3i Infrastructure H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 20, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Strong first-half performance — 3i Infrastructure reported a 7.4% total return in the six months to September, NAV per share of £407.9, an interim dividend of £6.725, and cash income up 18% year-on-year, and expects portfolio income to cover the dividend this year.
  • Positive Sentiment: TCR strategic review announced — the group is formally seeking offers for TCR (a standout performer and ~71% held by 3iN), reflecting readiness to realize value from a now-global airport equipment leasing platform after significant growth and COVID-proven availability-based contracts.
  • Positive Sentiment: Flag subsea expansion — the company bought capacity on a Google trans‑Pacific cable and raised a $340m facility to fund further network growth, enhancing bandwidth monetization opportunities driven by AI and cloud demand.
  • Positive Sentiment: Infinex pivot and growth firepower — landfill-gas generation is being supplemented (and expected to be overtaken) by solar build‑out, supported by a 1.4GW pipeline, a new CEO and refinancing that includes >£100m undrawn CapEx facility.
  • Negative Sentiment: SRL faces near-term headwinds — demand from cash‑strapped local authorities and rising labour costs have weighed on SRL, prompting management to take a cautious near‑term view and temper longer‑term cash assumptions.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
3i Infrastructure H1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 3i Infrastructure half-year results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged; they can be submitted at any time via the Q&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. I would now like to hand you over to CFO James Dawes. James, good morning, sir.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Good morning, and thank you all very much for joining this webinar. It's good to have you and good to have retail interest in this company. I will take you through our slides, and then we'll make sure there's time for the Q&A later. Just go through the disclaimers. Right, what are we about? What's 3i Infrastructure for? We're here to provide public market investors, that's you, people who have access to buying shares on the stock exchange, with a liquid exposure to buying into a diverse portfolio of private infrastructure businesses. You can't build this portfolio yourself. These are private companies, but you can buy into them through owning 3i Infrastructure PLC.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

These are controlling stakes, so we own substantially all of our portfolio companies, and we can therefore execute our active management playbook because we control the boards of the companies, and we can work very closely with the management teams to deliver on the strategies. That is what you are buying into. The investment objectives are to provide you as shareholders with a total return of 8%-10% per annum over the medium term, and within that return target, you get a progressive annual dividend per share. It has been going up every year since the start of the life of the company. That is what we are here for. Just a little bit about the market, there is a bit of jargon in the infrastructure market. We are trying to buy infrastructure businesses, so it is not just a portfolio of assets. We buy companies; there are 11 companies in the portfolio.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We'll run through these. We are at what we view as the slightly higher risk, slightly higher return end of the infrastructure market. You can see at the bottom left of the chart on the screen, at the core end, that would be regulated monopolies where you get a regulated allowed return or public-private partnerships, for example, or also renewable energy assets are often down at this lower end where it's a more predictable return. It's often exposed to regulatory risk, which we aren't that keen on, but those would be targeting returns below our investment target. What we buy are companies. They're companies that own an asset base. They have strong market positions, and we're looking for European companies. They may be multinationals, but they're headquartered, and the weight of their business typically is in Europe. They're supported by long-term growth megatrends.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I'll talk a bit about that in a minute. They're real companies, real businesses with employees, and they have the potential to outperform, and we drive them hard to try and make sure that they do that. Our performance in the first half of the year, just the six months to September, was at 7.4% total return. We've nearly achieved our annual return target in six months, so we're on track to certainly exceed that target for the financial year. The net asset value per share was at GBP 407.9. We've actually gone ex-div today, so you'll have seen the dividends come out of the share price today. The interim dividend is GBP 6.725, so the ex-div now is a little over GBP 4. The total income and non-income cash, this is what's supporting our dividend, was GBP 121 million.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

That was 18% higher than the same period in the last financial year. We seek to cover our dividend and the cost of running the company with income off the portfolio, and we're expecting that to be the case this financial year. We are very happy with those results for six months. This is a slightly longer-term perspective. This is going back to COVID, really. The growth in the NAV per share, you can see from around GBP 2.50 in March 2020 up to, as I said, over GBP 4 now. The big contributors to the growth in the portfolio in this first half are from the larger investments in our portfolio, as you'd expect, but with a standout contribution from our business, TCR. Again, I'll go through why that is in a minute, and I'll go through what these companies do in a minute. Here is the overall performance.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

You can see on the pie chart the larger going through to the smaller companies in the portfolio. The overall value of the portfolio, GBP 4.1 billion. It is a substantial portfolio of companies. Behind our 7.4% return for the company, before all the costs, the portfolio delivered a 7.8% return. Most of that return is obviously flowing through to shareholders. As I say, I'll go through each individual company. On this pie chart, we allocate the companies across what we call megatrends. These are the long-term sort of tailwinds behind our companies that support our companies. These are tailwinds that last not just any one year or any sort of economic cycle, but across economic cycles. These are multi-decade trends.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

You can see that the largest trends in the portfolio really are the energy transition, and we play that theme in a number of different ways in the portfolio, not just generating renewable energy, but a number of different ways of doing it. Digitalization, which we primarily in the portfolio at the moment invest through connectivity, whether it's for customers, for consumers, which is DNSNet, companies, which is TampNet, or sort of countries and continents, which is our business Flag. Again, I'll go through what each of these do. We've also got renewing, sort of aging and essential infrastructure as a key theme, and demographic change, so particularly the aging of populations and what that means in terms of infrastructure requirements. In this portfolio at the moment, it's principally through the healthcare sector.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

What we do in terms of active management of our businesses, there are three aspects to this. It's not step one, step two, step three. We look at all of these three pillars from the moment we take the keys for a business. The first part of it is to de-risk the businesses and make them more infrastructure-like. A part of the secret sauce for 3i is to buy businesses sort of at the mid-market end, and then we seek to grow them.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Our traditional hunting ground for new investments, particularly because we're trying to buy things typically on a bilateral basis rather than through broad auction processes where price is the key factor to win, we're looking in places like carve-outs of divisions in corporates maybe that have been slightly unloved or starved of investment, or businesses within private equity or family office portfolios where, again, they might be run for cash rather than invested in, and maybe the infrastructure characteristics are less appreciated. We can buy those businesses and then make them more infrastructure-like.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The sorts of things I'm talking about there are, for example, making contracts longer, putting in place infrastructure-style financing, so debt facilities that last a long period of time where we can persuade the lenders of the infrastructure characteristics and the downside protection inherent in these businesses, where maybe we can pivot the asset base to something that is even more essential or where the market position is even stronger. Things that we can do, and I'll give an example in a minute, to make it a more core infrastructure business. The second pillar is I talked a bit about investing in companies and sometimes companies being starved of investment. Infrastructure investors love CapEx, particularly where the CapEx leads to contracted earnings sort of straight away, so where you're not doing speculative builds, but you're building to contract.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

That is the ideal for an infrastructure investor, and we can talk a bit more about that in a minute. We pursue sort of growth plans that are baked into our original investment cases, but then more importantly, we find more growth for these companies, and generally that would be at returns that are ahead of our original underwriting cases. That is where we can outperform our return target, which we have done very consistently over the life of the company. Finally, we are investors. This is sort of a private equity style of management. We do seek to sell our companies periodically and then reinvest the proceeds to continue to grow the business.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

When we're looking to an exit, what we want to do is define the future growth pathways, the white space for the companies to grow into, which may be sort of adjacent categories for the business or perhaps internationalization, which is a strong theme across the 3i platform, so that we've got something to sell on to the next owner. Typically, we might then start down the pathway of investing in those areas, pursuing some internationalization, but not everything, or pursuing some of the new sort of categories of asset base that we might have identified so that a future buyer can feel confident in putting value on it, paying us at the point of exit for growth that is yet to come. That's our playbook, and I'll give some examples in a moment on how we've done that through the portfolio.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The first one, this writing on the slide looks quite small to me. Hopefully, it's slightly larger on your screens. This roadshow deck, the slide deck, is available on the 3i Infrastructure website if you want to look at it in more detail and if it's easier to read that way. It's available as a PDF on the website. The first of those pillars, giving you an example here of what we've done with the company, is a business called SVACT, which is a shipping business. This was a carve-out of a division from Maersk when we bought into it in 2015. 3i Infrastructure was a much smaller business at the time, and we didn't have the firepower to buy all of the business at the time. We actually bought sort of as a joint venture alongside another fund manager, AMP, and their infrastructure fund.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We bought joint control. The strategy from when we bought the business was to pivot the business into a different market sector. As a shipping business, this was focused on providing emergency response and rescue vessels for offshore oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, a market that in the long term was going to be declining as we stopped extracting fossil fuels. When I say we, I do not mean SVACT. I mean SVACT's customers stopping extracting fossil fuels from the North Sea. We saw an opportunity to turn this business into a business where the vessels were instead servicing offshore wind farms, where we saw that was a growing market relatively early, more than a decade ago. We could turn the business so that it was majority going to be servicing offshore wind farms. Now, these are different sorts of vessels.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It was as the older vessels servicing offshore oil and gas retired, and as the cash flow came in from that part of the business, it could fund the development of a fleet of a different type of vessels to service offshore wind. That is what we have done. By this year, with all the vessels in the pipeline as they come through, in terms of contracted revenues, we are about three-quarters of the business now servicing the offshore wind segment. That was about, I think, 10% when we took the business, so took control of the business. It has been a substantial pivot, and that pivot will continue. We have not built any more tonnage for the oil and gas sector. It has all been going into the offshore wind.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Now, when we look to exit this business, we do think it will be attractive to the sort of more large energy transition funds, private funds looking to invest in this space because of what we've done with the business. We've converted the business into a segment which is in structural growth, where there's long-term contracts, 10-15 year contracts, very likely sort of strong renewal rates at the end of contracts, and inflation linkage built into the revenues under those contracts. Much more solid infrastructure characteristics. In terms of defining the white space for future growth, we've got one vessel in construction to service a U.S. offshore wind farm, but for reasons that would be obvious to anybody that reads the newspaper, we don't have anything more in the pipeline for the U.S. market at the moment.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We have signed a joint venture with a Korean business, for South Korea, for developing, alongside our existing customer base, actually, vessels to service offshore wind around the south of the Korean Peninsula. That is a future growth prospect. We do not have anything in our valuation for that at the moment. One other thing I should mention, because 3i Infrastructure is a lot larger now, in 2022, we were able to buy out AMP's infrastructure fund. We now own substantially all of this business. We brought in, we syndicated a stake down at the time to third-party co-investors. Where we, 3i, manage that stake, it is tied together with 3iN stakes, so we still have control of the board. That flexibility allows sort of the additional firepower alongside 3iN to do that sort of thing.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The next example on the second pillar is talking about growth CapEx. This business Flag, it stands for the Fiber Link Around the Globe. This is a business that owns subsea fiber cables around the globe. The weight of the network is from Europe through the Middle East to Asia. We bought into a business where the majority of the network still had spare capacity. Our thesis was to sell that capacity into the growing demand for bandwidth between countries and between continents. Principally, when we invested in it in 2022, this was based on workloads of cloud infrastructure and streaming demands. Since then, the growth in AI workloads is a very strong driver for demand on the network. This has been performing very well for us. We think the prospects are very good.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Over and above our initial investment case, we've been able to grow the network. In the last period, we bought into two new cable systems around India. There was India to Europe, India to Asia. They were known as the IAX and IEX cable systems. In the last six months, we've bought capacity on a new cable, which was a Google cable. We've bought into the unused capacity by Google from them. This is a cable that runs from Singapore over to California, a Trans-Pacific cable. Not only will we monetize the capacity that we've just bought, we also have an agreement with Google to monetize other unused capacity because it's not Google's business to sell capacity to many other players on cables. They do other things, but they've partnered with Flag to monetize the spare capacity on the cable.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We think that's very attractive. Anything that develops our network and grows the network actually makes the existing network more attractive. Just by bolting on new routes, you make the existing routes more attractive as well. We raised additional debt in the last six months to continue our growth at Flag. We have raised a $340 million facility that will help us invest more through this company. I think it's worth saying, as we invest in CapEx, as the earnings grow for businesses, we have very high cash conversion across our companies that will deliver more cash that we can use to invest further. Also, on the back of increased earnings, we're able to raise greater debt facilities, which equally gives us more firepower to invest in CapEx. As I say, infrastructure investors love CapEx. That's a great business, Flag.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

TCR is the one that everybody in the market is talking about at the moment. We have acknowledged in these results presentations that we are undertaking a strategic review and will be seeking offers for this business. That has been known in the private market for some time. There have been a number of articles, including on Bloomberg, talking about the potential for this business coming to market. It is good to get that out in the open now. This is a business we bought into almost a decade ago, so that investment completed in July 2016. Again, as I said, a decade or more ago, 3iN was a smaller business. With this one, we went in jointly with Deutsche Bank, with DWS's infrastructure fund, joint control. Similar to the SVACT story, we in 2022 were able to buy them out.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

There's a story behind that, but I won't go into that in detail. At the same time, we syndicated a stake to third-party money managed by 3i that sits alongside 3iN. Even though this is the largest investment in 3iN, there's another stake alongside it, and we will be selling all of that, all of the business to a future buyer if we're successful. About 71% of this sits within 3i Infrastructure PLC. When we bought into this, it was a business providing leasing ground handling equipment in airports. This is one of those logos that you can spot as you travel. It's on the equipment, everything that moves around a plane or around the airfield that isn't a plane.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The tractors that push the planes back, the tractors that bring the bags to the plane, the steps, the catering trucks, all that sort of thing. It is a leasing business. It will lease to ground handlers, airlines, and in some cases, airports. At acquisition, it was principally a European business operating in 95 airports. We have then grown that. The real growth driver, rather than an increase in air travel, has really been an increase in the penetration of leasing in terms of the market for this equipment. A new statistic that has come out as we have gone through our work defining the white space for taking this business to market is globally only about 12% of the equipment, of the ground handling equipment, is leased. The rest of it is owned by the users of the equipment.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

There is a huge white space to go for leasing. Of course, during our ownership, we went through COVID when airports were shut and people were not traveling. This really proved the infrastructure characteristics for TCR because TCR's leases are availability-based leasing. The customers under the contracts have to pay TCR so long as the equipment is available to be used, regardless of whether they are using it or not. TCR, unlike its customers, unlike the airlines and the ground handlers, held on to the vast majority of its earnings through COVID, which really proved out the infrastructure characteristics. When we first bought into this business, it had been in a private equity fund. It really was not viewed by people as a core infrastructure asset. It is now much more viewed by the market as an infrastructure asset.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

That passage through COVID has been important for that. Post-COVID, when DWS were looking to monetize their stake, we thought there was a lot more growth to go for. We decided to buy their share off them. We have shown in the chart here that by that point, we were operating in 172 airports. There had been substantial growth at that point. We were right. There has been a lot more growth since. We are very pleased with that investment, buying them out. We are now at a position where the business operates in almost 240 airports. It is now a global platform.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It started to penetrate the US market in a very meaningful way, in particular, a recent contract to be the only provider of equipment on a pooled basis where TCR will manage the overall pool of equipment and all of the users of that equipment in JFK's new Terminal 1 will contract with TCR to use the equipment. That is a fully electric fleet. The energy transition and electrification away from diesel engines towards electric vehicles on the airfield aprons has been a real driver for new CapEx and for TCR's growth. That new Terminal 1 at JFK is a fully electric pool of equipment. This is the space to grow into. The US is a huge market. We have made a meaningful start in the US. We feel that now is a good time to take the business to market.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It's a large company, but it's not too large. It's a nice fit for any of the large private infrastructure funds that have been raised in recent years. This will be a good fit for them. There is more growth for them to go for. We think this is an appropriate time to go to market. In the private market, these processes take months. This is not something that you'll get immediate news on. In due course, likely next year, there will be additional news, we hope, to bring to you. That was a very strong return during the six months. A big chunk of that return was the strong performance of TCR. The remainder really was reflecting the upsides in terms of some of the upside in growth prospects for the business.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Looking forward, having gone through three of the key assets, we are on track to exceed our target returns this year. We're continuing to invest through our portfolio. We do have line of sight, we hope, on potential realization in the next year. A lot of work has been going in this year to build a strong pipeline of potential future investments. We've got an eye on further diversifying the portfolio. If one comes out, ideally two to three new things will go in. It will be very returns-driven and what we expect from future investments. To the maximum extent, having some optionality over timing on those investments so that we can try and match the timing of potential realizations with new investments. We do have a credit facility at the 3i Infrastructure level, which is there to help us bridge between realizations and new investments.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Just to take you through, I've done just under half an hour so far. Other aspects of the portfolio, these are in size order. Particularly where we think about additional drivers of return, if we are successful in selling TCR, what are the other great companies in the portfolio that will be drivers of return for the next few years? SVACT and Flag I've already talked about. Those are large companies, and we do expect great things from them. Infinex is also one of the largest companies in the portfolio. This is an energy transition play. It is a substantial power generator in the U.K. It generates electricity from landfill gas.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Rather than flaring off the methane that is emitted from waste rotting in closed-off landfill sites, a much better thing to do with it is to capture that methane and burn it through a gas turbine engine and generate electricity and plug that into the grid. This is base load power. It's always on. The gas is always coming out. The engines are always running. It's local to source of demand. Typically, landfill sites were built relatively near the outskirts of large urban centers. You've got a source of power that's local to large urban centers. That's a positive thing.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Where we've been investing in this business, and to some extent the pivot, has been as the methane resource, which you can see the gray on the bar chart here, as it very gradually declines, as the waste rots, eventually there will be no more methane coming off the landfill site. It is a gradual decline. We've been able to roll out solar panels onto these sites, which is a good alternative use for the site. You can't build housing on them. It's not agricultural land on a closed-off landfill site, but you can roll out solar panels. Infinex is there. It operates already on the sites. Importantly, it already owns grid connections on the sites, which is, I think you may have read in the newspapers, it can take a long time to get grid connections.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Infinex is already there and has the grid connections, often with spare capacity. It is a great head start for Infinex to develop. As you can see in the charts, the financial year there is to March. To March 2025, they had already installed a substantial amount of solar capacity. By the end of next March, we are expecting actually the solar to be more generating capacity than the landfill gas in the business. There has been a lot of investment going through there. The pipeline is 1.4 GW, which is almost half the size we will see. Hopefully, we can develop that faster than size we will see gets developed. We have brought in a new CEO who is part of a managed transition. He is going to be driving the growth of this business. We have refinanced the business.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We have additional debt, including more than GBP 100 million of sort of untapped CapEx facility to continue investing in rolling out solar capacity here. That is a great business. We are expecting further great things from it. TampNet is another one of our digitalization businesses. This connects offshore platforms substantially in the North Sea, but also in the Gulf of Mexico, where when we bought into the business, this is one of these enhancing infrastructure characteristics, that network was there, but based on using a fiber backbone owned by BP, where TampNet had a lease on that fiber. Early in the life of our investment, we bought that fiber off BP. That made it a much more solid position in the Gulf of Mexico. This is where the main customers would be oil and gas majors.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

They are increasingly automating operations on their platforms to improve performance, but also to take people off the platforms and have them run more onshore. That obviously has health and safety benefits. It's hard operating a long way from shore. In order to do that, they need high-speed, low-latency connectivity from the platforms to the shore, where they have vessels, for example, or floating rigs. They need roaming connectivity. TampNet has a roaming network around these platforms using, obviously, the platforms themselves to provide the sort of towers in order to get mobile connectivity. Increasingly, during our ownership, we've been bringing to customers private networks. So owning all of the sort of connectivity on the rigs and some of the sort of sensors and so on on the rigs themselves. Most recently, partnering with a business called Armada to deliver edge data centers.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

As AI workloads increase, having some of the data center capacity on the edge, so on the platforms themselves, but obviously connected through the fiber, the high-speed fiber network that TampNet also owns. Here, the thesis has been to sell capacity and increasing demand for capacity on the fiber networks. We have also got a line of sight on broadening the sort of customer base of the business. We are really encouraged that the first contract has been signed with a customer to provide connectivity for a carbon sequestration project in the North Sea. Once we finish, again, it is the customers of TampNet finish pulling the gas out of the gas fields, for example, in the North Sea. In due course, it is likely that carbon will be pumped back down into the gas fields under the North Sea and providing connectivity.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Clearly, there is a much longer time frame for TampNet's network if we can succeed in connecting customers to do that. We are encouraged by that. That is potentially the future of the business. The other side, of course, is connecting offshore wind farms. Typically, the electricity cables connecting the offshore wind farms have fiber connectivity in them. If you view TampNet's network as sort of a spider's web in the North Sea and in the Gulf of Mexico, you can also connect to TampNet's network. That gives you sort of redundancy or additional bandwidth if you are an offshore wind farm operator, again, to automate and monitor operations. That is an excellent, very good performing company. Jules is another energy transition business, but it is not an energy generator, or at least not substantially an energy generator.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It's a business that was a carve-out of a regulated electricity network in the Netherlands. Principally, its sort of weight of operations is in the south of the Netherlands, where, as you can see on the map we've put on this slide, there is particularly strong grid congestion in the south of the Netherlands. This was the non-regulated business. It was the first sort of privatization of a division like that in the Netherlands. There are two other large networks, both of which have since sold off their unregulated business. This installs and leases electrical equipment in customer premises. I think office parks, hotels, increasingly data centers, for example, where they're installing the transformers. Rather than the ownership passing to the landlord, Jules retains ownership and leases on an annual basis with a sort of maintenance contract built into the lease. Full-service rental.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We like leasing businesses where the ownership of the asset remains with the company we own. Over time, we've owned this business for around six and a bit years. Over time, we've been transitioning this business into a broader integrated energy solutions business, where it's not just the equipment like the transformers and the meters, which was the traditional business for Jules, but really, essentially, all of the electrical infrastructure, including some generation infrastructure like solar panels on the roofs, electric vehicle charging in the car parks.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Because of the grid congestion, if you've got, for example, a new data center or a new business park where they can't get an electricity grid connection, partnering with companies to provide on-site generation, perhaps through gas turbine engines, where that can be running, the office park or the data center can be run off-grid until such time as a data grid connection becomes available. When that happens, the gas turbine engines can be taken away. That grid connection will be complementary to the existing on-site generation from the solar panels and the storage, either from batteries or through the electric vehicle charging in the car parks. It is an integrated solution. All of the management of the energy and the balancing of the power would be through Jules's equipment and managed by Jules. That is really the future.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The pivot has with the sort of first to be doing that in the Dutch market. We have got an advantage, a sort of first-mover advantage in doing that. We are now starting to look at potential international growth opportunities, both actually organic and inorganic, through potential bolt-ons to the business. This is where we can make investments over and above our original investment case, where we see that they are accretive to our original returns that we were expecting from these businesses. I am slightly conscious of time. I want to leave time for questions. These are the key ones because they are in size order. Ionisos is a business. Demographic change is the sort of megatrend behind it. This is a business where the end customer is really in the medical equipment and pharmaceutical market, so healthcare. This business sterilizes medical and pharma products.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

If you think about things that you might see in a hospital, whether it's syringes or catheters, things that are in packages where they're sterile packages. When they're used in the hospital, you open the package and everything's sterilized inside it. These are things that can't be sterilized by heating them up, which was obviously a traditional method of sterilization. Instead, they're blasted with radiation, which kills all the bugs that may be in the packaging and in the product. It's run as a market in Europe, really, with only three players. Two are American-based, and only part of their market is in sterilization. Ionisos is the third player, and this is all it does. It's performed extremely well over our ownership. The underlying volume growth, sort of the demand for the products, is growing.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

is ever more demand for sterilization of things we put on and inside ourselves. There is ever more demand for healthcare. The underlying dynamics have been very strong. The pricing power that it has has been good. We have been getting good price increases year on year. The inflation linkage is strong. We have recently strengthened the board with somebody who used to run Steris in Europe. That is one of the other competitors. He is obviously bringing great insight into the market and things that Ionisos could be doing better. I am just going to keep whizzing through. DNSNet, I have mentioned. This is one of our other digitalization businesses. It is a fiber-to-the-home network rollout in the German market. It has had a tougher start. The German market has been difficult.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We took quite a lot of action early on, recruited a new management team to take the business forward, and focused on connecting homes rather than just rolling out fiber down streets because we'd seen a gap opening up between the capital, essentially, that had gone into the ground to provide the trunk network, but not enough revenue coming through from connected customers. We paused the trunk rollout. We focused exclusively for a period on connecting the customers. The business is now profitable, covering the cost of the development team. We're very happy with the penetration rate. We're over a third penetrated, which is well ahead of the German market average. We want to keep growing that, obviously. Eventually, we'll open the network to wholesale. You'd be able to buy your internet connectivity from a number of players, but using DNSNet's network.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

There are some questions in the Q&A already on this. I'll deal with some of that detail later on when I do the Q&A. This business does seem to have stabilized and turned a corner. It is growing in valuation again now. Oystercatcher is now one remaining terminal for liquid sort of petroleum products in the main. In the main, it is gasoline storage and blending in Singapore, which is a very strong market in Asia. It is a sort of strategic location to store oil products. This is a business we've sold most of. It used to be a portfolio of five terminals invested from really the start of the life of 3i Infrastructure. There is a question in the Q&A that has been submitted. I'll address where we are with it at the moment. This is a really great business.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

As the CFO, this makes me very happy. It always does what it's supposed to be doing. It's a very strong contributor to income yield for 3i Infrastructure. It is a very good business. I will address the question in a minute. SRL is a business where we've had some difficulty. There is a question in the Q&A, so I will address some of that in a moment. After we bought the business, there was a marked slowdown in expenditure on repairing roads from local authorities who were cash-strapped. The long-term megatrend, though, is that the roads are crumbling and do need to be repaired. The overall state of the roads gets worse every year. The repairs are not keeping up with the requirements on the roads. The rollout of sort of new pipes and strengthening the electricity grids, all that renewing aging infrastructure, that is all real.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

is going to be a lot of investment in the water network in the next five years. The fiber network rollout is not yet complete. Strengthening the electricity grid is clearly something that needs to happen in the U.K. The megatrend is there. We have had a slowdown in demand since we first acquired the business. We have also had, as many businesses in the U.K. have experienced, rising minimum wage costs, which have affected the business. It has a large depot network and lots of people driving around, replacing batteries and putting lights out on the roads. This is a temporary traffic light. Less so. I should have said that at the beginning. Indeed, the employers' national insurance increase obviously hit the business. We have reflected that. We have reflected some caution in the near term.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We've actually taken out some of the cash flows for some of our simpler products in the longer term to reflect what we're seeing in the market. We do have strong future areas of growth that we're expecting to try and do better with in due course. Again, I'll cover some of that in the Q&A. Very quickly, our smallest business, Future Biogas, is a—well, it's grown a lot since we bought it. It's a generator of energy through anaerobic digestion. It generates methane, so non-fossil fuel methane. It's done better than expected since we bought into the business. Its plants are performing ahead of our expectations. We built recently a new plant with an offtake agreement with AstraZeneca.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

This is part of customers' sort of long-term deep carbonization plans, to, rather than using fossil fuels, sometimes you do need to use methane in industrial processes or in requirements where high heat is required. Rather than using fossil fuels, they want to use biomethane. And here is a source of it from Future Biogas. That is a long-term offtake agreement, a 15-year agreement, no subsidies. That has been fully constructed. The gas has been produced really since the start of 2025. We would like to do more of that. We have more in the pipeline. There is a strong future for this business. That is the end of the core part of the presentation. There are more slides. As I said, the deck is available on the website. I think I am now ready to move to Q&A.

Operator

Perfect, James. That is great.

Operator

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&A tab that is situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. While James takes a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I would just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboards. James, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions that were both pre-submitted ahead of today's event, as well as those that have come in throughout your presentation this morning as well. Firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions.

Operator

James, at this point, sir, if I may hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. If I pick up from you at the end, that would be great.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Thank you. Thank you very much. There are sort of two themes in the questions in the Q&A. Some are on our portfolio and our strategy, which I think I'll cover first. There is also a bit about the market, in particular, market news in the last week for other listed infrastructure companies. I will make sure I cover that at the end. Jake, if I forget to do that, can you please prompt me?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I can see them here. The first one is on TCR. Why are you looking to sell TCR?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We do think that this is a good time to take the business to market. It has achieved all of our original investment thesis, our investment case. It's achieved all of our second investment case when we bought out our co-shareholder in 2022. It's now a global platform. It's got to a really good size. It is equally not too big to sell on to a future buyer. This is part of our model, that as investors, we will grow our businesses and periodically sell them. We are long-term holders. I think overall, it's more than seven years is the average hold period in the portfolio at the moment. TCR, we're likely to have held for about 10 years by the time if we're successful in selling it this time around. It's been a great compounder.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

If we can get a really great price for it now, we can drive exceptional value for shareholders and then seek to redeploy and continue to diversify the portfolio. It's a delicate balance when to take businesses to market. We're extremely thoughtful about it and have thought long and hard about it. We love this business. It's been growing extremely well. We do think this is a good time to take it to market. There's a lot of interest in it. DNSNet was the next one, talking a bit about DNSNet and about the risk of somebody else coming in overbuilding our investment. One of the reasons we invested in DNSNet was because it was a regionally focused play. It was just in a region around Berlin. We weren't trying to cover the whole country in fiber.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It's a sort of suburban semi-rural area, so an area where there's relatively low density of housing, so decent space between houses, where it only will make sense, we think, economic sense for one network to be built, and then eventually that network to be opened up on a wholesale basis so that other sort of providers of internet services can sell to the end customer, but using that network and paying to use that network. That has proven to be the case. We haven't been overbuilt in the areas that we're rolling out in. Where there was another player building in selected areas, which meant they got there first and DNSNet was then not going to build in those areas, we've seen that lessening because of the, I think, quite well-publicized difficulties in rolling out fiber networks in Germany.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We see actually less competition in our area now. Fewer people coming to try and nobody's coming to try and steal our lunch. I think we got the overbuild risk right. I think that focus play was the right call. It has been difficult, but we think we have the right strategy and the right control over our fiber network. Ultimately, we do see a route to making a good return on this investment. It is growing. Again, we've increased the valuation in the last six months. Ultimately, we're building a utility that will undeniably be a core infrastructure asset. Fiber connectivity is essential for people that have it. I couldn't wait to get it when I was at home. It sort of took a long time in the U.K. It's taken a long time in Germany as well.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I think we've got that right, but it's been difficult. The investment case for SRL is the next question. It's been challenging, as we said in our results. The questioner says, "Isn't local authority spending always scarce? And how are you planning to make any money in this market structure?" It's a good point. I think, as we showed on the graph on the slide, it's been particularly scarce since we invested in SRL, which has been unfortunate. I think what we would like to do ultimately is to be able to contribute to improving health and safety, improving the cost for customers of undertaking roadworks. That's not just local authorities. It's principally utilities as well who have a lot of need to dig up the roads and improving traffic flow and improving emissions.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

You do that with more complicated temporary traffic lights that can adapt to the traffic that can see either with radar or now in our latest product with cameras and with remote monitoring of lights where the traffic flow can be managed and the timing on the lights can change to reflect the buildup of traffic around junctions. Being able to do that in a lower-cost way because on many roadworks in the U.K., you may not see them, but the permit for digging out the road specifies having a man in a van sitting there monitoring the traffic and then intervening in the timing of the lights. Actually, you can have multiple junctions monitored by one person in the SRL control center. These are SRL employees with the full sort of traffic management qualification. They can look at more than one junction.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

They're there. They're not at the side of the road. It's safer. They definitely turn up. There's an ex-army guy sitting at the back of the room making sure that everything's being done properly. It is run as a monitoring center rather than a load of individuals at the side of the road. That is cheaper. It is a cheaper and better solution. I think that's how we want to take the business. That strategy seems clear and sensible. The megatrend is clear. The roads are crumbling. The utilities need to do the roadworks. There is something to go for. It's been very hard work. We will continue to work very hard on that business. The next one is around Oystercatcher and that Oystercatcher storage terminal that I covered. Very successful investment over a long hold period.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The questioner kindly says, "We realized four of the assets a few years ago. What's the plan for the rest of the stake?" As I said, I'm particularly happy with that investment. It's been a very good performer. It's a good cash yielder. We're not in a hurry to sell it. I think we've been clear with investors. It's not actually a long-term hold that we would be opening to realize it at the right time. We're not trying to sell this at the moment. This is one that we don't actually control. We don't have a controlling stake. We've got sort of a joint governance arrangement with the operator of the terminal, Advario. Maybe there would be an opportunity to sell alongside them.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Or in due course, maybe we can sell to another financial investor like us that Advario would be happy to partner with, particularly if it's a financial investor that they partner with in other things. There could be other ways of monetizing it. It's a great business. No hurry to do that. We've taken some value off the table by adding a bit of holdco debt ahead of it, essentially borrowing money against the terminal, against the robust cash flows of the terminal, and getting an extra distribution to 3iN. The equity value is a bit less that we're holding that at.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

That's that one. Another good one on the 3i Group has been building a US infrastructure team in recent years. Are there any plans to include US investments in 3iN?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It's a possibility.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I mean, the idea was to build a track record with a sort of seed capital. There has been some third-party money raised as well that that team are managing. They have been investing in exclusively sort of US North American businesses. It potentially is something that we could look at. It is not a current focus for us. We do see good opportunities in Europe. Our focus is remaining on European headquartered businesses. As I said, we do have a number of multinationals. We talked about TCR growing in the US. We talk to our US colleagues all the time. We share ideas. They are familiar with TCR. We are familiar with their airport equipment business called Smarte Carte that does luggage trolleys. There are benefits to having a North American team within the 3i sort of ecosystem.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

No current plans to deploy capital from 3i Infrastructure through that team. As I said, it could be something for the future.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

A question about why we sold our company in Valorem. One of the best-performing assets, alongside other very strong-performing assets, steady and high returns. Was there room to scale it further?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Yes, room to scale it further. Defining the right space for a future buyer and getting them to pay now for future growth. That was something that we believe we did successfully. It was not a zero-risk business. It was a business that was an energy developer principally in France, but it had been growing around Europe. It was an onshore wind developer. We sold when it had achieved a very decent scale and sold to essentially a more core infrastructure, lower cost of capital investor that wants to back the next phase of growth.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It may be that the returns available on the next phase of growth may scale faster if they accept slightly lower returns. The management team were keen for a deep-pocketed future backer for their business. We had been in it, I think, for about eight years by that point. We thought it was a good time for us to sell it on, where it still had a very clear growth pipeline ahead of it. We got a very strong return on that business, sold it for materially more than we had been holding it for. That is what we do.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Before I get onto the market, I am just looking through some of the other questions that have been raised as I was delivering the presentation. Who are the minority shareholders in the companies?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

As I said, sometimes we have syndicated to third-party money.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

These would be generally private infrastructure fund investors, so limited partners in the industry jargon. It's often pension money, long-term pension money. Institutional money. As I say, we 3i manage that money alongside 3iN. We also, in many of the businesses, have the management team, some of which may be founders, but the management team invested alongside us. It's good. It's an aligned incentive to have them invested in the equity alongside us. That's particularly where it's, say, 25%-30% minority alongside, when you look through the charts, that's typically other institutions that we're managing. That's that one.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I think, final one on the portfolio, undersea data cables we talked about. Obviously, it's in the news, very relevant recently. There's been a Russian vessel that's been crisscrossing an area where there are data cables.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

Breakages in subsea cables are a fact of life. There are a number of them on the Flag network each year. Typically, it's fishing boats. Either anchor dragging or trawling, breaking the cables, or sometimes it's sort of subsea activity. Sort of wave action and tidal action changing the shape of the seabed. Sometimes you get a bridge and a cable will snap. There may be examples. It's not always easy to prove whether a fishing vessel is not fully a fishing vessel. They're all security-related. There is a whole industry. It's sort of like a self-insured model for the whole industry. There are vessels regionally focused that go out, and their job is within a few weeks to repair any breakages in the network. It's an ongoing process. It's something that's always been present in the industry.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

One of the benefits of our networks are that they're, as I mentioned, spider's webs. There are many ways the data can travel to go from A to B. It can go a number of different routes. That's part of the attractiveness of our network to customers. It's a fact of life. The data can go around a breakage, and then the breakages are repaired.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I think I'll call it a day on the asset questions now. I'll read out the first one, which covers it. With the HICL-TRIG combination reshaping the listed infrastructure space, how is 3iN positioning itself in terms of energy transition exposure, capital allocation, and sustaining dividend coverage while pursuing growth?

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

That's a great question. Many parts to it.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I mean, firstly, our view, and our advisors have helped shape our view on this, is that the sector needed to shrink, and it will shrink. It has already started to shrink. Too much money was raised when interest rates were too low. The returns available from many of those vehicles have not been enough in a world of higher interest rates where if your return is not that far above what you can get from investing in a 10-year government bond, for example, then why would you do that? 3iN has always been different. I mean, we have been more than a decade focused on this core plus return. We have been trying to target 8%-10%, but trying to outperform that. A more than 10% return, but with the downside protection from investing in infrastructure assets, but with growth.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We have been quite a different proposition. It is an equity proposition. It is not a bond proxy. We have always tried to make that very, very clear. We think our position is just as relevant now as it always was, and that it is differentiated from HICL, from INPP, and from TRIG and the other renewable funds. One of the big differences with 3i Infrastructure's investments and some of the renewable funds is we invest in the developer, operator, and owner of assets. So Infinex operates its generation assets. It owns the assets. It is selling the power. It has a power price hedging program. It has a development capability. There are people working there. Often in renewable funds, what you have is a portfolio of assets. You do not have the development function. You do not have the operation function. Those things are outsourced to third parties.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

You're buying something quite different when you're buying into 3i Infrastructure's businesses. The same is true for our Future Biogas. It's a real company with real people with operational and development expertise. We can do more with our renewable assets than a pure play renewable portfolio. That's how we differentiate ourselves. That's how we think we can sustain our model. Our capital allocation is not going to be just to buy assets in isolation. We have been investing, as I've said, through Infinex in rolling out solar panels, through Future Biogas in developing new plants. We did actually buy plants from other people where Future Biogas was already operating. We bought economic ownership from two parties for plants. That is something we do, but it's through the development platform. I think that's a very different thing. I don't think I have anything more to add.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I've been asked quite a lot of this on the road. The broken notes and the pieces that have been in the Times and so on have said very sensible things about it being not an obvious combination. If it's a way of the sector consolidating and the number of parties shrinking, that's probably at the margin a good thing for 3iN. 3iN's proposition will clearly be different from a combination of HICL and TRIG, for example. I don't think we need to change our positioning. I hope that answers that question. I think that covers a lot of things on the call. There's one final on the weighted average discount rate.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

I think I'll make this my final question. I've slightly run over an hour. About the weighted average discount rate, the questioner says it's risen slightly. It was only 0.2%.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

It's gone from 11.3% to 11.5%. What's behind that? There's a question about what's the duration of the portfolio. That's a bond proxy question. I'll cover the weighted average discount rate rising slightly. I think you should view that as a portfolio mix effect, really, rather than a sort of wholesale view of increasing discount rates. Obviously, it is an increase. Increases in discount rates typically serve to reduce the valuations, whereas our valuations overall have gone up quite strongly. There's a clear increase in the weight in the portfolio from TCR. I think you can read into that. Our principle for valuations is to make changes in the performance of the companies and the prospects of the companies through the cash flows and not muck around with the discount rates.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We keep our long-term assumptions on inflation, on long-term interest rates, and so on constant. The inflation rate assumption we have is 2%. Other people have higher inflation assumptions. Inflation is a good thing for this portfolio. Our discount rates are consistent with that. We have not made any wholesale changes in discount rates. On the what's the approximate duration of the portfolio? I just mentioned this is an equity portfolio. These are equity investments and equity returns. We do not see ourselves as a bond proxy. We do not have a duration of the portfolio. You are taking equity risk, but with downside protection from the asset base and the essential nature of what these companies do and their strong market positions. We do not measure and we do not publish a duration. Perfect. Over to you, Jake.

Operator

Thanks, James.

Operator

Thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time and then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. Of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make those available to you immediately after the presentation has ended. James, perhaps before really now just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, 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.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

The main thing is to thank you all for your attention and joining this call. I think this is something we'd like to continue to do. It's a new thing for us. Retail investors are very important.

James Dawes
James Dawes
CFO at 3i Infrastructure

We do think this is a very relevant return, an 8%-10% return. That's the net of everything, net of all fees and costs. Don't add any more costs onto that. That's what we're trying to deliver. We've consistently delivered it over the life of the company.

Operator

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'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of 3i Infrastructure, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. Good afternoon to you all.

Executives
    • James Dawes
      James Dawes
      CFO
Powered by Quartr