3i Infrastructure (LSE:3IN) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 3I INFRASTRUCTURE PLC investor presentation. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I'd now

0:33 like to hand you over to CFO, James Dawes. James, good morning, sir. Good morning. Thank you, Jake, and thank you to everybody who's joining the call today. We've issued a pre close update this morning. Today being March 31 is our financial year end, so we have issued some guidance and some information on the second half of our financial year. It's a longer than normal pre close update. It's been a particularly busy few months, and so we are keen to get a number of highlights of that period out to investors. And then our next update will be at our full year results presentation. So we release our results on the May 12, and I expect to do another one of these updates around that time.

1:24 This is my second presentation using the IMC platform. We plan to continue to engage with retail investors on this platform. I think it is a very useful way of engaging with retail investors and retail investors are very important to me and to the company, so we'll carry on doing this. I'll quickly skip over my photo. Just before I get stuck in, I'll just remind you of what 3I INFRASTRUCTURE is and the purpose of it. So 3I INFRASTRUCTURE provides public investors, so you, with liquid exposure to a diversified portfolio of private infrastructure businesses. So these are businesses that you can't buy into yourself because they're not publicly traded companies.

2:14 But through 3I INFRASTRUCTURE you get access to those. We've got a well invested diversified portfolio I'll come to some of the contents of the portfolio in a minute Importantly, we invest in controlling stakes in our portfolio companies so we, the management team working within 3i who are dedicated to the infrastructure sector investment teams sit on the boards of these companies. We work closely with the CEO, CFO and the rest of the management team of those companies to deliver on their strategies and to grow them. And we have a proven and repeatable strategy of driving value creation through our portfolio companies, so it's an extremely active portfolio management approach, not least because we control the the boards of these companies, and we are constantly in touch with the management teams.

3:09 And we invest, we believe, in strong companies with growth dynamics in infrastructure sectors. So these are businesses with assets, with essential asset bases, and importantly, they're resilient across the GDP cycle I'll come to what that means the current market context but also that they have elements of growth upside that we work very hard to deliver. And then over our ownership period we'll look to grow them and then seek to exit at an appropriate point and drive some additional value by selling the companies very well.

3:55 And again, we've got some examples of that that we've done recently. And in that way we aim to deliver a return target our return target is eight to 10% per annum and we are incentivised to exceed that. So that's what we're about and I will now give you an update on where we've got to so far. So the key messages in our announcement this morning. We exited our largest investment, actually this month, signed in in March, so this was announced earlier in March. TCR is a provider, a lessor of ground support equipment in airports. So this is all the equipment you see around the plane, whether it's the push back tractors, the large motorised baggage trolleys that bring your bags to the plane, catering trucks for example, refuelling trucks.

4:52 That sort of equipment in a large number of airports across the world now. Started off in our investment as a European business largely and it's now a sort of scaled global platform. We've owned it for ten years and in this exit we have delivered proceeds of €1,100,000,000. It's a 50% uplift to the valuation that we had before we started our exit process which these things take a long time in the private market. So that's looking back to the valuation at March 2025. We've delivered over the over the time that we've owned the company three and a half times our money. So that's the money back from the business divided by the the money invested in the business over the years.

5:42 And that's a 19% per annum internal rate of return. So private equity style returns in terms of quantum, but actually over a particularly long investment period, which is typical for infrastructure. So in this case, percent per annum over ten years. So a very strong exit Adding to our track record, if I look back over three years we have a longer successful track record of exiting business If we just look back the last three years, we've we've realized three businesses, Atero, which was a Dutch waste treatment business, Valorem, which was a French renewals renewable development platform, so solar and wind farms, and now TCR.

6:34 And we've generated £1,500,000,000 of proceeds across those three exits in the last three years, and that's at an average uplift of 41%. So that's the uplift versus the pre sale valuation. So I think that goes to show that our valuation process, you know, the the the nav marks that we have in our in our accounts are robust and that when we come to sell businesses, we can get a material uplift in valuation. And and that is justified by by running competitive exit processes or competitive auction. So that's the first highlight. Secondly, we've been working very hard since we started marketing or looking to market the TCR business, so that's it, over the last year, building our pipeline for new investments, so what to do with the cash that we would receive on selling TCR.

7:43 And the most promising new business that we had in our pipeline, we sold almost at the same time, so we announced this around a week after we'd announced the TCR exit. So 3I INFRASTRUCTURE is committing around €300,000,000 to invest in a majority stake in a data centre campus in Norway so it's called the Leftdal Mine Data Centre And this is a disused Olivine mine in Norway on the coast. It's adjacent to a fjord. It's in one of the lowest cost areas in Europe within within Norway. The electricity is used to power the data center is entirely renewable, and the cooling of data centres is a you may have read in newspapers a particularly important aspect of data centre campuses.

8:43 This uses the cold water from the fjord that comes in, goes in a loop to allow for cooling of the chips within the data centre and that's from the fjords, so naturally cool and it's within a mountain as a disused mine, it's a naturally cool environment anyway So this is one of the most efficient data centres in Europe if not in the world actually the campus is set over six floors of this mine of which only one floor is being used so far so it's in terms of a sort of close to being freehold estate you've got a large amount of capacity that is not being used at the moment And when we look at metrics for data centres it's actually the power availability and the power capacity is the main metric to track for data centres This has 80 MW of power already in place and all of that capacity is let now to high quality counterparties.

10:06 These are financial institutions, government bodies and sort of university research departments who value the quality of the data center, they value the sustainability aspects of the data center, and it is less important to them being right next to, for example, next to a large city because they're not after the lowest latency, the quickest capacity, the nearest to point of use capacity, but they do value the quality of the capacity and the price of the capacity. So this is one most of attractive data centers certainly in Europe.

10:55 And it has ten year availability based contracts with its counterparties so the downside protection from that quality of cash flows is very strong but importantly it's got an attractive growth outlook I've mentioned that they're only using one floor of the disused mine so far. If we look at power, they are exploring in the short to medium term going up to 200 megawatts of available power. So a 120 megawatts in the process, of which the next 40 megawatts is is sort of nearer term using the existing grid connection, some of which would would need to be strengthened.

11:40 So so we can... We've got sight of of growth, and we will work during our ownership to deliver that that growth and and and build up the customer base. So we're very excited in that new investment. We see very strong downside protection. It's not in the more volatile side of data centers. This is not AI led, although the AI megatrend will will be supportive of this. This is sort of core high quality counterparties that have already signed long term contracts for all of the capacity, and that's what our investment case is based on. And we see the returns on that new investment being materially accretive to the to the returns...

12:27 To our return target for for 3I INFRASTRUCTURE.

12:32 We've also delivered a number of bolt on transactions through our portfolio. We've we've always said that this is one of the sort of best risk return profiles that that we we have available to us as investing through our platform companies. These are companies we know well. We've we've sat on the board of these companies for for many years and have have best visibility of the returns available. So our company, Jules, which is a a Dutch energy transition company, it provides sort of behind the meter infrastructure for commercial and industrial customers in The Netherlands. It's it's completed two bolt on acquisitions, one from Centrica Business Services and one from Angi.

13:20 And these are for commercial and industrial businesses. Centrica one some business in The Netherlands, it's also adding some Italian business and a new type of energy production, so heat, the distribution of heat to the portfolio of Jules' offerings. So it both diversifies the customer base and the geographic base for Joules and also the product range for Joules. And for Angier, we've acquired a sizable solar rooftop business principally in Belgium, so again another geography for Joules, but bringing in a large number of new commercial and industrial customers where Joules can offer its broader range of products too. So we think those are strategically very important and sizable. So this increases Jules' EBITDA by about 70% by adding those businesses on, so material growth in our company Jules.

14:32 So That was the first. The second one are another energy transition business, SVAC, which is a shipping company. The strategy for SVAC over a bit more than a decade that we've owned SVAC has been to transition its business away from offshore oil and gas, principally in the North Sea, towards vessels servicing offshore wind farms. So vessels that circle the wind farm, the engineers that maintain the turbines live on those vessels, and there are some workshops and and accommodation on on those vessels to support the the maintenance and the maximising uptime for those offshore wind farms There's some jargon in this slide SOV that's service operation vessels we mean wind farm support vessels there And we've acquired two more vessels into SVAC's portfolio from a business called Edda Wind.

15:34 And so that was a good returns, and we don't have to we we we don't have the construction risk for building new vessels. These are existing vessels already on contract, and those contracts have been novated over to SVAC. So, again, bringing additional earnings to SVAC and continuing its transition to the offshore wind. And the third one, Future Biogas, which is a UK business. It is an owner and operator and developer of anaerobic digestion plants, so these are producing non fossil fuel methane for customers. This can be sold into the grid, the the gas grid, or or indeed a recent example, we we developed a new facility, a new a new plant for AstraZeneca to provide them with green methane for their industrial uses.

16:38 So in the period we've we've acquired another another plant in the Burton Agnes renewables plant. That was a plant that that Future Biogas was already operating but didn't own. And part of our thesis since we acquired our our majority stake in Future Biogas is to move it to being an asset owner as well as developer and operator. So an asset heavy business, and this is another step towards that. I believe that takes us to 10 plants owned, majority owned by Future Biogas. So that's our bolt on acquisitions. Moving on then to to just provide some clarity on on capital allocation. We've said in the past that, you know, with with with sight of of getting proceeds for selling our largest investment.

17:31 The the priorities were in this order, actually, to repay our drawings on our credit facility. We're materially drawn in in our revolving credit facility at the start of the year. And our aim is to be symmetrical around zero in terms of our drawings, so not sitting on over the long term large drawn balances equally not sitting on large cash balances, which would clearly drag on returns. So we have been drawn. Our priority was to repay our credit facility to demonstrate that those drawings are not permanent or very long term drawings. The second step was to fund growth opportunities through our portfolios through our portfolio companies. As I've just outlined with the bolt on acquisitions, we have been doing that as material investment in this year in in our portfolio companies.

18:25 And thirdly was to look to invest in in the best opportunities in our in our pipeline that we spent much of the last year developing to get it to a state where we can make those investments. And as we've done that in the Left Al mine, we've pulled on that lever and that we think maintaining diversification in our portfolio is important. We need to maintain discipline as well in capital allocation, so through our realisation of TCR and the new investment, we've given in our announcement this morning a pro form a net cash position of about £200,000,000 so repaying the RCF and we'll have about £200,000,000 of cash after all these investments complete.

19:18 That that puts us in a very strong position, and we're not in a hurry to make new investments. We need to pick our time, and and then in a volatile market like like we have at the moment, we need to maintain our investment discipline. Equally, we're in a very strong funding position. So should we find good opportunities through the portfolio or indeed good new investment opportunities that we think have the benefit of diversifying the portfolio and delivering very strong returns, then then we have the ability to make those investments. Just turning now to, I mean, what... What's in the news at the moment. Clearly, the the the war in The Middle East is is affecting the listed market and we have done a review across our portfolio companies.

20:08 We believe, as we've found in the past, for example in COVID, that in infrastructure businesses providing essential services with a... With an essential asset base with high barriers to entry and an essential reason to exist. Those sorts of businesses are resilient in the face of whether it's a GDP shock or higher inflation and higher interest rates. So I'd just just like to point out this similarly to to as we found during COVID. Our our portfolio is positively correlated to inflation. So it's either direct inflation linkage through our our contract base or an ability to pass on inflation to our customers as contracts are renewed.

21:00 We have our portfolio company debt is either fixed rate or hedged to be fixed. We've got very little maturing over the next three years. This is as we announced in the interim results a few months ago. And we're always looking at refinancing and taking advantage of good rates when they're available in in the market. There's always refinancing activity going on, making sure that we are fixing rates where appropriate. So we are... We have little exposure to rising interest rates at the moment. Our energy generators, so we've got INFINIS and future biogas and to a lesser extent joules, they they are set to benefit from higher energy prices.

21:48 However, because we have an infrastructure thesis, an infrastructure investment case, over the short term, we actually hedge the exposure to power prices. So that is substantially fixed over the short term. But generally speaking, in in the long run, higher energy prices are are good for our portfolio companies. So broadly speaking, we... We've we've done we've done the work. We've gone around the portfolio. We've discussed with our management teams across the portfolio, and we think that our our portfolio is is resilient to the war in the in The Middle East. So the guidance we've given this morning in terms of our full year results. So as I said, today is the year end for the company and we'll be announcing full year results on the May 12.

22:33 We are on track to deliver our target return. So that's, as a reminder, that's eight to 10% per annum is the target. This is subject to finalising our year end valuation process and to the extent that we've got some residual FX exposure, we're not quite at the end of the day yet, so this is guidance that we're on track. I don't know the year end results yet. And we've been giving guidance to the analysts that it's probably closer to the bottom end of that target range of eight to 10% rather than the top end of the range.

23:08 And we are also on track to deliver our full year target dividend of 13.45p per share. That was announced in our prior year full year results. We set a target one year ahead. So the 13.45p per share is an increase of 6.3% on the prior year dividend. We've paid half of it as an interim dividend already, so we're on track to deliver the second half of it as a full year dividend in due course. And we expect that dividend to be fully covered by net income, so income net of costs when we come to publish our results. So those are the highlights from our pre close announcement today. I'm available to take questions.

23:57 I will hand over to Jake to lead the... Or to introduce the q and a section. Perfect, James. That's great. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while James takes a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboard. James, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning. And thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But, James, at this point, sir, if I may just hand back to you to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. And if I pick up from you at the end, that'd be great. Thank you. Okay. I've got a couple of questions. So thank thank you, Jake. I've got a couple of questions on DNS net, which was announced a write down in our Q3 update a couple of months ago.

24:59 DNSnet is a fibre to the home rollout investment in Germany a regionally concentrated rollout so just in the surrounding Berlin areas Our thesis was that in the areas that we've been rolling out it was relatively less dense housing, so rural and semi rural, and that it would only make sense for one fibre network to be rolled out. That part of the thesis has been borne out, so where DNSnet has rolled out fibre, it hasn't been overbuilt and it's been connecting homes to the network.

25:46 A lot of infrastructure funds and 3IM structure invested in fibre rollouts. This is true in The UK as it is in Germany. It has proven more difficult to roll out fibre in Germany again I would say that's similar to The UK actually. You have a dominant telecom provider in Deutsche Telekom there so Germany and is actually behind in terms of its fibre connectivity versus other countries in Europe, so that was an attractive area to invest in. That was the thesis. But it turned out to be harder to roll the fibre out. What we found early in the life of our investment and what others found is that it was easier to invest in rolling the trunk network, the fibre going past the houses, so down the roads, but harder to connect the homes to the network than expected. And a gap opened up, so more money went into the ground, but enough... Not enough homes were connected.

26:56 So a lot of capital expenditure went in, but not enough revenue was being built from the the homes being connected. We think that we were one of the first companies to recognize this issue. We we set about strengthening the management team, so a new CEO, a new CFO for the business and many other key positions within the company. And the performance of our company has been much better. We think we have one of the best performing businesses in the sector in terms of rolling out fibre. The issue is that rolling out fibre requires funding, and it's mostly debt funding with a slice of equity alongside it.

27:44 And we raised initially when went into this investment a debt facility which is largely drawn through for the rollout we've done so far. But the value in the network arises later in the life of the build. So you have to keep building it's a bit like building a house where at a point where we've half built a house and it requires ongoing funding to keep building the house such that you have a valuable house. In this case, it requires funding to keep building the network to the point where you have a valuable network. And we were in the process when we issued our half year results of raising additional debt finance.

28:30 We had an adviser appointed. We had good visibility that we were going to be able to raise additional debt financing to continue going, and that was the basis on which we valued the business at £212,000,000 in our half year results. That's the equity value for 3IN. A few weeks later, after we published our our interim results, the news came out that the largest network in Germany the largest alternate network, so outside Deutsche Telekom which is called Deutsche Glasfaser had entered restructuring conversations with its lenders And this business had about €7,000,000,000 of debt, so it was a very large business, very large debt pile.

29:20 And this came as a big shock to us as it did to the lending market. And a lot of lenders in the market are exposed to that credit, and indeed a lot of the lenders in DNSnet were exposed to that. And what we found is that the door for new debt finance for fibre rollouts in Germany, so DNSnet and for others, slammed shut. And it took a while for this to percolate through, but we were unable to raise additional debt for DNSnet and we had to think about the implication of that on equity. Now we have concluded at the time and we made an announcement as soon as we'd drawn this conclusion that on the basis of the partially built network at the moment, the value of the network is not greater than the size of the debt that's been drawn to build the network so far, which means that our equity value currently is expected to be zero.

30:21 Now we're still working with the company, the company is still operating, we're working with the company, we're working with the lenders to figure out what the next step is and that process is ongoing and we hope to be able to update people more at our full year results on the May 12. But we don't have a conclusion on that at the moment. So what we announced was that we expect our valuation at the end of March to be zero for DNSnet So that think covers part of what happened in the questions that have been asked One of the questions is do we have people on the board? Yes, there's an advisory board that some members of the 3I INFRASTRUCTURE team are on the board, and we have a broad deal team working hard on that investment. They're still working extremely hard on that investment.

31:13 But that is the issue. It's a financing issue. The performance of the company remains strong. The company continues to operate. We need to figure out the way forward with the lenders. So I think that gives the answer. In terms of the share price, this is also in the Q and A, as soon as we made that announcement the share price adjusted per share impact of that DNS net write down. So that's in the share price today. The performance since... Think it's fair to say that we as a management team are disappointed in the share price performance since. We've made a number of what we think are very positive announcements.

32:01 We've been very clear on the impacts, the beneficial impacts of the TCR news. We think we have a very strong portfolio looking forward, the position that we're in now is a more balanced one. We're in a strong funding position. You don't have a drag on returns from DNSnet, which has been a drag for a number of years now. So what you're buying into now, we think, is very strong portfolio with very good prospects. But to us it looks as if the benefits of the TCR exit and the other things that we've done in the last few months hasn't been reflected in the share price. So that's part of what's happened. The other part is that this is a very difficult market at the moment. There's a war going on.

32:53 The UK has been reported as being one of the economies that is going to be badly hit. We are making clear that what we believe based on our current knowledge is the resilience in the portfolio and that's on the basis of actually doing some work and doing a review. But interest rates are expected to go up. Government bond yields have gone up, the ten year gilt yield, last time I checked, was a little under 5%, so that's gone up. And I think that affects all of the infrastructure sector and us as well. I think that's something behind the share price pullback over the last month. So I think that's answering a few questions in the Q and A There's a question on future biogas is it still planning to develop new plants?

33:50 Yes it is! Is it still planning to add carbon capture? Yes it is. When will these come on stream? Depends. We've got a number of sites through planning and so now it's a question of getting the right essentially the off take, getting a visibility on what we can sell the gas for and indeed sell the carbon dioxide for if we're doing carbon capture. You either sell it, for example, for fizzy drinks. Has been a report in the press in the last couple of months there is a shortage of carbon dioxide at the moment for use in industrial and consumer processes or potentially there's a long term need to sequester this CO2 potentially under the North Sea to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

34:47 So it it depends. We will announce as as we as we get offtake contracts and and and are getting ready to build some plants, but we're we're more or less shovel ready in in in a number of sites.

35:02 So that will continue. What impact will the sale of TCR have on our dividend? That's a very good question. Our our assessment is that the the dividend is is sustainable, and we have progressive dividend target, which which means that that we expect to grow it every year. We will give a a a new dividend target for f y twenty seven when we announce our full year results on the May 12. But we we do think that we we have room to continue to progress the the dividend even after selling TCR. And, of course, our new investment in in the Left Aisle Mine data center will be an income generating investment. It's got fully let capacity on on average ten year availability based contracts, that will be throwing off cash and and income.

36:00 Let me look through Criteria for future divestments or bolt ons The funding position we're in at the moment is a much more balanced one the pro form a cash position as I say is around 200,000,000 net cash rather than being a net net drawn so we have a lot of flexibility on making new investments but equally not under pressure to look at future divestments. However, it is it is part of our business model is to buy companies well, try and get by the the... A good business at the right time for the right price, manage them well, then sell recycled capital So divestments is a key part of our business model We think through what the right business to sell is at right time and typically we might be having a number maybe one to three businesses that we'd be looking at because it takes, as I said about TCR, approximately a year to prepare a business well for sale.

37:13 So we we will be looking at at the next most likely candidates to sale... To sell. But equally, we're not under pressure, but we sell about one investment a year. We've done one in 2026, so we will work as normal on what the next most appropriate. But in terms of specific criteria, it's really about how far, how much of the investment thesis have we delivered, is the business going to be an attractive one for larger, more core infrastructure investors, can we foresee good competitive process that that will drive exceptional value? Those are the sort of criteria. Can we...

38:00 Do we see we can get an uplift on sale? How do we assess their potential impact? Well, the uplift obviously will hopefully be accretive to our target return profile. But then conversely, it's what do we then do with the cash? You know, have we already invested the cash and and drawn into our credit facility, or or how do we how do we view the alternatives to to... You know, is there something better out there versus the the proceeds that we might get and the the exceptional value generated on an exit. So it it really does depend on on the situation at the time. There are a number of things that we look through, but always with a focus on on on return, so the best return for for shareholders.

38:52 There's just one more follow-up question on DNS net, which is which is a good one. Does... Can the DNS net value go negative? I mean, our expectation is is that that zero means zero, and so so I think at the moment, we don't see sort of additional liabilities beyond our equity investment.

39:19 Are there any activists? I mean, we have a very active shareholder base and we engage, I think, very comprehensively across our institutional shareholder base and with retail investors. You see as activists in the market I'm not aware of any of them building a position on our register. Link between... There's a question about the link between the 3I INFRASTRUCTURE share price the share price fall of 3I GROUP PLC. Don't see those as connected. This is different portfolios.

40:08 I think 3IM structure is one of the larger investments on the 3I Group balance sheet,

40:14 but I don't think that's the driver of the 3I Group share price. I think beyond that, that's a matter for the 3I Group directors and investor relations team. Another good question: How big a part is the 3I INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT TRUST?

40:42 Guess how important is it? How much of our assets under management is 3IN within 3I's overall infrastructure business? Well, is the key fund it's most of it most of our assets under management We have one fully invested fund that we manage alongside 3INstructure, so there's no new investments going into that fund so all new investment is shown to 3INstructure PLC in priority We do manage money alongside 3IN though, so for example in TCR, about 71% of TCR was in 3IN and the remainder is managed by 3I on behalf of other investors, but the stakes are are tied together.

41:28 So in selling TCR, we're selling all of it. So so other investors have been sitting alongside 3IN in that. We've got a similar position in SVAC, similar position in TampNet, for example, other investors alongside 3IN. So so that is that is part of our assets under management, but very much tied to to to the investments in 3IN. So in terms of our management activity, it's it's the one investment. So it's it's very important, 3IM structure. It is the key focus we have. Jacob, I think that's that's... I've answered everything in the q and a. Absolutely, James. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended. But James, perhaps before really now just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback,

42:24 which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great. Well, I mean, the first thing is is thank you very much for your attention and for the support that I'm sure many of you have shown for our company in in the past. We'd really appreciate it. We we we value our engagement with retail investors. So as I said at the beginning, I I plan to continue to do this, and I look forward to to talking to you again soon. Perfect, James. That's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback? On behalf of the management team of 3I INFRASTRUCTURE PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

43:11 That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.