Charlotte Wessman
Good morning, and welcome to this presentation of CapMan's full-year results 2025. Presenting today we have Pia Kåll, CEO of CapMan, and after the presentation we will have a Q&A session, and you are welcome to send in questions at any time using the webcast link.
Please Pia, handing over to you.
Pia Kåll
Thank you, Charlotte. Welcome all to these financial results for 2025.
CapMan had a very strong year 2025. We reached new record levels on all key financial metrics.
Our assets under management are for the first time above €7 billion, and also fee income and fee profit at new record levels. In assets under management, we had a 19% growth during last year up to 7.2 billion.
We took in gross 1.5 billion of new capital: 600 million through our acquisition, 900 million of new raised capital, but with good exits, the net growth then 1.1 billion, but a strong 19% growth. Revenue at €63 million, a 9% growth from last year.
Looking at the recurring fee income, an 11% growth, even stronger growth. Comparable EBIT up 36% to €25.8 million.
It's driven by fee profit growth and strong fair value development in our investments. During 2025, we also took significant steps in our strategy implementation and strengthened our focus on real asset investments.
In the first quarter of the year, our Hotels II fund doubled in size with the acquisition of Midstar's portfolio, raised an additional €400 million of AUM to the fund. At the end of Q2, early Q3, we completed the partnership and acquisition of Caurus Investments, a German real estate debt manager, one of the pioneers in the industry.
With this partnership, we also established real asset debt as a new investment area for CapMan, further strengthening our focus on real assets. At the end of the year in Q4, we held a first close in Natural Capital's flagship fund, European Forest Fund IV, which continues fundraising, aiming to reach a larger size than the predecessor.
With a strong year behind us, the board proposal for the Annual General Meeting is a dividend of 12 cents per share for 2025. Our vision remains to become the most responsible private asset company in the Nordics, and with the investments we do and the value creation in those assets that we do, we are building the society that we want to see in the future.
As a responsible owner and investor, our reach in the society is broad. At the end of the year, 5.7 billion of the assets that we manage are in real assets.
It's a 30% growth compared to a year ago, and it spans real estate, where we have 258 properties in our funds, developing human-centric, sustainable real estate; 10 portfolio companies in infra, spanning energy, transportation, and telecom sectors; and a 240,000-hectare portfolio of forest in natural capital across eight European countries. In real asset debt, we are the lender to real estate owners covering 210 properties.
Within private equity and wealth, we are supporting small, mid-sized companies in their growth journeys, a portfolio of 35 portfolio companies with some 10,000 employees. The value drivers in our business is fee profit and carried interest from our fund management, asset management business, and investment returns from our balance sheet investments, primarily invested in our own funds supporting growth of the asset management business.
When we look at last year through these value drivers: fee profit at €7.4 million, 6% growth compared to the previous year; carry at €3 million, somewhat down from the previous year, but here we have large fluctuations between the years depending on when exits take place; and on the balance sheet investments, investment returns returning to normal levels, our own funds fair value uplift above 10% last year, and in total an 8.6% uplift as the external funds somewhat weighted it down. Fair value of our investment portfolio at €179 million at the end of the year.
Looking at fee income and fee profitability, we have an 11% growth in fee income. Here it's good to note that in '24 we had quite significant one-time retroactive fees when we had final closings in funds, something that we did not have in 2025.
If we only would compare the really recurring fee income, our fee income growth would be in line with our AUM growth. Looking at fee profit, 6% growth.
We have the same mechanism here that we had no retroactive fees supporting fee profit in 2025, and if we look at the underlying scalability, our operational expenses remained at the same level as in '24, except for the addition of Caurus and the Midstar organization that transferred to us, very strong cost control. Looking at the recurring numbers, very strong scalability that will continue to come through in the numbers.
In our balance sheet, we had at the end of the year a portfolio of €179 million fair value of a well-diversified portfolio in private assets. At the end of the year, remaining commitments or undrawn commitments to these fund investments, €58 million.
It's an unusually low number, and it will continue to increase when we reach first closes in our ongoing fundraisings and make commitments into those funds. When we look at 2025, we had a positive cash flow from our fund investments, driven by good exits and secondary sales.
When we look ahead, this is a trend we expect to continue, strong positive cash flow from our fund investments over the years when the current portfolio matures and exits realize. Looking at the fair value changes of this portfolio, all of our investment areas generated positive fair values during last year, specifically private equity and real estate being strong.
Our own fund investments had a fair value uplift of 10.2%, external funds somewhat lower, and leading to a total of 8.6% or €15.5 million in positive fair value changes. It is a doubling compared to the previous year.
Adding then up our EBIT components, we reached a comparable EBIT of €25.8 million. It's a 36% growth compared to the previous year, and it is really fee profit growth and the doubling in fair value changes that is driving this EBIT growth.
Our balance sheet remains strong. We have an equity ratio of close to 58%, cash and other short-term financial assets at €65 million, and in addition undrawn credit limit of some €20 million.
This balance sheet gives us the opportunity to continue to implement our growth strategy, support the growth of our asset management business also in this continued uncertain market environment. When we look at the market, there are no drastic changes in the short term.
We are moving in the right direction, but it's still too early to say that the market would properly have turned. Fundraising times have shortened during last year compared to the very long, extended fundraising processes the earlier two years.
Transaction market is activating, but again too early to say if the levels are really sustainable and they would still need to improve before we could properly say that the fundraising market has turned. At the same time, when we take a mid-term or long-term view, the segment we are focusing on, real-asset-focused private market funds, have a very attractive growth outlook, with a double-digit growth expected in assets under management in the market overall.
The general market sentiment continues to be uncertain, with higher inflation, higher interest rate expected, and geopolitics driving volatility. While it creates uncertainty, it's also in certain ways favoring private market real asset funds: investors looking for diversification, there the private assets are a good source of diversification, and looking for less volatility, asset-backed investments where you have a more controllable outcomes, controllable cash flows are also attractive.
Against that backdrop, we continue to implement our growth strategy. In 2025, we took significant steps towards our objectives on gross level, adding €1.5 billion of assets under management towards our target of €10 billion, and also significant steps across our CapMan Wins strategic programs.
Looking at the assets under management development, 2025 was the second year in a row where we had close to 20% growth year-on-year. During last year, we added €1.5 billion of new assets under management: €600 million of that through our partnership with Caurus, adding real asset debt to our investment portfolio, and €900 million of new capital raised during the year, primarily into our open-ended real estate funds, Midstar and the Hotels II transaction there being the clearly largest one, but also the other open-ended funds and mandates taking in capital.
In addition, we held the first close in our European Forest Fund IV fund in December, and also our wealth segment grew strongly last year. With good exits and distributing more than €300 million to our investors, the net growth then €1.1 billion, taking us to €7.2 billion at the end of the year.
Looking ahead for 2026 and 2027, we have several fundraisings ongoing, flagships across our investment areas. Within Infra, we are preparing to launch the Infrastructure III fund during 2026.
In real asset debt, fundraising for Caurus VIII fund is continuing, and we're also looking at opportunities and exploring the market for infra-related debt investments. Within Natural Capital, the Forest Fund IV fundraising continues after the successful first close end of last year.
In Nordic Real Estate IV, at the beginning of the year, we have secured the option for the first investment into the fund as a seed investment, supporting fundraising that's ongoing in that fund. For all of these funds, we are looking to raise larger fund size than the predecessor funds.
In addition, the open-ended real estate funds continue to be attractive, and we expect to take in capital also in those during the year as we have done throughout the previous years. Within private equity and wealth, we have Nest and Special Situations raising their next funds, and when we look more into 2027, it starts to be relevant also for Growth to come out with their fourth fund.
Within Wealth, continue with the investment partners programs, but also their continuously growing product portfolio. A lot of activity, and succeeding with these will take us to our strategic objective in assets under management.
If we look at the assets we manage and the new capital we take in, at the moment we have some 55% of our assets under management coming from outside of the Nordics, specifically Central Europe and to some extent North America. When we look at the 900 million that we raised during last year, it is a very broad mix where you have close to 40% coming from Central Europe, outside of the Nordics, a very strong intake from Sweden, especially for our real estate side, and some 20% from our Finnish investors.
Taking another cut at the same numbers, we can also see that 60% of the capital we raised come from new investors to CapMan, we are continuing to broaden our investor base. This is also the result of very long-term work to build relationships, which is now bearing fruit.
So 60% coming from totally new investors to us, and then cross-selling, existing investors in one product also investing in another strategy, some 20%, and re-ups at 20% out of the total. Still good to note that when we look at individual funds, the re-up rates are clearly high, somewhere around 70%, 80% normally, but out of the total mix, 20% last year.
When it comes to value creation in our funds, continued strong across all investment areas with good value uplifts across funds. Also transaction activity got back to more normal levels, active levels.
In total during last year, 10 new platform investments, spanning across especially real estate, where the Nordic real estate markets are offering really attractive opportunities at the moment, seven investments out of 10 across our real estate funds. In addition then, on the private equity side, Special Situations, Nest, and Growth making new investments in their latest funds.
Exit activity even more active: 15 exits completed last year and across the board with very strong, stellar returns. Here we have private equity being especially active with Buyout exiting in total five companies, but also Growth and Nest making exits from their portfolio.
Then several good, really strong exits from real estate, and likewise from the natural capital side. In Natural Capital, three different portfolios from Portugal, Latvia, and Lithuania exited during last year.
Sustainability work continues hand in hand with the financial value creation. Here a lot of the data concerning 2025 is still being collected from our portfolio companies and assets, but one highlight already now is the progress on climate, where during last year real estate validated their net-zero targets and also achieved significant reductions in greenhouse gas emission intensity across their properties, 56% down and 80% down in their commercial and residential portfolio, respectively.
When it comes to private equity and infra also, the share of portfolio companies with their own science-based emission reduction targets in place grew to 21% of the portfolio from 8% at the beginning of the year. This sustainability work also showing in international benchmarks, where the GRESB results for last year, we have across the board improved our ratings in our funds, and we now have five funds with the full five-star rating and no fund below four.
It's a significant step up from '22 where the best rating we had was three stars, and also less funds being rated back then. None of this would obviously be possible without the fantastic professionals we have at CapMan, and I'm very happy to see that we continue with a very strong employee satisfaction and inclusion index, eNPS last year at 51 and inclusion index at 81, both above our target levels.
Here obviously the heavy lifting and a big thank you also goes to the management group, but also all of the team leaders in our organization for keeping the best people, developing them, and together making great results. Looking at our long-term financial objectives, we have an objective to grow average annual growth of above 15%.
Last year, 11% achieved, but here looking at the underlying recurring revenue growth, clearly higher. Return on equity above 20%, last year landed at 9%.
Equity ratio above 50, and we were at 58% at the end of the year. Our distribution policy is to pay sustainable distributions that grow over time, pay more than 70% of the result excluding fair value changes.
Then when we see that we have excess cash in the balance sheet that we don't need for foreseeable growth initiatives and growing the overall business, we all can also distribute that. The Board of Directors proposed to the Annual General Meeting that the dividend for 2025 is 12 cents per share.
When it comes to our outlook for 2026, given the nature of our business, there are a lot of external factors that impact exactly the timing of when we can record some result items, like fair value changes or carried interest. Given that, what we give an outlook for is the growth of assets under management, where we expect them to continue to grow compared to last year, and fee profit that is also expected to grow in 2026.
Thank you.
Moderator
Thank you, Pia. We also welcome Atte Rissanen, CFO, to the stage.
Let's start with our questions. Please.
Yes, good morning. Sauli from Inderes.
About the Natural Capital IV first close, can you give us the number?
Pia Kåll
We are not disclosing the exact number, but let's put it this way that the size is such that the fund can start to implement its strategy of making significant industrial-size investments in the market.
Okay. Then about the real estate AUM, it grew some 200 million in Q4.
How much of that was net sales to the open-ended vehicles, and how much was just value uplifts?
Pia Kåll
Majority is new intake.
Atte Rissanen
Majority is. I dare say that more than 90% is new intake.
It's practically all.
That goes to open-ended vehicles, right? The social real estate.
Pia Kåll
Open-ended and mandates, yes.
Yes. Okay.
Then your AUM went down basically in all other lines. That was due to the exits, right?
Mostly?
Pia Kåll
Yes.
Then about the Real Estate IV, in the timeline, you show that the final close would be in 20 end of '26. Is that really valid, considering the fact that you haven't done first close yet?
Pia Kåll
Usually the funds are open 12 months from first close, and we are obviously working towards a first close in that fund.
When should we expect the first close?
Pia Kåll
We are not giving a more exact timeline than it's going on, but what happened there in the beginning of the year is that we have secured the option to make the first investment into the fund, and that is secured, and obviously having a seed deal in the fund is something that is strongly supporting fundraising.
Okay. Talking about seed investments, in the Dasos, you made €10 million commitment for the fourth fund.
Is that your total ticket to that fund?
Atte Rissanen
For the time being, yes.
Should we look that as a proxy when you are making other flagship investments?
Atte Rissanen
It's not a proxy, but yes, it can be used as a generalization of those kinds of flagship strategies.
Just trying to get a grasp how much you actually need to invest since in the five years ago in the previous large vintage you made some hefty investments there, 10 million is like peanuts compared to those numbers, so.
Atte Rissanen
It very much depends on the situation and also how we see that we can tactically utilize our balance sheet to support the fundraising.
Can you talk more about the infrastructure debt option, to speak?
Pia Kåll
That is exactly that. It's an option.
The core of Caurus is real estate debt, and that's also where the eighth fund is being raised. We are ongoingly exploring the option to expand it into infra debt, which would be a very natural expansion given our setup and for real asset debt in general.
It's a combination of market opportunity, investor appetite, and the right capabilities, getting them into the team.
That just to make sure, that would be for the Central European market?
Pia Kåll
That would be primarily for the Central Europe or European strategies with the debt strategies. They tend to be more European than specific into a certain just couple of countries.
What about on the same topic, what about the real estate debt in the Nordics? When you bought Caurus, you flowed the idea that it could be interesting to bring that asset class to the Nordics.
Have you moved further with those thoughts?
Pia Kåll
The mandate Caurus has at the moment in their current funds is actually including also the Nordics. What has happened since we joined up with Caurus is that their deal flow has significantly increased in the market and also, of course, their ability to assess the Nordic opportunities with local teams, local understanding of the market here is significantly better.
It is definitely part of the scope.
Okay. Then finally, about the management fees in Q4, they were really high.
Were there something special or one-offs or something, or should we look at that as a run-rate figure?
Atte Rissanen
That's a very good proxy for the run-rate figure. There's always some items that may fluctuate quarter-to-quarter, for example, based on acquisition-related fees or these types of, but nothing that would sort of tilt the picture in the same sense as, for example, a retroactive closing or not in the same magnitude.
Should we maybe more use second half as a proxy since Caurus is mostly?
Atte Rissanen
It's always better to use a longer time period than just a single quarter when it comes to our business.
Great. Thank you.
Patrik Setterberg
Hi, it's Patrik Campbell from Nordea. Just going back to the high management fee in the quarter and perhaps the somewhat soft fee profit in the quarter, were there any noticeable cost items apart from bonuses that should not be extrapolated into the future?
Atte Rissanen
You're correct in looking at the fee profit, but actually in Q4 versus Q4 last year, fee profit improved and the profit margin also improved in Q4. Yes, in addition to bonuses, other operating expenses, there's always some variability between the quarters, but otherwise, if you look at the personnel expenses, take out the carry-linked bonuses as well as the other items impacting comparability, you should be pretty on a solid level.
Patrik Setterberg
All right, thank you. Then just going back to the presentation, you mentioned uncertainty.
My question relates to that. What is the current investor sentiment in the market, and are investors still cautious in regards to taking on more risk?
Pia Kåll
I would say there's no drastic changes in the market sentiment from the end of the year, it's clearly easing up, and investors are looking to commit more capital than maybe in the past two years. It's still too early to say that we would be back in a very strong fundraising market.
Exit activity has picked up, distributions have picked up, but we need to see a longer track of that, I think, in the market before we can actually say that fundraisings and commitments are fully back. In general, I would say the sentiment starts to be more positive.
There's a lot of good ongoing discussions. Investors are clearly looking to allocate throughout the year now.
Patrik Setterberg
All right, thank you very much.
Pia Kåll
Thank you.
I could still continue on the cost. Just to make sure that I understand this correctly, you booked the carry on the P&L, it's give or take 4 million, and then you're talking about net carry, which is 3 million.
The delta there, the give or take 1 million, it's run through the P&L on the personnel expenses basically.
Atte Rissanen
Yes, those are carry-linked bonuses and those are separate when we present the APMs in the report.
Just out of curiosity that usually the carry-linked bonuses, they run off-P&L. Why is this some historical thing
Atte Rissanen
or
this is all vintage obviously?
Atte Rissanen
This is mainly related to the Kokoelmakeskus carry booked in Q4. This is, in terms of CapMan, an atypical arrangement, but one should take into account that Caurus has basically all of the carried interest that is paid out to the investment team via the P&L.
That is a line item you will continue to see in the future as well.
You continue to report in net carry obviously then?
Atte Rissanen
Net carry, yes, because it is basically linked to the carry and not the fixed personnel expenses or related to the fee profit.
That's helpful. Then about the costs, obviously in the first half of '26, there will be some year-in-year uplift due to the fact that you did the Midstar and the Caurus, of course.
Looking at the H2 next year, what kind of cost pressure are you seeing? Or you can look at the whole '26, just exclude the Caurus and Midstar.
Atte Rissanen
I wouldn't say that cost pressure right now is a similar type of topic that it's been maybe during the past couple of years. Of course, there's always cost pressure, but I think we're maintaining good cost control and look to do so in the future.
Do you expect your personnel level to stay flattish in '26?
Atte Rissanen
Yes, we are expecting that the scalability of our operations will improve going forward, and yes, that if there won't be any inorganic moves, then the organic growth of the personnel should be quite moderate.
Then finally, what was the number of the employees at the end of '25? You report the average, but due to the structural changes, I guess it's not the right one to use here.
Pia Kåll
230, I think, is roughly the right number at the end of the year.
That's clear. Thank you very much.
Charlotte Wessman
Thank you. Then we move over to questions from our online audience.
We still have some troubled open-ended real estate market in Finland. Are you seeing this potentially creating opportunities for you?
Pia Kåll
Definitely, there are opportunities in the market now, both might be because of that some funds being in trouble, but in general the markets are very attractive at the moment with valuations that have stabilized, and we also see strong value creation potential going forward. We are definitely like you saw from last year as well with seven new investments across the real estate portfolio, we are definitely active on the investment side.
Charlotte Wessman
You have successfully exited Buyout targets. Do you need to activate also in infra exits before launching the next fund?
Pia Kåll
The launch of the next fund is not dependent on exits in Infra. They have a very good track record, they have exits also in the past.
There are companies that are nearing maturity, and we will most likely see some exits over the coming months and 12 months.
Charlotte Wessman
A question also regarding real estate: Could you provide any update on the ongoing Real Estate IV fundraising? Is the first close for the fund realistic during first half?
Pia Kåll
Like we already answered in one of the questions, the fundraising is ongoing, and we are definitely targeting a first close this year. We are moving closer to it, as we also have secured the option for the first investment into the fund now in the beginning of the year.
Active dialogues there with the investors.
Charlotte Wessman
Then a question regarding dividend: Why is the dividend down, not in line with the communicated strategy?
Pia Kåll
The proposed dividend of 12 cents per share is actually exactly following our dividend policy. What the policy says is sustainable dividends that grow over time, but not a year-on-year growth as such.
What we're looking at is distributing at least or more than 70% of the profits excluding fair value changes. Then we're looking at our investment operations and what the need is going forward to support growth and create good returns in our investment portfolio, and where we see excess cash or possibility to distribute, that's what we distribute to shareholders, and the 12 cents is a total consideration of this that the board landed at.
Charlotte Wessman
Thank you. Any more questions in the room?
Hi, still Sauli from Inderes. About your own fund investments, are you expecting it to go up during this fundraising cycle?
We are currently at 180 million or so, since obviously you have some vintages, fairly large ones, coming to exit mode, and at the same time, you need to make the seed investments on the new ones.
Atte Rissanen
It's highly also depending on, of course, the investment performance of the underlying. If the fair values go up significantly, then that increases, but I'd say that the overall exposure should not be going up.
Also there's a significant part of external fund investments that are not part of the strategy. Those will be, or should be, over time of course decreasing.
There's no similar type of €30 million oversized commitments, which were made back in 2017, that play a large part right now in the balance sheet. It is, of course, very difficult to say how fair values will develop during future years, but it's not in the plans to increase the size of the fund investments.
If we look at the cash flow basis, then cash flow basis should be definitely negative since it excludes the fair value, investments in and
Atte Rissanen
Yes, cash flow to CapMan should be definitely positive, yes, yes, yes.
If I understood correctly, if I look further than just this fundraising cycle, let's throw the ball at the end of the decade or so, the fund investments should be clearly lower than right now since obviously the legacy Norvestia stuff is clean from the balance sheet, to speak, and then all the large vintages which you mentioned are all off the books, right?
Charlotte Wessman
That starts to be a pretty long time horizon for us to estimate.
Atte Rissanen
Yes, the relative share will decrease.
That's cool. Thank you.
Charlotte Wessman
A question here: The management fee had a significant step-up from Q3. Could you provide color what was driving this?
Pia Kåll
I think we covered it, but very much real estate funds.
Atte Rissanen
Real estate and also Caurus was contributing to that.
Charlotte Wessman
Okay. Then we don't have any more questions, we thank you very much for today and wish everyone a nice day.
Thank you.
Pia Kåll
Thank you.
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