Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Wendel's Q1 2026 trading update. Thank you for joining us today.

Over the next 15 minutes or so, Cyril and I will walk you through our key financial highlights for the quarter, the major strategic developments that occurred, and what they imply for the rest of 2026. We will then take as many questions as you have, and Benoît, our CFO, will help us answer them.

At a high level, this quarter reflects continued momentum in our asset management platform and steady operating trends in principal investments, while valuations were impacted by market multiples at the end of the period, which was a low point. Let's turn now to the quarter's headline figures.

This slide summarizes Wendel's Q1 2026 key financials across asset management and principal investments, as well as the net asset value. On the asset management side, Wendel Investment Managers continues to scale, with assets under management of €41.8 billion and fee-paying assets under management of €32 billion.

The acquisition and integration of Committed Advisors, closed yesterday, further expands the platform to close to €50 billion of AUM. Management fees and other revenues came in at €106 million over Q1, reflecting a very strong growth of 130%, driven by both organic growth, 8%, and scope effects.

On the principal investments side, the only items to report are the inclusion of the price of the offer on IHS, and, as I said, the impact of valuation multiples as of the end of the quarter. On the net asset value now, the end-of-March figure stands at €158.4 per share.

This level reflects the impact of multiples compression in public markets at the end of the quarter, which mechanically flows through to our NAV, as you know. Importantly, share buybacks have resulted in a strong accretive effect over the quarter and have helped cushion per-share metrics at the end of March, with a sequential decrease of our NAV limited to 3.6%.

Let's now look more specifically to the driver of the evolution of our net asset value as of the end of March on slide 5. As you can see, fully diluted NAV per share was impacted by market multiples at the end of the quarter.

The total adds up to €9 per share across Wendel Investment Managers and principal investments. That's partially compensated by the positive impact, as I said, of close to €4 per share from share buybacks.

Pursuant to our capital allocation strategy announcement, we bought back 4.7% of our share capital over the quarter, which is the highest level for any member company of the SBF 120 index. Coming back to the valuation impact, as you have seen, public markets were strongly depressed at the end of March following the situation in the Middle East, which has translated into a negative impact as of the date of calculation of our Q1 NAV.

What I want to emphasize is that the market rebound that has taken place since then is not reflected in the valuation marks shown here. The NAV movement in the quarter should be interpreted in the context of timing.

Our valuation updates are anchored to quarter-end assumptions, while public markets have moved quickly afterward. If we were to redo a net asset value calculation as of today, we would be looking at about €5 more, close to €164 per share.

In a nutshell, the message is certainly not a deterioration in the underlying portfolio quality or trends, but rather a mechanical effect of the timing of valuation multiples on our NAV at the end of the quarter. Let me now double-click on capital allocation, which is, as foundational to our strategy and transformation journey.

As we have already made significant progress against the €7 billion strategy announced in December 2025. Two major transactions have enabled this: the sale of Stahl, which will be generating €1.2 billion in proceeds to Wendel, and the sale of IHS, generating $535 million in proceeds.

These represented meaningful steps forward in our asset rotation plan and support both balance sheet flexibility and shareholder return, with a strong acceleration in terms of dividend distribution and share buybacks. Adjusting for these announced disposals, the acquisition of Committed Advisors, and the €340 million share buyback in full, our pro forma loan-to-value is at 7.8%, reflecting a conservative leverage position.

Importantly, more than 27% of the asset rotation expected by 2030 will already have been achieved on the back of the transactions announced. Combined with this strong financial position, this positions us well to execute the remainder of the capital allocation roadmap with discipline.

I now hand it over to Cyril for the update on WAM.

Thank you, Jérôme. Let's start with a brief update on the strategy before we move to the Q1 update.

We have announced yesterday the acquisition of Committed Advisors at the closing. We have announced the signing 4, 5 months ago.

Closing is very important, it's not a detail, because between the announcement and now, we went through the client consent, and it went very well. You will see that it's very important because it paved the way for future fundraising for Committed Advisors.

It's done now, it's behind us. We have now this platform announced in October, November with close to €50 billion of assets and €200 million of FRE.

Keep in mind that our business is mainly an FRE business, more than 90% of our profitability is coming from FRE, which is very important when you value our business. The other important strategic element is the announcement of the reinforcement of the partnership with BNP Paribas Asset Management Alternatives.

In fact, behind this, you have two very important partner for us, BNP Paribas and AXA. They are really partner, meaning that they commit money in our fund, and also they are distributor of our product.

For us, we do believe it's really a reinforcement of our ability to grow our business. That's for the strategic part of the announcement today.

Then let's move to the next page, Q1 activity. As Jérôme said, the growth momentum has been maintained during this very specific quarter for private assets, let's say.

Fee-paying AUM, I think it's a good summary of the dynamic of our business: 13% since announcement today, 13% is well positioned compared to our peers. Over the quarter, the growth is 3%, even during Q1 '26, 3%, I think it's a strong achievement.

If now we look at this in more detail: fundraising, new money coming from clients, €1.5 billion this quarter, €1.2 billion for secondary strategies for Committed Advisors. We have announced the deal, we have closed the transaction, and client trust us plus our model, and they have invested €1.2 billion in the secondary transaction of Committed Advisors over the quarter during the transaction.

I think it's a strong signal for us. The other strong signal is €0.5 billion of new money for private credit strategies for Monroe.

It's also less than what we saw in the previous quarter, but as we know all, we went through a difficult quarter, and I think the 0.5 is a very strong signal. If now we move to the retail, the evergreen vehicles, what we call the BDCs, Monroe Capital permanent vehicle, MCIP.

It's mainly non-tradeable BDC, that accounts for 20% of the total AUM. We saw limited redemptions, well below our peers, and on top of that, the key message is that we have been in a position to satisfy all the requests with the cash flows.

When I say cash flows, it's net flows plus the reinvestment of the coupon. No impact on the structure of the BDC.

I think it's a very important message. Then AUM, close to €50 billion, including Committed Advisors.

If we take out Committed Advisors, we look at IK and just Monroe, 13% versus Q1 last year, and 3% over the quarter, I think it's very interesting. Then revenues, for sure the actual number are very high, but what is more interesting is the organic growth at 8% at constant dollar because, as over the year, the dollar was negative for us.

That's the key figures for the quarter. It shows, even if it was a difficult quarter, we had less fundraising, but it was a good quarter globally in terms of growth.

What you have on the following page, the same thing, and you see the bridge in terms of AUM for the quarter from €41 to €42 billion in terms of AUM. You see the 3% in terms of fee-paying.

Those number are excluding Committed Advisors. Now, if you add Committed Advisors, you have the scope effect and you have the fundraising over the quarter.

Here, it's exactly in line with what we said in December during our Capital Market Day. With Committed Advisors, we add a new engine of growth, and this new engine of growth provide diversification, because if you add the growth of fundraising in Q1, you see that we are above 13.

The more we add engine of growth, the more we'll have a more resilient growth quarter after quarter for this type of business. Then what we wanted to do after this Q1 '26 is to convey some messages around private credit.

Page 10, you have our view of what is direct senior lending for us, and why we do believe that it's an attractive risk-adjusted investment for our clients. I will not comment on the pyramid because you know this, but I want to reiterate that what we do, it's direct senior lending.

We are at the top of the capital stack for the financing of the economy. I think it's very important to reiterate this message.

Monroe, they do only the light blue part of the pyramid at the top: senior secured with first-lien when they do loan. I think it's very important.

Monroe Capital, they're a leader in a very specific segment. Private credit is a very large asset class.

What they do is very specific. They do it in the US, I will come back to that, and they do it for the lower mid-market.

We think it's a very interesting risk-reward solution for investors. Why?

First, risk protection. They focus on the US economy, which is the largest economy in the world, you know this.

If you look at the middle market, it's 200,000 companies. With that, what you get?

You get growth. Last year, EBITDA growth was 10% for the underlying companies of Monroe.

You have the ability to be very selective. You can get high diversification by sector and by company.

It's very important for the portfolio. Second thing, as we see it in the pyramid, you have equity protection.

Monroe, they are very strict: debt to EBITDA below 4, LTV 40%, first-lien collateral, very important. Third point, direct senior lending, 100% is floating rate.

It means that you have embedded in the product protection against inflation, protection against rate fluctuation. It's very important.

Last thing, which is also very important, when you do direct lending as Monroe Capital does, they are very active. They are agent in 80% of their deal, meaning that they are not buying BSL in the market.

They are very active. They have access to information.

They have access to management. They can be very reactive in case of difficulties, and I think it's a key element of differentiation.

In front of that, you have the reward. What is the reward?

Is 500 basis points above the risk-free rate, and it's true in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. I think it's very important.

You have regular cash yield, relatively short duration in terms of if you look at the average duration of a loan, meaning that you have regular cash coming back in the vehicles. Lastly, you have diversification.

We do believe that this product is a very interesting risk-reward solution for investors. The second message I would like to convey today, it's client demand.

We have seen a lot of questions around that. The quarter, for sure you have two different situations.

On the institutional side, Q1 '26 was a very good quarter. As you can see, it's the PDI survey here.

It was one of the best Q1 quarter ever for the asset class. I think it's very interesting to see that because it's a large part of our franchise, and also they are very sophisticated investors.

Far, they have maintained their allocation, and we see no reduction of the allocation coming from client demand. It's true for dollar product for US client, but also for international clients investing in dollar.

We see the same dynamic for Monroe. On the other side, as it grabbed the headlines, there was significant redemption for the evergreen vehicles.

Here, we use the non-tradeable BDC as a proxy of the retail and wealth market. For sure, it's broader than that, but it's a good summary.

There was lot of demand. Monroe was less impacted than the industry.

We have been in a position to meet all the redemption requests, and we are very cautious in the way we manage our vehicle. We are increasing the cash component in the vehicle in order to see and to manage the evolution of the demand of our investors.

The last thing we would like to convey today, we talk about the private credit, the client demand, it's why we consider that Monroe Capital as an edge. The first thing is the experience in this type of environment.

Monroe was created a long time ago, and if you look at this industry, which is, for sure, quite new, you will see that less than 5% of all the private credit managers have more than 20 years of experience. It's the case of Monroe.

They went through different business cycle, and they have the experience to go through that. I think it's very important for the client.

The second element, which is also very important, is the proprietary sourcing networks. They manage the origination.

They have 8 offices in the US. They work with 200 sponsors everywhere in the US, and they have sector specialists.

To do this business and to do it the right way, you need to have a deep asset management infrastructure. It's very expensive.

We are 300 FTE at Monroe, 115 investment professionals. It's very important.

Security, second column: the way we manage the business, we are focused on performance. We are not chasing AUM.

It's key. We have a dry powder of $6.5 billion.

It was $6.7 billion at the end of December, meaning that we don't deploy money just to deploy money. We do it when it's a good risk-reward.

We will not come back to EBITDA multiple. They have also a very strong investment process.

One of the key elements of their investment process is that you have the origination locally and you have the centralized underwriting and monitoring teams at the headquarter. They are very independent, and it creates, I think, a good check and balance when you have to deploy capital.

The last thing, consistency: they have a very strong workout team. The private credit business is not a risk-free business.

You have a premium, 500 basis points, you have to manage default and you have to manage it well. They have a very seasoned workout team.

It's very important in this type of environment. The last two things that are also very important, and maybe it's part of some issues: they have a first-class LP base.

It's not a pure retail business, meaning that they have on their back every day very sophisticated institutional investors from the US and outside. I think it's a very important part of the way they manage the business.

The last thing, which is also very important, is the alignment of interest between Monroe, the employees, and the LPs. With that, you gain something very strong in order to deliver the value proposition to clients.

Thank you.

Let's now look at the performance over the quarter from our principal investments. What we see in general is that our companies have registered steady revenue growth on average for the quarter.

Let's start with Bureau Veritas, which posted 4.5% organic growth, underpinned by strong growth in most parts of the business and some headwind related to the situation in the Middle East. The group is further accelerating its portfolio transition, with an in-depth review of the terms of an exit from the government services subsegment, all of which has been taken into consideration in the 2026 full-year outlook.

At Scalian, the transformation of the company is accelerating under the leadership of a new CEO, William Rozé, with encouraging results in terms of margin improvement and cash generation. Whilst the market remains difficult, as you can see, the company is focused on accelerating its commercial pipeline.

CPI has seen pretty strong performance in the international part of its business, but is still facing some headwind in its core market in the US, having resulted in flat sales. This is related to continued federal oversight and funding uncertainty across CPI's customers and markets.

In this context, Andy, CPI's CEO, is energetically leading an effort to strengthen the company's management and commercial organization. ACAMS and Globeducate have posted strong organic growth performance of 5% and 6.3% respectively.

In line with our investment thesis, Globeducate has accelerated its growth through M&A, with 7.2% impact from scope over the quarter. I think this quarter reflects continued operational momentum across the portfolio, which is really the focus everywhere.

Turning to financing now, the situation is very strong. Wendel is financed with an average cost of 2.8%, with a well-structured maturity profile of 6.3 years when allowing for the upcoming repayment of our April 2026 bond.

The balance sheet remains conservative, with cash of €1.3 billion before the repayment of our April 2026 bond, plus additional committed facilities supporting a strong liquidity position. Note that we have significantly reduced our gross debt with the repayment of our exchangeable bond into Bureau Veritas in March, which will leave us with €1.4 billion of gross debt after the repayment of our April 2026 maturity.

Loan-to-value is also low at 7.8% on a pro forma basis, and the maturity ladder is spread out over multiple years, which reduces refinancing concentration risk. You can see resilience, flexibility.

We have room to invest, room to rotate assets, and capacity to return capital while maintaining a prudent leverage profile, all of which will support our capital allocation strategy through to 2030. What are the key takeaways now on slide 16?

Let me summarize them as follows. WAM had a good start of the year, and we confirm the 2026 ambition, supported by strong fee momentum and the scaling of the platform.

Principal investments deliver steady revenue growth on average, and numerous operational initiatives are being implemented, which will drive future value creation. Third, our net asset value was impacted by market multiples as of the end of March, but the post-quarter market rebound should be considered when looking at the NAV today.

Overall, we remain laser-focused on executing our capital allocation strategy and building long-term value through both platform scaling and disciplined portfolio management. Time for questions.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon to all.

I have two questions first on investment management. The first one is regarding the transaction with BNP AM.

I would like to know if it is made on the same valuation basis for Committed Advisors than the one at which Wendel took a stake. Can you also remind me what is the partnership with AXA you mentioned during the call?

I think it's for a different asset manager, but in this case, does it mean that the partnerships on distribution only applies on one investment strategy or asset class, or BNP AM is going, for example, to also distribute the funds from IK Partners or Monroe Capital? That's the first question.

The second one is more on the principal investments. It's regarding Scalian.

In the press release, you say that there are some signs of a rebound. I would like to know if you can be more specific about these rebound indications and when it is supposed to take place.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cyril.

Thank you for the question. Terms of the transaction, exactly the same: pari passu.

Initially we had in mind to buy 56%, they are buying 5.9% at exactly the same terms for us. Regarding the strategic question, we started this partnership with AXA, and as AXA IM was bought by BNP, and in fact we decided to pursue and we still believe that former AXA Prime, now BNP AM Prime, remains for us an interesting partner, and we have extended the partnership.

Initially, as you said, it was only Monroe Capital for private credit, but they consider that also secondary transactions are interesting for them. We decided to extend the partnership with BNP AM Alts.

In fact, this entity, now branded BNP, works for AXA and BNP. In fact, it's for both.

Okay. It's clear.

Are they going to have the same kind of partnerships for IK Partners or it's different?

No. Far, to be clear, it's GP by GP, it's only for Monroe and Committed Advisors.

Okay.

On your question on Scalian, yes, I alluded to this sort of early signs of gradual recovery. We see that from a commercial perspective, we see the pipeline increasing.

William and the team at Scalian are spending a lot of time improving the sales pipeline. They are having much more discussions with potential customers, trying to develop dialogue with new customers.

We see this pipeline building up, and what is positive is that the win rate is also improving, meaning that we have good performance from this point of view. Now, projects in this business are then to be converted in revenue, and this can take some time because if you win a frame agreement with a customer, it does not necessarily mean that you will start immediately to generate revenue.

It will depend on the customer's own project, but it's fair to say that we see in some parts of the business some early signs of a gradual recovery and sustained commercial dialogue. Bear with us, and I hope we will be able to report in the next quarters some momentum there.

What is also very positive, as I said, is that we see an improvement in the efficiency of the model, and initiatives that have been launched to, I would say, improve profitability are bearing fruits, and we see the first signs of that being converted in the business, so that's pretty encouraging.

Okay. Can we expect some stabilization in the revenue for the full year or is there any guidance given by Scalian at this level?

No, as Arnaud, we are not giving any guidance for private companies. I'm not able to give you any indication of that.

What is clear is that management is very focused both on top-line commercial leads and improving the top line, and improving the profitability. There is a lot of energy and already some results, I hope we will be able to report on an improved situation at the end of the year.

Okay. Thank you, Jérôme.

Thank you, Cyril.

Thank you.

Yes. Hi, gentlemen.

Thank you for taking my question. I got three.

The first one is on the commitments in the funds that you sold, commitments that were not drawn. Was it purely LTV-driven?

Why not keeping them? Was there a specific rationale or let's say a change in your allocation strategy?

That was the first question. The second question has to do with CPI.

Can you maybe elaborate a bit of the initiatives that you are taking to reignite the growth and when do you think you could see the first effect? The third question is on Bureau Veritas, which is trading at €26.

Do you think it could be an idea to seize this opportunity to issue maybe an exchangeable bond? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Geoffroy.

Ouais. Thank you.

No, regarding the sponsoring program policy globally, for sure, we manage this carefully, the LTV with the finance team, and we take into account these constraints. Since the beginning, we said that we will have a very active sponsoring program, meaning that when we believe that for a specific product there is a demand—as IK, for example, it's closed-end funds, between two fundraising, you have no product to sell.

Here, for the recent sale, in fact, some clients were interested by investing in the IK strategies. They are new LPs, I think it's very interesting because we enlarge the franchise of the business, and at the same time, it reduced the LTV.

We did it mainly for commercial reason. At the same time, we have a permanent discussion with the finance team in order to manage the LTV, but the main reason, to sell, you need to have buyer and you need to have a commercial discussion with LPs.

This was not a sell to a secondary managers, it was a sell to a new LPs in the fund, which is totally different in terms of dynamic.

Regarding your question on CPI, well, what is, I think, the focus here and the intent is to improve the go-to-market. It's about optimizing the sales team organization and the performance.

It's about improving the metrics there, implement a framework for the enterprise accounts, accelerate the growth of online leads conversion, etc. Really implement modern tools, modernize the way the business is done to improve the business with the existing customers, but also go after new customers in new verticals.

As CPI is very well entrenched in the healthcare and education businesses, but we think there is a good growth to target outside of those sectors, especially in the enterprise sector, but also in terms of what products we can offer, and the digitization also of the business should deliver superior growth. Our teams and the team at CPI are working on this, and we should see improvement there hopefully in the next quarters.

Regarding your question on Bureau Veritas, well, I think, and I hope you do as well, that obviously the share price is not reflecting the fair value of Bureau Veritas at €26. It's been under pressure yesterday following the announcement of the Q1, but I think this is unwarranted.

Does it create some ideas at Wendel? We're not trading our position.

We've been a long-term holder of Bureau Veritas, no, we're not minded to buy more to make a profit there. We are really disciplined in our capital allocation strategy, and I think the quarter shows that: disposals of Stahl, IHS, Committed Advisors, share buyback, increase in dividend.

These are the pillars of what we want to do. Yes, there is some noise on the valuation of BV, but that's the way it is, and it's not enough for us to change our course and do some opportunistic approach there.

Thank you, Geoffroy, for your question.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have a question from Isabelle Trick.

Can you talk about the demand you are seeing from investors for US private credit and the difference between retail and institutional? Fundraising seemed to slow for the quarter at +€0.5 billion versus +€3.8 billion, implying quarterly run rate of €0.95 billion in 2025.

Thank you.

Thank you. I think we had a slide for this.

As I said, you have seen the client demand on the institutional side, and it's a very large part of the market, because the non-tradeable BDC, it's less than 20% of the market. For the institutional market, the demand remains very strong, as you can see with the PDI survey.

As I said, it's not only the US investors internationally, it's also international investors. It could evolve, but so far in Q1 and when we look at the pipeline of development for Monroe, the pipeline remains strong.

As you have seen in the slide, it's totally different for retail now, we have to manage this. I think that it's a good test for the quality of the evergreen structure to give access to retail client to private credit, we have to manage this carefully, and the Monroe team is on it every day in order to meet redemption if we have additional redemptions.

I think it covered the point.

Thank you. We have three questions from David Cerdan.

On a pro forma basis, including Committed Advisors, what is the fee-paying AUM?

You have the fee-paying AUM for WAM before Committed Advisors. I think the fee-paying AUM are around €7 billion.

I don't have the figure with me, we can give it to you offline, but you should add €7 billion to the fee-paying AUM of IK and Monroe Capital.

Thank you. Can you update us on the credit default rate for Monroe since 2025?

Default rate remains very low. It's very very small.

The way we monitor this, I think what is important in your question, it's the non-accrual, if we look at the 400+ loans of Monroe, and it's below 2.5% of the loan that are not in line with the initial business plan, it remains very low at this stage. For sure, it's tied to the US economy, but when we look at the dynamic revenue growth, EBITDA growth of the underlying companies, so far we don't see an acceleration of the default rate.

Thank you. Now it's a question about the net asset value: by how much do you think peers multiples have rebounded since April regarding WAM?

I've not made the calculation today, but it's higher than at the end of March, but lower than at the end of December.

Thank you. Another question from [Loïc Coudeuse?]

about asset management. Should we expect management fees to remain stable at circa 130 basis points in 2026 across IK and Monroe?

How should we think about AUM growth in the coming quarters for IK and Monroe, and in terms of fundraising and distribution?

Let's start with the growth. The growth, as we presented in December, this year will come from Monroe and Committed Advisors, because IK is not raising fund this year.

It was last year and it will be in '27. For sure, as I said, the dynamic on retail is lower for Monroe, but they have various engines.

The quality of this firm is that they don't do only closed-end fund or BDCs, they have also CLOs, SMAs, in the US and internationally. We are in line with our expectation in term of growth, and Committed Advisors will be also a very important contributor of the growth of the platform this year, '26, and as you have seen in term of fundraising.

Regarding the margin, in this business, the margin compared to, for example, traditional asset managers, fees by product will not change quarter after quarter. The mix could have an impact, if we do a bit more of private credit and secondary, the fees are a bit lower than IK, but we will not be very far from 120, 130.

Thank you. I have no more question on the web.

I think there is an additional question by phone.

Yes, thank you. I have one follow-up question on IK Partners.

Can you just give us an update on future vintages and when can we expect a new phase of fundraising for IK Partners?

Thank you. You have the let's say the detail in the Capital Market Day.

As they have done the fundraising in '24 and a bit in '25, the previous vintage, €6 billion with the two strategies: Mid Cap and Small Cap. They have in mind to restart the fundraising the second part of '27 and '28.

I will not give you the expected growth, but it will be significantly more than the €6 billion of the previous vintage. Because in between, they have to invest Fund X, and I think we'll be in a position to give you some update on this in the second part of the year, and also to return capital of Fund IX.

Once it will be done, they will start the fundraising in '27 and '28.

Okay.

Which is a natural pace of investment for a closed-end fund on PE.

Sure. Okay.

No, it was just the need for an eventual update, but there is no change compared to the Capital Market Day. No, that's fine.

Okay. No,

no, no.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, and the next event will be our general meeting.

Thank you very much.