3i Group plc (III) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to 3i's FY25 annual results presentation. I'm Simon Borrows, CEO of 3i Group. On the call with me today are James Hatchley, our Group Finance Director, and Silvia Santoro, our Group Investor Relations Director. The slides supporting our remarks have been put on our website this morning. Last year, when I kicked off this meeting, I started by describing our purpose and approach to building long-term shareholder value. I said our purpose remains the delivery of attractive long-term returns to our shareholders and co-investors. We invest selectively in private equity and infrastructure assets and take advantage of our permanent capital to run our winners and to build the long-term compounders within our concentrated portfolio. We focus on thoughtful, thematic origination linked to ambitious plans. Our objective is to at least double the profits of the companies we buy. Importantly, investing well is our overriding priority. And we don't have to buy into what we see as overpriced vintages just to put third-party monies to work. The results of this approach can once again be seen in today's numbers. We generated another impressive return on equity of 25%. And that was on top of 23% return last year. This is the fifth consecutive year we have delivered a total return of over 20%. Our NAV per share finished at £25.42p. after a foreign exchange translation loss of 259 million. Private equity produced a 26% gross investment return, as well as generating cash proceeds of some 2.3 billion pounds. We ended the year at 3% gearing, and we announced a dividend of 73 pence per share. That's a 20% increase on last year. Here is our Maramico chart. showing the 3i portfolio on a page at the 31st of March, 2025. A share in 3i is a share of this portfolio. 87% of today's portfoli...