Wendel (MF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, thank you very much. Good morning -- good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for being on this call in a day where there's a lot of other financial communication. So in a small -- in a nutshell, this is a solid performance for Wendel during the first half 2026. We have achieved strong return to shareholders with EUR 450 million, which has been returned to-date to our shareholders. And our NAV is up 2.6% compared to last quarter, restated from the dividend paid to shareholders. So we will go back on each of those items. Just the key financial highlights of the quarter is that we have assets under management of EUR 48.7 billion. This is not anymore pro forma. This is really what we have, including Committed Advisor. We have fee-paying assets under management of EUR 37.8 billion. This is -- if we recall compared to last year, this is up 30%. If we want to look to the dynamic of those fee-paying AUM at the same parameter, it is up 11%, but Cyril will come back to that. The management fees are EUR 226 million for this first half. This is up 56% again, and which will -- but there is a change in parameter, but nevertheless, it shows how much we have quickly developed the asset management that translates in fee-related earnings of EUR 87.1 million, up 46%. And if we look to FRE and PRE, it's EUR 91 million. One characteristic of our model today is that we are very much FRE geared more than PRE. PRE will come by '29, '30. But before that, we will be mostly -- the quality of our is fee-related earnings rather than performance-related earnings. The GAV of the WPI is EUR 3.6 billion. At the date of the end of the second quarter, the share price of BVI was slightly down compared to where it was at the end of the quarter. I think it was -- the reference price was EUR 25.8, something like that. So slightly lower than what it is currently. We had good operating performance from the unlisted assets. Stahl is valued at the offer and the process of selling Stahl is well underway. We have -- we're confident on the way it is moving forward. Same for IHS. IHS, by the way, is valued at the -- not at the offer value, but at the listed value, okay? And no, it's at the offer price, sorry, I thought it was okay. The fully diluted NAV is EUR 158.9 as of June, it's up EUR 4.1. If we put back the dividend of EUR 3.6 that was paid in May to the shareholders, which is up 2.6%. You will see that there have been some strong accretive impact of the share buyback program, which was largely done at the end of the quarter, and that is finished now. We've just closed and finalized the purchase of the full share buyback program. If we look to the way the NAV has evolved, you have a positive impact of the Wendel Investment Manager. I think we've been clear on the Q1 to say that there was a dip into it. It has gone down at that period. It was -- we're valuing our assets based on market comparables and the -- all the alternative [ AUM ] were depressed at that period of time. So the picture was not very good, and we say that, by the way, at the time, and we see that reversing today. Wendel Principal Investment, we have EUR 1 coming from the decline coming from BVI and the rest is from the non-listed assets where we keep on adjusting to the fact that on the market, the multiples are slightly lower than they were the Q1. It's mostly because the performance of the firm are good. It's only a multiple impact, which is, I think, it doesn't show and the video will come back on that. We see the performance of our underlying company to be very, very solid. Share buyback has a positive impact of EUR 2.8 per share. If we make the addition to the first quarter, which was 6.5 -- no, total EUR 6.5 with the addition of the first quarter. Dividend paid was EUR 3.6 per share. We have returned, as I mentioned, EUR 450 million to shareholders, EUR 140 million through dividend, EUR 3.6 per share in May and EUR 310 million of share buyback, which has been achieved in 5 months. That is the amount at the end of June. We will have another dividend to be paid in November. You know that we pay now interim dividend. And as we announced, and we think it's a good way to have -- to smoothen the impact of the dividend and to have regular cash flow for the shareholders. Now I'll hand over to Cyril, who will go in detail on WIM. Then I'll hand over to David, who will go on the WPI. And then Benoit, he will take the earnings part. Great. Good and the LTV.

Thank you, Laurent. Hello, everyone. So Page 8. So this is our road map for '26. As Laurent said, we are building this platform. Now it represents 37% of the gross asset value of Wendel. Those 4 bullet points are really the 4 milestone of our development. So the first one is Q2 M&A. We have completed the acquisition of Committed Advisors. It's done. Two, we have reinforced our partnership with BNP Asset Management on the alternative side. As you know, cornerstone investors are very important to be the private asset management business on private assets, and we want to pursue that is very important. The fourth bullet point is the organic growth. It's our priority to develop the business, and we maintain the target of more than EUR 200 million of FRE. I will come back to that with a strong organic growth. And the fourth bullet point, it's, I think, a strong value proposition of our platform. We want to spur organic growth with new product and we invest in new products in order to diversify our book of business. Those 4 elements are really the 4 milestones of our road map. If now we move to the organic development, Slide 9. You have here the bridge of AUM. So let's start with the AUM. So as Laurent said, we are now at EUR 48.7 billion of total AUM. One comment regarding the Dry Powder. We remain around EUR 12 billion. We have less Dry Powder at IK and Monroe because there was activity in terms of investment over the quarter. So less Dry Powder. But at the same time, we have more coming from Committed Advisors. So Dry Powder remained high at EUR 12 billion, and it represents for Monroe future revenues. If we look at the fee-paying AUM at the middle of the chart, so we were at EUR 31 billion at the beginning of the year. We had the Committed Advisors, and then you have the organic growth of the business. So EUR 4.2 billion of new fee-paying AUM, it's EUR 1.2 billion coming from fundraise by Committed Advisor. We pay -- we receive fees on the fundraise, so EUR 1.2 billion and EUR 3 billion coming from the money deployed over the first 6 months by Monroe Capital, so EUR 4.2 billion. At the same time, we have returned capital to shareholders, EUR 3.1 billion, mainly at Monroe, a bit also at IK. And with that, we end the semester at EUR 37.8 billion, up 5% year-to-date on an organic basis and 11% compared to the previous year at the same time with the same perimeter.

As you said to shareholders, no, it's 2 LPs.

2 LPs, sorry. And 11%, I think it's really the key figures to assess the organic development of our business. Next slide. So to pursue on the activity update. So fundraising, EUR 2.2 billion of new equity raised in H1, as I said, EUR 1.2 billion for Committed Advisor and $1.2 billion for Monroe. I think it's a strong achievement. And one update also regarding the retail, the retail and wholesale, we had some slide in a discussion when we talk about Q1 earnings. If we look at the full -- the first 6 months of the year and if we look at -- so MCIP is our main vehicle, evergreen vehicle focused to retail and wholesale clients in the U.S. We look at the net subscription less the redemption met in this vehicle, the net is EUR 90 million, 9-0 million versus our total AUM and the $30 billion AUM of Monroe. So as you can see, for sure, there is less growth coming from retail. But when we look at the net outflows, it remained marginal for the development of our business.

One point I want to stress additionally that in 2026, there is no fundraising activity at IK, which is because the fundraising of the cycle of the fundraising was ended in 2025, and we will start again in 2027, but it's important. So fundraising is concentrated on Committed Advisors and Monroe.

We presented a slide during the Capital Market Day in December, where you had the sequence, and we are totally in line with this dynamic in terms of fundraising. Last comment on this slide, the revenue and the FRE. So as Laurent said, EUR 226 million of fees reported over the first 6 months. So it's up 56%. But what is important, I think, also is to look at the organic development with the like-for-like perimeter on this, it's a 12% growth on a pro forma basis. And if we look at the same dynamic in terms of FRE, it's EUR 87 million, up 46% on an actual basis. But if we look at the pro forma, we are up EUR 95 million, plus 11%. And also what is important for us because we pursue our investment in the business in line with the development, but we maintain the margin above 39%, the FRE margin. Now if we go a little bit more in the business development of our 3 activities. So IK Partners, our buyout GP. So as Laurent said, the fourth semester, it was not fundraising. It was the priorities were to return capital to shareholders and to deploy the capital. So in terms of return of capital, so there was 2 announced transactions in H1, Innovad and Sofia, but also since the end of beginning of July, we have announced 3 exits, coin4, Forthglade and also mainly MDT Technologies. It's a very important exit at 3x on a realized basis. So it's a very strong achievement. And we have a strong pipeline, sorry, to return capital this year to shareholders. It's key to pave the way for the fundraising next year. Deployment, 3 transactions announced. And also, as I said, we pursue the expansion of IK. We have opened now a new office in Madrid and Spain, and we have now 9 offices across Europe to source deals and create value for our clients. And we have hired for that an external partner, a very strong one that will lead this office effective from 1st September '26. Monroe Capital, so as Laurent said, there was no closed-end fundraising money over the first 6 months. But despite that, the fact that Monroe have a quite diversified capital raising machine with SMAs, evergreen vehicles. They have raised $1.2 billion of new equity over the semester. And also mainly what is important for the fees, they have deployed $3.5 billion. And the good news is that when we look at the quality of the deployment, the spread are up above [ $500 million ]. There was a slight decrease of the spread over the last 2 years, but first semester, spread are up and LTV are down, which is, I think, very good for the quality of the deployment. In terms of fundraising, so Monroe last year, they have completed the fundraising of their Fund V, $6 billion. The good news is that now this fund is invested at above 80%. It means that Monroe will be in a position to launch a new vintage of fundraising for the rest of the year, and I think it will accelerate the capital raising for Monroe for the next 6 months. On top of that, for Monroe, we pursue the diversification strategy. We are launching evergreen vehicles, new strategies in order to diversify the book of business. And I think it will generate revenues in the future. Our last and new one Committed Advisors, so what is important for them now is fundraising. Committed Advisors, so they are going through their vintage. So they are raising 2 funds now, their main fund, CASF VI, they started in March and also the fund dedicated to GP Strategies. With those 2 funds, just over the quarter, they have raised EUR 1.2 billion. In fact, for the fund, CAGPS II, they started a bit in '25. So if we sum what has been raised for those 2 funds so far, it's close to EUR 1.8 billion. And the target is EUR 4 billion for those 2 strategies. So -- and it's really -- the pipeline is very strong. There is strong appetite for the secondary strategies now. So I think it will feed our growth for the coming months. So now if we move to the financial performance. So you have on Page 12, the dynamic on the PPIs on an actual basis, not a pro forma. So the growth are very strong. So now you have close to EUR 87 million of FRE over the semester. I commented already the 56% and the 46% growth. So I think it shows you the dynamic of the contribution of the asset management at the level of Wendel. But what is more important is to look at the next slide where you have the pro forma figures. So you see the management fees if we assume that we had Committed Advisor for 6 months, so it's EUR 239 million. So it's up 12%. The FRE for the semester on a pro forma basis is close to EUR 95 million, up 11% versus the same period last year. And we -- at the stage, we confirm our guidance to be above EUR 200 million of FRE for the full '26 year.

Now we are turning to Slide 14 to talk about Wendel Principal Investments, which are the direct investments that we own on our balance sheet. The main event of the first half of the year is the advisory assignment that we signed with IK Partners. As you know, IK since January 1 is advising Wendel on all existing and future controlled private investments. This advisory mandate is going very well with very smooth relationship between the organization, and we believe that we're going to create more value with this new setup. We announced since the beginning of the year the signing of 2 divestitures, Stahl and IHS, both in February 2026, as Laurent was saying, closing are underway, and we are waiting for the last regulatory approval for those 2 divestitures, which are really well underway. In the next slide, I will describe the EBITDA growth and sales growth of our main investments. And as you will see, they did show up some solid performance over H1, but we'll go line by line in a few minutes. And last, those platforms did 7 bolt-on acquisitions, very accretive acquisitions, 5 at Bureau Veritas and 2 at Globeducate over the semester. Turning now to Page 15. So here, we show the performance in terms of sales and EBITDA for the first half. First, on ACAMS, you can see a modest growth. You need to remember that this is including the discontinuation of a noncore software business that ACAMS used to operate. If we exclude this small business that we discontinued, the organic growth was above 4%, and we do see some acceleration in terms of growth at ACAMS. The EBITDA growth was at 8.8%. We do see some margin improvement continuously at ACAMS with a very good control of fixed costs. For CPI, you can see some growth as well, more in the international operations. The U.S. operations still are impacted by some Federal funding uncertainty and the EBITDA grew by 3% over the first half. Globeducate is showing a very strong growth, both organically and M&A, as I mentioned previously. Scalian, we see some challenging market conditions for the business, but a very strong recovery plan managed by the management team. We see some traction in the core sectors of Scalian being aerospace and defense, where the growth is meaningful and some very strong measures being implemented on cost control. And so we believe that the numbers that you see here are going to show some meaningful improvement in the next quarters. I'm now turning to Slide 16, showing you the portfolio. When you take into account the sale of Stahl and IHS, you can see a balanced portfolio, almost 50-50, 50% of education and training businesses, including Globeducate, ACAMS and CPI. And the other part of the portfolio is Business Services and Industrial. You can see that Tarkett now is a private company after the P2P and Muno is now fully carved out from Stahl. On Page 17, a bit more information on the divestiture program that we announced in December 2025. We told you that we have a plan to get EUR 7 billion of capital proceeds. We already announced a bit more than 25% of this program being achieved with EUR 1.2 billion coming from Stahl proceeds in the next few months and a bit more than $500 million coming from the IHS offer that MTN launched recently. You can see that our ratio in terms of loan-to-value is at a reasonable level at 7.8%. And there is in the Appendix a more detail on those calculation. Turning now to Page 18 and leaving the floor to Benoit.

Good afternoon. For the first half year 2026, the net income Group share came in at EUR 69.5 million, significantly above last year for the same period. If we look at the detail of this strong increase, first, you can see that the contribution from the asset management platform has reached EUR 78 million, well above the previous year. It reflects the acquisition of Monroe in March 2025 and the acquisition of Committed Advisors in April 2026. The net income from the investment in the Sponsor Money and Wendel Growth is EUR 10.8 million in H1 2026. In H1 2025, we made a depreciation on the fund-of-fund portfolio of Wendel Growth that explains the loss you can see in this table. Turning to WPI portfolio.

We made a depreciation because we were to sell it, and we sold it in the -- just in line with that in the second half of 2025. It's not a depreciation. It was depreciation in view of selling it, which...

Absolutely. Thank you, Laurent. So the net income from WPI portfolio is EUR 391 million, 10.6% above the previous year. All the portfolio companies have contributed to this increase. However, when you look at the Group share of this net income, it is stable because the percentage of ownership in Bureau Veritas decreased after the forward sale and the block sale we made in 2025. The operating expenses of Wendel were EUR 36 million. The increase relates to specific cost of the first half year 2026. In addition, last year, we had a higher level of cash and we had higher money market rates. And then the income from the cash offset the bond coupons. And this year, this income does not fully offset the cost of the bonds. So overall, the net income from operation is EUR 418 million, 29% above last year. And in Group share is EUR 101 million compared to EUR 54 million in H1 2025. After nonrecurring profits and losses of minus EUR 80 million, mainly related to restructuring at the level of WPI portfolio after deducting the impact from the intangibles amortization and the adjustment of earnouts and other acquisition entries. The total net income, the IFRS net income is EUR 321 million, up 20%. And the Group share of this net income is close to EUR 70 million in H1 2026. It's worth noting that the change in fair value of our stake in IHS is booked through the equity for an amount of EUR 56 million. On the following page...

Just on the nonrecurring items, most of them are coming from WPI, mostly BVI in fact -- just there is no confusion in that.

Absolutely. So this page presents our very strong financial structures. First, you can see that the LTV is 7.8%. It takes into account the proceeds from -- coming from Stahl and IHS expected in H2 2026. It's well below the 20% ceiling for our current rating, S&P rating that is BBB. Second, we have an average maturity of our bond that is 6 years with the first bond maturing in 2030. And third, the cash amounts to EUR 500 million before the proceeds we will receive from the disposal of Stahl and IHS. So this is fully in line with what was presented at the end of 2025 at the Investor Day. And I would add that this strong financial structure is very cheap because the average coupon of the bond is 2.8%. So not very higher than the cash -- the money market rates.

It's fixed rate. Okay. Thank you very much. So in conclusion, I think that -- as you've seen, we are going exactly in line with what we expected in the development of the Asset Management platform. We're confirming our target of above EUR 200 million of FRE for this year based on the full year ownership of Committed Advisor, Monroe and IK. The development is well. There's a lot of initiatives. Fundraising is going well. And yes, we're very confident in our ability to continue growing the platform as explained by Cyril. We are very -- we see very good development from the WPI portfolio. All companies have a process of increasing their EBITDA. Even you've seen that Scalian is effectively still on a negative territory, but all action has been taken during the first half, and we will see, I think, this impact in the coming quarters, as mentioned by David. So it's important to see that the underlying companies are doing well in an environment which is not always, but I can tell you, we're spending a lot of time making sure and it is doing well. Then the fully diluted NAV is up EUR 4.1 per share, including if we restate from the dividend payment. And I want to stress the strong accretive impact of the share buyback, which was a promise we made to -- during the Investor Day. So we're delivering on our 2030 value creation ambition. And we've already returned EUR 450 million to shareholders. And as you see, we're saying what we do and we're doing what we say.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of David Cerdan with Kepler. David from Kepler.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the NAV performance. So it was clearly above my expectations. So congratulations for that. And there was some question regarding the NAV bridge. So to be simple, what was the evolution of the multiples retained to value the different assets and notably the WIM division? So is there any change in the peers multiples you retained between Q1 and Q2 for WIM and the different unlisted assets? My second question is more general and relates to the market environment for private assets. So could we have an update on the current mood among LPs, both in European [ P ] or in the U.S. for the credit -- private credit? So in other words, do you see some sign of stabilization or something improving regarding the appetite, the concern, et cetera? And my last question is regarding your debt inside your unlisted assets. So several of them are highly leveraged or leveraged. So now money is more expensive. So do you see some as you tested, what could be the impact of the new refinancing conditions? And do you think that you will need maybe to reinject some cash in some assets to face this debt repayment world?

Thank you, David. So I'll start with the bridge. ACAMS, we have -- well, the multiples for ACAMS, I think, slightly down compared to the first quarter. So we've taken basically -- I think ACAMS is on a very good trajectory. And I think the value of ACAMS is, in fact, the company is more valuable today than the last quarter and last year. However, we follow our rules, and we mostly are doing at on comparable multiples. So it's slightly down for this quarter, not big, but slightly down. Same for CPI on exactly the same sector, it's down also for CPI. For WIM, well, no, we didn't change the panel of the Asset Manager, but you've seen a rebound on the value, a strong rebound. The first Q1, at the end of the Q1, we were at dip in the value of the asset -- alternative Asset Managers. So I think the value in Q1, and I mentioned that was pretty low compared to the reality. We had to -- also we've made -- we refined the way we were -- because it was not easy to put into consideration because we're valuing 100% of the company, and then we deduct the values of [ earnout ] and so on. And to be fair, we've made a better link between the 2 on this quarter also in order to make sure that this is an appropriate number that we provide to the market, which is what we've done. I pass over to Cyril on the LP's mood on private equity or private debt. The only thing I can say on private credit is that you see that we have significant fundraised in the private credit, which shows strong appetite still from institutional LPs, but we will come back to that. And for the PE, again, we've not raised fund, and we're not fundraising, but we see what is needed in order to make sure that we will be successfully fundraised next year. Cyril?

No, yes. No, I don't know if you remember, but when we presented the Q1 earnings, we presented to you the PDI report. So I have the figure in front of me for Q2, and it's exactly the same trend. So you need to look at the market with institutional investors on one side and retail investor or wholesale investor on the other side. So on the institutional side, and it's the very large part of the market, the second quarter was in line with Q1, a record level in terms of fundraising. So it's even slightly above Q1. So if you sum the 2, it's more than EUR 200 billion raise fund and SMAs for the private credit as a whole all over the world, which is very good. The second good news for us with Monroe is that when we look at the split of those fundraising for institutional clients, it's focused mainly on direct lending for 60% where Monroe is strong, and it's focused on the U.S. private credit where Monroe has a strong presence. So it's very good for us. And I think it's a very good signal for the fundraising that I mentioned during the presentation. On the other side, when you look at the retail, the dynamic remain totally different. You still have a request for outflows, and it's true across the sectors for the nontraded BDCs. And -- but we still have flows, as I said, and if we look at for Monroe, the plus and the minus over the quarter, it's negative, but it's not huge. And keep in mind also that the full -- the global nontraded BDC market, it's close to EUR 250 billion globally, the assets. And when you look at the new money coming on the institutional side for just one semester, it's EUR 200 billion. So just to add the total market, it's more than EUR 2 trillion. So it's important. We are on it. Wealth Management and retail is a key engine of growth for us over the long-term. So there is a situation. It has not improved on the retail sector in Q2, but we are working on it in order to deliver liquidity to clients when they want liquidity and to invest the money to the newcomer.

On private equity, we see some -- I think what we see that the good performers are raising fund well. And there's a lot of, I would say, more -- there's much more differentiation between the selections. And that's why I think Cyril went through that, but it's so important that today with the team of IK, there's a lot of attention put on returning some money to their LPs by making good sale, which they've been doing in the first half, and there is more to come. The pipe is good. And it is also important that we deploy the money the right way. And again, also, we're pretty confident in the way we do. So we're not saying it's going to be an easy environment. There's -- it's not like everybody wants to rush into PE, but there is still a significant amount of money that want to be invested. Mid-cap Europe is part of the topic of the investors, which is really the sweet spot of IK. And we view the quality of our team and our performance as being a key driver for success next year when we start fundraising. So nobody can say it's going to be easy, but I think we have a very strong elements to be confident into that. The last point is the secondary market to finish on that. And there is huge appetite to go on to that. And we are very confident in the way that we will reach the EUR 4 billion that we have as a target for the 2 funds under fundraising at Committed Advisors.

And on Committed, if I may add, is that the appetite is on both institutional and retail, which is very interesting for Committed Advisor.

And private bank and high net worth individual. Last question because you had a few is the level of debt and debt repayment and so on. So David, maybe a little bit of a highlight on that.

Yes. So our portfolio have a wide range of leverage. We -- half of portfolio have actually a low or reasonable leverage and those are companies such as Bureau Veritas, Tarkett, Muno, Stahl, who some of them are cash free and others have like 1 or 2 turns in terms of leverage. At the same time, the other half of the portfolio, as you say, have a 5x to 6x leverage, and those are the companies that you can see on Slide 15. with ACAMS, CPI and Globeducate, Scalian which are more traditional LBOs with higher leverage. The first 2 companies, we did some refinancing recently. So we believe we have market rates. And so we don't expect to have an increase in terms of expense if we were to go to refinance those companies. On Globeducate, to the contrary, we do believe that if we were to refinance this company, we will have like a saving and a reduction in terms of interest expenses. Regarding the equity requirement, we are thinking that maybe some of those companies will require some equity injections because all those have an M&A program. As we mentioned, Globeducate already closed 2 acquisitions earlier this year and still has a healthy M&A pipeline and other companies on this Slide 15 have looked at some targets in sight. And so we might have to put a small amount of equity for some of them, but more to help them to grow than to reduce the leverage.

The only one for which we did so was Scalian, but it has been done. And now we're confident that they are at the right level. Otherwise, it's really -- and it was part of the -- how do you say that, the value creation plan is to support potential significant M&A by some of them, but they cannot fund only with the cash flow of the company.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Casas with Casas & Associates.

Do you hear me? I have 2 questions. The first one is an account question. On Page 11, about 17, the Asset Managers amount at the end of June 2026 is EUR 1.881 billion and was EUR 1.727 billion at the end of 2025. I don't remember what the amount was only EUR 1.326 billion at the end of the Q1, March of 2026. Is it a mistake or could you remember us the explanation of these strange differences between end of 2025, end of Q1 and end of Q2? The second question -- yes. The second question is more important and is related to the discount price of your stock and the evolution of the net asset value per share since 10 years. With my spreadsheet, I see that the net asset value per share is now EUR 159 at the end of June 2026, less than the net asset value of 2017, 9 years ago when the stock price of Wendel was EUR 140. My question is, could you anticipate that the net value of Wendel for the end of 2026 will be up than the 2025 year, so EUR 164.

Thank you for your question. The first one is that I don't have the figures in front of me, but you -- the parameter is not the same for the second quarter compared to the beginning of the year. Beginning of the year, you only have on the platform, IK and Monroe. And at the end of the second quarter, you have a Committed Advisor that has been added.

Yes, I understand that. But why that difference at the end of Q1, this is my question.

Because I told you the value we applied for Q1 was very low. That's why I mentioned, and I keep saying that the -- and that's it. I mean, I've been saying that, and that's why we're it.

Why this amount is less than the 2025 because it's not the same.

Because we are using market multiples to value our business and there was a lower value of the multiples of the ads during the first quarter. We specifically mentioned that during the Q1 session, and that's why we see a positive now impact because the value has come down. The Q1 was really the dip of the value of the alternative asset management. I think we were very clear on the -- during the call, maybe not.

Sorry for my question. I understand now.

No, no, no, -- so -- and then you have the -- from Q1 to Q2, you have a better multiple, but you also have the addition of Committed Advisors, which was acquired -- closed in April 2026. I give no forward-looking position on share price or NAV. I hear your question, but I give no forward-looking statement on NAV and share price, I have given in the Investor Day, I've given -- we're giving a target of what return we expect. But I don't give any on the midterm, but I don't give any short-term or even midterm specific guidance on it. We've given clear guidance on the development of our asset management, which I think is also -- and we're confirming those guidance with strength.

Our next question comes from the line of Alexandre Gerard with CIC.

Yes. Can you hear me? I have 4 quick questions. The first one is related to the BNP Paribas partnership. Could you please elaborate a bit on that? What do you expect from that partnership? Is BNP just a cornerstone investor or are there also LPs in the funds too? The second question is related to WIM. If we go back to Page 13 of your presentation, can we have the split or could we have the split between management fees and FRE between IK, Monroe and Committed Advisors? The third question is related to Tarkett. Tarkett is now classified as a private asset, but you don't comment on that line despite the fact that Tarkett is a non-negligible part of your NAV. So can we have -- can you elaborate a bit on that? And my last question is regarding your M&A opportunities maybe in the second half of the year, both for WIM and for Wendel Investment Partners. Are you still looking at opportunities?

Okay. Let me and I will hand over to Cyril on that. But BNP Paribas partnership, in fact, it was -- it started as being an AXA partnership. I'm saying that because that's how it has started where we have -- AXA is a significant -- has both things. It's LP, and it also has -- which has become BNP Paribas, a GP stake fund. So it has 2 quality. And in fact, the relationship started on Monroe, where they knew Monroe well because they were a significant LP of Monroe. And when we discussed with them of the fact that we were acquiring Monroe, they say, well, we're happy to come with you as a GP staker and to keep on being a significant LP even more as in Monroe. And then when we also did the Committed Advisor transaction, we had discussion because we've got regular discussion with them and they -- but then it has become BNP Paribas because the merger between AXA IM and BNP Paribas was consumed. And we had exactly the same thing. And it's a dual partnership. It's a partnership with BNP Paribas Investment Manager or asset management, I don't know the name now. And also AXA because AXA is becoming also a partner or NP to Committed Advisor as well as to Monroe. And by the way, the AXA -- the former AXA GP stake fund is mostly money coming from the AXA portfolio, I mean, investment funds. So it's a dual now partnership between BNP Paribas and AXA. And at the occasion of that merger, it has allowed us to enlarge our relationship also with the BNP teams and their asset management team, which is good, and we now have a very confident relationship with them. WIM, we don't give the split of the FRE here, but I think that you can find out a bit -- it's in the account. So you will find it in the accounts. It's in their accounts. So we give the split. [indiscernible], but in fact, we give it. So -- but there's no secret, you will see. But the interesting thing is that the margin is relatively -- the FRE margin is relatively similar on the different companies. Not the fee rates. Obviously, the fee rate is higher on [ PE ]-- but the margin is relatively similar from one to the other, the FRE. Tarkett. Well, Tarkett, it's true that we didn't give any information while it's not listed. We were -- it was used to come from the market information. So in a very brief term, Tarkett is having a pretty good first half in terms of growth and EBITDA supported by largely the sports business in the U.S., which is one of the key driver of the growth for Tarkett and the EBITDA is up. I don't have the numbers in mind, but it's -- I think it's 4%, 4%, 5% up EBITDA compared to last year. So a pretty decent good performance, largely driven by the development of the sports business. M&A opportunities. Well, we both -- we have M&A opportunities in 3 domains. First, on WPI at the company level and the companies are looking always to see whether they can expand their business through bolt-on acquisitions. This is true for BVI. This is true for Globeducate, which is part of the model. This is potentially true for ACAMS or CPI and even Scalian -- small acquisition, which is a little bit like having small teams coming and joining. We're not going to go for big things, but a few bolt-on acquisitions. So we look to a series of them on that. Second is we are constantly looking to new opportunities to invest money. And we've looked to a few investments during the first half. We didn't find anything which was what we wanted to do, but we are constantly monitoring that. And the team with the support of the IK network is signing a significant amount of good opportunities to us today. The last one is on the platform construction. And we've said that we've already created 3 expertise, but we may want to have other expertise. And I also say that the priority of the year 2026 was to give -- was to create the platform, start to integrate, start to think about the organization, develop the retail and the wealth management development and the organic growth was really the priority of the year. So we constantly monitor the fact that there is opportunity out there, but our main focus this year has been about internal development.