Thank you. We have a lot of questions from Arnaud Palliez and Alexandre Gérard. We'll start with the Net asset value related questions. In your NEV calculation, can you break down sponsor money between IK Monroe

41:55 and Committed? I don't think we break this down or maybe in the financial statements, but for the nine months at the end of September, I don't think we break this down. We have the total number.

42:10 Yes, we didn't. For Monroe, we had roughly 200 million euros already called. Committed advisor was about 45, if I remember well. And IK is close to 90,100. The amount called.

42:35 Thank you. Regarding, just to be sure, can you confirm that at September end under private assets, there are only four assets booked, Scallion, CPI, Acams, Global Decade for 2,189,000,000 euros or does it include Target and Muno? It does include Target and Muno. Can you quantify the impact of Russia on the valuation of targets?

43:12 There is no impact, as we said. This has already been taken into account as part of the previous NAV calculations, so there is no impact.

43:22 Thank you. Among unlisted assets, can you provide us more details on market multiples evolution? What are those seeing re-evaluation and those on the opposite side?

43:36 Well, all our companies have viewed their PIRS multiples increasing since the end of June. So we have a positive contribution for all the unlisted assets, except for global case just because we use transaction multiples. So we have no equity market effect.

44:04 Thank you. Now we move to More questions about Vandel Investment Managers. Is there a slight downward revision in your full year FRA expectations for 2026 from above 200 million euros to around 200 million euros and why?

44:27 As I said previously, we gave this guidance one year ago. One more time, we are still in line to reach this, to be around 200 million, but the environment is very volatile. Where we want to be cautious is the deployment at Monroe and the evolution of the retail, so we don't change this target of to reach around 200, but it will depend of the Q4 environment, but no particular change.

44:58 Thank you. What is Vandel's share in these 200 million euros?

45:04 For the target, I don't have it in mind.

45:10 It's a little bit below 60% in average, because we have 72% for Monroe, we have 50% for IKEA, 51% for IK, a little bit higher than 50% for a community advisor. So it makes an average a little bit below 60%.

45:29 Thank you. Can you give a breakdown of the 200 million euros FRE between the three asset managers?

45:39 No, we don't give this. I think that it's a platform, so you have to see this as a platform with diversification in terms of development. So we don't have in mind to disclose the profit contribution by affiliates.

45:58 Thank you. Can we go for a 15% increase next year for FRE?

46:04 We had a question. I think that when we did the capital market last year, we said that we gave two guidance. The first one was a look After the completion of the acquisition of Committed Advisor, the pro forma profitability of the platform will be around 200 million. And two, we consider that with the investment processes, the expertise we have, when we look at the scalability of each of our funds, if we reach the art cap when we raise capital, we can deliver 15% over the long term and we don't change this.

46:39 Thank you. What about PREs? What are your expectations for 2026?

46:49 So for the PREs, so we have today the only PRE we have coming from Monroe, so it's above 10 million, so it remains quite marginal. Keep in mind that for each transaction, We bought also 20% of all future carried right for new funds, committed, IK and mono capital. It will take time. It will start to have an impact in 2030, 2031. So short term, it will remain marginal.

47:19 Can you remind us what are the fundraising initiatives in 2027 for the free asset managers?

47:29 Okay, so committed advisor is the GP Currency raising capital with CISF 6 plus their new strategy GPS 2. They have in mind to raise for the first strategy 3.7 billion. For GPS 2, the target is 800. They are very close to this. So it went on track, but most of the fundraising will be in 27. That's for committed advisors. IK, so we have not announced so far what will be the size of the fundraising for the next vintage, but in the previous vintage, we raised close to 6 billion, and we will start the fundraising for IK in Q4 2017.

48:18 And for Monroe, it's different because, as you know, they have Evergreen Vehicles, SMAs, and Clothes and Funds. So they are always raising capital. And as you can see, we have raised close to 1 billion euros this quarter. So you will have always fundraising coming from Monroe every quarter.

48:37 Thank you. And now we have a question about net asset value. What is the rationale for using transaction multiples to value globe educate in particular? and all the other private assets. Do you intend to sell these assets?

48:55 No, no, no. Just because we don't have a listed peers for Global Educate, that's all.

49:03 Thank you. We have no more questions on the web. Maybe we can come back to phone questions. Thank you. We will now take our next question. From the line of Zach Wood from Autonomous Research, please go ahead.

49:21 Hi there. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. And apologies, I thought I was in the queue previously. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, the release says you feel that you've now reached critical scale in the asset management business. What does reaching critical scale actually allow you to do differently from here? Are there specific opportunities in distribution, product development, acquisitions, new strategies that are available now that perhaps weren't realistic previously? And then second, following the STAL and IHS transactions, Bureau Veritas again becomes a larger part of the portfolio, at least for now. How strategic is that holding today? Should investors think of it as a long-term core asset or would you be open to further monetization over time as you continue to scale the asset management platform? Thank you.

50:15 Okay, we'll start with the critical size and the merit of the platform. I think when you look at the critical size, you have the strategy at the critical size and then the platform from a corporate standpoint. So from a strategic standpoint, from the strategy standpoint, sorry, so each of our GPs, they have the critical size in their field. They are really focused on what they do, mid-market. They are Vintage 5, Vintage 8, and they have a lot of strong track record. So they have the critical size to pursue their development, to have a strong origination, Thank you very much. and then you have a long list of initiatives.

51:13 It's geographical cross-selling, it's be together at events, it's to have more strategic discussions with what we call the strategic investors. It's not possible when you are one single GP, but when you are part of a platform like Vendel, you have the merit of that. We have just disclosed one number. We are close to 1,000 LPs. We have only 10% of those LPs in command. We have to develop the cross-selling. It's not easy to do it, but we do believe that we can reinforce the cross-selling. And the last thing I would like to add is on the wealth management and retail. I think if for the institutional sales process, it has to remain very close to the investment managers, when you do retail, where you have to do marketing efforts, etc., If we do it all together, the three GPs, we can be more relevant in front of the platforms.

52:14 Regarding your question on Bureau Veritas, well, we are very happy shareholders of Bureau Veritas, especially since they've upgraded their growth guidance at the Capital Markets Day. We see sequential improvement in Q3. and they are delivering with now the share price hovering over 29 euros again. So we are very happy about this. We are a core shareholder of Bureau Veritas with 21.5%. We are the largest shareholder of this company and we've been there for the long term. We've discussed or touched upon our capital allocation strategy As I said, we are on track with 1.6 billion with STAN and IHS.

53:06 We are in no rush to generate more capital returns. We now have a cash flow generating business which is sizable with Vendan investment managers. We expect, not tomorrow, but in the longer term to also receive first distributions on our sponsor money invested. And we are very well funded in terms of... Available cash 1.5 billion, cost of debt 2.8%, no maturity before 2030, loan to value under 10%. So really, we are in no rush to sell any asset, be it unlisted or Bureau Veritas. And remember, we will receive further proceeds for IHS once the transaction completes.

53:58 So nothing to expect there.

54:03 Great, thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Jérôme Michiels for closing remarks.

54:17 Thank you. We were very glad to be here today with Cyril and Benoit for this Q3 which was another quarter of solid execution with NAV increase, portfolio rotation, Thank you very much and see you at our Investor Day. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.